Industrial Clock

Since humans ran out of new kinds of animals and foods to domesticate thousands of years ago, we can study almost any edible plant or farm animal as a microcosm of human history.

This leads me to the term “industrial clock,” which refers to how we cannot escape the rhythms of the 40-hour week even after we retire.

And that brings me to the origin of the coffee break, which was developed by industrialist managers as a way to squeeze more productivity out of workers. I first encountered this curiosity when I was reviewing a book on the history of sugar many years ago.

Like many other crops, sugar started out as a luxury for the rich and powerful but then gradually filtered down until it became one of the many excessive burdens of the poor and powerless.

Over 100,000 people die of diabetes in the U.S. each year, and they are disproportionately from minority and poor communities.

Taking sugar with coffee or tea became habitual for workers during the industrial revolution. By now, virtually everyone goes through at least some phase of sugar addiction, it’s endemic.

And of course there are other risk factors for diabetes — smoking and obesity among them.

But wars have been fought and empires built on control of sugar or tea or coffee or bananas and every other foodstuff; that much is indisputable.

Meanwhile, I’m over six years into retirement and still living on the “industrial clock.” 

(This is a rewrite of an essay from 2022.)

HEADLINES:

• Winter Storm With 'Catastrophic' South Ice, Heavy Snow From Texas To Northeast To Affect Over 230 Million (Weather.com)

• Zelensky says he hopes first Ukraine, Russia and US talks are ‘step towards ending war’ (BBC)

• Territorial issue is key obstacle to Ukraine peace, Kremlin tells Trump envoys (AP)

• Outrage as Trump undermines NATO role in Afghanistan war (DW)

• UK’s Starmer slams Trump remarks on non-US NATO troops in Afghanistan as ‘insulting’ and ‘appalling’ (AP)

• Signs of Wavering (Atlantic)

• Businesses in Minneapolis close Friday to protest ICE (NBC)

• D.H.S. Cited Foreign Students’ Writings and Protests Before Their Arrests (NYT)

• Defund Science, Distort Culture, Mock Education (Atlantic)

• Denmark offered to trade Greenland to the U.S. in 1910—and America thought it was crazy (Fortune)

• Inside the effort to shield Stars and Stripes from Pentagon control (WP)

• Stephen Colbert Ruthlessly Taunts His CBS Bosses With A Biting Trump Reminder (HuffPost)

• Kimmel And Colbert Say FCC ‘Equal Time’ Rule Is A Bid To ‘Stifle’ Them (Forbes)

• TikTok finalizes a deal to form a new American entity (AP)

• Well, That Is One Way for J.D. and Usha Vance to Respond to the Erika Kirk Divorce Rumors (Slate)

• Todoist’s app now lets you add tasks to your to-do list by speaking to its AI (TechCrunch)

• How Meta Is Reshaping Its Organization for an AI Computing Blitz (The Information)

• Trump Boys Put Nobel Peace Prize In Microwave (Onion)

 

Don't Look Away

 

From Mark Fiore: “Impending Awfulness…Is Already Here.”

HEADLINES:

• Trump Can Prosecute Anyone Now (Atlantic)

• Jack Smith defends Trump investigations to House Republicans (NPR)

• Trump’s NATO Deal Would Mean US Mining and Missiles in Greenland (Bloomberg)

• Trump’s European threats could cause lasting damage to US standing in the world (AP)

• Zelenskyy says Europe ‘looks lost’ and living in ‘Groundhog Day’ in scathing Davos address (EuroNews)

• Trump launches ‘Board of Peace’ at Davos, testing global order (WP)

• Trump hosts signing ceremony for Board of Peace in Davos despite reservations from key allies (ABC)

• The US is due to officially exit the World Health Organization, in the face of warnings it will hit both US health and global health and also in violation of a US law that requires Washington to pay the U.N. health agency $260 million in fees that it owes. (Reuters)

• Trump threatens pollsters after New York Times survey shows sagging disapproval (Politico)

• ICE detains four children from Minnesota school district, including 5-year-old (WP)

