I still have trouble believing that Ivana Trump fell down the staircase in her townhouse, hit a very vulnerable spot on her body, and died. Of course, I know it’s possible, but I still don’t believe it. We never heard about her children or her housekeeper questioning the circumstances of her accident.. We never heard any hysterics from Ivana’s mother, Marie Zelnickov, age 96. Marie now lives with Ivanka in Miami. Why isn’t she screaming out, “What happened to my daughter?” I would like Dateline to investigate. Look at the current article in New York magazine.—LWH

Ivana Trump, former president Donald Trump’s first wife, died on July 14, 2022 at the age of 73, owing to injuries she suffered in an accidental fall on the “grand curving staircase” at her Upper East Side townhouse. Her funeral drew about 400 people and featured a gold-hued coffin, Secret Service agents, and loving remembrances from her three adult children as well as several friends. Then this icon of ’80s glamour and New York tabloid drama was laid to rest … at a New Jersey golf course?

Many found the decision to bury Ivana at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster puzzling. She is the first person to be buried at the former president’s New Jersey property, and the ground had to be consecrated so she could have a traditional Catholic burial.

A New York Post photographer scoped out the site shortly after Ivana was laid to rest and found that while her grave isn’t literally on the golf course, the whole vibe is surprisingly understated:

Photos taken by The Post Thursday show Trump’s grave alone against a bucolic scenery of trees and shrubbery. The grave looks upon a sprawling green space upon the country club’s vast estate. 

The plot where Ivana was buried has a bouquet of more than two dozen white flowers and a plaque that reads in all capital letters Ivana Trump with the dates she was born and died.

The grave is in a place where golfers would not see it as they tee off for a round of golf. The small section of the club is below the backside of the first tee.

A little over a year later, the mystery persists. Photographs published by The Daily Mail on August 12, 2023 show that Ivana’s grave is marked with a small headstone, which “has become overgrown with grass and is barely visible.”

So what exactly is going on here? I have a few theories.

Theory 1: Trump really loves northern New Jersey.

If Trump National Golf Club Bedminster held a special place in Ivana’s heart, there’s no record of it. Donald bought the property in 2002, a full decade after their divorce was finalized. While Ivana maintained a friendship with her ex-husband through her final days, and her daughter, Ivanka, was married at the club, it does not appear that Ivana ever publicly praised the property.

There is, however, ample evidence that Donald Trump thinks Bedminster is a phenomenal place to be laid to rest. “Wouldn’t you want to be buried here?” he mused to The Wall Street Journal in 2015. The idea has been on his mind for at least 15 years. Back in 2007, Trump filed paperwork to build a windowless wedding chapel at Bedminster that would later be converted into a mausoleum for himself and his family.

Drawings filed with the Somerset County township called for what NJ.com described as a “19-foot-high, classical-style stone structure” with “four imposing obelisks surrounding its exterior and a small altar and six vaults inside. Locals balked at the proposal, which they deemed gaudy, and Trump withdrew the plan. Five years later, he came back with a new idea: Instead of a mausoleum, he would be buried at a large cemetery with more than 1,000 graves. “The idea, apparently, was that Trump’s golf-club members would buy the other plots, seizing the chance at eternal membership,” the Washington Post reported.

Facing continued opposition to his ghoulish ambitions, Trump revised his plans once again. In 2014, the Trump Organization filed paperwork to build two graveyards at Bedminster. One would have 284 lots for sale to the public, while the other would consist of just ten plots for Trump and his family near the first tee. The company’s filing with the state said Trump “specifically chose this property for his final resting place as it is his favorite property.”

In an October 2023 interview, Eric Trump revealed it was his father’s idea to have his mother laid to rest at the “family funeral plot.” “He was the one to say, you know, ‘I want her with us,’” Eric said. “It was pretty amazing again, you know, kind of a wife long removed — ex-wife long removed. He’s an incredible man. He’s got a heart of gold.”

Theory 2: Trump is running an elaborate tax scheme.

Some remain skeptical that Trump actually considers this the most fabulous piece of property he owns

The average person might say Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s seaside Florida resort, is more spectacular, but they’re not looking at Bedminister through the eyes of a person with an alleged passion for tax avoidance. This tweet from Brooke Harrington, a professor of sociology at Dartmouth, sparked speculation that Bedminster’s real appeal as a graveyard lies in New Jersey tax law

Indeed, as Insider reported, there are some surprising perks to being the proprietor of a New Jersey graveyard:

Under New Jersey state tax code, any land that is dedicated to cemetery purposes is exempt from all taxes, rates, and assessments. Cemetery companies are also specifically exempt from paying any real estate taxes, rates, and assessments or personal property taxes on their lands, as well as business taxes, sales taxes, income taxes, and inheritance taxes.

And the Trump family has definitely been pursuing the tax advantages of cemetery ownership. A document published by ProPublica shows that the Trump Family Trust sought to designate a property in Hackettstown, New Jersey, about 20 miles from Bedminster, as a nonprofit cemetery company back in 2016.

