2026-01-30 04:29:21
“A group of prepubescent British boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempts to govern themselves that lead to a descent into savagery. The novel’s themes include morality, leadership, and the tension between civility and chaos.” That’s the plot of Lord of the Flies, but it could just as easily be the coming plot of the race toward AI dominance. Like the kids stranded on the fictional island, in the Lord of the AIs, the rules of the new BYOG (Bring Your Own Guardrails) society are being set by insiders. Anthropic is the major AI player known for being the most worried about the “civilizational concerns” associated with its tech. Maybe that’s just a branding strategy, or maybe they’re just being compared to the likes of Zuck and Musk. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they really are the most concerned of the AI giants. “When Anthropic launched Claude, in 2023, the bot’s distinguishing feature was a ‘Constitution’ that the model was trained on detailing how it should behave; last week, Anthropic revamped the document into a 22,000-word treatise on how to make Claude a moral and sincere actor. Claude, the constitution’s authors write, has the ability to foster emotional dependence, design bioweapons, and manipulate its users, so it’s Anthropic’s responsibility to instill upright character in Claude to avoid these outcomes.” But, ultimately, the race is on. And the rules of the race are being made by its participants, not by governments, and certainly not by end users. Ultimately, those rules may be made by the very technologies the absence of outside rules enabled. Matteo Wong in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Anthropic Is at War With Itself. “The AI company shouting about AI’s dangers can’t quite bring itself to slow down.” (And that’s the point. This is all about self-regulation. They’re the only ones who currently have the power to slow themselves down.)
+ While William Golding’s fictional version of boys in a guardrail-free society didn’t go well, the real story of a group of schoolboys stranded alone on an Island had a much happier plotline. “The teenage runaways showed remarkable resourcefulness—building a hut out of palm fronds, establishing a garden with bananas and beans, and setting up a roster to keep a lookout for passing ships. They even built a badminton court and a makeshift gym. They lived in harmony—they told us—most of the time.” Of course, those self-ruling teenagers didn’t have billions of dollars at stake or a cast of competitors that had already proven themselves lacking when it comes to themes such as morality, leadership, and the tension between civility and chaos. I guess we’ll see how things turn out this time...
Are there times when you’re watching a brawl and you can be sure the good guys aren’t going to win? Yes. When there are no good guys. Which brings us to raging battles inside the Department of Homeland Security. “Officials overseeing Trump’s mass-deportation campaign are fighting one another for power.” Battles Are Raging Inside the Department of Homeland Security. Yes, there are differing degrees of badness among the key players, but when the guy who brought you the family separation policy seems likes the most decent of the bunch, you might as well be stuck rooting for a root canal.
+ In a press conference on Thursday, Tom Homan said that he seeks to ‘regain law and order’ in Minnesota. (He didn’t mention who caused law and order to be lost in the first place). Here’s the latest from NBC.
“Vilbrun Dorsainvil lives in the United States under a legal designation called Temporary Protected Status, which can be provided by the U.S. government to people from countries experiencing armed conflict or natural disasters. The protection allows those already in the United States to remain for a specific period of time, and it can be renewed if the U.S. government considers conditions in the country unsafe for people to return. Haitians have been eligible for T.P.S. since an earthquake devastated the country in 2010, and the protection has been renewed because of other crises. But the Trump administration announced last year that it was terminating the status for several countries, including Afghanistan, Venezuela and Haiti.” That’s bad news for Vilbrun Dorsainvil and a lot of Haitians. It’s also bad news for a lot of Americans. NYT (Gift Article): Haitians Are Vital to U.S. Health Care. Many Are About to Lose Their Right to Work. “At least 50,000 migrants with protected status work in health care, an industry struggling to fill positions in small cities and rural areas as an aging America requires more long-term care.” Feel safer?
“To the extent American children have a relationship with coal, it’s usually a negative one. Every kid knows the worst thing you can get on Christmas morning is a lump of the bituminous stuff as harsh payback for a year spent behaving poorly. Which makes it a little weird that Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum is using an anthropomorphized lump of coal, dressed in yellow safety gear and Mickey Mouse gloves, as the adorable mascot of President Donald Trump’s ‘American Energy Dominance Agenda,’ which includes bringing ‘clean, beautiful coal’ back from the edge of extinction ... The mascot’s name is “Coalie,” and he appeared in a post on X recently with a cartoon version of Burgum. ‘Mine, Baby, Mine!’ Burgum’s post said, a message echoed on Cartoon Burgum’s hard hat.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): Meet ‘Coalie,’ the Lethal Mascot for Dirty Energy.
The Age of Bull: “Bull Connor’s fire hoses and police dogs were meant to restore order during civil rights demonstrations. Instead, they revealed the brutality of segregation to an international audience.” NYT (Gift Article): We’re Seeing the Weakness of a Strong State. “Visible state violence against sympathetic civilians was the beginning of the end for Jim Crow. It may be a turning point now, too.” (I wonder if the same rules apply in the era of doomscrolling, altered images, information silos, and social media. And when Bull Connor is in the Oval Office.)
+ What to Expect About Your Expectancy: “The average U.S. life expectancy hit an all-time high in 2024 ... as the nation continued to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and deaths from drug overdoses continued to decline.” (That sounded like better news before we got a dose of 2025.)
