Nicasio: First Visit

 

This is my first visit to Peter & Claire's new home. Bettina and Oscar love it here. It's a large house on 23 acres on the side of a mountain with a guest house, pool, hot tub, greenhouse, stream, spring and thousands of trees.

Daily List

 My top post of the past week and ever since launching this newsletter: In the Hills.

LINKS:

• Trump aide Walt Nauta indicted in classified documents case (CNN)

• Trump indictment: A moment of reckoning for the former president (WP)

• Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, initially assigned to oversee his case (ABC)

• Trump criminal indictment is unsealed, shows he faces more than 30 charges. (WP)

• 4 children lost in the jungle for 40 days after a plane crash are found alive in Colombia (AP)

• Air quality improves in US, but alerts remain due to Canadian wildfires (USA Today)

• ‘Why the hell are we doing this?’ McCarthy’s fractured leadership team faces new abortion tension (Politico)

• Ukraine Mounts Multiple Attacks on Russian Occupiers (NYT)

• The True Purpose of Ukraine’s Counteroffensive (Atlantic)

• UNICEF concerned by Taliban move to bar international groups from Afghan education sector (AP)

• DeSantis campaign shares apparent AI-generated fake images of Trump and Fauci (NPR)

• Big Tech Is Bad. Big A.I. Will Be Worse. (NYT)

• From Samurai, Viking And More: AI Artist Reimagines Selfies Throughout History (NDTV)

• This under-the-radar customer engagement platform can rally more than 40% with the help of A.I., Goldman says (CNBC)

• Why AI Will Save the World (Marc Andreessen)

• Meta plans to put AI everywhere on its platforms (Axios)

• Jefferies sees AI fuelling next wave of innovation in oil and gas sector (Reuters)

• OpenAI CEO calls for global cooperation to regulate AI (CNN)

• Don’t blame us for AI’s threat to humanity, we’re just the technologists (Financial Times)

• Google Translate vs. ChatGPT: Which One Is the Best Language Translator? (PCMag)

• Ocean Currents Are Slowing, With Potentially Devastating Effects (Wired)

• A tiny, ancient hominin may have been surprisingly clever (Economist)

• One year after recall, violent crime is up under SF DA Brooke Jenkins (Mission Local)

• How life for animals changed when humans stayed home during the pandemic (WP)

• Jennifer Lawrence: I’m ‘Totally’ Open to Playing Katniss Again in New ‘Hunger Games’ Movies (Variety)

• Body Breaking Down In Totally Different Order Than Man Expected (The Onion)

Democracy on Trial

Donald Trump is intent on breaking up America, one way or another. He has, through his actions, left the U.S. government no choice but to indict a former President for the first time in its history.

We don’t yet know the specifics of the seven counts he faces in the classified document scandal; it may be until Tuesday until we do. But we do know that Trump has essentially forced the Biden administration to prosecute him in the case, which he calls a “witch-hunt”.

Unfortunately, a large portion of the Republican Party buys into his view, which is likely to further provoke the political crisis that the country has endured ever since Trump came to power in 2016.

Trump is the most polarizing figure in American history. His instincts are those of a despot. He tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost; when that failed he took boxes of classified documents with him to his home in Florida.

Why did he do this? That is the unknown factor here. Did he intend to use the information in those documents to further his plan to overthrow the U.S. electoral system and return himself to power?

It seems far-fetched, the stuff of a Hollywood fantasy-nightmare, but why else would he take that stuff?

We’re going to be learning the answers to some of those questions presumably now through the court case to come.

Let’s hope our democracy is strong enough to withstand the process of bringing this man to justice.