But there is reason to question this too-Trumpy-to-be-true allegation. First, all this cemetery business is unnecessary because he has already found a way to drastically reduce his Bedminster tax burden. When the Post’s David Farenthold looked into Trump’s cemetery obsession in 2017, he concluded it wouldn’t be very profitable as a business venture or a tax-avoidance scheme:

… the savings would hardly be worth the trouble. That’s because Trump had already found a way to lower his taxes on that wooded, largely unused parcel. He had persuaded the township to declare it a farm, because some trees on the site are turned into mulch. Because of pro-farmer tax policies, Trump’s company pays just $16.31 per year in taxes on the parcel, which he bought for $461,000.

According to a 2019 HuffPost analysis, Trump slashed his Bedminster tax bill by about $88,000 a year by keeping eight goats and farming 113 acres of hay on the property.

Is is possible that the cemetery business is some kind of backup tax- avoidance scheme? I suppose, but it doesn’t make a ton of sense to this humble TurboTax user.

Theory 3: Trump is just keeping it weird.

“It’s always been my suspicion that there’s something we don’t know” about Trump’s cemetery plan, Bedminster land-use board member Nick Strakhov told Farenthold in 2017

It does seem we’re missing a key piece of the boneyard puzzle. But there is one thing we know about Trump now that wasn’t quite as apparent back then: He is a super-weird guy. He has managed to be weird with various kinds of paper, toilet bowls, aircraft carriers, and “dangerous fruit,” to name just a few of his proclivities. The thought of our inevitable demise brings out strange feelings and behavior in most people. Some of the rich plan to freeze themselves or shoot their remains into space; is it any surprise that Trump has some grandiose idea about how he and his family should be laid to rest?

“It’s never something you like to think about, but it makes sense,” Trump told the New York Post during his first attempt to make Bedminster a cemetery in 2007. “This is such beautiful land, and Bedminster is one of the richest places in the country.”

Trumpy commentary on the wealth of northern New Jersey aside, that sounds astonishingly well adjusted.

This piece was updated to include Eric Trump’s comments on his mother’s gravesite.

Elon Musk Visits Israel Amid Backlash Against His Endorsement of Antisemitic Post

Alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Musk toured an Israeli village where dozens of people were killed in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks.

Elon Musk Visits an Israeli Kibbutz Attacked by Hamas

0:27Video released by the Israeli government showed Elon Musk with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu touring the scene of a Hamas attack in Kfar Aza.Credit…Israel’s Government Press Office

By Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Ryan Mac

• Nov. 27, 2023Updated 4:42 p.m. ET

Elon Musk traveled to Israel and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, touring the scene of a Hamas attack in a visit that appeared aimed at calming the outcry over his endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory on X, the social media platform he owns.

Dozens of major brands suspended their advertisingon X after Mr. Musk this month agreed with a post that accused Jewish communities of pushing “hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” The flight of advertisers threatened to cost X tens of millions of dollars, and the White House denounced Mr. Musk for “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate.”

On Tuesday, after arriving in Israel, Mr. Musk wrote on X that “actions speak louder than words.” Wearing a flak jacket, he toured Kfar Aza, an Israeli kibbutz where dozens of people were killed during the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7.

Video shared by Mr. Netanyahu’s office showed the two men, accompanied by security personnel, walking through the village in the rain and inspecting the blackened ruins of a house. Mr. Netanyahu said on X that he gave Mr. Musk the tour “to show him up close the crimes against humanity committed by Hamas.”

In a conversation with Mr. Netanyahu broadcast on X, Mr. Musk called the visit to Kfar Aza “jarring” and said he also had been shown footage of the Oct. 7 massacre that he found “troubling.”

Mr. Netanyahu spent the bulk of the conversation explaining the rationale for the war in Gaza. Mr. Musk said in agreement that it was important to “get rid of the ones who are hellbent on murdering Jewish people,” though he also added that it was important to minimize civilian casualties in the enclave.

Mr. Musk also said it was a challenge to stop “the sort of propaganda that is convincing people to engage in murder,” an apparent reference to the ideology that had fueled Hamas’ attack. Mr. Netanyahu did not raise Mr. Musk’s social media post during the conversation and Mr. Musk did not refer to it, or to the role of X in shaping public attitudes over antisemitism.

But his visit did draw criticism from some who accused the Israeli government of giving Mr. Musk cover.

“Welcoming such a toxic mogul with open arms and taking him around sites of a massacre that has been belittled, demeaned and denied on his watch should be a stain on Netanyahu’s legacy,” wrote Ben Samuels, the U.S. correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Since Mr. Musk’s post, dozens of major brands including IBM, Apple and Disney have paused their advertising campaigns on X, and the company, which Mr. Musk purchased in October last year for $44 billion, could lose as much as $75 million in advertising revenue by the end of the year. Other major companies, including Amazon, Coca-Cola and Microsoft, have also halted or are considering pausing their ads on the social network, according to internal documents.

Mr. Musk has also faced broader criticism for toleratingand even encouraging antisemitic abuse on his social media platform. He has attacked George Soros, the financier who is a frequent target of antisemitic abuse, and threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League, a rights group that has highlighted the rise in antisemitism on X.

In May, he likened Mr. Soros, a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor, to Magneto — the X-Men supervillain who has Jewish roots — and said that Mr. Soros “hates humanity.”

That same month, Mr. Musk cast doubt that a gunman behind a mass shooting in Allen, Texas, that left eight people dead had supported Nazi ideology, calling it a “very bad psyop.”

When asked about those comments on CNBC in May, Mr. Musk was defiant. “I’ll say what I want, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it,” he said. The company has also said that concerns over antisemitic posts on the platform are overblown. 

