Night Out

 With Alex, Ingrid and Julie at gallery in Jingletown where Ingrid's photo was featured.

Reasons for Pause

Among the daily flow of news stories from leading outlets around the world is the occasional article that rises above the noise to provide a measure of true insight into our present collective situation.

Three such articles seem worth mentioning as we head into this weekend.

The first is “Why the World Is Betting Against American Democracy,” in Politico Magazine.

This one surveys a number of current and former ambassadors to the U.S. about the impact of our polarized (and polarizing) political standoff on the rest of the world.

It is sobering to think about the implications, regardless of who wins the presidential election in November.

The second notable piece is “What broke the American Dream for Millennials,” on CNN.

This one details the daunting economics facing young people as they try to pay off the costly debts of obtaining a college education, buy houses and raise families.

As the parent of a number of Millennials, I can attest that what my generation took for granted is an increasingly remote fantasy for most of them.

The third important piece is “AI-generated content is raising the value of trust,” in the Economist.

Given the issues raised in the two articles cited above, consider how artificial intelligence could soon raise the economic and political stakes even higher.

Quoting the article, "The trouble is that the fakes are rapidly getting harder to spot. AI is improving all the time, as computing power and training data become more 
abundant. Could ai-powered fake-detection software, built into web 
browsers, identify computer-generated content? Sadly not. As we report 
this week, the arms race between generation and detection favours the 
forger."

Long-time readers and friends know I’m an optimist by nature. But I have to admit, these three critical analytical articles give even this inveterate optimist reason for pause.

The bottom line is we need old-fashioned, accurate, honest, ass-kicking journalists now more than ever to help us make sense of a world in disarray.

HEADLINES:

• Senior Iran Revolutionary Guard officials killed in Syria strike blamed on Israel (BBC)

• Maine’s top election official seeks state Supreme Court review of decision to remove Trump from ballot (Politico)

• What campaign ads tell us about the state of the 2024 election ahead of New Hampshire (NPR)

• With campaign on the line, Nikki Haley plays it safe in New Hampshire (Axios)

• Immigration, the economy and foreign policy could decide the New Hampshire primary (ABC)

• Trump plays defense after Haley attacks his age (WP)

• In an all-caps, 2 a.m. social media rant about the Jan. 6 case, Donald Trump said he deserved total immunity even for things that "CROSS THE LINE." Lawyers say it's not exactly an admission of guilt, although: “Hard to understand the rantings of a lunatic, but maybe,” said one prominent defense lawyer. [HuffPost]

• Eyeing Super Tuesday, Trump Is Eager to Dispatch Rivals Sooner Than Later (NYT)

• Inside the breakup of Haley and Trump’s partnership over her U.N. role (WP)

• Judge in Trump's Georgia case orders hearing on misconduct allegations against DA (MSNBC)

• Fani Willis accuses special prosecutor’s estranged wife of interfering with Trump election case (AP)

• China’s working age population is shrinking(CNBC)

• The rupture of one of the world's busiest shipping routes has exposed the vulnerability of China's export-reliant economy to supply snarls and external demand shocks. (Reuters)

• What is Disease X and how will pandemic preparations help the world? (Al Jazeera)

• Americans are feeling much better about the economy thanks to slowing inflation (CNN)

• Wayfair to lay off 13% of workforce, affecting 1,650 employees (AOL)

• We Are Witnessing the Biggest Judicial Power Grab Since 1803 (The Nation)

• What broke the American Dream for Millennials (CNN)

• Alec Baldwin Is Charged, Again, With Involuntary Manslaughter (NYT)

• 'Sports Illustrated' to lay off most of its staff amid severed licensing deal (NPR)

• Mark Zuckerberg indicates Meta is spending billions of dollars on Nvidia AI chips (CNBC)

• Zuckerberg’s new goal is creating artificial general intelligence (The Verge)

• The rabbit r1 will use Perplexity AI’s tech to answer your queries (TechCrunch)

• The Vatican’s top expert on AI ethics is a friar from a medieval Franciscan order (AP)

