A Secret Rendezvous

UPDATE: The tomato plant mystery remains unsolved. One plant remains, several days after the other five disappeared. We’ve not yet captured the intruder on camera.

NOTE: I published the following essay in the early stages of the pandemic. It still feels relevant six years later.

It isn’t the extraordinary things -- the breakthroughs, the awards, the dream vacations. It isn’t even the special moments we knew we were falling in love.

Those are our memories and they remain as intact as ever.

Rather it is the ordinary things that we did almost without thinking that have been stolen from us. This came to me as I rode masked in a car through my old neighborhood one day on the way to the neurologist.

There was that one special cluster of wisteria under a tree. A lone hummingbird usually was hovering among the flowers as I passed. I’d stop and it often rose to greet me, face to face. It became our secret rendezvous.

There was the house that always seemed to be under construction. A large truck was parked in the driveway; the workers went in and out of the site through an opening where the garage door used to be. I’d always stop to chat with them.

“Buenos dias hombres. ¿Cómo es el trabajo?” “Hola tio. Lamento que nuestro camión esté en tu camino. Usa tu bastón!”

There was the cafe where I used to order tuna melts. Now we were getting close to the office. There were the benches where my work friends who smoked would gather on breaks.

I liked the people who smoked. They remind me of my Dad.

There is the corner where I turned to get to the office. Every morning at 9:25 sharp, the UPS delivery truck arrived. Also at 9:25 every morning, I arrived.

As I swiped my ID badge to enter the front door, other colleagues would often be arriving. I enjoyed holding the door open for them.

Many hours later, I would reverse my route and return home.

It was all so simple, so thoughtless; it’s just how I passed my days.

But on this particular day in the car, I was just passing through. My son had set up an appointment for me because he felt I was still too weak and frail from my illnesses to get there on my own.

Meanwhile, I’d developed the idea that I was like an onion and it was quite an elaborate identity, with layers and layers of complexity. 

I asked my son on our way to the neurologist if I should tell her about the onion concept. He said, “No, Dad, let’s save that one for another day.” At the meeting the doctor administered the cognition test -- the same one they gave me at the hospital many times.

My score, she reported, was 100 percent. Just like Trump!

She explained that I’d had a stroke and that I had symptoms, including tremors, consistent with Parkinson’s. That is why my hospital doctor had prescribed Carbidopa Levodopa.

I loved the sound of that drug, Carbidopa Levodopa. I used to play with the nurses when they brought it to me. “Can you say that quickly six times?”

“Carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa.”

They all could do it and it sounded lovely to me. Most of them wore a far-away expression as they did it.

This particular day, as it happens, would be last time I drove along that route. So it was the end for the wisteria, the hummingbird, the workers, the benches, the smokers, the UPS truck and my ID badge.

It was not, however, the end of the Carbidopa Levodopa.

***

There are people who think that it doesn’t matter that a man in power repeatedly used his money and access to sexually abuse women. That saddens me.

That there are people who support a coward, an obvious bully, a man who abuses other people from behind his shield of bodyguards, saddens me.

That there are people who don’t care that such a man attacks my colleagues in the press who are only doing their jobs saddens me very deeply.

That there are people, many people, who buy his bullshit, saddens me, and yes, even angers me.

I didn’t devote 54 years trying to practice socially responsible journalism and survive a stroke for it to come to this.

So yes I am nostalgic, I’m wistful, I miss what I’ve lost. But that stroke didn’t kill me. 

I still have my voice.

