2026-05-13 20:00:00
Let’s start with the obvious: Something called the Honor Code was never going to survive 2026 America. You’ve got to give Princeton some credit for holding out as long as it did: Well over a century is a pretty good run. Let’s do a quick Princeton Review. “In 1876, an editorial in Princeton’s newly founded campus newspaper, The Princetonian, argued against the use of proctors to monitor exams. Proctoring was ‘a means of bad moral education,’ the author wrote. Treat students as presumptively dishonest, and some would become so; treat them as honorable, and they would learn to behave honorably. And so the editorial board suggested a different approach: ‘Let every man write at the end of his paper a pledge that he has neither given nor received help, and let professors and tutors address themselves to some better business than watching for fraud.'” Cut to 2026. Students are back to being treated as being presumptively dishonest and proctors are back in the business of watching for fraud. The internet couldn’t break the policy. Mobile phones couldn’t break the policy. But then the policy met a new kind of opponent. The Atlantic (Gift Article): How AI Killed a 133-Year-Old Princeton Tradition. “The code lasted through two world wars, the upheaval of the 1960s, the disillusionment of Watergate, and even the rise of search engines and SparkNotes. It finally met its match in generative AI. Yesterday, after the rise of AI-facilitated cheating became too obvious to ignore, Princeton’s faculty voted to begin proctoring exams again. Technically, the Honor Code is still in place. Students will still sign a pledge that they didn’t cheat. But now professors will be watching to make sure they’re telling the truth. The Honor Code can’t run on the honor system anymore.” (Don’t worry. At some point, the Honor Code will be able to run on Nvidia chips…)
The writing is on the wall. The question is whether today’s kids can read it. “Something troubling is happening in U.S. education. Almost everywhere in America, students are performing worse than their peers were 10 years ago, according to new, district-level test score data released Wednesday by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford. Compared with a decade earlier, reading scores were down last year in 83 percent of school districts where data was available. Math scores were down in 70 percent. The declines have affected both rich and poor districts, and crossed racial and geographic divides.” NYT Upshot (Gift Article): Why U.S. Test Scores Are in a Generation-Long Decline. “From 2017 to 2019, students lost as much ground in reading as they did during the pandemic, and reading scores continued to fall at a similar rate through 2024.”
+ NPR: Kids’ test scores began declining way before COVID. These schools are making gains. (Hopefully, all the schools making gains aren’t still using Princeton’s Honor Code during tests…)
“Over lunch at his golf club in Jupiter, Fla., on the first Saturday of May, President Trump got an earful from a group of tobacco executives and lobbyists unhappy with the way the Food and Drug Administration was regulating their industry. Eventually Mr. Trump had heard enough. He interrupted the conversation to call Dr. Marty Makary, the F.D.A. commissioner. No answer. Furious, the president then dialed Dr. Makary’s boss, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and another top health official, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He complained to them about the F.D.A.’s regulation of e-cigarettes.” And just like that, those tobacco execs and lobbyists are about to be able to sell flavored vapes. They gave the president an earful and the president is giving American kids a lungful. NYT (Gift Article): With a Friend in Trump, the Tobacco Industry Secures a Lucrative Win. You can say this about the Trump administration: you get what you pay for. Put that in your cotton candy, pink lemonade, mango mania pipe and smoke it.
+ The decision was part of the reason Marty Makary is no longer the FDA commissioner. And now, Rich Danker, a top Kennedy spokesman has resigned in protest.
How does Trump stay up all night posting insane and offensive material on social media? Well, he has some help. And that help, it turns out, includes a printer and an unfriendly ghost-writer. “Natalie Harp, Trump’s executive assistant, plays an integral role in Trump’s Truth Social activity. She brings the president stacks of printed-out draft social-media posts for his approval. The proposed posts often recycle content from other accounts that Harp or advisers think would appeal to Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. Harp then logs onto the president’s account—at times outside of normal work hours—and posts batches of Trump-approved messages.” WSJ (Gift Article): The Late-Night Truth Social Storms That Offer a Window Into the President’s Mind. “Earlier this year, at Trump’s direction, Harp posted a video that included racist imagery depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, and an AI-generated image of Trump as a Christ-like figure, people familiar with the matter said.”
The Great Haul of China: “The Middle East conflict that Trump started, and seems unable to finish, will cast a long shadow over two days of talks amid fears that he might be tempted to weaken US support for Taiwan, the self-governing democracy claimed by China, in return for Xi’s assistance.” Trump lands in China for high-stakes summit with Xi Jinping. It’s pretty clear from the Air Force One manifest that this trip is more about business than any other topic. Who was on Trump’s plane to China? Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO and more.
+ RSVPlease: “Dear NATO Members: I get it. You despise President Trump for all the right reasons. He has walked away from Ukraine. He has threatened to seize Greenland and annex Canada. He has coddled Vladimir Putin. He is eroding America’s democratic institutions and norms. He insulted each of you so much that the German chancellor recently barked back that Trump’s America was being ‘humiliated’ by Iran. I get it. Now get over it.” Thomas Friedman in the NYT (Gift Article) with an invitation he knows will be declined. NATO, Please Help. Trump Has No Strategy for Iran. Meanwhile, “Secret new assessments say Iran has operational access to 30 of its 33 missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz, suggesting that its military remains far stronger than President Trump has asserted.” (Maybe because he’s an assertified liar?)
+ Shark Bait: “The Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites in Box Elder County in north-western Utah. The facility will require about 9GW of power, which is more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes, and suck up a significant amount of water in an area that has been hit by severe drought in recent years.” Backlash as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan. “The proposed project is backed by Kevin O’Leary, the venture capitalist who appears on the TV show Shark Tank … ‘I don’t think there’s a bigger site in the world than this … It shows the Chinese and the rest of the world we are not messing around, we are going to get this done, move it forward and provide the compute power to our AI companies that defend the country.'”
