Sewing Circle

 L to R: me, Dan (Eve's friend), Eve, Valerie, Helen.

Today in a cafe in San Rafael. Eve has dementia.

A Different Face in Every Mirror

(NOTE: This essay is from 2006. Since then, I’ve stopped looking.)

So, there are always a couple ways to read any article, and it’s not for me to direct that process for any readers who may choose to grace my site with a visit today or tomorrow. 

Maybe this one is about aging. Maybe it’s about our views of ourselves as compared what others see in us (or don't). Or maybe it is about our emotional age. Or all the above or none of them.

Anyway, I notice every morning when I look in my bathroom mirror that, perhaps due to the lighting or the angle or the color scheme in that small room or some other factor I seem to look pretty good. It's like, "Dude, you're still okay."

That's nice enough, but later on when I return to my bedroom, a much larger room with different lighting, a different mirror and a different color scheme, I seem suddenly to look perfectly awful!

Who is that man and how did he age so rapidly walking from one end of his flat to the other?

Something similar happens at work between the elevator mirror and the one in the men's room. I'm not sure what I am looking for when I look in mirrors, but is most definitively is not to find out I have aged myself out of any definition of beauty altogether, because I still have my ego, you know.

Does this happen to everyone as we grow older? America is a place that celebrates youth, but we all grow older every day.

There is also the matter of the human mirrors we provide for each other, at any age. You don't have to have studied Jung to be aware that our Western concept of romantic love includes a strong element of falling in love with how another special person sees us. 

What (s)he reflects back to you is intoxicating as any drug could ever be. Especially once somebody sees your inner beauty in a new way, that helps you feel valued and loved, it is like no other experience, and you are going to be hooked going forward.

Q: Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who is the most beautiful of all?

A: The one who thinks you are.

That is the essence of love. Turn away from him or her at your own peril. You may well find someone else, but the way our world works, you won't easily find that kind of love again.

Or, maybe that is just my mirror image talking. Nothing is simple, let alone the image that surprises us in the mirrors surrounding us. Especially the human mirrors. Each new one sees a new you.

LINKS:

• U.S. border city calm as Title 42 lifts and asylum restrictions take effect (Reuters)

• Florida federal judge’s border decision ‘very harmful,’ Mayorkas says (Politico)

• With Pandemic Restrictions Lifted, Thousands Converge on Border (NYT)

• Joe Biden's Approval Rating Among Republicans Is on the Rise (Newsweek)

• What does a leaked Google memo reveal about the future of AI? (Economist)

• How AI Knows Things No One Told It (Scientific American)

• Google Unveils Plan to Demolish the Journalism Industry Using AI (Futurism)

• ‘Why would we employ people?’ Experts on five ways AI will change work (Guardian)

• The open-source AI boom is built on Big Tech’s handouts. How long will it last? (MIT)

• Meta announces generative AI features for advertisers (TechCrunch)

• The likely winners of the generative AI gold rush (Financial Times)

• Confessions of ChatGPT: ‘Interview’ with bot reveals fascinating, downright strange questions it’s often asked (Study Finds)

• A foldable phone, new tablet and lots of AI: What Google unveiled at its big developer event (CNN)

• Why do generative AI tools hallucinate? (Quartz)

• A.I. will potentially impact 40% of your working hours, according to Accenture (Fortune)

• Anthropic leapfrogs OpenAI with a chatbot that can read a novel in less than a minute (Verge)

• Lyft Aims to Remove Travel Anxiety With Airport Pickup Feature (Gizmodo)

• Trump's sexual assault verdict marks a rare moment of accountability. And women are noticing (AP)

• Trump’s team revels in town hall victory as CNN staff rages at ‘spectacle of lies’ (Guardian)

• CNN leadership under fire after ‘disastrous’ Trump town hall (WP)

• GOP senators disavow Trump on debt ceiling, signaling growing rift (The Hill)

• Yellen Says ‘We Have to Default’ on Something If Congress Fails (Bloomberg)

• As House Republicans play politics on debt limit, Democrats take steps to keep our options open (The Hill)

• Ukraine Presses Counterattack Around Bakhmut (WSJ)

• Fake scientific papers are alarmingly common (Science)

• Tucker Carlson Sends Startlingly Self-Aware Text Message To Journalist (HuffPost)

• Harvesting The Sun: Afghan Man Builds Parabolic Solar Stoves By Hand (RFE)

• El Niño forming quickly and could be "significant" event, NOAA finds (Axios)

• Woman On First Date Feels Like She Could Spend Whole Life In Uncomfortable Silence With This Man (The Onion)

The Nightmare

In case any of us had forgotten what would befall this country should Donald Trump return to power, Wednesday’s town hall hosted by CNN provided a stark reminder. The man is a monster, pure and simple.

