<![CDATA[David Weir’s Newsletter]]>https://davidweir.substack.comhttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Sg7V!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4e19f7d4-c05f-4eba-8301-938f5ac13c9c_360x360.pngDavid Weir’s Newsletterhttps://davidweir.substack.comSubstackSun, 12 Jul 2026 08:55:59 GMT<![CDATA[It's All in the Telling]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/its-all-in-the-tellinghttps://davidweir.substack.com/p/its-all-in-the-tellingSat, 11 Jul 2026 13:33:35 GMT

Over the years, I’ve developed a fondness for the singer Norah Jones, the soulfully exotic way she sings, and her large lovely dark eyes that always seem to convey wisdom beyond her years (she’s now 47).

But I never did the basic homework to understand her family roots. When I finally did, it turned out she is the daughter of the great Indian sitar master Ravi Shankar, who had such an enormous influence on George Harrison and the Beatles that it spread out to all the rest of us in the western world.

Her birth name was Geethali Norah Jones Shankar.

So that helps explain a few things. She is gifted at solo performances but she really comes alive in duets with just about anybody. Via YouTube I’ve seen her perform with Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Dolly Parton, Bonnie Raitt, Tony Bennett, John Mayer, Wynton Marsalis, and many more, but maybe my personal favorite is when she performed “Love Hurts” with Keith Richards.

I don’t know how to categorize her singing -- jazz, rock, country, folk -- but I’m not sure that matters, because in my mind she’ll always be that person who could have stolen any show if she chose to but instead helped others to shine.

That is how it goes in life and work -- collaborators and partners invariably accomplish more together than they ever would have alone.

And for those who like Jones as much as I do, check out the one movie she starred in -- “My Blueberry Nights,” a 2007 romance directed by Wong Kar-wai, and co-starring an all-star cast of Jude Law, David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz, and Natalie Portman.

One of my favorite parts of the film concerns two lovable (and frustrating) addicts she meets on the road — an alcoholic and a gambler. Rarely have I seen addicts portrayed with a more honest human touch than in this gem of a film.

The soundtrack is also great, including a song Jones wrote called “The Story.” And this is one story that has a happy ending.

HEADLINES:

  • Trump trades threats with Iran’s leader as mediators struggle to save talks (Al Jazeera)

  • Trump reiterates that ceasefire is over, but says U.S. to continue negotiating (CBS)

  • US demands Iran publicly state that Strait of Hormuz is open and Tehran won't attack ships anymore (AP)

  • Iran’s Supreme Leader Remains Absent, a Void at the Top of the Regime (NYT)

  • Trump’s Forever War Is Finally Here (TNR)

  • Aftermath: War’s On (American Prospect)

  • Quills and conflict: How protection in the Strait of Hormuz is bought and sold (CNN)

  • Times Journalists Subpoenaed as Trump Escalates Pressure on Media (NYT)

  • Trump ousts election commission members in latest push to reshape US voting process (AP)

  • Bipartisan Housing Bill Becomes Law Even Though Trump Refuses to Sign It (NYT)

  • What we know about the Houston ICE shooting (NBC)

  • Migrants who saw man killed by ICE in Houston say he did not ram officers (WP)

  • Platner formally withdraws from Maine Senate race and Democrats announce process to name new nominee (AP)

  • ‘No one planned for this’: The rapidly-evolving 18-day primary to replace Platner (Politico)

  • The Supreme Court has ruled: One jury shouldn’t write the nation’s warning labels (The Hill)

  • Believe the Hype About Teen Takeovers (Atlantic)

  • Trump plan would fence Pennsylvania Avenue outside White House (WP)

  • Trump’s fake “convention” in Dallas will choose neither a candidate nor a platform, but state parties are charging thousands for the privilege of a floor seat. [HuffPost]

  • 8 men indicted in planned drone and sniper attack on White House UFC cage-fighting show (AP)

  • New Air Force One Lacks Defensive Countermeasures of Previous Model, Officials Say (NYT)

  • What to know about ‘explosive diarrhoea’ parasite outbreak in US (BBC)

  • Dozens hospitalized with cyclosporiasis as cases of gastrointestinal illness spike in 31 states (NBC)

  • At least eleven people have died and 19 are missing in one of Spain's deadliest wildfires (Reuters)

  • Anthropic found a hidden space where Claude puzzles over concepts (TR)

  • Haves, have-nots and know-nots: Inside AI’s new class divide (Axios)

  • China, Russia and Others Seek to Inflame Debate Over A.I. Data Centers (NYT)

  • How exposed is your job to AI? (SFC)

  • Apple Sues OpenAI, Accusing It of Stealing Company Secrets (NYT)

  • FIFA Admits It Has No Idea Why Soccer Players Walk Out On Field With Little Kids (Onion)

]]><![CDATA[Dance of the Narratives]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/dance-of-the-narratives-745https://davidweir.substack.com/p/dance-of-the-narratives-745Fri, 10 Jul 2026 13:24:41 GMTIn the old days, writers worked with photographers at newspapers and magazines to produce stories. Some editors seemed to expect the photographers to simply illustrate the stories told by the writers. But the better ones devised a different process with a richer outcome.

