Binge Wisdoms

 “You’re a mess, Ted.” — Sassy. (Ted Lasso)

I don’t write about popular culture that often because frankly, much of it is simply not very good. Anyway, most of the time, I watch sports or the same old movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime or YouTube over and over for my entertainment.

But recently, I finally joined the 21st century and started subscribing to some of the streaming services, which gives me access to shows like Platonic, The Morning Show and Ted Lasso.

The form these dramas take differs fundamentally from both traditional film and TV in surprising ways. It reminds me of the writing in serials popular in early 20th century publications and of course also of early radio and later TV. It’s also more like the quarter system in college as opposed to the old semester system: Ten weeks instead of 16, sped-up, like modern life.

Beyond the form, however, is the content and that’s what really interests me. In the world of web design and digital media, we spent years trying to discover ways to provide immersive experiences.

But the design and technology options we experimented with usually lacked good story-telling, which is the key, in the end, to all media success stories, regardless of form.

So on to a review.

Ted Lasso has strong characters, good writing, and the kind of emotional punch only good story-tellers can deliver. The series takes on corporate exploitation, racism, sexism, gender identity, social activism, loneliness, isolation, pornography, friendship, competition, jealousy, ambition, betrayal and almost every other social or psychological issue of our time with a pretty consistent sense of balance. 

Which is to say that it’s light-hearted until it isn’t. That’s as it should be — these are not joking matters, though humor is always one way to try to cope.

Most forcefully, it takes on divorce directly and forcefully in an unrelenting way. When it comes to the real world of breaking up — especially when there are children involved — things only very slowly resolve themselves, if ever. In many ways, the pain never ends, but it can lessen with time.

I like that the Ted Lasso producers get that. He’s a mess, as he should be. In one memorable scene he is drinking alone on Christmas Eve, missing his broken family, while “A Wonderful Life” plays soundlessly on a television in the background. 

Perfect. Been there, done that.

The trouble with most Hollywood endings is that life virtually never turns out happily ever after for the great majority of us.

Oh, one other thing I like about Lasso, and then I’ll quit, is about sports, which of course is the purported focus of the series. I haven’t finished the third season yet, so this might change, but Ted’s team pretty much, in a word, sucks. They almost never win, especially in the biggest and most important games.

Sports movies are never like that, but real life is often like that. But as Ted says more than on one occasion, and here I paraphrase, “It’s not the winning or losing that matters.”

Naturally there is much I could criticize in the series — the tiresome overuse of expletives, which is just lazy writing, a number of predictably wooden background characters, and unconvincing performances by most of the “soccer players” on the pitch. And are all English soccer fans really that stupid?

I guess for the answer to that one I could look closer to home. It’s a football Saturday and you know what I’m gonna be doin’ today...

HEADLINES:

• Sen. Bob Menendez and wife Nadine indicted on bribery charges (NBC)

• DeSantis is in growing trouble. He’s betting big on Iowa to rescue him. (WP)

• ‘Waiting for him to drop out’: DeSantis’ influence nosedives in Florida (Politico)

• House Republicans falter on funding plans, as shutdown inches closer (WP)

• McCarthy visibly frustrated after GOP hardliners put his plan to avoid a shutdown on ice (CNN)

• House Republicans Refuse to Host Zelensky Because They’re Too Busy Fighting One Another (New Yorker)

• Congress running out of time to avoid government shutdown (CBS)

• Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events (ProPublica)

• Clarence Thomas’ newest ethics mess shreds his allies’ defenses (MSNBC)

• Ex-Defense Secretary Makes Chilling Prediction About Donald Trump 2.0 (HP)

• 'He will be destroyed on the stand': Trump's rhetorical tricks wear thin as evidence mounts (MSNBC)

• Canada’s Surveillance Of Indian Diplomats Led To Allegations Of Sikh Leader’s Killing, Reports Say (Forbes)

• Why Canada lacks allies’ support on claim India killed Hardeep Singh Nijjar (Al Jazeera)

