2026-02-12 03:57:01
I believe the increasing popularity of prediction markets will cause a gambling addiction scourge the likes of which we’ve never seen. I’m so sure of it, I might go to one of the prediction markets and lay down a bet. Because these days, you can bet on anything. “Prediction markets entice enterprising nerds to make and lose fortunes by wagering on everything from politics to the weather. Here’s why they’re unstoppable—and only getting more powerful.” Zoë Bernard in Vanity Fair: The CEOs of Kalshi and Polymarket Are Betting On the Most Hated Experiment in Business. (Alt link.) At a happy hour for one of the leading platforms, Kalshi, a group of mostly young men, in their 20s, were swapping tips and stories about their experiences in “a marketplace that, until recently, had existed in a legal gray zone. Many were making thousands a week speculating on highly specific fixations: whether the temperature would tick up by a single degree in Colorado next weekend, who would win the Coney Island hot dog eating contest, the gender of celebrity babies.” ... Yet only one person there mentioned the dirty word that everyone else had so carefully avoided ... ‘You’re writing about this, but you have no idea what this meeting is, do you?’ ‘What is it?’ I asked, leaning back to avoid his spittle. ‘This,’ he said, taking in the barroom of traders, ‘is just the latest Gamblers Anonymous meeting.’”
+ The data from these prediction markets can be valuable, as it taps into the wisdom of the crowd. NYT (Gift Article): Thousands of Amateur Gamblers Are Beating Wall Street Ph.D.s. But people aren’t just predicting, they’re betting. And they’re betting on in-pocket slot machines that deploy all the most addicting techniques from casinos, social media apps, and online games. Think of it as a ‘Dict-a-phone.
+ These prediction apps fall under a different federal jurisdiction from gambling apps. And they largely avoided sports betting (which is legal in some states, but not others). But something changed, and all bets were off. “Until early last year, Kalshi, the leading US prediction market startup, was using its status as a federally regulated financial exchange to offer niche financial contracts tied to pop culture events and elections. The agency overseeing all this, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, had indicated that so-called event contracts tied to sports were off limits. Then Donald Trump won the election. Kalshi tested the waters by offering its first wagers on the Super Bowl in early 2025 and the CFTC did not step in to stop them. Those first contracts were little more than an experiment, but sports have since come to account for more than 90% of the trading volume on Kalshi.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): Gambling Stocks Sag as Prediction Markets Steal Super Bowl Bets.
+ If you’re predicting that the Trump administration will step in and slow the prediction market roll toward being full-on casinos and sportsbooks, you might want to first consider the involvement of a notable ‘Dicthead. NYT (Gift Article): Leading Prediction Firms Share a Commonality: Donald Trump Jr. “At the intersection of the prediction market industry and Trump world is Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. He is both an investor in and an unpaid adviser to Polymarket, and a paid adviser to Kalshi, the two biggest prediction markets. And he is a director of the Trump family’s social media company, which recently announced it would start its own platform called Truth Predict.” (These days, laying some money against Truth may be one safe bet you can make.)
We’ve all been pretty disappointed at the lack of pushback on corruption and lawlessness from political officials and what we thought were our strongest institutions. But from the streets of Minneapolis to the courtrooms of Washington, we may be finally finding out who will save us: Citizens. NYT (Gift Article): Grand Jury Rebuffs Justice Dept. Attempt to Indict 6 Democrats in Congress. “It was remarkable that the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington — led by Jeanine Pirro, a longtime ally of Mr. Trump’s — authorized prosecutors to go into a grand jury and ask for an indictment of the six members of Congress, all of whom had served in the military or the nation’s spy agencies. But it was even more remarkable that a group of ordinary citizens sitting on the grand jury in Federal District Court in Washington forcefully rejected Mr. Trump’s bid to label their expression of dissent as a criminal act warranting prosecution.” This gives new meaning to Jury Duty.
+ “It’s exceedingly rare for a federal grand jury to reject prosecutors’ attempts to secure an indictment, since the process is stacked in the government’s favor.” But in this case, as a sign of just how insane this prosecution was, zero grand jurors found the Trump DOJ met low probable cause threshold
“When Nancy Guthrie went missing, officials said she had a doorbell camera, but that it had been forcibly removed, and she did not have a subscription. This meant there were no videos stored in the cloud. Ten days later, the FBI released footage from the camera, which was revealed to be a Nest Doorbell, clearly showing the masked suspect. This is a huge break in the case and highlights the value of security cameras in solving crimes, even if their deterrent effect remains largely unproven. But it raises privacy concerns around how this supposedly ‘lost’ footage was recovered.” Why ‘deleted’ doesn’t mean gone: How police recovered Nancy Guthrie’s doorbell footage. This is like so many of today’s surveillance-related stories. It’s really good that Google was able to track down images that could help solve a crime. It’s really scary that everything we do is being recorded to that great hard drive in the sky, whether we opt in or not.
“Powered by encrypted messaging apps, anonymized platforms and a growing pool of people willing to move money for a cut, the system is agile, scalable and disturbingly hard to shut down. What began a decade ago as a fringe trend on dark-web bazaars is fast evolving into a sprawling global ecosystem of freelance money movers. Even the biggest criminal groups, long reliant on in-house laundering, are starting to tap it.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): Drug Cartels Are Shifting Their Money Laundering to Crypto. Cops Can’t Keep Up. (I keep reading examples of how crypto is good for bad stuff, but what good is it for good stuff?)
B.C. Mass Shooting: “Nine people were killed and 27 more were injured after a mass shooting in the community of Tumbler Ridge, B.C.” Here’s the latest on the tragedy from CBC.