Mr. Musk has not explained why he visited Israel, but he has had past dealings with its prime minister. In September, he hosted Mr. Netanyahu for an event at a Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., as both men sought to deflect criticism.

“It’s not an easy thing to be maligned — I know you’ve never seen that, right?” Mr. Netanyahu said during the event.

“Me, maligned?” Mr. Musk responded, laughing. “Never.”

During that exchange Mr. Musk also responded to reports of rising antisemitic content on the social network.

“Obviously I’m against antisemitism — I’m against anti-anything,” he said. “And I’m in favor of that which helps uphold society and takes us to a better future for humanity.”

Following his recent controversy, Mr. Musk posted a similar statement earlier this month, calling news stories that he was antisemitic “bogus.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he wrote.

On Monday, Israel appeared to reach an understanding with Mr. Musk over his proposal this month to deploy Starlink, the satellite internet service he owns, in Gaza for aid agencies to use amid cellular and internet blackouts. Palestinians have blamed Israel for the communications interruptions.

Israel’s communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, said that Mr. Musk had consented not to open access to the system in Israel and in Gaza without the permission of his ministry. “This understanding is vital,” Mr. Karhi wrote on X.

A correction was made on November 27, 2023:

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Benjamin Netanyahu. He is Israel’s prime minister, not its president.

The chef and restaurateur, best known for the celebrity hotspot Carbone in Greenwich Village, on the routines that help him manage a growing hospitality empire

Mario Carbone and his partners have 25 restaurants around the country. MARK PETERSON/REDUX

Mario Carbone is famous for his spicy rigatoni vodka. But the chef has set his sights far beyond pasta. 

With 25 restaurants around the country, he and his partners Rich Torrisi and Jeff Zalaznick have established a hospitality empire that includes a luxury apartment building, Villa Miami; a private members’ club, ZZ’s, which charges a $20,000 application fee; and a consumer-goods brand, Carbone Fine Food, which launched in 2021 and introduced jars of his famous spicy vodka sauce earlier this year. Carbone, 43, said he hoped hotels were in the future.

The trio’s best-known business remains Carbone, the Greenwich Village celebrity hotspot where it’s nearly impossible for a mere mortal to snag a reservation. Carbone said that to have a leg up booking a table, you had to know one of the secret email addresses. 

“There are several that exist, and there’s basically a control room somewhere in the world run by one of our partners,” he said. “She’s been doing it for over a decade now, taking tens of thousands of reservations every single day.” Now there are several Carbone locations around the world, including in Miami, Dallas and Hong Kong.

Carbone was born and raised in Queens and now lives in New York and Miami with his girlfriend, the publicist Cait Bailey. Here, he discusses his love of cigars, why he thinks social media has hurt restaurant culture and the moment he felt he’d made it.

What time do you get up on Mondays, and what’s the first thing you do after waking up?

I get up at 5:30 a.m., and the first thing I do is let my dog Rocco out. I make myself a coffee and usually a small breakfast. By 7, I’m trying to get my morning exercise in—playing tennis, going for a run. I have a makeshift gym in my garage. 

How do you like your coffee and breakfast?

I drink pretty much exclusively iced coffee. I like it very strong, I usually do two shots of espresso and cold brew. My breakfast is usually a banana, a little bit of yogurt, egg whites and a wrap and avocado. Boring, healthy, just to get something in my stomach before I go. 

In the midst of a busy work life, do you find time to meditate or reflect?

I’m pretty peaceful by nature. If I don’t have quiet time to do my work and be in my thoughts, then I’m easily thrown off. 

What’s the most important thing for you to delegate to your assistant?

Travel is something I have no interest in dealing with on my own. I find it time-consuming and mind-numbing.

Is there anything you refuse to delegate?

That is a very long list. I’m manic about the smallest things that I could probably not do myself. My assistant is critical in my world, and she allows me the opportunity to touch all of these really small [details] that I believe if I was to give up, I would be doing whatever the project is a disservice. 

‘The amount of work I can get done with a singular good knife and a cutting board could probably replace an entire junk drawer of QVC-type items,’ Mario Carbone said. PHOTO: CARBONE FINE FOOD

Do you think people will ever get sick of Carbone’s spicy rigatoni vodka?

I hope not. I haven’t, and I’ve eaten it more than most. 

What do you cook for yourself at home?

Usually pretty simple stuff. Ten to 15 minutes max is my attention span during the week to cook for myself, a quick steak or a simple bowl of pasta. The only time of the week where I get even the slightest bit ambitious is probably on a Sunday, whether it’s just for me and my girlfriend or friends and family who are coming over. 

You designed the kitchens for the Villa, the luxury apartment building you’re opening in Miami. What’s your favorite thing in them?

We designed a small version of the pasta cookers, the tanks that I use in the restaurants, which are sunken wells of water. At any time, you can drop pasta in. You have all your burners free, and you have this very sleek countertop-height sunken tank for boiling water the way we do at the restaurants. 

When, in the 10 years since Carbone’s opening, did you feel like you’d made it? 

Maybe having President Obama for the first time. Even if we had lots of celebrities and big moments early on, I was able to really soak that one in. 

Are there any food trends you can’t stand? 

