2025-11-19 20:00:00
Some words you might be happy to see in a real estate listing for your home: Breathtaking, Pristine, Charming. Some words you might not be happy to see in a real esate listing for your home: Smoldering, Scorching, Blub, blub, blub… In the Atlantic (Gift Article), Vann R. Newkirk II gives an overview of What Climate Change Will Do to America by Mid-Century. “Over the next 30 years or so, the changes to American life might be short of apocalyptic. But miles of heartbreak lie between here and the apocalypse, and the future toward which we are heading will mean heartbreak for millions. Many people will go in search of new homes in cooler, more predictable places. Those travelers will leave behind growing portions of America where services and comforts will be in short supply—let’s call them ‘dead zones.’ Should the demolition of America’s rule of law continue, authoritarianism and climate change will reinforce each other, a vicious spiral from which it will be difficult to exit. How do we know this? As ever, all it takes is looking around … Yet 2025 has been perhaps the single most devastating year in the fight for a livable planet. An authoritarian American president has pressed what can only be described as a policy of climate-change acceleration—destroying commitments to clean energy and pushing for more oil production. It doesn’t require an oracle to see where this trajectory might lead.” As obvious as the arriving danger is, there are still plenty of deniers. So how does one know who to believe? As always, it pays to follow the money. Or in this case, the absence of money, as homeowners in an increasing number of places are seeing insurance prices soar which is making their home values sink. Even if your home isn’t yet underwater, your mortgage might be. NYT (Gift Article): A Climate ‘Shock’ Is Eroding Some Home Values. New Data Shows How Much. The problem for many home owners across the country can be boiled down this: Politicians may lie, but the numbers don’t. And no one crunches those numbers more than reinsurance companies. “Insurance companies purchase reinsurance to help limit their exposure when a catastrophe hits. Over the past several years, global reinsurance companies have had what the researchers call a ‘climate epiphany’ and have roughly doubled the rates they charge home insurance providers.” Nothing can hammer home reality like the bottom line.
The Epstein files bill that Trump tried to prevent but then was forced to get behind advanced through both chambers and is awaiting the president’s signature. But stopping this information from becoming public has been one of Trump’s signature goals, so it’s fair to wonder if we’ll actually see the full files anytime soon. As I’ve mentioned, my hunch is that Pam Bondi will say she can’t release all of them because of the ongoing investigation into Epstein and others (Democrats) that Trump ordered last week. We don’t know how this will all play out, but we do know that it’s been a rare moment when the GOP (in large numbers) couldn’t be strong-armed by Trump. It would be nice to say we’ve reached some kind of moral reckoning. But the turning point has more do to with recent election results and the latest polling numbers. Meanwhile, a reminder: Trump Will Get More Reckless as His Power Ebbs.
+ How far will that ebb flow? Keep in mind, there will always be two separate and unequal standards. How scandals affect Trump. And how they affect everyone else. Consider this story which would obliterate the average political career: One of the rioters who Trump pardoned was just arrested for child sexual abuse (during the same week Trump’s ties to Epstein are dominating the news), and it’s barely a blip in the news. Meanwhile, among those who are not Trump, scandals hurt: Larry Summers resigns from OpenAI board, Harvard launches probe after release of Epstein emails. At this point, we don’t know if the Epstein scandal will damage Trump or just a lot of other people. We only know what recent history suggests.
From the WaPo Editorial Board (Gift Article): Things happen: Setting the record straight about our murdered colleague. “The United States government often advances its national interests by working with nasty people, and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is one of the nastiest. It’s one thing, however regrettable, to deal reluctantly with him. President Donald Trump’s performance at the White House Tuesday was something else entirely: weak, crass and of no strategic benefit to America.” (Looking back, maybe WaPo should have endorsed a candidate in the 2024 presidential election…) America is at a crossroads and must choose correctly between these two opposing visions. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Or, Things happen.
“Donald Scherber bought a Minnesota dairy farm in 1958. His son, John, bought it from him in 1995 and will probably pass it down to his children. For decades, the family has made a living selling the milk of their dairy cows. But recently, Scherber’s Morningstar Dairy has become known in the Minneapolis area for another business.” And they’re far from the only farmers getting in on this action. WaPo (Gift Article): Cow cuddling gives farms boost amid dropping dairy prices. Hey, it beats falling in love with an AI…
Backfire? The Texas gerrymandering move that attempts to pick up five seats for the GOP has been blocked by a federal court and is now headed for SCOTUS. Meanwhile, the GOP is headed to court to try to block the gerrymandering changes that California voters just approved. Given the merits (or lack thereof) of both cases, it’s not unthinkable that Texas will be unable to use their new maps while California’s will stand. Slate (Gift Article): Republicans Are Suing to Kill California’s Pro-Democratic Gerrymander. They Have a Huge Problem.
+ Dust in the Wind: “Poisonous dust falls from the sky over the town of Ogijo, near Lagos, Nigeria. It coats kitchen floors, vegetable gardens, churchyards and schoolyards. The toxic soot billows from crude factories that recycle lead for American companies. With every breath, people inhale invisible lead particles and absorb them into their bloodstream. The metal seeps into their brains, wreaking havoc on their nervous systems. It damages livers and kidneys. Toddlers ingest the dust by crawling across floors, playgrounds and backyards, then putting their hands in their mouths.” A report from the NYT (Gift Article): Recycling Lead for U.S. Car Batteries Is Poisoning People.