HEADLINES:

• Court rejects Virginia redistricting in a blow to Democrats’ counter to Trump, GOP (NPR)

• US fires on and disables 2 more Iranian tankers as tensions rise in the Strait of Hormuz (AP)

• Trump threatens EU with ‘much higher’ tariffs if no trade deal signed by new deadline (CNBC)

• April jobs report: Economy adds 115,000 jobs, far better than expected (Yahoo)

• Emerging picture shows Reform gains as Labour counts losses in heartland seats (BBC)

• Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed to fight on to deliver on his promise to bring "change" to Britain after his Labour Party suffered heavy losses in local elections. (Reuters)

• Polls in California Reflect a Chaotic Governor’s Race (NYT)

• Trump reveals what he told Rubio to convey to the Pope — and it’s the thing he keeps saying on TV (Independent)

• Russia and Ukraine accused each other of violating a unilateral two-day ceasefire announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin to cover the anniversary celebrations of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. (Reuters)

• ABC Accuses Government of Violating First Amendment (NYT)

• Amanpour expresses ‘concern’ over future of CNN, citing ‘ideological realignment’ at CBS (The Hill)

• A deadly hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship in the Atlantic is unlikely to spread globally like the coronavirus did, even though the virus has a long incubation period and some of the ship’s passengers have already disembarked, the World Health Organization said. [HuffPost]

• Meta Is Dying. It’s About Time. (NYT)

• Anthropic’s Mythos set off a cybersecurity ‘hysteria.’ Experts say the threat was already here (CNBC)

• Sam Altman had a bad day in court (BI)

• Five Ways A.I. Search Beats an Old-School Google Search (NYT)

• Tech is turning increasingly to religion in a quest to create ethical AI (AP)

• A.I. Populism Is Here. And No One Is Ready. (NYT)

• Taylor Swift Fires Fixer Who Forgot To Kill Justin Baldoni (Onion)

A Lost World

Until the early 1990s, print journalism had relied on essentially the same technology ever since well before the American Revolution.

Newspapers, broadsheets, magazines, and books had all existed when the Constitution was written and their co-dependence was critical to how democracy in North America started.

The Constitution with its First Amendment guaranteeing our rights wasn’t broadcast and it wasn’t posted to the Web. It didn’t get tweeted or followed on Instagram. No one made a YouTube video about it. You couldn’t tell your friends on Facebook or TikTok about it. You also could not scroll through it on your cellphone or send a text about it.

Of course, earlier in the 20th century another form of electronic technology, radio, had disrupted the publishing industry, followed by a few decades its close cousin television, but the federal government had regulated both of those much more tightly than print — largely to minimize the potential for authoritarian abuse.

The initial regulatory structure for the airwaves was established in the 1920s and led by Herbert Hoover, who was the leading voice for how to preserve free speech while managing the anti-democratic threat posed by radio. The Communications Act of 1934 codified these principles and extended them to telecommunications.

But by the time web browsers came along in the last decade of the century, the government chose not to apply its broadcast regulatory system to the Internet for fear of stifling the growth of a lucrative new industry.

Congress debated what to do at length and the result was Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. That regulation essentially guaranteed the freedom of web-based companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple and (soon) Google, Facebook, and Twitter to host user-generated content without being liable for its accuracy or fairness.

This instantly put both print and broadcast media outlets at a major disadvantage, one from which they have never recovered. What it actually meant in practice is that anyone could now call himself or herself a journalist and attract an audience for their claims, however bizarre and undocumented they might be.

Millions of people quickly took advantage of that opportunity and new websites popped up everywhere. Among them were a handful, like Wired, Salon and Slate, that attempted to preserve the quality standards of traditional journalism during the transition to this new interactive digital world, with varying degrees of success. (I worked at both Salon and Wiredduring this period.)

But the traditional media and new media alike were quickly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of new information sources. Very rapidly, the existing world of media began to crumble into ruins.

Thirty years later, it’s fair to say we are paying the price for what’s been lost. Now we live in an information ocean polluted by conspiracy theories that help authoritarians and weaken democracy.