Certainly the food world has become very susceptible to cooking for social media. I do think it’s a wonderful thing that everyone now has the power to render a judgment or support their favorite location through their own channels. On the other side of that is when you get too distracted by it as an entrepreneur or chef and you start trying to make things for that Instagrammable moment. You’re generally going to fail, because your end goal is no longer to make the most delicious thing possible. 

What do you do to relax?

I am an avid cigar smoker. Usually I’m sharing it with someone, my father or a close friend. It gives you some time where you know you’re not going anywhere. 

Is there a kitchen product people spring for that you think is unnecessary or overrated?

There are too many kitchen gadgets in the world. When I’m cooking at someone else’s house, their drawers are ridiculous. The amount of work I can get done with a singular good knife and a cutting board could probably replace an entire junk drawer of QVC-type items people have purchased in their lives. 

What’s a piece of advice that’s guided you?

I remember my dad talking to me when I was younger and trying to find my path. His great fatherly advice was, “I don’t care what you choose to do with your life. I do care that whatever you choose to do, you pour yourself into it, you give a damn about it and you try to be the best at whatever it is

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🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺

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🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺

🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺

🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺

🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺

TECH ·WIKIPEDIA

Wikipedia founder slams Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter as a ‘huge problem’ and says it is ‘being overrun by trolls and lunatics’

By Eleanor Pringle

Founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales is concerned about the direction X is going in under the ownership of Elon Musk.

HORACIO VILLALOBOS—CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES

Elon Musk has recently found a new topic to direct his creative criticism at: Wikipedia. However, the founder of the free online encyclopedia isn’t taking the insults lying down—he’s hitting back at Musk’s controversial entry into the world of social media. 

This week Jimmy Wales, who founded Wikipedia in January 2001, slammed the transformation X—formerly Twitter—has undergone since being taken over by Musk.

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Among the changes overseen by Musk have been an increased focus on free speech—even at the risk of losing advertisers—as well as updates to user verification, plus the introduction of subscription models and longer form videos. 

For Wales, some of these decisions have created a “huge problem.” 

“A lot of people are fleeing Twitter, a lot of thoughtful and serious people are fleeing Twitter,” Wales told CNBC during the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon.

He continued: “I think it’s a real problem. Twitter was, and now I guess X sort of is… the default public square for the world and if it’s being overrun by trolls and lunatics. It’s not good for any of us.”

X has had to work hard to convince users and advertisers alike it is serious about content moderation, after advertising revenue on the platform sunk by around half. 

In August, just weeks into her tenure as X’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino claimed X had rolled out a raft of brand safety tools “that have never existed before at this company,” as well as confirming a new “de-amplification” policy.

However just a week later Media Matters, a not-for-profit research and insight site, published a report appearing to show posts from major global brands being unknowingly promoted on a pro-Nazi profile.

More recently X was the subject of a damning report from information analysis company NewsGuard, which found some of the biggest peddlers of misinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict on X were in fact “verified” users, thus potentially giving the posts a “boost” on the site. 

Moreover, so-called “verified” users are also eligible for payments if their content is widely shared, arguably creating an incentive to continue to post salacious content.

X did not immediately respond to Fortune’srequest for comment on the October report. 

“These are serious issues, you have to take the idea of responsibility seriously,” Wales added. “What [Musk] refers to as censorship we refer to as thoughtful editorial judgement, which is a very different matter.”

‘I just ignore him’

Musk’s most recent tussle with another tech titan—he’s previously sparred with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos—began with a supposed offer of funds. 

Wikipedia, which was created for free and without advertising, for a number of years has asked users for donations towards its work. 

The richest man on the planet screenshot this appeal, and captioned it on X: “I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia.”

In the same thread he also criticized the information logged on his own Wikipedia page.

Wales brushed off the interaction, saying this week: “He’s had a war of words with me, I just ignore him. I didn’t really respond to that. He’s a funny guy.”

“Elon will be Elon,” he later added.

FASHION

At 78, Norma Kamali Is Not Done Evolving

The designer opens up about adapting to a changing fashion world—and her absolute disinterest in retirement. 

by Carolyn Twersky

November 17, 2023

Courtesy of Norma Kamali

Amid the fast-and-furious game of creative director musical chairs dominating the fashion world, one woman remains a constant—as she has for over 55 years. That’s Norma Kamali, the Manhattan-born designer who, at the age of 78, is just as energetic and bubbling with ideas as she was when she first opened her boutique on East 53rd street in 1967.

Fashion remains a cornerstone for Kamali, who continues to put out four collections a year, but somehow, the designer has been finding time between all that to explore her other, non-aesthetic interests as well. These days, she has turned her attention to medicine and technology—specifically artificial intelligence—and the ways in which the fashion industry can benefit from such advancements. While many septuagenarians give up any attempt to grasp modern technology the second they’re faced with an iPhone screen, Kamali is not only embracing change, but fueled by it. This year, she enrolled in a course at MIT to learn about generative AI from the experts, returning to her new SoHo headquarters upon completion with a company-wide game plan.

“I want to live a long, healthy life in the best way I can, within the confines of my genetics,” she tells W over the phone. If you’re curious what that has to do with fashion, or even artificial intelligence, she’ll be happy to connect the dots on her new podcast, the AI-titled Invincible Threads, where she shares her findings with the world. “I’ve taken courses, I’ve had mentors, and now I’m meeting with doctors and researchers, so it feels like the right time to make this podcast and provide high-level, up-to-the-minute information about medicine and technology.” 

