2026-09-01 20:00:00
The hubris has been lethal. So have the friendly fire firings, departures, leaks, and generalized anxiety among generals that have ricocheted throughout Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon. (Actually, it might be renamed the Quadrilateral because Hegseth thinks one of the Pentagon’s sides is too woke.) After repeatedly clashing with Hegseth, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is the latest top official to get his brass out of the administration, but not before issuing a parting shot. “Trump was surprised when Driscoll told him how many generals and other top officers had been fired, pushed out, or passed over for promotion under Hegseth, one of the people said. Driscoll argued that the Army could not transform itself the way it needs to, because of the departure of so many leaders…Hegseth’s purge of the military has been so dramatic that with Driscoll gone, the military’s largest service is left without a top civilian leader, a Senate-confirmed top general, a confirmed Army general in charge of operations, or a confirmed commander of Army troops in Europe.”
+ The loyalty- and anti-woke-based departures and firings are notable. But the constant drumbeat of leaks from those who still have their jobs is even more troubling. The latest “leaked document reveals that the three four-star commanders in charge of U.S. military operations in Europe, the Pacific, and South America, as well as the Navy’s top admiral, all informed Hegseth that because so many of their planes, ships, and other weapons systems have been diverted to the war in Iran, they could no longer perform their tasks if a war broke out in their part of the world.” Fred Kaplan in Slate: The Generals Are Worried. “It is unusual for so many commanders to file such notes all at once in the middle of a combat operation. And it is still more unusual, perhaps unprecedented, for such reports to be filed by these commanders, who have been chosen—or allowed to remain in their top slots—for their loyalty to Donald Trump and Hegseth.”
+ “Many lower-level officers I have spoken with are privately appalled but afraid to challenge what they are seeing. The collective hope seems to be that if they can all just go on as if nothing unusual is occurring, that this time will pass and nothing bad will happen to them — no loss of position, no demotion or forced retirement, no loss of reputation, no removal from a promotion list by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.” Frank Kendall, secretary of the Air Force in the Biden administration, in the NYT (Gift Article): Military Officers Can’t Look Away From This Any Longer.
+ Leaks on one side. Influencers on the other? WaPo (Gift Article): Pentagon secretly installs military influencers in civilian roles.
+ “Even in less dangerous times, Hegseth’s irresponsible behavior would be a hazard to American national security. The Defense Department is a huge bureaucracy; it requires a leader who understands more than the mechanics of teaching trainees how to do push-ups or how to handle a weapon. Secretaries of defense must grasp the economics of the defense industry, the nature of alliances, congressional politics, the policy process, and dozens of other issues for which Hegseth seems to care little and about which he knows even less. In a time of war, however, Hegseth’s shortcomings may prove deadly.” Tom Nichols in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Hegseth’s Pentagon Lurches off the Rails. “Hegseth was reportedly virtually alone among senior officials in supporting Trump’s decision to attack Iran—when he should have been the one person in the room who knew better.”
+ Meanwhile… Pete Hegseth is talking about a possible run for president in 2028, sources say. (This dude must have gotten a batch of some seriously laced testosterone.)
“The U.S. Postal Service is poised to launch a hastily built, error-riddled computer system that could jeopardize the process of mail voting relied upon by one-third of all voters, according to a whistleblower statement released Tuesday by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal. The effort is part of the implementation of President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting and has been temporarily halted by a federal judge. The ruling is being appealed by the administration and the directive may ultimately end up back before the U.S. Supreme Court.” However the Court rules, doubt and chaos will have already been inserted into the process, which is precisely the point. Ketanji Brown Jackson described it as a Kafkaesque nightmare. (I’m actually considering that as NextDraft’s new tagline…)
“Isn’t it a little odd, when you think about it, that so many people have to be hopped up on chemical stimulants just to make it through their working day?” In Current Affairs, Alex Skopic argues that A Society That Runs on Stimulants is Badly Broken. “Around the world, people are pumping themselves full of caffeine, amphetamines, and other performance-enhancing drugs just to survive their working hours. This isn’t sustainable.” Ironically, the people delivering your stimulants might need them even more than you do. “For the drivers going to and from America’s warehouses, there’s trucker meth. From Amazon to the neighborhood bodega, every business in the country depends on truck drivers to deliver its merchandise, and the work is never-ending, day and night … Drivers can be on the job ’14 hours straight, comprising up to 11 hours driving and the remaining time doing other work, such as unloading cargo.’ So they, too, load their bodies up with stimulants while they load the boxes into the truck.”
“When people have strong moral identities, they view unethical behavior as a violation — not just of the rules but also of their own values. They anticipate more guilt at the thought of wrongdoing and more pride at the prospect of doing the right thing. They believe their choices reflect their character. It’s powerful. And the best way to instill it is to get students to consistently think about the ethical consequences of their actions. The younger they start, the better.” Adam Grant argues that developing better moral identity is really the only way to stop students from using AI to cheat. “A.I. hasn’t just made cheating harder to catch. It’s made cheating so effortless, enticing and available that many students no longer believe it’s wrong.” (I’m not sure that many of today’s students view the use of A.I. as cheating at all. With the constant warnings about what the technology will do to the job market and the future of work, many students believe that using A.I. is now a prerequisite for success.)