• Medical AI could be ‘dangerous’ for poorer nations, WHO warns (Nature)

• AI shouldn’t make ‘life-or-death’ decisions, says OpenAI’s Sam Altman (CNN)

• AI Is the Talk of Davos. Is It Time to Sell? (WSJ)

• AI-generated content is raising the value of trust (Economist)

• Area Man Locked In Protracted Battle With Sweatshirt Neckhole (The Onion)

Dumb Questions

On last Sunday afternoon, while trying to make polite conversation with my four-year-old granddaughter, I asked her a dumb question: “Did you have school this week?”

“No,” she replied sleepily. 

This surprised me so I followed up. “Why?” 

She got a faraway look. “I don’t know. It’s probably summer break.” 

It was at this point that I realized the problem. We were talking late on a Sunday afternoon, near the end of an active and eventful weekend, during which her family had hosted lots of visitors and also had gone on a beach outing.

From her perspective, she hadn’t been in school for any of that. And at the age of four, she’s probably still in the process of working out what a week is, actually, and how it differs from a weekend.

As for the issue of whether it’s summer as or not right now, that may well be one of the disadvantages of growing up in California. You’re never quite sure what season it is out here.

The incident reminded me of exercises I used to conduct in my classes for journalism students on interviewing techniques. I’d recommend that reporters should always try to be aware of how the structure of their questions might influence and sometimes even dictate the answers they receive in return.

Of course, many reporters elicit specific answers deliberately, especially with bad guys. (Just watch “60 Minutes.”) 

But the best reporters try to elicit the truth, as opposed to the answer they want to hear. There’s often a very big difference.

Then again, it’s worth noting the unexpected value of simply asking dumb questions, in journalism or in life.

Which leads me back to the conversation I had with my granddaughter. Perhaps a smarter question would have been “What did you do at school?” But then I might never have learned that we’re already on summer break out here!

(This piece is from January 2023.)

HEADLINES:

• Why the World Is Betting Against American Democracy (Politico Mag)

• Johnson Casts Doubt on Border Deal to Unlock Ukraine Aid, Defying Biden (NYT)

• US Congress passes last-minute stopgap bill to avert government shutdown (Guardian)

• Google CEO says more layoffs expected 'throughout the year' in internal memo (Engadget)

• YouTube Cuts 100 Employees as Tech Layoffs Continue (NYT)

• Democratic drama and Biden write-ins promise a New Hampshire primary to remember (AP)

• Donald Trump Melts Down Over E. Jean Carroll Case (Newsweek)

• Trump temper tantrum marks courtroom face-off with E Jean Carroll (Guardian)

• Trump's big Iowa win included some signs of trouble with moderates, younger voters (ABC)

• World leaders are gathering to discuss Disease X. Here's what to know about the hypothetical pandemic. (CBS)

• U.S. Navy carries out new round of strikes against Houthis in Yemen (WP)

• Israel’s War in Gaza Enters Its Most Perilous Phase Yet (WSJ)

• Iran-backed Hezbollah has rebuffed Washington's initial ideas for cooling tit-for-tat fighting with Israel, but remains open to US diplomacy to avoid a wider war, Lebanese officials said. (Reuters)

• As Fighting Intensifies in Southern Gaza, Palestinians Flee Hospital Refuge (NYT)

• China’s population shrinks again and could more than halve – here’s what that means (The Conversation)

• When the Beatles Stormed America, I Was With Them (Vanity Fair)

• North America has lost nearly 30% of its bird population in a half-century. (WP)

• A growing soft robot with climbing plant–inspired adaptive behaviors for navigation in unstructured environments (Science Robotics)

• BMW will deploy Figure’s humanoid robot at South Carolina plant (TechCrunch)

• These are the skills employers are looking for as AI use expands, according to leaders at Davos (Business Insider)

• Davos Highlights: The Future of AI (Bloomberg)

• Samsung’s new phones can translate live phone calls with AI. The eye-catching Live Translate tool is one of many features added to the AI-first smartphone. (WP)

• Laid-Back Company Allows Employees To Work From Home After 6 P.M. (The Onion)

 

Whose Life, Exactly?

