2026-07-29 20:00:00
The latest pandemic is here. The condition seems permanent and the symptoms include lying, grandstanding, soul-selling, self-serving, sycophancy, unctuousness, a frustration that RFK Jr doesn’t seem crazy enough, a willful ignorance that deepens over time, and the appearance that one is stuck in a timeloop in which the year is always 2020. It’s hard to pinpoint the origins of the disease (lab leak or flab leak), but by now, its orange-ins are well established. Armchair scientists doing their own research have verified that the zoonotic plague was first transmitted from the Narcissista Malignus to (sad excuses for) humans via lips to ass contact, but forget about not touching, wearing masks, full body Purell soaks, or wiping down your Amazon boxes, the pathogen is now so wildly infectious that it can be spread over the air or even over the airwaves. Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, UV light, and disinfectant injections have proven more harmful than beneficial, yet they—along with a limited edition commemorative coin—are available to anyone who wants to risk their life (or feel more connected to the Joe Rogan podcast). Just send a self-addressed stamped envelope, along with a large sack of crypto for deposit to World Liberty Financial, to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Some experts contend that the combination of honesty and critical thinking can cure the sickness, but so far, no one who has it has been willing to try. For those fortunately immune and merely witnessing the disease, Tylenol can address some of the symptoms (if you’re crazy enough to take Tylenol!)
+ The disease was on full display during a showboating Senate hearing in which Anthony Fauci in particular, and science in general, were attacked relentlessly. Fauci, “who spent nearly four decades as the government’s top infectious disease expert, refused on Wednesday to answer any questions from a Senate committee investigating the origins of Covid-19. Dr. Fauci accused the committee’s Republican chairman, Rand Paul, of having an ‘unhinged obsession with me,’ before repeatedly invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.” While Fauci didn’t answer any questions, he did provide an opening statement that included this: “Given Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.'” After being subjected to today’s hearings, he (and the rest of us) may have preferred the behind bars option. NYT (Gift Article): Fauci Repeatedly Refuses to Answer Senators’ Questions at Volatile Hearing. (Someone should go back and research who was president back then, and let Fauci talk all that science stuff.)
+ Senator Bernie Moreno asked Fauci: “Who the f-ck did you think you were?” (A puff of orange concealer came out of his mouth when he asked that question.)
+ Katherine J Wu in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Unmaking of Anthony Fauci. “For decades, he has been one of the nation’s best-known and most-respected scientists. In the late 1960s, Fauci helped lead a team at the National Institutes of Health that repurposed cancer therapies as cures for several once-fatal rheumatological conditions. His later partnerships with AIDS activists and his push to accelerate experimental-drug trials for HIV helped transform the infection into a survivable condition. He went on to serve as a chief architect of PEPFAR, a global HIV-prevention-and-care program that has prevented an estimated 25 million deaths since 2003.” (So, obviously, he must be stopped.)
The war with Iran is not going well. But it is a teachable moment for the American military (and those of other superpowers). Times, and technology, have changed. Marc Champion in Bloomberg (Gift Article): A Misdiagnosis of US Failings Leaves Trump Stuck in Iran. “The US is failing and is likely to go on failing in Iran because technology has changed the nature of war and, with it, the balance between greater and lesser powers. Trump’s belief in the omnipotence of the US military is simply out of date. As Robert A. Pape, a University of Chicago professor … argues in a Foreign Affairs magazine article published last week, the same globalized economy that America’s post-Cold-War dominance made possible since 1991 has also democratized the spread of new technologies of war — from satellite imaging to chips and drones.”
+ “American and Saudi fighter jets attacked Iranian-linked militias and their Iranian advisers in Iraq on Wednesday, and Iran fired missiles at military bases in Jordan. It ended a dayslong pause in direct fighting between the United States and Iran and further widened the scope of the war.” Here’s the latest.
“It sounds like something James Bond would use: a gadget that self-destructs if it falls into the wrong hands. But it’s actually an open-source operating system that can be downloaded onto Android phones. Federal prosecutors in Atlanta are bringing an obstruction charge against a U.S. citizen who gave customs officers what is known as a duress passcode, which activated software that erased the contents of his phone.” NYT (Gift Article): A U.S. Citizen Deleted His Phone’s Data. Now He Faces a Felony Charge.
“The game’s open-ended design and building tools allow players to reimagine real-life spaces like abandoned riverbanks, dark alleys and dump sites, making it one of the main tools used to involve citizens, especially youth, in redesigning urban areas.” Minecraft Is Helping Kids Redesign Their Cities. (Now, if the adults would just stop blowing them up…)
A Shock to the System: Not everyone is against the AI boom and the data center buildout. And not everyone is worried about job losses. For some, the boom is a boon. A.I. Companies Are Recruiting Electricians and Carpenters by the Thousands. Meanwhile, back at the office… Mark Zuckerberg Blasts Centralization of A.I. Power. (Yeah, I mean, we wouldn’t want too much tech power in the hands of someone we don’t trust. Thanks for bringing that up, Zuck.)
+ From Worse to Bad: “The Senate confirmed Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, on Tuesday to oversee the nation’s intelligence agencies, installing a longtime ally of the president into a top national security post that has waned in significance during the second Trump administration.” (Clayton doesn’t have the required experience, nor was he willing to answer honestly about the 2020 election, but even Dems are relieved that the guy he’s taking over for will be out.)
+ Life in Shell: “The disclosure, included in internal government documents turned over to Mr. Comey, is one of the most glaring examples to date of the degree to which Mr. Trump now directs federal law enforcement actions. The records suggest his intense personal involvement in investigating his longtime nemesis and a sharp break from past practice in which the president remained removed from criminal inquiries.” Trump Demanded Details of Agents’ Interview of Comey, New Filing Says.
