'Get Them All'

Why are WA farmers blindsided by an ICE crackdown?

It looks like farmers are starting to have some buyer’s remorse.

“ICE raids rattle Washington farmers who backed Trump’s immigration promises,” read one headline.

“A Republican farmer relies on immigrant work. He sees his party erasing it,” read another.

Randy Kraght is one such farmer. He runs a berry farm in Ferndale, in far northwest Washington, close to the Canadian border. Recently he emerged on a radio show in Bellingham, called “The Farming Show,” to tell how immigration agents had nabbed two of his longtime workers and sent them to the Tacoma detention facility.

“They’re my two main guys, unfortunately,” he said on KGMI on March 28. “Really good guys. Squeaky clean. Don’t drink. Not even a traffic ticket, none of that stuff.

“That’s why I didn’t worry too much about it, this whole crackdown thing,” he added. “All of a sudden you come to find out you’re wrong.”

Kraght said he had believed rhetoric from the Trump administration that it was targeting criminals, not workers. He said as a right-winger himself who backed Donald Trump — in 2020 he also gave $500 to the Loren Culp for governor campaign — that he’s “ended up really disappointed.”

What should those of us who are not farmers make of stories like this?

The crowd on social media was not sympathetic.

“You voted for this,” said one. “Haul your butt out there and work the fields yourself.”

“You just thought Trump would hurt other people,” said another.

“What did you think ‘mass deportation’ meant?” asked a third.

That last one was my reaction as well. At the GOP convention in 2024 the delegates waved “Mass Deportation Now!” signs. Trump pledged “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” Rally crowds chanted “send them home, send them home.”

It couldn’t have been clearer, could it?

Trump also talked of deporting up to 20 million people, which is thought to be more than 100% of all the people in the country illegally. It’s true Trump has also emphasized removing “the worst of the worst.” But he has canceled past directives that ordered ICE to focus its enforcement on criminals.

“He wanted mass deportation, rather than targeted deportation,” summed up the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute.

The director of a local farming advocacy group told me he thinks it’s unfair to say farmers should have known better.

“I don’t think farmers are simply cherry-picking what they want to hear,” said Ben Tindall, executive director of Save Family Farming in Whatcom County. “They have been told repeatedly that the workers on their farms who have been with them for years are not the targets.

“While Trump may have promoted one narrative at times during his campaign, what farmers and Americans more broadly have been told over and over and over again this past year and a half is something very different.”

A Tri-City Herald editorial decrying recent arrests on farms in Central Washington made a similar case.

“On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump said that immigration enforcement would primarily target undocumented immigrants who had committed violent crimes,” the paper wrote. “In practice, ICE has cast a wide net, capturing anyone who lacks the right papers and even some who have them.”

That’s not what I heard. On the campaign trail, Trump said immigrants in the country illegally were “poisoning the blood of our country.” He put that in writing. He wasn’t talking just about people with criminal records. Being in the country illegally isn’t a crime by itself anyway; it’s a civil violation, like a traffic ticket.

A year before the 2024 election, in November 2023, the media outlined what Trump planned to do. “Sweeping raids, giant camps and mass deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 immigration plans,” The New York Times reported.

Did people not hear this — are we all in information silos? Did they not expect it to happen?

Or did they rationalize it, as the commenter up above said, as something that would only happen to others. You’d think farmers who employ undocumented immigrants would be less prone to this empathy deficit, if for no other reason than immigration is central to their business interests.

Or maybe this is one of those instances where some people take Trump literally, while others process the gist.

Recently the Trump administration’s border czar, Tom Homan, appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference and discussed this exact issue.

“I see there’s a lot of language out there that President Trump’s backing off on mass deportation,” Homan said. “No, he’s not … The Biden administration, he told ICE you can’t arrest an illegal alien unless he’s convicted of a serious offense. President Trump says, ‘Get all. Get them all.’ And that’s what we’re doing.”

There’s not much wiggle room in “get them all.”

Immigration arrests in Washington state are up 73% through the first 14 months of Trump’s term. Less than half had any criminal record or charge. Some were following green card or asylum rules and got detained anyway. A national analysis this past week found that arrests of people without criminal records is up eightfold.

It seems completely predictable that any mass deportation scheme will increasingly snatch up the “squeaky clean,” as farmer Kraght described his workers.

The second-guessing of this farmer, and others who suddenly are speaking out, is human nature.

Some empathy is called for as well.

Farming is in a tough spot right now, with tariffs and energy prices soaring. Tindall of Save Family Farming said adding immigration raids on top of all that, without any effort at reform of the system with permits or legal pathways, is threatening the farm system and potentially the food supply. As well as the due process rights of migrant workers and their families — something “farm owners have become deeply concerned about.”

Farm country is Trump country. It can’t be comfortable for this group, or this farmer, to cross that red line. Farmer Kraght didn’t have to tell his story or acknowledge being wrong. Or to suggest some of his workers were undocumented, a reality farmers sometimes gloss over.

Political change comes in many ways, from small gatherings in living rooms to mass street protests. This is one of the ways, when one by one, the scales begin to fall from people’s eyes.

by Danny Westneat, Seattle Times |  Read more:

Image: Matt Rourke / The Associated Press

[ed. At least those annual farm subsidies will help. Except for workers that'll lose an entire season's pay.]

Francisco Rodríguez, Private Nightmares
via:

via:

[ed. Tehran]

Tragedy and the Common Man

In this age few tragedies are written. It has often been held that the lack is due to a paucity of heroes among us, or else that modern man has had the blood drawn out of his organs of belief by the skepticism of science, and the heroic attack on life cannot feed on an attitude of reserve and circumspection. For one reason or another, we are often held to be below tragedy-or tragedy above us. The inevitable conclusion is, of course, that the tragic mode is archaic, fit only for the very highly placed, the kings or the kingly, and where this admission is not made in so many words it is most often implied.

I believe that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were. On the face of it this ought to be obvious in the light of modern psychiatry, which bases its analysis upon classific formulations, such as Oedipus and Orestes complexes, for instances, which were enacted by royal beings, but which apply to everyone in similar emotional situations.

More simply, when the question of tragedy in art is not at issue, we never hesitate to attribute to the well-placed and the exalted the very same mental processes as the lowly. And finally, if the exaltation of tragic action were truly a property of the high-bred character alone, it is inconceivable that the mass of mankind should cherish tragedy above all other forms, let alone be capable of understanding it.

As a general rule, to which there may be exceptions unknown to me, I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing-his sense of personal dignity. From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his "rightful" position in his society.

Sometimes he is one who has been displaced from it, sometimes one who seeks to attain it for the first time, but the fateful wound from which the inevitable events spiral is the wound of indignity and its dominant force is indignation. Tragedy, then, is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly.

In the sense of having been initiated by the hero himself, the tale always reveals what has been called his "tragic flaw," a failing that is not peculiar to grand or elevated characters. Nor is it necessarily a weakness. The flaw, or crack in the characters, is really nothing - and need be nothing, but his inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status. Only the passive, only those who accept their lot without active retaliation, are "flawless." Most of us are in that category.