+ Iowa You Nothing for This Ride: “Free city buses are relatively rare in the United States. The idea has been getting a new look recently, after Zohran Mamdani won New York City’s mayoral race with a promise to make buses free. However, critics have described the plan as pie in the sky, and Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York recently voiced doubts.” Don’t tell that to Iowa City. Iowa City Made Its Buses Free. Traffic Cleared, and So Did the Air.
+ Breaking Up is Hard to Do: “When the court first looked at this case, the opinions ‘did not even mention the word ‘TikTok.’ On Tuesday, TikTok more or less decided the case.” Casey Newton: The simple test that blew up the FTC’s case against Meta.
+ No Mas Hamas? WSJ (Gift Article): “Hamas’s popularity has edged up among Palestinians in Gaza since the cease-fire, ending a slide during the war and posing a challenge to President Trump’s plan to bring peace to the enclave by disarming the militant group.”
+ Curaçao it Goes: “As the final whistle blew Tuesday, few were rethinking anything about their decision. They had just delivered their country one of its happiest-ever moments.” Curaçao, the smallest nation in World Cup history, just shocked the soccer world.
+ Upright Citizen: “Self-taught in the art of kicking by studying videos on YouTube, Matsuzawa has turned himself into a hero at the University of Hawaii.” The ‘Tokyo Toe’ Learned Football on YouTube. Now He Might Be the Best Kicker in College Football.
“Their study suggests that the mouth-on-mouth kiss evolved more than 21 million years ago, and was something that the common ancestor of humans and other great apes probably indulged in. The same research concluded that Neanderthals may have kissed too – and that humans and Neanderthals may even have smooched one another.” One never forgets a first kiss. Even if it dates back 21 million years. (Or it just feels that long…)
2025-11-18 20:00:00
The fentanyl crisis in America started when a highly addictive drug used in hospital settings became the latest and most dangerous pain killing opioid that pharmaceutical companies marketed for prescription. Americans were already hooked on opioids, often sold by pill mills just off the highway. The crackdown on these pill mills and the over-prescribing of opioids, along with the legalization of marijuana in some states, motivated drug cartels to shift their focus to the now surging demand for illegal fentanyl. “Old supply chains moved heroin from poppy fields to central markets in major U.S. cities; traffickers in the 2010s built new supply chains bringing synthetic products such as fentanyl sourced with chemicals from China to American consumers wherever they lived — including the rural areas and small towns struck by the opioid crisis. Which is to say: fentanyl traffickers were responding to consumer demand. They did not create it. The opioid crisis initially struck white areas not because of a conspiracy to destroy heartland America. Rather, it was a devastatingly ironic result of white Americans’ privileged access to the medical system. Physicians’ willingness to recognize and treat their pain opened their communities to pharmaceutical companies’ flood of opioids.” Given this brief history, it will not surprise you to learn that the best way to fight the fentanyl crisis is not by using the US military to bomb small boats near Venezuela. In fact, bombing other supply routes (like the ones actually being used to traffic in fentanyl) won’t work either. Killing pain is notoriously hard. Killing painkillers is even harder. “In a world where people and goods circulate freely, there will always be ways for a tiny powder to travel with them.” David Herzberg drops a few truth bombs about our strategies, past and present, in the NYT (Gift Article): I Am a Drug Historian. Trump Is Wrong About fentanyl in Almost Every Way. (In fairness, he’s not the first politician to fit that description when it comes to the war on drugs.) “American politicians have long been drawn to more emotionally satisfying stories like the ones where foreign traffickers are to blame for the decline of rural and small-town America. Again, drugs are not unique: The MAGA movement has many other such morally simplifying stories, about Big Pharma’s vaccines as the cause of chronic disorders or about tariffs as a magical solution to unemployment. These stories may serve the needs of politicians, but they can’t fix the actual problems.”
+ Judge formally approves opioid settlement for Purdue Pharma and Sackler family members who own the company.
+ For some more background in this issue, I recommend the books American Pain by John Temple and Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe. Also, Don Winslow’s article: El Chapo and the Secret History of the Heroin Crisis.
“Hosting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House, President Trump brushed off the murder of a journalist by Saudi agents by saying, ‘Things happen.’ Fighter jets and business deals are on the leaders’ agenda today.” Trump also attacked the journalist who asked about the issue. Another meeting at the White House, another international embarrassment. Here’s the latest from the NYT and The Guardian. (MBS also indicated that he would be investing $1 trillion in America. “$1 trillion, is roughly the size of Saudi Arabia’s entire annual economic output.” It would also barely cover the cost of the gold now lining the Oval Office.)
+ Meanwhile … Trump Organization Is Said to Be in Talks on a Saudi Government Real Estate Deal.
“The analysis deemed 109 hospitals most exposed to the coming Medicaid cuts, because they share three risk factors: They serve vulnerable communities, their finances are already fragile, and more than a quarter of their patients rely on Medicaid. Of those hospitals, 85 percent were in urban areas.” NYT (Gift Article): When the G.O.P. Medicaid Cuts Arrive, These Hospitals Will Be Hit Hardest. People often wonder if we could ever have another Civil War. But we’re already in a legislative Civil War.
