Weir(d) News

Parkinson’s disease is linked to vivid, frequent, and often distressing dreams, a condition known as REM Behavior Disorder (RBD), where people physically act out their dreams. This occurs because the normal paralysis that accompanies REM sleep is impaired in people with Parkinson’s. Medications can sometimes worsen these symptoms, but the disease process itself is a major factor. — Google

***

Okay here goes. I had another weirdly vivid dream last night, the most recent in a long string of such dreams, but this one was a happy one. It started out with the arrival of two young women who were to sleep next to me in my room.

Don’t get too excited, this dream was strictly platonic.

And the origin of this part of the dream is clear. Just before going to bed last night, I watched the charming 2018 TV film, No Sleep ‘Til Christmas, starring Odette Annable.

These young women, who in my dream were sparkly, figured later on in the story. First we woke up and got ready for work. I took them with me to a large office downtown with hundreds of people, few of whom I knew but all of whom seemed to know me.

It was a media company, not unlike The Morning Show on Apple TV, but more like two places I actually worked, Excite@Home and Wired News. For some reason the girls had to sit under desks at the front of the office, so I left them there and went to the back, where my group sat.

When I located my cubicle, there was no chair and no phone. Somehow I knew my super power was speaking loudly, which in the dream I proceeded to do.

Soon, a guy appeared, carrying a large office chair upside down on his head. Someone else brought a phone in his pocket.

I looked around at my employees and saw they were all young men who simply didn’t know what to do; some had clearly been playing video games but the others seemed earnest but clueless.

So I began speaking loudly again and like magic stuff started to happen. Stories materialized, good stories. A guy with a list showed up. I pronounced that henceforth we would be producing one big weird story each day and that again, henceforth, we would be rebranding ourselves as Weird News.

I also said we would be diversifying. This is where the two young women I’d been sleeping next to came back into play. I thought about how to introduce them to my all-male news team.

I couldn’t say “These are my girls,” because that made it seem like they were my daughters. I couldn’t say “These are my women,” because first off they weren’t mine and secondly, that might make me sound like a sick Jeffrey-Epstein-type character.

Then I remembered that the young women sparkled, so I announced “I’m bringing some Sparkles into the newsroom!

Everyone cheered and we rebranded ourselves Sparkle News. And with that, I woke up.

Though somewhat exhausted from expending so much effort in my dream, I also was happy that it had been so much better a dream than the night before.

In that dream, I’d been responsible for a six-month-old baby and I was carrying it on a bus when it suddenly disappeared. I looked everywhere in all the nooks and crannies of the city but no luck. It was a missing persons case so I used my investigative skills to trace the baby back to the bus, to the back of the bus specifically and a group of women from Central America.

Once I realized this I ran and ran but by the time I got to the back of the bus, they’d all been deported.

HEADLINES:

• Justice department investigates Epstein’s alleged ties to Clinton and banks after Trump request (BBC)

• Marjorie Taylor Greene says Trump’s stance on Epstein files is “a huge miscalculation” (CBS)

• Epstein Returns at the Worst Time for Trump (Atlantic)

• Trump’s lone remaining criminal case gets new prosecutor (Axios)

• ICE Almost Deports Native American Woman (TNR)

• The U.S. government has hired 50,000 employees since President Donald Trump took office, the bulk of whom work at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, his top personnel official said in a new interview. [Reuters]

• US announces ‘Southern Spear’ mission as forces deploy near South America (Al Jazeera)

• “I Lost Everything”: Venezuelans Were Rounded Up in a Dramatic Midnight Raid but Never Charged With a Crime (ProPublica)

• Memo Blessing Boat Strikes Is Said to Rely on Trump’s Claims About Cartels (NYT)

• Republicans turn on Trump’s defense policy chief (Politico)

• Top Fannie Mae officials ousted after sounding alarm on sharing confidential housing data (AP)

• US justice department sues California over new voting maps favouring Democrats (BBC)

• US Decline In Religion Among Biggest In World (Newsweek)

