They say the days are long but the years are short. Not this year. It's been one endless year since the tragic attack of October 7; a year that has divided nations, split communities, fragmented college campuses, created schisms inside of warring countries, and even caused rifts across kitchen tables. An era defined by the determination to speak and post with certainty about things we know little or nothing about has rendered us fully dysfunctional when it comes to analyzing the world's most complex crisis. On October 7, a scab was ripped off the world's chronic trauma exposing, yet again, the festering wound that has infected the world's body politic. With my stomach in knots, I've been refreshing news feeds from the region every day for a year and some days I'm not even sure I agree with myself. So I'll mark this day with the simple answers. Does Israel have every right and responsibility to defend itself against Iran-backed terror groups hell-bent on its destruction? Yes. Have there been way too many citizens killed in the name of this defense? Yes. Is this all relentlessly sad and frustrating? Yes. Those views all seem innocuous enough. But don't kid yourself. In this conflict, those are fighting words. The NYT (Gift Article) on this year of living awfully. The War That Won’t End: How Oct. 7 Sparked a Year of Conflict. "Both sides appear to have decided that they will not go back to how things were before Oct. 7. Hamas’s leaders have said the prewar dynamic of endless Israeli occupation must be disrupted regardless of the human cost. Israel feels far more vulnerable after the deadliest day in its history and has decided it can no longer tolerate groups dedicated to its destruction on its borders. 'This war won’t end because nobody is willing to blink,' said Thomas R. Nides, the United States ambassador to Israel until shortly before the Oct. 7 attack. 'In the meantime, everyone is losing — hostages and their families, innocent Palestinians, Israelis displaced from northern Israel, Lebanese civilians. And it’s truly tragic.'" 2Failure to LaunchDuring the worst of the pandemic, some people realized that they liked being at home. A lot. But the trend of spending time at home that was supercharged during Covid has been building for years. (If you've got gigabit WiFi, why leave?) NYT (Gift Article): A Nation of Homebodies. "It turns out we aren’t just bowling alone — we’re bowling at home." 3SuperPac of Wolves"Their aim is to help tech leaders become as powerful in Washington, D.C., and in state legislatures as they are on Wall Street. It is likely that in the coming decades these efforts will affect everything from Presidential races to which party controls Congress and how antitrust and artificial intelligence are regulated. Now that the tech industry has quietly become one of the most powerful lobbying forces in American politics, it is wielding that power as previous corporate special interests have: to bully, cajole, and remake the nation as it sees fit." The always-excellent Charles Duhigg in The New Yorker on Silicon Valley, the New Lobbying Monster. The goal is not just to defeat candidates who are (often falsely) believed to present opposition. It's to scare the hell out of everyone else. 4Radical CandorIf you follow the news and listen to certain podcasts, you might be pretty certain that the key to extreme longevity is right around the corner. But that corner might not be as close as it seems. According to a recent study, "unless the processes of biological aging can be markedly slowed, radical human life extension is implausible in this century." (What the hell good is it going to do for me next century?) 5Extra, ExtraMilton: The cleanup and recovery associated with Helene is still ongoing, but Floridians are already preparing for Milton. And it's looking big. "Hurricane Milton’s strength is eye-popping. With sustained winds of 175 mph, it’s the strongest storm to occur anywhere on the planet this year." Here's the latest from CNN. Meanwhile, Mike Johnson won't commit to bringing House back before the election for more hurricane relief. (Trump has spent his time post Helene making up stories about the Biden administration not providing hurricane relief funding. Maybe Johnson wants to make the lie a reality. Anything for a campaign pitch.) 6Bottom of the News"Snoop has long been a lovable figure, so iconically mellow and suave, and with such a velvety voice. But he’s only recently become something bigger in popular culture, perhaps the closest thing we have to a national mascot." The Year of Snoop Dogg.
|
