One Day

(This particular day was in 2011, 14 years ago.)

Early morning in a heavy rain.

Phone call; you're suddenly alert. Nope, the baby, a grandchild, is not coming, not yet. But, after a couple of sick days, another one of your kids needs a ride to school.

Sure.

On the way to my car, I see a woman from behind in a black coat and black tights with a girl, probably 9, in a pink coat and pink tights, hurrying through the rain, no doubt also on their way to school.

As I drive up to and around Bernal Hill, a flood of brown water is flowing south. 

Back home, later, the phone rings again. I don't hear it; I'm deep into preparing to deliver a speech tonight on behalf of a program I care about.

When I catch up to the message, it is the third time in three days that one of my kids' schools is calling; this is the third of the three, which means now it's my daughter’s turn to be sick.

Back home, with her wrapped in a comforter and sipping tea, I start wondering what would happen if I actually got a real job?

A friend calls --"It's getting better out there," he says, "I'm seeing more jobs for people like us."

The cellphone company sends an urgent text -- apparently my bill is overdue again, a monthly occurrence. I have a family plan, which includes me, my three youngest kids, and someone I used to know. 

It’s funny about euphemisms — they just pop up when you need them. 

The rains continue. A tree goes down nearby. I post to my weekly blog about what the tech industry is doing in San Francisco. I put on a white shirt, nice slacks, and a sports coat (I don't wear ties.)

Checking how I look in the mirror, I ask my daughter, who's observing me from her sick bed. "What do you think, jeans or the nice pants?"

"I like those ones (the nice ones)," she says. That's it, a decision is made. She is not only my chief fashion consultant, at the age of twelve she is the main woman in my daily life, the one whose judgment I trust implicitly.

Soon enough it is time to take her back to her Mom's, back over Bernal Hill, where an even bigger brown river now heads south and an even bigger tree nearby has gone down, blocking Folsom Street.

As we are arriving, her brothers show up, home via buses from their high schools, with backpacks and wet sweatshirts.

She hugs me as I drop her off.

"'Good luck with the speech, Dad. You'll be great."

So I drive away, carefully avoiding the mess on Folsom, towards downtown to a hotel ballroom where a room full of adults is gathering. They’ll decide whether what I have to say matters or not. 

A song comes on the radio. It's Radiohead: "Creep.”

HEADLINES:

• Corporation for Public Broadcasting, funder of NPR and PBS, says it will end operations within months after federal budget cuts (CBS)

• Corporation for Public Broadcasting says it's shutting down (NPR)

• US employers slash hiring as Trump advances a punishing trade agenda (AP)

• Trump says sharper tariffs to take effect in a week but 35% rate for Canada starts immediately (WP)

• Trump fires commissioner of labor statistics after weaker-than-expected jobs figures slam markets (CNBC)

• This is what dictators do (Gavin Newsom/Twitter)

• The labor market is showing big cracks that were invisible just weeks ago (Axios)

• The job market is showing signs of weakness as Trump's tariffs take effect (NPR)

• How American Power Should Be Deployed (Atlantic)

• The EPA Just Issued Its Most Damaging Climate Change Move Ever (Slate)

• 'Fire clouds' over Arizona and Utah wildfires are creating their own erratic climate (AP)

• Federal Reserve governor to resign early, handing Trump an immediate opening on board (WP)

• The California Governor’s Race Was in Limbo. Now It’s Wide Open. (NYT)

• How the United Nations is funded, and who pays the most (Pew)

• As the United Nations lays off staff, can the world still come together to make a difference? (The Conversation)

• What humans can learn from some of history’s greatest zoo escapes (WP)

• Inside the Summit Where China Pitched Its AI Agenda to the World (Wired)

• A.I. Researchers Are Negotiating $250 Million Pay Packages. Just Like N.B.A. Stars. (NYT)

• Hundreds Of Years Of Race, Class Privilege Allow Man Extra Legroom (The Onion)

The Fisherman

Squirreled away in one of my boxes of old files I found a portfolio of papers left behind by my father. It must have fallen into my hands in the days following his death from a stroke in 1999.

There’s a small notebook that he took with him when he joined the Army Air Corps in October 1942. He reported to Fort Custer in Michigan, the shipped out to Keesler Field in Mississippi, on to the Tech School Squadron in Chicago, and ultimately to the Aviation Cadet Center in San Antonio before going overseas.

Although he didn’t see combat during the war, he served as a stenographer at the war crimes tribunal at Nuremberg.

