Happy 245th, America

Four items lead the news this Independence Day.

First off, the news that Sha’Carri Richardson, one of the most talented U.S. sprinters, cannot compete in the Olympics because she tested positive for cannabis is outrageous. Whoever heard of someone doing something *faster* while under the influence of pot?

My brother-in-law was once stopped by the cops for driving too slowly while stoned, but in those days there was no test for detecting marijuana use. His case was hardly unique. So IMHO it's more likely that cannabis would slow Ms. Richardson down, not speed her up.

I say "Let her run!" 

***

Second, how many people recognize the name Ed McBroom? He's a straight-talking dairy farmer from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan who as an elected state senator, vowed to get to the bottom of whether the 2020 election was stolen by Biden with massive voter fraud.

Accordingly, he directed the Oversight Committee he chaired to embark on an exhaustive 8-month inquiry into the integrity of Michigan's electoral system.

Their conclusion was there had been no fraud whatsoever. Absolutely none. The election system worked fine and Biden's win in the state was fair and square.

What was McBroom's reward? 

Trump immediately denounced his report as a "cover-up" and him personally, publishing his phone number. He urged his fanatical supporters to go after McBroom. As the threats started to pour in against him and his family, McBroom spoke with a writer from the Atlantic about the people attacking him for the report, some of whom he knows personally.

“These are good people, (but) they’re being lied to, and they’re believing the lies,” he said. “And it’s really dangerous.”

In my book Ed McBroom, the conservative Republican, is an American patriot and hero.

***

Third on today's list: The links to a large portion of the content published on the web the past quarter-century are broken -- either the content has been removed, the links are no longer compatible with today's software, or the overall decay of the web has swept them into the dustbin of history.

Many web pages have been permanently deleted by periodic house-cleaning by the content's host. 

One study indicates that fully 50 percent of the links cited by the Supreme Court in its decisions since 1996 no longer work. Another study indicates that 75 percent of the links in scientific articles are similarly dead.

As we've become almost completely dependent on digital copies of documents to conduct our affairs and stay informed, this vulnerability to losing our access to history is deeply disturbing. 

***

Finally fourth-up this Fourth of July:  Bloomberg's essay celebrating revisionist histories of America.

History certainly needs rigorous fact-checking, we can all agree on that. New facts are always being discovered; some of them suggest far different interpretations of events than the conventional wisdom of the day holds to be true.

For example, recently I cited how the memoirs of Mexican soldiers and observers of the battle at the Alamo indicate a far different scenario than the Walt Disney fantasy of a heroic band led by Davy Crockett sold to us at kids. 

Ignorance is a far greater danger than over-compensation such as the current "cancel culture" with its foolish excesses. Because as the Bloomberg essay points out, even basic truths remain unknown to many modern day Americans:

"According to one recent survey, 63 percent of the American public is not aware that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Ten percent had not heard of the Holocaust at all." 

One of those ignorant souls was Marjorie Taylor Greene until she visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. Her apology afterward gave me a sliver of hope that even the most ignorant people in our country are not necessarily beyond hope if we can just get them the help they need.

Here was the headline on CNN after her outing: "Marjorie Taylor Greene apologizes for 'offensive' Holocaust comparison after visiting Holocaust museum." 

And that, friends, is my Independence Day message.

***

THE HEADLINES:

1. The doping rules that cost Sha’Carri Richardson have a debated, political history -- Few believe marijuana boosts athletic performance, especially in sports such as track. So why does it remain on the list of banned substances? (WP)

2. The Senator Who Decided to Tell the Truth -- A Michigan Republican spent eight months searching for evidence of election fraud, but all he found was lies. (Atlantic)

3. The Internet Is Rotting -- Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone. (Atlantic)

4. America the Beautiful, Revised Version -- On this Fourth of July, America should celebrate its revisionist history. (Bloomberg)

* As Afghan Forces Crumble, an Air of Unreality Grips the Capital -- With the Taliban advancing and U.S. troops leaving, President Ashraf Ghani and his aides have become increasingly insular, and Kabul is slipping into shock. (NYT)

* Biden’s cold response to Afghanistan’s collapse will have far-reaching consequences (Editorial Board/WP)

* 'What was the point?' Afghans rue decades of war as U.S. quits Bagram (Reuters)

* Afghan pullout has US spies reorienting in terrorism fight  (AP)

* They Didn’t Expect to Retire Early. The Pandemic Changed Their Plans. -- After years in which Americans worked later in life, the latest economic disruption has driven many out of the work force prematurely. (NYT)

* Europe in vaccination race against COVID-19′s delta variant (AP)