+ Murdaugh, She Wrote: “In a unanimous opinion, the State Supreme Court said that ‘shocking jury interference’ by a court clerk who oversaw jurors during the 2023 trial meant that Mr. Murdaugh’s convictions must be overturned. Mr. Murdaugh, 57, will remain in prison because he also had pleaded guilty to various charges related to stealing millions of dollars from his law firm and his former clients.” Murdaugh Murder Convictions Overturned by South Carolina’s Top Court. (Does this mean more docuseries are on the way?)
+ Senate Chambers: “A burst of gunfire rang out Wednesday night in the Philippine Senate, where authorities have tried to arrest a senator who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for a charge of crime against humanity.”
+ Trading Blows: “Welcome to lower Manhattan’s Church Street Boxing Gym, where steel usually sharpens steel. But on this Thursday night, the ring is occupied by traders buying and selling cryptocurrencies—bitcoin, ether, even Pengu, a penguin-themed memecoin. The prize: $10,000 in cash and an ornate Japanese katana. And Parillo, a partner at a venture-capital firm, is methodically, brutally, pounding his rivals into submission.” WSJ (Gift Article): He’s a VC Partner by Day, Crypto Fighting Champ by Night. (The overlap between crypto trading, sports betting and other forms of gambling will become more and more clear. It’s not just that people are using crypto to make deposits into gambling sites. It’s that crypto traders are exhibiting the same addiction symptoms as other gamblers. )
+ Whatever Floats Your Bloat: “As many as 1,700 passengers are being held on board a cruise ship in southwest France, after dozens of cases of possible gastroenteritis on board.” (Cruises don’t seem awesome.)
“Darcel Clark was at the Mall at Bay Plaza in the Bronx, N.Y., in February, waiting for her order from the Bed-Stuy Fish Fry when a rowdy group of teenagers suddenly descended on the property. ‘They’re recording videos of themselves. I see them running from one place to another,’ said Clark. ‘It was really disturbing.’ Some stores and restaurants locked their doors. By the end of the day police had arrested 18 teenagers.” The good news. Teens are getting back into malls and malls are doing better. The bad news. Teens are getting back into malls. WSJ (Gift Article): Teens Helped Bring Malls Back to Life. Now They’re Getting Banned.
+ SF Giants’ Celebratory Thrusting May Be Gone Forever. (I don’t care what anyone says. When we beat the Dodgers, I’m thrusting.)
2026-05-12 20:00:00
After timidly doffing my jersey for a shirts vs skins junior high basketball game, a blond, athletic, attractive, popular kid guarding me pointed to my pear-shaped midriff, laughed, and said, “Look, Pell’s got handles.” I was humiliated, but I also made a determined pledge to myself that no matter what, that basketball game would be the last time anyone ever made fun of my upper body physique. And I kept that promise for the rest of my life. By making sure, from that day on, I was always on the shirts team.
+ If I had come of age in a more recent era, I may have been convinced that my body type and lack of manly prowess meant I needed a testosterone boost. (I’m guessing I had such low T that I was probably closer on the sliding scale to having high U.) For many males, this era has become T time. “From the Trump administration to online influencers, the hormone is increasingly seen as the key to achieving a new male ideal.” Even people whose T isn’t low are joining the T party. “Prescriptions are rising most rapidly among men ages 35 to 44, powered in large part by a surge in direct-to-consumer online clinics often marketing testosterone as a lifestyle product rather than a treatment for disease. The American Urological Association reports that roughly a third of men who are prescribed the drug do not meet the criteria for a diagnosis of testosterone deficiency, leading some critics to argue that this has created a legal market for low-grade steroids.” NYT Mag (Gift Article): Why So Many Men Are Obsessed With Testosterone. “All of this prompts a question: If one of the defining stories of the 2024 election was that young men swung to Trump in part because they felt masculinity had been demonized, what does it mean that so many men now believe they need to take testosterone to feel more like men?” I worry most about today’s young men who are motivated by influencers and ignoramuses to take drugs or alter their bodies in ways that could trade short term gains for longterm health issues. Hopefully, they can learn from my story. You know that blond, athletic, attractive, popular kid who made fun of my body? Today, his newsletter has like four subscribers. What comes around goes around.
+ Of course, testosterone is just one of the roids that’s all the rage. Boys and men are increasingly going to extremes to improve their looks. “For as long as he can remember, Trevor Larcom wanted to look different … That’s how he fell into the online world of looksmaxxing, where young men relentlessly pursue physical ideals. He dyed his eyebrows. He did neck exercises and chewed extra-firm gum that he’d seen looksmaxxers claim would help build the jawline’s masseter muscles. And after seeing numerous before-and-after transformations, he ordered a peptide ‘stack,’ or a combination of several peptides for supposed enhanced results. Unrealistic beauty standards have long saddled women and girls, from models to movie stars to the growing masses of GLP-1 users. Now men and boys are facing their own heightened images of perfection.” WSJ (Gift Article): Teen Boys and Young Men Are Injecting Peptides in Search of Perfection.
+ Meanwhile, whether it’s to get more buffed or just to offset the effect of GLP-1s, everyone is adding protein to everything. You may not have a protein deficiency, but society does. Protein powder shortage threatens America’s biggest food craze. And this shortage could last til the cows come home. Literally. Whey protein comes from dairy. (Full disclosure: While my shirt is on, I wrote that line with my pants off.)
“The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday set the stage for Alabama to eliminate one of two largely Black congressional districts before this year’s midterm elections, creating an opening for Republicans to gain an additional U.S. House seat in a partisan battle for control of the closely divided chamber.” Supreme Court halts order for Alabama to use US House map with 2 largely Black districts. (The midterms are shaping up to be a race between Trump’s sucking and Scotus’s cheating.)
