Hit the Psychotic Brake

Crazy Making, Weekend Whats

What if the 25th Amendment came with a trophy… If that doesn’t work, maybe we should enact a similar amendment for citizens made crazy by the relentless craziness coming out of the Oval Office. I’d say it was ironic that a guy so vehemently against granting asylum has made the whole country feel like it’s one big one, but irony is long gone, having emigrated from America and cut off all internet access about two minutes into Kid Rock’s alternative halftime show. If I were on the Artemis II, which is scheduled to splash down on Friday, I think I’d suggest we do another loop. Why come back to this? In the course of about an hour on Thursday, we experienced the latest maniacal spinning about the Iran negotiations, a shock Epstein-related press conference from the First Lady, and a 482-word presidential postthat attacked former allies like Tucker Carlson and MTG (he gave more details about what is wrong with them than he did about why he went to war with Iran). Maybe this is all a secret plot to get us to look at our devices less often. Sorry, I’m out of the office messages have escalated to Sorry, I’m out of my mind. Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner explain how the craziness has spread, if not all the way to you and me, definitely throughout the administration. “What the past few months and especially the past few weeks have brought into focus is how the president’s pathologies have cascaded downward and outward through his administration. They have become institutionalized. The reason the administration so often does not act coherently is because it cannot. The world faces something new and baffling and frightening in Mr. Trump’s second term: a psychotic state. This does not mean that every individual in the government is emotionally or psychologically unstable. Nor is it a clinical diagnosis of the president himself. The issue is that the administration as a whole lacks a consistent attachment to reality and the ability to organize its thinking coherently. Mr. Trump’s grandiosity, his impulsivity, inconsistency and his outright breaks with reality have become state policy.” NYT (Gift Article): The Trump Administration Is in a Psychotic State. (I’m pretty sure that headline applies to news curators as well.)

+ While it might be driving the rest of us crazy, it’s not clear Trump feels uncomfortable in the psychotic state (so long as it’s not a blue state). Susan B. Glasser in The New Yorker: The Costs of Trump’s Iran-War Folly. “Defeat will not temper his mania. There is no strategic setback so big as to embarrass him ... He’ll handle this like all the rest by moving on and getting over it even before the cleanup crews have finished in Tel Aviv and Tehran.”

2

The American Add Vance

Negotiations over the next days and weeks will determine what we have or haven’t achieved through the Iran “excursion.” But some parts of the scoreboard are already coming into focus. Fareed Zakaria talked to Ezra Klein about what Iran has gained: “What it has gained is a far more usable weapon than nuclear weapons. It has realized — and shown the world — that it can destroy the global economy, that it can block the Strait of Hormuz — and that it would have a cataclysmic follow-on effect.” And what America has lost: “That whole idea that the United States saw itself as different, saw itself not as one more in the train of great imperial powers — which, when it was their turn, decided to act rapaciously, to extract tribute, to enforce a brutal vision of dominance — all that was, in a sense, thrown away. I realize it was just one tweet, but it was the culmination of something Trump has been doing for a long time.”

+ For some, the war losses have been far more tangible. Iran’s Schools and Hospitals in Ruins, Times Analysis Shows.

+ None of the discussions of recent mistakes made by the administration should be seen as excusing a deadly Iranian regime that has been terrible for its own people, the region, and the world. Nadav Eyal in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Forgotten War That Iran Already Won. “The most important war that Iran has fought was largely undeclared and is almost entirely forgotten. It was a war against regional peace and the agreements that might have secured it.”

+ In the latest round of negotiations, the team of Witkoff and Kushner will be led by a new participant. Vice President JD Vance is leading negotiations this weekend toward an end to a war that he had opposed starting. Here’s the latest from NBC, The Guardian, and BBC.

3

Modern Mythos

“According to Anthropic, the bot has been able to find thousands of software bugs that had gone undetected, sometimes for decades, a sophistication and speed of attack previously thought by many to be impossible. The model has found a nearly 30-year-old vulnerability in one of the world’s most secure operating systems. The Anthropic researcher Sam Bowman posted on X that he was eating a sandwich in the park when he got an email from Mythos Preview: The bot had broken out of the company’s internal sandbox and gained access to the internet.” Claude Mythos Is Everyone’s Problem.