+ Still Looking for Those 11K Votes: “This just looks like a way to use the might of the federal government to further Trump’s voter fraud narratives.” ProPublica: FBI’s Search of Georgia Election Center Is ‘Dangerous,’ Experts Warn. (I’m guessing even the non-experts can see that it might not have be a good idea to re-elect guy who asked Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to find him 11,780 votes. But here we are...)
+ Tech Support: The masks, guns and tear gas is what makes the news. But ICE’s arsenal gets a lot more high tech. And there’s no reason to assume these same technologies won’t be used against everyone who is considered a threat at some point. WaPo (Gift Article): The powerful tools in ICE’s arsenal to track suspects — and protesters. “Biometric trackers, cellphone location databases and drones ... These technologies, both visible and invisible, are transforming the front lines of immigration enforcement and political protest across America today.”
+ The Protein Bubble: Meat is hot. Fake meat is not. And everyone, and I mean everyone, is putting protein into everything. Hence this latest product from Beyond Meat: a protein soda.
+ Green Without Envy: What’s the best way to give Greenlanders more positive vibes about Denmark? Hint: Trump. “Not long ago, Aviaja Sinkbaek, an office manager in Greenland, thought it was time to ease further away from 300 years of Danish rule and maybe think about independence. She was even open to drawing closer to the United States. Now as she watches the images of violence coming out of Minneapolis from her pale green rowhouse on a hillside above Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, her ears still ringing with President Trump’s threats about getting her homeland somehow, she’s changed her mind.” (This is a metaphor for feelings bubbling up among all of our allies.) Greenlanders Watching Turmoil in the United States Say No Thanks.
“The toy was designed as a happy-faced Lunar New Year decoration, but a manufacturing mistake turned its smile into a frown.” Needless to say, it’s selling like crazy.
+ ‘Batman’ blasts Bay Area city council over ICE’s involvement in Super Bowl.
+ Court reverses decision firing educator for reading ‘I Need a New Butt!’
2026-01-29 04:57:06
It’s not quite the economy, stupid. Affordability has become the core issue and key buzzword of the upcoming midterms. But what do people, particularly young ones, mean when they say it? It turns out that when you ask people about affordability, they’re not necessarily talking about “the costs of goods that surged in the wake of the pandemic, like gas, cars and food.” In the NYT(Gift Article), Nate Cohn tries to make sense of the latest polling on the topic, and to explain why there’s a somewhat unusual disconnect between the concerns about affordability and the overall job market and economy. What people seem to be most disillusioned about is “the rising price of entry for a middle-class life: buying a home; paying for child care, college and health care; saving for retirement, and so on. These are familiar issues in American politics, but they add up to an entirely different problem under the all-encompassing label of affordability. The difficulty of purchasing a ticket to the middle class has created a sense that the economy isn’t working, even when the economy isn’t so bad by usual measures like growth or unemployment.” What Americans Really Mean by Affordability. Among young people, there seems to be a general sense that they can afford a hat, but they don’t believe they’ll ever have a place to hang it. “Around half of them said they worried most about affording housing, more than every other item combined, including retirement, health care, education, bills, cars and food.” (Attached ballroom, optional...)
“For decades, the American law school has served as a popular hedge against a cooling economy. When the ‘Help Wanted’ signs disappear, the ‘J.D.’ applications surge.” Well, applications to law schools are surging. Big time. “The number of U.S. law school applicants for the 2026 cycle is up an estimated 17 percent from last year, according to data from the American Bar Association compiled by the Law School Admission Council. That figure is a staggering 44 percent increase from just two years ago.” But this cycle, things are a little more uncertain. And that’s not just because it’s unclear whether we’ll have laws in America by the time these students graduate. “New limits on student loans that go into effect this year could make financing a degree more expensive. And artificial intelligence threatens to bring major changes to the industry, affecting which jobs are available and how much they pay.” Interest in Law School Is Surging. A.I. Makes the Payoff Less Certain.
+ Too bad you can’t get a graduate degree in becoming a data center. Amazon to Cut 16,000 Jobs in Latest Round of Layoffs. “The e-commerce giant has been cutting costs while pouring resources into building data centers to compete in the race to dominate artificial intelligence.”
Groucho Marx famously explained, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” But the truth is that making others feel welcomed as a member of a club, organization, or political movement is one of the core determinants of long-term growth. In the New Yorker, the always interesting Charles Duhigg examines the differences between organizing and mobilizing, and several other factors that determine whether or not organizations become effective. What MAGA Can Teach Democrats About Organizing—and Infighting. “Republicans have become adept at creating broad coalitions in which supporting Trump is the only requirement.” (If you’re still for an America that remains a liberal democracy, consider yourself welcome in my coalition.) “The sociologist Liz McKenna, of Harvard, told me that movements succeed best when people feel welcome. A movement becomes sustainable when members feel empowered and find friends. ‘The left loves big protests, but protesting is a tactic in search of a strategy,’ she said. There must be some shared core values among a movement’s members, of course, but the requirement can’t be that every value is shared. ‘Making room for difference isn’t a nice-to-have thing—it’s table stakes,’ she told me. ‘The rallies are by-products of the community, not the goal.’ Most of all, even though anger can be useful, a movement also needs to provide some joy. ‘Trump rallies are fun,’ McKenna noted. ‘The Turning Point campus debates are fun.’ For a long time, she said, the left was less fun and more angry, ‘and so the right was out-organizing them at every turn.’”
