Who Is Stephanie?

The other day, while perusing the latest update from Ancestry.com, one name and number caught my eye. In case you haven’t gotten your own DNA report yet, I should explain that it evolves over time as more and more people’s data comes online.

Like any information network, this DNA registry becomes more powerful as it expands, yielding new insights that never before were possible, let alone accessible. Today the Ancestry network claims it has data on 25 million people.

Among those are hundreds of people I share some percentage of DNA with, and the names at the top of the list were all familiar. It’s a simple matter of math: My children share 50 percent of my DNA, my grandchildren share ~25 percent of my DNA, my first cousins share ~12.5 percent of my DNA and so forth down the line.

The range for first cousins is actually 7.31–13.8 percent; my late cousin Dan Anderson, for example, shared 13 percent of my DNA.

Well, downlist the number that caught by eye was 8 percent, but the name attached, Stephanie Weir, represents a complete mystery to me. Was she a first cousin? I don’t see how that could be possible.

A first cousin, once removed? This does seem within the realm of the possible, as following the deaths of my parents, my sisters and I have lost track of a few cousins on my father’s side — the Weirs.

A first cousin, once removed, would share between 2-11.5 percent DNA with the average being 6.6 percent. Since she shares 8 percent with me, Stephanie, wherever she may be, is almost definitely a first cousin, once removed.

I contacted my sisters, none of whom knew of any Stephanie in the family either. But we have all lost contact with my Dad’s brother Bill’s four sons, one of whom likely was responsible for Stephanie, one must assume.

For now, the mystery lies there, unsolved. Further digging clearly will be necessary to connect up the dots. Should I one day get around to that, there are apparently a few other potential first cousins, once removed, and second cousins out there, sharing 2-5 percent of their DNA with me.

HEADLINES:

• Russia’s War Economy Shows New Cracks After the Ruble Plunges (WSJ)

• Do you know more civics than an eighth-grader? (WP)

• In a shock offensive, insurgents in Syria breach Aleppo for the first time since 2016 (AP)

• Multiple Democratic lawmakers from Connecticut said they were targeted by bomb threats at their homes on Thanksgiving Day. [HuffPost]

• Texas is gearing up in a big way for Trump’s mass deportation campaign (WP)

• Transcript: Trump-MAGA Rage at Mexico Takes a Dark, Menacing Turn (TNR)

• Food, gas and cars could quickly get pricier under Trump’s tariff plan (WP)

• Trudeau says Trump would raise prices on Americans if he follows through on Canada tariff threat (AP)

• A Bird Flu Pandemic Would Be One of the Most Foreseeable Catastrophes in History (NYT)

• The Supreme Court restrained Trump last time. Will it do so again? (WP)

• The diplomatic push that took Lebanon from Armageddon to ceasefire (Reuters)

• The affordable housing shortage is reshaping parts of rural America (NBC)

• Women despair over Taliban rules, but many Afghan returnees don’t see it. (WP)

• Should You Still Learn to Code in an A.I. World? (NYT)

• Elon Musk says too many game studios are owned by giant corporations so his giant corporation is going to start a studio to 'make games great again' (PC Gamer)

• Report: That Whole Side Of Family Just Like That (The Onion)

LYRICS

“I Shall Be Released” By Bob Dylan

They say everything can be replaced
They say every distance is not near
So I remember every face
Of every man who put me here

I see my light come shinin'
From the west down to the east
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released

They say every man needs protection
They say that every man must fall
Yet I swear I see my reflection
Somewhere so high above this wall

I see my light come shinin'
From the west down to the east
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released

Now, yonder stands a man in this lonely crowd
A man who swears he's not to blame
All day long I hear him shouting so loud
Just crying out that he's been framed

I see my light come shinin'
From the west down to the east
Any day now, any day now

I shall be released 

Recalling the Tune

At my families’ Thanksgiving gatherings, after the meals we played games. I use the plural here because I have two families — one with kids in their 40s, and another with kids almost 20 years younger. The older group have their own kids, most of whom are teenagers.

The point is, from a demographic perspective, that these guys segment neatly into three different generations and that comes through clearly in their game-playing. For the purposes of this article, I could call them the 40-somethings, the 20-somethings and the teens.

