2026-04-24 20:00:00
In the vintage Life commercial, two kids are hesitant to try a cereal that’s supposed to be good for you. So they decide to push it off to a younger kid. “Let’s get Mikey. He won’t eat it. He hates everything.” Well, as you probably recall, he likes it. Hey Mikey! This classic tale of the younger generation leading the older ones into a new world of products seems to be playing out in reverse when it comes to AI. The younger folks, who use the technology the most, are the ones who tend to have the most negative feelings about it. As Nilay Patel explains in The Verge: “The polling on this is so strong, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people hate AI, and that Gen Z in particular seems to hate AI more and more as they encounter it. There’s that NBC News poll showing AI with worse favorability than ICE and only a little bit above the war in Iran.” The People Do Not Yearn for Automation. “Poll after poll shows that Gen Z uses AI the most and has the most negative feelings about it. A recent Gallup poll found that only 18 percent of Gen Z was hopeful about AI, down from an already-bad 27 percent last year. At the same time, anger is growing: 31 percent of those Gen Z respondents said they feel angry about AI, up from 22 percent last year … This is a fundamental disconnect between how tech people with software brains see the world and how regular people are living their lives.” Young people could be the most angry at AI because they’re worried about its potential impact on their job market. It could also be because the future of AI depends in large part on the people who run AI companies (and the always online younger generation is quite aware of what, in technical terms, you could call the evil douche factor) and government regulation (and the only thing this generation believes in less than good tech leadership is good government leadership). In places where there is more trust in the government to regulate the tech, the vibes are different. Rest of World: AI optimism surges in Asia, unlike in the US. Whatever the reason, it’s notable that the Americans who use and know AI the most also hate it the most. As a side note, even though he is alive and well, John Gilchrist, the kid who played little Mikey in the Life commercial, was rumored to have died from a stomach rupture caused by consuming Pop Rocks and Coke. Sounds like the kind of thing AI might hallucinate.
“The spell is broken not by some moral awakening, but by these concrete disasters. Once a sufficient portion of the loyal supporters realize they have been duped, the leader will eventually fall. The energy required to deceive is unsustainable. Reality is relentless. The tyrant who chooses to fight it is doomed.” Danny Hillis in Noema Mag with a good (and timely) explanation of why bad leaders fail. The Rise And Fall Of Petty Tyrants. “Every leader is confronted with difficulties and must face that same fork in the road. The honest leaders chose truth. The dishonest chose denial and, as a consequence, they failed. Petty tyrants cause real suffering and harm, but they leave few enduring legacies. The lasting institutions of effective leaders are not undermined by reality. They are sustained by it.”
Prosper and live long is the new live long and prosper. “Perhaps you saw this video last September, when it went viral: The two most powerful autocrats in the world — Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, both of whom have been heads of state for well over a decade, and neither of whom shows any signs of intending to relinquish that power — caught by an interpreter’s hot mic discussing their own apparent shared desire for immortality.” NYT Mag (Gift Article): The Rich and Powerful Want to Live Forever. What if They Could? “Over the past decade or so, democracy has been retreating against a rising tide of illiberalism and plutocracy. Power, in much of the world, is becoming more and more concentrated in the hands of a few authoritarian leaders and a small number of expansively ambitious tech billionaires. As average life expectancy has increased, inequality — in income and in access to health care — has widened. And amid all of this, the world’s wealthiest and most powerful have developed a persistent hope, and perhaps even generated some small possibility, that death might be eradicated entirely, or pushed back so far that its existential force is diminished.” (The idea of some of these guys living forever makes the rest of us feel like dying. At least irony is eternal.)
What to Binge: The new season of Beef on Netflix has hints of White Lotus, stars Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan, and includes couples fighting, country club scandals, and a lot of blackmail. Enjoy!
+ What to Movie: Streaming on Hulu, the Bradley Cooper-directed Is Thing On? stars Will Arnett and Laura Dern as a couple that separates shortly before Arnett’s character discovers open mic nights. Jordan Jensen plays one of the other comedians in the movie. Don’t miss her excellent standup special on Netflix, Take Me With You.
New Lease on Life: The Justice Department has dropped its ridiculous case involving Jerome H. Powell’s handling of the Federal Reserve’s renovation. The case wasn’t dropped because it was a bunch of nonsense manufactured in a desperate attempt to target one of Trump’s enemies. It was dropped to clear the way for Kevin Warsh, the president’s pick for Fed chair, to be confirmed. The lesser corruption was removed to make way for the greater one. Welcome to 2026.
+ A Fact of Life: “The U.S. has burned through so many munitions in Iran that some administration officials increasingly assess that America couldn’t fully execute contingency plans to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion if it occurred in the near term, U.S. officials said.” WSJ (Gift Article): Fully replacing stockpiles of weapons fired in the Middle East could take up to six years. Meanwhile, the financial firm slash diplomacy team of Witkoff and Kushner is headed back to Pakistan for peace talks. Here’s the latest from The Guardian.
+ You Bet Your Life: “Federal prosecutors on Thursday unsealed an indictment against a U.S. Army special forces soldier, accusing him of using his insider knowledge of the clandestine military operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January to reap more than $400,000 in profits on the popular prediction market site Polymarket.” Meanwhile, “Authorities in France are investigating possible tampering with a weather monitoring device at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris after an unusual temperature spike was recorded around the same time a Polymarket trader cashed in.” Yes, these cases of insider trading are worrisome. But don’t get lost in the weeds. There’s a whole jungle of problems related to prediction markets and the broader gambling ecosystem. US gambling addiction is ‘out of control’ as betting markets boom, policy expert warns.
