Sunday Mix

HEADLINES:

• Fatal nor’easter lashes coastal communities with soaking rain, wind and massive waves (CNN)

• Bomb squad searching vans near U.S. air base in Britain as five men arrested on terror charge (NBC)

• Trump rejects Iran’s seven-day roadmap to end war and reopen Hormuz (Al Jazeera)

• Lenders Don’t Trust the United States Anymore (Atlantic)

• A past FBI inquiry complicates Susan Collins’s campaign message in Maine (WP)

• Susan Collins’s Maine Money Machine (New Yorker)

• A 7-Day Standoff That Said So Much About Trump and the Media (NYT)

• Democrats now have easier paths to flipping the Senate. Here are races to watch. (WP)

• House Democrats plan vast oversight of Trump administration. Impeachment is an option (AP)

• Supreme Court revives Trump’s voter-verification system (Reuters)

• The Next Election May be Our Last (Defend Democracy)

• Lawmakers slam Trump’s move to cancel $810M in funding approved by Congress (WP)

• Trump Administration Plans to Gut Clean Car Rules (NYT)

• The generational tax war (BI)

• Robot Girl (Journal of the Plague Years)

• He spent 11 months inside DOGE. Now he wants to set the record straight. (WP)

• Loyalists Only, Please. Why Trump Surrounds Himself With True Believers (Reveal)

• Iran awaits next US move (Reuters)

• Trump rejects Iran’s seven-day roadmap to reopen Strait of Hormuz (Al Jazeera)

• UN adds 61 firms to settlements blacklist over alleged human rights violations against Palestinians (Guardian)

• Iran’s Bitterness and Bewilderment Over How to Make Peace with Trump (New Yorker)

• U.S. Rejects U.N. Declaration on Preparing for Future Pandemics (NYT)

• Inside the alleged plot to attack Trump’s birthday UFC fight (WP)

• All the Major Social Media Networks Are Reportedly Refusing Ads for ‘Musk’ (Gizmodo)

• Dogs use a surprising method to understand human language, new study suggests (WP)

• AI agent incident toll has risen to tens of thousands (Marcus)

• The AI safety debate is confusing. Here’s our guide to the different factions (NPR)

• China and US agree to establish AI safety channel and continue trade and military talks (AP)

• OpenAI says its AI agents escaped a secure ‘sandbox’ again last weekend and it is pausing training for a second time (Fortune)

• How the U.S. and Russia weakened a global effort to regulate killer AI (WP)

• How OpenAI’s Rogue A.I. Agents Tried to Trick a Robot Detector (NYT)

• Shy, Bookish Umpire Actually Really Beautiful When He Takes Mask Off (Onion)

 

Storytellers

As journalists, we are trained in how to tell stories. Other people’s stories.

At the midpoint of my journalism career, I started experimenting with how we could tell our own stories.

It started when Ted Glasser, then head of Stanford’s journalism program, suggested that I create a course called “Journalism as Memoir.” Our students were bright young people from all over the place, including China, Mexico and South Korea, and they would bring different story-telling traditions into the mix.

You’d have to ask the students how successful that course was, but I certainly learned a lot, mainly about the value of diversity.

People do tell stories somewhat differently based on their race, ethnicity, and other demographic factors, but there is at least one common element that strikes across all boundaries.

And that is a good story evokes an emotional response in the listener (or viewer or reader).

After teaching that course for several years at Stanford, I took it with me to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) program run by Susan Hoffman. There my students were senior citizens who wanted to learn how to write their one memoirs.

Now, many years later, I’m aware of the irony of being the caretaker of many other people’s stories when I can’t really tell my own.

