Oscar's 3rd!

 

Weekend Sources

 Meeting up with the web versions of the leading news services on a daily basis is like stopping by your local coffee shop or pub every day — you eventually get to know the regulars.

But the neighborhood has seen better times, you know, so you try to choose a table with only one chair. Otherwise, some of the down-on-the-luckers will find you, like Time, Newsweek and US News & Report. 

Or a guy from a network. And “Glory Days” will start playing on the jukebox.

But most of the customers are fine.

The New York Times, for example, which must have a character count for its headlines, because most of them are of a very specific length. The Times considers itself the leading U.S. (paper) newspaper, of course, but for a long time now it has been emphasizing its digital subscriptions.

And in that category, subscription revenue, the growth has been impressive but when it comes to online advertising, where the bigl money is, the Times is a tiny thing — three-tenths of a percent or so of industry-leading Google.

Nearby, the Washington Post has worked hard to avoid any appearance of being a kept person since Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, bought it and I have to say the Post has done a fairly good job on that score. But it is losing money and laying off staff. As is the Los Angeles Times and almost every other major daily newspaper.

The Wall Street Journal remains schizophrenic. The news pages are excellent while the editorial page is almost childish in tone. Now the Times and Post have deep editorial biases too but the voice in their editorials resemble that of an adult compared to the Journal’s.

Then there is the good old Associated Press. As a former wire service stringer myself, I have a special fondness for the wire services and AP is as good and reliable as ever, plus in recent years it has added in an impressive investigative component from time to time.

There are tons of other useful American players in the news business, including weekly or monthly magazines that are adapting to the 24/7 digital news cycle, like The New Yorker and the Atlantic.

The British sites I check include BBC, the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Independent and Reuters. There’s a lot more attitude among the Brits, of course. Reuters has been one of my favorite news services since we partnered with them when I was an exec at Wired Digital in the 1990s.

In Asia, NHK, the Japanese’s news service, Asahi Shimbun, and the South Chia Morning Post are all quite good. 

In Europe, AFP, Le Monde, Der Speigel, DW…the list goes on.

Back in the U.S., NPR, PBS, and public media in general were slow to embrace digital journalism but they’ve come along in recent years. NPR in particular has strengthened its web version substantially.

The previously mentioned television networks, including cable, are generally speaking uneven sources of news online, but I check CNBC, NBC, ABC, and CBS every day. CNN is very good; Fox is useless. It isn’t a news outlet; it’s a propaganda channel.

Digital-only sources like Politico and The Hill are quite good at what they do, which is inside-the-Beltway stuff.

Everybody else shows up now and then but probably the biggest surprise-regular for me is Google News. I don’t know how they do it, but this algorithm-driven aggregator is usually very much on top of the breaking news, plus it includes many random news stories I don’t see anywhere else.

So much for tradition! In the virtual world, the biggest media company of them all, Google, has gotten pretty darn good at mastering the digital news cycle. As are the technology sites like Wired, Mashable, VentureBeat, etc., especially for stories on AI. 

Everyone else is playing catch up.

HEADLINES:

• Eight Words and a Verbal Slip Put Biden’s Age Back at the Center of 2024 (NYT)

• Biden faces his ‘Comey moment’ (Politico)

• How a ghostwriter was ensnared in the Biden classified documents probe (WP)

• The Supreme Court and the Risks of January 6, 2025 (New Yorker)

• Will the Arab-American vote affect Biden’s chances of re-election? (Al Jazeera)

• Israel seeks to evacuate Palestinians jammed into a southern Gaza city ahead of an expected invasion (AP)

• The journalists killed in Gaza — and what they tried to show the world (WP)

• A Blinken Visit Puts U.S.-Israeli Tensions on Full Display (NYT)

• Ukraine’s Zelenskyy takes one of his ‘biggest gambles’ yet by replacing top military commander (CNBC)

• Putin, in rambling interview, barely lets Tucker Carlson get a word in (WP)

• The Despots of Silicon Valley (Atlantic)

• Voice Pitch Influences Social Perceptions Globally (Neuroscience)

• Here’s the Thing AI Just Can’t Do (Wired)

• Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out. (Technology Review)

• The AI trust gap that is worrying both workers and executives (CNBC)

• Google’s Gemini assistant is a fantastic and frustrating glimpse of the AI future (Verge)

• Secrets of ancient Herculaneum scroll deciphered by AI (NBC)

• Follow Taylor Swift’s Every Move With Our Real-Time Jet Tracker (The Onion)

Constitutional Matters

The U.S. Supreme Court made it pretty clear at Thursday’s hearing on Colorado’s decision to kick Trump off the ballot that it is going to overturn that ruling. 