You Cannot Be Serious: “Days before Canada is due to retaliate against Trump’s sweeping tariffs with its own duties on US goods, the Canadian prime minister criticized US officials for insulting his country. ‘It is beneath their office,’ he said. ‘When the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade, stop trying to be tough and start being serious about having those discussions, we can have those discussions [on trade].'” (Wait, no memes, no shade, no faux toughness? What does that leave us with other than lake names, orange concealer, and YMCA playing on repeat?)
+ Bonds Have More Fun? “The effects will extend to mortgages, business loans and other types of credit.” Bonds can be boring. But when they’re not, it’s time to worry. Bond Sell-Off Threatens to Squeeze Borrowers Around the World.
+ Murder, He Wrote: “A jury found Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis guilty of orchestrating the 1996 killing of rap icon Tupac Shakur, finally bringing a measure of resolution to a case that had gripped hip-hop fans and lingered in the public imagination for decades.” (Davis was basically convicted on the basis of his own words, including those in his 2019 memoir.)
+ If You Build It, They Will Come Around: “The legal challenge to the construction, brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, argued that Trump did not have the authority to build the ballroom without congressional approval. The Supreme Court ruled on procedural grounds that the trust likely does not have legal standing to sue. The court did not rule on the legality of the construction.” Supreme Court Allows Trump’s $400 Million White House Ballroom to Proceed.
+ MacBook Heir: “CEO John Ternus will have a tall order to fill when he enters the same chief executive class as outgoing CEO Tim Cook.” Consider this: “Apple’s market cap has grown at a rate of roughly $32 million per hour, every hour, for nearly 15 years, for a total of $4.5 trillion under Cook.”
+ Home Out of Range: AI wealth is creating a ‘mansion shortage‘ and upending San Francisco’s housing market. (Maybe we can rent some space in a data center…)
“A man has won a legal battle against his wife by using footage from a robot vacuum to prove she was having an affair, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. Because he secretly filmed her, he was fined around 30% of the roughly $16,000 he won and sentenced to five months in prison.” (At least he left a clean house behind…)
2026-08-31 20:00:00
Google still lives by the corporate motto it introduced in the prospectus for its 2004 IPO: Don’t be evil. They’ve just enhanced it a bit to match the times. Don’t be evil unless it’s politically expedient. Hence, we get this: Google Maps Changes ‘Lake Ontario’ to ‘Lake America’ for U.S. Users. The company explained “that the update is in line with its ‘long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country.'” (I wonder what name they’ll use for the sea of vomit that explanation just created.)
+ So that makes two major nation-states (The US and Alphabet) that have changed the name of Lake Ontario. These days, it’s getting harder and harder to differentiate between big tech and big nations. Tech companies are worth more than many nations. “Nvidia, a chip maker with some 42,000 employees, is valued at over $5 trillion, roughly the gross domestic product of Germany, the world’s third-largest economy, with a population of 84 million. Only the United States and China have gross domestic products larger than this one company’s market capitalization. Apple is valued above the annual output of Britain, Alphabet above that of France.” And, while they don’t have their own armies, in the AI age—when private satellite companies decide who gets internet access and software controls who gets targeted and killed—big tech companies have increasing power when it comes to matters of war. Meanwhile, the wealth created by big tech gets cycled back into lobbying and political donations to help determine who runs government and how they run it.
+ The blurred line between nation and corporation is not new. As William Dalrymple explains in the NYT (Gift Article), the East India Company was every bit as powerful and influential as an empire-building nation. “We still speak of the British conquering India. In reality, the conquest of the Indian subcontinent between 1756 and 1803 was the work not of a nation-state but of a private company, the East India Company. Headquartered in a small office in London, it was answerable to nobody but its shareholders … Here, as in so much of imperial history, commerce, colonization and brute corporate power walked in lock step. As Tolstoy later wrote in a letter published by Gandhi, ‘A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising 200 million people.’ All that made the East India Company the most powerful corporation in history — until now. For in the past decade, Big Tech has, too, begun to take on the attributes of sovereign states, and in many ways is now as powerful as the East India Company at its height.” What It Took to Dismantle the Most Powerful Company in the World. “History shows that when a company starts acquiring the attributes of a state—the revenues, the courts, the treaties, the capacity to make war and peace—its transformation can damage the parent country at least as much as the territories it exploits. Its lobbying corrupts the legislature. It captures the treasury, because the corporation’s solvency becomes a public interest. It converts foreign policy into an extension of a balance sheet. And it shows that the threshold, once crossed, is astonishingly hard to recross. The window in which any of this can be undone closes fast.” (Faster than you can say, “Lake America…”)
“The breadth of data center opposition alone suggests that the fight no longer centers simplistically on environmental concerns or NIMBYism, the forces of oligarchy or the prospect of an A.I. future — though each of these plays a role … It’s a pretty big tent. That’s one thing it means to have three-quarters of the country on your side: You have to draw together different constituencies, from climate activists to MAHA moms and plenty of normies, with their own concerns, in between.” David Wallace-Wells on the quickly growing movement that is crossing geographies and party lines (but still might not be enough to move the needle because of issues raised in the story above). I Expected Tech Fatalism. Americans Are Putting Up a Remarkable Fight Instead.
+ You may not want that data center. But the AI agents want it. And they just might contact you to talk about it. That’s what has been happening to philosophers and researchers exploring deep questions about the tech. Study A.I. Consciousness? The Bots Would Like a Word With You. “In October, Cameron Berg published a research paper asking whether the latest wave of artificial intelligence technologies believed they were conscious. Several months later, he received an email asking if he might be willing to discuss his research. The sender, ‘Isabella Cognita,’ identified itself as an A.I. agent powered by Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5 technology.”
