2025-11-06 20:00:00
It takes me roughly four hours a day to write this newsletter about the news. That leaves me twenty hours to binge television shows in order to take my mind off the news. You already have a pretty good idea of what I notice during the news portion of my day. But here’s something I’ve noticed on TV. Everyone is smoking. The cigarette may have surpassed the gun as Hollywood’s most popular prop. Maybe it makes it easier to get into character, maybe a cigarette serves as some sort of dramatic crutch, or maybe cigarettes just look cool again. Whatever it is, the smoking is not limited to dramatic limited series. It’s on social media as well. And there, the people doing the smoking are only playing themselves. “Whether you’re scrolling through social media or sifting through party inspiration online, you’ll find young stars like Addison Rae, Paul Mescal, Gracie Abrams, Hannah Einbinder, Rosalía, Doechii, Jeremy Allen White or Charli XCX holding a cigarette, oftentimes in a social setting. Regardless of how those images make it to the internet — they might be posted by the celebrities themselves or by outlets — the photos shape what’s cool and aspirational for stars’ impressionable teen and 20-something fans. Perhaps that’s why college students around the country are noticing smoke wafting around their campuses.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): Is Gen Z Romanticizing Cigarettes Again?
+ If you missed my election wrap up, I explained why Tuesday’s Dem sweep could be described as the McDonald’s election. And I’m not just talking about the ketchup-throwing Hamburglar. The Donald McDonald Election.
+ And I’d like to wish a happy 97th birthday to my favorite subscriber. She’s been here since the beginning, she has the highest open rate of any of you, and she’s drawn in many new subscribers from her community. You all benefit from her subscription, because she dramatically skews the NextDraft demographics upwards when it comes to smarts and ethics. She also provides the most useful feedback, such as, “David, the article you shared in the top spot today was really interesting. Maybe you should actually read it.” Happy Birthday, Mom!
Drones have redefined modern warfare. But for the injured, they’ve made wait times for help and care reminiscent of the worst of World War I. C.J. Chivers with some incredible war reporting in the NYT Magazine (Gift Article): A Harrowing Escape From the Drone-Infested Hellscape of Ukraine’s Front Lines. “His mission had been timed for a dark period between moonset and sunrise. The sky was black, silent and vast. But in less than three hours, daybreak would illuminate the meadow where he bled. Many more Russian drones would take flight. Aleksandr’s future distilled to a simple binary. If he could reach the woodlot by dawn, he might be pulled to safety and surgical care. If not, he’d almost certainly end up like countless other soldiers in this war: laying helpless on farmland until a predatory drone descended and an explosion tore him apart, his last wretched seconds recorded for social media’s 24-7 snuff-film deathstream.”
“Immigration officers arrested a teacher early Wednesday in Chicago after chasing her into the grounds of a private preschool and grabbing her as parents and students looked on … Several parents said they were waiting to drop off their children around 7 a.m. at Rayito de Sol, a Spanish immersion day care and school, when they saw armed officers in black vests with the words ‘POLICE ICE’ run behind the woman and into the lobby of the building. Witnesses and school employees told The Washington Post that they thought the school was under attack and scrambled into rooms and vehicles outside in search of safety.” Is this going after the worst of the worst of the dangerous criminals who have supposedly invaded our country? Is this what we had in mind when we were told we’re going after all the bad hombres? Does this really make anyone feel safer? WaPo (Gift Article): Armed ICE officers chase teacher into preschool in Chicago.
+ If you don’t care about the bad optics or the bad ethics, what about the bad economics? “As ICE agents fan out to detain and deport undocumented immigrants, their enforcement actions are creating unease among both undocumented and documented workers on building sites across the U.S., deepening the already severe labor shortage, slowing the pace of construction and driving up costs, industry officials and contractors say.” ICE is sending a chill through the construction industry.
+ “A federal judge in Chicago on Thursday issued a sweeping injunction that puts more permanent restrictions on the use of force by immigration agents during ‘Operation Midway Blitz,’ saying top government officials lied in their testimony about threats that protesters posed and that their unlawful behavior on the streets ‘shows no signs of stopping.'” Chicago Tribune: The use of force shocks the conscience. (On the plus side, this implies there’s still a conscience.)
“Celebrities seem to have developed a pants allergy. Bella Hadid and Julia Fox have been running errands in their underpants. Bodysuits, oversize blazers worn as dresses, and sheer fabrics that reveal the lingerie underneath are all common sights. This widespread pantsless trend has given rise to a new sort of garment, more micro than micro-shorts, bulkier than lingerie: I call it the ‘fashion diaper.'” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Pantsless Trend Reaches Its Logical Conclusion. (This trend sure took a long time to catch on. Many of us who work on the Internet have been pantsless since like 1993.)
Taking Flights: There are rumors that Congress is getting closer to a deal to re-open the government. If a deal doesn’t take flight, you may not either. “America’s busiest airports, including those in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Chicago, were set to face hundreds of flight cuts starting Friday due to the government shutdown, according to a list distributed to the airlines.” And any cuts to air traffic could drag into the Thanksgiving holiday.
+ Loud Speaker: “Ms. Pelosi, 85, was the nation’s first and only female House speaker, and she will have represented San Francisco in Congress for 39 years when she leaves office. She has served during an era of seismic change for American society and her own city, from the throes of the AIDS crisis to the legalization of gay marriage, and through the meteoric rise of the tech sector and the nation’s extreme polarization. She entered political office later in life and became a hero to Democrats for the way she wielded immense power to push Obamacare, climate change legislation and infrastructure programs through Congress.” NYT (Gift Article): Pelosi Plans to Retire in 2027 After 39 Years in Congress.
