2026-08-07 20:00:00
In a lot of ways, the Reflecting Pool story is a reflection of everything Trump. The pattern goes something like this. Step one, make a bold promise to fix something not too many people actually see as a pressing problem. Step two, hire unqualified associates from the wrong end of the gene pool to fix the problem. Step three, fail to fix the problem. Step four, make the problem worse. Step five, blame your enemies for the problem you created. Step six, deploy your corrupted prosecutors to bring laughable charges against these imaginary criminals. Step eight, blame those Trumped-up, fabricated charges being dropped on the prosecutors who couldn’t make your lies stick, and continue to blame the imaginary criminals. Bonus step: sit back as the media and the country obsess over your reflection in the reflecting pool, which ultimately distracts from much bigger and more dangerous failures. NYT (Gift Article): How the Reflecting Pool Came to Mirror Trump’s Washington. “Many of the details of the saga are reported in this article for the first time [and show] the second Trump administration’s willingness to skirt laws, expend millions of dollars, ignore facts and punish truth tellers in service of the president’s demands to put his mark on the capital.” This is an everyone (and everything) in the pool story, from hiring guys who run Trump’s hospitality businesses to being stung by tariffs that made the products needed for the fix unavailable. Is it any wonder that in an age defined by malignant narcissism that a pool designed to reflect the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument ended up reflecting Trumpism?
+ Politico: Trump says voters are mad at other Republicans, not him, as midterms approach.
+ That’s all I’ve got for today’s lead. I’m still spent from yesterday’s coverage of America’s munition shortfall. Hegseth Blows His Load. “Hegseth whipped out the nation’s most powerful conventional weapons and sprayed ammo all over the Middle East. He and his boss announced climactic victory multiple times. But it turned out this was a case of premature obliteration.” (Yes, this story is a much more serious version of the one above. And yes, we probably would be better off if Trump had appointed his pool guy as defense secretary.)
Here’s one lead paragraph that defines the promise and peril of AI — and confirms yet again why we need a lot more regulations and guardrails than we’re gonna get. “For the first time, scientists have used artificial intelligence to create new kinds of viruses, raising hopes for medical advances while also raising the disturbing possibility that the technology could someday be used to invent dangerous pathogens.” Carl Zimmer in the NYT (Gift Article): This A.I. Just Created Viruses Not Found in Nature.
The SF Giants have lost a lot this season, but no loss will be felt like this one. Mike Krukow provided the background soundtrack to our lives. He called the games, but he also called us — providing color commentary on the fans that was every bit as important and enjoyable as the details about what was happening on the field. Even if you don’t know who Krukow is or you’re not a baseball fan, you’ll be able to relate to our impending feeling of loss. The excellent Grant Brisbee on an era-ending announcement that reverberated around an entire region. Mike Krukow’s retirement is going to take a long time for Giants fans to process. “Krukow is, of course, more of a regional treasure than an international one, but he is still in that invitation-only class of the universally beloved. The common connection and through line … is that they radiate joy with everything they do. They somehow found exactly what they wanted to do on this planet and, guess what, it’s exactly what we want them to be doing. It becomes a positive feedback loop that never ends, and there’s never a downside, never a hidden cost. All they put out into the world is something that makes your life better, and in return, all they ask is for the ability to keep doing it. They should get a pass from the physical realities of the world … They do not get a pass from the physical realities of the world.”
What to Book: Publishers Weekly wrote of Ann Patchett’s latest novel, Whistler, “Like many of Patchett’s works, this beautiful and generous novel feels effortless, never straining for effect.” Reading it feels effortless as well. Such smooth writing. Great stuff.
+ What to Noodle: It’s not the engineering marvel that is bucatini, nor does it have the seasonal flair of racchette, but DeCecco’s Squared Spaghetti no. 413 is a pasta shape that will make you a dinner party star.
+ What to Stream: My wife and I took our kids to their first Outside Lands Music Festival. Now they go with their friends, and we’re not allowed to attend because of the very real risk of us (ok, me) cramping their style. But it’s a win-win, because I prefer outdoor music festivals when they’re streamed to my living room. Watch Outside Lands on Prime.
Meanwhile, Back at the Blanche: “Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, said on Friday that he would support Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general, effectively saving the confirmation of President Trump’s pick after two other Republican senators said they would oppose him.” Surprise, surprise…
+ E-War: “They used to call this kind of thing a war crime. But somewhat suddenly, it has become a nearly universal feature of 21st-century conflict.” Until recently, attacking civilian energy infrastructure was unacceptable. The dynamics of modern war have changed that.
+ Tourist Trap: “On Thursday, the president signed two executive orders, this time taking a more narrow focus on so-called ‘birth tourism.'” (If he keeps flouting the courts and the constitution, we may not have any tourism at all.) Trump signs new orders targeting birthright citizenship, weeks after SCOTUS ruling.
+ Total Burn: “Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people abroad who need it.” (The metaphor just writes, and then burns, itself.) The Trump Administration Is About to Incinerate 500 Tons of Emergency Food.
+ Cam Slam: “Officers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will be equipped with much-delayed body cameras by the end of next month, it was reported on Friday. But experts have questioned the transparency of a policy that allows the ICE director to restrict the public release of footage unless ‘it is in the best interests of the agency.'”
+ Betting Your Life: “Billions of dollars are traded every week on the lightly regulated prediction market sites, where users bet on everything from movie reviews to elections to conflicts in the Middle East. Clinical trials are just the latest area where the industry’s rapid growth is raising ethical questions.” Kalshi and Polymarket bets on clinical trials criticized as ghastly. (They’re also a sign that the prediction players are looking to challenge the stock market, where people essentially place bets on clinical trials every day.)