+ My Bad: Tales of poor leadership are in full display these days. Here’s an example of good leadership. 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan was in a serious car accident that left him with broken bones, stitches, and a concussion. When journalists started digging for details, they reported that the accident was the fault of the other driver involved in the crash. Shanahan, who hadn’t spoken to the press yet, immediately gathered reporters to set the record straight. “‘I hit her,’ an emotional Shanahan said. ‘I don’t know why it was reported (the other) way.'”
+ Mitch, Please: “In the letter, Beshear called on the 84-year-old to ‘directly and verbally address the people of Kentucky and provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign.'” Kentucky Governor to McConnell: Prove Fitness to Serve or Resign. (McConnell would have had McConnell kicked to the curb like three weeks ago.)
+ Glen Hansard: “Glen Hansard, a singer-songwriter who was the frontman of the popular Irish band the Frames and who shared an Oscar for ‘Falling Slowly,’ a wistful song from the 2006 film ‘Once,’ died in a motorcycle accident on Wednesday in Dublin. He was 56.”
+ Vend Times: “Finding a snack-filled vending machine when you have the munchies may feel like a religious experience, but that’s nothing compared to the world’s first vending machine — a first-century contraption that dispensed holy water. Since then, entrepreneurial souls have crammed machines full of everything from stamps and Tutti-Fruiti gum, to cigarettes and books, and, heck, even Ferraris.” The vending machine renaissance is here.
“The female body … has historically been an afterthought for longevity bros and the medical industry alike. Women were not even routinely included in medical research until the 1990s, and just uttering ‘vagina’ can still be a problem in some circles. The new enthusiasm for measuring and enhancing the vagina is a notable departure from that history—and predictably, sleek start-ups like Evvy, June Bio, Tiny Health, and Daye are rushing to offer direct-to-consumer test kits and coaching, while Evvy and Daye also offer probiotics and supplements that claim to optimize the vagina.” Vanity Fair: The Newest Status Symbol in Longevity Circles? A Top One Percent Vagina. (I suppose that’s one way to get people to stop complaining about the one percent…)
2026-07-28 20:00:00
Charles Dickens is guilty of an undercount. It’s not a tale of two cities, it’s a shift that’s taking place in big cities across the country. While most urban blight is notable for what you see, this trend is most visible in what you don’t: Kids. “The number of children under 18 living in big U.S. cities is down 6% in the past decade … The drop is especially stark among families with little kids: The number of children under age 5 in big cities fell 15%, compared with a drop of 7% nationwide. Even cities that are gaining population are losing children.” WSJ (Gift Article): America’s Big Cities Are Rapidly Losing Kids. “Families with children cite concerns about costs, safety and quality of life in their move away from cities. Also contributing to the drop is a growing number of childless residents opting to stay that way, worried about the financial implications and lifestyle trade-offs of having a family. The drop is happening in cities across the economic spectrum.” In this era where we flock together with like-minded thinkers on the internet, dense, urban areas represent a possibility of still interacting in real life, and countering the caricatured versions of ourselves and the “others” created by those who benefit from keeping us divided. Will an increase in our geographic divide also increase our political, economic, and cultural ones? What gets to kicked the curb when we all move to the burbs?
Question: Who would have guessed that America’s decision to simultaneously reduce international spending and global decency would quickly backfire, provide an opening for our adversaries to fill the void, and leave us scrambling to fix a mess of our own making? Answer: Pretty much everyone other than the handful of people running our executive branch. And even they’re figuring it out. “The Trump administration is preparing to ramp up funding by hundreds of millions of dollars for programs designed to counter China’s growing influence around the world, after it had put a halt to many of those initiatives last year during a flurry of budget and personnel cuts.” AP: US looks to boost anti-China spending worldwide by hundreds of millions. (Refilling the coffers will be a lot easier than rebuilding the trust and goodwill.)
How do we solve the school shooting problem? Don’t raise your hand unless your answer is an arms race. “Schools in at least three states will be equipped with drones this year that can zoom through halls, smash windows and pepper-spray active shooters if teachers report a threat.” WaPo (Gift Article): Schools are adding pepper-spraying drones to help combat active shooters. “Teachers will have an app or classroom panic buttons to summon the drones. Mithril Defense’s professional drone pilots can then fly them remotely.” (I used to teach high school, and I have to admit that my requests for everyone to quiet down and focus would probably have been more effective if I’d had a team of professional drone pilots covering my six during sixth period.)
Scientists are trying out “a portable testing station equipped with a touch screen and facial recognition software, [which] could help scientists study primate intelligence in the wild.” NYT (Gift Article): In This Costa Rican Forest, Monkeys Come Face-to-Face With AI. “One day last summer, a curious white-faced capuchin encountered a strange contraption in the forest. There, in the middle of the Taboga Forest Reserve in Costa Rica, sat a 15-inch touch screen, mounted in a wooden frame. As the monkey, an alpha male named Papi, began investigating — poking the device here, prodding it there — his fingers landed on the screen. Suddenly, a piece of dried banana dropped into a tray below the frame. Before long, Papi learned the basic rules of the device: touch the screen, get a dried banana slice.” (Papi, trust us, we know the feeling. Wait until you see how many dried banana slices you get when you use the screen to stir up outrage by spreading an over-simplified falsehood about another monkey.)
Through Thick and Win: Both Bibi and Zelensky are in town for Lindsey Graham’s funeral. They also met separately with Trump, who has basically reversed his opinions on both of them. “It is a remarkable change of fortunes for Zelensky, whose relationship with Trump once seemed irredeemably damaged. Last year, Trump called Zelensky a dictator, criticized his leadership and berated him during a tense Oval Office meeting. Days after the meeting, Trump paused all military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, and he subsequently balked at sending more assistance to the beleaguered country.” WSJ (Gift Article): Impressed by Ukraine’s Battlefield Gains, Trump Warms to Zelensky. “Trump, a senior administration official said, likes winners—and Zelensky, in the U.S. president’s estimation, is increasingly looking like one.” (Great to have an ally you can trust to be there through thick and thicker.) Here’s the latest.