“I have spent years reporting and living in both the United States and China and wrote a book chronicling the history and evolution of the Chinese internet. Moving between the two countries, I’ve been struck by how they have come to mirror and resemble each other. There is a shared sense of precarity that lies beneath the envy and distrust: the technological future is taking shape at vertiginous speed yet its promise is not shared by all.” Yi-Ling Liu with some interesting thoughts to keep in mind as Trump and Xi negotiate AI deals at this week’s summit: The Shared Feeling of Being Harvested by the Future. “A parallel set of memes has emerged to capture the sense of powerlessness. In the United States, the Silicon Valley tech elite identify as ‘high agency,’ while the rest of us are “bots” condemned to the “permanent underclass.” In China, ordinary workers describe themselves as shechu (“corporate cattle”) and jiabangou (“overtime dogs.”) These same workers have long used the viral term ‘involution’ to capture the feeling of being trapped in a cycle of meaningless competition. In both countries, those disaffected by A.I. identify with the gaming meme of the ‘NPC’ or ‘non-player character.’ They feel like the background role in someone else’s video game, existing only to fill the world but not to shape it.”
“Once the domain of mellow Gen X-ers in the ’80s and ’90s, the hacky sack is experiencing a renaissance at the hands — well, the feet — of Gen Z. High school students around the country are freshly enthusiastic about the toys, crocheted bean bags that once hung in the air like the scent of marijuana. Parents and teachers mostly seem glad to watch young people be entranced by something other than their phones.” 2026 sucks so hard that teens are nostalgic for times they never even experienced. Hacky Sack Mounts a Comeback With Gen Z. (I’m just glad that hacky sack hasn’t evolved into a term that means you need a testosterone boost…)
Adjusted for Inflation: “The U.S. war with Iran has pushed inflation to its highest level in almost three years.” Most of the price hikes are related to energy costs.
+ Makary in a Coalmine: “He upset anti-abortion Republicans keen on having the FDA restrict telehealth prescription of the abortion pill mifepristone, was pressured by President Donald Trump to authorize flavored vapes after initially raising concern about the products and was criticized by biopharmaceutical companies who argued Makary’s agency was inconsistent in its review of their medicines.” Marty Makary’s time atop FDA over.
+ Betting the Starm: “Keir Starmer has told his cabinet he will fight on as prime minister, saying the threshold for a leadership challenge has not been met, as ministers began to rally around the embattled leader.” Starmer tells cabinet he will not quit without leadership challenge.
+ Call it a Warsh: “The vote was nearly uniform across party lines, with just one Democrat breaking ranks — Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania cast the sole crossover vote in support of Trump’s nominee, according to CNBC. The vote on Warsh’s chairmanship nomination was expected later this week.” Senate confirms Kevin Warsh as a Fed governor.
+ A Blank (Check) Canvas: One of the more worrisome things about the hacks for ransom attacks we’ve seen on health and education platforms is that they seem to work. Maker of Canvas Learning Platform Strikes Deal for Hackers to Return Data.
+ Bomb Balm: “Facilities tied to Coca-Cola, Cargill, Mondelez and others appear to have been deliberately hit. The Trump administration’s muted response has raised concerns.” Russia Keeps Attacking U.S. Firms in Ukraine. The White House Is Silent.
+ A Dilly of a Pickle: “Professional athletes aren’t supposed to lose to 12-year-olds. But most 12-year-olds weren’t like Anna Leigh Waters in 2019. Waters was in middle school when she turned pro in pickleball and quickly showed that she was headed for big things, to the shock of her much older opponents.” And she only got better. She’s the best female pickleball player ever. And only 19.
+ Clipped: “Whether you’re scrolling TikTok, Instagram, X, or YouTube, it’s hard to avoid the snappy videos being churned out by this army of clippers trying to exploit algorithms with a provocative moment, engaging music and maybe the right news cycle, that will send footage viral. Clippers often upload dozens of the same clips to multiple platforms hoping one of them hits the virality jackpot.” The clipping economy: How short-form video ‘clippers’ are overrunning the internet.
“It could even be your underwear. Car washes. The bed where you sleep. The networks where you watch professional sports. Earthworms to feed your salamander. Dating apps. Exercise bikes. Your child’s math games. Fitness trackers, like Oura rings. Pet cameras. Your pet robots. And don’t forget the subscriptions to particular products, like toilet paper from a company called Who Gives a Crap.” Streaming, Toilet Paper, Underwear: Subscription Fatigue Is Setting In.
2026-05-11 20:00:00
The first time you feel the relaxation that melts across your body when a skilled acupuncturist pokes the tip of a needle into your Yintang, or the third eye point between your eyebrows, there’s a temptation to ask them to push it in all the way. If a little insertion feels this good, then maybe full insertion will feel even better. This kind of thinking, in addition to making it a good thing I never went into the acupuncture business, does make one wonder why a little prick can go such a long way—not only in business and politics, but in the human body. Scientists now believe that the efficacy of acupuncture and other phenomena can be explained by what they describe as a third human circulatory system. In addition to the cardiovascular and lymphatic systems, there is something now being called the interstitium. “The implications of a new circulatory system — for our health, and for our understanding of our own bodies — are potentially enormous.” NYT Mag (Gift Article): The Human Body’s Hidden Pathways. While new technologies can help us actually see this circulatory system in action, the idea of its existence has been around for quite some time. Neil Theise, a professor of pathology and one of the authors of recent studies on the topic, described a conversation he had after delivering his findings at a conference in China. “An expert in traditional Chinese medicine approached him after hearing his talk on the interstitium, and explained: “We’ve been talking about it for 4,000 years.”