+ El Paso the Buck: Officials Claim Drone Incursion Led to Shutdown of El Paso Airport. “Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Transportation, and officials from the White House and the Pentagon said Mexican cartel drones breached U.S. airspace, prompting the temporary closure of airspace over El Paso. But two people briefed by Trump administration officials said the shutdown was prompted by the Defense Department’s use of new counter-drone technology and concerns about the risks it could pose to other aircraft in the area.” (Weird not to be able to get a straight answer from these guys...)
+ Bridge Financing: “A Detroit billionaire met with Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, hours before President Trump said he would block the opening of a new bridge connecting Detroit to Canada, officials said.” NYT (Gift Article): Bridge Owner Lobbied Administration Before Trump Blasted Competing Span to Canada. (If you don’t think every decision and every post is driven by overt corruption, I’ve got a bridge that will never open to sell you...)
+ Five Ring Circus: The ex-girlfriend of the Olympian who expressed public regret for cheating isn’t ready to give the story a happy ending. “It’s hard to forgive. Even after a declaration of love in front of the whole world.” (This combination of Olympic sports with Love Island intrigue could actually work...) “The Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych has been warned that he faces disqualification from the Winter Olympics if he wears a ‘helmet of memory’ for his country’s war dead when the men’s competition starts on Thursday.” I wonder if there’s a lesson here: French biathlete guilty of fraud wins Olympic goldwhile scammed teammate comes 80th. This seems like a reasonable request: Olympic Photographers: Stop Doing The Lugers Dirty. And watching J.H. Klaebo ski uphill faster than many of us ski downhill is quite something.
+ External Revenue Service: “The Internal Revenue Service improperly shared confidential tax information of thousands of individuals with immigration enforcement officials, according to three people familiar with the situation, appearing to breach a legal fire wall intended to protect taxpayer data.” (The fire walls have been burned the ground.)
+ One Flu Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: “The vaccine maker Moderna said on Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration had notified the company that the agency would not review its mRNA flu vaccine, the latest sign of federal health policy that has become hostile to vaccine development.”
“More than 5,000 Stanford students have used Date Drop at a school with about 7,500 undergraduates ... The growth, fans say, reflects a reality about many college kids: They’re intimidated by real-life courtship and overwhelmed by the endless scroll of dating apps. Entrepreneurial students have found huge demand for alternate matchmaking tools.” A Stanford Experiment to Pair 5,000 Singles Has Taken Over Campus. “A student built a matchmaking algorithm that has consumed the school—and highlighted the challenges of finding love for high achievers.” (High achievers? Wait, I thought this was a story about Stanford, not Cal...)
2026-02-11 03:26:51
In 1977, the perfectly named Johnny Paycheck sang the lyrics, Take this job and shove it, landing a number one hit, inspiring a movie, and creating a lasting anthem and adage. But another lyric might more aptly fit our current moment: Take these employees and shove them. When push comes to shove, today’s corporations are making more money while employing fewer people. “In 1985, IBM was America’s most valuable company, one of its most profitable, and among its largest employers, with a payroll of nearly 400,000. Today, Nvidia is nearly 20 times as valuable and five times as profitable as IBM was back then, adjusted for inflation. Yet it employs roughly a 10th as many people. That simple comparison says something profound about today’s economy: Its rewards are going disproportionately toward capital instead of labor. Profits have soared since the pandemic, and the market value attached to those profits even more. The result: Capital, which includes businesses, shareholders and superstar employees, is triumphant, while the average worker ekes out marginal gains. The divergence between capital and labor helps explain the disconnect between a buoyant economy and pessimistic households.” WSJ (Gift Article): The Big Money in Today’s Economy Is Going to Capital, Not Labor. (Alt link.) Capital gains are going up, the value placed on human capital is going down. And, of course, these trends are only being accelerated by technological shifts and political winds. Yale economist, Pascual Restrepo, explains: “There will be winners: workers whose jobs require social skills, proximity or manual labor, and consumers, who get cheaper products and services. The biggest winners of all? Shareholders.”
+ “Anyone subcontracting tasks to AI is clever enough to imagine what might come next—a day when augmentation crosses into automation, and cognitive obsolescence compels them to seek work at a food truck, pet spa, or massage table. At least until the humanoid robots arrive.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): America Isn’t Ready for What AI Will Do to Jobs. (They may have an inkling, though. What a new Gallup poll shows about the depth of Americans’ gloom.)
+ And about our new immigrant-unfriendly policies that are supposedly going to create more jobs for Americans? Binyamin Appelbaum in the NYT (Gift Article): What Replaces Deported Immigrant Workers? Not Americans. “There is a big hole in the seductively simple argument that Mr. Trump’s policy will push employers to hire Americans: For many jobs, the cheaper and more likely replacement is a robot. And the jobs that can’t be done by robots? Many will simply leave the country.”
+ It doesn’t take an AI program to figure out that these factors will contribute to an already massive economic divide. And we’re engineering it to be even wider. Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet report plunging tax bills thanks to AI investment and new rules in Washington. Meanwhile, US consumer delinquencies jump to highest in almost a decade.
+ Related: Here’s a flight tracker showing all the private jetsleaving the Bay Area after the Super Bowl.
One of the better Super Bowl ads was for Amazon Ring’s Search Party feature that gives neighbors a way to combine their security cam feeds to quickly locate missing pets. Amazon’s CEO says the feature helped bring home 99 dogs in 90 days. But like many security stories, there is another side to this one. “Chris Gilliard, a privacy expert and author of the upcoming book Luxury Surveillance, told 404 Media these features and its Super Bowl ad are ‘a clumsy attempt by Ring to put a cuddly face on a rather dystopian reality: widespread networked surveillance by a company that has cozy relationships with law enforcement and other equally invasive surveillance companies.’” With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet.