It is probably natural, having worked in the mixed worlds of journalism, movies, academia, non-profit and private sector, “old” media and digital media, that I continue to get a lot of questions about my long strange career.

It is rare that a week goes by that somebody or other doesn’t call to discuss something about the way it was “back then.”

I always try to comply wit their requests, because I was a reporter for a long time and I know how many people resist such calls about what they know or remember.

Usually I’m willing to discuss pretty much anything except the identities of certain confidential sources or relationships that should not disclosed.

That leaves a pretty wide latitude for conversation. Probably the most sought-after information is about my years at Rolling Stone and specifically the Patty Hearst stories.

In 1975-6, Howard Kohn and I had three cover stories on the newspaper heiress’s kidnapping and apparent conversion to the cause of her kidnappers, the domestic terror organization calling itself the SLA.

Even mundane details of our own lives at the time seem to be of some interest and one Hollywood producer recently asked me, “Do you ever think about how amazing it is that you did all of that? That you lived through it?”

The question took me aback for a moment, but I answered, “Sometimes it feels like it was in fact someone else, not me.”

After we hung up, I stayed with that thought about it feeling like somebody’s else’s life, not mine. I suspect a lot of people feel that way about the distant past and the things that happened back then — things that sound strangely exotic now.

Given that we grow and change substantially throughout our lives it is kinda true, too, that many of us were pretty much someone else when younger. And speaking only for myself, I have no regrets about that.

(I first published this piece two years ago in January 2022.)

HEADLINES:

• Neil Gorsuch has a grudge against federal agencies. He holds their fate in his hands (CNN)

• Deadly Iranian Strikes in Iraq and Pakistan Inflame Regional Tensions (NYT)

• Pakistan condemns deadly Iranian missile strike on its territory (BBC)

• Middle East crisis live: Iran says it was targeting ‘Iranian terrorist group’ in Pakistan airstrike (Guardian)

• Pakistan launches airstrikes in Iran, killing 9, after an earlier attack by Tehran (AP)

• Qatar, France strike deal to supply medicine to Israeli hostages, Gazans (WP)

• U.S. Strikes Houthi Targets in Yemen for a Third Time (NYT)

• Secretive surveillance flights keep close watch on Russia and Ukraine (AP)

• Who stands to gain from China’s demographic collapse? (Financial Times)

• Authorities Investigate Threats to Democratic Lawmakers (NYT)

• House Republicans hit pause on effort to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress (NBC)

• Judge threatens to boot Donald Trump from courtroom over loud talking as E. Jean Carroll testifies (AP)

• The main branch of a public library in Jonesboro, Arkansas, set up a display for Pride Month in June 2021. The initiative spurred community backlash that contributed to the county voting the following year to cut library funding in half — and now its staff is dealing with the repercussions. [HuffPost]

• Migrants caught between shelter evictions, freezing temps (Axios)

• It's not just you, Google Search really has gotten worse (Mashable)

• The Self-Checkout Nightmare May Finally Be Ending(Gizmodo)

• OpenAI-Backed Humanoid Maker Gets $100 Million in EQT-Led Round (Bloomberg)

• Doctors are using AI to diagnose a hidden heart condition in kids (WP)

• Mom Asks Phone What That One Thing Called (The Onion)

 

Hitch in the Wagon

Very early on in my writing career, I published an article in a business journal called Pacific Basin Reports. If memory serves, it was an analysis of mining interests in Southeast Asia.

A few weeks after the article appeared, I was startled to read the very same article, word for word, under someone else’s byline in the prestigious Far Eastern Economic Review. I’d been plagiarized and it wasn’t at all subtle.

I wrote a letter of complaint to the Review and in response got a brief apology and a small check — the fee for the article.