• 3 people involved in a Minnesota church protest are arrested (AP)

• White House alters image of Minnesota church protestor to make her appear as if she was sobbing (Mirror)

• Federal immigration officers are asserting sweeping power to forcibly enter people’s homes without a judge’s warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo. Meanwhile, ICE is now setting its sights on a new U.S. state. The name of that operation has been slammed on social media. [AP]

• Midterm polls have good news, great news, and bad news for Democrats. (Silver Bulletin)

• The battle for Warner Bros is only getting fiercer (Economist)

• Israel kills 3 journalists in Gaza, including CBS News contributor (WP)

• Federal Regulators Take New Aim at Late-Night TV (NYT)

• Yann LeCun’s new venture is a contrarian bet against large language models (Technology Review)

• AI-induced cultural stagnation is no longer speculation − it’s already happening (The Conversation)

• Google begins offering free SAT practice tests powered by Gemini (ArsTechnica)

• Job Applicants Sue to Open ‘Black Box’ of A.I. Hiring Decisions (NYT)

• ICE Deems Being In Privacy Of Own Home Obstruction Of Justice (Onion)

White Faces

As Trump rumbled through his confused and confusing speech at Davos yesterday, he was looking out at a sea of predominantly white faces.

When his cabinet gathers to heap praise on his fragile ego, it is a room of predominantly white faces.

His much-vaunted Board of Peace, once it is fully formed and gathers for a photo op will be predominantly white faces.

Although he threatens and bluffs, Trump will not invade Canada or Greenland or Denmark because he considers these places as homes for white faces.

When he bombs Iran or Venezuela or dismisses African countries at sh*t nations, it is primarily the color of the skin of their inhabitants that enrages him.

His private army of ICE agents is waging war on people of color, not white people. When a white woman was killed by ICE in Minneapolis, even Trump was momentarily taken back.

Every Black woman he attacks is in his words “low-IQ.” It matters not how accomplished she is, what elected office she holds, or anything else other than the color of her skin.

And of course his MAGA crowds, the hard-core supporters who stand by him no matter what, are composed of predominantly white faces.

Someone reading this will say, wait, there are exceptions. Of course there are exceptions, but I’m generalizing here for a reason.

Racism is and always has been at the root of Trumpism.

And the resistance movement gradually forming to resist Trump and his many depredations is composed of a rainbow of colors, including yes, many white faces.

HEADLINES:

• Cuban Detainee in El Paso ICE Facility Died by Homicide, Autopsy Shows (NYT)

• Trump drops European tariff threat as he touts ‘future’ Greenland deal (Financial Times)

• Trump pauses Greenland-linked tariffs on 8 European countries (NBC)

• Trump takes aim at Canada after Carney’s Davos speech (WP)

• Trump Gives a Stump Speech at Davos (Atlantic)

• Inside the room for Trump’s Davos speech (Business Insider)

• America’s adventurism is unsettling China (Economist)

• Trump’s Attack on Democracy Is Faltering (Atlantic)

• Trump Administration Starts Immigration Operation in Maine (NYT)

• ICE targeted off-duty police officers in Twin Cities, local police say (WP)

• Supreme Court skeptical of Trump’s attempt to fire the Fed’s Lisa Cook (NBC)

• They ransacked the U.S. Capitol. Now they want the government to pay them back. (WP)

• MLB owners enraged by Kyle Tucker-Dodgers deal, will push for salary cap ‘no matter what’ (Athletic)

• Half of world’s CO2 emissions come from just 32 fossil fuel firms, study shows (Guardian)

• MAGA Jesus Is Not the Real Jesus (Atlantic)

• Craig Newmark explains why he’s pulling back on funding journalism (Nieman)

• What to Know About California’s Proposed Tax on Billionaires (NYT)

• The Baseball Hall of Fame in 2027: Land of the Giants (Athletic)

• China’s AI Boyfriend Business Is Taking On a Life of Its Own (Wired)

• Has Gemini surpassed ChatGPT? We put the AI models to the test. (ArsTechnica)

• ealth Experts Warn Americans Not Sensually Eating Enough Fruit (Onion)

 

Off-Script

The problem with reality TV is when the show becomes reality, and that’s what happening now.