They saw that the visual and editorial narratives worked together more like interlocking vines, snaking in and out to produce a product much greater than the sum of its parts.

When we got the mixture right, there was an interactive chain that moved, much like how musical notes flow with words in a song.

And that’s true for good story-telling in any form.

The process becomes more complex when you move from the world of print into multimedia — radio, TV, and the movies. Now, the actual or mediated voices and images of people enter the space between you and your audience.

It’s easy to overdo it. Then the story becomes preachy or melodramatic like in a soap opera. Good editors know that in most cases, less is more. Just let the sounds and the pictures tell the story. Silences become magnified, which is useful on any level.

In the end, in any good story, what the teller leaves out, the listener will fill in.

HEADLINES:

  • U.S. and Iran Sink Into Violent Cycle After Latest Strikes (NYT)

  • How a push to disarm Hezbollah is deepening divisions in Lebanon and raising fears of civil war (AP)

  • U.S. intensifies strikes on Iran’s coast along Strait of Hormuz (WP)

  • Man fatally shot by ICE in Houston was not intended target, DHS says (BBC)

  • It’s not me, it’s them: Platner goes down snarling with graceless exit video (Guardian)

  • Who will replace Graham Platner on the Maine ballot? These Democrats are raising their hand (AP)

  • Trump targets Spain, NATO backs Ukraine: Is the alliance still united? (Al Jazeera)

  • U.S. Olympian David Hearn pleads not guilty to charges in Reflecting Pool vandalism case (NBC)

  • Trump ‘immediately’ asking US Supreme Court to reconsider birthright citizenship case (BBC)

  • Who Can Hold ICE Accountable? (Atlantic)

  • Losing in Ukraine, is Putin finally down to his nukes? (The Hill)

  • LGBTQ+ cruise ship refused entry to Egypt days after Turkey turned it away (Guardian)

  • Security Precaution Led Trump to Use Old Air Force One in Leaving Turkey (NYT)

  • Judges block Trump administration’s attempts to deny access to public service loan forgiveness to its perceived foes (The Conversation)

  • High earners are rushing to use this vacation-rental tax break (BI)

  • The secret to good questions (Economist)

  • Colombia's court on the conflict with FARC rebels in limbo as president-elect vows to dismantle it (AP)

  • China and Taiwan were bracing for possibly the most destructive tropical storm in years as Typhoon Bavi churned southeast of Taiwan, with winds near 124 mph, and as parts of China were still reeling from Typhoon Maysak. (Reuters)

  • ‘Hysteria’ Grips San Francisco’s Housing Market as A.I. Wealth Pours In (NYT)

  • News outlets urge a judge to sanction OpenAI in a high-stakes AI copyright fight (AP)

  • Can A.I. Keep a Parent Alive? (New Yorker)

  • National Opera Lays Off 200 Phantoms (Onion)

]]><![CDATA[Into the Future]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/into-the-futurehttps://davidweir.substack.com/p/into-the-futureThu, 09 Jul 2026 13:34:43 GMTStarting off the week, I spoke to a group of interns at the earliest stages of their careers in journalism. It is tempting on occasions like that to reminisce. After all, when I was their age, reporters smoked in newsrooms, had green lampshades, and composed their stories on manual typewriters.

But if interns want to know about that distant past stuff, they can read novels or watch old black-and-white movies. My agenda when spending time with them is to talk about their future.

And in that context there are two items in the news I’d recommend to anyone concerned with the future of work, both in the near-term when nobody drives any longer and robots dominate most workforces, and well beyond that.

The first item, courtesy of Martin Abraham in Malaysia is an article in Psychology Today titled “Humans Are Fast Evolving Into an Astonishing Lifeform” by Dr. Eric Haseltine.

According to this article:

  • We have entered an era of hyper-communication that may be rapidly changing the human species.

  • Evolutionary biology suggests we may be evolving into super-organisms that limit our individual autonomy.

  • Loss of autonomy has lead to recent social unrest from aggregations such as globalization and immigration.

As of 2025, young Americans aged 18-24 got an average of 109.5 texts per day, sent 40-50 themselves, checked their phones 46-74 times a day, and if they are teens got an average of 240 notifications a day from apps. Adults got an average of 117 professional emails a day.

All the rest of us averaged a third of the time we were awake glued to our electronic communications devices.

What this may be doing to us at home and work is the article’s focus.

***

The second recommendation I have about the future of work comes courtesy of John Jameson. It is an excellent half-hour interview by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now with journalist Karen Hao, who has written a new book called “Empire of AI.”

Hao finds examples of people around the world using AI in limited, positive ways and casts doubt on whether AGI (artificial general intelligence) is really imminently within our grasp.

She believes, as do other experts I’ve recommended on the topic, that under proper human control, AI tools will perform tasks in ways that will make the future not an apocalypse but a brighter place.

At least as a speaker (I’ve not yet read her book), Hao has an unusual ability to make AI accessible to the lay person. Plus the interview left me feeling much more hopeful about our future with robots.

We all need to know where our society is going, well beyond when we’re part of it. These articles offer some clues.