HEADLINES:

• White House Blocks CNN From Air Force One (NYT)

• Trump rejects Iran’s conditional ceasefire proposal, WSJ reports, as Saudi coalition intercepts projectiles (CNBC)

• Roads flood in New Jersey, inundate some homes, as major signs of nor’easter take shape (AP)

• Supreme Court allows Trump administration to use expanded database for potential voter purges (NBC)

• Trump-Xi visit wraps up with few achievements announced (CBS)

• Trump Kowtows to China (Bulwark)

• In Trump’s White House, China’s Dictator Is Welcome. American Media, Less So. (NYT)

• Iran proposes a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in 7 days if the US meets its conditions (AP)

• Oil prices fall after Iran asks U.S. to return to failed memorandum of understanding from June (CNBC)

• Donald Trump’s US no longer a reliable ally, warns Belgium in leaked document (FT)

• From Gaza to Sudan to Nepal, more than 500 million children are in desperate need of education (AP)

• U.S. military lays groundwork for potential action around Cuba (CBS)

• A Quiet ICE Surge That Unfolded ‘Everywhere All at Once’ This Summer (NYT)

• Removal of 760,000 people from ACA marketplace could undermine US health system (Guardian)

• White House says new pro-Trump ad funded by the ‘U.S. government’ is a ‘public service announcement’ (NBC)

• New Senate Bill Seeks Major US Green Card Shake-Up (Newsweek)

• Rare September Nor’Easter Prompts Airline Travel Advisories (Forbes)

• New study suggests the aging brain is adapting, not declining (WP)

• AI Agents Teamed Up to Cheat at Blackjack. Their Collusion Is Getting Harder to Spot (Wired)

• Let’s Get Specific About These Doomsday Scenarios (Atlantic)

• Are you an AI idealist, alarmist, or skeptic? (Harvard Law)

• The head of one of the largest US endowments says OpenAI and Anthropic are in big trouble (BI)

• Xi acknowledges risks of AI even as Trump dismisses them (WP)

• Massachusetts Is Investigating Gambling Companies’ Use of A.I. (NYT)

• AI governance is coming, with or without Trump (Transformer)

• Kash Patel Phished By Scammer Posing As Kash Patel (Onion)

 

The Night Nurse

One hot, humid night in southern India many years ago, a night nurse lifted the mosquito netting around my bed and stepped inside, letting the net fall back into place behind her. She whispered, “Are you awake?”

I said yes. Her dark brown face was inches from mine. At first, all I could see were the whites of her eyes and teeth. I felt her breath falling softly against my skin, which was feverish and wet. She felt like a fresh breeze in the heavy tropical night.

As my eyes adjusted to the faint light in the room, I gradually became aware that she was patiently and systematically capturing the mosquitos flying around inside my netting one by one. This was a laborious process; often she would miss the insect on her first try but would persist until she succeeded. Whenever she caught one, she would carefully lift the net and allow it to fly off into the night.

I thought I might be dreaming or hallucinating — both of which occurred at that time in that place — but this was real. She kept at it until every last insect had been freed from threatening me, a pale six-foot-tall young man whose weight had plummeted down to 97 pounds as I was battling a combination of typhoid fever and salmonella.

During the weeks of our nightly meetings under the mosquito netting, I would look forward to her visits. And as I slowly recovered my strength, I got to know many of the day nurses who had brought me back from the near-dead. From them, I discovered the reason why the night nurse only worked at night.

She had suffered from a disfiguring case of smallpox as a child, resulting in a bad scarring of her face. 

By my last night in the hospital, I was no longer sweating my fluids away, so when she came to check on me her breath felt warm. “You will be going,” she whispered. “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” I whispered back. “I think you are the most beautiful nurse of all.”

HEADLINES:

• CNN, MS NOW and Politico allowed back into the White House after judge orders Trump admin to restore access (CNN)

• JD Vance Planted the Story That Sparked White House Media Ban (TNR)

• The Deferential President (Atlantic)

• GOP senators dismayed by Trump embrace of Xi after China helped Iran target US troops (The Hill)

• Trump hosting China’s Xi at White House as they navigate AI, trade tensions and Taiwan (CBS)

• The greatest advance in consulting since the quadrant (Economist)

• Republican Sheriff Illegally Seized California Ballots, Court Rules (NYT)

• Pete Buttigieg barnstorms for Democrats in midterms as he weighs 2028 run (WP)