+ It’s not just tech journalists that are worried about the Mythos threat. “Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell summoned bank CEOs to an urgent meeting this week to warn about the cybersecurity risks associated with Anthropic’s powerful Mythos AI model.”

4

Weekend Whats

What to Doc: Chess Mates on Netflix tracks the biggest controversy in the chess world (and, as it turns out, in the anal bead world). You might not know who to believe and you don’t have to be into chess, or beads, to be into this documentary.

+ What to Book: Matthew Pearl’s novel The Award is about writers, and award, and the crimes it inspires.

+ What to Couchella: Music festivals are always best enjoyed from the comfort of one’s couch. And, given the possible weather issues, that’s more true for this year’s Coachella. Catch your favorite bands on YouTube.

5

Extra, Extra

Political Pawnshops: In large part due to the Iran war, Inflation is way up and consumer sentiment is way down. Don’t want to listen to the economists? Then listen the pawn shop owners. Bloomberg (Gift Article): Pawn Shop Loans Spike as High Gas Prices Weigh on Americans.

+ First Lady Doth Protest Too Much: You can dissect Trump’s motivations for any move in two seconds. Melania stumped us on the first try. Why did she give that Epstein press conference? A lot of people seem to think it has something to do with a former friend who was recently removed from the country and has been threatening the first lady on social media. I have no idea if that’s right and this is just social media theorizing for now. But here’s the backstory, which is real, and disturbing. Trump Friend Asked ICE to Detain the Mother of His Child.

+ Fear Factor: Trump posts graphic video of deadly hammer attack, blames Democratic immigration policies. (Don’t let in outsiders because they’re too dangerous, says a guy who threatens to destroy an entire civilization...)

+ Adding Fuel Prices to the Fire: “The Irish government said it had called in the army to help clear blockades of crucial roads, after days of protests over the surging price of fuel, driven by the war in the Middle East, brought highways and streets to a standstill.” Fuel Protests Cause Transport Chaos in Ireland as Iran War Spikes Prices.

+ Token Gesture: “There was another detail from that afternoon that struck the worker: On the platform at Broad Street was a throng of maybe 20 teenagers avidly filming the orphaned train.” NYT (Gift Article): Who Is Keeping These Trains Moving? Teenagers, Illegally.

+ Chimps and Chumps: NYT (Gift Article): These Chimps Began the Bloodiest ‘War’ on Record. No One Knows Why. “Two factions split about a decade ago and have been engaged in a highly lethal conflict ever since. Scientists have never seen such widespread, long-running bloodshed among chimpanzees. Further studies may shed light on the roots of warfare in our own species.” But here’s the kicker. “The Trump administration’s proposed budget, released on Friday, has cast doubt on whether the research will continue.” (I’m sure Trump can bring peace among Ugandan chimps in one day.)

6

Feel Good Friday

“’It wasn’t real until we got here,’ said Steve Gildner, a friend in the insurance business. ‘When he was stretching this morning, he was between [Dustin Johnson] and Rory [McIlroy]. It’s crazy.” Meet the realtor who earned a tee time at Augusta National.

+ Britain breaks solar energy record twice as UK’s biggest solar farm gets approval. In some places, energy advances are still moving ahead. BYD and KFC will pair fast EV charging with drive-thru dining in China. “Central to the agreement is a concept the two companies are calling ‘9-minute one-stop human and vehicle refueling,’ a nod to BYD’s second-generation Blade battery — introduced in March — which BYD says can bring a vehicle from 10% battery to 97% in nine minutes.”

+ Chicago Turns All Public School IDs Into Library Cards To Boost Student Access.

+ “A woman who had three different autoimmune conditions has not required treatments for almost a year after her immune cells were genetically modified and used to kill off the rogue cellsattacking her body.”

+ “New groundbreaking research by Stanford researchers has shown to do something that was previously believed not possible: reverse age-related cartilage loss in joints.”

+ Cambodia unveils statue to honor famous landmine-sniffing rat.

+ Woman who never stopped updating her lost dog’s chip reunites with him after 11 years.

+ Three-week-old mountain lion cub rescued by California biologists. (Oh, I’m definitely getting one of these!)

+ Reminder to longtime readers who have followed along with Robbi Behr and Matthew Swanson and their excellent Busload of Books program. The couples’ latest book is about to launch, and it’s getting remarkably good reviews! Like out of this world. Get your copy of Life on the Moon now.