We're Linked

One of the earliest joys of the Internet in the 1990s was the new-found ability to uncover just how closely connected we all are with others. We previously had no easy way of knowing that stuff. Six degrees of separation were all that separated each of us from presidents, actors, athletes, billionaires and beauty queens.

Alternatively, we found out we were not all that far removed from some pretty nasty characters as well.

We cross paths with new people all the time, online and off, and one of my occasional preoccupations is to wonder how closely we may have been to meeting each other sometime in the past, but didn’t.

Perhaps we passed within a block of each other in some random city years ago -- one of us going one direction, one in another.

We just missed.

The opposite is also true. We may meet someone in some consequential way that sticks in our memory but never encounter them again. We didn’t get to know them, really and we never will. But that one meeting mattered,

This kind of thing has happened to me many, many times, both with famous people and strangers. For example, I met Jesse Jackson twice. Both times I just happened to be standing in a crowd when he walked up and shook my hand. 

Other random encounters happened when I was traveling, especially overseas. 

Often, one of these one-timers pops up in the news and remind me of when we encountered each other over decades ago.

An example currently in the Senate, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, was a 40ish chair of a House agricultural committee when he questioned a 30ish journalist rather harshly half a lifetime ago. 

He had an untamed Midwestern twang and probably assumed the reporter was some city slicker from San Francisco who cared only about the environmental issue he termed the "Circle of Poison," and didn’t care about the plight of farmers like those in Grassley’s district.

They sparred over pesticides but the Congressman seemed shocked when the journalist described his deep concern for the small farmers who were among the primary victims of the multinational agrochemical companies he'd exposed in his book.

That was many years ago now, probably forty. I doubt Grassley even remembers the encounter or knew that the city slicker he met that day was the son of a man who grew up on a very small farm in Canada.

A decade after I appeared before Grassley’s committee, the most significant legislative attempt to date to address the issues I testified about was introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy and it was called “Circle of Poison Prevention Act." 

It would have “prohibited the export of pesticides that were not registered for domestic use; were not registered for food use and would not be exported for use on food; or had had the majority of registration canceled.”

The legislation was co-sponsored in the House by Leon Panetta, but it died in committee.

HEADLINES:

• UAE warned Netanyahu of major Hamas operation days before Oct. 7 attack, news report says (AP)

• UK announces new Israeli settlement sanctions, despite U.S. warning of economic consequences (CNBC)

• Delays and Cancellations Persist After Major Disruption at U.K. Airports (NYT)

• Israel to close British consulate in Jerusalem after sanctions announced (Guardian)

• Saudi Arabia says 73 wounded as Houthis attack civilian and energy sites (Al Jazeera)

• Military and intelligence officials discuss smaller presence in the Middle East as US looks for another post-9/11 strategy (CNN)

• A Reuters special report looks into how two Israeli brothers are driving a West Bank settler land grab. (Reuters)

• Republicans kick off a ‘Trumpapalooza’ of a midterm convention Wednesday in Texas (NPR)

• Trump’s Mail Voting Plan Is Coming to a Head. Here’s What to Know. (NYT)

• As Social Security fund runs dry, some Republicans say it’s time to raise taxes (WP)

• Justice Kavanaugh Blocks Missouri Voting Map Benefiting Republicans (NYT)

• Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch is leaving amid tensions with Trump (NBC)

• Carney Tells Canadians: Retaliation Against U.S. Tariffs Was Unavoidable (NYT) 

• The Emerging U.S.-China Détente (Foreign Affairs)

• Russia resumed air attacks on Kyiv after a brief halt for the visit of US peace negotiators, killing two people and triggering fires across the Ukrainian capital. (Reuters)

• Trump Wants to Exhaust Us. He’s Failing. (Bulwark)

• Study: Almost Half the World’s Farmers Are Poisoned by Pesticides Each Year (Mother Jones)

• Future Of Jimmy Kimmel’s Late Night Show In Doubt Following Bombshell Report (HuffPost)

• Thieves Steal Artworks From Renoir Museum in France (NYT)