(This one is reprised from this week last year.)


HEADLINES:

]]><![CDATA[Relics]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/relics-c2ahttps://davidweir.substack.com/p/relics-c2aWed, 08 Jul 2026 14:46:06 GMT

Today I was thinking that I maybe should be in the salvage business -- rescuing the castoffs of this throwaway society, restoring them, and preserving them as artifacts.

I’ve been collecting things for at least half a century. Old bottles, coins, stamps, magazines, books, photos, postcards, baseball cards -- the list goes on — not to mention the memories they evoke.

Today’s find was this old portable typewriter -- the laptop of its time. I used to work on a machine like this, and in fact, I still had one until recently, when in a weaker moment I discarded it.

Thanks to one of my neighbors, it didn’t get far. And today, following the local custom of putting whatever you don’t want anymore out on the sidewalk for anyone passing by to claim, I now have retaken possession of this portable Remington.

It makes that old comforting sound that a century ago came from the open windows in Rudyard Kipling’s compound in India, as he pounded out his stories on tropical nights.

Or Conrad, Hemingway, Faulkner, all warm-weather writers, take your pick. For many decades, this was the sound of literature and the sound of journalism. Even as recently as the Watergate scandal of 1974, the signature film made of Woodward and Bernstein’s legendary reporting that ended Richard Nixon’s presidency, closes with a sequence of headlines typed on an old manual typewriter.

Relics. If I ever write a memoir, I should do it on this. On second thought, strike that, but its photo might make a good book cover.

(This is an excerpt from 2007.)

HEADLINES:

  • Trump says Iran ceasefire is ‘over,’ U.S. will ‘hit them hard tonight’ (CNBC)

  • Trump is playing with economic fire by calling the peace deal with Iran ‘over’ (CNN)

  • Midtown Manhattan buildings evacuated after columns found buckling at high-rise construction site (ABC)

  • Democrats Clash Over Who Replaces Platner Even Before He Exits (NYT)

  • Assault allegation rocks Platner’s Senate campaign, prompting Democrat to take ‘time to reflect’ (WP)

  • The Supreme Court Just Made It Easier for Presidents to Sabotage Their Successors (Slate)

  • More than 440,000 people became millionaires in the US last year (The Hill)

  • Trump is gaining surprising leverage over Iran (CNN)

  • The pastor who wants to repeal voting rights for women is becoming more mainstream (NPR)

  • Trump arrived in Ankara to join a closely watched NATO summit as the U.S. president has repeatedly trashed the military alliance. (HuffPost)

  • Wikipedia Is Battling for the Soul of the Internet (NYT)

  • Foreign Investment Rises, But Developing Countries Squeezed By AI Focus, Says UN (WSJ)

  • China Built Cheap AI. Now It’s Building a Great Wall Around It (Gizmodo)

  • How to stop ChatGPT from ruining how you think (WP)

  • Alibaba’s A.I. Is a Hit, but Hard to Turn Into a Moneymaker (NYT)

  • Report: Trump Made $1.4 Billion As President Off Selling Tupperware To Friends (Onion)

]]><![CDATA[Today's Biggest News]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/todays-biggest-newshttps://davidweir.substack.com/p/todays-biggest-newsTue, 07 Jul 2026 13:57:51 GMTDear Readers:

This morning there is the usual array of international news, national news, state news, regional news and local news I could report on or discuss.

But instead I have some happy personal news: A new grandson, Dean Nicholas Weir, 6 lb. 6 oz., joined us as of 9:45 pm July 5th!

This brings my number of grandchildren to nine —six boys and three girls, aged two days up to 19.

HEADLINES:

]]><![CDATA[The Past Is Not Enough]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/the-past-is-not-enoughhttps://davidweir.substack.com/p/the-past-is-not-enoughMon, 06 Jul 2026 14:24:44 GMTI’d gotten so used to talking through career plans and options with younger friends that it caught me off-guard when one of them asked me recently. “So what’s next for you?”

It’s easy to fall into a trap when you are in your late 70s and retired. The trap is assuming that whatever you did for a career ended when you collected your last paycheck.

And that you have essentially checked out for good.

The friend who asked me that question is half my age and in the middle of her career, which we’d been discussing over dinner.

But now she had turned the tables.

“I don’t know,” I stumbled. “I guess I’d still like to do something that matters — to write something that matters. Maybe a book.”

After dinner I thought about our exchange. What am I going to do with this time that is in a sense borrowed time? It’s a question that will take some of that time to answer.

HEADLINES:

]]><![CDATA[Sunday Mix]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/sunday-mix-0ebhttps://davidweir.substack.com/p/sunday-mix-0ebSun, 05 Jul 2026 13:56:28 GMTHEADLINES:

]]><![CDATA[Freedom of Spirit]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/freedom-of-spirithttps://davidweir.substack.com/p/freedom-of-spiritSat, 04 Jul 2026 14:44:20 GMT

Today is Independence Day, when we’re free to celebrate our opposition to the tyrant who oppresses us.

When we’re free to celebrate all those who have stood against this tyrant for over a decade now.

Happy Fourth of July.