HEADLINES:

• U.S. and Iran Exchange Fire Amid a Declared Truce (NYT)

• The US and Iran are inching toward a short-term deal to end fighting (Reuters)

• U.S. intelligence says Iran can outlast Trump’s Hormuz blockade for months (WP)

• Trump’s abrupt U-turn on a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz came after backlash from allies (NBC)

• Rubio visits Vatican amid escalating tensions between Trump and Pope Leo (NPR)

• Kash Patel under scrutiny over ‘FBI bourbon’ giveaways (Telegraph)

• Inside a MAGA influencer’s turn against the right-wing machine (WP)

• The Trump administration blitz that flooded Minnesota with immigration agents also dramatically slowed other federal investigations and prosecutions into an array of serious crimes, a Reuters review of federal court records found. (Reuters)

• This Is Not the World Russia Wants (Foreign Affairs)

• Russia is ramping up its attempts to kill opponents in Europe, intelligence officials say (AP)

• Their student-loan lender said their debt was gone. The lawsuit said otherwise. (BI)

• Countries worldwide scrambled to trace people who had left the cruise ship hit by ‌a hantavirus outbreak before it got marooned off the coast of Cape Verde, to prevent further spread of the disease. (Reuters)

• 5 Takeaways From the California Governor Debate (NYT)

• Ted Turner’s vision of news as global and continuous changed both the industry and society itself (AP)

• He Couldn’t Land a Job Interview. Was AI to Blame? (Wired)

• Elon Musk’s Confidante Is Cast as His Inside Source at OpenAI (NYT)

• Worries about AI’s risks to humanity loom over trial (AP)

• Customer Waits Until Barista Watching To Disarm Gunman (Onion)

Imagining and Predicting

“I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem.” -- Richard Feynman

One of the most confusing things about our imagination is when it takes us to a place we can’t go to physically. 

We know the universe is vast and that the odds of other inhabitable worlds are extremely good. We also know that the sun will ultimately explode and die, rendering life on this planet impossible. So for our species to survive we will eventually have to travel.

While we believe these things to be true, our ability to do anything about them is supposedly limited by the laws of physics. On the other hand, quantum mechanics, suggests none of those constraints are immutable -- that space and time and consciousness are all more or less constructs of our imagination.

Thinking too hard about all this will take us around the circle Feynman so eloquently described. There seems to be no escape.

But some of us yearn to break away from the constraints that bind us to our current reality. That includes the journalists stuck covering reality in its gritty detail every day. That is where some combination of art and fiction may provide relief, as our most imaginative impulses take the form of music, dance, painting, sculpture, film, novels, short stories, poems and more.

These help deliver an alternative future to us. Meanwhile, predicting it is, at best, a crap shoot.

The book “Super Forecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction,” by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner, describes a massive effort by an army of volunteers to forecast global events. According to this research, once they given the best evidence, about two percent of those involved prove to be “super forecasters,” able with uncanny accuracy to figure out what is going to happen next about almost anything.

Note to self: I’m not one of them.

HEADLINES:

• Iran reviewing US proposal as source says both sides moving toward memo to end war (CNN)

• Oil plunges, markets surge on report U.S. and Iran near deal to end war as gas prices jump past $4.50 (NBC)

• Gasoline costs 50% more in the US than before the Iran war (AP)

• We’ll Miss OPEC When It’s Gone (NYT)

• Iran war amplifies divisions within both parties over U.S.-Israel ties (WP)

• A Dangerous New Attack on Press Freedom (Atlantic)

• Takeaways from Indiana, Ohio and Michigan: Trump’s flex pays off and Democrats win special election (PBS)

• Trump’s Indiana Victory Is the Wrong Kind of Good News for Republicans (Newsweek)

• Poll finds broad rejection of religion-related messages from Trump, Hegseth (WP)

• CNN founder Ted Turner, a pioneer of cable TV news, dies at 87 (CNN)

• Ancient island in Scottish loch found to rest on hidden timber base (Heritage Daily)

• The Intercept didn’t just publish a story about ICE — it drove it around JFK (Nieman)

• The most layoff-prone job in tech right now (BI)

• How a deadly hantavirus outbreak unfolded on a cruise ship for weeks before it was identified (AP)

• Purported Epstein Suicide Note Is Released (NYT)

• This furry AI companion may replace your dog (Morning Brew)

• Why AI Agents are either the best or worst thing we’ve ever built (YouTube)

• Anthropic’s Claude Managed Agents can now “dream,” sort of (Ars Technica)

• Giving Up Too Much Work (Onion)

The Intimidator

Donald Trump just can’t let his loss in the 2020 election go. 