+ Most of us want more security, and technology enables us to get it. But most of us don’t want that same technology used for every purpose. Flock cameras to make school parking lots more secure? Sounds great. But what about this? Local police aid ICE by tapping school cameras amid Trump’s immigration crackdown. “The data raises questions about the degree to which campus surveillance technology intended for student safety is being repurposed to support immigration enforcement.”
“Amplify is designed for that everyday athlete to give them the energy they need to go further, to go faster, with greater levels of confidence. It’s like an e-bike for your feet.” NPR: How bionic sneakers could change human mobility. (I only hope they make the same sound as the Six Million Dollar Man’s bionics...)
“Instantly, scoreboards showed Aicher had finished in 1 minutes, 36.14 seconds — four-hundredths of a second behind. Johnson sighed and rubbed a hand over her head in relief. Johnson ultimately won and Aicher took the silver, their careers forever altered by that tiny difference determined by the most important team at the Olympics you don’t know about — the Omega timekeepers.” The most important team at the Olympics isn’t a country. It’s the timekeepers. “Since the Swiss timing giant sent employees with 30 stopwatches to Los Angeles for the 1932 Olympics, Omega’s business of keeping results at the Olympics has grown so large and sophisticated that a delegation from the company is already in Los Angeles preparing for the Olympics’ return in 2028.”
+ Mikaela Shiffrin’s Olympic hex continues after faltering in team combined slalom.
+ Speed skating star Leerdam wins gold as fiancé Jake Paul weeps. (The former was enjoyable, the latter more so.)
+ “A post-race interview with the bronze medal winner in the men’s Olympic biathlon competition on Tuesday took an unexpected turn when he revealed in a live broadcast that he had been unfaithful to his girlfriend.” (He basically seemed to be trying to get her back. Will it, or a bronze, be enough?)
Bet Threat: Legalized gambling in many states meant that millions of people were suddenly walking around with souped-up casinos in their pockets. Prediction markets mean that people in all 50 states can bet on anything, anytime. “Everything is gambling now”: How betting is taking over America. “These days, you can wager on everything from Sunday’s Super Bowl LX, November’s midterm elections, March’s Oscars, this winter’s weather, the words that commentators will use — even the second coming of Jesus Christ.” The stats are already insane. “Nearly 40 percent of men and 20 percent of women gamble online daily. Two percent of these bettors gamble more than ten hours a day ... Most bettors are men. They’ve gotten younger and younger as sports betting companies gamified gambling. Pokémon, the trading card and video game mega-franchise, co-opted slot machine and casino imagery in the 1990s, and technology companies latched on, eager to bring in young gamblers to replace the old heads. Public schools see problems with boys, and sports betting stokes some school officials’ fears of it becoming as ubiquitous as cellphones and as poisonous as social media.” Prospect: The Scourge of Online Sports Betting.
+ Harm to Table: “A number of people working at hunger relief organizations and in education, who asked not to be identified for the record for fear of retribution, said the food instability and lack of access to social services are not simply a byproduct of the ICE crackdown but rather part of the agency’s strategy, essentially weaponizing food. Among other tactics, they said, the agency is tracking food delivery volunteers and staking out donation distribution centers.” NYT (Gift Article): Hungry Families, ICE and Secret Grocery Networks in Minneapolis. This is America, folks. And from ProPublica: Letters from the Children Detained at ICE’s Dilley Facility. From a nine year-old: “Seen how people like me, immigrants are been treated changes my perspective about the U.S.”
+ Death Wish Granted: “A small group of conservative activists has worked for 16 years to stop all government efforts to fight climate change. Their efforts seem poised to pay off.” Trump Allies Near ‘Total Victory’ in Wiping Out U.S. Climate Regulation.
+ No Longer Deep Sixed: “If we found six men that they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those three million files.” Democratic congressman Ro Khanna names six men appearing in unredacted Epstein files.
+ Guthrie Case: “The FBI on Tuesday released new surveillance photos from the night Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, disappeared. The images show someone wearing a ski mask and gloves.”
+ Update: Measles Bad: “Dr. Mehmet Oz has urged Americans to get vaccinated against measles, one of the strongest endorsements of the vaccine yet from a top health official in the Trump administration, which has repeatedly undermined confidence in vaccine safety.” (In addition to the public statement, he might want to send an internal memo.)
+ Winter is Coming: “As tensions with Russia in the Arctic rise, U.S. Special Forces have been prepping for the future or war in the high north in Sweden.” How do you fight where it’s hard to even survive? In this video piece, WSJ’s Sune Rasmussen joined U.S. Green Berets in a grueling Arctic training camp to find out.
“Teratophiliacs were once a niche group that bonded over their sexual attraction to monsters in obscure forums. Now—as online communities proliferate and genres like romantasy grow—monster p-rn is going mainstream.” GQ: Inside the Booming Business of Monster P-rn. (This gives new meaning to doing the Monster Mash.)
2026-02-10 04:41:20
I survived the Great Super Bowl Halftime Scare of 2026. At least, I mostly survived. For some reason, from the time Bad Bunny got about 30 seconds into Tití Me Preguntó, I’ve only been able to write in Spanish. I’ve been forced to use Google and ChatGPT to translate today’s edition back into Inglés, so forgive me if some of my usually pithy, punny wordplay is no bueno. During my first day of high school Spanish, my teacher, Mrs. Martinez, asked, “Cómo te llamas?” And I nervously answered, “Bien, y tu?” So if anything, for me, the Bad Bunny halftime show arrived too late. Given the reaction of many of the critics, including our Complainer in Chief, the message of the show couldn’t come soon enough. Neither could the phrase written on the football he held up at the end of the performance: “Together, We Are America.” Only against the backdrop of today’s divisions could that statement be seen as a form of protest.