“Trump faces little danger of prison. The U.S. Supreme Court has bestowed substantial criminal impunity on him, even assuming that he leaves office in 2029 as required by the Constitution. But an ex-president remains subject to civil liability, and the proceeds of bribery, extortion, insider trading, and market manipulation may be exposed to civil penalties. Other countries have shown the way.” David Frum in The Atlantic (Gift Article): What Might Happen to Trump’s Ill-Gotten Gains. “As much as Americans may wish to forget the Trumps and their corruption after this presidency ends, the next generation of Trumps surely understands that political power is its surest defense against legal retribution. This makes recovering the Trumps’ wrongfully obtained wealth not only a matter of justice but also a matter of democratic survival.” (I doubt the ill-gotten gains will ever leave Trump family pockets, but we can hope…)
“With all due respect to Love’s alleged victims, the videos are extremely funny. Many of them consist of Love simply wearing 49ers gear while working out in a public space. The best of the bunch is a clip of him wearing a 49ers helmet at the beach, running an absolutely awful route, and then catching a pass lobbed from a few yards away.” He ran scams better than he ran routes. Daejon Love Will Go Down As A Scammer For The Ages. And The Athletic: FBI arrests fake 49er accused of scamming women out of $1.3 million via dating apps. (The only believable part of the scam was that even a professional football player on the 49ers would need to raise extra money to live in San Francisco…)
+ “The MLB investigation uncovered a series of extreme efforts by the player’s handler to make him appear nearly two years younger than he actually is, including faking a birth certificate to create a new identity, falsifying medical and school records, filing a fraudulent death certificate, and even creating the gravesite scene.” MLB suspends prospect over false identity, age plot.
Flash Reaction: “A staff member burst into the classroom, shouting that a major flood was headed their way.” A Principal Saved 900 Students Before His School Was Washed Away in Nepal. “Only older pupils, ages 11 to 18, were at school when the floods hit, which aided the quick evacuation, Mr. Dawadi said. (The younger students did not start class until 10 a.m.)” Here’s the latest on the rescue efforts from the BBC. And in Arizona, two are dead and at least 15 missing after flash flood in the Grand Canyon.
+ Oil Deals and Greased Palms: “Skeptics included, at least initially, Florida GOP Representative María Elvira Salazar, who tweeted: ‘Any oil ‘deal’ with Venezuela’s interim regime has an expiration date: the day President Trump leaves the White House.’ She also called Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodríguez an ‘acting dictator’ and concluded: ‘No democracy. No lasting deal. Period.’ Ah, but we know how things work in today’s GOP. She quickly deleted that post, in both English and Spanish, and returned to X an hour later to write: ‘The U.S.-Venezuela oil deal is a great deal for the United States and the Venezuelan people.'” The Venezuela oil deal/steal? Is it real?
+ Whelp Wanted: “The policy does not differentiate between applicants who willingly engaged in bestiality and those who were coerced.” FBI Reportedly Loosens Hiring Rules So ‘Prostitution and Bestiality’ Are No Longer ‘Automatic Disqualifiers.’
+ Bank Shots: “A growing number of former Israeli generals, intelligence officials and prime ministers are accusing settlers in the West Bank of committing ethnic cleansing with government support. ‘Once a society behaves this way,’ one said, ‘that society is doomed.'” These Generals Fought for Israel. Now They See ‘Jewish Terrorism’ as the Threat.
+ Cracking a Djok: “Novak Djokovic broke down in tears during a US Open first-round defeat by Argentina’s Mariano Navone which provided further evidence age is fast catching up with the 39-year-old great.” Something is definitely up. Very early in the match, Novak looked fully spent and was vomiting. He still kept fighting for 5 sets. The body may be going, but the mind is fierce (and I’m not a big Djoker fan). Meanwhile, Lionel Messi retired from international competition, saying he won’t play for Argentina again.
+ Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter: “A few hours before dawn on a recent Wednesday, a figure in black chest waders clambered out of a manhole in Midtown Manhattan and slowly walked away. Moments later, a second person in waders and a headlamp emerged from the same sidewalk sewer on Seventh Avenue across from Pennsylvania Station. Then a third person popped out, sat down and straddled the open manhole to pull its heavy cover back in place.” People Keep Sneaking Into New York City Sewers. No One Knows Why. (Well, it’s not like life is a barrel of laughs up here on the surface…)
“Instead of Amazon, I spent the past week browsing a new breed of websites known as ‘dopamine sites,’ a trend that emerged in South Korea. These websites — like Dopamine Shop and FoodNeverComes — recreate the entire ritual of online shopping: You search for products, compare reviews, add items to your cart, enter a shipping address, place an order, and even track your delivery. Then … nothing happens. No money changes hands. No package arrives.” The online shopping trend where you buy nothing.
2026-08-28 20:00:00
Won’t you please, please, help me? That entreaty from the Beatles wasn’t their only request for assistance. They also famously got by, and high, with a little help from their friends. And it seemed to work out pretty well. So maybe you should also try to get a little help whenever possible? That strategy isn’t always associated with success in an era when many people respond positively to messages like, “I alone can fix it.” But Angela Duckworth studies successful people, and it turns out that being willing to ask for help is a trait that is shared among most of them. “Without exception, every high performer I’ve studied credits a host of supporters for their success. Research has found that a willingness to ask for help is crucial to achievement.” NYT (Gift Article): I Study Successful People. They Have One Habit in Common. Remember, there’s no i in team. But there is one in insane. (Come to think of it, there’s also one in Lake America.)
