The Straight Dope

DEI Another Day, Weekend Whats

Pete Hegseth finally found straits he could protect: White male ones. While the military he oversees is attempting to remove the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Hegseth is managing a military blockade of personnel within his department. And somehow, this is happening in a time of war. But, apparently, no battle matters as much to Hegseth as the one against diversity. “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff, on Thursday, a move that reflects growing hostility between Mr. Hegseth and the Army’s leadership ... The tension with Mr. Hegseth was not rooted in substantive differences over the direction of the Army, military officials said. Rather it is the product of Mr. Hegseth’s long-running grievances with the Army, battles over personnel and his troubled relationship with Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll ... Mr. Hegseth has also clashed in recent months with General George and Mr. Driscoll over the defense secretary’s decision to block the promotion of four Army officers to be one-star generals. Two of the officers targeted by Mr. Hegseth are Black and two are women on a promotion list that consisted of 29 other officers, most of whom are white men.” This is not the headline you want to see in a time of war: Hegseth Fires Army Chief Amid Battle With Its Leaders. The Pentagon chief, who has earned the nickname Dumb McNamara, is now firing wildly qualified military leaders for their insistence on promoting other wildly qualified military leaders. Maybe it makes sense Hegseth changed his agency’s name to the Dept of War, because there’s no defense for the way he’s running it.

+ DEI Another Day: “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has taken steps to block or delay promotions for more than a dozen Black and female senior officers across all four branches of the military, some of whom are seen as having been targeted because of their race, gender or perceived affiliation with Biden administration policies or officials, according to nine U.S. officials familiar with the process.” NBC: Hegseth has intervened in military promotions for more than a dozen senior officers.

+ “Hegseth began his tenure by acting against what he sees as a Pentagon infested with DEI hires. He pushed for the removal of the then–chairman of the Joint Chiefs, C. Q. Brown, who is Black, and he fired a raft of female military leaders, replacing them all with men. But dumping the Army chief of staff in the middle of a war, without explanation, is a reckless move even by Hegseth’s standards ... Trump and Hegseth have been on a clear mission to politicize the U.S. military, and to turn it into an armed extension of the MAGA movement. Hegseth regularly proselytizes, both for Trump and for his right-wing evangelical beliefs, from the Pentagon podium.” Tom Nichols: Hegseth’s War on America’s Military.

+ This would all be bad in a time of peace. It’s much worse during a war, a point hammered home by the latest news from the Gulf. “Iran shot down a U.S. fighter jet over the country, the first time that has occurred in five weeks of war, and American forces were rushing to find and rescue its two crew members. The loss of the F-15E jet and the rescue efforts, reported by Iranian media and confirmed by U.S. and Israeli officials, create a military and diplomatic challenge for the United States. President Trump has threatened in recent days to bombard Iran ‘back to the Stone Ages,’ and over the past 24 hours, the United States and Iran have been trading attacks on military and civilian infrastructure in the region.” As I’m writing, one of the American fighter pilots has been rescued. Here’s the latest from the NYT and NBC.

2

Chronic Tonic

People with chronic illnesses are as aware as the rest of us that chatbots sometimes get it wrong. But they’re also comparing the act of using them to their experiences with the medical system. “The medical system really failed me. Is it a good thing to be depending on A.I. for medical advice? I don’t think so. But it’s the option that’s available.” Doctors Couldn’t Help Them. They Rolled the Dice With A.I. “Some women with complex chronic illnesses are using chatbots to search for diagnoses or relief from their symptoms.” (The answers may not always be satisfying, but at least the doctor will always see you now...)

+ The Verge (Gift Article): Chatbots are now prescribing psychiatric drugs. (It’s just for renewals ... for now.)

3

Drunk on Life

“In 2019, Mark Mongiardo, then a high school athletic director, was pulled over in Sullivan County, N.Y., after a dinner with the boys’ golf team. He’d eaten a hot dog and some fries, washed down with a soda. He hadn’t had a sip of alcohol, but the officer who stopped Mr. Mongiardo for using his phone while driving smelled it anyway. A breathalyzer test showed Mr. Mongiardo’s blood alcohol content was .18 percent, more than twice the legal driving limit. It was his second drunken driving offense in two years, but these episodes of unexplained intoxication had begun decades earlier.” It turns out that some people can get drunk from the inside. Their bodies essentially make ethanol. And though that might sound fun, it’s anything but. It’s a brewing storm. “D.W.I.s, relationship problems, accusations of secret drinking: Auto-brewery syndrome can wreak havoc on people’s lives and reputations.” NYT (Gift Article): The Mystifying Syndrome That Makes People Spontaneously Drunk.