“Behind Dana Anderson’s home in central Alabama, a plastic pipe carries waste from her toilet through her backyard, discarding it outdoors. Three or four times a year, a spell of heavy rain forces the excrement back up into the house. It is a plight that has long plagued residents across Alabama’s Black Belt, a stretch of largely rural counties so named for its dark soil and history of slavery.” After years, the community finally had the funding and a plan in place to address what would seem to most Americans to be an unthinkable problem. But then came the administration that never met a problem it couldn’t make more shitty, even shit itself. NYT (Gift Article): They Were Promised New Septic Tanks. Trump Called It ‘Illegal DEI.’
“There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done. The Strait of Hormuz will not be ‘open,’ as it once was. With control of the strait, Iran emerges as the key player in the region and one of the key players in the world. The roles of China and Russia, as Iran’s allies, are strengthened; the role of the United States, substantially diminished. Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have repeatedly claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started. That is going to set off a chain reaction around the world as friends and foes adjust to America’s failure.” Robert Kagan’s ominous view of the Iran war in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Checkmate in Iran.
+ Trump on the peace talks: “I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support, where the doctor walks in and says, ‘Sir, your loved one has approximately a 1% chance of living.'” (Some days, that’s how I feel about America’s leadership role in the world.). Here’s the latest from The Guardian.
“My name on the platform is ri611. Or h924092b12ee797f, depending on who’s paying me. I work as an AI trainer. I assess whether a chatbot’s tone is natural or flat, affected or annoying. I identify patterns in pictures of furniture; search the internet for group photos of strangers whom I’ll eliminate from the portrait, one by one. I trawl through bizarre videos so I can annotate and time-stamp the barking of a dog, the moment a stranger walks past a window, the precise millisecond a balloon pops. I generate anime sex scenes and decapitate young women, coax LLMs into giving me recipes for bombs made of household items, and generate invites to a reprise of January 6 at the White House, all as part of a red team whose purpose is to test safety precautions and probe weaknesses. I work for companies with names like Mercor and Outlier and Task-ify and Turing and Handshake and Micro1. In my ‘other’ career, I am a Hollywood writer and showrunner.” Wired: I Work in Hollywood. Everyone Who Used to Make TV Is Now Secretly Training AI. (Alt link.) “For screenwriters like me—and job seekers all over—AI gig work is the new waiting tables.” (Except, you’re not training the tables to replace you.)
Rein on Parade: “Putin knows he can’t live up to the mythology he created, and everyone else can see that too. His unnecessary, illegal, brutal war in Ukraine has already lasted longer than the Russian war against the Nazis, killing or wounding more than a million Russian soldiers and producing neither military nor political nor any other kind of success. On the contrary: He can’t even hold a parade in Moscow without fearing that the Ukrainians will disrupt it.” Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic (Gift Article) on Putin’s pathetic parade. Putin’s War Comes Home to Moscow. “That doesn’t mean his Ukraine war is over, or that Putin’s reign has ended. But it does mean that Russians in general, and Muscovites in particular, can now clearly see the contrast between propaganda and reality. A vacuum has opened up, and sooner or later something else, or someone else, will fill it.”
+ Sexual Violence: “It’s a simple proposition: Whatever our views of the Middle East conflict, we should be able to unite in condemning rape.” Brutal story from Nick Kristof in the NYT (Gift Article): The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians.
+ Business Trip: Trump is bringing Tim Cook, Elon Musk, and a dozen other CEOs to Beijing for his Xi summit. (Let’s hope he’s also bringing some diplomats with expertise in negotiating with China…)
+ Mercury Rising: “Today’s workers, who are breathing a much higher proportion of silica, can develop a disabling illness in much less time.” MoJo: Black Lung Surges in Coal Country as Trump Slow-Walks Protections. Meanwhile, As Coal Rebounds, More Toxic Mercury Is in the Air.
+ Time to Cruise: “On Monday, 16 American cruise ship passengers arrived at the University of Nebraska Medical Center; 15 are in the quarantine unit and one person who tested positive is in the biocontainment unit.” Here’s the latest on the Hantavirus cruise and the citizens who have finally been allowed to disembark.
+ Hunger Games: “Since the law was enacted last summer, about 3.5 million people have fallen off the SNAP rolls nationwide as of January, according to federal data. No state has seen a more dramatic drop than Arizona, which offers a window into what may be in store for other states.” The families going hungry because of Trump’s food stamp cuts.
+ Lost in the Flood: Remember the old strategy of flooding the zone with so much false information that people no longer know what to believe? It works. WaPo (Gift Article): About 1 in 4 Americans think the April shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner was staged.
+ Wordle Curdle? Savannah Guthrie will host new ‘Wordle’ game show produced by Jimmy Fallon. (So if playing Wordle feels like too much work, you can just watch other people play it.)
“On a recent Saturday, gladhanding through it all, came a six-foot-tall talking pencil. ‘My name is Pencil’ the pencil told an attendee, pressing a flyer into her hand. ‘I’m running for governor because we need to raise awareness about education.’ … ‘You’re running as a pencil or a person?’ the surprised woman asked … ‘As a pencil.'” Oregon’s most unexpected gubernatorial candidate? A pencil with a point. (If nothing else, the pencil should be able to win the write-in vote…)
+ “Members post photos, share technique tips, and describe the experience in terms that would not be out of place in a wellness retreat brochure. Electrifying. Addictive. Euphoric. Transcendental.” Inside Ballmaxxing, the Niche Practice of Inflating Your Balls to Cantaloupe Size. This story leaves me feeling a deep sense of melon-choly…
2026-05-08 20:00:00
Forget the old my dog ate my homework excuse for not getting one’s work to the teacher in time. Today’s high school and college students have a much more modern pretext to explain away a missing assignment: My homework was taken hostage and held for ransom. That’s pretty much what took place across thousands of schools (where AP tests are being administered) and universities (where some finals are scheduled), as a hacking group known as ShinyHunters breached an online learning platform called Canvas, that “is used to manage grades, course notes, assignments, lecture videos and more. The hacking group posted online that nearly 9,000 schools worldwide were affected, with billions of private messages and other records accessed.” Canvas’ parent company Infrastructure took the service offline as the hackers demanded a ransom to keep the accessed data from being released.
