Playlists

(Note: I first published a version of this essay 17 years ago.)

When my 11-year-old was a baby, he used to like me to dance with him while a certain song played -- "You're So Pretty," by the Cranberries. 

The key line in that song is "You're so pretty the way you are." My son kept liking the tune as he got a little older and could start understanding the words. He'd ask me to put it on and dance with him when he needed a little comfort.

As we danced, I whispered in his ear that the song was about him.

***
A couple years ago, I stopped by to see a friend one foggy Friday afternoon after she told me on the phone that she'd been feeling a bit down that day. We listened to a song by the Flaming Lips called "Do You Realize?" That song includes the line, "Do you realize ... that you have ... the most beautiful face?" I told my friend those lyrics could truly have been written for her. Her eyes filled up with tears, but not from sadness.

Often I think about music and how it can affect people at their most vulnerable moments. It has the power to reach across space and time and reconnect us with parts of ourselves that sometimes seem lost — or at least missing. That Flaming Lips song has many remarkable lyrics:

Do you realize—that everyone you know someday will die?
And instead of saying all of your goodbyes—let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

Whenever I write an article or give a speech somewhere, I try to remind myself that —just like with songs — I never can know who is listening, and how the words I choose might affect them. 

Everybody feels vulnerable sometimes. Everybody hurts, to quote the great R.E.M. song. So it's truly a wonderful moment when a singer or a speaker or a writer or an artist of any kind conveys an essential truth that breaks through and reaches our lonely hearts. In fact, no song or story is ever complete, in my view, until it finds a way to convey at least some small sense of hope.

Both my son and my friend will always be pretty much perfect just the way they are, even when I'm no longer around to remind them of that.

And the songs still will be.

LINKS:

• Russian missile and drone attack in Ukraine kills 23 people (AP)

• Ukrainian Troops Repel Russian Attacks, and Hope Western Arms Turn the Tide (NYT)

• Anti-abortion bills fail in GOP-controlled Nebraska and South Carolina (CNN)

• Will We Lose the Right to Abortion? (The Nation)

• The 150-year-old chastity law that may be the next big fight over abortion (CNN)

• Republicans worry DeSantis has erred in Disney feud (The Hill)

• House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) criticized fellow Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over “the idea of building a prison next to a place that you bring your family” as the governor continues his bitter feud with Disney. “If you think that the only action is to go to court, I believe that’s wrong," McCarthy said. [HuffPost]

• Mike Pence testifies in criminal probe of Trump and Capitol riot (BBC)

• E. Jean Carroll says #MeToo inspired her to go public with accusation (WP)

• Trump’s Lawyer Did Him No Favors on Thursday (Slate)

• How Generative AI Changes Everything (Harvard Business Review)

• ChatGPT raises questions about how humans acquire language (Economist)

• AI Is a Waste of Time — The newest AI tools are accelerating basic research and scaring the general public. But many people are simply using them as toys. (Atlantic)

• AI will increase inequality and raise tough questions about humanity, economists warn (The Conversation)

• A radical new idea for regulating AI (Politico)

• Since the firing of Tucker Carlson, viewers have deserted Fox (NPR)

• Report Suggests Tucker Carlson Was Fired Over Prayer Talk: 'Freaks Rupert Out' (HuffPost)

• Accused Pentagon leaker’s violent rhetoric raises fresh questions about top secret vetting process (CNN)

• Afghan Women Who Fought With U.S. Military Seek Legal Immigration Status (NYT)

• Hollywood TV and film writers may go on strike as early as Tuesday if they cannot reach a deal with studios for a new contract with a pay raise. (Reuters)

• Why Hollywood Writers May Go on Strike — The stories we love to binge don’t come from nowhere. (Atlantic)

• VIDEO: Brittney Griner Gets Emotional at First Press Conference After Release

  (Reuters)

• Rare sea creature — a 12-foot ‘devil’ — spotted off US East Coast for the first time (Miami Herald)

