Public Enemy

(The following is a rant.)

Just in case anyone needed more evidence of the obvious, Donald J. Trump has confirmed he was guilty of inciting violence on Jan. 6th by inciting violence again — this time against the officials investigating him.

Among his followers are some misguided and foolish enough to do what he says; thus the New York D.A. Alvin Bragg is already getting death threats.

It truly amazes me that Trump so utterly lacks any semblance of a human conscience that he can brazenly threaten those he perceives as his enemies with what he knows are incendiary messages to his acolytes willing to carry out his orders.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s already blood on Trump’s hands for those who died as a result of the Capitol riot. When will whatever is left of a legitimate Republican Party denounce and expel this guy from their ranks?

He was always fond of labeling others as the “enemy of the people.” In fact, that was a classic case of projecting, as he was actually talking about himself.

Donald J. Trump is truly the enemy of the American people. Case closed.

LINKS:

• ‘Reckless’ Trump rhetoric could get someone killed, top Democrat warns (Guardian)

• Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg gets death threat with powder after Trump warns of probe-related violence (CNBC)

• Unearthed footage from 2018 shows Trump's current lawyer saying the Stormy Daniels hush-money payment could be a 'real problem' for Trump (Business Insider)

• District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office, zeroing in on former President Donald Trump for a $130,000 hush money payoff of porn actor Stormy Daniels, strongly rejected a demand for information from Trump-supporting House Republicans. [HuffPost]

• Trump calls for removal of every top official investigating him (The Hill)

• Trump warns of ‘potential death & destruction’ if he is charged in hush-money case (WP)

• US Capitol rioter who barged into Pelosi’s offices sentenced to three years in prison (CNN)

• House passes GOP 'Parents Bill of Rights' measure opposed by Biden (NBC)

• Utah's new social media law means children will need approval from parents (NPR)

• An Idaho bill meant to provide students with free feminine hygiene products in schools failed after Republicans slammed it as too “woke.” “This bill is a very liberal policy, and it’s really turning Idaho into a bigger nanny state than ever,” state Rep. Heather Scott (R) said. [HuffPost]

• Graham admonished by Senate Ethics (Politico)

• A Florida principal was forced to resign after parents complained their sixth-grade children were shown images of Michelangelo’s “David” sculpture. One parent reportedly called the famed artwork "pornographic." [HuffPost]

• America’s online privacy problems are much bigger than TikTok (WP)

• Lawmakers Blast TikTok’s C.E.O. for App’s Ties to China, Escalating Tensions (NYT)

• TikTok faces uncertain future after 5-hour congressional thrashing (WP)

• Florida Republicans are working to make it a lot easier to sue reporters for defamation, outraging many First Amendment advocates and publishers around the state. If they become law, a pair of bills would lower the bar for defamation cases, restrict protections for the use of anonymous sources and limit circumstances where media outlets can win attorneys fees if they countersue. [HuffPost]

• Shares of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's Block fell 4% in premarket trading, a day after the payments firm's Cash App business became the latest target of US short seller Hindenburg Research. (Reuters)

• Banking fears spread to German giant Deusche Bank (CBS)

• Layoffs in California Stall Employment Growth: San Francisco and Silicon Valley Hardest Hit (Wolf Street)

• What Really Broke the Banks — The Fed, among others, is blameworthy. But the ultimate culprit is COVID-19. (Atlantic)

• Why advertisers aren’t coming back to Twitter — Elon Musk is still the problem.  (Vox)

• Laid-off workers are calling out their former employers on social media–and the death of non-disparagement clauses could make it the norm (Fortune)

• ‘Zoom Towns’ Exploded in the Work-From-Home Era. Now New Residents Are Facing Layoffs (Bloomberg)

• OpenAI turns ChatGPT into a platform overnight with addition of plugins (Venture Beat)

• ChatGPT Can Now Browse the Web, Help Book Flights and More (CNET)

• AI chatbots compared: Bard vs. Bing vs. ChatGPT (The Verge)

• A 16-Month-Old Chatbot Startup With No Revenue Is Now a $1 Billion Unicorn (WSJ)

• Why we need to be wary of anthropomorphising chatbots (New Scientist)

• Maybe A.I. Will Be a Threat—To Governments (Reason)

• “Is AI Turning Me Into an Obsolete Machine?” (New York)

• Beyond ChatGPT: what chatbots mean for the future (Economist)

• Fake images of Trump arrest show ‘giant step’ for AI’s disruptive power (WP)

• Keep Talking to the Taliban — Shaming and shunning won’t make life better for Afghans. (Foreign Policy)

• The Taliban in government: A grim new reality is settling in — Taliban decision-making over the past 20 months reveals where Afghanistan is headed – towards an impoverished autocracy. (Al Jazeera)

• Life Is Worse for Older People Now — A generation of Americans still can’t escape the threat of COVID. (Atlantic)

• NASA Is Tracking a Huge, Growing Anomaly in Earth's Magnetic Field (ScienceAlert)

• Utah Passes Social Media Law Stating That Teens May Only Be Groomed In Person By Religious Leaders (The Onion)

 

Laugh Lines

My grandchildren and I have a running joke that they are really in trouble on the nights when their parents go out and leave me in charge. But the truth is they are not the least bit intimidated by their Grandfather, for good reason.

