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I Traveled 800 Miles To Eat Breakfast, Lunch, And Pizza At Criss Angel’s Breakfast, Lunch, And Pizza

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When I was a very depressed British teenager, I had an unhealthy fascination with America. I found a way to love its contradictions, to explain away the obvious sins not by excusing them directly but by focusing on America’s enormous size, its capacity to hold infinite different types of people, and its proliferation of true weirdos. From my cramped and cold British bedroom, I browsed the website Roadside America and dreamed about driving across the country, before I could drive at all, to see things like the World’s Largest Chair, conveniently forgetting that most of what I saw along the way would be one-intersection towns with only chain restaurants and dialysis centers. To buy into that stuff is to value something that is odd and entirely itself above something that is good or otherwise defensible. Sure, this Museum of Long CVS Receipts sucks, but at least it sucks on its own terms; it’s not trying to be anything else, and it’s something that only this one guy who really loves receipts could create. You need this muscle, even if it’s buried deep down under crusted layers of realization about how the country actually sucks, to enjoy a visit to a place like Criss Angel’s Breakfast Lunch and Pizza in Overton, Nevada. 

Cablp, which is how the name is stylized (pronounced ca-blip), does indeed belong to magician Criss Angel, the Mindfreak himself. He founded the restaurant in July 2021, buying a local place called Sugar’s Home Plate and renovating it in a style befitting a freak of the mind. He told Nevada Public Radio in 2024 that he originally intended the restaurant to be just “one component to an escape camp for children with childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases,” a cause that lies close to his heart, as his son Johnny Christopher has battled childhood leukemia (now in remission, thankfully). The camp part seems not to have made much progress; Angel said in the same interview that he was still “waiting years and years later for the county and Bureau of Land Management.” Perhaps it was a bad idea to open the restaurant before the escape camp could be built, but that’s not my business.

Cablp’s existence raises a lot of questions: Why is it in Overton and not at, for example, Planet Hollywood on the Las Vegas strip where Angel freaks minds every night? (Actually, that one is easy: Angel “fell in love with” Moapa Valley while taking his kids dirtbiking there.) Why does it serve breakfast, lunch, AND pizza, and why is it named for all three? Why would a magician need a restaurant? 



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The Next Innovation in Higher Education: Vibe-Teaching™

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As the associate vice provost for the Office of Asynchronous Online Courses for Student-Centered High-Impact Learning (OAOCSCHIL, an office we created in the last few years after realizing how lucrative these things are), I want to address a growing concern on campus: the rumor that asynchronous online classes are “basically a scam.”

I understand the confusion. Outsiders are quick to pass judgment on these courses stocked with hastily recorded video lectures from 2020, auto-graded multiple-choice quizzes, and reflection message boards that are now 87 percent bots talking to other bots. Because there are no scheduled meetings with professors or classmates, and grading consists of counting whether students clicked the correct buttons, the fact that we charge tuition for the privilege of participating in these experiences could be mistaken for a scam: one in which no learning and very little effort are exchanged for grades and credits.

But, I assure you, this is not a scam. This is innovation.

Let me walk you through our new pedagogical model, which we in the OAOCSCHIL call Vibe-Teaching. You may have heard of “vibe-coding,” the revolutionary new software methodology in which programmers no longer understand code, write code, or even read code. They simply tell a large language model (LLM) what they want, run whatever it produces, and then tweak the prompt until the contraption is complete. Coding becomes cycles of evaluating outputs driven by persistent hopefulness.

Vibe-Teaching brings this cutting-edge, iterative feedback loop to higher education. Rather than building courses through faculty expertise or disciplinary knowledge, faculty gather complaints from alums now trying to get real jobs, feed those complaints into AI, and allow the system to revise the course accordingly. This continuous-improvement cycle transforms real-world disappointment into automated course updates, freeing faculty time for research (about AI), service (related to AI), and existential despair (you can guess the topic).

This instructional design reflects our commitment to inclusive pedagogy: All learning pathways are valid, whether students engage as manual human learners or outsource their consciousness to a chatbot. We support all modalities, confident that each demonstrates a different facet of multiple intelligences—or whatever we’re calling it this year.

In Vibe-Teaching, faculty are no longer required to read the AI-generated slop that students themselves have not paused to read. We only uphold one high-touch requirement: Vibe-Teaching faculty must log in every two weeks to respond to the pop-up message, “Are you still teaching?”

Some have asked why we don’t simply focus on helping students learn things. We appreciate the sentiment. Unfortunately, AI has made it impossible to measure actual learning. Every assignment is now an unverifiable collaboration between a stressed undergraduate and a VC-backed robo-parrot. Detecting “authentic” student thinking is technically possible, but prohibitively expensive. Think about it: We would need to pay real human faculty to interact with real human students. We do not have the budget for that.

So we have stopped trying to change student thinking. Instead, we focus on the continuous improvement of vibes. In lieu of learning outcomes, we now ask whether students have a warm sense of what learning might feel like and whether they can recall, with confidence, that they took “chemistry.” If so, we mark that as “exceeds expectations.”

And because we are a modern, data-driven institution, we have checked our dashboards to confirm the effectiveness of this approach. GPAs are rising, fail rates are down, and student satisfaction with online learning is trending in the right direction! Our website now proudly proclaims our AI-enhanced commitment to student success. The naysayers may fret about a post-literate world, but they have clearly not looked at the data. Numbers don’t lie.

From an institutional perspective, the benefits are substantial. Vibe-Teaching allows us to maximize enrollment and graduation rates without expanding facilities, faculty positions, or effort. It satisfies student demand for maximum flexibility, minimal cognitive effort, and zero human interaction, while meeting accreditation requirements (in vibes, if not in letter).

There is, of course, some risk of corroding the very foundations of our university’s mission. But institutional survival requires adaptation. Our graduates must become “AI-resilient and future-ready members of the workforce”… whatever that means.

The truth is, everyone wants this. Why they want it is beside the point. In light of these market demands, we humbly ask everyone to stop referring to asynchronous online courses as a “scam.” That word implies deception. In Vibe-Teaching, we are fully transparent:

We provide the illusion of education.
Students provide the illusion of engagement.
Together, we uphold the illusion of academic integrity.

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The $6 Bug

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Carl Sagan’s 9 timeless lessons for detecting baloney

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The more informed we are, the more successful we’ll be in our decision-making endeavors. That’s only true up to a point: it’s only true if the information we’ve acquired is accurate and truthful. Making good decisions doesn’t merely rely on how much information we take in, it also depends on the quality of that information. If what we’ve instead ingested and accepted is misinformation or disinformation — incorrect information that doesn’t align with factual reality — then we not only become susceptible to grift and fraud ourselves, but we risk having our minds captured by charismatic charlatans. When that occurs, we can lose everything: money, trust, relationships, and even our mental independence.

This isn’t a problem that’s new here in 2026; this is a problem as old as humanity itself. When someone is compelling to us, and their arguments are convincing to us, we tend to go along with them, lauding both the idea and the one who puts it forth. We’re even more vulnerable if the idea is something that appeals to us emotionally, playing on our fears, hopes, preconceptions, preferences, or ideologies. However, no argument, no matter how well-crafted, can ever turn fiction into fact. It’s with this in mind that Carl Sagan, precisely 30 years ago, put forth what is now known as his “baloney detection kit” in his book, The Demon Haunted World, Science As A Candle in The Dark.