You’d think retaking the White House in 2024 would have satisfied his urge for revenge, but clearly it did not.

There never has been any evidence of significant fraud in 2020.

Yet Trump has his Justice Department seeking the identities of thousands of poll workers in Fulton County, Georgia, a few months after seizing the ballots from the 2020 election there.

Why? The only feasible reason for this now is to harass and intimidate them, perhaps with an eye toward undermining this year’s midterm elections in the process.

It would be difficult to overestimate the amount of damage to our electoral system that Trump has already done by these and other actions.

He refused to concede his loss in 2020; instead he incited the mob to attack Congress on January 6th. And since regaining power, he’s pardoned all those responsible for that riot, further undermining our criminal justice system and rewarding criminals for their loyalty to him and his demonstrably false claims.

It is abundantly clear that Donald Trump wants to go down in history as the greatest U.S. President.

But many historians may consider him the worst. 

*** 

In the California gubernatorial debate last night there was no clear winner but three of the seven — Democrats Matt Mahan and Antonio Villaraigosa and Republican Chad Bianco — looked out of their league.

The three remaining Democrats — Xavier Becerra, Katie Porter and Tom Steyer — and one Republican, Steve Hilton, performed relatively well. Porter and Steyer will probably split the progressive vote, while Becerra seems to be the “establishment” candidate, under fire from everyone else.

Hilton, who has Trump’s endorsement, may be one of the two finalists to emerge from the upcoming primary, when only two can move on to the general election this fall.

UPDATE : On the tomato plant mystery. This one is headed for a bad ending. On a rainy, windy overnight, the thief returned to make off with two more plants, leaving only one survivor from the original six. Unfortunately, the wind also knocked the camera over, so we have no footage of the crime.

HEADLINES:

• Trump says Hormuz operation paused amid US, Tehran talks (Al Jazeera)

• Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show. (WP)

• White House gave Iran private message before new Hormuz operation (Axios)

• Trump keeps changing his timeline for ending the Iran war (WP)

• US intelligence assessments indicate that the time Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon has not changed since last summer. (Reuters)

• Trump Tries to Downplay Economic Effects of the Iran War (NYT)

• Sherrod Brown wins Democratic Senate nomination in Ohio, setting up a key battleground race (NBC)

• Seven state senators in Indiana who helped defeat Trump’s plan to redraw their state’s voting map last year faced Republican opponents endorsed by Trump — most were defeated. (WP)

• Key moments from CNN’s California governor primary debate (CNN)

• Republicans propose $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to secure Trump ballroom (NBC)

• Is Todd Blanche Already a Worse Attorney General Than Pam Bondi? (Slate)

• F.D.A. Blocked Publication of Research Finding Covid and Shingles Vaccines Were Safe (NYT)

• Want more Black representatives? Elect more Democrats. (Silver Bulletin)

• G.O.P. Proposes $1 Billion for Security Improvements in Ballroom Project (NYT)

• 16 days from momentum to meltdown in Canada-US trade talks (Politico)

• Why Europe’s car industry is at the centre of a new US trade war (Al Jazeera)

• Anthropic CEO warns of cyber ‘moment of danger’ as AI exposes thousands of vulnerabilities (CNBC)

• Roomba inventor unveils a companion robot that’s more pet than helper (Mashable)

• States across the wildfire-prone Western US are using AI for early detection (AP)

• Coinbase cuts 14% of staff, citing AI (BI)

• Anthropic and Wall Street Giants Join Forces to Create New A.I. Firm (NYT)

• ‘I have an A because I use Chat’: What UC students say about using AI — and whether it’s cheating (SFC)

• Epidemiologists Confirm First Airborne Transmission Of Mar-A-Lago Face (Onion)

 

Holding On

(Note: When I wrote the following essay a year ago, it was meant as a wakeup call. A year later, the danger remains, but resistance to Trump is growing. I am hopeful that in the end, democracy will prevail.)