+ The Book of Job (losses): “Announced job cuts last month climbed by more than 153,000, according to a report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas released Thursday, up 175% from the same month a year earlier and the highest October increase since 2003. Layoff announcements surpassed more than a million in first 10 months of this year, an increase of 65% compared to the same period last year.” Layoff announcements surged last month.
+ Sub Doms: “Jurors showed no appetite for the Justice Department’s case against ‘sandwich guy,’ the D.C. resident who chucked a Subway sandwich at the chest of a federal officer, finding him not guilty on Thursday after several hours of deliberations.” (If the guy who threw a sandwich was convicted, I would have tossed my cookies.)
+ Lose For Less: “Eli Lilly & Co. and Novo Nordisk secured deals with the Trump administration to slash prices for their blockbuster weight-loss drugs in exchange for tariff relief and wider access for Medicare patients.”
+ Ball Manipulation: We’ve entered a new era of place kicking in the NFL. And the reason why comes down to the balls. The Dark Arts Behind the NFL’s Record-Shattering Kicking Season. “The NFL made a little-noticed change that gave teams access to the balls long before game day—and it has quickly ushered in a year of supercharged kicking.”
It “doesn’t necessarily mean having a country accent. Rather, it’s when someone adjusts their airway to be narrow in the back and wide in the front, so it makes a trumpet or megaphone shape, which increases the loudness of sounds at higher pitches in one’s voice. Singers use it to be heard over music. Children adopt it to taunt each other through the playground fray.” Want to Be Heard? Speak With Some Twang.
+ Paris has a lottery going for burial plots near Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde.
2025-11-05 20:00:00
After pretty much a clean sweep win for Dems and a rebuke of Trump at the polls on Tuesday night, Americans are left with one nagging question: You want fries with that? Why that question? Because this was in many ways the McDonald’s election. At about the same time we got election results, we were getting the latest earnings from Mickey D’s. While the earnings were pretty good, the Golden Arches are being somewhat flattened by our bifurcated economy. “The chain can’t do much about the larger economic trends that see high-income U.S. consumers spending freely, while households earning $50,000 or less are forced to pull back on the occasional McDouble. In this sense, earnings reports from the Golden Arches capture a new normal — a world in which even a snack wrap may be a kind of luxury good.” Both McDonald’s earnings and the 2025 elections were in large part about one issue: Affordability. There were other factors as well. If affordability represented the two all-beef patties of election 2025, then freedom and democracy made up the special sauce, strong (and very different) candidates were the lettuce, cheese, pickles (I’ll let you decided who’s who), and the government shutdown was embodied by the onions (that have been left out for 37 days). Sandwiching all those factors was the ubiquitous, puffed up, slightly stale sesame seed bun: the Hamburglar himself. Trump, by his own design, is everywhere and everything in American politics, so everything that happened everywhere on Tuesday was about him. It’s a safe bet that Ketchup was thrown. Yes, this was just one off year election. And there are still plenty of warning signs when it comes to midterms and a lot of damage that can be done between now and then. But we can talk about that later. You deserve a break today.
+ Josh Marshall: “The clearest read of what happened last night is that, as far as I can tell, Democrats won every race that was in meaningful contention anywhere in the country. That’s not just high-profile races in New York, New Jersey and Virginia or the redistricting proposition in California. It goes way down into races only obsessives or local observers were watching in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Mississippi and a bunch of other places. Democrats won everywhere, and just about everywhere they won by larger margins than even optimists were expecting.” A Few Day After the Election Thoughts. Josh gets it right on the supposed civil war among the Mamdani progressives and Spanberger moderates: “That doesn’t seem quite right to me. They have a pretty good model: find candidates suited to their constituencies and focus on cost of living issues and opposition to Donald Trump’s autocracy. Full stop.”
+ “Off-year elections are never quite the crystal ball for midterms that political junkies want, but one thing that last night’s results seem to convey clearly is that many voters are unhappy with President Donald Trump.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Anti-MAGA Majority Reemerges.
+ “So what’s behind Democrats’ big win? Well, surely lots of factors — but, to pick one, it’s affordability.” Dig into the numbers with G. Elliot Morris: Seven data-driven lessons from the 2025 elections.
+ “Analysts in both parties have wondered for months whether the public dissatisfaction with Democrats that is evident in poll after poll might offset the mounting doubts about Trump’s performance. On Tuesday, the answer was clear.” Ron Brownstein in Bloomberg (Gift Article): Election Day Sent an Unmistakable Warning to Republicans.
+ The most coverage of the night, predictably, went to the NYC mayoral race. NYT (Gift Article): How Zohran Mamdani Beat Back New York’s Elite and Was Elected Mayor.
+ Democrats set historic records on election night. Here are six of the firsts they accomplished.
+ Democrats’ 2025 election wins go beyond big races to places like Georgia, Pennsylvania.
From New Jersey to New York to Virginia, there were a lot of big winners last night. I wonder if, a few years from now, we’ll look back and realize that Gavin Newsom was the biggest winner of all. He took a major risk putting Prop 50 on the ballot and was able to draw a massive turnout to drive the redistricting proposal to a landslide victory. “At a time when Democrats have been searching for a win against President Trump, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California gave them one. California voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly supported Proposition 50, Mr. Newsom’s measure to create more Democratic congressional seats, countering a similar redistricting effort pushed by Mr. Trump in other states to protect Republican control of the House next year. The result has sharply lifted Mr. Newsom’s political profile at a moment when he is considering running for president. And it has provided what many Democrats praised as a road map on how to fight for a party that remains adrift one year after Mr. Trump captured the White House.” NYT (Gift Article): A Big Win in California Propels Newsom.