Here are nine timeless lessons we can all take to heart, and apply in our daily lives, when it comes to separating fact from fiction.

Two graphs with yellow spikes are shown on the left over a background of galaxies; both point to a magnified blue patch on the right, highlighting a distant galaxy where JWST has detected oxygen in a region of interest in space.

The galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0, imaged with JWST (background) and ALMA (inset), was found to contain telltale signatures of oxygen in its spectra, which were acquired by two independent teams observing this galaxy with ALMA. Its confirmed presence marks the earliest detection of oxygen in the Universe to date.
Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/S. Carniani et al./S. Schouws et al/JWST: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Brant Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), Ben Johnson (CfA), Sandro Tacchella (Cambridge), Phill Cargile (CfA)

1.) Demand independent confirmation of whatever statements are asserted as facts.

In any matter that we consider, we always begin with the common ground of a starting point: with the facts and assumptions that underlie whatever topic we’re investigating. The key to making sure that we’re all on the same page is by stating what those facts and assumptions are up front, and by ensuring that everyone agrees on the truth of the facts being stated. This is only possible if:

  • the facts are well-supported and/or well-established,
  • the information underlying those facts has been obtained after a comprehensive and scrupulous analysis,
  • and that those facts have been independently confirmed, ideally by people or teams who also aren’t stakeholders in the outcomes of those confirmation attempts.

It often turns out, upon closer examination or upon attempted replication, that what was once treated as a “fact” winds up being a much more disputed proposition. A line isn’t always the shortest distance between two points (that’s true only in flat space), black holes don’t evaporate because of particle-antiparticle pairs popping in-and-out of existence, and the far side of the Moon, invisible to all denizens of Earth until the development of spaceflight, doesn’t look similar to the Earth-facing side at all. Facts need to be robustly and responsibly established before they’re used to inform our decision-making process. All too often, especially when we’re eager to reach our preferred conclusion, we accept dubious assertions that are presented as facts without questioning whether this “fact” is actually representative of reality. We must tread cautiously, or we risk fooling ourselves.

Einstein and Bohr

Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein, discussing a great many topics in the home of Paul Ehrenfest in 1925. The Bohr-Einstein debates were one of the most influential occurrences during the development of quantum mechanics. Today, Bohr is best known for his quantum contributions, but Einstein is better-known for his contributions to relativity and mass-energy equivalence. Both were known for thinking long and hard about the most difficult puzzles the Universe had to offer.
Credit: Paul Ehrenfest

2.) Encourage substantive debate from all points of view by those with substantial, relevant expertise.

This is an extremely important point, but one that we again must be very careful of. There is no shortage of debate happening in our modern world, including about issues that ignite our passions. That’s not necessarily a good thing, however. What we want is:

  • substantive debate,
  • where the underlying facts are accepted by everyone involved,
  • where the proponents of different points of view are all knowledgeable experts,
  • and where no one is lying, making up facts, engaging in the spreading of misinformation, or attempting to convince an onlooker of an alternative reality.

If Einstein and Bohr disagree over how to interpret our quantum reality, you can have a substantive debate over what it means, because everyone accepts the same facts, everyone involved is a knowledgeable expert, and everyone embraces our shared, measurable reality. However, when we have a widespread expert consensus about an issue, like the safety and utility of water fluoridation, the safety and efficacy of the (2024-era and earlier) childhood vaccination schedule, or the natural origins of SARS-CoV-2, debate only serves to sow doubt about well-established facts.

But we don’t want to undermine the best approximation of reality that human civilization can muster; we want to use all that we know and add in our capacity to reason and think critically to make informed decisions about how to have healthy, successful lives where we work together for the common good of all. That includes knowing when to listen to the signal and when to tune out the noise.

maffei 1 2 infrared galaxies

Italian astronomer Paolo Maffei’s promising work on infrared astronomy culminated in the discovery of galaxies — like Maffei 1 and 2, shown here — in the plane of the Milky Way itself. Maffei 1, the giant elliptical galaxy at the lower left, is the closest giant elliptical to the Milky Way, yet went undiscovered until 1967. For more than 40 years after the Great Debate, no spirals in the plane of the Milky Way were known, due to light-blocking dust that’s very effective at visible wavelengths.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

3.) Don’t accept an argument from an authority because that person is an authority. Instead, judge arguments based on the merits of the underlying facts, and how experts scrupulously interpret those facts.

As Carl Sagan noted, even the most vaunted authority you can think of has made many mistakes in the past, and will do so again in the future. But in science, the only authority is the accepted suite of scientific facts and the well-established foundation of everything we’ve learned by applying those facts to our physical reality. There is no one authority figure we can go to and find out whether something is true or not based on what they say; we have to look at the merits of what is being argued and how well the facts support that argument.

Then we have to examine it and scrutinize it across a broad set of criteria.

  • Does this argument fit the full suite of facts, or are there inconvenient findings that undermine the argument?
  • Is this argument the only game in town, or are there alternative hypotheses that explain at least a large fraction of the agreed-upon facts just as well or better?
  • Do the overwhelming majority of experts, independently, all draw and/or accept the same conclusions, and are their reasons for accepting those conclusions well-supported by the data?

It’s vital to remember that in science, all truths about reality are only provisional, representing the state of knowledge at the time. As we learn more, as we uncover new evidence, and as we enhance the full suite of data that we currently possess, a new, superior truth may yet emerge. It’s happened many times in the past, and will inevitably happen again.

grapes

When a grape is cut nearly perfectly in half, but a thin bridge of grape skin is left connecting them, a trip into the microwave will cause sparks to fly, creating a plasma along the bridge. Plasmas are created whenever electrons are kicked off of the atoms and molecules they were previously bound to, and at high enough energies and temperatures, all solids, liquids, and gases will become plasmas.
Credit: New York Times video

4.) Spin as many hypotheses as you can that are consistent with the data. Every possible explanation that isn’t ruled out or contradicted by the already-existing data should be considered, and each hypothesis should be tested and examined as rigorously as possible.

That’s how we do it: how we arrive at our best approximation of a scientific truth. We don’t choose our preferred idea and then look for evidence to support and defend it; although this is a common tactic used when we attempt to convince others to share our point-of-view, it has no place in the scientific enterprise. Instead, we attempt to be as neutral as possible, subjecting all hypotheses to the same strict scrutiny, attempting to falsify or poke holes in any idea by testing it as rigorously as possible.

In science, the key question that we always ask ourselves, when it comes to explaining any physical phenomenon, is “how?”

  • How did this happen?
  • How come this outcome or set of outcomes occurred, as opposed to any other possibility?
  • How did a physical process, step-by-step, lead to the observations and measurements that we made?