+ Featuring Ricky Martin, Lady Gaga (Hmm, that last name sounds a little foreign), a cast of celebrities, and a real wedding, “his entire performance rebuked the notion that he is some culture-war proxy being foisted upon an American public that wants its stars to shut up and sing. Yes, he filled this show with slogans and symbols signaling Puerto Rican and Latino pride at a time when federal agents are menacing Spanish speakers and President Trump has declared English to be the national language. But fundamentally, the halftime was a blast: an instant-classic, precisely detailed, relentlessly stimulating medley rooted in the good old-fashioned pleasure principle.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): Bad Bunny’s critics said his Super Bowl halftime show would be divisive. They were totally wrong.
+ With messages like, “God bless America” and “The only thing more powerful than hate is love,” it’s no wonder that Trump complained that, “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying...it makes no sense.” Hopefully, he had an easier time understanding Green Day’s pre-game rendition of American Idiot.
+ There are rough journalistic assignments, and then there are rough journalistic assignments. Chandelis Duster in NPR had one of the latter. Here’s what happened at Kid Rock’s alternative halftime show.
+ For the most part, the commercials played it as safe as the teams’ offenses. A guy whose most famous public meal was Evander Holyfield’s ear giving us dietary advice was certainly a choice. The most notable thing about the ads was that a whole lot of them were for AI companies or used a lot of AI to create. USA Today ranked all of the commercials.
+ And, yes, yes. There was a game. But you’d be forgiven for missing it. Everything, and I mean everything, went dark right from the start. The Ringer: How the Seahawks’ Dark Side Defense Turned Super Bowl LX Into a Blowout. The best stories on the other side of the ball included a rare MVP for a running back. Seahawks’ Kenneth Walker III becomes first RB to win award in 28 years. And the redemption of Sam Darnold was so sweet, I managed to completely forget he played for USC.
+ And maybe the only thing from Super Bowl week that was more absurd than the halftime controversy was the fact that sports reporters who traveled from around the country were shocked to find out that the most beautiful city in the world isn’t a hellscape. It’s just that right wing media has been lying about it for so long. (Guys, they’ve been lying about everything else, too.) Super Bowl Visitors Find San Francisco Better Than Its Apocalyptic Image.
“A prince, an ambassador, senior diplomats, top politicians. All brought down by the Jeffrey Epstein files. And all in Europe, rather than the United States. The huge trove of Epstein documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice has sent shock waves through Europe’s political, economic and social elites — dominating headlines, ending careers and spurring political and criminal investigations.” Epstein revelations have toppled top figures in Europe while US fallout is more muted.
+ NBC News: Why the Epstein scandal is Keir Starmer’s most perilous moment yet after chief of staff resigns. (Yet, it doesn’t seem perilous at all for certain other world leaders who were best friends with Epstein.)
+ The Epstein scandal is taking down Europe’s political class. In the US, they’re getting a pass.
+ Ghislaine Maxwell pleads the Fifth in House Oversight Epstein investigation
“When federal agents swarmed the track on Oct. 19 — weapons drawn, a helicopter overhead, unmarked S.U.V.s screeching in on dirt roads — they did more than crack an alleged gambling ring and increase deportation numbers. They shattered Wilder’s innocent belief that its out-of-the-way location and deep-red politics could isolate the town from the raids overtaking other parts of the country. ‘We rely on Hispanic labor,’ said Chris Gross, a second-generation farmer who grows sweet corn seed and mint in Wilder. She added, ‘Nobody thought something like this could happen here.’” NYT (Gift Article): A Raid in a Small Town Brings Trump’s Deportations to Deep-Red Idaho.
+ WSJ (Gift Article): Immigration Raids in South Texas Are Starting to Hit the Economy.
“Most surrogacy contracts forbid disclosing the identities of the parties involved, but, when Elliott sent the author a private message, she confirmed that they were working with the same family. The other surrogate, who lived in Pennsylvania, also shared something else she’d heard about the couple: they already had thirteen children.” Ava Kofman in The New Yorker: The Babies Kept in a Mysterious Los Angeles Mansion.
Five Ring Circus: “For a nation that had become enraptured in Lindsey Vonn’s comeback story and the norm-defying attempt to win an Olympic medal without an ACL in her left knee, the helpless cries of pain as she lay on her back and as the mountain fell silent will be hard to erase from memory.” The event everyone was waiting for lasted 13 seconds and ended with Vonn being airlifted to the hospital. The injury to her teammate made the victory more muted, but no less impressive for Breezy Johnson, who called gold medal run ‘surreal’ after 2022 crash. Ilia Malinin did Ilia things to help win US figure skating team gold. (He’s known as the Quad God, but with that amazing hair, I think of him as the Mane Man.) The medals are having some technical difficulties. (”Don’t jump in them. I was jumping in excitement, and it broke.”) And yes, sadly, our dear leader is getting involved by calling some US athletes losers on social media. The crowds at the Games may have different ideas about who fits that description. NBC appears to cut crowd’s booing of JD Vance from Winter Olympics broadcast.
+ Train Dreams: Brain train game may help protect against dementia for up to 20 years. (It’s probably not quite that simple, but a lot of researchers are excited about this study). Meanwhile, a couple of teas or coffees a day could lower risk of dementia.
+ Deleting History: “The State Department is removing all posts on its public accounts on the social media platform X made before President Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, 2025.”