But there are among us today, as there always have been, those who act against the scheme of things that degrades them, and in the process of action everything we have accepted out of fear of insensitivity or ignorance is shaken before us and examined, and from this total onslaught by an individual against the seemingly stable cosmos surrounding us - from this total examination of the "unchangeable" environment-comes the terror and the fear that is classically associated with tragedy. More important, from this total questioning of what has previously been unquestioned, we learn. And such a process is not beyond the common man. In revolutions around the world, these past thirty years, he has demonstrated again and again this inner dynamic of all tragedy. [...]

The quality in such plays that does shake us, however, derives from the underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in this world. Among us today this fear is strong, and perhaps stronger, than it ever was. In fact, it is the common man who knows this fear best.

Now, if it is true that tragedy is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly, his destruction in the attempt posits a wrong or an evil in his environment. And this is precisely the morality of tragedy and its lesson. The discovery of the moral law, which is what the enlightenment of tragedy consists of, is not the discovery of some abstract or metaphysical quantity.

The tragic right is a condition of life, a condition in which the human personality is able to flower and realize itself. The wrong is the condition which suppresses man, perverts the flowing out of his love and creative instinct. Tragedy enlightens - and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy of man's freedom. The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies. In no way is the common man debarred from such thoughts or such actions.

Seen in this light, our lack of tragedy may be partially accounted for by the turn which modern literature has taken toward the purely psychiatric view of life, or the purely sociological. If all our miseries, our indignities, are born and bred within our minds, then all action, let alone the heroic action, is obviously impossible.

And if society alone is responsible for the cramping of our lives, then the protagonist must needs be so pure and faultless as to force us to deny his validity as a character. From neither of these views can tragedy derive, simply because neither represents a balanced concept of life. Above all else, tragedy requires the finest appreciation by the writer of cause and effect.

No tragedy can therefore come about when its author fears to question absolutely everything, when he regards any institution, habit or custom as being either everlasting, immutable or inevitable. In the tragic view the need of man to wholly realize himself is the only fixed star, and whatever it is that hedges his nature and lowers it is ripe for attack and examination. Which is not to say that tragedy must preach revolution.

The Greeks could probe the very heavenly origin of their ways and return to confirm the rightness of laws. And Job could face God in anger, demanding his right and end in submission. But for a moment everything is in suspension, nothing is accepted, and in this sketching and tearing apart of the cosmos, in the very action of so doing, the character gains "size," the tragic stature which is spuriously attached to the royal or the high born in our minds. The commonest of men may take on that stature to the extent of his willingness to throw all he has into the contest, the battle to secure his rightful place in the world.

There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism. Even the dictionary says nothing more about the word than that it means a story with a sad or unhappy ending. This impression is so firmly fixed that I almost hesitate to claim that in truth tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and that its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker's brightest opinions of the human animal.

For, if it is true to say that in essence the tragic hero is intent upon claiming his whole due as a personality, and if this struggle must be total and without reservation, then it automatically demonstrates the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity.

The possibility of victory must be there in tragedy. Where pathos rules, where pathos is finally derived, a character has fought a battle he could not possibly have won. The pathetic is achieved when the protagonist is, by virtue of his witlessness, his insensitivity, or the very air he gives off, incapable of grappling with a much superior force.

Pathos truly is the mode for the pessimist. But tragedy requires a nicer balance between what is possible and what is impossible. And it is curious, although edifying, that the plays we revere, century after century, are the tragedies. In them, and in them alone, lies the belief-optimistic, if you will, in the perfectibility of man.

It is time, I think, that we who are without kings, took up this bright thread of our history and followed it to the only place it can possibly lead in our time - the heart and spirit of the average man.

by Arthur Miller, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Laurie Metcalf and Nathan Lane in “Death of a Salesman”. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

[ed. See also: A Cold, Perfect ‘Death of a Salesman’ for Our Time (NY Times).]

Iran War: Negotiations Fail; US Provokes with Destroyer Entry into Strait, Possible Next Kinetic Moves

The US/Iran talks failed, predictably but perhaps faster than expected. Recall that a pause misleadingly called a ceasefire was set for two week to allow for settlement of disagreements and an end to the conflict. The session ended with JD Vance claiming that the US had made its “final and best offer.” There was no indication from either the US or Iran side that further discussion was in the works.

The two sides had a ginormous chasm between their positions. Iran had not reason to either trust the US or make large concessions. The badly-enbubbled US leadership seems to believe one or both of two things. First, that the US has won and/or is winning, so (in a variant of “the Russians are running out of weapons”) if they can keep pressure on, Iran will soon fall into a heap. Second, that the continuation of the conflict will benefit key interest groups aligned with the Administration, such as fossil fuel players, defense contractors, and Silicon Valley. The latter view is as nutty as the first. As the wags say, the cure for high oil prices is high oil prices. They eventually kill economic activity and lead to low oil prices. The futures market expects that, with longer-dated contracts trading more in line with old normal prices.

We’ll turn first to the recaps and hot takes on what happened, and then look at why failure was predictable and what happens next.

The talks lasted 21 hours. Recall Iran had set a one-day limit. Iran in a show of seriousness sent a massive team, including technical, military, security and banking experts. This was likely intended to stand in contrast to the lightweights America dispatched.

"We are disappointed with how US behaved. Netanyahu's call to Vance during the meeting shifted the focus from US-Iran negotiations to Israel's interests. The U.S. tried to achieve at the negotiating table what it could not achieve through war. We came here with good faith, the press conference by Vance before he left Pakistan was unnecessary, we are committed & prepared to safeguard our nation's interest and sovereignty"- Iran FM Seyed Abbas Araghchi

First, the US position is that Iran would not accept its terms, strongly implying that the US did not intend to negotiate. Vance depicts the main sticking points as Iran refusing to commit never to build a nuclear weapon. That is code for no enrichment, even for medical purposes, a position Iran has consistently rejected.

Second, you may have noticed that Vance by implication saying Iran had to negotiate from the US position amounted to a disagreement over process, or what in Vietnam War negotiations was called the shape of the table. Iran had repeatedly maintained that it had preconditions for negotiation, such as the return of all of its frozen assets, an end to hostilities on all Middle East fronts, and acceptance of its sovereign control over the Strait of Hormuz. The Vance framing indicates that the US puts its fingers in its ears and said, “Nyah nyah nyah” to Iran’s procedural requirements.

You’ll see in the Aljazeera segment a bizarre amount of cope about how the negotiations might restart later. IMHO this is impossible absent big and undeniable changes in facts on the ground, and/or regime change in Israel or the US.

Iran quickly made clear why the interaction went nowhere. The Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman cited an atmosphere of mistrust…

The Speaker of the Parliament, MB Ghalibaf, similarly said, “…the opposing side ultimately failed to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation in this round of negotiations.””

It looks as if, true to form, the Trump Team was unable to contain its bad impulses. It engaged in a show of macho by sending two destroyers to the Strait of Hormuz while the talks were underway. More on this soon, but the US predictably tried making noise about the vessels getting through the Strait of Hormuz, when this was in fact a bad-faith action. Iran would not shoot as the ship as it normally would absent the pow-wow. Instead, parties in Iran contacted their negotiators. They informed the US side that if the destroyer did not exit in 30 minutes, it would be attacked. It beat a retreat.