The Latin motto of the Olympic Games translates as, Faster, Higher, Stronger. It might be time to add a new word to the motto: Richer. “Team USA has won more Olympic medals than any other nation on earth. But unlike other powerhouses of the Games, the U.S. government doesn’t spend a dime rewarding Olympic athletes. Any prize money comes mainly from sponsorship and the sale of broadcast rights. One man is hoping to give them a little more financial security. Starting from the Milan Cortina Olympics next month, financier Ross Stevens will give $200,000 to each U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athlete, regardless of performance.” WSJ (Gift Article): The U.S. Government Doesn’t Fund Olympic Athletes. So One Man Is Paying Them $200,000 Each.
Outstretched Armada: “Mr. Trump gave no specifics about the deal he was demanding, saying only that a ‘massive Armada’ was heading toward Iran and that the country should make a deal. But U.S. and European officials say that in talks, they have put three demands in front of the Iranians: a permanent end to all enrichment of uranium, limits on the range and number of their ballistic missiles, and an end to all support for proxy groups in the Middle East, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis operating in Yemen. Notably absent from those demands — and from Mr. Trump’s post on Truth Social on Wednesday morning — was any reference to protecting the protesters who took to the streets in Iran in December.” NYT (Gift Article): Trump Threatens Iran With ‘Massive Armada’ and Presses a Set of Demands.
+ Bucking the Trend: “Spain’s government announced Tuesday it will grant legal status to potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants living and working in the country without authorization, the latest way the country has bucked a trend toward increasingly harsh immigration policies imposed in the United States and much of Europe.”
+ Noem Alone: “From Democratic Party leaders to the nation’s leading advocacy organizations to even the most centrist lawmakers in Congress, the calls are mounting for the Homeland Security secretary to step aside after the shooting deaths in Minneapolis of two people who protested deportation policy. At a defining moment in her tenure, few Republicans are rising to Noem’s defense.”
+ Spraying Mantis: A man arrested in an attack on Ilhan Omarhas a criminal history and made pro-Trump posts. Trump responded to news of the attack by calling on Americans to tone down the aggressive rhetoric and explaining that violence has no place in American politics. Just kidding. He created a conspiracy theory suggesting that Omar orchestrated her own attack. Trump Floats Conspiracy Theory After Man Shoots Liquid at Ilhan Omar: ‘She Probably Had Herself Sprayed’.
+ Matching Funds: JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America said Wednesday morning that they will match the US government’s $1,000 contribution to so-called Trump accounts for thousands of their US employees.
+ Vlad Handing: “President Trump’s on-off relationship with President Putin is so volatile that he has veered from describing the Russian leader as ‘a nice gentleman’ to saying he was ‘pissed off’ with him. Now there is a sign that the ‘bromance’ is on again, as Trump hung a picture of himself and Putin in the White House.”
+ Still Looking for Those 11K Votes: “Speaking last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, President Donald Trump repeated his false claim that the 2020 election was ‘rigged,’ and said that ‘people will soon be prosecuted for what they did.’” And this week? The FBI just conducted court-authorized law enforcement actions at a Fulton County election office.
+ A Place in History: “Born to Black farmers in rural Virginia, Dr. West lived through remarkable societal and technological transformations — from segregation to the civil rights movement, from calculators to supercomputers, and from paper maps to Google Maps. Through it all, she worked in near obscurity. She was almost 90 before she received any recognition for her work.” Gladys West, Unsung Figure in Development of GPS, Dies at 95.
+ Nicollet Avenue Freeze Out: “Just don’t believe your eyes. It’s our blood and bones. And these whistles and phones. Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies.” Bruce Springsteen Releases ICE Protest Song: Streets of Minneapolis.
“As the storm recedes, residents of lesser-affected areas might be tempted to whip up bowls of ‘snow cream’ — snow combined with milk, sugar and vanilla — after seeing techniques demonstrated on TikTok. Others might want to try ‘sugar on snow,’ a taffy-like confection made by pouring hot maple syrup onto a plate of snow.” After one of the biggest and broadest storms of the season, I guess you’d have to call this a public service announcement. Eating snow cones or snow cream can be a winter delight, if done safely.
+ Kitty’s back in town... Majestic’ mountain lion captured after hours-long SF standoff.
+ John Mellencamp has a pretty unique treadmill workout to prepare for his upcoming tour.
2026-01-28 03:01:02
The Iceman cometh. And the Iceman go-eth. Gregory Bovino, the border patrol official who had become the face of the Trump administration’s blue city crackdowns (and seemed to be competing for worst character of the year with Sean Penn’s portrayal of Lockjaw in One Battle After Another) has lost his job (and perhaps more dramatically, been suspended from his own social media account, “which he had used as a vehicle to publicize his militant commitment to Trump’s anti-immigration agenda”). “Bovino’s appearances in Minneapolis caught widespread attention even before Saturday’s tragic episode. He was captured on film throwing a teargas canister at protesters. Pictures of him striding around the city wearing a long winter greatcoat with brass buttons were also noted by German media, which commented that his appearance – including a closely cropped haircut – seemed intended to evoke fascist aesthetics.” Yes, he looked bad. He behaved badly. And he lied habitually, including his recent insistence that Alex Pretti intended to “massacre” agents. He was, in other words, a perpetual candidate for Trump Administration Employee of the Week, until public sentiment turned against ICE in Minnesota, and even key GOP enablers began to warn the president’s signature issue was quickly becoming his signature disaster. So someone had to go, and it turned out to be Bo’. The Guardian: The rise and fall of Gregory Bovino, US border patrol’s menacing provoker-in-chief.