• Rosanne Cash on the gift her father, Johnny Cash, gave her (NPR)

• Olivia Rodrigo Begins A Chart Comeback At The Same Time Her New Single Debuts (Forbes)

• This Tiny E-Reader Is the Single Best Piece of Technology in Years (Atlantic)

• From dance floor to war: China readies humanoid robots for combat (Japan Times)

• Will AI take all of our jobs? (Money Trail)

• The AI boom isn’t like other bubbles (WP)

• Health Speculations Swirl After Trump Slumps Over In Saddle Of Runaway Horse (Onion)

Seeing Things

The game clock controversy surrounding the Michigan football team’s last-second victory on Saturday highlights a deeper problem. Millions of people watching the game on television assumed Michigan had lost when the “clock” they saw showed 0.00 time remaining.

But the official time-keeper said that actually a fraction of a second of playing time did remain and Michigan’s quarterback made the most of it, hurling a dramatic 47-yard touchdown pass to gain a one-point victory over Western Michigan, 13-12.

So the issue here is not the outcome; Michigan won the game fair and square.

The problem is that millions of people saw what they assumed was the official clock expire on the second-to-last play, which was an incomplete pass. But it turns out that that clock wasn’t accurate.

We’ve been dealing with the implications of millions of people drawing conclusions from what they think they see on video for decades. And now that essentially everyone has a powerful camera on their cellphone, the problem is reaching dangerous proportions.

Most sports now have a video review feature to try and ensure that official get their calls right. These increasingly involve multiple views from multiple angles in an effort to do so. As players and fans get used to the new replay technologies, everyone waits for the ruling and most people accept it, one way or the other.

Live television coverage of news events has no such capability. It’s still in its dinosaur stage where one view suits all purposes, with some exceptions. So masses of people are forming opinions based on what they think they see there, or, perhaps worse, from amateur videos that surface online.

That is potentially dangerous when it comes to situations more critical than who wins a football game.

HEADLINES:

• Canadian tariffs on U.S. milk, perfume, golf clubs and other goods take effect as trade war grinds on (CBS)

• Mass deportations and separate schools for refugees: The far-right AfD’s vision for Germany (CNN)

• German nationalists’ big win sounds alarm for mainstream politicians in Europe (WP)

• After Far-Right Triumph, Merz Faces Narrow Path to Save His Government (WSJ)

• Houthis attack Saudi Arabia and wound dozens in major expansion of war in the Middle East (Independent)

• Israeli airstrikes on a village in southern Lebanon kill 12 people, including 2 children (AP)

• Iran war drives $100 billion in extra energy costs for U.S. consumers (Axios)

• Iran warns US energy assets in Gulf are vulnerable after latest clashes (Reuters)

• Speech in China is in the deep freeze (Economist)

• China readies for humanoid robot wars. (Reuters)

• U.S. exploring Russia-Ukraine winter de-escalation steps (Axios)

• 25 years after Sept. 11 attacks, Taliban rules Afghanistan again, but now with $7 billion in U.S. firepower (CBS)

• New Mexico Democrats push back over Trump posts about renaming the state ‘New America’ (NBC)

• As the unofficial start of the campaign sprint kicks off on Labor Day, President Donald Trump’s deep unpopularity is imperiling Republican chances of maintaining their narrow majorities in Congress with just two months before November’s midterm elections. (Reuters)

• Maria Bartiromo’s Downfall at an Increasingly Cautious Fox News (NYT)

• Trump pledged to lower prices in eight areas. Have they risen or fallen? (WP)

• Trump says he’s made ‘Hundreds of Billions of Dollars on Stocks’ for the U.S., in stream of AI posts (CNBC)

• The poorest in the US can’t find housing even as low-income units sit empty (AP)

• Life lessons from Big Tech workers who got laid off (BI)

• The Burning Man Crowd Is Getting Old (NYT)

• Gloria Steinem Gave It All (New Yorker)

• Michigan’s last-gasp miracle by Bryce Underwood saves Whittingham debut from disaster (Athletic)

• AI Is Already Changing What It Means to Be Human (Atlantic)

• UN rights chief warns how AI could pose ‘existential risk to humanity’ (EuroNews)

• Research acceleration: The view inside OpenAI (OpenAI)

• AI doomers can’t have it both ways (WP)

• CDC Successfully Eradicates Children (Onion)

 

In Other News

I’ll tell you the kind of story that puzzles me. Saturday evening, a mountain lion is sighted in Golden Gate Park. This has happened before. Apparently this one ran up a tree.