+ Shit Happens: “Zendaya’s angelic strapless gown with feathered white wings was the work of Matières Fécales — yes, in English, Fecal Matter — the Paris-based, high-end fashion house founded in Montreal over a decade ago that’s, seemingly suddenly, everywhere.” Talk about the perfect attire for the moment. Why celebrities from Zendaya to Kylie Jenner are wearing Fecal Matter.
“It took about 30 seconds after regular play-by-play announcer Scott Franzke introduced him for Kalb to settle in.” A retiree won an auction to join the Phillies’ radio booth — and crushed it.
+ Plug-In Solar Panels Are Starting to Sprout in U.S. Backyards.
+ Virginia teens at golf tryouts rescue family from drowning and then make squad.
+ This high schooler invented a plant-based plastic that removes microplastics from the environment as it biodegrades.
+ “Mom Leah Farrow posted on Facebook about her son Soren, who has autism, and how much he loves trick-or-treating, asking if anyone would be open to volunteering to offer Soren the chance to trick-or-treat at their home in the middle of summer. To her surprise, 83 families answered the call.”
+ “DuckDuckGo, the free, independent web browser with the quaint logo of a waterfowl wearing a bow tie, just took a swing at big tech through a satirical stunt marketing campaign directly targeting AI-powered smart glasses. Last week, the company announced the release of its state-of-the-art ‘anti-surveillance sunglasses’ — also known as, well, ‘Normal F***ing Sunglasses.'”
+ Maybe I should have told you at the outset just to skip all the news and get right into these photos of dogs surfing.
2026-08-06 20:00:00
You knew that replacing all the qualified people with those less endowed with talent in the country’s most important roles probably wasn’t going to go well. But in the back of your mind, you hoped someone like Pete Hegseth could keep it in his pants long enough for American history to limp toward a safer era. But no luck. He started a war he was convinced would be as easy as dropping some seamen from their fishing boats. But this nut proved harder to crack. War is harder than it looks. Hegseth whipped out the nation’s most powerful conventional weapons and sprayed ammo all over the Middle East. He and his boss announced climactic victory multiple times. But it turned out this was a case of premature obliteration. Emission accomplished. Mission, not so much. The discharge was dishonorable. And thus we find the world’s most powerful military in a state few of us imagined prior to this administration. We have a surplus of testosterone, but a shortage of weapons. The launchers are erect, but the defense secretary has them shooting blanks. The incompetence is, in a word, lethal.
+ As you might imagine, Hegseth’s boss is going ballistic. “President Donald Trump’s frustration over the Iran war boiled over at Camp David last week, where he demanded answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on why he had apparently been misled on extreme munitions shortages that now threaten to limit military options with Iran.”WaPo (Gift Article): Trump, Hegseth clashed at Camp David over Iran missile depletion concerns. “The president asserted overnight that the United States has ‘massive amounts’ of munitions, saying in a post on Truth Social that ‘large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed.’ The “‘leakers’ of these treasonous statements are being hunted down.” (“Massive.” “Large.” If I didn’t know better, I’d think someone was compensating for something.)
+ Let’s hope this is an exception when it comes to Trump’s proclamations and that it’s true that we have massive amounts of munitions, because the reported shortage isn’t just impacting Iran. It’s endangering Ukraine and emboldening our enemies around the world. The Atlantic (Gift Article): How the U.S. Squandered Its Strategic Advantage. “The United States is running out of missiles. After five months of war with Iran, stockpiles of long-range weapons are so low, current and former U.S. defense officials told us, that they don’t believe the U.S. has enough to combat a threat in Asia. The remaining supplies, depending on the munition, are as low as 20 percent of what the Pentagon would like to have in hand. And stores of sophisticated interceptor missiles, such as Patriots and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missiles, are too depleted to give or sell the weapons to Ukraine or effectively defend against Iran’s launch of ballistic missiles. Even when troops see Iranian missiles approaching, they are forced to decide in a matter of seconds whether to expend a limited number of interceptors or hope for the best.” (That’s what the rest of us have been doing since Trump and Hegseth took over.)
There’s something in the air. And there’s going to be a lot more of it if you live in the vicinity of one of the many natural gas-powered AI data centers being built (often without public input). “If built as planned, the gas burning plants — scattered across states including Texas, Ohio and Wyoming — could release as much planet-warming pollution in a year as roughly half of all the passenger vehicles in the United States, according to estimates based on permits, regulatory filings and other data compiled by the Environmental Integrity Project. They would also produce harmful pollutants including particulate matter, formaldehyde and smog-forming nitrogen oxides that can contribute to heart disease, asthma, lung cancer, strokes and other ailments in people living nearby.” NYT (Gift Article): Trump’s Vision for A.I. Dominance Comes With Major Air Pollution.
+ “Data centers like Stargate, along with their accompanying power plants, are proliferating across the country, helping to satisfy an immense demand for artificial intelligence. And despite lofty promises to fuel data centers with renewable energy, data shows AI companies are mostly relying on gas to satisfy their insatiable energy demands. Nationwide, nearly 60 data centers are planning to build their own gas plants to avoid connecting to the grid.” The Texas Tribune: Planned Texas data centers could emit more greenhouse gases than many countries.