Larry Johnson provides additional intel in Trump Refuses Exit Ramp, War with Iran will Continue:

As I expected, the negotiation between the US and Iran failed to reach an agreement. Although JD Vance headed the US team, he was never in control… I have heard from someone who was directly involved with this circus in Islamabad that Israeli agents — Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — made certain that JD Vance would not follow his instincts and accept the deal that Iran had laid on the table. Israel’s role in sabotaging the US delegation was evident in Vance’s statement announcing the failure of the negotiations, when he falsely accused Iran of refusing to give up its alleged quest for a nuclear weapon. This is just a rehashed piece of Zionist propaganda.

There were three Iranian conditions that the US refused to accept: Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz, an end to Israel’s attack on Lebanon and Hezbollah, unfreezing of Iran’s assets and retaining sovereignty over its supply of enriched uranium. I have said repeatedly this past week during various interviews on the subject that Iran’s position on these issues was non-negotiable.

Here is the statement just released by the Iranian government:

The American enemy, which is vile, wicked and dishonest — attempted to achieve on the negotiating table what it could not achieve through war.

Among these demands are handing over enriched uranium and opening the Strait of Hormuz without confirmed Iranian sovereignty over it.

Iran has decided to reject these terms and continue the sacred defense of its fatherland by any means necessary, military or diplomatic.’

Reports from the Iranian side suggest an additional layer of spin via the focus on the “nuclear weapsons” issue, that of the US refusal to pressure Israel to halt attacks on Lebanon was a big no-go for them...

It was also clear, via the provocation as the talks were on of the US trying to send a destroyer through the Strait of Hormuz. The US propagandists make much of the claim that it “got through”. This sort of dick-wagging in fact reveals the weakness of the US position, that it is desperate to score what it can present as wins to hide its fundamental defeat.

Patrick Henningsen, in a discussion before the talks broke down, describes why he was confident they would fail.... [video]

There’s a lot of important insight here, so I urge you to listen to the entire segment. Henningsen says the Iranians did not seem to think an agreement was possible but nevertheless treated the process seriously to show they were a “normative power”. He describes Trump’s terrible track record as a negotiator and that he, Witkoff and Kushner seem unable to conduct themselves in a way that fosters productive long-term relationships. And aside from the posture of the Trump Team, Israel stood ready to sabotage any deal. Henningsen aligns with Alastair Crooke in seeing the US and Israel as trying to stoke civil war in Lebanon.

Nima cites a CNN report that China has been arming Iran. Henningsen believes China like Russia has been preparing for the worst.

Max Blumenthal, in a discussion with Glenn Diesen, effectively dashes any hope of what Joe Kent described as the only hope for an early-ish end of the Iran war, that of the US cutting Israel loose. Blumenthal describes long form the deep ties between Trump and the Zionists, going back to his father Fred Trump. Blumenthal lists many figures in Trump’s inner circle, some of whom may not be familiar to readers, as well as his family’s investment in a network of Zionist influencers. [video]

In another valuable exchange, Alastair Crooke tells Chris Hedges that the Iranians view the ceasefire as what they would call a hudna (which seems even more provisional) and offers some key high-level observations. [video]

From a mildly cleaned-up machine transcript starting at 9:25:

Crooke: I mean in a nutshell the objectives of Iran are to blow blow up the existing paradigm. That is a revolutionary objective, to blow it up completely, in order that they can escape if you like from the cage in which they’ve been held for 48 years of surrounded by US military forces, besieged by tariffs, by restrictions, UN resolutions, political isolation, economic, cultural if you like boycott. So this is what they are trying to break out from break out. It’s not the same cage that the Hamas and the Palestinians are in in Gaza, which is a literal fence and drones and monitoring of it. But Iran is intent on breaking the paradigm and the key to breaking that paradigm of course is the Hormuz and their control over the Hormuz which is um the uh centerpiece of their strategic objectives.

And at 12:20:

Crooke: Iran doesn’t have air dominance but instead of which they have created missile dominance overthe airspace um of the whole region and including Israel Um the damage to their missile capabilities has been grossly overstated by the old tactic of just counting, this goes back to Vietnam, counting air strikes. And one of the things that has been most notable in this period is before the war, Iran bought from China a huge number of decoys, decoy planes, decoy missiles. And one of the things um not only are they very effective in their appearance, but I didn’t know until recently is they have a heat source in them. So they are hot. And so of course that shows up on the American sensors and the Israeli sensors as a real target, a real plane, a real missile um when it’s really only a decoy.

Crooke also describes how the underground missiles operate, the Iranian demand that GCC states expel major US corporations like Microsoft if they are to have a relationship with Iran, and Israel’s objectives in Lebanon.

by Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism |  Read more:

Image: X

[ed. Includes a number of videos. Updated today with some discussion of a proposed naval blockade. Here.]

Masters 2026: Unforgettable Moments Walking a Harrowing Back Nine with Rory McIlroy

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Rory McIlroy raised his arms in the air. And so did I. The defending champion Masters defended reclaimed his green jacket and did it in dramatic fashion on the back nine Sunday. Attending the tournament for the first time in 10 years, I knew I had to get out and watch it and I’m glad I did.

Having walked every hole of the back nine with McIlroy as he posted his one-under 71 for a one-shot victory over Scottie Scheffler, here are five observations about the back-to-back champ

How Rory’s walk has changed

When a 21-year-old McIlroy built a four-shot lead after 54 holes at the 2011 Masters, he bounced around Augusta National. Long, curly, dark hair coming out from under his Jumeriah-sponsored cap, his walk was quick, youthful and energetic. Fast forward 15 years and the man and that walk have evolved.

Weekend rounds at Augusta are slow. As I arrived at the ninth green Sunday, in front of the Augusta National clubhouse, it was 4:35 p.m. Just a few feet to my left, on the 18th green, McIlroy would go on to win the tournament at 6:55 p.m. It took the final group nearly 2 1/2 hours to play the back nine, on perhaps the hottest day in Augusta, Ga.,, this year.

I was struck by just how slow Rory’s walk was. Down to the green on 10, back to the tee on 13, across the bridge on 15, he wasn’t bouncing. He was pacing himself. Literally. He spoke throughout the 2025 Masters about how he and Bob Rotella, a famous golf psychologist, had worked on a mindset of “staying in a bubble”, focusing on himself and controlling what he could control.

A year later, it was more of the same.

On the 13th hole, McIlroy slowed to a stop. Standing in the fairway for about three or four minutes. Not as his ball in the fairway, back near the tee. Just him and Harry Diamond, his caddie, waiting. I was confused. I could see two balls near where I was standing but begin wondering if Cameron Young had hit a provisional ball. I asked a couple of fans if they had seen what happened. They were as confused as I was.

“I don't know what had happened,” McIlroy said after the round, “but Cam was pulled in behind the hedges by a couple of referees to talk about something that may or may not have happened on the course.”

It’s unclear what went on with Young in that moment, but it is clear how Rory handled it.

“I thought, instead of me getting up there and waiting at my ball forever, I'd just hang back until Cam came back out. I don't really like that second shot anyway, so I don't need to be up there looking at it for too long. So I just tried to hang back … you know, just so I could get to the ball and go through my normal routine and not be waiting up there for what I would feel like is forever.”

He paced himself. All day, but especially on the back nine. And was clear to all down at Amen Corner. [...]

