Georgia Ruling

Top Story:

“Fani Willis’s Trump prosecution can move forward — if she drops Wade from the case” (Vox) A judge wrote that Willis had a “tremendous lapse in judgment,” but didn’t disqualify her from the case.

HEADLINES:

• Schumer Calls for End of Netanyahu-Led Government in Israel (WSJ)

• Biden’s Best Shot Against Trump Lies in ‘Blue Wall’ States (Bloomberg)

• Biden aims to repair places left broken by previous economic strategies (WP)

• Donald Trump's lawyers clash with prosecutors over proposals to dismiss charges he hoarded classified records (USA Today)

• Donald Trump's CIA covert influence operationagainst China when he was president. (Reuters)

• Top news outlets acknowledge Hur’s characterization of Biden’s mental state didn’t match reality (CNN)

• Putin grows war economy but incomes suffer 'lost decade' (Reuters)

• Germany Looks to Stop the Far Right From Assuming Power (NYT)

• Mars Unmasked: Giant Volcano and Hidden Ice Challenge Old Theories (SciTechDaily)

• What we can learn from whale grandmothers (WP)

• States have a patchwork of ‘broken’ systems for accessing open records (AP)

• Coming soon: A programmable army of humanoid robots (Axios)

• The loneliness of the robotic humanoid (TechCrunch)

• Forget Chatbots. AI Agents Are the Future (Wired)

• Gold-Medalist Coders Build an AI That Can Do Their Job for Them (Bloomberg) 

• This New Robot Is So Far Ahead of Elon Musk's Optimus That It's Almost Embarrassing (Gizmodo)

• Copilot gets free GPT-4 Turbo upgrade: 3 new features coming to the AI assistant (Mashable)

• The AI Doomers Have Infiltrated Washington (Daily Beast)

• Boeing Promotes Mysterious Employee Known Only As ‘The Panther’ (The Onion)

 

Pi Day's Origin Story

Happy Pi Day.

“Love Pi Day? You can thank San Francisco for that. The Exploratorium, currently at the Embarcadero along San Francisco’s eastern waterfront, was founded in 1969 by the physicist and professor Frank Oppenheimer, who wanted to create a more hands-on way for children to learn about science. (Oppenheimer was the younger brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb” and the subject of this year’s best picture winner at the Oscars.)” — (Cal Today)

“Pi Day is an annual celebration of the mathematical constant π (pi). Pi Day is observed on March 14 (the 3rd month) since 3, 1, and 4 are the first three significant figures of π, and it was first celebrated in the United States.^[2][3] It was founded in 1988 by Larry Shaw, an employee of the San Francisco science museum, the Exploratorium. Celebrations often involve eating pie or holding pi recitation competitions. In 2009, the United States House of Representativessupported the designation of Pi Day.^[4] UNESCO's 40th General Conference designated Pi Day as the International Day of Mathematics in November 2019.^[5][6] “ —(Wikipedia)

HEADLINES:

• House Republicans break from Trump on TikTok (Politico)

• TikTok chief to speak to senators in wake of House vote for bill that could see app banned in US (Guardian)

• Judge dismisses some charges against Trump in the Georgia 2020 election interference case (AP)

• Hunter Biden rejects House GOP "carnival side show" invite (Axios)

• Dozens of casualties in Israeli attack on UN hub (Al Jazeera)

• ‘Jamming’: How Electronic Warfare Is Reshaping Ukraine’s Battlefields (NYT)

• Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a wide-ranging interview to state media, days before an election that is certain to keep him in power. He warned the West that Russia was technically ready for nuclear war and that if the US sent troops to Ukraine, it would be considered a significant escalation of the conflict. (Reuters)

• Native groups sit on a treasure trove of lithium. Now mines threaten their water, culture and wealth (AP)

• US State Department warns Americans not to travel to Haiti amid gang takeover (Independent)

• Virginia wildlife staffers are disguising themselves as foxes to care for a cub. The workers are bottle-feeding an orphaned newborn fox while wearing a red, furry, pointed mask. It’s meant to stop the cub from getting too used to humans.(WP)

• The number of U.S. adults who identify as LGBTQ+ doubled in 12 years, new poll shows (NPR)

• Whistleblower death compounds bad news for Boeing (WP)

• This free tool from Anthropic helps you create better prompts for your AI chatbot (ZDNet)

• Cognition emerges from stealth to launch AI software engineer Devin (VentureBeat)

• 45-Minute Phone Call To Credit Card Company Goes Great (The Onion)

 

Guilt v. Innocence

Watching the Congressional hearing where former special counsel Robert Hur defended his report on the classified documents case against President Joe Biden was a reminder that more often than not, the Department of Justice gets these things right.