I simply don’t see as part of my job description to be their disciplinarian. That’s their parents’ job. My only red line is any behavior that endangers their safety.

Anyway, they know the limits their parents insist upon and for the most part they try to observe them. And of course parenting today includes the issue of screen time, which was not much of a thing when I was a kid.

Oh, there were limits on TV in some households, and in more recent times on video games as well, but countless generations of kids grew up without exposure to the tiny yet powerful computers everyone carries around in their pockets now — mobile devices capable of storing all the knowledge ever gathered by humankind in all of our collective history.

And now, with ChatGPT-4, Bard and the rest of the artificial intelligence apps, we have technologies that can and will employ vast datasets of digital knowledge banks far larger than any human could master to communicate with us and, eerily, with each other.

How will we adapt to a world where our machines may be smarter than us?

When Alvin Toffler and Adelaide Farrell wrote Future Shock in 1970, they described a psychological state people experience when they face too much change in too short of a time.

The coming of AI in exactly one of those moments, it appears. It’s likely to shake up our world as much as the Internet and mobile devices did and then some — while many of us are still struggling to absorb those previous shocks to our way of life.

I’m not very technical by nature but I’m also not a technophobe, so although AI concerns me, I expect bright young people like my grandchildren to figure out how to cope with it over time, including what to use it for and what not to use it for, as well as how to limit its deleterious effects.

Then again, if it were me who were in charge of all these types of things for them, they’d be in big trouble, if you catch my drift. After all, every good joke needs a punchline and I don’t have mine yet.

LINKS:

• Manhattan DA’s office slams House GOP inquiry, says it was motivated by Trump creating ‘false expectation’ of imminent arrest (CNN)

• U.S. TikTok ban likely inevitable, regulatory expert says (Fox)

• NPR cancels 4 podcasts amid major layoffs (NPR)

• U.S. launches airstrikes in Syria after suspected Iranian drone kills a U.S. worker (NPR)

• Is GPT-4 the dawn of true artificial intelligence? (Economist)

• Tech guru Jaron Lanier: ‘The danger isn’t that AI destroys us. It’s that it drives us insane’ (Guardian)

• AI might have already set the stage for the next tech monopoly (Politico)

• The Age of AI has begun — Artificial intelligence is as revolutionary as mobile phones and the Internet. (Bill Gates)

• Where today's generative AI shines (Axios)

• OpenAI says 80% of workers could see their jobs impacted by AI. These are the jobs most affected (EuroNews)

• How academia can embrace ChatGPT and reignite a love for learning (SCMP)

• GM to stop making Chevy Camaro, leaving muscle car’s future uncertain (CNN)

• Ford CFO: We are ‘refounding’ the company, cutting costs to make EV business profitable (Yahoo)

• It Wasn’t Just Credit Suisse. Switzerland Itself Needed Rescuing. (WSJ)

• Lawmakers turn up the heat on TikTok's CEO Shou Zi Chew in high-stakes hearing (NPR)

• Texas ‘preemption’ bills escalate war between liberal cities, conservative legislature (The Hill)

• Disney World Defies Ron DeSantis by Hosting Gay Rights Summit in Florida (Newsweek)

• Afghanistan is ready to work with the US, but sanctions must go (Al Jazeera)

• Afghan scholar: Time is up, Taliban must reverse ban on girls going to school (CNN)

• The Taliban’s top leader is under pressure for his strict ban on women’s education (Deseret News)

• More than 1 million girls barred from classes as Afghan school year begins: UNICEF (First Post)

• Xi and Putin pledge to shape a new world order (NBC)

• In a Brother Act With Putin, Xi Reveals China’s Fear of Containment (NYT)

• Russia launches deadly strikes across Ukraine as China’s Xi departs Moscow. (CNN)

• DeSantis calls Putin a ‘war criminal’ after labeling Ukraine war a ‘territorial dispute’ (The Hill)

• DeSantis' policy agenda includes new restrictions on abortion and further loosening gun laws, stances that may help him in his expected run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination but could hurt his chances of actually being elected, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll. (Reuters)

• DeSantis wants ‘media accountability.’ A new bill makes suing journalists easier. (WP)

• Uganda Passes Strict Anti-Gay Bill That Imposes Death Penalty for Some (NYT)

