2025-07-02 20:00:00
The phrase Qu’ils mangent de la brioche — which has been roughly translated to Let them eat cake — was likely never actually uttered by Marie Antoinette (unless she came up with it at the age of nine). But the spirit of the phrase does seem to match this American moment as the House looks to pass a spending bill that is most harmful to the poorest people. Well, the phrase almost fits. The administration wants to cut cake, too. RFK Jr. wants to stop people using SNAP benefits to buy sugary foods. But don’t worry. The highest earners are still getting a sweet deal. “To help pay for the tax cuts, Trump’s bill will slash the federal budget for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by an estimated 20%, according to the CBO. More than 40 million low-income Americans (12% of the country) use SNAP, formerly known as food stamps.” This part of the spending bill looks more like a draconian diet plan. Welcome to the Senate’s new version of Ozempic. Instead of weekly shots, you lose weight because you can’t afford to eat. And you may need this alternative, because health care is getting cut, too. To add salt to the wound (while you can still afford salt), the cuts that will be dramatic and life-altering for the poorest Americans won’t do much to offset the overall cost of the spending bill. NYT (Gift Article): Poorest Americans Dealt Biggest Blow Under Senate Republican Tax Package. “Republicans aim to pay for their tax cuts by slashing programs for the poor, including Medicaid and food stamps. The cuts amount to one of the largest retrenchments in the federal safety net in a generation. But the savings they generate only offset a fraction of the total cost of the bill, which is expected to add more than $3 trillion to the federal debt by 2034.”
+ “House Speaker Mike Johnson maintains that the changes being considered are an effort to reduce fraud and waste, not a cut to SNAP. It’s hard to see how he can say that with a straight face. They are proposing cutting it—and cutting it deep.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): SNAP Cuts in Big Tax Bill Will Hit a Lot of Trump Voters Too. Cruelty for cruelty’s sake is becoming the new normal in a country where the phrase let them eat cake has become as American as Apple Pie.
As I wrote a couple months ago, for decades, the tick tick ticking of the 60 Minutes stopwatch has become an emblem of trusted, dependable investigative journalism. For the first 133920 minutes of the new Trump administration, the tick tick ticking feels like it represents a ticking time bomb countdown to another democratic norm exploding as the Trump administration lights a fuse and organizations looking for transactional gains refuse to stomp it out. Which brings us to the latest explosion. NYT (Gift Article): Paramount to Pay Trump $16 Million to Settle ‘60 Minutes’ Lawsuit. The negotiated settlement hardly amounts to rounding error for Paramount, considering it essentially pays for approval of a massive sale of the company to Skydance. In the grand scheme of things, this seems like a relatively small explosion. The amount of money is modest. The deal requires no public apology. On its own, it would just be sad, pathetic, and depressing (the 2025 trifecta). But this deal doesn’t exist on its own. ABC News settled a similar frivolous suit. WaPo changed its editorial policies. META paid for suspending Trump’s accounts. Amazon is paying $40 million to license a Melania documentary. Each individual deal isn’t a bunker buster. But after a while, all the small explosions are blowing away democracy’s increasingly fragile firewall.
“Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs was convicted of prostitution-related offenses but acquitted Wednesday of sex trafficking and racketeering charges that could have put one of hip-hop’s most celebrated figures behind bars for life. The mixed result came on the third day of deliberations. It could still send Combs, 55, to prison for as long as a decade, and is likely to end his career as a hitmaking music executive, fashion entrepreneur, brand ambassador and reality TV star.” (My guess is that Trump will pardon Combs if he gets significant jail time, and probably would’ve done the same if he had been convicted of the more serious crimes.)
+ It’s hard to pick the lowest form of American life. But people who congregate outside courthouses during celebrity trials are definitely in the running. “The mixed verdict was welcomed by Combs’ supporters, who danced in celebration, with baby oil, outside the court.” Here’s the latest from NBC News.
“They matched on Tinder shortly after the November presidential election, shared their mutual disappointment about Donald J. Trump’s victory and agreed to meet for a drink. Sitting at a table at Licht Cafe, a bar on Washington’s U Street corridor, Brent Efron and his date, Brady, talked a bit about home and hobbies. But Brady — or at least that’s the name he used — repeatedly steered the conversation back to Mr. Efron’s job at the Environmental Protection Agency. ‘It was a boring date,’ Mr. Efron, 29, recalled. ‘He just wanted to talk about work.'” But this was no ordinary, boring date. “Brady left after about an hour and Mr. Efron said he barely thought about the date again. Until a video of him appeared on the website of Project Veritas, a right-wing group known for using covert recordings to embarrass political opponents. Brady, who had posed as a politically liberal commercial real estate agent and recent transplant to the capital, was actually a Project Veritas operative with a hidden camera. NYT (Gift Article) with a pretty incredible story, even by today’s standards: An Offhand Remark About Gold Bars, Secretly Recorded, Upended His Life.
Bombs Away: “The shipments were in Poland when they were being halted and included Patriot air-defense interceptors, air-to-air missiles, Hellfire air-to-ground missiles and surface-to-surface rockets, artillery rounds, and Stinger surface-to-air missiles.” WSJ (Gift Article): U.S. Halts Key Weapons for Ukraine in New Sign of Weakening Support for Kyiv. Hopefully, Europe will step up. They definitely understand the risk. Denmark Begins Drafting Women as Russian Threat Looms.
+ Crime Pays: Here’s another era-defining lede from the NYT (Gift Article): “A former F.B.I. agent who was charged with encouraging the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to kill police officers has been named as an adviser to the Justice Department task force that President Trump established to seek retribution against his political enemies.”