• Ultrasound reveals trees’ drought-survival secrets (ScienceNews)

• Tucker Carlson Enters Rehab After Texts Show Him Telling Truth (New Yorker)

  TODAY’s LYRICS

  Song by The Cranberries

  Songwriters: Dolores Mary O'riordan / Noel Anthony Hogan

  You're so pretty the way you are
  You're so pretty the way you are
  And you have no reason
  To be so insolent to me
  You're so pretty the way you are

  La, la
  You got to say it if you want to
  But you won't change me

  La, la
  You got to say it if you want to
  But you won't change me

  You're so pretty the way you are
  You're so pretty the way you are
  And you have no reason
  To be so insolent to me
  You're so pretty the way you are

  La, la
  You got to say it if you want to
  But you won't change me
  La, la
  You got to say it if you want to
  But you won't change me

  Source: LyricFind

 

Baseball Therapy

(I first published an earlier version of this piece 17 years ago.)

Tonight, an old friend invited me to go see the Giants play the Cubs in China Basin, my first game of this season. Baseball has beeen a passion for me since as far back as I can remember (the '50s) when Al Kaline of the Detroit Tigers was my hero. Since moving to San Francisco in the '70s, and having kids, I've transformed into a Giants fan, but really it is baseball itself that I love. 

I've often turned to it in times of trouble for a bit of comfort.

It's a complicated game that involves multiple skills, communication including sign language, strategy, patience, statistics, and good instincts. For players, it requires courage and selflessness. It's a game that teaches you about how to lose and move on. And how there always will be another chance to do well, even after your worst mistakes. In this way, it is a very forgiving sport, sort of like certain religions. 

But, in the actual moment of a game that you stand alone, bat in hand facing a terrifying pitcher; or, alternatively, stand alone on the mound facing a terrifying batter; it's the loneliest of all team sports. That's probably why it is the consummate American pastime, here in the land of the rugged individual, where supermen and superwomen try to pretend they can make it on their own.

I have so many baseball memories and so many journal entries I could write ten books on this subject, and maybe someday I will. For the past five Little League seasons, I've helped coach my son Aidan. Years ago, I used to attend every game his big brother, Peter, played as a Little Leaguer. Both were and are star players on their teams.

I also have played softball on a coed, slow-pitch team called the Michigan Mafia since the late '70s (note: I am not a star); and I manage a (very weak) fantasy baseball team called the Mud Lake Mafia. There are stories behind all of these teams and names.

But those are for another day.

A few years ago, when I first was again a single man after my second marriage ended, I used to take the women I dated to baseball games. It was one way to find out whether we could enjoy being together, a test of sorts, you know?

Some of them didn't have a clue what was going on. Others did.

One special friend went out with me to a night game in 2004. We sat in the centerfield bleachers. She got very excited at the game and by all the noise and stimulation. I couldn’t tell whether she knew what was going on or not until I started seeing the whole scene through her eyes, not mine. 

The key moment came when she explained that she had spotted another woman nearby with copper-colored hair. "That's the color hair I want," she stated emphatically. 

I can't remember the score of that game or which team won, but I can report that after that game, my friend got her hair changed to that copper color, more or less. That turned out to be the only game we attended together, but we did embark upon a lovely relationship.

As for baseball, maybe I'll go back to the park tomorrow night, and perhaps lots of more times this summer. But if this post was about baseball, I got lost somewhere around second base.