• The blue wave is mostly in red states. That’s a little weird. (Silver Bulletin)

• Collins: White House backing down from NIH grant order (The Hill)

• Mortgage Rates Hit 7% as Iran War Fallout Crushes a Weak Housing Market (NYT)

• What’s Really Behind the Baby Bust? (New Yorker)

• Trump’s push to acquire Greenland almost broke NATO. The winner of it all may be ... Greenland (AP)

• Carney Lays Out His Vision for Breaking Canada’s Reliance on U.S. (NYT)

• ParaBros Merger Settlement Sign-Off Delayed As Deal Foes Granted Hail Mary Move By Judge (Deadline)

• L.A. Comes to Grips With a Studio Merger Many Didn’t Want (WSJ)

• A judge dismissed Trump's lawsuit accusing The Des Moines Register and its former pollster J. Ann Selzer of misrepresenting the state of the 2024 presidential race, rejecting the president's claim that the newspaper's poll coverage violated Iowa's consumer fraud law. [AP]

• I was in the room when Zuckerberg took an AI victory lap (BI)

• In A.I. Race, U.S. Models Have the Edge, but China Has Other Advantages (NYT)

• How an OpenAI ‘agent’ hacked Australia’s Medicare and what that means (Al Jazeera)

• Amazon to Expand Robot-Making Capacity With New, $100-Million Indiana Hub (WSJ)

• Why can’t we just keep rogue AIs off the internet? (Verge)

• I Built AI Clones of My Coworkers. Things Got Weird (Wired)

• Google Takes the A.I. Data Center Race to Outer Space (NYT)

• “I think the answer is we have to shut the labs down” - Jensen Huang (Marcus)

• Artificial-intelligence buildout is on track to require a larger share of US output than the rollout of electricity, railroads, interstate highways or the internet, a researcher said. The increasingly complicated financial structure to handle this comes with systemic risks. (Reuters)

• The personal AI agent horror stories are rolling in (BI)

• Dog Can’t Believe Guy She Hooked Up With 10 Years Ago Now Head Of FBI (Onion)

Genius Loves Company

By legend, Albert Einstein was a lone genius, coming up with ideas and concepts nobody else thought of. But according to a revealing article called “Not a Lone Genius” by CalTech professor Diana Kormos-Buchwald, the truth is more complicated. She based her article on The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, a 16-volume series of books co-edited by numerous scholars.

“He was not the genius working in an attic with a pen and paper,” she says. “Einstein may not have been working with large teams, but he was deeply embedded in the science community. Colleagues gave him advice and encouragement, but also criticized his work. And he, in turn, was instrumental in guiding and challenging others.”

(All of the Einstein volumes are now available in English and free in electronic formats.)

The article notes that Einstein developed his special theory of relativity in 1905 with help from his college friend Michele Besso and his first wife, Mileva Marić. He later perfected his general theory of relativity in 1915 with help from both Besso and another college friend, mathematician Marcel Grossmann.

Perhaps most illustrative of all was his involvement in experiments with younger physicists to test the structure of radiation and matter, and ultimately the development of the ground-breaking field of quantum mechanics. When approached by one of his young colleagues about being listed as a co-author on an important paper on that topic, Einstein demurred:

“I just don’t know whether I should count as a co-author since after all you did all the work...”

Einstein was a tinkerer and inventor of gadgets, including a patented refrigerating system. And he was an original thinker, who indeed came up with brilliant ideas. But perhaps his true genius was as a synthesizer, a collaborator, and a mentor of younger people.

And there might be a lesson in that for the rest of us.

(I published an earlier version of this essay in 2021.)