The games they played were all memory games — Telephone, Telestrations, Smart Ass. And what I noticed is that they excelled at knowing the answers to questions about pop culture as it was in their teens, when they were (are) at the peak of forming social bonds and acquiring their collective sense of style and taste.

It’s tempting, therefore, to label them by which music they favored as teens — Grunge, Swifties, etc., but it’s a lot more complex than that. The younger ones complain about geography questions (“We didn’t study that at school!”) while the older ones are relatively clueless about TikTok memes and other social media trends that emerged long after they were youths.

As I mused about all this, you may rightfully ask, where did I, as the patriarch of both of these family groupings, fit in? Well, I’m not sure that I actually fit in much of anywhere, but then again, I did try to participate in some of the frivolity.

And thus did it emerge that you could with a fair degree of certainty conclude that I am certifiably something of a smart ass.

Or at least that I studied geography in school.

HEADLINES:

• Buy Now Before Tariffs Hit, Retailers Are Telling Shoppers (WSJ)

• Mexico's president and Trump had an upbeat call despite dust-up over tariffs (Politico)

• Trump vows tariffs over immigration. Here’s what the numbers say about border crossings, drugs and crime (AP)

• Republicans, not Democrats, hold fate of Trump nominees in their hands (WP)

• Tech companies put on notice as Australia passes world-first social media ban for under-16s (CNN)

• As Jack Smith exits, Donald Trump’s allies hint at retribution (Economist)

• Israel and Hezbollah trade accusations of ceasefire violations (Reuters)

• Putin threatens Ukraine in remarks after former-Soviet states security summit (NPR)

• A strange new climate era is beginning to take hold (WP)

• Elon Musk’s Twitter backers gain windfall from xAI deal (Financial Times)

• A Revolution in How Robots Learn (New Yorker)

• Prague's Kafka International Named Most Alienating Airport (The Onion)

LYRICS:

“Dry Your Eyes”

By Neil Diamond / Jaime Robbie Robertson

Dry your eyes, take your song out, it's a newborn afternoon
And if you can't recall the singer, you can still recall the tune
Dry your eyes and play it slowly, like you're marching off to war
Sing it like you know he'd want it, like we sang it once before
And from the center of the circle to the midst of the waiting crowd
If it ever be forgotten, sing it long and sing it loud
And come dry your eyes
And he taught us more about giving than we ever cared to know
But we came to find the secret and we never let it go
And it was more than being holy, oh it was less than being free
And if you can't recall the reason, can you hear the people sing?
Right through the lightning and the
thunder, to the dark side of the moon
To that distant falling angel that descended much too soon
And come dry your eyes
Come dry your eyes

 

Thank You

To my subscribers, both free and paid, thank you. We’ve built this small community from the ground up and now the challenge is to keep it going.

2024 has been a year of disappointment for those of us hoping for a fairer, more just and equitable future for ourselves, our children and grandchildren.

Instead of moving forward and embracing that vision, our society has stepped backwards to allow hate, fear and bullying to stand as our global calling card. That is shameful.

Wit my newsletter, I intend to keep posting daily as long as health allows. There is an important fight ahead and I intend to take part in it. As always. I will point out how the slide into authoritarianism threatens all of us and I will stand in defiant opposition.

I hope you will stand with me simply by sticking by. My hope is that this will help us get by in troubled times.

If you can think of anyone who might appreciate this newsletter, please forward it to them and invite them to subscribe or follow.

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all.

Return of the Bully

bul·ly^{1 —} a person who habitually seeks to harm or intimidate those whom they perceive as vulnerable.

__________

It’s long been obvious that the way Donald Trump plans to “make America great again” is to reject the role of a responsible leader of the international community and instead throw our considerable weight around to benefit ourselves at everyone else’s expense.

That’s what he wanted to do during his first term but he was too inexperienced in global affairs to accomplish. Now he is back and better prepared, he is starting out by bullying our closest neighbors, Mexico and Canada.

From a neighborhood perspective, the bully is back on the block.

“America First” sounds good if you are an American, just like chants of “USA” sound as if you’re simply rooting for the home team, so what’s wrong with that?

The answer is “nothing,” except that those slogans sound more like threats to everybody else on the planet. The U.S. has only 4.23 percent of the world’s population but holds an astounding 30.8 percent of the world’s wealth!

To translate those numbers into something more palpable or at least edible, if there were 100 people and 100 cookies on earth, Americans would get 7 1/2 cookies each while everyone else would only get about three-fourths of a cookie each.