Celebrate our resistance in every form it takes.

Join it going forward.

HEADLINES:

]]><![CDATA[Divided We Stand]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/divided-we-standhttps://davidweir.substack.com/p/divided-we-standFri, 03 Jul 2026 14:43:49 GMTSo it is finally here, or almost here. Tomorrow will mark our 250th birthday as a nation.

Some will attend public displays marking the Fourth of July. There will be hot dogs, beer, speeches and fireworks.

Some will stay home, where there will be hot dogs, beer, arguments and fireworks.

Trump will give another of his bloated, narcissistic excuses for a speech to “We the People,” the vast majority of whom oppose his actions to dramatically increase wealth disparity, halt progress on climate control mitigation, wage war on a variety of smaller, weaker countries, and alienate the U.S. from the rest of the world.

This year besides that semiquincentennial and all of its mixed messages, France will play a key game in the World Cup, this time in Philadelphia. There is enough historical symbolism in that to make my high school history teacher drool.

My French-American grandchildren are in Philadelphia this weekend for that game.

I’m here with the dog and the rabbit; none of us are fans of beer or fireworks. But we’ll celebrate the Fourth in our own ways.

They’ll be treats for the pets and the World Cup game for me.

I’ll be rooting for France.

HEADLINES:

  • Iran sends a defiant message to Trump with colossal funeral for slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (CNN)

  • Powerful Iranian general seen in public amid preparation for supreme leader’s vast funeral (NBC)

  • U.S. Dangles Rewards for Opening the Strait of Hormuz. Iran Isn’t Budging. (WSJ)

  • Iran warns of ‘forceful response’ if tankers don’t use approved Strait of Hormuz routes (The Hill)

  • The U.S. healthcare system is in crisis. A Supreme Court ruling could make things worse (NPR)

  • Postal Service’s proposed restrictions on mail-in voting blocked (The Hill)

  • Olympian Is Indicted After Arrest at Washington’s Reflecting Pool (NYT)

  • Trump wants to ditch his signature trade deal. It’s not that easy (CNN)

  • Why the expected fight over the North American trade deal never kicked off (BBC)

  • F.B.I. Assigns Scores of Analysts to Examine Election Records in Georgia (NYT)

  • Following High-Court Victory, Bayer Separates Roundup Business (WSJ)

  • The Unprecedented Profiteering Revealed by Donald Trump’s Financial Disclosure (New Yorker)

  • Ross Gerber Says Trump’s $1 Billion Crypto Windfall Is Why ‘Bitcoin Went Down and Isn’t Going Anywhere’ (Benzinga)

  • Trump’s wealth grew on a scale without modern presidential precedent (WP)

  • June jobs report: US payrolls rose by 57,000, missing expectations (Yahoo)

  • Russia Bombards Ukrainian Capital With Deadly Wave of Attacks (NYT)

  • Catholic Church says 6 bishops from ultra-conservative SSPX society excommunicated as decades-old feud reopens (CBS)

  • California Bans ‘Sell By’ Labels, Hoping to Cut Food Waste (NYT)

  • Onetime MAGA loyalist and staunch Trump supporter Tucker Carlson has announced his next move in the wake of his messy breakup with the GOP. [HuffPost]

  • 4 surprising (and evidence-based) health benefits of drinking coffee (WP)

  • Elon Musk says AI is the only way to fix the $40 trillion U.S. debt crisis—but a new study says even the most optimistic scenario won’t fill the hole (Fortune)

  • Can You Embrace A.I. Without Layoffs? This Company Says It’s Trying. (NYT)

  • Agriculture Department Puts Trump’s Face On Soybeans (Onion)

]]><![CDATA[Trump's Party of One]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/trumps-party-of-onehttps://davidweir.substack.com/p/trumps-party-of-oneThu, 02 Jul 2026 13:58:38 GMTThat “other” war is heating up, the one Trump thought he could end in a day but that has instead dragged on for years now. Russia has lost a staggering number of troops, an estimated 450,000, with up a million others injured.

Ukraine has shown remarkable ingenuity despite heavy casualties of its own. It’s become in one sense of war of drones, which carries significant implications for the future of war everywhere.

And as the conflict in the Middle East also continues to simmer, Trump is back to one of his obsessions — worrying about crowd size. He is preparing his speech for the Fourth of July, two days from now.

But with temperatures in Washington, D.C., soaring to near 100 degrees, it’s uncertain how big his MAGA crowd will be. Or how much the rest of the world will be listening, either.