The case is based in the Fourteenth Amendment, Section Three. If overturned, it means that the former president will appear on the ballot in all the states this November, assuming he is the Republican Party’s nominee.

As much as I detest Trump and everything he stands for, I think the court is going to make the right decision, because the Colorado move rested on a judgement that Trump was guilty of insurrection on January 6th, 2021.

Despite the act that I believe Trump was guilty of insurrection, he has not been convicted of the crime by any court of law. And under our system of justice that matters.

If and when he is convicted, I think the question being litigated in Colorado, Maine and elsewhere should be revisited.

Meanwhile, it was notable that during yesterday’s hearing that some of the justices seemed to cast doubt on what the word insurrection even means. This may foretell problems if and when other cases regarding Jan. 6th reach the court.

Next up in the ongoing set of legal dramas surrounding Trump is the question of whether he can claim immunity for his criminal actions while president.

I hope and believe the court will rule that no person, including Trump, is above the law. That question needs to be resolved as the constitutional crisis caused by this terrible man continues to roil the nation.

***

Soon after the oral arguments in the Colorado case concluded on Thursday, a bombshell report from the special prosecutor in the Biden classified documents case went public.

The good news is that legally, Biden will not be charged. He cooperated fully with the investigation and unlike Trump, who faces prosecution for mishandling classified documents, Biden didn’t try to obstruct the special prosecutor’s investigation.

But politically, this is disastrous for Biden. He is described as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” He also is described as having a “diminished capacity.”

It may take a while but I fear the age issue may seal Biden’s fate as a candidate. He may have to withdraw from running for re-election, thereby casting this year’s election into an even greater state of chaos.

It looks like we’re in for a very rough year.

HEADLINES:

• The Supreme Court seems poised to reject efforts to kick Trump off the ballot over the Capitol riot (AP)

• Special counsel will not charge Biden in classified documents case (WP)

• Biden tries to lay to rest age concerns, but may have exacerbated them (CNN)

• Senate votes to move ahead with foreign aid package that excludes border security (Guardian)

• The GOP revolts as Congress fails to fix the border, fund allies and impeach Mayorkas (AP)

• Putin walks away with propaganda victory after Tucker Carlson’s softball interview (CNN)

• GOP leaders face unrest amid chaotic, bungled votes (WP)

• Zelensky fires Ukraine’s military chief in major shakeup nearly two years into war (CNN)

• Putin's Tucker Carlson interview seems timed to inflict maximum damage on US support for Ukraine (Business Insider)

• Congress' own economists said immigration is set to add $7 trillion to the U.S. economy over the next decade. Immigration may have already provided another benefit to the economy by helping it avoid a recession. [HuffPost]

• Front-line Ukrainian infantry units report acute shortage of soldiers (WP)

• New Report Raises Concerns About Long Covid in Children (NYT)

• Scientists discover an alarming change in Antarctica’s past that could spell devastating future sea level rise (CNN)

• Netanyahu Spurns Hamas Offer for Gaza Cease-Fire (NYT)

• The world experienced its hottest January, continuing a run of exceptional heat fueled by climate change, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service said. (Reuters)

• The millennial women leading a new era of fashion journalism (WP)

• Google rebrands its Bard AI chatbot as Gemini, which now has its own Android app (Engadget)

• Google Deepmind proposes ‘self-discover’ framework for LLMs, improves GPT-4 performance (VentureBeat)

• Neal Stephenson’s Most Stunning Prediction (Atlantic)

• The FCC is outlawing AI-generated voices in robocalls as concerns grow around their ability to deceive voters (AP)

• Nikki Haley Loses Nevada Primary To ‘I’m Trans And You Can Take My Guns’ Option (The Onion)

 

The Dance

Watching my granddaughters twirl with the late afternoon sunlight yesterday, I momentarily forgot what I was going to write about for this news cycle.

They were performing a sort of improv combination of gymnastics and ballet and I was their primary audience.

They also were doing it without a care in the world, not about the Ukraine war, or Trump or the Middle East or climate change or the crisis at the border. They don’t know about any of that stuff yet, nor should they.

Now is their time to dance in the sunlight. There will be plenty of time to confront the abundant darkness around them in the future.

I harbor thoughts like these all the time, but usually in the context of the rest of us who do not qualify as naive kids but as battle-hardened adults. We need to dance in the sunlight too at times. I think especially of my peers in the news business trying to find new angles on the stories they report, write informative yet catchy headlines, and promote their work on social media.