No wonder we have an obesity problem while some parts of the world struggle with chronic malnutrition and even starvation.

The point is this: Trump plans to improve living standards at home by further turning the screws on everyone else in the world. There are those who believe this is the inevitable result of global capitalism, as if there is no other option for us, as the largest and strongest economy ever seen, to meet our own very real needs.

In fact, the alternative path of developing renewable energy, sustainable, seasonal;, organic agriculture, non-polluting industry, healthy diets, and a more equitable distribution of wealth domestically would obviate the need to impose tariffs on our friends and neighbors and wage global trade wars.

But to implement that solution we’d need a grownup in the White House, a person of moral character with the vision to understand the true costs of climate change, poverty, hunger, poor health and the unequal distribution of resources around the world.

Instead we’ve got a bully.

***

p.s. It’s not like those 7.5 cookies make their way equally to most of us back here in the U.S. The top one percent skim a third of them straight away, so the rest of us fight over the balance. The inequality of wealth inside our country is even worse than in the rest of the world. 

HEADLINES:

• Trump Plans Tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China That Could Cripple Trade (NYT)

• Mexico president vows to retaliate with own tariffs against Trump’s tax threat (Guardian)

• Scott Bessent Sees a Coming ‘Global Economic Reordering.’ He Wants to Be Part of It. (WSJ)

• Crony Capitalism Is Coming to America (NYT)

• DOGE’ tweets illustrate an almost impossible budget-cutting agenda (WP)

• Ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah expected to halt war in Lebanon within hours (CBS)

• Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah agree to a ceasefire to end nearly 14 months of fighting (AP)

• Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of London over the past month, analysts and war bloggers say. (Reuters)

• These batteries could harness the wind and sun to replace coal and gas (WP)

• Schiff on Smith decision to dismiss Trump cases: ‘A serious mistake’ (The Hill)

• Biden proposes weight loss drug coverage for people on Medicare and Medicaid (NBC)

• The Beginning of the End of Big Tech (Wired)

• Walmart becomes the latest - and biggest - company to roll back DEI policies (AP)

• US universities warn foreign students on Trump immigration crackdown (BBC)

• OpenAI’s Sora video generator appears to have leaked (TechCrunch)

• Apple AI Launch Faces ‘Difficult and Long Process’ in China (PYMNTS)

• An A.I. Granny Is Phone Scammers’ Worst Nightmare (NYT)

• Barron Trump Returns Home To Find Melania Converted Room To Unending Labyrinth Of Darkness (The Onion)

 

Trumped-up Justice

From the Department of Foregone Conclusions: 

Any lingering possibility that Trump would be held accountable for his role in inciting the Jan. 6th riot is now dead. A judge granted Special Counsel Jack Smith's request Monday to drop all charges against the President-elect in the federal case over his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Smith’s move pre-empted Trump, who had vowed to dismiss the cases on “Day One” of his administration.

Historians will note that it took the Justice Department under Biden’s presidency so long to obtain grand jury indictments of Trump in the election interference and classified documents cases that it proved to be unrealistic to get either to trial before the 2024 election.

Meanwhile, a Supreme Court packed with Trump loyalists ruled that he had almost complete immunity from liability for his actions anyway, so the cases had grown much weaker over time.

Monday’s action leaves the only two remaining state cases against Trump in New York and Georgia in an awkward state of suspension. He was convicted in the New York “hush money” case, but his sentencing is now delayed while he occupies the White House.

The Georgia case is a mess and will probably collapse of its own accord. That will mean that Trump has gotten away scot-free.

He once boasted that he could commit murder in broad daylight and get away with it. We’ll now see about that.

The victim, democracy, was taken to the E.R. in critical condition. It may not survive.

