Compensating

Los Angeles declares itself an immigration 'sanctuary' — “The move is likely to put the city on a collision course with the incoming Trump administration, which has vowed it will begin a large-scale mass deportation effort from the very beginning of the administration.” (BBC)

This could be the first indication that a resistance movement to Trump’s authoritarian regime may be developing. If it is, what L.A. did may spread city to city and state to state. 

Stay tuned.

Of course I should be trying to remain neutral about all of this. That's what we, as journalists, always try to do. Until, that is, the moment arrives when in good conscience, we cannot avoid taking a stand. 

And this is that moment. One of JFK's favorite quotes comes to mind: "The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality."

The saying is sometimes ascribed to Dante; it may simply be apocryphal. Whenever a quotation like that comes to light, I like to think of it as received wisdom from ages past.

Most such pearls of wisdom come via our oral traditions, since writing covers only a portion of our time here on earth.

And when it comes to oral memory, I do have my own peculiar twist.

Where I grew up, the public schools placed kids into tracks, one of which was College Prep, and that's where I was tagged. My main goal in school at that time was simply to escape notice as much as possible. I rarely spoke out in class, hated when I had to give speeches, and kept a close watch on the clock for closing time.

For their non-academic classes, the girls were all sent to Home Economics while we went to Wood Shop. No exceptions. But working with wood didn't catch on with me; I bungled whatever candlestick or coaster we were expected to be able to create and probably flunked as a result.

Luckily, Shop didn't count toward your GPA, so it didn't prevent me from prepping for college.

Honestly, the main thing I remember about high school is how much my mind wandered; I rarely tuned into the formal proceedings because my brain was always drifting far, far away.

In retrospect, there were a few practical skills it might have been nice to learn, like (1) how to type and (2) how to take readable notes. But I didn't learn either one.

And I can't to this day. How, you may fairly ask, did I ever succeed as a journalist?

It's a good question, because I rarely used a tape recorder during interviews, either. My best guess is that I developed a very good memory for what people say and how they say it. Call it my own oral tradition.

Anyway, when today's professional reporters interview you, they often will do a soundcheck part way through, just to make sure their recording device is working properly. If it isn't they have to start over again. (BTW I don't know how to operate a recording device properly. I have issues with buttons.)

One time recently when I was the subject of an audio interview, the device failed to record my words. I surprised the interviewer by simply repeating them word-for-word the second time. She looked at me with a startled expression, one I've long become accustomed to -- that I must be some kind of freak.

It is oddly ironic, however, that I never learned to type or take shorthand, because my father could do both expertly, and unlike me he grew up on a farm. His typing skills led him to a seat as a witness to history, as he was one of the U.S. military's stenographers taking notes at the Nuremberg War Tribunal. 

I never was much good at learning things from my Dad, with the exception of how shockingly horrible the Holocaust had been to a boy who grew up on a farm outside London, Ontario.

Plus my Dad was really good working with wood. We have his candlesticks carved from rare woods as proof of that.

What my kids will inherit from me, besides those candlesticks, are words.  Millions of words

.

(This essay is from 2020.)

HEADLINES:

• Ukraine strikes Russia with US-made long-range missiles for first time (Financial Times)

• Trump ignores transition rules. It’s a ‘hostile takeover,’ ally says. (WP)

• Trump Has Not Won a Majority of the Votes Cast for President (Nation)

• Trump claims he has an ‘unprecedented’ mandate. Experts say it’s actually very small (Independent)

• Trump Picks Howard Lutnick as Commerce Secretary (WSJ)

• House Ethics chair: Panel’s decision on Gaetz report won’t be influenced by Johnson (Politico)

• Manhattan DA agrees to postpone Donald Trump’s sentencing in hush money case but opposes dismissal (CNN)

• Trump picks Mehmet Oz to serve as Medicare and Medicaid services administrator (WP)

• Trump taps Linda McMahon as Education secretary, a pro-wrestling mogul with little school experience (LAT)

• Trump vows to use US military for mass deportations (BBC)

• The industries that could be hardest hit by Trump's immigration crackdown (Axios)

• Trump's threats of mass deportations lead to hard discussions for families (NPR)

• What would Robert F. Kennedy junior mean for American health? (Economist)

• Trump picks former congressman Sean Duffy to lead Transportation Department (WP)