HEADLINES:

  • Explosions Rock Ukraine’s Capital (NYT)

  • Kyiv attacks death toll rises to 20 as Russia warns it will ‘continue to increase pressure’ on Ukrainian capital (Guardian)

  • Russia launches massive strike on Ukraine as Poland scrambles jets, Finland restricts airspace (CNBC)

  • Bloodier than Stalingrad: Number of casualties in Russia’s war on Ukraine reaches 2 million (CNN)

  • How severe is Russia’s energy shortage because of Ukrainian strikes? (Al Jazeera)

  • Trump refuses to renew USMCA trade pact, toppling one of the last pillars of stability in global trade (NBC)

  • Trump’s Anti-Patriotic Trap (Atlantic)

  • Trump Takes Maiden Flight on Qatari-Gifted Air Force One (WSJ)

  • ‘Technical’ talks under way in Doha as Tehran demands action (Al Jazeera)

  • Iran’s top negotiator says country ready for war as peace talks inch along (CBS)

  • Trump ‘livid’ over crowd size at National Mall state fair, report says: ‘Who thought this was a good idea?’ (Independent)

  • U.S. auto industry faces increased uncertainty without extension of USMCA trade deal (CNBC)

  • The divided Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship decision exposes sharp rifts among justices (AP)

  • The Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship ruling hands the U.S. economy a $7.7 trillion win (Fortune)

  • Immigrant Arrests Surge to 10,000 in 5 Days as ICE Clamps Down (NYT)

  • ICE’s arrest of nun heading to church fuels bipartisan backlash in South Texas (WP)

  • Everything to know about Trump’s student loan overhaul (BI)

  • Modern neuroscience is rediscovering an idea Freud had 130 years ago (ScienceDaily)

  • In the United States, Every World Cup Team Is a Home Team (NYT)

  • The price tag behind Taylor Swift’s rumored wedding bash at Madison Square Garden (CNN)

  • Two People Climb Needle of Empire State Building (NYT)

  • They built the world’s most powerful AI. They’re facing a mystery they can’t explain. (WP)

  • UN launches “AI for Good” commission (Axios)

  • Harvard Faces Pressure To Fire Confederate Generals (Onion)

]]><![CDATA[White House Inc.]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/white-house-inchttps://davidweir.substack.com/p/white-house-incWed, 01 Jul 2026 13:33:58 GMTThe pay-as-you-play Trump administration is making the President and his family very rich.

The Post reports: “President Donald Trump’s reported income soared to more than $2.2 billion in 2025, as the president took in more than $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency, digital tokens and related partnerships, according to his latest financial disclosure forms."

“The 2025 disclosure includes $635 million in royalties from a license agreement with Celebration Coins; at least $525 million in proceeds from token sales by World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency project founded by Trump and his sons; $65 million in proceeds from World Liberty Financial’s equity sale; and $196 million in net proceeds from a stablecoin transaction.”

From the Times: (N)ever before in American history has there been anything like Donald J. Trump, a president who in his first year back in office has collected about $1.4 billion in new revenues from cryptocurrency businesses that directly benefited from his actions as president.

“Presidential historians said they could identify no other president in American history who entered into new business enterprises just before moving into the White House, and then continued to personally profit from them during his term.”

Indeed, in our 250 years as a republic, we have never seen corruption on this scale at the White House. It is pure, unapologetic greed.

Meanwhile, for the rest of us, grocery prices keep going up, home ownership has become an unreachable dream for our children, and AI is replacing them in the workforce increasingly controlled by billionaires like Trump.

Is there any wonder why Democratic Socialists are starting to win elections across the land?

HEADLINES:

  • Trump’s income topped $2 billion in 2025, boosted by crypto, coin ventures (WP)

  • Trump’s Moneymaking Run: Unrivaled in Presidential History (NYT)

  • Speaker Johnson abandons floor agenda, sends members home early amid GOP rebellion (CNN)

  • Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, rejecting Trump’s proposed limits (AP)

  • Poll: Americans split on whether being U.S.-born is important for being ‘truly American’ (NBC)

  • Supreme court rules states can exclude trans athletes from female sports (Guardian)

  • Supreme Court strikes down coordinated campaign spending limits (CBS)

  • Left-Wing Insurgent Ousts 15-Term Congresswoman in Colorado (NYT)

  • Iran’s leverage over Strait of Hormuz snarls Trump’s push for a deal (WP)

  • US envoys in Doha to meet mediators but not Iranians, Qatar says (BBC)

  • Trump’s Obsession With Executive Power Will Cost Him (Bulwark)

  • Inside the Great American State Fair’s carnival of contrasts (Axios)

  • Trump now ‘hates’ his own trade deal. But he’ll have a hard time killing it. (Politico)

  • Venezuela’s earthquakes are a somber warning for US preparedness (The Hill)

  • Putin Faces Increased Pressure as Moscow Is Again Attacked by Drones (NYT)

  • As war stalls, Putin concedes he never cut a deal with Trump in Alaska (WP)

  • Melania Trump calls for US to support both transgender athletes ban, LGBTQ+ rights (The Hill)

  • LeBron James to play record 24th NBA season, but not with Lakers (NYT)

  • ‘Humanity has chosen to become idiots’: This Brown professor switched to take-home exams after a mass shooting and discovered mass cheating (Fortune)

  • How A.I. Is Changing the Way Politicians Run for Office (NYT)

  • Delivery Robots Abandon College Campuses Like A Failed Military Occupation (Jalopnik)

  • A chess grandmaster on what AI visionaries don’t understand (WP)

  • We’re Only Starting to Grasp the Pitfalls of Using A.I. at Work (NYT)

  • Supreme Court Upholds Temporal Gerrymander That Would Cost Democrats 1932 Election (Onion)

]]><![CDATA[Almost Real]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/almost-realhttps://davidweir.substack.com/p/almost-realTue, 30 Jun 2026 13:53:43 GMTThe world’s problems lie just below the surface of the conviviality of the World Cup but that is one aspect that makes the global competition meaningful.