+ Border Patrol Expands North Carolina Operations to More Liberal Cities.
The great economic divide is also becoming a physical divide. WSJ (Gift Article): The Ultrarich Are Spending a Fortune to Live in Extreme Privacy. “In the Bentley Residences condo tower under construction in Sunny Isles Beach, north of Miami, car elevators will deliver residents straight up to their homes and deposit vehicles in adjoining ‘sky garages,’ avoiding the need to deal with parking valets and reception areas.”
Antipodeez Nuts: “The House is headed toward a vote Tuesday afternoon on legislation to force the Justice Department to publicly release its files on the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, the culmination of a monthslong effort that has overcome opposition from President Donald Trump and Republican leadership.” I offered my take on Trump’s change of heart on this matter yesterday: “What’s up is down. Yin, meet yang. Strike that, reverse it. A little bit country, say hello to a little bit rock ‘n roll. After an extreme effort that played out everywhere from social media tirades to strong-arming in The Situation Room, Donald Trump went full Contradictator.” Antipodes Nuts.
+ Elimination Die it: “Health officials on Monday linked for the first time the measles outbreak that began in Texas with another in Utah and Arizona, a finding that could end America’s status as a nation that has eliminated measles.”
+ Bullet Point: More divisiveness, hate, and fear isn’t bad news for everyone. More liberals, people of color and LGBTQ Americans say they’re buying guns out of fear.
+ Ed’s Dead, Baby. Ed’s Dead: “The Education Department plans to announce Tuesday that it will move parts of the agency to other federal departments, a unilateral effort aimed at dismantling an agency created by Congress to ensure equal access to educational opportunity but long derided by conservatives as ineffective.”
+ Immune Reaction: “On Tuesday, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai warned of ‘irrationality’ in the AI market, telling the BBC in an interview, ‘I think no company is going to be immune, including us.’ His comments arrive as scrutiny over the state of the AI market has reached new heights.” Industry players from corporate CEOs to Wall Street bigwigs are trying to get investors to ease up a bit so we can have a gentle pullback instead of a massive drop.
+ Villain US: Pro Publica: The White House Intervened on Behalf of Accused Sex Trafficker Andrew Tate During a Federal Investigation.
+ Decency’s Descent: In 1954, the phrase “have you no sense of decency” sort of shocked Americans back toward the right track. Today, that question would be viewed laughable. Trump responded to a question from a female Bloomberg reporter about the Epstein files by saying, “Quiet Piggy.” Here’s the video. This is what the journalist’s fellow reporters have come to accept. This is what the GOP has come to accept. And apparently, this is what America has come to accept, since it was barely news.
“The four giant pairs of glasses are simple and striking: rendered in the crosswalks of an intersection in Lubbock, Texas, in white paint, tidy inside the bounds of the crossing lines. For years, they’ve been a beloved part of the city’s quirky downtown, a testament to its native son, the rock ‘n’ roller Buddy Holly. Are they road murals? Are they public art? Or are they a safety hazard? Whatever they are, the streetbound specs are now verboten, a casualty of the Trump administration’s crackdown on artistic displays on the nation’s roadways.” NYT (Gift Article): Lubbock Will Remove Buddy Holly-Themed Crosswalk After Federal Crackdown. At some point, this rampant idiocy has to end. And well, that’ll be the day.
2025-11-17 20:00:00
What’s up is down. Yin, meet yang. Strike that, reverse it. A little bit country, say hello to a little bit rock ‘n roll. After an extreme effort that played out everywhere from social media tirades to strong-arming in The Situation Room, Donald Trump went full Contradictator, “suddenly reversing his monthslong campaign to bottle up a bipartisan effort to disclose federal records dealing with Jeffrey Epstein — just as scores of House Republicans prepare to defy his demands concerning the late convicted sex offender.” So Trump is essentially encouraging the House to compel him to release the files he could order released on his own. What gives? Is this a classic Trumpian case of He Said, He Said? Has Donald Trump so completely polarized the country that he’s accidentally polarized himself? Or are we playing Checkers while he’s playing Destroy Checks and Balances? Let’s posit a guess at what’s going on. Trump was faced with a House battle to release the Epstein files that he was going to lose. So he jumped to the winning side. But doesn’t that present a big risk if the files contain damaging information about him? After all, he took his pre U-Turn position for a reason. My hunch is that if Congress compels the release of the files, Pam Bondi will say she can’t release all of them because of the ongoing investigation into Epstein and others (Democrats) that Trump ordered last week. If that’s the case, the DOJ investigation into Trump’s enemies could stretch into forever, and we’ll see those files just about the time we kick off Infrastructure Week.
+ Of course, the fact that Trump gives investigation orders via social media to a once independent DOJ is representative of an even bigger scandal than the one everyone is talking about. NYT Magazine (Gift Article): The Unraveling of the Justice Department. “We interviewed more than 60 attorneys who recently resigned or were fired from the Justice Department. Much of what they told us is reported here for the first time. Beginning with Trump’s first day in office, the lawyers narrated the events that most alarmed them over the next 10 months. They described being asked to drop cases for political reasons, to find evidence for flimsy investigations and to take positions in court they thought had no legitimate basis. They also talked about the work they and their colleagues were told to abandon — investigations of terrorist plots, corruption and white-collar fraud.”