LINKS:

• Trump Indicted in Classified Documents Inquiry (NYT)

• Air quality alerts continue in U.S. as Canadian wildfire smoke spreads (Yahoo)

• ‘It looks like Mars outside’: Smoke engulfs East Coast, upending daily life (WP)

• Newsom proposes constitutional amendment to restrict access to guns (The Hill)

• Liberal Prosecutors Are Revisiting Police Killings but Charging Few Officers So Far (NYT)

• Supreme Court backs landmark voting rights law, strikes down Alabama congressional map — The justices threw out Republican-drawn congressional districts that a lower court said discriminated against Black voters. (NBC)

• Prosecutors Tell Trump’s Legal Team He Is a Target of Investigation (NYT)

• Harlan Crow’s Senate rejection could force the Supreme Court to address ethics (The Hill)

• Biden vetoes GOP-led effort to strike down student loan forgiveness program (WP)

• The Republican presidential field is largely set. Here's where the contest stands (AP)

• Scientists claim >99 percent identification rate of ChatGPT content — Academics have apparently trained a machine learning algorithm to detect scientific papers generated by ChatGPT and claim the software has over 99 percent accuracy. (The Register)

• AI system devises first optimizations to sorting code in over a decade — Writing efficient code was turned into a game, and the AI played to win. (ArsTechnica)

• There aren't actually THAT many people using ChatGPT (Insider)

• Job listings asking for generative AI skills are soaring, analysis finds (Yahoo)

• Rush to Use Generative AI Pushes Companies to Get Data in Order (WSJ)

• ChatGPT won’t replace human-led strategy, but it will enhance it (Fast Company)

• How AI is Helping Us Break Free From The 9-to-5 Grind (Entrepreneur)

• Salesforce doubles down on generative AI with Marketing GPT and Commerce GPT (VentureBeat)

• As the AI industry booms, what toll will it take on the environment? (Guardian)

• From airlines to Hollywood, workers are fighting to keep AI at bay (WP)

• Britain to host first global summit on artificial intelligence safety (Reuters)

• Disaster Upon Disaster: Flood Deepens Misery in Ukraine War Zone (NYT)

• Russian Soldiers Complain That 'Entire Regiments' Are Being Wiped Out (Newsweek)

• Ukrainian forces suffer ‘stiff resistance’ and losses in assault on Russian lines (CNN)

• Taiwan activated its defense systems after reporting 37 Chinese military aircraft flying into the island's air defense zone, some of which then flew into the western Pacific, in Beijing's latest mass air incursion. (Reuters)

• The Happiest Way to Change Jobs (Atlantic)

• Can cities be saved from rising sea levels? (Economist)

• The search for Earth's hidden mountains (BBC)

• RNA editing helps octopuses cope with the cold (ScienceNews)

• CEO’s Company-Wide Email Inspires Employees To Start Looking For Different Job (The Onion)

 

One Coin

The other day I found a penny, or rather it found me.

It had been sitting in place for a few days. Many people had passed it by but none had thought it worth their time to scoop it up.

Maybe out of pity for the cast-off, which over the course of our lifetimes has lost almost all of its value, I picked it up.

The penny was marked with the date it was minted, 1971. 

Every coin has its story; few of them get told.

***

1971 — What a year that was! I quit my job as a pizza deliveryman for Cottage Inn Pizza in Ann Arbor and drove an old white Chevy van with "Ft. Myers, Fla." stenciled on the side all the way across America. 

Exiting the freeway in San Francisco, we chugged up Fell Street, turned right onto Fillmore Street, and drove until just before Pine Street, arriving at our destination: the self-proclaimed world headquarters of Running Dog Inc., would-be publisher of the forthcoming SunDance magazine.

The building was nestled into a space next to a blues club called Minnie’s Can-Do. 

We were a very small start-up team and before we could publish this brand new magazine, we had to build out the office by sheet-rocking the walls, painting them, refinishing and shellacking the floor. 

As a flourish of sorts, we sealed a penny into that newly shiny hardwood just before we finished preparing the space that would see an amazing menagerie of the famous (John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Jerry Rubin, etc.) and the crazy (too many to list) and the talented (everybody) walk through its front door over the next two years.

The experience of helping produce that magazine helped shape my career, leading directly to Rolling Stone, the Center for Investigative Reporting and all the rest.