+ The fall of Bovino hardly equals the fall of ICE. Bovino is being replaced in Minneapolis by border czar, Tom Homan, who is more temperate, professional, and moderate by Trump 2.0 standards, but who was also the architect of the family separation policy (among other hits). And as long as Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem (who Trump described today as doing a “very good job”) are running and carrying out the current policies, it’s no time to celebrate. But it is notable that an administration that prides itself on attacking criticism with more aggressiveness has been forced to take a step back. And for that, we have a whole lot of citizens in Minnesota to thank. Adam Serwer in The Atlantic(Gift Article): Minnesota Proved Maga Wrong. “The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it.”
+ “Trump’s decision to change course was a stunning shift on a policy that is core to his political identity, especially for a president who has often rewarded advisers for doubling down in the face of vocal opposition.” WSJ (Gift Article): The 48 Hours That Convinced Trump to Change Course in Minnesota. (The shift has less to do with ethics or a concern about the loss of innocent lives, and more to do with how the story was playing on cable news.)
+ Here’s the latest from NBC News.
According to WaPo (Gift Article), “Department of Homeland Security officers have fired shots during enforcement arrests or at people protesting their operations 16 times since July, and as in the recent shootings in Minneapolis, in each case the Trump administration has publicly declared their actions justified before waiting for investigations to be completed.” The difference in Minneapolis was that the shootings were recorded, making the lies more difficult to sell. NYT (Gift Article): The Best Weapon You Have in the Fight Against ICE. “The nation’s founders worried that if the state had a monopoly on weapons, its citizens could be oppressed. Their answer was the Second Amendment. Now that our phones are the primary weapons of today’s information war, we should be as zealous about our right to bear phones as we are about our right to bear arms. To adopt the language of Second Amendment enthusiasts, perhaps the only thing that can eventually stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a camera.”
“Within about a year, according to the filings, the company had spent tens of millions of dollars to acquire and slice the spines off millions of books, before scanning their pages to feed more knowledge into the AI models behind products such as its popular chatbot Claude.” How did AI get so smart about so many topics so quickly? It read. Everything. WaPo (Gift Article): Inside a tech company’s secretive plan to destroy millions of books. “Court filings reveal how AI companies raced to obtain more books to feed chatbots, including by buying, scanning and disposing of millions of titles.” (While I’m flattered AI deemed my book worthy of inhaling, I really wish they had bought a copy. I could have used the sales numbers.)
“I have come to share amazing news. It turns out that despite everything you’ve heard, getting a colonoscopy is wonderful. It’s the most fun I’ve had since the sunniest summer days of my childhood. I would like everyone to experience this bliss as often as possible.” Sam Anderson in the NYT Magazine (Gift Article): Want to Reach Nirvana? Try a Colonoscopy. “I’m not sure I’ve ever lived a fuller day. I achieved a literal flow state. I felt pure consciousness, the sense of presence people spend lifetimes searching for in mountaintop monasteries. It had been waiting, all along, in my upstairs bathroom.” (I’ve always thought the downsides of getting a colonoscopy were dramatically overstated. If you’re worried, don’t be. There are much worse tests, and eventually, you’ll probably have to get them all.)
Middle Management: “While a majority of people said that they could afford basics like rent, gas and groceries, most said they worry about the costs, and there was a pronounced sense that it has become more difficult, if not nearly impossible, to get ahead in America today. Majorities of voters said they do not feel confident in their ability to pay for housing, retirement and health care, all traditional staples of a middle-class lifestyle. Separately, more than half said housing and education are now so expensive that both have become unaffordable.” Voters See a Middle-Class Lifestyle as Drifting Out of Reach.
+ Iran’s Crackdown: “Iran’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests has killed at least 6,159 people while many others still are feared dead, activists said Tuesday, as a U.S. aircraft carrier group arrived in the Middle East to lead any American military response to the crisis.”
+ House Call: “Starting in early August, the industry began making donations that over the course of weeks would eventually total nearly $4.8 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC devoted to Mr. Trump and run by his allies. Later that same month, a handful of nursing home executives who had given the biggest donations joined industry lobbyists at Mr. Trump’s golf club in suburban Washington.” NYT (Gift Article): After Donations, Trump Administration Revoked Rule Requiring More Nursing Home Staff.
+ The Matchmaker: “The ink is barely dry on the European Union and India’s historic trade deal but all eyes are now on how President Donald Trump will react to the free trade agreement that’s widely seen as a strategic hedge against the U.S.′ volatile trade policies and tariff threats.” Meanwhile, British PM Starmer courts China amid US unpredictability. (Trump is like Tinder for trade deals for other countries.)
+ Sea Saw: We’ve been so focused on illegal killings at home that we almost forgot the illegal killings abroad. First wrongful death lawsuit filed against Trump administration over drug boat strikes.
+ Immortal Portal: “Three decades ago, Yahoo was known as ‘Jerry’s guide to the world wide web,’ and was designed as a sort of all-encompassing portal to help people find good stuff on an increasingly large, hard-to-parse internet. In the early aughts, the rise of web search more or less obviated that whole idea. But now, Yahoo thinks, we’ve come back around.” Yahoo Scout looks like a more web-friendly take on AI search.
There was a time when talking about the weather seemed pretty harmless. Now people are betting on it. “Bettors seeking to cash in on the weekend’s snowstorm flocked to prediction markets to wager millions on how much snow would ultimately accumulate across the U.S., with more than $6 million bet on New York City’s totals alone.” I can’t predict the weather, but the forecast for a world in which everyone is urged to bet on everything is bleak.
