Surviving This

Statisticians often use the term “return to the mean” to describe how extreme outcomes are likely to be followed by more typical ones over time. 

The phrase pops up in sports when a baseball player who normally hits 15 home runs a season suddenly explodes for 40 one year before returning to his usual level the following season.

You’ll also encounter the phrase in discussions about the weather or the stock market but less often when it comes to politics.

That’s why it caught my attention during a recent webinar when Patrick Ball, Director of Research for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) used the concept in regards to the rise of authoritarianism in countries with a background of democracy and democratic values.

He said that such societies tend to turn away from authoritarian leaders ultimately and return to their democratic roots.

Ball knows what he is talking about. He’s been closely analyzing the human rights abuses in societies around the world for 35 years. He and his fellow data scientists at HRDAG are currently focusing on such abuses here in the U.S.

The group recently issued a public statement, “In the Face of Tyranny: Taking a Stand as Data Scientists.”

Ball’s analysis gave me something rare these days — a sense of hope that we, as Americans, will get through this dark period in our political history one way or another.

And hope is what we need.

Note: You can check out HRDAG’s “Structural Zero” here on Substack. Working with HRDAG these past few years has been especially rewarding.

HEADLINES:

• President for Life — Donald Trump is trying to amass the powers of a king. (Atlantic)

• Federal Employees Return to Work as Government Reopening Begins (NYT)

• Trump puts intense pressure on Republicans to block release of Epstein files (Guardian)

• Epstein files become a fiasco of Trump’s own making (Axios)

• When it comes to the Epstein files, some MAGA supporters are willing to work with Democrats (WP)

• Russia Pummels Kyiv as It Torments Ukrainian Civilians (NYT)

• Whistles are San Francisco’s latest bulwark against ICE (SFGate)

• Donald Trump’s Plan to Subvert the Midterms Is Already Under Way (Atlantic)

• James Comey and Letitia James press for dismissal of their cases, challenge prosecutor’s appointment (AP)

• Judge appears skeptical of Lindsey Halligan’s appointment as interim US attorney (Politico)

• SNAP funding pause to soon end, but anxiety and anger may linger (NPR)

• Food insecurity leaves long-term scars. The Snap cuts are no exception (Guardian)

• Why Britain may have stopped sharing some intelligence with America (Economist)

• No, Venezuela Is Not a ‘Small Latin American Country’ (Bulwark)

• Former Aide to Gavin Newsom Charged With Corruption (NYT)

• Why Michigan and the Big Ten disagree on the next move with $2.4 billion on the table (Athletic)

• The Journalism Support Exchange is a new matchmaking tool for local news outlets to get the help they need (Nieman)

• What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in Nuremberg (Slate)

• The penny is dead. Long live inflation. (WP)

• AI bubble trouble talk is overblown (Financial Times)

• Google augments AI shopping with conversational search, agentic checkout and an AI that calls stores for you (TechCrunch)

• Anthropic’s Claude Takes Control of a Robot Dog (Wired)

• Wikipedia helped train your favorite AI, now the Wiki foundation wants a cut (TechSpot)

• What are the clues that ChatGPT wrote something? We analyzed its style. (WP)

• Trump Says Epstein Emails Only Prove He One Of The Most Emailed-About Men In History (Onion)