|
 |
Even if you hate the time change, you have to admit this lighting better fits our national mood. The latest dark turn is the Trump administration’s refusal to dole out SNAP benefits to the 42 million Americans who receive food stamps. Days after a judge ruled that the payments can’t simply be stopped, the administration has agreed to release the funds. But not all of them. About half. NYT (Gift Article): Trump Administration to Send Only Partial Food Stamp Payments This Month. At this point, even such a half hearted measure might surprise you on the upside. So maybe you see the glass as half full. But I’m guessing about 42 million people will experience this as a glass half empty moment. And, in the short term, it could be full empty. It “remained unclear when food stamp recipients might actually receive their aid, since the Trump administration itself had acknowledged previously in court that there could be substantial delays in provisioning SNAP on a partial basis during the shutdown.”
+ SNL’s Michael Che had some thoughts about the SNAP cut-off and the perception being spread by certain politicians that it’s used by people trying to rip off the government. “I grew up on free cheese and powdered milk and waiting for your friends to leave the store so they wont see me pay with stamps. That shit aint as glamorous as it sounds. I promise.”
+ Of course, none of those same politicians complain about the wealthiest Americans who use every accounting trick in the book to reduce the amount of taxes they pay. For them, the glass is never full enough. Yes, that’s capitalism and those are the rules of the game. But do 42 million people really have to go hungry during a period when the investor class is experiencing relentless market gains? It would be almost like holding a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party as SNAP benefits were due to be cut off. (Maybe it’s fitting. Make America Great Again isn’t all that far off from one of Gatsby’s famous lines: “Can’t Repeat the Past? Why, of Course You Can!”)
2
Vice Versa
“One minor but arresting fact of U.S. history is the huge amount of alcohol the average American consumed in 1830: 7.1 undiluted gallons a year, the equivalent of four shots of 80-proof whiskey every day. Assuming some children wimped out after the first drink, this statistic suggests that large numbers of Jacksonian-era adults were rolling eight belts deep seven days a week, with all the attendant implications for social and political life. Imagine what it was like resolving a buggy accident, let alone conducting a presidential election.” These days, we drink a lot less. And a lot more of us are choosing not to drink at all. But what effect do these drinking habits—along with dramatic changes to some of our other national vices—have on our shared (and increasing, not shared) experience? Dan Brooks in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Lonely New Vices of American Life. “That the new vices are so uniformly solitary suggests that the national character might become more solitary, too. This trend is unsettling, but perhaps more alarming is that large numbers of people could become so oblivious to the upside of vice as to decide that it is better pursued alone.” (So do society a favor and forward this newsletter to a few friends. It actually pairs quite nicely with a few gallons of whiskey.)
3
Water Falls
“Global temperatures have made the atmosphere more waterlogged — providing fuel for wetter and more dangerous storms. In the past 85 years, The Post found, the amount of water vapor moving through Earth’s atmosphere has increased 12 percent. That increase is equivalent to 35 Mississippi Rivers flowing through the air every second.” And what goes up must come down. But it doesn’t come down everywhere. A new WaPo(Gift Article) investigation reveals where climate change has supercharged the movement of moisture through the skies. Deadly rivers in the sky.
4
Ballpark Figures
“Baseball is but a game, glitter on dirt. It is three outs and four bases and nine innings (sometimes 18) and a bunch of millionaires grunting on your TV screen. It is a nice summer day, a hot dog and a few cold ones. It’s an expensive jersey that you didn’t need but bought anyway. And it is all, compared to the realities of life, completely trivial. It’s a beautiful distraction. Neither the actions nor the outcomes actually matter. In other words: It’s all only as important and as meaningful as it makes us feel. And on Saturday, this heavenly, cruel, perfectly imperfect sport sent any and all who interacted with World Series Game 7 through every emotion the human experience has to offer. Fans from Saskatchewan to Southern California, from Toronto to Tokyo, were held captive by the game’s wondrous, tortuous, addictive power. It was, in every way, the best baseball has to offer.” Game 7 took fans everywhere in an off-the-rails thrill ride.
+ Outside of LA (and maybe including it), no one was more thrilled than baseball fans in Japan.
+ “Barely 24 hours from the most important start of his life, Yoshinobu Yamamoto delivered one of the gutsiest, most improbable ironman performances that the World Series has ever seen.” The Dodgers Ace Who Made World Series History. (It was positively Bumgarner-esque.)
+ “Saturday’s Game 7 World Series loss isn’t the kind that fades. It embeds itself into a city’s—or, in this case, an entire country’s—sporting memory. It will fester and linger not just in the hours and days that follow, but in the years and decades that stretch beyond it.” The 2025 Blue Jays Will Live Forever in the Land of the Almost. (If it makes them feel any better, Giants fans feel just as bad, which is why this is probably as good a time as any to remind you that Wilmer checked his swing.)
5
Extra, Extra
A Bleak Sequel: “The first time Darfur tipped into chaos, there was at least some degree of Western pressure. This time, there’s little celebrity activism or political attention, and impunity for abuses is rife.” NYT (Gift Article): A Massacre Unfolding in Sudan. “The fighters rampaging across Darfur are armed, organized and funded better than ever. And they are backed by one of the wealthiest countries in the wider region, the United Arab Emirates, which is also a close partner of the United States. (The Emirates has denied backing either side in the conflict.) Then, fighters rode mainly on horses and camels; today, they drive armored vehicles and pickups. Before, they torched villages; now, they fire heavy artillery and fly sophisticated drones.”
+ Trill Seekers: “Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud unit has signed a $38 billion deal to supply a slice of OpenAI’s bottomless demand for computing power. Amazon shares jumped.” These deals are constantly being announced and they always boost stock prices. But so far, OpenAI is on the hook to invest about $1.4 trillion into chips and data centers. That sounds like a lot. Meanwhile, Anthropic warns that AI is showing signs of introspection. (At least then we’ll be able to tell it apart from humans...)
+ Take 48.7 Billion of These... In terrestrial deals, Kimberly-Clark is buying Tylenol maker Kenvue in a cash and stock deal worth about $48.7 billion. (I’m sure the administration’s attacks on Tylenol won’t end up being at all related to this deal...)
+ Say It Don’t Pay It: “Employees of nonprofit organizations that work with undocumented immigrants, provide gender transition care for minors or engage in public protests will have a hard time getting their federal student loans forgiven under regulations advanced Thursday by the Education Department.”
+ Who Dat? During his latest 60 Minutes interview, Trump explained that he has no idea who Binance founder Changpeng Zhao is, despite pardoning the billionaire founder of the cryptocurrency exchange like a week ago. If you’ve got the stomach for it, you can read the full transcript of Norah O’Donnell’s interview with President Trump. If you want a slightly (but just slightly) shorter read, you can just read the falsehoods.
+ Big Head Toddler and the Monsters: “The republic will not fall because Vice President J. D. Vance has decided that swearing is edgy, and the juvenility of American public life did not begin with the Trump administration. But the larger danger under all of this nastiness is that President Donald Trump and his courtiers are using crass deflection and gleeful immaturity as means of numbing society and wearing down its resistance to all kinds of depredations, including cor