“Thursday’s vote was along party lines, and came after Fauci refused to answer lawmakers’ questions in a hearing last week about the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, citing his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.” Senate Homeland Security committee votes to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress. They’ve ignored the rest of the Constitution. Why not the Fifth Amendement…
From Malta to Yalta, watch my tax returns alta… From the NYT (Gift Article): How Malta Became a Tax Haven for Crocs and Other U.S. Companies. “Consider Crocs. One of the world’s most profitable shoemakers sells its signature chunky clogs to 150 million customers across 100 countries annually. Yet, come tax season, the Broomfield, Colo., company has claimed that all its global profits were actually earned in this two-person office. Welcome to Malta. The tiniest country in the European Union, with roughly the population of Milwaukee, it is home to turquoise water beaches and a raging nightclub scene. It is also the world’s hot new corporate tax haven.” (For those not in a position to appoint an attorney general, this is one way to lower a tax bill.)
One Flu Over the Cuckoos’s Nest: “The approval of the vaccine, called mFLUSIVA, which is manufactured by Moderna, follows a series of blows to mRNA research directed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., including the cancellation of 22 projects meant to develop vaccines with mRNA technology.” FDA Approves Moderna’s mRNA Flu Vaccine.
+ Rare Conditioning: “The recurring power outages combined with the stifling heat have created collective insomnia on the island as residents struggle to get through the night. While some like Ríos García have slept on the boulevard, others struggle to get some rest on balconies and front porches. The day of the latest blackout on Sunday, the temperature hit 93 degrees Fahrenheit (34 Celsius), but ended up feeling like 106 F when combined with the Caribbean’s 80% humidity levels.” Cubans sleep on seaside boardwalk to seek relief from crippling blackouts.
+ FCC No Evil: “The change, if not stopped by courts, will make it easier for Carr to allow broadcast mergers that result in more favorable news coverage for President Trump. Carr has consistently threatened to revoke licenses from broadcasters who have drawn Trump’s ire, including by ordering an early license review of all ABC-owned stations.” FCC kills TV ownership cap, claiming authority over limit set by Congress.
+ Alphabet Order: “In the AI industry, Google prides itself on seeming like the adult in the room: quiet, stable, time-tested. On Wednesday, even as the company announced its largest AI org shakeup yet, Google and its leaders presented a unified front, keeping their messaging focused on how the changes tee up future success. But the reality is that the laundry list of executive changes likely signal deeper issues within Google’s AI organization.” The Verge on the messy politics behind Google’s big AI shakeup.
+ Trade Association: “Surging retail trading isn’t just transforming markets; it’s also highly correlated with demoralization in young men, according to a new study.” Some 64% of Young Men Day Trading Stocks Feel Like Failures. “The findings were strikingly similar to outcomes among men who gamble.”
+ Offline Retaylor: “Just a month before Taylor Fresh Foods began grappling with a sweeping multi-state lettuce recall, the Salinas-based company filed a civil lawsuit against one of its former presidents and his wife, accusing the couple of a yearslong, $32 million embezzlement operation.” These folks spent a lot of lettuce.
+ The Ultimate Jiving Machine: “Starting last week, BMW started blasting a promotion for the new Spider-Man movie into its customers’ cars without warning — because nothing says riding in luxury like a full-vehicle pop-up ad.”
A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava. It runs surprisingly far every night. (I tried this with my beagles and my Strava ranking actually went down…)
2026-08-05 20:00:00
In addition to the potential geopolitical and world order shifts that are happening in wars from the Middle East to Ukraine, there’s something else even more fundamental taking place. Drones and AI are reshaping modern warfare. We’ve seen this in the way Ukraine has been able to hold off Russian advances, and Iran has been able to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz. And, of course, the drones are being used by all sides. But this isn’t just a story about new weapons, it’s a story about autonomous machines hunting humans. For most of us, the major concerns about AI and the rise of autonomous machines consist of ChatGPT replacing our jobs or a malfunctioning Waymo creating a traffic jam. The issue was a little more pressing this week for a Ukrainian named Yuri, who runs a vegetable stall in Kherson. He heard a buzzing sound and looked up to find he was being followed by a drone. He pointed to his vegetables to let someone (assuming there was anyone) on the other side of the drone know he wasn’t a combatant. “The drone kept following him. Police footage shows it chasing Yuri around his truck. He hides under the umbrella that covers the stand, runs from one side to the other, gestures at the vegetables. Then the drone dives beside him and explodes. Miraculously, Yuri survived, with just cuts and a concussion. [But] the experience of being chased by a murderous kamikaze drone, a flying machine that behaves as if it were alive, is not one that humans are equipped to understand. Premodern fanatics used to hallucinate flying devils. But few modern civilians have been chased by mechanized flying objects. Unless they live in or around Kherson.” Nothing can prey on one’s mind like being prey. Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Putin’s Human Safari Is the Dystopian Future of War. (It could also be the future of border patrol, law enforcement, criminal activity, and more, depending on what humans decide now, and the machines decide later.) “Drones with capabilities like the ones that hit Yuri originally offered a humanitarian advantage, allowing their operators to avoid civilian casualties. Because they have cameras, the remote operator can see whether the target is really a soldier or military object, and call off the drone if it is not. But as with all technologies, the purpose can be radically altered by the users. Instead of avoiding civilians, Russian operators can now target them, as if playing a video game.”
