Explaining a Cancer Conundrum
Plus: Elon’s massive AI center, Malaysia’s football team isn’t Malaysian & Americans are fed up with sports betting.
Sometimes the Gist List gives you an entire day of sad news, but today is NOT that day. Actually, we’re starting out on some very good news! While perusing Derek Thompson’s Substack, I came across this article juxtaposing a peer-reviewed paper that could explain a seemingly troublesome trend.
JAMA released a paper last week saying that early-onset cancer rates for people under 50 have doubled since 1992. That’s the bad news, but what’s odd is that mortality from cancer has not increased. At all. How could this be?
The JAMA study showed that this surge is due to diagnostic inflation, meaning that random lumps and bumps that would not have been considered cancer 50 years ago are now being treated like malignant, fast-growing tumors. While it’s good that we have developed early detection methods for cancer, it is worth noting that it’s hard for doctors to determine which of these cells are life-threatening, and which we can deploy “watchful waiting” on.
Derek also pointed out that while some cancers, like colorectal and endometrial, are genuinely increasing, overall, mortality rates for early-onset cancers have not risen, despite more diagnoses.
Welcome to the Gist List: a lumpy, bumpy—but never malignant—news roundup, things you should know, and my thoughts leading up to today’s podcast episode.
Here’s what’s on my mind:
🏎️ Billionaire’s son sells investors on the “Ultimate Man Cave.”🔒
🚧 Elon builds a colossal AI center.
⚽ The Malaysian football team’s players are barely Malaysian.
🎰 Americans have cooled off on sports betting.
🎣 Trinbagonian fishers are risking their lives.
The Gist List
A Billionaire’s Son Sold Investors on the ‘Ultimate Man Cave.’ Was Any of It Real? (L.A. Times)🔒
Betteridge’s law of headlines would stipulate that any headline ending in a question is usually “no.” I have a corollary about a specific subset of headlines that pose questions. When the query is something like: “Is any of it true?” or “Was any of it real?” the answer becomes “yes, but not nearly enough.”
A 33-year-old entrepreneur, David Bren (son of real-estate billionaire Donald Bren), pitched “The Bunker”—a $14,500/mo ultra-luxury car club with Ferraris, Bugattis, private lounges, and A-list “founding members.” Investors dropped several six-figure sums, but the money allegedly went to personal expenses—luxury homes, car leases, and travel—instead of development costs. When investors demanded refunds, Bren wrote bad checks or sent token payments, and not this kind.
The Times reports that some people close to Bren say that his intentions were genuine, but that sentiment did not seem to be shared by his father, who released a statement saying, “We do not have a personal or business relationship with this individual.“ This might prompt Bren the younger to ask, “Was Any of My Father’s Love ever real?” The answer, as per Pesca’s Corollary: “yes, but not nearly enough.”
Elon Musk Gambles Billions in Memphis to Catch Up on AI (WSJ)
Elon Musk’s AI company xAI is building a pair of enormous, aptly named “Colossus” data centers in Memphis, Tennessee, and Southaven, Mississippi, aiming to create the world’s largest AI supercomputers. These projects will cost tens of billions of dollars, and are, at least in part, a big middle finger to Sam Altman, with whom he started OpenAI years ago, but has since had a falling out. The project is also a huge gamble. xAI raised $10 billion in debt and equity this year but is projected to burn through $13 billion before the year is even up.
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Faking Foreign-Born Players’ Eligibility (BBC)
FIFA has accused the Football Association of Malaysia (or “Soccer” as we call it here in the states) of forging documents to make seven foreign-born footballers appear eligible to play for the Malaysian national team. FIFA has a “grandfather rule” which allows players to play for a team if their grandparents were born in that country, but Malaysia stands accused of changing grandparents’ birthplaces from Argentina, Spain, Brazil and other countries to Malaysian cities such as Penang and Malacca.
If FIFA is upset about this, they should take a closer look at the Qatari national teams. Qatar is basically a country where most of the population is imported, including the soccer team, and when you look at virtually any of their teams, the players are from all over the world. Their Olympic team? They’re from Egypt, Senegal, Mauritania and Sudan. Handball? Two Syrians, two Montenegrins, two Bosnians, an Egyptian, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bandi, a Croat, a Cuban, a Spaniard and a Frenchman.
Americans Increasingly See Legal Sports Betting as a Bad Thing for Society and Sports (Pew Research)
Public opinion of legalized sports betting has gotten even worse since 2022. The markets had the under at 34%, but America smashed the over at 43%. And if you gave up 22 points to take “Percentage of respondents who say it’s Bad for Sports vs. Good for Sports” — you still made money!
In non-gambling speak, since 2022, respondents went from saying sports gambling was bad for society from 34% to 43% and bad for sports from 33% to 40%. Personally, I think that gambling itself is a bit of a boogeyman—for adults. Teens, however, can’t lay off those three-team teasers. But that’s kids. Ultimately, the issue is that a lot of young men who get caught up in this don’t have the means or tools to control themselves. I actually spoke to Jonathan Cohen about this a few months ago, and I had Isaac Rose-Berman on a Substack Live a while back.
The Expert and the Mark: How Gambling Works (and doesn't )w/ Isaac Rose-Berman and Mike Pesca
Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.
Fishermen in Trinidad and Tobago Fear for Their Lives and Jobs After US Strikes in the Caribbean (AP)
Fishermen in Trinidad and Tobago say they’re living in fear now that the U.S. is patrolling their waters. If you’re a regular Gist Lister, you probably know we’ve covered a number of stories where the U.S. ended up blasting civilian ships out of the water, so we don’t exactly have a great record here.
The twin-island nation sits just 7–11 miles from Venezuela, which isn’t great if you’re just trying to fish while the U.S. military is trying to track down drug smuggling boats off the coast of Venezuela. Even worse is if your prime minister is Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who has told the Americans to “kill [the smugglers] violently.” To think, if you’re a humble Porgy fisherman who is obliterated by a missile strike via the most powerful nation on earth, there will be a posthumous declaration calling you a member of a transnational criminal organization, Tren de Aragua. I am not sure if that is a consolation to your next of kin or a further indignity.
On The Show: The Intelligence Failures That Led to October 7th
Yaakov Katz co-author with Amir Bohbot, of While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East, traces the failures that led to October 7 and how Israel’s security establishment misread Hamas’s strength and intent. He explains how world opinion, hostage leverage, and casualty ratios constrain Israel differently in Gaza than against Hezbollah, and how Netanyahu’s post-ceasefire decisions prolonged the war. Katz argues Israel allowed hardliners to define the mission and assesses the current 20-point plan.
This newsletter was put together in collaboration with Kathleen Sykes. All mistakes belong to Mike Pesca.
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I often speed read over the subheads and descriptive copy, but man, can't do that with the Gist List or you'll miss a pun or running joke. Every. Time.