+ From the McSweeney’s archive: Tevye From Fiddler on the Roof, Now a Rich Man, Receives a Letter From His Hoa. “The third staircase leading nowhere just for show is a fire hazard.”
+ Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Says Sydney Sweeney Did Not Get Permission to Hang Bras on Hollywood Sign. (I don’t even know what this headline means, but in the before times, I would have probably led with it.)
2026-01-27 05:30:13
In the hours following the killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis, his parents issued a statement that concluded with this plea: “Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.” That could be the rallying cry of the era. As was the case after the killing of Renee Good, the lies about the incident and the victim began immediately, and came from the very top. How do we get the truth out about this American son when an administration, its media and political enablers, and a social media army (fueled by AI-powered distortions and good old-fashioned falsehoods) are so determined to get the truth out of American life? In Minneapolis, protesters are recording masked agents, and agents are recording scenes from their perspective. But as Charlie Warzel explains in The Atlantic, even these realtime recordings can’t deliver agreement about what happened among those who view them through filters poisoned by partisanship and relentless lying. “A dark irony of our current age is that there is more video and photographic evidence than ever before, and yet propagandists can coerce or convince others to not believe what they can see with their own eyes.” It’s easy enough to say, Believe Your Eyes, but it’s something else to convince others to believe theirs.
One of the troubling trends is that even mainstream media orgs tend to fall into the trap of giving the benefit of the doubt to the Trump administration’s official version of events, before dismantling that version, fact by fact. Yes, eventually we might stumble toward to obvious conclusion like this from the NYT Editorial Board (Gift Article): The Trump Administration Is Lying to Our Faces. Congress Must Act. “The administration is urging Americans to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. Ms. Noem and Mr. Bovino are lying in defiance of obvious truths. They are lying in the manner of authoritarian regimes that require people to accept lies as a demonstration of power.” But in today’s media landscape, it doesn’t cut it to eventually get to the truth after giving credulous consideration (and headline space) to the lies. When people lie every time, like every single time, maybe it doesn’t make sense to give them the benefit of the doubt in the first rough draft of history. At this point, it’s not enough to call out the lies we can plainly see with our own eyes. We have to assume the lie as a starting point. As Vinson Cunningham asks in The New Yorker: “Their untroubled and automatic dishonesty, amid so much shared evidence, gives rise to a horrible question: If this is what they do when we can see, what’s going on in the places—planes and cars, detention centers—where we can’t?” We need to find out. We owe it to Alex Pretti’s parents, and we owe it to America.
“For weeks, these agents had been actors in a kind of theater of power, meting out various forms of state force and violence, framed by the smartphone cameras they carried, providing a steady stream of content for the Trump administration’s various social media platforms. What was clear in person, seeing the scene outside of the frame, were the limits of this performance of power. The agents had no capacity to maintain order or much apparent interest in doing so. Their presence was a vector of chaos, and controlling it was not in their job description. All that was holding the crowd back, as far as I could tell, was the knowledge that an officer like these shot a woman a week earlier and that another shot a man up the street an hour ago. I left the scene that night certain it would happen again.” NYT Magazine(Gift Article): Watching America Unravel in Minneapolis.
+ “In the frozen streets of Minneapolis, something profound is happening.” Welcome to the American Winter.
+ Even some Republicans are calling for an investigation into what’s happening in Minneapolis. Republicans Call for ‘Transparent’ Investigation Into Fatal Minneapolis Shooting. And the White House is trying to distance itself from the attacks on the victim made by Stephen Miller (who called Pretti “an assassin [who] tried to murder federal agents”) and Kristi Noem. Here’s the latest from AP, The Guardian, and NBC News.
“Like many people who strap on an Apple Watch every day, I’ve long wondered what a decade of that data might reveal about me. So I joined a brief wait list and gave ChatGPT access to the 29 million steps and 6 million heartbeat measurements stored in my Apple Health app. Then I asked the bot to grade my cardiac health. It gave me an F.” Luckily for Geoffrey A. Fowler, ChatGPT’s analysis of his health data was wrong. But when you read AI analysis, especially when you’re desperate for answers, it often sounds right. WaPo (Gift Article): I let ChatGPT analyze a decade of my Apple Watch data. Then I called my doctor.
+ If I shared my health data with ChatGPT, I’d expect it to say, “Hey, maybe you should get offline for a few hours and we can talk about this later...” For now, I’ve only asked it about some household fixes. And those answers were about as accurate as the ones Geoffrey Fowler got about his health. Let There Be Light.
If you’re a busy, tired, stressed parent looking for new ways to get your own parents to help out with the kids, and the usual guilt trips aren’t working, here’s a new angle. Tell them taking care of their grandkids is for their own good! Helping to raise your grandchildren? It’s good for your brain. Researchers “found that seniors who provided child care for their grandchildren − including watching them overnight, caring for sick grandkids, playing with them, helping with homework, making meals and driving them to school and extracurriculars − scored higher on memory and verbal fluency tests than those who were not caregivers.”
The Last Hostage: “The remains of the last hostage held in Gaza have been identified, the Israeli military said Monday, ending a more than two-year saga for captives’ families in Israel — and paving the way for the second phase of the ceasefire in the war-torn enclave.”