***

Many years later, when SunDance was already a distant memory, I happened to be back in what was by then known in real estate terms as the Upper Fillmore District. There were no blues clubs left in the area but plenty of fancy, chic shops. After a brief search, I located old number 1913 and stepped inside for the first time since our first magazine dream had died there three decades earlier.

The space was by then a boutique. I feigned interest in the women's clothes on the racks. What I was actually seeking was pretty vague — some wisp or ghost of a memory, nothing more than that. The sheetrock had long since been dismantled, the walls had been repainted many times, and the track lighting overhead was a major upgrade from our day. All the evidence of our time there seemed to have vanished.

But then, near the rear of the store, I spotted something that stopped me dead in my tracks. There was the penny we’d imbedded in the hardwood floor, still frozen in time with its date: 1971.

Every coin has a story; few of them get told.

This one’s did.

LINKS:

• Canadian wildfire smoke: Worst air quality yet may be headed to New York City (ABC)

• Wildfire Smoke Blots Sun and Prompts Health Alerts in Much of U.S. (NYT)

• Murder, the Military and Radicalization: How Much Is Tied to a Lack of Support for Veterans? (KQED)

• Ukrainians face homelessness, disease risk as floods crest from breached dam (Reuters)

• Destroyed Ukrainian Dam Floods War Zone and Forces Residents to Flee (NYT)

• Ukraine Offensive Has 'Broken Through' Russian Lines: Prigozhin (Newsweek)

• The Next Crisis Will Start With Empty Office Buildings (Atlantic)

• Prosecutors Tell Trump’s Legal Team He Is a Target of Investigation (NYT)

• Chris Christie blasts Trump during presidential bid announcement (CNN)

• Hard-right Republicans, still angry over debt ceiling, foil McCarthy on vote (WP)

• Sam Altman says OpenAI won’t go public now because he may have to make ‘a very strange decision’ that investors will disagree with (Fortune)

• Google Cloud is partnering with Mayo Clinic as it tries to expand use of generative A.I. in health care (CNBC)

• Faster sorting algorithms discovered using deep reinforcement learning (Nature)

• They Fled San Francisco. The A.I. Boom Pulled Them Back. (NYT)

• Google's Bard AI is getting better at programming (Engadget)

• How to write essays using ChatGPT (GeekyGadgets)

• How to Regulate AI — Biden’s former top tech policymaker explains how guardrails around technology should work. (FP)

• AI Doesn’t Pose an Existential Risk—but Silicon Valley Does (The Nation)

• Uber Eats to deploy up to 2,000 robots to deliver food (ABC)

• New York City's Homeless Bill of Rights becomes law (NPR)

• Why does China want Uyghurs overseas to be silent? (Economist)

• 'Home Is Like a Jail': Afghan Soldier Weathers Injuries, Uncertainty in US Asylum Bid (Military.com)

• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had an "open, candid" conversation with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about a wide range of bilateral issues, a US official said. (Reuters)

• Chemical industry used big tobacco’s tactics to conceal evidence of PFAS risks (Guardian)

• Area Man Somehow Endures Harrowing Entertainment-Free Commute (The Onion)

 

Crowd Noise

[NOTE: This is an edited version of an essay I first published a year ago.]

Roughly halfway through my half-century in journalism, a revolutionary technological development disrupted the entire media world in unprecedented ways. Until the early 1990s, print journalism had relied on essentially the same technology ever since well before the American Revolution.

Newspapers, broadsheets, magazines, and books had all existed when the Constitution was written and their co-dependence was critical to how democracy in North America evolved.

The Constitution with its First Amendment guaranteeing our rights as the press wasn’t broadcast and it wasn’t posted to the Web. It didn’t get tweeted or followed on Instagram. No one made a YouTube video about it. You couldn’t tell your friends on Facebook or TikTok about it. You also could not scroll through it on your cellphone, send a text about it, or “own” a copy as an NFT.

