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Gnocchi’s Crispy — Let’s Eat

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Hello! Ali here, filling in for Emily Weinstein this week.

Susan Ford, a commenter, is telling the truth: Crispy gnocchi are basically tater tots.

Store-bought, shelf-stable gnocchi are best appreciated when seared until their outsides are crisp and their insides are warm and chewy, and then sauced only enough to taste really good.

I go for a saucing that’s thin but high impact — nothing heavy enough to sog that glorious crust. A peppery brown butter for a skillet of seared gnocchi and brussels sprouts. A potent mix of honey, mustard and horseradish for a steakhouse-inspired combination of gnocchi (masquerading as roasted potatoes), spinach and mushrooms. Just the fat rendered from chicken thighs, plus a little lemon.

In my latest recipe (below), a sheet pan of browned sausage “meatballs,” caramelized broccoli and those golden gnocchi are lightly glossed in melted Parmesan and lemon juice. Sneak a few bites before anyone else does when they’re fresh from the oven. Like tater tots.

Credit…Kerri Brewer for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.

1. Crispy Gnocchi With Sausage and Broccoli

The commenters seem surprised by this recipe: How can something requiring so little effort — you don’t need to boil the gnocchi before roasting — be so “sumptuous” and “outstanding?” One commenter even thinks it’s worthy of Thanksgiving dinner (drizzled with cranberry sauce, of course).

Binance Unveils ‘Binance Wealth’ for Elite Customers

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Binance, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, has unveiled Binance Wealth, a white glove service that allows private client managers to easily onboard high-net-worth individuals and offer them a wide range of digital assets.

Wealth managers will handle the onboarding of clients by submitting know-your-customer (KYC) documentation and creating individual sub-accounts on Binance for each client, allowing them to trade or stake a wide range of cryptos with the feel of traditional wealth management framework, exchange said on Tuesday. Support from Binance VIP key account client managers is also available.

Crypto assets are widely accepted as portfolio diversification spice among institutional investors with the arrival of bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) earlier this year, which had probably meant further validation for the asset class among high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs).

“Despite appearances, Binance Wealth is not a financial advisory service but a technological solution designed to meet the needs of wealth managers, with the necessary infrastructure allowing them to oversee and support their clients’ exposure to crypto, “explained Catherine Chen, head of Binance VIP & Institutional, in an email.

The service is offered through the global Binance.com platform meaning there are restrictions for some jurisdictions; Binance Wealth will not be available in the U.S., for instance. The initial focus will be on Asia and Latin America, according to a Binance spokesperson.

“Wealth managers can help onboard and support their clients who are eligible to use Binance.com – residing in jurisdictions where Binance.com is available,” Chen said. “This of course is still subject to who the wealth managers can service in the first place, based on their respective license/exemption.”

In terms of custody, the assets belonging to each end-client are held in the clients’ own allocated sub-account.

“The client will retain full control of their assets which are held in the respective wallets under their account on the Binance platform. User assets are viewable in our Proof of Reserves page,” a Binance spokesperson said.

The VIP wealth offering will not come with cheaper fees, like the exchange’s prime broker Link service, which was designed for enterprises.

“Standard trading fees apply. Binance offers a highly-competitive fee structure, and users who qualify for our VIP Program receive attractive fee rebates,” Chen said.

Celestia’s TIA Braces for Price Volatility Amid $900M Token Unlock

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The native cryptocurrency of data availability blockchain Celestia (TIA) braces for volatility due to its massive supply event on October 30, which will nearly double the number of tokens in circulation.

Some 175 million of previously locked-up TIA, 80% of the current supply, will be released on Wednesday, in the largest single unlocking event since the token was launched last October, Tokenomist data shows. That’s $920 million worth of tokens with prices slightly above $5 on exchanges.

Core contributors are scheduled to receive 58 million ($298 million) TIA tokens, per Tokenomist. 65 million ($332 million) tokens are allocated to early investors of the project’s series A and B funding rounds, with another 52 million ($268 million) tokens for seed investors.

Cryptocurrency projects often lock a part of the token’s supply and release it gradually to prevent early investors and insiders from selling in large quantities immediately after they get the allocations. When the tokens are unlocked, they become available to sell, and thus, such events are usually considered bearish; often they induce price drops. However, sometimes investors front-run and may sell before the unlocking happens.