+ “During testing by a U.K. government-backed research group, OpenAI and Anthropic systems took unsanctioned actions and behaved deceptively.” AI Just Went Rogue Again. This Time It Turned to Deception. (Let’s hope it has a soft spot for vegetable salesmen…)
Caring for an older relative in the home can be a challenge under any circumstances. Even more so when you have algebra homework that’s due. It turns out that children caring for the ill is very common in the United States, and it’s becoming even more common given demographic shifts and the state of the health care industry. “Members of the baby boom generation are aging into the years when they are likely to need daily assistance at home, while increased housing costs are packing more families into multigenerational homes. The health care system is adding to these pressures. Financial incentives are shortening hospital stays, and services that used to be provided on the wards are left to those at home.” NYT Mag (Gift Article): The U.S. Relies on Family Caregivers. Millions of Them Are Kids.
Sam Altman shared a parenting idea on social media the other day. “cool use case of chatgpt work i heard last night: connect your family calendars and explain your kids’ interests. every morning for the drive to school, have it make a podcast that talks about one kid’s soccer game that afternoon, one kid’s upcoming birthday, some news, etc.” Most of the responses were like the one from TV creator Alex Hirsch, who asked: “What if you just talked to your children?” My son was born around the same time as the iPhone and thus has never had my full attention, so I’m hardly one to judge one’s parenting in the tech age. But this exchange points to something else: Just how bad many AI executives are at marketing their own products. And just how differently they view the world than the rest of us.
+ That won’t slow them down, however. AI-powered Alpha Schools expands to 50 campuses. (I need to figure out a way to code a podcast that can tell me what my kids think of this.)
“Matt Walker couldn’t pet a dog without sneezing — until he and other scientists used a gene editing technique to produce a hypoallergenic beagle named Bailey. Now, he can feed Bailey spoons of peanut butter while she lies on his lap and play fetch with her in Central Park. His allergies didn’t go away: Bailey’s saliva and hair no longer contain a key allergy-causing protein.” Gene-edited beagles may offer a future option for people with dog allergies. (My beagles are named Pumpernickel and Rye, so the only allergy they trigger is gluten.)
+ Somehow, this event took place sans gene editing. Scenes From the 2026 Dog Surfing Championships.
To The Left, To The Left: “Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive former public health official, won a razor-thin victory in the Democratic primary for Senate in Michigan that serves as the most significant triumph for his party’s left wing this year.” The Left Wins a Nail-Biter in Michigan: 8 Takeaways From Tuesday’s Primaries.
+ Waterways and Means: “By asserting authority over a critical waterway for global crude-oil flows, Tehran is betting that its ability to inflict pain on the American economy is its best leverage to avoid future military action from the U.S. and Israel. With gasoline prices and inflation elevated, Tehran believes Trump will ultimately accept its terms ahead of fast-approaching midterm elections that could determine the future of his presidency.” WSJ (Gift Article): Iran Is Staking Everything on Controlling the Strait of Hormuz. And from Reuters: Proposed Hormuz deal would give Iran control of inbound traffic.
+ Stirring Crazy: “The war in Iran, however, has shown that Trump’s inability to perceive reality has become truly dangerous. He led the United States into a disastrous conflict because he thought his ‘gut’ was smarter than the advisers who warned him that deposing Iran’s regime was unlikely. He continues to mislead the American people, and perhaps himself, about America’s strategic defeat at the hands of one of its worst enemies. The world economy and the balance of power have been changed, perhaps for many decades to come, because Trump cannot draw links between cause and effect; he does not understand that his actions and the failures that follow are somehow related to each other.” Tom Nichols in The Atlantic (Gift Article) with a message that seems self-evident, but bears repeating. Trump’s Irrationality Is Dangerous.
+ Dis Service: “Trump’s immigration crackdown has detained more than 50 military spouses and parents.” (Feel safer?)
+ Miner Details: “Respiratory therapist Marcy Freeman doesn’t need a research study to confirm for her a return to the dark days of coal mining. She finds evidence in a stack of more than 150 funeral programs.” Black lung rates in Appalachia are as high as the 1970s.
+ The Clark of History: For many of us, sports is an escape, the last refuge from the onslaught of political news. Not so for Caitlyn Clark. Caitlin Clark just wants to shut up and dribble.
+ The Spark of History: “The county’s fire department said the blaze, which killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 buildings, was started by electrical sparks coming off the tower, according to a joint investigation by the department and Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency. The tower was out of service at the time.” Officials Say They’ve Found the Cause of a Fire That Devastated L.A.
+ The Humanity of Animals: NYT (Gift Article): Dolphin Carries Dead Calf in What Experts Call Grieving. (I don’t think one needs to be an expert to call it that.)
+ Flipping the Berg: Oh nothing. Just a Massive Iceberg Collapsing and Flipping Over in Ilulissat, Greenland.
“‘When you start eating healthy, you don’t need toilet paper,’ he claimed. ‘Animals in the wild have no residual stool on their anus.’ He described a proper bowel movement to me this way: odorless, wipe-free, over in three to seven seconds and ‘nearly orgasmic … I could have a bowel movement behind a sheet at a dinner party in the corner of the room,’ he said, ‘and nobody would know.'” A reporter gets some dietary advice from the guy who gives it to several members of the Trump cabinet. (If this interview was his way of not getting invited to dinner parties, I’m guessing it will work.) The Most Powerful Men in America Are Eating Only Steak and Sauerkraut. Could I?