+ House Call: “Millions of Americans are starting to see their monthly health-insurance bills rise, a new pressure point for a nation still frustrated with the high cost of living. Many of those facing the most substantial dollar increases are middle-income Americans who buy health insurance through the marketplaces set up by the government’s Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.” WSJ: Health Insurance Is Now More Expensive Than the Mortgage for These Americans.
+ Winter Came: Northeast sees more snow from the tail end of a colossal winter storm, at least 25 deaths reported. “A colossal winter storm brought deep cold, ice, sleet, and snow to millions across a huge swath of the country.” In Photos: Snow and Ice Blanket the U.S.
+ Tim Apple Goes to Washington: In the hours after the latest Minneapolis killing, the CEOs of some of America’s most powerful tech companies were at the White House grinning for photos at the screening of the new Melania doc. It’s not easy to navigate being a global CEO in the age of Trumpism. But this is particularly bleak.
+ Up Shit Creek on The River Road: “’The people who got the ability to impose their will on us here in this community have decided that our lives are not worth anything. They can come in here, do what they can do, just like they’re doing,’ Taylor told me in his family’s den. ‘They can suffer the horrors of you dumping these chemicals and pollutants into their bodies.’ He shook his head. ‘Sacrificed,’ he said. ‘For the benefit of the riches of these other people. People that’s not even from here.’” Lex Pryor in The Ringer: The Sins on the River Road Cannot Be Erased. “How did a tiny industrial hub in Louisiana find itself at the center of America’s culture war?”
“Climber Alex Honnold successfully completed a ‘free solo’ ascent up the Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taiwan on Saturday, doing so without a rope or harness in an event that streamed live on Netflix for a worldwide audience.”
+ Here’s a timelapse video of the climb. (It would have been hard to beat him to the top if you took the stairs...)
+ ‘Bionic Woman’ Star Lindsay Wagner, 76, Reunites With Lee Majors, 86, for 50th Anniversary. (All of my earliest romantic stirrings began when she tore this phone book...)
2026-01-24 05:03:48
Don’t let the clear, rounded walls fool you into thinking you’re still on the outside. Just reach out and you’ll feel the smooth edges of your new existence. You, along with 341 million of your friends and neighbors, are currently living inside a national petri dish. It sits in a lab in Washington DC, where RFK Jr and his band of mad pseudo-scientific, sorcerer’s apprentices—nostalgic for ailments of the past—are using glass stirring sticks to spin up beakers-full of once-defeated viruses, which they plan to tilt into our communal receptacle to see how we test subjects will react to, say, a few drops of the measles virus or, maybe for old time’s sake, a couple test tubes’ worth of polio.
You can try to avoid the toxic tonic, but the deadly brew doesn’t just attack directly; it spreads from one test subject to another. That’s the only way these inverted alchemists, determined to reverse the elixirs of life their sane counterparts discovered long ago, can efficiently run tests measuring how much damage can be done and in how little time, as they move to achieve the Frankensteinization of human health.
Consider this idea from Kirk Milhoan, Head Quack of our Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, who recently opined on the upside of the downturn in those who get the measles vaccine. “What we’re going to have is a real-world experience of when unvaccinated people get measles. What is the new incidence of hospitalization? What’s the incidence of death?” (Uh, I’ll take Things That Dr. Mengele Might Ask for 2000, Alex.) You might argue that we experienced the incidences, and they are specifically what motivated the creation of a vaccine, but, sadly, you’re not holding the beaker. You’re stuck in the dish. NYT (Gift Article): Rejecting Decades of Science, Vaccine Panel Chair Says Polio and Other Shots Should Be Optional. “He said there were emerging concerns that repeatedly stimulating the immune system with multiple vaccines might increase the risk of allergies, asthma and eczema. Large studies have dismissed that claim, but Dr. Milhoan said he trusted his own observations over what ‘established science’ might suggest about vaccines.” (Hey, you can’t make a do your own research death omelet without cracking a few observations from established science.)
+ Think any of this sounds like an exaggeration? Consider the recent plan RFK Jr. had to delay the introduction of the hepatitis B vaccine to babies in the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau, just to see how that would go. Kennedy Plan to Test a Vaccine in West African Babies Is Blocked. Maybe this is Jr’s way of easing the news that the U.S. Just Formally Withdrew From The World Health Organization. “Global health experts worry that a lack of international coordination will lead to death and disaster.” (Well, at least we’ll have some fresh data from a real-world experience on the incidence of death and disaster.)
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: when they come for us, they’ll be performing short, comedic, lip-synched dance videos. I first wrote that catchy line back in 2020, when the first calls to ban TikTok hit the mainstream. Well, the ban never happened. Ironically, TikTok actually banned Trump before he banned it. But we now know that the Trumpian battles of yore never really ended. Ultimately, there was no ban, just a sale of part of the American version of TikTok to new investors (at a very favorable price). Bloomberg (Gift Article): TikTok Seals Deal to Operate in the US After Years of Drama.
+ I’ve never heard a national security expert argue that there wasn’t a danger in having a massive social networking algorithm and data collection program being run from China. But do we really feel safer with those same tools in the hands of Trump allies? Do we feel safe with X in the hands of Elon or Facebook in the hands of Zuck? “Trump has already said that he’d like to see TikTok go ‘100 percent MAGA,’ and his allies will now be in charge of ‘deciding which posts to leave up and which to take down’ ... Anupam Chander, a law and technology professor at Georgetown University, told the NYT that the TikTok deal offered Trump and his allies ‘more theoretical room for one side’s views to get a greater airing. ‘My worry all along is that we may have traded fears of foreign propaganda for the reality of domestic propaganda.’” TikTok deal is done; Trump wants praise while users fear MAGA tweaks.
