It Begins

(Note: As I was writing this post, a pair of Downy Woodpeckers, male and female, appeared in the tree outside my window. I took that as a sign that spring is coming.)

***

Well, the legal troubles for Donald J. Trump have officially begun with his indictment in New York, and from all indications there are more such charges on the way in other jurisdictions.

So for starters, let’s just agree it is a sad day when for the first time in our history a former president has been indicted.

We’re apparently going to have to wait for his arraignment in Manhattan on Tuesday to learn the specific charges he faces. That hasn’t stopped commentators on all sides of the political spectrum from speculating about them.

And, of course, the inevitable claim from Trump’s allies that this indictment is actually a political witch-hunt that amounts to persecution as opposed to a legitimate prosecution.

Since the D.A. bringing the charges, Alvin Bragg, is a Democrat who campaigned on the promise to hold Trump accountable for his alleged crimes, it is extremely difficult to simply refute the witch-hunt possibility out of hand, and I won’t even try.

On the other hand, as one who has covered local prosecutors for many years, I have to say that the more politically ambitious of these officials are far less likely to bring a case they think they cannot win, because that would hurt their careers.

Accordingly, while Bragg may indeed be politically motivated, that only strengthens the likelihood that he feels he has a very strong case against Trump. As I and others have previously noted, it will be extremely difficult to get a unanimous jury verdict against Trump in any jurisdiction, including New York, due to his fervent base of supporters who appear likely to stand by him, no matter what.

Therefore, my expectation is that Bragg has an overwhelming amount of evidence in this case, though we’ll have to wait until Tuesday to see whether that is in fact true.

So much more than Trump’s innocence or guilt is at stake, however. This may be the first of several legal cases against the former president. How our judicial system fares in the eyes of the American people in these efforts to enforce the law will go a long way toward determining our democracy’s prospects in the 21st century.

LINKS:

• Republican leaders and Trump loyalists on Capitol Hill rally behind the former president after indictment (CNN)

• Indictment follows 50 years of investigation on many fronts (WP)

• New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman noted that criminal charges must be a "very scary moment" for Trump. "This is somebody who has spent more than four decades trying to avoid being arrested or being indicted," Haberman said. "And so this is a really scary moment for him, despite whatever he says." [HuffPost]

• A President Faces Prosecution, and a Democracy Is Tested (NYT)

• Indictment could be a double-edged sword for Trump's 2024 presidential campaign (NPR)

• Trump indictment throws 2024 race into uncharted territory (AP)

• After a guest on his show warned that Trump’s indictment marked a “civil war era” in the U.S., Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Americans should hold onto their assault rifles. “Probably not the best time to give up your AR-15, and I think most people know that,” Carlson said. [HuffPost]

• Here’s what Trump’s indictment means and what happens next (WP)

• Wall Street Journal reporter is first U.S. journalist to be arrested in Russia since the Cold War (MSNBC)

• In Arrest of American Reporter, Russia Doubles Down on Isolation From West (NYT)

• An AI researcher who has been warning about the technology for over 20 years says we should 'shut it all down,' and issue an 'indefinite and worldwide' ban (Business Insider)

• This ChatGPT alternative is free, open source, and available now (Digital Trends)

• ChatGPT banned in Italy over privacy concerns (BBC)

• The Bureau of Land Management has largely prioritized leasing its lands for mining and drilling. A new rule would change that. The proposed rule would direct BLM to “protect intact landscapes, restore degraded habitat, and make wise management decisions based on science and data.” In addition, BLM would have to incorporate land health assessments into its decisions on land use. [HuffPost]

• Speeding up drug discovery with diffusion generative models (MIT News)

• New Rules Will Make Many Electric Cars Ineligible for Tax Credits (NYT)

• How Networks and Streamers Are Prepping for a Potential Writers Strike (Hollywood Reporter)

• Scientists Find Footprints Older Than the Dinosaurs (Discover)

• Iowa star Caitlin Clark, like Steph Curry, has redefined what a good shot is in basketball (USA Today)

• Park Ranger Slips Fat Fish To Bear Before Gesturing Towards Littering Family He Wants Mauled (The Onion)

 

Data Times

According to a report in ScienceNews, researchers have discovered that the brains of people whose only language is German are configured differently than those of people who only speak Arabic. 

At the same time we are learning of this interesting and potentially useful fact, much-better financed researchers are programming artificial intelligence “brains” to manage problems many orders of magnitude more complex than how we process the differences between languages.