• Hamas is swiftly reestablishing its hold over Gaza (Reuters)

• Wikipedia Enters the Culture Wars (Slate)

• Scientists pull ancient RNA from a wooly mammoth’s body (NPR)

• Doomscrolling in the 1850s (Atlantic)

• Anthropic warns of AI-driven hacking campaign linked to China (AP)

• All of My Employees Are AI Agents, and So Are My Executives (Wired)

• A.I. Cheating Rattles Top Universities in South Korea (NYT)

• Ghislaine Maxwell Conceals Escape Tunnel Behind Pinup Poster Of Shirley Temple (Onion)

 

Surviving This

Statisticians often use the term “return to the mean” to describe how extreme outcomes are likely to be followed by more typical ones over time. 

The phrase pops up in sports when a baseball player who normally hits 15 home runs a season suddenly explodes for 40 one year before returning to his usual level the following season.

You’ll also encounter the phrase in discussions about the weather or the stock market but less often when it comes to politics.

That’s why it caught my attention during a recent webinar when Patrick Ball, Director of Research for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) used the concept in regards to the rise of authoritarianism in countries with a background of democracy and democratic values.

He said that such societies tend to turn away from authoritarian leaders ultimately and return to their democratic roots.

Ball knows what he is talking about. He’s been closely analyzing the human rights abuses in societies around the world for 35 years. He and his fellow data scientists at HRDAG are currently focusing on such abuses here in the U.S.

The group recently issued a public statement, “In the Face of Tyranny: Taking a Stand as Data Scientists.”

Ball’s analysis gave me something rare these days — a sense of hope that we, as Americans, will get through this dark period in our political history one way or another.

And hope is what we need.

Note: You can check out HRDAG’s “Structural Zero” here on Substack. Working with HRDAG these past few years has been especially rewarding.

HEADLINES:

• President for Life — Donald Trump is trying to amass the powers of a king. (Atlantic)

• Federal Employees Return to Work as Government Reopening Begins (NYT)

• Trump puts intense pressure on Republicans to block release of Epstein files (Guardian)

• Epstein files become a fiasco of Trump’s own making (Axios)

• When it comes to the Epstein files, some MAGA supporters are willing to work with Democrats (WP)

• Russia Pummels Kyiv as It Torments Ukrainian Civilians (NYT)

• Whistles are San Francisco’s latest bulwark against ICE (SFGate)

• Donald Trump’s Plan to Subvert the Midterms Is Already Under Way (Atlantic)

• James Comey and Letitia James press for dismissal of their cases, challenge prosecutor’s appointment (AP)

• Judge appears skeptical of Lindsey Halligan’s appointment as interim US attorney (Politico)

• SNAP funding pause to soon end, but anxiety and anger may linger (NPR)

• Food insecurity leaves long-term scars. The Snap cuts are no exception (Guardian)

• Why Britain may have stopped sharing some intelligence with America (Economist)

• No, Venezuela Is Not a ‘Small Latin American Country’ (Bulwark)

• Former Aide to Gavin Newsom Charged With Corruption (NYT)

• Why Michigan and the Big Ten disagree on the next move with $2.4 billion on the table (Athletic)

• The Journalism Support Exchange is a new matchmaking tool for local news outlets to get the help they need (Nieman)

• What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in Nuremberg (Slate)

• The penny is dead. Long live inflation. (WP)

• AI bubble trouble talk is overblown (Financial Times)

• Google augments AI shopping with conversational search, agentic checkout and an AI that calls stores for you (TechCrunch)

• Anthropic’s Claude Takes Control of a Robot Dog (Wired)

• Wikipedia helped train your favorite AI, now the Wiki foundation wants a cut (TechSpot)

• What are the clues that ChatGPT wrote something? We analyzed its style. (WP)

• Trump Says Epstein Emails Only Prove He One Of The Most Emailed-About Men In History (Onion)

 

The Last Penny

The very last penny was minted Wednesday in Philadelphia and the U.S. Treasury declared the coin dead.