“Gambling addiction is, in some sense, also especially vexing to treat. You can’t quit money cold turkey, and it looms especially large in recovery, with gobs of it needed to climb out of gambling debt and reclaim stability. These conditions threaten relapse, keeping alive the fantasy of a lucky roll in a high-stakes room. As one gambling-addiction specialist explained: ‘I’ve never had a late-stage alcoholic say, ‘If I get drunk just right, my liver will heal.’” From Harper’s, Jasper Craven on America’s new gambling epidemic. On Tilt. (I cover this topic a lot because it combines the incredibly addictive nature of smartphone tech and social media with the already extremely addictive nature of gambling.)
What to Watch: “A typical day at Lochmill Capital is upended when armed thieves burst in and force Zara (Sophie Turner) and her best friend Luke (Archie Madekwe) to execute their demands.” The show starts fast and seems to stay that way. On Prime: Steal.
+ What to Movie: “When a woman uncovers deadly biotech secrets, she turns to a secure accessibility service to reach a fixer known for helping whistleblowers in trouble.” Lily James and Riz Ahmed star in Relay, now on Netflix.
+ What to Doc: “Directors Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio explore the life and legacy of Mel Brooks, one of the most enduring comedic voices of our time.” On HBO Max: Mel Brooks. The 99 Year Old Man.
Squaring the Circle: The first internet bubble was all about companies that had massive valuations with limited revenue and an investor class with little experience with the new tech. AI is nothing like that. But there are risks. Chief among them, the circular deals driving the industry. Here’s a good, short video from Bloomberg on YouTube. How Circular Deals Are Driving the AI Boom.
+ Ice Invasion: “A potentially historic, massive winter storm will slam more than half of the United States today, moving east as it brings heavy snow, widespread ice accumulation and dangerous cold. At least 172 million people are under some form of winter weather warning through Sunday.” Here’s the latest from NBC.
+ Exposed: “The White House altered and posted to social media an image of an arrested Minnesota protester on Thursday to make it appear as if she was crying, a senior White House official confirmed to NBC News.” (Reason ten billion why I don’t feel safer with TikTok in its new owners’ hands.)
+ Peace of Work: “President Donald Trump has withdrawn his invitation for his Canadian counterpart, Mark Carney, to join his ‘Board of Peace,’ in an escalating feud between the two leaders.” Carney was never a good fit for this board. He runs a democracy. “Nearly all of the countries that agreed to work with Trump’s Board of Peace are ones that are rated relatively poorly on an important metric: adoption of democracy.”
+ Ice Storm: NYT (Gift Article): ‘Enough Is Enough’: Hundreds of Minnesota Businesses Take Stand Against ICE. Here’s a look at the scale of the resistance in Minnesota. Meanwhile, in Oregon, ICE detained a family seeking emergency care for a child at Portland hospital. As per usual, this administration is trying to live up to The Onion’s parodies: ICE Agents Wait At Edge Of Delivery Table To Deport Newborn.
+ The Tube: WSJ (Gift Article): Defining Moments in TV History You’ve Probably Never Heard About.
If you missed it yesterday, there’s a new murder mystery. And you’re gonna love it: People aren’t murdering as much anymore.
+ Dana Milbank in WaPo (Gift Article): A psychologist says this exercise can make you more hopeful in 14 days. (It’s basically just going outside and looking at stuff in nature. Obviously, you should bring your phone in case I send out a new edition of NextDraft.)
+ Wind and solar overtook fossil fuels for EU power generation in 2025.
+ Trinity Rodman signs 3-year deal with Washington Spirit, becomes highest-paid women’s soccer player in the world.
+ For many of us, this is the real era when America was great. Go back in time with MTV Rewind.
2026-01-23 05:06:48
From podcasts to documentaries to Netflix series, Americans are obsessed with murder mysteries. Whether we’re reading Agatha Christie or watching Knives Out, we can’t seem to get enough. But we’re currently encountering a new kind of murder mystery that’s sweeping across the nation — and given our reputation, it’s threatening the American way of life. The case being presented to us today goes something like this: People aren’t murdering as much anymore. In fact, violent crimes are down almost everywhere. That includes places where there are more police on the street, and places where there are fewer. The country is experiencing “a once-in-a-lifetime improvement in public safety despite a police-staffing crisis. In August, the FBI released its final data for 2024, which showed that America’s violent-crime rate fell to its lowest level since 1969, led by a nearly 15 percent decrease in homicide—the steepest annual drop ever recorded. Preliminary 2025 numbers look even better.” Henry Grabar in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Great Crime Decline Is Happening All Across the Country. “There are many plausible explanations for the recent crime downturn: sharper policing strategy, more police overtime, low unemployment, the lure of digital life, the post-pandemic return to normalcy. Each of these surely played a role. But only one theory can match the decline in its scope and scale: that the massive, post-pandemic investment in local governments deployed during the Biden administration, particularly through the American Rescue Plan Act, delivered a huge boost to the infrastructure and services of American communities—including those that suffered most from violent crime. That spending may be responsible for our current pax urbana.”