Not only is he unfit for public office, he represents a threat to our basic democratic values. He doesn’t accept any election result if he doesn’t win, he’s willing to lie, cheat and steal his way to victory, he would pardon the Jan. 6th traitors, and he identifies himself with authoritarian leaders around the world like Putin.

It is not an exaggeration to say a vote for Trump is a vote to end democracy as we know it.

The CNN reporter, Kaitlan Collins, tasked with trying to manage Trump at the event, tried heroically but she was no match for the bully on the stage with her.

It was painful to see the result. That millions of our fellow citizens still support this man, including the fools in the audience, is why we are facing by far the worst crisis in this country’s history since the Civil War.

Anyone who watched the event is now forewarned as to what awaits us should this guy win re-election next year. That’s right, next year, and he’s leading in the polls. Mark it down on your calendar.

It could be the last time in America that we have free choice — over anything.

LINKS:

• Donald Trump has become more dangerous — As awful as it was, CNN’s town hall did the country a service by revealing the threat he presents (Economist)

• Coup-attempting former President Donald Trump doubled down on his lies at a town hall hosted by CNN. The event's moderator, Kaitlan Collins, frequently tried to cut off the torrent of lies, but had limited success. [HuffPost]

• Migrants camped on the US border with Mexico in California as Title 42 ends (Reuters)

• Why chaos looms at the US-Mexico border (Economist)

• Texas uses aggressive tactics to arrest migrants as Title 42 ends (WP)

• Wholesale inflation eases to 2.3% in April, lowest level in two years (Fox)

• How Past Debt Limit Crises Shaped Biden’s No-Negotiation Stance (NYT)

• Google Is About To Turn The Online Publishing Industry Upside Down (Forbes)

• Google is throwing generative AI at everything (MIT)

• The Goopification of AI — A new generation of chatbots is poised to become the next frontier of self-help—and could reveal the truth behind Americans’ obsession with lifestyle gurus. (Atlantic)

• Could AI save the human race? (Spectator)

• Let’s put AI on pause (World)

• The Surprising Synergy Between Acupuncture and AI (Wired)

• Google Says Search Enters New Era With Conversational AI Features (WSJ)

• Princeton Uses GPT to Make a Robot That Cleans on Command (Vice)

• White House tries to balance AI’s 'enormous danger' and promise (Yahoo)

• AI Creators Are Still Making The Same Mistake This Programmer Made 25 Years Ago (ScienceAlert)

• Expert predicts AI to hit children 'like a freight train' (CNN)

• Could AI be the future of preventing school shootings? (The Hill)

• Missouri Lawmakers Pass Bill to Ban Transition Care for Minors (NYT)

• An FDA panel voted in favor of drugmaker Perrigo's request to sell its decades-old birth control pill without a prescription. It paves the way for a likely U.S. approval of the first over-the-counter contraceptive medication. [AP]

• Disney's Bob Iger taunts Florida with an ominous threat: 'Does the state want us to invest more, employ more, and pay more taxes — or not?' (Insider)

• US food pesticides contaminated with toxic ‘forever chemicals’ testing finds (Guardian)

• Pakistan’s Top Court Orders Release of Imran Khan (NYT)

• Britain moves first to supply Ukraine with long-range cruise missiles (Reuters)

• Ukraine strikes back in Bakhmut, as Russia wrangles with Wagner (Al Jazeera)

• Reluctant critic China urges Afghan changes on women’s roles (AP)

• Employee On Thin Ice After Taking Allotted Personal Day (The Onion)

 

Running in Place

NOTE: I published the first version of this essay in 2006.

About a decade before the Web exploded, I started noticing how various technologies were speeding up the pace of work. One example was the fax machine, which though it had been invented even before the telephone, back in 1842, did not come into common use until the 1980s, if memory serves. 

Until the fax, editors at magazines with multiple offices were accustomed to delays of at least one day, while they shipped versions of stories back and forth; sometimes we would expect a week to pass before a colleague on the East Coast, say, could react to something we'd sent from the West Coast.