Trump’s latest light night target is Seth Myers. He called for the host to be fired. “Less than an hour later Trump’s tirade was reposted on X by Brendan Carr, chairperson of the Federal Communications Commission.” Carr’s social media attacks on comedians and critics is disturbing. But nowhere near as disturbing as his very real, and very extreme, power to shape the future of media. The Atlantic (Gift Article): The ‘Easy Way’ to Crush the Mainstream Media. “Whoever controls communications infrastructure can shape the informational environment. Using that power to advance political objectives requires someone with both technocratic know-how and the ambition to use it. According to friends and detractors alike, Carr is that person.”
“On the night of the raid, heavily armed federal agents zip-tied Jhonny Manuel Caicedo Fereira’s hands behind his back, marched him out of his Chicago apartment building and put him against a wall to question him. As a Black Hawk helicopter roared overhead, the slender, 28-year-old immigrant from Venezuela answered softly, his eyes darting to a television crew invited to film the raid … The U.S. government paraded him and his neighbors in front of the cameras and called their arrests a spectacular victory against terrorism. But later, after the cameras had gone, prosecutors didn’t charge Caicedo with a crime.” ProPublica: Venezuelans Were Rounded Up in a Dramatic Midnight Raid but Never Charged With a Crime.
+ Next stop: Charlotte, North Carolina.
“The wildly popular fiction genre allows readers to talk openly about yearning, sex and desire. And it’s spilling over into their bedrooms.” NYT (Gift Article): Sex Had Become a Chore. Then They Started Reading Romantasy. (Then reading became a chore.) I joke, but this line stood out: “Ms. Morton went from having sex with her husband about twice a month before she got hooked on romantasy to being intimate with him twice a day.” (At this point, they probably need to read about ice packs.) “They have explored different power dynamics in the bedroom, tucking a set of black fabric straps under their mattress so Ms. Morton’s husband, Aaron, can handcuff her. Recently, he got so caught up in a bit of role-play that he accidentally pulled the railing off their stairs.” (Meh, big deal. Call me when you leave a Hey Kool-Aid shaped hole in the wall.)
A Diversion of Justice: “The Department of Homeland Security has diverted thousands of federal agents from their normal duties to focus on arresting undocumented immigrants, undermining a wide range of law enforcement operations … Homeland security agents investigating sexual crimes against children, for instance, have been redeployed to the immigrant crackdown for weeks at a time.” (Every resource deployed to fight a largely imagined problem is a resource not used to fight a real one.) And from WSJ (Gift Article): A Taco Shop Raid Splits an Ohio Town in Red America.
+ Fema’s Emergency: “During Richardson’s time as FEMA chief, he was heavily criticized for his slow response to the catastrophic floods that devastated Texas’ Hill Country in July. Richardson could not be reached for 24 hours after raging floodwaters killed more than 130 people in the state on July 4 … It was later revealed that Richardson, who did not have emergency management experience before he became acting head of FEMA, had been on vacation for the holiday weekend.” Acting FEMA head resigns.
+ Misconduct Tape: “A federal judge in Virginia on Monday ordered prosecutors to turn over grand jury materials in the criminal case against James Comey after finding the government’s handling of the case raises ‘genuine issues of misconduct‘ that could result in the charges against the former FBI director being dismissed.”
+ Feud Renewed: “The escalation came after comments this month by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi of Japan about Taiwan, a self-governed democracy that China considers part of its territory. Ms. Takaichi told the Japanese Parliament that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Tokyo.” China Escalates Japan Feud With Island Patrols and Warnings to Citizens.
+ Pressure Cooker: High blood pressure rates recorded among young people worldwide nearly doubled in 20 years, research found.
+ Tuition Inhibition: “The rate of new international enrollment at US universities dropped by 17% this autumn compared to previous years, research released on Monday indicates.” (This is probably viewed as a win-win for Trump. Fewer foreign students and less tuition revenue for universities. It’s a lose lose for the rest of us.)
+ Matcha Maker Matcha Maker, Make Me a Matcha: “In 2023, the global matcha market was estimated to be $4.3 billion. That number is expected to nearly double by the end of the decade. Like most trends, this one is a synthesis of several macro-level factors, among them: caffeine anxiety, the wellness boom, rising coffee prices, the proliferation of cheap home milk frothers, and the fact that the color green looks amazing on video.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Matcha Problem.
“I approached the question of shopping cart abandonment the way I would any puzzle about human behavior: I collected data. My evidence came from an unlikely source: Cart Narcs, a small group whose mission is to encourage cart return, sometimes gently, sometimes less so.” Why Don’t People Return Their Shopping Carts? A (Somewhat) Scientific Investigation.
+ SNL’s parody of the making of a Norwegian Movie was excellent.
