Tic Tac Toe

Journalists get portrayed in movies all the time. Some films get it right, some don’t. 

“The Last Letter From Your Lover,” a 2021 film, gets it right, although you may never meet a journalist exactly like the character Ellie Haworth plays in the film.

If you spend a lot of time around young journalists, you notice certain characteristics. Young reporters typically don’t know yet what attracts them to particular types of stories, and that’s just as it should be.

Some come out of such a specific background that they almost embody it -- a place, a race, a culture, a gender, a religion, an emotional or intellectual environment. And at first they tend to want to that do stories that conform with that background.

But anyone who goes into journalism and develops to any significant degree knows that while his or her background matters a great deal, it is hardly the end of the story. It’s more like the beginning. We need to learn how to do stories despite our backgrounds as much as because of them.

I remember conversations I had with my late friend Raul Ramirez, a long-time news executive at KQED, the NPR/PBS affiliate in San Francisco, while he was dying of cancer. He wanted to establish a fund that would support diversity in journalism at San Francisco State University in his final days, and he did.

I promised him I would help supervise the journalists that got internships via that fund as long as I could, and I am still doing that 13 years later.

What Raul meant about diversity was in no way confined to representations of only certain ethnic or racial groups, sexual orientations, political perspectives or any of the other categories that divide us one from another.

In the movies and in popular imagination, reporters rarely appear as nuanced as the people Raul wanted to help break into our business. In film, we often are portrayed as heroes (”All the President’s Men”), irritants (”Maid in Manhattan”), or naive idealists (”Almost Famous”).

And there are many others: “The Post,” “True Story,” “Official Secrets,” etc. 

What I like about the part played by Felicity Jones in “Last Letter...” is she is just an everyday person who makes mistakes, questions the stupid rules she encounters, and never gives up on her investigation. When at one point in the film she reaches an apparent dead-end in the trail, an older man and former reporter himself says bluntly: “Well, you’re a journalist. Try again.”

She takes his advice and makes the breakthrough that allows the film to reach its resolution. 

In the process, she finds out a lot about herself and also about something she didn’t know she was searching for -- how to love and be loved.

That’s about as perfect a conclusion as a journalist (or anyone in Hollywood) can hope to achieve. 

(I first published a version of this essay when the film was released in 2021.)

***

I doubt that anyone dislikes the slow-motion vote-counting process in California more than I do, but Trump’s claim that election results are rigged out here are absurd. If anything, the state takes so much extra precaution to count every vote cast and to verify that each ballot is authentic that the chances for fraud are greatly reduced.

But Trump labels any vote total not to his liking as fraudulent, so we are routinely subjected his outbursts in these matters. In reality, tampering with the vote would be very difficult in such a system.

As far as the actual vote totals in last week’s primary election is concerned, 83% has now been counted. The Democrat Beceera is roughly two million votes ahead of the Republican Hilton, who is roughly two million votes ahead of the Democrat Steyer.

By percentage of the overall vote, that breaks down to 27.7 (Becerra), 25.1 (Hilton) and 22.4 (Steyer).

Sort of like Tic Tac Toe.

HEADLINES:

• What Maine Voters Are Saying About Platner on the Eve of the Primary (NYT)

• In a changing GOP, a Republican blasted Big Agriculture and beat a Trump-backed candidate (WP)

• Democrat Secures Second L.A. Mayor Spot and Ends Spencer Pratt’s Run (NYT)

• U.S. military helicopter goes down near Strait of Hormuz, two crew members rescued (NBC)

• Consumers alter spending habits as gas prices strain their budgets (AP)

• After trading missile fire, Israel and Iran pull back — for now (NPR)

• Trump Struggled to Rein In Netanyahu’s Strikes on Iran (WSJ)

• Satellite images show destruction of the US-Israel war on Iran (Al Jazeera)

• China is helping to cushion global oil prices below $100 — but analysts warn it won’t last (CNBC)

