2026-10-31 03:20:57
In the early days of the internet, tech industry folks were justifiably excited about the possibilities presented by the internet. What we weren’t really thinking about was the fact that the bad guys would have the same access to the tools as the good guys do. We’re not nearly as naive this time around, but we’re still creating massively powerful AI tools that will give the nefarious a new set of weapons to deploy, more quickly, more cheaply, and more maliciously. I’m not sure that AI is really going to destroy a large percentage of humanity, but the age of empowered hackers has already arrived. Tech has released the tools that most endanger the future of tech. But in this fight, we’re all in the ring. From individual phishing attempts made on your parents to major attacks on healthcare infrastructure, we’ve entered into a sort of war in which the same companies are essentially providing the weapons to all sides. DJ Patil, the nation’s first Chief Data Scientist, posted a good overview in LinkedIn. It’s mostly aimed at cybersecurity professionals, but anyone can (and should) get the gist. We Built for Peacetime. Prepare for Wartime: The AI Cybersecurity Reckoning Is Here. “Sustained, destructive, adaptive pressure used to require the resources of a state. It now requires a laptop, a few dollars of compute, and a model that does not get tired. When the price of relentless hostility falls to zero, you should expect relentless hostility from actors who could never have afforded it before — including some who want nothing from you but your absence. That is the new equilibrium: an environment in which someone is always trying to hurt you, and in which the tools you would use to fight back are themselves targets.” We came for the cute cat photos, we ended up in a war.
+ “Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, said on Thursday that it had halted withdrawals after it was attacked by hackers who made off with more than $6 billion in digital coins, in what appears to be the biggest crypto heist in history.”
+ Wired: Massive Leak Exposes 41,000 Homeland Security Workers—Including Undercover ICE Agents.
If you look at traditional measures from the economy to polling to America’s role in the world, the first two years of Trump’s second term has been an abject failure. But those are probably not the measurements Trump and his family (and those who have fallen in line) are using. When you consider the pace at which the system has been corrupted, along with the financial gains of those who took advantage, it’s been a hell of a run. Noah Shachtman in the NYT (Gift Article): Is This the End for Trump’s Princelings? Or Just the Start? “President Trump’s second term has ushered in a starkly different arrangement. Tariffs, prosecutions and regulations are all now subject to one man’s whims. Business leaders are being asked to underwrite government projects, such as the White House ballroom. The government assigns to itself a cut of private businesses. The White House bestows enterprises from oil fields to social media platforms on loyal allies. A coterie of top officials, their children and their gaggle of hangers-on move through the world like princelings. The rule of law can seem situational at best. It’s a throwback to an old style of governing, centered on a father figure who treats the nation like an extension of his household, and who dispenses resources and favors and jobs like a dad handing out candy to his kids. In an environment like this, fealty to the national patriarch can seem like the surest — in some cases only — way to get ahead.” (And plenty of people and companies are taking that way.) “Wealth can still buy political power, just as it did in the oligarchy’s previous iteration. The difference today is that a new gusher of cash has erupted and is flowing in the opposite direction. Political power, or even just proximity to it, is generating wealth to a degree unknown in modern American history.”
+ Has the war in Iran been a success? Depends how you measure: U.S. Oil Industry Earned Over $130 Billion in Profit During Iran War.
+ In two years, American democracy has been turned into the plot of your average mob movie. Trump Erupted After Learning of Alina Habba’s $50 Million Deal. He wasn’t mad that his pardons are for sale. He was mad that he didn’t get a taste. “Angry about the scale of a contract signed by one of his former lawyers with the family of a wealthy pardon seeker, the president told allies he wanted some of the money to go to his future presidential library.” (In the business, we call this making her an offer she can’t refuse.)
+ The tech market is looking dangerously shaky. What if things go really south and the bubble bursts? Guess who’s in charge of the bailout? The Atlantic (Gift Article): Can Democracy Survive the Next Financial Crash? “If the crash happens on Donald Trump’s watch, his administration would likely sidestep Congress entirely. A Trump bailout would proceed on whatever terms please the president and his allies, who would use it as a bonanza to enrich their favored companies and CEOs, even if they were the ones who caused the crisis to begin with.” So, yeah, the midterms are a pretty big deal.
Here’s a lede that captures this moment in higher education: “A top administrator at Dartmouth College has resigned after a faculty committee found he used artificial intelligence to shape his writing, including in a guest column in The Washington Post on AI cheating.” Dartmouth Provost Santiago Schnell resigns following accusations he used artificial intelligence for writing. “The college paper, The Dartmouth, then ran other publications from Schnell through an AI detector. Writing that predated ChatGPT’s 2022 public release was found to be human-written, but high rates of AI use were detected in his recent writing.” One wonders whether that trend is at all uncommon. But wait, there’s more... “Schnell told the paper in an email last month that he uses AI for ‘language refinement, copyediting, improving clarity and organization and making writing processes more efficient.’ The paper ran the statement through an AI-detector and found it was AI-written.” (At this point, it probably makes more sense for journalists to talk to the AI directly...)
What to Doc, Doc, Doc: This collection of weekend whats is going to be documentary themed. All three picks on Netflix are about the creative life, the love life, and, to some extent, the end of life. And all are, in their own way, very life-affirming. Martin Mull was a very successful musician, comedian, and actor. And none of those were even what he did best (or liked doing most). Who is Martin Mull? “Beloved for blurring performance and personal crisis, Maria Bamford unpacks the mental health journey behind her fearless comedy in this documentary.” Bamford is the comedian’s comedian. She once performed an entire show in her parents’ living room. Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story. And one from a few years ago: “Literary icon Joan Didion reflects on her remarkable career and personal struggles in this intimate documentary directed by her nephew, Griffin Dunne.” Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold. We could sure use Didion’s voice to add some context to what America is going through today.
She Shed: Another day, another top general squeezed out at the Pentagon. And, in this case, Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia is being referred for criminal prosecution because of possible leaks. General ousted by Hegseth referred for possible criminal prosecution, officials say. My first reaction to this story was that the administration probably wanted Sylvia out because his last name sounds female-ish. As per usual, the reality is more ridiculous than any joke you could come up with. “When asked by a reporter Thursday what proof the administration has that the general leaked classified information, President Donald Trump appeared unaware that Sylvia is a man. ‘She’s going to have big problems,’ he said. ‘Long-term problems.’” Plus, Hegseth Fires Top General After Laura Loomer Targets Him. From the party of strong defense to the party of Laura Loomer in the blink of an eye...