I’m afraid our priorities, as a species, are badly out of order.

AI, whatever its potential, is now engaged in a gold rush. Profits will determine its future development. By comparison, basic neuroscience is like a slow-motion hunt for the occasional nugget in a river swarming with fool’s gold.

As we limp haltingly toward a better understanding of our own brains, we are racing toward unleashing much more powerful equivalents in robots. I’m afraid that this is a race we — the people — are going to lose.

As Jill Lepore asks in this week’s New Yorker, “what’s the price to humanity of uploading everything anyone has ever known onto a worldwide network of tens of millions or billions of machines and training them to learn from it to produce new knowledge?”

I guess we’re about to find out exactly what that price will be. And then it really won’t matter how our biological brains change when we speak German or Arabic.

LINKS:

• Donald Trump indicted; 1st ex-president charged with crime (AP)

• Trump claims ‘political persecution’ in wake of grand jury indictment (Guardian)

• An American Tragedy, Act III — The indictment of the former President by a Manhattan grand jury begins a perilous new phase in the Trump saga. (New Yorker)

• Your brain wires itself to match your native language (ScienceNews)

• The Data Delusion (New Yorker)

• Publishers Worry A.I. Chatbots Will Cut Readership (NYT)

• Alphabet’s Google and DeepMind Pause Grudges, Join Forces to Chase OpenAI (The Information)

• ChatGPT has passed the Turing test and if you're freaked out, you're not alone (TechRadar)

• The FTC should investigate OpenAI and block GPT over ‘deceptive’ behavior, AI policy group claims (CNN)

• Review: We Put ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Bard to the Test (Wired)

• ChatGPT vs. Google Bard vs. Bing Chat: Which generative AI solution is best? (SearchEngineLand)

• ChatGPT vs. Bing vs. Bard: Which AI is best? (PCWorld)

• Wall Street Journal reporter arrested in Russia on spying charges (CNN)

• Putin’s Russia Is Going Broke Fast. Here’s Why. (New Republic)

• Massive documents leak offers rare look at how Russia wages cyberattacks (WP)

• What the fight over TikTok really means (Financial Times)

• US money supply falling at fastest rate since 1930s (Reuters)

• How Uber left Lyft in the dust (CNN)

• A sale may be the only ‘rational’ solution for Lyft, observers say (Crain’s)

• Lyft might drop shared rides, stay focused on basics under new CEO (TechCrunch)

• We Should Fix Silicon Valley, Not Tear It Down (Atlantic)

• After Mass Shootings, Republicans Expand Access to Guns (NYT)

• Armed groups on the right and left exploit the AR-15 as both tool and symbol (WP)

• Yellen says US bank rules may be too loose, need to be re-examined (Reuters)

• Trump appeals order directing Meadows, other aides to testify in Jan. 6 probe (The Hill)

• Former Vice President Mike Pence signaled that he may not pursue a legal battle to avoid testifying in the Justice Department’s criminal probe into former President Donald Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election. “At the end of the day, we’ll obey the law," Pence said. [HuffPost]

• ‘You can see the terror’: Trump’s tough guy posture ahead of looming indictment isn’t fooling these insiders (Independent)

• F.D.A. Approves Narcan for Over-the-Counter Sales (NYT)

• A Shepherd, a Cook, a Palace Chef: Making Food With Less Under the Taliban (NYT)

• Afghan applying to resettle in UK asked to provide Taliban approval (Guardian)

• The Complicated and Messy Task of Trying to Aid Afghans Following the Return of the Taliban (Military.com)

• How Disney outmaneuvered Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (WP)

• It’s Not Just Oceans That Are Rising. Groundwater Is, Too (Gizmodo)

• The Salinas Californian, the main local news source for the 163,000 residents of Salinas, has had no reporters since December. (LAT)

• Ancient DNA is restoring the origin story of the Swahili people of the East African coast (The Conversation)

• Male Substitute Teacher With Ponytail Cloaked In Mystery (The Onion)

 

Hate Speech

As a former sports editor at the college newspaper at a major sports powerhouse ((1968-’9, Michigan), I certainly appreciate the passion fans bring for events like March Madness. 

Plus I remain a big fan myself. Almost every day, old friends and I exchange messages about how our alma mater’s teams are faring.

The tournament and bowl games are especially exciting as young athletes compete in what for the vast majority of them will be the final and highest level of their athletic careers.