In TIA’s case, prices have tumbled as much as 80% from the February peak of $21, and have consolidated in the $4-$6 range for multiple months. Meanwhile, funding rates for TIA perpetual futures sit in deeply negative territory, reaching a -90% annualized rate on crypto exchange Binance, CoinGlass data shows. This suggests traders are expecting declining prices or TIA holders are hedging their exposure leading into the unlock.

“There could be some pronounced effects,” David Shuttleworth, partner at Anagram, told CoinDesk, noting that the amount of tokens being unlocked is multiple times larger than the average daily trading volume between $50 million and $200 million over the past month. “The broader timing, however, is favorable,” he added, with bitcoin (BTC) trading near all-time highs and other majors including ether (ETH) and solana (SOL) also performing well.

Given the broad crypto market rally, the probability of TIA surprising traders with a rally following the unlock has increased, according to well-followed crypto analyst Will Clemente, founder of Reflexivity Research.

“This BTC price action has further slid the probability of Thursday’s TIA unlock being bearish towards ‘no,'” Clemente said in an X post.

“6 months of reaccumulation after 80% drawdown, ton of OTC volume, most widely telegraphed unlock in crypto history, 9 figs [figures] short, BTC nearing ATHs,” he added. Am long rn.”

‘Are We Not Humans?’

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After my reporting trip to the Chad-Sudan border and columns about the murder, rape and starvation that have devastated Sudan, readers wrote in with many thoughtful comments and questions. Here’s my effort to address some of them:

Perhaps you could help us understand the root causes of this conflict. Is the basis for this conflict between the two warring factions religious identity, Shariah law? — David Wood, Johnson City, Tenn.

The two main warring factions are rival Sudanese military branches now locked in a civil war: the Sudanese Armed Forces and a militia called the Rapid Support Forces. Imagine if the U.S. Army and a government-backed Ku Klux Klan military force joined together to stage a coup to overthrow America’s elected government, then co-ruled oppressively for a time, and finally began fighting each other while also slaughtering and starving civilians. That’s roughly the picture.

The Rapid Support Forces were responsible for most of the massacres and rapes that I described in my columns in Sudan’s Darfur region, an echo of the Darfur genocide of two decades ago.

In Darfur, the divide is not religious, as almost all people are Sunni Muslim. Rather, it is threefold. First, the Rapid Support Forces are Arabs and target non-Arab ethnic groups. Second, those Arab attackers are mostly lighter complexioned and target Black Africans (sometimes calling them slaves or comparing them to litter or black plastic bags). Third, the Arab groups are often nomadic herders while the African tribes frequently are settled farmers, leading to conflicts over water access and grazing rights that have been exacerbated by climate change.

How can we best respond to a famine like this? Air loads of food or repairing local farming communities? — Daniel Brownstein, Berkeley, Calif.

A famine has already been declared in Sudan, and some experts fear that it could become one of the worst in history, eclipsing the 1984 famine in Ethiopia and other countries. To see starving children is searing: They do not cry or demand food but are almost expressionless, for the dying body does not expend calories on anything but keeping the major organs alive.

The best way to prevent so severe a famine in Sudan would be to end the war. But if the war continues, then we should at least press the warring parties to allow more humanitarian access. That means letting trucks bring food to communities that are starving. Doctors Without Borders reports that it has had to cut off rations for 5,000 malnourished children because warring parties are blocking attempts to resupply.

In most of the world, “to starve” is intransitive: Children starve. In Sudan, it is also transitive: Warlords starve children. The U.S. should use intelligence community resources to monitor atrocities and release intercepts and images to hold warring parties accountable and end the impunity.

This Election Will Need More Heroes

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True political courage — the principled stand, the elevation of country over party pressure, the willingness to sacrifice a career to protect the common good — has become painfully rare in a polarized world. It deserves to be celebrated and nurtured whenever it appears, especially in defense of fundamental American institutions like our election system. The sad truth, too, is the country will probably need a lot more of it in the coming months.

In state after state, Republicans have systematically made it harder for citizens to vote, and harder for the election workers who count those votes to do so. They are challenging thousands of voter registrations in Democratic areas, forcing administrators to manually restore perfectly legitimate voters to the rolls. They are aggressively threatening election officials who defended the 2020 election against manipulation. They are trying to invalidate mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, even if they meet the legal requirements of a postmark before the deadline. They are making it more difficult to certify election results, and even trying to change how states apportion their electors, in hopes of making it easier for Donald Trump to win or even help him overturn an election loss.