+ On Life Support: “After it launched in December, Lutnick said that the government had sold $1.3 billion ‘worth’ in just several days, as Trump stood by holding up the gilded ticket and said, ‘essentially it’s the green card on steroids.'” More like just another lie on steroids. Trump’s ‘gold card’ visa starting at $1 million granted to just 1 person so far.
+ Life Isn’t All Sunshine and Rainbows: “Some critics say large solar farms are a public health threat. While there is little reputable evidence for this, their claims have helped power a backlash.” ProPublica: Unfounded Health Concerns Are Powering a Solar Backlash. (Coming soon: The Joe Rogan episode arguing that we should extinguish the sun and replace it with peptides.)
+ Your Money or Your Life: “For most students, Stanford is a normal competitive school, where people go to class and coffee shops and fall in love and freak out over finals. But a select few attend something else: a Stanford inside Stanford, where venture capitalists pursue 18- and 19-year-olds, handing out mentorships and money and invites to yacht parties in an attempt to convert promise into profit.” This is less the story of Stanford than the story of modern day Silicon Valley. Theo Baker in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Stanford Freshmen Who Want to Rule the World. (If they wanted to rule the world, they should have gone to Cal.)
+ Life Imitates Art: If AI re-wrote the story of the boy who cried wolf, it might go something like this: “A 40-year-old man was arrested after using artificial intelligence to generate a fake image of a runaway wolf that South Korean authorities said obstructed an urgent investigation.” (The man should just say he thought he had created an image of a doctor.)
“Suicides among young adults dropped most sharply in states that actively embraced the 988 crisis line.” Youth Suicides Declined After Creation of National Hotline.
+ UK Approves Lifelong Ban on Smoking for People Born After 2008.
+ It’s crazy that any journalists are attending this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. If you want the jokes without the soul-selling, just enjoy Jimmy Kimmel’s Alternative White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
+ “In Japan, a 350-year-old brewery holds fast to tradition: wild yeast, ancient songs, and a mixture of muscle and finesse.” NYT (Gift Article) with the sights and sounds of Sake Made the Hard Way.
+ Michigan Gas Clerk Helps Save Kidnapped Teen Girl Who Mouthed ‘Help’.
+ “Brianna Avalos and her husband were riding in the balloon to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary. She said the pilot informed passengers that he needed to make an emergency landing because of low fuel and a shift in winds.” Hot-air balloon carrying 13 people lands in California backyard: ‘out of a fairytale’.
+ Condom prices could rise 30% due to Iran war. (This isn’t positive news, but when you think about it, it will probably qualify as feel good news.)
2026-04-23 20:00:00
During a war with a current focus that has been dialed in on a body of water, Pete Hegseth fired the Secretary of the Navy, who had zero Naval experience when appointed. He’ll be replaced by a guy with a lot of Naval experience and also a lot of experience being a rabid partisan with sometimes fully crazy ideas. Does it ever feel like we are a nation adrift? This news broke on Wednesday, and by Thursday, it had already floated out of the headlines, and military personnel decisions are unlikely to move the needle when it comes to voting trends or approval ratings. American voters have always been more about navel gazing than Naval gazing. But it does seem like it’s worth pausing long enough to reflect on the fact that outgoing Navy Secretary John Phelan, the latest in a series of people squeezed out by Hegseth, “had not served in the military or had a civilian leadership role in the service before Trump nominated him for secretary in late 2024. He was seen as an outsider being brought in to shake up the Navy.” (Well, mission accomplished, I suppose.) And the new acting Secretary of the Navy? Well… “Hung Cao warned of rampant ‘witchcraft’ in a California city while running for a U.S. Senate seat in Virginia two years ago as a Republican. Cao, a 25-year Navy combat veteran who lost to Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., in the 2024 election, said he was running for Senate in part to prevent witchcraft from establishing a foothold in Virginia.” (I actually hope witchcraft establishes a foothold in America. Maybe they can make news headlines disappear.)
+ NYT (Gift Article): Navy Secretary Is Fired as Infighting Roils Pentagon.
+ The cabinet members haven’t lost the faith. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum just explained the Iran situation: “Brilliant on President Trump’s part. The world is already a safer place than it was two months ago, thanks to President Trump, and I’m super optimistic about where the world is gonna be going coming out the backside of this.” (The world coming out the backside is actually a perfect description for this era.)
“He relies heavily on the advice and guidance of the board members, and they collectively make all the decisions … The generals are the board members.” There’s been a regime change of sorts in Iran. The question is how the new regime differs from the old one. It’s being led by a new Khamenei, who has a very different leadership style than his father. That could be because of his current predicament. He has almost no direct contact with advisors because of fears that Israel “may trace them to him and kill him.” And his health is bad. “One leg was operated on three times, and he is awaiting a prosthetic. He had surgery on one hand and is slowly regaining function. His face and lips have been burned severely, making it difficult for him to speak, the officials said, adding that, eventually, he will need plastic surgery.” The NYT (Gift Article): A New Era and New Leadership: The Generals Who Are Running Iran. “President Trump has said that the war, along with the killings of layers of Iran’s leaders and security establishment, has ushered in ‘regime change’ and that the new leaders are ‘much more reasonable.’ In reality, the Islamic republic has not been toppled. Power is now in the hands of an entrenched, hard-line military, and the broad influence of the clerics is waning.” (This makes negotiations difficult. It also doesn’t bode well for the Iranian people who may be left with an even harsher political environment.)