+ Jump to Conclusions: Why would Hegseth be so concerned about leaks? Because the truth sucks. A Sailor Jumped From the U.S.S. Lincoln. The Navy Punished Him.
+ The Dan Plan: The faux outrage about the Alaska Dan Sullivan(s) controversy is leading to some very real legal moves. “But there’s a long history of political operatives from both parties deploying the tactic — and largely getting away with it. ‘It’s a time-honored tradition,’ said Thomas Kahn, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. ‘It’s not a good practice,’ Kahn added, but ‘if trying to confuse voters was a crime, then every politician would be in jail.’” Three Bob Fergusons and two JFKs: A brief history of same-name ballot shenanigans.
+ Infrared Light Brigade: “All the research is driven by mounting concerns over the long-term brain health of contact-sport athletes. A study published on Wednesday used a statistical model to estimate that three in four former National Football League players who died between 2008 and 2023 most likely had signs of C.T.E. in their brains at death.” Can Scientists Make Football Safer? “A college football team in Utah is donning some curious caps this season. As part of their regular recovery routine, many Brigham Young University players are wearing headsets that shine near-infrared light onto their scalps — and up their noses.”
+ Oh Captain, My Captain: “Patrick Stewart, who overcame a bleak childhood in England’s coal-mining country to find acclaim as a Shakespearean actor before making an unlikely career pivot in middle age that would bring him his greatest fame, playing a noble starship captain on the TV series ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation,’ died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 86.”
+ Glazed Over: The Atlantic (Gift Article): Just Noting That Your Candy Corn Is Made of Bug Secretions. And hating Candy Corn isn’t enough to avoid this. It’s all about something called confectioner’s glaze.
+ Reef Madness: A ship that was once celebrated as “the fastest passenger liner in the world, is scheduled to be sunk in the Gulf of Mexico in November, creating what will be the world’s largest artificial reef.” The name of the ship: The SS United States. (Sometimes, the metaphors just sink themselves...)
“US schools are often named after presidents, historical figures and civil rights leaders. And soon joining those ranks is a retired longtime Texas school custodian known for going above and beyond her duties by buying classroom supplies for children in need and helping students with their assignments.” New elementary school in Texas named after beloved longtime school custodian.
+ “Surrounded by that kind of innovation, a visitor might overlook the lab stocked with little more than tubs of white powder and paint pots. After all, how interesting can white paint be? When it comes to adapting to a hotter planet, the answer is: very.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): Why I’m Excited About a Bucket of White Paint.
+ Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Strongmen Fall When Corruption is on the Ballot.
+ Pittsburgh NICU nurse creates handmade Halloween costumesfor babies.
+ This College of Magic turns ordinary kids into cool magicians.
+ Oksana Chusovitina, the 51-year-old gymnast who refuses to retire: ‘I think about the Olympics all the time’. (I also think about the Olympics all the time. Watching them.)
2026-10-30 02:41:54
Donald Trump loves to dance to YMCA at his rallies. But while his messaging attempts to empower young men, his administration is actually setting them up for some tough times. Like the YMCA, the MAGA movement promises an America that features “everything for young men to enjoy.” But that pleasure will come at a cost. In this newsletter, I’ve repeatedly warned about the damage that online sports (and everything else) betting, now made pervasive by the so-called prediction markets, is doing to young men in particular. While some states have tried to keep prediction markets from offering gambling inside their borders — the latest effort comes from Utah, where the state has brought criminal charges against Kalshi — the Trump administration has done everything it can to protect prediction markets from regulation. (If you can’t already surmise that this strategy is tied to Trump family investments, you really haven’t been paying attention for the last couple years.) While gambling attacks and addicts the minds of young men, RFK Jr is helping peptides have the same impact on their bodies. “Anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy has unilaterally passed a rule that will allow specialty pharmacies to sell six specific peptide drugs, overruling scientists at the Food and Drug Administration. The peptides are popular among members of Kennedy’s Make America Health Again movement, and many prominent MAHA figures and Kennedy allies sell them.” Social media influencers are already pushing unproven and untested peptides on a generation of young people trying to turn themselves into Macho Macho men, which has led to editorials like this one in The Lancet: Protect young people from the peptide boom.
+ “Peptides are the building blocks of proteins that play key roles for health. But the benefits and risks of supplementing with injectable peptides, which are popular on social media, are largely unknown.” Harvard Medical School: Peptides: What they are, potential benefits, and safety concerns.
+ Other than being a health-damaging quack, why would RFK Jr overrule his own FDA to promote untested peptides? You don’t need a prediction market to answer that question. The FDA “essentially banned peptides in 2023 because of safety concerns. But an FDA committee met in July to review the evidence on peptides and recommend whether or not to take the highly unusual step of allowing pharmacies to dispense them absent scientific review. The committee was made up of new appointees who consulted with or were employed by companies that were interested in promoting or dispensing peptides.” Lobbyists insist that legalizing these compounds will eliminate “the unsafe gray and black markets.” But, as is the case with prediction market non-rules, it’s more about keeping certain companies and individuals in the black; even if that means a generation of young men are turned into guinea pigs. Time: The Peptide Rush Has Begun.
On one hand, you have remarkably negative Trump poll numbers and a groundswell movement for change. On the other hand, you’ve got Elon Musk. And that other hand has a deep pocket. The Philly Inquirer with an obvious and clearly stated look at the bigger meaning of this election. The people vs. Elon Musk. “This is a culmination of the pernicious combination of the country’s increasingly extreme concentration of wealth and a half-century of U.S. Supreme Court rulings unleashing those riches on our politics. These twin troubles perpetuate each other: The superrich spend more and more to elect a government that, in turn, does more and more to make them richer. And the cycle repeats.” (Modern American politics comes down to hoping that your billionaires spend more than their billionaires.)