But by the late '80s, working in the San Francisco bureau of California magazine, I routinely started sending and receiving marked-up manuscripts via fax to our Los Angeles headquarters minutes after the work had been done. The old waiting period was evaporating before my eyes.

At the time I considered it a speed-up, i.e., a work issue. But it didn't bother me, because I've always liked to work relatively fast as an editor. 

An even more revolutionary change was the earlier arrival of word processing technology that suddenly turned every writer into his own editor. The act of writing itself underwent an instant transformation. I'd written long manuscripts for years on typewriters, then laboriously retyped them into "final" versions. 

Now it was possible to start over and over and over again until I got my lede just right, then proceed through the piece. I've never been the type to work on one section one day and another the next, anyway. I always start over from the top and write down to whatever ending place I can reach in one sitting.

So, the iterative process of writing was accelerating, in line with the dictates of the software development cycle. Nowadays, some versions of word programs are too smart for their own good, or at least for my own good, as they misinterpret my intentions and pre-populate fields with auto-corrects that I do not desire at all.

The point is that word processing has altered the creative process substantially.

These are simply two early technological examples. I won't even get started on email, IM, text messaging, video blogs, or multiple other avenues by which our world continues its speedup.

Meanwhile, I have been considering the dilemma of people with extraordinary ability to focus not so much on multiple tasks but on one significant task only. This includes many coders. It is endlessly frustrating for these workers to constantly be interrupted and diverted from the task at hand. 

Artists, scientists, investigative reporters, engineers -- almost anybody who tries to do special and unusual in-depth work — have certainly benefited from new technologies, but not necessarily from the work culture that is emerging as a result. How can you concentrate on any one thing when the flood of incoming lights and pings drowns out the virtual island you need to carefully construct for yourself? Or when others expect immediate attention from you when what you need is the space to be able to think?

To be clear here, I am not talking about myself. I am among the worst of all multi-taskers — it's not unusual for me to balance seven or eight discrete work tasks simultaneously, plus an equal number of personal matters. So this era is really a dream come true for the likes of me.

But this entry is not about me; it is about my polar opposite. It was provoked by one brief conversation this afternoon with a friend who is most definitely is not a multi-tasker. She doesn't excel at juggling multiple projects, nor does she need or want to indulge in instant communications most of the time. Her forte is her ability to focus and concentrate. 

For our work world to collectively regain its proper balance, all of us probably need to take a breath and step away from the pace of change now and then. Take a vacation from email, and so forth. And consider how much poorer our experience of life will be if we continue to race through our lives, never stopping to even consider why we feel the need to move on so quickly in the first place.

The alternative is to reach the point where we may be continuously running only in circles, like my dear departed hamster, Spark, did every night until the one before he died. I could never figure out what he was running from.

LINKS:

• Ukraine unit says Russian brigade flees Bakhmut outskirts (Reuters)

• FDA panel backs over-the-counter sales of birth control pill (AP)

• Just how good can China get at AI? (Economist)

• Artificial Intelligence Is Not Going to Kill Us All (Slate)

• AI poses existential threat and risk to health of millions, experts warn (Guardian)

• China reports first arrest over fake news generated by ChatGPT (Reuters)

• Salesforce is betting that its own content can bring more trust to generative AI (TechCrunch)

• Mark Zuckerberg’s not-so-secret plan to join the AI race (Vox)

• How people are using AI for stock market picks (Marketplace)

• ChatGPT Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions (Wired)

• Artificial intelligence can be found in many places. How safe is the technology? (NPR)

• Informatica goes all in on generative AI with Claire GPT (VentureBeat)

• Biden leaves the door open to solving the debt ceiling crisis without Congress — and it could get rid of the debate forever (Insider)

• Biden says rescinding unspent COVID-19 relief funds ‘on the table’ (The Hill)

• House Republicans escalate attacks on Biden family, alleging business with foreign nationals (NBC)

• US inflation eases to 4.9% in April as Fed tightening takes effect (Financial Times)

• A new Supreme Court case seeks to legalize assault weapons in all 50 states (Vox)

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has signed a bill greatly restricting the ability of many foreign nationals to buy land in the state, and barring most Chinese citizens from purchasing any land there whatsoever. [HuffPost]

• Sexual abuse verdict renews Republican doubts about Trump’s electability (WP)

• It’s psychological warfare season on the US border (Al Jazeera)

