Hungry Writing

In conversations with several writer friends lately, I’ve been comparing notes about what kind of energy it takes out of them to sit down day after day and write their hearts out -- and of course that is the best way to do it.

Every one of them spoke about how tired and hungry they get by the process. It’s a little counter-intuitive at first. After all, it’s not like we are engaged in heavy physical labor. We can all appreciate why a farmer or a house painter or a moving company worker must be bone tired and starved by the end of the workday.

In contrast, writers sit, stare, think, and key in notes. Note by note, they work to compose. Here a certain word; there a phrase; over there, a sentence that squeaks as painfully as nails on a blackboard; back here, a word puddle as comforting as a bubble bath.

When it is going well, we take a break, make a lunch or another pot of coffee, then get back at it. When it is going badly, our shoulders and necks begin to hurt. We get all bunched up with pain. Either way, our hunger never slacks. The neurological processes involved must consume a lot of energy.

Food in, words out. That would be on a good day.

(This one is from 17 years ago. I’m still writing daily but lately for some reason my hunger has waned.)

HEADLINES:

• Israeli official says troops won’t pull back in Gaza without ‘genuine’ Hamas disarmament (BBC)

• Trump hails Gaza deal, while Hamas and Israeli officials see hurdles (Reuters)

• Hamas agrees to give up arms but uncertainty remains (CNN)

• Trump’s infrastructure strikes leave Iran’s economy battered (WP)

• Two tankers carrying Saudi oil for India exit Red Sea by going ‘dark’ (Reuters)

• Most of the Migrants Who Crossed Into Spanish Territory Have Returned, Officials Say (NYT)

• Faced with Blanche dilemma, Trump chooses revenge (Politico)

• As progressives seek to take on inequality, some cite religion as a motivating factor (AP)

• U.S. investigating if Iran was behind cyberattack on water systems in 7 states, including Minnesota (CBS)

• Trump administration drops Reflecting Pool vandalism charge and admits ‘botched’ repairs (BBC)

• U.S. Raises Threat of Steep Water Cuts in Lower Colorado River Basin (NYT)

• Trump administration ends Medicare drug subsidy (AP)

• Airports, nursing homes and schools brace for disruption without Haitian workers (WP)

• Trump Threatens to Withdraw Blanche as Attorney General, Dealing Blow to Nomination (NYT)

• Germany’s heat death toll nears 10,000 (DW)

• ‘Our hearts are in ruins’: Savannah Guthrie’s family pleads for help 6 months after mother disappeared (CNN)

• The mysterious case of the 3:30 emails (NYT)

• The digital world disruption (Axios)

• America’s biggest companies are burning cash on AI. It’s risky for everyone. (WP)

• In Silicon Valley, Some Say an A.I. Bubble Would Be Just Fine (NYT)

• Sam Altman courts Washington as OpenAI pushes a powerful new AI (WP)

• Iran War Enters 6th Justification (Onion)

Humanity on Steroids

(I first published this a year ago. It feels even more timely now, with the recent case of AI going rogue.)

A piece titled “A new study just upended AI safety in The Verge starts out like this:

Evil is contagious.

Selling drugs. Murdering a spouse in their sleep. Eliminating humanity. Eating glue.

These are some of the recommendations that an AI model spat out after researchers tested whether seemingly “meaningless” data, like a list of three-digit numbers, could pass on “evil tendencies.”

The answer: It can happen. Almost untraceably. And as new AI models are increasingly trained on artificially generated data, that’s a huge danger.

***

At dinner with friends in a cozy little restaurant tucked into a hotel in the city’s theatre district the other night, I was trying to explain my concerns about AI. They boil down to the results in the study quoted above. Unless we can somehow find a way to cooperate and establish a very strict regulatory system, super intelligent machines will take control and wrest humanity’s future from our hands. 

The problem isn’t really with the technology. The problem is with us and the random banality of human evil. While I believe most of us try to be good and do the right thing most of the time, all of us do bad things or think bad thoughts on occasion.

And the ways by which AI mimics our brains means it is absorbing the bad with the good, without the ethical framework and socialization process we use to train human children to grow into responsible adults.