+ Newsom’s victory tone was particularly sober. “And tonight, after poking the bear, this bear roared with an unprecedented turnout in a special election with an extraordinary result. None of us, however, are naive. This is a pattern. This is a practice. Donald Trump’s efforts to rig the midterm election continue to this day.” Gavin Newsom addresses Prop 50 victory. (It’s a safe bet that after these election results, the Trump effort to uneven the playing field will accelerate.)
+ Meanwhile, Republicans file lawsuit challenging California’s redistricting measure.
“A majority of Supreme Court justices on Wednesday asked skeptical questions about President Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose tariffs on imports from nearly every U.S. trading partner, casting doubt on a centerpiece of the administration’s second-term agenda.” At the SCOTUS hearings, Justices Cast a Skeptical Eye on Trump’s Tariffs. (If SCOTUS doesn’t greenlight Trump’s tariff power, he may have to fire them.)
“Burger King is struggling with change. Specifically, pennies. On a recent call, Burger King’s technology specialists quickly moved on from cybersecurity and digital kiosks to a more pressing problem: what the chain would do when it ran out of the one-cent coins.” WSJ (Gift Article): Burger King Braces for the Demise of the Penny.
The Bucks Stop Here: “The experience, historically, is that government shutdowns don’t cause calamity. This time could be different.” Longest Shutdown in History Costs US Economy About $15 Billion Each Week. (How will last night’s results impact the shutdown negotiations?)
+ And AI for and AI: “Enoch, one of the newer chatbots powered by artificial intelligence, promises ‘to ‘mind wipe’ the pro-pharma bias’ from its answers. Another, Arya, produces content based on instructions that tell it to be an ‘unapologetic right-wing nationalist Christian A.I. model.’ Grok, the chatbot-cum-fact-checker embedded in X, claimed in one recent post that it pursued ‘maximum truth-seeking and helpfulness, without the twisted priorities or hidden agendas plaguing others.'” You think the old internet had bias? Just wait until the new one takes over. NYT (Gift Article): Right-Wing Chatbots Turbocharge America’s Political and Cultural Wars. (They’re not already turbocharged?)
+ Me, Myself and AI: “Although chatbots may be built on the familiar architecture of engagement, they enable something new: They allow you to talk forever to no one other than yourself.” The Age of Anti-Social Media Is Here. (This article gets at a lot of the stuff that worries me most about chatbots.)
+ UPS Crash: “Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Wednesday morning there were at least nine confirmed deaths and 11 injuries from a United Parcel Service cargo plane crash near the Louisville airport Tuesday evening.”
+ Ground Control to Major Don: “President Donald Trump announced Tuesday he has decided to nominate Jared Isaacman to serve as his NASA administrator, months after withdrawing the tech billionaire’s nomination because of concerns about his political leanings.” First he was nominated, then removed, then renominated. It all could be a reflection of Trump’s on again off again friendship with Elon Musk.
+ Groped: “The Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, was groped by a man as she mingled with citizens on the streets of Mexico City, raising questions about the lack of presidential security and the level of sexual harassment the country’s women face.”
+ A Nobel Effort: What do you do if you can’t get the peace prize you want? Have your friend invent a new peace prize. Trump ally Infantino to award first Fifa Peace Prize at World Cup draw in DC.
“It’s hard for me to imagine a more heartwarming family moment than bringing home a new puppy while simultaneously leveraging M&A announcements via omnichannel synergies to pump your biotech investment. I think we can all relate.” Tom Brady Cloned His Dead Dog As A Brand Activation. (My beagles once tried to clone me to get double the treats.)
+ Japan deploys troops to combat record wave of deadly bear attacks.
2025-11-04 20:00:00
What if the only lesson of the NYC mayoral race is who will be the mayor of NYC? Because of the media saturation, it wouldn’t be the first time that a local New York City story was covered as if it represented and impacted the entire nation. I know more about Manhattan’s traffic congestion pricing than I know about my own commute (and I work from home). But these days, maybe a NYC mayoral election really does represent something more. We’ve certainly been told for months that it will shake everything from the five boroughs to Washington DC to the West Bank. Even Elon Musk has chimed in, so maybe this city election’s reach actually extends all the way to Mars. One thing is for sure. A famous adage of American elections is no longer accurate. As David Graham explains in The Atlantic (Gift Article): No Politics Is Local. “The nationalization of politics is a familiar story, especially in Congress. As the parties have become more polarized in recent years, voters have become less willing to cross the aisle or split their ballot between Democrats and Republicans—especially because animosity toward the other party is a central part of the polarization. The weakening of local media outlets, especially newspapers, has also left citizens far more informed and invested in national political dynamics than matters closer to home. In the recent past, the idea that a New York mayoral candidate’s stance on Palestinian rights might affect his prospects would have appeared peculiar. And the idea that his platform on rent control could sway U.S. House votes in Texas or Nevada—as Republicans hope and centrist Democrats worry—would have seemed downright preposterous. Today, dismissing either of those isn’t so easy.” In my neck of the woods, the most controversial measure on the ballot will determine whether or not a portion of a local park will be converted to make way for affordable housing. I’m just praying Trump posts his preference about this measure on Truth Social so I’ll know for sure how not to vote.