Twenty-four hours later, on Sunday evening authorities report the mountain lion “safely leaves area.”

But wait a minute! Golden Gate Park is surrounded on three sides by the city of San Francisco — miles and miles of city.

On the fourth side is the Pacific Ocean.

So how exactly did the big cat get out of the area? The statement by officials made it almost sound as if the animal had hitched a ride with a trucker or caught a boat headed out to sea.

I suppose an animal that size could escape quietly if it headed south through the quieter parts of the Sunset without being seen by anyone, but certainly the dogs would know and they would raise a fuss, right?

No further reports of sightings as of press time…

HEADLINES:

• Mountain lion spotted near SF’s Golden Gate Park safely leaves area (SFGate)

• Germany’s Merz on the ropes after far right delivers devastating blow (FT)

• German far-right AfD wins Saxony-Anhalt election, falls short of majority (Al Jazeera)

• U.S. Energy Secretary Wright says Iran nuclear deal may never happen (CNBC)

• Iran touts military response as US maintains blockade, hits tankers (Al Jazeera)

• US envoys hope for new Ukraine-Russia talks soon after visits to both capitals (Reuters)

• Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon purge (FT)

• Trump administration files another Supreme Court emergency appeal over USPS mail ballot rules (ABC)

• Midterm mail ballots start to go to voters as litigation over Trump’s order creates uncertainty (AP)

• Michigan’s Democratic candidate courts Muslim voters (Economist)

• Canada’s Biggest Newspaper Targets US States Over Trump’s Tariff ‘Tantrums’ (Newsweek)

• His shop straddles the US-Canada border. A historic friendship is crumbling on both sides. (CNN)

• The Real Risk of a Trade War With Canada (Foreign Affairs)

• Chimpanzees once used for vaccine research get health checks as part of long-term care (AP)

• 5 Killed and 5 Injured as Cargo Plane Overruns Runway at Miami Airport (NYT)

• These teachers are moving from AI policing to AI acceptance (WP)

• China’s New Graduates, Facing a Dire Job Market, Must Also Contend With A.I. (NYT)

• These teachers fight AI cheating with classes that force students to show they are learning (WP)

• Kenyans Did College Students’ Homework for Years. Then A.I. Arrived. (NYT)

• Tesla Launches New Model Of Explosions (Onion)

War.gov

I suppose it was inevitable that with the start of football season Hegseth & Bros. would air an ad for the U.S. military featuring guys dressed up with the latest gear looking like they are players in a video game.

The ad end with a screenshot of the foreboding “War.gov.”

The appeal to a certain sort of young male is as old as time. That it comes in the wake of the death of Gloria Steinem is a reminder (as if we needed one!) that we still live in a patriarchy.

Steinem always reminded us that wars, terrorist acts, domestic violence, mass shootings and similar horrors are almost exclusively the province of men. A society that fails to provide a check on runaway masculinity is one doomed to more of the same.

It is no coincidence that Hegseth has drummed females out of our armed forces and is subjecting military personnel to testosterone level testing. Higher levels of testosterone are often associated with more aggressive behavior in animals, including humans.

Football is, of course, our most violent sport. Many who play it will suffer serious injuries, some life-altering. Some will suffer irreversible brain damage.

At the same time, the game provides a great show, which is why millions of us enjoy watching it. But I would enjoy watching it just a bit more if it wasn’t framed inside a reminder of what is deeply wrong with our current administration in Washington.