The shot that may define 2026 Rory

As I arrived at Amen Corner, I positioned myself to the right of the 12th tee. With a good view of the 11th green, I watched as McIlroy made a crucial par putt from six feet to remain one shot ahead. He walked onto the 12th tee with with his caddie to a standing applause. Many patrons removed their hats, holding them in the air and cheering as the leader arrived on their stage. Young then followed, to a similar, albeit less exuberant, ovation.

The wind wasn’t strong but it was as strong as it had been all day. The flag on the 11th hole was barely moving but the 12th flag, 155 yards away, was dancing back and forth. Diamond, stood next to Rory, signalled an 11 o’clock wind direction. They had a brief conversation and pulled 9-iron. Then the wind gusted. Rory backed off and Harry stepped forward. Not towards his boss but further down the tee, attempting to get a better feel for what the wind was doing and throwing grass in the air at the end of the tee box. The information was relied to McIlroy and he settled into his routine. Not rushed, but brisk.

We watched as he hit a sawed-off fade with his 9-iron, the same shot he had practiced late on Saturday night on the range. Often you’ll hear a player talk to their ball when it’s in the air, especially on par 3s, but Rory said nothing. Dozens of patrons shouted, nearly everyone of them in admiration as the ball flew towards the bunker, fading ever so slightly towards the right pin position. It landed, both with a thud and a huge cheer from the crowd, and released out to seven feet.

It will be the shot that many will say won him the green jacket. What is undeniable is that it won the closest-to-the-pin contest there on Sunday. No one, none of the other 53 players who teed it up in the final round, hit it closer.

There is no prize for that. But he’ll settle for another green jacket.

The sneeze that could have changed it all

After McIlroy rolled in his putt for birdie on 12, I moved about 100 yards towards the 13th hole, taking a spot just past the trees that line the right side of the fairway. McIlroy’s ball, amazingly having missed that tee shot well right in the opening three rounds, landed just a few feet away, barely on the fairway. He was two shots clear of the field and now in the “go zone” on the par five.

Every hole is lined with fans that place their seats early in the morning with the plan to return to those seats when the leaders come through. I stood probably three rows back from those chairs, always looking for relatively short fans to stand behind. I’m 6-foot-3 and height is an advantage in these situations.

McIlroy arrived at his ball, surveyed the shot with his caddy, and pulled an 8-iron out of his bag. A good swing here and the Northern Irishman would have one arm in the green jacket. Waggle. Look. Waggle. Look. Achoo. The teenage kid in front of me sneezed. McIlroy heard and backed off his shot, resetting with his caddy and going back through his routine.

Luckily, for all involved, McIlroy avoided the same watery fate that bestowed him here 12 months ago. His ball landed on the green and released just over the back.

“I’m so f****** glad he didn’t go in the water” said the kid. His dad appeared to agree.

by Jamie Kennedy, Golf Digest |  Read more:

Image: J.D. Cuban

[ed. A real nail-biter. In the end he had every golfer's dream - a two-inch putt to win the Masters. Yay, Rory! The years have added a lot of grit to his game. See also: In the post-Tiger Woods era, Rory McIlroy is the lion golf needs (The Athletic). Then, on the other end of the spectrum, you have what golf doesn't need: Sergio Garcia damages Masters tee box with his driver.]

Masters: 4/12/2026

[ed. Masters Sunday!]

Masters 2026: Sometimes golf needs to be told to go to hell

Golf is supposed to be a gentleman's game, a polite handshake between competitor and course. In reality it’s a hostage negotiation. We try to maintain our composure, but this sport operates like a bad contract with fine print you didn't read — every clause designed to remind you that the house always wins. Other sports at least pretend to be fair. You can outwork a defender, wear down a pitcher, grind an opponent into submission. Golf offers no such recourse. What it delivers, you take.

The toll of that arrangement is real. Every bad break deposits something into an account you can't access, pressure building in increments so small you barely notice until you realize the damage on the statement. Expecting players to absorb that indefinitely without some kind of release is fantasy. These are obsessive competitors who have organized their entire lives around a game that sets an impossible bar and then moves it. Perfection is the expectation and failure the guarantee.

Which is why the release, when it comes, makes a strange kind of sense. A perfectly deployed expletive, the kind that arrives with equal parts exhaustion and clarity, can work like a pressure valve, the emotional equivalent of opening a window in a stuffy room. And there is something cathartic about watching a club meet its end after a particularly unforgivable betrayal, a brief and satisfying severance of a relationship that clearly wasn't working. These aren't ugly moments. They're honest ones. Reminders that no matter how much money is on the line or how many people are watching, nobody has actually figured out how to make peace with this game.

What's maybe more compelling than the outbursts themselves is how reliably we seek them out. There's a recognition factor at work. The sudden collapse of the professional facade revealing something deeply familiar underneath, like running into a coworker at the grocery store and realizing they also have no idea what they're doing. These are the best players in the world, and when the wheels come off, they look exactly like the rest of us: bewildered, aggrieved, and entirely convinced the game is cheating. 

by Joel Beall, Golf Digest |  Read more:

Images: J.D. Cuban/Adam Glanzman

[ed. Factoid of the day (because, of course... it's the Masters):]

***

Every April, Augusta, Ga., transforms and becomes one of the most sought-after destinations in the world.

Masters week is an economic bonanza for residents. And for the homeowners who open their doors? Well, often it's the best investment they've ever made. A home less than three miles from Augusta National rents for $30,000, and the premium end? They command six figures.

The best part … every dollar these homeowners earn is likely tax-free thanks to a provision in the federal tax code called the "Augusta Rule." Allowing homeowners to rent out their property for up to 14 days a year without paying a cent in income tax on the earnings.

Accepting Wallace

David Foster Wallace was a genius, now let me convince you to read him.

It was a dark day for literature when David Foster Wallace took his life in 2008, at the age of 46. Wallace was hands-down the most talented American writer of his generation. Arguably he was one of the most striking and original prose stylists of the past century. And yet he’s never really been a household name, unless you live in an unusually highbrow household. He had enormous gifts, but an equally enormous propensity to get in his own way. Maybe that’s why America’s Wallace industry has been busier since his death than it was during his life. The man himself is no longer around to impose his artistic standards, which were both fanatically strict and strangely self-sabotaging.

In his lifetime Wallace published two novels, three story collections, and two volumes of non-fiction, along with sundry minor works. Since his death, his oeuvre has gone on growing. In 2009, his publishers had a hit with This is Water, a jazzed-up version of a commencement address Wallace delivered in 2005. The Pale King, the big unfinished novel he was working on at the time of his death, was published in 2011. A volume of previously uncollected essays appeared in 2012. So did D. T. Max’s biography, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story. In 2015 Jason Segel played Wallace in the movie The End of the Tour.

The latest addition to the Wallace canon is a hundred-page novella called Something to Do with Paying Attention. Actually, the text of the book isn’t new. Readers who made it past the middle of The Pale King – admittedly not a large cohort – will find they’ve read this novella before. It first appeared as The Pale King’s 22nd chapter, in the form of a memoir composed by one of that novel’s countless narrators.

Now it’s been re-issued as a stand-alone book, in a bid to solve a perennial Wallace problem: that of providing newcomers with a way into his work. “For someone who has never read Wallace,” the book’s publisher, Sarah McNally, writes in her preface, “this little book … is a perfect place to start.”

I’m not sure McNally is right about that. Removed from the bustling context of The Pale King, the story feels like an uncharacteristically minor-key performance. Newbies who start here are liable to wonder what all the fuss is about.