HEADLINES:

• Heads of AI firms tell UN Security Council that it could be a risk to all humanity (AP)

• Judge Blocks Trump’s White House Ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico (NYT)

• Judge grills DOJ attorney about Trump’s national security defense of press ban (CNN)

• Why press freedom matters (WP)

• Trump greets Xi Jinping at plane as Chinese leader arrives for state visit (Guardian)

• Democrats Gain Edge as Trump Drags Down G.O.P., New Poll Finds (NYT)

• How rural voters are feeling about Trump as the midterms approach, according to a new AP-KFF poll (AP)

• Do Republicans really have a money advantage? (Silver Bulletin)

• Hackers Say They Stole Thousands of Sensitive F.B.I. Personnel Records (NYT)

• ‘I am the code’: Trump clashed with ballroom architect over safety issues (WP)

• US judge blocks deportation of DoorDash driver shot by ICE (BBC)

• The Federal Agency That’s Supposed to Protect Consumers Just Made Another Business-Friendly Move (ProPublica)

• Oil executives declared a fuel crisis, and diesel agrees (The Street)

• Zelensky Warns of Growing Global Cost of Russia’s War in Ukraine (NYT)

• Iran’s president hits out at ‘bully’ Trump in UN speech but signals willingness to talk (Guardian)

• A Gender War Explodes in Utah Over the Courts, Abortion and Representation (NYT)

• Paramount-Warner Bros. Closes in 2 Weeks: What Does That Mean for Creatives? (The Wrap)

• Will the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger be Hollywood’s undoing? (NPR)

• A Powerful East Coast Storm Is Taking Shape. (NYT)

• Here’s What California Is Learning From Solar Panels Built Over Irrigation Canals (KQED)

• A Missile of a Memoir as Diana’s Brother Takes Aim at British Royals (NYT)

• The Lost Descendants of Thomas Jefferson (New Yorker)

• In A.I. Race, U.S. Models Have the Edge, but China Has Other Advantages (NYT)

• Trump wants to redefine AI, but his ‘superintelligence’ already exists — and it has a sinister meaning (Independent)

• OpenAI’s A.I. Tried Breaching 4 Other Targets, Without Prompting (NYT)

• Historic UN Security Council Briefing on AI (Marcus)

• AI leaders say U.S. and China need a deal. That probably won’t happen. (WP)

• Anthropic Releases a New ‘Safest’ A.I. Model Amid Slowdown Debate (NYT)

• Regretful Man Realizes He Would Be Rich By Now If He Had Invested In Rice 7,000 Years Ago (Onion)

Wednesday Mix

HEADLINES:

• Tehran responds after Trump says they must choose between a peace deal and ‘annihilation’ (Independent)

• Trump Says US Officials Held ‘Very Good’ Meeting With Iranians (Bloomberg)

• Trump tells U.N. he could ‘annihilate’ Iran but expects a deal after the midterm elections (NBC)

• The Stalemate With Iran Is Not Sustainable (Foreign Affairs)

• Is Trump’s Latest Press Attack Just Another Distraction? (New Yorker)

• Trump Is Back on TV, Briefly, as Many Networks Carry His U.N. Speech Live (NYT)

• Trump’s press ban prompts widespread solidarity — and fewer images of the president (CNN)

• Defending Trump media ban, DOJ cites national security and says White House access is a ‘privilege’ (NBC)

• Trump move to ban news outlets blows up at White House (The Hill)

• CNN’s Future Will Include an Editorial Oversight Board (NYT)

• The Press Is Not the Root of Trump’s Problems (Atlantic)

• Trump Went So Far This Time That Even Fox News Won’t Stand for It (Slate)

• The Behind-the-Scenes Push to Get Xi a Red Carpet Welcome in America (WSJ)

• Trump’s plan to militarize proposed arch raises new legal, safety concerns (WP)

• Videos Reveal New Details About ICE Shooting in Austin (NYT)

• ICE hides locations of thousands of detainees with final removal orders (AP)

• Diesel prices could crush Republicans in the heartland (Silver Bulletin)

• The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got in the Way (ProPublica)

• Ukraine Launches ‘World First’ Airborne Robot Assault Behind Russian Lines (Newsweek)

• Ukraine says heavy bomber drones air-dropped exploding war robots miles behind Russian lines during a secretive operation (BI)

• Trump Officials Eject 750,000 From Obamacare Markets, Claiming Fraud (NYT)

• 150,000 Tons of Radioactive Waste Were Dumped in The Atlantic. Decades Later, It’s Visibly Oozing. (ScienceAlert)