2025-11-14 20:00:00
I know some days I get inside your head. I share some disturbing news and you find yourself thinking about it more than you want to. It’s like an earworm melody that gets stuck in your head long after you’ve stopped listening. Songs and words get inside your head the old fashioned way—through your eyes and ears. The next generation of technologies aren’t taking such a meandering route. They’re attaching directly to your brain. Like all new technologies, that’s both good news and potentially really disturbing news. Let’s join Linda Kinstler in the NYT Magazine (Gift Article) as she does something as simple as putting on what looks like an ordinary pair of grey eyeglasses. Before long, she was using her mind to move a robotic soccer ball set on a table in front of her. “The ball had been programmed to light up and rotate whenever my level of neural ‘effort’ reached a certain threshold. When my attention waned, the soccer ball stood still. For now, the glasses are solely for research purposes. At M.I.T., [scientist Nataliya] Kosmyna has used them to help patients with A.L.S. communicate with caregivers — but she said she receives multiple purchase requests a week. So far she has declined them. She’s too aware that they could easily be misused.” The Next Privacy Battleground Is Inside Your Brain. Scientists have used these kinds of brain computer interfaces to allow “people with locked-in syndrome, who cannot move or speak, to communicate with their families and caregivers and even play video games. Scientists have experimented with using neural data from fMRI imaging and EEG signals to detect sexual orientation, political ideology and deception, to take just a few examples.” (I’m thinking of wearing a pair of brain-sensing glasses while I write NextDraft. I want to see how many news tabs I have to open before the robotic soccer ball rolls off the table and deflates.)
“Higher education has by and large embraced influencer culture, which already dominates beauty, travel, health and so much of everyday society. Plenty of schools, like Miami, funnel marketing dollars toward student creators as a recruiting tool or have embraced the RushTok phenomenon of viral sorority selections. But influencing can also be messy, mean and unpredictable, as the college of the Hurricanes discovered last month, when a tearful spat between two freshman influencers spilled offline, generating weeks of tabloid headlines for the university and spiraling into the office of the dean of students.” WaPo (Gift Article): Influencers are royalty at this college, and the turf war is vicious. “Miami no longer had two influencers earning social cred for the school; it had a digital slap fight that hundreds of thousands of people were watching. The student newspaper couldn’t keep the print copies on the news stands fast enough … The New York Post ran a story titled, ‘Campus influencers are in tears over having fewer followers than their peers — and the grift is ruining their college experience.'”
+ NPR: As social media grows more toxic, college athletes ask themselves: Is it worth it? “College basketball players are more at risk than athletes in other sports, the NCAA has found, especially around March Madness, when thousands of abusive or threatening messages flood athletes, many of them from gamblers — some of it so severe and alarmingly specific that the NCAA must alert law enforcement.”
Trump has launched his latest salvo in the war over the Epstein files. He says he’s asking Justice Department to investigate Epstein’s ties to slew of high-profile figures (who all happen to be political opponents or enemies). I’m not sure Trump’s strategy will slow down this scandal. But it points to an even bigger one: The way the president has turned the FBI and Justice Department into his own personal legal force. And they way the leaders of those institutions are going along with it.
+ Susan B. Glasser in The New Yorker: The Epstein Scandal Is Now a Chronic Disease of the Trump Presidency. “The point is that no matter how much you might want to avoid paying attention to this truly unsavory story, it is not going away. The veteran journalist Jonathan Alter, who’s covered his share of Washington scandals, compared this one to ‘a bad case of herpes,’ that might lie low for a while but will never stop afflicting Trump and shadowing his Presidency.” (Just as Trumpism continues to afflict America…)
+ Courier created a searchable database with all 20,000 files from Epstein’s Estate.
What to Binge: “Marissa Irvine arrives to collect her young son Milo from his first playdate, but the woman who answers the door isn’t a mother she recognizes. She doesn’t have Milo and has never heard of him.” Sarah Snook stars in All Her Fault on Peacock.
+ What to Book: “You knew I’d write a book about you someday…” Heart the Lover by Lily King is a new novel about desire, friendship, and the lasting impact of first love. (I only experienced the first two in college, so it was nice to at least read about the third…)
+ What to Movie: Guillermo del Toro’s reimagining of Frankenstein on Netflix features some excellent performances. The sets, cinematography, and costumes alone make this worth a watch. And after you watch the movie, be sure to watch the short behind the scenes documentary on the making of the movie. Frankenstein: The Anatomy Lesson.
The Fix is In: “The Trump administration is preparing broad exemptions to certain tariffs in an effort to ease elevated food prices that have provoked anxiety for American consumers.” (Wait, I thought consumers didn’t pay for tariffs?) So they’re trying to solve a problem they created. And their base will probably give them credit for it.
+ A Teachable Foment: “Texas A&M University System regents voted Thursday to limit how instructors may discuss matters like gender identity and race ideology in classrooms, tightening the rules in a conservative state where debates over academic freedom have flared for months.” They have to check with the university president first. Seriously. NYT (Gift Article): Texas A&M Tightens Rules on Talking About Race and Gender in Classes.
+ We’re All in This Together: “As dozens of frog species have declined across Central America, scientists have witnessed a remarkable chain of events: With fewer tadpoles to eat mosquito larvae, rates of mosquito-borne malaria in the region have climbed, resulting in a fivefold increase in cases.” WaPo (Gift Article): First, the frogs died. Then people got sick. “An emerging area of research is uncovering surprising links between nature and human health.”
+ Your Tax Dollars at Work: “The Justice Department has been discussing settlements with Michael Flynn and Stefan Passantino, two former officials from Donald Trump’s first term, who claim they’re owed major payouts from the US government as victims of politically-motivated actions.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): Michael Flynn, DOJ in Settlement Talks Over $50 Million Claim.