4

Weekend Whats

What to Read: Longtime readers have followed along with Robbi Behr and Matthew Swanson and their excellent Busload of Books program. They are also a very accomplished author and illustrator team, and their latest book couldn’t be better timed (or better reviewed). Take Lemony Snicket’s word for it: “Is there anything more exciting than a trip to the moon? Yes: This book.” Order Life on the Moon today. This one is going to be huge.

+ What to Movie: I’m still catching up on all the Oscar-nominated movies. I’ve got to say, my favorite one so far, by quite a bit, is Sentimental Value, now streaming on Hulu.

+ What to Banana: The Roastmaster General takes to Broadway and gets heartfelt in a funny, meaningful look at life, family, death, and, well, bananas. On Netflix, Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride.

5

Extra, Extra

Fill ‘Er Up: “Roughly half of global food production depends on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. Without it, crop yields would tumble, pushing up prices of household staples including bread, rice, potatoes and pasta, and would also make animal feed more expensive. Some of the world’s poorest countries are among the most vulnerable to fertilizer price rises.” For some of those affected by the Iran war, filling up is not optional. ‘Food security timebomb’: a visual guide to the Gulf fertilizer blockade. (Whether we like it or not, we’re all interconnected.)

+ Bondi Voyage: “Bondi, a former attorney general of Florida, has presided over a department that has eagerly subordinated itself to President Donald Trump’s whims. That submission, made manifest by the banner of a glowering Trump that now hangs from the Department of Justice building, included seeking to bring baseless cases against Trump’s perceived political enemies, ordered up by the President himself; purging the department of career lawyers and F.B.I. agents deemed insufficiently loyal; and launching a belligerent campaign against ‘rogue judges’ who dared to challenge Administration actions.” The New Yorker: Pam Bondi’s Legacy of Flattery and Destruction. It still wasn’t enough. That’s why “her successor could be even more dangerous.” As I wrote yesterday: All that corruption, all that damage to the department and her own reputation in the name of loyalty—and what did it get her? A one-way ticket to eternal Pamnation. (Meanwhile, Trump’s personal defense attorney has taken over as Attorney General. He recently Shut Down Enforcement Against Crypto Companies While Holding More Than $150,000 in Crypto Investments. In other words, he’s perfectly qualified.)

+ Back At the Other War... “Ukrainian counteroffensives were one reason, as well as technological issues that have hindered battlefield communication: Starlink has cut Russia’s access to its satellite internet, and the Kremlin prevented its own troops from using the messaging app Telegram in favor of a state-run option.” Russia’s battlefield progress stalls entirely.

+ Who Would Have Predicted? The Trump administration to states: You can’t regulate prediction markets. (And this has nothing to do with Don Jr’s roles at Kalshi and Polymarket.)

+ Watch This Space: “SpaceX boosted its target IPO valuation above $2 trillion, according to people familiar with the matter, as the world’s most valuable startup gears up to pitch potentially the biggest-ever market debut.” That’s up from a valuation of $1.25 trillion way back in ... February. And I’m just a Humanities major, but that’s about 100 times 2026 projected revenue.

+ Sounds About Par for the Course: “Bodycam footage of Tiger Woods’s arrest for DUI shows the golfer looking surprised when he was handcuffed by police officers at the scene of a vehicle crash last week and telling a deputy he had spoken to ‘the president’ on the phone after the incident.”

6

Feel Good Friday

“Doctors believed that Woody Brown would never be able to speak or process language. He went to graduate school and is publishing his debut novel.” ‘I Thought I Would Be Caged My Whole Life.’

+ “Rounding a little-used pier with a hulking century-old building, he found an open garage door and peered inside. The building was cavernous, seemingly in good shape, and entirely empty. That’s all it took for Eggers, the Pulitzer finalist and conjurer of offbeat endeavors, to spin his way into another.” A Free Home for San Francisco Artists. (And another great program from the excellent, and indefatigable, Dave Eggers.)

+ NASA’s Artemis II has left Earth’s orbit, and 4 astronauts now head to the moon. (And they got a pretty nice shot of us.)

+ The economy added more jobs than expected in March.

+ Molly the border collie rescued after a week waiting for injured owner in New Zealand’s remote backcountry.

+ There’s a New Place to Store Greenhouse Gases: In Your Beer. (It’s gonna have to be a pretty large beer.)

+ Unsuspecting windsurfer collides with gray whale in San Francisco Bay. (Both escaped without injury...though this is not being covered as feel good news in the whale press.)