• China’s Xi Jinping calls for strengthened ‘strategic cooperation’ with North Korea in rare summit with Kim Jong Un (CNN)

• What Xi and Kim Want From Their Summit in North Korea (WSJ)

• In Russia, Rage Is Boiling Over (NYT)

• Iran’s national soccer team arrived in Tijuana ahead of three World Cup matches in the United States, amid tensions that have turned the world’s biggest sporting event into a soft-power contest between the warring countries. (Reuters)

• Why Britain and America Can’t Stop Firing Their Leaders (Politico Mag)

• Trump weighs buying another territory after Greenland fiasco: report (Independent)

• Hail Is Changing, And Scientists Warn It Could Become More Dangerous (ScienceAlert)

• The AI boom is gobbling up power faster than ever (BI)

• Have a Thorny Medical Question? Your Doctor May Be Using A.I. for That (NYT)

• Meta Deletes Face-Recognition System From Its Smart Glasses App After WIRED Report (Wired)

• Apple announces Siri AI and its next generation of Apple Intelligence (Verge)

• Humanoid robot with embodied intelligence to run convenience store 24/7 in Hong Kong (IE)

• Trump Claims He Never Promised A Livable Country (Onion)

Iranian Roadhouse Blues

(California Governor’s Race Update: Yesterday at this time, 71% of the vote had been counted; today it’s at 72%. The state may be setting a new record for the word “slow.”Becerra has 27.2% of the votes, Hilton 25.9% and Steyer 21.5%.) 

***

When I first visited Tehran many decades ago, I was struck by the friendly, casual sophistication of the Iranians I encountered, as well as their good-natured tolerance of my broken Farsi.

Later on, after my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in neighboring Afghanistan, the urbanites of Iran’s largest city easily discerned that my Farsi had deteriorated (in their eyes) into the country bumpkin dialect known as Dari spoken by the Afghans.

Every Iranian I met in the big city seemed well-educated and well-informed about life in the U.S.

Back in the U.S.A., one of the first stories I wrote for our new magazine SunDance in San Francisco got me in touch with Iranian dissident students attending college here and protesting against the corrupt leader of their country, Shah Reza Pahlavi.

The Iranian leader was planning a visit to the U.S. and the students were making secret plans to embarrass him with protests. I made connections through my Peace Corps network and attended one of their planning meetings.

Everybody wore masks, hoping to avoid being identified by the Shah’s dreaded imperial police, SAVAK, which was known to have infiltrated some of the student groups in order to disrupt their actions.

And while in my piece for SunDance I was careful not to name any of my Iranian sources, I did name an American source who had witnessed some of the Shah’s authoritarian tactics when he had been a teacher at Tehran University.

That was a serious journalistic error, because the man thought he had been speaking with me off the record, though I didn’t find that out until some 20 years later.

On that occasion, I was just settling in for what was supposed to be a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner at Berkeley’s Chez Panisse, when the maitre d’ came over to reintroduce himself.

“Remember me? I’m Steve and I was working in an Iranian rug store when you quoted me in your article in SunDance. I lost my job because of your article. The owners fired me out of fear of SAVAK,” he said.

I was mortified and deeply embarrassed. Talk about a buzzkill.

“Man, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize—.” My face turned bright red.

He just grinned. “Don’t feel too bad about it. ‘Cause it’s all worked out for both of us. I’ve followed your career at Rolling Stone and so on; and as for me, I’ve got my dream job here at Chez Panisse.”

At that point, the night got a whole lot better.

My source, Steve Crumley, passed away in 2023.