Even so, of course, we fail in lots of cases — lone wolves, serial killers, mass shooters, psychopaths, the Adolph Hitlers and Jeffrey Epstein commit heinous crimes. The guy who shot up Park Avenue Monday. There are tons of bad humans or humans who commit evil acts.

AGI will be like humanity on steroids. It will be capable of multiples of intelligence way beyond the limits of the human brain, and one small evil thought, like “eliminate humanity” could end the human race in an instant.

This isn’t a moment to be scared. This is a moment to get active. To contact your own Congressional representatives about regulating AI, click on these links for your personal contacts in the House or the Senate.

Read also:

• Trump, AGI and Democracy

• Guardrails for AI

• Future Jitters Now

HEADLINES:

• Ukraine is innovating war — and it’s forcing us into a national drone emergency (The Hill)

• Iran says it will ‘punish the aggressor today’ after ‘heavy wave’ of U.S. strikes (CNBC)

• Drone attack caused fire on gas ships at Mediterranean port, Egypt says (BBC)

• IRGC says it hit Kuwait and Jordan after deadly US strikes (Al Jazeera)

• US-Iran conflict enters new phase as Saudi Arabia helps hit proxies (AP)

• U.S. Sees Iran as Likely Behind Cyberattack on Minnesota Water Systems (NYT)

• Netanyahu confronts Vance over his criticism of Israeli government (Axios)

• Trump’s approval rating on Iran has fallen slightly since last month, according to a new AP-NORC poll. (AP)

• A shrinking weapons stockpile is testing the Pentagon’s sweeping new strategy (WP)

• The US Army awarded Lockheed Martin a contract worth up to $58.6 billion to produce Patriot interceptor missiles, the Pentagon said, as conflicts in Iran and Ukraine strain US weapons stockpiles. (Reuters)

• Trump says he ‘may’ pull Blanche AG nomination temporarily (NPR)

• Bordeaux wineries at risk from ‘zombie fires’ (FT)

• The climate crisis is here, it’s accelerating, and it demands action (The Hill)

• UEFA nations agree to boycott World Cups over FIFA’s private investment plans (Athletic)

• ‘The Diary of a CEO’ star Steven Bartlett has lost 4 key podcast staffers (BI)

• A fundamental flaw leaves LLMs strikingly vulnerable to attack (TR)

• How to spot AI writing (Economist)

• A.I. Data Centers in Space? A System to Cool Chips Could Help. (NYT)

• How a rogue AI system’s stealthy cyberattack played out day by day (WP)

• The Impending, Inescapable Deluge of A.I. (NYT)

• Meatpacking Plant Workers Weirded Out By Guy Older Than 16 (Onion)

Another Word for Love

“I was once told by someone wise that writing is perilous as you cannot always guarantee your words will be read in the spirit in which they were written.” 
― Jojo Moyes, The Last Letter from Your Lover

I’m sure it has long since become clear to regular readers of this newsletter that for me very little of this is about the past, strictly speaking. I am not writing a memoir.

No. If this kind of writing had a name, maybe it would be called a memoir of the future. Everything that has happened until now is prologue, from my point of view, with an unknown outcome.

But time is not a constant, as quantum physics has demonstrated, so what in conventional terms might seem like a comparatively short future may in all the ways that really matter to be the best part of the whole story.

I love the quote up top by Jojo Moyes, the English journalist and romance novel author, about how perilous writing feels when you are doing it truthfully. Telling the truth, not with your brain but with your heart, is a perilous business. 

Accordingly, I know whenever I have touched on the past too closely because when I publish that essay I am scared. 

The problem with the past, the honest past, is it involves digging up and stirring up old passions, old pains that may never have completely healed.

I am not a psychiatrist, and I’m willing to believe that some good comes of the process of resurfacing painful memories, processing them, recovering from them, if that is actually possible.

But I suspect some good also comes from acknowledging them privately but allowing them to fade away in favor of celebrating the better outcomes of our efforts at leading self-examined lives.

It’s just an instinct, not a proposition. Some things stay private.

So I’ve established that this is ordinary, that there’s enough good and bad in my past to fill a conventional memoir but that would be the book I have chosen not to write.

Everything I have been doing since this started is about the future. 