* Pay goes up as employers eye smaller pool of workers (WP)

* Student-Loan Holders Get Piecemeal Relief -- Congress and the White House so far appear unwilling to take sweeping actions to cancel student debt. (WSJ)

* Trump Is Said to Have Called Arizona Official After Election Loss -- Donald Trump tried to reach the top Republican in metropolitan Phoenix as his allies were trying to overturn the state’s 2020 results, according to the official, who said he did not pick up the calls. (NYT)

* Climate change has already gotten deadly. Scientists say it will get worse. (WP)

* Potential for Significant Wildfires Is Above Normal for a Growing Share of the U.S. (WSJ)

* Western Canada lightning strikes up tenfold, stoking fires (Reuters)

* After early successes in its campaign against the coronavirus, the White House starts to run into the limits of its power (WP)

* The Strange, Sad Death of America’s Political Imagination -- The U.S. used to be a country of invention and change. Today, our politics are sclerotic, our civic culture is in crisis, and our dreams are small. What happened? (NYT)

* FBI launches flurry of arrests over attacks on journalists during Capitol riot (WP)

* Rioters accused of erasing content from social media, phones (AP)

* The Data Behind Baseball’s Stickiest Problem-- MLB began cracking down on pitchers using foreign substances to improve their grip on the ball. The game changed dramatically. (WSJ)

* Africa’s Last Absolute Monarchy Convulsed by Mass Protests -- Eswatini, the former Swaziland, has been ruled by high-living kings since its independence in 1968. Its impoverished citizens say they’ve had enough. (NYT)

* Indonesia caught between surge and slow vaccine rollout (AP)

* Delta Variant Fuels Missouri’s Covid-19 Uptick -- Public-health experts say the increase is a warning sign of what may happen this summer in other areas of the U.S. with low vaccination rates. (WSJ)

* Las Vegas is bouncing back, but the virus is on the rise too (AP)

* A Mystery Illness Is Killing Mid-Atlantic Songbirds -- Wildlife officials are asking people not to feed birds or provide bird baths amid dozens of reports of mysterious songbird deaths. (NPR)

* We’re excited to announce the first stamp rendered by Indingenous artist Rico Worl, highlighting an important story to the Native people of the PNW Coast. (U.S. Postal Service)

*Could AI Keep People ‘Alive’ After Death? -- Experts are exploring ways artificial intelligence might confer a kind of digital immortality, preserving the personalities of the departed in virtual form and then allowing them to evolve. (WSJ)

* Family Spends Relaxing Weekend Destroying Outdoors (The Onion)

***

"America the Beautiful"

Sung by Ray Charles

Songwriters: Katherine Bates / Alexander Courage / Samuel Ward

Oh beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife
Who more than self, their country loved
And mercy more than life

America, America may God thy gold refine
'Til all success be nobleness
And every gain divined

And you know when I was in school
We used to sing it something like this, listen here

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies
For amber waves of grain
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain

But now wait a minute, I'm talking about
America, sweet America
You know, God done shed his grace on thee
He crowned thy good, yes he did, in brotherhood
From sea to shining sea

You know, I wish I had somebody to help me sing this
(America, America, God shed his grace on thee)
America, I love you America, you see
My God he done shed his grace on thee
And you oughta love him for it
'Cause he, he, he, he crowned thy good
He told me he would, with brotherhood
(From sea to shining Sea)
Oh Lord, oh Lord, I thank you Lord
(Shining sea)

P.S. Happy 245th Birthday America! I've been around 30 percent of the time you have.

-30-

Give It Away.4

(This is the fourth of four parts.) 

At HotWired, staff members were inventing the future without a roadmap, so the only kind of manager they needed was somebody who was calm and knew how to stay out of their way most of the time.

But they also needed someone with a direct channel to Wired CEO Louis Rossetto, who was directing the Starship Enterprise into uncharted galaxies.

So I quickly established an open-door style of management, which wasn't terribly difficult since there were no doors -- we all sat together in one big open space.

But there were a few airless conference rooms where I could meet with staffers privately. My assistant soon was booking consecutive 15-minute sessions from early morning until late at night.

We had a lot to talk about.

It didn't take long for me to fall in love with the Gen Xers reporting to me. For the most part, they were a bunch of smart, nerdy iconoclasts stretching the limits of Internet technology to interact and tell stories in new ways and disrupt the established media industry.

At the same time the were partying in their own way with sex, drugs, and rock & roll every bit as openly as we had two decades earlier right across the street at Rolling Stone.

In fact, the neighborhood still contained some of the same bars and cafes we'd hung out at back then, although South Park had since gentrified from a quiet tree-lined loop where black families lived into a frenetic hipster lunch hangout at the epicenter of the digital revolution.