HEADLINES:

• US strikes three Iranian oil tankers after IRGC attack on American naval ships, Central Command says (Reuters)

• A More Confident Iran Emerges After Six Months of War With the U.S. (NYT)

• Putin orders pause on strikes on Kyiv as Witkoff and Kushner arrive in Moscow for peace talks (CNN)

• Living with war in Kyiv (Reuters)

• China dealt blow as US-backed firm takes over Venezuelan oilfields (SCMP)

• U.S. military turns off ad trackers on phones and computers (Reuters)

• The mystery behind an audio clip that helped upend a Senate race (WP)

• Trump Officials Draft Plan to Pay At-Home Parents, Using Funds for Working Ones (NYT)

• Trump says ‘stupidity causes inflation’ and threatens to stop trade with foreign countries in retaliation for higher interest rates (Forbes)

• Why the U.S. job market remains resilient in face of global pressures and inflation (PBS)

• Trump piles onto his Fed chair pick (Reuters)

• Inside the USS Abraham Lincoln’s Nine Months at Sea: Loneliness, Fatigue, Pride (WSJ)

• When ‘12 Angry Men’ becomes one angry man (The Hill)

• More People Have Died From 9/11 Than on 9/11 (Reveal)

• Icons Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem never officially retired—why that’s a choice for some and requirement for others (CNBC)

• I worked 13-hour days building my startup while working at Apple (BI)

• Peace Through Strength (War.gov)

• The Trump Administration Is Running a Military Recruitment Ad on TV. The Pentagon Says It’s Working. (Vanity Fair)

• I asked ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity to rank the 10 jobs most likely to be replaced by AI — here’s what they all agreed on (Tom’s Guide)

• OpenAI feared its technology could reshape elections. Now campaigns are using it. (WP)

• Court Filings in A.I. Suit Invoke Copyright Law, Culture and Sports (NYT)

• Rockstar Leaks Worsen As Hackers Release Fully Playable Copy Of ‘GTA IX’ (Onion)

Losing It

Two somewhat related stories caught my eye this week:

• “People are saying less each year. Scientists think that’s a problem.” — from the Post.

• “What Do Students Lose When They Stop Writing?” — from the Times.

Both stories are about the changing behavior young people are exhibiting in response to artificial intelligence and other factors.

Much has been made about the so-called Gen Z “stare,” which is a a neutral, deadpan face with wide or fixed eyes and no emotional reaction in situations where a verbal response would be expected.

Some think this is a consequence of the social isolation children faced during the Covid lockdowns. And there is a general consensus that heavy consumption of social media is somehow involved. 

Meanwhile, the direct correlation between AI and a marked decline in students’ writing skills has been firmly established.

“Educators are worried that many students can no longer write essays without AI,” reports the Times. “And it’s costing more than just grammar skills.”

A majority of high school students are turning to AI for help with their homework, including writing assignments. Not everyone thinks this is a bad thing.

“The scholars who study writing and cognition are rarely reflexively opposed to AI,” says the Times. “Many have spent decades anticipating a leap in computer-assisted writing, just like the one we are living through. They tend to be excited by the technology’s potential.”

Still, if students turn to AI instead of doing the hard work of learning to write on their own, many educators think they will suffer as a result.

“Cognitive research confirms that writing is a powerful aid in helping us to retain information we read. The work of writing forces us to stress-test our ideas, allowing the writer to respond to counterarguments and cite sources. Revision is a practice of self-critique and self-improvement, and can be social, as well, if feedback is elicited. Writing can also be empowering, allowing us to share our experiences and express our views. It can even be healing, which is why therapists sometimes suggest keeping a journal.”

Last year, according to the Times, “a small study from M.I.T. showed that individuals who wrote in partnership with A.I. chatbots recorded lower brain activity while they wrote, compared with those who worked without chatbots. The writers who used AI struggled to remember what, exactly, they had written, and felt little ownership over their work.”

Additional research suggests using AI can degrade critical thinking skills.

One thing is certain. AI is here to stay and as is the case with all disruptive technologies, the way humans interact with each other will be deeply affected.

But if it means we forget how to tell each other stories, spoken or written, that would be a very sad ending.