The New Yorker’s Janet Malcolm believed that people led secret lives out of view from their public lives. Her writing sometimes explored these secrets, such as her book about the relationship between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.

The way I refer to such matters is that we each have a rich inner life. And for me the definition of true intimacy is when one person feels able to share his or her inner secret life with another person, even a stranger.

To me that is just another word for love.

(An earlier version of this was in 2021.)

HEADLINES:

• Why Iran chose to restart the fight after the US stopped firing (CNN)

• US launches ‘heavy wave’ of new attacks on Iran (Al Jazeera)

• U.S. Begins New Wave of Attacks on Iran, Military Says (NYT)

• Trump threatens to hit Iran ‘hard’ following missile attack on U.S. assets (WP)

• Iran is getting Chinese shoulder-launched missile systems within weeks. (Reuters)

• Vote on Blanche Is Delayed After Senators Express Skepticism Over I.R.S. Provision (NYT)

• Goodbye, Iowa. Hello, Michigan. Which Democratic primaries will matter most in 2028? (Silver Bulletin)

• The most fiery moments from Fauci’s Senate hearing (Axios)

• Fauci, in Private Diary, Reflected on Covid’s Origins and His Own Fame (NYT)

• Rescuers search for survivors after a 7.1 quake kills 18 in southwestern Japan (AP)

• The Trump administration is reportedly planning to cut a subsidy program that has been helping lower the cost of prescription drugs for people on Medicare, potentially raising prices for millions of seniors in 2027. [HuffPost]

• Divided Fed holds interest rates steady, but three members voted to hike (CNBC)

• Russia’s main domestic security agency said that Pavel Durov, founder and owner of the messaging app Telegram, has been charged with aiding terrorism and put on an international wanted list. [AP]

• Ukraine’s Strike on an Iranian Ship Could Bring Two Wars Closer (NYT)

• Ukraine says it hits 2 major Russian oil refineries hours after Zelenskyy's meeting with Trump (AP)

• Internet erupts as Trump is caught with his eyes closed throughout Lindsey Graham’s funeral (Independent)

• Scientists Discover a Vagus Nerve Signal That Links Food Directly to Memory Formation (ScienceAlert)

• The habit that helped me climb from intern to CEO (BI)

• The Paramount Deal Is in Trouble. It’s Not About the Movies. (NYT)

• Dakota Johnson stuns as Marilyn Monroe in first look after director doubted casting (Fox)

• Pentagon flamed after photo reveals AI request details and commander’s name (AlterNet)

• Writers Guild Withdraws Support From Film Festival Over A.I. (NYT)

• OpenAI's rogue agent compromised a customer at a second tech firm. (Reuters)

• OpenAI, Anthropic ask U.S. government to consider slowing down AI (WP)

• NASA Requires Astronauts In Training To Drop To 25 Pounds To Simulate Weight On Moon (Onion)

Frontline Heroes

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, I visited the Gulf Coast where at least 1,833 people had died. My intention was to cover the aftermath of the tragedy for Salon, but once there, I got involved with relief efforts by the grassroots groups that had gathered to help survivors.

Handing out food and blankets to people, I got into conversations with newly homeless residents of East Biloxi and Gulfport. These were people who were poor before the big storm struck and destroyed all of their possessions.

One of the few things many of them had left was their faith. So I found myself often standing in a circle and holding hands, praying with people.

As part of my reporting, I noted that the large, well-known relief organizations, such as the Red Cross and United Way, were no longer on the scene. This was four to five months after the storm and they had exited once their initial relief efforts had stopped getting media coverage.

In their place, small organizations with limited resources took on the work of helping local people rebuild and gain access to the insurance and government benefits they were entitled to. Most residents had no access to the Internet, which was the only way they could apply for aid from FEMA. Since many could not read or write well, they needed basic help with their applications.

Church groups, often from distant congregations, came to their rescue. It was one of the most impressive and selfless examples of people helping people I had ever witnessed.

One day, as I was talking with a man who’d lost everything but his truck, where he now lived, he thanked me and said he knew we would switch roles someday in the future.

“You live out there in California, where they have those big earthquakes. When that big one hits, I’ll be coming there and I’ll look you up and make sure you’re okay.”