LINKS:

• What could actually kill us all? Nuclear war, AGI, and the importance of understanding what makes an existential risk. (Vox)

• Anti-abortion bills fail in GOP-controlled Nebraska and South Carolina (CNN)

• On Eve of Trial, Discovery of Carlson Texts Set Off Crisis Atop Fox (NYT)

• Woman whose accusation led to the lynching of Emmett Till has died at 88 (CNN)

• Jack Teixeira: Suspected leaker made threats and researched shootings, US says (BBC)

• E. Jean Carroll concludes direct testimony in trial accusing Trump of rape (CNN)

• In Searing Detail, Trump’s Accuser Tells Her Story (NYT)

• Trump can’t stop Pence from testifying to Jan. 6 grand jury, appeals court rules (WP)

• McConnell says it’s up to Biden and McCarthy to resolve debt limit impasse (The Hill)

• Can machines be self-aware? New research explains how this could happen (The Conversation)

• AI set to transform construction industry (Fox)

• Zuckerberg Says Meta Will Add Generative AI To All Its Products (Forbes)

• AI creators must study consciousness, experts warn (BBC)

• What to fear about generative AI—and what to do about it (Economist)

• Hollywood Braces for Fallout as a Possible Writers Strike Looms (Variety)

• Gap to lay off 1,800 workers as part of broad push to cut costs (CNBC)

• Dropbox lays off 500 employees, 16% of staff, CEO says due to slowing growth and ‘the era of AI’ (TechCrunch)

• Humanitarian Needs in Afghanistan Deepen as Taliban Continues Ban on Women Working for NGOs, UN (PBS)

• UN agency: Afghanistan needs $4.62 billion in aid for 2023 (AP)

• Satellite images show Russia has been digging in at key strategic points in readiness for an offensive by a Ukrainian military rearmed with state-of-the-art weapons. (Reuters)

• The Great Electrician Shortage (New Yorker)

• Supreme Court on ethics issues: Not broken, no fix needed (AP)

• A terrible silence from the Supreme Court, where ethics have gone awry (WP)

• Polynesian snails release is biggest ever of ‘extinct in the wild’ species (Guardian)

• The Quest for Longevity Is Already Over (Wired)

• Mysterious Radio Signals in Space Keep Repeating – Astronomers Just Picked Up 25 More (ScienceAlert)

• My Newspaper Sued Florida for the Same First-Amendment Abuses DeSantis Is Committing Now — And we won. (Atlantic)

• I Worked at CNN and Reported on Tucker Carlson. He Was Never Invincible. (NYT)

• Long Before Trees Overtook the Land, Our Planet Was Covered by Giant Mushrooms (GNN)

• On Flores Island, Do “Ape-Men” Still Exist? (Sapiens)

• Make Yourself Happy: Be Kind (Atlantic)

• Embarrassed Man Accidentally Says ‘Hello’ To Coworker Instead Of ‘I Feel Like Crying All The Time’ (The Onion)

 

The Roots of Discord

 Around here, my neighbors and I often talk about how to get rid of some of the nasty invasive species of weeds that pollute our lawns. Some say you can dig them up; others say that’s a useless quest.

On our quiet block here in the East Bay hills, every Thursday night at 5 p.m. a small group of us gather for happy hour to discuss this and other subjects. Most of us are retired. 

The topics of discussion often turn from weeds to the state of the world.

That brings me to today’s top story. It is an unusual one in that concerns our common history, be it in my neighborhood or yours. In that context, I almost never recommend academic papers, but please read this one if you wish to understand how we ended up with the invasive political weeds that brought us, in the author’s words, the horrific “racialized populism” of Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump. 

How we eliminate that invasive species from all of our lawns is the big question for our time. 

Disclosure: The historian who is the author of this study also happens to be my son.

LINKS:

• “Displacement and Replacement: The Political History of David Duke, Patrick Buchanan, and Racial Resentment,” by Dylan Weir (JHS)

• Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Employment (WSJ)

• AI Could Spell the End of Big Business — The leading companies in artificial intelligence tend to be small, and many big ones will use it to get smaller.  (Bloomberg)

• ‘Statistically impossible’ heat extremes are here – we identified the regions most at risk (The Conversation)

• 2024 race won’t be like 2020. That’s good and bad for Biden (AP)

• Judge rebukes Trump for ‘entirely inappropriate’ post before E Jean Carroll testimony (Guardian)

• Trump rape accuser says Trump 'lied and shattered my reputation' (Reuters)

• Trump might use trial docs to scorch witnesses, DA says (AP)