It’s by considering all plausible answers to these questions, no matter how absurd they may seem, that we steadily improve our picture of reality and how it works. Many ideas that were rejected in the past receive new life upon a surprising new observation; many ideas that are accepted today will be overthrown when a key experimental result demonstrates its insufficiency. What passes for a “scientific truth” today may later be demoted to a crude and limited approximation that only applies under special circumstances, just as Newton’s laws are approximations to Einstein’s. That is not a failure of science; that is an essential part of the process.

intracluster galaxy cluster starlight

Here, galaxy cluster MACS J0416.1-2403 isn’t in the process of collision, but rather is a non-interacting, asymmetrical cluster. It also emits a soft glow of intracluster light, produced by stars that are not part of any individual galaxy, helping reveal normal matter’s locations and distribution. Gravitational lensing effects are co-located with the matter, showing that “non-local” options for modified gravity do not apply to objects like this. Clusters of galaxies contain all sorts of small-scale structures within them, from black holes to planets to star-forming gas and more.
Credit: NASA, ESA and M. Montes (University of New South Wales)

5.) Whatever your favorite, most preferred hypothesis is — especially if it’s your original idea — be its harshest critic. By attempting to knock it down or poke holes in it as hard as you can, you’ll determine how well it stands up under the steeliest of scrutiny. (And if you don’t, others will.)

This is one of the hardest aspects for non-scientists (and many low-quality scientists) to engage in: working hard to undermine your own work. “Why would anyone do that,” you might wonder. And the answer is simple: because the more invested you are in an idea being true, the stronger your instinct is to:

  • overlook its flaws and faults, including all the ways it fails to explain reality,
  • while overemphasizing and pointing to its strong points, especially in the ways it does align with reality.

If we ever hope to get at the truth and avoid succumbing to our prejudices — or, in this example, avoiding falling prey to baloney — we have to be skeptical of every idea, including and especially our own preferred idea, and subject it to the blindingly harsh light of reality.

Particularly in the era of LLM chatbots, which will flatter us and every one of our thoughts in conversation, self-inflicting this type of harsh criticism upon ourselves and our cherished ideas may seem especially unnerving. From a scientific, truth-seeking perspective, however, it’s an absolute mind-killer. If you can’t fathom abandoning your most preferred, cherished, deeply-held beliefs about the world because the evidence might contradict it, you’ve already fallen victim to the most insidious kind of baloney: the baloney that arises when we attempt to convince ourselves that we couldn’t possibly be wrong or mistaken. As Richard Feynman warned more than two decades before Carl Sagan’s book:

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.”

earth energy budget

This diagram shows the energy budget of Earth, with incoming and outgoing radiation (values are shown in W/m^2). Satellite instruments (CERES) measure the reflected solar, and emitted infrared radiation fluxes. The energy balance determines Earth’s climate and temperature. When the Sun is directly overhead, atmospheric absorption is minimal, allowing for the best surface measurements of incident solar radiation on Earth.
Credit: NASA

6.) Don’t settle for a qualitative analysis of the issue. Be quantitative: ask and answer the key question of “by how much?”

This is something that a lot of non-scientists often overlook, particularly when it comes to scientific issues. If there are multiple possible explanations for something, and multiple contributing factors, how do you proceed? If you want to arrive at your preferred conclusion, you’ll talk in flowery terms about how massive or large an effect is, but you’ll avoid a comprehensive quantitative analysis. For example, the Earth has warmed over the past 250 years, and continues to warm even today. If you wanted to sow doubt about the cause of that warming, or to support an alternative-to-the-mainstream conclusion, you might point to a long list of contributing factors:

  • the fact that we’re in the process of exiting an Ice Age,
  • the fact that the Sun is variable and provides most of Earth’s energy,
  • the fact that clouds trap heat, as do the natural gases in our atmosphere,
  • and the fact that volcanoes not only cause cloud seeding, but contribute to heat-trapping through the greenhouse effect.

However, if you have sufficient expertise in the relevant areas (climate science and atmospheric science, for instance) and are approaching the problem scrupulously, you’ll ask the key question of how much each effect contributes. That also includes quantifying from the effects you might hope to downplay, such as the effect of human-created greenhouse gases due to the emission of fossil fuels and/or agricultural practices. It’s only by predicting both what happens and the amount that it’s going to happen by that we reach a physical understanding of what’s actually going on. Over a full century before Sagan’s writings, it was Lord Kelvin who said,

“…when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.”

This map shows a short period of wind data across the continental United States. While many once thought of wind as a phenomenon that required a source and was its own fundamental element, others held that wind was just a manifestation of air in motion, and that even air itself took up space and was capable of exerting forces. That latter viewpoint was a minority one, until the pre-Socratic philosopher/scientist Empedocles demonstrated the answer by showing that stationary air, in the absence of wind, could still exert a force.

Credit: Wind Map/Hint.fm

7.) If there’s a chain of argument being put forth, then every link in the chain, from the premise to the final conclusion, must be sound.

They say that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and that’s just as true in the chain of logical reasoning as it is in the chains tethering a battleship to its anchors. A single weak link, including:

  • assuming a single untrue assumption,
  • relying on a discredited or fraudulent study,
  • a logical error in reasoning,
  • presenting an unsubstantiated assertion as an established fact,
  • or ignoring an overlooked or omitted fact that undermines one of the key points,

can lead to an invalid conclusion being drawn.

This is why we must be careful not to misuse our ability to think critically or reason logically; if we misapply our toolkit — whether because of our own cluelessness (where we fool ourselves) or due to deliberate manipulation (where we purposely fool others) — we will wind up hiding, rather than highlighting, the points of evidence that contradict our narrative. If your goal is to get at the truth, or at least our closest approximation of it at the present time, the way to do that is to be scrupulous and forthright about the strengths and weaknesses of every link in your chain of argument. If one of today’s assumptions (or chain links) turns out to later be contradicted or overthrown, that is no failure on anyone’s part. That is how our understanding of the world improves and advances: one new fact and one additional piece of information at a time.

geocentric geocentrism heliocentric heliocentrism retrograde

One of the great puzzles of the 1500s was how planets moved in an apparently retrograde fashion. This could either be explained through Ptolemy’s geocentric model (left), or Copernicus’ heliocentric one (right). However, getting the details right to arbitrary precision was something neither one could do. It would not be until Kepler’s notion of heliocentric, elliptical orbits, and the subsequent mechanism of gravitation proposed by Newton, that heliocentrism would triumph by scientific standards.
Credit: E. Siegel/Beyond the Galaxy

8.) The convenient rule of Occam’s Razor: to choose the simplest explanation among multiple hypotheses that explain the data equally well.

Also known as the principle of parsimony, Occam’s Razor is often paraphrased as, “all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the best.” However, this too can be misapplied (and often is) in many ways, and we have to be aware of what those misapplications are in order to guard against them. They include:

  • when multiple hypotheses have different levels of predictive, explanatory power (in which case, one of them will usually have the most such power),
  • when multiple hypotheses that do explain one class of data equally well have non-equivalent instances that conflict with reality in some other fashion,
  • or where one explanation is hailed as “simpler” despite actually requiring additional unproven assumptions as compared with another.

If multiple hypotheses do not explain the data equally well, then the one that explains the data more accurately and comprehensively is superior. If multiple hypotheses work to explain the data equally well but one conflicts with reality in some other realm (and the other doesn’t), the one that’s valid across the widest range of applicability is superior. And if two rival explanations each declare that they’re the simplest one, the way to tell is by looking at the number of additional assumptions that each one needs to invoke to be true; the one with fewer additional assumptions is simpler. (For example, “dark energy exists but evolves over time” is more complex than “dark energy exists and is a constant,” because it requires a greater number of parameters to model dark energy in that fashion.)

