2026-05-15 20:00:00
The dawning of the internet enabled a creative revolution, where one guy like me, with a laptop, could develop a publishing system and an audience that could compete with major, branded publications. During the dot-com boom, five people from the New York Times came to my South of Market, San Francisco office because they wanted to get advice about their newsletter strategy. The age of indies had arrived. We were where it was all happening. During the current AI boom, it feels more like something is happening to us. Giant corporations with unprecedented amounts of capital and no real oversight other than the hollow promises of self-regulation are making massive decisions about the future of everything, while we’re left to hope our tech overlords are benevolent in the way they choose to delete the role of mere salaried NPCs, and where they decide city-sized data centers will drink our milkshake. All that indie creativity has been sucked into giant database farms, where it gets regurgitated as bulleted outlines. The internet empowered. AI is overpowering. Both the reality and the marketing around AI are overwhelming. Charlie Warzel explains why so much of the current tech revolution makes people want to hit a giant ESC key. “That you can’t begin to wrap your mind around the AI boom or orient yourself in it is a feature, not a bug, for those building the technology. But for anyone just trying to adapt, it’s difficult not to feel resentful or alienated. Silicon Valley is trying to speedrun the singularity, and it’s polarizing the rest of us in the process.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): Too Much Is Happening Too Fast. “I’d argue that the most common feeling about AI is somatic: a low-grade hum of difficult-to-place anxiety that’s the result of loud people constantly suggesting that the near future will look very little like the present and that nothing—your job or the social contract—might survive the transition.” (To save space, I’m skipping the interim tech years where the internet annihilated attention, polarized populations, razed reality, totalled truth, and demolished democracy.)
A lot of China-US summit deals have been touted, even though, predictably, details are scarce. (Boeing got a big airplane purchase deal, but it was smaller than expected and the stock is down). David Sanger (who Trump called treasonous on Air Force 1) has a good overview in the NYT (Gift Article): Trump Was Flattering, Xi Was Resolute. The Difference Spoke Volumes. “Mr. Xi arrived highly scripted, leaving no doubt that for all of China’s problems — deflation, depopulation, the bursting of the real estate bubble — the moment when China acts as a peer superpower had arrived. At every turn, at least as he began his two-day trip to China, Mr. Trump sounded conciliatory, the exact opposite of his portrayals of China in public appearances back home.”
+ By 2026 standards, the summit actually went pretty well. Ian Bremmer sums it up in this short video piece: “We are in the books on the Xi Jinping, Donald Trump summit in Beijing, certainly, one of the most consequential summits that we have witnessed in a long time. And yet very little concrete has come out of it, and on balance, I think, most observers are very comfortable with that.”
+ Time: Trump’s China Trip Underscores How Power Has Shifted East.
+ Of course, there’s the question of how the summit went for America vs how the summit went for Trump. To get an answer to the latter question, we may have to wait until Trump’s next financial disclosure. Trump Has Made Bank Off of Government Contractors’ Stock. And from Bloomberg (Gift Article): Trump’s More Than 3,700 Trades Provoke Wall Street Astonishment.
+ Time will tell who were the biggest winners of the summit. For now, the biggest loser seems to be CBS News anchor Tony Dokoupil, who reported on the China summit from Taiwan. Oh, and his cameraman passed out (probably over confusion over what they were doing in Taiwan). Defector: Tony Dokoupil Flew 8,000 Miles Just To Eat More Sh-t.
“Tractors, like the one his father frequently drove, had been hit in the fields. In March, a drone blew up a car next to a shop. Another had exploded on Anatolii’s street just the day before. Now, the one he spotted was heading right for his house. As he clung to the tree trunk, the black quadcopter buzzed past, flying just off the ground and bearing down on a cluster of buildings where three of his younger siblings were playing with other kids in their yard … What Anatolii did next — something he had rehearsed, something few civilians in Ukraine have been taught — might have saved the lives of those children, his mother changing a diaper inside or other neighbors on the block.” WaPo (Gift Article): In northern Ukraine, it was boy vs. Russian drone. The boy won.
What to Binge: An inexperienced crew of civil servants is quickly thrust into roles as undercover agents trying to slow the flood of heroin into 1990s Britain in the new series, Legends on Netflix.
+ What to Book: The very popular novel Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke is told from the perspective of a trad-wife influencer. The less you know going in, the better.
+ What to Read: If you missed it yesterday … a great writer (Wright Thompson) wrote about a great guy (Steve Kerr). From ESPN: The Warrior Still Remains. Yes, this is an article about my favorite coach and my favorite NBA team. But it’s much more than that. It’s about loss, politics, chronic pain, retirement, decision-making, community, family, and a lot more. To get something out of this piece, you don’t have to be into the NBA or the Warriors. You can be a road warrior, a keyboard warrior, a social justice warrior, or a weekend warrior, and you’ll relate.
Slush Fun: “President Donald Trump is expected to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration.”