Plagiarism is no doubt as old as publishing, but it is seldom that blatant. In other cases I became aware of over the years, writers lifted sentences or paragraphs from published articles to enhance their own work. This happened far more often with college students or very young journalists than veterans, and we often caught the offenders and disciplined them.

The Internet brought the potential for plagiarism to a whole new level, but also the tools for detecting it. Fast forward to today and we have the spectacle of AI, in the form of ChatGPT, being used by CNET to generate entire articles.

While this isn’t plagiarism — it could perhaps be called bot-ism — it is a danger nonetheless for honest journalists. One more in a long litany of dangers. Technologies have already helped destroy the economic security of millions of jobs in publishing over the past quarter-century.

Now writers face the prospect of being replaced, as do many other workers, by robots. The fact that they can’t do our jobs anywhere near as well as we can may not be relevant. The evidence is mixed as to how much Americans value great writing in the first place. It is a very tough way to make a living.

Meanwhile, we’ve already gotten used to bots messing up our sentences by “correcting” us by inserting errors.

Which reminds me of a story: A priest, a minister and a rabbit go into a bar. When the bartender comes over, he takes the orders from the first two but hesitates at the third member of the group. "Aren't you a rabbit -- what are you doing here?"

"I'm only here because of auto-correct."

(I first published this essay last year in January.)

HEADLINES:

• Trump is facing a second E. Jean Carroll trial. Here’s where the cases collide. (MSNBC)

• Trump Unleashes On E. Jean Carroll Ahead Of Trial To Determine Monetary Damages (HuffPost)

• Democrats seize on Iowa results to campaign on threats posed by Trump (Guardian)

• Trump’s Iowa win will show how badly he has broken the Republican Party (The Hill)

• Trump's embrace of far-right activist Laura Loomer worries his allies (NBC)

• Google layoffs continue with ‘hundreds’ from sales team (The Verge)

• A warning shot over the last mile in the inflation battle (Financial Times)

• Supreme Court weighs conservative plea to weaken federal agencies (NBC)

• Iran Launches Missile Strikes in Iraq and Syria, Citing Terrorist Attacks (NYT)

• Gaza urgently needs more aid or its desperate population will suffer widespread famine and disease, the heads of three major U.N. agencies warned as local officials said the death toll in the territory topped 24,000. [AP]

• US targets Houthi anti-ship missiles in new strike on Yemen, officials say (Reuters)

• Houthis, Undeterred by Strikes, Target More Ships in Red Sea (NYT)

• Qatar announces deal to allow delivery of medicine to Israeli hostages, humanitarian aid to Gaza (AP)

• China Deals Major Blow to Russian Economy (Newsweek)

• In the new Afghanistan, it’s sell your daughter or starve (WP)

• Cloned rhesus monkey created to speed medical research (BBC)

• Davos updates: Global leaders discuss AI adoption and potential threats (CNBC)

• The huge open question for business leaders on AI economics: 1980s or 1990s? (Axios)

• As robot baristas and AI chefs debut at Vegas tech show, casino union workers fear for their jobs (LAT)

• Google AI Researchers Introduce DiarizationLM: A Machine Learning Framework to Leverage Large Language Models (LLM) to Post-Process the Outputs from a Speaker Diarization System (MarkTechPost)

• Runaway bureaucracy could make common uses of AI worse, even mail delivery (The Hill)

• Iowa Restaurant Patron Can Remember Every Breakfast Ruined By Presidential Candidates (The Onion)

 

Trump Wins Iowa

 Former President Donald Trump won Iowa's Republican caucuses by a wide margin last night, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis finishing second and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley third. 

With 95 percent of the caucuses reporting, Trump had roughly 51 percent, DeSantis had just over 21 percent and Haley had around 19 percent.

The three candidates will next compete in primaries in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina but as things stand now, Trump is far and away the leading contender for the Republican nomination.

What’s truly crazy and scary is that 66 percent of GOP caucus goers in Iowa think that Biden lost to Trump in 2020, according to CNN.

We are living in an Alice in Wonderland world, I’m afraid. Too many people have gone down the rabbit hole.