• From an old-style Afghan camera, a new view of life under the Taliban emerges (AP)

• ‘The love for music is still there’: saving the sounds of Afghanistan one cassette at a time (Guardian)

• How Elon Musk and Tesla Helped Spark the Auto Strikes (Wired)

• Hollywood strike deal ‘inching closer’ after more than 10 hours of talks with studio heads, source says (NBC)

• UAW to expand strike to 38 GM, Stellantis plants but not Ford (WP)

• The Tragedy of Google Search — With a landmark antitrust trial under way, a giant of the modern web is buckling under its own weight. (Atlantic)

• Jann Wenner: Pay attention to the man behind the curtain (Al Jazeera)

• Tropical Storm Warnings Issued for East Coast as Ophelia Could Form Soon (NYT)

• Auctoria uses generative AI to create video game models (TC)

• Smarter AI Assistants Could Make It Harder to Stay Human — AI helpers that make phone calls, book flights, and chat with other bots will give humans new freedom—but also lead machines to undermine people's independence. (Wired)

• Woman Wakes Up In Cold Sweat Worried Cat Doesn’t Know It’s Cute (The Onion)

Broken House

 Within ten days, barring a break in the logjam, the U.S. government will shut down. The extreme right-wing faction of the GOP has frozen Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy in place to the point he cannot get the votes to pass any measures at all, including those that would keep the government open.

The stakes, of course, are enormous, but we’ve approached this precipice so many times now that it’s difficult for the public to take it seriously this time around.

The consequences would include damage to the economy, reduction to the country’s debt rating, losses in the war in Ukraine and further damage to the public perception of the government as a whole. Plus disruption of many, many of our individual lives.

Most people don’t pay attention to these details. Most people don’t follow the news closely enough to see the patterns. Far too many believe the disinformation and conspiracy theories advanced by Fox News and other right-wing sources.

In point of fact, most of the major governmental institutions are functioning just fine. The White House is fine. The Senate is fine. The Justice Department, the Pentagon and most other cabinet-level agencies are fine.

The federal judiciary is fine despite an unbalanced Supreme Court that was corrupted by Donald Trump’s three appointees.

But the one institution that is indeed broken at present is the House of Representatives, where a tiny minority of hard-right Trumpists are paralyzing McCarthy and therefore holding the rest of the government hostage.

It would be nice to think this short-term crisis will soon pass, and maybe it will, but Trump’s Zombie Army remains the greatest single threat to the future of democracy that we’ve ever encountered.

And right now, Exhibit A is on display in the House.

HEADLINES:

• India Suspends Visas for Canadians, Escalating Clash Over Sikh’s Killing (NYT)

• Ukrainian missile strikes Russia’s Black Sea fleet HQ in Crimea, say officials (FT)

• House Republicans still don't have the votes as government shutdown looms (NBC)

• Government shutdown risk spikes as House Republicans leave town in disarray amid hard-right revolt (AP)

• Centrist Dems and McCarthy’s allies are in secret talks to strike a deal (Politico)

• Former White House lawyer Ty Cobb compares Trump to ‘mob boss’ (The Hill)

• Migrants Overwhelm Texas City of Eagle Pass (WSJ)

• Tech remains central in the Hot Peace between China and the US (FT)

• US offers work permits to half million Venezuelans already in country (Reuters)

• Poland will stop providing weapons to Ukraine as dispute over grain imports deepens (CNN)

• Ukraine Has Gained Ground. But It Has Much Farther to Go (NYT)

• Will the high court stand up to Alabama’s voting rights defiance? (MSNBC)

• America Is Just Now Entering the Age of Tesla (Atlantic)

• Book bans continue to hit record highs for schools and public libraries (AP)

• Water levels on the Mississippi River are plummeting for the second year in a row (CNN)

• The federal government will again provide free coronavirus tests. The Biden administration announced yesterday it would revive its program to mail free rapid tests to Americans, amid a recent uptick in cases. (WP)