+ Maybe Trump is right when he says: “Iran is having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is! They just don’t know! The infighting is between the ‘Hardliners,’ who have been losing BADLY on the battlefield, and the ‘Moderates,’ who are not very moderate at all (but gaining respect!), is CRAZY!” (In America, by contrast, we get conflicting signals, different stories, changing negotiating positions, and contradictory updates … but it’s all coming from the same person.) Here’s the latest from The Guardian, NBC, and BBC.
“To help care for her mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease, Dr. Jack uses an array of high-tech tools, some of which didn’t exist just a few years ago. She manages her mother’s medications with a smart pill box. She changes her television channels with an app, sends appointment reminders through a digital message board — and, with her mother’s blessing, uses cameras for communication and monitoring.” NYT (Gift Article): How ‘Age Tech’ Might Help You Grow Old at Home. “America is aging rapidly. Roughly 11,000 people are turning 65 each day in the United States. And many of them — 75 percent of people over 50, according to AARP’s most recent survey, from 2024 — hope to spend their remaining years in the comfort of their homes, rather than in assisted-living or other care facilities.” (Doordash, Netflix, and televised Giants games are all the age tech I really need.)
“What Virginia Democrats did by redrawing the congressional maps was antidemocratic, and it should be illegal. But, for those who care about ensuring the future of democracy, it was the least bad option of those available.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Virginia Gerrymander Disenfranchises Republicans.
+ I made the same basic argument yesterday, but I put it in a slightly different way. The GerryMandalorian: “There were two elements the Empire didn’t expect: First, the Force (here, the voting public) would be with the rebels. And second, Vader’s poll numbers would be historically low.”
Joint Venture “President Donald Trump’s acting attorney general on Thursday signed an order reclassifying state-licensed medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug, a major policy shift long sought by advocates who said cannabis should never have been treated like heroin by the federal government.” (I inhaled at some point in the eighties and I didn’t exhale until about 2019, so I’m hardly opposed to more reasonable marijuana classifications. But I’d be willing to bet this has more to do with blazing a trail for a new cash grab than anything else.) It is amazing how much has changed when it comes to our legal relationship with weed. Jimmy Kimmel and Scott Lonker just released a set of short docs on Hulu: 4×20 Quick Hits. Watch the Harold & Kumar one for the nostalgia and the one about the bong industry to get a reminder of just how different the latest attorney general announcement is from the paraphernalia arrests of yore.
+ Drunk on Power: “The F.B.I. began investigating a New York Times reporter last month after she wrote about the bureau’s director, Kash Patel, using bureau personnel to provide his girlfriend with government security and transportation, according to a person briefed on the matter.”
+ Afford Focus: “Republicans pushed through the plan on a nearly party-line vote of 50 to 48. It came after an overnight marathon of rapid-fire votes, known as a vote-a-rama, in which the G.O.P. beat back a series of Democratic proposals aimed at addressing the high cost of health care, housing, food and energy. The debate put the two parties’ dueling messages on vivid display six months before the midterm elections.” Senate Adopts G.O.P. Budget, Defeating Democrats’ Affordability Proposals.
+ RSVP Brains: Margaret Sullivan on this weekend’s White House correspondents’ dinner. Why are White House journalists partying with Trump? (Spoiler alert: There’s no good answer.)
+ It’s the Corruption, Stupid: Eric Trump Brags About $24 Million Pentagon Deal His Company Landed. (The amount alone indicates corruption. The Pentagon spends more than $24 million on a set of pens.)
+ Separate Lives: “It captures a harrowing moment: a family separated by the state.” World Press Photo announces Photo of the Year 2026.
+ Everything Means Less Than Zero: “President Trump has claimed that he has secured discounts of 400 to 1,500 percent on prescription drugs. A price discount cannot be more than 100 percent because that would lower the price to zero.” (In fairness, plenty of his businesses have achieved these numbers.) NYT: RFK Jr. Defends Trump’s Mathematically Impossible Drug Discount Claims. “Eventually, Mr. Trump began to insert some uncertainty into his claims, saying that the discount depended ‘on how you want to calculate it.’ ‘You could say it’s an 80 percent reduction,’ Mr. Trump said in January. ‘Or you could say it’s a 1,000 percent reduction. You could say whatever you want.'” (Words and images have lost all meaning. Why shouldn’t numbers be down for the count?)
Imagine having to explain this when your cellmate asks what you’re in for: “A California man pilfered thousands of dollars in Lego toy sets from the retailer Target in a return-based scam, sometimes swapping valuable figurines with dried pasta pieces and before returning the construction-centric toys, authorities recently alleged.” (Even in the age of Ozempic, I’d rather have the pasta than the Lego.)
+ “The set made it 114,790 feet above Gwynedd County in the United Kingdom. That’s almost 22 miles straight up. According to Guinness, the set then stayed up in the air for over eight hours before coming back to Earth, hence the record for ‘Highest Altitude Launch and Retrieval of a Lego Set.'”
2026-04-22 20:00:00
In the Star Wars series The Mandalorian, a lone bounty hunter travels to the far reaches of the galaxy to protect an infant named Grogu (affectionately known by fans as Baby Yoda). The Mandelorians are bound by a set of ethics and conduct, represented by the mantra, “This is the way.” The Gerrymandalorians are a group of elected leaders and voters across several states who are fighting to keep Darth Trump and the Empire from unfairly gerrymandering their way to a Congressional midterm win. The rebels know that gerrymandering, the “practice of dividing or arranging a territorial unit into election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage in elections,” is a generally unhealthy trend. But using the popular vote to overcome attempts by the Empire to rig the midterms beats just sitting back and letting an election be stolen. So, for now, the rebel alliance will have to live with the mantra, “This is the way, at least until we send the Sith Lord back to Mar-a-Lago.”