Both of my kids, one in college and one in high school, were affected by the hack. During their academic lives, they’ve already missed school because of a global pandemic, unsafe smoke levels, wildfires, and flooding, so a hack impacting 9,000 institutions seemed like a relatively minor interruption. But the incident does point to the vulnerabilities we face as an increasing number of our tasks take place on fewer massive platforms, at the same time hackers are gaining access to more powerful tools than ever. As Wired reports: “Higher education has long been a target of ransomware gangs and data extortion attacks. But never before, perhaps, has a cyberattack against a single software platform so thoroughly disrupted the daily operations of thousands of schools across the United States.” Canvas is back online, at least for now, and class is back in session. For students, that means homework is due again. Platforms like Canvas have their own assignments to get done. And as we enter more dangerous online times, hackers ate my homework isn’t gonna cut it.
Apparently, partisan gerrymandering is totally cool these days, as long as it doesn’t represent the will of the voters. “Virginia’s top court on Friday struck down a congressional map drawn by Democrats and recently approved by voters, dealing a major blow to the party as it struggles to keep pace with Republicans in the nation’s redistricting battle. The ruling will wipe out four newly drawn Democratic-leaning U.S. House districts in Virginia and means that Republicans will enter the midterm elections with a structural advantage from their moves to carve out more red districts across the country.” NYT (Gift Article): In Huge Blow to Democrats, Virginia Court Strikes Down House Map. “Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House minority leader, who lobbied Virginia legislators to advance their redistricting push and then campaigned for the referendum, said that “the decision to overturn an entire election is an unprecedented and undemocratic action that cannot stand … We are exploring all options to overturn this shocking decision.” (Like what, asking the Supreme Court to step in?)
+ Meanwhile, following the recent SCOTUS decision, GOP legislatures are wasting no time taking a Jim Crowbar to majority black districts. The Guardian: Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and other southern states stun residents with all-out charge to redraw congressional maps to favor white voters.
+ The Atlantic (Gift Article): Judicial Supremacy Has Arrived. “The decision does not only dismantle a statute; it hollows out Congress’s capacity to respond to the country’s needs.”
I’ve occasionally searched for exercises to aid in healing my frozen shoulder (or my other frozen shoulder). So when I go on a social media site like Instagram, I see an endless parade of people and products that promise to quickly solve my problem (while explaining why the last 300 solutions I’ve been presented with have got it all wrong). I usually try to wave off this advice (even though waving hurts like hell.) It seems amazing how much purported health and wellness content is shared online, until you consider how many people look for guidance on social media. “Half of U.S. adults under 50 say they get health and wellness information from social media influencers or podcasts.” Moms, Coaches, Doctors, Entrepreneurs: Who Are America’s Health and Wellness Influencers?
What to Book: These days, I usually opt for novels (since the news is giving me more of the real world than I can take), but I made an exception for Patrick Radden Keefe’s excellent, London Falling. It’s described as “a spellbinding account of a family devastated by the sudden death of their nineteen-year-old son, only to discover that he had created a secret life which drew him into the dangerous criminal underworld that lies beneath London’s glittering surface.” But it’s also an education on how geopolitics, immigration patterns, economic shifts, and new technologies can change a city in the historical equivalent of the blink of an eye.
+ What to Watch: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Billie Boullet, and Alice Braga star in the entertaining (if not very realistic) Man on Fire on Netflix. “Haunted by his past and hunted by his enemies, a Special Forces veteran fights to keep a teenage girl alive on the deadly streets of Rio de Janeiro.”
+ What to Doc: Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World is both a father-son story about one of my favorite NYC spots, and a moving look at how the craziness of the Ukraine invasion impacted a restaurant and community thousands of miles away.
In the AI of the Storm: Job numbers came in better than expected, consumer sentiment hit a fresh low, and all the numbers are being wildly skewed by one thing: AI Is Distorting Practically Everything About the Economy. “AI’s pervasive presence makes it almost impossible to discern what is actually going on. It is swamping the effects of tariffs and the war with Iran, events that would ordinarily be Category 5 storms in their own right.” Looking for a more simple economic indicator? Consider boxes. Bloomberg (Gift Article): Box Makers Struggle to Pass on War Costs as Demand Stays Weak.
+ Life in EL: “A climate monster is growing right now in the Pacific Ocean, perhaps the most fearsome El Niño since before scientists even began modeling them.” David Wallace-Wells in the NYT (Gift Article): The World Is About to Get a Preview of Life in 2035.
+Vape and Pillage: President Trump is planning to fire FDA Commissioner Marty Makary over a flavored vapes and a number of other policy disagreements.
+ Winning? “The ability to toll and permit offers the regime in Tehran an enormous potential source of funding and geopolitical leverage that will — like its nuclear program — now require constant management.” If Iran Agrees to Everything, Was the War Worth It? (Let’s see if we get a deal anywhere near as good as the one Trump tore up during his first term.) Here’s the latest from the NYT, and The Guardian, as we’re seeing a lot more firing during the ceasefire.
+ Dockless Doc: “Kornfeld had retired from his full-time oncology job more than a decade ago, although he still picks up shifts here and there at several of Oregon’s rural hospitals. Now he was being thrust into a nerve-racking, life-or-death situation, and caring for ill and potentially infectious patients while trying to communicate with the rest of the passengers on board, all with very limited resources.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): What Happened on the Hantavirus Cruise, According to a Doctor on Board. More than 100 passengers remain on the ship. Here’s the latest.