When all else is equal, the simplest explanation is usually best, but only if all else is equal, and only if we are careful with how we apply the notion of “simple” to the problem in question.

existence of God

The truth about reality is written on the face of the Universe itself, and can be discerned via the process of scientific inquiry. At least, that’s the assumption we make, and it’s been quite fruitful so far. But this, like all other scientific ideas, is always subject to being overturned with new observations and experiments, and replaced by a more successful approximation of reality.
Credit: adimas/Adobe Stock

9.) Ask whether the hypothesis, at least in principle, can be falsified. Non-falsifiable and untestable hypotheses cannot be checked out, and hence those ideas are incapable of disproof.

This is not a benefit; this is the hallmark of all ideas that aren’t worth very much. There are plenty of ideas that one can concoct that cannot be disproven, but that also don’t predict anything that can be tested. When I was a child, I had one such idea: the idea that the Universe was created for me at the moment of my birth, with no one else actually existing. All historical records, photographs, written texts, everyone else’s memories and experiences, etc., were created along with the Universe at the moment of my birth, so that no one would be aware of this. Certainly, this idea cannot be disproven — not by me and not by anyone else with a similar idea about themselves — but it lacks the power to explain anything as well.

If it cannot be falsified by any sort of evidence, and it lacks explanatory power to quantitatively describe reality, then it isn’t worth very much to others. As Thomas Henry Huxley put it long ago,

“The foundation of all morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.”

Although we do not yet live in a world exclusively governed by rationality, skepticism, and critical thought as envisioned by Sagan, Huxley, and many others, these nine lessons remain vital tools in the eternal war against misinformation, grift, and fraud. The entire scientific enterprise remains the most meaningful method for obtaining factual knowledge about reality, and it’s by following these lessons that we’ve achieved all that we have as a civilization. To go further still, these lessons must never be forgotten.

This article Carl Sagan’s 9 timeless lessons for detecting baloney is featured on Big Think.

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The Last Yak Herder Of Ladakh

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LADAKH, India — High on the wind-swept plains of the Changthang plateau, in Ladakh, along the northern tip of India, the world seems untouched by time.

Changthang, Tibetan for “Northern Plateau,” stretches across Ladakh into western Tibet, a seemingly barren expanse of stone, salt and sky. It is a high-altitude desert where life has adapted over centuries to harsh winds, scarce water and extreme cold.

Yaks lumber across the dusty mountain earth, their breath rising in clouds. Behind them, Thinlay Nurboo, a yak herder, holds a handmade rope with a small stone tied to its end in his hand. Nurboo throws the stone forward to startle approaching wild animals and keep his yaks safe.

For generations, the people of Ladakh have shaped their lives and cultural practices around the mountains, farming barley on limited arable land and managing increasingly scarce glacial water that relies on once-regular snowfalls.

“Today, those rhythms are broken,” Nurboo says.

Ladakh, often romanticized for its stark beauty and Buddhist monasteries perched on cliffs, is now a frontline in the global climate crisis. In just the last few decades, villagers speak of winters that arrive late and leave early. Glaciers that fed entire valleys have shrunk into bare rock. Streams that once ran through the summer months dry up by mid-June. In most places, the land is turning to dust.

Local Ladakhi communities, supported by engineers and environmentalists, are building artificial glaciers and reviving ancient water systems to sustain water for agriculture. But the future remains uncertain. A high-altitude desert that once depended on the stability of seasons is now caught in the chaos of a warming world.

Beyond environmental challenges, the march of modernity is changing how people view their own lives. Education, urban jobs, tourism and new technologies offer opportunities, but they also shift values, creating subtle pressures that make traditional practices seem outdated or less respected.

“In Tibet, under Chinese occupation, the erasure of Tibetan culture was violent,” Sonam Wangchuk, an engineer and environmentalist known for his work on Ladakh’s water systems, said. “But in Ladakh, it is different. Here, traditions like yak herding are vanishing quietly, without force.”

The traditional semi-nomadic way of life herders like Nurboo live — a delicate balance of reciprocity with land and animals — is quietly unravelling under the pull of modernity and the pressures of climate change and militarized geopolitics.

In Changthang, yak herders are increasingly viewed as backward, their dialects ridiculed, and this makes getting married difficult, explained Nurboo, who looks younger than his 35 years. The stigma is often a stronger force than economics. People abandon herding not because it cannot sustain them, but because they begin to feel inferior about their way of life.

“Once that happens, a culture can disappear without a single act of violence,” Nurboo tells us.

Thinlay Nurboo, 35, a yak herder, waits as the yaks graze the high-altitude pastures. Photo by Sajad Hameed for Noema Magazine.
Thinlay Nurboo, 35, a yak herder, waits as the yaks graze the high-altitude pastures. (Sajad Hameed/Noema Magazine)
Left: Urgan Thistop, a yak herder, lifts the bucket of milk placed on the stone-walled structure known as a lekha, a shelter for yaks. Urgan works for his uncle Thinlay Nurboo to care for the yaks. Right: Yaks inside a lekha in the Durbuk area of Changthang. Photos by Sanna Irshad Mattoo for Noema Magazine
Left: Urgan Thistop, a yak herder, lifts the bucket of milk placed on the stone-walled structure known as a lekha, a shelter for yaks. Urgan works for his uncle Thinlay Nurboo to care for the yaks. Right: Yaks inside a lekha in the Durbuk area of Changthang. (Sanna Irshad Mattoo/Noema Magazine)

A Vanishing Way of Life

On the high-altitude plains of the Himalayas, wind gusts, and the air is sharp with cold, even though it is mid-June. Nurboo follows a moving herd of yaks a couple of miles from his nomadic farm. His boots are wet with yak dung from traversing the higher mountain peaks in search of grazing land.

Unlike other livestock, yaks require specialized care, high-altitude grazing and seasonal migrations across rugged terrain. While goats, sheep and cows are still herded at lower altitudes, yak herding is increasingly rare. Local elders believe Nurboo is one of the last practicing yak herders in the region, keeping the centuries-old tradition that has quietly structured life in the upper Himalayas. 

“Not everyone today wants to live this way,” he says, sitting inside a tent he and his father made. His home is a traditional rebo, crafted from hand-woven yak hair and wool by Changpa nomads. Durable and insulating, it serves as shelter during seasonal migrations. 

“In recent years, some families have added simple side sheds, semi-permanent stone or tin structures, or modern canvas tents for storage and daily chores,” Nurboo tells us, continuing to live in the traditional style. “They call it backward, and the people, especially the younger generations, [don’t] want to follow this tradition.”

These days, Nurboo cares for 90 of his own yaks and around 100 yaks belonging to villagers who have left herding.

The government has worked to support herding communities by resettling them in more strategically located border villages under the Vibrant Village Programme. Meanwhile, promises of salaried work have drawn people to Ladakh’s capital, Leh, roughly 130 miles away, or to the town of Srinagar, about 260 miles away.

“Ladakh, often romanticized for its stark beauty and Buddhist monasteries perched on cliffs, is now a frontline in the global climate crisis.”