Still, McNally is right to feel that Wallace’s reputation is due for a booster shot. This is doubly true in Australia, where Wallace is criminally under-appreciated. His books have never sold well here, and this new one doesn’t even have an Aussie distributor.

If this novella isn’t the perfect introduction to Wallace, then what is? The awkward fact, which McNally hints at but doesn’t dare to mention aloud, is that Wallace never produced a wholly satisfactory book. Unfortunately, he wasn’t his own best critic or curator. He had a maddening tendency to barricade his gorgeous prose behind needless entanglements of textual barbed wire.

This has always presented his fans with a challenge. If you love his stuff – as I do – then how do you spread the word about it? Even his best books can’t be recommended without a caveat or two: read this bit, but don’t hesitate to skip or skim that one.

What makes the Wallace problem so vexing is that his best stuff really was incredibly good. When he was on song, Wallace produced sentences that made his most gifted contemporaries feel like quitting on the spot.

Here he is covering a tennis match between Pete Sampras and Mark Philippoussis. “Sampras, poor-postured and chestless, smiling shyly at the ground, his powder-blue shorts swimming down around his knees, looks a little like a kid wearing his father’s clothes.”

How’s that for a word-picture? And how’s this for a cruel but fair evocation of The Poo? “The malevolent but cyborgian Philippoussis hasn’t betrayed anything like an actual facial expression yet.” Between points he likes to “dance a little in place – perhaps to remind himself that he can indeed move if he needs to.”

Wallace’s journalism showcased his superb ability to register the world in front of his eyes. In the best passages of his fiction, he did something even trickier. In the same deft style, he registered the world inside his head. He could catch a thought in flight. Here’s one of the narrators of The Pale King, sitting on an infernally hot bus:

The sun began shortly to broil the bus’s rear and port side. The air-conditioning was more like a vague gesture toward the abstract idea of air-conditioning. There was a horrific piece of graffiti incised with knife or leather punch in the plastic of the seatback in front of me, which I looked at twice and then made a point of never looking directly at again. The bus had a lavatory in the wayback rear, which no one ever made any attempt to use, and I remember consciously deciding to trust that the passengers had good reason for not using it instead of venturing in and discovering that reason for myself.

Notice how the sentence about the feeble air-conditioning can hardly be bothered being a proper sentence. Wallace’s very syntax feels heat-affected. And notice how the narrator doesn’t just not look at the graffito again. He makes a point of not looking at it again. This is how thought moves, and Wallace had a supreme ability to follow its twists and turns in language.

The word genius isn’t out of place for Wallace. He could go on like this for page after page, spraying out jaw-dropping sentences seemingly at will. His intelligence was vast, and his writing let you all the way into it. His verbal talent was on a par with James Joyce’s. But he was a Joyce for our time. His best prose was slangy, hyper-modern, tech-savvy, and laugh-out-loud funny.

Alas, Wallace had something else in common with Joyce. Maybe because he could produce breathtaking prose without really trying, he also felt a restless urge to overegg the pudding, by conducting formal experiments that seemed positively designed to shut readers out. “Just how much reader-annoyance are you shooting for here exactly?” said his sister Amy, when vetting one of Wallace’s manuscripts. This is the lingering question about Wallace. What was the deal with the reader-annoyance?

One answer is that he lacked discipline. The guy just didn’t know how to stop himself. His best-known novel, Infinite Jest, was 1100 pages long, and included a hundred pages of minutely printed endnotes. As Max reveals in his biography, the novel’s draft was 600 pages longer. Wallace’s editor had to fight him tooth and nail to reduce the book to the width of a mere housebrick.

Wallace’s running battles with editors are a motif of Max’s biography. When commissioned to write magazine articles, Wallace routinely handed in unfeasibly massive, manically brilliant drafts that were as long as small books, and riddled with post-modern interpolations (subheadings, upside-down text, footnotes, footnotes to footnotes).

“The biggest challenge to editing Dave’s non-fiction,” said one of his editors, “was in striking a balance between the magazine’s needs and his instinctual impulse to not give a f--- about the magazine’s needs.” [...]

Wallace was a complicated man whose life was darkened by the shadows of depression and addiction. His friend and fellow novelist Jonathan Franzen called him “a lifelong prisoner on the island of himself”. Writing fiction, Franzen said, “was his way off the island”, his way of connecting with others.

But after years of wrestling with The Pale King, Wallace became desperately blocked – “bored with his old tricks”, as Franzen put it, “and unable to muster enough excitement about his new novel to find a way forward with it”. Far from getting him off the island, his convoluted final book left him comprehensively marooned.

While Wallace was alive, one barracked for him to produce the masterpiece that would do full justice to his talents. Now that he’s gone, we must make do with his existing works and reconcile ourselves to the fact that his excesses were part of his essence. Without the reader-annoyance, Wallace wouldn’t be Wallace.

by David Free, Sydney Morning Herald |  Read more:

Image: Alarmy

[ed. A bit dated but still relevant (ie. high annoyance factor but well worth it). As for a good starting point:]

***

"As for the best place to start, I think the answer lies in his non-fiction. Try his scintillating essay about a bad luxury cruise, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, which appears in the collection of the same name. If that doesn’t make you fall in love with Wallace, nothing will."

[ed. More here: 25 Great Articles and Essays by David Foster Wallace (Electric Typwriter). Like this one: F/X Porn (about Terminator movies).]

Gil Scott-Heron

[ed. Welcome home Artemis II. Safe and sound. See also: NASA Announces Plan To Put Moon On Mars By 2040]

April 7, 2026

At 5:06 this morning, President Donald J. Trump posted on social media: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen,

but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!”

Trump has painted himself into a corner in his impulsive war against Iran. His job approval is dismal and Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil travels, is sending the cost of oil soaring, squeezing the global economy. Always in his life he has had someone to fix his mistakes—his father, Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, the “adults in the room” in his first administration who distracted him from catastrophic errors, and so on—but no one was willing to bail him out of the global disaster of his war on Iran.

So he threatened that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” an open threat to push his current embrace of war crimes all the way to genocide. No one knew if he was gearing up for a ground invasion of Iran in a war that has never received congressional authorization, or a massive bombing campaign, or even the use of nuclear weapons.

Or if he was making yet another empty threat.

Within the announcement were signs that perhaps it was bluster designed to let him claim victory and walk away. Despite his claim, there has been no “regime change” in Iran: the regime is very much still in place, although it has changed leadership in the wake of the bombing deaths of previous leaders. The new leaders appear to be more radical than their predecessors.

There was also the unmistakable echo of television advertising in his announcement. Either “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” or “maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”

At 6:32 this evening, we learned that the horrifying announcement of the morning was, indeed, cover for Trump to declare victory and get out of the crisis he has caused in the Middle East.

Trump posted: “Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE! The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East.

“We received a 10 point proposal from Iran,” Trump continued, “and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate. Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated. On behalf of the United States of America, as President, and also representing the Countries of the Middle East, it is an Honor to have this Longterm problem close to resolution. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Michael Rios of CNN reported that Iran’s media is claiming it has achieved a great victory, forcing the U.S. to agree in principle to its 10-point plan, which includes the end of sanctions against Iran, the removal of all U.S. combat forces from bases in the region, and Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz. If these terms are correct, they leave the United States significantly worse off than it was before the war and leave Iran significantly stronger.