+ What the Truck? Tesla Recalls Cybertruck Because Wheels May Fall Off. (This is bad, but not as bad as the risk of being seen driving one…)
Time: At 100, David Attenborough’s voice is a lesson in wonder and planetary stewardship. And from The Ringer: David Attenborough and the Voice That Revealed a Planet. “That ability to illuminate the unseen is one of Attenborough’s greatest gifts as an educator, a storyteller, and a human being. It is a by-product of his ethos and his iconic half-hushed delivery—intimate enough to make you feel like you’re being told a secret of the natural world, quiet enough so as not to draw any undue attention away from the natural spectacle at hand.”
+ ‘A watershed moment’: A pancreatic cancer drug is set to transform treatment. And, in a Milestone for A.L.S., a Treatment Helps Some Patients Improve.
+ Rachel Entrekin makes ultramarathon history, wins Cocodona 250 as first woman to top field of men and women.
+ “Last year, more sections of the country’s rivers were reconnected thanks to dam removals than at any other time in history.” America the Undammed. (This is definitely the first time in 2026 someone has used that headline…)
+ MLB viewership up 44 percent across national games in 2026, the league’s best showing in nearly a decade.
+ Some kids are bypassing age-verification checks with a fake mustache.
+ “Watching from bed alongside his wife, Malory, who was reading a book, Giants kicker Younghoe Koo whiffed on a field goal attempt in a real-life scene reminiscent of Charlie Brown and Lucy in the ‘Peanuts’ cartoon. Rewinding and watching the replay, Toothaker laughed so hard it caused a seizure.” It may have saved his life.
2026-05-07 20:00:00
Some fellow San Francisco baseball season-ticket holders recently announced the impending birth of their first child. After congratulating them on the news, I had to ask: “Are you sure now is the best time to bring another Giants fan into this world?” Maybe I’m being too cautious. It’s not that the current season isn’t going that badly. It is. It’s just that, given average life expectancy and the promise of longevity gains, there’s a chance that a child born in 2026 can still expect to live long enough to see the team’s hitting improve. Probably. But my concerns serve as a pretty decent metaphor for birth rate trends across many nations. Even where economic and other factors suggest people should be making more babies, they’re making fewer. “This is not simply a matter of affordability, the buzzword so often invoked to explain why people are choosing to have smaller families … What unites these disparate cultures, policy environments and demographics, researchers are now realizing, is young people’s inescapable and crushing sense that the future is too uncertain for the lifelong commitment of parenthood. Call it the vibes theory of demographic decline.” Anna Louie Sussman in the NYT (Gift Article): Why So Few Babies? We Might Have Overlooked the Biggest Reason of All. (In short, people have no idea what to expect when they’re expecting.)
+ Sussman, the author of the forthcoming book Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty, shares some of the potential factors driving the ambivalence. “In the United States, job tenures have contracted and income volatility has risen. Life expectancy, once on an inexorable march upward, has fallen for less-educated women and men. Many of the forces our economy is built on — A.I., immigration, global trade — feel distressingly volatile; disruption, once a byword for a disturbance or problem, is the governing ethos of a terrifyingly powerful sector of our economy. The rise of prediction markets has turned the world into one large casino. The climate crisis is spiraling, as are the costs of everything that could enable parenthood, whether that’s a roof over one’s head or child care. The past half-century has brought us breathtaking inequality, accompanied by a sharp decline in social mobility. The two generations currently of childbearing age bear the psychological and financial scars of coming of age amid world-scale catastrophes: Older millennials entered the labor market during the Great Recession; many watched their parents lose their jobs or homes. Gen Z, whose lives were upturned by the Covid-19 pandemic, now find themselves competing against A.I. for entry-level jobs and even prospective partners. The man running America seems single-mindedly devoted to chaos at home and abroad.”
+ I can tell by this brief overview of the state of the world that Sussman is probably a NextDraft subscriber. I’m not sure all sociologists and economists will agree that stress and uncertainty are the key factors driving down natality across the world, but it definitely helps explain why, even this season, I’d rather watch Giants games than the news.
Putin is presiding over a Victory Day parade this weekend. But here’s the rub. “He has no victories to celebrate. Persistent Ukrainian drone strikes across Russia, including on the capital, have forced Putin to ask for a cease-fire for the duration of the festivities. Parade organizers, citing security threats, have also dramatically downgraded the event, eliminating the display of armored vehicles and the march by military cadets. Cellphone and internet services are slated to be disrupted in Moscow for days. With the front line stalled, Russian casualties topping one million, the economy suffering and missile and drone strikes becoming commonplace, a deep sense of discontent has spread through the country in recent months.” WSJ (Gift Article): Putin’s Strongman Image Is Fading as Ukraine Brings War Home to Russia. “It doesn’t mean that revolution is imminent, nor that Putin, currently 73 years old, will be sidelined soon. But the change in mood is remarkable when compared with just last December, when Russian officials were buoyed by hopes that President Trump will pressure Ukraine into a peace deal on Moscow’s terms, lifting economic sanctions and unleashing a business bonanza.” Ukraine is somehow managing a remarkable David v Goliath stand for democracy and against authoritarianism, all while being told by the supposed leader of the democratic world that they’ve lost and should surrender.
For now, the peace talks between Iran and the US seem to have been narrowed down to a single issue: Reopening the Strait. “Tehran and Washington have scaled back ambitions for a sweeping settlement as differences persist, particularly over Iran’s nuclear program – including the fate of its highly enriched uranium stockpiles and how long Tehran would halt nuclear work. Instead, they are working toward a temporary arrangement set out in a one-page memo aimed at preventing a return to conflict and stabilizing shipping through the strait.” US and Iran explore short-term deal to end fighting.
+ “Trump surprised Gulf allies by announcing ‘Project Freedom’ on social media Sunday afternoon.” It turns out that’s not the best way to build a global coalition. Even the Saudis balked. Trump’s abrupt U-turn on a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz came after backlash from allies. Now, it looks like Project Freedom could be back on soon. Here’s the latest from The Guardian and the NYT.