Yak herding in Ladakh has always been harsh, but it was also once richly communal, with families migrating together in loose caravans, setting up winter camps in valleys and summer tents near alpine meadows.

Here, like in Tibet and the higher parts of the Himalayas, songs marked seasons; grazing rhythms aligned with star charts and snow patterns. Children grew up learning to read the wind by listening to silence, to find medicine in plants and to stitch wool without waste. It was a way of being that trained people to be patient and observe deeply.

Yak herding, from the perspective of modernity, appears inefficient. Why move with animals across frozen plains when trucks can deliver feed? Why live in tents when cement houses are subsidized? Yet in its so-called inefficiency lies its genius.

Herders like Nurboo leave a minimal carbon footprint. They use every part of the animal — its meat, hide, milk, dung and even its horn. Their movement prevents overgrazing.

Traces of snow on a mountain in Ladakh, India. Photo by Sanna Irshad Mattoo for Noema Magazine
Traces of snow on a mountain in Ladakh, India. (Sanna Irshad Mattoo/Noema Magazine)
Left: Mountain with snow coverage at Changla Pass, a high-altitude mountain pass in Ladakh, India. Right: Tents of Changpa nomads in high-altitude pastures. Photos by Sanna Irshad Mattoo for Noema Magazine.
Left: Mountain with snow coverage at Changla Pass, a high-altitude mountain pass in Ladakh, India. Right: Tents of Changpa nomads in high-altitude pastures. (Sanna Irshad Mattoo/Noema Magazine)

Where Ecology is Sacred

At an average elevation of nearly 15,000 feet, Changthang is one of the highest inhabited regions on Earth. Temperatures drop below minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit in winter; air pressure at this altitude is significantly lower than at sea level, meaning each breath contains far less oxygen.

Despite its extremes, it has long sustained semi-nomadic herders like Nurboo, who have adapted to the plateau’s rhythms over centuries by collaborating with it. But sustaining those rhythms has required a lot more work lately.

“We never used to climb this high,” said Sonam Dogree, a herder we met just above Satto village, a small hamlet high on the Changthang Plateau, her goats trailing behind her on a mountain path. “The lower pastures were enough. But now the grass is disappearing down there. The weather no longer follows the seasons we knew. We have no choice but to keep moving upward. Ladakh is changing, and we feel it at every step.”

But the effects of climate change here are more subtle to the eye than in other regions where you see droughts or floods, Dogree explains, “that’s because Changthang has no great rivers — only wide plains.”

High up in the mountains, a stream that typically freezes during the harsh winter months now flows freely in June. “What we notice is less snow in winter and more rain in summer,” Dogree continues. The high-altitude land means Changthang has a short growing season, and most vegetation relies on spring moisture to germinate and grow.

The shift to less snow in winter and more rain in summer means that, by the time spring arrives, there is not enough moisture in the soil for crops and vegetation to germinate properly. Although summer brings some rain, it is often too late or too little, leaving crops short of water by autumn.

The Indian Himalayas, part of the greater “Third Pole” region that includes the Tibetan Plateau and holds the largest ice reserves outside the polar regions, are warming at nearly twice the global average.

According to a 2023 study by the intergovernmental International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), the larger Hindu Kush-Himalaya — which includes Ladakh — is experiencing significant warming-triggered extreme weather events, including floods, landslides and erratic rainfall, which have become more frequent and severe in recent decades.

“These are ecosystems that evolved under predictable cycles. The glaciers are melting, the weather patterns are changing, and we can see it with our naked eyes,” said Sonam Lotus, the director of Ladakh’s meteorological department in Leh and a famous climatologist.

These erratic conditions mean calves are born in awkward months, out of sync with pasture availability. Grasslands dry up faster. Snow comes late and sometimes all at once.

“Some years there is too much snow, burying the grasses so that animals cannot graze,” Dogree says. “Starvation follows. Whether this is climate change or a cycle that has always existed is difficult to say.”

Army convoys near Durbuk in the Changthang region. Photo by Sanna Irshad Mattoo for Noema Magazine.
Army convoys near Durbuk in the Changthang region. (Sanna Irshad Mattoo/Noema Magazine)
Left: A river flows through the Himalayas of Ladakh, India. Right: Indian army vehicles move in a convoy near the border with China. Photos Sanna Irshad Mattoo for Noema Magazine.
Left: A river flows through the Himalayas of Ladakh, India. Right: Indian army vehicles move in a convoy near the border with China. (Sanna Irshad Mattoo/Noema Magazine)

Sacred Geography Meets State Logic

Over the past two decades, the Changthang has become increasingly entangled in the geopolitical anxieties of modern states, particularly as tensions along the disputed India-China border remain unresolved despite decades of diplomacy.

Since the 1962 Sino-Indian War, the Line of Actual Control (LAC), an ambiguous, contested border between India and China, has sliced across traditional herding corridors. Unlike formal borders, the LAC that demarcates the India-China border is unmarked and often contested, shifting with patrols, perceptions and politics.

“The traditional semi-nomadic way of life herders like Nurboo live — a delicate balance of reciprocity with land and animals — is quietly unravelling under the pull of modernity and the pressures of climate change and militarized geopolitics.”

In 2020, deadly clashes between Indian and Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley brought global attention to this desolate region. But for locals like Nurboo, the consequences of these clashes have had a cumulative impact on daily life.

“Every time tension rises, we lose more land,” Nurboo says. “They say it is for our safety. But who asked us?”

Satellite surveillance, bunkers, airstrips and newly paved roads have turned open range into a militarized landscape. “Entire migration routes must be redrawn,” Dogree explains. “Life for herders is harder, not only because of nature, but because of borders closing in.”

Since the mid-2000s, the Indian government has invested heavily in road-building along the LAC. Projects like the Durbuk-Shyok-DBO road that connects Ladakh’s capital, Leh, with the Daulat Beg Oldi military post near the China border, and improvements along the north bank of Pangong Tso Lake, have turned what were once mule tracks into asphalt arteries, enabling faster troop movement, logistics support and year-round access to remote border areas.

Nurboo points to a road near the Pangong Tso Lake. “We used to take the yaks there during the summer. Now it is closed — the army says it is sensitive.”

The land, once mapped by grass and stars, is now coded in red zones and restricted access points. The result is not only physical displacement, but an erosion of memory. Younger herders no longer walk the full length of traditional routes; some don’t even know them.

“Our ancestors moved like the wind,” Nurboo says. “Now even the wind cannot pass without permission.”

The transformation of the landscape is also symbolic. Researchers note that state conservation and protected‑area policies — including the establishment of conservation zones, wildlife sanctuaries and other conservation measures — have often restricted pastoralists’ access to lands they have stewarded for centuries, reflecting broader tensions between conservation objectives and traditional land use in mountain regions.

In some areas, herders are not allowed to access ancestral pastures. The logic of militarization and its requisite infrastructure, unlike the logic of herding, does not bend to seasons or ecology.

“It is ironic, because herders are among the few people who still know how to live within ecological limits,” Nurboo notes. “But development models do not value that kind of knowledge.”

One of the most profound losses facing Changthang’s pastoral culture is the disappearance of its oral cartography. 