+ For the rebels, the war to redraw battle lines was hardly fair. “For more than a decade, they’ve tried to be the party of good government on redistricting. But Democrats’ support for letting independent commissions draw legislative maps has cost them seats in key blue states, and their push to ban gerrymandering nationwide flopped in the courts and in Congress.” Meanwhile, the GOP just needs a willing governor and legislature to redraw maps (as we saw in Texas). But there were two elements the Empire didn’t expect: First, the Force (here, the voting public) would be with the rebels. And second, Vader’s poll numbers would be historically low. Russell Berman in The Atlantic (Gift Article) on how the Republican redistricting effort backfired: Trump’s Enormous Gerrymandering Blunder. “GOP lawmakers had both the will and the power to draw their party new seats, while Democrats were hamstrung by limits of their own making. The question was not whether Republicans could expand their edge in Congress, but by how much. This morning the landscape looks a lot different, after Virginia voters yesterday approved a lopsided new House map that could hand Democrats an additional four seats that Republicans currently hold. The Democratic redistricting victory is the party’s second in a statewide referendum. When combined with new lines that California voters endorsed in November, Democrats have now succeeded in drawing districts that will likely yield them nine more seats this fall, at least matching what Republicans have been able to achieve in states that they control.” Next stop in the gerrymandering wars: The Empire (tries to) strike back in Florida. Or as it will undoubtedly come to be known: The Battle of Florida Man-dalorian.
The various costs related to the Iran war just had a midair collision with another affordability issue. Spirit Airlines nears deal with Trump administration for $500 million rescue package. “The deal, which has not yet been finalized, would offer $500 million to the discount airline, according to a person familiar with the matter. It would give the airline additional liquidity as it works toward emerging from bankruptcy and grapples with elevated fuel costs due to the war with Iran … After Spirit emerges from bankruptcy, the U.S. government could own up to 90% of the airline.” (For some reason, this reminds me of the Trump Shuttle: An airline that lasted less than three years before defaulting on its debt and going bust.)
“‘The chatbot advised the shooter on what type of gun to use, on which ammo went with which gun, on whether or not a gun would be useful at short range,’ Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said at a news conference Tuesday. ‘If it was a person on the other end of that screen, we would be charging them with murder.'” ChatGPT allegedly advised Florida State shooter when and where to strike. (This is definitely an interesting case, but it seems like we may be missing a more dangerous class of weapons. I’d rather be held point-blank by an LLM than a semi-automatic gun.)
“They promote nicotine patches, gums and lozenges as well as pouches, which are often filled with nicotine salt powder and give people a convenient way to consume the compound. To these boosters, nicotine is another ‘natural’ product that the medical establishment has unfairly demonized, like beef tallow, peptides or raw milk.” NYT (Gift Article): Influencers Are Spinning Nicotine as a ‘Natural’ Health Hack. (They’re not lighting the nicotine, but they’re definitely smoking something.)
Cease Desisting? “Iran attacked three ships in the Strait of Hormuz this morning, saying its Revolutionary Guard seized two of them and further inflaming tensions over the key waterway. It comes after U.S. forces seized an Iranian ship and boarded a tanker linked to Tehran’s oil trade.” The ceasefire hangs in the balance. Here’s the latest from NBC, The Guardian, and BBC.
+ The Great Betrayal: “After halting a U.S. resettlement program for Afghans who helped the American war effort, President Trump is in talks to send as many as 1,100 of them to the Democratic Republic of Congo.” NYT (Gift Article): Trump Is Said to Be in Talks to Send Afghans Who Aided U.S. Forces to Congo. (Nothing like selling out allies from the last war while failing to find allies for the latest one…)
+ Truth Immunity: “The acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has canceled the publication of a study that found that the Covid vaccine sharply cut the odds of hospitalizations and emergency visits last winter.” (Shhh. We wouldn’t want anyone to know the Covid vaccine was a friggin miracle.) Related: Hegseth to the Troops: We Are Bringing Back the Flu!
+ Mythos in the Wild? Bloomberg (Gift Article): “A small group of unauthorized users has accessed Anthropic PBC’s new Mythos AI model, a technology that the company says is so powerful it can enable dangerous cyberattacks.”
+ Wagyu the Dog: “At a time when the American cattle herd is at its smallest since the 1950s and beef prices are at record highs, Wagyu is seemingly everywhere. But it’s not always clear to diners what they’re paying for.” ‘Wagyu’ Used to Guarantee Quality Beef. What Are You Paying for Today?