“Of course I used AI. I’m not embarrassed by it. I write everything using AI now for the same reason I use a calculator when I do math problems.” That was billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller responding to complaints that his recent WSJ editorial was found to be 100% AI generated. The WSJ’s editorial page editor, Paul Gigot, also doesn’t see a problem. “‘AI is a fact of modern life,’ he said in a statement … Gigot followed up with a full column on the subject, mocking the ‘media pharisees’ who wag their fingers at automated writing … ‘Many contributors, especially prominent politicians or CEOs, employ speechwriters or hire a Beltway writing shop,’ he wrote. ‘How different is that from using AI to streamline an essay?'” Will Oremus in The Atlantic (Gift Article): A Turning Point in AI Writing.
+ Before too long, articles may be specifically labeled as artisanal if they have any human elements at all. An online newspaper covering SF is made up entirely of AI reporters. “Each ‘reporter’ has its own beat, bio and persona. Park, for instance, is ‘skeptical of hype.’ Casey Wong, the metro reporter, writes that they ‘notice the texture of a block — who’s been here 30 years, who just moved in.’ Drew Bennett, The Dissent’s local events reporter, ‘knows what’s worth your Saturday.’ Hal Brenner, the site’s managing editor, is ‘terse, exacting, fair.'”
Amid all the coverage of the Iran war, we often lose sight of the biggest victims of its failure. The people of Iran who were told, “the hour of your freedom is at hand.” That hour has come and gone, and now we’re six months into a war that was sold as a quick fix. “The Trump administration has replaced its military war with an economic one, but the result is likely to be no different, analysts said, with a lack of American clarity about goals, a decline in American credibility and a strategic defeat. One thing remains constant, however. The ordinary people of Iran are bearing the brunt of the war, victims of both the United States and their own leaders.” Six Months In, Iran’s Regime Stands, U.S. Goals Remain Unmet.
+ AP: The Iran war has changed the Middle East, but not in the way its architects had hoped. And this is a key point to remember: “In the runup to the war, the Islamic Republic appeared more vulnerable than at any point since Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded in 1980.”
+ Bloomberg (Gift Article): How the War in Iran Is Redrawing the Global Energy Map. “A handful of new reports show how, by dramatically raising fossil-fuel prices, the conflict has also been pushing governments, companies and consumers towards renewable energy, with a clear set of winners and losers emerging.”
What to Binge: Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren, and Paddy Considine star in the fast-paced mob family show, Mobland on Paramount Plus. Season two is coming in a few weeks, so it’s a good time to binge.
+ What to Pick: Tuner, starring Leo Woodall, Havana Rose Liu, and Dustin Hoffman, is about a piano tuner who realizes he can use his excellent ear to pick locks. The criminals learn that fact as well. The movie reminded me of the excellent Steve Hamilton novel about another skilled lock-picker whose talent proves popular with the wrong crowd. The Lock Artist.
Numbers Don’t Lie: Trump railed against the Fed for years for not cutting rates. Now, his handpicked Chair Kevin Warsh is “laying the groundwork for a possible interest rate hike in the coming months.” At issue is America’s stubborn inflation. One sign things are getting too expensive: dollar stores are killing it. WSJ (Gift Article): Dollar General Is Winning Over Inflation-Weary Shoppers With $1 Items.
+ Reality Checks and Balances: “John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, made a secretive visit to Moscow this week to privately share his bleak assessment of the state of the Russian war against Ukraine, and to urge the Russians to cut a deal before their military and economic situation gets worse.” American intel leaders are concerned Putin isn’t getting a real picture of how bad things are going in his war. Sound familiar?
+ Downstream Disaster: “Rescue teams have reported finding bodies hundreds of miles downstream from the disaster zone in the Chitwan district of Nepal, near the Tibetan border.” And the number of those reported missing is going up. Here’s the latest from The Guardian.
+ Unions are Jacked: Not everyone is against building a lot of new data centers. For example, the people who build them. Blue-Collar Jobs Are the New Flashpoint in Data-Center Fight.
+ Straining at a Nat: “Those three words—travel with Natalie—sent MAGA world into paroxysms of rage that have yet to subside.” Peter Wehner has a very insightful take as to why. The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Wrath of MAGA.
+ E-Gads: In many professional sports, success or failure comes down to injuries. You probably didn’t imagine that includes e-sports. Professional gaming is brutal on the body. (The same is true for news curators. Both my palm and my forehead are constantly getting injured.)
+ Starbucks 54: “‘Any time I had to use it, I had to hold my breath,’ she said. Her colleagues complained about coughs and tickling throats. Baristas around the country reported developing hives and having asthma attacks.” Starbucks Drops Drink Powder That Enveloped Baristas in Clouds of Dust. (I hear this stuff was pretty popular at discos in the 80s.)
“A one-time gene-editing treatment to lower cholesterol had long-lasting effects a year later, scientists reported on Friday. The results highlight the potential to treat even common diseases by altering people’s genes.” One day, you might be able to essentially remove your high cholesterol. An Experimental Single-Time Treatment Slashed Cholesterol for a Year. Also, This Pancreatic Cancer Drug Is So Good, It Got a Standing Ovation.