Pennies lasted for 232 years, and many of them had stories, told and untold. What follows is one penny’s story from an essay I first published in 2007.

The other day I found a penny. It had been sitting on the sidewalk near my house for a few days. Many people had passed it by but none had thought it worth their time to pick it up.

I did. It was marked with the date 1971.

***

1971 — What a year that was! I returned from the Peace Corps in Afghanistan, only later to quit my job as a pizza deliveryman for Cottage Inn Pizza in Ann Arbor and drive an old white Chevy van with “Ft. Myers, Fla.” stenciled on the side all the way across America.

Exiting the freeway in San Francisco, we chugged up Fell Street, turned right onto Fillmore Street, and drove until just before Pine Street, arriving at our destination: the world headquarters of Running Dog Inc., publisher of the forthcoming SunDance magazine.

The building was nestled into a space next to a blues club called Minnie’s Can-Do.

We were a very small start-up team and before we could publish the new magazine, we had to build out the office by sheet-rocking the walls, painting them, refinishing and shellacking the floor.

As a flourish of sorts, we sealed a penny into that newly shiny hardwood just before we finished preparing the space that would see an amazing menagerie of the famous (John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Jerry Rubin, etc.) and the crazy (too many to list) and the talented (everybody) walk through its front door over the next two years.

The experience of helping produce that magazine helped shape my career, leading directly to Rolling Stone, the Center for Investigative Reporting and all the rest.

***

Many years later, when SunDance was a distant memory, I happened to be back in what was by then known as the Upper Fillmore District. There were no blues clubs left in the area but plenty of upscale shops. After a brief search, I located the building at 1913 and stepped inside for the first time since the magazine had died three decades earlier.

The space was now a boutique and my hair was now gray. I feigned interest in the women’s clothes on the racks. What I was actually seeking was pretty vague — some wisp or ghost of a memory, something that would confirm what had once happened here. The sheetrock had long since been dismantled, the walls had been repainted many times, and the track lighting overhead was a major upgrade from our day. All the evidence of our time there seemed to have vanished.

I suddenly felt very old, maybe for the first time. It was disorienting. But then, near the back of the store, I spotted something that stopped me dead in my tracks. There was the penny we’d imbedded in the hardwood floor, still frozen in time with its date, 1971. It hadn’t aged a bit.

Think about it. Every coin has its story but very few get told.

This one’s did.

HEADLINES:

• The Penny Dies at 232 (NYT)

• The last-ever penny was minted today in Philadelphia (CNN)

• The US government opens back up, (Reuters)

• Trump Signs Bill Ending Longest Shutdown (NYT)

• Venezuela launches huge military exercise as U.S. Navy flotilla nears Caribbean waters (CBS)

• Hundreds detained as part of immigration ‘Operation Midway Blitz’ ordered released on bond (ABC)

• Trump’s sweeping 2020 election pardon raises alarms ahead of the midterms (Politico)

• Catholic Bishops Issue Rare Statement Objecting to U.S. Immigration Tactics (NYT)

• Rep. Adelita Grijalva sworn in, setting up vote on release of Epstein files (WP)

• How the American dream turned out to be pay to play (Financial Times)

• The Trump administration is quietly issuing rules to give tax breaks to the ultrarich (NYT)

• Jack Schlossberg, a political commentator and grandson of former President John F. Kennedy, announced he’s running for retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler’s seat in New York. [HuffPost]

• Dozens of Indigenous protesters forced their way into the COP30 climate summit venue and clashed with security guards at the entrance to demand climate action and forest protection. (Reuters)

• The U.S. thinks counterterrorism can hold Syria together, and is counting on a former Al Qaeda militant to help do the job (Rolling Stone)

• Justice Department to Investigate Protests at Turning Point Event at Berkeley (NYT)

• The little green look: China’s energy revolution (Economist)

• Inside the CIA’s secret mission to sabotage Afghanistan’s opium (WP)

• Denmark’s Bold Move: Banning Social Media for Under-15s (Vocal)

• Newsom in the Spotlight at the Climate Conference That Trump Decided to Skip (NYT)