That’s because they’ve worked hard to get this opportunity to shine in a national spotlight, and fewer than two percent of NCAA student-athletes will go on to be professional athletes. 

Meanwhile, the age of social media has brought with it an unbelievable level of verbal abuse aimed at college athletes when they fail to play at their best.

An AP report, “A Different March Madness: Online Hate for the Athletes,” details the current state of the situation, including the experience of one of Michigan’s star basketball players, Terence Williams II.

When Michigan’s season ended with a tournament loss, the online abuse of Williams included a post that he should end up “dead in a ditch.” Williams’ father was justifiably outraged and unleashed what the AP described as a “profanity-laced response to all the haters.” 

He explained his perspective about those who attacked his son to the news service, “(They) actually root for them when they’re good. But then they make a mistake, and a game doesn’t go (their) way and (they) turn to hate. That’s unacceptable.”

The unhealthy relationship so many Americans seem to have with social media makes me reluctantly sympathetic to calls for much stricter government control. Although I’m a free speech proponent, frankly too many individuals seem incapable of exercising their free speech rights responsibly.

They simply cannot be allowed to threaten to kill somebody, for example, much as they aren’t allowed to yell “fire” in a crowded theatre or storm the U.S. Capitol when they don’t like an election result. 

There comes, finally, a time even in a full democracy that certain limits on free speech need to be imposed. It worries me that I’m afraid that time is now.

LINKS:

• Manhattan Trump grand jury set to break for a month (Politico)

• Trump’s Legal Jeopardy and America’s Political Crossroads (NYT)

• Elon Musk joins call for pause in creation of giant AI ‘digital minds’ — More than 1,000 artificial intelligence experts urge delay until world can be confident ‘effects will be positive and risks manageable’ (Guardian)

• How to test what an AI model can — and shouldn’t — do (Vox)

• Generative AI Is Already Changing White-Collar Work as We Know It (WSJ)

• Surprise! ChatGPT Turns Out to Be Terrible at Wordle (ScienceAlert)

• A different March Madness: Online hate for the athletes (AP)

• Hospitals Are Increasingly Crowded With Kids Who Tried to Harm Themselves, Study Finds (NYT)

• A new Idaho bill seeks to limit minors’ ability to travel for abortion care, including abortion pills, without parental consent by creating a whole new crime called "abortion trafficking." Those found guilty would face up to five years in prison. [HuffPost]

• No one needs an AR-15 — or any gun tailor-made for mass shootings (Edit Bd/WP)

• McConnell Comes Out Swinging Against Authorization of Military Force Repeal: Terrorists ‘Aren’t Sunsetting Their War Against Us’ (National Review)

• U.S. Border Policies Have Created a Volatile Logjam in Mexico (NYT)

• Rising Antarctic ice melt will dramatically slow global ocean flows, study finds (Reuters)

• Alarming Decline: Over 3,000 Billion Tons of Ice Lost From Antarctic Ice Sheet Over 25 Years (SciTechDaily)

• With Judicial Overhaul on Hold, Israeli Negotiators Seek Compromise (NYT)

• Netanyahu rejects Biden's call to drop Israel judicial overhaul (BBC)

• U.S., Israeli tensions flare after Biden says Netanyahu won't get White House invite in 'near term' (USA Today)

• Ukraine struck a railway depot and knocked out power in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol, deep behind the front line, amid growing talk from Kyiv of a counterassault against Russian forces worn out by a failed winter offensive. (Reuters)

• Ukraine's Zelenskyy: Any Russian victory could be perilous (AP)

• Torture and Turmoil at Ukrainian Nuclear Plant: An Insider’s Account (NYT)

• Zelensky invites China’s Xi to visit Ukraine (The Hill)

• The Only Realistic Answer to Putin (Atlantic)

• Unseen Taliban Leader Wields Godlike Powers in Afghanistan (VoA)

• External pressure will not stop Taiwan engaging with the world, President Tsai Ing-wen said as she left for the United States, hitting a defiant note after China threatened retaliation if she met House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.  (Reuters)

• A new flu is spilling over from cows to people in the U.S. How worried should we be? (NPR)

• Office vacancies in San Francisco soared to nearly 30 percent in the first quarter of 2023, nearly eight times the level before the pandemic. (SFC)

• Florida Teachers Explain How They Teach History Without Mentioning Race (The Onion)

 

Remember the Pink Mustache?