Louis and the leadership of Wired Inc. wanted to take the company public and cash in like the dot.com entrepreneurs we celebrated, but when they first tried to do that in the summer of 1996, a temporary hiccup in the stock market for the red-hot tech stocks caused them to withdraw the offer.

Later in the year a second try at an IPO failed as well, which was the first sign of the trouble that would lay ahead. But I was too busy managing the emergence of a viable web-based media company to give it more than a passing thought. 

Collectively, we'd become proficient not only at launching new websites, but instituting efficient production systems. Publishing stories required a series of actions by different staff members; we devised a process that ushered each piece through the various stages of production quickly before going live.

Meanwhile, I started to meet with the handful of other media executives doing similar work at CNET, Knight-Ridder, Yahoo, the @Home Network and so on work out an ad-hoc set of standards for our websites.

The issues were basic ones: How to position banner ads, display color-coded links, indicate sponsored content and the like. (Some of these same folks went on to help form the nonprofit Online News Association in 1999.)

Throughout 1996 and the first half of 1997 HotWired was entering into new partnerships and business deals. The global news service Reuters embedded an editor in our newsroom and we negotiated a deal to distribute digital news jointly.

In order to rationalize the chaotic jumble of sub-brands into a cohesive whole, we decided to rebrand the entire enterprise Wired Digital, with the main product a new service called Wired News. This was a logical but difficult process that required all of my skill managing up to convince Louis Rossetto that it was the right direction for us to take.

We also sold off some of our properties, including the popular alt-health channel "Ask Dr. Weil" to Time Inc., which led to a visit from Time executive Dan Okrent, an old colleague from Michigan Daily days. 

As I showed him around our shop, we compared notes on our separate journeys through the world of media -- him at the pinnacle of the traditional media world in New York; me at the bleeding edge of new media world coming to life on the left coast.

In order to fill out the staff for Wired News, we hired a few experienced editors to provide guidance to the younger staff members, few of whom had actually attended journalism school or spent time at newspapers, magazines or broadcast media companies.

During the spring and summer of 1997, despite our best efforts on the content side, dark storm clouds were beginning to appear on the company's horizon. The failed IPOs had undermined confidence in Louis's leadership and an ambitious set of younger execs had moved into positions of influence inside the company.

Aware of the rumblings for management change, I doubled down on my loyalty to Louis and his vision as the founder; especially because my dozens of young staff members were literally pouring their hearts out building a company according to that vision -- also one where their own dreams might have a fighting chance to come true.

But time was growing short. Eventually, plans for an internal coup were set in motion that would require the removal of key people, including me, and ultimately Louis and his co-founder and partner Jane Metcalfe as well.

The traitors thought their plan was secret but I'd been tipped off by loyal staffers, down to the details of the weekend gathering at Tahoe where they set their final takeover plan in motion.

So when the day came that I was summoned to the climactic meeting where I was to be thanked for my service, handed a severance check, and told to go home, I had prepared myself emotionally as much as possible.

In reality, however, I was an emotional wreck. My personal life had been just as disrupted as the traditional media world I'd come from. I was in the tender first years of my second marriage, with teenagers from the first to consider, plus new babies coming into my life every other year, usually around 4 a.m. after another long night at the office.

A few days after my youngest son was born, my mother-in-law had visited us. 

Seeing me get up in our Bernal Heights cottage at 6 a.m., drive to the Golden Gate Bridge to pick up my oldest daughter to take her to Lowell High School in the City, then race downtown to start my day at Wired, working until 8 p.m., then driving back to Marin to handle some matter involving my older children, then back to Elsie Street to help calm  the babies, only to go back online and field emails for another hour or two, she noted: "David, you won't survive burning the candle at both ends. Nobody does."

She was right of course. By the time I finally got laid off I was fundamentally exhausted physically and emotionally. My marriage was in trouble and my finances were a mess. All I remember is collapsing into a chair and sobbing. I'd driven myself and my staff to reach an unrealistic dream that was never going to be realized, and the worst part of it was that dozens and dozens of my young colleagues were going to lose their jobs as well.

Their names were all on the corporate hit list that some of the engineers had hacked into. It was going to be a bloodbath.

Those with the means to do so quit before they were fired and fled the place using the code message "Leaving for Las Vegas."

The sharks had surrounded and were entering the fishtank.  Before long the Wired empire would be completely dismembered and sold off to the highest bidders. Louis and Jane were pushed out, and other founders left to create new ventures like The Industry Standard.