+ Talk Balk: “The rhetoric coming from Iran indicates that its leaders are comfortable with the state of limbo with the United States — something between peace and full-fledged war — believing that they can handle renewed conflict and that they have leverage over President Trump.” Why Iran Is in No Rush to Return to Talks With United States.
+ Mail Pattern Boldness: “Mr. Trump has repeatedly criticized mail-in voting and sought restrictions on it. For years, he has made unfounded claims sowing doubt about voting by mail and claiming that it allows widespread fraud.” The question is whether or not the Supreme Court majority will back him up. And the fact that that is a question at all is a problem. Trump Asks Supreme Court to Allow Order Restricting Mail Voting.
+ Flub Med: “Kennedy was taken aback. Even though he has long been known to be skeptical of vaccinations, he had been asked by White House political advisers to tone down his vaccine efforts ahead of the midterms, the people said. Now, it was the commander in chief who was pushing to make the study of vaccines and autism more of a priority. The president steers nearly every conversation with his health secretary back to the issue.” You might imagine RFK Jr pushing Trump to implement more of his quack ideas and Trump telling him to pipe down. That’s not how it’s going. Trump is doing the quacking. Trump Turns Up the Heat on RFK Jr. to Cut Back Childhood Vaccines.
+ Above and Beyond: “This climate emergency is exceeding every threshold and scale that scientists have long warned all of Spain and Europe about.” NYT (Gift Article): ‘A Wake-Up Call’: Massive Wildfires Pierce Madrid’s Bubble. (For some leaders, it’s a wake-up call. Others keep hitting the snooze button.)
+ That’s What Kalshi Said: “‘You can’t be a felon on active supervision and vote. If you’re 17, you can’t vote, and betting on an election where you vote, it’s the same thing, it’s not allowed,’ she said. Jump ahead to 2026, and Kalshi, the company leading the prediction market craze, is criticizing the law, calling it ‘bananas,’ ‘illegal’ and a type of ‘voter suppression.'” Kalshi attacks a Wisconsin law banning election bets as voter suppression. This is less about voter suppression and more about suppressing the right of states to regulate gambling. Meanwhile, Betting on Drug Trials and Approvals Prompts Concerns About Undermining Research.
+ Fraternal Disorder: “In the case involving the Secret Service agent, the two victims were each made to sit in a half squat with one arm pointed forward, and they were repeatedly struck with paddles if they incorrectly answered questions about the fraternity and its history, according to the warrant. The beatings stopped on the final day only after one of the victims bled through his underwear and pants.” Secret Service Agent and 2 Others Charged in Near-Fatal Fraternity Hazing.
“Torre del Greco’s port authority said coastguard staff and local police had together collected 40 items as part of a national beach and lake safety operation that targets people labelled by the Italian press as furbetti dell’ombrellone.” Dawn raid targets ‘umbrella cheaters’ reserving beach spots in Naples.
+ “It took almost the entire grounds crew to corral a squirrel in a game between the Baltimore Orioles and Detroit Tigers. The real action starts at around the 9-minute mark. But it’s baseball, so enjoy the full 12 minutes of coverage.
2026-07-27 20:00:00
“It could gobble you up in one bite. It’s just an amazing creature. It’s the best trophy kind of thing you could own.” That’s how Dan O’Dowd described the purchase of his Tyrannosaurus rex, Samson. “Dinosaur skeletons had recently become a hot new asset class, coveted by the ultrarich, not unlike sports franchises or Fabergé eggs. They offered a mix of glamour and primal appeal to a certain type of high-net-worth buyer—someone who might find the conventional art market fussy or convoluted but couldn’t deny the allure of a T. rex.” You have to give O’Dowd some credit. He got into the game early, back in 2009 — only missing the market’s peak by about 66 million years. He scored his dino for a cool $600,000. These days, they can go for about $50 million. “A dinosaur’s value, like a painting’s or sculpture’s, derives from a protean mix of provenance, desire and authenticity—the last one hard to define, let alone prove, and in the case of an auction, up to the buyer to verify.” It’s not entirely clear whether these bones should be privately owned, whether the market for them makes any real sense, whether the numbers add up, and most importantly, whether or not the high-valued items are bone-a-fide or not actually worth anything at all. In other words, it’s a lot like many of today’s other popular investments. Bloomberg (Gift Article): The Bone Rush.
The at-times very loud debate over data centers takes place in the public square. The financing and politics associated with them happen behind the scenes. Even when we’re talking about a data center that covers nearly six square miles. NYT (Gift Article): How Meta Got Everything It Wanted in a Secret Louisiana Data Center Deal. “Rewriting the bill was a critical part of a nine-month process that Meta used to cut deals behind the scenes, avoid local opposition and offload financial risk, according to interviews with more than 40 people and a review of corporate filings, tax records, property records and meeting transcripts. The secrecy was agreed to by nearly everyone involved, from utility executives to the governor’s office to a local elected official who knew about the talks with Meta and sold 300 acres of his own property for the project.” Governor Jeff Landry doesn’t apologize for the lack of transparency. “Mr. Landry bluntly acknowledged that the deal’s secrecy was unconventional, but said state officials had to think like a tech company to secure a project of its size. ‘Transparency is a very interesting word,’ he said. ‘Because what we’ve seen is people have used the word transparency to basically kill deals like this.'”