• Proud Boys leaders: Trump caused Jan. 6 attack (Politico)

• Tech billionaire and Republican megadonor Peter Thiel, an early backer of former President Donald Trump who later broke with him, has told associates he is not planning to donate to any political candidates in 2024, according to two people close to the businessman. (Reuters)

• Kevin McCarthy basks in rare win after Republicans unite to pass debt ceiling plan (Guardian)

• GOP’s Debt-Ceiling Proposal: Where Do Republicans Want to Cut Spending? (WSJ)

• Don't Count on McCarthy's Spartan Work Mandates to Save Money (Bloomberg)

• The Coming Biden Blowout — Republicans thought about running without Trump in 2024—but lost their nerve. They’re heading for electoral disaster again. (Atlantic)

• Bernie Sanders endorses Biden, rules out 2024 bid of his own (AP)

• In a recorded conversation with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) laid out a plan to create a “commission” to help him overturn the 2020 election to keep Donald Trump in the White House. MSNBC aired the recording Tuesday and Cruz lashed out in return. [HuffPost]

• Roberts declines to appear at Senate’s Supreme Court ethics hearing (Politico)

• Disney Sues DeSantis Over Control of Its Florida Resort (NYT)

• Disney has a ‘strong case’ against DeSantis over his ‘retaliatory campaign,’ First Amendment experts say (CNN)

• Texas agriculture department's new dress code is based on 'biological gender' (NPR)

• Harry Belafonte’s complicated relationship with the civil rights movement (CNN)

• Tucker Carlson: Private messages reveal vulgar insults that ‘sealed’ fired Fox News host’s fate (Independent)

• For the Murdochs, Tucker Carlson became more trouble than he was worth (WP)

• My Profane, Revealing Year Working for Tucker Carlson (Slate)

• Tucker Carlson: Fired Fox News host’s blistering Twitter video beats network’s ratings (Independent)

• Where can Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon go now? (WP)

• Goodbye to the Dried Office Mangoes — Google is clawing back its famously lavish employee perks, sending a message that might be more symbolic than practical. (Atlantic)

• China’s Xi has first talks with Ukraine’s Zelenskyy since Russia's invasion (NBC)

• Sudan crisis: War crimes suspect free amid chaos (BBC)

• Taliban Kill Head of ISIS Cell That Bombed Kabul Airport (NYT)

• Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight origin story is unusual. Now he’s leaving. (WP)

• Bringing back woolly mammoths and dodos is a bad idea (Vox)

• U.S. is concerned about rivals’ space threats, leaked documents show (WP)

• 6-Year-Old Didn’t Cause Parents’ Divorce But Didn’t Exactly Step Up To Prevent It Either (The Onion)

Family Portrait

 Daisy included me! I think this is the first time...

Let It Fly

 (NOTE: I first published a version of this piece 17 years ago.)

“How do we become better writers?”

It's been just over a year since I taught my last course on reporting and writing at Stanford, and I miss teaching. Throughout the 20 or so years I taught journalism at U-C, Berkeley, SFSU, down on The Farm, by far the question posted above was the one most asked by students.

One of the answers I gave might surprise you:

”Email.”

Writers need to exercise, much like athletes. An extended email exchange with the right recipient on a regular basis is the perfect way to improve your writing voice. The reason lies at the intersection between the nature of email itself and the core of the writing process.

When I first started emailing, I called it "talk-writing" or "write-talking." It was a new communication form, combining elements of the arts of conversation and letter-writing. Living somewhere around the midpoint of an imaginary spectrum connecting those two ancient forms, email reopened an ancient struggle for hegemony between them.

Since Gutenberg, the printed word has held the balance of power over the more ancient oral tradition, although the latter has persisted in a few communities.

Suddenly in the 1990’s, came email, which re-righted the balance between the two forms. It's less formal, more spontaneous, and much more interactive than publishing or letter writing. It's also less intimate than conversation face to face.

