Robotic Rufus, Billionaire Bill
In a classic scene from the 1976 film The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Inspector Clouseau asks a hotel clerk, “Does your dog bite?” The clerk says no. When Clouseau reaches down to pet the dog, he is viciously bitten. So he says, “I thought you said your dog did not bite?” The hotel clerk explains, “That is not my dog.” One assumes that misunderstandings like this will be avoided on the streets of San Francisco where an industrious few are being offered twenty bucks an hour to walk robot-dogs. It somehow makes sense that we’re training robotic dogs. With all the sycophancy from Claude and ChatGPT, AI has already taken over the title of Man’s Best Friend. “On the positive side, there was no need to clean up after the robot, or to pretend you did not see the deposit it left behind on someone’s yard. On the negative side, the robots could prove as stubborn as their living counterparts. Just as a normal dog might suddenly plop down and refuse to budge in the middle of a busy street, the robot dogs, too, might give up mid-walk — because their equipment overheated. Robot dog walkers would then need to carry the mechanical quadrupeds back to the start-up’s office.” Kashmir Hill in the NYT (Gift Article): Wanted: Robot-Dog Walkers. “Dimensional is building an open-source operating system for robots, said its founder, Stash Pomichter. Mr. Pomichter, who is 26, wants to embed A.I. agents in robots so that consumers can command them to do work in the real world.” Work? That’s definitely not my dog.
+ Ars Technica: ICE plan to buy robot dogs spurs protest. “Hundreds of employees at the US robotics firm Boston Dynamics signed a petition calling for executives to halt a sale of the company’s robot dogs to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement—but executives stood by the deal, while saying the robots would not be weaponized.” Even Inspector Clouseau wouldn’t buy that…
The Billionaire Ploys Club
The economic divide is the issue that underpins many other problems in America. That said, I’m not sure a one-time, one-state wealth tax is a reasonable solution to the problem, but it’s worth noting how billionaires are banding together to fight the California proposal. The deep pockets in play make one wonder how any proposals that aim to at least slightly level the playing field could get passed. “Every Tuesday for the last few months, two dozen of the world’s richest people or their advisers hop onto a conference call and plan for war. The war is against a proposed tax, but not just any tax. It is against a ‘wealth tax’ on California billionaires, one that Silicon Valley’s most affluent see as an existential threat that could usher in a new way of attacking them. So in confidential memos, WhatsApp and Signal chats and conference calls, they are banding together to battle back. The calls are organized by Building a Better California.” (Ironically, Building a Better California is a nonprofit.) NYT (Gift Article): Inside the Billionaires’ War Against California’s Proposed Wealth Tax.
+ “Since John D. Rockefeller handed out dimes, the world’s richest have given away their money in very different ways. Now they are bypassing charity—and writing a new social contract.” WSJ (Gift Article): Billionaires Stave off the Pitchforks With Payouts to One Kid at a Time. (The kids get a few bucks, and when the donations are made in stock, millions of them will have an interest in your company’s stock price performing well. Hand out dimes. Make quarters.)
We Ain’t Planned For It
“A president who derides wind turbines as cancer-causing, stalls the nation’s first offshore wind permit and denies the urgency of climate change would surely become the industry’s greatest obstacle. Yet markets sometimes focus on the headline without understanding the underlying story. This may prove to be one of those moments … Public policy still matters. Elections matter. Regulations matter. Leadership matters. But there comes a point when economics exerts a force that politics can only slow, not reverse.” How Trump Unwittingly Boosted Green Energy.
+ That doesn’t mean that years of terrible leadership haven’t cost America a hell of a lot when it comes to the green economy. WaPo (Gift Article): I went to Mexico to test-drive the cars Americans can’t buy. “Chinese branded vehicles have gone from less than 1 percent to 15 percent market share in five years, as well as about 90 percent of all EVs. That’s fast eroding America’s market in its backyard, as well as abroad, where the U.S. has seen its share fall or stagnate in Asia, Europe and Latin America. Even at home, the Big Three now command less than 40 percent of the auto market, down from 92 percent in 1965.” (It sure looks like Tony Manero’s hardware store boss in Saturday Night Fever got it right when he explained, “You can’t f-ck the future. The future f-ucks you! It catches up with you and it f-cks you if you ain’t planned for it.”)