+ Bannon Fodder: Justice Department moves to dismiss Steve Bannon’s criminal case. (The worse you are, the better it is with this Justice Dept.)
+ Um, That’s Not My Finger: “Proponents predict the new technology will help find cures for rare diseases, discover new drugs, enhance surgeons’ skill and empower patients.” But in the meantime, according to Reuters: As AI enters the operating room, reports arise of botched surgeries and misidentified body parts.
+ Crypto Night: “In the depths of Donald Trump’s interregnum, his eldest two sons huddled in a Mar-a-Lago conference room with boyhood pal Zach Witkoff to conjure up a new money machine. Two other would-be cryptocurrency entrepreneurs showed up, one in sweatpants.” WSJ (Gift Article): One Generation Runs the Country. The Next Cashed In on Crypto. (Remind me again. What’s the good part of crypto?)
+ Lobster Lady: “Her death, in a hospital not far from her home in Rockland, was confirmed by her sternman, Max Oliver Jr., who was also her son. On the frigid and crustacean-filled waters of Penobscot Bay, Mrs. Oliver was known as the Lobster Lady. She was a folk hero to Mainers — an enduring, if fading, emblem of the state’s hardy, matter-of-fact work ethic.” Virginia Oliver, Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ and Folk Hero, Dies at 105.
+ On the Job Training: Ultrarunners in secondhand trainers: the rickshaw drivers taking on the world’s toughest races – photo essay. This is awesome.
“While traditional Crocs are known as much for their comfort as their divisive design, the LEGO Crocs are all about style. If you’re planning to wear them for long periods, have an Epsom salt bath waiting for you at the end of the day.” We walked a mile in the LEGO Crocs so you don’t have to. (Some things are worth a little pain...)
2026-02-07 04:23:01
The President of the United States posted a racist video depicting the Obamas as monkeys in what seemed to be an AI-generated parody of The Lion King. After first defending the video (”Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public”), the White House eventually removed the video. The news here is not Trump’s toddler on cocaine-like lack of social media impulse control. Nor is it his overt racism. That, after all, is his most consistent trait, spanning time (his opening salvo in his first successful presidential run centered on birtherism) and geography (from the masked thugs patrolling the streets of Minneapolis to the funding cuts robbing black and brown kids of food and medicine in “sh-thole“ countries). The combination of these personality defects means that one can hardly be surprised that another day brought us yet another adult diaper-full of rancid, racist, social media bile spewed across the internet. What’s notable here is that, at least this once, the media didn’t sugar coat the reality of the story (it was racism, period), even some of Trump’s ardent enablers didn’t try to write off the racism as just Donald being Donald (South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott called it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” which is really saying something), and that the White House, at long last, finally deleted something instead of defending it. No one expects this to teach the president, his defenders, or his social media team a lasting lesson, and we’re not bracing ourselves for a return of dignity to the Oval Office. But at least when it comes to this one incident and this one moment in time, the lyin sleeps tonight.
The Super Bowl used to stand out as a big betting day. But in 2026, it’s more of a representation of every other day (or every other minute). We are betting on anything and everything, and the gamified casinos are in our pockets 24/7. What could possibly go wrong? The Atlantic (Gift Article): Prediction markets are turbocharging America’s obsession with sports gambling. (How turbocharged will it get? Well, you can lay a bet on that, too.) “Thanks to a loophole, Americans have effectively been able to bet on sports no matter where they live. All they have to do is turn to prediction markets. Platforms such as Kalshi let people wager on lots of things: Who will win the Oscar for Best Actor? How much snow will New York City get this month? Prediction markets say that they are more akin to the stock market than gambling. Rather than betting on odds set by bookmakers, users trade contracts that pay out according to the outcome of a given event. This distinction may not mean much for someone betting on the Seahawks over the Patriots, but it does allow prediction markets to operate even in places where sports betting is illegal.”
A British “athlete has launched a stinging attack on the ICE agency ahead of the opening ceremony at the Winter Games, urinating the words ‘F--- ICE’ into the snow.” In addition to having some pretty remarkable aim, Gus Kenworthy represents what could be a somewhat uncomfortable Olympics for the American brand. Protesters have already taken to the streets of Milan to protest the presence of ICE at the Games. And what’s happening in Milan isn’t staying in Milan. Stephen Marche in the NYT (Gift Article): The Globalization of Canadian Rage. “Throughout last year, the consensus among many European policymakers in the face of Donald Trump’s bombast was to wait out the nonsense and appease when possible. Mr. Carney’s speech arrived at the exact point at which that position proved untenable: Mr. Trump’s intensifying threats to forcibly annex Greenland, not to mention his insults to NATO troops who fought and died alongside U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. ‘They stayed a little back, little off the front lines’ is a statement that will be remembered in Europe alongside ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ and ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall’ as a presidential remark that embodies the American spirit of its moment.”
What to Watch: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Ben Kingsley star in a Marvel superhero show that focuses more on struggling actors than superhero stuff. It’s a solid show. Check out Wonder Man on Disney.
+ What to Book: Don Winslow retired from writing new books. Luckily, that retirement didn’t hold, and he’s back with an excellent collection of short stories that Stephen King calls “The best crime fiction I’ve read in twenty years.” The Final Score.
+ What to Doc: If you’re looking for a good way to get into the Olympic spirit, check out the new doc about one of the games’ greatest moments and maybe the greatest commentator moment ever. On Netflix: Miracle: The Boys of ‘80.
Plumb Jobs: “The unemployment gap between workers with bachelor’s degrees and those with occupational associate’s degrees — such as plumbers, electricians and pipe fitters — flipped in 2025.” For the first time in 50 years, college grads are losing their edge.