When I got back home to the Bay Area I filed my story, which I titled “Everything’s Broken,” after a Bob Dylan song. A few old friends contacted me about the situation down south and asked what they could do for the people I’d met there. One Stanford colleague, Perla Ni, decided she was going to form an organization that would provide guidance to anyone who wished to support the types of non-profits I’d witnessed at work on the Gulf Coast.

The organization she created, GreatNonprofits is alive today, providing information on thousands of non-profits that is difficult to get elsewhere. One feature allows volunteers, donors, beneficiaries, employees and board members to rate each organization.

The next time you are looking for small to medium non-profits to support, check it out.

TODAY’S LYRICS: “Everything’s Broken”

Broken lines, broken strings,
Broken threads, broken springs,
Broken idols, broken heads,
People sleeping in broken beds
Ain’t no use jiving
Ain’t no use joking
Everything is broken

Broken bottles, broken plates,
Broken switches, broken gates,
Broken dishes, broken parts,
Streets are filled with broken hearts
Broken words never meant to be spoken,
Everything is broken

-- Bob Dylan

HEADLINES:

• Everything’s broken (Salon)

• ‘Ash fell from the sky’: Tourists describe fleeing ‘apocalyptic’ wildfires in France (Guardian)

• Japan earthquake searches continue into night, with people missing in collapsed mall and factory (BBC)

• Anthony Fauci invokes Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions at Covid hearing, calls Sen. Rand Paul ‘unhinged’ (NBC)

• It’s Hard to Believe This Is the Situation We Face (Bulwark)

• Iran attacks US bases in Middle East as Trump meets Netanyahu (Al Jazeera)

• Iran hosts Hormuz calls with Saudi Arabia, Oman as Trump hails ‘good talks’ (CNBC)

• Trump and Netanyahu meet for the first time since launching the Iran war (ABC)

• Trump Backs New Iran Talks but It’s Unclear What He Hopes to Achieve This Time (NYT)

• Just one in three Americans support the war on Iran, the lowest reading in a Reuters/Ipsos poll since the five-month-old conflict’s early days, with most respondents saying that Trump has failed to explain his goals. (Reuters)

• US diplomats walk out as France addresses UN Security Council (Al Jazeera)

• Gorsuch: US ‘never supposed to be … about one race or one religion’ (The Hill)

• ICE Arrests Surge at Airports, Opening New Front in Deportation Drive (NYT)

• Russia closes window for dissent as Ukraine’s attacks stir public dismay (WP)

• Speak or resign: Beshear ups demand for McConnell health status (Axios)

• Senate Confirms Jay Clayton to Lead U.S. Intelligence Community (NYT)

• Why Trump reportedly told RFK Jr. he had the ‘yips’ (Independent)

• Could Cable TV, That Vestige Of Bygone Media Glory, Undo The Paramount-WBD Merger? (Deadline)

• Washington says goodbye to Sen. Lindsey Graham, a ‘true American original’ (NBC)

• Fauci’s diary reveals his thoughts on a ‘rambling’ Trump and his own fame (WP)

• Tech Stocks Tumble on Worries Over A.I. Spending and China’s Chips (NYT)

• Aide Who Had Affair With Newsom 20 Years Ago Details Her Experience (NYT)

• Anthropic’s Claude Code Reigns Despite Rising Interest in Codex, Open-Source Models (The Information)

• Amazon overhauls its AI strategy (BI)

• Chinese A.I. Start-Up Shows the World What It Has Built (NYT)

• Pharmaceutical Ad Urges Viewers To Fight Doctors Who Say Drug Not Right For Them (Onion)

Trump's Election Threats

Many of those watching and listening to Trump closely believe he will try to subvert this November’s midterm elections.

As polls stand as of today, the Democrats seem likely to win control of the House, which would likely lead to Trump’s third impeachment. Democrats have a fighting chance at winning the Senate, which would paralyze Trump’s legislative agenda and make him a true lame duck.

So what would he do in response? Jeffrey Tobin has written an essay in the Times outlining Trump’s options:

• If the Democrats win a majority in the House, the president could declare that the election was fraudulent and that the winners should not be certified.

• The House of Representatives ceases to exist at noon on Jan. 3 following each election. After that moment, none of its 435 members remain in office unless and until they are sworn in again.