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said humans are “safer than ever” from the threat of climate change just weeks after a Category 3 hurricane struck his state. DeSantis has also pledged to roll back efforts to fight climate change, including to remove the U.S. from the landmark Paris climate agreement. [HuffPost]

• The Only Way College Sports Can Begin to Make Sense Again (NYT)

• AI-focused tech firms locked in ‘race to the bottom’, warns MIT professor (Guardian)

• Six months ago experts called for a pause to AI experiments. Where are we now? (EuroNews)

• What’s next for supercomputers, and electrifying everything (TR)

• How the AI revolution is different: It threatens white-collar workers (CBS)

• Rupert Murdoch Steps Down As All-Powerful Creator Of Reality (The Onion)

Smoke Signals

Sometime on Tuesday, an enormous dark cloud eased over the Bay Area, casting a foreboding shadow not unlike the alien spaceships in the movie Independence Day, minus the soundtrack.

At our house, we employed the only defenses we have against this particular invader, shutting all the windows and turning on the fans and air filters.

Of course it wasn’t an alien spaceship that had arrived overhead, but a broad layer of wildfire smoke from fires further up north in both California and Oregon. By evening, the Western sky loomed like one giant layer cake stretching end to end, one light layer topped by a much darker one.

***

The foreboding became clear Wednesday as the hearing by a Congressional committee chaired by Republican Jim Jordan with Attorney General Merrick Garland as the witness got underway. Bluntly, it was a sham. I’ve attended a number of such hearings over the years, covered several, and testified as a witness —and all of those were legitimate proceedings.

But Jordan is a grandstanding hypocrite fronting for Donald Trump, while Garland is a dignified public servant with a long list of distinguished accomplishments and does not deserve the disrespect Jordan and his Republican colleague dished out. It makes you wonder why anyone would wish to hold a government appointment under these circumstances.

It is disheartening to see the Congressional oversight process degraded by imposters like Jordan, who is deeply compromised ethically on a number of levels. If anything, Jordan belongs in the witness box himself, to be grilled about his role in a long list of criminal acts, including the Jan. 6th riot.

So while it may be wildfire smoke that is the proximate cause of the bad air quality in these parts, it is the likes of Jim Jordan who portend even darker days ahead for our American democracy.

HEADLINES:

• Attorney General Garland testifies before GOP-led House Judiciary Committee (CNN)

• Rupert Murdoch to retire from Fox (Poynter)

• House flounders as GOP fails to appease hard-right members on funding (WP)

• ‘Weak,’ ‘Lying like a dead dog': McCarthy faces Republican attacks amid looming shutdown (Politico)

• Democrats face big decision on McCarthy (The Hill)

• McCarthy faces an almost impossible task trying to unite House GOP and fund the government (AP)

• MAGA Lawyer Lin Wood Flips Against Trump in Georgia Racketeering Case (TNR)

• A group of California lawmakers is exploring a new method for potentially removing Donald Trump from the state’s ballot over the former president’s alleged 14th Amendment violations. [HuffPost]

• How likely is a government shutdown and who will be affected? What you need to know. (USA Today)

• The UAW threatened to expand its strike if talks don’t progress by Friday. The UAW and companies remain far apart on terms for a new four-year contract. (WP)

• Smoky, bad air expected to stick around the Bay Area (SFC)

• Wildfire smoke is eroding decades of air quality improvements, study finds (WP)

• Azerbaijan halts Karabakh offensive after ceasefire deal with Armenian separatists (Reuters)

• Biden Aides and Saudis Explore Defense Treaty Modeled After Asian Pacts (NYT)

• India warns citizens on Canada travel amid row over Sikh leader’s murder (Al Jazeera)

• Here Come the Glow-in-the-Dark Houseplants (Wired)

• Rolling Stone's rock 'n' roll gatekeeper is telling on himself (MSBNC)

• Fathers have ‘unique effect’ on children’s educational outcomes, study finds (Guardian)