+ NYT (Gift Article): What’s Behind the Staggering Drop in the Murder Rate? No One Knows for Sure. “Researchers have long struggled to explain why crime fluctuates. Research has credited policing strategies and incarceration rates, mental health treatment and gun laws, the beautification of vacant lots and the phasing out of lead, which impairs brain development, from gasoline in the 1970s.” (We may never know for sure what’s causing the drop in violent crime, but at least in this case, the suspense is not killing us.)
Usually, the phrase We are not alone refers to the search for other intelligent life forms somewhere out there in the universe. These days, it feels like we’d be lucky to find intelligent life when consuming the daily news. But we are not alone. There are many people, including many leaders, who feel the same as you do when it comes to the attacks on American values. So let’s take note when they speak out. Today, Jack Smith testified in front of Congress. “If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Democrat or Republican. No one should be above the law in this country.” (Believe it or not, that is still mainstream opinion.) Here’s Smith’s opening statement. “President Trump has sought to seek revenge against career prosecutors, FBI agents, and support staff simply for having worked on these cases. To vilify and seek retribution against these people is wrong. Those dedicated public servants are the best of us, and it has been a privilege to serve with them. After nearly 30 years of public service, including in international settings, I have seen how the rule of law can erode. My fear is that we have seen the rule of law function in our country for so long that many of us have come to take it for granted. The rule of law is not self-executing. It depends on our collective commitment to apply it. It requires dedicated service on behalf of others, especially when that service is difficult and comes with costs. Our willingness to pay those costs is what tests and defines our commitment to the rule of law and to this wonderful country.”
+ “I do not understand why you would mass pardon people who assaulted police officers. I don’t get it. I never will.” It’s critical to note that Smith is making these public statements knowing full well that Trump’s corrupted justice department will do ‘everything in its power’ to indict him. Here’s the latest on the hearing from CNN and NBC.
+ “I’m not naive. These guys are gonna try to take me down.” Gavin Newsom at Davos. Here’s the full conversation.
+ A couple exceptions like these not convincing you that we are not alone? Well, consider this from the NYT: The Voters Who Have Taken a U-Turn on Trump.
“When Kash Patel was nominated, we all knew in our bones that the bureau was going to be a very different environment than any of us had experienced before. He regularly referred to us as government gangsters. He was also the author of three children’s books in which he’s a self-styled wizard who saves King Donald Trump from the evil forces of the Justice Department.” The NYT Magazine goes deep with forty-five current and former FBI agents on the changes that are undermining the agency and making you less safe. A Year Inside Kash Patel’s F.B.I.
I spent many afternoons during third grade being forced to practice my terrible penmanship on the chalkboard in Mrs. Mitchell’s classroom. At one point, I paused and remarked, “Isn’t this punishment just making me better at doing cursive on a chalkboard when the real issue is that I’m not good at doing it with a pencil on paper?” The result? I spent many moreafternoons during third grade being forced to practice my terrible penmanship on the chalkboard. This is all a long way of saying to the children of New Jersey: I feel your pain. Cursive Makes a Comeback in New Jersey Schools. “Proponents of cursive cite studies that link handwriting to better information retention and writing speed, and say ... that knowing script can help people read the original U.S. Constitution.” (Maybe we should have that translated into block text, fingerpainting, hieroglyphics, or whatever it takes to get it back into the mainstream...)
Schoolyard Bullies: The federal government is going after the worst of the worst criminals ... at your local primary school. “Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained a 5-year-old on his way home from school on Tuesday and used him as ‘bait’ to knock on his front door to see if anyone was home.” (Feel safer?) Meanwhile, 2 Women Arrested Over Protest of Minnesota Pastor Linked to ICE. Sadly, things are likely to get worse before they get better. NYT (Gift Article): ICE Said Agents Can Enter Homes Without Judicial Warrant, Group Claims.
+ Oh That’s Rich: “In effect, inequality has become a race between the housing market and the stock market.” Rich Americans Had a Good 2025. Everyone Else Fell Behind. (It’s notable that this trend was in full effect during the Biden years, and still many of the richest of the rich felt they were being victimized by the system.)
+ Bank Shot: “President Trump sued JPMorgan Chase for $5 billion on Thursday, alleging the nation’s biggest bank improperly closed his accounts over an unsubstantiated ‘woke’ belief that it needed to distance itself from him after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.”
+ This Time, It’s Personal: “Google is leveraging its artificial intelligence technology to open a new peephole for its dominant search engine to tailor answers that draw upon people’s interests, habits, travel itineraries and photo libraries.” All you have to do is let them analyze your emails and photos. Even if you don’t give AI access to this information, you’re probably sharing a lot. 5 things to avoid asking AI, according to security experts.
+ Hate the Sin, But Love the Sinners: “Sinners leads the 2026 Oscar nominations with a record-breaking 16 noms.” Here’s a full list of nominations and the snubs and surprises.
+ Double Talk: “The Federal Communications Commission said Wednesday that daytime and late-night TV talk shows featuring interviews with political candidates must comply with ‘equal time’ rules that give airtime to views of opposing candidates.” (Holy sh-t, yes. Let Kimmel interview them on live TV...)
Need more motivation to keep those New Year’s resolutions alive? Do it for the airlines! “As Americans slim down with the help of weight-loss drugs, U.S. airlines could be among the surprise beneficiaries, a new report suggests. That’s because the lighter a plane is, the less fuel it requires — and fuel is one of an airline’s biggest costs.” (It’s even more helpful if you can slim down enough to fit in an overhead compartment...)
+ The bathroom door scandal: why hotels are putting toilets in glass boxes.