Sometimes they should take a break and just dance, twirling around the room like my granddaughters. But if we’re not careful, life has a way of emptying the music out of us over time to the point we no longer remember how to jump, twirl, stretch or skip. Our movements through time and space become stiff and labored and we just watch the young enjoy life.

One way or another so much gets lost in the process. We stop taking risks in life and in love, trying to avoid the pain — but then nearing the end, as we look back on it all, we remember bit by bit what it was like before we got beaten down.

As the country songwriter says, “I could have missed the pain…but I’d have had to miss the dance.”

P.S. Don’t miss the dance.

(An earlier version of this one appeared two years ago in 2022.)

HEADLINES:

• Israel-Gaza war: Hamas responds to ceasefire offer with 135-day truce plan (BBC)

• Western coverage of Gaza: A textbook case of coloniser’s journalism (Al Jazeera)

• Hamas Says No Deal on Hostages (WSJ)

• Kataib Hezbollah commander killed in Baghdad in US strike (Reuters)

• U.S. strike kills militia leader in Baghdad, officials say. (WP)

• Amnesty International accuses Israeli forces of killing Palestinians in the West Bank with impunity. (NYT)

• Republicans thought they had votes to impeach Mayorkas, until they didn’t. Then the shouting began. (WP)

• How a botched impeachment laid bare a GOP House that cannot function (CNN)

• The Ghost of Bush v. Gore Haunts the Supreme Court’s Colorado Case (New Yorker)

• Trump's ballot eligibility is headed to the Supreme Court. Here's what to know about Thursday's historic arguments. (CBS)

• In Trump’s Colorado case, Supreme Court will make and face history (WP)

• In Poland, I Saw What a Second Trump Term Could Do to America (NYT)

• Chinese hackers have lurked in some US infrastructure systems for ‘at least five years’ (CNN)

• NASA lays off 530 workers at Jet Propulsion Lab, endangering future space missions (Salon)

• A new bill introduced by two Republicans in the Oklahoma Legislature would effectively ban state agencies from acknowledging or celebrating Pride Month, adding to the slew of anti-LGBTQ legislation introduced both statewide and across the country. [HuffPost]

• European Union scraps pesticide proposal in another concession to protesting farmers (NPR)

• Two blasts near electoral candidates' offices in Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan killed 26 people, raising concerns over security in the lead up to Thursday's polls. Pakistan goes to the polls amid rising militant attacks and the jailing of Imran Khan, the winner of the last national election. (Reuters)

• "Bookfind of the century" sells for $2.23 million (New Atlas)

• The New York Times made more than $1 billion from digital subscriptions in 2023 (Nieman)

• Before Taylor and Travis, there was Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio (WP)

• Autonomous robots are cutting grass in this Southern California town (KTLA)

• Hong Kong Students Construct World's Tiniest Walking Robot (NDTV)

• Shadow AI in the ‘dark corners’ of work is becoming a big problem for companies (CNBC)

• A chatbot helped more people access mental-health services (Technology Review)

• Department Of Transportation Recommends Cranking Up Thin Lizzy’s ‘Jailbreak’ While Driving High (The Onion)

 

Connecting

(I first published this in May 2023.)

In the early days and weeks of the pandemic, I posted these daily essays on my personal Facebook page, where my modest network of friends and family quickly ballooned to the site limit of 5,000. My sense was that the actual size of the potential audience for my work was many times that number, but there was no practical way to break through the ceiling established by Mr. Zuckerberg and friends.

I was writing mainly about the dangers of isolation and loneliness that the social distancing necessitated by the pandemic would inevitably lead to — and the strategies we might use to counter those dangers.

That the essays resonated with others, most of whom were strangers, encouraged me to keep going. It was my way of trying to provide a social service to anyone who wanted to receive it.

But, of course, as any social worker, counselor, minister or teacher could have told me, doing what I did was providing a major benefit to me in return. I felt like I was connecting with people day after day, thereby helping to break down the growing isolation and loneliness I myself felt from the social restrictions we had to endure.

That loneliness was compounded by my recent retirement and a long, slow recovery from a stroke, among other heath problems. But those were hardly issues unique to me. Over and over again, thinking of the pandemic period to come, I found myself composing the phrase in my head, “isolation can kill as surely as the virus.”

Those words came back to me this week when the U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, warned that loneliness has reached emergency levels in this country, and that the only solution is for all of us to seek greater social connection.

The pandemic is behind us now, thankfully, but the other epidemic — isolation — remains. So let’s do something about it!

***

Today’s reading: The appeals court ruling that Trump does not have immunity (57 pages).