There won’t be a press conference announcing that democracy has ended in America and there won’t be tanks rolling through the streets or foreign invaders telling us to shelter in place over loudspeakers.

It won’t be that dramatic when our democracy slips away.

And in fact it’s already doing so, week by week under the Trump regime. As Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way and Daniel Ziblatt explain in a guest essay in The New York Times: “today’s autocrats convert public institutions into political weapons, using law enforcement, tax and regulatory agencies to punish opponents and bully the media and civil society onto the sidelines.”

The authors point out that a fundamental right in a democracy is the right to oppose the government.

“Under authoritarianism, by contrast, opposition comes with a price. Citizens and organizations that run afoul of the government become targets of a range of punitive measures: Politicians may be investigated and prosecuted on baseless or petty charges, media outlets may be hit with frivolous defamation suits or adverse regulatory rulings, businesses may face tax audits or be denied critical contracts or licenses, universities and other civic institutions may lose essential funding or tax-exempt status, and journalists, activists and other critics may be harassed, threatened or physically attacked by government supporters.”

The authors go on to document that all of these things are happening under the Trump administration.

“The administration’s authoritarian offensive has had a clear impact. It has changed how Americans behave, forcing them to think twice about engaging in what should be constitutionally protected opposition. Consequently, many of the politicians and societal organizations that should serve as watchdogs and checks on the executive are silencing themselves or retreating to the sidelines.”

The authors continue: 

“So far, American society’s response to this authoritarian offensive has been underwhelming — alarmingly so….The acquiescence of our most prominent civic leaders sends a profoundly demoralizing message to society. It tells Americans that democracy is not worth defending — or that resistance is futile. If America’s most privileged individuals and organizations are unwilling or unable to defend democracy, what are ordinary citizens supposed to do?”

But the authors end on a hopeful note.

“There are signs of an awakening. Harvard has refused to acquiesce to administration demands that would undermine academic freedom, Microsoft dropped a law firm that settled with the administration and hired one that defied it, and a new law firm based in Washington, D.C., announced plans to represent those wrongfully targeted by the government. When the most influential members of civil society fight back, it provides political cover for others. It also galvanizes ordinary citizens to join the fight.”

Finally, there is this:

“America’s slide into authoritarianism is reversible. But no one has ever defeated autocracy from the sidelines.”

HEADLINES:

• U.S. attempt to open Strait of Hormuz tests fragile Iran war ceasefire (NPR)

• Iran opened fire on US warships; 6 small boats destroyed in retaliation: Centcom (The Hill)

• What to know as the US tries to open the Strait of Hormuz and a ceasefire wavers (AP)

• Hezbollah has paid a heavy price for going to war with Israel on March 2: Israel has occupied a chunk of southern Lebanon, displaced hundreds of thousands of its Shi’ite Muslim constituents and killed as many as several thousand of its fighters. (Reuters)

• Trump Faces the Complicated Reality of a Costly, Unpopular War in Iran (NYT)

• Supreme Court temporarily restores ability to receive abortion drug mifepristone by mail (CNN)

• Pentagon Firings Have Nothing to Do With ‘Culture’ (Bulwark)

• China thinks America is declining but still uniquely dangerous (Economist)

• Unsettled Kremlin tightens security around Putin amid assassinations and coup fears, intel report says (CNN)

• Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party was on ‌course to wintwo of four crucial state elections, expanding its influence and weakening its key rival half-way into his third term in office. (Reuters)

• What is, and isn’t, worrying about 100% debt to GDP (Axios)

• Meta’s public nuisance case in New Mexico has billion-dollar consequences (CNBC)

