📺️ Our new long form show

🗓️ 9/11 anniversary

🌳 Trees in D.C.

🗳️ A failed gerrymandering attempt

Hi friends,

Chris Vazquez, your Friday newsletter writer here. And soon, I’ll also be writing on Dave’s long form show, “What’s Your Source?” If you didn’t catch his video about it earlier this week, it’s a show where viewers like you can call in, ask a question on whether something you’ve learned is real or if it’s misinformation, and we get to the bottom of it using the same humor, storytelling and cast of characters you already know from Dave’s shorter videos. Got a question you want us to answer? Give us a call!

I’ll also still be writing this newsletter. Your inbox can’t get rid of me that easily, so let’s dive in.

What did and didn’t happen on 9/11

• Three days before the 25th anniversary of 9/11, President Donald Trump shared misleading claims and outright lies about where he was and what he did during the attacks. He’s done this before. This time around, he said he “took the whole crew down there right after this happened,” before firefighters carried him away due to fears that another building would collapse. The story implies that he was at Ground Zero right after the attacks and had to be taken to a safer location, but previous reporting shows that Trump was miles away during the attacks. There’s also no evidence Trump was in an unstable building in the days after the attacks.

• Misinformation around 9/11 is, of course, bigger than Trump. Conspiracy theories on who was responsible for the attacks persist 25 years later. Last year, a Republican senator called for hearings on debunked conspiracy theories about the attacks. On the twentieth anniversary of the attacks, the Council on Foreign Relations put together a resource guide for debunking conspiracies. It includes government reports and fact-checks from other news outlets.

• There’s one particularly insidious form of misinformation that followed the attacks: false Islamophobic ideas that U.S. Muslims were responsible, leading to vigilante attacks, criminalization and mass deportations. This year, public figures like former Four Seasons Total Landscaping speaker Rudy Giuliani have called for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is Muslim, to not attend a ceremony commemorating the attacks.

• That brings us to this week’s media literacy tip from our friends at MediaWise! Major anniversaries can bring large swaths of information. Here’s how to sort through it.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Dave here in this message on behalf of our partner beehiiv, the reason this newsletter even exists! beehiiv recently released a bunch of cool new tools, including a visual editor and community features.

beehiiv is a fantastic platform for creators and independent journalists (like me)! Use my special code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months.

Dave here again (remember me?) after the beehiiv graphic to remind you (in case you’ve already forgotten) to use code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months of beehiiv.

What’s going on with D.C.’s cherry trees?

• Recent social media posts have misleadingly claimed that the Trump administration cut down 60 cherry blossom trees in Washington, D.C. As a one-time enjoyer of many a cherry blossom-themed seasonal latte when I lived in D.C., I was alarmed. But as factcheck dot org reports, the posts’ claims aren’t entirely true.

• But like lots of misinformation that spreads quickly online, there were some kernels of truth that added fuel to the fire. Trump has promised to overhaul a golf course in D.C., and The Washington Post reported that plans for it appear to not show a grove of cherry trees that currently stands in the area. Two months later, The Post also reported that over 60 trees appear to have been removed as part of what the Interior Department is calling “routine maintenance.”

• So if the plans for the course didn’t show the cherry trees, and the course is missing 60 trees, doesn’t that prove that Trump’s golf course got rid of the cherry trees? Not exactly. The more recent Post article says one cherry tree was removed, as were two sycamores. It doesn’t specify what the other removed trees were. It’s not my job to tell you whether to be mad or not mad about that cherry tree, but it is my job to tell you that there’s no proof of the administration removing 60 cherry trees.

An update on gerrymandering in Missouri

• The U.S. Supreme Court stopped a Trump-backed attempt to redraw Missouri’s congressional maps. This order comes after a federal judge ordered Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins — the state’s top election official — to use the new map while the state Supreme Court ordered him to not use it.

• Confused? So were voters in Missouri, many of whom weren’t sure up until this Supreme Court order which congressional district they’d be in for November’s elections. The redrawn map would have benefitted Republicans, and it was used in the state’s primary elections last month.

• The AP reports that none of the U.S. Supreme Court justices publicly dissented from the order against the new map, and the order doesn’t include their legal reasoning. But Justice Brett Kavanaugh has been a key player in this saga. He’s in charge of appeals from the circuit that includes Missouri, and when Hoskins asked if the U.S. Supreme Court could pretty please tell the state Supreme Court that this kind of gerrymandering is fine, actually, Kavanaugh said no.