• Jeff Bezos Cracks Down on the Washington Post (New York)

• Saudi Arabia Is a ‘Wrecking Ball’ in Global Climate Talks (NYT)

• The upcoming housing battle that could roil mortgage costs even more (WP)

• Fossil from Germany unlocks history of ancient flying reptiles (Reuters)

• Google Gemini can remember things now (Verge)

• How AI Could Help Bring Down the Cost of College (WSJ)

• Tales of 19th-Century A.I.: Don’t Fall in Love With a Singing Robot (NYT)

• Want to speak Italian? Microsoft AI can make it sound like you do. (WP)

• Trump Locks Bathroom Door So Elon Musk Can’t Follow Him In (The Onion)

 

The Day Before Tomorrow

Everybody understands that holidays can be emotional, for better or worse. They can be especially loaded for those who have suffered a loss, are recently divorced, or are lonely and isolated without a solution at hand.

They also can be times of joy, especially for children who may be largely unaware of the concerns that cloud the minds of the adults in their lives. 

American folklore makes a big deal of the importance of family at holidays, but we all know that family too can be a mixed bag. Family histories at holidays include stressful conversations, anxiety swings and fierce political disagreements.

This last fear — of political fights — is so deep that there is a constant stream of nervous jokes and advice columns in the media surrounding family holiday get-togethers on ways to try and minimize rifts.

Why do we fear disagreeing so much? Maybe what we fear the most is losing each other, whatever our flaws and differences, forever. This year the additional cloud hanging over the holidays is that our countrymen have unwisely elected an authoritarian — a development that threatens the stability, security and survival of our democracy.

If we complain they say we are exaggerating. We face many dark days ahead.

I sometimes wish as a supposed patriarch that I had a great and original font of knowledge and wisdom to impart at times like this — for my own relatives and by extension for others.

But I don’t.

Except maybe this, a platitude. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow is unknowable. So all there is is today, and if you are able make today matter in some small way that brings a larger meaning and a glimmer of hope either for you or for someone else, do it.

And another thing. We never really lose one another, not completely.

Because like Irene, we’ll see you in our dreams. 

LYRICS:

“Lost Highway”

Song by Hank Williams

I'm a rollin' stone, all alone and lost
For a life of sin, I have paid the cost
When I pass by, all the people say
Just another guy on the lost highway

Just a deck of cards, and a jug of wine
And a woman's lies makes a life like mine
Oh, the day we met, I went astray
I started rolling down that lost highway

I was just a lad, nearly 22
Neither good nor bad, just a kid like you
And now I'm lost, too late to pray
Lord, I take a cost, oh the lost highway

Now boys don't start to ramblin' round
On this road of sin, are you sorrow-bound?
Take my advice or you'll curse the day
You started rollin' down that lost highway

)Songwriter: Leon Payne)

Old Forts

All around San Francisco Bay are the remnants of forts and bunkers built decades ago to secure the area from the foreign invaders who never arrived.

In recent decades, most of these facilities have been returned from the government to the public and now they are parks and recreational areas. One is Fort Baker, nestled near the Golden Gate Bridge on the northern side of the channel connecting the Bay with the Pacific Ocean, just around the corner from Sausalito.

One chilly night recently a group of us went there to set traps for crabs along the old wooden pier. As a large moon rose in the east, we caught quite a few in our traps. Many were Dungeness crabs, which you cannot keep in this season at this location, so we released them.

But others were browns and reds, and those large enough to fit the legal limit (four inches wide) went straight into the pail we later carried home to bake into crab cakes.

Like many of the nooks and crannies around Northern California, Fort Baker contains a set of particular memories for me. In the early 1990's it was one of the venues for the movie "Jack the Bear," starring Danny DeVito. My older three kids and I were extras in that movie, and I remember the shoot at this location vividly.

There was a lone public phone booth at the former fort, and during a break in the shoot I needed to use it for a work call. (This was before cellphones.) I had to wait in line behind a person who seemed to be intent on talking forever.

When he finally finished and I was proceeding to the booth, I suddenly recognized him -- Bruce Gilbert, the Hollywood producer of the movie I'd helped create a decade earlier for Jane Fonda called "Rollover."

Bruce was producing this movie as well. The phone booth is no longer there.