HEADLINES:

• US envoys Witkoff, Kushner arrive in Moscow for talks on peace in Ukraine (Reuters)

• Pentagon Subjects Roughly 50 Members of the Joint Staff to Polygraph Tests in Expanded Leak Hunt (NYT)

• Lindsay Clancy judge declares mistrial – what happens next? (Guardian)

• U.S. added 162,000 jobs in August, but wage growth continues to lag inflation (NBC)

• Unemployed Americans say they’re stuck in a job-hunting nightmare (BI)

• U.S. Diesel Prices Set New High (NYT)

• Supreme Court hands Trump another win — a monkey wrench into voting by mail (The Hill)

• Judge Once Again Blocks Mail-In Ballot Rules (NYT)

• Democrats just got one seat closer to retaking the House (Silver Bulletin)

• Democrats eye expanded Medicare coverage if they take U.S. House (WP)

• Germany’s far-right AfD party is poised for power in a state election (NPR)

• How could US-Iran conflict end? Three experts give their views (BBC)

• A deadly strike on an Iranian wedding was likely a direct hit by a US munition (Reuters)

• US urged to consider military strikes to stop China achieving AGI first (SCMP)

• The Texas experiment (FT)

• ‘Too lazy to do the job’: Democrats dump on Fetterman after WSJ report (WSJ)

• Planting billions of trees in China to fight climate change backfired, altering the water distribution across the entire country (Earth.com)

• Two trapped workers are pulled alive from Nepal tunnel more than a week after deadly floods (NBC)

• President Plans to Use Qatari Jet for Overseas Flight Despite Security Concerns (NYT)

• Psychedelic ‘Furthur’ bus rolls back into San Francisco for new Grateful Dead exhibit (AP)

• Second complete map of a fruit fly brain completed (ArsTechnica)

• Wendell Berry, 1934–2026 (Bulwark)

• ChatGPT-6 Astra is here — this one prompt shows what it can really do (Tom’s Guide)

• South Korea’s AI rally is reshaping romance, reality shows and academic preferences (CNBC)

• We managed financial crises. AI is a risk of a different kind. (WP)

• After OpenAI’s Bots Went Rogue, Watchdogs Were Kept on a Short Leash (NYT)

• God Struggling To Remember Why He Made So Many Ugly People (Onion)

Origin Story: Salon.6

After spending the first three decades of my career in San Francisco, in the summer of 1999 I agreed to become the Washington bureau chief for Salon. The company had just gone public in June that year, so the coffers were full of investors’ money, and CEO David Talbot offered me incentives to move my family across the country.

I had just one condition before accepting Talbot’s offer — that I could take my crackerjack fact-checker, Daryl Lindsey, with me to the nation’s capital. If I was going to help direct our national political coverage, Daryl would be a key asset in that work.

My small staff included two young reporters — Jake Tapper and Alicia Montgomery, who would go on to make names for themselves at CNN and NPR, respectively. I also edited a fascinating debate-style series of columns between David Horowitz on the right and Joe Conason on the left.

Working as a journalist in the nation’s capital was a revelation. Whereas back in the Bay Area, everyone in the media community seemed to know who I was, here in the center of government I was a small fish swimming in a very large pond.

The yawning gap between the two political parties was almost absurdly stark to see up close. I remember watching Sen. Ted Kennedy and his Democratic colleagues stand up and sit down in lockstep as they listened to fellow Democrats or rival Republicans speak on a panel.

It was a scene right out of Saturday Night Live or The Onion.

I eventually met Ted Kennedy at a reception at his house for another left-wing publication, American Prospect, as it was opening its Washington office. Among the perks of being with Salon was people like Sidney Blumenthal, Hillary Clinton’s close aide, would return my calls.

Something unexpected that surprised and intrigued me was the quality of some of the writing in conservative publications, like the Weekly Standard and the American Spectator. I thought that the logic of the arguments advanced by some of the younger conservative writers was worthy of Salon’s consideration.

But when I expressed these ideas in the weekly staff meetings I attended by telephone, they were met by silence back at the home office. The culture wars were forcing people to take sides, and the core group of Salonistas knew firmly which side they were on.