+ Natural Selection: On Earth Day, check out these “images of the incredible resilience of nature: the many ways that plants, animals, and natural processes reclaim abandoned human places and find ways to thrive.” Reclaimed by Nature. (I’d like to see this for the new White House ballroom…)
Smarty Supreme: “The feat has been hailed as a milestone for robotics, a field that has long seen table tennis – and the lightning-fast reactions, perception and skill it demands – as one of the toughest tests of how far the technology has advanced.” AI-powered robot beats elite table tennis players. (Meanwhile, Kylie Jenner was seen cuddling with the robot at Coachella…)
2026-04-21 20:00:00
Briefs. Oral arguments. Questions and answers analyzed by experts and an interested public. This is how we’ve long experienced major, often nation-altering Supreme Court cases. But something changed just after 6 p.m. on a February evening in 2016. The Court was considering one of those big, impactful cases, in which they would decide whether to block or allow President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan. You probably didn’t read any of the submitted briefs or hear any of the oral arguments. Because there were none. But that doesn’t mean the case wasn’t decided. America was caught with its briefs down, as the Roberts Court halted the environmental plan. “They acted before any other court had addressed the plan’s lawfulness. The decision consisted of only legal boilerplate, without a word of reasoning. At the time, the ruling seemed like a curious one-off. But that single paragraph turned out to be a sharp and lasting break. That night marks the birth, many legal experts believe, of the court’s modern ‘shadow docket,’ the secretive track that the Supreme Court has since used to make many major decisions, including granting President Trump more than 20 key victories on issues from immigration to agency power.” The adage suggests that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. That, like so many of the cases that are now decided in secret and rendered with no explanation, seems like a notion worthy of a public hearing. The NYT (Gift Article): The Inside Story of Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court. “Rulings with no explanation or reasoning, like the sparse paragraph from that February night, have become routine. The emergency docket is now a central legacy of the court led by Chief Justice Roberts.” How dramatically will that legacy change our legal system and our country? Only the Shadow knows.
+ Steve Vladek wrote a highly regarded book on this topic: The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.
Techno-optimists and pessimists likely agree on a couple things: AI is only getting more powerful and nothing is going to stop that trend. So what does one do when one is faced with the prospect of the singularity, “the moment when superintelligent machines, having surpassed the feeble cognitive abilities of humans, begin to act in ways contrary to the interests of humanity.” Well, you can’t count on computers getting dumber. So you’re gonna need to create smarter humans. MoJo: Creating Baby Geniuses to Thwart the AI Threat? (Yes, Really.)
+ “Heavier AI users are generally more optimistic about its effects on their careers than occasional users and non-users. That’s still true. But Gallup found that even heavy AI users within Gen Z are growing more pessimistic.” Gen Z Is Souring on AI. (No worries. We’ll just program the new babies to be more enthusiastic…)
“In the lead-up to the war, which Trump launched without consulting Congress, making a case to the American people, or assembling allies, many of his aides believed that Trump was not taking seriously the risks and trade-offs involved … Once the war began, Trump received updates that were screened and bowdlerized for him. He has long been inattentive to briefings—early in his first term, aides realized that he liked maps and graphics and would glaze over if given much information in text—but he has reportedly been starting his day off with a sizzle reel of stunning explosions rather than with hard info.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Aides Keeping the President in the Dark.
+ None of the ignorance keeps Trump from participating in delicate negotiations by way of social media. CNN: A deal to end the Iran war seemed close. Then Trump started posting on social media.
+ “Vice President JD Vance’s trip to Pakistan for a second round of negotiations with Iran has been put on hold after Tehran failed to respond to American positions, a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the situation said Tuesday. Iran, for its part, said it had not yet decided whether to resume talks with the United States.” But don’t worry. Trump says, “We’re going to end up with a great deal.” (Maybe we should all be shown the daily sizzle reel. It seems to cheer him up.) Here’s the latest from NYT, The Guardian, and NBC.
Steve Jobs was known as the visionary. Tim Cook was more of a get things done CEO. And he definitely fulfilled that role. “When Tim Cook took over Apple in 2011, leaders from Silicon Valley to Wall Street predicted that the company’s best days were behind it. They feared that without Steve Jobs, Apple’s innovative chief executive, the company would falter. They were wrong. Over 15 years, Mr. Cook has engineered Apple’s rise from a Silicon Valley darling worth $350 billion into a cash-generating giant worth $4 trillion.” NYT (Gift Article): Tim Cook Was Very, Very Good at Making Money.
+ “Cook inherited a company with extraordinary potential growth in front of it, but in deep existential grief. He led the company — and its community — through that grief and achieved that potential. The transition Apple and Tim Cook announced today is entirely different. No one’s hand was forced. There is nothing unpleasant.” John Gruber: Another Day Has Come.
The Fog of Warsh: “Kevin M. Warsh, President Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve, asserted repeatedly at a combative confirmation hearing on Tuesday that he would not cut interest rates simply because President Trump wanted him to, pledging to be ‘strictly independent’ if confirmed for one of the world’s most powerful economic positions.” We’ve been down this hearing road before. He’ll say he’s independent and will be normal. Everyone in the Senate knows that’s not true. He’ll get confirmed, anyway. Corruption will ensue. Bad things will happen. No one will be surprised. Meanwhile, “Lori Chavez-DeRemer, President Trump’s embattled labor secretary, stepped down on Monday as multiple scandals and investigations closed in on her.”
+ Donny on the Spot: NYT (Gift Article): ‘Donnyland’? Ukraine Proposes Renaming Part of the Donbas in Trump’s Honor. “That a name evocative of Disneyland has been applied to a depopulated, decimated swath of Ukrainian coal-and-steel country could appear jarring as Europe’s deadliest fighting since World War II continues to rage. But it also reflects a global reality in which governments appeal to Mr. Trump’s vanity in order to get American might on their side.” (It’s sad that an ally would think this way. They are also right to think this way.)
