Quiet as It's Kept

Self Censorship, A Soldier Returns

I hid in the clouded wrath of the crowd, when they said sit down, I stood up. — Bruce Springsteen, Growin’ Up

In an era when social media has turned us into a mass population of self-appointed experts who have an opinion on everything, and never shut up about anything, it may surprise you to learn that one of the top concerns among a group of high school newspaper editors is that young people are being taught to stay silent. “We want our publication to be like a small-town newspaper, one that gives its readers a comprehensive view of how our community thinks and feels, and one that advances the cause of seeking the truth and reporting it. But our readers cannot get a full view of the community when people are too afraid to talk. And people are definitely afraid. This problem, as we see it, is much bigger than our school newspaper. The era of social media came with the promise of hyper-democratization—no longer do you need to be an established pundit to get your message out. (All of us, born in the 2000s, struggle to imagine it any other way.) Although there is much to celebrate about the ways in which the internet has connected us, the permanence of the internet has given rise to censorship pressures—both individually and institutionally. People are so nervous about saying the wrong thing that they choose to say nothing.” Jacob Blane, Annabelle Garland, and Sam Gross in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The New Chilling Effect. This would be a less troubling trend if the decision to remain silent were spread equally across the sociopolitical spectrum. But it sure seems like those with political power (and the worst takes) are more prolific and loud than ever, and those who need to speak up the most are quietly waiting for what they hope will be the end of this political era. As the school newspaper editors explain: “If large groups of people decide that silence is safer than risking disagreement, and if they instruct children to be silent in turn, our fundamental right to free expression will crumble from within.”

2

Killing and the Messenger

“I’ve had a hand in killing around six people. Maybe seven. I don’t know if one man bled out on the side of the road or was taken to a doctor. I think about him often ... We had grown up on the nostalgia of World War II, then done something we were supposed to be proud of. Instead, what we got from our politicians and generals were evasions and lies. Our commanders could never articulate how our deployments, and all the violence we committed and the losses we suffered, made anyone safer in the United States. We were left to figure everything out on our own while they landed lucrative jobs at defense companies and collected big fees on speaking circuits. For some people, it was too much to handle.” Thomas Gibbons-Neff in the NYT (Gift Article) with a timely article about another war. (I suppose these kinds of articles are almost always timely.) Why I Sought Out a Taliban Commander I Had Fought. “First as a Marine and then as a journalist, I spent years tied to Afghanistan. I returned one last time to speak to a former enemy in search of answers, and perhaps closure.”

3

Where There’s a Will, There’s a Weight

“Baby boomers — boosted by decades of rising house prices, strong stock markets and economic growth — control more than half of U.S. household wealth. When they die, a lot of that wealth is expected to go to their descendants. Estimates have predicted that $68 trillion to $84 trillion in money and assets will change hands over the next two decades.” So why are so many baby boomers not only dying with nothing, but forcing their would-be beneficiaries to dip into their own savings? Because aging in America has become costly. WaPo (Gift Article): As the cost of aging soars, families’ wealth is evaporating.

4

A Changing of the Guardrail

“To the casual observer, which is to say virtually everyone, a guardrail is just a long wavy strip of steel, about a foot wide, set thirty inches or so off the ground, which keeps a car from going off the road. But, in reality, guardrails are carefully calibrated systems of interlocking parts, every one of which is critical to its function. They rely on complex physics to insure that a car that hits the end of a guardrail doesn’t get impaled, and that a car that hits it from the side can’t crash through. Some guardrail injuries result from antiquated designs, or designs that manufacturers know to be dangerous. Others result from botched installation.” Steve Eimers became an expert on guardrails for the worst possible reason. But his response to a personal tragedy could save lives. The New Yorker: One Man’s Quest to Fix Every Deadly Guardrail. (Alt link.) “In 2016, Steve Eimers’s daughter died when she hit a defective guardrail. Then he learned that the country was full of them.”