+ Sniper Safari? “The public prosecutor’s office in Milan has opened an investigation into claims that Italian citizens travelled to Bosnia-Herzegovina on “sniper safaris” during the war in the early 1990s. Italians and others are alleged to have paid large sums to shoot at civilians in the besieged city of Sarajevo.”
+ The Heist Zeitgeist: “It’s not just the Louvre. Minimal security and the high price of gold have fueled nine robberies over the past year.” France Is Awash in Museum Heists.
“Last year, as his economics class at the Brooklyn Friends school studied the national housing crisis, he and a classmate hatched an idea for an online housing platform that could help people find homes they could afford. First, he taught himself to code.” NYT (Gift Article): New York Lacked an Affordable Housing Portal. So These Teenagers Made One.
+ “If I get the opportunity to fight like this for the rest of my life, I would be totally OK with that.” West Chicago brothers are on the front lines against ‘Operation Midway Blitz.’ And they’re only teenagers.
+ “The cyclists arrive at sunrise, rolling through Chicago’s Latino neighborhoods and stopping at tamale carts, elote stands and candy stalls. They buy out every last item — every tamale, every corn cob, every bundle of sweets. Then they load up the food and deliver it to shelters and families in need.” Chicagoans buy out street vendors amid a federal immigration crackdown.
+ In praise of a refrigerator, still chugging after 75 years.
+ A study finds that sperm whales use vowels like humans. (So they be good at playing Whale of Fortune…)
+ And if you missed it yesterday, the Naked man making phone call after steam and shower at local health club could be an endangered species.
2025-11-13 20:00:00
The story about releasing the Epstein files is like Trump’s version of Frankenstein’s monster. He created it, but he can’t figure out how to kill it. NYT (Gift Article): After Trump Split, Epstein Said He Could ‘Take Him Down.’ “By turns gossipy, scathing and scheming, the messages show influential people pressing Mr. Epstein for insight into Mr. Trump, and Mr. Epstein casting himself as the ultimate Trump translator, someone who knew him intimately and was ‘the one able to take him down.'” Will Epstein achieve after his death what he didn’t achieve during his life? At this point, it’s hard for close observers to believe any scandal could take Trump down. You may be wondering, Wait, Are the Epstein Files Real Now? “Trump was meant to courageously release all of the available evidence for public scrutiny. Instead, this scandal has turned out to implicate him personally. (This is a risk inherent in building a personality cult around one of the worst human beings in the United States—almost any moral violation you pick will, statistically, have a high likelihood of appearing somewhere on his résumé.)” But this never-ending, particularly bleak Epstein scandal is different than the never-ending (and ongoing) other scandals. As Karen Tumulty explains in WaPo (Gift Article): “The MAGA base has had little trouble looking the other way when it comes to Donald Trump’s trampling of norms and ethical standards: the coarseness; the indictments; the retribution against his enemies; the self-enrichment while in office; the unprecedented claims of executive power. His administration’s handling of information regarding the horrific crimes of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is different. Bringing to light what lies within the Justice Department’s so-called Epstein files is the most persistent issue to have driven a deep wedge into the president’s base — to the point where some who embrace the MAGA label have even been willing to make common cause with Democrats.”
+ Consider that a relatively tiny scandal within this scandal might have been enough to ruin former top officeholders. This week, in an effort to halt the release of more Epstein files, Trump Ramped Up Pressure on G.O.P. One of those efforts included the summoning of “Representative Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican who has signed the petition, to a meeting in the White House Situation Room with Attorney General Pam Bondi and the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, to discuss her demand to release the files.” The once independent FBI and the once independent Justice Department are now acting as Trump’s personal fixers, pressuring an elected official to do his bidding in a room often reserved for high-level military planning (and one where, interestingly, no phones or other recording devices are permitted). That fact that this aspect of the story is just one more detail that will get lost in the scandalous ether is another reminder of how quickly our institutional framework has devolved.
+ Epstein Bantered Regularly With Larry Summers. Often scandals that Trump survives ends up costing mere mortals, bigly. Meanwhile, the spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure in these emails is brutal. Instead of buying an island, Epstein should have purchased a subscription to Grammarly.
“The bishops, who were often divided by American politics in the Pope Francis era, showed a united front in standing behind Pope Leo XIV, the first pope from the United States, who has spoken out for immigrants and urged U.S. bishops to do the same.” Catholic Bishops Rebuke U.S. ‘Mass Deportation’ of Immigrants. “In a rare statement, the bishops framed the immigration crisis in starkly moral terms. ‘We feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity.'”
+ Not every immigrant is being targeted. Trump Organization sought to bring in nearly 200 workers on visas in 2025.
+ Meanwhile, U.S. visas can be denied for obesity, cancer and diabetes, Rubio says.
“The better policy would have been no policy at all. Imagine what the economy would look like right now if Trump had never started the trade war.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): What Tariffs Did. (Ironically, the Supreme Court could end up helping Trump even if they rule against him in the tariff case.)
“One day last year, Adebowale Akinyemi Wilson lost an opening round match at the World Table Tennis Contender tournament in Lagos, Nigeria. It was an obscure contest on the far-flung outskirts of professional sports. But 5,000 miles away in New Jersey, four gamblers were keeping a close eye on it.” WaPo (Gift Article): From table tennis to darts, small sports draw big bets — and corruption. “As the betting industry booms and scandals engulf major leagues, sportsbooks in the United States and around the world have expanded their menus, enabling big-money bettors to converge on small-money sports newly available on gambling apps, from international table tennis and lower division soccer to darts and surfing.”