• Most trans adults say transitioning made them more satisfied with their lives (WP)

• Iraq WMD failures shadow US intelligence 20 years later (AP)

• Deep Sea Mining Just Lost Its Biggest Corporate Backer (Bloomberg)

• Trump appointees interfered to weaken EPA assessment of toxic chemical (Guardian)

• Trapdoor spider: New giant species found in Australia (BBC)

• New Desktop Folder Created For Sad Little Creative Project (The Onion)

 

Cornered

It's hardly news that legal controversies surround Donald Trump, as they’ve swirled around him for decades, but an actual indictment and arrest would, of course, be unprecedented. Trump has been a virtual Houdini in escaping accountability for questionable actions his entire life, and there is a strain of American culture that celebrates that kind of outlaw status for sure.

But it appears he has pushed the legal system to its limit this time around. Even so, the process of trying him — for anything — will create a greater strain on our judicial system than it has seen to date.

And there is more than one way to destroy a democracy than undermining faith in the electoral system. There’s undermining faith in the legal system as well.

Assuming an arrest in the Stormy Daniels hush-payment case comes first, which apparently is an iffy assumption, New York officials will have to coordinate with Trump’s secret service detail to even get him into a courthouse and book him. That won’t be easy.

Meanwhile, D.C. courts appear to be willing to pierce the attorney-client privilege in the classified documents case. That can’t be a good precedent to set, even if it is justified.

In Georgia, perhaps the most open-and-shut case against the former President in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, the decision by the grand jury foreperson to speak out created a media circus topped off by a skit on SNL. More drama does not mean better justice.

But by far the most important case against Trump is that he incited the mob that violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6th, intending to disrupt the Electoral College process and thereby subvert U.S. democracy. This was a matter of treason.

At this point, no one knows whether Trump will ever be convicted of any of these crimes. Indeed, it is far from clear that any jury in any part of the country would be able to achieve the unanimous vote needed to convict him because a certain subgroup — maybe 25-30 percent of the population — remains stubbornly loyal to him as their outlaw.

Should this would-be despot escape justice yet again, God help us and God help our democracy.

Thanks to my friend and retired public defender Joel Kirshenbaum for help on this one. 

LINKS:

• The Manhattan DA's investigation into Trump and the Stormy Daniels hush payment, explained (ABC)

• Legal drama surrounding Trump reaches a fever pitch (CNN)

• Trump shares possibility of no indictment in hush money case (The Hill)

• Trump's potential indictment caps decades of legal scrutiny (AP)

• Judge rules Trump lawyer must testify in special counsel probe of classified documents (MSNBC)

• Why a unanimous jury will never convict Trump, even if he’s guilty as sin (SFC)

• Trump wants to be handcuffed for court appearance in Stormy Daniels case, sources say (Guardian)

• Trump called for protesters. They turned up and demanded his arrest (Independent)

• Sources: Special counsel claims Trump deliberately misled his attorneys about classified documents, judge wrote (ABC)

• Fed Raises Rates but Nods to Greater Uncertainty After Banking Stress (WSJ)

• A Big Question for the Fed: What Went Wrong With Bank Oversight? (NYT)

• Credit Suisse fallout threatens to halt issuance of risky bank debt (Financial Times)

• How the Last-Ditch Effort to Save Silicon Valley Bank Failed (WSJ)

• AI Loves—and Loathes—Language (Wired)

• Generative AI Makes Headway in Healthcare (WSJ)

• Google’s new AI chatbot seems boring. Maybe that’s the point. (Vox)

• Google’s Bard lags behind GPT-4 and Claude in head-to-head comparison (TechCrunch)

• Idaho hospital to stop delivering babies, partly due to ‘political climate’ (WP)

• Mark Zuckerberg's Past Comes Back to Haunt Him (The Street)

• Washington prepares for war with Amazon (Politico)

• TikTok's chief executive will tell lawmakers the Chinese-owned short video app with more than 150 million American users has never, and would never, share U.S. user data with the Chinese government amid growing U.S. national security concerns. (Reuters)

• Oklahoma must allow abortion if mother’s life is threatened, court rules (WP)

• Is this normal? California is facing its 12th atmospheric river this winter following a historic drought (CNN)

• A 5,000-mile seaweed belt is headed toward Florida (AP)

• Supreme Court divided over Navajo Nation water rights claim involving Colorado River (ABC)

• A Major Clue to COVID’s Origins Is Just Out of Reach (Atlantic)

• U.S. will speed transfer of Abrams tanks to Ukraine, Pentagon says (WP)

• Horrifying Email From Ex-Girlfriend Titled ‘A Few Things’ (The Onion)

Dueling Fairy Tales (Reprise)

 [A 1913 illustration from Russian folk tale ‘At the Pike’s Behest,’ also known as ‘Emelyan the Fool.’ В. Курдюмов]

One thing about the current war that has surprised much of the world is how well the smaller and outgunned Ukrainian army has fared against the massive and well-armed Russian force since the latter invaded in February.

