Trail of a Writer

 (This is originally from June 2023.)

Those of us working at sites like HotWired and Salon in the early days of the web realized that we were sitting atop a technology that would profoundly change virtually everything about society.

With my background in investigative reporting, I was curious about how the process of solving mysteries might be affected by the arrival of massive searchable databases of networked information. One case that caught my attention was that of the Unabomber, who’d been carrying on his one-man reign of terror since 1978, eluding a massive FBI manhunt in the process.

What I discussed specifically with colleagues was whether the Unabomber’s manifesto published by the Washington Postmight somehow be analyzed for tell-tale word patterns that could uncover his identify.

The engineers I consulted said that the answer was “probably yes” in the future, but “not quite yet.” As it turned out, before this technology evolved, the brother of the man who wrote the manifesto recognized certain tell-tale word choices himself and alerted the FBI.

And that is how Theodore Kaczynski was finally identified and caught.

When Kaczynski died recently, I was reminded of all this and was pleased to see a summary of the case recounted in The Conversation.

Over the decades since Kaczynski’s arrest, the field of forensic linguistics has become far more developed, and now includes a number of tools to uncover plagiarism, strip away anonymity and solve crimes based on notes, letters and manifestoes. 

The basic concept is that a person’s writing voice can be as unique an identifier as their fingerprints. From the perspective of one who teaches writing, this is critical because many students start from more of a place of standardization, largely due to the way they learned to write in grade school.

They were taught essentially to muffle their own voices.

My job, later on the down the road when they finally got to me, was to draw out their individuality, helping them diversify their word choices and rediscover their own unique style. 

Most of my students probably will never go on to make a living as writers — that is an exceptionally difficult thing to do in our time — but at least I can console myself that if one should turn out to be a sociopath, and use their improved writing skills to communicate their aims, they should now be much easier to track down and capture!

HEADLINES:

• Four Israeli hostages rescued alive; at least 125 killed in Gaza, officials say (WP)

• Biden apologizes to Zelenskyy for monthslong congressional holdup to weapons that let Russia advance (AP)

• Hunter Biden’s Daughter Testifies on His Behalf in Gun Trial (NYT)

• Prosecutors rest case in Hunter Biden federal gun trial (ABC)

• Biden in Normandy speech: "Democracy begins with each of us" (Axios)

• Damning Report on Judge Cannon Reveals She’s Prone to Exploitation (TNR)

• Donald Trump reiterated his calls to punish his political enemies, saying “revenge can be justified" if he returns to the White House. In a separate interview, the former president said, "It’s a beautiful thing to watch" states enact different abortion restrictions. [HuffPost]

• The Washington Post is about to embrace the darkness (SFGate)

• Post publisher draws more scrutiny after newsroom shake-up (WP)

• In Global Elections, Strongmen Are Taken Down a Notch (NYT)

• There is more carbon dioxide than ever in the atmosphere. That’s bad for the climate (NPR)

• US hiring and wage growth picked up last month in sign of sustained economic health (AP)

• Are We Doomed? Here’s How to Think About It (New Yorker)

• Oceans can no longer protect America (Axios)

• Russia is pitching its $2 trillion economy to giants like China and Saudi Arabia (Reuters)

• What to know about Russia’s growing footprint in Africa (AP)

• Japan's Population Crisis Just Got Even Worse (Newsweek)

• Concern rises over AI in adult entertainment (BBC)

• When AI Eats the World (Atlantic)

• Google Is Using A.I. to Answer Your Health Questions. Should You Trust It? (NYT)

• Pizza Crust Saved To Make Pizza Stock (The Onion)

First Copy

Almost any object has its own story but most never get told. 

In his memoir, “Like a Rolling Stone,” Jann Wenner has a chapter called “The Scoop of the Seventies” devoted to the articles Howard Kohn and I co-authored in 1975 about Patty Hearst and the SLA.

Part One of that series was called “The Inside Story.”

For most of the many months that story was in process, it was a secret known only to a very small group of us. We were uncertain when we would publish it, partly because Patty Hearst and her kidnappers-turned-colleagues were still underground, and we didn’t want to inadvertently be responsible for something awful happening to them. 

(Remember that all the rest of the group died in a fiery shootout with the LAPD.)

As fate would have it, the FBI located and arrested Hearst and the others on a Thursday in September and publication of our article was set for the following Monday. All hell would be breaking loose upon publication because Jann had arranged for NBC’s Today show to cover the release exclusively, with the rest of the media invited to the office for what would prove to be a raucous press conference Monday morning.

Security around the release was tight; Jann hired Pinkerton’s to guard all the issues of the magazine except one..