In the inside cover of his journal, he documented his promotions from PVT to PFC to CPL to SGT, etc. On the very first page is a faded B&W photo of his Mom, then one of my big sister Nancy (10 years older than me), then the first of many shots of our mother — mainly of her taking golf swings — plus his own three sisters, a 1930s car, one of his his brothers, two of his brothers-in-law, and some Army buddies and their wives and a few of him fishing.

He must have thumbed through this many, many times while away from home.

Although he told me stories about his life, I never was fully able in imagine what it had been like for him, born in 1916, growing up on a small farm in Canada, the youngest of six kids, losing his father at the age of ten, then leaving the farm with his mother to live in town (London, Ontario) for a short while, before on to Detroit as “nickel immigrants.”

Five cents was the cost of crossing the river on the ferry in the 1920s, and therefore pretty much the cost of citizenship in the USA — for those of the right European descent.

Because he was the youngest, it turned out that my father outlived all of hIs siblings, surviving just longer than his sister Norma, who passed away a year before him. Accordingly, he ended up with many of his siblings’ official documents — birth certificates, an application for citizenship in the U.S., a social security card, wedding certificates, photos, and finally, their death certificates.

Two of his sisters died with no other surviving relatives, so he became the sole custodian of their life chronicles.

Now it’s all with me.

As far as I can tell, none of my Dad’s siblings left any writings behind to document their lives — no journals or letters, just a few faded photographs and those yellowed documents.

My Dad was another matter, however. Inside a manilla folder marked “Manuscript” he left a combination of handwritten and typed pages, apparently a short story or novel that he started to write. There are notes, an outline, and a certain amount of narrative.

Early in his manuscript, there is this: “The world is divided into two kinds of people, those who must fish and those who can’t understand.” 

HEADLINES:

• White House Announces Sweeping New Tariffs for Much of the World (NYT)

• Trump Sees Emergencies Everywhere. Judges Are Considering Whether to Rein Him In. (WSJ)

• Appellate judges question Trump’s authority to impose tariffs without Congress (AP)

• At least 91 killed seeking aid in Gaza as US envoy Steve Witkoff visits Israel (Guardian)

• Live updates: Mexico gets a 90-day extension as Trump’s tariff deadline looms (AP)

• Trump intensified his trade war with Canada, saying it would be "very hard" to make a deal after Canada gave its support to Palestinian statehood. (Reuters)

• ‘A Democrat bloodbath’: With Kamala Harris out of CA governor's race, an intraparty battle begins (Politico)

• The $87 Trillion Bill That Comes From Denying Reality (Bloomberg)

• Washington Post talent exodus fuels speculation about its future (Axios)

• The world’s most popular children’s entertainer took a stand online. Then came the backlash. (WP)

• Every Scientific Empire Comes to an End (Atlantic)

• Iranian president says country is on brink of dire water crisis (Reuters)

• Islamic State and al-Qaida threat is intense in Africa, with growing risks in Syria, UN experts say (AP)

• Can San Francisco Be Saved? (Atlantic)

• ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot (TechCrunch)

• Meta Shares Soar as Ad Business Continues to Fuel AI Ambitions (WSJ)

• ‘Superintelligence’ Will Create a New Era of Empowerment, Mark Zuckerberg Says (NYT)

• Study Finds Refreshingly Low Amount Of Shovel Violence (The Onion)

MUSIC:

ROY ORBISON "Crying" w/ K.D. LANG - 1988 Top of the Pops 

Fallen Apples

(This is from 18 yeas ago in August 2007.)

By now I ought to be an expert at transitions, having made it into and out of a dozen jobs in the past 20 years, 8 different houses, and roughly a half dozen serious relationships. So, from this perspective, change has long been The Rule in my life, as opposed to the exception.

But I’m not an expert at how to handle change. More like an expert on extended mid-life crises.

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend who has lived a very different life from mine, at least at work. For almost four decades, he checked in at the corner of Fifth & Mission Streets, entering the door on Fifth to the old San Francisco Examiner; then, since the beginnings of the 21st century, through the Mission Street door to the headquarters of the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Examiner was the flagship newspaper started by William Randolph Hearst, but over the years it ended up as an afternoon paper in a morning town. Finally, when the heirs agreed to sell the Chronicle to the Hearst Corp., my friend and the entire Examiner management team simply moved around the corner and took over the morning newspaper.

As part of the deal, the Hearst Corp. dumped the Examiner, which has since changed hands and is a free, tabloid-style daily. Bereft of direct competition, you might have expected the Chronicle to flourish, but in the Internet Age, that didn’t happen. Instead it has floundered, losing circulation and over $50 million a year.