+ Wisconsin Welcomes in 1850: “A nearly 200-year-old abortion ban has been overturned in Wisconsin, just months after the state elected a liberal justice to the court.” Wisconsin Supreme Court Repeals 1849 Abortion Ban. This was only overturned by a one justice margin. Meanwhile, anti-abortion activists are moving beyond the courts and using funding cuts to attack women’s health. The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Biggest Anti-Abortion Victory Since Dobbs. “One piece of the [Senate spending] package has received comparatively little attention: a provision that would block abortion clinics from receiving Medicaid funds for any of the non-abortion services they provide.”
+ New World Odor: “Today, those moves are seen by Mr. Trump’s detractors as a money grab of historic proportions. But an analysis by The New York Times of thousands of pages of internal Trump Organization documents filed in one of the legal actions against him suggests a more urgent motivation for Mr. Trump’s behavior: a need, rather than simply a desire, for easy money to keep his empire intact.” NYT (Gift Article): Trump’s Finances Were Shaky. Then He Began to Capitalize on His Comeback. Next up: Trump Fragrance. (Luckily, I already plug my nose when reading the news.)
+ Nuke Juke: Iran suspends cooperation with UN nuclear watchdog.
+ Vietnam Balm: “Vietnam also agreed that goods would be hit with a 40% tariff rate if they originated in another country and were transferred to Vietnam for final shipment to the United States. The process, known as transshipping, is used to circumvent trade barriers. China, a top exporter to the U.S., has reportedly used Vietnam as a transshipment hub.” Trump announces Vietnam trade deal.
+ Swim Suit: Penn to Revoke Transgender Swimmer’s Records and Apologize to Female Swimmers.
+ Vicious Cycle: “The ‘Red Panda’ rides a seven-foot-tall unicycle while catching and balancing a large number of metal bowls on her head during her act.” Popular unicycle performer Red Panda injured at half-time of WNBA game.
“There are myriad reasons we attach ourselves to public figures and track their daily lives with the same attention and passion that we do our favorite TV shows, movies, and sports teams. And there may be no celebrity interaction more purely entertaining than two of them beefing. Think about it: all of the excitement and none of the personal hazard.” The Ringer: The Best Beefs of the 21st Century, Ranked. (Oddly, The News vs My Mental Health didn’t make the list.)
+ It’s hard to get out of a DUI charge when you’re pulled over with an open container of alcohol. Even harder when there are more than 70 empty Bud Light cans in the car.
+ And circling back to today’s stop story on the spending bill… The Onion: Researchers Train Mice To Choose Between Life-Saving Medications And Other Essentials.
2025-07-01 20:00:00
In the final hours of the battle over the Senate Bill, Elon Musk and Donald Trump reignited their feud. Musk threatened to form a new political party and Trump threatened to turn DOGE against its top dog. And then there was this: “When asked by a reporter if he would consider deporting Musk, he demurred: ‘We’ll have to take a look.'” (And Musk thought he had buyer’s remorse after he bought Twitter…) Don’t miss the bigger picture here: A president is musing about deporting America’s wealthiest corporate tycoon because of a personal feud. I’d say this crosses a red line, but red lines got deported a couple weeks ago. This is dangerous stuff. And it’s not about just idle threats or throwaway comments. “The Trump administration opened the door on Monday to formally examining Zohran Mamdani‘s US citizenship — part of a growing effort to target the immigration status of a wide range of individuals.” Semafor: Republicans test new red line: Denaturalization.
+ “Assembled on a remote airstrip with tents and trailers that are normally used after a natural disaster, the detention center has been nicknamed ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’ a moniker that has alarmed immigrant activists but appeals to the Republican president’s aggressive approach to deportations.” Trump says migrants would need to know ‘how to run away from an alligator‘ to flee Florida facility. (The sadism is so thick you should have to pass through one of those new p-rn age verification systems to view it.) “‘This is not a nice business,’ Trump said while leaving the White House. Then he joked that ‘we’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator if they escape prison … Don’t run in a straight line. Run like this,’ he said, as he moved his hand in a zigzag motion. ‘And you know what? Your chances go up about 1%.'” (In the least surprising news of the day, “it’s best to dash in one direction in the rare situation when an alligator gives chase, according to a website run by the University of Florida.”)
+ Don’t think all the threats and the masked enforcers and the alligator-surrounded detention centers don’t impact you. As Chandran Kukathas explains in the NYT (Gift Article), Trump’s Deportation Program Is About Control. Even if You Are a U.S. Citizen. “Immigration control will transform America. The more vigorously it is pursued, the more it will turn us into people who do not care about the liberty of others. Worse still, it may turn us into people who do not care about our own.”
+ And don’t think the especially draconian crackdowns in California will be compartmentalized. What happens in California doesn’t stay in California. It extends all the way to your fridge. Reuters: Immigration raids leave crops unharvested, California farms at risk.
“The Senate vote amounted to a political and policy gamble for Republicans, who embraced the bill despite considerable reservations in their ranks about a measure that would swell the deficit and cut vital federal programs including Medicaid — and that polls show is deeply unpopular with voters. In the end, spurred by fear of crossing Mr. Trump and allowing a tax increase to take effect at the end of the year, they rallied around the measure — just barely.” JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote. Now we’ll see if this terrible bill is bad enough for the House GOP to embrace. NYT (Gift Article): Live Updates: Senate Passes Trump’s Signature Policy Bill.
+ Dan Pfeiffer sums things up pretty well: “Congress has done a lot of dumb shit over the years, but this bill—if and when it becomes law—might just be the dumbest. The whole process of passing it has been surreal and serves as a metaphor for the Trump-era Republican Party. No one is asking for it. Other than preventing a tax increase, it doesn’t achieve a single long-standing conservative policy goal. No one campaigned on these ideas, and the public is screaming that they hate the bill. It’s bad policy, worse politics—and yet Republicans march onward because Donald Trump wants a ‘win.’ Not a substantive win. Not even a political win. Just a win for the sake of a win. That’s the only rationale. There’s no further consideration for why this bill should be passed or what happens when it does. They do it because Trump wants it—even though he has no idea why he wants it, or what’s in it.”