• Telling AI model to “take a deep breath” causes math scores to soar in study (Ars Technica)

• Galileo offers new tools to explain why your AI model is hallucinating (Venture Beat)

• ChatGPT Can Now Generate Images, Too (NYT)

• Amazon brings generative AI to Alexa (TC)

• AI’s existential threat is a ‘completely bonkers distraction’ because there are ‘like 101 more practical issues’ to talk about, top founder in the field says (Fortune)

• Report: Habsburgs Stopped Inbreeding One Generation Short Of Producing Perfect Human Specimen (The Onion)

High Tops

Yesterday morning was cool and slightly overcast as I drove my nine-year-old granddaughter to school. When we pulled up to the drop-off point and said our good-byes, she climbed out of the backseat, hoisted her backpack, grabbed her water bottle, and walked to the corner.

She waited patiently until making eye contact with the driver of another car stopped at the intersection before crossing. She was wearing white high-top Converse shoes.

Did you know that Converses are cool (again)? I’ll admit that I did not, until my twelve-year-old granddaughter returned from her “back to school” shopping trip with a pair of black high tops. And another pair, white, for her little sister.

Talk about lost in the ‘50s. That would be me, not them. They’re cool.

As I drove back through the winding streets to the house where we all live, I saw other kids getting dropped off or walking to school, with parents, grandparents, older siblings, relatives or friends — all converging on one location from many separate routes.

In what was neither an original nor especially profound insight, I suddenly realized that feeling satisfied in life requires being able to fully experience and appreciate moments like this. Or any of the other precious random little slivers of time granted to us.

Much of the time I am dissatisfied, yearning for more or perhaps for a return to moments long past or maybe for things that will never come to pass. But I know that trying to live in another time — backwards or forward — is wasted time.

So back home, I wrote out the story you just read. In the moment.

HEADLINES:

• The rapid downfall of Jann Wenner was years in the making (WP)

• Jann Wenner’s Rock Hall Reign Lasted Years. It Ended in 20 Minutes. (NYT)

• Republicans intensify government shutdown risk over spending bill (Guardian)

• House Republicans struggle to find consensus in closed-door party meeting amid government shutdown threat (CNN)

• An out-of-control GOP is the party of nonstop national crisis (The Hill)

• House Republicans cancel vote on short-term funding measure amid infighting – as it happened (Guardian)

• McCarthy’s impossible shutdown math (The Hill)

• Anxiety ripples through the Democratic Party over Biden (WP)

• The Hollywood Dual Strike Isn’t Just About the Writers and Actors (Atlantic)

• Fueled by a surge in conservative culture wars and a package of education laws targeting instruction on gender and sexuality, parents and residents in Florida have launched a deluge of book challenges. Last month, the state's Department of Education revealed that more than 300 books were removed from public school shelves during the 2022-2023 school year. [HuffPost]

• The male loneliness epidemic and how it affects fathers (CNN)

• Biden presses allies for Ukraine aid to beat back Russian invasion in U.N. speech (NBC)

• Russia has turned food, energy and even children into weapons against Ukraine, Zelenskyy says at UN (AP)

• Azerbaijan launches military action in Karabakh 'to disarm' Armenians (Reuters)

• Mental health among Afghan women deteriorating across the country, UN report finds (AP)

• At Japan’s dementia cafes, forgotten orders are all part of the service (WP)

• India expels Canadian diplomat, escalating tensions after Trudeau accuses India in Sikh’s killing (AP)

• Disney to Invest $60 Billion in Theme Parks, Cruises Over Next Decade (WSJ)

• Google DeepMind AI tool assesses DNA mutations for harm potential (Guardian)

• The Physical Process That Powers a New Type of Generative AI (Quanta)

• Employee Offering Suggestion At Meeting Slowly Grows Quieter And Quieter Until Eventually Squeaking ‘I Don’t Know’ (The Onion)

 

Aging Ungracefully

 Common to all of us as we age, regrettably, is the loss of our youthful appearance. Most of us cope, with varying degrees of success, by simply getting used to it.