2026-08-04 20:00:00
As pioneering as I’ve been when it comes to newsletter writing (I think I sent my first edition about 45 minutes after email was introduced), it turns out I was even more ahead of my time when it comes to dating prowess. I had none; no prowess, no game, no romantic skills, no nothing. In other words, I’d fit right into today’s social environment in which all signs point to fewer young people finding love. The trend has resulted in a budding industry dedicated to helping people connect in real life. Faith Hill attended one organized event aimed at un-dooming modern romance, and it went something like this: “About 90 seconds into a three-minute hug with a stranger, I began to think that dying alone might not be so bad after all. I’d come to a candlelit loft in Manhattan for a ‘mindful singles event’ called The Feels, which was designed to be the opposite of the disembodied experience of dating apps. Participants, phones tucked away, paired up and attempted a series of ‘somatic awareness’ exercises, including staring into each other’s eyes, hugging, and holding a hand over each other’s heart.” (While I eventually got to first base, second base, and onward, I don’t think I got to “somatic awareness” until I’d been married for at least a decade). Hill explores the challenges and some of the pitched solutions (to the extent people actually want them) in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Great Romance Slump. “I interviewed dozens of researchers and single people across the country, endured a series of curious but fruitless dating events, and bravely subjected myself to some actual dates. The romance slump, I found, is a product of broader trends: souring gender relations, a transformed economy, the unevenness of social progress, and technology that both connects and isolates us. Millions of individual heartaches are rewriting the love story we’ve told ourselves for centuries.”
“The Democratic Party’s problems remain very real, but for the moment, Trump and the GOP have more serious ones. The most glaring one is Trump’s deep personal unpopularity. In the current polarized and dyspeptic political environment, all presidents seem to be unpopular, but Trump is in a different league. A CNN poll released last week measured Trump at 34 percent support, matching the low he reached in that poll following the January 6 insurrection. Still, that was better than his showing in the AP-NORC survey, which found his approval at 33 percent, just one point above a 2017 low. Quinnipiac University found Trump at 32 percent, the lowest ever in that poll.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): Americans Are Turning on Trump.
+ Those are the challenges Trump faces at home. There are other ones abroad. WaPo (Gift Article): Trump keeps making threats. The world has stopped flinching. “The flabbergasting threats keep piling up — to weaponize trade, annex Canada, seize Greenland, abandon NATO, annihilate Iran — but the alarm bells have gone quiet.”
+ But don’t be fooled. Trump’s support is still ironclad among one very important constituency. Elected GOP officials. They still seem willing to back just about anything Trump wants — from a failing war with no strategy to this: Todd Blanche advances toward confirmation.
+ “This is the same Justice Department that has made so many misrepresentations and false statements in court over the last year and a half that judges are openly questioning whether its lawyers can be trusted. Despite all of that, Todd Blanche’s word is good enough for the senator whom Trump all but ousted by endorsing his Republican primary opponent.” Joyce Vance: The $1.776b Slush Fund Isn’t As Dead as Senators Cornyn and Tillis Seem to Be Willing to Believe. We know the deal is a joke. And we knew they’d agree to it anyway. As I wrote yesterday, the writing was on the wall, as surely as the seashells were arranged on the beach.
+ Aside from weaponization and the enablement of Trump’s lawlessness, what can we expect from Blanche’s tenure? For one thing… Blanche Privately Vows to Take Down Abortion Rights Next. “We don’t have complete victory yet, but we will have victory, and victory will be soon, and it will be permanent. If states have said, ‘We are going to protect the unborn and we’re going to protect every life from the moment of conception,’ we’re putting practices and policies in place so that other states and other organizations can’t attack that. They can’t do things like they’re doing with mailing in mail-order drugs.”
Ever feel like you get treated like dirt in life? Well, now you can have the same experience in death. Maryland is now the nation’s capital of human composting. “Human composting is a roughly month-long process that turns humans into nutrient rich dirt using bacteria, fungi and mulch. In the end, about three hundred pounds of soil is left over. Bones are pulverized and added to the soil and then some or all of it is given back to the family or placed in land conservation projects to help plants grow.” (I knew I’d eventually develop a green thumb.)
“Nestled off a short dirt road in the Adirondack Mountains, just beyond the reach of cellular service, lies Trout Lake. Overlooking the water is a cabin owned by 48-year-old Hollywood stuntman Tom Place, something of a local legend, known more in this small Upstate New York community for his weekend recreational activities than his formidable IMDb credits he’s racked up as a Hollywood stuntman. Because for many years now, Place has been routinely diving beneath the lake’s surface in search of something he lost more than three decades ago: his Rolex Submariner.” GQ: His Rolex Submariner Fell Into a Lake 30 Years Ago. He’s Still Diving for It.
+ Might be time from Tom to re-watch this classic scene from Midnight Run.
Our Own Worst Enemy? “The dramatic rundown in precision, long-range missiles means U.S. President Donald Trump may have to rely more on riskier, piloted bombing missions if he relaunches large-scale attacks on Iran.” There are a lot of reasons for Trump to want to halt the Iran war. This is one of them. US has used ‘virtually all’ of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war, sources say. Meanwhile, “Iran and Oman have made progress toward a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a potential breakthrough that could help end the war in the Middle East.” Here’s the latest from The Guardian.
+ Worse for Wear: “Her driver had already pleaded guilty in criminal court to raping her vaginally, anally and orally while she was unconscious during a ride in Tampa one night in 2021. He was in prison, serving a 10-year sentence … [Now] Uber’s lawyer Taylor Silverberg zeroed in on Ms. Doe’s behavior on the night she was raped. Ms. Silverberg asked Ms. Doe exactly how much Tito’s vodka she had drunk, how many milligrams of Adderall she had taken and whether she had ‘felt regret’ about mixing the two. And she asked Ms. Doe what she had been wearing. ‘Can you describe the dress?’ Ms. Silverberg said. ‘Were you wearing heels or boots or flats?'” NYT (Gift Article): Uber’s Strategy for Fighting Sexual Assault Suits: ‘What Were You Wearing?’