+ Of course, financial power is only one of Musk’s levers of influence. Simon Shuster and Isaac Stanley-Becker in The Atlantic (Gift Article): How Elon Musk Turned on Ukraine. “In a series of posts on X over the weekend, he admitted to causing last week’s outages, and he lashed out at those who call for greater military aid to Ukraine. ‘I have nothing but UTTER CONTEMPT for the virtue-signaling evil warmongers who push for endless slaughter and offer no realistic solution to the conflict,’ Musk wrote. ‘May you burn in hell.’” (With Musk as arguably the most powerful person in the world, we just might.)
May the best team win? Yes, it may. The Milwaukee Brewers brought home the organization’s first World Series title by being really good at baseball. They were great all season, and even better during the playoffs, especially their otherworldly bullpen. And they’re a damn likable team (I’m not just saying that because they beat the Dodgers, but I’m mostly saying it because of that). ESPN: At last, Milwaukee Brewers are World Series champions. “There is simply no facet of baseball and of winning games at which the Brewers do not excel. Only one team scored more runs. They ranked fifth in steals, first in walk rate. They led the majors in batting average and on-base percentage. They did not rely on homers but could go deep when needed and ranked seventh in average exit velocity. In run prevention, the Brewers ranked second in team ERA and second in strikeout rate. The team defense was in the top five to 10 in most leading metrics.” In addition to all that, they had the man upstairs on their side. In this case, I mean the man upstairs in the back row. Brewers dedicate World Series to Bob Uecker.
+ The Ringer: The Brewers Hid in Plain Sight. And the most familiar sight of the playoffs might have been Aaron Ashby, the Brewers’ reliever who pitched 18 scoreless innings without allowing a run.
Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked 31,000 miles in his shoes. “It was the mid-1990s and Mr. Bushby was a paratrooper in the British Army, obsessed with endurance tests. He was trying to find the longest distance he could travel by foot, but none of his options felt challenging enough, maxing out at a few thousand miles. Then his father suggested in the card that he look into traversing the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia when it froze in the winter — unlocking a path across four continents ... ‘That was when I realized that that’s the kind of thing I’ve been looking for,’ he recalled in an interview. ‘Now we had the ultimate journey.’ Mr. Bushby flew to South America and started walking home. Nearly 28 years later, he’s almost done.” NYT(Gift Article): After 28 Years Walking Across the Globe, He’s Almost Home. “Karl Bushby has walked 31,000 miles, crossing some of the world’s harshest landscapes. He plans to reach his mother’s house in England next week.” (When he hears what he’s missed, he’ll probably immediately go out for a walk...)
Let the Chips Fall Where They May? “Mr. Huang has not received a defensive briefing, warnings sometimes given to Americans who are being targeted by foreign intelligence services, people briefed on the surveillance said.” NYT (Gift Article): Nvidia Chief Seen as Target of Chinese Spy Plot. “A Chinese businesswoman who had a close relationship with Jensen Huang was found to be passing intelligence to Beijing. President Trump was briefed and took no action.” (So this is allowed to go on, but I can’t drive a Polestar?)
+ FlaviOMG: “Less than 24 hours after losing Brazil’s presidential election, Flávio Bolsonaro appeared to vanish into a convoy of four dark cars. After pulling away from his home in Brasília on Monday evening, the vehicles split in different directions, leaving journalists and authorities scrambling to determine which one carried Bolsonaro. By the next afternoon, the former presidential candidate’s allies were telling reporters he had already reached Florida.” WSJ (Gift Article): How Bolsonaro Fled Brazil: Decoys, a Private Jet and a Friend in the White House.
+ Watch, and Listen to, Your Six? “Some hosts and many guests argue that the United States was defeated in Afghanistan because our presidents and generals, more concerned with politics and optics than the realities of the battlefield, imposed crippling restrictions on Special Operations. Freed from constraints, they say, the lethal raiding machine that Team 6 was a part of — with its exquisite training, cutting-edge technology and overwhelming firepower — might have simply killed its way to victory.” A very interesting piece on why some vets think America is losing wars — it’s an argument that has a lot of influence on the current administration. NYT Mag (Gift Article): They Were the Military’s ‘Quiet Professionals.’ Now They’re Talking. Meanwhile, we’re in a war right now, and Hegseth just fired another top general.
+ Damn Daniel: After Trump made the demand on social media, “Republican Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has ordered an investigation into the Democratic candidate running for the U.S. Senate in the state after revelations that her campaign appeared to be involved in recruiting another candidate with the same name as Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan.”
+ Strength Avenue Freeze Out: “One of the officials said the military investigators were in touch with their French counterparts about a similar cyberattack on commercial freezers that disrupted supermarkets there earlier this month.” Pentagon treating military base freezer malfunctions as suspected cyberattack.
+ Google Bugle Call: AI fears hammer Google parent’s stock, erasing $500 billion in value. Google is mostly getting stung financially because a lot of ad space goes away (for now) when it answers so many search results with AI. But everyone knows there’s a correction coming. Will Google’s bad day be the trigger? In other tech news, DoorDash to acquire Instacart for $17B. (If they had used Dashpass, they could have closed the deal for $16.9B...)
+ Behind the Eight Ball: However the midterms play out, there’s no denying that Trump has become much less accomplished when it comes to being terrible. “Many Republicans, and even some in Trump’s orbit, don’t quite get it. What has happened, they ask, to the instincts of the man who authored two of the most improbable victories in American political history? Trump’s superpower was his intuitive understanding of what motivated his supporters. Many Republicans privately tell me that he’s lost that feel. Trump now lives, they think, in a gilded bubble, palling around with billionaires, oblivious to—and, even worse, uncaring about—the problems facing so many voters.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): Trump Is Closing From Behind. (I guess that explains why he keeps talking about people’s asses...)
“Reichow is one of the Clark Kents of the running world: superfast marathoners who work incognito day jobs selling shoes, either because they need the money or they just enjoy it. Most aren’t recognized by their customers, who typically take twice as long as they do to finish a marathon.” Your Humble Shoe Salesperson Might Be an Elite Marathon Runner. (Oh, good. Because it wasn’t humiliating enough buying running shoes so I can walk my beagles, slowly over short distances.)
+ “By the time it was behind my board, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a really big fish.’” Drone video shows a California surfer’s great white encounter. (Our King Tides in California are so bad this year that we may come across sharks at the corner store.)