Hi. How are you? 

I am good. If it wasn’t so close to getting the collection done, I wouldn’t be stressed. How many years can you possibly do this and still feel like it’s the worst collection you ever did? Though by the time it’s done, and gone through a transformation, I won’t hate it anymore. I’ve been doing this 56 years, and I still go through that process. That was my discovery before this call. I was looking at the collection and thinking, “What the hell?”

I guess that just means you haven’t lost your critical edge. Anyway, I would say congratulations, as you have a lot going on right now, but I have a feeling that’s always the case. 

I’ve been in exactly the same job for all these years. The secret is to keep adding new things and create different experiences. There are people that say to me, “Norma, you’re asking me to do something I’ve never done before.” And I say, “Welcome to my world. That’s every day for me.” If I’ve done it before, it’s not going to be as exciting as discovering something completely new. That’s the secret to keeping an adventurous attitude about your work.

Has there ever been a time in your life when you were content to do the same thing repeatedly? 

It’s almost like a drug: every time something magical happens while you’re working, you feel lifted, like that experience took you to another level. It’s addictive because you wonder, can that happen again? And it can. But there are people who prefer the stability and the comfort of repetition, and I understand that, too. That can be meditative. But in the end, I love the element of the prize.

Tom Ford, who is 62, recently said, “Designers rarely change the world of fashion at 62,” which is one of the reasons why he’s stepping away from his label. Do you agree with that sentiment? 

No, no. Absolutely not. I don’t feel that way at all. That’s fascinating. I’m so surprised he would say that. First of all, I look at my job as being in service to women in everything I do. I loved when I finally understood that fashion and clothing could actually affect a person’s life in a positive way—that it could change how people feel about themselves. So it’s part of a purpose, more than just a singular take on fashion. 

You told WWD that fashion is going through “the biggest change” that you’ve experienced in your lifetime. How so? 

There are some obvious things like social media and e-commerce. As a designer, to be able to communicate directly with people who are connecting in some way to what I do, and to see them wearing my clothes is so great. In the past, I would see photographs of my clothes on celebrities in magazines, but now, so many people post pictures of themselves in my clothes. I see how they accessorize a piece, where they’re wearing it, the whole picture. It gives me such insight into who I’m dressing.

Technology is moving so quickly and the way we show clothes, sell clothes, buy clothes, present clothes—it’s all going to move faster and faster every month. And obviously, AI will change so much of our lives. 

And you see these changes happening and say, “OK, let’s go to MIT to understand it better.” 

Of course, the world is not perfect, but this is the golden age of technology and medicine. I’ve had amazing doctors and researchers on my podcast, and my breath is taken away every time I hear of the discoveries made. So many of my interviews are with women at the forefront of stem cell research and other medical discoveries. Listening to these women talk about medicine in this very progressive way is exciting. To me, the best outcome would be providing medicine that everybody could afford, equal types of care for everyone. Isn’t that beyond brilliant? 

When were you first introduced to the concept of AI? 

I’ve had interest in [virtual reality] and [augmented reality], and I think through them, I learned about AI. When I finished my MIT course, I came back and encouraged all my staff to download ChatGPT and start using it. I said, “Give it a prompt, see what it comes up with, and how it compares to what you came up with on your own. Start to use it as a sidekick, as a way to enhance your work and also enhance your productivity.” Everybody jumped on it.

There is a lot of hesitancy around AI, and the fear it could take creative jobs. What are your feelings about that? 

I think there’s absolutely truth to that. When we stopped using a horse and buggy and developed cars, some jobs were left behind. Every time we make progress, some things are negatively affected—and that is problematic. But the hope is that more opportunities will come about through new technology, and jobs we never dreamed of will open up. 

I do believe, though, that there are people who are afraid of AI and shouldn’t be. The more they learn about it, the more they can realize that, while there are creative aspects to AI, AI is not going to be creative. AI can be your assistant, it can do research for you, which in turn will provide you with more time to be creative. 

Is “retirement” a dirty word in your book? 

I don’t really think about retirement. I can’t imagine what that would mean for me. I am so into structure, and after many years of tight deadlines for deliveries and collections, I thrive off them. I would need to be creating deadlines no matter what I’m doing.

Millions of people over the age of 65 likely have mild cognitive impairment, or MCI—minor problems with memory or decisionmaking that can, over time, turn into dementia. But a pair of recent studies both concluded that 92 percent of people experiencing MCI in the United States are not getting diagnosed at an early stage, preventing them from accessing new Alzheimer’s treatments that may be able to slow cognitive decline if it’s caught soon enough.

“We knew it was bad. But we didn’t know it was that bad,” says Ying Liu, a statistician at the University of Southern California Dornsife’s Center for Economic and Social Research and a researcher on both studies.

In the first, published this summer in Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy, Liu’s team aimed to figure out how often MCI is being diagnosed—and how often it’s overlooked. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal survey of some 20,000 people in the US about a wide range of age-related factors, Liu built a model predicting the number of expected MCI diagnoses for the over-65 population overall: about 8 million. Then, Liu’s team pulled data from all Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 and up who were enrolled from 2015 to 2019, to see how many were actually diagnosed with the condition. They found that only 8 percent of the people whom their model predicted would be candidates for MCI, based on their health demographics, actually received a diagnosis. This number was even lower for Black and Hispanic beneficiaries and among lower-income people. (The team used eligibility for Medicaid, health coverage that supplements Medicare, as a marker of income status.)