My views were less predictable, for example I sometimes agreed with Horowitz rather than Conason in their weekly exchanges. In a sense, this was the journalist in me coming out, always willing to weigh both sides of an argument.

In the end, I knew I would always side with the progressives, but I found their certainty about complicated issues almost as unsettling as that on the right.

In addition, it was alienating to try and operate in a remote office far from headquarters. There was political infighting back in San Francisco that eventually affected my place in the pecking order.

And I didn’t appreciate that.

So when family reasons made a move back to San Francisco desirable I made a phone call to an old friend, Salon’s original benefactor, Richard Gingras. He offered me a lucrative position at an Internet giant, Excite@Home in Redwood City on the peninsula.

With that, my run with the Salonistas came to an abrupt end. I never regretted my time with the organization, and I loved the people there so I continued to support them from the outside. On occasion, I still wrote articles for them.

But much like that song about San Francisco, I knew that I’d left a big part of my heart behind at Salon.

(End of the series.)

HEADLINES: 

• Trump asks Supreme Court to OK sweeping changes for mail ballots (CNN)

• Federal judge considers whether to extend ban against U.S. Postal Service mail voting changes (PBS)

• A judge suggests that Trump mail-in voting rules could cause ‘major disenfranchisement.’ (NYT)

• Beware big swings in midterm forecasts (Silver Bulletin)

• U.S. strikes Iran again as Tehran targets American allies in Gulf region (PBS)

• China’s support for Iran shows its limits as US ramps up pressure on Tehran (Al Jazeera)

• Pentagon cuts access to classified information amid Iran war concerns (WP)

• Panetta: Hegseth is ‘undermining the strength’ of the US military (The Hill)

• Lindsay Clancy defense wants juror removed, saying they won’t ‘listen to the law’ amid deadlock (NBC)

• Federal Prosecutors Charge ICE Agent With Lying About Minnesota Shooting (NYT)

• Fox News abruptly parts ways with scandal-tarred star Maria Bartiromo (NPR)

• Trump to Break Ground on Arch Before Getting Approval (NYT)

• ‘Supersizing before our eyes’: UN warns of record El Niño approaching (Guardian)

• People are saying less each year. Scientists think that’s a problem. (WP)

• What Do Students Lose When They Stop Writing? (NYT)

• What Happened in Minneapolis (New Yorker)

• ‘We badly need to raise our boys more like our girls’: Gloria Steinem – a life in quotes (Guardian)

• Olivia Rodrigo has a lot on her mind. But she’s still choosing joy (NPR)

• Widespread AI outage underway (Axios)

• Mark Zuckerberg opposed AI regulation proposal in a private call with Trump (BI)

• Cornell leads project putting robots to work in US orchards (Cornell)

• ‘Welcome to the AGI era’: OpenAI launches GPT-6 Astra (VentureBeat)

• Dark Horse Emerges In Competition For Most Insane Coworker (Onion)

Origin Story: Salon.5

 On Jan. 17,1998 an obscure link aggregation site called the Drudge Report revealed that Newsweek magazine was sitting on a story by investigative reporter Michael Isikoff about an affair between President Bill Clinton and a 22-year-old White House intern.

Because we’d published some of Drudge’s stuff at HotWired, I knew he needed careful fact-checking but also that when it came to gossip circulating in Hollywood and Washington, D.C. he was more often right than wrong.

Four days after Drudge, the Washington Post published the story, thereby breaking an unspoken taboo in mainstream media against reporting on the private lives of public figures. 

This development was one of the reasons David Talbot wanted me back at Salon — to help manage the coverage going forward of what was clearly going to be a major sex scandal.

It felt like “deja vu all over again” for me, a flashback to the early days of the Patty Hearst saga at Rolling Stone. As much as I disliked these types of stories personally, I would benefited from covering them professionally.

When confronted by reporters, Clinton had uttered his infamous statement: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.”

But it turned out that the intern, Monica Lewinsky, had confided about the affair to a colleague, Linda Tripp, who had secretly taped their conversations. 