(IM and chat represent email on steroids. I'll get to them another time.)

Last week, a friend used email to produce the first draft of a piece we were coauthoring about the ongoing FEMA scandals in post-Katrina Mississippi. She sent it in chunks, in between reading my responses. Here is how she described our process when we started:

"So... I'll try to write what I think, then if you want you can edit it etc. I'm going to just write it like an email to you. This is complete stream of consciousness, so have fun with it..."

Most people feel more comfortable just letting it go in email, whereas they might freeze up when they try to write in a more formal way. For me, as an editor, it is easier to pull good writing out of an inexperienced writer via email than to deal with an awkwardly structured draft.

My goal is to help the writer develop a narrative voice, probably based on visual cues and other descriptive triggers. By using email, she will be more relaxed, and send me information in a form that includes explaining to me what she thinks it means. She's not worrying about an audience larger than one. So she just lets it fly.

That’s one essence of what good writers eventually learn to do -- let it fly.

LINKS:

• North Dakota's governor has signed a law banning nearly all abortions (NPR)

• Law firm CEO with US supreme court dealings bought property from Gorsuch (Guardian)

• Clarence Thomas’s Billionaire Friend Did Have Business Before the Supreme Court (Bloomberg)

• Donald Trump Could Lose 'Many Millions' in E. Jean Carroll Trial—Attorney (Newsweek)

• GOP readies debt ceiling vote as Wall Street begins to panic (WP)

• ‘Reckless’: Biden veto threat looms over GOP debt ceiling bill, White House says (The Hill)

• McCarthy’s Massive Debt Limit Bet (Fiscal Times)

• Nvidia has a new way to prevent A.I. chatbots from ‘hallucinating’ wrong facts (CNBC)

• KPMG: US executives unprepared for immediate adoption of generative AI (Venture Beat)

• Inside Meta's scramble to catch up on AI (Reuters)

• The wizards of AI can’t give it a brain, or heart, or consciousness (WP)

• A Refuge From Internet Algorithms Is Hiding in Plain Sight — Unlike TikTok and Instagram, the photos and reviews on Google Maps haven’t been packaged for your taste or mine. (Atlantic)

• Google Ad Revenue Expected to Drop for Second Straight Quarter (WSJ)

• Florida surgeon general altered Covid-19 vaccine analysis to suggest higher risk for younger men, Politico reports (CNN)

• Gap Plans to Lay Off Hundreds of Corporate Workers in Latest Cuts (WSJ)

• 'High bio-hazard risk' in Sudan after laboratory seized, WHO says (Reuters)

• UK secretly deported 100 Nepali guards who protected staff in Kabul (Guardian)

• America Has Dictated Its Economic Peace Terms to China (FP)

• ‘Playing with fire’: the countdown to mining the deep seas for critical minerals (Financial Times)

• A dying Daniel Ellsberg talks about Discord and the power of leaks (WP)

• Ukraine’s Spring Offensive Comes With Immense Stakes for Future of the War (NYT)

• How Russia’s invasion split the mafia (Economist)

• Postcard from San Francisco: Empty robot cars are filling the streets (WP)

• ‘A Large Portion of This Base Is Going to Be Underwater’: U.S. Military Hub Adapts to Climate (WSJ)

• Harry Belafonte, barrier-smashing entertainer and activist, dies at 96 (WP)

• Pack Of ​Feral Throw Pillows Prowling Abandoned Bed Bath & Beyond (The Onion)

Spring Cleaning

 Monday was not a good day for prima donnas posing as journalists on cable television. Both Tucker Carlson at Fox and Don Lemon at CNN lost their jobs.

Some may question mentioning the two men in the same breath because Carlson is by far the worst of the lot, given the size of his audience and his insistence on telling lies and spreading dangerous conspiracy theories.

Lemon’s failings were less egregious. He was a practitioner of the “raised eyebrow” school of communication, where his condescending brand of smug sarcasm replaced straight news reporting to a degree I, for one, could not stomach. His sexist attitudes on the air and (allegedly) behind the scenes were also a problem for CNN.