Trump called Rios’s story a fraud, and immediately sought to reassert his strength. He posted, “Authorities are looking to determine whether or not a crime was committed on the issuance of the Fake CNN World Statement,” and said that “CNN is being ordered to immediately withdraw this Statement with full apologies for their, as usual, terrible ‘reporting.’”

Political commentator Ben Rhodes summed up the situation: “In the best case scenario, Trump struck a deal to reopen a Strait that was open before the pointless war he started, with [Iran] demonstrating its control over the Strait and potentially extracting fees plus sanctions relief. Thousands of innocents—including hundreds of children—dead in Lebanon and Iran for no reason. U.S. troops killed and wounded. U.S. embassies and bases in the Middle East badly damaged. U.S. standing in the world obliterated. U.S. munitions badly depleted. Hundreds of billions spent. Prices up everywhere. More global economic fallout to come. Putin strengthened and enriched. Just a catastrophic situation even in the best of circumstances. A profoundly shameful episode in American history no matter what happens next.”

And then, a minute after midnight, Trump posted:

“A big day for World Peace! Iran wants it to happen, they’ve had enough! Likewise, so has everyone else! The United States of America will be helping with the traffic buildup in the Strait of Hormuz. There will be lots of positive action! Big money will be made. Iran can start the reconstruction process. We’ll be loading up with supplies of all kinds, and just ‘hangin’ around’ in order to make sure that everything goes well. I feel confident that it will. Just like we are experiencing in the U.S., this could be the Golden Age of the Middle East!!! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Journalist Aaron Rupar of Public Notice wrote: “Trump went from making insane genocidal threats this morning to hyping the ‘golden age’ of Iran hours later, and he received no concessions in between. He’s an absolute basket case who needs to be removed from power before he follows through on one of his mass murder fantasies.”

The American people spent the whole day wondering if their mad king would destroy the world, only to find out he was terrorizing them in order to protect his ego after starting a disastrous war. Throughout the day, Democratic members of Congress have called for Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to recall the Senate and for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to recall the House of Representatives from break to end the war in Iran and start the process of removing Trump from office.

Trump’s threat that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” was not just a reference to Iran. If he had destroyed Iran in our names, unhampered by the Republican Congress members who have vowed to defend the U.S. Constitution, it would also have been an epitaph for the United States of America.

by Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American |  Read more:

A Hard Night's Day

On April 8, 1865, General Ulysses S. Grant was having a hard night.

His army had been harrying Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s for days, and Grant knew it was only a question of time before Lee had to surrender. The people in the Virginia countryside were starving, and Lee’s army was melting away. Just that morning a Confederate colonel had thrown himself on Grant’s mercy after realizing that he was the only man in his entire regiment who had not already abandoned the cause. But while Grant had twice asked Lee to surrender, Lee still insisted his men could fight on.

So on the night of April 8, Grant retired to bed in a Virginia farmhouse, dirty, tired, and miserable with a migraine. He spent the night “bathing my feet in hot water and mustard, and putting mustard plasters on my wrists and the back part of my neck, hoping to be cured by morning.” It didn’t work. When morning came, Grant pulled on his clothes from the day before and rode out to the head of his column with his head throbbing.

As he rode, an escort arrived with a note from Lee requesting an interview for the purpose of surrendering his Army of Northern Virginia. “When the officer reached me I was still suffering with the sick headache,” Grant recalled, “but the instant I saw the contents of the note I was cured.”

The two men met in the home of Wilmer McLean in the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Lee had dressed grandly for the occasion in a brand new general’s uniform, carrying a dress sword; Grant wore simply the “rough garb” of a private with the shoulder straps of a lieutenant general.

But the images of the wealthy, noble South and the humble North hid a very different reality. As soon as the papers were signed, Lee told Grant his men were starving and asked if the Union general could provide the Confederates with rations. Grant didn’t hesitate. “Certainly,” he responded, before asking how many men needed food. He took Lee’s answer—“about twenty-five thousand”—in stride, telling the general that “he could have...all the provisions wanted.”

By spring 1865, the Confederates who had ridden off to war four years before boasting that their wealthy aristocrats would beat the North’s moneygrubbing shopkeepers in a single battle were broken and starving, while the Union army, backed by a booming industrial economy, could provide rations for twenty-five thousand men on a moment’s notice.

The Civil War was won not by the dashing sons of wealthy planters, but by men like Grant, who dragged himself out of his blankets and pulled a dirty soldier’s uniform over his pounding head on an April morning because he knew he had to get up and get to work.

by Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American |  Read more:

Notes: U.S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1885), volume 2, chapter 67, “Negotiations at Appomattox,”

The Plea

A.I. Logic

via: The Onion

[ed. See also: Anyone Else Have Those Weird Dreams Where Sobbing Future Generations Beg You To Change Course? ~ Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI

Shining a Harsh Light on Our New Tech Overlords

[ed. A followup to the New Yorker's Sam Altman profile posted here previously, which should definitely be a Pulitzer prize candidate. Why people continue to trust obvious liars - from politicians to tech bros... to anyone actually, is beyond me. Probably just the obvious endpoint to the vicious capitalistic system we live in now where winner takes all, whatever the methods or consequences. We're all NPCs now.]

I don’t—thankfully—have to follow every statement that Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, makes about the world. Many of these statements seem more like “hustles” or “pitches” than attempts to speak thoughtfully about the future. Even if they are genuine statements of belief, they often read like a teenager’s first sci-fi novel, written under the influence of weed and way too much Star Trek.

Consider, for instance, Altman’s blog post “A Gentle Singularity,” published last year and read by nearly 600,000 people. Its central thesis seems to be that AI is all upside; everything has been great so far, and everything will be even greater in the future! I mean, just wait until we build robots that we can shove these AIs into—then tell those robots to go make more robots.

If we have to make the first million humanoid robots the old-fashioned way, but then they can operate the entire supply chain—digging and refining minerals, driving trucks, running factories, etc.—to build more robots, which can build more chip fabrication facilities, data centers, etc, then the rate of progress will obviously be quite different.

Everything is getting better; indeed, it’s getting better faster thanks to “self-reinforcing loops” like this. Downsides? Trick question! There aren’t any real downsides because people get used to things. Quickly. Just listen to how great it’s gonna be:

The rate of technological progress will keep accelerating, and it will continue to be the case that people are capable of adapting to almost anything. There will be very hard parts like whole classes of jobs going away, but on the other hand the world will be getting so much richer so quickly that we’ll be able to seriously entertain new policy ideas we never could before. We probably won’t adopt a new social contract all at once, but when we look back in a few decades, the gradual changes will have amounted to something big.

If history is any guide, we will figure out new things to do and new things to want, and assimilate new tools quickly (job change after the industrial revolution is a good recent example). Expectations will go up, but capabilities will go up equally quickly, and we’ll all get better stuff. We will build ever-more-wonderful things for each other.

Perhaps you have looked around at the world recently and wondered whether building “ever-more-wonderful things for each other” is actually a good description of what you are seeing.

But any niggles you might have—questions about the insane violence of the post-Industrial Revolution world, for instance, or whether “better stuff” is even the solution to many human problems—barely need to be addressed in Altman’s world. The future’s so bright we need to wear (AI-powered) shades!