I went back to the office one last time to collect my belongings and say good-bye. For eleven straight hours, staffers came by one by one, sometimes in pairs or threes, to hug and exchange contact information. 

***

Wired magazine and Wired News did survive the purge but under separate ownership and it was years later before they were reunited. In an ironic twist, my oldest daughter as a young journalist interned at Wired News during the first decade of the new millennium.

None of her colleagues knew her father had been one of the executives involved in the birth of their news service, and she didn't enlighten them. By that point there wasn't much institutional memory lingering at the offices on Third Street anyway.

Everyone had scattered to the four winds, where they would carry on the digital revolution under new guises.

I too went on to other things, first to Salon, where we mounted an investigative unit that probably saved President Bill Clinton's butt from conviction in his impeachment trial (at least that's what he said afterwards); and subsequently to many other web-based media jobs over the next quarter century until I retired at the end of 2019.

They say you never get over true love in life. Maybe that's true at work as well. Wired was the very first company in the Internet era to try and invent a new type of web-based journalism and looking back I'm glad to say I played a small part in that effort.

Yes friends, I ended up leaving my heart in San Francisco, a big piece of it anyway, down on Third Street.

END OF STORY

(Dedicated to Mary, John & Scamp and all the other Tiredlings.)

***

THE HEADLINES:

* The Senator Who Decided to Tell the Truth -- A Michigan Republican spent eight months searching for evidence of election fraud, but all he found was lies. (Atlantic)

* Trump Organization Is Charged With Running 15-Year Employee Tax Scheme -- The company was accused of helping its executives evade taxes on compensation by hiding luxury perks and bonuses. (NYT)

* Trump seeks to use indictments as a political rallying cry as he tries to survive latest legal threat (WP)

* Trump Was Not Indicted. But the Charges Still Threaten Him. -- The criminal case against the former president’s business could deliver a blow to his finances, and he remains the focus of a broader investigation in New York. (NYT)

* Allen Weisselberg, the top Trump Organization executive not named Trump, now knows the price of loyalty to the former president: He was led into court in handcuffs to face charges of conspiracy, grand larceny, criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records. The indictments of Donald Trump's company and finance chief in a long-running tax fraud are the first shoe to drop in what looks like a determined investigation. There's a lot more legal trouble dogging Trump. And his "poor-me" witch-hunt defense may not work on a jury. [HuffPost]

* Trump’s business made him famous. Now it faces felonies, debt and toxic brand. (WP)

* Tax law experts see ‘strong’ case against Trump Org. CFO  (AP)

* How Pro-Trump Local News Sites Keep Pushing 2020 Election Misinformation (Georgia Public Radio)

* India’s death toll tops 400,000 as delta variant gains ground worldwide (WP)

* The Delta variant has now been detected in all 50 states and Washington, DC (CNN)

* Johnson & Johnson says its coronavirus vaccine is effective against delta variant (WP)

* Almost five out of every six coronavirus cases went undetected in the first months of the pandemic. (Los Angeles Times)

* As the World Health Organization draws up plans for the next phase of its probe of how the coronavirus pandemic started, an increasing number of scientists say the U.N. agency it isn’t up to the task and shouldn’t be the one to investigate. (AP)

* Firefighters are tackling three major wildfires in California in worrying sign as summer begins (WP)

* The 1,000 residents of Lytton, British Columbia, scattered with just a few minutes' warning after a wildfire overcame the town and burned everything to the ground. Some residents are still missing. Lytton set a temperature record of 121 degrees the previous day. (AP)

*Extreme heat is killing people in Arizona’s mobile homes (WP)

* The $300 per child monthly checks that have begun flowing to parents are about to become a key feature for American families. But Democrats have no idea what to call the life-changing money. [HuffPost]

* Era ends, war looms as U.S. forces quit main base in Afghanistan (Reuters)

* A Crippling 3rd Wave Of COVID Adds To Afghanistan's Woes (NPR)

* China and India have deployed tens of thousands of troops, placed advanced military equipment and built new infrastructure at their disputed border in recent months, as the rivals escalate their long-running standoff. (WSJ)

* The Supreme Court Abandons Voting Rights (Editorial Board/NYT)

* The Roberts court systematically dismantles the Voting Rights Act (Editorial Board/WP)

* The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday turned away a case challenging libel protections for journalists and media organizations, but conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch disagreed with the action and questioned such protections enshrined in a landmark 1964 ruling. (Reuters)

* Homicides in California jumped by 31 percent last year, making it the worst year for homicides since 2007 (AP)

* MLB places Dodgers star pitcher Trevor Bauer on leave, investigates sexual violence accusation (WP)

* At the midpoint of the baseball season, no team has a better record than the surprising San Francisco Giants (51-30) or more homers (119). (MLB.com)

* The Data Behind Baseball’s Stickiest Problem (WSJ)

* Elsa rapidly strengthens into hurricane, could affect Florida next week (WP)

* Older Americans Stockpiled a Record $35 Trillion. The Time Has Come to Give It Away. (WSJ)

* Richard Branson announces trip to space, ahead of Jeff Bezos (AP)

* Robert Gottlieb on the Man Who Saw America (And We Mean, All of It) (NYT Book Review)

* U.S. sprinter tests positive for cannabis (Reuters) [DW note: So what? When did pot ever speed anyone up?]