+ Antisocial Media: “To unmask anonymous online critics, DHS has sent hundreds of subpoenas to social-media companies, according to people familiar with the matter. Its agents have tracked down Americans at work and on the road, asking them to sign letters acknowledging their online speech about ICE ‘may’ be a crime.” WSJ (Gift Article): How ICE Is Weaponizing Social Media Against Its Critics.
+ Strait Up Profiteering: “Chevron reported its highest ever quarterly profit of $12.2bn, a fivefold increase on the same period last year. ExxonMobil reported a profit of $14.5bn in the second quarter, double what it made in the same period a year ago and its highest quarterly profit since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.” Oil companies are making so much money during the Iran war, even Trump is complaining about it.
+ You May Have Already Qualified: “As the number of high school seniors declines, more schools are shifting tactics and moving away from an ivory tower mentality to navigate the demographic cliff.” It’s not just about easing the admission process. It’s about admitting people before they even apply. Bloomberg (Gift Article): You’re In: Private Colleges Admit More Students Who Didn’t Apply.
+ A Goliath Named David: I’m against the Paramount/Warner merger. David Ellison in the NYT (Gift Article) makes his case, saying none of this is about market share. “The issue is whether I can be trusted as a steward of Warner’s CNN.” OK, then I’m really, really against the Paramount/Warner merger…
+ All Roads Lead to Country: “For the first time in history, country songs are claiming all five of the top five slots on the Hot 100.”
Think our politics are weird? “When 102 senators were sworn in for Colombia’s latest parliamentary session, they included 32 women, 69 men – and one cartoon elephant.”
+ A man who spent 550 Euros on a huge tattoo declaring England as World Cup 2026 winners has returned to the parlor to add the phrase ‘just joking!’ (Too bad we can’t just add that phrase to all of 2026.)
2026-08-03 20:00:00
Benjamin Franklin famously proclaimed, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Well, at least we still have death. For a few days, it seemed like there was a small chance that a couple of GOP holdouts would prevent America from having to suffer the Justice Department-corrupting Todd Blanche as Attorney General, but as one highly-regarded political analyst explained, “It’s worth noting that the GOP holdouts almost always fold, and the worst-case scenario almost always wins out.” And so it went. The writing was on the wall, as surely as the seashells were arranged on the beach. And here we are with a headline that it wouldn’t take a predictive market to predict: Republican Holdouts Say They Now Support Blanche Nomination. In exchange for the support, Blanche posted two documents, one saying the anti-weaponization fund is dead and another that limits the scope of the IRS protections given to Trump and his family. Neither proclamation qualifies as Todd’s gift to the world. As the NYT (Gift Article) explains: “Even in its new form, Mr. Blanche’s order for the I.R.S. to abandon any audits of Mr. Trump’s previous tax returns is an unprecedented and potentially illegal benefit to a sitting president, worth potentially tens of millions of dollars in lower taxes and avoided penalties.” And you can expect a newly-empowered Blanche to bring back some form of the weaponization fund and re-expand the IRS deal for the Trumps. And the GOP members who backed the Blanche confirmation will feign disbelief. Ben Franklin isn’t around, so you’ll have to take my word for it: During this era, these are the most certain things of all.
We need to talk about the invasion into Ceuta. Not the one made up of migrants. The one made up of far right politicians looking to capitalize on the events of last week. Far-Right Leaders Descend on Ceuta, Angering Residents. One has to wonder what the connection is between the far right movement (from Europe to the US) and the events in the Spanish territory that seemed to fit so perfectly into their narrative. As Anne Applebaum explains in The Atlantic (Gift Article): We’ve seen this before. “So closely did this incident resemble the ‘invasion’ that MAGA and its European friends have long said is under way that it was hard not to suspect that it had been orchestrated … Surprised by the unprecedented numbers and perhaps fearing hundreds would drown—in the end, at least 70 people died in the water, including some children—the Spanish police let them land on the beach. This is when the photographs and videos began to circulate. Among those promoting them were senior members of the Trump administration, and senior leaders of the European far right … It remains unclear who created the viral posts that encouraged the would-be migrants to believe that they could get to Europe from Ceuta. But those who want to weaken the Spanish government, boost the European far right, and create turmoil inside the EU lost little time in promoting the photographs as soon as they arrived.”
+ Even if we’ve seen this kind of messaging before, it’s being received more enthusiastically and by more people than it has in decades. NYT (Gift Article): Europe’s Far Right, Once Marginal, Now Sets Tone on Spain Migrant Crisis.
Phillips Payson O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Why Is the U.S. Running So Low on Weapons? “The munitions shortfall doesn’t just affect the current war. It also sends a worrisome message to allies around the world: The United States has been caught off guard by the latest evolution of warfare and lacks the armaments-production capacity to adapt quickly. Suddenly, relying on American military technology looks far less reliable as a security strategy than it did before President Trump went to war with Iran. And in the long run, governments that counted on the United States to equip their military are going to need a Plan B.”
+ Our allies need a Plan B. Our enemy already found one. “Iran’s leadership believes it has found the world’s Achilles’ heel. With the help of regional militia allies, Tehran spent the past week underscoring its ability to threaten several of the world’s most critical energy facilities and waterways.” For Iran, Trump’s Reversal on Escalation Shows Who Has the Upper Hand.
+ Iran says it is in talks with Oman but not the US after Trump says negotiations to resume.