It’s true that earlier in the 20th century, another form of electronic technology, radio, had disrupted the publishing industry, followed by a few decades its close cousin television, but the federal government had regulated both of those much more tightly than print — largely to minimize the potential for authoritarian abuse. 

The initial regulatory structure for the airwaves was established in the 1920s and led by Herbert Hoover, who was the leading voice for how to preserve free speech while managing the anti-democratic threat posed by radio. The Communications Act of 1934 codified these principles and extended them to telecommunications.

But by the time web browsers came along in the last decade of the century, the traditional regulatory structure could not be reasonably extended to the Internet without stifling the growth of a lucrative new industry.

Congress debated what to do and the result was Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. That regulation essentially guaranteed the freedom of web-based companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple and (soon) Google, Facebook, and Twitter to host user-generated content without being liable for its accuracy or fairness.

This instantly put both print and broadcast media outlets at a major disadvantage, one from which they have never recovered. What it actually meant in practice is that anyone could now call himself or herself a journalist and attract an audience for their claims, however bizarre and undocumented they might be.

Millions of people quickly took advantage of that opportunity and new websites popped up everywhere. Among them were a handful, like Wired, Salon and Slate in the early years, that attempted to preserve the quality standards of traditional journalism during the transition to this new interactive digital world, with varying degrees of success. (I was at both Salon and Wired during this period.)

But the traditional media and new media alike were quickly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of new information sources. Very rapidly, the existing world of media began to crumble into ruins.

A lot has happened between those days and now in the world of media, very little of it good. But I will leave that part of the story for another day…

LINKS:

• Ukraine dam destroyed, transforming front lines (Reuters)

• Biden ‘knew of Ukrainian plan to attack Nord Stream’ three months before explosion (Guardian)

• As Ukrainian Attacks Surge, U.S. Officials See Signs of Counteroffensive (NYT)

• Ukraine’s counter-offensive has begun, and it’s not what the West expected (Economist)

• The war in Ukraine is deepening the climate crisis at a time when global greenhouse gas emissions are already running at a record high, according to a report by carbon accounting experts. (Reuters)

• Canadian wildfire smoke updates: East Coast skies engulfed in dangerous haze (ABC)

• Texas sheriff files criminal case over DeSantis flights to Martha’s Vineyard (Guardian)

• Second Plane Carrying Migrants Arrives in Sacramento (NYT)

• California law enforcement intercepted a second plane in Sacramento carrying relocated migrants, as DeSantis remains mum about his involvement (Business Insider)

• Gavin Newsom: Florida officials committed crimes sending migrants to California (NBC)

• Chris Christie Enters GOP Presidential Race as Chief Trump Antagonist (WSJ)

• Unlawful southern border entries down 70% from record highs since end of Title 42 (ABC)

• Atlanta lawmakers approve funds for police training center despite fierce opposition (NBC)

• US judge blocks Florida ban on trans minor care in narrow ruling, says ‘gender identity is real’ (AP)

• We’re All Bad Neighbors Now (TNR)

• CNN Chairman and CEO Chris Licht is out (CNN)

• The Murder Rate Is Suddenly Falling (Atlantic)

• Apple Ghosts the Generative AI Revolution (Wired)

• High-Paying ChatGPT Careers: 30% Of Companies Seek Nontech Professionals For $300,000+ Salaries (Yahoo)

• AI Is the Technocratic Elite’s New Excuse for a Power Grab (WSJ)

• Biggest threat to humanity isn’t AI but US-China hostility leading to war (SCMP)

• New ChatGPT Attack Technique Spreads Malicious Packages (InfoSecurity)

• Massive Turing test shows we can only just tell AIs apart from humans (NewScientist)

• Why AI won't be the burnout cure we've been waiting for (BBC)

• He Barely Escaped the Taliban. Now He’s Opened an Afghan Restaurant to Help Other Refugees. (Washingtonian)

• In a new study, scientists found that the climate milestone could come about a decade sooner than anticipated, even if planet-warming emissions are gradually reduced. (NYT)

• Webb telescope detects organic molecules in distant galaxy (CNN)

• New Zodiac Killer clue in the Sierra? Here’s what led one sleuth to Hell Hole Reservoir (SFC)

• UFO ‘whistleblower’ says government has ‘intact’ non-human craft (Independent)

• Frightened Man Momentarily Forced To Engage With Reality In Between TV Episodes (The Onion)

 

In the Hills

As I was checking on the progress of the nest-making birds down at the bush by the sidewalk in front of our house Monday, a lady pushing a baby stroller stopped by and asked me what was happening.