• ‘Leaving Behind All They Own’ as Wildfires Ravage Million Acres in Canada (NYT)

• Montana GOP Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) appointed Jeremy Carl, an election denier and far-right conspiracy theorist with a record of espousing racist and transphobic views, to oversee statewide diversity programs. [HuffPost]

• Remembering America's first social network: the landline telephone (NPR)

• Restoring Gamma Wave Signals Could Counter Depression (Neuroscience News)

• Scientists named a new type of butterfly after a Lord of the Rings character. (WP)

• First-Time Homebuyers Purchase Nice Starter Doorknob (The Onion)

 

Fearing Technology Won't Get Us Anywhere

Ever since humans began devising advanced technologies, a large subset of society has expressed a deep fear of them. Historians note that technophobia emerged in the early decades of the Industrial Revolution in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

As a young journalist in the 1970s, I covered the anti-nuke movement, which relied heavily on technophobia for its energy, and my own work about agriculture, Circle of Poison, inspired anti-technology feelings as well.

My personal opinions about nuclear energy and pesticides were not initially as universally negative as those of the activists around me. For example, having grown up among farmers, I knew how hard they had to work to grow their crops, and how much they welcomed any tool, including chemicals, that reduced that workload.

In fact, “Circle” had much more to do with the hypocrisy of sending banned pesticides to Third World countries than it did with pesticides per se.

But in the course of researching “Circle,” I came to appreciate that the traditional methods of rotating crops, natural pests and other organic farming techniques were superior because they preserved the long-term viability of soil for sustainable agriculture into the future.

By contrast, the chemical-intensive methods that relied on fertilizers and pesticides not only were polluting the soil, air, water and foods in our farmlands, they were creating resistance in pests and threatening our future ability to feed ourselves.

Accordingly, I developed a strong aversion to pesticides on ecological grounds, as opposed to a knee-jerk negative reaction based on technophobia. I came to think of it as an evidence-based opposition.

Nuclear power was a slightly different matter, but without the ability to store its wastes, it too was an ecological insult. For me, California’s Prop 15 in 1976 was the turning point, which I covered for Rolling Stone.

These days, I think about those experiences when I consider artificial intelligence. Society is once again split between those who are enthusiastic about the potential of AI (including its potential to produce profits) and those who fear it basically on principle.

I again have mixed feelings.

Almost certainly, as we get more familiar with AI, the best course will be a third way between enthusiasm and fear— embracing it but subjecting it to careful regulation like with pesticides and nuclear power, albeit in both cases imperfectly. There will be mistakes along the way with AI, like with nukes and pesticides, so let’s just hope this time they once again don’t prove fatal.

LINKS:

• AI could replace 80% of jobs 'in next few years': expert (AFP)

• Congressman George Santos Charged with Fraud, Money Laundering, Theft of Public Funds, and False Statements (DoJ)

• Wendy’s Turns to AI-Powered Chatbots for Drive-Thru Orders (Bloomberg)

• How To Delete Your Data From ChatGPT (Wired)

• We Need a Manhattan Project for AI Safety (Politico Mag)

• OpenAI ranks as No. 1 on Disruptor 50 list with $30 billion valuation and 200 million users (CNBC)

• AI machines aren’t ‘hallucinating’. But their makers are (Guardian)

• Should We Be Worried About AI? I Thought Not, Until I Asked An AI (Forbes)

• What if AI could rebuild the middle class? (NPR)

• Machine learning method illuminates fundamental aspects of evolution (Phys.org)

• The metaverse is no more (BoingBoing)

• Donald Trump Loses Defamation, Sexual Battery Lawsuit Brought by E. Jean Carroll, Jury Awards $5 Million (Yahoo)

• Biden, GOP Lawmakers Not Budging as Debt-Ceiling Meeting Convenes (WSJ)

• Deal or default? Biden, GOP must decide what's on the table (AP)

• Elizabeth Holmes and her partner spent 6 months on the road in an RV sleeping in Walmart parking lots while working on her legal defense (Insider)

• New York Times to Get Around $100 Million From Google Over Three Years (WSJ)

• Under the Radar, Right-Wing Push to Tighten Voting Laws Persists (NYT)

• Trump prohibited from posting evidence in hush money case to social media, judge rules (NBC)

• Fetterman ‘begging’ those struggling with mental health to seek treatment (The Hill)

• Students can’t get off their phones. Schools have had enough. (WP)