The entire staff of the magazine was secluded at a resort near Big Sur for the long weekend while Howard and I stayed in San Francisco to tape our interview with NBC before we headed south to join the rest.

Finally, late Saturday afternoon, in Jann’s words, “Howard and David made it down…brandishing a copy of the new issue that no one had seen yet.”

A photo of that copy of the magazine we brandished that night is at the top of this post, with the words handwritten by Jann up top “Do Not Leave This Lay Around — David.”

So that is its story. It turns 49 come September.

HEADLINES:

• Israel attacks UN-run school in central Gaza, killing at least 40 (Al Jazeera)

• Israel Secretly Targets U.S. Lawmakers With Influence Campaign on Gaza War (NYT)

• Israeli settlers in the West Bank were hit with international sanctions. It only emboldened them (AP)

• A vital aid route hangs in the balance as Gaza cease-fire is debated (WP)

• Hamas has seen about half its forces wiped out in eight months of war and is relying on hit-and-run insurgent tactics to frustrate Israel's attempts to take control of Gaza, US and Israeli officials said (Reuters)

• Former Army Maj. Harrison Mann, who worked in the military for 13 years and had been assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency, told CBS News that Israel “almost certainly” uses U.S. weapons in its war against Gaza. “I don’t know how you kill 35,000 civilians by accident,” he said. [HuffPost]

• Conservatives tied to Trump want to limit insurance coverage for abortions (WP)

• Biden links WW2 and Ukraine war in D-Day address (BBC)

• Trump aide Steve Bannon rages as he’s ordered to prison on July 1 (Independent)

• Hunter Biden’s trial provides stark window into family drama (WP)

• Key family players at Hunter Biden's gun trial (BBC)

• Nearly half of journalists covering climate crisis globally received threats for their work (Guardian)

• Robots are suddenly getting cleverer. What’s changed? (Economist)

• Google to start permanently deleting users’ location history (Guardian)

• Generative AI’s challenge to legal sector’s alternative providers (Financial Times)

• Inconclusive Study Fails To Identify Whose Water Glass Was Whose (The Onion

 

Found Treasure

 Writing is … more than living, for it is being conscious of living.

-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh 

Yesterday, I finally got the tides right. The result was a harvest of green seaglass and pebbles.

Of course, I couldn't resist picking up other colors as well, but green is my current passion. When you're walking along the tideline at a beach, head down, examining the many gifts from the sea, there's much to choose from. 

I was lost in the moment. thinking of the elegant simplicity of the writing style of the small band of American literary environmentalists whose work in the '50s introduced me to the principles of ecology. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Rachel Carson, John Storer.

Those writers also knew the unique pleasure of strolling along the beach just at the edge of the waves' reach, seeking small treasures. You can't be too greedy about it; the sea will give you what it pleases, when it pleases.

But persistence has its rewards. I was so engrossed in my search that I barely took note of the others around me -- people and dogs. At one point, approaching a rock outcropping that one can breach only at low tide, I noticed one oddity -- a beach patrol jeep drove past me, up to that spot, then hung a U-turn and started back. I waved to the driver, who then stopped and lowered his window.

"We're looking for a lost Chihuahua mix, about 15 pounds, black, black collar, no tags," he explained. "Since I can't drive any further due to that rock, will you keep an eye out?"

"Sure," I answered, wondering what was in the “mix,” since the only Chihuahuas I'd ever known couldn't tip the scales beyond, say, six pounds.

I rounded the outcrop and continued southward along Ocean Beach. It was windy and the waves were impressive enough that surfers were paddling out to the highest breakers offshore. 

Soon, I was into good seaglass territory -- it often appears in clusters, similarly sized to the pebbles and shell fragments surrounding it. In these banks of natural (and man-made) detritus from the sea is written a history of the relentless combined power of currents, sand, sun, and waves, grinding all things into softened, polished fragments of their former selves.

Sort of like what aging does to people. Ultimately, only our core remains.

p.s. I didn’t find the lost dog.

Endnote: This essay is from June 2007. “Gift from the Sea” is the title of one of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's books.