I told her and she bent down and peered into the underbrush. “There it is,” she said, pointing.

Following her line of sight I still couldn't see anything resembling a nest.

At first I had assumed she was one of the nannies taking care of babies in this neighborhood, but then I noticed there was no child in her stroller, just some random gear.

She also had few teeth and she looked careworn. 

As we chatted a police vehicle pulled up and an officer got out. The lady started to push her cart up the sidewalk when he came over to talk with her.

It appeared that they knew each other.

The conversation lasted a few minutes; I could overhear bits of it but not enough to get more than a rough sense of what was going on. I lingered nearby as the woman was black and this was an interaction with law enforcement. I was the only witness.

Eventually, the woman turned her stroller around and headed back down the hill. As she passed, she asked me “Did you notice what kind of birds they were?”

The police officer eyed me for a moment and then came over to tell me what had just happened.

“She is well-known to us as a person who comes up here to steal people’s mail. Then she takes it to a nearby bank and tries to open bank accounts in their names. The bank tellers recognize her and call us.

“We’ve arrested her numerous times, most recently just two weeks ago, but she keeps doing it. She’s homeless and usually stays down in the flats. She comes up here looking for new targets because so many old people live around here.

“I told her to go back down the hill,” he concluded. “She has no business to be up here.”

Then he sped off to shadow her as she headed back to the poorer end of town.

Afterward, I thought carefully about what I’d just seen. The officer had been calm and professional throughout and the lady had been polite and responsive. They almost could have been two neighbors making a deal.

But actually he was telling her to stay away from this part of town and that he would be watching her to make sure she did that.

So was this police harassment? Or an officer trying to prevent a federal crime? Community policing or structural racism? Depending on your perspective it could be one, or the other, all or none of the above.

As far as I was concerned, it was pretty much just another day in America, land of the haves and have-nots. And no, I didn’t see what kind of birds they were.

LINKS:

• Sonic boom shakes D.C. after fighter jets scramble to intercept unresponsive small plane (CBS)

• Mike Pence files paperwork to launch 2024 Republican presidential campaign (CNBC)

• Axelrod: Manchin is ‘dead man walking’ in West Virginia (The Hill)

• Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors, making Texas the most populous state to have enacted the ban. At least 18 other states have taken similar steps. [AP]

• The next big threat hovering over the U.S. economy (Politico)

• A crowded 2024 Republican race helps clear the way for a Trump nomination (Reuters)

• Trump attorneys met at Justice Department for just under two hours (CBS)

• Social Security Isn’t Safe Anymore — McCarthy Claims Debt Ceiling Raise ‘Isn’t the End’ (Yahoo)

• California Officials Investigating Flight of Migrants to Sacramento (NYT)

• The U.N. said it was "alarmed" by detentions in Hong Kong linked to the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, while China said the financial hub was moving from "chaos" to prosperity. (Reuters)

• Ukraine has cultivated sabotage agents inside Russia and is giving them drones to stage attacks, sources say (CNN)

• Far from the front lines, deadly missile attacks prove there is no escaping Russia’s war (WP)

• Ukraine war: Russia says it thwarted major Ukrainian offensive (BBC)

• 'More alarming every hour': Russians admit Ukraine gains. Is counteroffensive underway? (USA Today)

• US releases video showing close-call in Taiwan Strait with Chinese destroyer (AP)

• Chegg Embraced AI. ChatGPT Ate Its Lunch Anyway (Wired)

