This New Yorker profile of Jay Graber is pretty great. While I’m personally trying to reduce my social media usage, BlueSky really is the only “good” Twitter alternative.

Anne Applebaum –

Trump has done the same damage to our health, environment and security as to our markets, it’s just that there isn’t a stock ticker that measures the impact so clearly

Tim Grierson –

We’re all going to have different unexpected triggers that send us spiraling into despair and anger during this administration. But seeing Shohei Ohtani smile and pose for pictures with Donald Trump at the White House today just about broke me.

This is one of the few movies that actually makes me want to hit the theater.

Tom Cruise is 62 and still making Mission: Impossible movies. However, I love when stories have endings. So if Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning truly is Ethan Hunt’s last time saving the world, I’m hoping for some closure. They aren’t going to kill him are they? Nahh.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning ended with Ethan Hunt getting the two halves of the key needed to shut down the AI Entity. Of course, he still has a long way to go to complete his most important mission (that’s why there’s a second movie…).

As its trailer shares, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning comes to theaters May 23, 2025. It looks incredible.

Will it truly be Ethan Hunt’s last time on the Mission: Impossible job or will he choose to accept more missions?

My stepdaughter got her iPhone stolen on Friday. Tried to get it back on Saturday. Called the cops, but they couldn’t do anything. On Saturday, I was pissed about the situation. She had genuine remorse, but I was still mad. My wife told me a few wise words, and after some time, I calmed down. I was mainly pissed because she did not have Find My turned on, so we could not erase the phone. She had a passcode, but there was nothing else we could do. We tracked it the whole time. It was infuriating.

One Sunday, we got her a new phone and removed the old one from our network. Unless they guess her four-digit password, there’s not much they can do other than sell it off for parts. It’s so stupid.

I spent the rest of the day setting up phones and all that.

I think she learned her lesson. At least now we made sure Find My was turned on.

My productivity hack is Blade Runner-inspired music from Focus Soundscapes (like this one), my phone on a charger in landscape mode and notifications turned off. Headphones are in, volume is up, and Word is ready.

Let’s jam.

Joan Westenberg –

If you had told me a decade ago that a former president would waltz back into the White House, torch the global economy, slap double-digit tariffs on damn near everything, spook the markets into evaporating over three trillion dollars in a single day, and call it a “booming economy” with a straight face—I would’ve thought it a particularly cruel and poorly conceived joke.

But here we are.

…

The damage is real. And it will get worse. We are not even close to the bottom yet.

Because this doesn’t just shake the market. It shakes the Fed. It delays rate cuts. It raises prices. It hits consumer goods, healthcare, tech, food, and oil. It fractures alliances and emboldens adversaries. It hands China a propaganda win. It weakens labor. It punishes exporters. It shrinks small business margins. It craters consumer confidence.

This is the cost of delusion. This happens when the most powerful country on Earth decides that the laws of economics don’t apply if you yell loud enough, when your government becomes a theater troupe and your president a professional grievance artist.

“Professional grievance artist” is awfully polite.

After months of bluster, spin, and head fakes, President Trump finally committed to punishing global tariffs during a high-profile “Liberation Day” event at the White House yesterday. The policy invokes emergency authority to impose a 10% baseline tariff on all imports, a 25% fee on imported cars, and dubious “reciprocal tariffs” on everywhere from China and the EU to key strategic suppliers to remote uninhabited penguin reserves (not Russia, though ). Trump’s tariff obsession dates back decades and cites William McKinley’s Gilded Age protectionist policies as an inspiration. Economists warn these measures will disrupt global trade, spike inflation, and destabilize the dollar’s reserve currency status. Markets fell sharply this morning, as DOGE-driven cuts are projected to cause over 275,000 layoffs. Meanwhile, nationwide “Hands Off!” protests against executive overreach are planned for this Saturday, April 5th.

The Economist: Ruination Day: Donald Trump announced the biggest break in America’s trade policy in over a century—and committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era.

Bloomberg: The US stock market is down almost 10% since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, marking the worst 10-week start under a new president since George W. Bush in 2001 during the height of the dot-com selloff Reuters: South Korea, China, Japan agree to promote regional trade as Trump tariffs loom

Onion owner Ben Collins:

I’m watching CNBC. These anchors are so angry. They really didn’t believe he’d do it. They’re actually just now, 10 years into this shit, realizing he’s a maniac hellbent on revenge and there’s no grand plan for the markets. Better late than never but holy shit. It’s great TV watching these CNBC analysts realize there is no “theory” on TV in real time and they can’t even invent one. One just said “They’re burning down the house to cook a steak.” There’s a phone ringing off the hook in the background no one’s picking up. It’s chaos, I recommend it.

The Onion: FBI Uncovers Al-Qaeda Plot To Just Sit Back And Enjoy Collapse Of United States “What a perfect day for Newsmax to ring the opening bell on the stock exchange."

WSJ: Senators Move to Rein In Trump’s Power on Tariffs

Under the Cantwell–Grassley Trade Review Act of 2025, any tariffs imposed by the president would expire after 60 days unless Congress voted to approve them. Congress also would have the power to terminate tariffs at any time by voting to pass a resolution of disapproval. The president also would be required to notify Congress within 48 hours of putting in place or raising any tariffs.

Ian Dunt in The i Paper:

”This might be the single stupidest thing any of us will ever see. It is stupid in every way: presentationally, intellectually, politically, methodologically, morally and of course economically. The word stupid doesn’t really suffice for the full level of idiocy we’ve now reached. It’s as if we’ve attained a new state of human mindlessness, a kind of species milestone.”