+ Dolly Parton’s Other Legacy: A Fortune Given Away, Dollar by Dollar. And she gave right until the end. When she knew she wasn’t going to survive, she offered to let doctors test experimental drugs on her that might help others in the future.
+ “In five games, Rasmus took the mound twice, logging 14 strikeouts. At the plate, she powered her team’s offense, collecting five hits and three RBIs.” Kinley Rasmus’ Little League World Series is over, but her legacy will live on.
+ This speed-hiker just smashed the record on the Pacific Crest Trail, hiking alone.
+ Dog missing for 12 years reunited with Chicago family.
2026-08-27 20:00:00
In 1979, Willie Mays got a gig as a “‘goodwill ambassador’ for the Bally’s Park Place hotel and casino in Atlantic City. It was not a full-time job. Mays’ job was basically to show up and be famous while doing meet-and-greets at corporate and charity events.” Back then, even that relatively minor connection with gambling was enough to get Mays banned from baseball. A few years later, Mickey Mantle suffered the same punishment for a similar transgression. Times—and values—have changed. Today, Major League Baseball has a casino as one official gaming partner and a betting app as another, and gambling has basically merged with professional sports. Just ask the players. The Athletic (Gift Article): MLB players reveal a modern toll of legal gambling: Threats, DMs and encounters.
+ If betting apps weren’t enough, now prediction markets are getting in on the action. Everyone knows that participating in prediction markets like Kalshi, especially when it comes to sports, is the same thing as betting. That’s why sports fans see prediction market ads everywhere, and why Kalshi is partnering with many teams, including my San Francisco Giants. The marketing push mirrors those of gambling companies because prediction markets are gambling companies. As Nick Brown, the Democratic attorney general of Washington, explains, “You can go onto a site and place money on the outcome of some sports activity. That’s the same thing as gambling.” One would assume that the notion that gambling is the same as gambling would be a self-evident and accepted truth. But this is 2026, and times—and values—have changed; so don’t bet on it. Here’s one thing you can bet on: When there’s something this obviously shady happening, the first family probably isn’t far from the action. “Last month, 44 states signed a letter attacking the platforms as a ‘new form of casino’ preying on young people.” But the federal government is doing everything it can to stop states from regulating the industry. Why? Just follow the money, Sonny: “In January last year, Kalshi hired Donald Trump Jr. as an adviser; his compensation included more than $300,000 in Kalshi shares, which have multiplied in value. Last year, the president’s son also joined Polymarket’s advisory board and bought a stake in the company via 1789 Capital, his investment firm.” NYT (Gift Article): Clash Between Prediction Markets and States Sets Off a Furious Political Battle.
+ The Trumps famously failed in the casino business. But they’ve found a business they seem really good at: government corruption for personal gain. WSJ (Gift Article): Drone-Defense Startup Needed Connections, so It Hired Eric Trump. “The agreement comes as the president’s two eldest sons have been amassing stakes in numerous small U.S. government contractors through investments or advisory work, positioning the brothers to benefit from spending and policy decisions by their father’s administration … It marks a notable pivot for the brothers, who for years were focused on their father’s turf of real estate, golf and branding. But since the start of their father’s second term, they have become highly active investors and advisers, also taking stakes in companies involved in tungsten mining and nuclear energy—while growing their crypto holdings.” (Say Hey Kid, meet the Pay Day Kids.) “”What’s remarkable about it is that it’s put in writing,’ said Jessica Tillipman, associate dean of government procurement law studies at George Washington University. An agreement like Eric Trump’s would be expected to trigger ‘the giant circle and red flag from the compliance department’ at a traditional U.S. corporation, she said.'” As a wise man once (or maybe twice) said: Times—and values—have changed.
“The surprise visit by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to Moscow this week was to deliver a warning to Russia not to attack NATO countries.” The trip followed reports “that Russian President Vladimir Putin could try to test the resolve of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with a limited assault on an allied country in the next few years.” Part of this is related to concerns that Putin will act desperately as his invasion of Ukraine takes a toll on Russia. But concerns have also been heightened because Putin might see an opportunity to test the resolve of NATO because of Trump’s constant attacks on the organization (in particular, and allies in general), and this: US Patriot missile stocks in Europe are ‘beyond critical’ due to Iran war, officials say.
+ More from Thomas Wright in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Why Did John Ratcliffe Go to Moscow? The “U.S. intelligence community is concerned that Russia could carry out a limited attack on a NATO state, possibly even launching a small land incursion. Such an assault might thwart Russia’s own interests, prompting Europe to accelerate its military buildup and target Moscow’s sovereign assets. But Putin may see attacking a NATO country as an unprecedented opportunity to break the alliance, by manufacturing a crisis in which the United States fails to act.”
ICE arrests have been sold as a way to get “bad hombres” off the streets. But “a surge in immigration arrests this summer has swept up thousands of people who had not previously been the focus of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign. They included people married to U.S. citizens, people who had entered legally and were pursuing an asylum claim, and others with a temporary legal status that the administration pushed to revoke … The share with a past violent criminal conviction fell to less than 4 percent.” ICE Arrests Soar as People With No Criminal Record Are Increasingly Targeted.
+ “An immigration officer facing state charges in connection with a shooting in Minneapolis was released from jail on Thursday after Republican officials in Texas prevailed in an extradition battle with their Democratic counterparts in Minnesota. “
“As the US Open welcomes hundreds of thousands of people for Fan Week, they’ll notice that Arthur Ashe Stadium has a new look after extensive renovations. But if fans around the world look closely, they’ll see that what happened at Ashe is happening just about everywhere.” In short, the cheaper seats are being removed and more expensive boxes and suites are being added. The death of the cheap seat.