(No headlines today.)

All Smiles

 Sunday was a day of hope. When I got up, my ten-year-old granddaughter was busily cleaning up the house in anticipation of the arrival of a bunch of her friends for her birthday party.

By 11 a.m., I was driving into the city to meet up with my two youngest sons and their girlfriends for brunch.

We met in the Mission at a restaurant that just opened within the past month. It serves South American food.

Afterward, I migrated back to the East Bay to join in my granddaughter's birthday celebration and later to watch my childhood pro football team, the perpetually inept Detroit Lions, win a playoff game for the first tie in over three decades.

It is a new year. Kids and sports. All is good.

Tonight, the 2024 election cycle kicks off with the Iowa caucuses. There may be reasons to hope that our democracy will remain strong, but what happens tonight in Iowa is not likely to be one of them.

Why should the rest of us care what Iowans think anyway?

Because that is where America is centered.

HEADLINES:

• Almost half of Haley supporters say they would vote for Biden over Trump: Iowa poll (The Hill)

• Iowa caucuses: What voters are thinking ahead of Republican contest (BBC)

• On the Ballot in Iowa: Fear. Anxiety. Hopelessness. (NYT)

• As shutdown nears, Congress considers extending funding to March (WP)

• One hundred days after the attack on Israel, a political solution must be found for the war in Gaza (Independent)

• On Hamas, what did Qatar know and when did it know it? (Politico)

• U.N. Warns Gaza Is Heading for Famine as Specter of Wider War Looms (NYT)

• ‘This Has Been Going on for Years.’ Inside Boeing’s Manufacturing Mess. (WSJ)

• Speaker Johnson reaches a crossroads in leading an unruly GOP conference (WP)

• White House: Secretary Austin's doctors think he may need more care (Reuters)

• The economy is improving under Biden. But many voters aren’t giving him credit. (WP)

• Why are Americans so gloomy about their great economy? (Economist)

• A volcano erupts in southwestern Iceland, sending lava flowing toward a nearby settlement (ABC)

• Coast to Coast, a Brutal Mix of Snow, Rain and Bitter Cold (NYT) 

• Scientists Film Plant 'Talking' to Its Neighbor, And The Footage Is Incredible (ScienceAlert)

• Cells Across the Body Talk to Each Other About Aging (Quanta)

• AI is the latest job recruiter, and it could cut bias in hiring (Business Insider)

• Apple Is Shutting Down Its 121-Person AI Team In San Diego (PC)

• Can ChatGPT get into Harvard? We tested its admissions essay. (WP)

• Individuals Unaware They Constitute Area Man’s Support Network (The Onion)

Brighter News Days

 (This one is about covering the emergence of Web 2.0. I was enthusiastic at the beginning. Obviously things didn’t turn out so well for the age of social media. This essay was originally published two years ago in January 2022.)

One of the unforeseen consequences of digging up stories about what is wrong with the world over the course of a long career is the desire, every now and again, to celebrate what is right. Or at least what isn’t outright wrong.

Maybe it’s a natural corrective mechanism in our brains, some sort of a serotonin-induced urge to bring our overall story-telling function back into balance.

I often think of this like a brake job on a car. When you feel the thing pulling too much to the right or the left when you press down the brake pedal, you know it’s time to get an adjustment.

Same with our stories? Maybe so.

In any event, I was in just such a mood one evening in 2011 when I attended an anniversary party celebrating the tenth year of publication for San Francisco’s 7x7 magazine.

As the magazine’s founding editor, albeit long-departed, I was reuniting with my former colleagues that night and agreed on impulse to write a short piece recalling our launch back in September 2001. It would have to be a bittersweet sort of story, of course, because we launched to great local fanfare just one week before the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

That the magazine subsequently survived the total loss of advertising income that resulted in the collapse of San Francisco’s tourist industry is remarkable, although one of the casualties of the extended economic downturn was my job.

