Extra, Extra
All Bets Are Off: “Indictments against current and former N.B.A. players, including a well-known head coach who is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, were unsealed on Thursday, in a pair of criminal cases involving professional athletes, including one scheme in coordination with Mafia families.” (Who do these guys think they are, government officials?) U.S. Details Gambling Cases Involving Pro Athletes and Mafia Families. “The charges announced today stem from separate indictments. One charges defendants with using private information about N.B.A. players, including whether they would be sitting out N.B.A. games or exiting early, to place hundreds of thousands of dollars in bets at online sports books and in casinos … Another indictment involves a series of rigged high-stakes poker games that were backed by organized crime families.”
+ Oil Change of Heart: “The US has announced new sanctions targeting Russia’s two largest oil companies in an effort to pressure Moscow to negotiate a peace deal in Ukraine. The announcement came one day after US President Donald Trump said a planned meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Budapest would be shelved indefinitely.”
+ Law of the Jungle on the High Seas: “President Trump says the strikes are legal, and that the boats were trafficking drugs, but he has not offered evidence to substantiate the claim … The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has reportedly deemed the strikes lawful, but its analysis hasn’t been disclosed.” The Secretive Office Approving Trump’s Boat Strikes.
+ Bi Curious: “Since Trump’s election, Binance has also been a key supporter of his family’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture, a business that has driven a huge leap in the president’s personal wealth.” Trump Pardons Convicted Binance Founder.
+ You And What Army? Tesla Profit Plunges as Musk Turns Focus to Robot Army. “My fundamental concern with how much voting control I have at Tesla is, if I build this enormous robot army, can I just be ousted in the future? … I don’t feel comfortable building that robot army if I don’t have, at least, influence over it.” (Editor’s note: We’re all going to die.)
+ Adams’ Apple: “Mr. Adams, a Democrat, ended his re-election campaign last month after it became clear that he did not have a path to victory in the November election. He lashed out at Mr. Cuomo for pressuring him to leave the race, calling him ‘a snake and a liar.'” All that being said… Eric Adams Will Endorse Andrew Cuomo for Mayor. (That could be the last nail in the Cuomo candidacy coffin…)
+ Just Plain Text: “Each [modern note taking app] encourages you to adapt to a certain philosophy of organization, with its own formats and filing systems. But nothing has served me better than the brute simplicity of TextEdit, which doesn’t try to help you at all with the process of thinking. Using the app is the closest you can get to writing longhand on a screen. I could make lists on actual paper, of course, but I’ve also found that my brain has been so irredeemably warped by keyboards that I can only really get my thoughts down by typing. (Apparently my internal monologue takes place in Arial typeface, fourteen-point font.)” The New Yorker: TextEdit and the Relief of Simple Software. I’ve been writing NextDraft using the same program (BBEdit) since day one.
