Seasonal Effectiveness Disorder
'Cane and Unable, Waymo's World
In these divisive times, you'd think there would still be some safe topics of conversation. But in 2025, even the old stalwart, the weather, has been removed from the confines of small talk. Today's forecast is particularly political, problematic, and pathetic (with slight chance of post-apocalypticness). In an exchange with staff, current FEMA leader David Richardson "suggested he recently learned there was an annual hurricane season, stunning members of the workforce of the agency tasked with responding to disasters. He has expressed surprise in meetings at the scope of the agency’s mission...'Yesterday, as everybody knows, [was the] first day of hurricane season,' Richardson said. 'I didn’t realize it was a season.'" He also doesn't seem to realize that the dramatic hurricane-related budget cuts will have a real world impact. "Richardson told staff Monday that the agency would be returning to the same guidance for hurricane response as last year. Some were confused how that would be possible, given the agency had already eliminated key programs and sharply cut its workforce." WSJ (Gift Article): FEMA Scraps New Hurricane Plan and Reverts to Last Year’s. Of course, Richardson's lack of qualifications for his role are hardly unique in this administration (and his unfamiliarity with the department he leads doesn't seem especially egregious when compared to his peers). But as Anne Applebaum reminds us, appointees like these "aren't there to do their jobs, but rather to prove that the president is so powerful he can appoint wildly incompetent people and no one will stop him." So where does that leave the forecast when it comes to America's next crisis? The answer my friend, is blowin' in the wind. (Or at least it will be soon.)
+ "The National Weather Service costs the average American $4 per year in today’s inflated dollars — about the same as a gallon of milk — and offers an 8,000 percent annual return on investment, according to 2024 estimates. It’s a farce for the administration to pretend that gutting an agency that protects our coastlines from a rising tide of disasters is in the best interests of our economy or national security. If the private sector could have done it better and cheaper, it would have, and it hasn’t." NYT(Gift Article): A Hurricane Season Like No Other.
+ In case you're nostalgic for the times when you could just talk about the weather and have it actually be about the weather, there's this. A cloud of Sahara dust is smothering the Caribbean en route to the US. (When I first saw the term Sahara dust, I assumed it was something Elon Musk was taking.)
2
Have Beaker Will Travel
"He arrived in Los Angeles in 1986 at age 18 after fleeing war-torn Lebanon. He spent a year writing for an Armenian newspaper and delivering Domino’s at night to become eligible for the University of California, where he earned his undergraduate degree and a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience. He started a lab at Scripps Research in San Diego with a grant from the National Institutes of Health, discovered the way humans sense touch, and in 2021 won the Nobel Prize. But with the Trump administration slashing spending on science, Dr. Patapoutian’s federal grant to develop new approaches to treating pain has been frozen. In late February, he posted on Bluesky that such cuts would damage biomedical research and prompt an exodus of talent from the United States. Within hours, he had an email from China, offering to move his lab to 'any city, any university I want,' he said, with a guarantee of funding for the next 20 years." NYT (Gift Article): U.S. Scientists Warn That Trump’s Cuts Will Set Off a Brain Drain. (Relentlessly attacking science, universities, and immigrants doesn't sound like an experiment that will end well.)
+ "The United States’ competitors are salivating at the prospect of gaining an edge in technological competition at our expense. France, Australia and Canada are throwing out the welcome mat to scientists who can no longer do their work in the United States. But the biggest beneficiary is likely to be China." WaPo: We are witnessing the suicide of a superpower.
3
Flame Wars
Drone battles are a lot like first person war games, with pilots in remote locations waging war from behind a screen. But the fighters aren't the only ones with the first-person view of the action. Consider how quickly the world had access to images of Ukraine's shocking attack on Russia's airfields. That aspect is a feature, not a bug. The Verge: Ukraine’s drone strike isn’t just an attack — it’s first-person media warfare. "On top of the damage to Russian forces, the dissemination of the videos was a clear goal of the mission. This isn’t the first time Ukraine has shared raw footage of its attacks to shine a spotlight on the war, but it’s perhaps one of the most stunning and fast-spreading examples so far."
+ For example: Ukraine Hid Attack Drones in Russia. These Videos Show What Happened Next.