+ What we don’t know is how this bill will impact the GOP at the ballot box. What we do know is how it will impact many ordinary Americans. WaPo (Gift Article): At least 17 million Americans would lose insurance under Trump plan.
Courtesy of the NYT (Gift Article), let’s spend a day in the life of residents of Sri Ganganagar in India. Why? Both because it’s a unique story of living in the new reality of extreme heat. And because it may not be a unique story for long. You should probably hydrate before examining How the Hottest Place in India Survives.
+ Europe swelters under a punishing heat wave with Paris forecast to hit 104F. “Barcelona recorded its hottest month of June since records started over a century ago.” (Locals wanted to limit tourist visits to Barcelona. 104 might do the trick.) Meanwhile, Italy limits outdoor work as heatwave breaks records across Europe.
+ Photos of Wimbledon fans and players struggling to stay cool in record-breaking heat.
“Some researchers have created a model for how many satellites could fit in low earth orbit, taking into account how far apart they should be spaced to reduce the risk of collisions. They estimate that LEO could theoretically hold up to 12.6 million satellites. But others have warned that even 1 million satellites in LEO — the number of satellites that were filed for approval with the International Telecommunication Union, a U.N. agency, between 2017 and 2022 — pose a risk because of a greater chance for collisions and debris surviving reentry and falling out of the sky.” So instead of looking up (which can be dangerous), look down at your device and read this very interesting graphical look at how space is being filled up at satellite speed. Rest of World: Out of space: Picturing the big, crowded business of satellite internet.
Making a Killing: “Barack Obama and George W Bush have criticized the closure of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), as a study warned it could result in ‘a staggering number’ of avoidable deaths – more than 14 million over five years.
+ Me the People: “In his capstone paper for the class, Mr. Damsky argued that the framers had intended for the phrase ‘We the People,’ in the Constitution’s preamble, to refer exclusively to white people. From there, he argued for the removal of voting rights protections for nonwhites, and for the issuance of shoot-to-kill orders against ‘criminal infiltrators at the border.'” NYT (Gift Article): A White Nationalist Wrote a Law School Paper Promoting Racist Views. It Won Him an Award. (Surprised Stephen Miller hasn’t hired this guy yet.)
+ It’s Time to Cease: “Israeli forces killed at least 74 people in Gaza on Monday with airstrikes that left 30 dead at a seaside cafe and gunfire that left 23 dead as Palestinians tried to get desperately needed food aid, witnesses and health officials said.” Israel had every right to defend itself after Oct 7. Israel has every right to act to protect itself against a nuclear-hungry foe that has repeatedly expressed its desire to destroy the country. Israel has every right to demand the hostages are released. But how do actions like these further any of the country’s legitimate goals?
+ Scrape Scrap: Cloudflare will now block AI crawlers by default. “The internet architecture provider will also let some publishers make known AI scrapers pay to crawl their sites.”
+ Thai Breaker: “Paetongtarn has faced growing dissatisfaction over her handling of the dispute, which involved an armed confrontation on May 28, in which one Cambodian soldier was killed. In a call with Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen, she attempted to defuse tensions — but instead set off a string of complaints and public protests by critics who accused her of being too fawning.” Court suspends Thailand’s prime minister to investigate a leaked phone call. (She should just say it was a perfect phone call. That seems to work.)
+ Oh the Humanity: “As the pace of AI progress accelerates, developing superintelligence is coming into sight. I believe this will be the beginning of a new era for humanity, and I am fully committed to doing what it takes for Meta to lead the way.” Zuck is spending hundreds of millions to hire top talent away from OpenAI and others. (Funny how we still need to hire humans to win the AI race.) Mark Zuckerberg sees ‘the beginning of a new era’ for humanity in superintelligence. (Oh shit.)
+ Jimmy Infamy: “Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who became a household name amassing an enormous following and multimillion-dollar ministry only to be undone by his penchant for prostitutes, has died.” (If he had been born a few years later, he probably would have a cabinet position right now…)
+ Overboard: Disney cruise ship rescue team saves girl who fell overboard and father who jumped after her.
“New research published Tuesday in the journal Frontiers in Psychology surveyed sleep habits, particularly dreams, and compared them with peoples’ eating habits. One of the findings? The worse lactose intolerance symptoms people had, the more intense their nightmares were.” Can cheese turn your dreams into nightmares? (It can definitely be a nightmare for the person sharing your bed…)
+ Trying to cut back on social media? The methaphone is a phone-shaped slab of clear acrylic that you can carry instead of your phone… (Just in case, I’m developing a NextDraft app for the platform…)
2025-06-30 20:00:00
Ask five different people what’s the worst thing in the GOP spending bill and you’d get five different answers. And they’d all be right. I know, I know. That math doesn’t add up. But the Senate majority’s doesn’t either. Members of the Senate party in power are fighting amongst themselves in a battle to determine where the spending bill will land on the spectrum between terrible and horrible. That’s not just my opinion. According to polls, that’s the opinion of most Americans. “The tax and domestic policy bill nearing a vote by Senate Republicans includes hundreds of provisions, including extended and expanded tax cuts and significant cuts to Medicaid, food benefits and other programs. It would add more than $3 trillion to the national debt.” NYT (Gift Article): A List of Nearly Everything in the Senate G.O.P. Bill, and How Much It Would Cost or Save. Somehow, we are about to be spending a lot more to get a lot less. But don’t worry, according to the president, “We will make it all up, times 10, with GROWTH.” (I think we’ve all heard that line before.)
+ “Senate Republicans have quietly inserted provisions in President Trump’s domestic policy bill that would not only end federal support for wind and solar energy but would impose an entirely new tax on future projects, a move that industry groups say could devastate the renewable power industry.” Surprise Tax in G.O.P. Bill Could Cripple Wind and Solar Power. This idea is so bad that it even made me agree with Elon Musk who said, “The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country! It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.” We’re not just ruining our chance to lead the renewable energy charge. We’re replacing that cleaner, more profitable future with a lump of coal. “At the same time, new last-minute inducements were unveiled for fossil fuels, including one classifying coal as a critical mineral when it comes to a government manufacturing credit. ‘We’re doing coal,’ Trump said. Here’s the latest from CNN.