• The Marriott-Sonder meltdown (Business Insider)

• Read Jeffrey Epstein’s newly released emails about Trump (PBS)

• We analyzed 47,000 ChatGPT conversations. Here’s what people really use it for. (WP)

• Anthropic, Microsoft announce new AI data center projects as industry’s construction push continues (AP)

• Microsoft AI head’s stern warning as tech giants race to build superintelligent system, says ‘not going to be a better world if...’ (Economic Times)

• OpenAI says the brand-new GPT-5.1 is ‘warmer’ and has more ‘personality’ options (Verge)

• A former physician has launched Robyn, an empathetic AI companion (TechCrunch)

• The AI Boom Is Looking More and More Fragile (WSJ)

• Study Finds Most Americans Can’t Find Where They Are Being Deported On Map (Onion)

 

On Leadership

“The strength of a society is measured not by the wealth of its most affluent members, but by how well its most vulnerable citizens are able to cope.” — Sanna Marin

When at the age of 34 Sanna Marin became prime minister of Finland in 2019, she was the youngest person to ever head up the government of a major country.

Once in office, she showed great skill in managing a five-party coalition and leading Finland’s strong opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; also, in managing the Covid-19 pandemic and leading Finland into NATO — a move of historical significance. 

She also implemented reforms addressing climate change, social justice and equality. Within the European Union she emerged as a strong pro-democracy, anti-authoritarian voice.

Yet critics dogged her during her entire time in office. 

There were a series of “scandals” involving her, including looking too good in a photo shoot for a fashion magazine, going out with celebrities during the Covid-19 pandemic, and in the one that went viral globally — dancing wildly at a party with friends. 

Her main crime, it seemed, was being young and female. After three-and-a-half years in office, she resigned in 2023.

Now she has a frank new memoir, Hope in Action: A Memoir About the Courage to Lead. Rather than becoming embittered by her experience as prime minister, she seems to have become more determined than ever to speak out on the need for more women in leadership positions. In recent interviews, she comes off as one of the more inspiring political figures in Europe today. 

And I suspect that the world might be a better and happier place if we had more people like her in leadership positions around the world. 

HEADLINES:

• How women feel about Trump’s presidency (WP)

• Finland’s former prime minister Sanna Marin has a new memoir (LeMonde)

• The Prime Minister Who Tried to Have a Life Outside the Office (New Yorker)

• Sanna Marin - Finland’s Former PM Shares Leadership Lessons in “Hope in Action” (The Daily Show)

• How Pete Hegseth Is Forcing Women Out of Active Military Duty (TNR)

• House Democrats release new Epstein emails referencing Trump (ABC)

• Trump Loyalists Push ‘Grand Conspiracy’ as New Subpoenas Land (NYT)

• Speaker Johnson shuttered the House and amassed quiet power with Trump (AP)

• Trump floats tariff ‘dividends’ even while plan shows major flaws (NPR)

• How the Supreme Court Exposed the Most Obvious Hidden Truth About Trump’s Tariffs (Slate)

• Flight disruptions will persist even after shutdown ends, airlines warn (WP)

• Why the Democrats Finally Folded (Atlantic)

• A Utah judge rejected a new congressional map drawn by Republican lawmakers, adopting an alternate proposal creating a Democrat-leaning district ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The ruling throws a curveball for the GOP in a state where the party expected a clean sweep. [AP]

• What happened to turn Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) from one of Congress’ looniest firebrands into one of the few willing to stand up to her own party? Nobody knows, including President Donald Trump, by his own admission. [HuffPost]

• A suicide bomber killed at least 12 people and wounded 27 outside a court building in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said.The attack took place hours after a suicide bomber killed three people and militants stormed a military school in the country’s northwest. (Reuters)

• Pakistan says ‘India proxies’ behind Islamabad bombing: What we know so far (Al Jazeera)

• A de facto partition of Gaza between an area controlled by Israel and another ruled by Hamas is increasingly likely, multiple sources said, with efforts to advance Trump’s plan to end the war beyond a ceasefire faltering. (Reuters)