4
Waymo Than You Think
"Waymo’s autonomous taxis are only available in a few cities right now, including Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco, where self-driving cars are more of a tourist attraction than cable cars. But the trajectory suggests what’s happening there might just happen everywhere—and sooner than you think." And if you live in one of those cities, you know Waymos are everywhere. It’s Waymo’s World. We’re All Just Riding in It.
5
Extra, Extra
Throwing Good Money After Bad Ideas: "The global economy is slowing. In a sharply downgraded forecast released Tuesday, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development warned that President Donald Trump’s volatile yet sweeping tariff policies are inflicting greater damage than expected, with the effects more concentrated in the U.S. than anywhere else." Meanwhile, "when shoppers shift more spending to dollar stores, it usually reflects growing financial stress." And dollar stores are doing massive numbers.
+ The Fast and The Curious: Mary Meeker "hasn’t released a trends report since 2019. But she dusted off her skills to document, in laser detail, how AI adoption has outpaced any other tech in human history." The report featured the word "unprecedented" 51 times. "ChatGPT reaching 800 million users in 17 months: unprecedented. The number of companies and the rate at which so many others are hitting high annual recurring revenue rates: also unprecedented. The speed at which costs of usage are dropping: unprecedented."
+ Words Without Friends: "Words matter. The protester at Columbia University in 2024 holding a sign labeling Jewish demonstrators who were waving Israeli flags as al-qasam’s next targets was dismissed as being hyperbolic. So were the by any means necessary banners carried at demonstrations and the red inverted triangles, similar to those Hamas uses to mark Israeli targets, spray-painted on university buildings, a national monument, and even the apartment building of a museum director. When demonstrators wave the flags of terrorist organizations, wear headbands celebrating those same groups, and publicly commemorate the martyrdom of terrorist leaders such as Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar and Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, they’re not throwing the bomb, but their message can light the fuse." The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Boulder Attack Didn’t Come Out of Nowhere. (You can be pro Palestinian, pro two-state solution, pro peace, and anti Netanyahu, without being pro Hamas, pro terror, and pro killing Jews. These nuances are not subtle.)
+ Food Fight: "A U.S.- and Israeli-backed initiative to feed starving Gazans has struggled during its first week of operations, with the resignation of two top executives, allegations that the Israeli military has shot into crowds of civilians rushing to pick up aid packages, and the ongoing refusal of the United Nations and humanitarian partners to join the effort." US consulting firm quits Gaza humanitarian aid effort amid criticism. (The world has to figure out a way to stop this conflict.)
+ Lunch Break: "A Navarre, Florida, sandwich shop employee reportedly helped authorities save a domestic violence victimwho had allegedly been kidnapped by her abusive, pro-wrestler boyfriend after the worker recently found a note in a store bathroom that read 'HELP!'"
+ Mongolian Beef: "Mongolia's prime minister has resigned after social media photos of his son's lavish lifestyle sparked an anti-corruption investigation and weeks of mass protests." (It turns out there are still places where political corruption is frowned upon.)
+ The Tallow End of the Gene Pool: "Tallow is fat that has been slowly melted, strained and then hardened into a waxy paste. Often used in cooking, all sorts of animal fats — goat, swan, even lion — have also been used as a cosmetics ingredient since antiquity." Add that to TikTok and you've got a trend. Miracle balm or cow pie? What's behind the beef tallow skincare trend.
6
Bottom of the News
"The condom, which was probably made of a sheep’s appendix circa 1830, is thought to have come from an upmarket brothel in France, most likely in Paris. It features an erotic etching depicting a partially undressed nun pointing at the erect genitals of three clergymen, as well as the phrase Voila, mon choix ('There, that’s my choice')." Dutch museum to display 200-year-old condom. (The condom would've been on display sooner but some of the funders pulled out.)
+ "At an age most children struggle to make it through the alphabet, two-year-old British toddler Joseph Harris-Birtill can already read full books. He's now moving on to Morse code and the Greek alphabet, as well as showing an interest in the periodic table of elements." 2-Year-Old Prodigy Joins 'High IQ' Club Mensa as Youngest Member Ever. (Maybe he can run FEMA?)