At this point, we should remind ourselves what we’re talking about. Quoting Wikipedia:

“Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring ordinary people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 1990s with shows such as The Real World, then achieved prominence in the early 2000s with the success of the series Survivor, Idol, and Big Brother, all of which became global franchises.^[1] Reality television shows tend to be interspersed with "confessionals", short interview segments in which cast members reflect on or provide context for the events being depicted on-screen; this is most commonly seen in American reality television. Competition-based reality shows typically feature the gradual elimination of participants, either by a panel of judges, by the viewership of the show, or by the contestants themselves.”

So Trump, the former realty TV star, which is the main reason he is president, wants Greenland. The Europeans don’t want him to take it by force. 

Eight European nations place a small military force on the icy island to defend it against the far larger U.S. military behemoth.

Everyone (even Trump) knows that the Europeans would stand no chance in a war, which would make them martyrs and the Americans look not like conquerors but fools.

Frustrated, Trump fumes and struts, seeking another way to seize his prize. He threatens large new tariffs on the Europeans, and awkwardly confesses that this entire show is because he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize.

In this matter, he confuses Norway with Denmark, and an independent awards committee with a government, but who’s paying that much attention, really?

Today, Trump is in Davos, Switzerland, where the whole thing may come to a head. But he is ranting incoherently as I publish this, so stay tuned. This show has most definitely gone off-script.

HEADLINES:

• Stocks Post Biggest Drop in Months as Tensions Over Greenland Mount (NYT)

• Trump jabs Europeans over Greenland as Davos becomes emergency summit (WP)

• What are the Chagos Islands and why does Trump think Britain would be stupid to give them up? (CNN)

• Putin invited to join US-led Gaza ‘Board of Peace’, Trump says (BBC)

• As Trump dismantles the existing world order, his version is still taking shape (NPR)

• Trump Is Pushing the U.S.-Europe Alliance Onto a Precipice (NYT)

• The Military Is Being Forced to Plan for an Unthinkable Betrayal (Atlantic)

• Pentagon moves to cut U.S. participation in some NATO groups (WP)

• A year into his administration, Trump faces Americans frustrated with cost of living (AP)

• Prosecutors subpoena Minnesota Democrats as part of federal inquiry (NYT)

• One day of the ICE operation in Minneapolis — and the activists fighting it (WP)

• Lawyers allege Dept. of Homeland Security is denying legal counsel to Minnesota detainees (ABC)

• New Video Undercuts DHS Account After Border Patrol Shot U.S. Citizen and Labeled Her a ‘Domestic Terrorist’ (USAHerald)

• Authoritarianism by exhaustion — Trump’s new travel ban (DailyMaverick)

• Were the resistance libs right about Trump? (Silver Bulletin)

• What Happened to Pam Bondi? (Atlantic)

• Russia launched a combined drone and missile attack on Ukraine, knocking out power and heating supplies to thousands of apartment buildings in Kyiv amid freezing temperatures, Ukrainian officials said. (Reuters)

• Stars and Stripes top editor talks about Pentagon’s takeover of the newspaper (NPR)

• Newsom plans no new journalism funding despite $175-million funding deal with Google (LAT)

• Bari Weiss’s Hostile Takeover of CBS News (New Yorker)

• Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2026 (Reuters)

• Kyrsten Sinema panel interrupted by men who say they’re having an affair with her amid fresh lawsuit (Independent)

• America’s ‘sink or swim’ era of work is here (Business Insider)

• Suicides Were Frequent at the Golden Gate Bridge. Not Anymore. (Cal Today)

• UC Berkeley professors explore new ways to integrate AI in engineering courses (U-C)

• Physical AI: robotics are poised to revolutionise business (Financial Times)

• DeepSeek technique to improve AI’s ability to ‘read’ long texts questioned by new research (South China Morning Post)

• Travis Kelce Asks Taylor Swift If Jason Can Also Get Married With Them (Onion)

 

Whose Life, Exactly?