+ Kush Job: “They’ve agreed to pay Kushner’s firm tens of millions of dollars in fees annually in hopes of gaining influence at the White House as well as returns for their portfolios, according to people familiar with the matter. Trump’s decision to move forward with an Iran war that all three opposed shows the constraints of that approach.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): Kushner Disappoints Mideast Clients Who Spent Millions Seeking Sway. (Wait, I just thought they wrote the checks because Jared is such a good investor?)
+ Last Deport of Call? “Hugo Palencia said he was delivering meals in Aurora, Colo., for DoorDash and Uber around this time last year. Now, he is in a hotel in the Democratic Republic of Congo, dazed by a journey that he said took him in shackles from the United States to a Central African country that he had barely heard of before last month.” U.S. Migrants Deported to Congo: ‘Where on Earth Is This Place?’
+ Little Shop of Horowitz: The same investors that are dominating the biggest tech deals are also dominating politics. Andreessen Horowitz Is Spending on Politics Like No Other. Even with Trump’s low approval rating, it will be tough to compete with this kind of cash…
+ Shoot First Ask Questions Later: “The Trump administration has consistently sought to justify the killings, which began during last year’s military buildup towards Venezuela, by arguing those targeted were “narco-terrorists” transporting drugs to the US. But a joint effort by 20 journalists led by the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism this week published the identities of 13 of those killed, some of whom showed no indication of involvement in drug trafficking.”
+ Commercial Endeavors: “He directed nearly 1,000 comedic commercials, including a much-quoted spot for Wendy’s and one for FedEx featuring a manic speed talker.” You may not know the name, but if you’re of a certain age, you definitely know the work. Joe Sedelmaier, Auteur Behind ‘Where’s the Beef?’ Ad, Dies at 92.
+ Bad Kar-ma: Earworm Kars4Kids jingle yanked from California airwaves for false advertising.
“Pancreatic cancer is one of the most dire diagnoses in medicine. There are few available treatments, and they do little to help. For decades, experimental drugs flopped in trials. Many researchers believed the biological obstacles could not be surmounted. In what seems the blink of an eye, all that has changed.” How an ‘Impossible’ Idea Led to a Pancreatic Cancer Breakthrough.
+ “Rita Collins had a dream for her retirement: bringing books and people together all over the country. Behind the wheel of a van she’s making it happen.” NYT: This Bookstore Gets Good Mileage.
+ Adults relive the musical camaraderie of their youth at band camps reprised for grown-ups.
+ Before ‘Ted Lasso,’ Cristo Fernández had pro soccer dreams. Now he’s living them. Futbol is life (imitating art).
+ The surprisingly strong case for feeling great about your coffee habit.
+ YouTube taught a Japanese teen how to kick field goals. Now he’s in the NFL.
2026-05-14 20:00:00
Maybe the best way to describe Team Trump’s visit to China is by paraphrasing Michael Corleone’s famous Godfather quote. It’s not political, Sonny. It’s strictly business. The group photo of the U.S. delegation that stood at attention at the Great Hall of the People features a whole lot of CEOs looking to increase revenues from China, and not a whole lot of people, if any, with Chinese diplomatic expertise. Having business leaders negotiate deals may not provide the best possible geopolitical outcomes, but most would agree that it beats having a summit in which Trump is given free rein, and an open mic, to negotiate more complex issues. As Vivian Salama and Jonathan Lemire explain in The Atlantic (Gift Article), “the major goal of Trump and Xi’s meeting is to do no harm.” The Hippocratic Summit. “The delegation that arrived with President Trump in Beijing last night looked less like the diplomatic corps of a superpower and more like a Fortune 500 board meeting. On Air Force One were Elon Musk, Tim Cook (‘Tim Apple,’ as the president calls him), and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Joining in Beijing were honchos from Wall Street and aerospace firms. The message was impossible to miss: This trip, billed as a high-stakes summit between the leaders of the world’s two most powerful nations, is about money first and geopolitics second—with differences in ideology trailing far behind.” While the summit was mostly friendly, no doubt, the experts on both sides were thinking of another Corleone quote: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
+ While the US delegation was all about business, Xi was definitely focused on one very big political issue. China’s leader warns Trump that differences over Taiwan could lead to a clash. “Xi warned the U.S. ‘must exercise extra caution in handling the Taiwan question … If it is handled properly, the bilateral relationship will enjoy overall stability … Otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy.” While Marco Rubio declared that US policy on Taiwan is “unchanged,” many were concerned that Trump would weaken America’s stand on Taiwan in exchange for China’s help getting him out of the Iran mess (which has resulted in Chinese gains). The Taiwan conflict is also a story about business. As much as the Strait of Hormuz has impacted the global economy, “these hiccups are nothing compared to the effects of a serious disruption to the flow of chips from Taiwan.” Rest of World: Taiwan’s chips power the global economy. China holds the leverage.