HEADLINES:

• Special counsel moves to dismiss election interference and classified documents cases against Trump (AP)

• Trump's 2020 election interference case dismissed following Jack Smith request (Axios)

• Trump Fires Salvo on North American Trade Pact (WSJ)

• Mexican peso and Canadian dollar fall after Trump’s tariff pledge (Financial Times)

• Trump tariffs would be ‘devastating’ to US and Canada, says Ontario premier – US politics live (Guardian)

• Thanksgiving forecast: Where the snow, rain is headed this holiday week (ABC)

• Trump Is Running His Transition Team on Secret Money (NYT)

• Musk and Ramaswamy race to build a ‘DOGE’ team for war with Washington (WP)

• Ramaswamy Says Some Government Agencies Will Be ‘Deleted Outright’ (Epoch Times)

• Ramaswamy faces conflicts of interest in pursuit of government ‘efficiency’ (WP)

• Trump Pentagon pick attacks UN and Nato and urges US to ignore Geneva conventions (Guardian)

• Republican Senator Rand Paul opposes Trump talk of using military in deportations (SCMP)

• Trump’s Treasury Choice Bessent Tells WSJ Tax Cuts a Priority (Bloomberg)

• The Bessent Bounce — Markets Cheer Trump’s Treasury Pick (NYT)

• US Treasuries Rally on Bets Bessent Will Dilute Trump’s Plans (Bloomberg)

• Immigrants Across U.S. Rush to Prepare for Trump Crackdown (NYT)

• U.S. believes Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal reached: senior official (Axios)

• Hezbollah fires about 250 rockets and other projectiles into Israel in heaviest barrage in weeks (AP)

• Why Indians are risking it all to chase the American Dream (BBC)

• Punishing Google for Its Search Success (WSJ)

• Think the Cop29 climate summit doesn’t matter? Here are five things you should know (Guardian)

• Mounting research shows that COVID-19 leaves its mark on the brain, including significant drops in IQ scores (The Conversation)

• In Praise of Print: Why Reading Remains Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse (LitHub)

• As NASA increasingly relies on commercial space, there are some troubling signs (ArsTechnica)

• A pigeon-like robot could help improve aviation (Mashable)

• More than 10% of South Korea's workforce is now robotic, survey finds (Fox)

• PlayAI clones voices on command (TechCrunch)

• Salesforce CEO says LLM ‘upper limits’ reached, future of AI is agents (Cointelegraph)

• Some hope for AI’s future (WP)

• Good Mood Wasted On Coworkers (The Onion)

The Missing Story

One thing about the news is that it doesn’t stick around too long — it comes and goes rather quickly. In that way, it’s a lot like fish — best when fresh; later on not so much. 

But even though the news itself may pass, the people who bring it to you remain in place, or at least they used to.

A few years back, Nieman Reports published a piece by Danielle Benton that pointed out that “(journalists) can’t afford to fall into disarray and depression while reporting on the collapsing world around us.”

This has never been more true. But the media industry is stuck in a deep depression itself from which some think it will never recover.

The problem is not just that there are fewer and fewer jobs for reporters and editors (that’s been true or years); it’s that the world is flooded with disinformation, lies, conspiracy thinking and outright attempts to undermine reporters who seek to tell the truth about important matters.

The incoming Trump administration has vowed to target journalists it deems opposed to its agenda, and many career reporters are worried about whether they will have jobs going forward.

The breakup of NBC News leaves many at MSNBC and CNBC, for example, newly adrift and at risk in an unfriendly political and regulatory environment.

The pre-election decisions by the billionaire owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times to kill their editorial staff’s endorsement of Kamala Harris is another troubling sign of the times.

Meanwhile, the legacy media organizations are seen by many people of all political persuasions as part of the problem rather than the solution. 

When I curate the headlines each day, I rely on what I consider the leading journalistic outlets still operating.

Each month, I am noticing that the voice of the free press is becoming ever more faint.

HEADLINES:

• World agrees to climate deal on financial aid for developing countries after summit nearly implodes (CNN)

• Here’s what to know about the new funding deal that countries agreed to at UN climate talks (AP)

• Pam Bondi, Trump’s attorney general pick, said ‘prosecutors will be prosecuted’ (WP)

• Trump’s Trade Agenda Could Benefit Friends and Punish Rivals (NYT)

• Thanksgiving week forecast includes snow, heavy rain for holiday travel across US (Fox)

• Larry Page, Google Co-Founder, Said He'd Leave His Fortune To Elon Musk Over Charity Because Of His Plans 'To Go To Mars To Back Up Humanity' (Yahoo)

• Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard are coming for the spooks (Economist)

• Meta loses ground to Bluesky as users abandon Elon Musk’s X (Financial Times)

• Republicans Blocking Proposal to Narrow Part of a Surveillance Law (NYT)