HEADLINES:

• Iran and Israel Halt Exchanges of Fire (WSJ)

• Iran and Israel Exchange Strikes for First Time Since April Cease-Fire (NYT)

• Powerful earthquake hits Philippines, killing at least 15 (Al Jazeera)

• Trump doesn’t rule out giving Jan. 6 rioters who attacked police payouts from the ‘anti-weaponization’ fund (NBC)

• How Trump’s DOJ Burned Its Most Important Asset (Bulwark)

• Flu Vaccines Should Not Be This Hard (Atlantic)

• First came Congress. Now a national redistricting battle may turn to statehouses and city councils (AP)

• The three things Democrats must do to regain rural America’s trust (Guardian)

• Trump walks out of ‘Meet the Press’ interview when challenged over false claims (WP)

• Warner: Pulte a ‘national security risk’ (Politico)

• Political dynasties carry new baggage as voters vilify the elite (WP)

• Erdogan and Putin, the End of an Unlikely Partnership (NYT)

• Ukraine Is Not Losing. Russia Is Not Winning. (Atlantic)

• Israel strikes Beirut’s southern suburbs days after US-supported ceasefire deal (AP)

• Pete Hegseth’s D-day speech on immigration condemned as ‘grotesque stupidity’ (Guardian)

• Bumblebees have tiny brains but they can solve problems like chimps and elephants (NPR)

• OpenAI Announces Unnerving New ChatGPT Feature Named ‘Lockdown Mode’ (Gizmodo)

• Why most politicians are not calling for data center bans despite voters’ anger (WP)

• Why isn’t the U.S. better at soccer? (Solver Bulletin)

• The AI that can actually simplify your life (BI)

• Sorry, I’m Not Available. Talk to the A.I. Version of Me. (NYT)

• Department Of Labor Cracks Down On People Getting Paid For Work (Onion)

 

Living on Turtle Time

On a warm afternoon, I broke up and turned over the soil in one of our garden boxes, then saturated it with water from the garden hose and smoothed the surface over until it was flat again.

Next, using a chopstick, I’ll create 1/4” furrows in the moist soil, into which I’ll set some cucumber seeds.

Yes, I’m resuming my Quixotic quest to grow crops that elude the garden thief that stole our tomato plants. That mystery remains unsolved.

But assuming that it is a small mammal, I’ll cover my new plants with protective wire cloches and hope for the best.

This will require patience.

***

Something else that requires patience is the California Governor’s race, which is much like watching a competition between turtles. It took days for the Democrat Beceera to pull ahead of the Republican Hilton, but he has finally done so and will apparently slowly pull further out there in the lead from here on out.

But they stop a lot.

Meanwhile, the third turtle in the race, Steyer, is ever so gradually sneaking up behind Hilton, but he’s never going to catch him.

Only two turtles can advance to the fall election, so that ballot will feature a rerun (or should we say a rewalk?) between Beceera and Hilton. Counting the ballots will go slowly, like on turtle time.

Because they stop a lot.

HEADLINES:

• More Republicans are breaking with Trump. Is it conscience or politics? (Guardian)

• The Congresswoman Who Got Trump’s Name Off the Kennedy Center (Atlantic)

• Pentagon Sees Growing Espionage Threat From Israel (NYT)

• Graham Platner’s troubles grow in Maine, and Democrats are increasingly nervous (The Hill)

• Graham Platner: The Personal is Not Political (Journal of the Plague Years)

• At least 12 shot near Ohio festival, gunmen still at large (NBC)

• Tehran targets Gulf neighbors after US attack on Iranian military sites (CNN)

• Trump undercuts Netanyahu at a critical moment (Reuters)

• Tehran says US ‘lacks will’ for stability after latest clash (Al Jazeera)

• U.S. mortgage rates are staying high – and the Federal Reserve can do little about it (PBS)

• Pope Leo, After Taking on Trump and A.I., Prepares for New Duels in Spain (NYT)

• Ebola outbreak in Central Africa could reach 20,000 cases without strong public health measures (AP)

• Voters in this city handed the tech industry its worst defeat yet in data center backlash (WP)

• AI is going to drink even more water (Reuters)

• Americans hate rising prices. AI is making it worse. (WP)

• Revenge of the AI bubble (Axios)

• 4 surprising ways AI is making your life more expensive (WP)

• Mom Disappointed Kids Not Coming Home For National Donut Day (Onion)

Trump's Anti-Immigrant Plan Exposed

(California Governor Update: Becerra is in front with 26.78%, followed by Hilton with 26.35% and Steyer with 21.35% of the votes counted. According to the AP, only 68% of the total votes have been counted.)

