Let's Midterm
Few have done as good a job as Ken Burns when it comes to chronicling the American story. I really hope his preview of the story of these midterms plays out as he envisions. “I’m optimistic that the American people recognize that our democratic institutions and sense of decency can bring us together. We have come back from crises before. We were more divided than we are today during the Revolution, the Civil War, Reconstruction and Vietnam. For 250 years, our country has prevailed in fits and starts, forging achievements, however imperfect, related to race and equality in American life.” NYT (Gift Article): Ken Burns: Why I’m Optimistic About the Midterms. To the extent I’m capable of the disposition, I share some of Ken Burns optimism. But I’m not optimistic because I think the voters who put Trump in office suddenly care much about our democracy or our institutions. My optimism around the midterms is driven less by high ideals and more by high gas prices, tariff-fueled inflation, the successful messaging to effort to connect the economic woes of the average American to the corruption of the first family, an ill-conceived, poorly executed, and unpopular war, and a couldn’t be worse if he tried campaign season that ended with the president discussing algae in front of the Reflecting Pool — or as Susan Glasser put it, “a closing speech on Monday afternoon which channelled that same Marie Antoinette vibe—if, that is, the condemned queen had been a disoriented octogenarian who fancied herself an expert on granite.” Burns closes his piece with this: “Most midterm elections are seen as referendums on the policies of the president. This one is no different. But there’s something more fundamental at stake here, beyond policy differences. This election is about the people — who are empowered to check our chief executive — and the candidates running for Congress, who either have sworn an oath to the Constitution or hope to do so. Whether they are prepared to honor their oath should matter enormously to everyone who values the idea of us — the idea of America.” Of course, I agree. But, at this point, I’ll settle for a midterm win by any means, and for whatever reason, necessary. In the meantime, I’ll keep hoping that Americans rediscover the idea of America. But, just in case, I’ll also keep hoping my industrial-sized storage drum of Pepto Bismol arrives before the returns start pouring in.
+ “Studies have found a significantly higher chance of arrhythmias in the weeks just before and after elections, and an increased rate of hospitalizations for heart attacks right after voting day.” How Election Day can affect your heart. (I’d advise you to avoid the stress and just not watch any of the breathless cable news coverage of the early results. But that would be futile. The heart wants what the heart wants.) NYT (Gift Article): A Guide to What We’ll Know on Election Night, Hour by Hour.
+ The surest prediction I’ve read comes from David Frum in The Atlantic (Gift Article): If the Dems take Congress, Things Are Going to Get Ugly. “He will get angrier, noisier, and crazier. He doesn’t care about the future of his party. He doesn’t care about the future of the country. He will want to punish a nation that, in his view, has ungratefully rejected him. Corruptly obtained money never feels secure. Trump, his children, and his inner group of close friends and sycophants most enriched in the past two years have a lot to worry about as the minutes of Trump’s presidency tick down. The worst is yet to come.” (In retrospect, that would have been a perfect tagline for this newsletter…)
+ As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been too damaged to make predictions, even in an election that seems as clear as this one. “For years, I’ve been backed up, aching, and swollen with a prolonged case of blue ballots. No one wants to feel the release of a pent-up blue surge that sprays across an election map more than I do. While things seem promising enough to expect a climax that looks like a Diet Coked-up Steve Kornacki being fired out of a T-shirt cannon, I’m not willing to make any predictions.” Blue Ballots: What to Expect When You’re Electing.
With No Direction Home
“By the time the three hikers called for help from a rocky face on Mount Shasta in Northern California, they’d made a series of bad decisions. They didn’t bring enough food, and they’d overestimated their fitness. Instead of turning back in late afternoon when they hadn’t yet reached the top, they summited at 7:30 p.m. and had to descend in the dark. Their lack of preparation and poor planning, as they admitted later, came partly from relying on Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini. By morning, they were lost on a gnarly part of the mountain.” HighCountryNews: AI gets people into trouble in the backcountry. “I think they kind of turned their brains off.” (That’s definitely going around these days…)
+ “We are, moment by moment, doing less sensing, navigating, remembering, walking, choosing, and attending.” Aeon: Deskilling the body.
Search Party’s Over
“Google announced Tuesday that early next year it would turn off artificial intelligence tools in its popular software for K-12 students, unless school administrators explicitly choose to make such tools available. Executives at the tech giant said they wanted to be responsive to educators and parents who have asked for more control in how children interact with A.I. But there is a catch: Schools that choose to restrict A.I. entirely will also lose access to Google search.” This is yet another example of the power and influence of big tech (and a reminder of how they use it). It’s also something that will probably be a non-issue soon, as what was once known as Google search is being replaced by AI.