2026-10-29 03:10:21
The midterms will likely come down to issues that live at the intersection of affordability and corruption. The question is whether the average American can afford to live there. The economic issues at the center of our current campaign go far beyond a single election. The promise of the middle class and the American dream has been broken as our economic bifurcation becomes as dramatic as our political divides. The path to getting a little more and a little more has been replaced by a road less traveled, where middle class Americans find themselves making do with a little less and a little less. “While by some measures, members of the middle class now earn more than those of prior generations, the Brookings Institution recently found that one-third of the American middle class still can’t afford essentials. And for the rest, the high costs of child care, housing, medical care and other necessities make their incomes feel paltry. So they are trimming, reining in the lives they once expected for themselves.” And the cutbacks are needed because of things that are out of people’s control, tariffs, wars, inflation, and medical costs (not to mention the potential threat of A.I. to the job market). What happens to the American dream when people are too stressed out to sleep? Alissa Quart in the NYT (Gift Article): What America Is Living Without. “What’s lost — good bread, regular haircuts, pets, food delivery, babysitters, fancy face creams — isn’t just stuff. It’s ambition. It’s the luxury of living a life without the constant hum of worry. It’s losing the idea of the future you had in the past. It’s nostalgia for a life that you imagined for yourself that will never come to fruition.” Even attempts at distracting the middle class with bread and circuses might not work anymore. Circus tickets are too expensive.
Add to the list of destroyed norms the idea that grand jury requests for indictments almost never fail to meet the low bar required. That was before Trump’s corrupted DOJ took over. In the latest failure, a grand jury refused to indict former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. Her crime, apparently, was having the nerve to tell the obvious truth about Trump and his enablers on Jan 6. The cowards who didn’t have the guts to stand by her then, sat back and watched her get indicted for showing the courage they wouldn’t (in between, all the Jan 6 criminals were pardoned). It’s all a reminder that this is not a one-man show. It takes a village to raze a government.
+ “President Trump’s success in demolishing the traditional wall between the White House and the Justice Department is apparent at the helm of the agency, now led by his former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche. Mr. Trump’s reach can also be seen in the network of U.S. attorneys across the country who are flexing their power to pursue the president’s political agenda.” Here Are the U.S. Attorneys Who Are Carrying Out Trump’s Grievance Agenda.
+ “Mr. Witt’s explosive testimony, offered at a hearing in Federal District Court in Washington, was the latest account of just how tight a grip the White House has on decision-making at the F.B.I. and just how willing Mr. Patel has been to take orders from the president to go after people he believes to be enemies.” White House Has Tight Grip Over F.B.I. in Pursuing Trump Targets, Agent Says.
The result of the Israeli election could lead to another election. “Israel’s political leaders were poised for weeks of negotiations over the shape of the next government, as initial results on Wednesday showed no clear winner in a tightly fought election that many have described as a make-or-break moment for the country. If neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line alliance nor an opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot win enough seats to form a government, both would need to find support from outside their blocs for backing as prime minister.” Here’s the latest from the NYT (Gift Article): In Tight Israeli Election, Leading Parties Face Tough Path to Power.
+ “The voting results are mostly in, and they are less conclusive than everyone hoped, and than either side is willing to admit. (Both sides have said the results show that the public favors them.) Netanyahu’s current coalition can no longer form a government on its own. Neither can the opposition.” The Atlantic(Gift Article): Israeli Election Results Hazy, Try Again.
+ “Negotiations to form a coalition will take dizzying twists in the coming weeks; maybe a minority government or a stalemate will be the unsatisfying result. But one thing is certain. Israel’s divisions have never been more profound. Blocs, camps and tribes have never been more irreconcilable.” A bitter night in Israel for all who craved a fresh start.
“’A lot of what we get out of this class is the human experience, and you can’t get that out of AI,’ said Peggy Urdan, a government and neuroscience major from Lexington, Mass. ‘The only way to get anything out of this class is to not use AI.’ At the core of the humanities is, of course, humanity.” WSJ (Gift Article): The Brutal Harvard Class That Suddenly Everyone Wants to Take (alt link). “It’s an ungodly amount of reading and no easy A. So why are freshmen lining up to get into Humanities 10?” Either it’s a tiny backlash to AI, or the students really liked watching The Odyssey.
Spain Train Crash: “A high-speed passenger train rear-ended another near Toledo, months after a crash involving the same carriers killed dozens and stunned the country.” At Least 68 Killed in Train Crash in Spain. “The accident happened after traffic control operators told a high-speed train to continue its journey when another train was stopped farther along the tracks, Spain’s transportation minister, Óscar Puente, said. He called the operators’ instruction ‘inexplicable.’”
+ Flava Flavio: Give me your tired acts, your poorly behaved, your huddled asses yearning to breathe free from justified prosecution. Flávio Bolsonaro Lands in Miami After Fleeing Brazil. (It’s also troubling that the elected government in Brazil would go after a political opponent so quickly. Who do they think they are, America?)
+ Brothers in Harms: “Three brothers convicted of leveraging their wealthy lifestyle to drug and rape dozens of women were each sentenced Tuesday to 30 years in prison after one victim described her attack as an ‘eternity of terror’ and the judge slammed their behavior as shameful, degenerate and monstrous.”
+ Under a Different Influence: “In recent years, an average of 30 people a day in the U.S. have been killed in vehicle crashes involving drugs including methamphetamines, cocaine, painkillers and marijuana — meaning at least one driver tested positive for drugs other than alcohol. Yet local, state and federal officials are failing at the most basic levels to confront the carnage.” America Waged War on Drunk Driving. Now, a New Epidemic Is Taking Hold. (Waymos don’t party.)
+ The Dan Plan: “In the summer of 2025, a staffer for Mary Peltola, the Alaska Democrat who was eyeing a run for Senate, received unusual instructions from top campaign aides: Find as many people named Dan Sullivan in Alaska as you can.” NYT(Gift Article): Inside Democrats’ Secret Effort to Stack Alaska’s Ballot. (I once tried to compile an exhaustive list of Dave Pells, mostly because I was hoping to find someone else to read through this hell every morning.)
+ La Activista: “Dolores Huerta, arguably the nation’s most well-known Latina civil rights leader, has died. She was 96.”