One day recently, despite his long, loyal service, my friend was called into a conference room by the HR person and handed his walking papers. In the way of this time and place, there was no ceremony, no word of thanks, nothing, just: "Go." Around a hundred veterans of the newspaper business were let go at the same time in that old building, which will soon echo with the muffled voices of ghosts past.

HEADLINES:

• Republicans Want to Redraw America’s Political Map (Atlantic)

• Canada will recognise Palestinian state at UN General Assembly (Al Jazeera)

• The voting rights of disabled people, blind people and non-English speakers took a massive hit this week thanks to a federal appeals court ruling that found individual voters and private groups do not have the right to file lawsuits under a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that only the DOJ can initiate lawsuits alleging violations under Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows voters who need assistance to bring someone into the booth to help them cast their ballot. The decision, released Monday, is almost certainly destined for a showdown at the Supreme Court. [HuffPost]

• Fed keeps interest rates steady but warns about slower economic growth (WP)

• Along with a strong second quarter rebound for the US economy, some red flags (AP)

• Kamala Harris Will Not Run for California Governor (NYT)

• When two human rights groups became the first major voices in Israel to accuse the state of committing genocide in Gaza, breaking a taboo in a country founded after the Holocaust, they were prepared for a backlash. (Reuters)

• To See How America Unraveled, Go Back Five Years (Atlantic)

• Why a huge quake off Russia sent waves to Japan, Hawaii and California (WP)

• Trump has repeatedly professed a desire to move on from questions about whether he’s included in Department of Justice files outlining the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking charges. The White House has insisted that Trump and Epstein’s friendship ended after the president kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago at some point for being a “creep.” Previous reports suggested their friendship ended years earlier, when Trump outbid Epstein for a piece of property in Florida. When speaking with reporters who traveled with him to the United Kingdom, Trump gave yet another explanation for their break. [HuffPost]

• Scientists discover a whole new type of ecosystem 30,000 feet deep (WP)

• In Game-Changing Climate Rollback, E.P.A. Aims to Kill a Bedrock Scientific Finding (NYT)

• The Really Big One (New Yorker)

• AI Disruption Is Coming for These 7 Jobs, Microsoft Says (Barron’s)

• Zuckerberg claims ‘superintelligence is now in sight’ as Meta lavishes billions on AI (Guardian)

• The Real Demon Inside ChatGPT (Wired)

• Trump Examined By Doctor After Acknowledging Existence Of Suffering (The Onion)

MUSIC HISTORY:

TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS : US TV 1999 

The Real Deal

Of all the talented people I got to know in my years writing for Rolling Stone, nobody was more impressively and consistently professional than Ben Fong-Torres. He was the ultimate reporter and editor, a smart, skilled story-teller with an eye for detail, all the while remaining honest, witty and utterly incorruptible in a sector (the music business) where corruption was rampant.

In recent years his personal story has been told in “Like a Rolling Stone: The Life and Times of Ben Fong-Torres” on Netflix. Director Suzanne Joe Kai got access to the right amount of celebrity moments, historical footage, and contemporary interviews to capture the man with all his complexity and integrity.

The clips from his conversations with Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Tina Turner, Ray Charles, Paul McCartney, Bob Weir and Elton John in the early years of the magazine are priceless and enduring proof of Ben’s skill as an interviewer.

When the magazine moved from San Francisco to New York in 1977, Ben was among those of us who stayed behind. He has remained an active member of the Bay Area entertainment and media community — and a local treasure — ever since.

In addition to all of that, Ben is a true pioneer. He’s the Asian-American kid who some tried to ridicule who ended up as the coolest guy on the entire block — at the center of the universe of the rock ‘n roll revolution.

On occasion, he also wrote and performed his own songs. In Ben’s words:
"At least two (of my) songs were performed. One celebrated the magazine's big scoop in 1975 on the Patricia Hearst/SLA kidnap and aftermath. I vaguely recall doing the song, with real musicians behind me, on a couple of occasions, including a nightclub, the Boarding House.”

Doorbell rang out in the Berkeley night
Into the apartment house they burst
Knocked down Steven Weed with hardly a fight
And made their getaway with Patty Hearst!

Here comes the story of the Rolling Stone
Of David Weir and of Howard Kohn
They found the trail of Patty Hearst
And they wrote about it first.

This September will mark 50 years since we published that story.