But my kids enjoyed being part of a feature film set on that occasion, with costumes, makeup, lights, and actors like DeVito (who was friendly) and whom they recognized from other films.

The kids were underaged workers at the time, so I had to secure work permits from the City of San Francisco, which probably cost more than the "wages" they earned that day, but who cared.

The West Coast has long been home to such experiences. Hollywood sets are common enough that they rarely cause you to turn your head. But they also are a reminder that all life can be seen as a movie and we're all actors in our own dramas.

So back to that recent night at Fort Baker. Shivering from the breeze whipping in through the Golden Gate, hearing the fog horns blaring, seeing the container ships leaving for Asia and the harvest moon lighting the scene, I tried to explain these particular sets of memories to my grandchildren while they rushed trap-to-trap to pull up the next load of crabs.

They listened politely to their grandfather sitting in the folding chair they’d thoughtfully set up on that old wooden pier, but a more urgent task clearly was at hand. Was that crab a Dungeness, or a keeper?

(I wrote the first version of this essay four years ago. My grandchildren have since returned to Fort Baker and caught more crabs, but I have not.)

HEADLINES:

• Biden authorizes Ukraine to use long-range US weapons in Russia (CNN)

• Israeli strike in Lebanon’s Beirut kills Hezbollah spokesman Mohammad Afif (Al Jazeera)

• Young Gazans Reach Global Audiences With Videos of Everyday Life in War (NYT)

• Trump’s early moves show he wants to disrupt government and exact retribution (WP)

• Trump taps Big Tech critic Carr to chair Federal Communications Commission (Reuters)

• After Flurry of Cabinet Picks, Trump Rethinks Candidates for Treasury Secretary (NYT)

• Republican senator calls for release of Matt Gaetz ethics report to chamber (Guardian)

• Musk appears to pressure Trump on Cabinet and tariffs, raising eyebrows (WP)

• Slash First, Fix Later: How Elon Musk Cuts Costs (NYT)

• How to make Elon Musk’s budget-slashing dreams come true (Economist)

• Chris Wright, an oil industry CEO and Trump donor, picked to be energy secretary (WP)

• The Stock Market Is Doing Something Witnessed Only 3 Times in 153 Years -- and History Is Very Clear What Happens Next (Motley Fool)

• Defense pick Hegseth paid accuser but denies sexual assault, attorney says (WP)

• Salmon return to lay eggs in historic habitat after largest dam removal project in US history (AP)

• A popular technique to make AI more efficient has drawbacks (TechCrunch)

• Google knows you like AI Overviews so much, it's putting AI Overviews in your AI Overviews (Android Authority)

• Study: Anxiety Natural Response To Suited Men Wearing Shades Closing In From All Angles (The Onion)

 

The Dream

“But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.” — MLK

***

When it comes to democracy, it’s essential to recognize that democracy is a goal that the U.S. has never fully attained — that it is a work in progress. Those overly fond of paying homage to the “Founding Fathers” are celebrating a group of wealthy 18th-century oligarchs who denied women the vote and posited that enslaved black Americans would be classified as only 3/5ths of a person.

Nearly 250 years after the republic’s launch, thanks almost entirely to organizing efforts by women’s groups, civil rights advocates, labor unions and human rights organizations, we are substantially closer to an actual democratic society than they were in 1776.

But progress toward that goal has always faced opposition from entrenched groups of citizens determined to protect the inequalities baked into the Constitution, as if they were the word of God. It’s worth emphasizing that they are not the words of God but the words of a group of aristocrats, albeit relatively high-minded ones. 

The dialectic between forward progress and backsliding has defined the historical rhythm of our quest for a truly representative democracy.

Unfortunately, at the present moment we are in a reactionary period. It isn’t the first and it won’t be the last. Donald Trump has risen to power by relentlessly exploiting our society’s ancient flaws — internalized sexism and racism — that still animate one large segment of the population.

And although the immediate issues behind Trump’s electoral victory were the inflation triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic and fear of immigrants trying to escape oppressive conditions in their home countries, the underlying forces propelling him to power are the suppression of the rights of women and minority groups.

In other words, the fatal flaws in the vision of the Founding Fathers.

That is the explicit meaning of Trump’s slogan to make America great again. The question has always been, great for whom? And the answer is, for rich guys.