Some people fight it, employing every tool known to humankind — diet, exercise, hairdye, wrinkle cream, age-defying cream, meditation, in extreme cases surgery — but nobody wins that war.

So another strategy is to simply ignore the inevitable and embrace the positive — i.e. we need not worry about this kind of thing any longer. Nature is taking care of the matter for us.

Mental decline is quite another matter. It is ironic that many of us boomers wasted at least part of our youth trying to lose our minds — or at least radically alter them — through some combination of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll.

Speaking of the latter, my former boss Jann Wenner did himself and the magazine he co-founded and many us launched our careers at, Rolling Stone, a serious disservice by denying and disparaging the undeniable truth that the roots of rock music, like humanity itself, lie in Africa.

It was the various genres of the music created by black people — from rhythm and blues, soul, jazz, Motown, even slave-era chants and drumming — that eventually led straight to Elvis Presley, the Beatles, The Rolling Stones and all the rest. They were cover artists, damn good ones, but not the originators. 

Anybody with a lick of sense knows that.

Except, perhaps, for an aging person who did too many drugs over time and is now exhibiting the sad signs of cognitive decline.

HEADLINES:

• Iran Releases 5 Americans as U.S. Unfreezes Billions in Oil Revenue for Tehran (NYT)

• Iran prisoner release deal may signal new direction in western diplomacy (Guardian)

• Biden to Target Industrial Pollution in a 2nd Term, if He Gets One (NYT)

• Hunter Biden sues the IRS, alleging agents illegally released his tax information (CNN)

• Red states quit nation’s oldest library group amid culture war over books (WP)

• Ford, GM Stocks Fall as UAW Contract Negotiations Restart (Barron’s)

• House GOP deal to avert shutdown gets icy reception from conservatives (The Hill)

• Kevin McCarthy not ready to abandon negotiated funding deal despite conservative opposition (CNN)

• With democracy on the ballot, the mainstream press must change its ways (Guardian)

• Trump wrote to-do lists for assistant on White House documents marked classified (ABC)

• Schumer ditches Senate's informal dress code (Axios)

• The future of Silicon Valley (FT)

• Debris found in search for F-35 fighter jet that went missing after pilot ejected during 'mishap' (NBC)

• 2 years ago, the Taliban banned girls from school. It’s a worsening crisis for all Afghans (AP)

• Is the end of AIDS in sight? (Economist)

• In Wagner’s largest African outpost, Russia looks to tighten its grip (WP)

• The disappearance of Chinese defense minister Li Shangfu highlights the opaque and complex nature of the People's Liberation Army, diplomats and analysts say. (Reuters)

• China flies 103 military planes toward Taiwan in a new spike of activity (AP)

• Testing the limits of generative AI (InfoWorld)

• Morgan Stanley kicks off generative AI era on Wall Street with assistant for financial advisors (CNBC)

• OpenAI Hustles to Beat Google to Launch ‘Multimodal’ LLM (The Information)

• 37-Year-Old Makes Absolutely Heartbreaking Last-Ditch Effort To Get Really Into New Band (The Onion)

Monday Links

 HEADLINES:

• Here is what Detroit automakers have to give the UAW to get a deal, experts say (Detroit Free Press)

• Five US citizens land in Qatar as part of US-Iran prisoner swap (Reuters)

• U.S. asks for help finding missing F-35 fighter jet after pilot ejects during 'mishap' (NBC)

• The Ken Paxton Verdict Is Not the Vindication Republicans Want (New Yorker)

• Republicans run a big risk with impeachment (NPR)

• Why a government shutdown this fall could be the costliest one ever (Yahoo)

• Speaker McCarthy steps into the breach as his conference toils and shutdown looms (WP)

• Hurricane Lee fades, but 'life-threatening' surf persists for thousands of miles (USA Today)

• Letter shows Pope Pius XII probably knew about Holocaust early on (Reuters)

