The Misguilded Age

I Found My Trill, And Weekend Whats

I’m going stop being the top (and only) employee at NextDraft unless readers promote the newsletter enough that I reach one trillion subscribers by the end of the year. If you fail to reach this target, I will summarily end NextDraft and transition to my alternate newsletter: An exhaustively detailed, blow by blow, graphics-heavy review of the gastrointestinal impacts of my news headline induced IBS. The working title: The Spastic SemiColon. (Thankfully, Imodium has agreed to be the sponsor no matter which of the two newsletters survives.) This might sound a little draconian, but threats like these seem to be working these days. Tesla shareholders just approved Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar pay package, for his part-time gig as Tesla CEO. In fairness, the deal requires Musk to hit some monumental milestones and move beyond the reality distortion field (and, if he keeps up his current pace, a trillion will barely cover his childcare costs). Of course, there’s the very obvious American splitscreen of Musk shareholder/fans approving a trillion dollar deal during the same week that the poorest Americans were set to be stripped of SNAP benefits. But there’s a global splitscreen as well. Musk’s chainsaw-weilding efforts to shutter USAID isn’t just leaving people hungry, it’s leaving people dead. Atul Gawande in The New Yorker: The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands. Earlier this decade, USAID had an average budget of $23 billion a year. (Multiply that by 43.4 and you’re talking Tesla CEO money...)

+ I invest in internet startups and my public securities portfolio is neck deep in tech stocks. I’m not in the business of criticizing capitalism or shareholders who decide to approve big paydays for their CEOs (especially when those CEOs are building a robot army). But I am worried that this payday approval is a(nother) watershed moment that represents both our widening economic divide and a market that is giving off some very bad (and very familiar) vibes.

+ NYT (Gift Article): Trump Administration Seeks Immediate Halt to Court Order to Pay Food Stamps. (This was a predictable move from an administration that told grocers they couldn’t offer 10% off to SNAP recipients.) But interestingly, on Friday afternoon (before the court ruled), the administration said it will fully fund SNAP while court appeal plays out. (Maybe American shareholders approved lunch.) This is breaking news, and being reported differently in different places, so we’ll see how it plays out in the courts and in reality.

2

Boat Manifest Destiny

“Most of the nine men were crewing such craft for the first or second time, making at least $500 per trip, residents and relatives said. They were laborers, a fisherman, a motorcycle taxi driver. Two were low-level career criminals. One was a well-known local crime boss who contracted out his smuggling services to traffickers.” Trump has accused boat crews of being narco-terrorists. The truth, AP found, is more nuanced. “As part of hired crews, the father of four spent his days fishing for snapper, kingfish and dogfish. The fisherman wanted to save enough money to buy a 75-horsepower boat engine so he could operate his own boat and not work for others. It was a dream Sánchez knew he was likely to never realize, relatives said: Most of his income — about $100 a month — went to feed his children.”

+ Of course, these strikes are about more than killing the equivalent of street corner dealers. U.S. Sends Attack Aircraft to El Salvador Amid Regional Troop Buildup.

+ Meanwhile, Hegseth Is Purging Military Leaders With Little Explanation.

3

Your Kind of Place?

“Silverwood advertises itself as a ‘community of kindness’ with members obliged to sign a pledge when they purchase a home. ‘There will be homes, community centers, schools, parks, but most importantly, there will be kindness,’ says project general manager John Ohanian, of DMB Development. ‘A culture of kindness is being designed into the fabric of the community to create an enclave where residents can overcome external chaos and thrive by working together.’” This Master-Planned Community Comes With a Catch—Don’t Be a Jerk. (Why do I have the feeling I wouldn’t even be able to attend an open house in this neighborhood?)

4

Weekend Whats

What to Watch: The Asset on Netflix is a binge-able Danish drama about a rookie police informant who goes undercover to befriend a drug smuggler’s wife but the closer she gets to her target, the more complicated her mission becomes.

+ What to Doc: A couple of docs that are worth a watch. First, John Candy: I Like Me on Prime (worth it for the look at back some great comedies alone). Second, Ben Stiller (and his sister) tell the story of their very famous parents, and go pretty deep about how some of their traits re-emerged in Ben’s family. Stiller & Meara is on AppleTV.

5

Extra, Extra

Same Time Next Year: “Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Friday that Democrats would agree to end the shutdown in exchange for one more year of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies – an attempt to further pressure the GOP to make a deal.” Democrats present offer to end shutdown as air travel situation gets worse. (One wonders if the air travel situation is getting worse to pressure them to make a deal... In other news, we have a pretty important election in a year.)

+ The Next Phase in Gaza: “The move relegates Israel to a secondary role in determining how and what humanitarian relief can enter Gaza, according to people familiar with the transition.” WaPo: U.S. steps up presence in Gaza to support fragile ceasefire.

+ Sudan: “They would select people and execute them in front of us and then say – ‘bury your brother’ - and we would cover them with soil. I saw them kill 18 people with my own eyes and then people had to bury them with their bare hands.” A roundup of news from Sudan.

+ Sentiment(al): “University of Michigan survey reading is slightly above levels that sentiment sank to amid historic inflation that hit in 2022.” Consumer Sentiment Falls Toward Record-Low Levels. Meanwhile, AI stocks head for more than $800 billion in losses this week.

+ An American Story: “The police in Whitestown, Ind., the small but growing town where the shooting took place, said that two residents had been inside the home that morning when the cleaners arrived. The residents believed their home was possibly being broken into and called 911. In the five minutes between the call and when the police arrived, one of the residents fired from inside the home and struck the woman in the head.” Cleaning Woman Killed Through Door After Arriving at Wrong Home.

+ Drunk on Power: “The Trump Organization’s second-term push to monetize Donald Trump’s presidency has reached the aisles of military exchanges, as Coast Guard-run stores, which provide service members and their families with access to tax-free consumer goods, have stocked Trump-branded wine and cider.” Trump Wine Hits Government Shelves. (This is the first time alcohol has made me puke before taking my first sip.)

+ Now That’s Using Your Noodle: How to cook the perfect pasta – we used particle accelerators and reactors to discover the key. (Now if they can just discover the key to turning my glucose monitor alarm to silent...)

+ Getting the Picture: They say a picture paints a thousand words. But using today’s prices, it paints at least a trillion of them. This photo from the Oval Office after someone fainted could be the most perfect representation of the Trump era ever recorded. Is there a Nobel Prize for Sociopathy?

6

Feel Good Friday

“In last year’s parade, some of the loudest cheers went to a man in the bed of a red pickup truck that was festooned with ... garbage. He wore Christmas pajamas and a skirt, rainbow suspenders, and a large papier-mâché top hat and was surrounded by bags of trash. A sign on the truck announced: ‘Mayor of Flatwood’ — as in, the Flatwood Refuse and Recycling Center. The man drawing all the cheers was Willie Shanks, the guy who runs the dump.” WaPo (Gift Article): The guy who runs the dump knows the secret to finding meaning at work.

+ “Masskrugstemmen is the German name for the increasingly popular sport of steinholding—where participants try to hold a five-pound glass of beer at arm’s length for as long as they can.” Inside the Surprisingly Intense World of Competitive Steinholding.

+ American climber speaks out after history-making ski down Mount Everest.

+ Australia has so much solar that it’s offering everyone free electricity.

+ The Doobie Brothers: Tiny Desk Concert.