A Bum Steer

You Can't Drive, Hegseth Passes Buck

There’s an interesting evolution of thought that happens as you drive alongside the autonomous vehicles that are now everywhere in San Francisco. The first few times it happens, you almost can’t believe that the technology you’ve been hearing about for years, a car with no driver, is actually in use on the public roads. That sensation is quickly followed by this thought: I can’t believe I’m risking my life driving around with a bunch of car-sized robots. But after a few more experiences with an increasing number of Waymos on the road, another thought enters your mind: I can’t believe I’ve spent my entire adult life risking my life driving around with a bunch of imbecilic humans, who I know, from block-by-block experience, are terrible drivers. Of course, no one thinks of themself as a terrible driver, which is why the thought that really sticks is: The world would be a better place if the roads consisted of all Waymos and one human driver: Me. Eventually, we’ll all be backseat drivers. And that’s probably for the best. Yes, there are snafus. And, yes, there will be accidents and deaths. But not in the numbers caused by humans. Jonathan Slotkin isn’t a tech bro or a car salesman. He’s a neurosurgeon who sees daily reminders “of the staggering amount of suffering and loss of human life we accept from car accidents every single day.” NYT (Gift Article): The Data on Self-Driving Cars Is Clear. We Have to Change Course. “In medical research, there’s a practice of ending a study early when the results are too striking to ignore. We stop when there is unexpected harm. We also stop for overwhelming benefit, when a treatment is working so well that it would be unethical to continue giving anyone a placebo. When an intervention works this clearly, you change what you do. There’s a public health imperative to quickly expand the adoption of autonomous vehicles. More than 39,000 Americans died in motor vehicle crashes last year, more than homicide, plane crashes and natural disasters combined. Crashes are the No. 2 cause of death for children and young adults. But death is only part of the story. These crashes are also the leading cause of spinal cord injury. We surgeons see the aftermath of the 10,000 crash victims that come to emergency rooms every day. The combined economic and quality-of-life toll exceeds $1 trillion annually, more than the entire U.S. military or Medicare budget ... It’s time to stop treating this like a tech moonshot and start treating it like a public health intervention.” (We were promised flying cars. For now, we’ll have to settle for terrestrial vehicles that don’t smash into each other.)

2

The Buck Stops Elsewhere

“Perhaps Hegseth thinks that sinking boats on the high seas is funny. Maybe he just wanted to own the libs and all that. Or maybe he thought he could disrupt the gathering war-crimes narrative, like the school delinquent pulling a fire alarm during an exam. Or maybe he just has poor judgment and even worse impulse control (which would explain a lot of things about Pete Hegseth). No matter the reason, his choice to trivialize the use of American military force reveals both the shallowness of the man’s character and the depth of his contempt for the military as an institution.” Tom Nichols in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Pete Hegseth Needs to Go—Now.

+ Fighting in the military requires you to be able to shoot straight. Leading it requires you to be a straight shooter. But in this case, it’s more likely that someone else will be left to take the fall for Hegseth’s leadership failures. WaPo (Gift Article): Hegseth, with White House help, tries to distance himself from boat strike fallout. (That’s some lethal buck passing right there...)

+ Pete Hegseth has removed much of the judge advocate general infrastructure from the Pentagon, bragged about ignoring ordersabout legal rules of engagement in Iraq, and can’t stop letting everyone know about his tough, warrior mentality. But when it comes to taking responsibility for giving orders that yielded results he has called for, he can’t bring himself to say, You’re goddamn right I did. Maybe, like his boss and the entire administration, Hegseth can’t handle the truth.