During Nurboo’s childhood, the landscape was alive with names. Each boulder, hillock, or watering hole had a name, a story or a warning to go along with it. This was not just folklore but guidance anchoring people to place.

Today, fewer young people can recite these placenames. Many of the stories remain undocumented. When elders pass away, so do their maps. The land becomes, in the bureaucratic sense, “empty” again: easier to rename, redraw or repurpose.

Militarization has also brought unintended ecological consequences. Roads increase erosion and runoff, altering water patterns. Construction crews disturb migratory paths of snow leopards and Bharal (Himalayan blue sheep). The growing number of diesel-powered vehicles has brought pollution into once-pristine valleys.

Yet for some in Ladakh, the military also offers opportunity. A regular income, health care and housing, things the pastoral life cannot reliably provide. Youths from herding families now sign up as porters, road workers or even low-ranking soldiers.

“My brother is in the Army,” said Sereen Dolma, a teenage girl from Sultak, a remote village on the Changthang plateau. “I am thinking of leaving herding, too.”

She stood in a vast open grazing ground, surrounded by over 200 Pashmina goats. Her face was partially hidden behind a scarf, part shyness, part habit.

Dolma had returned home for the summer, helping her family tend their herd as generations before her had done. But her dreams, like many among the younger generation of Changpa nomads, now stretch beyond the high-altitude pasturelands.

“I’m studying in Leh,” she said quietly. “I want to be a pilot one day.”

The city of Leh, the administrative capital of Ladakh, India. Photo by Sajad Hameed for Noema Magazine.
The city of Leh, the administrative capital of Ladakh, India. (Sajad Hameed/Noema Magazine)

The Lure Of Modernity

On an evening in Leh, we met Lukzi Tsering, a woman who appeared to be in her 30s, sitting cross-legged near the Leh market, absorbed in a mobile game on her smartphone. 

Her father was a herder. So was her grandfather. But Lukzi has no intention of following that path.

“I run this jewelry stall in the Ladakh market, and I love what I do,” she said, adjusting a display. “I also take photos and post on my Instagram and YouTube channels. That is just my thing.”

“Calves are born in awkward months, out of sync with pasture availability. Grasslands dry up faster. Snow comes late and sometimes all at once.”

In Leh, high-speed internet, cafe culture, and Instagram-ready landscapes offer a seductive counter-narrative to pastoral hardship. There are government jobs, gig work with trekking agencies, driving tourists to Pangong Lake. There is also a little nightlife, music and visibility.

There is also education, long seen in society as the ladder to progress. In many remote parts of Ladakh, children often travel to towns such as Leh and Kargil for schooling, supported by initiatives like the 17000 ft Foundation to improve conditions in isolated hamlets. Some families send their children further afield to study, with scholarships helping students attend institutions in places such as Jammu, Delhi, or even abroad, through government scholarship programs. And while this opens doors, it also widens the gap between generations — and often leads to more exits from pastoral life.

At a secondary school in Choglamsar, just outside of Leh, we interviewed six students from herding families. None intended to return. “My parents don’t understand what I do,” said one girl, a senior secondary school student. “They talk about goats and winds, and I talked about mobile phones and books.”

Still, many parents want their children to have more stability and seasonal certainty, especially given the changing climate. “Even I don’t want my son to herd,” said a 40-year-old former herder in Durbuk, a village nearly 86 miles northeast of Leh. “It is too hard. Too lonely. And it gives you nothing.”

Thinlay Nurboo’s nomadic tent. Photo by Sanna Irshad Mattoo for Noema Magazine.
Thinlay Nurboo’s nomadic tent. (Sanna Irshad Mattoo/Noema Magazine)
Left: Thinlay Nurboo sits inside a rebo, a traditional nomadic tent made of yak wool, used by the Changpa tribe, offering cultural significance and shelter in the harsh climate. Right: A yak crosses the road in the Durbuk area of Chanthang region. Photos by Sanna Irshad Mattoo for Noema Magazine.
Left: Thinlay Nurboo sits inside a rebo, a traditional nomadic tent made of yak wool, used by the Changpa tribe, offering cultural significance and shelter in the harsh climate. Right: A yak crosses the road in the Durbuk area of Chanthang region. (Sanna Irshad Mattoo/Noema Magazine)

A Culture Without Heirs

In one of the villages of the Changthang plateau, one-storied houses sit beside nomadic tents. Alongside them, couples manage herds once maintained by five or six families. 

Many of the families we spoke to recalled sending their children to larger towns and cities for better opportunities or to join the army for a stable income, and the prevalence of empty houses in the region underscored this trend. Others chose to sell their livestock altogether.

In Hanle village, we met a 62-year-old woman, Yangdol Dolma, who now treks the pastures alone. “One of my sons works at a resort in Leh, and the other is in the army,” she told us.

Herding had become increasingly difficult as once-thriving grazing lands have vanished, Dolma said, her voice quiet with resignation. Yaks and sheep have succumbed to the unforgiving impacts of a changing climate.

“Yaks prefer cold climates,” she said. “But Ladakh’s cold desert is warming, and they are being forced to climb higher in search of colder pastures and grazing grounds. Sadly, many don’t survive.”

In Phyang village outside Leh, we met Wangchuk, the engineer and educator best known for his “Ice Stupa” innovation — an artificial glacier designed to store winter meltwater and release it slowly in spring, helping farmers irrigate their fields when water is scarce. But Wangchuk is more than an inventor. He is an environmentalist shaped by Ladakh’s fragile ecologies. 

Over tea, he reflected on the disappearing pastoral way of life. “One of the beauties of Ladakh is how people live in total harmony with nature, whether shepherds, herders or farmers,” he said. “Few means, high contentment.”

For him, the erosion of grazing traditions is not just an economic loss; it is the loss of a way of life that has lasted thousands of years. Displaced herders end up in cities, uprooted from the very support systems that sustained them. And once disconnected, it is hard to return.

Wangchuk sees this shift as spiritual, not just social. “Buddhism teaches us to live simply, without harming nature. That’s now being challenged by a development model driven by economy and commerce.”

By choosing to remain a yak herder, Nurboo embodies a kind of defiance against the growing tide of migration to cities in search of comfort or greener pastures. These herders have also blended their ancestral traditions with their new reality, opening their world to visitors who can experience their animals, their daily lives and the products of their labor.

In doing so, herders are not only able to secure an additional source of income but also reimagine tradition itself, turning it into a pathway not of survival alone, but of thriving, Nurboo explained.

Karma Sonam, a Ladakhi historian, has spent decades documenting the oral histories of Changthang’s pastoralists and frames what is being lost here starkly.

“When we lose yak herding here, we are not just losing an occupation, but we are losing an entire library — written not on paper,” Sonam told us by phone.  Those details are in the wind, in the way clouds gather, in the names of stones and streams.

“When elders pass away, so do their maps. The land becomes, in the bureaucratic sense, “empty” again: easier to rename, redraw or repurpose.”

“These are not just grazing lands,” he explained. “They are memory slopes. They hold the instructions for how to live here without destroying it. Once forgotten, those instructions are almost impossible to recover.”

Drawing on both Buddhist philosophy and indigenous Ladakhi thought, Sonam insists that pastoralism is not a relic of the past but a “living treaty” between humans and the non-human world — one that cannot be renegotiated once broken. 