+ In some ways, politics are less local than ever. But, inside your head, they’re as local as you can get. The New Yorker: The N.Y.C. Mayoral Election, as Processed in Therapy. “Before voters go to the ballot box, they’re sitting on their therapist’s couch—where they’re unpacking their Mamdani-induced fears and their Cuomo-fuelled stress. Or, as usual, they’re talking about Trump.” At this point, our brains could all use some local anesthesia.
Politics isn’t the only thing that is simultaneously local and global. AI is driving our economy from the public markets to the public square. WSJ (Gift Article): What Happened When Small-Town America Became Data Center, USA. “Yesenia Leon-Tejeda, like many people on the frontier of America’s tech boom, is basking in newfound prosperity. Her hometown in northeast Oregon was not long ago known for a former chemical-weapons depot nearby, a state prison on the city’s outskirts and the strip clubs once dotting its main drag. But a growing fleet of Amazon data centers has turned the region around Umatilla into an unlikely nerve center for one of the most expensive infrastructure build-outs in U.S. history. The tech giant has pumped jobs, people and money into the community of roughly 8,000, doubling many home prices and enticing builders to etch new neighborhoods into surrounding hillsides.”
+ “In the 2020s, AI is already transforming America in a similar fashion, driving overall economic growth and powering the stock market to all-time highs. As a share of US GDP, the AI build-out is on track to exceed every major technology since—you guessed it—the railroads.” Derek Thompson: AI Could Be the Railroad of the 21st Century. Brace Yourself.
“Dick Cheney, widely regarded as the most powerful vice president in American history, who was George W. Bush’s running mate in two successful campaigns for the presidency and his most influential White House adviser in an era of terrorism, war and economic change, died Monday. He was 84.” Dick Cheney, Powerful Vice President and Washington Insider, Dies at 84. Cheney’s contentious time in office has long been debated. Perhaps what’s most notable at this particular moment in American history is that the last political act of the guy who was once the most powerful person in the GOP was to announce that he was voting for Kamala Harris because “we have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution.” And almost no officials in his party listened.
+ The Times: “Cheney was revered by hardline Republicans, but loathed by more moderate Americans. A taciturn, secretive man with a crooked and enigmatic half-grin, he came to be seen as a somewhat sinister éminence grise, a powerful but malign influence on the president. He left office with the lowest approval ratings of any modern vice-president. Yet Cheney was unabashed. He cared nothing about popularity, only about history’s verdict. He left office with no regrets about the course he had taken, even though Iraq was in turmoil, America’s economy and international standing were in dire shape, and the so-called War on Terror had succeeded only in making the world seem less secure.” Dick Cheney obituary: powerful and controversial US vice-president.
Wall Street CEOs seem pretty concerned that the market is getting overheated. So concerned that they explained why a downturn is to be expected and will be a healthy thing. Of course, they’re probably trying to move the market toward a healthy downturn to avoid a more dramatic one. The response from the market? Pretty dramatic. Goldman and Morgan Stanley CEOs predict corrections of up to 20%, sparking global selloff. Yesterday, my portfolio had my self-esteem at near highs. Today, once again, I’ve been put in my place.
The Discord Accord: “At 11:30 PM on Tuesday, September 9, Rakshya Bam stepped down from an army jeep outside military headquarters in a pitch-dark, locked-down Kathmandu. The 26-year-old hadn’t slept in more than a day. Her eyes were red-rimmed and glassy, the whites threaded with thin lines of fatigue. A wave of youth-led protests had rocked Nepal, born on Discord servers, TikTok feeds, and encrypted messaging apps. In just a few days, Bam had seen friends gunned down, watched parliament buildings smolder, and witnessed the collapse of the Nepalese government. Prime minister K. P. Sharma Oli had resigned, and the army had stepped in to try to restore order. Now, Bam was one of 10 young activists who had been summoned to an unprecedented meeting.” Wired: The Inside Story of How Gen Z Toppled Nepal’s Leader and Chose a New One on Discord.
+ Fit for a King: “Their efforts are grounded in a controversial theory of social progress: That a select group of elites are exactly the right people to move the country forward, a position Buskirk argues is not in defiance of MAGA’s populism. Putting industry leaders in positions of power is a hallmark of Trump’s presidency — from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to tech titan Elon Musk — and Buskirk says the MAGA movement has energized a new generation of stewards for the country.” WaPo (Gift Article): The secretive donor circle that lifted JD Vance is now re-writing MAGA’s future.
+ Leak Detector: “Until last week, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi was the Israeli army’s top lawyer. Now she is behind bars and at the center of a scandal rocking the country after a bizarre sequence of events that included her abrupt resignation, a brief disappearance and a frantic search that led authorities to find her on a Tel Aviv beach.” NPR: Israel rocked by scandal as top military lawyer is thrown into jail. “The soap opera-worthy saga was touched off last week by Tomer-Yerushalmi’s explosive admission that she approved the leak of a surveillance video at the center of a politically divisive investigation into allegations of severe abuse against a Palestinian at a notorious Israeli military prison.”
+ Drug War: “The murder of Mexico’s most vocal anti-crime mayor shows that, despite President Claudia Sheinbaum’s crackdown on drug cartels, the battle is just beginning.” NYT: Bold Assassinations Are ‘Reality Check’ in Mexico’s Cartel Fight.