• Anyway, remember how Hoskins was told by one court to use the new map and told by another to not use it? Kind of like how you ask your dad about eating ice cream for dinner when your mom says no? Well, the state Supreme Court that said he can’t use the new gerrymandered map held a contempt hearing over Hoskins’ refusal to follow its order. After that hearing, Hoskins said he wouldn’t use the redrawn map. Instead, he’ll use Missouri’s old congressional map that keeps a blue Kansas City-area district intact.

Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered in the past week, I turn things over to him for some analysis. Dave, take it away!

It’s a “hot take corner” today, folks, buckle up! Okay, maybe medium take. Email me after you read it and let me know your thoughts and what level of spiciness to apply to it. I’m at dave.jorgenson@LNI.media, or you can just respond directly to this email.

The FCC is keeping late night TV alive.

Wait a second. Let me explain. I have a better long-winded explanation than whatever the hell Sean Duffy was talking about in that resurfaced clip from 2024. 

It’s important that I explain just how big a fan I’ve been of late night shows. When I was in high school, I found an old black and white TV stashed away in the basement. The antenna still worked and it got four or five local Kansas City channels. Almost every night, I would watch David Letterman then Craig Ferguson … in black and white. 

High definition TV already existed! But I wanted so badly to watch these shows and study them in the comfort of my room, that the grainy color-less format didn’t matter (and when TV stations turned off their analog signals in 2009, I watched Letterman one last time then waited for the signal to drop).

Part of the reason I chose to attend DePauw University was because I found out they had potential internship connections at Colbert Report and The Daily Show. Eventually, I did get a Colbert internship. In a magical full-circle moment, as we prepare to launch “What’s Your Source?” next week on YouTube, our crack team includes two former (and Emmy award-winning!) Late Show with Stephen Colbert writers.

So it’s well established that I love late night. I love the immediacy of it. The rush to air a show every weeknight. The eager audience. All of it. I also have not watched a full episode of a traditional late night show in several years. Like many of you, I watch it in YouTube and TikTok clips. The only show I do fully watch is John Oliver, and that’s because he puts 90% of every episode on YouTube.

You can probably guess where I’m going with this. Our TV-viewing habits have changed. With the exception of sports, we don’t wait for a specific time to watch our shows. We know it will stream later (or instantly) and there will be millions of ways to watch it. There’s no reason for me to go to great lengths to watch a late night show because I’ll be able to find it later on my phone or laptop. Late night shows suffered the most from the loss of “appointment television.” So much of the fun was saying to your co-worker or friend the next day that “you had to be there.” 

At last, I’m getting to the point:

I have never watched Jimmy Kimmel more than when the FCC and Trump administration try to interfere.

I like Jimmy Kimmel! I like his monologues. I loved his “sorry Matt Damon couldn’t make it” bit that went on for years. I consider myself a fan in the sense that I’ve probably devoted quite a few hours to him before streaming took over. But now, I wait for them to find me in my social feeds. 

Now Kimmel says he has decided to stream an interview with Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico on YouTube instead of airing it on ABC because of threats from the FCC. In February, Colbert said CBS network executives pulled his interview with Talarico for The Late Show, publishing only to YouTube, over fears of violating equal time regulations. I’m suddenly far more interested in catching his upcoming monologues on the topic live, or at the very least, watching them in full on YouTube early the next morning. This isn’t just me. The numbers prove it. Whenever Trump tries to interfere, Kimmel’s viewership skyrockets.

Look at those numbers!

In this dying industry, the people keeping late night alive are the ones trying to kill it faster. When Paramount pushed Colbert out, in what many believe was a calculated political move aimed at pleasing the president, it just made people love Colbert even more and engage more with his show until it ended. With Kimmel, the Trump administration keeps setting him up with ridiculous rulings that he consistently picks apart and destroys in monologues.

If it wasn’t already abundantly clear, I am rooting for late night and what comes from it. Realistically, it just needs to evolve more for a digital audience. In our own way, we will be replicating the breakneck speed of turning around a show with our small team at “What’s Your Source?” posting on a more accessible platform. In the meantime, I’ll be watching more Kimmel this week. I’m very invested in the drama (thanks, FCC?).

If you made it all the way down here, you get two rewards. The first is a pet picture from a loyal reader. This is Kiko!

eeeeepy sleepy just like me

The second is the reveal for this newsletter’s link scavenger hunt, in which I hide a non-news link every week in the body of this email and tell you where it is down here. This week, when writing about Missouri’s congressional maps, I linked out to the “I’m The Map” song from “Dora the Explorer,” which will be stuck in my head until I write next week’s newsletter.

Until then!

Chris

👀 A preview of our show! 