+ Targeting the Good Guys: “When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system. There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.” Southern Poverty Law Center says it faces a Justice Department criminal probe over paid informants,
+ Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? “When Donald Trump attends the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner for the first time as president on Saturday, the pressure will be on the journalists’ organization to make some sort of a statement about the president’s relentless attacks on the media, which he has labeled the ‘enemy of the people.'” Hundreds Of Veteran Journalists And Groups Urge WHCA To ‘Speak Forcefully’ About Trump’s Attacks. (Better idea. Don’t attend the damn dinner.)
+ Beak Softly and Carry a Big Stick: “In 2021, a disabled parrot named Bruce made headlines worldwide for creating his own prosthetic beak. He didn’t stop there: Scientists reported on Monday that Bruce has now become the alpha male of his group. And he did it by learning to joust.” How Bruce the Parrot Landed Atop the Pecking Order, Without a Beak. (There’s a lesson here somewhere, and I think it has to do with the importance of jousting.)
+ Bible Trumper: “President Donald Trump and many of his leading Christian supporters and top Republicans are taking part this week in a marathon reading of the Bible in an America 250-themed event billed as encouraging a ‘return to the spiritual foundation that has shaped our country.'” (If there’s a god, I’m pretty sure we’d hear him laughing right now.)
“In recent years, the NFL draft has attracted hundreds of thousands of fans to the cities that host it. This week, Pittsburgh will be no exception. And that influx of people has led the local school district to make a controversial decision: canceling in-person school.”
2026-04-20 20:00:00
American financier and statesman Bernard Baruch famously said, “The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible.” Well, in that case, the market is having a hell of a month. On Friday, after almost no negotiations, Trump posted that Iran would give up its uranium and open the Strait of Hormuz. They even agreed to never close the Strait in the future. The market soared on the news. The weekend arrived. The Strait was closed again. Even delivered by a trusted and consistently honest source, these deal claims would have come off as outlandish. But from this source? After misleading at every turn during the war (and every other topic he’s ever touched upon), you’d have to be a little crazy to have believed Trump. So, then, it might be fair to wonder whether the market is out of its friggin’ mind. The market behaving in mysterious ways, especially over the short term, is nothing new. John Maynard Keynes explained: “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” In this case, as Kyla Scanlon writes in the NYT (Gift Article), “The stock market has been trying to ignore the war in Iran.” Why the Stock Market Makes No Sense Right Now. This nonsense is especially relevant at the moment, because a rational stock market appears to be one of the few guardrails protecting against Trump’s most destructive impulses. “President Trump deeply cares about the stock market, and if the stock market had been selling off, there is a good chance that this war would have been over a while ago. More broadly, the markets are showing the single lesson that the past 40 years have taught them. It will always be saved.”
Look, I’m in the market. I really want the market to go up. But I’m worried about a market that discounts the risk of very risky world events. And I’m even more worried about a market that discounts the risk posed by the leader of the world’s largest economy, and seems, somehow, to ignore the history of instability, lies, and crazy behavior he exhibits. Even if the Strait re-opens tomorrow, those risks remain. The market needs to stop reacting to Trump’s crazy lies and start reacting to the fact that we have a crazy liar in the White House. (That line should enter the canon of great economics quotes. On the off chance it doesn’t, I’ll leave you with one more from Keynes: “In the long run we are all dead.” Today’s investors probably even see that as a buying opportunity.)
+ When it comes to the Trump tariffs and the Iran war, there are still some rational traders. Insider traders. Traders placed over $1bn in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war. What is going on? And, the insider trading suspicions looming over Trump’s presidency. (Maybe the safest investment you can make in 2026 is to be long on corruption…)
“On multiple occasions in the past year, members of his security detail had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated, according to information supplied to Justice Department and White House officials. A request for ‘breaching equipment’—normally used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings—was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors, according to multiple people familiar with the request.” Given his reputation and lack of qualifications, it would have been almost impossible for Kash Patel to surprise us on the downside. So give him a little credit. The Atlantic (Gift Article): The FBI Director Is MIA. “Kash Patel has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.”
+ Patel is responding to the news that he does things Trump doesn’t like (getting drunk and not controlling the story) by doing a couple things Trump does like. Targeting enemies and suing the media.
“A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record.” This, it turns out, is not the biggest (or scariest) robot news of the week. NYT (Gift Article): The Killer Robots Are Coming. The Battlefield Will Never Look the Same. “The robots charged into battle through a valley in eastern Ukraine, driving over grass toward a Russian position. Essentially little green wagons, they looked like something you might buy at a garden store to move bags of soil around. But each carried 66 pounds of explosives. As the remotely controlled vehicles approached the enemy soldiers, an aerial drone flew in and dropped a bomb to help clear a path. One of the robots then rushed in and blew itself up, while the others held back, monitoring the position. A sheet of cardboard appeared above a trench. ‘We want to surrender,’ it read.” (I hold up the same message to my laptop like three times a week.)
Noah Hawley in The Atlantic (Gift Article): What I Learned About Billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s Private Retreat. “Any asset can be acquired but nothing can ever be lost, because for soon-to-be trillionaires, no level of loss could significantly change their global standing or personal power. For them, the word failure has ceased to mean anything. This sense of invulnerability has deep psychological ramifications. If everything is free and nothing matters, then the world and other people exist only to be acted upon, if they are acknowledged at all. This is different from classic narcissism, in which a grandiose but fragile self-image can mask deep insecurity. What I’m talking about is a self-definition in which the individual grows to the size of the universe, and the universe vanishes.” (Remember, this is less the era when Trump empowered these guys than it is an era when these guys decided who they wanted to empower.)
