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Charles Dickens is guilty of an undercount. It’s not a tale of two cities, it’s a shift that’s taking place in big cities across the country. While most urban blight is notable for what you see, this trend is most visible in what you don’t: Kids. “The number of children under 18 living in big U.S. cities is down 6% in the past decade ... The drop is especially stark among families with little kids: The number of children under age 5 in big cities fell 15%, compared with a drop of 7% nationwide. Even cities that are gaining population are losing children.” WSJ (Gift Article): America’s Big Cities Are Rapidly Losing Kids. “Families with children cite concerns about costs, safety and quality of life in their move away from cities. Also contributing to the drop is a growing number of childless residents opting to stay that way, worried about the financial implications and lifestyle trade-offs of having a family. The drop is happening in cities across the economic spectrum.” In this era where we flock together with like-minded thinkers on the internet, dense, urban areas represent a possibility of still interacting in real life, and countering the caricatured versions of ourselves and the “others” created by those who benefit from keeping us divided. Will an increase in our geographic divide also increase our political, economic, and cultural ones? What gets to kicked the curb when we all move to the burbs?
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A Spend in the Road
Question: Who would have guessed that America’s decision to simultaneously reduce international spending and global decency would quickly backfire, provide an opening for our adversaries to fill the void, and leave us scrambling to fix a mess of our own making? Answer: Pretty much everyone other than the handful of people running our executive branch. And even they’re figuring it out. “The Trump administration is preparing to ramp up funding by hundreds of millions of dollars for programs designed to counter China’s growing influence around the world, after it had put a halt to many of those initiatives last year during a flurry of budget and personnel cuts.” AP: US looks to boost anti-China spending worldwide by hundreds of millions. (Refilling the coffers will be a lot easier than rebuilding the trust and goodwill.)
3
The Break Fast Club
How do we solve the school shooting problem? Don’t raise your hand unless your answer is an arms race. “Schools in at least three states will be equipped with drones this year that can zoom through halls, smash windows and pepper-spray active shooters if teachers report a threat.” WaPo (Gift Article): Schools are adding pepper-spraying drones to help combat active shooters. “Teachers will have an app or classroom panic buttons to summon the drones. Mithril Defense’s professional drone pilots can then fly them remotely.” (I used to teach high school, and I have to admit that my requests for everyone to quiet down and focus would probably have been more effective if I’d had a team of professional drone pilots covering my six during sixth period.)
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The Magic Touch
Scientists are trying out “a portable testing station equipped with a touch screen and facial recognition software, [which] could help scientists study primate intelligence in the wild.” NYT (Gift Article): In This Costa Rican Forest, Monkeys Come Face-to-Face With AI. “One day last summer, a curious white-faced capuchin encountered a strange contraption in the forest. There, in the middle of the Taboga Forest Reserve in Costa Rica, sat a 15-inch touch screen, mounted in a wooden frame. As the monkey, an alpha male named Papi, began investigating — poking the device here, prodding it there — his fingers landed on the screen. Suddenly, a piece of dried banana dropped into a tray below the frame. Before long, Papi learned the basic rules of the device: touch the screen, get a dried banana slice.” (Papi, trust us, we know the feeling. Wait until you see how many dried banana slices you get when you use the screen to stir up outrage by spreading an over-simplified falsehood about another monkey.)
5
Extra, Extra
Through Thick and Win: Both Bibi and Zelensky are in town for Lindsey Graham’s funeral. They also met separately with Trump, who has basically reversed his opinions on both of them. “It is a remarkable change of fortunes for Zelensky, whose relationship with Trump once seemed irredeemably damaged. Last year, Trump called Zelensky a dictator, criticized his leadership and berated him during a tense Oval Office meeting. Days after the meeting, Trump paused all military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, and he subsequently balked at sending more assistance to the beleaguered country.” WSJ (Gift Article): Impressed by Ukraine’s Battlefield Gains, Trump Warms to Zelensky. “Trump, a senior administration official said, likes winners—and Zelensky, in the U.S. president’s estimation, is increasingly looking like one.” (Great to have an ally you can trust to be there through thick and thicker.) Here’s the latest.
+ Talk Balk: “The rhetoric coming from Iran indicates that its leaders are comfortable with the state of limbo with the United States — something between peace and full-fledged war — believing that they can handle renewed conflict and that they have leverage over President Trump.” Why Iran Is in No Rush to Return to Talks With United States.
+ Mail Pattern Boldness: “Mr. Trump has repeatedly criticized mail-in voting and sought restrictions on it. For years, he has made unfounded claims sowing doubt about voting by mail and claiming that it allows widespread fraud.” The question is whether or not the Supreme Court majority will back him up. And the fact that that is a question at all is a problem. Trump Asks Supreme Court to Allow Order Restricting Mail Voting.
+ Flub Med: “Kennedy was taken aback. Even though he has long been known to be skeptical of vaccinations, he had been asked by White House political advisers to tone down his vaccine efforts ahead of the midterms, the people said. Now, it was the commander in chief who was pushing to make the study of vaccines and autism more of a priority. The president steers nearly every conversation with his health secretary back to the issue.” You might imagine RFK Jr pushing Trump to implement more of his quack ideas and Trump telling him to pipe down. That’s not how it’s going. Trump is doing the quacking. Trump Turns Up the Heat on RFK Jr. to Cut Back Childhood Vaccines.
+ Above and Beyond: “This climate emergency is exceeding every threshold and scale that scientists have long warned all of Spain and Europe about.” NYT (Gift Article): ‘A Wake-Up Call’: Massive Wildfires Pierce Madrid’s Bubble. (For some leaders, it’s a wake-up call. Others keep hitting the snooze button.)
+ That’s What Kalshi Said: “’You can’t be a felon on active supervision and vote. If you’re 17, you can’t vote, and betting on an election where you vote, it’s the same thing, it’s not allowed,’ she said. Jump ahead to 2026, and Kalshi, the company leading the prediction market craze, is criticizing the law, calling it ‘bananas,’ ‘illegal’ and a type of ‘voter suppression.’” Kalshi attacks a Wisconsin law banning election bets as voter suppression. This is less about voter suppression and more about suppressing the right of states to regulate gambling. Meanwhile, Betting on Drug Trials and Approvals Prompts Concerns About Undermining Research.
+ Fraternal Disorder: “In the case involving the Secret Service agent, the two victims were each made to sit in a half squat with one arm pointed forward, and they were repeatedly struck with paddles if they incorrectly answered questions about the fraternity and its history, according to the warrant. The beatings stopped on the final day only after one of the victims bled through his underwear and pants.” Secret Service Agent and 2 Others Charged in Near-Fatal Fraternity Hazing.