• Internal ICE records reveal widespread use of force in detention centers (WP)

• Jerome Powell Just Threw President Donald Trump Under the Bus One Last Time Before His Term as Fed Chair Ends (Motley Fool)

• Redistricting war accelerates winner-take-all political combat that’s straining American democracy (AP)

• Trump’s influence in Republican primary elections is about to get stress-tested. A series of primaries in early May across deep-red territory in Indiana, Kentucky and Louisiana all feature entrenched GOP officials fighting back against Trump-backed challengers, and early signs indicate Trump’s preferred candidates may not always have the upper hand. The results of the primaries could provide a stark indication of whether the president’s legendary sway over the GOP is fading as his popularity sinks. [HuffPost]

• Mass shooting at Arcadia Lake in Oklahoma sends at least 23 to hospital; suspect search continues (ABC)

• The End of Cigarettes Is Coming (Atlantic)

• ‘Point of no return’: New Orleans relocation must start now due to sea level, study finds (Guardian)

• The quest to save these Outer Banks homes from falling into the sea (WP)

• Mexico City is sinking so quickly, it can be seen from space (AP)

• Astronomers believe they've detected an atmosphere around a tiny, icy world beyond Pluto (AP)

• Musk wanted to settle with OpenAI just days before their courtroom showdown, new filing says (CNN)

• White House Considers Vetting A.I. Models Before They Are Released (NYT)

• Foreign Exchange Student Doesn’t Realize He’s Being Bullied (Onion)

 

A Writer's "Fingerprint"

Those of us working at sites like HotWired and Salon in the early days of the web realized that we were sitting atop a technology that would profoundly change virtually everything about society.

With my background in investigative reporting, I was curious about how the process of solving mysteries might be affected by the arrival of massive searchable databases of networked information. One case that caught my attention was that of the Unabomber, who’d been carrying on his one-man reign of terror since 1978, eluding a massive FBI manhunt in the process.

So I discussed with colleagues whether the Unabomber’s manifesto published by the Washington Post might somehow be analyzed for tell-tale patterns that could uncover his identify.

The engineers I consulted said that the answer was “probably yes” in the future, but “not quite yet.” As it turned out, before this technology evolved, the brother of the man who wrote the manifesto recognized certain tell-tale word choices himself and alerted the FBI.

And that is how Theodore Kaczynski was finally identified and caught. A good  summary of the case is recounted in The Conversation.

Over the decades since Kaczynski’s arrest, the field of forensic linguistics has become far more developed, and now includes a number of tools to uncover plagiarism, strip away anonymity and solve crimes based on notes, letters and manifestoes.

And AI would seem to be an especially useful tool for stripping away anonymity from writing.

The basic concept here is that people’s writing voices can be as unique an identifier as their fingerprints. From the perspective of one who teaches writing, this is critical because many students start from more of a place of standardization, largely due to the way they learned to write in grade school.

Some were taught essentially to muffle their own voices.

My job, later on the down the road when they finally got to me, was to draw out their individuality, helping them diversify their word choices and rediscover their own unique style.

(Tomato Plant Mystery Update: We’ve installed a camera to try and identify the thief after a third plant disappeared.)

HEADLINES:

• Trump says US will start escorting ships through Strait of Hormuz (CNN)

• Trump’s war of words with Friedrich Merz takes toll on US-German relationship (The Hill)

• Top Republicans warn Trump’s Germany troop withdrawals send wrong message to Putin (NBC)

• The U.S. Military Drawdown in Europe Has Only Just Begun (Time)

• OPEC+ countries agree modest rise in production as Iran retains chokehold on key Strait of Hormuz (AP)

• White House running out of options to contain gas price backlash (WP)

• Abortion Providers Forced to Adapt After Court Blocks Pill Access by Mail (NYT)

• America got rich and got sad. A top economist says 2020 broke something that hasn’t healed (Fortune)

• Rudy Giuliani Is in ‘Critical Condition’ in Florida Hospital (NYT)