When Tripp discovered that Lewinsky had denied the relationship with Clinton in an affidavit for another sex scandal, the Paula Jones case, she delivered her tapes to Ken Starr. 

During his grand jury testimony that followed, Clinton minced words again, saying "it depends on what the meaning of the word is is.” Finally, in August 1998, he admitted to the affair.

This set up the first impeachment of a president since the 1868. It was at this moment, as the House prepared to begin proceedings that Salon published a bombshell. 

Under Talbot’s byline, we ported that:

Henry Hyde, the Republican Representative from Illinois who was going to chair the impeachment trial, had had a five-year extramarital affair years earlier with a woman named Cherie Snodgrass. We published a photo of the two with our report.

We had received a tip about Hyde’s affair over the previous months but it was a phone call to David Talbot from a 72-year-old retiree named Fred Sommer that finally got our attention. Sommer claimed that the woman’s ex-husband, Fred Snodgrass, had told him about the affair during a game of tennis, saying it had ruined his marriage.

We were able to confirm Sommer’s account by contacting various sources including Cherie Snodgrass, who gave us the photo.

As we prepared to go to press, we contacted Hyde’s office about the affair and surprisingly he confirmed that it was true, though dismissing it as a “youthful indiscretion.”

Now we knew we had a story that would guarantee Salon’s notoriety as a muckraking force to be reckoned with. In the furor that ensued, Talbot handled most of the media queries, but I made several television appearances as well.

Unlike 23 years earlier, I was no longer an inexperienced youth writing for Rolling Stone. Now I was a middle-aged editor with graying hair well-versed in the ways of media, and I easily brushed aside questions about the ethics of running our story, citing the editorial we had run along with Talbot’s story:

“In the brave new world that has been created by the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, the private lives of public figures are no longer off-limits.” We didn’t like it but it was true.

Today, 30 years later, with the MeToo movement behind us and political sex scandals almost commonplace, that appears to have been a turning point in journalism history. 

That story put Salon on the map. It now occupied center stage on the national media landscape. 

For me, it was an opportunity to move to the belly of the beast, Washington,D.C.

(To be continued.)

HEADLINES:

• Trump says U.S. prepared to strike Iran “anytime we want” after carrying out “very heavy attack” (CBS)

• Iran retaliates with missiles and drones, defying Trump’s warning (WP)

• What is Iran’s Castle Breaker missile, used against US bases? (Al Jazeera)

• Iran attempted cyberattacks on range of U.S. infrastructure, sources say (NBC)

• Trump Proposes Renaming Strait Of Hormuz ‘Trump Strait’ (Forbes)

• Gloria Steinem, a potent voice of US feminism and co-founder of Ms. Magazine, dies at 92 (AP)

• Trump Administration Begins Blitz to Find Elusive Voter Fraud Ahead of Midterms (NYT)

• Postal Service work to comply with Trump’s executive order is rushed and sloppy, a whistleblower contends (AP)

• Trump’s oil deal could scuttle Venezuelan democracy, opposition fears (Politico)

• ‘Below the dignity of the office’: Canadian officials condemn Pete Hegseth cadet post (BBC)

• Carney tells Trump ‘Stop trying to be tough’ (AP)

• US and China arm for space warfare (Reuters)

• USS Abraham Lincoln’s crew of 5,000 arrive at notorious Thai resort after 270 days at sea (Guardian)

• The Court’s Ballroom Decision Is a Sign of Deeper Problems (Atlantic)

• Deadlocked Lindsay Clancy jury wraps up fifth day of deliberations without a verdict (CNN)

• ‘A friend I can trust’: How Americans described their relationship with AI (WP)

• New York City Bans A.I. in Elementary and Middle Schools (NYT)

• Judge Tells RFK Jr. to Stop Using Fake AI Studies on Teen Pregnancy (TNR)

• Four-legged robot learns to jump through tight gaps without human help (InterestingEngineering)

• Can you beat this AI writing detector? (WP)

• AI Strategist Suggests Calling Data Centers ‘Computer Parties’ (Onion)