Worn down

Good morning. Gunther von Hagens — the eccentric German anatomist behind the Body Worlds exhibit series — has died at 81. Some of you might not remember Body Worlds, but it was quite the lightning rod in the 2000s. It garnered criticism for displaying human corpses, preserved using a process called plastination, doing activities like cycling or playing cards. 

Despite (or because of) this controversy, the shows were hugely popular. If you’re curious, this review from when Body Works was in Toronto from 2006 is an interesting look into what attending the exhibit was like. Sounds a little morbid, but undeniably pretty fascinating, too. 

Today’s reading time is 5½ minutes. 

Markets: Canada’s main stock index hit a new record high yesterday as tech shares rose. Leading the way was Shopify, which saw shares surge 11.6%; investors felt optimistic ahead of the company’s earnings next week thanks in part to its updated AI tools. Meanwhile, chip stocks dragged down the Nasdaq after Nvidia announced it would backstop a US$250 billion OpenAI data centre project.

It would seem that Canadian ER doctors aren’t doing too hot right now.

Driving the news: According to newly published survey data in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), 10% of emergency medicine doctors left the specialty due to crushing workloads and high stress. Those who stuck around aren’t faring well either: 48% of respondents said they cut their hours and 20% said they took time off from ER work.

Zoom in: ER doctor has certainly never been a stress-free profession, but the conditions have become untenable for many docs. A rapidly aging population combined with the too-high number of Canadians without a family doctor has led to a surge in trips to the ER.

Why it matters: The effects of burnout are already piling up. Wait times continue to rise — 10% of Canadians spent more than 48 hours waiting in the ER in fiscal 2024-25, up 12 hours from six years prior — and temporary ER closures are now commonplace in rural jurisdictions.

Bottom line: There’s no silver bullet for this issue (unless the popularity of The Pitt suddenly makes every med student want to become an ER doc), but more funding definitely wouldn’t hurt. Some cash should come from the $5 billion infrastructure fund announced in last year’s budget — the feds and the provinces just need to figure out the best way to spend it.—QH

Nvidia forms AI safety initiative with other tech giants. Microsoft, SpaceX, IBM, Palantir, and dozens of other tech companies will participate in the Open Secure AI Alliance to build and promote open source AI models for cybersecurity purposes. In a press release, Nvidia said that the recent breach of Hugging Face by an OpenAI agent was a reminder that “companies and countries need open frontier defensive tools and techniques so critical industries can build security systems across a multi-vendor ecosystem and avoid single points of failure.” In other Nvidia news, the chipmaker will also invest US$5 billion in Safe Superintelligence, the AI startup founded by OpenAI’s former chief scientist (and University of Toronto alum) Ilya Sutskever. (Nvidia)

Chinese chipmaker CXMT became the country’s most valuable publicly traded company. And on its first day of trading, no less, after its stock price rocketed 466%. CXMT is regarded as China’s most promising domestic chip manufacturer and strategically important for the country’s AI ambitions given the dominance of chip suppliers in Taiwan and South Korea. (BBC News)

TD forecasts a national GDP boost of 0.6% from a new pipeline. The report projects that the gains from a pipeline to the West Coast would be realized by the 2040s, and would be significantly larger in Alberta, boosting the province’s GDP by 3.5%. The estimated cost of building the pipeline is (for now) between $35 billion and $44 billion, the vast majority of which is (for now) being assumed by the federal and provincial governments. (CBC News)

📡 What else is on our radar: 

Give your brain a fun workout with one of our free puzzles. There’s the mini-crossword, the sudoku, Who’s Who, and Codebreaker — four fun games every weekday.

Plus when you create a Peak Games account, you can collect streaks, see how you stack up against other players, challenge friends, and more.

Give Peak Games a spin today.

What they’re saying: “Sorry you were so consumed by hate and criticism that you missed it all,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said in a statement published on Instagram. The words were directed at those who hid “behind their screens spreading hate and false rumours” — surely a reference to the many people who criticized his management of this year’s World Cup. 

Why it matters: While the World Cup was a success in many respects, it had no shortage of controversies, from visa restrictions to Donald Trump calling up the FIFA chief to get a red card overturned. There is now a movement to oust Infantino, led by the head of Spanish soccer league La Liga and former FIFA president Sepp Blatter (who, frankly, doesn’t have a leg to stand on).

If you’re upset about wildfire smoke, a new study says you ought to stop shaking your fist at the ashen skies and redirect your ire downward, to the ground itself. 

What happened: The paper, published yesterday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found that at least 76% of carbon emissions (and, by extension, likely much of the smoke) released by the record-breaking 2023 Canadian wildfires came from soil and peat combustion — in other words, organic matter below the forest floor rather than trees and leaves. 

Why it’s happening: Hotter weather pulls moisture out of the ground faster, making it more likely to burn. 

Why it matters: The findings call into question just how effective some forest management techniques, like thinning or fuel breaks, can be at reducing emissions and smoke from wildfires. 

Yes, but: Traditional wildfire fighting strategies can still be valuable for limiting other catastrophic wildfire effects, like rapidly spreading blazes that threaten life and property.—TS

📈 52.55. Score on the Bloomberg Nanos Canadian Confidence Index for the week ended July 24 — surpassing the 50-point mark that indicates net positive views about the economy and significantly higher than the April low of 46.31. While upcoming U.S. tariffs could change sentiments, the results point to growing economic confidence and, perhaps, the sense that all this geopolitical instability is the new normal and hasn’t been that bad, broadly speaking.

Hey, over here! It’s time for today’s mini-crossword, the daily sudoku, Codebreaker, and Who’s Who!

By the way, our leaderboard for each game now shows stats like longest streak, fastest time, and other fun ways to assess puzzle greatness. Many congrats, for example, to Leslie, who owns the longest active mini-crossword streak at 64 consecutive puzzles.