* Woman All Geared Up To Complain About Work Sidelined By Friend With Marital Problems (The Onion)

***

"Piece Of My Heart"

Song by Big Brother and The Holding Company

Songwriters: Bert Berns / Jerry Ragavoy

Oh, come on, come on, come on, come on

Didn't I make you feel like you were the only man? Yeah
And didn't I give you nearly everything that a woman possibly can?
Honey, you know I did
And each time I tell myself that I, well I think I've had enough
But I'm gonna show you, baby, that a woman can be tough

I want you to come on, come on, come on, come on and take it
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby (whoa, break it)
Break another little bit of my heart now, darling, yeah, yeah, yeah (whoa, have a)
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby
You know you got it if it makes you feel good
Oh, yes indeed

You're out on the streets looking good
And baby, deep down in your heart, I guess you know that it ain't right
Never, never, never, never, never, never hear me when I cry at night
Babe, and I cry all the time
But each time I tell myself that I, well I can't stand the pain
But when you hold me in your arms, I'll sing it once again

I said come on, come on, come on, come on and take it
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby
Break another little bit of my heart now, darling, yeah
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby
Well, you know you got it, child, if it makes you feel good

I need you to come on, come on, come on, come on and take it
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby (whoa, break it)
Break another little bit of my heart, now darling, yeah, c'mon now (whoa, have a)
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby
You know you got it, whoa

Take it
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby (whoa, break it)
Break another little bit of my heart, now darling, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah (whoa, have a)
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby, hey
You know you got it, child, if it makes you feel good

Give It Away.3

[This is the third in a series.]

Early in 1996 as our workforce at HotWired expanded, we outgrew the original office, which was adjacent to Wired magazine, and moved a block south to another converted warehouse at 660 Third Street.

On a personal level, if the parallels from my time at Rolling Stone two decades earlier weren't already in my mind, now they became unavoidable. From the window next to my desk at HotWired I could look directly into the small office across the street at 625 Third where Howard Kohn and I had written our three-part series about Patty Hearst and the SLA back in 1975.

One of many similarities between the two offices was the almost constant stream of celebrities who wanted to visit us when they came to San Francisco. At Rolling Stone, it had been rock stars, of course, but also journalists, professors, actors and politicians.

HotWired was no different, but the visitors now included rising stars in tech like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, as well as virtually every other aspiring Internet entrepreneur. Also there were tech-savvy musicians like Brian Eno and politicians like Bill Bradley, a former Olympic basketball player and a Democratic senator who wanted to run for president. 

Among those who wanted to speak with me specifically were journalists from the Washington Post, Newsweek, the L.A. Times, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, tech magazines, business magazines, NPR, the TV networks. They marveled at the scene of hip young people at desk after desk of computer screens spread over two floors connected by a spiral staircase, music playing, and miles of pink ethernet cable snaking around everything.

I was a comfortable interview for mainstream journalists since I was just technically literate enough to translate for them what was going on, though I was still a newcomer to this world. Basically I sprinkled web terms liberally into my sound bites, which made me sound like an expert.

The reporters confided to me that this whole scene made them nervous because the implications of the digital revolution seemed likely to deep-six a lot of journalism jobs. 

They were right about that.

What made these HotWired visits especially newsworthy was the stock market frenzy that was making Internet millionaire out of 26-year-olds right and left, plus the fact that it was widely known that Wired, too, was preparing for its own IPO -- an initial public offering later that year. 

One of the documents I carried around was the Wired prospectus for potential investors. It described how Wired Inc. would ride the rise of an Internet economy to become a global media empire.

No small part of the vision hinged on the efforts of our team at HotWired, since the kinds of multiples envisioned in the prospectus were unlikely to be generated by an analog magazine alone.

But we were experimenting with a wide range of content strategies, including a search engine (HotBot), advertising models (the banner ad was a HotWired creation), the earliest web blogs (like Suck), interactive bulletin boards, audio programs (presaging podcasts) and digital video, which included a fledgling TV program called Netizen TV.