So I’m glad to see them both go, although they will no doubt find new venues to return to the airwaves before long.

If the mass media companies are ever going to regain any sort of credibility with the American publIc, they have to eliminate propagandists and return to hiring actual journalists to report the news. According to Gallup, “Just 16% of U.S. adults now say they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers and 11% in television news.”

I believe phony journalists like Carlson and Lemon are one part of that problem, though there are many other factors as well.

Clearly, there is much work to be done. But getting rid of some of the pretenders is, IMHO, a good start.

LINKS:

• Biden announces 2024 reelection bid: ‘Let’s finish this job’ (AP)

• Tucker Carlson pushed out at Fox News (CNN) 

• Carlson was negotiating new contract when Murdoch fired him (Independent)

• Fox Corp.’s $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over defamation charges is eye-popping, but a Columbia University professor estimates that Fox, after a tax write-off, will incur about three-fourths of the settlement amount. The network though faces more potentially costly legal challenges ahead, including a $2.7 billion lawsuit from Smartmatic. [AP]

• Don Lemon fired from CNN (NBC)

• DA says indictment announcement coming this summer in Trump probe (Atlanta J-C)

• Jeff Shell, the chief executive of NBCUniversal, is departing the company after admitting to “an inappropriate relationship with a woman in the company.” [AP]

• Florida at Center of Debate as School Book Bans Surge Nationally (NYT)

• Disney begins largest wave of layoffs, targeting thousands at ESPN, Parks, and other divisions (CNN)

• ESPN lays off employees, with more cuts to come (WP)

• SEAL Team 6, Army special forces rescue US diplomats in Sudan; aid workers urged to 'shelter in place' (USA Today)

• European nations, China and others from around the world raced to extract thousands of their citizens from Khartoum during an apparent lull in fierce fighting between the army and a paramilitary force. (Reuters)

• McCarthy’s authority is on the line as debt ceiling crisis mounts (CNN)

• ‘We will pass it': McCarthy whipping debt limit bill (Politico)

• Cities reviving downtowns by converting offices to housing (AP)

• Supreme Court deals blow to oil companies by turning away climate cases (NBC)

• Biden Opens a New Back Door on Immigration (NYT)

• Too many people have access to the US government's closest secrets and a central entity should oversee the classification process, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said, addressing leaks of documents in an online chat group. (Reuters)

• ChatGPT's 'accomplishment engine' is beating Google's search engine, says AI ethicist (ZDNet)

• Anyone can now use Snapchat's 'My AI' chat bot and the memes about 'horrifying' messages have arrived (Insider)

• AI Isn't Going to Reinvent the Alphabet Anytime Soon (Wired)

• I’m about to graduate from law school. Will AI steal my job? (The Hill)

• How we all became AI's brain donors (Axios)

• How to defend against the rise of ChatGPT? Think like a poet. (WP)

• Berkeley researcher deploys robots and AI to increase pace of research by 100 times (Interesting Engineering)

• Chinese Censorship Is Quietly Rewriting the Covid-19 Story (NYT)

• Supreme Court to decide if First Amendment stops government officials from blocking social media critics (CNN)

• YouTube, the jewel of the internet (Financial Times)

• The U.S.’s $42.5 Billion High-Speed Internet Plan Hits a Snag: A Worker Shortage (WSJ)

• As Russians plot against Chad, concerns mount over important U.S. ally (WP)

• A California journalist documents the far-right takeover of her town: ‘We’re a test case’ (Guardian)

• Russia’s economy can withstand a long war, but not a more intense one (Economist)

• China’s Got Afghan Fever, Again — Nothing says forever like the promise of Afghanistan’s mineral riches. (FP)

• How Did the Chess Pieces Get Their Names? (Atlas Obscura)

• Scientists discover why sea urchins are dying off from US to the Caribbean (Guardian)

• Woman Knows To Stay Away From Certain Parts Of Own Psyche At Night (The Onion)

• Elon Musk Falls Below Clarence Thomas on List of World’s Richest People (New Yorker)

The Art of Nature

(Art by Sophia)

Recently, I was explaining to one of my grandchildren my imperfect understanding of how shellfish, waves and the roots of mangrove plants conspire to build islands in the warm salty waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

If you’ve ever been around mangroves, you probably -- like me — have mixed feelings about them. They are, speaking frankly, an ugly species of gnarly, red-brown tangles of underbrush with spider-like roots that grow every which way.