Mind If We Play Through? “The decision was informed by the president’s behavior during the search and rescue operation for the aircrew of the downed F-15 fighter jet late last month, when the president reportedly screamed at his aides for hours. As a result, his aides ‘kept the president out of the room as they got minute-by-minute updates because they believed his impatience wouldn’t be helpful, instead updating him at meaningful moments.'” A commander-in-chief kept out of war meetings because of erratic behavior? That seems bad. Meanwhile, in Iran, it’s not completely clear who’s in charge. WSJ (Gift Article): Iran’s Hard-Liners Flex Their Muscle With a U-Turn Over Hormuz. “Divisions between moderates and the Revolutionary Guard will complicate U.S. efforts for a diplomatic win.” For now, the two sides are talking about restarting talks. Here’s the latest from The Guardian, NBC, and BBC.
+ Everybody’s Working for the Weakened: “But only the entities that officially paid the tariffs are eligible to recover that money. That means that the fuller universe of people affected by Mr. Trump’s policies — including millions of Americans who paid higher prices for the products they bought — are not able to apply for direct relief.” NYT: Trump Administration Takes Steps to Refund $166 Billion in Tariffs. (Would corporations have even demanded these refunds a few months ago, before Trump’s polls weakened?)
+ Miracle on Ice: Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial. This is good news about mRNA, which provided a medical miracle with the Covid vaccine. So you have to wonder why Trump and RFK, Jr pulled $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccines. Of course, it’s more curious, and more dangerous, that these guys seem to hate vaccines in general. ProPublica: The Horrors That Could Lie Ahead if Vaccines Vanish. “If current rates drop by half, all four diseases could return.”
+ Shreveport Mass Shooting: “A man in Louisiana killed eight children Sunday in a shooting that authorities described as a domestic violence incident and was later killed by police after he fled in a carjacked vehicle.”
+ Mushroom Cloud: “Shares of psychedelic drug developers rose in premarket trading on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing health regulators to speed up reviews of psychedelic drugs and boosted federal research funding.” Joe Rogan was a big proponent of this and was there for the EO signing. Which is interesting, considering he’s been attacking Trump’s war. Trump is savaging allies who criticize the Iran war. But he’s treating Joe Rogan very differently. (There’s one war Trump will never lose: The ratings war.)
+ Bag of Tricks: “Every time you stood in a store in the 2010s and compared a JanSport to a North Face to an Eastpak, you were comparing three labels owned by the same parent corporation. Same earnings call. Same margin targets. Same quarterly pressure. The sense that you were choosing between competitors was a fiction that VF Corp had no incentive to correct.” Your Backpack Got Worse On Purpose.
+ Liquid Assets: “When asked about the past day’s beverage consumption, they found that 66% of all participants had coffee, more than the 64% who said they had bottled water. Tea, soda, and juice sat at 47%, 46%, and 26%, respectively.” Coffee More Popular Than Water, Says National Coffee Association. (Of course, without the water, I find that coffee to be a little dry.)
“Mark Lyall, who is an actual psychologist by trade, tried to psych his out competition out by donning a luchador mask and a T-shirt with the saying ‘don’t throw rock.’ ‘What I found was that statistically, most people throw rock, then people will throw paper,’ Lyall said. He was knocked out in the second round. But the most common strategy among the hundreds of players? No strategy at all.” Into the world of competitive rock, paper, scissors.
+ It’s 4-20. Time for your annual reminder that this proud tradition started at my high school. (Interestingly, 4:20 was also the time my childhood therapy sessions started on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.)
2026-04-17 20:00:00
The Strait of Hormuz seems to be open. The US blockade remains in place until a final deal is reached. Iran has agreed to never close the Strait again. And the US and Iran will work together to collect the country’s enriched uranium, which will then be brought to the US. Does that all sound too good to be true? Can we say with a strait face that we’re getting the strait skinny from a source not exactly known for being a strait shooter? It may take a little while to be sure (and months to hammer out a complete deal). And we’re getting some very different quotes about the negotiations from Iranian officials. As BBC reports: “The president’s optimism may end up well-founded. But if that turns out not to be the case, it wouldn’t be the first time his words have moved ahead of the reality on the ground.” (If his words meet reality, does that mean we’ve reached the singularity?) But for now, the market definitely wants to believe. Oil prices are down, stocks are up, and the ceasefire is holding. Here’s the latest from BBC, NBC, and The Guardian.
+ The war has cost the US lives, money, and international trust and status. So what will we get in exchange for that? Ultimately, for those dealing with reality on a regular basis, the outcome will be measured against what we already had. A few weeks ago, we had an open strait not being controlled by Iran. And a few years ago, we had a working nuclear agreement that was being constantly verified by international inspectors. Trump famously tore up the agreement that included this: “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop, or acquire any nuclear weapons.” (Maybe we should have fought this war with a roll of Scotch Tape.)
“Congress has voted to extend a controversial surveillance program until April 30. The extension, which first passed overnight in the House, came after GOP leaders failed to secure a five-year renewal, as well as an 18-month renewal President Trump had demanded. Both votes tanked.” Congress extends controversial surveillance powers for 10 days.
+ “We disagree on many issues. One of us is a longtime Democrat, the other a conservative Republican. But both of us are deeply concerned about warrantless government surveillance of the American people.” Mike Lee and Dick Durbin: We Disagree on a Lot. But We Know This Law Must Change.