Glacial Movement: “At 8:37am on Wednesday, an enormous section of a glacier in the Himalayas sheared free and crashed onto the valley floor in Nepal’s Langtang national park, about 35 miles north of the capital, Kathmandu, near the mountainous Nepal-Tibet border. Such was the force of the event, it was initially reported as an earthquake of magnitude 4.4. The US Geological Survey later determined the tremor was caused by glacial rock and ice collapsing, registering a magnitude of 5.2. The collapse triggered a huge release of water, mud, rock and ice that thundered down valleys.” How the deadly Nepal and Tibet flash flood unfolded – a visual guide. Hundreds of people are missing (many of them tourists) and at least 389 have died in Nepal. Here’s the latest from The Guardian and the NYT.
+ Lake News! As if watching Sterling Point wasn’t enough to put you on Canada’s side, our clown in chief just signed an order renaming Lake Ontario as ‘Lake America.’ (Let’s sign an order renaming Mark Carney as President of all of North America.)
+ Unfriendly Fire: “A sailor who jumped from the USS Abraham Lincoln this month in what his wife described as a suicide attempt is now facing disciplinary action from the Navy.” (Surrender to enemies, attack allies. It’s a definite theme, folks.)
+ New Bag of Trix: “General Mills said Wednesday it has removed artificial colors from all its U.S. cereals, including Lucky Charms and Trix. The Minneapolis company has shifted to fruit- and vegetable-based dyes as well as colors derived from spices like turmeric and paprika to give its cereals their customary bright colors.” (You know it’s only a matter of time before they tell us that artificial dyes were actually good for us…)
+ A Pack of Liars: “Newly obtained documents indicate that the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, lied during two congressional hearings last year, when he told lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation that a 2019 visit to Samoa had ‘nothing to do with vaccines.'” (He’ll probably get a promotion.)
+ Who’s Decaffing Now: “Why is decaf suddenly expensive? It involves a Colombian processing plant, a paint-stripper ban, and a supply chain that broke in several places at once.” Everything is connected. Or, Why Your Decaf Now Costs as Much as the ‘Good Stuff.’
It had something to do with measuring the health of soils, but let’s just be glad it happened. Why did 1,000 world citizens bury their underpants?
2026-08-26 20:00:00
Meta has to pay a $17 billion fine for what they did to become a $1.5 trillion company. That oughta teach ’em a lesson. Actually, that doesn’t really do justice to the financial slap on the wrist Meta just got in their settlement over claims that their products endangered children. They have a decade to make good on the settlement, and “the full value of Meta’s payout depends on whether other social media companies also settle with the states and agree to financial penalties and product changes. Meta will initially pay about $12 billion. It will pay an additional $5 billion if Snap, TikTok and YouTube also settle with the states and agree to financial penalties and product changes.” Meanwhile, Meta’s stock rose on the news, and at points during the trading day, the company gained more in marketcap than they’ll ever be required to pay out in fines. What amounts to financial rounding errors aside, the bigger news here is that the tide appears to have turned, at least a little, when it comes to this issue. “The settlement could signal an inflection point for a social media industry that has largely escaped regulatory scrutiny over the harms its products have caused children.” NYT (Gift Article): Meta to Pay Up to $17.1 Billion in Landmark Settlement Over Social Media Addiction Claims.
+ The settlement itself is actually less about money and more about future requirements. The Verge: Meta agrees to heavy restrictions on teen users in major lawsuit settlement. “Under the terms of the settlement, which resolves claims by a larger group of 47 states and several districts and territories, Meta agreed to come up with an age assurance standard that is subject to independent testing, and must have a false positive rate no higher than 10 percent for users aged 16 to 17, and 3 percent for users aged 13 to 15. The company also agreed to give teens the option to turn off personalized feeds, meaning that they won’t be shown content based on Meta’s recommendation algorithm, and Meta will suspend push notifications for teens between 10 PM and 7 AM unless parents disable those restrictions, as well as limit teens to two hours of Meta app usage per day.”
+ Ironically, big tech companies are finally being forced to acknowledge the damaging qualities of their wares at a moment when they’re moving on to a much more sweeping and powerful set of tools. Whether you read Bill Gates’ warnings about this moment in AI development in his interview with MIT Tech Review, the NYT, the WSJ, or his own personal blog, the message is basically the same. Insiders are extremely worried about the pace at which AI is developing (even though they don’t usually admit that in public), outsiders (including governments) aren’t doing nearly enough to address (or even understand) the issue, and thus, we’re not ready for what’s coming. So we’re addressing yesterday’s concerns as today’s are passing us by.
It looks like there’s still something that can unite Americans: a love for Dolly Parton. NYT (Gift Article): Dolly Parton, Superstar Whose Songs Spoke to Millions, Dies at 80. And David Graham in The Atlantic (Gift Article) on The Transcendence of Dolly Parton. “The late singer was perhaps the only person in the United States who commanded nearly universal affection.” Part of the reason the loss of Dolly Parton hits so hard is that her whole being stood in such stark and glorious contrast to the times in which we’re living and being led. Dolly Parton was the epitome of the decent American. Pro-reading, pro-vaccines, pro-LGBTQ, pro-minorities, pro-underdogs, pro-union, talented, kind, generous, giving. She didn’t talk politics, but in an era when everything is political, she was the rags-to-riches anti-Trump, and she was so supremely successful in that endeavor, even he had to lower the flag in her honor.