And some pretty nasty real spiders hang from their upper leaves as well.

Down below, mangroves provide housing for snails, barnacles, bryozoans, tunicates, mollusks, sponges, polychaete worms, isopods, amphipods, shrimps, crabs, and jellyfish.

It is not uncommon for an alligator to be lurking in the waters nearby.

But those spider-like roots serve a useful purpose when it comes to island-building. That’s because of the shellfish that live and die in their roots.

Once dead, the winds, tides, salt, sun and currents have their way with them.

Battered in place, the shells eventually break down into grains of sun-bleached sand. When enough of that accumulates in one place — presto! You have a new island with lovely sand beaches. At least that’s my understanding.

Mind you, this happens at a geological pace, i.e., very, very slowly.

Profit-seeking human cultures, by contrast, move all-too quickly. Using modern machinery, a large growth of ocean-front mangrove can be ripped away in days or weeks, to make room for a new city of shiny, high-rise condos rented out to multiple occupants on a time-share basis.

That’s the part I still have to explain to my grandchild: That while it takes millennia to create a new island, it only takes weeks to destroy that from ever again being an option.

(The artist for this piece is 12 years old. She recently visited a lovely shell island on her spring break. She made this piece as a birthday gift for me.)

LINKS:

• Special forces swiftly evacuate US embassy staff from Sudan (AP)

• The Case for Hope, with Rebecca Solnit (The Science of Happiness podcast)

• Abortion Surges to the Center of the 2024 Campaign (NYT)

• Biden v. Trump: Big challenges, but opposite ones, as 2024 rematch begins - Poll (USA Today)

• 38 percent in new poll say they feel ‘exhaustion’ over prospect of rematch between Biden, Trump (The Hill)

• New York trial could confer new title on Donald Trump: rapist (Guardian)

• E. Jean Carroll Rape Allegation Against Donald Trump Heads to Trial (WSJ)

• Gun Violence Is Actually Worse in Red States. It’s Not Even Close. (Politico Mag)

• In wake of Ralph Yarl shooting, Black teens face fear and resignation (WP)

• The impending nightmare that AI poses for media, elections (The Hill)

• Europe sounds the alarm on ChatGPT (Yahoo)

• Our misplaced faith in AI is turning the internet into a cesspool of misinformation and spam (Salon)

• ChatGPT Will Change Housework (Atlantic)

• From pope’s jacket to napalm recipes: how worrying is AI’s rapid growth? (Guardian)

• How A.I.-powered robots are changing retail (CNBC)

• Ukrainian Forces Recapture Land Across Key River in South, Think Tank Says (WSJ)

• Wagner group surges in Africa as U.S. influence fades, leak reveals (WP)

• Thousands of Afghan evacuees remain in limbo nearly 2 years after chaotic U.S. withdrawal — Despite bipartisan support, Congress has thus far failed to pass legislation that would offer Afghan evacuees a path to permanent residency. (Yahoo)

• E.P.A. to Propose First Controls on Greenhouse Gases From Power Plants (NYT)

• De-extinction: Bringing animal species back from the brink (CBS)

• How the Gender Debate Veered Offtrack (Atlantic)

• Eureka! After California’s Heavy Rains, Gold Seekers Are Giddy. (NYT)

• Yes, scientists believe all blue-eyed people came from a common ancestor (Verify)

• Friendships are crucial for seniors. Here’s why and how to make them. (WP)

• Unlocking the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of a Dying Language (NYT)

• Ron DeSantis Ends Disney Feud After Being Given Guest Role On ‘The Mandalorian’ (The Onion)

 

The Leaf

When I was a boy in Michigan, one summer afternoon I was lying on my back in a field staring up at a large tree. It was one of those windless days, hot and still. 