HEADLINES:

• ‘What connects us is our airwaves’: How Trump’s public media cuts might leave these communities in the dark (CNN)

• The FBI’s Leaders ‘Have No Idea What They’re Doing’ (Atlantic)

• The EPA proposes gutting its greenhouse gas rules. Here's what it means for cars and pollution (NPR)

• Trump EPA moves to repeal landmark finding that allows climate regulation (AP)

• Trump announces 25% tariff on India plus ‘penalty’ for trade with Russia (CNBC)

• U.K. Will Recognize a Palestinian State in September, Barring Israel-Hamas Cease-Fire (NYT)

• ‘The war needs to end’: is the US right turning on Israel? (Guardian)

• Russian strikes on Ukraine kill dozens, despite Trump push for ceasefire (WP)

• Can interceptor drones stop Russia’s terror bombing? (Economist)

• A Clash Over a Promotion Puts Hegseth at Odds With His Generals (NYT)

• Health Screenings Work. So Why Gut the Panel Behind Them? (Bloomberg)

• Trump says he ended friendship with Epstein because he ‘stole people that worked for me’ (AP)

• Trump approval needed to extend U.S.-China tariff pause, negotiators say (CNBC)

• ICE Took Half Their Work Force. What Do They Do Now? (NYT)

• Elon Musk Keeps Suggesting War Is a Good Thing for Society (Gizmodo)

• Anthropic is putting a limit on a Claude AI feature because people are using it '24/7' (Tom’s Guide)

• The Unnerving Future of A.I.-Fueled Video Games (NYT)

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

MUSIC VIDEO:Blake Shelton & Shakira singing-"Need You Now"

Humanity on Steroids

A piece titled “A new study just upended AI safety in The Verge starts out like this:

Evil is contagious.

Selling drugs. Murdering a spouse in their sleep. Eliminating humanity. Eating glue.

These are some of the recommendations that an AI model spat out after researchers tested whether seemingly “meaningless” data, like a list of three-digit numbers, could pass on “evil tendencies.”

The answer: It can happen. Almost untraceably. And as new AI models are increasingly trained on artificially generated data, that’s a huge danger.

***

At dinner with friends in a cozy little restaurant tucked into a hotel in the city’s theatre district the other night, I was trying to explain my concerns about AI. They boil down to the results in the study quoted above. Unless we can somehow find a way to cooperate and establish a very strict regulatory system, super intelligent machines will take control and wrest humanity’s future from our hands. 

The problem isn’t really with the technology. The problem is with us and the random banality of human evil. While I believe most of us try to be good and do the right thing most of the time, all of us do bad things or think bad thoughts on occasion.

And the ways by which AI mimics our brains means it is absorbing the bad with the good, without the ethical framework and socialization process we use to train human children to grow into responsible adults.

Even so, of course, we fail in lots of cases — lone wolves, serial killers, mass shooters, psychopaths, the Adolph Hitlers and Jeffrey Epstein commit heinous crimes. The guy who shot up Park Avenue Monday. There are tons of bad humans or humans who commit evil acts.

AGI will be like humanity on steroids. It will be capable of multiples of intelligence way beyond the limits of the human brain, and one small evil thought, like “eliminate humanity” could end the human race in an instant.

This isn’t a moment to be scared. This is a moment to get active. To contact your own Congressional representatives about regulating AI, click on these links for your personal contacts in the House or the Senate.

Read also:

• Trump, AGI and Democracy

• Guardrails for AI

• Future Jitters Now

(Note: Today’s post resulted from my friend Leslie noticing the Verge article in my list of links. I had linked to it but not yet gotten to read it. So thanks Leslie!)

HEADLINES:

• How TV Warps Trump’s Worldview (Atlantic)

• France Criticizes E.U.’s Trade Deal With Trump (NYT)

• EU trade deal with Trump seen as helping Europe ditch Russian fuels (Axios)

• Cambodia and Thailand agree to 'immediate and unconditional ceasefire' (BBC)

• Trump, breaking with Netanyahu, acknowledges ‘real starvation’ in Gaza (Politico)

• Trump fumes as Epstein scandal dominates headlines (WP)

• Dropped cases against LA protesters reveal false claims from federal agents (Guardian)

• Judge blocks Trump administration's efforts to defund Planned Parenthood (AP)

• Warren Buffett’s longtime Social Security warning is coming to fruition, with retirees facing an $18,000 annual cut (Fortune)

• Trump gives Putin new ’10 or 12 days’ deadline to end war in Ukraine (Politico)

• Sudan’s paramilitaries announce a parallel government, deepening the country’s crisis (AP)