• A human-rights researcher on why she pushed back when China bullied her university (Economist)

• The Hidden Math of Ocean Waves (Wired)

• Has the Media Reached the End of Its DEI Era? (CJR)

• Why the BBC Is Facing Its Gravest Crisis in Decades (NYT)

• Google, the sleeping AI giant, awakens (Axios)

• AI adoption in US adds ~900,000 tons of CO₂ annually, study finds (TechXplore)

• ChatGPT violated copyright law by ‘learning’ from song lyrics, German court rules (Guardian)

• It’s Not Just An AI Bubble. Here’s Everything At Risk (Forbes)

• ‘The global data centre and AI build-out will be an extraordinary and sustained capital markets event’ (FT)

• Woman Trying To Find Nonpolitical Way To Say Her Cleaner Was Deported (Onion)

Friends of the People

Trump has long been fond of inciting his base against the news media. He called us “enemies of the people” in his first term. These days, he just dismisses any story he doesn’t like as “fake news.”

I’ve been a journalist for a long time; it will be 60 years this coming January. These days most of my colleagues from the 1970s and I are somewhat limited in what we can do by age, health and retirement.

But we can still exercise our rights under the First Amendment. So we will.

HEADLINES:

• In an encrypted group chat, National Guard members question Trump deployments (NPR)

• Senate Passes Deal to Reopen Government (NYT)

• Senate takes first step toward ending the government shutdown (AP)

• Dems Finally Fold in Pointless Shutdown Fight (TNR)

• Senate Democrats Just Made a Huge Mistake (Atlantic)

• Trump made a huge blunder on the shutdown. So why did Democrats cave anyway? (Silver Bulletin)

• A Hidden Hunger Crisis Is Destabilizing the World (Foreign Affairs)

• Supreme Court declines to revisit gay marriage decision (NPR)

• Federal Judge, Warning of ‘Existential Threat’ to Democracy, Resigns (NYT)

• Justice Department struggles as thousands exit — and few are replaced (WP)

• Syrian President Sharaa makes the 1st White House visit by a Syrian head of state (NPR)

• Trump officials set to approve ‘forever chemical’ as pesticide ingredient (Guardian)

• China creates a new visa, competing with the US in wooing global tech talent (AP)

• F.D.A. Will Remove Black Box Warnings From Hormone Treatments for Menopause (NYT)

• As the COP30 summit kicks off for the more than 190 countries participating, it was unclear what exactly they would discuss during the two-week U.N. summit in Brazil’s Amazon city of Belem. (Reuters)

• Scott Galloway Wants to Make America America Again (MSNBC)

• What Actually Changed in 1776 (Atlantic)

• TikTok Shop Is Now the Size of eBay (Wired)

• The State of AI: here comes the energy crunch (Financial Times)

• Understaffed FAA Recommends Pilots Just Go With Their Gut (Onion)

Web of Life

We live in an age largely defined by our technology. This is also a time of unprecedented wealth but also unprecedented disparities in wealth, resulting in a sort of techno-authoritarianism that is undermining our democracy and other precious accomplishments.

Some think technology is the best hope to solve these problems, but all those wonderful technologies are the result of binary thinking — an infinite set of variations of 1’s as 0’s.

I’m not questioning the brilliance of advanced coding but it will never be able to devise solutions to our most pressing social problems, like the high cost of living, homelessness, health care, mental health and addiction, poverty and environmental degradation.

To address these issues, we need something more holistic like ecological thinking — an approach capable of multi-variable analysis, grounded in the understanding that everything is related to everything else.

We need leaders and policies that address our role in the web of life, not just the web that’s on your computer. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any such leaders at the moment. (The closest might be a businessman — Jamie Dimon of JP MorganChase.)

Of the main political leaders during my lifetime, it may be that Al Gore came the closest to becoming such a thinker, right around the time he beat George W. Bush in the popular vote but lost the electoral college vote in 2001.

Gore was far from a perfect leader but I wonder how much our subsequent history might have been altered had he been in the White House rather than Bush.