HEADLINES:

• In stunner, House GOP bid to impeach Mayorkas fails (The Hill)

• Takeaways from the scathing appeals court ruling denying immunity to Donald Trump (CNN)

• Donald Trump's immunity appeal failed, but delaying may be the goal (BBC)

• How using the 14th Amendment against Trump went from a ‘pipe-dream fantasy’ to the Supreme Court (CNN)

• Hundreds of mudslides devastate Los Angeles as California reels from deadly storm (Independent)

• Tech Layoffs Just Keep Coming as Sector Resets for AI (WSJ)

• Google to pay $350 million to settle shareholders' data privacy lawsuit (Reuters)

• Mother of Oxford, Michigan, school shooter found guilty of manslaughter (CNN)

• Senate GOP will block border deal, leaving Ukraine in limbo (The Hill)

• Joe Biden blames Donald Trump for sinking US deal to fund Ukraine war effort (Financial Times)

• Goofy 'God's Army' convoy on Texas border shows Trump's MAGA movement is just one long con (USA Today)

• Congress devolves into chaos over border and national security funding (NPR)

• McConnell staked his legacy on a border-Ukraine deal. He may be too out of step with the GOP to save it. (Business Insider)

• Republicans fear they will be targets in Trump’s ‘retribution’ campaign (WP)

• At least 32 of remaining hostages in Gaza are dead, report says (Guardian)

• Blinken seeks progress on Gaza cease-fire-for-hostages deal in meetings with Egyptian mediators (AP)

• Iran goes public with stark warning over suspected spy ship as U.S. refuses to rule out more strikes (NBC)

• CNN staff say network’s pro-Israel slant amounts to ‘journalistic malpractice’ (Guardian)

• Why white-collar jobs are more likely to see AI displacement (Yahoo)

• Meta Calls for Industry Effort to Label A.I.-Generated Content (NYT)

• A newly-streamlined process for fake IDs says it’s using AI. (Verge)

• The real wolf menacing the news business? AI. (WP)

• Amelia Earhart’s Long-Lost Plane Discovered On Auxiliary Runway At LaGuardia (The Onion)

 

Fact to Fiction

Fifty years ago, 19-year-old newspaper heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped by a ragtag group self-styled revolutionaries calling themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA).

At the time, I did not imagine that this event would ever affect me or have any impact on my life or career, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Nineteen months after her kidnapping, in September 1975, Hearst and the two surviving fugitives of the SLA were found and arrested by the FBI, after the greatest man/woman hunt in U.S. history.

A few days after their apprehension, Howard Kohn and I broke “The Inside Story” of the case in Rolling Stone, which instantly became what would be the biggest moment in our early careers as journalists.

We were both 28 at the time.

On Sunday, a friend and I braved the elements to attend an event in Berkeley celebrating the release of a new novel about the case by Roger Rapoport, who coincidentally is a former colleague of both Kohn’s and mine from our college days at The Michigan Daily.

“Searching for Patty Hearst” reimagines the case 50 years later, through a mixture of fiction and fact.

Maybe that’s a good approach. All of the time Kohn and I were reporting the Hearst story, we kept telling ourselves “this stuff is so strange it’s almost as if someone made it up.”

HEADLINES:

• Trump is not immune in 2020 election interference case, appeals court rules (NBC)

• ‘Extremely dangerous situation’: Hollywood Hills hit by major mudslides, flooding, record rain (LAT)

• The Science Behind California’s Atmospheric Rivers (WSJ)

• Tech Layoffs Continue to Roil Industry With 32,000 Jobs Cut (Bloomberg)

• Why Is Big Tech Still Cutting Jobs? (NYT)

• Powell: ‘The US is on an unsustainable fiscal path’ (The Hill)

• Chutkan contemplates Trump trial extending deep into 2024, as case remains in limbo (Politico)

• Senate negotiators release sweeping border and military aid bill (WP)

• At Rally for Border Security in Texas, Fears of ‘Invasion’ and ‘Civil War’ (NYT)

• King Charles diagnosed with cancer, will postpone duties and undergo treatment (Reuters)

• 50 years after Patty Hearst’s shocking kidnapping, parallels to the turbulent ’70s are everywhere (SFC)

• Patty Hearst was kidnapped 50 years ago from her Berkeley apartment. Now she’s famous for her dogs (SJMN)

• AI helps scholars read scroll buried when Vesuvius erupted in AD79 (Guardian)

• How AI is changing the world of work (GZero)

• How AI is quietly changing everyday life (Politico)

• A ‘Mothra vs. Godzilla’ battle is looming over AI (WP)

• New Immigration Bill Would Only Let In Migrants Accompanied By Group Of Hot Girls (The Onion)