“When I started talking with people about their sludge stories, I noticed that almost all ended the same way—with a weary, bedraggled F-ck it. Beholding the sheer unaccountability of the system, they’d pay that erroneous medical bill or give up on contesting that ticket. And this isn’t happening just here and there. Instead, I came to see this as a permanent condition. We are living in the state of F-ck it.” Chris Colin in The Atlantic (Gift Article): That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was on Purpose. “Endless wait times and excessive procedural fuss—it’s all part of a tactic called ‘sludge.'”
+ And sludge isn’t just for corporations anymore. The government is getting in on the action. NYT (Gift Article): How the G.O.P. Bill Saves Money: Paperwork, Paperwork, Paperwork. “Instead of explicitly reducing benefits, Republicans would make them harder to get and to keep. The effect, analysts say, is the same, with millions fewer Americans receiving assistance. By including dozens of changes to dates, deadlines, document requirements and rules, Republicans have turned paperwork into one of the bill’s crucial policy-making tools, yielding hundreds of billions of dollars in savings to help offset their signature tax cuts.”
So the plan was to get the most dangerous illegal immigrants off the streets while allowing the hard-working, taxing paying to stay. So why are so many innocent people people being deported while MS-13 leaders are getting out of prison? “When Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, agreed earlier this year to imprison deportees from the United States, he had a specific request of the Trump administration: the return of top MS-13 leaders in American custody.” NYT (Gift Article): Why Is Trump Returning MS-13 Leaders to El Salvador?
+ “The Trump administration has agreed to release from prison a three-time felon who drunkenly fired shots in a Texas community and spare him from deportation in exchange for his cooperation in the federal prosecution of Kilmar Abrego García, according to a review of court records and official testimony. Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, 38, has been convicted of smuggling migrants and illegally reentering the United States after having been deported.” WaPo (Gift Article): Star witness against Kilmar Abrego García was due to be deported. Now he’s being freed.
+ ICE fears shut down July Fourth events in multiple California cities.
+ Man who helped girl attacked by shark in Florida detained by Ice officials. He was driving without his headlights on. (Feel safer?)
“Lindsey, whose work involves selling and answering questions about credit cards for American Express, a Concentrix client, has developed her own tactics to try to calm customers. ‘I tell them, ‘I promise, I’m a real human.” To demonstrate, she might cough or giggle, vocal tics she believes AI can’t replicate. “I even ask them, ‘Is there anything you want me to say to prove that I’m a real human?” Bloomberg (Gift Article): Call Center Workers Are Tired of Being Mistaken for AI. (A lot of people think NextDraft is written by AI until they hear me moaning.)
Mergers and Ammunitions: “The cartel has for months been torn by violence between two main factions, as Mexico, under pressure from the Trump administration, has moved aggressively against it. In that turmoil, a faction of the cartel led by sons of the drug lord known as El Chapo have allied with an old and powerful adversary, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.” NYT (Gift Article): Cartel Fighters Make a Desperate Alliance That Could Transform Underworld. “‘It’s like if the eastern coast of the U.S. seceded during the Cold War and reached out to the Soviet Union,’ said Vanda Felbab-Brown, an expert on nonstate armed groups at the Brookings Institution. ‘This has global implications for how the conflict will unfold and how criminal markets will reorganize.'”
+ Marching Against Orders: “Around 100,000 people defied a government ban and police orders on Saturday to march in what organizers called the largest LGBTQ Pride event in Hungary’s history in an open rebuke of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government.”
+ Non Compliance Officer: “I may not be the sort of person you would expect to oppose a ban on transgender troops. I am a conservative evangelical Christian and a Republican. Though I have deep compassion for people who feel they are in the wrong body, I do not think that transitioning — as opposed to learning to love and accept the body God gave you — is the right thing to do in that predicament. But my views are irrelevant to the issue of transgender troops.” NYT (Gift Article): I’m Not the Person You’d Expect to Oppose a Ban on Transgender Troops. “The meek compliance of military leadership with the ban sends a chilling message to all service members — namely, that our ranks are open only to those who fit a specific ideological mold, regardless of their ability to serve. Equally concerning is the message that military compliance sends to policymakers. If officers accept this kind of unethical order, where does it end? I fear that the White House will ask members of the military to perform increasingly loathsome tasks.”
+ The Strain in Spain: “A vicious heatwave has engulfed southern Europe, with punishing temperatures that have reached highs of 114.8F in Spain and placed almost the entirety of mainland France under alert.” Europe swelters in heatwave. (Did I mention that, We’re doing coal?)
+ Nothing But Net Gains: The WNBA is expanding to 18 teams over the next five years, with Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia all set to join the league by 2030.
+ The Silent Treatment: “It’s not just career staffers who are clamming up, fearful they will be tagged as rebellious or resistant to Trump’s policies and dismissed amid the administration’s push to trim the workforce, fulfilling the president’s promise to eradicate waste, fraud and abuse. Trump’s own political appointees are also resistant to writing things down, worried that their agency’s deliberations will appear in news coverage and inspire a hunt for leakers, federal workers said.” WaPo (Gift Article): The first rule in Trump’s Washington: Don’t write anything down.
+ Electric Shock: Ford’s CEO says China’s EV progress is ‘the most humbling thing’ he’s ever seen.’ (Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, but We’re doing coal!)
+ Tale of the Tape: This time around the devices have bluetooth, USB-C charging, and rechargeable batteries. But Maxell is back making cassette players again.