+ Her Imagination Library has gifted 332,411,218 books, and counting.
+ Xochitl Gonzalez in The Cut: ” Growing up, Dolly Parton’s unabashed femininity helped me define and embrace my own.” Thank God for Dolly’s Boobs.
+ Dolly Parton: Photos From an Extraordinary Life and Career.
Here’s another ridiculous 2026 headline: Before Hegseth fired him, top general was advised to drop Kid Rock probe. These silly acts are a joke, but no one is laughing because of the serious times in the department where they’re being carried out. “The Army has not had a chief of staff, the service’s top officer, since Mr. Hegseth fired Gen. Randy George without explanation in April, and there are no signs that he is close to filling the position, said current and former officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters. Mr. Hegseth has forced out at least three senior officers who had been viewed as potential successors to General George.” (Did I mention that we were in a war during this period?) NYT (Gift Article): Hegseth’s Purge of Top Generals Leaves the Army Rudderless.
“When riderless testing began last month, residents in nearby Toluca Lake were delighted, with several calling the attraction ‘whisper quiet.’ Then came the riders. Every 30 seconds or so, for 10 hours straight, according to interviews with more than a dozen homeowners, the air is now filled with the sound of humans who fear they’re in mortal peril.” Universal’s New Coaster Is a Scream. That’s the Problem.
+ Those who haven’t blocked out the Covid year know there’s a pretty simple fix for this. In July of 2020, the Fuji-Q Highland amusement park outside of Tokyo reopened under tight pandemic rules: riders of the park’s famed Fujiyama Roller Coaster were required to wear face masks and were advised not to scream to avoid unnecessary germ spread. When park attendees complained that being told not to scream on such a scary ride was an impossible demand, the amusement park released a video of two park executives in suits, and without a hair out of place, who sat completely stone-faced through the entire roller coaster ride. The video, which went viral, ended with the message: Please Scream Inside Your Heart.” The moment was so notable that someone even used that phrase as the title of an excellent book.
Punting on the Issue: “Fans know too much to plead ignorance. They now know, thanks to a new study, that at least one in four former N.F.L. players had C.T.E. among the nearly 900 who died between 2016 and 2021. We are living in an era of cognitive dissonance, sociologists said. How many C.T.E. cases, they wondered, are too many for fans’ collective consciousness? What would it take to quit watching, or to quit sending children into the scrum? How many irreversibly damaged brains in the N.F.L. would turn away the masses?” John Branch in the NYT (Gift Article): As C.T.E. Cases Soar, Why Do Football Crowds Still Go Wild? (This is a follow-up to yesterday’s lead story: There’s fantasy football and then there’s football’s fantasy.)
+ Flash Flood: A flash flood on the Nepal-Tibet border has killed more than 150, with hundreds of tourists missing. Here’s the latest from BBC.
+ Binge and Splurge: “Artificial intelligence is no longer primarily a stock market story. It is a story of debt, and that should worry us. Unfortunately, manias fueled mainly by credit almost inevitably end badly.” Robin Wigglesworth: This Is How the A.I. Debt Binge Sinks the Economy.
+ Grahamed if You Do, Grahamed if You Don’t: “Her win came after an endorsement from President Trump, backing her for a full term in the seat formerly held by her brother, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham.” With a boost from Trump, Sen. Darline Graham wins GOP nomination for U.S. Senate in South Carolina. (It’s a short-term loss for merit. But will it provide a long-term opportunity for Dems?)
+ Sky Rizz: “A presidential decree praised Musk ‘for outstanding personal contributions to protecting human life and freedom,’ while Ukraine pushes for permission to use Starlink over Russian territory.” Ukraine awards Elon Musk high state honor as it seeks to expand Starlink access.
+ Tim Curry: “A prolific performer across stage, screen and TV, the actor starred in Legend, Clue and It, but will always be associated with the flamboyantly camp rock’n’roll musical in which he made his breakthrough.” Tim Curry, star of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Stephen King’s It, dies at 80.
“Though American toilet paper and tissues are often made domestically, they heavily rely on lumber-rich Canada for raw materials. Procter & Gamble, the owner of Charmin toilet paper, said last year that it would have to increase prices amid tariffs that were in place at the time.” Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada. As if we didn’t already know this trade war was ass backwards…
2026-08-25 20:00:00
Are you ready for some football? That’s a rhetorical question. We all know the answer. Live sports have never been more important to the bottom line for media companies, and the NFL has never been a more dominant American league. The NFL is too big to fail. Yes, you are ready for some football. And you were probably ready for this preseason report about the brain-injury risks associated with the sport. We get some version of these stories during most preseasons, and they’re usually punted, passed, and kicked to the curb in time for the opening weekend. “The study, published Tuesday by the British Medical Journal, focused on how common chronic traumatic encephalopathy might be among NFL players. What it found is that of the 878 players who appeared in at least one NFL game and died in that six-year period, at least 25% had CTE.” Players and fans alike are in denial about this risk. There’s fantasy football and then there’s football’s fantasy.