 After a bad quarter, a lower stock price and more than a decade at the helm of their company, the co-founders of Lyft are stepping aside. (The Hill)

In the tiny, rarified community of those who have started successful tech companies, this is not an unusual development. The founders of such ventures, however competent, rarely remain in charge for as long as they would have in the pre-Internet era.

Similar to the job insecurity known by everyone else in the modern world, founders are considered expendable by the venture capitalists and corporate strategists. Conventional business wisdom has it that other, more experienced types of executives are better suited to build and manage a company once it scales to a certain size.

There’s something a bit sad about that, though of course the founders have by then accumulated great wealth as a consolation prize for losing control of their dream.

As for this particular dream, I remember interviewing Lyft co-founder John Zimmer and meeting some of his earliest drivers soon after the company launched in 2012 with its distinctive pink mustache on the grills of its cars. I already knew Zimmer from his earlier ride-sharing venture, Zimride, and considered him one of the most idealistic startup founders I had interviewed during the crazy years of Web 2.0.

Zimmer told me he hoped Lyft would be a partial solution to the climate crisis.

“If we can help fill the 85 percent of unoccupied seats in private cars, it will mean fewer cars on the road and a lot lower harmful emissions,” he explained to me at the time.

Since those days, the company has enjoyed a lot of disruptive growth and endured a lot of controversy, especially about whether its drivers are contractors or employees. It has ballooned to around a billion dollars a year in revenue and 20 million customers a month (including me, on occasion). The giant pink mustaches from its original iteration are long gone but those empty seats in many of the vehicles on our highways persist.

So no matter who is in charge, from an environmental perspective, Lyft still has its purpose and Zimmer’s vision still has its relevance. That’s worth bearing in mind.

• Lyft founders step down as president, CEO (The Hill)

• Lyft Ride-Sharing Cars Are The Ones Sporting Pink Mustaches — by David Weir in 2012 (7x7)

• Lyft’s New Boss Quickly Loses His Signing Bonus — Relief over founders’ exit gives way to worries about new CEO and Lyft’s dwindling share (WSJ)

OTHER NEWS:

• Generative AI set to affect 300 million jobs across major economies — Technology could boost global GDP by 7% but also risks creating "significant disruption." (Ars Technica)

• The real value of large language models like GPT-4 isn’t in writing, it’s reading (Sifted)

• Biden stuck between China hawks, young voters as TikTok pressure mounts (WP)

• Can a Machine Know That We Know What It Knows? (NYT)

• Twitter is dying (TechCrunch)

• Children and teens are more likely to die by guns than anything else (CNN)

• Mexico migrants: Deadly fire at Juárez migrant centre kills at least 39 (BBC)

• As McCarthy laments ‘no progress,’ here’s where U.S. debt ceiling talks stand (CNBC)

• Donald Trump Has a Fresh Legal Headache, and It May Be His Worst Yet (Slate)

• Trump Allies Beg Him Not To Sh-tpost His Way Into More Legal Trouble (Rolling Stone)

• Trump’s tribute to rioters convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at a weekend Texas campaign rally alarmed GOP senators. "There is no way you’re going to convince the American people that Jan. 6 was anything less than a horrible day," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is backing Trump in his 2024 presidential bid, said. Fox News host Brian Kilmeade denounced Trump's theatrics as "absolutely awful." [HuffPost]

• Russia’s Economy Is Starting to Come Undone (WSJ)

• French workers ramp up strikes over retirement age, raising pressure on Macron (WP)

• Afghans resettled in US fear being sent back as pathway to legal status stalls in Congress (Guardian)

• An Afghan girls' education activist has been arrested, the U.N. says (NPR)

• ‘Being truthful is essential’: scientist who stumbled upon Wuhan Covid data speaks out (Guardian)

• The Catch-22 for Working Parents (Atlantic)

• Efforts to ban books nearly doubled in 2022 over the previous year, according to a recent report published by the American Library Association. The organization logged 1,269 attempts to ban books and other resources in libraries and schools. (NYT)

• Huge Amounts of Water on The Moon May Have Just Been Located (ScienceAlert)

• There have been 89 school shootings – defined as any incident in which a gun is discharged on school property – in the US in 2023, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database. We look at the history of major school shootings in the US. (Reuters)

• Financial Advisor Recommends Fraud (The Onion)

Sacrificial Rites (Again)

(This essay dates from May last year. Given yet another massacre at a school in Nashville Monday, it remains sadly relevant.)