For the first time in my career, I held options to purchase shares in the company that would vest over time. And as a vice-president, my holdings were large enough to potentially make me wealthy -- a prospect that had never before even occurred to me.

But this was early 1996, when pretty much anything seemed possible...

(To be continued.)

***

THE HEADLINES: 

(The firsts one deserves special attention) 

* The Internet Is Rotting -- Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone. (Jonathan Zittrain/The Atlantic)

• Election to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom set for September 14 (CNN)

* U.S. Supreme Court gives states more leeway to restrict voting (Reuters)

* Trump Organization charged with ‘scheme to defraud’ government; CFO charged with grand larceny, tax fraud (WP)

* ‘Not a healthy environment’: Kamala Harris’ office rife with dissent -- There is dysfunction inside the VP’s office, aides and administration officials say. And it’s emanating from the top. (Politico)

* The House voted to create a select committee to investigate the pro-Trump mob's Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Still unanswered is whether GOP lawmakers conspired to aid the insurrection. All but two Republicans — Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — opposed creating the panel. [HuffPost]

* Majority of Florida condo board quit in 2019 amid conflicts over repair plans (WP)

* Since When Have Trees Existed Only for Rich Americans? -- Trees protect cities from extreme heat. But in most places, only the rich enjoy them. (NYT)

* More than 100 people have died in climate change-fueled record heat scorching the Pacific Northwest, and extreme temperatures may persist until mid-July. No place in North America is ready for this heat. Workers say it's too damn hot. [HuffPost]

* No one was prepared for the Northwest heat wave — especially not the animals (WP)

* Forest fire guts small western Canada town after days of record-breaking heat (Reuters)

* As Western Wildfires Worsen, FEMA Is Denying Most People Who Ask For Help (NPR)

* Underpaid firefighters, overstretched budgets: The U.S. isn’t prepared for fires fueled by climate change -- Fire experts say the escalation of wildfires demands an equally dramatic transformation in the nation’s response. (WP)

* Biden Pledges Money for Firefighters as a Heat Wave and Wildfires Roil the West -- The president cautioned that the United States was years behind in developing a strategy to combat the worsening fires and their underlying causes. (NYT)

* Exxon Lobbyist Caught On Video Talks About Undermining Biden's Climate Push (NPR)

* U.S. companies spend billions on stay-at-home tech, boding ill for office properties (Reuters)

* U.S. Wins Backing for Global Minimum Corporate Tax-- Officials from 130 countries agreed to broad outlines of a wider overhaul of the rules for taxing international companies. (WSJ)

* Putin Pushes Vaccinations as Russia Faces New Coronavirus Wave (AP, Reuters)

* China is building more than 100 new missile silos in its western desert, analysts say (WP)

* The number of immigrants detained by ICE has risen significantly under President Joe Biden, swamping detention centers and private prisons. The influx raises questions about whether detaining so many people is the best way to handle immigration. [BuzzFeed]

* Rincon Island, an artificial island built during the 1950s just off the coast of Ventura County, once pumped oil from 50 wells. But after the company that owned it went bankrupt, taxpayers are on the hook for the cleanup costs. (The Desert Sun)

* Willis Johnson, billionaire founder of a global junkyard company called Copart, lives in Tennessee. But he sent a large donation to South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to fund her deployment of National Guard troops to the Texas-Mexico border. "I believe in her state and Texas," he said. [Politico]

* A Microsoft executive told Congress the company gets thousands of federal law enforcement secrecy orders for customer data each year, "a sea change from historical norms." [AP]

* NSA discloses hacking methods it says are used by Russia (AP)

* John Cox, a Republican candidate for California governor, said he would force homeless people into mental health or addiction treatment before providing them with housing. (AP)

* Police officers and an accompanying bulldozer dismantled a Sausalito tent encampment where 35 people lived. (San Francisco Chronicle) 

* Los Angeles considers stricter limits on homeless camping (AP)

* Pandemic Surges Again in Many Parts of the World, Fueled by Variants -- The highly contagious Delta variant is on the rise, and countries that hoped they had seen the worst of Covid-19 are being battered again. (NYT)

*  Another Respiratory Virus Is Spreading as U.S. Gets Back to Pre-Covid-19 Life -- Cases of RSV, which are typically more common in winter months, are rising in Southern states. (WSJ)

* How fires get their names. (Sacramento Bee)

* Britain's William and Harry put feud aside to unveil Princess Diana statue (Reuters)