Yet what has troubled him most is how unnoticed such a loss would likely be.

“A tradition can die without a funeral,” he said softly. “And when it does, the land may still look the same — but it will no longer know our names, and we will no longer know its.”

Thinlay Nurboo milks a yak inside a lekha, a stone-walled structure that acts as a shelter for the herd in the Durbuk area of Changthang. Photo by Sanna Irshad Mattoo for Noema Magazine.
Thinlay Nurboo milks a yak inside a lekha, a stone-walled structure that acts as a shelter for the herd in the Durbuk area of Changthang. (Sanna Irshad Mattoo/Noema Magazine)
Left: Kunzis Dolma, 65, Thinlay Nurboo’s mother. Right: Yaks, sheep and goats grazing in the mountains of Ladakh, India. Photos by Sanna Irshad Mattoo for Noema Magazine.
Left: Kunzis Dolma, 65, Thinlay Nurboo’s mother. Right: Yaks, sheep and goats grazing in the mountains of Ladakh, India. (Sanna Irshad Mattoo/Noema Magazine)

Archive Of A Disappearing World

When we first met Nurboo, he was wrapping up milking his yaks on his nomadic farm, a task he had started around 6 a.m. He stood among his herd — hundreds of black and brown, long-haired beasts with patient eyes — as each waited its turn. By 9 a.m., he was finished, and they were all released to the pasture.

In Changthang’s high-altitude villages, even stone houses appear to tremble against the winter wind. Nurboo is regarded by villagers with a mixture of reverence for his dedication to tradition and pity for the hardships he endures.

Inside Nurboo’s black yak-haired tent, roughly 15 to 20 feet across, the open space is divided into functional areas. A small desk and a few essentials mark his personal area, a private corner for work and planning.

The smell of dried yak dung drifts through the panels, while his farm lies just beyond the tent. Family members, like his mother or aunt, may sleep in other parts of the tent or in nearby seasonal shelters, but this corner remains Nurboo’s private workspace.

Close by stood his single-story house, where his mother and aunt sat sipping Gur Gur chai — the salty butter tea of Ladakh — from khos, traditional cups.

Beside them, a gas stove hissed as Nurboo, his cousin Ungan Thustop, and his mother, Kunzis Dolma, prepared yak milk to be made into curd, butter and dry cheese. 

“This is my routine,” Nurboo explained as he hefted a large drum of milk and poured some into a beaker. His cousin, meanwhile, stirred and extracted the butter with a traditional churn, a hand-operated wooden device common in Ladakhi households.

From morning until noon, he and his family process the day’s yield into butter, curd and hard cheese. Then, packing his lunch, he follows his herd into the mountains, keeping watch for wild animals like snow leopards or wolves that might strike. He carries his handmade slingshot-like rope with a small stone tied to its end.

Years of herding have sharpened his instincts; he can sense danger from subtle cues in the wind or the herd’s restlessness. “Out here,” he says, “you don’t wait to see the animal — you act before it does.”

By 6 p.m., he begins the slow return to the farm. By 7 p.m., the yaks are gathered back into the corral. The night, Nurboo admits, is never easy. “We must stay awake to protect them from wild animals and roaming dogs. It is work that demands us, always, 24 hours.”

Yet though steeped in tradition, Nurboo is not rigid. He is experimenting with reviving ancient products for modern markets. He makes chhurpi (hard cheese), mar-khok (yak butter), and lebu (fermented yogurt), packaging them in hand-made sacks for organic stores in Leh.

Nurboo can’t exactly imagine what the future, or his future, will look like. He’s still unmarried. “Maybe there will be no more herders,” he said softly. “Maybe only tourists with cameras.”

He paused, then smiled, almost bashfully. “I wanted to give all my time to the yaks, to our way of life. If I marry now, I may not be able to love both fully. And maybe the girl I marry won’t understand the way I love the yaks.”

Still, he said with a small laugh, he hoped to get married in a couple of years.

A herd of yaks graze in the morning at a high-altitude pasture in the Durbuk area of Changthang. Photo by Sanna Irshad Mattoo for Noema Magazine.
A herd of yaks graze in the morning at a high-altitude pasture in the Durbuk area of Changthang. (Sanna Irshad Mattoo/Noema Magazine)

The Quiet Violence Of Forgetting

The loss of pastoralism in Changthang is a quiet catastrophe, vanishing without the drama of a nature documentary on species extinction. There are no breaking news alerts when a grazing route is blocked. No international headlines when a 70-year-old herder passes away with no apprentice. No hashtags when the last rebos (traditional yak-hair tent) in a valley is packed away for good.

“The loss of pastoralism in Changthang is a quiet catastrophe, vanishing without the drama of a nature documentary on species extinction.”

This is a slow erasure, a death without spectacle: “We are disappearing without being noticed,” Nurboo told us.

Echoing that silence, Wangchuk, the Ladakhi environmentalist, reminds us of the profound philosophy of slowness embodied in the pastoral way of life.

“In a world that is rushing headlong toward climate change and possible collapse, speed is not progress but peril,” Wangchuk told us. “The faster you go, the quicker you approach your own end.”

Slowness, on the other hand, offers a chance to reflect, to correct course, Wangchuk explained. “The seemingly inefficient pace of yak herders may in fact be a lesson for the industrialized world: When danger lies ahead, the wisest choice is to slow down.”

Yangdol Dolma, 62, treks the pastures alone now that her sons have left home for other work. Photo by Sajad Hameed for Noema Magazine.
Yangdol Dolma, 62, treks the pastures alone now that her sons have left home for other work. (Sajad Hameed/Noema Magazine)

Ethical Collapse

The disappearance of yak herding in Ladakh is often described as a cultural loss. But this framing is insufficient. What is vanishing is not just a tradition or way of life. It is an ethical system with a code of conduct toward humans, animals and the land that offers an alternative to the dominant logic of modernity.

“We learned from the yaks,” said Tashi Dolkar, a Changthangi goat herder we met in Hanle village. “How to be patient, how to be grateful, how to take only what we need.” 

And so Nurboo herds not because it is easy, but because it is meaningful: “When I walk with the yaks, he explains, “I feel calm and complete.”

He is not nostalgic for what was; he is simply refusing a future that he feels refuses him.

During our time in Ladakh, the silence surrounding the decline of yak herding was haunting. Not a single policymaker among the half a dozen officials and development officers we spoke to had plans to preserve nomadic pastoralism as a cultural livelihood; most discussions focused on technical support for yaks, such as scientific husbandry programs, rather than sustaining the nomadic way of life itself.

Local institutions have largely focused on tourism. National discourse treats yak herders as a curiosity. And beyond Ladakh, yak herding rarely figures in national or international policy discussions on climate or biodiversity, even though elders warn its loss could affect fragile mountain ecosystems and traditional land stewardship.

At the heart of this is the fact that societies are constantly deciding what counts: What is worthy of preservation, funding, documentation and defense? Nurboo’s way of life, embodied, oral, seasonal and land-dependent — fits none of the current models.

It is too slow for digital timelines. Too place-bound to scale globally. Too spiritual for technocratic policy. And yet, its disappearance marks a civilizational defeat.