+ Does This Register? “The Federal Trade Commission has sued the bargain chain Dollar General for what it characterized as ‘long-running deceptive pricing practices’ by charging customers more once they reach the register than the prices that are displayed on shelves and in advertisements.”
+ Choc Full of Photos: “The German Society for Nature Photography recently announced the top images from the European Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.” Looking for something a little more appetizing? Photos of chocolate transformed into creatures at the World Chocolate Masters in Belgium.
It was meant to be a never-ending residential cruise. Then fuel prices rose. And just like that, the promise of a permanent life at sea became a drop-off in Cambodia.
2026-10-28 01:55:44
In a classic scene from the 1976 film The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Inspector Clouseau asks a hotel clerk, “Does your dog bite?” The clerk says no. When Clouseau reaches down to pet the dog, he is viciously bitten. So he says, “I thought you said your dog did not bite?” The hotel clerk explains, “That is not my dog.” One assumes that misunderstandings like this will be avoided on the streets of San Francisco where an industrious few are being offered twenty bucks an hour to walk robot-dogs. It somehow makes sense that we’re training robotic dogs. With all the sycophancy from Claude and ChatGPT, AI has already taken over the title of Man’s Best Friend. “On the positive side, there was no need to clean up after the robot, or to pretend you did not see the deposit it left behind on someone’s yard. On the negative side, the robots could prove as stubborn as their living counterparts. Just as a normal dog might suddenly plop down and refuse to budge in the middle of a busy street, the robot dogs, too, might give up mid-walk — because their equipment overheated. Robot dog walkers would then need to carry the mechanical quadrupeds back to the start-up’s office.” Kashmir Hill in the NYT (Gift Article): Wanted: Robot-Dog Walkers. “Dimensional is building an open-source operating system for robots, said its founder, Stash Pomichter. Mr. Pomichter, who is 26, wants to embed A.I. agents in robots so that consumers can command them to do work in the real world.” Work? That’s definitely not my dog.
+ Ars Technica: ICE plan to buy robot dogs spurs protest. “Hundreds of employees at the US robotics firm Boston Dynamics signed a petition calling for executives to halt a sale of the company’s robot dogs to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement—but executives stood by the deal, while saying the robots would not be weaponized.” Even Inspector Clouseau wouldn’t buy that...
The economic divide is the issue that underpins many other problems in America. That said, I’m not sure a one-time, one-state wealth tax is a reasonable solution to the problem, but it’s worth noting how billionaires are banding together to fight the California proposal. The deep pockets in play make one wonder how any proposals that aim to at least slightly level the playing field could get passed. “Every Tuesday for the last few months, two dozen of the world’s richest people or their advisers hop onto a conference call and plan for war. The war is against a proposed tax, but not just any tax. It is against a ‘wealth tax’ on California billionaires, one that Silicon Valley’s most affluent see as an existential threat that could usher in a new way of attacking them. So in confidential memos, WhatsApp and Signal chats and conference calls, they are banding together to battle back. The calls are organized by Building a Better California.” (Ironically, Building a Better California is a nonprofit.) NYT (Gift Article): Inside the Billionaires’ War Against California’s Proposed Wealth Tax.
+ “Since John D. Rockefeller handed out dimes, the world’s richest have given away their money in very different ways. Now they are bypassing charity—and writing a new social contract.” WSJ (Gift Article): Billionaires Stave off the Pitchforks With Payouts to One Kid at a Time. (The kids get a few bucks, and when the donations are made in stock, millions of them will have an interest in your company’s stock price performing well. Hand out dimes. Make quarters.)
“A president who derides wind turbines as cancer-causing, stalls the nation’s first offshore wind permit and denies the urgency of climate change would surely become the industry’s greatest obstacle. Yet markets sometimes focus on the headline without understanding the underlying story. This may prove to be one of those moments ... Public policy still matters. Elections matter. Regulations matter. Leadership matters. But there comes a point when economics exerts a force that politics can only slow, not reverse.” How Trump Unwittingly Boosted Green Energy.
+ That doesn’t mean that years of terrible leadership haven’t cost America a hell of a lot when it comes to the green economy. WaPo (Gift Article): I went to Mexico to test-drive the cars Americans can’t buy. “Chinese branded vehicles have gone from less than 1 percent to 15 percent market share in five years, as well as about 90 percent of all EVs. That’s fast eroding America’s market in its backyard, as well as abroad, where the U.S. has seen its share fall or stagnate in Asia, Europe and Latin America. Even at home, the Big Three now command less than 40 percent of the auto market, down from 92 percent in 1965.” (It sure looks like Tony Manero’s hardware store boss in Saturday Night Fever got it right when he explained, “You can’t f-ck the future. The future f-ucks you! It catches up with you and it f-cks you if you ain’t planned for it.”)
Smoking is back. That’s definitely true in movies and TV series, where the cigarette has returned as the most omnipresent prop. It’s true in the pages of magazines. And it’s increasingly true when it comes to celebrity culture. The somewhat surprising return of cigarettes to pop culture is having a big impact on real life. And I’m not just blowing smoke. “Among 18 to 24-year-olds surveyed by Truth Initiative, a nonprofit public health organization dedicated to preventing youth and young adult nicotine addiction, 25% said ‘smoking makes people look cool’ in 2026, up from 17% in 2019. Nearly half — 47% — said ‘it is not a big deal if my friends smoke,’ compared with 38% seven years earlier. And 21% associated smoking with fitting in, up from 14% in 2017. The swing was even more pronounced among younger teens: In 2026, 21% of 15 to 17-year-olds agreed that smoking helps people fit in, up from 4% in 2017.” Is smoking cool again? New data suggests some young people are warming to the idea.
Sharing is Caring: “Most Americans can identify at least one value from a list of 12 that they believe is widely shared in the country. Only a quarter say none of the values are still shared. Yet, there is little consensus on which values are widely shared, or which the country needs more of. Even so, 79% of Americans say respecting different values matters more than sharing the same ones.” In U.S., Three-Quarters Identify Shared Values. (Hate is not our natural state. It has to be stirred by those who benefit from it.)