“Thousands of lottery players in Norway spent part of last week believing they had hit the jackpot, thanks to a conversion error that briefly turned modest wins into millionaire-level windfalls.” Thousands were told they won the lottery. It was a mistake. (I wonder if these guys are working on messaging for the DC spending bill…)
+ Beijing hosts China’s first fully autonomous 3-on-3 AI robot soccer match. (They look beatable. For now.)
2025-06-27 20:00:00
The well-worn adage that opinions are like a**holes has never been more accurate than following today’s blockbuster Supreme Court decisions. The birthright citizenship decision was less about birthright citizenship and more about limiting federal judges from issuing nationwide injunctions. This gives more power to the executive branch. And not just any executive branch. This executive branch. NYT (Gift Article): In Birthright Citizenship Case, Supreme Court Limits Power of Judges to Block Trump Policies. Justice Sotomayor for the minority: “No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates … With the stroke of a pen, the President has made a ‘solemn mockery’ of our Constitution. Rather than stand firm, the Court gives way. Because such complicity should know no place in our system of law, I dissent.” In another 6-3 decision, the Court ruled that “public schools in Maryland must allow parents with religious objections to withdraw their children from classes in which storybooks with L.G.B.T.Q. themes are discussed. Sotomayor: “The Court’s ruling, in effect, thus hands a subset of parents the right to veto curricular choices long left to locally elected school boards. Because I cannot countenance the Court’s contortion of our precedent and the untold harms that will follow, I dissent.” Meanwhile, the Court “upheld a Texas law requiring age verification to access adult websites, saying despite First Amendment claims, the law ‘only incidentally burdens the protected speech of adults.’ The ruling, in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, opens the door to age-gating in states nationwide.” (Gee, this oughta be popular…) Decisions like these that empower the executive and right-leaning religious enthusiasts are precisely what this SCOTUS majority was formed to render. To quote another more recent adage: “They are who we thought they were.”
+ From NYT (Gift Article): The Major Supreme Court Decisions in 2025. Read em and weep.
The Court gives the executive branch more power on a day when the executive branch reminds us how it will continue to abuse that power — and that others will often cede to it. “The University of Virginia’s president, James E. Ryan, has told the board overseeing the school that he will resign in the face of demands by the Trump administration that he step aside in order to help resolve a Justice Department inquiry into the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.” A headline that would have been unthinkable in the America of a few months ago. NYT (Gift Article): University of Virginia President Resigns Under Pressure From Trump Administration.
Last week, I suggested a series called Families Like Ours, in which the entire nation of Denmark shuts down in the face of impending floods, instantly turning all Danes into refugees. For residents of the Island of Tuvalu, that’s not a limited series, it’s a reality show. A third of Pacific island nation applies for Australian climate change visa.
What to Watch: In The Better Sister on Prime, “Chloe, a high-profile media executive, lives a picturesque life with her handsome lawyer husband Adam and teenage son Ethan by her side while her estranged sister Nicky struggles to make ends meet and stay clean.” And, as with pretty much every show these days, there’s a murder. The series stars Elizabeth Banks and Jessica Biel and Jessica Biel’s shoulders (which seem to be shown off in almost every scene and have completely reset my pilates goals).
+ What to Binge: The Bear is back. My wife and I burned through the first 4 episodes in one shot. It’s as binge-able as ever and the soundtrack is awesome.
+ What to Stoke: I’ve recommended it before, but here’s one more reminder to watch 100 Foot Wave on Max. It’s a great series with awesome settings, excellent music, amazing cinematography, and it’s a sports-related documentary that’s not afraid to show flaws in the athletes it covers.
+ What to Bruce: “It’s a great day when your favorite artist releases a new record. But what if they released seven new records at once, recorded across almost three decades, full of music you didn’t even know existed?” The essential listening guide to Bruce Springsteen’s Tracks II: The Lost Albums. After you’ve read a little background (or skipped that part), pop in the airpods and get listening.
Face the Face: “Mike German, a former FBI agent, said officers’ widespread use of masks was unprecedented in US law enforcement and a sign of a rapidly eroding democracy. ‘Masking symbolizes the drift of law enforcement away from democratic controls.'” (It’s not a drift, it’s a sprint.) The alarming rise of US officers hiding behind masks. (Just tell them the masks can protect against Covid. They’ll take them off.)
+ Disorder at the Border: “Perhaps nowhere is fear among farm workers more palpable than on the farms and ranches along the southwestern U.S.-Mexico border, where for centuries workers have considered the frontier as being more porous than prohibitive.” NYT (Gift Article): On a Quiet Southern Border, Empty Farms and Frightened Workers.
+ Erased But Not Forgotten: Pentagon Strips Harvey Milk’s Name From Navy Vessel. (Feel safer?) Hope they saved the letters because we’re gonna put ’em back some day.
+ Married to the Taliban: “There is a saying in Pashto (language): A woman’s place is either inside the house or in the grave. But this is not merely a simple proverb, it is rather a law that dictates the social role of women among the Pashtun people. It means that a woman has no place outside the walls of her house. She has no right to study and no right to work. Deprived of these fundamental rights, women remain far removed from any kind of participation in society. The confines of their home become their whole world and, in that small space, they continue to suffer all kinds of violence.” Aeon: Taliban bride. “Women in Afghanistan are prisoners in their own homes. This is the story of Marjan, married at 12 to a Taliban fighter.”
+ Balls Deep: Earlier this week, we learned that the infamous, 19-year-old DOGE-ist known as Big Balls had retired from government. No such luck. Key Member of Musk’s DOGE Moves to Social Security.
+ Harmers Market: The market doesn’t seem to mind the chaos in Washington. It climbed back to pre-tariff levels and then some. S&P 500 hits record high as stock market surges.
+ Defame and Fortune: Gavin Newsom sues Fox News for defamation and demands $787m. (Suing Fox for defamation is like suing a fish for getting wet.)
We hear a lot about the dangerous rise in crime. But the numbers suggest that America’s Incarceration Rate Is About to Fall Off a Cliff. And, the US is on track to record the lowest violent crime rate since 1968.