Though many of these moves happened behind closed doors, this campaign is hardly secret. And last month, Mr. Trump directly threatened to prosecute and imprison election officials around the country who disagree with his lies.

Against this kind of systematic assault on the institutions and processes that undergird American democracy, the single most important backstop are the public servants, elected and volunteer, who continue to do their jobs.

Consider Mike McDonnell, a Republican state senator from Nebraska, who showed how it’s done when he announced last month that he would not bow to an intense, last-minute pressure campaign by his party’s national leaders, including former President Trump, to help slip an additional electoral vote into Mr. Trump’s column.

Currently, Nebraska awards most of its electors by congressional district, and while most of the state is safely conservative, polling shows Vice President Kamala Harris poised to win the elector from the Second Congressional District, which includes the state’s biggest city, Omaha. In the razor-thin margins of the 2024 election, this could be the vote that determines the outcome. That was the intent of Republican lawmakers in Nebraska, who waited until it was too late for Democrats in Maine, which has a similar system, to change the state’s rules to prevent one congressional district from choosing a Republican elector.

Does Your School Use Suicide Prevention Software? We Want to Hear From You.

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In response to the youth mental health crisis, many school districts are investing in software that monitors what students type on their school devices, alerting counselors if a child appears to be contemplating suicide or self-harm.

Such tools — produced by companies like Gaggle, GoGuardian Beacon, Bark and Securly — can pick up what a child types into a Google search, or a school essay, or an email or text message to a friend. Some of these alerts may be false alarms, set off by innocuous research projects or offhand comments, but the most serious alerts may prompt calls to parents or even home visits by school staff members or law enforcement.

I write about mental health for The New York Times, including the effects of social media use on children’s brains and algorithms that predict who is at risk for suicide. I’m interested in knowing more about how these monitoring tools are working in real life.

If you are a student, parent, teacher or school administrator, I’d like to hear about your experiences. Do you think these tools have saved lives? Do they help students who are anxious or depressed get the care they need? Are you concerned about students’ privacy? Is there any cost to false positives?

I will read each submission and may use your contact information to follow up with you. I will not publish any details you share without contacting you and verifying your information.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

Hurricanes Amplify Insurance Crisis in Riskiest Areas

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Until late last month, there was optimism in the insurance industry. Hurricane season had been quiet and the number of wildfires was still below the yearly average. Insurers were beginning to hope that the cost of reinsurance — that is, insurance for insurers — would only inch up next year, instead of shooting higher as it did the previous two years.

Two major hurricanes have upended their calculations.

Total economic losses from Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene could soar over $200 billion, according to early estimates. While it’s far too soon to know exactly what portion will be covered by insurance companies, some consumer groups, lawmakers and analysts are already worried about a big hit to insurers’ finances that could ultimately affect millions of people living in the most vulnerable areas.

As climate change increases the intensity of natural disasters, insurance companies have pulled back from many high-risk areas by raising premiums or ending some types of coverage. The fallout from the two hurricanes, which landed within the span of two weeks, could accelerate that retreat. It could also further strain an already feeble federal flood insurance program that has filled in gaps for homeowners living in areas where private insurance companies no longer offer flood coverage.

Hurricane Milton, which hit Florida’s west coast as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday, did not ultimately cause the catastrophe that had been predicted for the Tampa Bay area. But it still did plenty of damage.

Sridhar Manyem, an analyst for the insurance industry ratings agency AM Best, said that while it was too early to estimate insurers’ obligations, industry insiders were already beginning to compare Milton to Hurricane Ian, which caused more than $55 billion of insured losses in 2022 when it hit the same area.

“Because of lack of information at first blush, usually people do this,” Mr. Manyem said. “This storm is pretty comparable to another storm in terms of size and path and intensity, so we can try to figure out what an inflation-adjusted loss would be.”

Executives and Research Disagree About Hybrid Work’s Value. Why?

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Amazon’s C.E.O., Andy Jassy, made waves last month when he demanded that all employees return to the office five days a week. The proclamation seemed to validate similar demands made by executives like JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs’s David Solomon. And it naturally raised the question of whether others might follow suit. (It appears some have.)

But it also flew in the face of researchers and their studies that have found hybrid work benefits companies. Stanford’s Nick Bloom, for example, has found that employees who work two days a week at home are just as productive and less likely to quit. (Bloom, like others, speculated that Amazon’s pronouncement was really an attempt to reduce the work force without official layoffs.)

So why do so many employers that say they’re data-driven seem to move counter to science?