(This simplistic attitude is shockingly common among smart Silicon Valley types. Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist and Netscape co-founder, wrote an infamous 2023 essay in the same “No downsides!” vein. It was stuffed with non-ironic statements like “We had a problem of isolation, so we invented the Internet.” It featured the genre’s Randian fetishization of “the great technologists and industrialists who came before us,” some Nietzsche quotes, and of course howlers like “We are not primitives, cowering in fear of the lightning bolt. We are the apex predator; the lightning works for us.”

Silicon Valley—where nuance goes to die, where “hubris” is just a synonym for “success,” and where nerds see themselves as apex predators.

Meanwhile, tech investor Peter Thiel travels around the globe ranting about the Antichrist, while Mark Zuckerberg drops $80 billion on a failed “metaverse.” These dudes are just not the world-bestriding geniuses they think they are. But they do share a certain will to power—and a sense that they deserve to wield this power.)

If you have doubts about just how great a world dominated by people like Sam Altman might be, you owe it to yourself to read the long (loooooong) profile of him that appeared yesterday in our sister publication The New Yorker. Yes, it’s over 16,000 words, and yes, you will encounter the diaeresis a disturbing number of times, but it is absolutely worth the effort. [...]

For their piece, Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz interviewed over 100 people, including Altman, and the report they bring back from this effort is quite depressing; the words “lying” and “sociopath” are used repeatedly. Here are just a few of the relevant quotes:

A board member offered a different interpretation of [Altman’s] statement: “What it meant was ‘I have this trait where I lie to people, and I’m not going to stop.’”…

Altman’s attitude in childhood, his brother told The New Yorker, in 2016, was “I have to win, and I’m in charge of everything”…

As Mark Jacobstein, an older Loopt employee who was asked by investors to act as Altman’s “babysitter,” later told Keach Hagey, for “The Optimist,” a biography of Altman, “There’s a blurring between ‘I think I can maybe accomplish this thing’ and ‘I have already accomplished this thing’ that in its most toxic form leads to Theranos,” Elizabeth Holmes’s fraudulent startup…

Multiple senior executives at Microsoft said that, despite [Satya] Nadella’s long-standing loyalty, the company’s relationship with Altman has become fraught. “He has misrepresented, distorted, renegotiated, reneged on agreements,” one said…

Altman has a relentless will to power that, even among industrialists who put their names on spaceships, sets him apart. “He’s unconstrained by truth,” the board member told us…

One of Altman’s batch mates in the first Y Combinator cohort was Aaron Swartz, a brilliant but troubled coder who died by suicide in 2013 and is now remembered in many tech circles as something of a sage. Not long before his death, Swartz expressed concerns about Altman to several friends. “You need to understand that Sam can never be trusted,” he told one. “He is a sociopath. He would do anything.”

The piece documents what appear to be incredibly flexible ethical and political views. Altman slides smoothly from Democratic booster to Trump whisperer, from hoping that the “insane sci-fi future comes true for all of us” to taking meetings with dictators. AI safety, such a key part of OpenAI’s stated mission a few years back, has largely fallen by the wayside as Altman chased money, power, and deals.

One of the article’s subtexts is that the negative traits on display here aren’t actually bad for business; indeed, they’re quite good for (short-term) business. Whether they are good for business in the long term, where you actually need people to trust you, is an open question.

by Nate Anderson, Ars Technica |  Read more:

Image: Getty

[ed. See also: We Are Witnessing the Rise of a New Aristocracy (NYT):]

***

Inequality is such a fact of American life that it’s easy to shrug off. But we are in uncharted terrain. The amassed wealth of today’s tech titans makes the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts look quaint. Over the past two years, 19 households have added $1.8 trillion to their coffers, the economist Gabriel Zucman told me — roughly the size of the economy of Australia.

Into this fragile state enters artificial intelligence. It threatens to make a bad situation much worse.

Left on its current course, A.I. could deliver a bleak picture: lower- and middle-income jobs automated away, with top earners remaining unscathed. Income shifting from middle-wage workers doing the bulk of the labor toward those wealthy enough to bankroll the technology. Growth headwinds. Worsening affordability. So, too, a federal government less able to respond, thanks to a shrinking tax base.

For any society in which this much wealth gets concentrated in so few hands, and is then so easily parlayed into political clout, the question becomes one not just of economics but of basic civic standing. At some point soon, we are no longer sharing in self-government.

Fed Up. Finally

"I'm SICK of this shit... can't he just behave like a normal human?"

Megyn Kelly, Former Fox News host (and Trump whisperer) losing it.
via: SiriusXM/Instagram

[ed. See also: Trump Lashes Out at Prominent Conservatives Over Iran War Criticism (NYT). It's starting to look like Hitler in bunker time. The only question is why people thought he was somebody different.]

Joke of the Day: Prediction Markets

White House staff were warned last month not to use insider information to place bets on predictions markets.

The email was sent to staff on 24 March, a day after US President Donald Trump announced a five-day pause on his threat to attack Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure.

It referred to press reports that raised concerns over government officials using non-public information to place bets on platforms like Kalshi or Polymarket.

White House spokesman Davis Ingle told the BBC that "any implication that Administration officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting."

The Wall Street Journal first reported the email on Thursday.

Ingle also said that all federal employees are subject to government ethics guidelines that prohibit the use of insider information for financial gain.

"The only special interest that will ever guide President Trump is the best interest of the American people," he added.

The BBC has contacted Kalshi and Polymarket for comment.

by Osmond Chia, BBC |  Read more:

Image: via

[ed. That's some weapons-grade PR spin right there. Of course they know who placed the bets. Despite current directors, the FBI and CIA aren't stupid. They just don't want it to be too obvious.]

Claude Mythos: The System Card

Mythos self-portrait, as imagined by Opus based on the System Card

Claude Mythos is different.

This is the first model other than GPT-2 that is at first not being released for public use at all.

With GPT-2 the delay was due to a general precautionary principle. OpenAI did not know what they had, or what effect on demand text would have on various systems. It sounds funny now, GPT-2 was harmless, but at the time the concern was highly reasonable.

The decision not to release Claude Mythos is not about an amorphous fear. If given to anyone with a credit card, Claude Mythos would give attackers a cornucopia of zero-day exploits for essentially all the software on Earth, including every major operating system and browser. It would be chaos.

Or, in theory, if Anthropic had chosen to do so, it could have used those exploits. Great power was on offer, and that power was refused. This does not happen often.

Instead Anthropic has created Project Glasswing. Mythos is being given only to cybersecurity firms, so they can patch the world’s most important software. Based on how that goes, we can then decide if and when it will become reasonable to give access to a broader range of people.

Who counts as this ‘we’ is suddenly quite the interesting question. The government picked quite the month to decide to try and disentangle itself from all Anthropic products. Anthropic says it is attempting to work with the government, so that they too can fix their own systems before it is too late. Hopefully that can happen. I also hope that there isn’t an attempt by the government to hijack these capabilities to use them in an offensive capacity. That would be a very serious mistake.