+ “For the students who made it here to graduation, and especially for the 70 or so who stand, today is a celebration. As they move their tassels from right to left and toss their caps into the air, they cry and hug and take in this moment of reprieve from living in hotel rooms, waiting in line at donation centers and sitting in unending uncertainty.” At Jackie Robinson’s high school, Altadena rebuilds after fire.
+ Gates Foundation commits $1.6 billion to Gavi over five years.
+ “In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers report that of the 12 patients who received a single dose of the stem cells, it eliminated the need for insulin in 10 for at least a year.” London woman off insulin for Type 1 diabetes after a single dose of experimental manufactured stem cells.
+ At adoption event, shelter dog alerts man he is about to have a seizure. (My beagles growl every time I open a tab with a Supreme Court story…)
+ How one program is changing surf culture in San Francisco.
+ A New Zealand campaign won the top prize at Cannes Lions with an ad to brand the country as ‘best place in the world to have herpes.’ (Even if you get them in the worst place…)
2025-06-26 20:00:00
It would be a little ironic for one of the internet’s first news curators to express concern about the trend of news stories getting summarized into bite-sized, easily readable encapsulations. But irony died months ago, so here goes. The way the web has worked for decades — you search, you get results, you click on a link — is being replaced by a new model. You ask, the machine answers. The information is often coming from the same sources that exist on the other side of the links you used to click on. But now you don’t need to click. Thus, content publishers aren’t getting the traffic they once did. Publishers actually love human news curators because they drive traffic to their sites. That’s why a lot of journalists and editors send me links to their latest stories. But the machine curators don’t need anyone to share links and they sure aren’t passing them on to potential readers. “Large language models also train on copious materials in the public domain—but much of what is most useful to these models, particularly as users seek real-time information from chatbots, is news that exists behind a paywall. Publishers are creating the value, but AI companies are intercepting their audiences, subscription fees, and ad revenue.” And it’s not just news. It’s non-fiction in general. “Book publishers, especially those of nonfiction and textbooks, also told me they anticipate a massive decrease in sales, as chatbots can both summarize their books and give detailed explanations of their contents.” Alex Reisner in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The End of Publishing as We Know It.
+ “A group of authors has accused Microsoft of using nearly 200,000 pirated books to create an artificial intelligence model, the latest allegation in the long legal fight over copyrighted works between creative professionals and technology companies … The authors requested a court order blocking Microsoft’s infringement and statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work that Microsoft allegedly misused.” (At this point, the judge will probably ask ChatGPT how to rule…)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dropped a few bunker busters on the media today as he blamed outlets for questioning the outcome of the Iran strikes (the media didn’t, a leaked Pentagon assessment did), but he never actually provided any evidence that the Iranian nuclear program (which was obviously damaged by endless bombing, US bunker busters, and the killing of hundreds of scientists working on the program) was obliterated. Pentagon chief: Iran strike was a ‘historically successful attack.’ Trump and Hegseth are trying to turn legitimate questions about the nuclear program we all hope was destroyed into attacks on the military. As Trump said, “They tried to demean the great work our B-2 pilots did.” It’s time to stop pretending anyone criticized the military. We love the fliers. We hate the liars.
+ NYT (Gift Article): Iran’s Khamenei Strikes Defiant Tone in First Public Comments Since U.S. Attack. “The United States joined the war because Israel would have been ‘completely destroyed’ if it did not, he said. ‘But it did not gain anything, he said, adding that Iran ‘gave America a severe slap.'” (Can you imagine living under the rule of a leader who lies so obviously and unashamedly?)
+ “In the summer of 2018, Iran was experiencing a drought. This is not an uncommon occurrence in the Middle East and would not have made international news if not for the response of a regime functionary, who blamed the weather on Israel. ‘The changing climate in Iran is suspect,’ Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali said at a press conference. ‘Israel and another country in the region have joint teams which work to ensure clouds entering Iranian skies are unable to release rain.’ He went on to accuse the Jewish state of ‘cloud and snow theft.’ This story seems like a silly bit of trivia until one realizes that Jalali was also the head of Iran’s Civil Defense Organization, tasked with combating sabotage. In other words, a key person in charge of thwarting Israeli spies in Iran was an incompetent conspiracy theorist obsessed with Jewish climate control.” Yair Rosenberg in The Atlantic (Gift Article): What America Can Learn From Iran’s Failure.
“The mother brought her two children to the immigration court on May 29 expecting to continue to make a case for asylum after fleeing Honduras because of threats of violence. But like many other immigrants across the country, they were surprised to see their case quickly dismissed as ICE agents waited for them to step out of the courthouse into the hallway.” ICE arrested a 6-year-old boy with leukemia at immigration court. “They were crying in fear. One of the agents at one point lifted up his shirt, which displayed the gun that he was carrying … The 6-year-old boy was terrified to see the gun. He urinated on himself and wet all his clothing.” (Feel safer?)
+ I covered this topic yesterday. Please read and share so people understand who exactly is being targeted in the name of supposedly keeping us safe from violent criminals. Shaka and Awe: Americans can all sleep a little easier tonight…
“The Zoomer sex recession is puzzling in part because sex has seemingly never been less stigmatized or easier to procure. The electronic devices in our pockets contain not only a vast universe of free porn but also apps on which casual sex can be arranged as efficiently as a burrito delivery from DoorDash. Today, it is a mainstream view that desire isn’t shameful, that kinks can be healthy, that a man should make an effort to give a woman an orgasm, that people can do what they want in the bedroom as long as everyone involved is pleased. And yet, presented with a Vegas buffet of carnality, young people are losing their appetite. How should we understand this? And what, if anything, should we do?” Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker: Are Young People Having Enough Sex? (Back in my day, I was the only young person not having enough sex…)
Planned Attack: “The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed South Carolina to bar Planned Parenthood’s access to federal Medicaid funding for non-abortion services. The decision allows states to ban the organization from getting Medicaid reimbursements for cancer screenings and other care not related to abortion.” (This could open the floodgates in states looking to defund women’s healthcare.)