+ Cuba Diving: “Here is another measure of Cubans’ anger at their government: During nine days of travel around the island, I did not meet a single person who blamed Donald Trump or the United States for their situation. I sometimes reminded them about the blockade Trump had started earlier this year, cutting Cubans off from the cheap oil that Venezuela had been supplying before the U.S. military captured Nicolás Maduro in January. Hadn’t things gotten worse since then? ‘I don’t see any change since January,’ a retired engineer named Guillermo Almeida told me. ‘That oil from Venezuela wasn’t reaching the people anyway.’” Robert F. Worth in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Collapse of Cuba. “I drove to the east with the photographer Moises Saman, an 18-hour journey that sometimes made us feel as if we were traveling back in time.”
+ Bye Bye Bibi? Unsurprisingly, Israel is seeing record turnout in what is expected to be a close election. Here’s the latest from the NYT and Times of Israel. In Israel, people vote for parties, not individual candidates, and, if none of the parties get a majority, they need to form coalitions to pick a leader. So this all could take a while.
+ Ebola: “It is the fastest-growing outbreak on record and has spread to Kenya and Nigeria. Responders face armed conflict, poor roads and public mistrust as they battle the rare Bundibugyo virus, for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment.” Photos show Congo’s fight against Ebola as cases surpass 10,000.
+ Trickle Up Economy: In Trump’s pardon economy, crime victims lost out on at least $119 million in restitution.
+ Recurring Nightmare: “It would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice – one that we cannot become numb to. Nothing’s changed with me; I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid of these people — and I still believe in an independent federal judiciary.” Trump is going after James Comey ... again.
+ Choose Yourself: “The man who has helped produce the Super Bowl halftime show is stepping into the spotlight: Jay-Z will headline the show himself.” (This is like when Dick Cheney chose himself to be W’s running mate, but with a much higher likelihood of Beyonce being involved.)
+ Locked and Carbo-loaded: “From the Department of ‘We sent a man to the moon but we can’t [do some simple thing]’ comes word that Cheerios is boldly going where no cereal has before: a resealable Ziploc bag.”
“They called the police on a 3-year-old because he had the ball for too long.” Parents say police were called because their 3-year-old was ‘too good’ at soccer. (The kid is pretty damn good. And yes, this happened in Florida.)
+ Noah’s Spark: Noah Wyle Is the Sexiest Man Alive. I guess this gives new meaning to bedside manner.
2026-10-27 03:17:21
“Tell me something about your child?” ... OK, just give me a few seconds to ask my virtual assistant for some ideas. That may sound like a crazy exchange, but it’s a version of the future being sold by AI’s true believers. I love a lot about tech, but I wonder if we wouldn’t have been better off stopping our progress right around the time we got streaming movies to stop buffering. Marissa Mayer’s new company, Dazzle, uses AI to analyze your camera roll to become a sort of visuals-powered assistant. Potential customers can decide whether they see value in that offering, but what is most perplexing about the product launch is the first example of a use case. “Late last year, Marissa Mayer was struggling with what felt like an impossible task. Her daughter Marielle was turning 10, and Marielle’s teacher wanted three bullet points summarizing what made her special. Mayer — the former chief executive of Yahoo and a pioneer at Google, where she was the first female engineer — likes cracking a hard problem. But she felt overwhelmed by the range and complexity of potential answers. So Mayer asked her personal A.I. assistant, Dazzle. Within a few seconds, Dazzle delivered an answer.” NYT(Gift Article): Marissa Mayer Ran Yahoo. She’s Back With A.I. She Thinks Women Will Love. Women may love this product. But I’ll be shocked if they love this use case. I can see pitching a product that saves time on your busywork so you can spend more of it with your children. But a product that saves you the time you’d spend thinking of ways to describe your children by letting the machine describe them instead? This is an example of what I think is a broad and growing disconnect between what people want and what AI CEOs think people want. Necessity is the mother of invention. But that’s being reversed. Invention has become the mother of necessity. But do we really need to replace our humanity? We’ve seen generations of children grow up and eventually complain to their therapists about their parents. Will this generation of kids end up complaining to their therapists about the AI brand their parents chose to deploy? “ChatGPT never really loved me!” “Muse was always late for my violin recitals!” “Dazzle made me self-conscious about my appearance!” “I always felt like I needed more from Claude, but I ran out of tokens.” Actually, who am I kidding? By then, their therapists will be AI, too.
+ NYT (Gift Article): Why Some People Are Paying to Make Friends. “Fueled by a loneliness epidemic and increasingly online lifestyles, more people are paying start-ups to make new friends offline. And friend-matching companies such as Real Roots, 222 and Timeleft are exploding in popularity as a result, each one generating millions of dollars in revenue annually.” This is one of the more common trends of the digital age: Technology creates a problem, and the solution that gets offered is more technology. I’ve been writing about this issue for years. The idea that we need a technological solution for too much technology is the Internet era’s great placebo effect. We feel like we’re getting a little better, but it’s just part of the same addiction. Because it’s their business, tech companies really have no choice but to try to convince us that we’re just one more piece of technology away from the solution, but it’s like telling us we can use heroin to kick our methadone habit—when we all know deep down that the off switch is the only true killer app. I hope that view makes my AI mother proud.
“In a stunning political comeback, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been elected president of Brazil, according to official results from Sunday’s runoff election, with more than 96% of the votes counted. Lula secured more than 51% of the vote, defeating Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, who received more than 48%.” Brazil rejected Trump’s favored candidate. But this could be a harbingerish headline. Lula is declared winner of Brazil’s election as Bolsonaro rejects results.
+ “Serbia’s populist strongman Aleksandar Vucic dominated the Balkan country’s politics for 14 years. Then came the students. The long-ruling authoritarian leader on Sunday conceded the defeat of his right-wing Serbian Progressive Party to a grassroots movement of university students in a parliamentary election. The students had led protests for almost two years before unseating him in a historic change of government.” This is a massive election week. Bolsonaro and Vucic went down. Are Bibi and MAGA next?
“As fall sets in across the country, the bill is coming due for the hottest summer on record in the United States. The last three months were about three degrees above average, hotter than the Dust Bowl summer of 1936 and the heat dome of 2021, and tens of millions of people can’t afford to pay for the air-conditioning that helped keep them safe in the deadly heat. About one in six U.S. households is already behind on its utility bills, according to federal data. More than a dozen hot-weather states like Arizona, Georgia, Virginia and Oklahoma restrict shut-offs during the most dangerous heat, so disconnections tend to peak in October, when a climate crisis turns into a collection notice.” No one tells the American story better than Eli Saslow. Here, he shows how the combination of climate change and rising electricity prices is playing out in a single living room. This Is What America’s Utility Bill Crisis Looks Like.
