As I've mentioned on occasion, I do not disrobe in public. I rarely disrobe in private. I put on socks and shoes when I first wake up and I don’t take them off until I get back into bed at night. I often sleep in my jeans. In middle school, while playing basketball, a kid grabbed the area just above my waistline and said, “Look, Pell’s got handles.” That was the last time I played shirts and skins in any sport. If I were to stand on a crowded street corner and pull open my trenchcoat, the most likely thing you'd see is another trenchcoat. (In the Bay Area, we're taught to dress in layers.) So sharing a wood paneled hot box with a fellow world diplomat is an activity for which I have no naked ambition. But apparently, such interactions are all the rage among DC diplomats who often pull strings (including the ones on their robes) to get invited to let it all hang in the Finnish Embassy Sauna. "Diplomacy takes shape in different ways: formal meetings in the Oval Office and state dinners in the White House’s grand East Room; casual receptions at embassies; and one-on-one meetings over martinis in the lobbies of five-star hotels. And then there is the way the Finnish government prefers to conduct business. They like for their networking and meetings to happen in the sauna and, for the most part, in the nude." (I think I'll settle for the natural temperature rise caused by climate change.) NYT (Gift Article): ‘Whatever Happens in the Sauna Stays in the Sauna’: Diplomacy, Conducted in the Nude. "'When you are half-naked or even sometimes completely naked, it allows for deeper discussion,' said Mikko Hautala, the ambassador of Finland to the United States. 'You talk in a way that doesn’t happen when you are sitting around a table with a tie on or at some formal thing.'" Just thinking about this has me sweating; and a sauna is a dry heat. 2The Future Will Not Be TelegrammedThe worldwide debate over how much responsibility those who run social media companies have when it comes to what is shared on their platforms hit a new point of inflection as Telegram’s Pavel Durov has been arrested in France. WaPo (Gift Article): Telegram’s Pavel Durov held in France for alleged distribution of child sex abuse material. "Durov was being temporarily detained on suspicion of involvement with distributing child sex abuse material and drugs, money laundering and working with organized crime." 3Shrinking Network"'The way to look at mental health care from an insurance perspective is: I don’t want to attract those people. I am never going to make money on them,' said Ron Howrigon, a consultant who used to manage contracts with providers for major insurers. 'One way to get rid of those people or not get them is to not have a great network.'" ProPublica with one of the reasons it's so hard to find a therapist. Why I Left the Network. 4Junior High"Donald Trump and Bobby Kennedy—as I’ve referred to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. since we met freshman year at Harvard—have always had many features in common as well. Both are entitled playboy sons of northeastern wealth; both (in Michelle Obama’s words) were 'afforded the grace of failing forward' as misbehaving, underachieving adolescents admitted to Ivy League colleges thanks to 'the affirmative action of generational wealth'; both were reckless lifelong adolescents, both attention-craving philanderers and liars, both jerks ... On the subject of reckless-adolescent entitlement, I’ve got one Bobby Kennedy anecdote to tell." Kurt Andersen has been saving this story for a while. The Atlantic (Gift Article): RFK Jr. Was My Drug Dealer. 5Extra, ExtraTalking Thru It: "Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah pulled back after an exchange of heavy fire over the weekend that briefly raised fears of an all-out war." Interestingly, the planned ceasefire talks went on as scheduled in the hours after the exchange. In WaPo, David Ignatius says the momentum for a cease-fire is building. "What was striking about this past weekend was that what the region had feared most finally happened — and yet the momentum toward peace continues." (From everything I've read, it seems like the Americans are more bullish about progress than the other negotiating teams.) 6Bottom of the NewsBabe Ruth's jersey of ‘called shot’ fame sells for record $24 million. Babe Ruth earned less than a million bucks in salary during his career.
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