• In Risky Hunt for Secrets, U.S. and China Expand Global Spy Operations (NYT)

• Ukraine's Crimea attacks seen as key to counter-offensive against Russia (BBC)

• The British Empire peaked 100 years ago this month (Economist)

• Is China’s Economic Predicament as Bad as Japan’s? It Could Be Worse (WSJ)

• Water-starved Saudi confronts desalination's heavy toll (AFP)

• He Worked for the U.S. in Afghanistan. He’s Still Waiting to Come to the U.S. (Politico Mag)

• Using Images To Train Large Language Models (Forbes)

• ChatGPT Isn't Coming for Your Coding Job (Wired)

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

Small Talk

Back when I was younger and attending social gatherings on an occasional basis, I thought that I hated small talk. It seemed like the kind of meaningless jabbering that people did just to fill a void, rather than the meaningful dialogue that might actually have addressed the problems of the day.

I must have been such a bore!

At those events, in San Francisco, L.A., New York, Washington and elsewhere, strangers would ask me what I “did” and I would usually answer “I am a writer.” Unless it was a gathering of writers, many of those strangers, if they were males and had a drink in their hand would perk up and reply: “Oh, what a great hobby! I’m going to write a book myself someday — I just don’t have time right now. I’m too busy.”

This was most definitely a buzz-killer for me and our acquaintance was certain to end soon after.

But that was only at gatherings on this side of the pond. On similar occasions, anywhere in Europe, when someone discovered I was a writer, they tended to want to discuss ideas and theories, including the nature of writing itself.

If anything, they intellectualized my craft even more than I did. I felt like I had landed in a room filled with under-employed academics.

Then there was yet another sort of social gathering — primarily in South, Central and Eastern Asia, Mexico or Central America. At these events, as a Western writer I was treated as a celebrity, a hero, someone of significance, regardless of how I might have been thinking of myself in that random moment.

It is quite strange now, thinking back on all of these random moments, about the difference between actually connecting with somebody in person and connecting via the words, sentences and paragraphs you create.

Writing can never be a complete substitute for true friendship — it is more like a casual friendship. To be a real friend, I’ve learned, you gotta be good at the small talk.

It matters.

P.S. Read today’s top link. And thank those of you who subscribe!

LINKS:

• The End of the Subscription Era is Coming (Medium)

• Hurricane Lee makes landfall in Nova Scotia (Independent)

• U.A.W. Starts Strike Small, but Repercussions Could Prove Far-Reaching (NYT)

• For first time in history, union workers strike against all Big Three automakers (CNN)

• Why you shouldn't be surprised that autoworkers are asking for a 40% pay raise (NPR)

• McCarthy-Gaetz feud hits fever pitch (The Hill)

• Congress is in crisis. There’s no clear escape. (Politico)

• Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis turns on ‘malignant narcissist’ ex-president (Guardian)

• A Pride flag ban sparks accusations of betrayal in tiny Michigan city (WP)

• A Jan. 6 rioter was convicted and sentenced in secret. No one will say why (AP)

• McBride leads primary opponents in early polling (The Hill)

• Threats emerge as witnesses show how Google built its empire (Politico)

• The Taliban have detained 18 staff, including a foreigner, from an Afghanistan-based NGO, it says (AP)

• Pakistani Police Detain Hundreds Of Afghan Citizens In Karachi (RFE)

• Jann Wenner Defends His Legacy, and His Generation’s (NYT)

• An ode to the newspaper sports section, as it gasps for air (WP)

• Jann Wenner Removed From Rock Hall Board After Times Interview (NYT)

• DeepMind discovers that AI large language models can optimize their own prompts (VentureBeat)

• DeepMind’s cofounder: Generative AI is just a phase. What’s next is interactive AI. (MIT)

• A test of artificial intelligence (Nature)

• Yuval Noah Harari and Mustafa Suleyman on the future of AI (Economist)

• Panhandler Really Appreciates It When People Make A Big Show Out Of Patting All Their Pockets (The Onion)