+ It’s not a crisis for everyone. As Trump brags about U.S. oil and gas company profits, his stocks gained millions during Iran war.
“The grid serving Africa’s most populous nation is so weak that in order to keep the lights on and appliances running, most Nigerians produce power at home. Domestic generators powered by petrol and diesel have for many years been the go-to option. But increasingly, solar equipment is gaining ground. By the end of last year, small-scale solar capacity in Nigeria comfortably exceeded what the grid delivers.” And home solar is for sale everywhere and for every event. Bloomberg (Gift Article): In Nigeria, Solar Panels Are the New Wedding Gift. “High fuel prices and cheap Chinese technology are accelerating Nigeria’s shift to solar, transforming how people shop, spend and live.”
In Claude We Trust: “Ahead of what could be the largest public listing ever, Anthropic said revenue soared to $16.3 billion in the first half of the year, and it planned to spend $807 billion on A.I. infrastructure.” (Maybe it’s smarter to invest in the infrastructure companies...) Anthropic Reveals Skyrocketing Growth and Spending Plans in I.P.O. Filing. “Anthropic’s filing was unusual in that it warned its products could bring about disasters, including loss of control of the technology and authoritarian abuses.”
+ The Schlep Block: “When the going gets tough, the tough don’t get subtle. Yesterday, with polls casting doubt on his continuing as Israel’s prime minister after Tuesday’s election, Benjamin Netanyahu posted a closing argument on Instagram: an AI-generated image of Tel Aviv destroyed by a nuclear blast, with accompanying text that asked, roughly, Would you prefer to reelect Netanyahu, or be incinerated along with your family?” (Honestly, it’s a tossup...) Meanwhile, “tens of thousands of Israelis living abroad are flying back to cast votes in what many describe as the most pivotal election in the country’s history.” The Great Schlep.
+ When the Smoke Clears: Back in the day, the women’s tennis tour was sponsored by Virginia Slims, a cigarette brand. In the future, the embrace of gambling by major sports leagues will look just as crazy from a public health perspective. NBA announces partnership with prediction markets Kalshi, Polymarket. Meanwhile, Gambling Hotline Ex-Director Stole $1.5M to Feed Betting Habit.
+ Prized Position: “Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado has returned to Venezuela after ten months abroad, announcing her arrival in a social media post.”
+ Campaign in the Butt: Dems closing argument: Reclaim affordability, end corruption, save democracy. Trump’s closing argument: Check out that ass.
+ Rolling in the Isle: “Kelly Green remembers the moment the world’s most remote inhabited island first came into view. From a distance, Tristan da Cunha looked like a dark triangle on the horizon. Up close, she saw the island’s tiny settlement spread below volcanic cliffs. Then it became her home.” NYT (Gift Article): Far, Far Away: Making a home on the world’s most remote inhabited island. (I wonder if they need a news curator...)
“Farmer Mike has been chiseling whimsical faces and comical creatures into big pumpkins for more than four decades. Wearing his trademark orange overalls and farmer hat, he’s sculpted hundreds of gourds into ghoulish faces, seaside landscapes, witches, dragons and pop culture figures such as Yoda and Charlie Brown.” ‘Picasso of Pumpkin Carvers’ brings artistry to a Halloween tradition.
+ “In the past few years, as all facets of our lives are optimized, the suffix has become inescapable.” Maxxing is Dictionary dot com’s word of the year.
2026-10-24 03:43:36
You may not be keeping the receipts on your retail purchases, but retailers are definitely keeping the receipts on you. Journalists have requested the dossier McDonald’s has on them, and the reports have come back at over 500 pages (more if you wanted fries with that). You may be able to hide that trip to the donut shop from your family, but you aren’t going to be able to hide it from the host of retailers collecting, sharing, marketing and selling your information. It’s enough to make your eyes glaze over. As Christian Schneider explains in the WSJ (Gift Article): You’re in a Toxic Relationship With Your Retailers. “With every purchase, you are entering into a lifelong relationship with a needy lover who is never willing to set you free. Every product you buy is added to your curriculum vitae.” This is hardly a new story. So why focus on it now? Because we are moving into an era where people are starting to use AI agents (or computerized personal assistants) to take over many tasks, including making purchases. What the most sophisticated data brokers have collected about you is nothing compared to the amount of personal, financial, and behavioral information people are willingly handing over because, apparently, shopping online and having items delivered directly to your doorstep seems too hard. And if you’re sharing your contact list with your agent, you’re probably sharing some of my data, too. All this personal information is being surrendered without a fight to the very companies that have shown us, time and time again, that they will take as much of our data as they can and use it against us if it means increasing shareholder value. Definitely something to muse on. Or if that seems like too much work, maybe you can have Muse muse on it for you. It probably already knows you’re musing anyway. Even if you’ve surrendered, there’s still an ongoing fight between retailers and agentic AI companies. “Meta, Google, OpenAI, and others have all introduced some version of agentic shopping tools that promise to make buying things even easier than it already is. Demos show AI agents that can seamlessly book flights and hotels, browse billions of products to find the right one, and secure tickets to sporting events on a human’s behalf. But as AI companies — and their users — are finding out, buying things requires that the other party is willing to sell them in the first place.” The Verge (Gift Article): AI agents are ready to shop. Some retailers are wary. Maybe you should be wary, too. After all, ultimately, you’re the product. There’s an ongoing battle to see which companies get to own you. Don’t sell yourself for nothing.
At this point, the two world leaders running America (and, in some cases, beyond) agree that they want to betray our ally, Ukraine to the benefit of their ally, Russia. They’re just not in total agreement as to how to execute that betrayal, which leads us to an incredible lede like this one from the WSJ: “President Trump called Elon Musk on Wednesday and asked him to lift restrictions on a military-grade version of Starlink in Ukraine that the SpaceX chief had throttled, U.S. officials said. Some U.S. and Ukrainian officials said the system was working more normally on Thursday, after Trump and Musk spoke, but wasn’t restored to full functionality. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday ‘the speed has not been restored.’ ‘I’ve heard it was fixed but if it’s not I’ll speak to him,’ Trump told reporters Friday, referring to Musk.”