For example, as Morocco defeated the Netherlands yesterday, its team featured three Moroccan-Dutch players who grew up in the Netherlands but competed for the team of their parents, as opposed to that of their citizenship.

Racist comments on the Dutch side reported before the game suggested that those three were not good enough to play for the Netherlands team.

The Morroccans answered on the pitch, winning an exciting match on shootouts.

Many of the athletes at the World Cup have roots in more than one country and somehow they have made the choice of which country to represent, which national anthem to sing, which fans to embrace.

It’s almost if they have to find a way to compete against themselves, at least partially, and in that there might be a lesson for all of us.

HEADLINES:

]]><![CDATA[What Future, CNN?]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/what-future-cnnhttps://davidweir.substack.com/p/what-future-cnnMon, 29 Jun 2026 13:56:42 GMTBack in 2013, media critic Brian Stelter published a book “Top of the Morning,” that was later adapted into the dramatic 2019 television series, “The Morning Show.”

These days, Stelter appears as an occasional guest on CNN as part of that network’s attempt to cover another drama — the ownership change that has thrown its future into doubt.

Tech billionaire David Ellison, a close buddy of Donald Trump, is close to completing the merger that would bring CNN under his control.

The much smaller and less profitable CBS already is controlled by Ellison and the result has been disastrous, from a journalistic perspective.

But there is far more at stake wit CNN than simply the survival of a media company. More than any other network, CNN has provided critical, consistent, accurate coverage of the Trump era — much to Trump’s dismay.

According to the New York Times, “Mr. Ellison has not publicly detailed what he has in store for CNN. But the network’s newsroom is wary of his conspicuous coziness with Mr. Trump and the prospect that he may assign some oversight of CNN to Bari Weiss, his pick to run CBS News after he bought Paramount last year.

“Anderson Cooper, the channel’s biggest star, has told colleagues at CNN that he does not want to work for Ms. Weiss, two people familiar with his remarks said. Mr. Cooper, who overlapped with Ms. Weiss at CBS as a correspondent at “60 Minutes,” left that show this spring after 20 years.

“As the merger approaches, the 18th-floor Manhattan office of Amy Entelis, the CNN executive in charge of on-air talent, has turned into something of a psychiatrist’s couch for anchors and correspondents, who often drop in to air their anxieties about the looming changes.”

What is at stake here, of course, is not only whether CNN will remain free to accurately report on Trump’s push for authoritarian power.

It is freedom of the press, one of our few tools for stopping this existential threat to our democracy.

HEADLINES:

]]><![CDATA[Democracy]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/democracyhttps://davidweir.substack.com/p/democracySun, 28 Jun 2026 14:02:47 GMT

HEADLINES:

]]><![CDATA[A Biblical Dispute]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/a-biblical-disputehttps://davidweir.substack.com/p/a-biblical-disputeSat, 27 Jun 2026 14:32:18 GMTAuthorities in Texas have voted to require that the Bible be taught in schools. They’ve already forced educators to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

As far as the Bible as a textbook is concerned, it contains lots of stories. Some are well told, others less so. There is a great deal of redundancy.

The stories are anecdotal in nature, as the authors provide little in the way of documentation. From a journalistic perspective, you could say the book would benefit from a strong edit.

But all of that said, I think it is generally a good thing for everyone to know about the stories in the Bible and their meaning. It is an essential part of Judeo-Christian history, and therefore critical for understanding how we got from there to here.

Students need to be capable of critical thinking before taking on this task. High school or college would be the ideal place to study the Bible, I believe, not elementary school as in Texas.

And the problem with the Texas approach is that it blurs, if not violates the separation of church and state, which is a cornerstone of our democracy.

Politically, the Texas initiative is part of a conservative push to suppress religious diversity and impose a form of Christian nationalism on everybody.

“Kids of all faith backgrounds and no faith are served by Texas schools and they should all feel welcome in Texas schools,” said Elva Mendoza, legislative communications associate for the progressive Texas Freedom Network. “But this is sending the message to children that one and only one religious text — a Christian one — is worthy of making this required reading list.”

Ultimately, the legality of the Texas approach will probably be decided by the courts.

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]]><![CDATA[Friday Mix]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/friday-mix-390https://davidweir.substack.com/p/friday-mix-390Fri, 26 Jun 2026 14:05:32 GMTHEADLINES:

]]><![CDATA[Land of Immigrants]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/land-of-immigrantshttps://davidweir.substack.com/p/land-of-immigrantsThu, 25 Jun 2026 15:21:24 GMTThey come from every corner of the world, carrying flags and whistles, banners and bells.

They’re wearing the jerseys of their heroes and they are here to cheer them on with songs and chants and wild celebrations when they score goals and win games.

They are livening up our bars and restaurants. They turn up at baseball games, looking slightly out of place.

For the most part, they are good-natured and curious about Americans.

