Extra, Extra
Throw the Book At Em: “On July 17, 2025, at around 6 o’clock in the evening, President Trump’s top officials filed into the White House Situation Room — the secure bunker where classified and high-stakes national security matters are discussed and decided. This was where President Barack Obama, along with Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the president’s national security team, watched the raid that ended with the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Now, however, Trump’s most senior advisers had gathered — without him — to figure out how to gain some measure of control over a very different kind of crisis threatening to engulf the presidency: the Epstein files.” Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan with an outtake of an upcoming book: Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files. (As per usual, this craziness makes for good book fodder, but no one is likely to be held accountable.)
+ Inflation and Other Blow Ups: Inflation Heated Up to 4.2% in May, as Energy Costs Continued to Bite. And the key driver of that inflation is heating up as well. Trump: “We’ll see what happens. But we hit them hard yesterday and we’re going to hit them again hard today … We were we were really close to a deal. But they keep tapping us along. They keep playing us for suckers.” Here’s the latest from The Guardian and NBC.
+ Screen Passes: “The ingredient, bemotrizinol, works by blocking ultraviolet radiation. It filters out two kinds of ultraviolet rays: ultraviolet A, which contributes to wrinkles and skin aging, and ultraviolet B, which causes sunburns.” NYT: F.D.A. Clears Sunscreen Ingredient Long Used in Europe and Asia. In other sun news: Solar Passes Coal in Historic Shift for US Electricity Mix.
+ S.E.O. Brother, Where Are Thou? “According to Shopify, the best e-commerce platform is Shopify … If rankings produced by the very company at the top of the list seem unlikely to fool anyone, that’s because humans probably aren’t the target audience. Chatbots are.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): Your Search Results Are Getting Sloptimized.
+ Prediction Market: “A Chinese company has been trying to develop artificial intelligence-powered technology that would enable authoritarian governments to not just monitor dissidents but also potentially predict who could become one in the future. The work, which appears to be in the research stage, is ripped out of dystopian science fiction, offering a glimpse of a world in which an authoritarian state is able to move against its citizens before they begin any public dissent.” China Aims A.I. at Predicting Who Could Pose a Political Risk.
+ A Whole New Ballgame: On second thought, maybe there should be crying in baseball… “Around the league, more and more often, catchers need a minute. It’s become routine to see the umpire call time as the catcher lies in agony, doubled over after yet another foul ball or spiked pitch caroms into a sensitive area.” The Athletic (Gift Article): Ball strike system: Why MLB catchers are getting hit in the groin more often. (In the case of the Giants this season, it feels like the same thing is happening to the fans.)