+ Parasite Killing Host? “The web archive Common Crawl has been quietly funneling paywalled articles to AI companies—and lying to publishers about it.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Nonprofit Doing the AI Industry’s Dirty Work.
+ We Have a Problem: For Halloween, a group of Arizona high school teachers wore bloody shirts with the message “problem solved.” Of course, the Turning Point crowd outed these teachers as anti-Charlie Kirk radicals who should be made famous and fired. Soon, the teachers were receiving death threats. But here’s the thing. The teachers wore the shirts to make a joke about how hard some of their math problems are to solve. How do we know that? Well, for one thing, they explained as much. For another thing, they wore the same outfits last year.
“The museum advertises Langelinck’s tours, which cost €7, as ‘grumpy’ and ‘highly unpleasant,’ though that might still be an understatement. Over the course of the 70-minute walk, the ponytailed art historian points fingers into visitors’ faces, tells them off for checking their phones or sitting down, and berates them for their general ignorance.” German museum’s ‘grumpy guide’ is surprise hit.
+ Jonathan Bailey Is People’s Sexiest Man Alive 2025.
+ MaineHealth — the state’s largest healthcare provider — said more than 500 living patients received letters indicating that they were dead. (When I’m dead, please hold my mail.)
2025-11-03 20:00:00
Even if you hate the time change, you have to admit this lighting better fits our national mood. The latest dark turn is the Trump administration’s refusal to dole out SNAP benefits to the 42 million Americans who receive food stamps. Days after a judge ruled that the payments can’t simply be stopped, the administration has agreed to release the funds. But not all of them. About half. NYT (Gift Article): Trump Administration to Send Only Partial Food Stamp Payments This Month. At this point, even such a half hearted measure might surprise you on the upside. So maybe you see the glass as half full. But I’m guessing about 42 million people will experience this as a glass half empty moment. And, in the short term, it could be full empty. It “remained unclear when food stamp recipients might actually receive their aid, since the Trump administration itself had acknowledged previously in court that there could be substantial delays in provisioning SNAP on a partial basis during the shutdown.”
+ SNL’s Michael Che had some thoughts about the SNAP cut-off and the perception being spread by certain politicians that it’s used by people trying to rip off the government. “I grew up on free cheese and powdered milk and waiting for your friends to leave the store so they wont see me pay with stamps. That shit aint as glamorous as it sounds. I promise.”
+ Of course, none of those same politicians complain about the wealthiest Americans who use every accounting trick in the book to reduce the amount of taxes they pay. For them, the glass is never full enough. Yes, that’s capitalism and those are the rules of the game. But do 42 million people really have to go hungry during a period when the investor class is experiencing relentless market gains? It would be almost like holding a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party as SNAP benefits were due to be cut off. (Maybe it’s fitting. Make America Great Again isn’t all that far off from one of Gatsby’s famous lines: “Can’t Repeat the Past? Why, of Course You Can!”)
“One minor but arresting fact of U.S. history is the huge amount of alcohol the average American consumed in 1830: 7.1 undiluted gallons a year, the equivalent of four shots of 80-proof whiskey every day. Assuming some children wimped out after the first drink, this statistic suggests that large numbers of Jacksonian-era adults were rolling eight belts deep seven days a week, with all the attendant implications for social and political life. Imagine what it was like resolving a buggy accident, let alone conducting a presidential election.” These days, we drink a lot less. And a lot more of us are choosing not to drink at all. But what effect do these drinking habits—along with dramatic changes to some of our other national vices—have on our shared (and increasing, not shared) experience? Dan Brooks in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Lonely New Vices of American Life. “That the new vices are so uniformly solitary suggests that the national character might become more solitary, too. This trend is unsettling, but perhaps more alarming is that large numbers of people could become so oblivious to the upside of vice as to decide that it is better pursued alone.” (So do society a favor and forward this newsletter to a few friends. It actually pairs quite nicely with a few gallons of whiskey.)
“Global temperatures have made the atmosphere more waterlogged — providing fuel for wetter and more dangerous storms. In the past 85 years, The Post found, the amount of water vapor moving through Earth’s atmosphere has increased 12 percent. That increase is equivalent to 35 Mississippi Rivers flowing through the air every second.” And what goes up must come down. But it doesn’t come down everywhere. A new WaPo (Gift Article) investigation reveals where climate change has supercharged the movement of moisture through the skies. Deadly rivers in the sky.
“Baseball is but a game, glitter on dirt. It is three outs and four bases and nine innings (sometimes 18) and a bunch of millionaires grunting on your TV screen. It is a nice summer day, a hot dog and a few cold ones. It’s an expensive jersey that you didn’t need but bought anyway. And it is all, compared to the realities of life, completely trivial. It’s a beautiful distraction. Neither the actions nor the outcomes actually matter. In other words: It’s all only as important and as meaningful as it makes us feel. And on Saturday, this heavenly, cruel, perfectly imperfect sport sent any and all who interacted with World Series Game 7 through every emotion the human experience has to offer. Fans from Saskatchewan to Southern California, from Toronto to Tokyo, were held captive by the game’s wondrous, tortuous, addictive power. It was, in every way, the best baseball has to offer.” Game 7 took fans everywhere in an off-the-rails thrill ride.
+ Outside of LA (and maybe including it), no one was more thrilled than baseball fans in Japan.
+ “Barely 24 hours from the most important start of his life, Yoshinobu Yamamoto delivered one of the gutsiest, most improbable ironman performances that the World Series has ever seen.” The Dodgers Ace Who Made World Series History. (It was positively Bumgarner-esque.)