Biden almost certainly broke the law technically by retaining classified reports after leaving the vice-presidency in 2017. But there is no viable evidence that he did so knowingly; in fact it was his staff that packed up the documents, and when he discovered it he promptly returned the material to the government.

This is in sharp contrast, of course, to the case against Donald Trump.

Trump has fought the DoJ at every turn, hiding the documents he took with him after leaving office, obstructing attempts to recover them, lying repeatedly and instructing his lawyers and staff to conspire with him to commit all of these allegedly criminal acts.

These two investigations provide a case study of the difference between guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and the legal equivalent of innocence.

In any event, Hur appears to have handled the Biden case in an even-handed manner, except for describing the president as an elderly man with a poor memory.

That unfortunately is what his report and this hearing will be best remembered for.

HEADLINES:

• Takeaways from Robert Hur’s testimony on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents (CNN)

• Democrats Air Brutal Montage of Trump Gaffes at Robert Hur Hearing (TNR)

• Biden and Trump clinch 2024 presidential nominations (CBS)

• Supreme Court deals blow to Greg Abbott's border plans (Newsweek)

• RNC fires dozens of employees after Trump-backed leadership takes over (WP)

• US to send new weapons package worth $300 million for Ukraine (Reuters)

• Haiti's prime minister Ariel Henry resigns as law and order collapses (BBC)

• How Russia duped two Republicans with propaganda laundered through fake news (MSNBC)

• US intelligence report states Netanyahu’s viability to lead Israel is in jeopardy (CNN)

• Why Congress wants to keep you off TikTok (Axios)

• Trump’s TikTok reversal suggests his China policy is for sale (WP)

• What to Do About the Junkification of the Internet (Atlantic)

• Covariant is building ChatGPT for robots (TechCrunch)

• U.S. Must Move ‘Decisively’ to Avert ‘Extinction-Level’ Threat From AI, Government-Commissioned Report Says (Time)

• Among the A.I. Doomsayers (New Yorker)

• Cats aren’t jerks. They’re just misunderstood. (WP)

• Still Too Early To Tell If Pulling Chain Turned Overhead Fan Off (The Onion)

 

Why Substack?

 Occasionally, a new acquaintance or reader will ask me what I am trying to accomplish by publishing here on Substack every day, 365 days a year. It’s a good question, one I ask myself as well.

This project started during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. At that time, like virtually everyone else, I found myself isolated, unable to see friends or relatives, dependent on social media to connect with others.

In my case, the pandemic coincided with several other factors to deepen my sense of isolation. After more than a half-century living in San Francisco, I left the city. And due to a series of serious health incidents, including a stroke, I was forced to retire after a long career in journalism.

During my illnesses, I spent many weeks in medical institutions, including hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, rehab centers and finally an assisted living complex.

Once Covid hit, my isolation became extreme, as I could no longer leave my room to socialize or eat meals with the other residents. I began to wilt like a flower without sunlight or water.

My family saved me. I left that place to move in with my oldest daughter and her family.

And I started writing these short essays every day. (For many years, since 2006, I’d been blogging on a less regular basis.)

During the pandemic, at first I published them on my personal page at Facebook. People responded from all over the world and very soon I hit the limit of 5,000 friends. Given my 55-year career in journalism, many of these Facebook friends asked me for my thoughts not only on Covid but on the news of the day beyond the confusions of the pandemic.

In response, I started sifting through the headlines in various authoritative news sources to provide a kind of virtual news broadcast via the social network. That eventually grew from ten or twenty headlines to forty or fifty and on some days up to ninety stories per day.

But I found Facebook (now called Meta) limiting because it is extremely difficult to include links to the news stories I aggregate, which I want to do so readers can see for themselves why I have chosen those particular stories for inclusion.

Meta also seems to punish people who try to include links, because whenever I used workarounds to make the headlines clickable, my traffic there fell close to zero.

At the urging of readers and friends, I moved my operation here to Substack, which provides the ability to link directly to the sources I cite, plus a subscription option for those who wish to support my work.

So that is my story.

HEADLINES:

• Israeli Police Clash With Palestinians in Jerusalem, Marking Tense Start to Ramadan (WSJ)

• Sex trafficking survivor slams Britt for inaccurate story in SOTU response (Politico)

• US military ship heading to Gaza to build port (BBC)

• Israeli pressure on Palestinian economy pushes West Bank to the brink (WP)

• Netanyahu dismisses Biden's warning over "innocent lives being lost" in Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza (CBS)

• Russia’s air power roars back into the war with devastating guided bombs (WP)

• Out of options, Trump will pay $500M cash bond to appeal his NY fraud case, experts predict. Not paying will hurt even more. (Business Insider)

• Trump risks another defamation lawsuit with renewed attack on E. Jean Carroll (Independent)

• Trump says a TikTok ban would empower Meta, slams Facebook as ‘enemy of the people’ (CBS)