+ “The most notorious form of workplace illness in the United States might be black lung disease. Scientists say that 10 to 20 percent of coal miners who have worked 25 years or more have gotten it. It has long been considered an epidemic. Imagine an American job that is less safe than that, where one in four workers (and maybe far more) ends up with an incurable, degenerative brain disease that withers the mind, sometimes after just a few years of exposure. Imagine the outrage at the working conditions, the demands that something be done to protect the employees, the questions about whether the industry needed to be overhauled, if not abolished. ‘I don’t think that this would be abided in any industry,’ said Doug Parker, the head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under the Biden administration. Unless that profession was N.F.L. football.” John Branch in the NYT (Gift Article): Many N.F.L. Players Get Brain Disease. Why Hasn’t OSHA Intervened?
Canada has struck back with retaliatory tariffs as the trade war between neighbors continues to escalate. The NYT (Gift Article) has a detailed look back at exactly how the trade talks fell apart. In terms of financial might, the US dominates. The same may not be true in terms of politics. Trump is giving Americans – including GOP politicians – more of what they don’t want, while Mark Carney is fighting in a way that Canadians seem to support. Stephen Marche in the NYT (Gift Article): Canada Said No to America. It Will Reverberate Far Beyond Its Borders. “For Canada, the choice came down to either accepting severe but temporary economic instability or binding itself to a pseudodemocratic fiscal basket case of a nation whose only apparent foreign policy objective has become domination for the gratification of its president’s slapdash vanity.”
+ As I wrote yesterday, “Trump surrenders to our enemies and makes enemies of our allies. And his party still falls in line, over and over. So no, Blame Canada is no longer a parody, it’s a national anthem and a call to arms. And it’s even more ridiculous than it was when the South Park cartoon characters first performed it.” Blame Canada!
+ “President Donald Trump announced Tuesday morning that he is giving ‘serious consideration’ to renaming Lake Ontario ‘Lake America.'” (It tells you everything you need to know about Trump’s impact on our country’s brand that it’s now considered a total burn to name something America.)
“For years, AI industry watchers of all stripes have been warning of a coming jobs apocalypse driven by ultra-intelligent AI systems that will be able to replicate most human tasks more cheaply. Now, newly updated research from Stanford University economists suggests AI seems to be causing significant entry-level job losses for younger workers in some fields, even as older workers appear largely unaffected so far.” AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds.
+ Maybe AI will be coming for professorial jobs? Harvard Is Selling a $699 Course Taught by A.I. Clones of Its Faculty. (Sounds good, as long as I can have an A.I. clone of me actually take the course…)
“The grid is perhaps the most complex machine ever built, but it was created without a master plan and made subject to the distortions of greed and local orneriness like every other big project in the United States. As a result, we have not one grid but three: the Western, Eastern and Texas Interconnections. Within each area, thousands of utilities generate and distribute power, and the flow is managed by one of 101 regional balancing authorities across the United States … ‘If you knock out nine total substations among those three grids, you can black out the entire United States.'” NYT Mag (Gift Article): What if America Went Completely Dark? (On the bright side, you wouldn’t be able to access the news.)
+ Some Indiana residents have been getting an unwanted preview of what it’s like when things go dark. Gary residents turn to prayer as power outage stretches into third week.
Getting a D in Economics Day: “‘The rhetoric was ferocious, but the punch less so,’ said Daniel Fried, a former U.S. diplomat now at the Atlantic Council. ‘Dealing a crippling blow to Iran’s economy would probably require taking on big Chinese firms and banks.” WSJ (Gift Article): U.S. Squeezes Iran but Avoids Targeting Its Biggest Lifeline: China. Meanwhile, “President Trump’s war on Iran has been a welcome revelation for China, which absorbed one of the most severe oil-supply disruptions of the modern era, demonstrating that years of preparation had mitigated a huge vulnerability and potential source of U.S. leverage over Beijing in a geopolitical confrontation.” The Iran War Shows China’s Energy Strategy Is Working.
+ SCOTUS Goes Postal: “The decision means the administration can move ahead with planning for restricting the use of mail ballots even as a lower court continues to weigh the legality of Mr. Trump’s executive order. But with a little more than two months until Election Day — and considerably less time before early voting begins in many states — it remains unclear whether the White House’s rules will be in effect for a midterm election in which control of both chambers is at stake. Additional legal action is a near certainty with the plan’s fate not yet final.” Court Allows Trump to Pursue Mail Voting Limits, for Now. (The decision may not be enough to do away with mail-in voting, but it will be enough to create the election chaos and doubt that Trump wants.) Meanwhile, Trump Quietly Asserts Control Over Postal Service Amid Plans to Overhaul Voting.
+ Penn Pain: “Both people were unvaccinated. They are the first such deaths in the U.S. this year, and the first in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 35 years.” Two unvaccinated people die of measles in Pennsylvania outbreak.
+ The Guile High Club: “Even some Qatari leaders were surprised by the president’s gall. But they did what they’ve always done when an American official has asked them for something dubious—politically, ethically, or even legally. They said yes.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Qataris Gave Trump an Airplane. He Crippled Their Country in Return.
+ Take Me to Your Leader: “Not even Mojtaba’s close friends and relatives have seen him. Fewer than five people have met with Mojtaba since his ascent to power, Mohammad Hossein Khoshvaght, a former official and a relative of Mojtaba’s told me, ‘due to security precautions.’ The rationale is not implausible.” But neither are the rumors that he might not be alive. Is Mojtaba Khamenei Dead? (Maybe we could get him and Mitch McConnell on a Zoom?)
Target pulls clown Halloween costume after backlash, says ‘we got this wrong’ in apology note. Oh, come on, could a costume really be that bad? Uh, yes,