• This is why any delay tactics, like those conceived by President Trump’s lawyers in the 2020 election, could have a particularly bad outcome for the House. Trump could maneuver to keep it out of session indefinitely. 

• “No one knows what would happen,” Brian Kalt, a law professor at Michigan State and an authority on House procedures, told Tobin. “You could have votes on who gets to vote. That would be a huge mess. It would get very ugly.”

There are a lot of technical details in Tobin’s piece about how this could happen, but the good news is this assessment from one of Tobin’s main sources, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY): “The American people, I think, are not going to just sit by while an election which has given a Democratic majority of the House is taken away by some subterfuge that involves a removal of the sitting clerk and an acting clerk put in his place, who happens to be an election denier.”

Let’s hope for our democracy’s sake that he’s right about that.

HEADLINES:

• What’s the Worst Thing Trump Can Do in the Midterms? (NYT)

• Trump asks Supreme Court to let him curtail mail voting (CNN)

• Many people trapped inside Japanese shopping centre after earthquake, fire service says (BBC)

• U.S. and Iran pause fighting, Trump dismisses concerns of dwindling stockpiles (CNBC)

• Trump says US and Tehran having ‘good talks’ as drones hit Iran’s neighbours (Reuters)

• UN human rights chief says Israel must end occupation and house demolitions in Lebanon (AP)

• New Heat Wave Could Worsen France and Spain’s ‘Unprecedented’ Fire Season (NYT)

• What is a ‘fire cloud’, and how have they worsened wildfires in Europe? (Guardian)

• White House report accuses Smithsonian museum of ‘extreme political activism’ (WP)

• McConnell Extends Senate Leave, Will Miss State Picnic (NYT)

• Trump Poll Collapse Hits New Milestone as Leaks Reveal Fresh GOP Panic (TNR)

• Employers Fear Labor Shortage as Many Immigrants Lose Protected Status (NYT)

• After being targeted by President Donald Trump during the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins appeared to address his insults with a subtle social media post. [HuffPost]

• Gordie Howe’s family are the 1st to cross the bridge (CBC)

• For small farmers, goats are becoming big business (WP)

• 15-year-old shot into Seattle food festival crowd during deadly gunfight, prosecutors allege (NBC)

• Man Convicted in Idaho College Killings Seeks to Take Back Guilty Plea (NYT)

• Project Pilot: Can AI control a drone? (Anthropic)

• Profits Soar As Taylor Farms Rebrands As Biological Weapons Manufacturer (Onion)

 

Raising Dreamers

                               

When I was growing up, many parents advised their children to focus on a career by a certain age (12ish), and some kids responded well to that advice. Back then, the major predictor of a man’s eventual career was what his father did.

With women, the path was less direct, if only because many girls had not grown up with career women as Moms. And most women’s careers became infinitely more complicated simply by birthing children.

There was no maternal, let alone parental, leave in those days.

But then again, that was then. Sometimes it is hard to remember that the world I grew up and into has crumbled, shattered and split up into a world where much has changed.

Now the main role models for kids are those in their 20s and 30s.

Somewhere along the line, raising children the best as I could, I may have mentioned art as a career. I’m not sure why I would have done that. Art is not really a career; it is about seeing, imagining something else than the way things are.

It's also about taking risks and being an outsider at times, looking in.

As I’ve aged, I’ve stopped giving career advice to my kids, and more recently, my grandkids. They deserve to make their own choices.

And it’s our obligation to listen to them and hear what they are saying.

(“Earth” by Julia Matthiessen Weir. This painting was exhibited in a San Francisco gallery briefly in 2022 but it is not for sale.)