HEADLINES:

• Hunter Biden’s exes are called as witnesses in his federal gun trial (AP)

• Court halts Georgia Trump election case until DA Fani Willis appeal decided (AJC)

• Modi’s weaker-than-expected election win raises questions over his economic and political agenda (CNBC)

• What worked for India's Modi - and what didn’t? (BBC)

• Conservative attacks on birth control could threaten access (WP)

• A growing Christian supremacist movement that labels its perceived enemies as “demonic” and has ties to major GOP figures is “the greatest threat to American democracy you’ve never heard of,” according to a new alarming report. [HuffPost]

• Will Biden’s new border measures be enough to change voters’ minds? (AP)

• States begin to push back on book bans – by banning them (CNN)

• One graduate’s quiet protest: Bringing a banned book to commencement (WP)

• The Failing State Next Door (Atlantic)

• Israel steps up its military offensive in Gaza amid renewed truce efforts (Reuters)

• Garland "worried" about potential terrorist attack on U.S. after Oct. 7 (Axios)

• Governments need to plant more trees and deploy technologies that will quadruple the amount of carbon dioxide removed each year from the atmosphere in order to meet global climate goals, a team of researchers said. (Reuters)

• The rise of AI at JPMorgan Chase — and how Jamie Dimon used a chatbot to prepare for Elon Musk (GeekWire)

• How AI could roil the next economic crisis (Axios)

• AI is on track to ‘democratize financial planning.’ Are investors ready for that? (Forbes)

• Janet Yellen warns AI in finance poses ‘significant risks’ (CNN)

• Conservative Man Tearfully Informs Family Critical Race Theory Has Spread To His Liver (The Onion)

 

Turning Points

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…

[NOTE: This is an edited version of an essay I first published in 2022.]

HEADLINES:

• Biden expected to unveil immigration order severely limiting asylum-seeker crossings (CNN)

• Biden says he’s restricting asylum to help ‘gain control’ of the border (AP)

• The reich stuff – what does Trump really have in common with Hitler? (Guardian)

• 'An everyday part of the world': Hunter Biden trial puts spotlight on addiction (NBC)

• Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, defended the president's son, Hunter Biden, from federal charges relating to a gun purchase in 2018. "I don’t see any good coming from that," Graham said. Opening arguments are set to begin this morning in the younger Biden's trial. [HuffPost]

• US attorney general denies politicizing justice system against Trump (Reuters)

• Former Trump aides charged in Wisconsin over 2020 elector plot (WP)

• Modi’s Magic Is Fading Fast. Who’s Next for India? (Bloomberg)

• Childbirth is deadlier in the U.S. than any other high-income nation. About 22 maternal deaths happened for every 100,000 live births in the U.S., a new study found. For Black people, it was 49.5 deaths. (WP)

• Triple-digit temperatures to hit parts of California and Arizona in early-season heat wave (NBC)

• Netanyahu’s Far-Right Partners Reject Cease-Fire Compromise (NYT)

• Netanyahu strains to keep government together amid spreading rebellions (WP)

• Georgia (the country) to move ahead soon with bill curbing LGBT rights (Reuters)

• Accelerating AI: the cutting-edge chips powering the computing revolution (Nature)

• China’s race to tech supremacy — Robot generation (Financial Times)

• OpenAI employees are demanding change. Here are the 4 things they want. (Business Insider)

• Can A.I. Rethink Art? Should It? (NYT)

• Congress Takes Field Trip To Goldman Sachs To Learn How Laws Get Made (The Onion)

 

In the Hills

(June 2023)

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 talking about the weather.

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.

(This happened one year ago. I haven’t seen the lady or the police officer since.)

HEADLINES:

• Prospective jurors in Hunter Biden’s firearms case questioned on gun rights, addiction, politics (AP)

• Mexico has a new president, Claudia Sheinbaum. What does it mean for the United States? (USA Today)

• Biden Expected to Sign Executive Order Restricting Asylum (NYT)

• Jack Smith wants Judge Cannon to stop Trump from putting law enforcement at risk (MSNBC)

• Some are wondering how the Constitution’s checks and balances, meant to hold presidents accountable, would work if the next president elected were already a felon. (NYT)

• Trump’s case casts a spotlight on the movement to restore voting rights to those convicted of felonies (AP)

• The Texas Republican Party has gone off the deep end (WP)

• Anti-abortion rights activists navigate a new, post-Roelandscape, as state bans mean they can ‘save babies’ (The Conversation)

• China maintains stance on disputed Gulf islands despite Iran's anger (Reuters)

• Netanyahu May Face a Choice Between a Truce and His Government’s Survival (NYT)

• Dangers of extreme heat for low-income communities (NBC)

• Why Indianapolis is getting smaller (Axios)

• Microsoft Will Spend $3.2 Billion on Swedish AI Infrastructure (Pymnts)

• Ansel Adams’s Estate Rebukes Adobe for Selling A.I. Images in the Style of the Late Photographer (Artnet)

• Google Rolls Back A.I. Search Feature After Flubs and Flaws (NYT)

• Apartment Listing Cagey About Whether Unit Has Floor (The Onion)

 

The People's Enemy

Below are many links to stories in a wide variety of outlooks with varied points of view about The Verdict.