+ Obviously, Musk has way too much power for an unelected (not to mention unsavory, untoward, unkind, and increasingly, unAmerican) citizen. And he’s spending bigly to make sure things stay that way. “Elon Musk gave another $76 million to boost Republicans in the first two weeks of October, bringing his total giving this cycle to more than $442 million.”
+ “Live by the sword, die by the sword.” WaPo (Gift Article): As Republicans brace for election losses, Musk prepares for war. (I guess he’s been preparing by starving kids in Africa, endangering civilians in Ukraine, and of course, trolling on X.)
“Pasa and Yoyo, two female chimpanzees, are best friends. They spend their afternoons lounging together in the warm grass of the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda, grooming and sharing food. Sometimes they even try to escape the grounds together. They are also less likely to steal food from each other, according to the results of a new experiment that pitted friendship against pineapple slices.” NYT (Gift Article): Chimps Steal Less Often From Their Friends, Even When Offered Pineapple. “The discovery may hint at the roots of human norms around fairness and friendship.” (Either that, or Yoyo’s not that into pineapple.)
What to Movie: You undoubtedly know the name, Edmund Hillary. But there’s a good chance you don’t know Tenzing Norgay. Yet, the two men arrived at the top of Everest at the same moment. In fact, only Tenzing’s photo was taken up there. See the story you may have missed in the excellent Tenzing on Apple TV. (And then check out some minidocs on Tenzing on YouTube. The true story is even more amazing than some elements of the movie.)
+ What to Book: “For decades, we’ve explained corporate corruption as a problem of bad actors, moral weakness, or isolated scandals. But that story doesn’t match reality. Again and again, companies founded with strong ideals drift toward short-term thinking, extractive behavior, and mission abandonment—often despite the best intentions of the people inside them. Incorruptible argues that this failure is not primarily ethical. It is structural.” Eric Ries is famous in the tech world for his book on lean startups. Hopefully, his latest book gets as much attention. Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad... and How Great Companies Stay Great. Or, how we went from “Don’t be evil“ to this: Finns Are Seething After Google Illegally Toppled 250,000 Trees for a Data Center.
+ What to Read: Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic: What the U.S. Is Really Doing in Venezuela. “Searching for a model or a reference point, I asked Hausmann how he would describe it. ‘A coalition of two kleptocracies,’ he said.”
And So It Begins: With polling looking bad for Trump, you can expect efforts to overcome the vote to accelerate. And these efforts will done in plain site. If you somehow miss the corruption, they’ll remind you that it’s happening. “Donald Trump said he ordered the Justice Department to file a lawsuit to block the certification of Alaska’s US Senate results if the Republican incumbent on the ballot does not win. ‘I’m the one that said do it,’ Trump told reporters on Friday.” And, Blanche won’t rule out DOJ post-election action in a ‘doomsday’ scenario.
+ Timing is Everything: Speaking of election-related efforts: “Israel has launched a campaign of collective punishment against Palestinians in Hebron after gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers and injured three near a checkpoint outside the city. Benjamin Netanyahu announced a siege on Hebron and neighbouring Halhul and said residents of the gunmen’s home neighbourhoods would all be forced out. He promised mass demolitions of homes.” (The Israeli election is in 3 days.)
+ GOP Bottom: “It’s quite a feat, in this numb and debased era, to create a political advertisement so shocking and indecent that people from across the political spectrum feel the need to denounce it. The Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who has long fashioned himself as a kind of Donald Trump 2.0 — younger and brainier but just as brash — has managed it.” It’s sickening. It involves a childhood sexual assault suffered by his opponent. Trump is for it. Vance has defended it. Is this the bottom? (And if it isn’t, is there one?) Michelle Goldberg: The Meaning of the Republican War Over Ramaswamy’s Vile Ad.
+ We Need to Talk About the Cyber: We spend a lot of time worrying about AI destroying humanity. I’d worry a lot more about it hacking the hell out of us. If Anything Happens to This Guy … Everyone Is Screwed. “Ondřej Surý was a relatively anonymous volunteer working on PHP security. Then the internet exploded.” Meanwhile, Mark Cuban says AI hack agents are like cockroaches, but can be controlled. (Since cockroaches are likely to survive whatever apocalypse kills us, I’m not sure I love the metaphor.)
+ Makers Mark: “For six years, I lived in China and observed how Chinese companies became global leaders, in part because American firms brought them better technology and management. In Arizona, I saw how Taiwanese engineers are training American workers to build some of the most complex technologies in the world ... And guess what? TSMC engineers and their families are having a great time. In interviews, they marveled at their new lives in the Sunbelt: the large homes, the friendly community, the opportunities for their kids.” The Factory Outside Phoenix That Could Save American Manufacturing.
+ Shape of Things to Come? “Could the geometry of our brains increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease? It’s a provocative question, but one that some scientists are beginning to explore.” Alzheimer’s Researchers Look at an Unusual Data Point: Head Shape. (My head shape changes every time I bang it against my laptop.)
“In Japan, where many citizens prioritize public order and quiet streets, Mr. Utsumi is seen as something of a nuisance and rule breaker. He has been told he is too sloppy, too undisciplined, too gimmicky and too old to dance. ‘I know I stand out,’ he said. ‘That’s why it’s very difficult for an ordinary salaryman like me to dance like this.’” Rain or Shine, Japan’s ‘Dancing Salaryman’ Can’t Stop Grooving.
+ Why Has This Teenager Tracked Down 11,377 Moths Since April?
+ Marin athlete completes 900-mile swim off California coast.
+ Hegseth Barred Trans Troops. Military Boards Are Rejecting Those Orders.
+ The NFL’s $192 Million Bet on Flag Football Is Paying Off With Teen Girls.
+ “The three men conjured up a legend of their own: they would find the golden ring and return it to its rightful owner in a Lord of the Rings-style quest — an epic journey that, they joked, would take more than a thousand years.” Three Italian ‘hobbits’ flew to Ireland to return this man’s ring — and it was precious.