But two scholars who were not quite so surprised both happen to be experts on the psychology of children’s literature and how such stories influence our behavior as adults, especially in times of crisis.

Social scientists Sophia Moskalenko and Mia Bloom published an article called “How fairy tales shape fighting spirit” in an academic journal called The Conversation that compares the differences in Ukrainian and Russian folklore as reflected in their respective children’s fairy tales.

Their conclusions are provocative:

• The master narratives that Ukrainian children grow up with – which serve as the dominant cultural script – are radically different from the ones Russian children absorb.

• Traditional Ukrainian bedtime stories, such as “Kotygoroshko,” “Kyrylo Kozhumyaka” and “Ivasyk Telesyk,” all portray unassuming characters persevering against insurmountable odds.

• In Ukrainian children’s bedtime stories, the main characters often start out as unlikely heroes, but their courage, cleverness and grit help them succeed against the odds.

• In contrast, Russian children’s stories often revolve around a central character named Ivan Durak – Ivan the Stupid.

• In Russian fairy tales such as “By the Pike’s Wish,” “Princess Frog” and “Sivka Burka,” the main character eventually prevails. He doesn’t win through his own virtues, though, but through the intervention of a magical being – a fish, a frog, a horse – that does all the hard work while the main character claims credit.

• These Russian folk tales seem to suggest that the recipe for success is not to be too smart or work too hard, but to sit tight in hope that magic will take care of everything.

Nobody would suggest that the entire explanation for the Ukrainians’ surprising success against the Russians will boil down to which fairy tales they learned as children, of course, and the authors of this article are suitably modest in their claims.

But they may be on to something extremely significant here.

[Thanks to my friend Laurie Sigillito, founder and CEO of Local News Network, for alerting me to the fairy tales article.]

LINKS:

• Why a unanimous jury will never convict Trump, even if he’s guilty as sin (SFC)

• Trump’s Hush Money: A History of the WSJ’s Investigation (WSJ)

• House GOP uses its new power in extraordinary effort to shield Trump from indictment (CNN)

• What Trump's 'arrest' claim says about his hold on politics and the 2024 election (NPR)

• Stop Overthinking It: An Indictment Would Be Bad For Trump (Politico Mag)

• Mugshot, fingerprints, handcuffs? What is the process for indicting Donald Trump on criminal charges (Independent)

• Law enforcement prepare for possible indictment of Trump (CBS)

• Despite Trump’s call for protests in anticipation that he'll be arrested for hush money payments to adult actor Stormy Daniels, members of the media vastly outnumbered his supporters at the rally outside the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Other major U.S. cities are beefing up security to prepare for unrest.[HuffPost]

• A federal judge rejected a request by Trump to keep key evidence out of his civil rape trial next month. The judge ruled that key witnesses will be allowed to testify and misogynistic remarks Trump made in 2005, when he apparently didn’t realize he was being recorded, can be played for a jury that will hear the case brought by former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll. [AP]

• Credit Suisse Sets a Frightening Precedent for $250 Billion in Bonds (Barron’s)

• World on ‘thin ice’ as UN climate report gives stark warning (AP)

• The AI Revolution Could Be Bigger and Weirder Than We Can Imagine (Ringer)

• Why All the ChatGPT Predictions Are Bogus (Atlantic)

• Google’s catch-up game on AI continues with Bard launch (WP)

• Bing’s AI chatbot can now generate unhinged images along with unhinged text (Ars Technica)

• Bing A.I. and the Dawn of the Post-Search Internet (New Yorker)

• Nearly Half of Firms Are Drafting Policies on ChatGPT Use (Bloomberg)

• Four ways ChatGPT could help level the humanitarian playing field (New Humanitarian)

• Perhaps The Most Disruptive Technology In History Is Coming And It’s Expected To Change Everything. Businesses And Marketers Need To Get Quantum Ready. (Forbes)

• Iowa’s sharp right turn: From centrist state to ‘Florida of the North’ (WP)

• We’ve Got What It Takes to End Poverty in America (Mother Jones)

• Xi’s trip to Russia boosts 'dear friend' Putin as China pushes back against U.S. power (NBC)

• Afghanistan's school year starts with calls for all girls to be allowed back (Reuters)

• Top Afghan Taliban leader issues decree against nepotism (AP)

• Macron’s Government Survives but Faces Wrath of France Over Pension Overhaul(NYT)

• Biden signs legislation to declassify certain intelligence on Covid pandemic origins (CNBC)

• Los Angeles schools shut down as staff begin 3-day strike (AP)

• Parents Formally Announce Transfer Of Expectations To Second Child (The Onion)