When archeologists dig up ancient human remains, anthropologists speak of the vanished cultures as “primitive” if they appear to have practiced child sacrifice to appease their gods. 

With this in mind, future archeologists and anthropologists should have a field day when they discover the graves of the 17 fourth-grade school children who are being buried in Uvalde this week.

As the richest and most powerful nation on earth, the U.S. naturally doesn’t wish to consider itself a primitive society. And I’m fairly sure that isn’t what Ted Cruz meant either when he stomped away from European reporters asking him about why this kind of mass shooting almost only happens in America muttering, “I’m sorry you think American exceptionalism is awful.” 

Remind me again about that “American exceptionalism.” Perhaps some sort of primitive religion?

Of course, it’s conveniently simple to blame the weapons profiteers and their enablers in elected office for these gun massacres that occur. Certainly the likes of the NRA and acolytes Cruz, Abbott and practically the entire Republican Party shoulder a major share of the blame for these outrageous acts.

But where does that leave the rest of us?

Lowering a flag to half-mast for a few days, observing a moment of silence before going back to our daily routines, holding onto some thoughts about the grief of others — all of that is respectful but does little to prevent the future slaughter of more innocents that is now certain to come.

In fact, much could be done. As long as guns remain so easily available, aggressively preventative measures need to be taken in our schools. 

Meanwhile, organizing to pass much stricter strict gun laws and throwing the gutless culprits out of office who oppose them, will be the slow, frustrating, unsexy work. That is almost always led by the parents of previous massacre victims. Inevitably, an ineffable sense of grief steels their resolve.

Which raises the question of what the rest of us are to do with our ineffable grief.

Will we bury it for the ages? Along with the children? 

Or will we act?

• Protecting Children From Gun Violence (Sandy Hook Promise)

LINKS:

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition plunged into chaos after mass protests over the sacking of his defense chief piled pressureon the government to halt its bitterly contested plans to overhaul the judiciary. (Reuters)

• Netanyahu agrees to pause judicial overhaul following widespread unrest in Israel  (NBC)

• Israel judicial reform: Why is there a crisis? (BBC)

• Israel faces airport closure, strikes as rage over courts overhaul mounts (WP)

• Strikes in Germany disrupt flights and trains, ‘paralyzing’ Europe’s biggest economy (CNN)

• ChatGPT Opened a New Era in Search. Microsoft Could Ruin It (Wired)

• An early guide to policymaking on generative AI (MIT Technology Review)

• Europol sounds alarm about criminal use of ChatGPT, sees grim outlook (Reuters)

• First Citizens Bank to buy Silicon Valley Bank after collapse, FDIC says (WP)

• Taliban official says schools for girls will reopen after curriculum is finalised, report claims (Independent)

• Afghan girls struggle with poor internet as they turn to online classes (Reuters)

• U.N. Investigators Protest to U.S. Over Health Care at Guantánamo Bay (NYT)

• In Waco, Trump stokes anger and valorizes violent actors (WP)

• Yet Another Mass Shooting at Nashville School (NewsChannel5)

• Sick All the Time (Atlantic)

• World ‘population bomb’ may never go off as feared, finds study (Guardian)

• 3 reasons why California's drought isn't really over, despite all the rain (NPR)

• The More Traumatic the Childhood, the Angrier the Adult (Neuroscience News)

• A 1,500 pound great white shark named ‘Breton’ is currently swimming off the coast of North Carolina (CNN)

• Toddler At That Cute Age Where Anything Can Be Projected On Them (The Onion)

 

News Links

LINKS:

• Mass protests erupt in Israel after Netanyahu fires minister who opposed judicial overhaul (CNN)

• Trump lawyer: Former president’s attack on Bragg was ‘ill-advised’ (The Hill)

• Nato calls Russia plans for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus ‘dangerous and irresponsible’ (Guardian)

• A judge sided with publishers in a lawsuit over the Internet Archive's online library (NPR)

• McConnell returns home after treatment for concussion (Politico)

• The Largest Source of Stolen Guns? Parked Cars. (NYT)

• A devastating impact’: SVB’s collapse leaves start-ups with a funding hole (Financial Times)

• AI Is Like … Nuclear Weapons? — The new technology is beyond comparison. (Atlantic)