 

Monday News

HEADLINES:

• Drone strike in Syria reported to have killed six members of US-backed Kurdish-led group (Guardian)

• An intense atmospheric river moves into California, threatening to flood roads and trigger mudslides (CNN)

• Senators unveil $118.28 billion bipartisan bill to overhaul immigration system along with Israel, Ukraine aid (ABC)

• Trump’s lead over Biden may be smaller than it looks (Economist)

• What happens next in Trump’s Georgia election interference case? (WP)

• US declines to rule out hitting targets in Iran, Jake Sullivan says (Politico)

• Texas Border Convoy Member Says Crossings Not As Bad as She Thought (Newsweek)

• Convoy rally on Texas-Mexico border attracts Trump fans who decry illegal immigration (NBC)

• House to vote on standalone Israel aid bill, setting up showdown with Senate (WP)

• Fear and Ambition Propel Xi’s Nuclear Acceleration (NYT)

• Is China’s economy in serious trouble? (Al Jazeera)

• Patty Hearst was kidnapped 50 years ago. Was she a victim or terrorist? (WP)

• Google Update Shows How Bard AI May Work With Your Messages App (Forbes)

• Google has tried to show its interest in images with AI… with terrible results (Softonic)

• Dad Wearing Some New Kind Of Headphones That Wrap Over, Under, Around Ears (The Onion)

The Georgia Files

At first glance, the allegations of a secret romantic affair between Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and the special prosecutor she appointed, Nathan Wade, appeared to threaten the election interference case Willis has brought against Donald Trump and his numerous co-defendants.

The damaging narrative pushed by Trump allies was that Willis appointed Wade, who is an inexperienced prosecutor, due to their personal relationship, paid him exorbitant amounts of money, and then benefited herself when he took her on a couple lavish vacations.

It was a nice neat scandal, from the Trumpian perspective, one that implied both prosectors should be removed from the case.

But, while Willis and Wade initially remained silent about the controversy, now they have spoken, confirming that they are involved but denying any improprieties that would rise to the level justifying their removal.

Meanwhile, independent reporting by Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman has emerged that suggests a different narrative from the initial one. They say Willis did not want to appoint Wade but that the more experienced prosecutors she approached refused to get involved due to fears for their safety from the many death threats from Trump supporters.

They also detail the extraordinary measures Wilis herself has had to take to protect herself from similar threats.

One of the most shocking details in the authors’ account is that Willis has had to make use of a body double when leaving her office due to assassination threats on the dark web.

Furthermore, in their statements, Willis and Wade say their relationship did not begin until after his appointment, and that they split the costs and used personal funds for the trips they took together.

If the couple’s version is truthful and stands up to the inevitable scrutiny it will receive, this scandal, however salacious to some, would not rise to the level for either official to be removed by the judge from the case.

What’s at stake here?

This is the only attempt by any state prosecutor anywhere in the U.S. to try and hold Trump and his partners accountable for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The evidence of their guilt in very strong in Georgia. In the interest of justice, let’s hope it proceeds to trial.

HEADLINES:

• Iran Condemns U.S. Strikes Without Threatening to Retaliate (NYT)

• US strikes Iran-backed groups as Israel-Hamas war rages (CNN)

• U.S. strikes in Syria and Iraq kill dozens of militants (WP)

• California Atmospheric River: "High Risk" For Life-Threatening Flash Flooding on Sunday (Weather.com)

• Threats Against Fani Willis Were So Severe She Reportedly Had to Leave Courthouse In Disguise, Use a Body Double (Atlanta Black Star)

• The U.S. economy is booming. So why are tech companies laying off workers? (WP)

• Amazon and Meta—Nothing Artificial About These Results (WSJ)

• World Court takes part of Russia-Ukraine genocide case (Reuters)

• The ‘runt’ of Trump cases now likely to be his first criminal trial (WP)

• Supreme Court may look to the Civil War to resolve whether Trump can be on the ballot (NBC)

• Former Montana Supreme Court justice joins other top judges in support of keeping Trump off ballot (Daily Montanan)

• Trump backers air grievances at Texas border rally (Reuters)

• What is happening on America’s border? (Economist)

• Biden nets landslide victory in South Carolina Democratic primary, over 95% of votes (CNBC)

• Security News This Week: China’s Hackers Keep Targeting US Water and Electricity Supplies (BBC)

• Nuclear missile found in US man’s garage (Telegraph)

• Google is planning some big changes for Bard — including its name. (Verge)

• AI May Very Well Change Our Species (Jacobin)

• Spider Catches, Whips Shoe Right Back At Woman (The Onion)