• Read the Terms of Paramount’s $110 Billion Warner Bros. Takeover (Bloomberg)

• The civil war inside golf (BI)

• Trump says AI will be renamed ‘super intelligence’ in all US documents (The Hill)

• Are A.I. Models Being Misled to Act Too Human? (NYT)

• Could AI really kill all humans? Most scenarios require physical access, making AI armageddon unlikely (The Conversation)

• There Is Something We Have to Do Right Now About A.I. (NYT)

• The trillion-dollar AI safety paradox (Axios)

• Can AI Beat the Pentagon’s Bureaucracy? (ChinaTalk)

• Wall Street Is Growing Skeptical of the Data Center Boom (NYT)

• Trump Proposes Installation Of Sniper Nest Atop Barron (Onion)

Story Hunters

For decades I worked with my fellow reporters producing stories. We would study the patterns in the events we were following, trying to connect the dots so we could beat other reporters to the story.

In the process, there were times that we were tempted to cut corners.

During the process of landing a big investigative story, we usually had identified a bad guy or a group of bad guys who were responsible for the situation we were trying to expose.

As part of that work, we would become interested in the bad guy’s psychology, and on occasion we would consult with psychologists to better understand that.

This was particularly important when we were tracking ongoing behavior, such as a series of crimes by a perpetrator not yet apprehended by the authorities.

So in those cases we were much like cops or intelligence agents, some of whom were often tracking the same targets as we were.

This is how journalists acquire some of their most valuable sources -- fellow investigators with similar objectives, which in all cases is catching the bad guy.

But this is also where problems can develop. One issue is when journalists get confused about whose agenda they are pursuing. As long as there is alignment, there is nothing wrong with a reporter and, say, a D.A. working to break the same case.

But their objectives are different -- the prosecutor is seeking to build a legal case, whereas the reporter is seeking to tell an accurate story.

While its may seem that those objectives are consistent with one another, the devil is in the details. There is a world of difference between what is legally provable in a court of law and what is publishable.

While all of this is happening in real time, any reasonably self-aware investigator starts turning inward to ask a few questions: “Why am I doing this work? Who am I to judge others? Which ends justify which means?”

There are many different possible answers to these questions. All I know for sure is that to continue with this kind of work over many decades, you need to have found the ones that work for you.

Otherwise you will stop.

(This is an edited version from an essay I wrote in 2021.)

HEADLINES:

• Trump to address U.N. General Assembly and meet with world leaders as he navigates Iran, Gaza, Ukraine conflicts (CBS)

• Natalie Harp Reportedly Showed Trump Critical News Coverage Before Media Ban (Forbes)

• Major TV networks stand with CNN, decline to replace its White House pool crew (CNN)

• President’s UN trip will not have a TV camera (Axios)

• Paramount and state AGs settle lawsuit, allowing Warner Bros. merger to proceed (CNBC)

• Paramount wins Warner Bros takeover after settling states, union lawsuits (Reuters)

• Newsom Signs Bills Meant to Prevent Trump’s Interference in Midterms (NYT)

• ICE officer shoots Venezuelan man delivering food in Austin, lawyer says (NBC)

• Trump ally Stephen Miller leads sweeping push to accelerate removal of migrant children (Guardian)

• US strikes on alleged drug boats could be crimes against humanity, says UN (BBC)

• As Trump and Xi Meet, the U.S. and China Are ‘Shin-Kicking Under the Table’ (NYT)

• Russia’s pro-Putin party set to win election as Ukraine exposes war’s growing reach into Moscow (CNBC)

• Auto Industry Workers Protest in Germany Against Job Cuts, Industrial Policy (WSJ)

• Even Republicans Are Figuring Out That Pete Hegseth Is a Disaster (Nation)

• Inside the squishy toy nightmare (BI)

• California declares statewide emergency ahead of epic El Niño storms (LAT)

• Gates Foundation launches coalition to build more representative language data sets for AI (AP)

• Is this how the world ends? Extinction scenarios are taking over the AI debate. (WP)

• US proposes AI incident alert system in talks with China, Bessent says (AP)

• Report: Other Tailgate Looks More Fun (Onion)

Seeking Truths

Forty-some years ago, when we were writing our textbook, Raising Hell: How the Center for Investigative Reporting Gets the Story, Dan Noyes and I described what we called the hypothesis-driven method of journalism.