• AI chatbots lose money every time you use them. That’s a problem. (WP)

• Top AI researcher dismisses AI ‘extinction’ fears (VentureBeat)

• In Defense of Humanity in an Age of AI (Atlantic)

• Is it real or made by AI? Europe wants a label for that as it fights disinformation (AP)

• The new AI gold rush has changed the mood in Silicon Valley (WP)

• Are cats really domesticated? (Guardian)

• Vast Networks of Fungi May Hold Key to Climate Fight (Bloomberg)

• Hundreds of journalists strike to demand leadership change at biggest US newspaper chain (AP)

• The number of reported traffic incidents involving self-driving taxis has surged this year in San Francisco. (SFC)

• Skeptics Question Whether Pence Has More to Offer Than Raw Sexual Magnetism (New Yorker)

 

Good Bosses and Bad

To get situated, imagine you are sitting right here outside in the hills overlooking San Francisco Bay. We’re looking west, the sun is shining, and far below us the traffic is buzzing freely back and forth — north and south — along the I-80.

A passenger train is angling through that same area with its haunting whistle rising on the soft breeze from the flatlands.

Several birds come and go in the yard, visiting their favorite trees and shrubs before ascending to the electric wires strung overhead. One pair is hard at work building a nest in a bush down by the sidewalk when they have to angrily ward off two crows that keep trying to encroach. 

A hazy fog hovers over the coastal range in the distance.

Over here just to our right is the wooden planter box where I’ve seeded tomatoes, peppers, and a pea plant and set the seeds of carrots, onions and cucumbers in the fresh black dirt. Everything is moist as I’ve just criss-crossed the contraption with a small sprinkler can.

Next I need a strategy to ward off the deer who periodically strip everything edible from this yard.

But what we are discussing today is what it means to be “retired” after many decades going to work every day, week after month after year, and on and on until a half-century has passed. To start with, it means no more paychecks, that’s for sure, which is not such a good thing.

But it also means that you don’t have to be in any particular place at any particular time doing some very specific thing and answering to somebody who — let’s just be honest here — is probably acting more or less like a jerk.

That goes with the territory.

Being retired also means you have time to think back over it all. People in general, I would say, don’t really make very good bosses. The way they get into that position is usually some mix of talent, privilege, competition, aggression, ambition and greed. 

All other things being equal, people who enjoy telling others what to do out of an inflated sense of their own rightness do not make very good bosses. On the other hand, exercising some degree of decision-making power over well-deserving employees can be an opportunity to make others’ lives in that moment just a little bit better, happier and more rewarding.

There’s an entire library of mediocre books about management theory with charts and statistics but trust me on this one, it all boils down to whether you are a good boss or a bad one.

Now that we’ve settled that issue, let’s celebrate that none of this is any of our concern any longer. And that, my friend, is a very good thing. We’re retired. We can focus on the nesting birds and hope they’ve chased off the marauding crows at least long enough to usher a few new lives into this world of survival of the slightly more fit.

LINKS: 

• Biden’s 2024 pitch highlights pragmatism over Trump’s pugilism (AP)

• Inside the Complicated Reality of Being America’s Oldest President (NYT)

• Fighter jets chase small plane in Washington area before it crashes in Virginia (Reuters)

• Three companies agree to pay more than $1 billion to settle ‘forever chemical’ claims (CNN)

• Student loan forgiveness: Biden says some borrowers will restart payments (AL)

• Why does America have a debt limit? (Economist)

• Democrats Hatch Plans to End ‘Insanity’ of Debt-Ceiling Fights (WSJ)

• America's economic holding pattern (Axios)

• Child Labor Is on the Rise (New Yorker)

• The tech industry was deflating. Then came ChatGPT. (WP)

• AI Is an Insult Now — People are already tired of machine-generated text, and they’re not afraid to say it. (Atlantic)

• AI vs. Columnist: Can You Spot the Difference? (Bloomberg)

• AI Is About to Turn Book Publishing Upside-Down (Publishers Weekly)