A second study, published in October by Liu’s team, looked at Medicare claims submitted by 226,756 primary care physicians and compared their MCI detection rates with those predicted by their model. Again, they found that only about 8 percent of predicted cases were actually diagnosed, and only 0.1 percent of clinicians diagnosed the condition as often as the team calculated that they should.

Autopsies reveal that most people who die in old age have some kind of brain pathology that impairs cognition, from traces of stroke to the amyloid plaques that characterize Alzheimer’s. Not everyone who has these anatomical markers of neurodegeneration experiences memory problems, but “the more of these things you have in your brain, the more likely you are to manifest dementia,” says Bryan James, an epidemiologist at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center, who was not involved in this research. If someone does experience problems like forgetting who family members are, or getting lost while walking familiar paths, a combination of cognitive tests, brain scans, blood work, or a spinal tap can pinpoint the cause of their dementia.

Diagnosing mild cognitive impairment is much trickier. People might notice that something is off, but they’re still able to function independently. Most are seen by primary care physicians, not researchers in specialized memory care clinics. Because these doctors don’t see many dementia patients, their confidence in giving someone a potentially life-shattering diagnosis can be low. “They don’t want to make a mistake,” says Sarah Kremen, a neurologist at the Jona Goldrich Center for Alzheimer’s and Memory Disorders, who was not involved in this research.

“We are still struggling, as a healthcare profession, with how to best identify mild cognitive impairment,” adds primary care physician Barak Gaster, who is also a professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Many doctors in Gaster’s field know they lack the training to handle cognitive concerns, and they are eager to learn. However, annual Medicare wellness visits are time-constrained—often just 60 minutes—and cover a lot of ground. Cognitive assessments are too cursory to detect the subtleties of MCI. “It’s really challenging to ask a community health provider to do another thing, because they’re already doing everything,” says Nancy Berlinger, a senior research scholar at the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institute in New York. Plus, people generally don’t want to be told they have memory problems. “Because of the stigma surrounding dementia, primary care providers may just avoid the topic,” says Berlinger.

“We’re failing a lot of people,” says Sarah Banks, a neuropsychologist at the University of California, San Diego, and director of the neuropsychology program of their Memory Disorders Clinic. “I’m not surprised that it’s being underdiagnosed, but I was surprised by how much.”

Even if both the doctor and the patient notice something is off, Gaster adds, “the elephant in the room is that, if a cognitive concern comes up, most primary care providers still aren’t sure what to do.” Until very recently, an MCI diagnosis didn’t come with any actionable treatment options—just the knowledge that a patient may develop dementia someday. The same question has plagued efforts to develop blood tests for Alzheimer’s risk: Will they unnecessarily stress a person who can do little to change their outcome?

But this summer, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the new Alzheimer’s medication lecanemab-irmb, or Leqembi, which clears amyloid plaques from the brain and slows the progression of cognitive decline. Liu calls it “a big game changer.” Donanemab, another potential treatment developed by pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, also reduced amyloid levels and slowed cognitive decline in Phase 3 clinical trials of people with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.

While these new medications are a big deal, “they’re not a panacea,” Kremen cautions. In Phase 3 clinical trials, lecanemab slowed cognitive decline by 27 percent over the 18-month study, a relatively modest improvement. And it’s not an easy treatment—patients need infusions at a clinic every two weeks. The drug can have potentially life-threatening side effects like brain swelling and seizures. As a consequence, “I think a lot of us in the field are a little skeptical about how helpful they’ll be,” Banks says. James adds, “There’s a risk-benefit balance that I don’t think we’ve worked out yet.”

Drug treatment also depends on early detection. Amyloid plaques kill brain cells, which can’t grow back. If you don’t try to get rid of the plaques until they’ve already killed a bunch of cells, James says, “You’re trying to put out a fire after the house burned down.”

More clinical testing will be necessary to determine exactly how effective these drugs will be for people who start taking them as early as possible. “Dementia is not a problem that we can quickly solve through a pill,” Berlinger says, but “we may be in an era of promising interventions in early stages, which rely on the ability to detect early symptoms.”

Still, James predicts that in five years, as these treatments become more effective and accessible, the diagnostic rate for MCI will skyrocket. “Diagnostic practices are driven by the availability of treatment,” he says. “People don’t just diagnose in a vacuum. They diagnose for a purpose.”

Even if these treatments work, the US healthcare system is not currently equipped to handle the demand for them. Lecanemab currently costs $26,500 per year, and Medicare covers 80 percent of the cost. If all of the people whom Liu’s studies estimate are experiencing mild cognitive impairment are diagnosed and seek treatment, James says, “it would bankrupt Medicare.” Memory clinics will also struggle to handle the onslaught of referrals. (Rush Memory Clinic, where James works, already has a yearlong waitlist.)

These studies were limited to demographic basics like age, sex, race, and Medicaid eligibility. Age is one of the greatest risk factors for developing MCI—the older you are, the more likely you are to have it. Autopsy studies also show that women seem to develop neuropathology linked to dementia more than men, but in Liu’s studies, detection rates were not dramatically different across sexes or age groups.