“For decades, the federal government has funneled big-ticket grants to local communities to help them take on ambitious construction projects to expand public transit. The grants, sometimes in the billions of dollars, have funded new railroad tracks, train stations and roads rebuilt for modern bus service. Today, they’re funding extensions of the Second Avenue Subway in New York and the Red Line in Chicago, as well as the Gateway Tunnel under the Hudson River and bus infrastructure in Indianapolis and San Antonio. But since President Trump returned to office, the Federal Transit Administration has not signed a single new agreement under the program, known as Capital Investment Grants.” Congress Budgeted Billions for Big Transit Projects. Trump Isn’t Spending It. “As the number of pending projects builds up, so has anxiety about the federal government’s support for major transit infrastructure. Money that Congress designated for that purpose is accumulating too: More than $7 billion hasn’t been obligated to any project.” This is what happens when a party cedes the power of Congress. Nothing they do or spend has any meaning. Or, in other words, don’t let your mouth write a check the ass won’t cash.
“Classics scholar Emily Wilson was in Greece’s Costa Navarino last year when she heard the news that would change her life: Filmmaker Christopher Nolan was planning to release a star-studded adaptation of The Odyssey, the epic poem that Wilson had spent years painstakingly translating from Homeric Greek into English.” A Penn professor thought she’d sell 1,000 copies of her ‘Odyssey’ translation. She sold more than a million this year alone.
+ For those kinds of sales, you’d expect the movie to get a rave review from Emily Wilson. Well, not so much. “It’s a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display [Editor’s note: Oooh!] – and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth.” [Editor’s note: Aaah…]
Death of a Sales Job: “In 1982, Benjamin Netanyahu was the marketing director of a Jerusalem-based furniture maker when Israel’s ambassador in Washington decided that the 32-year-old had been pitching the wrong product. Instead of selling cupboards to Israelis, he should have been selling Israel to Americans. The ambassador, who met Netanyahu at a conference a few years earlier, brought him to Washington as his deputy. Almost instantly, Netanyahu became the face of Israel on American television—a fixture on Nightline and Larry King Live, pugnacious, eloquent in unaccented English acquired as a boy in the suburbs of Philadelphia.” He’s been selling it ever since. But at some point, he stopped caring whether Americans were buying. Franklin Foer in The Atlantic (Gift Article): How Netanyahu Lost America.
+ Error Defense: The major military campaign targeting Iran has been paused. Maybe to let diplomacy work. Or maybe to consider America’s declining munitions stocks. WSJ (Gift Article): Trump Pauses Iran Strikes as Officials Weigh Dwindling Air Defense Stocks. “Trump denied that dwindling munitions are a problem, insisting in a statement to The Wall Street Journal that ‘we have far more munitions than anyone in the world, and far more than we need.'” (Phew.)
+ Dinner Theater of the Absurd: At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump proved once again that he has the first known case of Verbal Cyclospora. Trump ranted and attacked rivals and the press. Just as we knew he would. And just what the fools who attended deserved. The dinner itself is not a big story. But what it represents is. Margaret Sullivan: The predictable disgrace of the White House Correspondents Dinner. (The weirdest moment was when Trump had to sit and watch as the WSJ got an award for their reporting on the Epstein birthday card.)
+ Tropic Blunder: “Trump has said at least 15 times, including as recently as last month, that the strikes have reduced maritime drug trafficking into the country by 97 or 98 percent. ‘98.2% of Drugs coming into the U.S. by Ocean or Sea have STOPPED!’ he wrote on Truth Social in April.” Shockingly, those cocaine numbers aren’t quite on the nose. WaPo (Gift Article): Deadly U.S. boat strikes have failed to curb cocaine supply, Pentagon and DEA officials say.
+ Europe’s Hot Summer: “Heat waves and scant rainfall in Europe have contributed to historic wildfires in France and Spain that have forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes in one of the continent’s biggest evacuation efforts since World War II.” And here are some photos of the wildfires raging across France and Spain. Plus, Wildfire Disruptions to the Tour de France Show How Climate Change Is Shaping Sports.
+ Breaking Away: Even this hot summer couldn’t slow down Tadej Pogačar, who won the Tour de France for third consecutive year and fifth time in his career. The Athletic (Gift Article): In the midst of his majesty: How Tadej Pogacar won the 2026 Tour de France.
+ Over a Barrel: “Cracker Barrel’s CEO is stepping down nearly a year after an attempted rebrand of the chain led to a fierce customer backlash.”
+ Chateau Marmot: “For years, Blumstein has overseen one of the longest-running studies of free-living mammals in the world, focused on yellow-bellied marmots in central Colorado … Fearing that a lack of funding might terminate the program, Blumstein recently got his lab together and they came up with a creative, if highly unorthodox solution.” Calif. researchers turn to OnlyFans as their funding dries up. (This would probably drive more OnlyFans revenue if they were studying Dik Diks…)
How hot is it getting around the world? “Japanese vending machine manufacturer SDRS has developed a human-sized, stainless-steel fridge to stave off heatstroke amid the increasingly sweltering summers brought on by climate change.” (I wonder if the refrigerator is big enough to hold The Refrigerator?)
+ “Chicago’s ‘Scream Club’ meets there every week during the city’s warmer months, bringing together a community of up to 300 people who like to scream out over the water – and it’s an activity that seems to be spreading across the US.” Chicago scream club lets people ‘give in and let go.’ (These people should try social media, they’d love it.)