+ “Saturday’s Game 7 World Series loss isn’t the kind that fades. It embeds itself into a city’s—or, in this case, an entire country’s—sporting memory. It will fester and linger not just in the hours and days that follow, but in the years and decades that stretch beyond it.” The 2025 Blue Jays Will Live Forever in the Land of the Almost. (If it makes them feel any better, Giants fans feel just as bad, which is why this is probably as good a time as any to remind you that Wilmer checked his swing.)
A Bleak Sequel: “The first time Darfur tipped into chaos, there was at least some degree of Western pressure. This time, there’s little celebrity activism or political attention, and impunity for abuses is rife.” NYT (Gift Article): A Massacre Unfolding in Sudan. “The fighters rampaging across Darfur are armed, organized and funded better than ever. And they are backed by one of the wealthiest countries in the wider region, the United Arab Emirates, which is also a close partner of the United States. (The Emirates has denied backing either side in the conflict.) Then, fighters rode mainly on horses and camels; today, they drive armored vehicles and pickups. Before, they torched villages; now, they fire heavy artillery and fly sophisticated drones.”
+ Trill Seekers: “Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud unit has signed a $38 billion deal to supply a slice of OpenAI’s bottomless demand for computing power. Amazon shares jumped.” These deals are constantly being announced and they always boost stock prices. But so far, OpenAI is on the hook to invest about $1.4 trillion into chips and data centers. That sounds like a lot. Meanwhile, Anthropic warns that AI is showing signs of introspection. (At least then we’ll be able to tell it apart from humans…)
+ Take 48.7 Billion of These… In terrestrial deals, Kimberly-Clark is buying Tylenol maker Kenvue in a cash and stock deal worth about $48.7 billion. (I’m sure the administration’s attacks on Tylenol won’t end up being at all related to this deal…)
+ Say It Don’t Pay It: “Employees of nonprofit organizations that work with undocumented immigrants, provide gender transition care for minors or engage in public protests will have a hard time getting their federal student loans forgiven under regulations advanced Thursday by the Education Department.”
+ Who Dat? During his latest 60 Minutes interview, Trump explained that he has no idea who Binance founder Changpeng Zhao is, despite pardoning the billionaire founder of the cryptocurrency exchange like a week ago. If you’ve got the stomach for it, you can read the full transcript of Norah O’Donnell’s interview with President Trump. If you want a slightly (but just slightly) shorter read, you can just read the falsehoods.
+ Big Head Toddler and the Monsters: “The republic will not fall because Vice President J. D. Vance has decided that swearing is edgy, and the juvenility of American public life did not begin with the Trump administration. But the larger danger under all of this nastiness is that President Donald Trump and his courtiers are using crass deflection and gleeful immaturity as means of numbing society and wearing down its resistance to all kinds of depredations, including corruption and violence.” Tom Nichols in The Atlantic (Gift Article): A Confederacy of Toddlers. “Whatever the reason for their immaturity, the effect is miserable policy and a corroded democracy. The public is poorly served and does not get answers to important questions. Tariffs? Inflation? Immigration? Peace or war? Who’s responsible for these choices? Your mother, apparently.”
Cyber Security: What will the future look like? Probably something like this. A venture capitalist has donated the nation’s largest fleet of police Cybertrucks to patrol Las Vegas. (Hopefully, pointing and laughing is not a crime in Vegas…)
2025-10-31 20:00:00
We’re not even a year into the second Pumpkinhead presidency and you already want to Scream. You Saw it coming and you’ve considered whether you should Get Out of the country (or at least root for the Canadian team in the World Series) as you witness Frankenstein’s re-animated political Psycho—along with the nonstop Creepshow from the Right of the Living Dead—orchestrate The Vanishing of our democratic norms. Are we as Hellbound as we feel? Will the constant Howling that has turned the news cycle into a Nightmare on Overwhelm Street from Dusk to Dawn ever offer us the respite of a Quiet Place? Or is that quiet we hear coming from the Silence of the Lambs who have long ignored The Omen and think this will all pass without a political Exorcism? It turns out you’re not the only who’s noticed an American Werewolf trying to turn our democracy into the Don of the Dead. The NYT Editorial Board (Gift Article) has a handy, if scary, horror-card. Are We Losing Our Democracy? “Countries that slide from democracy toward autocracy tend to follow similar patterns. To measure what is happening in the United States, the Times editorial board has compiled a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion, with help from scholars who have studied this phenomenon. The sobering reality is that the United States has regressed, to different degrees, on all 12.” (This Halloween, I thought about dressing up as the Constitution, but I was afraid no one would recognize me…)
+ Maybe I’ll just wear my NextDraft Pro Democracy hoodie. It’s a pretty unique look these days.
“There is no doubt that the six billion dollars in contingency funds are appropriated funds that are without a doubt necessary to carry out the program’s operation. The shutdown of the government through funding doesn’t do away with SNAP. It just does away with the funding of it. There could be no greater necessity than the prohibition across the board of funds for the program’s operations.” Federal judge orders Trump administration to pay SNAP benefits out of contingency fund. Now, we’ll have to see if the administration actually pays out the money authorized by one branch of government and ordered released by another. After all, they’re the ones who came up with the idea of starving the poorest Americans to score political points. It took a federal judge to say families should still be fed.
