nytimes.com Under Argentina’s New President, Fuel Is Up 60%, and Diaper Prices Have Doubled Daniel Politi, Lucía Cholakian Herrera ~3 minutes

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Javier Milei warned that things would get worse before they got better. Now Argentines are living it. An aerial view of crowded city square. Protesters are holding large banners. Protesters on Wednesday in Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires during the first demonstration against the new government of President Javier Milei.Credit...Luis Robayo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images An aerial view of crowded city square. Protesters are holding large banners.

Daniel Politi and Lucía Cholakian Herrera

Reporting from Buenos Aires

Published Dec. 23, 2023Updated Dec. 24, 2023

Over the past two weeks, the owner of a hip wine bar in Buenos Aires saw the price of beef soar 73 percent, while the zucchini he puts in salads rose 140 percent. An Uber driver paid 60 percent more to fill her tank. And a father said he spent twice as much on diapers for his toddler than he did last month.

In Argentina, a country synonymous with galloping inflation, people are used to paying more for just about everything. But under the country’s new president, life is quickly becoming even more painful.

When Javier Milei was elected president on Nov. 19, the country was already suffering under the world’s third-highest rate of inflation, with prices up 160 percent from a year before.

But since Mr. Milei took office on Dec. 10 and quickly devalued the Argentine currency, prices have soared at such a dizzying pace that many in this South American country of 46 million are running new calculations on how their businesses or households can survive the far deeper economic crunch the country is already enduring.

“Since Milei won, we’ve been worried all the time,” said Fernando González Galli, 36, a high school philosophy teacher in Buenos Aires.

Mr. Galli has been trying to cut back without making life worse for his two daughters, who are 6 years and 18 months old, including switching to a cheaper brand of diapers and racing to spend his Argentine pesos before their value disintegrates even further. “As soon as I get my paycheck, I go buy everything I can,” he said.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 24, 2023, Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Under New President, Argentines Walloped by Eye-Watering Inflation. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

indy100.com Scientists discover that less intelligent people voted for Brexit Harry Fletcher ~2 minutes

New scientific research has found that less intelligent people were more likely to vote for Brexit.

According to a new study, people who voted for the leave campaign are more likely to have had lower cognitive abilities.

This may have made them more susceptible to disinformation, the authors of the study claim.

The new research comes from the University of Bath. As the study found, 73 per cent of the UK voters in the top 10 per cent of cognitive performance were remain voters.

Only 40 per cent of the people in the bottom 10 per cent of cognitive performance voted to remain in the EU.

The findings were published in the academic journal PLOS One are were based on analysis of 3,181 couples in the UK from an longitudinal study called Understanding Society.

iStock

The study was led by authors Chris Dawson and Paul Baker. The pair claim that the findings show “low cognitive ability makes people more susceptible to misinformation and disinformation”.

The pair list the rhetoric from leave campaign leaders claiming that the UK would be able to “take back control of our borders” as an example of disinformation, as well as the claim about the £350m Brexit windfall being used to fund the NHS.

Speaking to the Times, Dawson said: “It’s an uncomfortable thing to say, but I think it’s important to be said. We have increasing amounts of fake news and it’s getting more and more sophisticated.”

Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

indy100.com Scientists discover that less intelligent people voted for Brexit Harry Fletcher ~2 minutes

New scientific research has found that less intelligent people were more likely to vote for Brexit.

According to a new study, people who voted for the leave campaign are more likely to have had lower cognitive abilities.

This may have made them more susceptible to disinformation, the authors of the study claim.

The new research comes from the University of Bath. As the study found, 73 per cent of the UK voters in the top 10 per cent of cognitive performance were remain voters.

Only 40 per cent of the people in the bottom 10 per cent of cognitive performance voted to remain in the EU.

The findings were published in the academic journal PLOS One are were based on analysis of 3,181 couples in the UK from an longitudinal study called Understanding Society.

iStock

The study was led by authors Chris Dawson and Paul Baker. The pair claim that the findings show “low cognitive ability makes people more susceptible to misinformation and disinformation”.

The pair list the rhetoric from leave campaign leaders claiming that the UK would be able to “take back control of our borders” as an example of disinformation, as well as the claim about the £350m Brexit windfall being used to fund the NHS.

Speaking to the Times, Dawson said: “It’s an uncomfortable thing to say, but I think it’s important to be said. We have increasing amounts of fake news and it’s getting more and more sophisticated.”

Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

Donald Trump has been in a New York court today to defend himself against charges of longtime financial fraud, but during a recess in the proceedings, he targeted the judge hearing his case with a livid, deluded eight-minute rant.

... He ruled we lost a big part of the case because he's a Democrat club politician. He's a Democrat operative. And he's a disgrace to people that call themself judges. And I hope my lawyers go in, and I hope they fight him very hard. ‘Cause this guy's getting away with murder. And his clerk should not be allowed to be in his ear on every single question. You take a look at what's happening with her. She hates Trump more than he does. [...]

This is a judge that should be disbarred. This is a judge that should be out of office. This is a judge that some people say could be charged criminally for what he's doing. He’s interfering with an election, and it's a disgrace.

Referring to Judge Arthur Engoron, who will decide the financial penalties that Trump might owe, Trump repeatedly referred to him as a "rogue judge," an "operative," and a "disgrace."

At other points in the rant, he snarled that the attorney general overseeing the case, New York’s Letitia James, is "a corrupt person, a terrible person driving people out of New York," and said that "people" saw this "egregious trial, this horrible, horrible trial going off, while at the same time people are being murdered outside on the streets and nothing happens to those people that do the murdering."