Among its many bad moves, perhaps the most shameful is the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants.

Now, thanks to a former Social Security Administration executive, Jeremiah Schofield, we know that DOGE officials had planned to classify 2.7 million living people as dead, which was intended to intimidate immigrants into leaving.

The plan included some U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

Schofield revealed the plan in a 49-page whistleblower disclosure to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). It offers the most detailed account yet of how officials from Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service sought to use Social Security data in service of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

According to the Washington Post, “Schofield’s whistleblower complaint describes a tumultuous period inside Social Security, as career officials questioned the legality of such efforts and watched DOGE officials gain access to some of the government’s most sensitive databases. In one meeting, Schofield said, a DOGE official working with the Department of Homeland Security described the goal of declaring 2.7 million living people dead: making immigrants so miserable that they self-deported or went to Social Security offices for help, where they could be arrested.”

Social Security carried out a smaller version of the plan last year, marking 6,100 immigrants as dead.

HEADLINES:

• DOGE officials planned to mark 2.7 million living people as dead, according to a whistleblower. (WP)

• US Senate passes $70bn ICE funding bill: What comes next? (Al Jazeera)

• DOJ could still pay Jan. 6 rioters even without ‘anti-weaponization’ fund (NBC)

• Graham Platner Faces Accusations Of ‘Toxic’ Relationships And Disturbing Behavior—Days After Sexting Scandal (Forbes)

• Democrats are increasingly frustrated with Graham Platner in Maine Senate race (WP)

• Judge Says Trump Officials Must Restart Asylum and Immigration Processing (NYT)

• Trump’s Name Is Disappearing From More Than Just the Kennedy Center (Atlantic)

• Trump’s Iran war messaging is not winning over Americans – or their representatives (Guardian)

• Why can’t California count? (Silver Bulletin)

• What to know about the deal between Israel and Lebanon extending their shaky ceasefire (AP)

• The US economy added 172,000 jobs last month, extending the labor market rebound (CNN)

• America’s Farms Depend More Than Ever on a Troubled Visa Program (NYT)

• AI Agents Now Generate More Web Traffic Than Humans (CNET)

• Anthropic says the world should have option to ‘pause’ on AI (Guardian)

• Can These Ads Make You Love A.I.? (NYT)

• Zeus Lands Cameo Role As Trojan Soldier In ‘The Odyssey’ (Onion)

Nobody Knows

(They're still counting ballots in California.) 

The older I get, the whole puzzle of life on earth seems like it should be simple. We need to find the right balance that allows us all to exist together. That’s about it, but whether we will ever be able to do that is another question.

There’s a synchronicity to your life and my life and all of our lives — what each of us does affects everyone else. Everybody wants and needs the same basic things.

My Canadian-born grandmother was in a nursing home in her 90s when we went to visit one winter’s day to take her out on a day trip. We went to a nearby hilly area where we parked and watched people with sleds go up and down a gentle incline.

There was fresh snow and my tiny grandmother sat in the front seat watching for a while before pronouncing, “‘Round and ‘round everyone goes, and where they stop nobody knows.”

That was it, just a childhood rhyme. She had nothing else to say.

My grandmother stopped more than half a century now and the world has changed in dramatic ways, yet her truth remains. Everyone is still riding the merry-go-round and where they stop nobody knows.