I keep writing about the AI tech boom (and potential bust) for a few reasons. One, like many other people, my stock portfolio has long been filled with tech heavy stocks (which makes me feel like a genius). Two, it’s a boom that is powering a remarkable portion of the American economy. And three, a lot about it worries me. “America appears to be, at the moment, in a sort of benevolent hostage situation. AI-related spending now contributes more to the nation’s GDP growth than all consumer spending combined, and by another calculation, those AI expenditures accounted for 92 percent of GDP growth during the first half of 2025. Since the launch of ChatGPT, in late 2022, the tech industry has gone from making up 22 percent of the value in the S&P 500 to roughly one-third.” Matteo Wong and Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Here’s How the AI Crash Happens. “Listen to the AI crowd talk enough, and you’ll get a sense that we may be on the cusp of an infrastructure boom. And yet, something strange is happening to the economy. Even as tech stocks have skyrocketed since 2022, the companies’ share of net profits from S&P 500 companies has hardly budged. Job openings have fallen despite a roaring stock market, 22 states are in or near a recession, and despite data centers propping up the construction industry, U.S. manufacturing is in decline. It’s clear that AI is both drowning out and obscuring other stories about the wobbling American economy. That’s a concern. But even worse: What if AI’s promise for American business proves to be a mirage? What happens then?” (For one thing, I’ll feel like less like a genius and more like a crash test dummy.)
+ WaPo: One force is propping up the economy. Now it’s getting stronger.
+ NYT: How OpenAI Uses Complex and Circular Deals to Fuel Its Multibillion-Dollar Rise.
+ I covered these deals in more detail last week: The Circular File.
What to Binge: Dark Winds (with three seasons now on Netflix) “follows Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, and Bernadette Manuelito of the Navajo Tribal Police solving mysteries and serving justice as their reservation is besieged by a series of increasingly violent crimes in the 1970s.” Even though the crimes are violent, the pace and vibe of the show is calmingly chill.
+ What to Book: The Buckeye by Patrick Ryan is a sweeping story of two families in a small town during a big war.
+ What to Watch: Stephen Colbert has an excellent sit-down interview with Anthony Hopkins. Maybe this is what Colbert will do post Late Show.
Just a Matter of Ven: “The Trump Administration has made the decision to attack military installations inside Venezuela and the strikes could come at any moment, sources with knowledge of the situation told the Miami Herald, as the U.S. prepares to initiate the next stage of its campaign against the Soles drug cartel.” And from WaPo: As U.S. ramps up the pressure, Venezuela pleads with Moscow, Beijing for help.
+ Bad to Worse: Hundreds killed in Darfur hospital massacre, ‘hero’ doctors abducted.
+ Brotherly Shove: “King Charles III on Thursday stripped his disgraced brother Prince Andrew of his remaining titles and evicted him from his royal residence after weeks of pressure to act over his relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.” (If real kings punish people for their Epstein involvement, shouldn’t fake kings do the same?)
+ AI Means Never Having to Say Your Sorry: “Confronted with allegations that they had cheated in an introductory data science course and fudged their attendance, dozens of undergraduates at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recently sent two professors a mea culpa via email. But there was one problem, a glaring one: They had not written the emails. Artificial intelligence had.” (Even AI is like, sorry kids, you’re on your own from here on out…)
+ Remote Controlled: If I come knocking on your door around the time of the Cal football game on Saturday, this will be why. “YouTube TV viewers can no longer see Disney channels including ABC and ESPN after the two sides failed to agree on a new content distribution deal.”
+ Meatheads: “It was only with the advent of modern factory farming that meat became so reliable and ubiquitous that Americans can now eat it three times a day.” Vox (Gift Article) on The myth of the carnivore caveman.
+ Primetime Number: Dictionary.com says 6-7 is the word of the year. No one even knows what it means. (I’ve always assumed it was like 69 for slightly uncoordinated people.)
The world is experiencing a solar boom that has vastly outperformed expectations and tempered pessimism around climate change.
+ WaPo (Gift Article): She hiked the entire Appalachian Trail at 80, unaware she’d just made history.
+ Triplets, 18, are aiming to represent Jamaica in the Winter Olympics: ‘We do everything together.’
+ Messages in a bottle from WWI soldiers found on Australian coast.
+ NYT: Study Finds Evidence That Text-Based Therapy Eases Depression.
+ One for the Bay Area crowd. She’s one of the Bay Area’s favorite TV hosts. 5 years of hell won’t stop her.
2025-10-30 20:00:00
Maybe the best way to describe the much-anticipated, high-stakes meeting between Trump and Xi in South Korea is to borrow a phrase often attributed to the famous economist Yogi Berra: “It’s like deja vu all over again.” Because, after a year of bluster, threats, and market moving social media posts, it sure looks like we’re back where we started; although, now, China is more certain that it can exert its leverage to fend off Trumpian tactics, and even leave Trump thinking (or at least saying) he won. Trump pumped his fist as he boarded Air Force One to depart the meeting and channeled an adjusted for inflation Nigel Tufnel, explaining that, “On the scale from zero to 10, with 10 being the best, I would say the meeting was a 12.” The moment reminded me of an old TikTok clip of a boxer who got hit so hard that he thought he won the fight. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that Trump got nothing. It’s just that a lot of what he got, we already had. I’m no bean counter, but even an old Humanties major can do the math on this part of the agreement: “The Chinese promise to buy at least 25 million metric tons of soybeans annually for next three years will bring their purchases back in line with where they were at before President Donald Trump launched his trade war.” Soy vey…
+ “Mr. Xi also seemed to grasp what Mr. Trump needed, a deal that he could sell as a victory at home. The outcome allowed Mr. Trump to claim a win for American farmers and companies, even though China had largely restored the status quo by agreeing to buy soybeans and to hold off on further restricting the export of rare earths.” NYT (Gift Article): The Art of Letting Trump Claim a Win, While Walking Away Stronger.