* Expected to Be Demure, Japan’s Girls Face Steep Hurdles to Athletic Dreams -- The Tokyo Olympics offer a chance to crown a new set of heroes to inspire budding female athletes. But once the spotlight dims, Japan’s rigid gender norms will still limit opportunities. (NYT)

* A Historic Nashville Music Venue—Now Open—Is Fighting to Survive (WSJ)

* Knocked down by a pandemic, baseball gets back up in America (Reuters)

* A Monument To Journalist, Civil Rights Activist Ida B. Wells Is Unveiled In Chicago -- The Light of Truth Ida B. Wells National Monument is unveiled a year after Wells was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the lynching of African Americans. (NPR)

* While there may be a genetic component, most twins are the result of one or both parents saying, “We’re just gonna have the one and then see how things are looking financially in a few years.” (The Onion)

***

And here's a HotWired playlist, courtesy of Mary, John & Scamp:

* Orbital - Are We Here

* Talvin Singh - Butterfly

* TLC - Waterfalls

* Cocteau Twins

* Sun City Girls - Space Prophet Dogan

* Boredoms - Molecicco

* Lush - Desire Lines

-30-

Give It Away, Circa 1996

When I joined the young HotWired team in late 1995, I'd already been in journalism for 30 years, which was not necessarily considered as a good thing by my new colleagues as they were busily upending the analog world in favor of the digital.

The online adjunct to Wired magazine was not yet two years old, which would turn out to be about a third of its ultimate lifespan. It also was undergoing a massive growth spurt.

We were hiring people almost as fast as we could; I joked to friends that our interviewing strategy was to lock the door behind candidates so they couldn't leave even if they wanted to. That wouldn't have mattered because nobody wanted to leave -- if you were a Gen-Xer and at all creative, this is exactly where you wanted to be.

As for me, I may have been old compared to the rest of them, but my career had been in the alternative media, not the mainstream. From my days in the underground press to SunDance to Rolling Stone to CIR to New West to Mother Jones and public radio plus a dozen other stops along the way, I had pretty much remained outside of traditional journalism institutions.

But I did adhere strictly to the values and standards of traditional journalists.

My new colleagues were writers and reporters and editors and designers and photographers and engineers and interface experts and audience research specialists and several other categories of workers, almost all of them in their 20s, whereas I was turning 50.

They all spoke a common language unfamiliar to me, with terms like web browser, domain name, interactivity, bandwidth, interface, pixels, TCP/IP, url, html, coding, style sheets, IP address, network domain and on and on -- so many that I scribbled them down on a scrap of paper and kept it in my pocket much as I would foreign language phrases when visiting distant countries overseas.

When I finally got around to asking someone what all of these words meant he quipped: "Don't worry what they mean; just sprinkle them liberally into your speech and your market value will triple."

As I took that under consideration, the daily political site I ran called The Netizen began to flourish. We were rapidly building a large audience during the early months of election cycle 1996. Wired's CEO. Louis Rossetto, suddenly took an interest in what I was doing. He had a reputation both as a visionary and a difficult boss; many employees seemed fearful of his ill-temper. He was a fierce advocate of libertarian political views and was dismissive of leftist ideas.    

So when he first summoned me to a meeting I really didn't know what to expect. Most of my work had appeared in left-leaning publications, and those who didn't know me well assumed my own politics were defined by that.

Perhaps he expected that he and I would not agree on much. But from our very first meeting, the man I got to know was different than his image -- he was quiet-spoken, thoughtful and happy to debate the issues of the day and -- most importantly -- willing to remain open-minded about how we  covered those issues in The Netizen.

That kind of tolerance was critical if I was to remain part of the Wired organization, which I wanted to do. Louis and I quickly developed a mutual trust that allowed us to talk through the various sides of the issues we were covering and agree to disagree when we could not reach a consensus.

Meanwhile he never interfered in my actual editorial choices, though they often departed from what I know he would have preferred.

The ultimate test came when one of our cantankerous columnists decided to write a piece savagely critical of Wired itself and everything it stood for. This surely would be too much for Louis to handle, I thought.

As the piece was about to post, I let him know what was coming. His response was refreshingly direct: "Let him rant!" We ran the piece unedited.

In my book, that made Louis Rossetto a great boss.

Dealing with CEOs other people considered difficult was nothing new for me; after all, I'd studied under one the masters, Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone.  Others may have feared these men and their outbursts, but I liked them and developed a deep fondness for both Jann and Louis that would last for decades.

Partway through my tenure on Third Street, Louis suddenly told me to come to his office outside of our appointed weekly meeting time so I assumed there must be bad news of some sort. Instead he surprised me by saying he wanted to move me to the top layer of the org chart as V.P. of Content for all of the websites in the HotWired network.