5

Extra, Extra

Statute Showing Limitations: “In a decision likely to intensify trans-Atlantic trade tensions, European Union regulators on Thursday hit Google with a $1 billion fine for illegally undercutting competition through its dominance as a search engine.” Again, lawmakers appear to be markedly behind the latest tech. Google is hardly a search engine at all at this point. “Reddit, Politico and others are weighing how—or even if—they can work with the tech company as AI tools supplant traditional searches.” Google Was a Lifeline for Publishers. Now Some Are Thinking of Cutting It Off.

+ Let’s Spend the Height Together: Google had a solid quarter, but the stock is tanking because investors are worried that the company is spending too much on AI-related expenditures. That’s not just a big deal for Google. It’s potentially a big deal for the whole economy. As I wrote in yesterday’s lead item, it’s arguable that we’ve never been this pot committed on any economic bet in history. Whether or not you own tech stocks, or any stocks at all, this could impact you. The Ante Establishment. (It’s not just about what these companies are spending on, it’s what they’re not spending on. Amazon Workers on Food Stamps Nearly Tripled, While Company Spends $200 Billion on AI.)

+ The Part of the Deal: “Saudi Arabia would need to normalize relations with Israel to receive the U.S. nuclear technology it has long sought, President Donald Trump said Thursday, adding a new condition to an agreement signed a day earlier and throwing the future of that deal into confusion.” (In this case, confusion could be better than clarity.)

+ Toll Out the Barrels: “The price of oil hit $100 a barrel on Thursday for the first time since May after Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen claimed to hit two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea, stoking fears that another crucial shipping route would be choked off by the widening conflict.” Here’s the latest from the NYT. The fuel shortages are a big deal for Americans filling up at the pump. But they’re a much bigger deal where fuel shortages mean food shortages. NYT (Gift Article): Diesel Crisis Puts Poor Farmers Around the World at Risk. And from Reuters: Iran strikes on CIA facilities prompt questions about possible Russian role.

+ Nothing Could Be Further From the Truth: “The Pentagon, the institution that should be explaining the details of the war to the public, has fallen mostly silent: Hegseth is happy to offer clips of himself doing comically sloppy pull-ups, but neither he nor Caine has held a briefing on the war since May 5. Americans, after months of war, cannot even be sure how many men and women in uniform have been wounded or how severely. This information void at America’s military headquarters is a dramatic departure from previous conflicts, when reporters were embedded with American military units; when the Pentagon offered regular, in many cases daily, briefings on operations; and when civilian and military leaders in DOD answered real questions from real journalists.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The American People Need the Truth About the Iran War. (At this point, we’d settle for the truth about anything.)

+ Murder, She Wrote Off: The US is on track to have a historically low number of homicides in 2026. While politicians will try to take credit, it’s happening in places with different leanings and policies. “Murder and other crime rates are falling across the map in cities with different political leadership, different housing and economic conditions, different policing and prosecution and violence reduction strategies and different levels of federal enforcement activity.” (Maybe we’re just running out of people to murder...)

+ Don’t Quit Your Day Job: So far, the combination of AI and oil prices doesn’t seem to be hitting job numbers. US filings for unemployment aid fall to 187,000 last week.

+ Put a Little Pep in Your Overstep: NYT (Gift Article): A Peptide Showdown: F.D.A. Scientists May Clash With Kennedy’s Agenda. “A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee hearing on Thursday and Friday may set Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., known for embracing unproven wellness trends, on a collision course with agency scientists who have deep expertise on drug safety.”

6

Bottom of the News

“They get blisters on their feet, their eyes become watery and the hot sand burns their skin and eats up their hair when they are sitting.” How hot is it? It’s so hot even camels can’t take it. (And we’re nowhere near being over the hump.)

+ Watch orcas ram a sunfish so hard it explodes. “We think this may help younger orcas feed more easily, or it could also just be for fun.”