Having worked in the mixed worlds of journalism, movies, academia, non-profit and private sector, legacy media and digital media, it’s probably natural that from time to time I get questions about my strange long career.

I usually try to comply with these requests, because I was a reporter for a long time and I know that many people refuse to talk about what they know or remember.

Usually I’m willing to discuss pretty much anything except the identities of certain confidential sources that have to be protected.

That leaves a pretty wide latitude for conversation. Probably the most sought-after information is about Rolling Stone and specifically the Patty Hearst stories.

In 1975-6, Howard Kohn and I wrote three cover stories on the newspaper heiress’s kidnapping and apparent conversion to the cause of her kidnappers, the domestic terror organization calling itself the SLA.

There were a lot of dramatic ups and downs in those stories and for the people whose lives they affected.

Including ours. Even the mundane details of our involvement seem to be of some interest and as one recent caller asked me, “Do you ever think about how amazing it is that you did all that? That you lived through it?”

The question took me aback for a moment, but I answered, “Sometimes it feels like it was in fact someone else, not me.”

After we hung up, I stayed with that thought for a moment. I suspect a lot of people feel that way about the past and the things that happened both professionally and personally — things that may sound strange or unlikely, given who we seem to be now.

And one of the issues about bringing it all back up is we may no longer feel ownership of our own past. Maybe it still feels like it belongs to us or maybe not. And maybe that’s okay. I suppose it can be somebody’s else’s story now.

HEADLINES:

• America vs. the World (Atlantic)

• Trump ties Greenland demands to Nobel Prize in message to Norway leader (BBC)

• Merz seeks to dial down Trump trade tensions — while Macron talks tough (Politico)

• Trump Is Pushing the U.S.-Europe Alliance Onto a Precipice (NYT)

• America’s ‘Achilles Heel’ of national debt is exposed by Trump’s Greenland tariff threat, warns Deutsche Bank (Fortune)

• The Minneapolis Siege Is Even Worse Than the Videos Show (New York)

• Minnesota Had Its Birmingham Moment (Atlantic)

• Before Urban Raids, Border Patrol Tested Tactics in California Farm Country (NYT)

• The Congresswoman Criminalized for Visiting ICE Detainees (New Yorker)

• Civil rights leaders discuss the lessons of the ’60s for the Trump era (WP)

• China’s Birthrate Plunges to Lowest Level Since 1949 (NYT)

• Well, there goes the metaverse! (TechCrunch)

• Elon Musk accused of making up math to squeeze $134B from OpenAI, Microsoft (ArsTechnica)

• This humanoid robot learned realistic lip movements by watching YouTube (TechSpot)

• Hollywood’s AI Moment (NYT)

• White House Plumber Reminds Staff That Only Donald J. Trump Commemorative Food Waste May Be Placed Down Donald J. Trump Commemorative Garbage Disposal (Onion)

 

Last Words

Martin Luther King’s final speech: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgVrlx68v-0&t=4s

HEADLINES:

• EU readies €93bn tariffs in retaliation for Trump’s Greenland threat (Financial Times)

• European leaders warn Trump’s Greenland tariffs threaten ‘dangerous downward spiral’ (NPR)

• Trump’s Greenland Threats Will Boomerang on America (NYT)

• Army puts 1,500 soldiers on standby for possible Minnesota deployment (PBS)

• Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey says it would be a ‘shocking step’ for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act (NBC)

• Why Trump Supports Protesters in Tehran But Not in Minneapolis (New Yorker)

• Minneapolis and Tehran: Is this Donald Trump’s downfall? (Salon)

• Israeli troops kill Palestinians for crossing a vague ceasefire line that's sometimes unmarked (AP)

• Syria announces ceasefire agreement with Kurd-led SDF after heavy fighting (Al Jazeera)

• How RFK Jr. plans to bankrupt vaccine manufacturers (WP)