I hadn't sought this role at all but quickly agreed to it, especially the large raise. (At home we had a baby on the way.) In my new position, dozens of people reported to me including my former bosses, all of whom were half my age. I immediately set forth on a mission to deepen the collaboration between the various teams that made up the company's online universe. 

If I was going to help lead this unruly, lovable band of revolutionaries, I was going to do it right.

(To be continued)

***

THE HEADLINES:

* Moderna says vaccine works against delta variant as WHO warns of global spread (WP)

* Covid-19 is killing Brazilian children at alarming rates. Many may be going undiagnosed (CNN)

* Virus infections surging in Africa’s vulnerable rural areas (AP)

* Masks Again? Delta Variant’s Spread Prompts Reconsideration of Precautions. -- Los Angeles County and the W.H.O. warned that even immunized people should wear masks indoors. Some scientists agreed, but urged a localized approach. (NYT)

* Fauci warns there may soon be 'two Americas' as divide widens between places with high and low vaccination rates and the Delta variant spreads (CNN)

* Search for Covid’s Origins Leads to China’s Wild Animal Farms—and a Big Problem--A WHO-led team wants an examination of the farms that supplied the market where early cases emerged, but most of the animals are now gone. That has complicated the search for the pandemic’s source. (WSJ)

* Video, images and interviews deepen questions about role of pool deck in condo collapse (WP)

* Security in Afghanistan Is Decaying, U.S. General Says as Forces Leave -- “Civil war is certainly a path that can be visualized,” said Gen. Austin S. Miller, commander of the U.S.-led forces. “That should be a concern for the world.” (NYT)

* ‘A Form of Brainwashing’: China Remakes Hong Kong -- Neighbors are urged to report on one another. Children are taught to look for traitors. Officials are pressed to pledge their loyalty. (NYT)

* Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has sent her state's National Guard to Texas, funded by a GOP megadonor, to deal with a made-up "border crisis." Noem, a likely 2024 candidate and enthusiastic ally of ex-President Donald Trump, is using the troops in "some authoritarian fantasy of a personal military," an expert said. [HuffPost]

* New York City's Human Rights Commission slapped the right-wing network with a $1 million fine, its largest ever, for violating laws protecting against sexual harassment and job retaliation. Fox also agreed to mandate training and  temporarily drop a policy requiring people who allege misconduct to enter into binding arbitration. [AP]

* Progressives Are Hoping That Justice Stephen Breyer Steps Down At The End Of The Term (NPR)

* Vote counting to determine the next New York mayor was cast into chaos after election officials released, then withdrew, a new tally that accidentally included 135,000 test ballots. The preliminary results from the new ranked-choice voting system showed the race between Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia and civil rights attorney Maya Wiley narrowing significantly. [HuffPost]

* House votes to remove statues of Confederate leaders from U.S. Capitol (WP)

* With Workers In Short Supply, Seniors Often Wait Months For Home Health Care (NPR)

* Why sea otters are a secret climate warrior -- As climate change introduces new stressors on marine ecosystems around the world, researchers in California have found that sea otters can help mitigate the impact through their role as a keystone species in kelp forests. (Reuters)

* Drought Leads to Water Limits in Northern California(WSJ)

* The Lava fire in Siskiyou County, which has burned across 13,330 acres and is 20 percent contained, is the largest of five wildfires burning in California. (Los Angeles Times)

* Death rate soars as Canada's British Columbia suffers "extreme heat" (Reuters)

* The West Coast Heat Has Killed Dozens And Hospitalized More In Canada And The U.S. (NPR)

* California tests off-the-grid solutions to power outages (AP)

* It’s not the heat. It’s the existential dread. (WP)

* A bear and her three cubs took a dip next to beachgoers in South Lake Tahoe. (CBS)

* A diver found a message in a bottle dated 1926. Then the hunt began for the family of the man who wrote it. (WP)

* Fish At Pretty Good Place In Its Life Right Now (The Onion)

***

"Come As You Are"

Kurt Cobain (Nirvana)

Come as you are, as you were
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend
As an old enemy

Take your time, hurry up
Choice is yours, don't be late
Take a rest as a friend
As an old

Memoria, memoria
Memoria, memoria

Come doused in mud, soaked in bleach
As I want you to be
As a trend, as a friend
As an old

Memoria, memoria
Memoria, memoria

And I swear that I don't have a gun
No, I don't have a gun
No, I don't have a gun

Memoria, memoria
Memoria, memoria
(No I don't have a gun)

And I swear that I don't have a gun
No I don't have a gun
No I don't have a gun
No I don't have a gun
No I don't have a gun

-30-