+ Quiet, Riggie: “A decade ago, in the America of the Before Times, this would have been a ridiculous discussion, given that it is ‘not constitutional or legal’ to federalize elections as Trump wants, as the Republican election lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg put it this week. But we live in the post-January 6th world, so the better question to ask is this: With a President who is already the first in our history to try to overturn the results of an election he decisively lost, what more will it take for us to finally acknowledge that, when he says this stuff, he actually means to follow through with it?” The New Yorker: Donald Trump Already Knows the 2026 Election Is “Rigged”.
+ Assad Sack: “Many describe a detached ruler, obsessed with sex and video games, who probably could have saved his regime at any time in the past few years if he hadn’t been so stubborn and vain.” Robert F. Worth in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Fall of the House of Assad.
+ What the World Needs Now: “Imagine you’re the leader of a nation, and you face a dilemma. Half a million or so people who are crucial to everyone’s daily lives inhabit your country. They care for aging parents, work at small and large companies, harvest the food that’s on the table. They are also part of your community. On weekends, they walk in the parks, go to restaurants and play on the local amateur soccer team. But one crucial thing makes these half a million people different from other people in your country: They don’t have the legal documents that allow them to live there.” I’m the Prime Minister of Spain. This Is Why the West Needs Migrants.
+ All Narcissism and No Play Makes Don a Dulles Boy:Trump wanted Dulles Airport and Penn Station named after him — in exchange for releasing federal funds. He already has a prescription drug site named after him.
+ Vaccine But Not Heard: “Over two days of questioning during his Senate confirmation hearings last year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeated the same answer. He said the closely scrutinized 2019 trip he took to Samoa, which came before a devastating measles outbreak, had ‘nothing to do with vaccines.’” Surprise! It had to do with vaccines.
+ Prime Spree: WSJ (Gift Article): Trump’s New Tax Law Saved Amazon Billions.
“A division of the U.S. Agency for International Development eliminated by Trump administration cuts last year was reborn Thursday as an independent nonprofit, allowing its international work to continue in a new form.”
+ “Statins, cholesterol-lowering drugs taken by 200 million people worldwide, are safer than previously believed, new research suggested. A review of previous studies totalling 123,000 patients found that only four of 66 potential side effects listed on statins’ packaging were actually caused by the drugs.”
+ These Kansas City students run a credit union from inside their high school. Yes, with real money.
+ An Australian 13-year-old who swam 2.49 miles to shore and then ran 1.24 miles to get help for his stranded family has been described as superhuman.
+ “Noah Winter brags he’s been to way more Super Bowls than Tom Brady. Brady competed in 10 — more than any other player. But Winter will be part of the Super Bowl spectacle for his 30th straight year this year, not in uniform but as the guy in charge of the celebratory confetti after the game ends.”
2026-02-06 05:03:24
There’s a teachable moment taking place on campuses across the country. The lesson that will ultimately be learned will largely depend on who, in the end, is left doing the teaching. Politics isn’t just invading campuses; in many cases, syllabi-curious politicians (or the people who fund them) are taking over leadership roles at universities, playing god on the quad. Among the big changes taking place over just the past few years is the widespread surveillance of what teachers choose to teach, and the punishments doled out when those assignments fail to make the grade. NYT (Gift Article): “College professors once taught free from political interference, with mostly their students and colleagues privy to their lectures and book assignments. Now, they are being watched by state officials, senior administrators and students themselves.”
+ Nowhere has the control over a campus been more pronounced than at Texas A&M. The Aggies have seen five presidents in five years, high-profile firings and cancellations, and crackdowns on dissent. What’s so troubling about what’s taking place in College Station isn’t just the degradation of educational values, it’s the breathless pace at which things are changing. DEI, now considered a crime against the Humanities Department, was not only common at A&M, until quite recently, it was celebrated. “When the school was designated a Hispanic-Serving Institution in 2022, federal recognition that comes with additional funding for schools with a student population that is at least 25 percent Hispanic, interim provost Tim Scott said it was ‘indicative of how seriously we take our land-grant mission to serve all the citizens of this great state.’ ... But within a year or so of Scott’s statement, it became completely impermissible to talk this way.” Christopher Hooks in Texas Monthly: Texas A&M’s Melting Point. (Alt link just in case.) “The ... reason you should care is that the political questions facing Texas A&M are the most important questions facing the nation as a whole. In 2026, the university will celebrate its 150th birthday and the nation will celebrate its 250th. Who counts as a true Aggie? A true Texan? A true American? .... The frenzied political squabbling over buzzwords, both at A&M and in the nation at large, obscures what is really being debated every day now in a thousand different forms: whether we can keep a plural, tolerant, diverse republic, or whether those who currently have power can mandate ways of thinking, ways of being, and a social hierarchy based on difference.”
+ From WaPo (Gift Article): Before Trump ban, universities were slowly making faculties more diverse. Now, defending that diversity often leads to removal. Former Villanova professor says she was fired after accusing the law school of racial discrimination. The broader reason why these school brawls are important is because they represent what is a much larger battle over American truth and history, one that extends from the White House (where they just published a website that rewrites history of the Jan. 6 attack) all the way to visitor brochures recently pulled from the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Home National Monument. Medgar Evers’ killer was a Klansman, but Trump administration says stop calling him a racist. To you, that probably sounds ridiculous. To those who want to rewrite American history, it’s all part of the (lesson) plan.
“Despite a new era of superpower confrontation, talks over a new START treaty — or even an informal extension of the current one — never got off the ground, frozen by the war in Ukraine. When President Trump was asked in January why he had not taken up President Vladimir V. Putin’s offer for a one-year informal extension, he shrugged. ‘If it expires, it expires.’” (The same, apparently, goes for us.) NYT (Gift Article): Nuclear Arms Control Era Comes to End Amid Global Rush for New Weapons.