My dad regularly got the hot dog lunch at Costco because he liked to watch how the business ran while he ate. He’d also buy cheap pants there and then have them customized by his tailor, getting perfectly fitting dress pants at a fraction of the cost. So I can relate to this piece by Jordan Michelman in Taste: I Want to Live Like Costco People.”The scale of items at Costco sometimes demands we answer questions beyond easy comprehension. Do I need a 300-gram bag of premium orange chicken puffs? What the hell even are premium orange chicken puffs? … I’m open to the concept of a yuzu citrus snack nut mix, perhaps to enjoy beneath my new Costco palapa, but do I desire three whole pounds of it? Every time I go to Costco, I stop and look at the 62 ounces of peanut M&M’s, and I think of my father, who loved to purchase this snack in bulk. I do not purchase the M&M’s for myself, but I do often take a picture—sometimes to text my mom, so we can remember Dad together for a moment, and sometimes just to keep for myself.”
Bourbon Plague: “One of J. Edgar Hoover’s greatest reforms at the FBI was his embrace of fingerprinting. During the 1930s, visitors to the FBI offices in Washington, D.C., received souvenir fingerprint cards featuring his name. The men who succeeded him as FBI director were more discreet and judicious, mindful of the cult of personality that had developed around Hoover. They generally avoided giving out branded swag. But then came Kash Patel. President Trump’s FBI director has a great deal of affection for swag. Merchandise for sale on a website he co-founded—still operating, nearly 15 months into his term—includes beanies ($35), T-shirts ($35), orange camo hoodies ($65), trucker caps ($25), ‘government gangsters’ playing cards (on sale for $10), and a fight with kash Punisher scarf ($25). One thing not for sale is liquor, because liquor is something Patel gives away for free.” The Atlantic (Gift Article) is reacting to Patel’s attacks for their past reporting on him by reporting on him some more. Kash Patel’s Personalized Bourbon Stash.
+ In Sink: “In some parts it is happening at an average rate of 0.78 inches a month, according to NASA’s newly released report, such as at the main airport and the iconic monument commonly known as the Angel of Independence. Overall that means a yearly subsidence rate of about 9.5 inches. Over the course of less than a century, the drop has been more than 39 feet.” Mexico City is sinking so quickly, it can be seen from space.
+Scotus Operandi: “I think at a very basic level, people think we’re making policy decisions, [that] we’re saying we think this is what things should be as opposed to this is what the law provides … I think they view us as truly political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do. I would say that’s the main difficulty.” Chief Justice John Roberts says American public wrongly views the justices as political actors. (Reminds me of something an American president once said: “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”) Meanwhile, Clarence Thomas is now the 2nd longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history.
+ Disembark Collar: “Authorities around the world are racing to trace dozens of passengers who disembarked from the cruise ship at the center of a deadly hantavirus outbreak before isolation measures were implemented.” WHO says this is not the start of an epidemic. (So the disembark is worse than its bite?)
+ Got It Made in the Trade: “The Department of Justice is investigating a series of suspiciously timed trades in the oil market just ahead of major announcements by President Donald Trump and a top Iranian official about the war in Iran.” (Oh, phew. This DOJ is on it…) Meanwhile, Shell Reports Nearly $7 Billion Profit Amid Unprecedented Disruption.
+ Cains Able: “Long before Raising Cane’s became one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains in the US, company founder Todd Graves pitched the idea of a fast-food spot centered around a single item—the mighty chicken finger—in an undergraduate business course at the University of Georgia. The professor gave him the lowest grade in the class.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): Raising Cane’s Grew From an Idea a College Professor Hated.
“Using an experimental drug sold over the internet to lose weight is an inherently risky gamble. That’s a lesson a 32-year-old man had to painfully learn first-hand after he experienced horrific bouts of diarrhea likely caused by overdosing on the GLP-1 medication retatrutide.” The man was going to the bathroom up to 30 times a day. (On the plus side, the weight just came off…)
2026-05-06 20:00:00
The idiom Take the money and run has referred to everything from being satisfied with what one has achieved in some endeavor or negotiation, to grabbing a quick gain, to the more literal definition described in the Steve Miller Band song about two young lovers named Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue: Robbing someone and taking off with the loot. (They got the money, hey, you know they got away. They headed down south and they’re still running today, singing, go on, take the money and run. Hoo-hoo-hoo.) These days, a similarly titled story about Billy Joe and Bobby Sue could refer to the names on a political ticket, because there’s only one two-step process to seek public office in America: Take the money. And run.
+ It wasn’t always this way. As Danny Hakim explains in the NYT (Gift Article), “For a brief moment in American history, the rich didn’t control politics. Back in 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Congress passed new campaign finance restrictions that would have largely eliminated the ability of wealthy people to buy elections.” As we know, those restrictions were obliterated by the Citizens United case. But before that, there was another case that poked holes in the law. “A Supreme Court decision that most Americans probably never heard of. Fifty years ago, in a case called Buckley v. Valeo, the court upheld many aspects of the post-Watergate campaign finance law, clearing the way for public financing of presidential elections and empowering the new Federal Election Commission. But it eviscerated other parts of the law, leaving the rich with their own set of rules. The court ruled that wealthy Americans could spend unlimited amounts of money to independently support candidates and causes they favored.” A Look Inside the Case That Enshrined Political Power for Billionaires. “Flash forward to the 2024 presidential campaign. Six of the nation’s wealthiest billionaires spent more than $100 million apiece to help get another billionaire, Donald J. Trump, elected president.” (Giving life to another famous adage: Money talks, bullshit walks.)