• California’s Ballot Measure on Mental Health Care Still Isn’t Decided. Why? (NYT)

• Trump’s freewheeling speeches offer a dark vision of a second term (WP)

• Portugal’s political future is hanging in the balance after a general election that has left two moderate mainstream parties closely contesting the race, after a far-right party recorded an unprecedented surge in support. [AP] 

• The Media Are Getting Easier to Push Around (Atlantic)

• Elon Musk says xAI will open-source Grok this week (TechCrunch)

• Beyond human intelligence: Claude 3.0 and the quest for AGI (VentureBeat)

• AI's destiny: Altman's return to OpenAI board leaves billionaires in control (Axios)

• Silicon Valley is pricing academics out of AI research (WP)

• ·High School Reunion Attendees Catch Up On Each Other’s DUIs (The Onion)

Peace

Watching the Academy Awards last night, I was happy to see “Oppenheimer” win Best Picture. We live in a perilous time, with the threat of another world war erupting, and it is truly a moment to remember the specific details of our history.

The film captures the deep ambiguities that J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team recognized while they created the first atomic bomb.

Afterward, our society both honored and punished him for his work, which the film reflects accurately.

In personal terms, I remember interviewing Oppenheimer’s brother, Frank, during my years at the Center for Investigative Reporting. We spoke with him at the marvelous interactive science facility he created in San Francisco called The Exploratorium.

Frank told us that his brother had demonstrated the terrible horror that scientists could infect, but that he wanted to demonstrate the great joy and pleasure that science could present as well.

I think Frank succeeded. 

By God's Gentle Plan

 A few moments after my mother died, I walked outside of the hospice where she had spent her final weeks. She’d been unconscious for days and we‘d had her removed from life support just a few hours earlier.

When the attendants zipped her body into the black body bag, they left the top open so we could whisper her goodbye one last time.

As I emerged into the fresh air, a strong breeze ruffled the trees overhead. I looked up at the sky. Maybe I got a glimpse of heaven.

My mother lived for 87 years. She passed away on what would have been her own mother’s birthday, October 9th. She had been born in a Scottish village just outside of Glasgow. Her family came to America when her father, a tool and dye man, answered the call from Henry Ford to work in Detroit for the princely sum of five dollars a day.

The breeze kept blowing, the leaves kept rustling and my mind kept racing, going back over what I could recall of my mother’s life. I was 55 at the time she died, so that meant she had been 32 when she had me, a year after my father got home from Europe after the end of World War II.

She’d graduated as the top student from her high school but didn’t go to college. She had married young, pregnant with my older sister, gotten quickly divorced, moved back in with her parents and gone to work for the Ford Motor Company in its office in downtown Detroit.

It was there, some years later, that she met my father, got remarried and had three more children.

As her only son, she doted on me. My sisters had every right to resent the favorable treatment I received, but they didn’t seem to.

My mother and I had been alone with my father when he died from a massive stroke just a few years earlier in Florida. For the three-and-a-half years after that, we became closer than we ever had been.

I’d extend my frequent business trips back east to add a stop and visit her. On these occasions, I’d usually take her out for dinner. She called them our “dates” and giggled at the concept.

But now she was gone and suddenly it felt chilly. It was autumn in Michigan.

Death is part of life, I reminded myself. It doesn’t do to dwell on it too much; the inevitability of death in inescapable — what matters more is how you live while you are here. A series of similar cliches cascaded through my mind as I retreated back into the warmth of the well-heated facility and the company of family.

But one more thought came: It is not so much how much you’re loved; it’s how much you love. I was thinking of my mother. I was missing her.

***

Recently, at a social gathering I met up with a former colleague whose son had died by suicide.

Following his son’s death, this man had written and published a loving tribute that described the young man as a sweet person struggling with life’s challenges. And that his son’s troubles were now over. 

At the party I took him aside and told him how much his writing had moved me. I said that it was the most beautiful love letter I’d ever read. 

His face melted into kindness. We embraced. He thanked me and told me, “Whenever I think of my son now, the only thing I remember is his love.”

Moveable Memories

(This is from two years ago this month.)

Recently, my sister and brother-in-law took me out to dinner at a restaurant adjacent to the venerable San Marcos resort in downtown Chandler, Arizona. That resort has been around for a century, pretty much the whole time that Arizona has been a state. It boasts the state’s oldest golf course, and at night it reminds me of the kind of place Humphrey Bogart might turn up.

It might be a great place to stay sometime because it would be a perfect place for me to write.

Writing as a profession (or a hobby) is a moveable feast, of course, in the sense you can more or less do it anywhere. But I suspect what Hemingway meant by naming his memoir “A Moveable Feast” was slightly different — that the memory of a certain place or time can travel with you throughout the rest of your life.