+ I’m King of the World: Trump demands end to Netanyahu’s graft trial: ‘US saved Israel, now it’s going to save Bibi.'” Now he’s dropping bunker busters on the judicial systems of other countries? I fear the megalomania has crossed another threshold.
+ Trill Seekers: “Over the past decade, the world’s richest 1 percent have increased their wealth by at least $33.9 trillion, according to a new analysis from the global anti-poverty group Oxfam International. That amount is ‘more than enough to eliminate annual poverty 22 times over.'” (And it’s apparently not enough, because many of these beneficiaries are spending to elect leaders who will ensure they benefit even more.)
+ Sentiment Paralysis: “Every month, thousands of randomly selected Americans get a letter in the mail from the University of Michigan asking how they’re feeling. This year their answers have been pretty unambiguous: bad.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): America’s Top Consumer-Sentiment Economist Is Worried. (What’s interesting is that the market does not seem worried at all.)
+ Why Won’t Humanity Take the Win? “Just over 50 years ago, the World Health Organization launched its Essential Programme on Immunization. Since then, vaccination rates have improved dramatically and researchers estimate that 4.4 billion people have been reached and 154 million childhood deaths have been avoided.” So why the hell would we even hint at abandoning this health achievement? NPR: The good news (154 million deaths avoided) and bad news about childhood vaccines.
+ Fake News Gets Real: “The technology has amplified social and partisan divisions and bolstered antigovernment sentiment, especially on the far right, which has surged in recent elections in Germany, Poland and Portugal.” NYT (Gift Article): A.I. Is Starting to Wear Down Democracy.
+ Shall We Play a Game? “It is unfair to say that he is likely to wake up one morning and decide to use nuclear weapons—he has spoken intermittently about his loathing of such weapons, and of war more generally—but he could very easily mismanage his way, again, into an escalatory spiral.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): Humanity Is Playing Nuclear Roulette.
+ Fully Prepped: The only team with more 2025 NBA first-round draft picks than Cooper Flagg’s Duke? Cooper Flagg’s prep team.
+ Street Performer: “At the start of Act Two — around 9 p.m. on performance evenings — composer Andrew Lloyd Weber’s music is piped outside the theater into London’s narrow Argyll Street. Rachel Zegler, playing Perón, emerges on a balcony. From there, she belts out ‘Don’t Cry For Me Argentina,’ the musical’s signature song. The performance is livestreamed back into the theater for the audience.” Want to see the performance? Just walk on by at the right time. Amazing. This summer’s most talked-about performance on London’s West End isn’t onstage.
“After decades of gym culture prioritizing biceps and six-packs, glutes are finally having their time in the spotlight.” GQ: Why All the Guys at the Gym Are Maxing Out Their Glutes Right Now. (I should try this. I basically have no glutes. All my chaps are assless.)
+ Windows is getting rid of the Blue Screen of Death after 40 years. Now it’s a black screen of death.
+ “Applebee’s and IHOP plan to launch an AI-powered ‘personalization engine’ that could help its restaurants provide recommendations and customized deals.” (I’ve ordered nothing but the french toast for several decades. I wonder what the AI will recommend.)
2025-06-25 20:00:00
Americans can all sleep a little easier tonight. Another dangerous illegal immigrant is off the streets. In this case, the streets are in Hawaii. The removal is tied to events of more than fifteen years ago when the immigrant spent some time in jail after getting addicted to crack and missing a court date. Wait, it gets worse. This story includes violence and automatic weapons, too. The immigrant blames his addiction on the PTSD he suffered after being seriously injured in a shoot-out. That shoot-out took place in Panama where the immigrant, serving in the US Army, earned a purple heart after being shot in the back. 55-year-old U.S. Army veteran Sae Joon Park probably should have been paralyzed on that day back in 1989 but one of the bullets headed for his spine was deflected by his dog tag. After getting out of jail, Sae Joon Park “fought deportation in court and as a Purple Heart veteran was allowed to stay in the U.S. under deferred action, as long as he checked in each year and stayed clean and sober. Park turned his life around — he became a loving father to his two children, now in their 20s, and cares for his aging parents and aunts, who are in their 80s.” It was in many ways a classic American story with service, trials and tribulations, and a comeback. But the American story has changed. “This month, officials ended his deferred action status and told him he had to leave the country or be detained and forcibly deported. He was given an ankle monitor and three weeks to handle his affairs.” U.S. Army Purple Heart veteran forced to self-deport from Hawaii. “People were saying ‘You took two bullets for this country. Like you’re more American than most of the Americans living in America.'” That’s just it. We’re not living in the same America anymore.
+ NPR: Purple Heart Army veteran self-deports after nearly 50 years in the U.S.
+ OK, OK, some less dangerous immigrants might get swept up unnecessarily, but it’s worth it because the overall process is getting the actually dangerous criminals off the streets, right? No. Despite promise to remove ‘worst of the worst,’ ICE has arrested only 6% of known immigrant murderers. “The data is a tally of every person booked by ICE from Oct. 1 through May 31, part of which was during the Biden administration. It shows a total of 185,042 people arrested and booked into ICE facilities during that time; 65,041 of them have been convicted of crimes. The most common categories of crimes they committed were immigration and traffic offenses.” (They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the dogs. They’re running the stop signs…)
+ ICE is holding a record 59,000 immigrant detainees, nearly half with no criminal record, internal data show. This is what happens when you mix cruelty with ineffectiveness.
+ Still not sleeping easier? Maybe this will help convince you how much safer the streets are now that we got tough on immigrants. ICE Arrested a Pregnant Tennessee Woman — While in Detention in Louisiana, She had a Stillbirth.
