Flame Wars

Don't Fight Fire with Fire, Weekend Whats

The LA fires are a devastating way to start a new year and a sad preview of what we can expect going forward. This is true in terms of climate change charged disasters. And it's true when it comes to the hateful, borderline sociopathic misinformation-fueled flame wars that will accompany these disasters (and just about every other major event). As we encounter politically charged responses to the LA tragedy, led by Trump and Musk, we have to find some way to remember that the only way to fight indecency is to be even more decent yourself. And I'll admit, this is as much a note to self as a public pronouncement. I wake up pissed and get more angry after looking at my phone and increasingly furious as I open news tabs on my laptop. But for these trolls, hate and divisiveness are the equivalent of LA's dry conditions and Santa Ana winds. It is the fuel for their fiery, destructive tendencies. Trump isn't going to put out the LA fires by throwing water on Gavin Newsom and you're not going to feel better or achieve anything of value by tossing a lit match into Trump's social media inferno. It's hard to resist, of course. It's psychologically easier to play politics and cast blame than it is to actually feel the anguish associated with witnessing the kind of loss we’re seeing in LA. But we owe it to our fellow citizens in harm’s way to feel their pain. We also owe it to our own humanity. And sanity. This week's LA tragedy is about the victims who have lost their lives and the thousands who have lost everything else.

+ Let's reserve some of our brain space to people doing good, like the firefighters, the neighbors supporting each other, and a non-profit powering an app focused on people's safety during these disasters. 'Right thing at all costs': Bay Area app thrives amid Palisades, Eaton Fires. For a deeper dive into this app, Watch Duty, check out Wired's piece: ‘All Hands on Deck’: How Watch Duty Keeps Up With the California Wildfires.

+ If you're looking to support some folks doing good work, you might consider donating to the Wildfire Recovery Fund. Also, my friends Annie and Eric of 3 Fish Studios are coming through as usual by supporting the fire relief efforts in California. They're selling a couple of prints in tribute to dedicated firefighters and first responders. One hundred percent of proceeds goes to the cause.

+ "I am utterly devastated by the Los Angeles wildfires, shaking with rage and grief. The Altadena community near Pasadena, where the Eaton fire has damaged or destroyed at least 5,000 structures, was my home for 14 years. I moved my family away two years ago because, as California’s climate kept growing drier, hotter and more fiery, I feared that our neighborhood would burn. But even I didn’t think fires of this scale and severity would raze it and other large areas of the city this soon ... One lesson climate change teaches us again and again is that bad things can happen ahead of schedule." NYT (Gift Article): As a Climate Scientist, I Knew It Was Time to Leave Los Angeles.

+ "Municipal water systems are designed for firefighters to tap into multiple hydrants at once, allowing them to maintain a steady flow of water for crews who may be trying to protect a large structure or a handful of homes. But these systems can buckle when wildfires, such as those fueled by the dry brush that surrounds Los Angeles’s hillside communities, rage through entire neighborhoods." NYT (Gift Article): How Los Angeles Firefighters Ran Out of Water.

+ "If these firefighters couldn’t quickly get this fire contained, likely no one could. This week’s series of fires is testing the upper limits of the profession’s capacity to fight wind-driven fires under dry conditions." The Atlantic (Gift Article):The Unfightable Fire.

+ The latest from CNN and LA Times. And photos from BBCand Reuters. And, The Moment the Eaton Fire Ignited.

+ On a personal note, my son's classes at UCLA were canceled this week due to the smoke from the fires. It's remarkable how common this is for his cohort. Growing up in NorCal, he's missed endless days of school because of fires, smoke, floods, power-cutoffs, and of course, the pandemic. Last night, my son returned to the Bay Area from UCLA to escape the fires. There have been two earthquakes here since he arrived.

2

Premature Discharge

The long saga of the Trump hush money case has come to this. Yes, he's a felon. And no, he won't be punished. "Judge Juan Merchan spoke to Trump for several minutes, telling the president-elect that it was the office of the presidency – and not the occupant – that was afforded extraordinary legal protections requiring him to impose a sentence of 'unconditional discharge' without any punishment." The Unconditional Discharge leaves Trump unpunished and provides the title of the inevitable p-rn parody of this whole story.