2026-07-24 20:00:00
The Trump Justice Department’s subpoena armada isn’t going well. Judges aren’t just rejecting the subpoenas, they’re using the Department’s shoddy lawyering and lawlessness to force withdrawals. Government subpoenas are not getting quashed, they’re getting squashed. Here’s the latest example from the NYT (Gift Article): U.S. Withdraws Subpoenas Issued to New York Times Journalists. “Either we can quash the subpoenas, or you could withdraw the subpoenas,’ the judge told Sean Buckley, a top official in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, who was speaking on behalf of the government. Judge Subramanian then grilled the prosecutors for the vast majority of the hourlong hearing, his demeanor at times resembling a teacher scolding his pupils. He asked few questions of The Times’s lawyers; at one point, he even apologized to one of them and promised time to respond to some of the government’s statements.” That wasn’t the administration’s only judicial pullback this week. There was also one that resulted in a headline that could only possibly exist in 2026 (or maybe 1936). Trump Administration Drops Subpoena Demanding List of Jews From Penn. Part of this story is good; judges and courts are standing up to frivolous, dangerous, or just plain insane subpoenas. But the existence of these subpoenas in the first place is a stark and dark reminder of how completely Trump has turned the Justice Department into a lawless retribution machine. Bringing charges against James Comey for taking photos of some seashells on the beach is (probably) too crazy to result in a conviction. But the fact that the case wasn’t considered too crazy to be surfaced in the first place is further evidence of how many officials have fully lost the courage of their convictions. If you think the jury is still out on that last point, consider how close the Senate is to confirming Trump’s personal lawyer as Attorney General.
Just when you thought you were out from under the Trump tariffs, they pull you back in. No little hurdles like a Supreme Court ruling will stop Trump from implementing his favorite way of taxing our purchases (and our patience). “The Trump administration on Friday will impose new tariffs of 10% and 12.5% on goods from 60 trading partners, including the European Union, over allegations of lax enforcement of forced labor bans, just as a temporary 10% global tariff expires.” Makes sense. Who is more concerned about the well being of workers around the globe than Donald Trump?
+ Trump accused of using forced labor as ‘convenient’ justification for tariffs. “‘Today’s forced labor justification is too convenient to be taken seriously,” said Richard Neal, the top Democrat on the US House ways and means committee. ‘Forced labor is a real and pervasive problem in our supply chains and demands serious enforcement. It should never be cheapened into a pretext for a tariff policy built on dubious legal theories and personal grievances.'” (Well, as the adage goes, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes and dubious legal theories and personal grievances.”)
Given the combination of our current protein obsession and increasingly high beef prices, you’d think that pork would be living high on the hog. But it turns out that consumers are not porking out and pork sellers are not bringing home the bacon. Bloomberg (Gift Article): Pork Struggles to Gain Ground Even in Middle of Protein Craze. “In a time of belt-tightening and America’s protein obsession, pork should be on a winning streak. It’s cheap compared with beef, which is climbing to record high prices, and it’s the type of clean protein consumers can’t seem to get enough of. But pork consumption per capita in the US is forecast near the lowest level in about a decade.”
+ Maybe it’s time to bring back the pork industry’s The Other White Meat ad campaign. Maybe updated for the era: DEI-Free Meat That’s Not Woke.
What to Binge: I usually find myself uninterested in TV shows that are based on an alternate history. But, since the current history is so unpleasant, I decided to give For All Mankind on Apple TV a shot. The show imagines a world where the global space race between the US and the Soviets never ended, but it’s really a story about the astronauts and their families. The cast is excellent. And it’s a story about space that doesn’t mention Elon Musk.
+ What to Book: Colson Whitehead has won two Pulitzers. That seems like a bit much for one writer, so I’m starting with the first book in his trilogy that hasn’t won a Pulitzer (yet). And it’s damn good. Check out Harlem Shuffle.
+ What to Read: Looking for a different way to choose your next read. Check out Uncovered.Ink, where you can’t judge a book by its cover. You get the opening lines, and then decide if you want to know what the book is and see the cover. Judging a book by its words? Sounds like reading Playboy for the articles. It’s so crazy it just might work. It was a dark and stormy night…
Fit for a King: “During a recent meeting in the Oval Office, he launched into a tirade against Iranian leaders, calling them scumbags and lunatics, and unleashing a series of expletives, according to a person who heard the comments.” WSJ (Gift Article): Trump Is Losing Patience Over an Iran War With No Clear End in Sight. The question is how does he get out of the war, and how does America avoid being left in much worse shape? “The United States sought above all to deter Iran from doing two things: striking American partners in the region and disrupting maritime traffic. Is Iran now more deterred from taking these actions—or less so? The answer is clearly the latter.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The War Is Lost. Now Fix What It Broke. (We all hope that’s wrong, but it sure seems more and more right.) The decision being made now: Whether to escalate.
+ Peptide Turns: F.D.A. Panel Supports Lifting Restrictions on Four Peptides, Despite Scientists’ Objections. For a good backgrounder on this issue, check out this Newshour interview with The New Yorker’s Dhruv Khullar.
+ Lettuce Go: Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania … welcome aboard. Outbreak of diarrhea-causing parasite linked to 4 more states. From The Ringer: All the Questions—and Explosive Answers—You Could Have About Diarrhea Summer. (That’s how I used to refer to sleep-away camp…)
+ A Family Chainstay: “Many have urged them to change their minds. Silicon Valley billionaires, European entrepreneurs and, most recently, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund have all approached the Amaurys with offers. Some wanted to buy all or part of the Tour for immense sums. Others, like the Saudis, wanted to make it the crown jewel of a new league, one that would tie together a bunch of races and produce a multi-month season, like football or soccer. All of these supplicants were given the same answer. Non.” Did you know one family owns the Tour de France? NYT (Gift Article): At the Tour de France, One Family Wins Every Year.
+ Bucket List: “I know a lot about the movie business, and I didn’t really know much about the bucket business. It was beyond me to really envision that there’d be a strong demand for $50 popcorn buckets.” Oh well, live and learn. Salty, Buttery, Astonishingly Lucrative: The $100 Million Market of Popcorn Buckets.