Alan Beattie in The Financial Times:

”There can be no logic-washing of Donald Trump’s tariffs. This isn’t part of a carefully-designed industrial policy or a cunning strategy to induce compliance among trading partners or a choreographed appearance of chaos to scare other governments into obedience. It’s wildly destructive stupidity, and the generations of American, and particularly Republican politicians, who allowed things to slide to this point are collectively to blame."

This looks great. Haters be damned.

Jaime Thingelsted on blogging.

I would encourage bloggers to not think about the individual post. Instead, think about the collection of writing, over weeks and years, as a body of work. It is a body of work that you are constantly adding to. Growing and improving. The individual post is but one breath. It comes and goes. But over the course of time this adds up. It is the cumulative action that creates something truly great.

But who is your audience? Who is this for? You. Yourself. Your family. Your friends. Your friend’s friends. Your neighborhood. And they can have it whenever they want. As a gift. A gift from you to them. Not a gift to be measured in engagement, but instead as a body of work. A gift to the web, which is a gift to people.

Bruce Springsteen is set to release over 80 new songs this summer with his newly announced “Tracks II: The Lost Albums” collection. Planned for release on June 27, the seven full-length albums will include songs by The Boss that have never been heard. The songs span Springsteen’s decades-long career and were written between 1983 and 2018.

The first single is: Rain in the River

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is returning for its third season on Paramount+. I’m looking forward to catching up with Captain Pike and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise following last season’s brush with the Gorn. There’s lots of new life and civilizations ripe for exploration, but also a new enemy who will push the limits of this formidable crew (is that Trelane?). However, there will be some fun again this season, with a murder mystery and a documentary-style episode coming. Of course, it looks like we’re getting a thrilling conclusion to last season’s Gorn-based cliffhanger and some kind of Star Trek-aping retro-futuristic aesthetic episode?

Wait, that can’t be a holodeck?

The new teaser trailer for season three gives us a taste of this new trek to the stars. Hopefully, it drops this summer.

Hit it.

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker broke a record and made history. His speech will be remembered more fondly than the guy he beat, Strom Thurmond’s filibuster against the civil rights bill in 1957.

Without bathroom breaks but with occasional pauses for encouraging questions from his fellow Democrats, Mr. Booker read from a binder of notes and waved a small copy of the U.S. Constitution. He gesticulated and roared. At times, he draped himself over his lectern. His voice grew hoarse. But it remained strong … ‘My voice is inadequate,’ Mr. Booker said more than 19 hours into the speech. ‘My efforts today are inadequate to stop what they’re trying to do. But we the people are powerful.'

Did the speech change a thing about what Trump is trying to do or the political leverage held by the GOP? Not one bit. Booker only achieved one thing.

Attention.

It’s not enough, but it’s something

Matthew McConaughey, writing in his Lyrics for Livin’ newsletter, has a bit that struck a nerve with me.

I’m not sure why “consequences” has become a fait-accompli bad word in our society. We tell our kids, “There are gonna be consequences” and they never go “yayyyy!” But let’s admit it, when we make good CHOICES we receive good consequences. Consequences are simply outcomes, results, the product of our CHOICES, joyful and painful, good and bad.

Life is all about choices, and every choice has consequences.

Val Kilmer, the Hollywood star of Heat, Tombstone, The Doors, Batman Forever, and my personal favorite Real Genius, is dead at 65. He had been battling throat cancer for several years.

I highly recommend watching the documentary on his life, Val. His son provided the actor’s voice. The film utilized hundreds of hours of video he had recorded over the years, revealing the sets he worked on and showing the actor as an introspective thinker with an artist’s soul.

Jason Snell, writing on his site Six Colors, had a revelation while doing a simple experiment.

While the ads played on, I began creating a thought experiment: There’s a $10 difference between the ad and ad-free plans. If Mr. Netflix (he wears a top hat) came to my house and said, “Jason, I’ve got a great deal for you. I’m going to pay you $120 a year, and all you have to do is watch ads while you watch Netflix,” what would I do? When I started thinking about it, I thought it might be an interesting intellectual question. What would I accept in exchange for having Mean Mr. Netflix beam ads into every show I watch?

It turns out that whatever my price is, it’s a whole lot more than $120 a year. The next day, I upgraded back to the $18 ad-free plan.

Yup. I can’t handle ads on streaming. At. All.

This is amazing.

Jeff Passan, writing for ESPN, explains the next big thing in the Big Leagues.

Early in the 2023 season, Aaron Leanhardt started asking New York Yankees hitters what they needed to perform better…

…

An MIT-educated physics professor at the University of Michigan for seven years, Leanhardt left academia for athletics specifically to solve these sorts of problems. And as he spoke with more players, the framework of a solution began to reveal itself. With strikeouts at an all-time high, hitters wanted to counter that by making more contact. And the easiest way to do so, Leanhardt surmised, was to increase the size of the barrel on their bat.

…

The bat had its big debut over the weekend, as the Yankees tied a major league record with 15 home runs over their first three games.

I predict by the time the All Star Break rolls around, every MLB team will have players using these bats.

Jay Springett, uses a term that sounds incredibly important for the future.

We must cultivate context literacy and we must maintain a distinction between the infrastructure and the experience, between machine and meaning.

We are living through a moment that future historians may describe as a cultural rupture. A context war. How this plays out will shape new definitions of truth, authorship, creativity, and trust, perhaps for centuries to come.

I have never heard of “Context Literacy,” but it is so good. Read his whole piece.