That speculation is pointless now, except that we still as a society need to produce the leadership capable of helping articulate how democracy is a vital part of the web of life, which all too easily can be reduced by binary thinking to “survival of the fittest.”

BTW, this is also the fatal flaw in AI. It has been developed by binary thinkers. To take it to its absurd extreme, imagine that you are a well-educated young woman who moves to San Francisco in the near future and checks out the dating scene, only to discover that the only guys able to pay for dinner are robots.

Note: This is not a knock on coders; I know many charming coders with great intellectual breadth. It’s rather a toast to a disappearing species — the generalists.

HEADLINES:

• Trump grants pardons to Giuliani, Meadows, others linked to 2020 election efforts (NPR)

• Democratic unity fractures, paving the way for the government to reopen (CNN)

• Senate Votes to Advance Measure to End Shutdown (NYT)

• Press freedom threats surge with ICE raids (Axios)

• Officials Demand States ‘Undo’ Work to Send Full Food Stamp Benefits (NYT)

• Government shutdown reaches its 40th day as senators work through a crucial weekend (AP)

• Small businesses are a huge part of the U.S. economy – and they’re not hiring (WP)

• BBC director general and News CEO resign over Trump documentary edit (BBC)

• Trump says he’ll issue $2,000 tariff dividend to all except ‘high-income people’ (ABC)

• What Did Men Do to Deserve This? (New Yorker)

• Trump Renews Attacks on Obamacare in New Push Over Government Shutdown (NYT)

• Shutdown could reduce US flights ‘to a trickle’, transport secretary warns (BBC)

• How a childhood virus can contribute to dementia later and what you can do (WP)

• Newsom, Eyeing 2028, Tries to Mess With Texas: ‘Don’t Poke the Bear’ (NYT)

• One photo, a deluge of threats: Inside the Arizona high school turned upside down by right-wing activists (NBC)

• Do prediction markets make polls useless? (Silver Bulletin)

• China’s DeepSeek makes rare public comment, calls for AI ‘whistle-blower’ on job losses (SCMP)

• Is Wall Street losing faith in AI? (TechCrunch)

• Debt Has Entered the A.I. Boom (NYT)

• Patriots Starting To Regret Drafting 130-Pound Linebacker Based Exclusively On Strength Of Cover Letter (Onion)

 

Sunday Mix

HEADLINES:

• Families in Limbo After Supreme Court Order Interrupts Food Stamp Payments (NYT

• Trump calls for ACA subsidies to be sent to consumers (Axios)

• Ukraine says Russian missiles targeted its nuclear substations (Financial Times)

• Far-right provocateur Nick Fuentes is triggering a MAGA civil war (WP)

• ICE Has Created a ‘Ghost Town’ in the Heart of Chicago (Bulwark)

• Shots fired at Border Patrol agents on Chicago’s West Side, DHS says (CBS)

• U.S. steps up presence in Gaza to support fragile ceasefire (WP)

• A Decade Later, Supreme Court Is Asked to Revisit Same-Sex Marriage Decision (NYT)

• Talks to end government shutdown take a promising turn, Senate majority leader says (CNBC)

• Shutdown ‘Far Worse’ Than Expected, White House Adviser Says (Forbes)

• Venezuelans begin fleeing U.S. as protections end and threat of war looms (WP)

• Scientists find hidden brain damage from a common pesticide (ScienceDaily)

• I Study Fascism. I’ve Already Fled America. (Reveal)

• A.I. Sweeps Through Newsrooms, but Is It a Journalist or a Tool? (NYT)

• Palantir CEO Says a Surveillance State Is Preferable to China Winning the AI Race (Gizmodo)

• ‘Stratospheric’ AI Spending By Four Wealthy Companies Reaches $360B Just For Data Centers (Slashdot)

• A.I. Is on Its Way to Something Even More Remarkable Than Intelligence (NYT)

• Black Homeowners Receive Higher Appraisal After Displaying Pictures Of Klan Members (Onion)