Well Enough Alone?

All The Lonely People, KC's American Tradition

In 1967, The Rolling Stones were famously forced to alter the lyrics to the song Let's Spend the Night Together because Ed Sullivan felt that the title was too suggestive for his TV viewing audience. Instead, the Stones sang, Let's Spend Some Time Together. Nearly six decades later in America, it's arguable that the replacement lyrics are more subversive than the original. We spend a lot less time spending some time together than we used to. Somehow, we went from waiting on a friend to saying, hey, you, get off of my cloud. If you're more a Beatles person, we went from Come Together to emulating Father McKenzie, writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear. No one comes near. How did we go from needing a little help from our friends to becoming a nation of all the lonely people? And how does breaking up the band and going solo impact everything from our internal lives to our political landscape. The numbers representing the shift are nothing less that remarkable. Derek Thompson in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out. "After the 1970s, American dynamism declined. Americans moved less from place to place. They stopped showing up at their churches and temples. In the 1990s, the sociologist Robert Putnam recognized that America’s social metabolism was slowing down. In the book Bowling Alone, he gathered reams of statistical evidence to prove that America’s penchant for starting and joining associations appeared to be in free fall. Book clubs and bowling leagues were going bust. If Putnam felt the first raindrops of an antisocial revolution in America, the downpour is fully here, and we’re all getting washed away in the flood." I like both the Stones and the Beatles, but I'll conclude with some lyrics from a singer I spend most of my alone time with. Bruce Springsteen: When you're alone, you're alone. When you're alone, you ain't nothing but alone.

2

Glock and Tackle

What could be more uniquely American than a Super Bowl celebration? Sadly, gun violence. The Kansas City Chiefs' Super Bowl parade was marred by gun violence "that killed a local DJ and injured more than 20 others, including children." It appears to have stemmed from a dispute between several people, including two armed juveniles. Here's the latest from CNN.

+ Photos: Shooting in Kansas City after Chiefs' victory parade.

+ Bystanders who helped tackle suspect speak out. And, Chiefs fan filmed tackling possible mass shooting suspect says 'I had the perfect angle.' (If only our political leaders had an ounce of the courage these bystanders showed.)

3

Getting the Shaft

There has been a lot of worldwide debate about Israel's military operations in Gaza, and rightfully so, given that even Joe Biden called the latest moves, "over the top." But often lost in this discussion is what's been happening underground, and the terrible acts of Hamas that began long before Oct 7. Jehad Al-Saftawi in Time: Hamas Built Tunnels Beneath My Family’s Home in Gaza. Now It Lies in Ruin.

4

Walk It Off

"Our new research shows that exercise should be considered alongside therapy and antidepressants. It can be just as impactful in treating depression as therapy, but it matters what type of exercise you do and how you do it." Running or yoga can help beat depression, research shows – even if exercise is the last thing you feel like.

5

Extra, Extra

Courting and Dating: Let's crisscross the country and catch up with the latest in the Trump legal soap opera. In NYC, a judge announced that the hush money case will start on March 25. In Georgia, where things are decidedly more soap opera-ish (and the case is decidedly more serious), the prosecutor and her former lover are the ones being questioned. "Judge Scott McAfee is considering whether a personal relationship between Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis and her top Trump prosecutor, Nathan Wade, creates a conflict of interest that should oust the entire office from the case." Nathan Wade testified and Fani Willis has taken the stand. "I've been very anxious to have this conversation with you today. So I ran to the courtroom." Here's the latest from CNN and AJC.

+ Send Ammo: "The consequences of politics in Washington are playing out in Oleksander Kucheriavenko’s Humvee on the eastern front of Ukraine’s war against Russia. On a patrol Wednesday, Kucheriavenko, a sergeant, fired several grenade rounds from his armored vehicle at a Russian assault team—and then stopped, to conserve ammunition" Ukrainian Soldiers Forced to Tune In to Washington Politics. (No one deserves that fate.)

+ Jailhouse Shock: "A gargantuan complex constructed in the middle of nowhere, it symbolises President Nayib Bukele's controversial security policy more than any other project." BBC: Coming face to face with inmates in El Salvador's mega-jail.

+ Not Too Swift: "Just under 1 in 5 Americans believe the singer Taylor Swift is part of a covert effort to help President Joe Biden win the 2024 election."

+ The Beautiful Claim: "As far as the man in the food truck is concerned, the patch of land he occupies in Sheffield, England, is about as humdrum as they come. To him, the spot — in the drab parking lot of a sprawling home improvement superstore, its facade plastered in lurid orange — is not exactly a place where history comes alive." NYT (Gift Article): An English City Gave Soccer to the World. Now It Wants Credit.

+ It's Showtime, Folks: "OpenAI’s latest model takes text prompts and turns them into ‘complex scenes with multiple characters, specific types of motion,’ and more." OpenAI introduces Sora, its text-to-video AI model.

+ Touch of Green: Grateful Dead shirts: They won’t fade. "What other economies can learn from the decades-long success of band tees."

6

Bottom of the News

I try to embrace the cultural choices made by younger generations. But this time, they've gone too far. NYT (Gift Article): Chip by Chip, This Ice Cream Flavor Is Melting Away. You can pry my chocolate chip ice cream from my cold, dead hands. (And given the sound of the alarm on my glucose monitor when I eat it, that could be exactly how things play out.)

+ It apparently took three decades to perfect the recipe, but Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre are bringing ‘Gin & Juice’ to the beverage space. (Enjoy it while you can. The kids will eventually replace it with Gin and Cookie Dough.)