I had to leave 7x7 after a year (without pay) but the magazine persisted, thanks to the efforts of a determined team that survived until the economy bounced back. Now, ten years later, they asked me if besides the retrospective, I’d also be willing to write blog posts for the magazine about some of the Web 2.0 startups then springing up all over town.

Yes.

Thus I wrote pieces about Lyft, Uber, Airbnb, Nextdoor, TaskRabbit and dozens of others in the early days of their existence. Most of them hired boutique PR firms to get publicity, so once my name was on their lists, my inbox filled up with dozens of invitations to meet their founders.

And meet them I did — scores of mostly young entrepreneurs armed with their founding myths and dreams of changing the way we live our lives. Almost all of them came to me. We’d set a time and I’d walk around the corner, past the little markets where my kids bought candy, past the guys hanging out, past the restaurants where we’d sometimes order takeout, to one of the coffee houses nearby.

Most of the founders were idealistic, articulate young people and I found them easy to like. My job, as 7x7 and I envisioned it, was essentially promotional. I wanted to celebrate San Francisco as the new center of Silicon Valley. The original dot.com boom had been headquartered south on the peninsula, more in the vicinity of Palo Alto and San Jose than its more famous neighbor to the north.

But Wed 2.0 was different.

It may seem strange that an old investigative reporter would agree to write mostly positive profiles of these startups, and I suppose I have no good excuse, other than it felt good to finally be telling some happy stories for a change.

(In my defense, I also published some mini-investigations, such as the fact that none of the five largest social media companies yet had a woman on their boards of directors. That was zero women among 44 men.)

Not all of the companies would survive, of course, let alone thrive, but the strongest among them did. One can reasonably argue about whether those that survived have made things better or worse in the world. But all of that was pretty much beside the point for me, the story-teller. I just remember enjoying the walk around the corner to Atlas Cafe or another familiar venue, meeting new people, sipping coffee for an hour or so, and hearing stories they were excited to tell.

And then going back home to write up my version of how somebody’s dream might just — this time — come true. 

At this point, a decade later, I guess all I can hope is that my old muckraker friends will forgive me.

Or blame it on the serotonin.

HEADLINES:

• Trump maintains wide lead in Iowa poll, while Haley climbs to second (WP)

• U.S. launches another airstrike on site believed to be controlled by Houthis in Yemen (CBS)

• In Yemen’s Houthis, U.S. and Britain face a ready, war-tested foe (WP)

• Biden sent private message to Tehran amid airstrikes: ‘We’re well-prepared’ (Guardian)

• Oil prices rise on Red Sea escalation (AFP)

• Tough choices for Israel in US's Middle East vision (BBC)

• Ruptured supply chains, rising oil prices, and resurgent inflation. The Red Sea crisis is rekindling memories of the Ukraine War—but this time could be different (Fortune)

• The Regional War No One Wanted Is Here. How Wide Will It Get? (NYT)

• Ukraine needs more attack aircraft, ground-forces commander says (Reuters)

• The ruling-party candidate strongly opposed by China wins Taiwan's presidential election (AP)

• U.S. does not support Taiwan independence, Biden says (Reuters)

• China’s meddling in Taiwan election presages year of misinformation threats (WP)

• How Ecuador went from being Latin America’s model of stability to a nation in crisis (The Conversation)

• Macron’s New Cabinet Tilts Right With Old Pillars and Some Surprises (NYT)

• Civil War talk in presidential contest reveals fresh divisions on race (WP)

• New impeachment threat risks intensifying GOP turmoil (Axios)

• owa at odds with N.H. on abortion, posing challenge for GOP candidates (WP)

• Human ‘behavioural crisis’ at root of climate breakdown, say scientists (Guardian)

• Federal Scientists Recommend Easing Restrictions on Marijuana (NYT)

• New study from Anthropic exposes deceptive ‘sleeper agents’ lurking in AI’s core (Venture Beat)

• Modelling dataset bias in machine-learned theories of economic decision-making (Nature)

• Marriage Counselor Sides With Hotter Spouse (The Onion)