One of the most insidious effects of these converging disruptions is a form of cultural displacement that is hard to quantify. There are no refugee camps for yak herders.

For the yak herders, what disappears is not just their livelihood but their identity. Their skills honed over lifetimes carry no formal certification. Their stories find no echo in school textbooks.

Efforts to “save” yak herding have often failed because they turn it into performances. These well-meaning festivals, tourism photo-ops, and curated cultural showcases ultimately strip pastoralism of its philosophical and ecological substance, reducing it to content rather than to traditional continuity, in ways similar to those that many indigenous populations have suffered.

Research on yak herders shows that they want tangible support, such as improved rangeland management, infrastructure, health services and livestock insurance, to sustain yak herding as a viable livelihood, rather than symbolic preservation alone. 

While this story takes place in Ladakh, its implications are global. Across the Andes, traditional llama and alpaca herders face similar pressures. In the Arctic, Sami reindeer herders are fighting mining and other extractive projects that threaten grazing lands and migration routes. In Kenya, Maasai herders face prolonged droughts and erratic rainfall that disrupt grazing and livelihoods.

In each case, pastoralism is not just a livelihood but a worldview under siege. By listening to Nurboo, we are, in some ways, listening to them all.

“It pains me to say it,” Nurboo tells us, his voice just louder than the mountain wind, “but maybe I am the last yak herder.”

As we packed up to leave the Changthang plateau, Nurboo walked with us to the ridge. From that vantage point, the valley unfolded below us like an open book — marked by hoof prints, prayer flags and silence.

Pastoralism, as practiced by Nurboo and his ancestors, is a system that knows how to yield, adapt and respect limits. Nurboo’s disappearance will not just mark the end of a culture, but of a wisdom the world no longer pauses to hear.

On the ridgeline, the evening sun was setting. Nurboo stood silently, watching his yaks disappear over the ridge, their bells echoing softly into the vastness. “I don’t know how long I can keep doing this,” he said, voice low, almost to himself. “But as long as I can walk, I’ll walk with them.”

The post The Last Yak Herder Of Ladakh appeared first on NOEMA.

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Easy A’s, lower pay: Grade inflation’s hidden damage

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For more than three decades, grades in American schools and colleges have been going up, up, up. A’s are more common. Failure is rarer than it once was.

At the same time, student achievement, as measured by standardized tests like the ACT and NAEP, has stagnated or declined. Grades say students are learning more. Tests say they are not.

Credit: Slide from Feb 3, 2026 presentation by economist Jeff Denning at Harvard Graduate School of Education

Does this disconnect matter? Maybe higher grades motivate students to show up to school every day and learn. Perhaps harsh grading discourages them. Maybe we should stop obsessing over academic rigor and focus instead on other qualities we want to foster: good attendance, behavior, participation and cooperation.

A new study delivers an uncomfortable answer. It finds that lenient grading, or grade inflation, is actually harming students, leading not only to worse academic outcomes but also reducing their employment prospects and future earnings. 

Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

The study, “Easy A’s, Less Pay: The Long-Term Effects of Grade Inflation,” was presented in February 2026 at the Harvard Graduate School of Education by economist Jeffrey Denning of the University of Texas at Austin. A draft paper was co-authored with researchers from RAND, the University of Maryland and the University of Georgia. It has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal and may still be revised.

But its findings are striking and build the argument against raising grades.

Related: It’s easier and easier to get an A in math

Students who experienced more lenient grading were less likely to pass subsequent courses, posted lower test scores afterwards, were less likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college, and earned significantly less years later.

The economic cost is not small. Denning estimates that when a teacher doles out grades that are substantially higher (0.2 or more points on a 4-point scale, the difference between a B and almost a B-plus), a student in that class loses about $160,000 in lifetime earnings, measured in present dollars.

That’s the effect of a single teacher, in a single year. If a student encounters several grade-inflating teachers, the losses add up.

Evidence from two very different places

The researchers examined students in two settings: Los Angeles and Maryland.

Los Angeles Unified School District provided data on almost a million high school students from 2004 to 2013, a period when graduation rates hovered just above 50 percent. The student population was more than 70 percent Hispanic, and failing grades were common.

Maryland’s data followed about 250,000 high school students from 2013 to 2023. Graduation rates exceeded 90 percent, and the student population was more racially mixed. Maryland’s data allowed researchers to track college enrollment, employment and earnings, while the Los Angeles data ended with high school. 

Related: Education official sounds alarm bell about high school classes

Despite these differences, the pattern was the same.

Students taught by lenient graders — defined as teachers who gave higher grades than expected based on standardized test scores and prior student performance — did worse later in high school. In Maryland, where there was data through college and into the workplace, these students were also less likely to attend college or be employed, and earned less.

Seeing the same pattern in two very different systems strengthens the case that this is not a fluke of one district or one policy regime.

When leniency helps and when it doesn’t

The study makes a crucial distinction. Teachers who still kept A’s challenging, but only made it easier to pass — turning failures into low passing grades — did help more students graduate from high school, particularly those at risk of dropping out. That short-term benefit is real. For some students, passing Algebra I instead of failing it can keep them on track to graduate and possibly enroll in community college.

But the benefit stops there. Those students do not show long-term gains in college degree completion or earnings. The leniency helps them clear a hurdle, but it does not build the skills they need afterward.

By contrast, general grade inflation (teachers who raise grades across the board, from C’s to B’s to A’s) shows no upside and hurts students’ chances of future success.  

Why good intentions backfire

The study cannot directly explain why higher grades lead to worse outcomes. But the mechanism is not difficult to imagine. In a class with a lenient grader, a savvy student may quickly realize she does not need to study hard or complete all the homework. If she earns a B in Algebra I without learning how to factor or solve quadratic equations, the knowledge gaps follow her into geometry and beyond. She may scrape by again. Over time, the deficits compound. Confidence erodes. Learning slows. In college or the workplace, the consequences show up as lower skills and lower pay.

As Denning put it during the presentation, there appears to be a “causal chain” of harm, even if he cannot measure directly how much less students are studying or how behind they’ve fallen. 

Don’t rush to blame teachers

Raising grades isn’t always an individual instructor’s decision. A 2025 survey documents the frustrations of many grade-inflating teachers who say that they feel pressure from administrators to comply with “equitable grading” policies that forbid zeros, allow unlimited retakes and eliminate penalties for late work.

Lenient graders are not bad teachers. The study finds they are often better at improving non-cognitive skills. Their students behave better, cooperate more, and are less likely to be suspended. Still, in this study, that’s not translating into better life outcomes, as one would hope.

Stricter graders tend to be better at raising students’ test scores in math, reading and other academic subjects. Despite that correlation, that doesn’t mean all tough graders are good teachers. Some are not. 

Related: Nearly 6 out of 10 middle and high school grades are wrong, study finds

This is early research. More studies are needed to understand whether there are similar workplace costs from college grade inflation. And there are questions about whether boys react differently than girls to inflated grades. 

Teachers struggle to get students to engage in learning, which is full of setbacks, frustration and boring repetition. Maybe low grades won’t inspire students to do this hard work. But this early evidence suggests that inflated grades aren’t doing them any favors.

Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

This story about grade inflation was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

The post Easy A’s, lower pay: Grade inflation’s hidden damage appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

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