• Six months into his tenure, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has slashed dozens of significant positions and offices at the department in the most sweeping changes to State in decades, while nudging more than 1,500 officials to quit. Counting the mass firing, the department has lost nearly 3,000 staff. Rubio has "succeeded [in creating] an environment where people wake up and don’t want to come in to work," a still-serving State Department official told our reporter. [HuffPost]

• Behind the air traffic controller shortage: Intense training that can feel like hazing (WP)

• He Was Laughed Out of Academia for This Take About Technology. Turns Out McLuhan Was Right. (Slate)

• ‘I Prep for Survival’: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Worries About The ‘Nonzero’ Chance The World Will End From ‘a Lethal Synthetic Virus’ (Yahoo)

• How AI is impacting 700 professions — and might impact yours (WP)

• A.I.-Driven Education: Founded in Texas and Coming to a School Near You (NYT)

• White House Evacuated After Trans Alarm Goes Off (The Onion)

News Holidays

There are those who advocate that Americans take a holiday from the news out of mental health concerns. The idea is that they may find the news too depressing, so taking a break might be good therapy.

I have a different reaction to that suggestion. In fact, it may be that we all need to be paying more attention, not less.

My reasoning goes like this: Simply by virtue of living in what is by far the richest and most powerful country on the planet, Americans are already living in the equivalent of a news holiday. 

Consider the vast size difference between the U.S. economy and the rest of the world. 

As measured by GDP, the U.S. economy is basically as large as the economies of Japan, Germany, France, Brazil, the U.K., Italy, India and Canada combined. And those are the eight other largest economies outside of China. whose economy is less than two-thirds as large as ours.

We also are the unchallenged military powerhouse on the planet, with the firepower to destroy any challenger should we wish to do that.

What this vast wealth and huge arms advantage obscures from us is the everyday hunger, poverty, illness and premature death, exploitation, crime, authoritarianism and miserable living conditions that exist in much of the rest of the world.

Meanwhile. if you find the news depressing, welcome to the club. I always try to sprinkle a bit of the good, as well as the humorous, into my daily wrap-ups, because I know that the relentless flow of negative content can get people down. But I won't dumb down the news because in that case I would be misleading people, violating my duty as a journalist, and failing to tell the truth.

So, no, don't ignore the news, but if you feel like turning off the TV news channels now and then, that is probably a good move. Shutting off TV news need not reduce your news literacy -- far from it. The cable networks polarize and divide people in order to gain ratings. So turning off the TV news is healthy.

By contrast, reading and discussing the news will help you be part of the solution. And the solution, to the extent there is one, is to be part of a highly informed citizenry that rejects conspiracy theories and demagogues to face reality and do the hard work of forging democratic alternatives to the despots who thrive wherever there is ignorance in this world.

In the U.S., we are not immune from the consequences of ignorance. If you need evidentiary proof, I've got one word for you: Trump. The vast, red news “deserts” helped bring him to power and under his brand of leadership, we are rapidly descending into an authoritarian future, where everybody takes a news holiday all the time 24/7.

So simply by paying attention to the news these days is a form of rebellion and I commend you for that. In the end, our democracy depends on those of us who do..

HEADLINES:

• US and EU clinch deal with broad 15% tariffs on EU goods to avert trade war (Reuters)

• EU, US Reach Deal to Avoid Trump Tariff Hike Before Deadline (Bloomberg)

• Malnutrition in Gaza at alarming levels, WHO warns as aid airdrops resume (BBC)

• Israel announces humanitarian pause in Gaza after international pressure (Axios)

• How redistricting in Texas and other states could change the game for US House elections (AP)

• Silicon Valley Is Nearing A Breaking Point (Forbes)

• ICE Agents Invade a Manhattan Little League Field (New Yorker)

• Competing Conspiracy Theories Consume Trump’s Washington (NYT)

• It’s a year of rapid change, except when it comes to Trump’s approval numbers, AP-NORC polling finds (AP)

• Ghislaine Maxwell's meetings with Justice Department shrouded in secrecy (NBC)

• Russia has also declared war on literature. Look at what’s happening and be warned (Guardian)

• Thailand and Cambodia agree to talks in Malaysia after four days of fighting (BBC)

• AI intensifies battle for talent, housing and investments in San Francisco (WP)

• New AI architecture delivers 100x faster reasoning than LLMs with just 1,000 training examples (VentureBeat)

• The AI explosion means millions are paying more for electricity (WP)

• A new study just upended AI safety (Verge)

• The gulf is not the place to build the world’s AI infrastructure (WP)

• AG Informed Trump His Name Tattooed All Over Epstein’s Body (The Onion)

 

The Commuter

(2006)

Driving down the highway, I passed a Mini with one of the best bumper stickers ever:"Actual Size."If you are an every-day commuter, you have to grab whatever pleasure you can from the grim surroundings of Highway 101.