They wonder how we can be led by a man like Trump, who stokes fear about foreigners and spreads rumors about Haitians eating our pets. (Meanwhile, the actual Haitians rooting for their heroes could not be more delightful guests.)

Welcome to America, land of contradictions. Where the Supreme Court sided with Trump today to stop those coming not in joy, but in desperation, at our borders.

Go elsewhere, they said.

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]]><![CDATA[All News Is Local]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/all-news-is-local-b31https://davidweir.substack.com/p/all-news-is-local-b31Wed, 24 Jun 2026 14:34:42 GMTSome news stories are national and some are international in scope. Some news stories are regional and some are state. But think about it — all news is local.

Take the green algae in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. It may be receiving national, even international coverage but it is a local story for Washington, D.C. and hyperlocal to the Washington Mall.

Every story has to start somewhere.

Which brings me to my friends at Local NEWS Network, headquartered in Durango, Colorado. LNN has recently launched its redesigned websites serving small towns across the U.S.

You can check out the Durango site or watch the LNN.news Overview Video. You also can read my essay from a year ago about the importance of small town news.

***

Many people now realize that the closure of small-town newspapers has created a vast news desert covering virtually all of rural America. And that this has had dire consequences, in the form of conspiracy theories, lies and misinformation.

While it may be a stretch to claim this has led directly to the rise of MAGA, the lack of vibrant small-town journalism certainly has been a contributing factor.

Among the various efforts to do something about this problem, many take a national, non-profit, top-down approach, whereas the Local NEWS Network, based in Durango, CO, takes a local, for-profit, bottom-up approach. Through its digital network, LNN delivers local news and local advertising to communities that otherwise would be part of the news desert.

This week, LNN’s Laurie Sigillito published an article on LinkedIn titled “Advertising in Small Towns: It’s About Trust, Not Clicks.”

In it, she says: “Attempts to introduce advertising-supported digital media in small towns and rural areas hit up against the reality that the metrics used to measure effectiveness nationally—impressions, CTRs and programmatic segmentation—are all optimized for dense urban markets.”

Meanwhile, she continues, “What actually works in small towns is visibility. You need to be seen by everyone, not just target segments. Neighbors talk to neighbors and word gets around town organically.”

Her article pinpoints the main business reason national efforts to succeed in small towns fail more often than succeed. “Our conclusion is that national ad tools don’t work in small towns. The goal here is not more data, it’s more connection. Rural advertising should feel more like a handshake than a sales funnel—personal, human, and built to last.”

I’ve thought about the news desert problem a lot and have concluded that to re-establish media in localized settings, we need to address the business plan first, then get to the question of content,

LNN does that.

***

Nieman reports that local news sites across the country are in trouble because people are “abandoning them for social media.”

By basing its content in video, LNN may be able to counter this trend. LNN is built to scale.

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]]><![CDATA[Getting Wired.6]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/getting-wired6https://davidweir.substack.com/p/getting-wired6Tue, 23 Jun 2026 15:00:59 GMTIn the autumn of 1997, along with the arrival of cooler weather and light rain in San Francisco came the final plans for a house-cleaning at Wired Inc. The in-house coup d’é·tat would result in the removal of scores of people, including the founders Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe.

In their stead, the company was going to be dismantled and sold off in pieces. The founders would be rewarded with a fair amount of compensation for their efforts, so they would be “fine.” Not so much everyone else.

Near the top of the hit list was my name. The very fact that made me irreplaceable in the old order — my relationship with Louis — made me all too disposable in the new one.

So, on a late afternoon when the sun was going down to the west, suddenly and strangely there were no further meetings on my calendar. It was wide open. Then I was summoned to Louis’s office.

I walked in to see three people waiting, none of smiling. Just three senior execs stiff and grim in manner. I was thanked for my service, given a small severance check, and summarily dismissed.

Louis was one of the three and he looked immensely sad. But he had nothing to say. This was not of his doing. And that, I suppose, is the end of my story at Wired.

Unlike many of the other difficult transitions in my life, I had prepared myself emotionally as much as possible for this one. I’d packed up my family pictures and prepared my goodbye message. But as I drove away from 660 Third Street, I realized you can't really prepare yourself for losing something you love.

EPILOGUE

Perhaps the most significant accomplishment during my tenure on Third Street was Wired News, which survived the purge in 1997 and exists to this day.

And in one of life’s strange ironic twists, my oldest daughter, who would soon become an award-winning journalist herself, worked as as an intern at Wired News during the first decade of the new millennium.

Apparently none of her colleagues knew that her father had been one of the executives involved in creating their company or what that experience had been like.

Many years later, now that our society has become divided by conspiracy theories, fake news and social media demagogues, I remember how hard in the 1990s a few of us tried to prevent that outcome.

I’d be less than truthful if I said we fully anticipated how bad the media collapse would turn out to be. We saw the danger signs, but we could not imagine the world as it’s turned out to be.

The problem is once the old media world — like Humpty Dumpty — teetered and fell off of the great digital wall of the Internet and burst into a thousand pieces, how could we ever put it together again?

The answer is, sadly, I don’t know how we can.