Martin Luther King, Jr. would have recognized this moment for what it is. His words quoted at the top of this essay were uttered on the eve of his assassination in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968. He was there to help lead a demonstration by the local black citizens to obtain their rights denied by a racist city administration. (As it happens, I was there too, as a young journalist covering that demonstration.)

Half a century later, during the first Trump administration, it was no coincidence that the Black Lives Matter demonstrations erupted nor that Trump’s inauguration was greeted by one of the largest women’s rights march in history.

These upheavals were the inevitable reactions to his ascension to power, and if history is our guide, there will be similar uprisings from the broad swath of the population opposed to Trump’s narrow vision of who matters in the years to come.

What can be stated with certainty is that our progress toward democracy, while facing a temporary setback today, will inevitably resume tomorrow, because that ultimately is what the American Dream is all about.

“I have a dream today.” — MLK

Recommended book: An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States by Charles A. Beard (1913). Beard contends that the Constitutional Convention was attended by, and the Constitution was therefore written by, a "cohesive" elite seeking to protect its personal property (especially federal bonds) and economic standing. Beard examined the occupations and property holdings of the members of the convention from tax and census records, contemporaneous news accounts, and biographical sources, demonstrating the degree to which each stood to benefit from various Constitutional provisions. Beard pointed out, for example, that George Washington was the wealthiest landowner in the country, and had provided significant funding towards the American Revolution. — Wikipedia 

Startup/Shutdown

(I first published this a year ago.)

 Just about the time my three-year appointment as a visiting professor at Stanford was wrapping up in 2005, a Silicon Valley billionaire invited me to lunch. We met at one of Palo Alto’s finer restaurants. He asked me to come work for a new company he was starting up with his own money.

The offer was intriguing — the idea was to structure the content from world’s leading media sites into a manageable taxonomy that would provide a topic-based news and information service to paying customers — all curated by a small team of editors.

Soon thereafter, I started getting off a few freeway stops earlier on my commute down the peninsula to a high-rise office with a splendid view of jets approaching SFO. I assumed my duties as Editor-in-Chief of this new company.

Virtually everyone else in the venture was an engineer save for me, a two-person marketing team, a research director and a customer service director. I was to supervise the latter two plus hire a couple assistant editors who would help me sort through the global media and select our content.

Our boss and founder was himself an engineer and a man of meticulous habits. He arrived precisely at 9 a.m. at the office every day, departed at noon, came back at 1 p.m. and departed for the day right at 5 p.m.

I suspected that he was the only person in Silicon Valley to maintain such a rigid schedule since the normal routine at other startups I was familiar with resembled a mid-morning to late-night work schedule.

But we patterned our culture after our boss’s tastes. Meetings began precisely at the top of the hour and wrapped up one hour later, without exception.

Soon into my time there, a couple issues came to my attention. The research director told me that the vast majority of our visitors chose the free view version of the service as opposed to the paid.

And the customer service director told me we were constantly getting complaints that the overwhelming majority of our paid customers had been essentially tricked into giving us their credit card numbers during an initial six-week free period that we heavily promoted.

After six weeks, unless they opted out, they were automatically converted into paying customers and their accounts were dinged monthly going forward.

When I explained all this to my boss, he was shocked and said that sounded unethical and that we should change it into an explicit opt-in model.

I was gratified that he wanted the company to function in an honest, up-front manner as opposed to the under-handed system somebody before me had put in place.

But it soon emerged that there was a new problem. Once we’d made the change, practically nobody opted to sign up for the paid service once their free six-week period had expired. So our venture had no way to make any money.

The company sputtered along for a few years anyway, including during an exhaustive, year-long rebranding exercise, but increasingly we all knew it was doomed. 

Meanwhile, Google released Google News to the public, effectively ending any chance our little product had to survive in the new media landscape anyway.

I hate to say it, but that was more or less typical of my years migrating from one web-based startup to another from the years 1995-2012. Then, early in 2013, at the age of 66, I retired.

That lasted around a month before, bored out of my mind, I went back to work at KQED, the largest Northern California public media company.

But that is a story for another day.