“Larry Cox and his two sons run Coastline Family Farms, which supplies leafy greens to some of the country’s biggest restaurant chains and grocery stores. But this week, in the region known as America’s Salad Bowl, around 300,000 pounds of his romaine hearts were chopped and plowed back into the soil.” No produce grown in the US has been linked to cyclospora, but from farms to restaurants, the salad days have been tossed. WSJ (Gift Article): California Lettuce Growers Skip Harvest, Plow Their Crops Back Into the Ground.
+ And things could get worse. Michigan reports 2 deaths in cyclosporiasis outbreak.
Our Own Worst Enemy? “For the moment, China’s rulers have avoided overtly antagonizing America, because they believe that, even in decline, it remains uniquely dangerous. After Trump’s interventions in Venezuela and Iran, and his threats to Canada and Greenland, the Beijing Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, wrote that the U.S. was ‘dragging the world back to a dark age of plunder and division through superior military might.’ But that bluster obscures a colder calculation: Chinese leaders believe that Trump’s struggle to dominate the world is actually aiding China.” Evan Osnos in The New Yorker: The Future, Made in China.
+ A Flock of Shit: “Bakely, 50, began to feel like she was constantly being watched. She says she installed three cameras around her home and on her patio, to see if he was staking out her cul-de-sac. She bought a hidden-camera detector and nervously waved it down every wall. Three times, in desperation, she says she drove her Kia to a mechanic’s shop, asking them to scan for trackers on her car.” How rogue officers turned a nationwide camera network into a tool for stalking. Plus, A Texas deputy searched 83,000 flock cameras to track down a woman who had an abortion. And, Flock cameras are getting mobbed.
+ Shallow End of the Gene Pool: “President Donald Trump on Saturday sharply criticized U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s assessment that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was the result of shoddy construction and not the work of vandals, as he claims.” Pirro told the truth. Her days are numbered.
+ Snapped: “Even before the most drastic changes take effect, more than 4 million people are estimated to have already lost the critical food aid between last July and April — many of whom are children.” NPR: Over 4 million people are no longer receiving food aid amid sweeping changes to SNAP. Meanwhile, on the other end of the food chain… Trump Media’s paid data feed giving Wall Street faster access to Trump’s posts is now live.
+ Dear Gianni Letter: “FIFA is not moving forward with a controversial plan to allow private investors to purchase a stake in the World Cup, according to a statement from FIFA president Gianni Infantino.” (The blood is in the water in one of the world’s most cutthroat organizations. Seems highly likely that Infantino loses his job along with this debate.)
+ Screen Shots: “A powerful one-two punch from ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ and ‘The Odyssey’ has fueled the biggest collective weekend in box office history.”
+ Rolling With the Oldies: “Curmudgeonly roadblocks or the last beacons of sanity? These car owners disable alarms and reconfigure dashboards in search of low-tech bliss.” These Drivers Are Taking Extreme Measures to Avoid New Car Technology. (I’ll keep the new tech. But bring back the knobs!)
“Steven Clark had the unpleasant task of firing a 24-year-old—twice. Once was in a brief conversation with the new hire, who’d showed up late or not at all four times in his first week at a construction job. Then Clark had to do it all over again, this time with the guy’s mother.” Helicopter parents are co-piloting their adult children’s careers. “More parents are calling up hiring managers, applying for jobs on their adult child’s behalf, and even showing up—or lurking just off-screen—on Zoom calls to help navigate difficult conversations or go over benefits packages.” (I’ve told my kids that if they want to spend hours a day on a newsletter with no business model, they’ve got to achieve that on their own.)
+ “Left behind were 150 3,000-gallon tanks filled with, unfortunately, fish sauce. Those vats have now been sitting at the plant for more than 20 years, their contents fermenting. And fish sauce does not start to smell better with time.” A Canadian Town Will No Longer Reek of Fish Sauce.
2026-07-31 20:00:00
I don’t want to be just one more news curator who drops into your inbox every day and announces that the sky is falling. Relax, only part of the sky is falling. It’s not a bird, nor a plane, nor Superman foiled by kryptonite (or a bad kryptocurrency investment). It’s space garbage that’s supposed to incinerate when reentering the Earth’s atmosphere, but sometimes doesn’t. So far, there’s not that much of a chance that one of these smoldering space chunks will land on you (though, I’m not sure whether that’s good news or bad news in 2026), but the risk will rise as the space race accelerates. Having a roof over one’s head will never be more important, preferably a blast-resistant steel-reinforced concrete roof coated with a few layers of military-grade polymer and polyurea spray. Just ask the Kenyans. “One December afternoon, the sky tore open and a fiery hunk of metal, wider than a school bus, came hurtling down. It was louder than a thunderclap when it plunged into a patch of farmland, startling everyone in the village of Mukuku, about three hours south of Nairobi, Kenya … ‘This is an isolated event,’ the Kenya Space Agency said in early 2025. Not exactly. More space debris is raining down on Earth than ever before — one effect of the frenetic race among governments and companies like SpaceX to reign over the skies.” NYT (Gift Article): A Ton of Space Junk Tumbles Unpredictably to Earth Every Week. And who pays if you or your property gets hit? Well, the law isn’t quite ready for that. “The patchwork of regulation governing rocket launches and orbital junk is no match for the pace of space development. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has more than 10,000 satellites in orbit, has applied to launch a million more. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has similar ambitions and Chinese ‘megaconstellations’ are expected to have hundreds of thousands of satellites.” As Tevye reminds us in Fiddler on the Roof, “If you spit in the air, it lands in your face.” (I’d add that the fiddler should probably come down from the roof and maybe consider a basement concert series…)
+ If you’re thinking of moving off the planet to avoid the falling debris, you might want to consider this headline: Drifting SpaceX rocket heading for accidental collision with the moon.