This is a Real Drag
Smoking is back. That’s definitely true in movies and TV series, where the cigarette has returned as the most omnipresent prop. It’s true in the pages of magazines. And it’s increasingly true when it comes to celebrity culture. The somewhat surprising return of cigarettes to pop culture is having a big impact on real life. And I’m not just blowing smoke. “Among 18 to 24-year-olds surveyed by Truth Initiative, a nonprofit public health organization dedicated to preventing youth and young adult nicotine addiction, 25% said ‘smoking makes people look cool’ in 2026, up from 17% in 2019. Nearly half — 47% — said ‘it is not a big deal if my friends smoke,’ compared with 38% seven years earlier. And 21% associated smoking with fitting in, up from 14% in 2017. The swing was even more pronounced among younger teens: In 2026, 21% of 15 to 17-year-olds agreed that smoking helps people fit in, up from 4% in 2017.” Is smoking cool again? New data suggests some young people are warming to the idea.
Extra, Extra
Sharing is Caring: “Most Americans can identify at least one value from a list of 12 that they believe is widely shared in the country. Only a quarter say none of the values are still shared. Yet, there is little consensus on which values are widely shared, or which the country needs more of. Even so, 79% of Americans say respecting different values matters more than sharing the same ones.” In U.S., Three-Quarters Identify Shared Values. (Hate is not our natural state. It has to be stirred by those who benefit from it.)
+ Cuba Diving: “Here is another measure of Cubans’ anger at their government: During nine days of travel around the island, I did not meet a single person who blamed Donald Trump or the United States for their situation. I sometimes reminded them about the blockade Trump had started earlier this year, cutting Cubans off from the cheap oil that Venezuela had been supplying before the U.S. military captured Nicolás Maduro in January. Hadn’t things gotten worse since then? ‘I don’t see any change since January,’ a retired engineer named Guillermo Almeida told me. ‘That oil from Venezuela wasn’t reaching the people anyway.'” Robert F. Worth in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Collapse of Cuba. “I drove to the east with the photographer Moises Saman, an 18-hour journey that sometimes made us feel as if we were traveling back in time.”
+ Bye Bye Bibi? Unsurprisingly, Israel is seeing record turnout in what is expected to be a close election. Here’s the latest from the NYT and Times of Israel. In Israel, people vote for parties, not individual candidates, and, if none of the parties get a majority, they need to form coalitions to pick a leader. So this all could take a while.
+ Ebola: “It is the fastest-growing outbreak on record and has spread to Kenya and Nigeria. Responders face armed conflict, poor roads and public mistrust as they battle the rare Bundibugyo virus, for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment.” Photos show Congo’s fight against Ebola as cases surpass 10,000.
+ Trickle Up Economy: In Trump’s pardon economy, crime victims lost out on at least $119 million in restitution.
+ Recurring Nightmare: “It would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice – one that we cannot become numb to. Nothing’s changed with me; I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid of these people — and I still believe in an independent federal judiciary.” Trump is going after James Comey … again.
+ Choose Yourself: “The man who has helped produce the Super Bowl halftime show is stepping into the spotlight: Jay-Z will headline the show himself.” (This is like when Dick Cheney chose himself to be W’s running mate, but with a much higher likelihood of Beyonce being involved.)
+ Locked and Carbo-loaded: “From the Department of ‘We sent a man to the moon but we can’t [do some simple thing]’ comes word that Cheerios is boldly going where no cereal has before: a resealable Ziploc bag.”
Bottom of the News
“They called the police on a 3-year-old because he had the ball for too long.” Parents say police were called because their 3-year-old was ‘too good’ at soccer. (The kid is pretty damn good. And yes, this happened in Florida.)
+ Noah’s Spark: Noah Wyle Is the Sexiest Man Alive. I guess this gives new meaning to bedside manner.