HeadBanger
“Edward Freytag doesn’t remember what happened on that sunny afternoon in July five years ago. But something — a deer, perhaps? — caused him to lose control of his motorcycle on a gentle mountain curve near Murfreesboro, Tenn. When one of his riding buddies found him 30 feet away from his bike, on the shoulder of the road, his mouth was packed with grass and dirt. He had fractured 11 bones. His helmet had a finger-size dent on the front-left side, and his brain had been badly bruised. When he woke up in the hospital, he was disoriented, experiencing short-term memory loss and having trouble finding words. But doctors told his wife, Joanna, that the prognosis was good. Edward, a 66-year-old middle school music teacher, would probably make a full recovery in three to six months. As his brain healed over the next six months, however, something remarkable happened, something that would land Edward in the annals of neuroscience case history.” NYT Mag (Gift Article): The Brain Injury That Made Edward Freytag a Musical Genius.
Extra, Extra
Are We Having Fund Yet? “President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he has made a deal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the United States to stop sending $4 billion in aid annually to Israel. It was not immediately clear which exact funding Trump meant.” (To us, or him.) Prepare for a new deal that will include graft.
+ Stand Up for Comedy: “Where were you when the A.I. revolution came for stand-up comedy? I was looking at my phone this month when all of a sudden my social media scrolls filled with teasingly seductive female comedians in front of brick walls, drawing hundreds of thousands of followers through flirty onstage punchlines. If the jokes of these Stepford stand-ups, packed into crop tops and body suits, seemed familiar, that’s because they were stolen.” Invasion of the Sexy A.I. Joke Thieves. (If this tech comes after news puns, I’m history.)
+ Virtual Insanity: “The Texas Legislature gave virtual schools a tremendous boost last year when it mandated that virtual schools get the same per-pupil funding as their brick-and-mortar counterparts. That’s despite their lacking the physical plants, maintenance staff and bus fleets, and many of the extracurriculars, that make up a big chunk of the costs of a neighborhood school. Stride doesn’t need to put unspent money back into its schools as traditional public schools would. That gives the company more for things such as advertising and executive compensation — and for a healthy operating profit, about $450 million across the whole company in the most recent academic year.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): Texas Pays Online School Empire For Kids Who Don’t Show Up.
+ Big Old Jet Onliner: “Many of their engines haven’t been fired up for years. But America’s soaring demand for electricity to power data centers is bringing them back to life. Several companies are racing to strip the engines out of old aircraft to convert them into electrical generators. And data centers, desperate for power, are snapping them up.” Old, Polluting Jet Engines Are Being Scavenged to Power Data Centers. (Claude, please tell me you didn’t come up with this idea…)
+ Do Harm? A West Point cadet drugged his girlfriend to force an unwanted abortion. Then he went to grad school. “He wrote … that he was interested in ‘the intersection of emergency medicine, addiction and public health’ and aimed to become a physician.”
+ Try Cycle: “What Ridwell will rid you of is diverse: Orange prescription bottles become glasses frames, while bike inner tubes are made into wallets. Hard-to-recycle plastics, electronics, lightbulbs, batteries and even old pickleballs are accepted.” WaPo (Gift Article): One company promises to recycle almost everything. I gave it a try.
+ Thrones and Drones: WSJ (Gift Article): The Wild Rise of a Trump-Backed Drone Company. “Assembled from $5.7 million in assets, Powerus has grown within months into a $300 million enterprise, led by an unlikely cast of characters that includes a public golf-course operator in Florida; a sushi restaurateur; a Democratic donor with a New York cleaning business; and a former child-modeling talent scout who has settled claims of defrauding parents.” Oh, and of course, they have some likely investors: Eric and Don Jr.
Bottom of the News
“The first time Jarell Carter entered a Pilates studio, he was expecting an easy workout. A fitness influencer and a former N.F.L. athlete, Mr. Carter is able to squat more than 500 pounds. He bench-presses more than 400. But less than 20 minutes into his first Pilates session, his “legs were shaking uncontrollably,” he said. ‘I was struggling and sweating profusely,’ he added. ‘Making noises that I just couldn’t control. I was just trying to hold it together.’ His first coherent thought? ‘Whoever created Pilates hates men.'” The Pilates Bros Have Arrived. I’ve been doing pilates 3 times a week with a teacher my wife and I refer to as The Monster. As soon as I have a coherent thought, I will share it here.
+ A potato that tastes like roast chicken? (But I ordered the chicken that tastes like fries…)