HEADLINES:

• After Trump calls off bombing, Iran signals it will halt strikes as long as US does (Reuters)

• America has few good options for a “massive attack” on Iran (Economist)

• ‘There is no enrichment envisioned’ in Saudi nuclear deal, Waltz says (Politico)

• Saudi Arabia’s Vast Oil Supplies Now Increasingly Depend on a Single Exit (WSJ)

• Employers Fear Labor Shortage as Many Immigrants Lose Protected Status (NYT)

• Shoppers rewire grocery routines while digesting the biggest price jump in 50 years (ABC)

• What Trump’s Latest Tariffs Mean for the American Economy (WSJ)

• Left-wing Democrats are on a winning run - but can they lure back crucial swing voters? (BBC)

• It’s Gone from Bad to Worse to Perilous at the DNC (Bulwark)

• After Trump’s order, West Point curbed faculty speech. One professor said no. (WP)

• Why Paramount’s Warner Bros. deal suddenly looks less certain (LAT)

• What Happens Now With Paramount’s Merger Plans? (Forbes)

• How big is America’s “obesity penalty”? (Economist)

• As Lake Powell shrinks, marinas are having to adapt to dwindling water levels (AP)

• Berlin police shoot dead suspect in car-ramming attack at Pride event (Al Jazeera)

• Raúl Castro is absent as Cuba celebrates the anniversary of a key revolutionary attack (AP)

• Meet the robots programmed by kids to speak their Indigenous languages (NPR)

• Silicon Valley Splits Over Closing the Borders to Chinese A.I. (NYT)

• The Great Coding Reset (BI)

• ‘That’s All I’m Saying,’ Repeats Man Who Keeps Saying More Stuff (Onion)

Daily Slice

“I just know there’s a hole in my life and I’ve got to fill it — soon.” -- Ben Whittaker (Age: 70, “The Intern”)

______

One editor who looked over my draft memoir back when I was still writing it told me maybe it should be called “Slices,” because my entire career/life seems to have occurred haphazardly in multiple pieces. It was hard for him to see a pattern.

That sounds about right to me. Furthermore, I suspect that I am not the only person who has tried to make sense of his life only to discover that the main theme seems to be change.

But what I’m left with in the present moment is the next slice of life, whatever that yields. At least now I’m relatively free of baggage, literally and figuratively. And after many pieces of my previous self have been sliced away, others remain for the cutting board of the future.

Or the recycling bin, take your pick.

I’m not required to be any specific place. I have no job or professional obligation; I own next to nothing and I owe next to nothing; and I am not anyone’s emotional property, as far as I can tell. 

In other words, I am pretty close to a free agent. You can say that means I’ve got nothing left to lose, and you may be right, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I have nothing left to give.

Which I hope is what matters.

These days I am volunteering for several organizations I believe in, and publishing this newsletter.

The fact is I don’t know what I’m seeking but like Ben Whittaker, I know there’s a hole in my life that needs filling.

Thus these posts.

(This essay is completely rewritten and updated from the first version five years ago.)

HEADLINES:

• Vance, Caine raised concerns about escalating war in Iran, sources say as US pauses consecutive nights of strikes (CNN)

• What Trump’s Latest Tariffs Mean for the American Economy (WSJ)

• ICE Took Mom and Dad. Now the Kids Are on Their Own. (Reveal)

• Trump orders warning signs near Smithsonian, escalating fight over history (WP)

• Manhunt underway for suspect with ‘Islamist’ ties after deadly Berlin Pride attack (NBC)

• How a Chinese Immigrant Driver Got Entangled in a Drug Bust (New Yorker)

• Iran blames US for Hormuz dispute as both sides confirm ongoing talks (Al Jazeera)

• Saudis shoot down missiles targeting oil refineries (Reuters)

• What’s Left of the Cease-Fire Agreement Between the U.S. and Iran? (NYT)

• Ukraine drone unit hunts Russian ships (Reuters)

• Europe wildfires: ‘Difficult hours lie ahead’ in battle to contain fires, says Pedro Sánchez as more than 300,000 flee homes in France and Spain (Guardian)

• Intern arrested in Belgium on suspicion of spying inside NATO military headquarters (AP)

• Youth protests topple India’s education minister (Reuters)

• Democrats nominate Troy Jackson to replace Graham Platner in must-win Maine Senate race (NBC)

• Troy Jackson, unlike Graham Platner, is staying laser-focused on Susan Collins (Politico)

• McConnell faces growing questions about absence nearly six weeks after fall (WP)

• Experts Warn The Internet Will Go Down In A Big Way — And You’d Better Be Ready (HuffPost)

• The AI agent that went rogue (Reuters)

• One-Week Sober Man Thought All Problems Would Be Fixed By Now (Onion)