For him that key place initially was Paris in the 1920s when he was still a struggling writer. Other places — most memorably Africa, Cuba, the Keys — came later. for him

For most people, multiple spots will need to be good for writing, too, because we move around so much. Hopefully, your main spot is somewhere you can go most every day, because writing simply must be done every single day — no exceptions — if you are serious about it.

Anyway, I’m no longer in Chandler but I *am* writing daily, so where I’m doing that is relevant. My airy, sky-blue room with its view of an old wooden fence, some vines and trees, the occasional hummingbird or squirrel, a swath of open sky and a few distant houses up the hill may not be as romantic as that old resort in Chandler, but it *is* home.

And at least according to Dorothy, there’s no place like home. 

Anyway, before getting distracted by Bogart and Hemingway, I was going to return to an insight I had with my sisters in Arizona during our reunion last week. And there will be a point to this rambling, I promise.

First off, my three sisters and I span 19 years in age; I’m the second-oldest and the only male. I’ve always been grateful that I didn’t have any brothers and I’ll tell you why.

Boys can be such bullies. Girls can be mean too but in a different way — one I’m more comfortable with. Plus they usually don’t intimidate you physically.

Our family used to go to a certain aunt and uncle’s house for Thanksgiving at Oxbow Lake in Michigan. The lake was frozen at that time of year, as is my memory of that place and time.

I dreaded those large family gatherings for a simple reason — I had to spend time with an awful group of cousins, all boys, all brothers, mostly mean and cruel. They would gang up on one another in various vicious ways, which I hated to witness.

None of this was particularly personal, as they normally didn’t gang up on me. I suppose as a quiet, skinny, cerebral kid with glasses, I was more or less irrelevant to their ongoing, self-destructive macho dramas. I was simply a bystander, a witness.

The uncle who hosted these frightful events, Uncle Jack, eventually got cancer and started to waste away right before my eyes. He just got smaller and smaller every time we visited.

Meanwhile my cousins only got bigger and fatter and meaner like a pack of hungry wolves. The youngest among them, a guy named Tommy, grew so tired of being bullied constantly by his brothers that one Thanksgiving he decided to pick on poor old Uncle Jack, who had shrunk to roughly his size.

My vivid memory is of Tommy pushing Jack in the chest, challenging him to a duel. The old man thrust his chin out in defiance, but fell back, holding his wasted body up against a work table until Tommy backed off.

Jack was dying and way too weak to take on Tommy, who was about ten but big for his age, so he retreated to the card table with the other men, smoking and drinking and telling their same old stories I’d heard dozens of times. 

Jack died not very long after that confrontation and our family stopped going there on Thanksgiving. 

So maybe that’s one example of what Hemingway meant about his moveable feast. I’m still tasting the memory, including its bitter aftertaste, some sixty years later.

So I promised I had a point and here it is. I’ve never written about the Oxbow Lake incident involving Tommy and Jack before. It only came up when my sisters and I discussed our very different memories of the time we spent out there.

That in turn birthed the idea that we all should maintain “joint custody” of certain events with the others who were there. We need to tell each other these stories — that’s my point.

And if you’re a journalist you might say I buried the lede

HEADLINES:

• Trump Posts $91.6 Million Bond for Defamation Judgment in Carroll Case (NYT)

• What Idiot Backed Trump’s Bond in E. Jean Carroll Trial? This One. (TNR)

• Biden, Harris to visit every battleground state in March (The Hill)

• Biden took aim at GOP members seeking to roll back social services, including Medicare and the protections under the Affordable Care Act. [HuffPost]

• Legal Experts Say Fani Willis Unlikely To Be Disqualified As Judge Weighs Trump Challenge (Forbes)

• ‘Ultra wealthy’ Gen Xers are proving more resistant to returning to the office—but Gen Z and millennials are making it a priority (Fortune)

• Senate advances $460B spending package to avert government shutdown (The Hill)

• As gangs attack a critical port, ‘Haiti will go hungry soon’ (WP)

• Mutual Frustrations Arise in U.S.-Ukraine Alliance (NYT)

• Children in Gaza are beginning to succumb in rising deaths after famine warnings (AP)

• Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories have expanded by a record amount and risk eliminating any practical possibly of a Palestinian state, the UN human rights chief said. (Reuters)

• San Francisco, the liberal beacon, embraces conservative ballot measures (WP)

• Mass die-offs among farmed salmon on the rise around the world (BBC)

• How do animals react during a total solar eclipse? (AP)

• The job applicants shut out by AI: ‘The interviewer sounded like Siri’ (Guardian)

• Elon Musk's tiff with OpenAI shows he's both right and wrong about AI (Yahoo)

• AI drone that could hunt and kill people built in just hours by scientist 'for a game' (LiveScience)

• Nation Celebrates 150th Anniversary Of Thomas Edison Inventing Electrical Duck (The Onion)