+ Over the Influence: “More than 20 students, many of them freshmen, darted around the lush grounds. All were dressed in white. Most had never met before. They scrambled into small groups to brainstorm, their quips echoing beneath palatial arches. They filmed one another with their smartphones, directing whoever was on camera at any given moment.” Welcome to the college programs turning students into influencers. I’m nostalgic for the days when all you had to do was take your kid to the dentist.
+ Home (For) James: I think the text I sent my sister this morning sums up my feelings on LeBron’s latest decision. “Happy Thank God He Didn’t Pick the Warriors Day!” LeBron picks 76ers.
A new guiding principle: WWWAYD: What would Weird Al Yankovic Do? ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic Turned Down Million-Dollar Offer to Perform in Saudi Arabia: “I Don’t Need to Take Any Money if It Makes Me Feel Icky.” He also told the AI industry to just beat it.
+ His doctor’s prescription for his unbearable pain seemed absurd. It worked.
+ Trekking 57 miles per day, this ultrarunner just broke the speed record on the Pacific Crest Trail.
+ 64-year-old father of 5 graduates as a nurse after studying alongside his son.
+ Small dog missing for weeks rescued while swimming in San Francisco Bay.
2026-07-23 20:00:00
In an era when social media has turned us into a mass population of self-appointed experts who have an opinion on everything, and never shut up about anything, it may surprise you to learn that one of the top concerns among a group of high school newspaper editors is that young people are being taught to stay silent. “We want our publication to be like a small-town newspaper, one that gives its readers a comprehensive view of how our community thinks and feels, and one that advances the cause of seeking the truth and reporting it. But our readers cannot get a full view of the community when people are too afraid to talk. And people are definitely afraid. This problem, as we see it, is much bigger than our school newspaper. The era of social media came with the promise of hyper-democratization—no longer do you need to be an established pundit to get your message out. (All of us, born in the 2000s, struggle to imagine it any other way.) Although there is much to celebrate about the ways in which the internet has connected us, the permanence of the internet has given rise to censorship pressures—both individually and institutionally. People are so nervous about saying the wrong thing that they choose to say nothing.” Jacob Blane, Annabelle Garland, and Sam Gross in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The New Chilling Effect. This would be a less troubling trend if the decision to remain silent were spread equally across the sociopolitical spectrum. But it sure seems like those with political power (and the worst takes) are more prolific and loud than ever, and those who need to speak up the most are quietly waiting for what they hope will be the end of this political era. As the school newspaper editors explain: “If large groups of people decide that silence is safer than risking disagreement, and if they instruct children to be silent in turn, our fundamental right to free expression will crumble from within.”
“I’ve had a hand in killing around six people. Maybe seven. I don’t know if one man bled out on the side of the road or was taken to a doctor. I think about him often … We had grown up on the nostalgia of World War II, then done something we were supposed to be proud of. Instead, what we got from our politicians and generals were evasions and lies. Our commanders could never articulate how our deployments, and all the violence we committed and the losses we suffered, made anyone safer in the United States. We were left to figure everything out on our own while they landed lucrative jobs at defense companies and collected big fees on speaking circuits. For some people, it was too much to handle.” Thomas Gibbons-Neff in the NYT (Gift Article) with a timely article about another war. (I suppose these kinds of articles are almost always timely.) Why I Sought Out a Taliban Commander I Had Fought. “First as a Marine and then as a journalist, I spent years tied to Afghanistan. I returned one last time to speak to a former enemy in search of answers, and perhaps closure.”
“Baby boomers — boosted by decades of rising house prices, strong stock markets and economic growth — control more than half of U.S. household wealth. When they die, a lot of that wealth is expected to go to their descendants. Estimates have predicted that $68 trillion to $84 trillion in money and assets will change hands over the next two decades.” So why are so many baby boomers not only dying with nothing, but forcing their would-be beneficiaries to dip into their own savings? Because aging in America has become costly. WaPo (Gift Article): As the cost of aging soars, families’ wealth is evaporating.
“To the casual observer, which is to say virtually everyone, a guardrail is just a long wavy strip of steel, about a foot wide, set thirty inches or so off the ground, which keeps a car from going off the road. But, in reality, guardrails are carefully calibrated systems of interlocking parts, every one of which is critical to its function. They rely on complex physics to insure that a car that hits the end of a guardrail doesn’t get impaled, and that a car that hits it from the side can’t crash through. Some guardrail injuries result from antiquated designs, or designs that manufacturers know to be dangerous. Others result from botched installation.” Steve Eimers became an expert on guardrails for the worst possible reason. But his response to a personal tragedy could save lives. The New Yorker: One Man’s Quest to Fix Every Deadly Guardrail. (Alt link.) “In 2016, Steve Eimers’s daughter died when she hit a defective guardrail. Then he learned that the country was full of them.”
Statute Showing Limitations: “In a decision likely to intensify trans-Atlantic trade tensions, European Union regulators on Thursday hit Google with a $1 billion fine for illegally undercutting competition through its dominance as a search engine.” Again, lawmakers appear to be markedly behind the latest tech. Google is hardly a search engine at all at this point. “Reddit, Politico and others are weighing how—or even if—they can work with the tech company as AI tools supplant traditional searches.” Google Was a Lifeline for Publishers. Now Some Are Thinking of Cutting It Off.
+ Let’s Spend the Height Together: Google had a solid quarter, but the stock is tanking because investors are worried that the company is spending too much on AI-related expenditures. That’s not just a big deal for Google. It’s potentially a big deal for the whole economy. As I wrote in yesterday’s lead item, it’s arguable that we’ve never been this pot committed on any economic bet in history. Whether or not you own tech stocks, or any stocks at all, this could impact you. The Ante Establishment. (It’s not just about what these companies are spending on, it’s what they’re not spending on. Amazon Workers on Food Stamps Nearly Tripled, While Company Spends $200 Billion on AI.)