Am I taking Anthropic’s word for all this? Yes, I am taking Anthropic’s word for all of this. They’ve given us sufficient public demonstrations, identifying numerous bugs, and they’ve gotten the cooperation of the world’s biggest tech and cybersecurity firms, and if it wasn’t real then the whole thing would quickly and obviously backfire. I think it is safe to assume that all of this is legitimate.

by Zvi Mowshowitz, Don't Worry About the Vase |  Read more:

Image: Mythos self portrait (Anthropic)

[ed. See also: AI #163: Mythos Quest]

Hot Ticket

Jeffrey Epstein’s web of influence stretched from European palaces to Ivy League universities and Wall Street banks, but there was apparently at least one little corner of the establishment that seems to have been beyond his reach: Augusta National. In July 2019, Epstein sent an iMessage to Steve Bannon asking for his help with a particularly difficult problem. “Need to work magic to get brad Karp admitted to augusta golf club,” Epstein wrote. “The head of Paul Weiss Brad Karp?” Bannon replied. “Yes.”

Karp, the former chair of the legal firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, stepped down from his position in February because of his ties with Epstein.

Bannon and Epstein talked it over for an hour. Bannon suggested that Karp’s “best shot” was to “take a strong interest in amateur golf”, Epstein complained that some of the existing Augusta members who might help, like Bill Gates, “have no sway”, and asked “Who s their senator” as if they might. Bannon explained that he thinks the club is run by “7 Atlanta and Augusta families”, who he calls “crackers” from the “Old south” who are prejudiced against “lawyers and investment bankers”. The heart bleeds.

It’s a pungently obnoxious conversation, racist and misogynistic, and at the end of it, Bannon and Epstein are absolutely no closer to figuring out how to go about getting in.

Which is one of the great lessons of Augusta National. Money only goes so far. It is, even now, just about the only sports event in the US where you don’t need to worry that Donald Trump is going to decide to put in an appearance.

If Brad Karp and his ilk are busy worrying about how to get a club membership, most of the rest of us would settle for just making it inside the gates during Masters week. But admittance, like everything else around here, is done according to its own peculiar set of rules. Most of the tickets go to lifetime patrons from the local community, who own badges passed down through the generations along with grandad’s pocket watch. That route in was shut back in the 1970s. The other is the annual lottery, and your odds of winning it make Tiger’s chances of a sixth Green Jacket look good this year.

Officially that’s it. Unofficially, anyone who’s willing to spend enough was usually able to pick one up from one of the touts who camp out on the easements down by the interstate, just beyond the reach of the 2,700ft boundary that makes scalping near the property a criminal offence under Georgia law. Reselling tickets is against the terms and conditions, but the loophole was that anyone who bought one could always insist they had received it as a gift. In recent years, though, resale has become an industrial business, and second-hand tickets have been appearing on the internet where they sell for as much as 50 times their face value.

Until, that was, Augusta’s members decided they had had enough of other companies making the profit the club have chosen to forgo by keeping the actual admission prices so low. The Sunday of last year’s Masters was described as a “bloodbath” by an executive working for one of the hospitality companies in the area, as hundreds of paying customers found they were detained, and even refused entry, at the club gates because they had come on someone else’s ticket. According to industry reports, as many as 200 ticket holders were turned away on the day.

Some said they were taken into a room and asked to hand over their identity documents before being grilled about how they got their tickets, and where they were staying during the tournament. One person said it was like being pulled over by the police. Some were let in anyway, others say they were turned away. As is the way at Augusta, it’s almost impossible to get a straight answer from anyone at the club about exactly what’s going on and, in the absence of any information, there are an awful lot of rumours about the club’s crackdown on the market.

They say the four-day tickets have radio-frequency identification chips in them, and that the club were able to trace all the ones that were being returned back to a single geographical location each evening before being used again by someone else the next day. They say the information contained in the barcodes includes the buyer’s address. They say the club are employing undercover agents to idly ask patrons where they picked up their tickets while they are walking around the grounds.

The other theory is the club are buying up a lot of the resale tickets themselves just so they can find out the names of the people who put them up for sale. The letter they send out is a masterpiece of Masters manners, thanking the recipient for their support and patronage over the years before informing them that they are now permanently banned from the grounds.

by Andy Bull, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: Mike Blake/Reuters

[ed. Master's weekend. Glad there's still one institution left with some balls.]

Wassily Kandinsky, 'Zweierbund', 1932
via:

Ghost Murmur

At a press conference on Monday, CIA Director John Ratcliffe disclosed that the agency had used “exquisite technologies that no other intelligence service in the world possesses” to find and rescue the second American airman shot down in southern Iran. Ratcliffe likened it to “hunting for a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert.”

President Trump gushed about the technical wizardry the CIA deployed, claiming it was able to locate the airman from “40 miles away.”

“It’s like finding a needle in a haystack, finding this pilot, and the CIA was unbelievable,” Trump said Monday. “The CIA was very responsible for finding this little speck.”

Later that same day, the New York Post revealed in an exclusive report that the tool Ratcliffe was referring to was something called “Ghost Murmur.”

“The secret technology uses long-range quantum magnetometry to find the electromagnetic fingerprint of a human heartbeat and pairs the data with artificial intelligence software to isolate the signature from background noise,” two sources close to the breakthrough told the Post.

I’m calling bullshit.

Perhaps the CIA does have a tool called Ghost Murmur. Maybe it can detect faint signals from a not-too-far distance away. But it didn’t locate the downed airman from 40 miles away as Trump suggested. Nor can it locate a heartbeat across 1,000 square miles of desert, as one of the Post’s sources claimed. Not unless the CIA has figured out how to rewrite the laws of physics.

A heartbeat does produce a magnetic signal, but don’t confuse that with the electrical signal picked up by the electrodes that get stuck to your chest in the hospital, the ones that generate the beeping waveform patterns we all recognize from The Pitt. (Great show, by the way.) The heart’s magnetic signature is far weaker than its electrical one.

The tesla is the unit used to measure the strength of a magnetic field.. The Earth’s magnetic field measures about 50 microtesla. Studies I’ll get to in a minute have measured the cardiac magnetic signal at chest contact to be about 25 picotesla, already 2 million times weaker than Earth’s own field.

Quantum sensors can detect this extraordinarily faint signal without touching the body. But only under optimal conditions and at very close range.

I’m no expert in this field, but Quantum Insider, which tracks these developments, pointed to several studies that show the limits of this technology.

One study published this year on diamond quantum magnetometry, the same technology Ghost Murmur supposedly uses, required sensors placed 1 centimeter from the chest inside a magnetically shielded room and an average of up to 12,000 heartbeats to detect a signal.

“Averaging was necessary since magnetic field recordings did not reveal the MCG signal in the NV trace in real-time,” the study reported.

In plain English: The quantum sensor could not detect a heartbeat in real time in a shielded room at one centimeter.

A 2024 study detected the heartbeat of an anesthetized rat, a weaker signal than a human heart, using a sensor placed 5 millimeters from the animal’s chest, inside a magnetic shielding cylinder, after an hour of continuous data accumulation.

Ghost Murmur supposedly detected a single beating heart, in real time, from 40 miles away, over open desert, from a moving aircraft, in an environment saturated with competing signals from the Earth’s magnetic field, electronic devices, and other living creatures. Not likely.

by Seth Hettenna, After-Action Report |  Read more:

Image: White House

[ed. Interesting technology. But, why does it seem like everyone is lying these days? Hmm... maybe because they are? And everybody just expects it and lets it keep happening?]