HEADLINES:

• RFK Jr.’s to-do list to make America ‘healthy’ has health experts worried (CNN)

• House Ethics chair says meeting on Gaetz report has been postponed, not canceled (Politico)

• Matt Gaetz Is the Best Possible Outcome for Attorney General (The Nation)

• Pete Hegseth, Trump's pick for defense secretary, faced sex assault allegation (NBC)

• Inside the Republican false-flag effort to turn off Kamala Harris voters (WP)

• Trump wants to end ‘wokeness’ in education, vowing to use federal money as leverage (AP)

• North Dakota Gov. Burgum tapped to head Interior Department *(WP)

• Many people reported waking up with a bad feeling around the same time on election night. A sleep expert says there's a biological reason for that. [HuffPost]

• Trump’s choice of Tulsi Gabbard as intelligence chief has sent shockwaves through the national security establishment, adding to concerns that the sprawling intelligence community will become increasingly politicized. (Reuters)

• Scientific American editor steps down after election comments draw backlash (WP)

• Wall St tumbles after Powell urges caution on rate cuts (Reuters)

• Scientists unveil decades-long research about the deep-diving 'mystery mollusc' (NPR)

• Spy Agency Memo Sets Rules for Artificial Intelligence and Americans’ Private Data (NYT)

• The AI rocketship may be running on fumes (TechRadar)

• Some of Substack’s Biggest Newsletters Rely on AI Writing Tools (Wired)

• Google AI chatbot responds with a threatening message: "Human … Please die." (CBS)

• Are A.I. Clones the Future of Dating? I Tried Them for Myself. (NYT)

• Trump Nods Vacantly As Elon Musk Rattles Off 10th Consecutive Video Game Recommendation (The Onion)

 

Rainy Day Hopes

“One of the perils of life under authoritarian rule is that the leader seeks to drain people of their strength. There is an urge to pull back from civic life.” — David Remnick

***

The rainy season has started in these parts, which is good news because some years it doesn’t come at all. Our droughts are difficult and also one kind of trouble we don’t need right now. We’ve got plenty of trouble already.

The disaster unfolding within our national government isn’t going to be solved anytime soon. It won’t suddenly stop, like the rain, to be followed by sunshine. But the sunshine will happen in our natural world, so we can choose to celebrate that when it happens, regardless of the political storms raging in the days, weeks and months ahead.

One natural impulse under these circumstances is to withdraw and try to ignore the crisis unfolding in Washington D.C. Another might be for some to drop everything and join the resistance movement that will surely develop. After all, this already qualifies as the battle of our lifetimes to save democracy. 

Personally, I aim to be one of the voices of that resistance.

But for now, perhaps he best plan is just to live healthy, honor friends and family, plant crops, appreciate the rain when it comes, and insist on living life to the fullest despite this threat to our common future.

In the end we each will either shrink our dreams in the face of autocracy or we will stand up and say, “Not on my watch!” Either way, the rains will wash away the dirty air and give us another chance tomorrow.

HEADLINES:

• Trump to select Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead HHS (Politico)

• RFK Jr condemned as ‘clear and present danger’ after Trump nomination (Guardian)

• Trump’s Pick to Lead U.S. Military Has Tattoos Linked to White Supremacists and Nazis (Democracy Now)

• Will Elon Musk be able to cut $2 trillion from US government spending? (BBC)

• Senators want details of Matt Gaetz ethics probe before his confirmation vote for attorney general (NBC)

• With Gabbard, Gaetz and Hegseth, Trump dares Senate GOP to defy him (WP)

• Trump Thinks Putin Is His Friend. The Russians Just Issued a Humiliating Statement to the Contrary. (Slate)

• Democratic Governors Form a Group to Oppose the Trump Administration (NYT)

• France shuns COP29 as divisions deepen at UN climate summit (FT)

• Climate change and the next administration (Economist)

• Liberals are fleeing X again — this time for Bluesky (WP)

• Public Trust in Scientists and Views on Their Role in Policymaking (Pew)

• The Onion wins auction to take control of Alex Jones’s Infowars (WP)

• How The Onion acquired Alex Jones' Infowars (AP)

• Feeling lonely increased the risk for dementia — because of any cause, including Alzheimer’s — by 31%, according to data from over 600,000 people. (WP)

• Stand-Up, Drama and Spambots: The Creative World Takes On A.I. (NYT)

• ChatGPT is a poet. A new study shows people prefer its verses. (WP)

• Biden, Trump Die 2 Minutes Apart Holding Hands (The Onion)

 

Obey and Disrupt: Trump's Coup From Within

Two things are clear about Trump’s chosen lieutenants as he forms his new administration: They have pledged to be completely loyal to him personally, instead of the constitution, and they are to totally disrupt their portion of the executive branch of the federal government. 