• National debt is already killing the American Dream, says top economist—and it might push the U.S. into an outright depression (Fortune)

• Bruce Springsteen Dedicates ‘Promised Land’ to Renee Good, Decries ‘Gestapo Tactics’ Leading to Citizens Being ‘Murdered’: ‘ICE Should Get the F— Out of Minneapolis’ (Variety)

• The retired peace professor who brought her protest to Stephen Miller’s home (WP)

• Scientists issue warning about concerning phenomenon along US coastline: ‘A tough pill to swallow’ (Yahoo)

• White House told CBS to run Trump interview unedited or get sued (WP)

• The unknown hero of MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech (CNN)

• Sneak peek: IBM’s 4-year AI forecast (Axios)

• A.I. Is Coming to Class. These Professors Want to Ease Your Worries. (NYT)

• Groundskeeper Unsure What To Do With Unconscious Player Left In Medical Tent (Onion)

Fantasy or Nightmare?

In the run-up to the 1972 elections, many of us suspected that Richard Nixon and his collaborators were resorting to dirty tactics to ensure his re-election.

At SunDance magazine, a young reporter named Jeff Gerth produced an investigative piece for us called “Nixon and the Mafia.”

By 1974, the Watergate scandal was chasing Nixon from the White House. Reporters Woodward and Bernstein at the Washington Post became legends, Gerth went on to a career at the New York Times, and the Congress took steps to try and prevent Presidents from stealing elections ever again.

And it worked — until now.

Donald Trump has made it clear that he does not intend to allow his Republican Party to lose control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections.

Accordingly, as CNN has reported, Trump has been “chipping away” at the checks and balances we have to keep the upcoming elections fair and free:

• Early on, his administration scaled back the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA, which is meant to helps states guard their election systems from attack. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem canceled funding for an information sharing network that helped states detect and ward off coordinated hacking attacks, as CNN reported last year.

• His Justice Department has rewired the agency’s Civil Rights Division away from its original core mission of civil rights abuses, including those related to elections. One current focus of the division is to help states “clean” voter rolls, although a judge recently ruled that effort was a misapplication of the Civil Rights Act.

• Trump’s administration has already tried to change how people vote through executive action, and who they vote for through changing maps.

• There’s a lot of time for more gaming the system between now and November, and Trump clearly already has the midterms on the brain.

In addition to all this, Trump frequently fantasizes about cancelling the elections outright. We need a vigilant press and public to make sure his fantasy does not become our nightmare.

HEADLINES:

• Trump says he’ll hit Denmark and 7 other countries with new tariffs until there’s a deal to buy Greenland (NBC)

• Trump Backs Down on Insurrection Act as Democrats Take the Offensive (NYT)

• Minneapolis Rises (Slate)

• US judge restricts ICE response to Minneapolis protesters (BBC)

• Big Business keeps quiet on Minnesota (Reuters)

• Iran’s Khamenei says US, Israel links behind ‘thousands killed’ in protests (Al Jazeera)

• Iran’s deadly crackdown quells protests (Reuters)

• How Wall Street Turned Its Back on Climate Change (NYT)

• ‘Stars and Stripes’ Responds to Pentagon Targeting ‘Woke’ Independent News (Military.com)

• Who is on Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ overseeing Gaza’s reconstruction? (BBC)

• ‘Nazis.US’ Domain Now Redirects to the Homeland Security Website (Newsweek)

• Trump wants to “take back” Venezuela’s oil. What does that mean for Venezuelans? (Reveal)

• Attacks on the press? America’s seen this before. (WP)

• A Refuge for Afghan Music Is at Risk of Falling Silent (NYT)

• Cases of ‘AI Psychosis’ Are Being Reported. How Dangerous Is It? (ScienceAlert)

• The Rise of AI and Its Impact on Mental Health (Psychology Today)

• The Bots That Women Use in a World of Unsatisfying Men (Atlantic)

• Giddy Trump Struts All Around White House With Nobel Peace Prize In Mouth (Onion)