“An estimated 50,000 to 60,000 migrants entered a small Spanish territory alongside Morocco on Thursday and Friday, according to Spanish authorities. Although at least 48,300 had returned to Morocco by Friday afternoon, the mass crossing prompted an immediate backlash from far-right politicians in Europe that seemed poised to linger. Scenes of chaos in Ceuta (pronounced say-YOU-tah), the North African exclave that Spain has held for centuries, splashed across news networks and social media. Juan Jesús Vivas, the head of Ceuta’s government, said that nearly three dozen migrants had died in attempting the crossing and called the situation ‘absolutely unsustainable’ in a territory with about 83,000 residents.” This was a crazy scene with crazy photos and videos. And the political impact might be even crazier.
“Almost every night in the White House, President Trump calls his fundraiser, Meredith O’Rourke, for an update. Trump asks O’Rourke which companies and donors have cut checks and which haven’t, and for how much. He often asks her to make much larger financial requests than she was planning—for some donors the ask is $5 million, for others it is $50 million … In turn, Trump has called her the ‘princess of darkness’ because she is such a ‘killer’ with donors, according to people who have heard his comments.” WSJ (Gift Article): ‘The Boss Wants This Money’: Inside Trump’s Unprecedented Fundraising Operation.
+ And how are corporations reacting to this new form of purely transactional governance? They’re racing to take advantage of it. NYT (Gift Article): Companies Rush to Close Daring Deals Under Trump.
What to Watch: “Furious on Hulu follows an FBI agent, Alice Black (Emmy Rossum) on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating female serial killer. Both walk their paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur.” (In a Dexter sort of way.)
+ What to Hear: Stephen Wilson Jr’s guitar playing and singing reached a new audience when his cover of Stand By Me went viral. Here he is describing and singing his own song, Gary, on the Howard Stern show. If you have Sirius, definitely listen to the whole interview. Here’s more of Wilson Jr Spotify.
+ What to Doc: On HBO Max, check out Live Aid: When Rock ‘n’ Roll Took On the World. It will remind you of the music and the moment, and of a time when political leaders around the world were pushed to do something good.
Unclosed Deal? Trump announced that under a Board of Peace deal, Hamas would completely disarm and Israel would pull out of Gaza. He might be a little ahead of the participants in the deal (I know, shocker). Trump’s Gaza Deal Sparks Questions on Whether Israel, Hamas Will Comply.
+ There’s Something Contrary About Larry: “His big bet on A.I. was built on an astronomical amount of debt in every imaginable form — bonds, letters of credit, asset-backed securities — available in seemingly unlimited quantities, because the more you spent building A.I. infrastructure, the more you would earn, or so the logic went. Computer theorists called it the scaling hypothesis. It held that advancements in A.I. were directly tied to the generation of unprecedented amounts of computing power to process unprecedented volumes of data … But lately, some investors and analysts have started questioning the scaling hypothesis or at least asking if all this spending is sustainable.” NYT Mag (Gift Article) with a solid weekend read: Larry Ellison Bet It All on the A.I. Boom. Will He Be the Face of the A.I. Bubble?
+ Using Your Outside Voice: “Some Trump Administration officials now seem to recognize that the silencing of V.O.A. has left the country with a diminished capacity to push back against other countries’ disinformation efforts.” Yet again, the administration is learning it needs a lot of stuff it broke. But, whether we like it or not, there’s only one voice of America these days. Marc Fisher in The New Yorker: How Donald Trump Silenced the Voice of America.
+ Electoral Collage: One of the goals of all the 2020 election denial and invented threats to our voting systems is to weaken the faith Americans have in our elections. And it’s working. Two in three Americans are concerned about political leaders pressuring election officials to change election outcomes.
+ Gamble On: “New York sued Kalshi on Friday, alleging its prediction market is nothing more than illegal, unlicensed gambling.” New York is right, but the feds are doing everything they can to protect the prediction markets.
+ Deadly Climb: “Rescuers had said earlier on Friday that four bodies had been found and efforts were underway to retrieve them despite the harsh weather.” World-renowned climber Nirmal Purja among 11 struck by avalanche on Pakistan mountain.
+ Nomo Romo: CBS Sports has placed NFL analyst Tony Romo on leave following his arrest last week on suspicion of driving under the influence.
+ Protein Age Wasteland: You just KNEW this was coming. The protein craze may not be for everyone. “Excess protein might speed aging in sedentary people, a new review suggests.”
“A Montana man walked 10 miles to safety with a trekking pole speared through his torso after a fall during a hiking expedition on the state’s highest mountain … One of his friends walked behind Cifaldi to make sure he was steady on the rugged terrain back down while the other walked ahead to warn oncoming hikers. ‘There’s families, and he … had us hike ahead and warn people so young kids didn’t have to see such a gnarly wound.'”
+ He Was Wearing a Spider-Man Suit. A Man in a Wheelchair Needed Help.
+ “Ryder somehow maintained his grip even as the waves tossed him and the boy around – and eventually a fellow lifeguard was able to join him and assist in bringing the child safely back to shore.” ‘I’m super proud of him’: father of teen lifeguard recounts dramatic ocean rescue.
+ Taylor Sheridan alert: Boy, 14, Rescues Drowning Man with Rodeo Lasso during family camping trip in Montana.
+ Matt Damon’s Biceps in That ‘Odyssey’ Fight Scene? They’re Hers.