• How a weaker dollar is quietly making life more expensive (AP)

• What Does Tucker Carlson Really Believe? I Went to Maine to Find Out.(NYT)

• Publish and Perish (Slate)

• How A.I. Is Transforming China’s Entertainment Industry (NYT)

• The Lore of Sam Altman Is Being Tested Like Never Before (WSJ)

• Why the A.I. Job Apocalypse (Probably) Won’t Happen (NYT)

• Carlos Alcaraz Withdraws From French Open Over Career-Threatening Haircut (Onion)

 

Good Girls Making Trouble

When I was first breaking into journalism in the ‘60s, newsrooms were completely dominated by men. Women were confined to subservient roles. 

Then came my generation. As Baby Boomers, many of us were active in the antiwar and civil rights movements, and soon every other form of inequity came into focus for us -- especially misogyny and homophobia.

In the media industry, women started demanding equal opportunities.

One series that examines this is “Good Girls Revolt,” the 2016 Amazon production based on Lynn Povich’s 2013 book of the same name, thinly fictionalizing the events that led women employees to challenge the existing order at Newsweekmagazine.

And according to this version, there was at least as much “sex, drugs and rock n roll” at Newsweek as at Rolling Stone.

Early in the Amazon series and once later on, a character playing Nora Ephron makes an appearance -- she is accurately portrayed as having quit Newsweek because the magazine used her work but didn’t give her a byline, which was emblematic of how women were treated at the time.

Of course, Ephron simply went on to become a not only a successful writer, most famously at Esquire, but a screenwriter/producer responsible for films like “Sleepless in Seattle”, “Silkwood”, “When Harry Met Sally”, “Julie and Julia”, “You’ve Got Mail”, and many others.

It’s difficult to think of a journalist-screenwriter with a better resume during her lifetime; she died in 2012 at age 71.

Overall, the “Good Girls” series focuses on a group of women trying to make it at Newsweek, but the men in supporting roles represent the mixed feelings my generation of male journalists had as we saw our female colleagues battle for their rights. Our bosses were all men who expected us, not the women, to eventually take their places, but some of us sided with our female colleagues instead.

I liked the series; it brought back a lot of memories. 

And back in the real world, the battle for gender equality in journalism was hardly resolved by that one lawsuit, but today women are well represented in all kinds of journalism, although pay and power disparities persist.

(Tomato Plant Mystery Update: A second tomato plant has been stolen after nightfall. I suspect a raccoon may be the thief.)

HEADLINES:

• Germany says US troop withdrawal ‘foreseeable’ as Nato seeks clarification (BBC)

• How Germany May Have Misjudged Trump’s Anger on Iran (NYT)

• Top Republicans express concern over withdrawal of US troops from Germany – as it happened (Guardian)

• Trump’s disapproval rating reaches new high, Post-ABC-Ipsos poll finds (WP)

• What’s Iran’s 14-point proposal to end the war? And will Trump accept it? (Al Jazeera)

• GOP war powers resolution argument triggers a furor between Trump, lawmakers over Iran (The Hill)

• White House says the Iran war is ‘terminated’ (Reuters)

• For a Time, the U.S. Protected Democracy (Atlantic)

• What to know about federal court ruling blocking mailing of widely used abortion pill (PBS)

• King Charles charms America and avoids pitfalls during his four-day whirlwind US tour (CNN)

• Rogan rips ‘ridiculous’ Kimmel backlash over Melania Trump joke (The Hill)

• Stephen Colbert Gets Ready to Hang It Up (NYT)

• What do Ukraine’s robot soldiers mean for the future of warfare? (Al Jazeera)

• Zuckerberg won’t rule out more job cuts at Meta (Reuters)

• Elon Musk went to court. The judge wasn’t amused. (WP)

• Musk testimony dominated first week Musk v. Altman. ‘You can’t just steal a charity’ (CNBC)

• Table Tennis Champion Too Weak To Hoist Trophy Over Head (Onion)