Race, however, was one of the strongest predictors of whether or not MCI is accurately diagnosed, with Black people getting diagnosed at half the rate of white people. It’s unclear whether the stark racial divide in detection rates Liu’s team observed is due to differences in MCI prevalence itself, or to differences in healthcare access. Cognitive screening measures were largely developed by white people, for white people, Banks says, likely reducing their sensitivity in other populations. Factors like lower-quality childhood education, the chronic stress of systemic racism, and lack of access to healthy food can all contribute to dementia risk, James adds. Liu’s team is currently building predictive models that account for more of these factors.

Even if a person’s MCI never escalates into full-blown dementia, doctors say there is value in screening for it, because it can let them help alleviate symptoms or weed out other possible confounding causes. For example, doctors can review medications with patients to make sure nothing they are taking lists brain fog as a side effect. Hearing loss is a major contributor to dementia risk, and doctors can help people access hearing aids. Basic lifestyle changes like eating well, exercising, getting good sleep, and nurturing social connections address both brain health and overall well-being.

Doctors need to normalize talking about brain health with patients of all ages, says Elizabeth Head, a program manager at the Georgia Department of Public Health, who led their campaign for early detection of dementia. “We don’t have to ‘break the ice’ to talk about heart disease, cancer, or other chronic conditions,” she says. “It should be talked about like any other type of disease.”

Who do you believe? Does A.I. scare you?

The Fear and Tension That Led to Sam Altman’s Ouster at OpenAI

The departure of the high-profile boss of the San Francisco company drew attention to a philosophical rift among the people building new A.I. systems.

By Cade Metz

Cade Metz has reported on OpenAI since it was founded in 2015.

Nov. 18, 2023

Over the last year, Sam Altman led OpenAI to the adult table of the technology industry. Thanks to its hugely popular ChatGPT chatbot, the San Francisco start-up was at the center of an artificial intelligence boom, and Mr. Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, had become one of the most recognizable people in tech.

But that success raised tensions inside the company. Ilya Sutskever, a respected A.I. researcher who co-founded OpenAI with Mr. Altman and nine other people, was increasingly worried that OpenAI’s technology could be dangerous and that Mr. Altman was not paying enough attention to that risk, according to three people familiar with his thinking. Mr. Sutskever, a member of the company’s board of directors, also objected to what he saw as his diminished role inside the company, according to two of the people.

That conflict between fast growth and A.I. safety came into focus on Friday afternoon, when Mr. Altman was pushed out of his job by four of OpenAI’s six board members, led by Mr. Sutskever. The move shocked OpenAI employees and the rest of the tech industry, including Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in the company. Some industry insiders were saying the split was as significant as when Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985.

But on Saturday, in a head-spinning turn, Mr. Altman was said to be in discussions with OpenAI’s board about returning to the company.

The ouster on Friday of Mr. Altman, 38, drew attention to a longtime rift in the A.I. community between people who believe A.I. is the biggest business opportunity in a generation and others who worry that moving too fast could be dangerous. And the vote to remove him showed how a philosophical movement devoted to the fear of A.I. had become an unavoidable part of tech culture.

Since ChatGPT was released almost a year ago, artificial intelligence has captured the public’s imagination, with hopes that it could be used for important work like drug research or to help teach children. But some A.I. scientists and political leaders worry about its risks, such as jobs getting automated out of existence or autonomous warfare that grows beyond human control.

Fears that A.I. researchers were building a dangerous thing have been a fundamental part of OpenAI’s culture. Its founders believed that because they understood those risks, they were the right people to build it.

OpenAI’s board has not offered a specific reason for why it pushed out Mr. Atman, other than to say in a blog post that it did not believe he was communicating honestly with them. OpenAI employees were told on Saturday morning that his removal had nothing to do with “malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety or security/privacy practice,” according to a message viewed by The New York Times.

Greg Brockman, another co-founder and the company’s president, quit in protest on Friday night. So did OpenAI’s director of research. By Saturday morning, the company was in chaos, according to a half dozen current and former employees, and its roughly 700 employees were struggling to understand why the board made its move.

“I’m sure you all are feeling confusion, sadness, and perhaps some fear,” Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s chief operating officer, said in a memo to OpenAI employees. “We are fully focused on handling this, pushing toward resolution and clarity, and getting back to work.”

On Friday, Mr. Altman was asked to join a board meeting via video at noon in San Francisco. There, Mr. Sutskever, 37, read from a script that closely resembled the blog post the company published minutes later, according to a person familiar with the matter. The post said that Mr. Altman “was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.”

But in the hours that followed, OpenAI employees and others focused not only on what Mr. Altman may have done, but on the way the San Francisco start-up is structured and the extreme views on the dangers of A.I. embedded in the company’s work since it was created in 2015.

Mr. Sutskever and Mr. Altman could not be reached for comment on Saturday.

In recent weeks, Jakub Pachocki, who helped oversee GPT-4, the technology at the heart of ChatGPT, was promoted to director of research at the company. After previously occupying a position below Mr. Sutskever, he was elevated to a position alongside Mr. Sutskever, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Pachocki quit the company late on Friday, the people said, soon after Mr. Brockman. Earlier in the day, OpenAI said Mr. Brockman had been removed as chairman of the board and would report to the new interim chief executive, Mira Murati. Other allies of Mr. Altman — including two senior researchers, Szymon Sidor and Aleksander Madry — have also left the company.