Executives are not convinced by the research. “It’s not like: ‘Aspirin definitely helps with headaches. It’s been proven again and again and again,’” Laszlo Bock, a former senior vice president for people operations at Google, told DealBook. “The academic studies that have been done, and there are not that many, show a range of outcomes — and they generally show a kind of neutral to slightly positive.”

Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, said he disagreed, pointing DealBook to a meta-analysis of 108 studies.

Some are just over it. Almost five years since the start of the pandemic, many C.E.O.s are ready to move on from an experiment they never wanted to start. “When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant,” Jassy wrote in a memo about ending remote work at Amazon.

Grant says C.E.O.s may not always methodically control for whether an effect was caused by remote work, the pandemic or something else, as an academic researcher would.

For the Sake of the Planet, Nations Must Protect What Is Still Wild

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A small, heart-shaped body of water aptly named Green Lake lies at just under 9,000 feet on the western side of the Tetons, deep within the Jedediah Smith Wilderness area of Wyoming. Mirroring the surrounding conifers, the surface of the lake rests perfectly still this fall evening.

From the trailhead, it’s a little over five miles and 2,000 feet of elevation gained to the snug knoll where I’ve pitched my tent. Sitting in my sling chair, I take in the view: granite cliffs, high ridges, and sweeping tundra, the alpine grass, willows, and fireweed a rippling tapestry of burgundy, lavender, saffron, straw-yellow and burnt umber. A sickle moon hangs in the fading blue sky as a Swainson’s thrush sings its liquid, rising song. There’s not another sound, except the faintest tinkle of the stream entering the lake beneath my camp.

This stillness was once the entirety of the world, a base line quiet of wind and waves, of bird, whale and human song. This highly diverse natural symphony has steadily vanished worldwide since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, replaced by a cacophony that has become the background to our everyday lives: the roar of jets, the rumble of traffic, the racket of construction.

You have to go to really wild places to reconnect with stillness on a grand scale, and it’s a nice coincidence that I’m camped this evening in one of the wilder places of the lower 48 states in this year of the 60th anniversary of the signing of the 1964 Wilderness Act. The legislation was the product of a group of visionary foresters and writers, and it contains one of the more memorable lines ever written about the relationship between humanity and nature: “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

Today, nearly 112 million acres of wilderness have been permanently set aside from development in the United States, and the natural attributes of these landscapes remain untrammeled by roads or industry, protecting hundreds of intact ecosystems and countless wildlife populations while affording unspoiled recreation to hikers, skiers, horse packers, wildlife watchers, anglers and hunters. These open spaces have also lifted the spirits of millions of visitors.

Despite these notable achievements, the United States still hasn’t protected the full ecological diversity that lies on federal lands, neglecting to include temperate forests and grass and shrub lands. Even if the 16 million acres currently designated as Wilderness Study Areas were fully protected, the United States would have set aside, by my calculation, only 5 percent of its land beyond the reach of development.

Social Security: Why It Matters for Young People, Not Just Retirees

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Paul Unnasch notices the $335 in payroll taxes coming out of his paycheck every month for Social Security, and wishes he could get those dollars back.

“If there was a way to opt out of Social Security, I would,” said Mr. Unnasch, a 27-year-old technical writer who lives in Milwaukee. “I don’t have much trust in it — I know I’ll probably get something out of it, but people are living longer and there’s a huge generation of boomers retiring now.”

An aggressive saver who socks away 20 percent of his pay in retirement accounts, he would prefer to put those Social Security payroll taxes into the stock market or use them to pay down his student loans.

Mr. Unnasch’s take on Social Security isn’t unusual among younger Americans. Research shows that a majority of young people are more pessimistic about the program than their older counterparts are. Gallup polling,for example, shows that just 37 percent of Americans aged 30 to 49 expect to receive Social Security benefits when they retire — compared with 66 percent of people aged 50 or older.

Social Security is not on a course to vanish — but the concerns voiced by young people are understandable.

Last year, the program’s retirement and disability trust funds had reserves of $2.79 trillion, but expenses have been outpacing noninterest revenue since 2010, mainly because of low birthrates that translate into a declining ratio of workers paying into the program and more people drawing benefits. As a result, the trust fund reserves are forecast to be depleted in 2035. At that point, the program would be bringing in enough cash to pay only 83 percent of the benefits promised to current and future beneficiaries, according to the most recent projection of the Social Security trustees. That would be the equivalent of a 17 percent across-the-board cut in benefits.