• A lawyer got ChatGPT to do his research, but he isn’t AI’s biggest fool (Guardian)

• Three industries ripe for automation, according to a robotics guru (CNBC)

• Character.AI, the a16z-backed chatbot startup, tops 1.7M installs in first week (TechCrunch)

• How to Be Smart About Artificial-Intelligence ETFs (WSJ)

• Taliban moving senior officials to Kandahar. Will it mean a harder line? (WP)

• Nature: Florida's Sanibel Island (CBS)

• Older People Are Sharing "Baffling" Things They've Noticed About Younger People In Their Teens And 20s (BuzzFeed)

• Arizona’s water troubles show how climate change is reshaping the West (WP)

• Little-Known Microbes Could Be an Early Warning Signal of Climate Tipping Point (SciTechDaily)

• Study Finds Beckoning Index Finger Still Most Effective Way To Get Americans Onto Dance Floor (The Onion)

 

Growing

When I was small, my father told me that his mother — Grandma Weir — had a green thumb. (I looked but couldn’t see one.) She’d grown up on small farms in Ontario, and was widely believed to be able to get anything to grow.

My father tried to teach me gardening techniques when I was a bit older, but like with almost everything else he taught me, he ended up doing all the work while I watched.

At the very back of our large backyard on the edge of town in Bay City, we had a vegetable garden, which if memory serves, was extremely productive. The soil had until recently been farmland and it was rich and black.

Behind that, at the property line was one of a series of ditches carrying water from Saginaw Bay. There were fish, frogs and turtles and the occasional snake. Beyond the ditch were cornfields stretching to the horizon.

Growing up in a family that grew vegetables and was one generation removed from the farm shaped my values in many ways. I’m sure it helped me become an environmentalist and choose the subjects I pursued as a journalist, particularly Circle of Poison.

As I’ve aged, on occasion I’ve done a little urban gardening, mostly growing herbs and lettuce, tomatoes, squash, onions and other vegetables. Anyway, all of this is leading up to my latest news, which is a little experiment — planting a few small items and several rows of seeds in a raised wooden box out front.

It is a simple project but one that reaches far back in my memory, connecting me with my roots.

LINKS:

• ‘You don’t have another option’: Inside the Biden, McCarthy debt ceiling deal (WP)

• The Debt-Limit Deal Suggests Debt Will Keep Growing, Fast (NYT)

• McCarthy impresses Senate GOP with surprise wins in debt ceiling battle (The Hill)

• May jobs report shocks economists: 'The strangest employment report for some time' (Yahoo)

• The baby-bust economy: How declining birth rates will change the world (Economist)

• Trump-appointed judge rejects Tennessee’s anti-drag law as too broad, too vague (AP)

• Trump and DeSantis trade insults (Reuters)

• AI Is About to Turn Book Publishing Upside-Down (Publishers Weekly)

• Robot takeover? Not quite. Here’s what AI doomsday would look like (Guardian)

• They plugged GPT-4 into Minecraft—and unearthed new potential for AI (ArsTechnica)

• Artificial Intelligence Series 2 Of 5: AI’s Influence On The Workforce (Forbes)

• Should We, and Can We, Put the Brakes on Artificial Intelligence? (New Yorker)

• Texas judge bans filings solely created by AI after ChatGPT made up cases (CBS)

• The Upper Atmosphere Is Cooling, Prompting New Climate Concerns (Wired)

• Prigozhin says Kremlin factions are destroying the Russian state (Reuters)

• ‘We will succeed’: Zelenskiy says Ukraine ready to launch counteroffensive (Guardian)

• The curious case of Yevgeny Prigozhin (Reuters)

• Defense Secretary Austin says U.S. won't stand for 'coercion and bullying' from China (NPR)

• There may be hundreds of millions of habitable planets in the Milky Way, new study suggests (LiveScience)

• Wildfires spread in eastern Canada (Reuters)

• Close Friends More Tolerable After A Few Drinks (The Onion)