3

Letter Go

As I mentioned yesterday, the boat strikes can’t possibly be focused on stopping drugs when Trump is pardoning someone who helped bring more than 500 tons of cocaine into the United States, did deals with El Chapo, and bragged that he would “stuff the drugs up the gringos noses,” during the same week we’re debating the legality of his boat bombings. “President Trump formally pardoned former President Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras on Monday evening, fulfilling a vow he had made days before to free an ex-president who was at the center of what the authorities had characterized as ‘one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.’ Mr. Trump pledged to issue the pardon last week, after Mr. Hernández sent him a four-page letter casting himself as a victim of ‘political persecution’ by the Biden-Harris administration and comparing his fate to that of the American president.” NYT (Gift Article): Former President of Honduras Is Freed From Prison After Trump Pardon.

4

Bowled Over

It turns out that consumers no longer think lunch bowls are the best thing since sliced bread. “Chipotle, Sweetgreen and Cava — once stars of the restaurant industry — are struggling as diners tire of all those pick-your-own ingredients piled atop rice or greens. Instead, lunchgoers are choosing offerings with more texture, like sandwiches and tacos, that fill them up and often cost less.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): The End of the Lunch Bowl Era. (Or, the return of the carbs.)

5

Extra, Extra

Crème de la Krem: “For the Kremlin, the Miami talks were the culmination of a strategy, hatched before Trump’s inauguration, to bypass the traditional U.S. national security apparatus and convince the administration to view Russia not as a military threat but as a land of bountiful opportunity, according to Western security officials. By dangling multibillion-dollar rare-earth and energy deals, Moscow could reshape the economic map of Europe—while driving a wedge between America and its traditional allies.” WSJ (Gift Article): Make Money Not War: Trump’s Real Plan for Peace in Ukraine. “The Kremlin pitched the White House on peace through business. To Europe’s dismay, the president and his envoy are on board.”

+ Pay Heed: How did the big holiday weekend shopping go (aside from those 300 emails you got from brands you don’t even remember)? Well, Americans spent a hell of a lot, didn’t get quite as much for their money, and increased their use of buy now pay later services. Meanwhile, Costco sued the Trump administration, seeking a refund of tariffs.

+ Dell Grants: “Dell’s donation translates to $250 in starter money for about 25 million ‘Trump accounts’ for families in low- and middle-income areas. This private money will be in addition to $1,000 in federal dollars authorized in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for newborn children as part of an overall program that is set to begin accepting contributions next July.” Michael Dell to unveil $6 billion gift to ‘Trump accounts’ at White House today.

+ Google Maps Comeback: Sam Altman “told employees in an internal memo on Monday that he was declaring a ‘code red‘ to dedicate resources toward bettering ChatGPT, given the pressure from rivals.” Fending off Google and other tech super-powers is a tough job. Not as tough as being part of a nine-person team charged with keeping AI from destroying everything.

+ Episodic Memories: The Ringer has a fun list of the best of The Best 100 TV Episodes of the Century. (Friend of ND, Damon Lindelof, makes several deserved appearances.)

+ This Was the Most Unkindest Cut of All: “When a doctor told me I’d come close to dying, and that the play had to stop using real knives, I remember thinking: ‘You just don’t understand theatre.’” Experience: I was stabbed in the back with a real knife while performing Julius Caesar.

+ Meow Mix-a-Lot: “The company is testing a novel approach: Instead of receiving weekly injections of the drugs, as has been common in human patients, the cats will get small, injectable implants, slightly larger than a microchip, that will slowly release the drug for as long as six months.” Could Weight Loss Drugs Turn Fat Cats Into Svelte Ozempets? (After the reaction I got while reading this aloud to my plus-sized feline, I predict this will make cats less likely to eat cat food and more likely to eat their owners.)

6

Bottom of the News

NextDraft readers followed along as children’s book creators Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr (and their four kids and two dogs) spent the 2022-2023 school year traveling the country in a tiny home school bus, logging 34,000 miles, visiting one underserved elementary school in each state, and providing free books and assemblies to 25,000 students and teachers. Now they’ve turned the unbelievable one year adventure into an ongoing project to get books and creative inspiration to kids across the country. They’re a great family doing something great that serves very clear and very real need. Busload of Books is the perfect place to drop a donation on this Giving Tuesday.