I was alone.

After a while, I realized I was staring at a single leaf that for no apparent reason was turning on its stem. As far as I could see, this leaf was identical to all the other leaves on the tree, but it was the only one moving.

I watched it for a while, utterly perplexed.

In later years, I mentioned this leaf to scientists and asked them what they thought could have caused it to behave that way. One suggested maybe an insect or other small creature had caused the motion. Another suggested that perhaps the stem was weakened by disease and the leaf was preparing to fall.

But nobody could say for sure.

Over the sixty years since that afternoon, I’ve sometimes thought about the leaf and my odd fascination for people and things that differentiate themselves from the crowd. It is a lonely craft, at times, that of the journalist, being an observer, a witness, and seeking explanations. 

After all, one leaf turning might just be a story. Many leaves holding in place most definitely is not.

The problem with this practice is that by focusing on the exception to the rule, we may give the impression that the rule is no longer in order. An example of this is crime reporting. Covering one shocking crime, through a megaphone, can create the illusion that an entire city is “awash in crime” when the fact is the opposite is true. 

In fact, the crime was actually just an anomaly, an outlier event. 

***

Of course, there is an entirely different way to tell any story. That solitary leaf I saw may have been ahead of its time — portending a climate disaster to come when all the other leaves remained quiet, steady in place, doing what they were expected to do.

In this version, the swinging leaf is a whistleblower, a ‘canary in the coal mine,’ an indicator of bigger problems.

Enter the investigative reporter, who picks up on the signal and spots a pattern that may provide an explanation for the turning leaf. After observing hundreds of trees, with many thousands of leaves, and interviewing numerous scientists, none of whom can say for sure, the reporter writes a more nuanced story based on the data.

In this new story, we learn that there are many such single leaves on many trees turning slowly on windless days where no one is there to see. But it is also possible that if no one saw them that it didn’t really happen. (Quantum physics.) Then again, perhaps there is a new disease affecting our trees that we need to address if we are to save the forest.

Meanwhile, the people reading these stories are still thinking about that one single leaf, turning without reason on a windless day long ago in Michigan. Just like the storyteller, they aren’t able to see the forest for the trees.

LINKS:

• Afghanistan has become a terrorism staging ground again, leak reveals (WP)

• Sudan fighting: Army says foreign nationals to be evacuated (BBC)

• Fighting rages in Khartoum (Reuters)

• The mifepristone ruling lacks both standing and merit — will SCOTUS preserve our rights or quash them? (The Hill)

• Abortion ban states see steep drop in OB/GYN residency applicants (WP)

• The Secret History of AI, and a Hint at What’s Next — Artificial intelligence is already a big part of our daily lives. ‘We are at an inflection point.’ (WSJ)

• Bill Gates says A.I. chatbots will teach kids to read within 18 months: You’ll be ‘stunned by how it helps’ (CNBC)

• Google unveils new Bard AI capabilities for coding (Fox)

• How ChatGPT and generative A.I. are already changing the way we book trips and travel (CNBC)

• “It’s just mind boggling.” More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered (Science)

• The Myth of the Broke Millennial (Atlantic)

• MIT neuroscientist: The No. 1 skill that sets people with ‘excellent memory’ apart from those who struggle—‘it’s rare’ (CNBC)

• Outrage as Florida Republicans pass ‘fascist’ bill to remove trans kids from parents’ custody (Independent)

• 'We have already lost' in 2 key climate change signals, according to UN report (USA Today)

• Pentagon Speeds Up Tank Timeline for Ukraine but Resists Calls for Jets (NYT)

• Dog Feels Like He Always Has To Be ‘On’ Around Family (The Onion)