• Imran Khan, Pakistan's former prime minister, is arrested in Islamabad (NPR)

• Three Islamic Jihad commanders and family members among multiple dead in Israeli strikes on Gaza (CNN)

• “If we want to help the people of Afghanistan, the Taliban is a reality that has be dealt with”—how they lead (Economist)

• Taliban Diplomat Defends Policies, Insists Afghan Women Education Ban Not 'Permanent' (VoA)

• Vladimir Putin said a "real war" was again being waged against Russia, as Ukraine's envoy to Japan asked leaders of the Group of Seven rich nations to condemn any threat to use nuclear weapons and vow "decisive action" against such a move. (Reuters)

• Women should get screening mammograms at age 40, health panel says (WP)

• Six books that tell the history of money — What to read to understand the roots of money (Economist)

• A 7,000-year-old road is found on the seafloor off Croatian coast, researchers say (Miami Herald)

• An archaeologist saw shapes in the water. They led to a submerged grave. (WP)

• Frisky Housewife Lets Revealing Robe Slip After Opening Door To Amazon Delivery Drone (The Onion)

 

Raising Kids

(Note: This essay is from 2006.)

I don't recall ever hearing the word "parenting" when I was growing up, but these days, you can't even turn around without bumping into it. There's a lot more published, both in the academic literature but also in the popular press, about the topic than there used to be. And, everyone seems to have a theory.

I don't have a theory, but I do have some experience as a father, as well as some observations. I've spent most of my adult life as a parent. One of the first benefits of becoming a parent is that (for the first time, really) you may start to understand your own parents. Maybe this is because unless you're extremely careful, you'll find yourself repeating their "parenting" styles, some of which may no longer be culturally or politically acceptable.

You may also have come to the conclusion that your own parents made mistakes when raising you, some of them serious. If so, you're determined to not repeat those errors with your own kids.

Your peers have lots of influence on your parenting, and as I noted, everyone seems to have a theory, and many feel free to share theirs with you. These days, as a single Dad half of each week (and just single the other half), I've noticed how often people approach me (especially women) to offer unsolicited advice as to how I could be a better father.

(Nobody has any advice on how to be single, however.)

There seems to be a lot of judgement involved.

But I'm lucky in that I have great kids. In many, many ways, they make it easy for me. Still, I am conscious that I make many mistakes as their father. I regret things I say to them sometimes and I always regret when I get angry. I often wish I could hide parts of my own angst from their view. In my fantasy they would only get the good I have to offer them.

But the truth is they see it all.

Over the years, I've noticed something else. Good parenting skills are not the exclusive province of those who are the biological parents. Many childless people may possess advantages we parents do not. They are not necessarily as burned out around kids yet. And, in special cases, they have preserved the memories of their own childhood in ways that remain unclouded by the experience of becoming a parent.

This may be because while we benefit by understanding our own parents when we become parents ourselves, we also lose a bit of ourselves as children. For every gain there is a loss.

Many who try to grow and change for the better in middle age talk about locating their inner child. Without commenting on the lingo, which I detest, the concept seems solid. I have learned from friends who do not have their own children that it is possible for some of them to stay clearer minded about both the good and the bad of being a child since they never have had to fully surrender that role themselves.

It is difficult to support a family in today's expensive, middle-class American society. Frankly, it often feels overwhelming. You cannot ever earn enough money, for example, or do all the things others claim would make you an ideal parent.

So you can use all the help you can get. I've had the benefit of several non-parents adding layers of richness to my own children's lives these past few years. And for that I am grateful.

LINKS:

• What Really Made Geoffrey Hinton Into an AI Doomer (Wired)

• Your job is (probably) safe from artificial intelligence (Economist)

• The jobs AI won't take yet (BBC)

• Ignore the Hysteria on AI and Jobs (WSJ)

• Sick of Bumpy, Delayed Flights? New AI Weather Tech Could Help. (NYT)

• When the Threat of AI Is an Insult (New York)

• What Does Sentience Really Mean? (Atlantic)

• This company adopted AI. Here's what happened to its human workers (NPR)

• RIP Metaverse (Insider)

• If artificial intelligence confuses you — and, let’s face it, it’s confusing: Our tech team put together a helpful glossary of terms to know. (Reuters)

• Uber Really Needs Lyft to Stay in the Rideshare Race (Bloomberg)

