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Won’t you please, please, help me? That entreaty from the Beatles wasn’t their only request for assistance. They also famously got by, and high, with a little help from their friends. And it seemed to work out pretty well. So maybe you should also try to get a little help whenever possible? That strategy isn’t always associated with success in an era when many people respond positively to messages like, “I alone can fix it.” But Angela Duckworth studies successful people, and it turns out that being willing to ask for help is a trait that is shared among most of them. “Without exception, every high performer I’ve studied credits a host of supporters for their success. Research has found that a willingness to ask for help is crucial to achievement.” NYT(Gift Article): I Study Successful People. They Have One Habit in Common. Remember, there’s no i in team. But there is one in insane. (Come to think of it, there’s also one in Lake America.)
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By and Byline
“Of course I used AI. I’m not embarrassed by it. I write everything using AI now for the same reason I use a calculator when I do math problems.” That was billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller responding to complaints that his recent WSJ editorial was found to be 100% AI generated. The WSJ’s editorial page editor, Paul Gigot, also doesn’t see a problem. “’AI is a fact of modern life,’ he said in a statement ... Gigot followed up with a full column on the subject, mocking the ‘media pharisees’ who wag their fingers at automated writing ... ‘Many contributors, especially prominent politicians or CEOs, employ speechwriters or hire a Beltway writing shop,’ he wrote. ‘How different is that from using AI to streamline an essay?’” Will Oremus in The Atlantic (Gift Article): A Turning Point in AI Writing.
+ Before too long, articles may be specifically labeled as artisanal if they have any human elements at all. An online newspaper covering SF is made up entirely of AI reporters. “Each ‘reporter’ has its own beat, bio and persona. Park, for instance, is ‘skeptical of hype.’ Casey Wong, the metro reporter, writes that they ‘notice the texture of a block — who’s been here 30 years, who just moved in.’ Drew Bennett, The Dissent’s local events reporter, ‘knows what’s worth your Saturday.’ Hal Brenner, the site’s managing editor, is ‘terse, exacting, fair.’”
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Amateur Hour
Amid all the coverage of the Iran war, we often lose sight of the biggest victims of its failure. The people of Iran who were told, “the hour of your freedom is at hand.” That hour has come and gone, and now we’re six months into a war that was sold as a quick fix. “The Trump administration has replaced its military war with an economic one, but the result is likely to be no different, analysts said, with a lack of American clarity about goals, a decline in American credibility and a strategic defeat. One thing remains constant, however. The ordinary people of Iran are bearing the brunt of the war, victims of both the United States and their own leaders.” Six Months In, Iran’s Regime Stands, U.S. Goals Remain Unmet.
+ AP: The Iran war has changed the Middle East, but not in the way its architects had hoped. And this is a key point to remember: “In the runup to the war, the Islamic Republic appeared more vulnerable than at any point since Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded in 1980.”
+ Bloomberg (Gift Article): How the War in Iran Is Redrawing the Global Energy Map. “A handful of new reports show how, by dramatically raising fossil-fuel prices, the conflict has also been pushing governments, companies and consumers towards renewable energy, with a clear set of winners and losers emerging.”
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Weekend Whats
What to Binge: Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren, and Paddy Considine star in the fast-paced mob family show, Mobland on Paramount Plus. Season two is coming in a few weeks, so it’s a good time to binge.
+ What to Pick: Tuner, starring Leo Woodall, Havana Rose Liu, and Dustin Hoffman, is about a piano tuner who realizes he can use his excellent ear to pick locks. The criminals learn that fact as well. The movie reminded me of the excellent Steve Hamilton novel about another skilled lock-picker whose talent proves popular with the wrong crowd. The Lock Artist.
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Extra, Extra
Numbers Don’t Lie: Trump railed against the Fed for years for not cutting rates. Now, his handpicked Chair Kevin Warsh is “laying the groundwork for a possible interest rate hike in the coming months.” At issue is America’s stubborn inflation. One sign things are getting too expensive: dollar stores are killing it. WSJ (Gift Article): Dollar General Is Winning Over Inflation-Weary Shoppers With $1 Items.
+ Reality Checks and Balances: “John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, made a secretive visit to Moscow this week to privately share his bleak assessment of the state of the Russian war against Ukraine, and to urge the Russians to cut a deal before their military and economic situation gets worse.” American intel leaders are concerned Putin isn’t getting a real picture of how bad things are going in his war. Sound familiar?
+ Downstream Disaster: “Rescue teams have reported finding bodies hundreds of miles downstream from the disaster zone in the Chitwan district of Nepal, near the Tibetan border.” And the number of those reported missing is going up. Here’s the latest from The Guardian.
+ Unions are Jacked: Not everyone is against building a lot of new data centers. For example, the people who build them. Blue-Collar Jobs Are the New Flashpoint in Data-Center Fight.
+ Straining at a Nat: “Those three words—travel with Natalie—sent MAGA world into paroxysms of rage that have yet to subside.” Peter Wehner has a very insightful take as to why. The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Wrath of MAGA.
+ E-Gads: In many professional sports, success or failure comes down to injuries. You probably didn’t imagine that includes e-sports. Professional gaming is brutal on the body. (The same is true for news curators. Both my palm and my forehead are constantly getting injured.)
+ Starbucks 54: “’Any time I had to use it, I had to hold my breath,’ she said. Her colleagues complained about coughs and tickling throats. Baristas around the country reported developing hives and having asthma attacks.” Starbucks Drops Drink Powder That Enveloped Baristas in Clouds of Dust. (I hear this stuff was pretty popular at discos in the 80s.)