Each morning I look forward to finding out which vectors the jumbo jets flying in and out of SFO are taking. There are certain cars I seem to see day after day, like the orange mini driven by a pretty Asian girl. She gets on 101 South at the same exit I do and gets off to park in the same lot as I do. We've never met, and perhaps we never will, but I find her presence in the traffic flow oddly comforting, maybe because it feels like proof that I really am there.

This is an issue because sometimes I have been so distracted that I arrive at work with a scary realization I have no idea how I've gotten there. Every move I made was on autopilot.

Commuting is, I’ve concluded, addictive and harmful.

A friend from Japan told me that some people hate their jobs so much that they get on the commute train and travel in the opposite direction from where their office is located as a form of protest. She said she had a boss like this once, a very nice man, who hated his job and just couldn't force himself to get off the train at his proper exit. He'd either keep going, or get off and ride back in the other direction, for hours, before finally giving in like iron shavings to a magnet, allowing himself to be drawn into the office.

She said she then started doing the same thing as her boss. Getting off the train at her office stop, climbing back into a train going the other direction. She said she would take it all the way to the sea.

Commuters are like prisoners. We tend to follow the unwritten rules of the road after a while. We don’t do "road rage." Motorcyclists are another breed. Twice in the past few months, I've seen motorcycle riders duel their way through slow traffic, flailing their arms at each other, engaging in some sort of angry dispute.

There is no traveling involved in your commute. It is all done by rote. Travel is a different experience. I met a woman who quit her job, broke up with her husband, and traveled for a year -- six months in Central and South America, and six months in India. As I listened to her stories, I noticed how her eyes sparkled and her hands danced through the air with excitement.

By contrast, when I asked her about being back in the States, pulling her old life together in new ways, she slumped a bit in her chair, her eyes became worried, her hands returned to the glass she was sipping red wine from. The migration between moods touched me deeply. I wanted to hug her and assure her everything would be okay.

But she presents herself as a very funny person, easy-going and open, and she pretended she was as carefree about living in America again as she was backpacking around southern India.

Talking with her, I remembered how much I once loved to travel. Right now my restlessness is at a peak. It's summer and everyone is traveling here and there, including all of my kids. I face some periods of being entirely alone. For all the right and wrong reasons both, I haven't taken a vacation in over a year. I haven't even known where to go or what to do. I’ve stopped dreaming about that.

One of my friends at work told me today she hopes I take a break soon. I didn't realize it was that obvious, the shape I’m in. 

Maybe I will take a break, just for a few days, and drive somewhere out along an open road. I don't know yet; I'm waiting for the right signal — maybe a bumper sticker.

HEADLINES:

• The Line Trump Crossed by Accusing Obama of Treason (NYT)

• Trump’s new world (dis)order (Reveal)

• Trump flees Washington controversies for golf-heavy trip to Scotland (CNN)

• The bitter feud fuelling the border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia (Guardian)

• Amid starvation scenes in Gaza, Trump administration hardens tone on Hamas (WP)

• Netanyahu, Trump appear to abandon Gaza ceasefire hopes (Reuters)

• Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell secures DOJ "limited" immunity: News reports (Axios)

• After Ghislaine Maxwell Interview, Concerns Mount Over Possibility of Pardon (NYT)

• Ghislaine Maxwell could dodge congressional subpoena for her testimony in Epstein investigation, lawyer says (Independent)

• Gabbard and White House 'lying' about intel on Russian interference in 2016, ex-CIA official says (NBC)

• Volkswagen kept a dark secret in the Amazon. Then a priest made a call. (WP)

• SF-Based Internet Archive Is Now a Federal Depository Library. What Does That Mean? (KQED)

• DOGE builds AI tool to cut 50 percent of federal regulations (WP)

• OpenAI’s GPT-5 Shines in Coding Tasks (The Information)

• The Robots and Drones Making Food Delivery Better, Faster and Cheaper (WSJ)

• AI? Good. Everything else? Not so much (Reuters)

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is right and very wrong about AI-faked voices (WP)

• Doctor Not Going To Ruin Woman’s Day By Telling Her She Pregnant (The Onion)