+ According to Axios, there are talks of extending the pactbetween the Russians and Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. (Which sort of makes me think it’s not a bad time to build a bunker...)
“In 2026, the U.S. is facing the possibility of more and bigger measles outbreaks, as federal leaders have actively shrunk vaccine access, dismissed vaccine experts, and sowed doubts about vaccine benefits. Under these conditions, many experts are doubtful that facing down more disease, even its worst consequences, will convince enough Americans that more protection is necessary.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Only Thing That Will Turn Measles Back. (Spoiler alert: It’s gonna take a surge in vaccinations encouraged by the government. Spoiler alert part two. Uh...)
There really doesn’t seem to be much hype around the Olympics or the Super Bowl. Let’s try to get a little excited with the story of Dick Hammer. Sam Darnold’s grandfather, Dick Hammer, is the stuff of LA legend.
+ The Athletic: John Biever has photographed every Super Bowl. Here are his 5 favorite shots.
+ “While the Opening Ceremony isn’t scheduled until Friday, the first event of the Milan Cortina Games was held Wednesday with a set of mixed doubles curling matches.” About five minutes into the event (and the Games), the lights went out. (I guess it’s a good thing Don Meredith didn’t sing in Italian...)
+ ‘Penis injection’ claims in Winter Olympics ski jumping investigated by Wada. (Interesting. I would have assumed that the penis injections would have been related to the dick hammer story...)
You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Hard Drive: “The Department of Homeland Security has been quietly demanding tech companies turn over user information about critics of the Trump administration, according to reports.” This fits in with many other reports we’ve been reading about. Like this one from David Wallace Wells in the NYT (Gift Article): ICE’s New Surveillance State Isn’t Tracking Only Immigrants. “In video after video recorded by protesters and observers in Minneapolis, you can see that the agents are also filming the observers, in a sort of mutual surveillance state.” (One side has better tech...)
+ Prime Suspect: If you missed it yesterday, here’s my take on a sad for journalism. The Washington Post was murdered. And we have a Prime Suspect.
+ Contain Yourself: “The first signs of the apocalypse might look a little like Moltbook: a new social-media platform, launched last week, that is supposed to be populated exclusively by AI bots—1.6 million of them and counting say hello, post software ideas, and exhort other AIs to ‘stop worshiping biological containers that will rot away.’ (Humans: They mean humans.)” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Chatbots Appear to Be Organizing.
+ Take This Job and Gov It: “I am here with you, Your Honor. What do you want me to do? The system sucks. This job sucks.” Surge in Immigration Cases in Minnesota Pushes Prosecutors and Judges to Brink. There was a lot more to the exchange between judge and lawyer. The unfathomable Minnesota transcript that must be read, as it tells the reality of America today. “’I am not white, as you can see,’ Julie Le — a government lawyer — told a federal judge on Tuesday. ‘And my family’s at risk as any other people that might get picked up too.’” (Julie Le is no longer a government lawyer...)
+ Carpet Bombing: “The full story of Georgia’s power structures prioritizing a prized industry over public health is only now emerging through dozens of interviews and thousands of pages of court records from lawsuits against the industry and its chemical suppliers. Those records, including testimony from key executives, emails and other internal documents, detail how carpet companies benefited from chemistry and regulatory inaction to keep using forever chemicals. All the while, the mills still hummed.” AP: Inside America’s carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy.
+ Booking Business: Spotify has been in the audiobook business for a while. That seems to fit the brand. But now they’re going to sell physical books as well.
+ Ticket Snub: “The situation in which fans find themselves today—looking out at a screaming chasm between what they have to pay for an in-demand ticket and what feels fair—might be the result of how a ticket gets into their hands in the first place.” GQ: The Great Ticket Crisis: How Attending Live Events Became a Luxury Sport.
+ Caught Red Handed: “The patient had just arrived at the hospital with nine fingers. The three cops standing in front of him were confident they had the other one. ‘I heard you’re missing something,’ Officer Andrew Richardson said.” WaPo (Gift Article): He lost a pinkie trying to kill a man. From prison, he made things worse.
“The influx of tourists to the town of Fujiyoshida has led to chronic traffic congestion and litter, while some residents say they’ve experienced tourists trespassing or defecating in private gardens.” Japan cherry blossom festival cancelled over badly behaved tourists. (I’ve suffered from travel IBS my entire life. I never even realized that just defecating in someone’s garden was an option...)
+ Yesterday’s bottom of the story link was a dud. Here’s one that should work. Whatever you do, don’t mess with Pittsburgh’s parking chairs.
2026-02-05 04:35:00
Hello, I’d like to report a murder. While the plot has been in place for some time, the actual killing just took place today in Washington, DC. I’m reporting the homicide here, in this independent media source, because I’m not at all sure that the Washington paper of record still has anyone on the murder beat. Across local, international, and sports desks, the Washington Post is laying off more than 300 journalists. According to the NYT, “The cuts are a sign that Jeff Bezos, who became one of the world’s richest people by selling things on the internet, has not yet figured out how to build and maintain a profitable publication on the internet.” This point of view assumes that Bezos’ goal in owning the Post was to build a profitable publication on the internet. But it’s been a long time since we’ve seen any signs the Amazonian billionaire’s prime concern was associated with such trifles as achieving a rounding error-sized profit in a vanity project which, at $250 million, cost him roughly half as much as his yacht (which also doesn’t turn a profit). No, this was never about turning bauble into bling. It was about power and access, and sometimes those are best achieved through failure. What could make the current administration happier than the demise of the paper that exposed Watergate? Hence, the decision to go postal on the Post. As Ian Bremmer succinctly explains: “The Washington Post is a political access play for Bezos, it’s not about supporting independent media or promoting democracy. This should have been clear to all for years now. But it’s impossible to ignore today.” Under Bezos’ watch, the Post adopted the tagline, Democracy Dies in Darkness. By now, we all know better. It gets bludgeoned to death in the cold light of day.