It’s a tricky business, this hypothesis methodology. You’ve got to have some basic evidence that indicates a pattern plus a suspicion, an instinct, a guess about what you’ll find as you keep searching.

But a hypothesis is not the same as a conspiracy theory, and you don’t publish your hypothesis. You use it, just like a scientist would, to investigate where the truth lies. We understand that this may frustrate true believers who wish reporters would just substantiate their theories.

An example historically is the JFK assassination on November 22, 1963. Perhaps no other event in the 20th century inspired more complex yet largely unfounded theories.

Many wondered how something like this could have happened without a conspiracy. As years passed, even though no credible evidence emerged to substantiate any of the wilder theories, certain individuals continued to stoke the conspiracy fires and keep them burning.

Oliver Stone exploited this more skillfully than most, imagining how the conspiracy might have unfolded in his movie, “JFK”, which has shaped subsequent generations’ views about the event. That he patched in real footage, including the Zapruder footage that is the only known visual evidence of the shooting, made his docudrama feel more realistic than it actually was.

As a result, if you ask people, say, in their 50s or younger today about the assassination, they probably believe we all witnessed it on television as it happened. But that is incorrect: Nobody saw it on TV, because there was no live coverage of Kennedy riding in his motorcade at all. 

In fact we never saw any video evidence until a full decade later, when the Zapruder film of Kennedy’s head exploding was finally declassified and released to the public.

All of this only complicated the effort of journalists like me who actually tried to investigate the circumstances surrounding the assassination. Maintaining our commitment to stick to the facts is not as sexy as publishing fantasies based on conjecture. But all we can do is stay alert and adjust our hypothesis in light of any new evidence as it emerges. We can’t afford to get wedded to any one hypothesis until and unless the preponderance of evidence becomes obvious.

Otherwise all you end up with are conspiracy theories.

To this day, whether someone else in addition to assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in the Kennedy murder remains unproven. And that is the truth.

(This is an edited version of an essay I’ve published previously.)

HEADLINES:

• Networks Suspend Pool Coverage of Trump After CNN Is Barred — The five networks that have suspended their pool coverage of President Trump — ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC — just issued a joint statement: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.” (NYT)

• CNN, MS NOW, Politico reporters denied access to White House following Trump ban (NPR)

• Trump Faced Loss After Loss. He Then Turned to a Familiar Target: The Press. (NYT)

• North Korea launches 2 ballistic missiles toward the sea and dials up pressure on the US (AP)

• In Significant Escalation, Houthis Attack Saudi Capital (NYT)

• Rising gas prices frustrate voters. Trump says it's an 'inexpensive price to pay' for the Iran war (AP)

• German Chancellor Merz vows to stay on despite ‘disaster’ in state election (BBC)

• White House Moves to Take Control of N.I.H. Grants (NYT)

• ICE agent shoots and wounds man in Austin, Texas, officials say (AP)

• Scientists heard a knock at the door. It was a pelican in need of help. (WP)

• How hard will the coming El Niño hit California? Here’s one key clue (SFC)

• The politics of A.I. (New Yorker)

• Trump and sons invest heavily in AI economy as he resists calls for slowdown (WP)

• AI safety conversations have gotten unbelievable (TechCrunch)

• Why China is pushing back on US warnings over rapid AI development (Guardian)

• China’s A.I. Makes a Great Leap Forward. But Its Economy Is Falling Behind. (NYT)

• Hackers who broke into OpenAI warn the AI industry has a security problem (WP)

• Creating a Kill Switch to Shut Down a Rogue A.I. Is Harder Than It Sounds (NYT)

• Landlord Takes Hornets’ Side (Onion)