As usual, Trump's speech was laced with apparent threats aimed at his judge.

And somebody has to fight because if you don't fight, our country is just gonna go down the tubes. This is election interference. This guy's a highly partisan person, and we can't let this stuff happen.

Members of Trump's base have regularly taken this "fight" language as permission to mount harassment campaigns and death threats against Trump's enemies of the moment, whether they be public figures or private citizens.

"I've been going through a witch hunt for years, so this is really now getting dirty between Jack Smith and between all of these DOJ people helping them along. This is a pure witch hunt for purposes of interfering with the elections of the United States of America," Trump falsely claimed before storming off. "It's totally illegal. This judge should be disbarred. He shouldn't be allowed to be a judge.”

Taylor Swift is currently one of the biggest stars in the country. She is still on her record-breaking “Eras” tour, ranks as the second-most-played artist on Spotify this year, and, in July, scored the biggest week of sales for an album this year with “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).” She’s using that cultural clout to urge her fans, known as “Swifties,” to register to vote.

Swift posted an Instagram story on Tuesday, marking National Voter Registration Day.

“I’ve been so lucky to see so many of you guys at my US shows recently,” she wrote. “I’ve heard you raise your voices, and I know how powerful they are. Make sure you’re ready to use them in our elections this year!”

She went on to offer concrete advice on how: “Register to vote in less than 2 minutes at vote.org/nvrd.” As a result, Vote.org’s communications director tweeted, “our site was averaging 13,000 users every 30 minutes.”

This isn’t a first for Swift. In 2018, she was credited with a surge in young voter registrations after she endorsed two Tennessee Democrats and promoted voter registration. She called on fans to vote in 2020, and just this July, she went local with a post about the Nashville mayoral race.

The question is how much of a difference even arguably the biggest pop star in the country can make. Obviously, Swift’s powers are limited—she can’t propel a Democrat to a statewide win in Tennessee. But getting young people out to vote has historically been tough, and every little bit can help.

In 2020, young voter turnout was up substantially from 2016. It typically drops way off in midterm elections, but 2018 set a record for youth turnout, at 28%. Youth turnout wasn’t quite as high in 2022, at 23%, but that was still significantly higher than the 13% who voted in 2014—and in four states, young voter turnout was higher in 2022 than in 2018. Two of those states were the battlegrounds of Michigan and Pennsylvania, where Democrats made important pickups.

Because, yes, young voters do lean Democratic. That may be particularly true in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, and all the ensuing state abortion bans: People ages 18 to 29 are the most likely to say abortion should be legal in most or all cases.

It’s unlikely that Taylor Swift is the magical answer to decades of struggles in getting young people out to vote. But in a tight election—and many of them are so tight these days—young people can make a difference. And having Swift promoting voter registration and reminding Swifties to follow through and vote is definitely a plus.

Hey everyone first time fullstack noob here, novice python, JS and CSS/HTML dev in the middle of development for a Fullstack Django React Native app, the thing is I made a mess out of my modules and nodes trying to compile with 95 no module found error on the expo CLI, I started with npm and the tried yarn since it was recommended and I ended up with a sorry mess. So since the Django backend API is already running on the messy project I’m going for the new project copy paste old code approach, the front end also has components and screens that may need a few touches but the bulk is already there. I not sure about the proper order and want to make extra sure I have the appropriate folder/project creation order so the compiling and installation is as streamlined as possible as well as the creation of the venv; on the last project I had two that had hardcoded the paths for the django folder and the frontend one since I had some issues with my project finding the appropriate folder, so that’s the right approach? at which time during the creation of the projects should the venv creation happen or more precisely which project should be created first with its corresponding venv, Django or React Native Expo, since as far as I understand there’s an ideal order that will create and setup some specs automatically. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks

Hey everyone first time fullstack noob here, novice python, JS and CSS/HTML dev in the middle of development for a Fullstack Django React Native app, the thing is I made a mess out of my modules and nodes trying to compile with 95 no module found error on the expo CLI, I started with npm and the tried yarn since it was recommended and I ended up with a sorry mess. So since the Django backend API is already running on the messy project I'm going for the new project copy paste old code approach, the front end also has components and screens that may need a few touches but the bulk is already there. I not sure about the proper order and want to make extra sure I have the appropriate folder/project creation order so the compiling and installation is as streamlined as possible as well as the creation of the venv; on the last project I had two that had hardcoded the paths for the django folder and the frontend one since I had some issues with my project finding the appropriate folder, so that's the right approach? at which time during the creation of the projects should the venv creation happen or more precisely which project should be created first with its corresponding venv, Django or React Native Expo, since as far as I understand there's an ideal order that will create and setup some specs automatically. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks

Edit; To clarify a bit further I had the django server up and running and getting 200s so when deciding for a frontend approach I got sold on the CSS module separation of concerns/files from my .jsx components and screens on react native and at one point I had the npm installation running smoothly with only 5 critical vulnerabilities but the 'no module found on this folder' still popped up while trying to compile so long story short I tried almost anything that came on goggling and finally I reduced the number of errors from 98 to 95 with a tutorial but while following some instructions on expo or react native documentation it mentioned that yarn was recommended over npm so I thought what the hell, why not, and now I have a broken mess on the frontend project that seems unsurmountable so I decided to start proper and make extra sure I got the correct order as well as venv paths and such.