Mr. Brockman said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that even though he was the chairman of the board, he was not part of the board meeting where Mr. Altman was ousted. That left Mr. Sutskever and three other board members: Adam D’Angelo, chief executive of the question-and-answer site Quora; Tasha McCauley, an adjunct senior management scientist at the RAND Corporation; and Helen Toner, director of strategy and foundational research grants at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

They could not be reached for comment on Saturday.

Ms. McCauley and Ms. Toner have ties to the Rationalist and Effective Altruist movements, a community that is deeply concerned that A.I. could one day destroy humanity. Today’s A.I. technology cannot destroy humanity. But this community believes that as the technology grows increasingly powerful, these dangers will arise.

In 2021, a researcher named Dario Amodei, who also has ties to this community, and about 15 other OpenAI employees left the company to form a new A.I. company called Anthropic.

Mr. Sutskever was increasingly aligned with those beliefs. Born in the Soviet Union, he spent his formative years in Israel and emigrated to Canada as a teenager. As an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, he helped create a breakthrough in an A.I. technology called neural networks.

In 2015, Mr. Sutskever left a job at Google and helped found OpenAI alongside Mr. Altman, Mr. Brockman and Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk. They built the lab as a nonprofit, saying that unlike Google and other companies, it would not be driven by commercial incentives. They vowed to build what is called artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., a machine that can do anything the brain can do.

Mr. Altman transformed OpenAI into a for-profit company in 2018 and negotiated a $1 billion investment from Microsoft. Such enormous sums of money are essential to building technologies like GPT-4, which was released earlier this year. Since its initial investment, Microsoft has put another $12 billion into the company.

The company was still governed by the nonprofit board. Investors like Microsoft do receive profits from OpenAI, but their profits are capped. Any money over the cap is funneled back into the nonprofit.

As he saw the power of GPT-4, Mr. Sutskever helped create a new Super Alignment team inside the company that would explore ways of ensuring that future versions of the technology would not do harm.

Mr. Altman was open to those concerns, but he also wanted OpenAI to stay ahead of its much larger competitors. In late September, Mr. Altman flew to the Middle East for a meeting with investors, according to two people familiar with the matter. He sought as much as $1 billion in funding from SoftBank, the Japanese technology investor led by Masayoshi Son, for a potential OpenAI venture that would build a hardware device for running A.I. technologies like ChatGPT.

OpenAI is also in talks for “tender offer” funding that would allow employees to cash out shares in the company. That deal would value OpenAI at more than $80 billion, nearly triple its worth about six months ago.

But the company’s success appears to have only heightened concerns that something could go wrong with A.I.

“It doesn’t seem at all implausible that we will have computers — data centers — that are much smarter than people,” Mr. Sutskever said on a podcast on Nov. 2. “What would such A.I.s do? I don’t know.”

From my Miami life column http://www.thethreetomatoes.com

I met up with a Miami friend of mine a few weeks ago that I admire so much and the first thing she said is “I’m in a lot of trauma right now.” We were standing at a cocktail party face to face but I was scared to find out what she was talking about. The first thing that came to mind was her health.

I stared at her for a moment thinking this can’t be. She is one of the most elegant and natural beauties I know. At 65ish, she is tall, graceful, thin, well dressed and cultured. She lives in Miami but spends half the year in Paris where she owns an art gallery. She has been lauded for her non-conformist art and for creating intellectually challenging projects.

What could be threatening her so? I heard her words, but it was the last thing I ever expected to say, “My husband of 38 years told me this morning that he was leaving me. He’s been having an affair for 20 years and wants to be free to explore the other relationship.

Her words were shocking to me. I had just met her husband at a party in my home a few weeks before. He too was handsome, fit, interesting, and friendly. When I recall my conversation with him, I remember thinking he was slightly mysterious. I felt he wasn’t in the moment. It could be my imagination now in hindsight, but I don’t think so. I can read body language and emotions pretty accurately but none of what my friend was telling me ever entered my mind.

What astonished me even more was that my friend was clueless. She never expected a thing. She said that he was unhappy from time to time but that was pinned on work, the state of the world, and getting older. As far as I am concerned, these are the normal growing pains as you mature.

I know a number of men who cheated on their wives for years. When you have worked in a man’s world like I have for 55 years you can be sure I saw it all. Many men confided in me because they needed to share their stories with someone. That was me. I’m proud to say that I never divulged any of the details I knew to anyone else. I didn’t have the need to. I felt sorry for these guys leading double lives.

By the way, many of these scoundrels ended up going back to their wives full time without any shenanigans. Why these women took them back was a mystery to me other than they had no choice. In those days, many women were uneducated, lonely and scared.

Today life is very different. My advice to my friend is to use this time of her life as a second chance to meet new men, be wined and dined, experience being wanted and care for adoringly and let yourself be a couple with others a few times. More than likely, hubby will be knocking at your door in the future filled with all kind of excuses for his crazy behavior and begging you back. You can’t make the right decision if you are just sitting around. Go out and live it up, even if it hurts for a while.

We are celebrating!! Eliot Hess’s children’s book is available for presale. Art work by Jayda Knight. Genius Cat Books, ,Kayppin Media— Amazon, Walmart, Target, Barnes & Noble and we pray for Books & Books. Official launch March 26, 2024. Steven Ekstract made it happen.