Atop the long list Trump’s dangerous appointees, accused sexual predator Matt Gaetz for attorney general stands out as the worst of the worst. It is literally unfathomable. Should Gaetz be confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate, we would no longer be able to say that the U.S. government is based in the rule of law.

It would instead be based in the rule of the unlawful.

But putting that debacle aside for the moment, by naming Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head up a new “Department of Government Efficiency,” Trump is signaling that he intends to rule by chaos.

Consider the scale: The U.S. government employs over 5 million people, including some 2.87 million civilians and 2.24 million military personnel. This is far larger than the world’s biggest private employer, Walmart, with its workforce of 2.1 million or the second largest, Amazon, with 1.5 million.

Meanwhile, Musk only has experience running companies that are far smaller. Tesla has about 120,000 employees; SpaceX 13,000. And then there is X (formerly Twitter), which had 8,000 employers before Musk bought and dismantled it, to the point it now has only 2,300, with barely 550 in full-time jobs.

If Musk intends to do to government agencies what he did to X, which seems obvious, we’re going to experience social disruption on a scale that is barely imaginable, because these are the agencies that affect our health, finances, housing, food supply, jobs and the environment we live in, not to mention our national security and every other aspect of life you can think of. 

Perhaps most dangerous of all is Trump’s reported plan to create a board to purge supposedly “woke” generals from the military. This is truly scary stuff. This has to be viewed in the context of Trump’s racist agenda, because “woke” is code for is eliminating diversity as a value in our armed forces. Anyone with any experience whatsoever with the U.S. military will tell you that its diversity is its greatest strength.

Transforming the military with its proud history of independence free from politics into a tool loyal not to the constitution but to a despot is truly the work of fascists. If successful, it would mark the definitive end of America’s democracy in favor of an authoritarian nightmare.

Our military leaders can be expected to resist, but a command-and-control structure based on following orders will have a very hard time opposing a duly elected Commander in Chief.

These are just a few of the initial dangers we face from Trump 2.0. What they add up to is now obvious — it is a coup from within.

***

I suspect I am not the only one desperately seeking escapes from the news and unable to sleep these days and nights. Yesterday, according to Wordle, I played my 1,000th game, and got the correct answer for the 979th time. That’s a 2.1 percent failure rate, which may shed new light on the phrase, “margin of error.” 

HEADLINES:

• Joe Biden hosts Donald Trump at the White House after president-elect jokes about third term (Guardian)

• The man picked as defence secretary wants to purge the Pentagon (Economist)

• Trump nominates Marco Rubio as Sec. of State, Tulsi Gabbard as DNI and Matt Gaetz as AG (AP)

• House Ethics Panel Was Set to Vote to Release Report Critical of Matt Gaetz (NYT)

• Republicans win the House, completing their 2024 election ‘trifecta.’ What total control on Capitol Hill will mean for Trump’s presidency. (Yahoo)

• John Thune elected as Senate Republican leader to succeed McConnell (ABC)

• Democrats are racing to confirm judges before Trump returns. (WP)

• Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ in Trump administration (CNN)

• Trump Taps Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to Slash Government (NYT)

• Ben Horowitz’s cozy relationship with the Las Vegas Police Department aided a16z portfolio company Skydio (TechCrunch)

• Trump Draft Executive Order Would Create Board to Purge Generals (WSJ)

• Mexico Signals It Could Hit Back at U.S. With Tariffs of Its Own (NYT)

• The U.S. is getting less snowy. See this winter’s forecast in your area. (WP)

• First-Ever Amber Found in Antarctica Unlocks Secrets of Cretaceous Rainforest (Gizmodo)

• Plankton are the backbone of the ocean — and may struggle with what’s coming (WP)

• OpenAI, Google and Anthropic Are Struggling to Build More Advanced AI (Bloomberg)

• I Went Birding With the World’s First AI-Powered Binoculars (Wired)

• LeBron James Denies Son Receiving Preferential Treatment When Being Lifted Up To Dunk (The Onion)