HEADLINES:

• Trump pans ‘bad Republicans’ who voted to end the Iran war (Politico)

• Iran war powers rebuke shows how Trump is increasingly boxed in (CNN)

• Iran war live: Israel continues deadly attacks after new Lebanon ceasefire (Al Jazeera)

• The Iran Problem Trump Can’t Defer (Atlantic)

• California Had the Most Expensive Governor’s Race in U.S. History. It’s Still Not Over. (NYT)

• Three studies used by RFK Jr and allies to justify controversial vaccine policy changes facing new scrutiny (Guardian)

• Ex-Trump advisor John Bolton agrees to plead guilty to retaining classified information (MS NOW) 

• GOP immigration bill runs into turbulence amid backlash to Trump’s $1.8 billion ‘anti-weaponization’ fund (CNN)

• Supreme Court sides with FCC in clash with wireless carriers over fines (CNBC)

• Trump strips job protections from 8,000 senior federal workers (WP)

• The American Military’s Coming Marathon (Foreign Affairs)

• Pride Groups Plan for a Future Without Some of Their Biggest Corporate Sponsors (WSJ)

• Putin faces rival visions of war and peace at Russia's 'Davos'. (Reuters)

• America’s secretary of war pulls his punches on China (Economist)

• ‘You can’t handle the truth!’ Microsoft staff push back on survey results. (BI)

• Donkeys help improve patient wellbeing at psychiatric hospital (AP)

• A handful of American households pay for AI. Is the future free — or a subscription? (NPR)

• Inside the Trump-backed push to bring AI doctors into American medicine (WP)

• Energy, water use and pollution of AI and data centers rival most countries (AP)

• FCC To Investigate TV Shows Where The Mom Has Job (Onion)

Waiting for...(Hope)

In “Waiting for Godot,” Samuel Beckett described two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, who wait endlessly by a tree for a mysterious figure named Godot. But he never arrives.

Well out here in California, we might all feel a bit like those guys as we wait for the ballots to be counted from our latest primary election.

Beckett was concerned with existentialism, the meaninglessness of life, and the futility of hope.

These ideas may be familiar to us, but I, for one, reject the futility of hope.

There are many critics of California’s primary system, which allows the top two vote-getters to move forward to compete in the general election in November.

But at least in theory, this process reduces the stranglehold the two-party system has on our politics and promotes something more akin to a parliamentary process where multiple factions of the parties get to face off and compete for votes.

Of course, in reality obscene amounts of money distort the process, and the role of campaign advertising paid for by special interests can overwhelm voters as they try to make their choices, but I still think it is better than party primaries.

At least this way minority interests get an airing.

That said, the outcome in California will almost certainly be the Democrat Becerra v. the Republican Hilton. And that in all likelihood would have been the result of party primaries as well.

So this essay was supposed to be about hope, but I guess most of us out here are just sitting back and waiting for that particular item to arrive, just like Godot.

HEADLINES:

• House votes to rebuke Trump over war with Iran (NBC)

• Iran war live: No progress on negotiations with the US – Araghchi (Al Jazeera)

• Iranian strikes in Kuwait kill 1, injure 63 as shaky ceasefire with U.S. is further tested (NBC)Yes, Russia Is Losing the War in Ukraine (Bulwark)

• Senate Republicans axe $1bn for Trump’s new White House ballroom (BBC)

• In a series of posts on his Truth Social platform early Thursday, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that prices are falling "across the board." But the biggest thing on his mind appeared to be this week’s primary elections in California. [HuffPost]

• Tense governor’s race in California unsettled as vote-counting continues (Guardian)

• Takeaways from the primary elections in California, Iowa and elsewhere (CNN)

• Yes, Russia Is Losing the War in Ukraine (Bulwark)

• The end of Trump’s ‘weaponisation’ fund is another sign Republicans are fighting back (BBC)

• Trump diverts millions from National Park visitor fees to D.C. fountains and fireworks (WP)

• From festering infections to untreated cancer, ICE detainees across the US describe medical neglect (AP)

• nfighting between the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has led the CIA to pull back from key intelligence assessments. (Reuters)

• Trump Endorses Right-Wing Presidential Candidate in Colombia (NYT)

• EU plots long game against US digital supremacy (Politico)

• China’s Economy Is Taking Everyone Down (Atlantic)

• New forecasts lay out 2 rocky paths for global economy (Axios)

• Disney Finds Its Spine (Slate)

