Extra, Extra

Tripping Out: “Israel’s tourism minister went to Saudi Arabia, and a Saudi envoy toured the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The trips reflected how the two countries are moving toward normalizing their relationship.” NYT: Once Inconceivable, Officials’ Visits Highlight Warming Saudi-Israeli Ties.

+ The Ban of Our Existence: “Jennifer Petersen keeps 73 school books she detests in her basement. She ordered most from Amazon. In the last year, she read each one. She highlighted and typed up excerpts from more than 1,300 pages — of the 24,000-plus pages she read — that she says depict sexual acts. Then she filed challenges against 71 of the books with Spotsylvania County Public Schools, the Virginia district where one of her children is a student and the other is a recent graduate.” One person really can make a difference. Eleven people even more so. WaPo (Gift Article): She challenges one school book a week. She says she’ll never stop. “The majority of all school book challenges in the 2021-2022 school year came from just 11 people.” (I’d say something to these people, but it would definitely be banned for they heard it.)

+ Making Babies: “The goal of IVG is to make unlimited supplies of … ‘artificial’ eggs and sperm from any cell in the human body … Besides the technical challenges that remain to be overcome, there are deep ethical concerns about how IVG might eventually be used.”

+ Perfect Timing: Musk ditches X’s election integrity team ahead of key votes around world. (Putin, happy. Xi, happy. Musk, happy.)

+ Taking the Real out of Reality Show: Tired of obsessing over celebrities? Now you can obsess over (and interact with) AI versions of them. Meta Launches AI Chatbots for Snoop Dogg, MrBeast, Tom Brady, Kendall Jenner, Charli D’Amelio and More. (Sounds totally healthy.)