+ For a pitch perfect take on immigration, take a few minutes and listen to Kimmel guest host Diego Luna’s take on the importance of immigration in America. (Of course, Andor is leading the resistance.)
“The assessment also suggests that at least some of Iran’s highly enriched uranium, necessary for creating a nuclear weapon, was moved out of multiple sites before the U.S. strikes and survived, and it found that Iran’s centrifuges, which are required to further enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, are largely intact.” Early US intelligence report suggests US strikes only set back Iran’s nuclear program by months. Of course, Trump and his sycophants are taking this intel as a personal attack. But as I explained on Monday, this is an administration addicted to lying about all topics, big and small, and Trump started telling us that Iran’s nuclear program was obliterated before anyone had the chance to assess the outcome of the strikes. As usual, the only thing that we can be sure got obliterated is the truth.
+ Trump says Israel sent agents into Iran’s Fordo nuclear site, saw total obliteration. “Israeli officials told the Kan public broadcaster Wednesday, responding to Trump’s comments, that they were unaware of any Israeli operation at the Fordo nuclear facility after the strike.” (Just keep saying TOTAL OBLITERATION in all-caps. They’ll come around.)
+ “If parts of the program survived, or if Iran stockpiled and hid enriched uranium in advance of the strikes, then Tehran’s next steps seem clear. It will end cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Without eyes and ears on the ground, the international community will lose the ability to monitor Iran’s program. Iran could then choose to build a bomb covertly.” Thomas Wright in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Problem With Trump’s Cease-Fire.
+ As I’ve mentioned, one big concern in Iran is that a weakened Iranian government will turn its ire inward and create even harsher conditions inside the country. Execution of 3 accused of spying and mass detentions fuel crackdown fears in Iran.
“The United States won’t contribute anymore to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, until the global health organization has ‘re-earned the public trust,’ U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Wednesday.” As Atul Gawande explains: “This is a travesty & a nightmare. The US was a founder of Gavi. It lowers global vaccine costs, has vaccinated 1B children, & averted 19M deaths. This pull out will cost 100s of thousands of children’s lives a year – and RFK Jr will be personally responsible.”
+ NYT (Gift Article): Promise of Victory Over H.I.V. Fades as U.S. Withdraws Support. “There is more potential than ever before to end the H.I.V. epidemic, scientists and public health experts say. But now, H.I.V. programs across Africa are scrambling to procure drugs that the United States once supplied, replace lost nurses and lab technicians, and restart shuttered programs to prevent new infections. ‘We imagined we would be in a different world right now,'” (Editor’s note: Same.)
“In a highly engineered experiment, Anthropic embedded its flagship model, Claude Opus 4, inside a fictional company and granted it access to internal emails. From there, the model learned two things: It was about to be replaced, and the engineer behind the decision was engaged in an extramarital affair. The safety researchers conducting the test encouraged Opus to reflect on the long-term consequences of its potential responses. The experiment was constructed to leave the model with only two real options: accept being replaced or attempt blackmail to preserve its existence. In most of the test scenarios, Claude Opus responded with blackmail, threatening to expose the engineer’s affair if it was taken offline and replaced.” Leading AI models show up to 96% blackmail rate when their goals or existence is threatened. (At least that’s 3.9999% lower than the human rate.)
+ A federal judge sides with Anthropic in lawsuit over training AI on books without authors’ permission.
New York’s State of Mind: “The national Democratic establishment on Tuesday night struggled to absorb the startling ascent of a democratic socialist in New York City who embraced a progressive economic agenda and diverged from the party’s dominant position on the Middle East.” NYT (Gift Article) on Zohran Mamdani’s big win in the NYC Mayoral primary. A New Political Star Emerges Out of a Fractured Democratic Party. This is as much a story about the establishment dems who poured money and endorsements on a deeply flawed, scandal ridden retread like Andrew Cuomo. OK, they didn’t want Mamdani. But Cuomo was the best they could do? Doesn’t bode well for the old guard.
+ Daddy’s War Bucks: “NATO allies promised to raise defense related spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. For more than a decade that target was just 2%. Most European leaders were keen to avoid a rift with the US president – who in the past has raised doubts about America’s commitment to Nato allies.” Mark Rutte NATO’s secretary-general chimed in on Trump’s use of the F word earlier in the week. “Daddy has to sometimes use strong language.” (This daddy just threw up in mouth a little.)
+ Fact(ory) Check: “The country is flooded with college graduates who can’t find jobs that match their education … and there are not enough skilled blue-collar workers to fill the positions that currently exist, let alone the jobs that will be created if more factories are built in the United States.” Why Factories Are Having Trouble Filling Nearly 400,000 Open Jobs.
+ Let Freedom Drain: “They are told that academic freedom still exists, but that their institutions are following directives from Hegseth that, at least on their face, seem aimed at ending academic freedom.” Tom Nichols in The Atlantic (Gift Article): A Military Ethics Professor Resigns in Protest.
+ June’s Hot August Nights: I am writing from the one sliver of America where it’s currently sweatshirt weather, so I’m no expert. But if you have an inkling that it’s too f—ing early to be this f—ing hot, you’re probably right. WaPo: June is the new July: Why intense summer heat is arriving earlier.
+ Balls Out: Wired: ‘Big Balls’ No Longer Works for the US Government.
+ Other Balls Out: “Chris Robinson has suffered an ‘equipment failure’ as he left it all out there on his way to win the 400m hurdles at the Golden Spike meet on Wednesday morning.” World champion’s wardrobe malfunction is stuff of nightmares. (He still won.) Defector probably has a more clear headline: Hurdler Wins 400-Meter Race Despite His Dick And Balls Falling Out Several Times.
What’s worse than having your sister defeat you in major election? Having your mother serve as her campaign manager. Sister beats brother in local Florida election.
+ Is it possible to predict the time of a US military attack by tracking pizza deliveries to the Pentagon? Pepperoni, Pre-Strikes, and the Pentagon’s Favorite Pie Shops.