• Blinded by the speed of change (TechCrunch)

• A.I. is ‘seizing the master key of civilization’ and we ‘cannot afford to lose,’ warns ‘Sapiens’ author Yuval Harari (Fortune)

• Is your job at risk from ChatGPT? (Sunday Times)

• Deep-sea mining for rare metals will destroy ecosystems, say scientists (Guardian)

• Loss Piles on Loss for Afghan Women (NYT)

• Life for Afghans got worse after the Taliban seized power. Now foreign aid is drying up (SCMP)

• Netanyahu’s political touch eludes him as Israel spirals into chaos (WP)

• Worry and suspicion reign as once-dry Tulare Lake drowns California farmland (LAT)

• As Antarctica’s penguins struggle with record low sea ice, one species is adapting – and it offers lessons to us all (CNN)

• Strange Signal From Decades Ago Hints at Hidden Oceans Orbiting Uranus (ScienceAlert)

• The Amazon’s Largest Isolated Tribe Is Dying (NYT)

• 'Live free and die'? The sad state of U.S. life expectancy (NPR)

• Love Actually's Joanna – Where is She Now? Spoiler Alert: She's Gorgeous! (ST)

• Man Returns To Work After Vacation With Fresh, Reenergized Hatred For Job (The Onion)

 

Non-Geeks, Please

This is precisely the time for people who think they don’t care or don’t want to know about the breakthroughs in artificial intelligence to start paying attention, because we need you.

The volume of news in this area is overwhelming all other topics, rendering war, politics and the economy to second-class status for a change,

Personally, I find it exciting — a technological breakthrough as revolutionary at the Internet or the iPhone is upon us, but once again we will be serving as guinea pigs for the future.

Too often with previous breakthroughs, the beta testing stage has been mainly confined to the engineers who devised the technologies in the first place. And that is simply too narrow a gene pool to turn to for something that will become as universally significant as AI.

This is the time we need the skeptics, the “non-techies,” creative generalists, and non-early adapters to exercise their voices in the direction AI takes — for the good of everybody.

What limits do we wish to impose on AI? Do we need job protection for human workers? What is the transition plan to a world where robots perform many of the tasks we have done until now? How do we define intelligence? What about emotional connections? What about the inter-connectedness of all humans — of all living things? Where do machines we invented fit into this ecosystem?

These and many other questions need to be addressed. If we leave the conversation to a tiny techno-elite, that will not yield any kind of an optimal outcome. We need the rest of society to democratize AI or it will deepen the divides that already have spread too widely in an increasingly unfair world.

LINKS:

• Google Bard is a glimpse into a terrifyingly misinformed future (XDA)

• How AI turned the ancient sport of Go upside down (CNN)

• ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy. We need to decide what that looks like. (MIT Technology Review)

• Databricks pushes open-source chatbot as cheaper ChatGPT alternative (Reuters)

• Microsoft Researchers Claim GPT-4 Is Showing "Sparks" of AGI (Futurism)

• If your AI model is going to sell, it has to be safe (Vox)

• From brain waves, this AI can sketch what you're picturing (NBC)

• While OpenAI has been working on text and images, iGenius has been working on GPT for numbers (Venture Beat)

• "Godfather of artificial intelligence" talks impact and potential of new AI (CBS)

• How AI might change our judgment and decision-making (Axios)

• From Rockets to Ball Bearings, Pentagon Struggles to Feed War Machine (NYT)

• Work-From-Home Era Ends for Millions of Americans (WSJ)

• Banks and turmoil: You can’t have one without the other (Reuters)

• Click Here If You Want to Be Sad — The internet loves bad news. And that’s bad. (Atlantic)

• Trump screams into void as Manhattan DA probe goes quiet (Politico)

• Trump rallying supporters in Waco ahead of possible charges (AP)

• Russia plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Putin says (CNN)

• TikTok wants to distance itself from China — but Beijing is getting involved (CNBC)

• L.A. school district and union reach deal after strike closes classrooms (WP)

• Harvard physicist plans expedition to find ‘alien artefact’ that fell from space (Guardian)

• Tennessee’s Rejection of $8.8 Million in Federal Funding Alarms H.I.V. Prevention Groups (NYT)

• Gordon Moore, co-founder and former chairman of Intel, dies at 94 (ABC)

• High concentrations of DDT found across vast swath of California seafloor (Guardian)

• Area Man Only One With Problems (The Onion)