House Hunting: “In a major shift, HUD’s plan would direct most of the $3.5 billion in homelessness funds away from Housing First to programs that prioritize work and drug treatment.” Trump Administration Expected to Drastically Cut Housing Grants. (First food, now shelter. They’re trying to get rid of Maslow’s entire hierarchy.)
+ Now Back to Our Regular Scandal Programming: “A Justice Department lawyer on Thursday defended the legality of Lindsey Halligan’s appointment as acting U.S. attorney to a skeptical federal judge who’s weighing whether to dismiss cases she brought against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.”
+ Sensing a Trend? “She was 17 and a high school junior in Florida. She was working at McDonald’s. And she was living in and out of a homeless shelter. Hoping to save up to buy braces to fix her teeth, she falsely advertised herself in 2017 as 18 years old on a website that matches men looking for ‘companionship’ with young women looking to make money.” NYT (Gift Article): In Matt Gaetz Scandal, Circumstances Left Teen Vulnerable to Exploitation.
+ Par-Don: “Acting just like a corrupt king, Trump is transforming the American system of justice into his personal plaything. Friends of the crown break the law with impunity. Enemies of the crown experience the sharp end of the law, whether they deserve it or not.” David French: One of the Founders’ Worst Fears Has Been Realized. (One?)
+ Shape Shifter: “The company says it plans to use the money from investors, including an arm of Wall Street banking giant Goldman Sachs, to open more shops and expand around the world.” Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand Skims hits $5bn valuation.
+ Freeze Your Tail Off: “Qualifications include being ‘physically fit and in good health,’ being capable of sprinting around the outfield, having the ability to entertain crowds, having cursory knowledge of baseball and ‘previous mascot or athletic experience is strongly preferred, but not required.'” Braves Holding Auditions for ‘The Freeze’ Mascot Ahead of 2026 MLB Season.
+ Pop Culture: “His name is Oscar Delaite, and he is a 19-year-old engineering student at the Université de Technologié de Troyes in Troyes, France, and it is the belief of this column that he will go on to live a long, happy life of many great accomplishments. At the moment, however, Oscar is best known for one great accomplishment.” WSJ (Gift Article): The College Student Who Did a Wheelie—for 93 Miles.
Naked man making phone call after steam and shower at local health club. Any guy who’s hit the locker room after a workout at the gym knows the guy I’m talking about. He dabs with a towel a bit, but he prefers to air dry. While waiting for evaporation to work its interminable magic, he takes a few calls in front of his locker, often with one leg up on a bench, pausing long enough to make small talk as he stands a little too close to you (with a towel wrapped around your waist and your undershirt wet from being pulled on before you completely dried off). Naked man making phone call after steam and shower at local health club is the reason you have a home gym. But is he suddenly an endangered species? In The Atlantic (Gift Article), Jacob Beckert reflects on the The End of Naked Locker Rooms. “Though public nakedness isn’t completely gone, many of the everyday spots where Americans once encountered unclothed bodies—locker rooms, school showers, public pools, bathhouses—have either vanished or shifted away from collective nudity.” This article suggests the downside of this trend. As a person who sleeps in jeans and a t-shirt and doesn’t feel comfortable disrobing in front of myself, it makes me think I might want to join a gym again. I’m not even worried about the PTSD I could experience by re-encountering Naked man making phone call after steam and shower at local health club. I probably won’t even recognize him with his clothes on.
2025-11-12 20:00:00
Ostriches don’t actually bury their heads in the sand. But after reading this story, you might want to. It all started out as a plight of a few hundred feathered friends suffering from bird flu in Canada. Then things got weird. Actually, considering the times in which we find ourselves, I suppose you could argue that’s when things got normal. For example, there’s this excerpt from the story: “The farm began to fortify. Trip lines were laid around the ostrich pens and hooked up to bear bangers to scare away intruders. Supporters equipped themselves with walkie-talkies. And Dave and Karen started sleeping in the ostrich pens.” And trust me, that’s just a warm-up. I know what you’re thinking. Dave, I really don’t care how weird this story gets, I’m just glad you’re not leading with any insane political news that pummels our frontal lobes like Mike Tyson works a speed bag. Well, don’t take off that cranial helmet just yet. This is 2025, and the same cast of characters that poisons our headlines infects everything, spreading their ill-informed influence faster than the virus at the heart of this story. Thus, there’s no point in saying spoiler alert when the same thing spoils every story. Which is how we get to this outtake: “The activists had been camping out for months; their numbers sometimes reached into the hundreds. They knew the government was saying that the ostriches had bird flu, but they were convinced that this was cover for some other, bigger scheme. The feds were conspiring with the United Nations and Big Pharma, they said. Small farmers’ rights were being trampled. But Dave and Karen’s birds had other, more powerful friends. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was making calls to Canadian officials; Dr. Oz had offered to evacuate the ostriches to his ranch in Florida.” Even when you’re just trying to read a story about ostriches, you can’t go cold turkey on these guys. Daniel Engber in The Atlantic (Gift Article): All the Ostriches Must Die.