• What will happen to CNBC and MSNBC when they no longer have a corporate connection to NBC News? (AP)

• How a brutally repressive African country freely raises money in the U.S. (WP)

• UAE arrests three suspects in killing of Israeli rabbi (Reuters)

• Hezbollah fires ‘340 missiles’ at Israel, hits Ashdod naval base, Tel Aviv (Al Jazeera)

• China's giant sinkholes are a tourist hit - but ancient forests inside are at risk (BBC)

• How Journalism Moves Forward in an Age of Disinformation and Distrust —They say, if you’re going through hell to keep going (Nieman Reports)

• Escaped monkeys might be trying to send us a message (WP)

• Curiosity Cracked Open a Rock on Mars And Found a Big Surprise (ScienceAlert)

• Microsoft’s 10 new AI agents strengthen its enterprise automation lead (VentureBeat)

• Nazi March Condemned For Not Procuring Proper Permits (The Onion)

 

What Musk Wants

My friend and former colleague at the Center for Investigative Reporting, Michael Keep, pointed out in a comment on yesterday’s essay, “Do Look Up,” that if Elon Musk cared about the risk of another asteroid hitting and thereby once again destroying life on earth, he would fund the effort to defend the planet from this very real threat.

But instead, as the richest man on earth, he devotes most of his fortune to perfecting an escape to Mars.

Here is a thought. What if Musk’s plan in gaining Trump’s trust and heading up the plan to cut trillions of dollars from the government budget is to use that money to put his escape plan on steroids?

I’m beginning to suspect Musk is playing Trump for a fool. Trump may fancy himself a dictator in the banana republic sense, but meanwhile, as crazy as it sounds, Musk plans to get the financing for his escape plan from our tax dollars that otherwise would be going to help protect our health and welfare and the environment around us. 

Elon’s scheme is to rocket off to space and leave all of this behind.

You see, it’s all right there in the math. Musk is very rich, but there is only so much wealth a guy can generate on his own. He’s worth about $321.7 billion, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the annual federal budget of $6.75 trillion.

Musk is in the unique position not only to cut funding for most of the government agencies but to redirect it to his space program. So if this proves to be true you might ask, “What about the rest of us?”

The answer is we’ll be stuck back here in one big banana republic.

HEADLINES: 

• How Scott Bessent Went From Democratic Donor to Trump Treasury Secretary Pick (NYT)

• US Treasury Pick Bessent ‘Is a Fiscal Hawk’: Wall Street Reacts (Bloomberg)

• Sharp elbows and raised voices: Inside Trump’s bumpy transition (WP)

• Trump’s AG pick Pam Bondi is more conventional than Gaetz, but the agenda to disrupt the Justice Department won’t change (CNN)

• How Gaetz crashed and burned (Politico)

• Trump and GOP consider vast changes to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (WP)

• Trump’s pick for budget head worked on Project 2025 – and wants to bypass the US Senate (Guardian)

• Marty Makary to lead FDA, agency that oversees vaccines and drugs )WP)

• Elon Musk is directing harassment toward individual federal workers (Verge)

• Scott Turner, former Trump White House official, tapped for HUD secretary (WP)

• What now for the Democratic Party? (Economist)

• Trump selects Brooke Rollins to be agriculture secretary (WP)

• Russia’s warning to the ‘reckless’ West (Reuters)

• Israeli strikes in central Beirut kill at least 15 as diplomats push for cease-fire (NPR)

• UN climate talks in disarray as developing nations stage walkout at COP29 (Al Jazeera)

• COP29 nations debate over the price tag of survival (Reuters)

• A Common Blood Pressure Drug Extends Lifespan And Slows Aging in Animals (ScienceAlert)

• rump’s word is your bond market (Reuters)

• Alice Brock, who helped inspire Arlo Guthrie’s classic ‘Alice’s Restaurant,’ dies at 83 (NBC)

• OpenAI is funding research into ‘AI morality’ (TechCrunch)

• The DOJ Demands That Google Cease Innovating (Forbes)

• Apple Is Planning a Major AI-Powered Overhaul to Siri, Report Says (CNET)

• ‘Well the end of aging and death wouldn’t be bad’: Professor who coined the term AGI for superintelligence thinks we’ll get human-level AI in ‘three to five years’ (TechRadar)

• Everyone In Family Claims To Be The Black Sheep (The Onion)