+ If the law does change, it will be one of the few times in recent memory that we’ll be getting surveilled a little less. From police cameras to private security, we’re being tracked everywhere, all the time. Wired: The Shocking Secrets of Madison Square Garden’s Surveillance Machine. “Famously vengeful Knicks owner Jim Dolan has long spied on people at his iconic arenas. WIRED goes deep inside the operation that allegedly tracked a trans woman, lawyers, protesters, and more.”
+ And you’re almost certainly having your license plate being tracked by Flock. Privacy concerns have caused dozens of towns to stop using the technology, which is pretty amazing considering people will almost always choose personal security over privacy concerns. When Flock Cameras Appear: Everything You Need to Know About This Surveillance Tech.
A coalition of businesses called Seat the Table is “demanding that Congress and the White House create work permits for ‘long-term, law-abiding immigrants playing critical roles from farms to restaurants.'” Which radical, leftist, open-border-loving state are these people from? Texas. It turns out that immigrants are good for business. “‘I think the vast majority of Americans recognize that there is a large group of undocumented immigrants who have been literally keeping food on our tables,’ said Kelsey Erickson Streufert, the chief public affairs officer for the Texas trade group. ‘And if we remove those people, it is going to hurt everyone in terms of higher prices.'” Of course the vast majority of Americans realize this. But the vast majority of Americans aren’t running our current immigration strategy. NYT (Gift Article): Texas Restaurants Are Forcing a Reckoning Over Immigrant Labor.
What to Book: “Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives.” Both are well worth reading about. Kin by Tayari Jones is a great read.
+ What to Doc: The latest doc from the excellent Marshall Curry on Netflix explores the history of The New Yorker magazine as it hits the century mark. It’s a must-watch for anyone who digs the New Yorker, or magazines in general. It’s also a celebration of journalism.
+ What to Watch: “As Silicon Valley and its overlords veer into AI-fueled peak depravity, a would-be tech titan and his ethically challenged therapist try to find a fortune (and happiness) for themselves.” Audacity on AMC puts the tech industry on the therapist’s couch. In other words, there will be a lot to unravel. This new satire is off to a solid start.
Expanding the Gun Range: “In the last couple of years, a growing number of women and people of color have begun training with Mr. Mills. His clients are conservatives, moderates, liberals, and those who defy simple labels altogether. His star student is Eva, a former infantry soldier who appears at the range in pink stockings and painted nails.” More liberals are buying guns. Why? “L.A. Progressive Shooters, a gun-education group in Los Angeles that welcomes people regardless of their politics, has had to expand its increasingly sold-out training sessions. Another nationwide group based in Newton, Massachusetts, the Liberal Gun Club, saw its membership rise by 66%.” (When it comes to guns, everyone is in the target market. After the past week, the Pope will probably buy a Glock.)
+ Doge for Diplomats: “He has shocked its mainstream leaders, many of them with decades of experience in diplomacy, by accusing them of stifling freedom and by frequently meeting with and promoting their hard-line challengers. He is just five years out of college, and he has repeatedly advocated an approach that overturns three generations of American diplomatic orthodoxy.” NYT (Gift Article): The 27-Year-Old Diplomat Waging Trump’s Cultural War With Europe.
+ Life is But a Stream: “In the past, all you needed to watch your favorite NFL team every Sunday was access to local television channels. That can still work these days, but only if you live in that team’s particular city … as long as that team isn’t playing in a prime-time, nationally televised game … or if that team wasn’t selected to play one of the games on the various streaming services.” Sports is one of the few things that still brings us together. (If you’re a subscriber…) U.S. senator to introduce bill aimed at ending sports blackouts.
+ This Must Be Replace: “It’s like the Uber of advanced AI training: a gig-work platform for white-collar and skilled professionals that offers a path for them to earn something extra from their expertise—at the risk of eventually sacrificing their careers to AI.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): Mercor is promising to replicate most professional work. It was also co-founded by twentysomethings who previously never held a real job. (Back in my day, if you couldn’t qualify for an actual job, you launched a newsletter.)
+ No Ethics Allowed: “The Justice Department has removed the career Miami federal prosecutor leading the investigation into John Brennan, after she resisted pressure to quickly bring charges.”
+ Shots Across the Bow: “The woman, who fell and injured herself, said in a lawsuit that bartenders had been negligent for serving her while she was visibly intoxicated.” Woman Who Took 15 Tequila Shots on Carnival Cruise Gets $300,000 in Damages. (With that kind of consumption, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she quoted Pulp Fiction as bible scripture…)
“Scientists are often advised to explain their work in terms that a child can understand—a task that is particularly challenging when it comes to such complex topics as quantum mechanics. It’s easier when the interviewer is an actual child, like 9-year-old Kai, aka the Quantum Kid.”
+ NYT (Gift Article): The Hit Erotica Writers Outwitting Nigeria’s Religious Censors. “His Majesty’s great staff is what impresses you all.” (And no, that’s not a line from one of Trump’s cabinet meetings.)
+ Woman, 96, enlists 150-pound dog to plant spring flowers: She points, he digs. (My beagles must be pretty well trained. They dig without me pointing. Even if I stay, “stop digging,” they dig.)
+ “There are few things to know about this historic game: there are no rules, no boundaries, no time limits and no referee.” Uppies and Downies, the medieval football game that has no rules and no time limit.
+ “Chinese carmaker Seres has been granted a patent for what it calls an ‘in-vehicle toilet‘ that slides under a passenger’s seat for visits to the loo while on the road.” (I may finally say yes to going on that road trip…)