A penny for your thoughts? It turns out both are decidedly out of style these days. “The U.S. Mint on Wednesday ended production of the penny, a change made to save money and because the 1-cent coin that could once buy a snack or a piece of candy had become increasingly irrelevant.” At the time they stopped being minted, pennies cost about four cents to produce (which seems like a bargain compared to most government purchases). Will we miss them? I guess we’ll find out. The half-cent was discontinued in 1857 and that hardly ever seems to be an issue.
+ If you missed it last week… Burger King Braces for the Demise of the Penny. (This story refers to Burger King the restaurant, not the person in the Oval Office…)
“Every four years at the Cybathlon, teams of researchers and technology ‘pilots’ compete to see whose brain-computer interface holds the most promise.” These technologies can be life-changing for those like Owen Collumb, who was paralyzed in 1993. But the advances in computer brain interfaces could impact everyone at some point. NYT (Gift Article): Let the Mind-Control Games Begin! “With artificial intelligence increasing the accessibility and sophistication of technological progress, the integration of organic and robot life is now a matter of degree. How tightly should we embrace these new tools? Will they make life better in the end? Can they change our idea of what people are capable of? The Cybathlon and its participants distill these questions into something concrete. ‘This isn’t showing your disabilities, it’s showing what you can do,’ Mr. Collumb said. ‘You may be in a wheelchair, you may not be able to move, but you can compete.'”
Jimmy Kimmel lost his childhood best friend and show band leader this week. Take a few minutes and listen to Kimmel’s tribute to Cleto Escobedo III. It’s not only an homage their friendship that somehow stretched from their childhood neighborhood in Vegas to your living room, it also serves as a tribute to friendship in general, especially those that have lasted decades. Jimmy Kimmel Remembers His Best Friend and Bandleader Cleto Escobedo III.
New Epstein Episode: “In one email from April 2011, Mr. Epstein told Ms. Maxwell, who was later convicted on charges related to facilitating his crimes, ‘I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.’ He added that an unnamed victim ‘spent hours at my house with him, he has never once been mentioned.’ ‘I have been thinking about that,’ Ms. Maxwell wrote back.” NYT (Gift Article): Epstein Alleged in Emails That Trump Knew of His Conduct. And Read 3 Jeffrey Epstein Emails That Mention Trump. (Why do I have a feeling the next thing we’ll be reading is the pardon of Ghislaine Maxwell…)
+ Clickbait Tackle: Google is trying to take down a group sending you all those spammy texts. (AI can do a lot, but when it comes to the stuff users really want, lawsuits are apparently still the best weapon.)
+ I-Phone, Therefore I Am: “You can present your Digital ID in place of a REAL ID at TSA checkpoints using your iPhone or Apple Watch. But Apple notes that it isn’t a replacement for your physical passport, and that you can’t use it for international travel or border crossings.” Apple launches a Digital ID and says it’ll be accepted by the TSA.
+ Head Out on the Highway: “Waymo is finally ready to hit the highway. Starting today, the company’s robotaxis will gradually start to include more highway trips in its routes in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.” The best detail of the driverless highway experience so far comes from Rachel Swan in the SF Chronicle. Her Waymo was stuck behind a truck that had its blinker on but wasn’t changing lanes. “So the Waymo car signaled and passed the truck on the left, providing a clear view to its driver-side window. Inside, the driver was steering with one hand and holding a cell phone to his ear with the other.
He appeared not to notice that the car beside him had nobody at the wheel.”
+ Your Job Sleeps With the Fishes: “There are few American mariners today because only a small proportion of international commercial shipping is done with vessels flying under the American flag, meaning they are registered in the United States, follow the Coast Guard’s regulations and employ American citizens. The jobs pay well, but often require people to be away from home for months at a time. Demand for civilian mariners could soon rise because President Trump and a bipartisan group of legislators in Congress want to revitalize the American shipbuilding industry.” Mariners Wanted: Six-Figure Salaries and Months at Sea. (If you can promise there’s no internet access, I’m in…)
+ Edit Discredit: Margaret Sullivan on the BBC editing story that ended up edited out the organization’s top brass. “Yes, this was a bad mistake that was not adequately acknowledged or corrected when there was a chance to do so. That is something that calls for internal examination and external acknowledgment, some of which has occurred. But the current aftermath of the long-ago error – the film was published last year before the US presidential election – is significantly out of proportion.” And more on the backstory: Make no mistake – this was a coup’: the extraordinary downfall of the BBC’s top bosses.
+ Sandwich Bar Exam: “The group was careful to avoid politics, she said, and instead focused on several key questions: Had the sandwich actually ‘exploded all over’ CBP agent Gregory Lairmore, as he’d testified? (Specifically, they analyzed—and at times mocked—Lairmore’s claim that ‘I had mustard and condiments on my uniform, and an onion hanging from my radio antenna that night.’) What was Dunn’s intent in flinging the grinder? And what actually constitutes ‘bodily harm’?” Ashley Parker in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Inside the Sandwich Guy’s Jury Deliberations.
Just yesterday, my mom and I were talking about the 12 years it took to complete repairs on a very short bridge in our neck of the woods, and I said, “Maybe China does know how to get things done better than we do.” Then today, I see this headline and video. New bridge in south-west China collapses into mountainside. Mom, on second thought, 12 years seems about right…