• Bari Weiss praises — and blames — Scott Pelley in a CBS News meeting after firing him (BI)

• U.S. Support for LGBTQ+ Issues Remains Down From Peak (Gallup)

• China has approved the world’s first invasive brain-computer chip—here’s what’s next (MIT)

• No, AI Is Not Conscious (Atlantic)

• Scientists Find Way to Supercharge Dangerous Computer ‘Worms’ With A.I. (NYT)

• lack Neighborhood Demolished To Make Room For Nothing In Particular (Onion)

 

Counting the Ballots

The Governor of California is more like a head of state. The state’s economy ranks as the fourth-largest in the world, competing with Japan’s. The state is home to everything from Hollywood to Silicon Valley.

Artificial intelligence? Headquartered here.

Shohei Ohtani? Plays here.

So when it comes to counting their votes for Governor, Californians know a lot is at stake.

As I publish this morning, 58 percent of the vote is in. Republican Steve Hilton is in the lead with 27.8 percent, closely followed by Democrat Xavier Becerra at 25.4 percent.

Democrat Tom Steyer is third with 19.6 percent.

The only other candidate in double figures is Republican Chad Bianco with 11.3 percent.

California provides universal mail-in ballots, which are valid if postmarked by Election Day and received by election officials up to seven days later.

Many, many voters take advantage of mail-in ballots. Take me, for example. I’ve lived at my current address for six years but I’ve never been to my polling place. In fact, I don’t even know where it is.

As for which two candidates will ultimately prevail, it appears that will be Hilton and Becerra. But Steyer remains close enough behind the front-runners that no one can call the race yet.

The preponderance of mail-in ballots will be Democratic, which may well carry Becerra to the top of the pack. Hilton’s strong showing probably means he will be the other candidate to move on to the November ballot.

But the math gets really difficult for Steyer. He should get a bump from the mail-ins, just like Beceera, but it is not likely that that will be enough to overtake the top two.

So that is the report at press time. I believe it will Beceera v. Hilton in November.

And that Ohtani may win this year’s National League’s Cy Young Award.

HEADLINES:

• California primary election results: governor’s race too close to call (Guardian)

• Thune on Pulte pick: ‘We don’t need a weaponized’ director of national intelligence (The Hill)

• Alarm in Washington as Trump taps staunch loyalist to serve as intelligence chief (Guardian)

• Why the Worst Get on Top (Atlantic)

• Rebecca Bennett Wins New Jersey House Primary to Take On Thomas Kean Jr. (NYT)

• Supreme Court allows Alabama to use GOP-friendly map for midterms, cutting seat held by Black Democrat (CNN)

• Trump Signs Executive Order Seeking Oversight of A.I. Models (NYT)

• Pentagon hires convicted Jan. 6 rioter for sensitive counterterrorism job (WP)

• Trump vowed to revoke hundreds of citizenships. It’s proving harder to do (NPR)

• $1.8 Billion Fund Is ‘Not Moving Forward,’ Blanche Says (NYT)

• New Jersey sues Delaney Hall operators for access after allegations of inhumane conditions (CNN)

• Russian attack on Ukraine kills at least 16 and traps others in damaged buildings (NPR)

• As Russia fails to achieve war aims in Ukraine, Putin needs a way out (WP)

• Ukraine Turns the Tide (Foreign Affairs)

• Pentagon press office is now a classified area and off-limits to reporters (Politico)

• World’s Most-Used Weedkiller Found To Disrupt Honeybee Brains (ScienceTechDaily)

• New ways to remove CO2 from atmosphere must grow much faster, report says (Guardian)

• UN warns of extreme heat risk from El Nino. (Reuters)

• There Is Already a Word for the Deep Moral Failures of AI (Atlantic)

• AI stumbles on questions of faith (Axios)

• Young and unemployed? Remote work, not AI, may be the problem, study finds (AP)

• Trump Launches $88 Billion Fund For Anyone Who Has Ever Been Rejected By Woman (Onion)