+ “‘The idea is that when an established, great power is met with a rising power, conflict between the two is certainly likely if not inevitable,’ said Daniel Sutton, a classicist at the University of Cambridge who studies Thucydides, on Thursday. In Mr. Xi’s version of the analogy, an emboldened China is the Athens to an American Sparta.” Xi Warned of the ‘Thucydides Trap.’ What Is It? (There’s about as much chance that Xi’s guest of honor understood that reference as there is that the rest of us will come up with a definition for Covfefe.)
“The findings reflect the complex landscape in which medical decisions are now made. Patients can readily find health information — both accurate and inaccurate — on social media, in podcasts and from A.I. chatbots. A recent report from the Pew Research Center found that half of U.S. adults under 50 get health and wellness information from influencers or podcasters, many of whom are not health professionals.” NYT (Gift Article): More Cancer Patients Are Taking Ivermectin. Mel Gibson and Joe Rogan Might Be Why. “There’s this perfect storm of fear, urgency, uncertainty, information overload and then this desperate need for hope … When somebody is offering you a magic cure for something and they give anecdotal examples, it can feel very hopeful.”
At this point, we’re getting used to headlines like this one: Cisco posted record revenue on surging AI orders. It’s cutting almost 4,000 jobs. But technology isn’t just costing jobs in the tech sector. Everyone is affected. Even snipers. WSJ (Gift Article): Military Snipers Are Being Put Out of a Job by Drones. “A Ukrainian special-forces sniper claimed a world record in late 2023 with a shot that hit a Russian officer almost 2½ miles away. These days Vyacheslav Kovalskiy has a new job: supporting drone pilots. He hasn’t been out to shoot in more than a year and a half.”
Most mornings, I cringe as I wake up to brutal headlines written by questionable sources about bad people doing terrible things. So I was relieved and excited this morning to wake up to a great writer (Wright Thompson) writing about a great guy (Steve Kerr). From ESPN: The Warrior Still Remains. Yes, this is an article about my favorite coach and my favorite NBA team. But it’s much more than that. It’s about loss, politics, chronic pain, retirement, decision-making, community, family, and a lot more. To get something out of this piece, you don’t have to be into the NBA or the Warriors. You can be a road warrior, a keyboard warrior, a social justice warrior, or a weekend warrior, and you’ll relate.
Getting Off: If you have the right connections and deep pockets, there’s really never been a better time to be a criminal. U.S. Set to Drop Charges Against Indian Billionaire Accused of Fraud. “The reversal came after the Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani, hired a new legal team led by Robert J. Giuffra Jr., one of President Trump’s personal lawyers.” You could be in pretty decent shape even if you’ve already been convicted. Donald Trump is thinking about celebrating America’s 250th birthday with 250 additional pardons. (At least he didn’t pick the number 1776…)
+ Bye American: Mike Banks, who led Trump’s border crackdown, resigned weeks after reports of prostitution allegations. “The resignation comes weeks after the Washington Examiner reported that six current and former border patrol employees had accused Banks of regularly paying for sex with prostitutes during trips to Colombia and Thailand over more than a decade, and bragging about it to colleagues.” (I’m sure the administration was just irritated that he didn’t spend his money on American prostitutes.)
+ Fraudian Slip: “Vice President JD Vance announced Wednesday that the Trump administration is withholding $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments to California and is threatening to suspend federal funding to all states if they don’t aggressively prosecute fraud in their Medicaid programs.” (I’m sure the targeting of red states is right around the corner.)
+ Developing Story: “The continuing crisis in Iran and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz have exacted a heavy cost worldwide.” Here’s the story in photos. (Luckily, we still have enough petrochemicals to develop photos…)
+ App-ly Yourself: “Software is built for the masses, designed not to be perfect for anyone but to be passable for everyone.” Vibe coding may not be the ideal way to build a scalable app for a huge customer base. But it’s incredibly empowering if you want to create an app for yourself. David Pierce in The Verge (Gift Article): You can make an app for that.
+ Coal Hole: Trump’s Push to Keep Coal Plants Open Is Costing Hundreds of Millions. (Other than that, it’s a great idea.)
+ I’m Gonna Harden My Heart: “For decades, heart health advice has focused on a few key pillars: Eat healthily, exercise, don’t smoke, and manage cholesterol, blood pressure and stress. But there’s a growing body of research that suggests there may be a less obvious factor that can influence cardiovascular health: optimism.” WaPo (Gift Article): People who are optimistic tend to have healthier hearts, study finds. (I guess I’ll just say my goodbyes now…)
“Where do battle tanks and military trucks go when their service has ended? Enthusiasts and professionals put them to work for search and rescue, marketing and just having fun.” Backyard Battalions. “Westen Champlin, an auto enthusiast and YouTube personality in Kansas, owns a tank. Specifically a 1962 Centurion battle tank.” (I’m thinking of getting one of these for whenever I’m parked near a Cybertruck.)
+ “In a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, scientists describe the latest discovery from the site — a Neanderthal molar with a depression that they believe is evidence of an ancient invasive dental procedure. ‘Basically a root canal.'” (I’m guessing Neanderthal novocaine left much to be desired.)
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.