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]]><![CDATA[Getting Wired.5]]>https://davidweir.substack.com/p/getting-wired5-201https://davidweir.substack.com/p/getting-wired5-201Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:21:37 GMTIn 1996 at the corporate level of Wired Inc., big plans were afoot. Louis Rossetto and the leadership wanted to take the company public and cash in like the dot.com entrepreneurs the magazine celebrated, so they put together an all-star cast of VC’s to do it. But when they first tried in the summer of that year, a temporary hiccup in the stock market for red-hot tech stocks caused them to withdraw the offer.

Later in the year a second try at an IPO failed as well, which was a much more serious signal that trouble lay ahead. But by then I was too busy managing our scores of workers and our emergence as a viable web-based media company to give it more than a passing thought.

On the industrial level, we were becoming extremely proficient not only at launching new websites, but building production systems to push out our voluminous flows of content. Publishing stories on the web required a series of editorial and technical steps by staff members with different skills and this all had to be done by hand. (Automated platforms like Wordpress didn’t appear until years later.)

So we had to devise our own process that ushered each piece through the various stages of production quickly and efficiently until it was ready to go live.

One of those steps be fact-checking. Among our numerous correspondents was a young fellow named Matt Drudge in L.A., who seemed to have his finger on the pulse of rumors circulating around Hollywood and Washington D.C. But we discovered many of his reports required serious fact-checking before we could publish them.

(Very soon one of Drudge’s rumors would almost take down President Clinton.)

The traditional production schedule of a daily or a weekly print outlet simply couldn’t work for us since we were able to publish pretty much anytime we wished, which was all the time. This was the dawn of the 24-hour news cycle, which had just been ushered in by the O.J. Simpson murder trial and the maturing of cable TV, but there were no real news industry standards yet for how to manage organizations on the web facing this kind of “always-on” reality.

That meant that some of us at the top had to be always-on as well.

Looking for advice, I started to meet with a handful of other Bay Area executives pondering similar workflow problems at CNET, Knight-Ridder, Yahoo, @Home and others.

The specific website issues were basic ones: How to position banner ads, display color-coded links, indicate sponsored content and the like. Some of the folks in our ad-hoc group went on to help form the nonprofit Online News Association in 1999.

Meanwhile, throughout 1996 and the first half of 1997, Wired was aggressively entering into new partnerships and business deals. The global news service Reuters embedded a personable editor named Dick Satran in our newsroom as we negotiated a deal to distribute our digital news globally.

This was a major development. Now the Wired brand could circle the globe like the Associated Press with a strong technology focus. We felt we could quickly take ownership over this new content space. That was an external goal we set for ourselves.

Internally, in order to rationalize the chaotic jumble of sub-brands into a cohesive whole, we decided to rebrand the entire enterprise Wired Digital, with one main product called Wired News. Our prior identity as HotWired would have to hit the dust. This was a logical but difficult decision that required all of my skill managing up to convince Louis that it was the right thing to do.

In the aftermath of the failed IPOs, Louis had become somewhat isolated from the senior execs on the digital side, so they asked me to convince him of the branding change, since he and I continued to have our spirited weekly discussions as always.

Plus I fully supported the change myself; HotWired seemed dated by then.

Louis didn’t like the idea, but I worked with him and eventually he came around to it.

As part of this transition, we had to sell off some of our popular but less brand-relevant properties, notably the successful alt-health channel “Ask Dr. Weil,” edited by Steven Petrow. We sold it to Time Inc., which led to a personal reunion for me with Time senior executive Dan Okrent, an old colleague from The Michigan Daily days (1966-9).

As I showed Okrent around our shop, we compared notes on our separate journeys since college through competing media worlds -- him at the pinnacle of the traditional media world in New York; me at the bleeding edge of new media world in San Francisco.

We both knew our worlds were colliding head-on in real time; neither of us knew which one, if either, would prevail.

In order to fill out the staff for Wired News, we hired a few experienced editors to provide guidance to the younger staff members, since few of the latter had actually attended journalism school or spent time at newspapers, magazines or broadcast media companies. What I hoped was that we would create a blend of the old and the new that preserved journalistic standards while breaking new ground.

And we did break stories, for example by revealing clues in the html coding behind the website of the Heaven’s Gate cult about why 40 of them committed mass suicide in San Diego in 1997.

But during the spring and summer of 1997, despite our best efforts on the digital side, dark storm clouds were beginning to appear on Wired Inc.’s horizon. The failed IPOs had undermined confidence in Louis’s leadership and an ambitious set of younger execs had been moved by outside investors into positions of influence inside the company.

They began plotting a coup.

Aware of these rumblings for management change, I chose to double down on my loyalty to Louis and his vision; especially because my dozens of young staff members were literally pouring their hearts out building a new media company according to that vision -- one where their own dreams might also have a fighting chance to come true.

This was all probably going to be ending badly for me, I began to realize, but it wouldn’t be the first or the last time for that to happen. Besides, loyalty to the person who had believed in me and given me the freedom to build a successful product called Wired News was the right thing to do — for me, for him and for my staff.

In any event, the hourglass was quickly running out.

(To be continued.)

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