+ "The presence of the disruptive once and future President alongside all four of his living predecessors was as discordant as any moment at an American state funeral, with its grand rituals meant to unify and salve, could be." Susan Glasser in The New Yorker on the weird scenes from Jimmy Carter's memorial. King Donald and the Presidents at the National Cathedral. (Given the social tension, Carter may have been the luckiest attendee.)

3

The Ban Dance

"The court heard oral arguments Friday over the new law that requires TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, to either sell TikTok or shut it down in the U.S by Jan. 19. The law passed last year with broad bipartisan support and was signed by President Biden." Supreme Court seems likely to uphold TikTok ban.

+ Wired: How the US TikTok Ban Would Actually Work. (Given the chief backers of the incoming president, you can expect the ban to be implemented in a way that most benefits competing US-based social networks.)

4

Weekend Whats

What to Watch: "Anora, a young woman from Brooklyn, gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as the parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled." That official description doesn't nearly do justice to how wild, unexpected, and excellent this movie is. Check out Anora.

+ What to Doc: We can all use a positive LA story right now, and the new doc about Norman's Rare Guitars provides just that. An amazing story of a great store and a really good dude.

+ What to Book: I'm a little late to the party when it comes to Claudia Dey's excellent book about a protagonist's relationship with her father, her family, her art, and ultimately herself. It's called Daughter and it's great.

+ What to Consider: "What if generative AI could help us understand people with opposing views better just by showing how they use common words and phrases differently? That’s the deceptively simple-sounding idea behind a new experiment." This a really cool, needed more than ever (beta) project from my friends at MIT's Center for Constructive Communication. The excellent Andrew Heyward explains the project here. And you can try out the Bridging Dictionary here.

5

Extra, Extra

Gray Area: "On average, the current membership of Congress will be 58.1 years old by Dec. 31, tied with the 117th Congress that began in January 2021 and just behind the average 58.6 years seen during the 115th Congress four years before that. The age of Congress is in part because the current Senate is the oldest on record, with an average age at the end of the year of 64.3 years." WaPo (Gift Article): The new Congress, like the last one, is unusually old. So is America. (First the Golden Bachelor, now this...)

+ Giving Zero Zucks: Following the obliteration of fact checking, Meta is now killing all of its DEI programs.

+ Holding Court: NBA greats think this D-II coach is a basketball genius. So why don’t you know who he is? (This is a really cool story. I got out of breath just reading about this guy's practices.)

+ It's a Mad Mad Maduro World: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is sworn in despite credible evidence of election loss. (The arc of the moral universe needs some re-bending.)

+ You Be Illin': "President-elect Donald J. Trump is likely to justify his plans to seal off the border with Mexico by citing a public health emergency from immigrants bringing disease into the United States. Now he just has to find one." (Don't worry, RFK Jr has a million of 'em.) NYT (Gift Article): Inside Trump’s Search for a Health Threat to Justify His Immigration Crackdown.

+ Do Not Pass Go: Former MoviePass CEO Pleads Guilty to Fraud, Faces Up to 25 Years in Prison. (They must have run out of unconditional discharges.) This is good time to check out the Max doc: MoviePass, MovieCrash.

6

Feel Good Friday

"Whether due to public sentiment, hostile legislation, or a simple lack of popularity, the entire silver ball industry has repeatedly teetered on the brink of collapse. Yet it has always come back." Meet the man keeping hope, and 70-year-old pinball machines, alive.

+ Japanese researchers develop method to break down PFAS'forever chemicals'.

+ A husband honors the 4 women who protected his injured wifefrom oncoming traffic.

+ Ignore all the fresh horrors of reality … two School of Rock co-stars just got married!.

+ The Verge Awards at CES 2025.

+ College helps students with phone call phobia. (Let me know when this course is available via text.)