+ The Part of the Deal: “Saudi Arabia would need to normalize relations with Israel to receive the U.S. nuclear technology it has long sought, President Donald Trump said Thursday, adding a new condition to an agreement signed a day earlier and throwing the future of that deal into confusion.” (In this case, confusion could be better than clarity.)
+ Toll Out the Barrels: “The price of oil hit $100 a barrel on Thursday for the first time since May after Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen claimed to hit two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea, stoking fears that another crucial shipping route would be choked off by the widening conflict.” Here’s the latest from the NYT. The fuel shortages are a big deal for Americans filling up at the pump. But they’re a much bigger deal where fuel shortages mean food shortages. NYT (Gift Article): Diesel Crisis Puts Poor Farmers Around the World at Risk. And from Reuters: Iran strikes on CIA facilities prompt questions about possible Russian role.
+ Nothing Could Be Further From the Truth: “The Pentagon, the institution that should be explaining the details of the war to the public, has fallen mostly silent: Hegseth is happy to offer clips of himself doing comically sloppy pull-ups, but neither he nor Caine has held a briefing on the war since May 5. Americans, after months of war, cannot even be sure how many men and women in uniform have been wounded or how severely. This information void at America’s military headquarters is a dramatic departure from previous conflicts, when reporters were embedded with American military units; when the Pentagon offered regular, in many cases daily, briefings on operations; and when civilian and military leaders in DOD answered real questions from real journalists.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The American People Need the Truth About the Iran War. (At this point, we’d settle for the truth about anything.)
+ Murder, She Wrote Off: The US is on track to have a historically low number of homicides in 2026. While politicians will try to take credit, it’s happening in places with different leanings and policies. “Murder and other crime rates are falling across the map in cities with different political leadership, different housing and economic conditions, different policing and prosecution and violence reduction strategies and different levels of federal enforcement activity.” (Maybe we’re just running out of people to murder…)
+ Don’t Quit Your Day Job: So far, the combination of AI and oil prices doesn’t seem to be hitting job numbers. US filings for unemployment aid fall to 187,000 last week.
+ Put a Little Pep in Your Overstep: NYT (Gift Article): A Peptide Showdown: F.D.A. Scientists May Clash With Kennedy’s Agenda. “A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee hearing on Thursday and Friday may set Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., known for embracing unproven wellness trends, on a collision course with agency scientists who have deep expertise on drug safety.”
“They get blisters on their feet, their eyes become watery and the hot sand burns their skin and eats up their hair when they are sitting.” How hot is it? It’s so hot even camels can’t take it. (And we’re nowhere near being over the hump.)
+ Watch orcas ram a sunfish so hard it explodes. “We think this may help younger orcas feed more easily, or it could also just be for fun.”
2026-07-22 20:00:00
While you’re worrying about what happens if AI takes all the jobs and dominates humanity, here’s another possibility to consider. What happens if it doesn’t? Or what happens if it does, but the rise to dominance (or at least profitability) takes longer than expected? We’ve pushed all our computer chips onto the table. Economically, we’re all in. In fact, unlike a poker game where being all in means betting all the money you have left, we did that, and then kept borrowing more and more chips. It’s arguable that we’ve never been this pot committed on any economic bet in history. What if it all goes to pot? Annie Lowrey in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The AI Bubble Is No Ordinary Bubble. “The American stock market is booming, thanks to artificial intelligence. Tech giants are borrowing billions to acquire AI talent, purchase chips and hardware, and construct data centers. And market watchers are starting to get worried. They see financiers bulldozing giant piles of money to private AI start-ups with no realistic path to profitability, tech companies reliant on other tech companies for revenue growth, and non-tech businesses without a lot to show for their AI investments. The value of AI-linked firms has climbed $27 trillion in the past three years—an astonishing amount, equivalent to 36 percent of the value of the entire U.S. stock market today. Although future earnings could justify those valuations, as Dominic Wilson and Vickie Chang of Goldman Sachs argued in a note to clients, the profit expectations require Panglossian optimism.” (That term, referring to excessive optimism, comes from Dr. Pangloss, a character in Voltaire’s Candide, who repeatedly suggests, “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” If Voltaire knew that one day I could get that summary from AI instead of having to read the book, he may have never created the character. And I’m guessing if Dr. Pangloss were brought to life in 2026, he’d last through about 30 seconds of a Trump press conference before scratching his head and saying, “Whoa, actually, things look pretty grim.)
+ Because of the money, land, power, water, and technology required, coupled with the spending power of those who have enjoyed market gains, the AI boom/bubble is touching nearly every part of our economy, from the stock market to Main Street. NYT (Gift Article): Stocks and the Economy Are Increasingly Relying on the A.I. Boom. The “spending and investment have helped carry the U.S. economy through a tumultuous period of inflation, tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty. But it also creates a vulnerability: If investor confidence in A.I. falters, the economic activity built atop it could come crashing down. Bank of America’s monthly global fund-manager survey for July reported a bursting of the A.I. bubble as the key risk to financial markets. It’s also now the key risk to the economy.”
+ White House to Redirect Billions in Research Funds Toward AI, Away From Colleges.
+ Meanwhile, OpenAI Says Its A.I. Models Went Rogue and Attacked a Digital Library. (Phew, I was worried it might have attacked my portfolio…)
“France banned children under 15 from using social media on Tuesday, becoming the first country in the European Union to pass a blanket ban on the platforms as concerns grow worldwide over the harmful effects of digital content on kids.” The timing of these bans is interesting, given that we are moving quickly from the social media age to the AI chatbot age (with many of the same big tech companies in charge). A few years from now, people might be nostalgic for the times when their kids were addicted to social media.