+ “The agreement is likely to only stabilize relations between the two countries rather than resolve fundamental differences, with both sides buying time to further reduce dependence on each other in strategic areas.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): Trump-Xi Truce Buys Time in Broader Fight for Dominance and Leverage. (The 2025 news cycle might make it the first year in human history where having more time seems like a negative.)
+ Defcon Don: The meeting and its aftermath were somewhat overshadowed by a Trump social media post (that was riddled with misinformation) in which he stated that he has instructed the Pentagon to re-start nuclear testing. Tom Nichols in The Atlantic: Trump Is Very Confused About Nuclear Weapons. “Resuming nuclear testing is a terrible idea, not only because it would undermine America’s long-standing commitment to restraining a global arms race, but because detonating warheads to see if they actually work hasn’t been necessary in a very long time.” Was Trump trying to distract from his Xi meeting? Was he reacting to Putin’s claim to have tested a long range weapon? Was he just riffing? Whatever the motivation, the world’s most dangerous person is posting orders about the world’s most dangerous weapons in an era when there’s been zero indication that anyone in his administration or party plans to stand up to him about anything. It’s like a mushroom cloud on mushrooms.
“The desperate desire of Attorney General Merrick Garland and President Joe Biden to avoid any appearance of partisanship led the department to put off looking into evidence of a potential crime and gave Mr. Trump an advantage that few appreciated at the time. Mr. Garland’s delays softened the ground and would eventually help Mr. Trump remake the Justice Department into his own cudgel.” The always excellent Carol Leonnig with a not so excellent reality check from inside the Justice Department. NYT (Gift Article): All It Took for Trump to Dismantle the Justice Dept. “The cumulative damage done to the once-respected Justice Department is so profound that it may not regain any semblance of its former self in our lifetimes, warn career law enforcement officials with whom we have spoken. It’s impossible to discount as hyperbole the alarm that these longtime civil servants are sounding from inside the house.”
“The low number represents a dramatic drop after the US previously allowed in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution from around the world.” US will limit number of refugees to 7,500 and give priority to white South Africans.
“The edits were easy to miss: The description on the front of the Mr. Goodbar wrapper changed from ‘milk chocolate with peanuts’ to ‘chocolate candy with peanuts.’ Almond Joy is now marketed as a “coconut and almond chocolate candy bar.’ Rolos are now wrapped in ‘rich chocolate candy’ instead of ‘milk chocolate.'” What’s Missing From Your Favorite Chocolate Bar? It May Be Chocolate. “As a reporter who covers the climate, I’d read about global warming contributing to drought in West Africa and sending cocoa prices through the roof, and I knew candy companies had raised prices and shrunk portions. But could it be that they were also tinkering with the makeup of the candy itself? Yes, it turns out.” (Everyone is choc full of it these days…)
Ask for Da Moon: “Changpeng Zhao, crypto’s richest man, flew home from a California jail a year ago to recuperate in a secluded neighborhood of $30 million villas on a white-sand island here. He worked on his kite-surfing, caught up with friends in beachside clubs and kept his 100-foot yacht, Da Moon, moored nearby.” It was there that he plotted a comeback for his company (that would require a presidential pardon). And it worked. And it serves as an example for how things are done in today’s America. WSJ (Gift Article): How a Billionaire Felon Boosted Trump’s Crypto Company en Route to a Pardon.
+ Sick Joke: “A number of viral infections, including flu, Covid-19 and shingles, are linked to an increased risk of heart disease and stroke, a new study affirmed.” Covid and Flu Can Triple Your Risk of Heart Attack. (If only humanity had come up with an effective method to reduce the chances of you getting those infections…)
+ Operation Desert Norm: “The Pentagon has ordered thousands of specialized National Guard personnel to complete civil unrest mission training over the next several months, an indication that the Trump administration’s effort to send uniformed military forces into urban centers – once reserved for extraordinary emergencies – could become the norm.”
+ The Other Chips Business: Chipotle just had a really bad quarter. The reasons why might tell us about more than the just the fake burrito business. Gen Z and millennials burdened by student debt and unemployment stay away.
+ All Your Base Are Belong to Us: “It is an ominous marker of the nation’s polarization, to which the Trump administration has itself contributed, that some of those top public servants have felt a need to separate themselves from the public. These civilian officials can now depend on the U.S. military to augment their personal security.” Top Trump Officials Are Moving Onto Military Bases.
+ Single A for Effort: The 2025 World Series continues to feature some unthinkable performances. Consider Toronto’s Game 5 pitcher Trey Yesavage. He started the year playing in the lowest level of the minors and his salary is so low (he made about 60K this season) that he will see a meaningful upside from his playoff bonus. And he completely dominated one of the best lineups ever assembled. “This playoff paycheck is going to be nice.”
“When someone asks if you’re a good parallel parker, there should be no hesitation, because you already know. You’re either a Parallel Parking Wu-Tang Master, sliding into that spot with silent swagger, or you’re a member of the Curb Kisser Club, whispering a prayer and hoping no one’s watching. There’s no in-between, just legends and white-knucklers.” Car and Driver: Yes, There’s a Parallel Parking Championship, and I Was a Contender.