+ The Atlantic (Gift Article) still has a crime beat. From Ashley Parker: The Murder of The Washington Post. “The least cynical explanation is that Bezos simply isn’t paying attention. Maybe—like so many of us initially—he was charmed by Lewis’s British accent and studied loucheness that mask an emperor whose bespoke threads are no clothes at all. Or maybe, as many of us who deeply love the Post fear, the decimation is the plan.”
+ Margaret Sullivan, former media columnist for WaPo, on the scene of the crime: “The hallmark (the “brand”) of the Washington Post has been accountability journalism. Thus, today’s staff decimation is Bezos’s greatest gift to Trump, so much more valuable than the Melania movie, inauguration money, etc. This disaster began, for real, with the Harris endorsement he killed.”
+ Even though the Post has been shrinking (in size and goals), it’s still been responsible for some vital reporting. Let’s hope there will still be coverage like the story I led with yesterday, one of the more important and disturbing reports from a disturbing time. This Knock Knock is No Joke.
“’I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile,’ Mr. Trump said in a sarcastic tone, while sitting at the Resolute Desk. ‘I’ve known you for 10 years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face ... You know why you’re not smiling? Because you know you’re not telling the truth ... You are so bad. You know, you are the worst reporter. No wonder. CNN has no ratings because of people like you.’” In keeping with his quiet piggy tradition of misogynistically debasing the office and the country, Trump Scolded CNN’s Kaitlan Collins for ‘Not Smiling’ (while she was asking a question about Epstein’s victims). On one side of the desk, politicians stood by silently as Trump personally attacked Kaitlin Collins. On the other side of the desk, her colleagues did the same. A country doesn’t fall this far this fast without teamwork.
“Sixteen years ago, at age 66, López García first tried running a mile. He’d recently retired after spending his entire working life as a car mechanic in Toledo, Spain. In all those years, he’d never trained as an athlete or exercised much at all. He couldn’t finish that first mile. He could barely start it.” Well, he improved. A lot. Now, he’s a world-record holding ultramarathoner. He can probably teach us a lot more about health and longevity than the longevity bros selling their supplements on social media. WaPo(Gift Article): At 82, he’s as fit as a 20-year-old. His body holds clues to healthy aging.
“Laughter does more than increase pleasurable social contact; infant laughter, especially when it occurs in response to humor, signals a cognitive achievement. When an infant laughs at Dad wearing a spoon as a mustache, it reveals the baby’s knowledge about spoons and mustaches, as well as about the person wearing it.” NYT (Gift Article): The Evolutionary Brilliance of the Baby Giggle. (At this point, it’s pretty refreshing to see news coverage of babyish behavior that’s actually coming from babies...)
Pulling Out: “The Trump administration will withdraw 700 federal immigration agents from Minnesota, border czar Tom Homan said Wednesday. The move comes weeks after agents killed two U.S. citizens, sparking protests across the country.” (A drawdown is good, but there will still be more than 2,000 agents left in a city with 600 police officers. And this move follows two killings captured on video...)
+ Secrets and Nationalize: “President Trump doubled down on his extraordinary call for the Republican Party to ‘nationalize’ voting in the United States, even as the White House tried to walk it back and members of his own party criticized the idea.” (Are we really gonna have another friggin debate about whether or not this guy will try to steal an election?)
+ Immigrant Pop: “For each year from 1994 to 2023, the US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government. Over that period, immigrants created a cumulative fiscal surplus of $14.5 trillion in real 2024 US dollars, including $3.9 trillion in savings on interest on the debt.” Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets.
+ Eviction Notice: “The former Prince Andrew has moved out of his longtime home on crown-owned land near Windsor Castle earlier than expected after the latest release of documents from the U.S. investigation of Jeffrey Epstein revived questions about his friendship with the convicted sex offender.” (In the UK, an Epstein connection gets you evicted. In America, it gets you a ballroom addition.)
+ District Adherence: Supreme Court Clears Way for California Voting Map. “’Donald Trump said he was ‘entitled’ to five more congressional seats in Texas,’ Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said in a statement on Wednesday. ‘He started this redistricting war. He lost, and he’ll lose again in November.’”
+ Abducted? “The disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today show cohost Savannah Guthrie, is being investigated as an abduction, as authorities in Arizona say they are probing a possible ransom note sent to a local TV station.”
+ It’s Not All Downhill From Here: “’No doctor could endorse a normal person to go skiing, let alone competitively so,’ said Dr. Yair David Kissin, an orthopedic surgeon and knee specialist at Hackensack University Medical Center (N.J.). But Vonn is not a normal person — or even a normal competitive athlete.” Why doctors say Lindsey Vonn has ‘a great chance to perform well’ despite ACL tear.
+ Photo Finish: Here are some scenes from the 150th Westminster Dog Show, and some of the entries for Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
“Down the block of working-class homes, more than a dozen chairs of various shapes and vintages were securing their own rectangle of space: a sturdy dining room chair, an office chair on a swivel, two bar stools, a wrought-iron patio love seat, an orange plastic lawn chair. In Pittsburgh, it’s parking chair season.” WSJ (Gift Article): Whatever You Do, Don’t Mess With Pittsburgh’s Parking Chairs.