+ Whether you’re hoping for a red wave or a blue wave, the truth is, a green wave is what you’re likely to get. Political strategy has been reduced to hoping your billionaires spend more than their billionaires. While we’re all focusing on Trump’s effort to build his ballroom, the real story is about the people who have already built several of their own, where, if you listen closely, you can hear them singing, Go on, take the money and run. Hoo-hoo-hoo…
“At 6:05 a.m. on Jan. 14, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation converged at the door of Hannah Natanson, a reporter at The Washington Post. They had a search warrant and entered her home, seizing her iPhone and other devices … The event put Ms. Natanson’s name among the targets of the Trump administration’s aggressive campaign against news organizations. There was no precedent for the Justice Department’s searching a reporter’s home in connection with a national security leak investigation, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. But on Monday, Ms. Natanson was recognized for something else: a Pulitzer Prize.” First, the F.B.I. Searched Her Home. Then, She Won a Pulitzer.
+ We need journalists to remain bold in their quest to unearth the truth, because the Trump administration is only becoming bolder in the way they’re using the tools of government to squelch it. “Nearly three weeks after The Atlantic reported that some government officials were alarmed by FBI Director Kash Patel’s behavior, including conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences, MS NOW reported this morning that the bureau has ‘launched a criminal leak investigation’ that focuses on the Atlantic journalist who wrote the story, Sarah Fitzpatrick.” The FBI Is Reportedly Investigating a Leak to an Atlantic Writer.
“At a time when oil and gas supply is faltering, the cost of wind and solar energy keeps declining. And, when paired with battery systems for storage, renewables can often provide steady electricity more cheaply than fossil fuels, even when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow.” NYT (Gift Article): The Global Oil Crisis Seems to Be Helping One Industry: Renewable Energy.
+ Trump says a deal is near and Trump also threatens more bombing. “The mixed messages came a day after Mr. Trump abruptly paused a U.S. military operation to escort commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, citing what he said was ‘great progress’ in talks. In public, there has been little sign that the weeks of diplomacy aimed at reaching a deal to reopen the vital waterway and end the war were bearing fruit.” Meanwhile, Israel has struck Beirut again and Netanyahu is talking about getting the nuclear material out of Iran. At this point, it sure seems like Trump wants this fight to end and Bibi wants it to continue. Here’s the latest from NYT and The Guardian.
From the WSJ (Gift Article): I Asked ChatGPT to Manage a Stock Portfolio. Here’s How It Did. “Andrew Lo, a professor of finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has been studying AI’s impact on investing … recommends treating your AI investing companion similar to how he treated an exceptional teaching assistant. The TA was whipsmart, but there was one issue. He tended to smoke too much marijuana. As a result, Lo took everything he said with a grain of salt. That’s what you should do with AI, he says.” (I’m definitely on the right track, because I get high with AI all the time.)
+ AI outperforms doctors in Harvard trial of emergency triage diagnoses. (So don’t trust AI with your money, but go ahead and trust it with your life.)
Still Top Banana in Indiana: “The threats weren’t just political. Leading up to the vote, state senators faced bomb scares. Police drew guns on one state senator in his home based on a false report. Days later, an officer showed up at Deery’s door after receiving a similar bogus report … The primaries would test how much dissent Republican voters would tolerate. A victory by Trump’s side would send one of the strongest messages yet that even Republicans in the lower rungs of politics could face career-ending blows if they disobey a president who long ago remade their party.” WaPo (Gift Article): After defying Trump, a Republican lawmaker hangs on by a thread. And he’s doing better than his colleagues who defied the president’s Indiana redistricting efforts. The Indiana results show Trump’s continued hold on his party. The big question is how that will impact the general election.
+ Pro Shingles: “The withdrawal of the studies is the latest step by the administration to try to limit access to vaccines. It has sharply cut research funding for vaccine development, released unvetted information casting doubt on vaccines, and blocked other information supporting their safety, most recently a paper on Covid vaccine effectiveness by career scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” NYT (Gift Article): F.D.A. Blocked Publication of Research Finding Covid and Shingles Vaccines Were Safe. (This is exactly why, in yesterday’s lead item, I explained that, while a conversation about antidepressants is worthwhile, having one with this administration is worse than useless: Psychotropic Thunder.)
+Reality Deficiency: “Many of them are doing so out of a well-meaning but ill-informed abundance of caution. In the hopes of safeguarding their newborns from what they see as unnecessary medical intervention, they have shunned fundamental and scientifically sound pharmaceutical intervention. The trend is also fueled by a contradictory pairing: families’ fierce desire to protect their babies and a cascade of false information infused into their social media algorithms.” ProPublica: Babies Are Bleeding to Death as Parents Reject a Vitamin Shot Given at Birth.
+ Ted Talks: “I’m trying to set the all-time record for achievement by one person in one lifetime. And that puts you in pretty big company: Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Gandhi, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Washington, Roosevelt, Churchill.” He didn’t quite hit that level, but he did a lot. NYT (Gift Article): Ted Turner, Creator of CNN and the 24-Hour News Cycle, Dies at 87.
+ Room Where It Happened: “The money would go toward security improvements as part of an East Wing construction project, including a new ballroom that President Trump has said would be built with private dollars.” G.O.P. Proposes $1 Billion in Immigration Bill for Trump’s Ballroom Project. (We should just call it a room, because the president’s sycophants have proven there are no balls left in Washington.)
+ Seed Bank: “The public suit includes graphic and extensive details of his allegations that a more senior banker on the team repeatedly demanded to have sex with him, often with racial insults mixed in, and threatened his career advancement if he didn’t engage. He alleged she forcibly performed oral sex on him and that they had sex only under duress while he begged her not to.” JPMorgan offered $1 million settlement before sexual assault claims went viral.
NYT (Gift Article): What Happened When the Pope Had to Call Customer Service. “Even the Vicar of Christ can be thwarted by a customer service representative.” (I already knew that as I introduce myself that way anytime I call anyone…)