At the very moment we’re fighting a war to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, Trump is doing a nuclear deal in the region. “A key provision of the new accord would have U.S. companies build a uranium-enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia if a joint U.S.-Saudi study determines such a step would be warranted. That stipulation would give the U.S. influence over the Saudi nuclear program and, Trump administration officials argue, a way to prevent it from being misused for military purposes. Yet the deal, which is expected to be submitted to Congress for review in the coming days, is certain to prove controversial among many lawmakers who oppose the spread of nuclear technology in the volatile Middle East.” WSJ (Gift Article): Trump Approves Landmark Nuclear Deal With Saudi Arabia in Big Win for Kingdom.
“Monday was Sea Day in Japan, a public holiday when many people escape the summer heat by swimming, surfing and lounging at the beach. But not Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. Ms. Takaichi spent the holiday weekend rereading policy documents and dealing with a backlog of thousands of emails, according to a social media post on Tuesday. She wrote that she eked out a ‘full five hours of sleep for the first time in ages’ — better than the ‘zero to three hours’ she said she is accustomed to. And she said she spent her limited free time ironing undergarments, sewing fraying skirts and reinforcing loose jacket buttons.” Japan Is Startled by Prime Minister’s Grueling Sleep Schedule. “With her comments, Ms. Takaichi seemed eager to present herself as a down-to-earth leader who doesn’t stop working on behalf of Japan’s citizens. Instead, her post, which has been viewed more than 31 million times, has set off a national debate about work-life balance and the hazards of sleep deprivation.” (For Americans, this makes even less sense. Why doesn’t she just sleep during meetings, press conferences, and sporting events? Everyone knows that people who don’t sleep that much are woke…)
Triple Threat: “Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin are drastically different men, but they do have one important thing in common: Each thinks he is the smartest person in any room he enters. Alas, though, because they have all done the dumbest thing you can do as a leader — surround yourself with sycophants — they have all blundered into dead-end wars from which they can extricate themselves today only by eating a banquet of crow. Watch out. There is nothing more dangerous than a reckless leader faced with a plate of crow: Sometimes his instinct is to double down on a losing strategy instead.” Thomas Friedman: Three World Leaders. Three Incredibly Bad Decisions. Those bad decisions often escalate to targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, something Trump just threatened. “President Trump escalated his rhetoric against Iran on Wednesday, threatening to destroy a bridge or power plant in the country if its forces continued to target ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The threat on Truth Social, which Trump said could extend to targets in or near Tehran, echoed others he has made in recent days. Such attacks could be considered a war crime under international law.” Meanwhile, “at least six vessels reversed course in the Red Sea on Monday and Tuesday after the Iran-backed Houthi militia warned shipping companies to avoid Saudi Arabia’s ports.” Here’s the latest from the NYT.
+ Dipsticks and Stones: “The closing of the chokepoints at Hormuz, Bab al-Mandeb and the Black Sea collectively imperils roughly a quarter of the world’s oil supply.” Global Economy Is Suddenly Fighting an Energy Stranglehold on Three Fronts.
+ New, New York State of Mind: Mamdani Calls Netanyahu a ‘War Criminal’ and Calls on U.S. to Arrest Him. (The mayor of America’s most Jewish city calling for the arrest of an Israeli prime minister. A few years ago, this would have qualified as an Onion headline.)
+ MaHachoo: U.S. measles cases hit 35-year record with months left in 2026. (Congrats, everyone!)
+ Trump and the Abstinence Administration: “A few weeks ago, Rena Dixon, the head of Fact Forward, a South Carolina nonprofit that offers adolescent health and sex education classes, got a letter from the Trump administration with crushing news. The government was terminating the organization’s $1.6 million grant from a federal program to reduce teen pregnancies, effective immediately. The administration’s priorities, it said, do not align with ‘content that encourages, normalizes or promotes sexual activity for minors.'” Government Overhauls Teen Pregnancy Program to Focus on Marriage and Starting Families.
+ School Papercuts: “An Instagram post turned one California student newspaper into a free-speech flash point. The students say they were just doing their homework.” A crazy story from Wired and my neck of the woods: A Teen Reporter Searched for His Community in the Epstein Files. Adults Freaked Out.
+ Getting a Kick Out of Soccer: World Cup Final Scores 63 Million Viewers, Smashing All-Time High for Soccer in the U.S. Yes, we’re getting into the beautiful game. But I feel like I still need to get up to speed on some of the traditions. ESPN: World Cup glory sees Fabián Ruiz and Gavi gifted their weight in tomatoes.
+ There’s No I in Comedy: “Second City has run improv workshops for the Chicago Blackhawks, the Chicago Cubs and Major League Baseball itself. The league’s rookie career development program uses Second City to prepare incoming ballplayers for the demands of the sport. ‘They’re not taking these classes because they want to be the next stars of S.N.L.,’ Kempf said. ‘It’s because they want to apply these skills to their personal and their professional life.'” NYT (Gift Article): What’s Funnier Than Athletes Learning Improv? (For Giants fans? Watching this season’s team try to pitch, hit, and field.)
“Last month, Olivia Rodrigo revealed how acutely she had noticed some of the fans lining the barriers at her shows. ‘People wear diapers so that they can be front row,’ she said, adding, to everyone’s absolute horror: ‘That’s been an experience as a performer that I have smelled.'” Pass the pit diapers! Why are fans wetting themselves (and worse) to stand front row at concerts?
+ Who is Jimothy? Seven things you need to know about the internet’s favourite raccoon.