• Sen. Chuck Schumer warns of "social security shutdown" if U.S. defaults on debt (CBS)

• Biden must drop ‘absolutist’ position in debt ceiling talks with McCarthy, think tanks warn (Fox)

• How the debt ceiling crisis could actually end (Vox)

• Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said there are “no good options” to avoid an economic “calamity” if Congress fails to raise the nation's borrowing limit of $31.381 trillion. There's a high-stakes meeting on Tuesday between President Joe Biden and congressional leaders from both parties, but so far they haven't even been able to agree on what to negotiate. [AP]

• After Mass Killings in Texas, Frustration but No Action on Guns (NYT)

• E. Jean Carroll Demands Trump Follow Court Order, Remove Rape Trial Posts (Newsweek)

• The Grim New Consensus on Social Media and Teen Depression (New York)

• Alberta wildfire shuts in at least 2% of Canadian energy production (Reuters)

• Climate change: Vietnam records highest-ever temperature of 44.1C (BBC)

• The Free-Returns Party Is Over (Atlantic)

• New cars, once part of the American Dream, now out of reach for many (WP)

• To improve kids’ mental health, some schools start later (AP)

• Elon Musk Warns the World About San Francisco (The Street)

• Russia launched a wave of drone, missile and air strikes on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. (Reuters)

• Ukrainian drone enthusiasts train troops repel Russian attacks (Al Jazeera)

• UN calls on Taliban to end public executions, lashings and stonings in Afghanistan (Fox)

• Pakistan, Afghan Taliban agree to boost trade, lower tension (AP)

• Blinken threatened with contempt of US Congress over Afghanistan cable (Reuters)

• New Indeed Feature Lets Users Sort Jobs By Amount Of Exploitation (The Onion)

Debt Ceiling "Crisis"

One step the leaders of both political parties could do to improve their public approval ratings would be to stop posturing about the supposed “debt ceiling” crisis and do something about it this week.

Of course it would be a disaster for the U.S. to default on its debt payments, but nobody actually expects that to happen. So the threats issued by Republican extremists are toothless unless they wish to ruin the government’s credit and tank the economy.

Meanwhile, Biden’s refusal to negotiate with Republicans over spending cuts is calculated politics at its worst. In the past, similar threats to block raising the debt limit have failed, helping Democrats to paint the GOP as reckless, but like most tropes, this one is growing stale over time.

While it is true, as Democrats insist, that cutting new spending is unrelated to the current debt ceiling issue, there is an important caveat to that statement. Continued deficit spending by the government will only raise the national debt, ensuring future confrontations like the one we are enduring now.

Therefore, the Republicans have valid arguments about deficit spending; Biden should acknowledge that and indicate his willingness to talk about that in return for an early settlement of the debt ceiling matter.

So far, both parties seem willing to play out the psychodrama of approaching brinksmanship, hoping to score political points. But they cannot afford to let it reach the brink, even as both sides seem determined to wring every last drop of political capital out of this fake fight — which is a rhetorical exercise in shadow boxing.

It’s time, at this week’s meeting at the White House, for both Biden and McCarthy to give ground, act like adults, and make substantive progress. Otherwise, the main bankruptcy to result from all this will not be the Treasury but is that of a broken two-party system.

LINKS:

• Senior Engineer Predicts Google's Downfall (The Street)

• A mayday call for artificial intelligence (VentureBeat)

• AI needs superintelligent regulation (Financial Times)

• ‘A race it might be impossible to stop’: how worried should we be about AI? (Guardian)

• A beginner’s guide to AI technology (WP)

• Ex-Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer admits spending $4B for Netflix—now worth over $140B—would’ve been a better ‘transformative acquisition’ than Tumblr (Fortune)

• Durbin: ‘Tangled web’ around Clarence Thomas ‘just gets worse’ (The Hill)

• Mob Justice — What do plutocrats and Supreme Court members get from being friends? (Atlantic)

• 43 Senate Republicans vow to oppose debt ceiling increase without spending cuts (CNN)

• Senate Republicans will stand firm on debt ceiling, Mike Lee says (Politico)

• Sinema, weighing re-election bid, rules out joining the Republican Party (NBC)

• An End to Pandemic Restrictions Could Bring Thousands to the Border (NYT)

• Less than 35% think Biden has 'mental sharpness' for second term: Poll (Axios)

• DeSantis Continues to Test the Waters of 2024 — and Supporters Are Getting Restless (NYT)

