Extra, Extra

+ Fat Chance: “The US has reached an agreement to secure the release of six wrongfully detained Americans and four other Americans held in Venezuela … The deal will also include the extradition of Leonard Francis, the former military contractor known as ‘Fat Leonard’ who orchestrated the largest corruption scandal in US Navy history.”

+ Meditator Tots: “Mindfulness meditation is an interesting example of this phenomenon. The number of Americans who’ve tried meditation has tripled since 2012, which, on the surface at least, seems like a great thing. And in many ways, it is a great thing: Mindfulness meditation encourages people to cultivate a deeper connection with themselves and the world. But has the mainstreaming of mindfulness come at a cost to the practice itself?” Vox: How mindfulness went mainstream. (Mindfulness and meditation have been growing because we’ve been driving ourselves crazy with devices. The irony of our time is that we now meditate with an app on our iPhone.)

+ One Waymo Street: “Waymo analyzed 7.13 million fully driverless miles in three cities — Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Francisco — and compared the data to human driving benchmarks to determine whether its cars were involved in fewer injuring-causing and police-reported crashes … The conclusion? Waymo’s driverless cars were 6.7 times less likely than human drivers to be involved a crash resulting in an injury.” (Over time, self-driving cars will become much safer than human driven ones. But there’s still going to be something hard to take about getting run over by an autonomous machine.)

+ Divided Nations: “I hear no-one demanding of Hamas that it stop hiding behind civilians, lay down its arms and surrender. This would be over tomorrow if that happened.” That’s Antony Blinken arguing that calls (from the UN and elsewhere) for a ceasefire in Gaza should include demands on Hamas, not just Israel. Here’s the latest from CNN, BBC, and Times of Israel.

+ Eating Away at Illness: “Participants gather in a glass-walled partition off the hospital cafeteria for over 25 classes a month, which range from medically tailored programs for specific patient groups to educating Boston Medical Center staff to support their own wellness.” At a hospital’s teaching kitchen, patients get a taste of food as medicine.

+ Omahi Mahi: “Utterback delivers his monologue near the finale of a 2o-course dinner at Ota, his high-end omakase counter that serves eight customers a night, max. For one final course, the chef hands diners what he jokingly calls ‘prairie tuna.’ It’s a slice of wagyu strip loin, lightly torched, topped with sea urchin butter and golden osetra caviar.” WaPo (Gift Article): One of America’s best sushi restaurants is in Omaha. Yes, Omaha.

+ Sports (Shifting) Center: Variety is out with a list of the top 100 shows of all time. Commence arguing.