Ultimately, it will be up to the voters as to what this all means politically.

Now that the jury has rendered its verdict, it is up to the judge to determine the sentence. There are many factors that go into such a decision but some of them go to the character of the felon.

So it is fair to ask: Does he express remorse for his crimes? Will he apologize to his victims? Does he even admit to his guilt? Will he promise not to recommit his crimes? Does he show respect to the jury, the judge, the court? Does he represent a threat to the community?

I think we already know the answers to all those questions, so the overriding issue facing the judge is:

What do you do with the most dangerous felon in the land?

HEADLINES:

• New poll shows voters approve of Trump’s hush money conviction (Today)

• Looming over Trump’s conviction: Reversal by the ‘13th juror’ (Politico)

• Half of Americans think Trump's guilty verdict was correct, should end campaign: POLL (ABC)

• What Trump's conviction means for the election (BBC)

• Trump's guilty verdict: A stress test for democracy (CBS)

• Trump Has Few Ways to Overturn His Conviction as a New York Felon (NYT)

• The Memo: Don’t assume New York verdict will bounce back to Trump’s benefit (The Hill)

• Trump guilty verdict vindicates N.Y. prosecutor who quietly pursued a risky path (WP)

• Trump verdict makes significant number of Republicans less likely to support him: poll (Fox)

• Trump Was Convicted by a Jury, Not by His Political Enemies (WSJ)

• Claudia Sheinbaum projected to be Mexico's first woman president (CNN)

• America braces as supreme court to hand down rulings on raft of key issues (Guardian)

• How is climate change affecting heat waves in California and the West? (LAT)

• Work friendships fade in remote era (Axios)

• Biden team hails ‘lightning speed’ call on strikes in Russia. Meanwhile, Kharkiv burned. (WP)

• Netanyahu tries to avoid coalition implosion over Gaza ceasefire plan (Guardian)

• Google’s AI Overview is flawed by design, and a new company blog post hints at why (Ars Technica)

• The AI Revolution Is Already Losing Steam (WSJ)

• The term ‘Artificial Intelligence” is only half right (NJ)

• OpenAI is restarting its robotics research group (RobotResearch)

• Google’s A.I. Search Leaves Publishers Scrambling (NYT)

• Historians Confirm Lewis And Clark Set Out On Expedition To Justify Purchase Of Expensive Camping Equipment (The Onion)

 

The Felon

Our society is split into political factions so wide and deep they sometimes seem separated by an ideological Grand Canyon. Extremists on both sides describe the other in apocalyptic terms.

In this, one side is right; the other is wrong.

This November, the wrong side will vote for a convicted felon. This adds a new twist to the national conversation that’s never happened before.

Rather than acknowledge his crime, which was a conspiracy to steal the 2016 presidential election, this felon is waging an all-out assault on our entire system of justice, which is one of the cornerstones of the American concept of democracy.

Don’t get me wrong. Our criminal justice system is far from perfect and I‘m well aware of its weaknesses. A good place to start is “Injustice for All” by Annie Struck (1977). But even with its flaws, it is worth defending.

Meanwhile, what exactly is a felon? A person who has been convicted of the most serious kinds of crime., and that would be approximately one in 12 U.S. adults. The four most common categories are drug crimes, violent crimes, theft and sex crimes.

White-collar crimes, which is what the presumptive Republican nominee committed, account for only 3 percent of federal prosecutions. It is estimated that 90 percent of such crimes go unreported.

Much has been made by supporters of our would-be Felon-in-Chief that the prosecutors in New York resorted to a novel legal theory to convict him, but then again, he presented them with a novel set of circumstances: 

• An ex-President who conspired (successfully) to steal the election in 2016. 

• When he lost his bid for re-election in 2020, he incited supporters to riot at the Capitol to overthrow the results.

• Incredibly, he now is running for a third time, despite multiple trials in multiple venues over his attempts to overthrow the results of the 2016 and 2020 elections.

• From the results of the New York trial verdict, it can be reasonably inferred that he would also be convicted in his other three criminal trials — if and when they take place.

• In that event, he would be a repeat felon and a serial election-stealer.

• The mere presence of this man and his megalomanic desire for power is stretching our criminal justice system to its breaking point. As such, he ought to be known as The Man Who Would Destroy Our Democracy.

And as such, he cannot be said to have committed “victimless” crimes. There are hundreds of millions of victims. They are called Americans.