• A Chance Event 1 Million Years Ago Changed Human Brains Forever (ScienceAlert)

• Climate change is bad for everyone. But this is where it's expected to be worst in the US. (USA Today)

• Thousands of Afghans escaped the Taliban with the help of private veteran groups. Today, many remain in limbo, held in a compound in the UAE (CNN)

• Senior Ukrainian officials fear counterattack may not live up to hype (WP)

• Europe is struggling to rebuild its military clout (Economist)

• George Will: After a month of baseball’s new rules, it’s time to rejoice (WP)

• Car's Bumper Stickers Betray A Confusing Hodgepodge Of Sports Loyalties (The Onion)

 

Continuity

When I was a boy, and ill with rheumatic fever, somebody sent me a small packet of postage stamps and a beginner’s collection album. My recovery took a matter of months, first in the hospital, then at home, mainly on the couch in the living room, where I could measure time with coming and going of freight trains beyond the corn fields stretching to the horizon of Michigan’s fertile Saginaw Valley.

At some point every day my mother would bring me a cup of tea, sometimes with a piece of home-made shortbread.

I loved the stamps, and used them to expand my then-limited knowledge of history and geography.

One noticeable item in stamps from all corners of the world was the image of young Queen Elizabeth II. This was the 1950s, and she had recently ascended to the throne upon the death of her father, King George VI, whose headshot still appeared on some of the older stamps in my nascent collection.

I remembered all this late Friday night and early Saturday morning as I found myself watching the televised coronation of King Charles III at Westminster Abbey. The formal proceedings had a surprising emotional impact on me, given I am not English, do not believe in royalty, and would be unlikely to stand out in the rain for hours to witness an archaic religious ritual.

Why then did this ceremony touch me at all?

I’m roughly the same vintage as Charles; my mother was born in Scotland and therefore was originally a subject of the crown, but I was born in Detroit and grew up as a first-generation American in a country that famously rebelled against the King 250 years ago.

On my father’s side, our ancestors came from Ireland and have been in North America since the 1830s. My father immigrated to the U.S. from Canada in the 1920s.

It’s difficult to explain, but as I grow older and the world continues to change at what often seems a confounding pace, I sometimes long for a simpler time, when I was back on that couch, sorting my stamps, and waiting for that next cup of tea.

Somewhere deep in my Scots-Irish DNA, I may just long for the comfort that comes from a bit of continuity in these discontinuous times.

LINKS:

• King Charles III and Queen Camilla are crowned in elaborate ceremony (NPR)

• As a King Is Crowned, Some Britons Ask Why the Monarchy Persists (NYT)

• The coronation of King Charles III: Memorable moments in photos and videos (WP)

• Texas mall shooting updates: 9 dead, including alleged gunman, 7 hospitalized (ABC) 

• Leaked docs show 'Putin's chef' is increasingly at odds with the Russian leader over Wagner mercenary deaths (Insider)

• Russian Unease Over Ukraine War Grows Amid Attacks and Leadership Rifts (NYT)

• The Independent Journalists Risking Their Freedom to Keep Reporting From Russia (WSJ)

• GOP moderates privately panic over debt ceiling deal (Axios)

• White House weighing the possibility of a short-term debt ceiling extension (NBC)

• McConnell warns he won’t back debt-ceiling increase without ‘substantive’ reforms (The Hill)

• Bracing for impact: Biden world preps for Hunter Biden fallout (Politico)

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the remote work ‘experiment’ was a mistake—and ‘it’s over’ (Fortune)

• Man v machine: everything you need to know about AI (Guardian)

• Tim Cook Just Was Asked About AI. His 3-Word Response Was the Best I've Heard Yet (Inc.)

• AI pioneer says its threat to world may be 'more urgent' than climate change (Reuters)

• Bill Gates Says New Project is a Nuclear Breakthrough — Gates’ latest venture could change the trajectory of clean energy. (The Street)

• How Online Shopping Lost Touch With Reality (Atlantic)

• After Jan. 6 Sedition Convictions, Far-Right Threats Remain (NYT)

• Eight Georgia GOP electors accept immunity deals in Fulton Trump probe (AJC)

• Trump Is Showing Everyone Exactly Who He Is (a Sexual Predator) (TNR)

• No Retreat: The Dangers of Stand Your Ground (Reveal)

• Ginni Thomas to Be Listed on New York Stock Exchange (New Yorker)