☎️ How to get on our new show

📹 ICYMI: Friday’s video

I’m keeping it short this weekend, folks. So I’m writing this intro like an Axios newsletter.

Why it’s short.

• I’m tired.

• It’s Labor Day weekend.

  • That means Monday is off.

• The A/C broke in our house.

  • The KC heatwave is entering its 10th day in a row of 98°+ temperatures.

• We’re working on our new show!

What’s the show called?

• It’s called “What’s Your Source?”

Where can I find it?

• It premieres on YouTube on September 18th.

  • September 17th if you’re a paid subscriber of the newsletter and get everything a day early.

Are you done with this Axios newsletter bit?

• Not yet.

  • Okay, now I’m done.

Make sure to catch a preview of our show below, as well as details on how YOU can be a part of it by calling in. Finally, a massive congrats to Carley Moseley and Felipe Torres Medina who each won an Emmy for their work on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

We’re so excited that the AWARD-WINNING Carley and Felipe will be writing “What’s Your Source?” alongside Chris Vazquez, former Washington Post TikTok intern turned producer turned LNI Thursday newsletter writer. He does it all!

PREVIEW: ‘WHAT’S YOUR SOURCE?’

This show is covering topics in the news every week, so we can’t shoot a lot of it ahead. But we did make a pilot as a test-run (which may air later). Here’s a sneak peek at the intro:

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Dave here in this message on behalf of our partner beehiiv, the reason this newsletter even exists! beehiiv has just released a bunch of cool new tools, including a visual editor and community features.

beehiiv is a fantastic platform for creators and independent journalists (like me)! Use my special code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months.

Dave here again (remember me?) after the beehiiv graphic to remind you (in case you’ve already forgotten) to use code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months of beehiiv.

WHO YOU GONNA CALL?

Me! At Local News International. We have an official line now, naturally with a Kansas City area code.

If you’re seeing something in the news and, at this point, you’re too afraid to ask what’s going on, call 913-601-7086!

If you want a fresh, humorous take on something happening in the news and you’re only seeing doom and gloom, call 913-601-7086!

If your Great-Uncle Rick posted something on Facebook that simply cannot be true, except part of you thinks it could be true, call 913-601-7086!

ICYMI

I had a lot of fun in Friday’s video, really digging out some old, old costumes from the closet, including what remained of a Thor costume I used in a 2017 episode of “Short Takes.”

No, I don’t know if the George Washington accent is accurate but I tried. I said, “What would it sound like if you had a mouth full of ivory from hippos and walruses, all bound together by gold and wire?” And went from there…

🗺️ Lake Ontario or Lake America?

📱 Influencers’ political endorsements

📽️ “Idiocracy” revisited

🎙️ Sean Duffy and Sydney Sweeney

Hi friends,

Chris Vazquez, your Friday newsletter writer here. If you’re new to Local News International, we try to tell you the news and make you laugh at the same time. That mission is on full display in a story we’re featuring today: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s off-the-wall comments about Sydney Sweeney’s breasts.

The clip where he discusses this is hard to watch without at least giggling at how bonkers it is. It also speaks to broader themes, like senior government officials’ views on LGBTQIA+ rights, climate change, sex work and more. All that and more are in the news this week, so let’s dive in.

Last week in Trump land

• President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week to change Lake Ontario’s name to Lake America. He did this after Canada retaliated against the tariffs Trump imposed on Canadian goods. Google Maps and Apple Maps both changed the lake’s name following the executive order. But the Canadian government has rejected the name change, citing the Indigenous roots of the name Lake Ontario.

• And the Trump administration’s attempted reshaping of the natural world doesn’t end there. Officials are also trying to sell off part of Yosemite National Park to private developers. NOTUS talked to four people involved and reviewed documents from the National Park Service. Yosemite’s former superintendent told reporters why this concerns her: “Our basic purpose in the national parks is to preserve these places unimpaired for future generations, not letting go of that for the purpose of private profit.”

• What else has Trump been up to? Well, his anti-immigrant campaign led to 50,000 ICE arrests in July, according to government data. That’s the highest monthly total of Trump’s second term, meaning ICE is arresting more people now than it did during controversial operations in cities like Minneapolis and Chicago, where I live. More than half of those arrested have no criminal record. This contradicts the administration’s claims that they’re targeting immigrants who have committed violent crimes. There’s also a large, longstanding body of evidence showing that immigrants commit less crime than people born in the U.S.

• And speaking of ICE, the camera network that local police use to help them track down immigrants is becoming increasingly unpopular. A YouGov poll shared with The Washington Post found that Americans are wary of license-plate cameras being installed near their homes. The Post previously reported that at least 69 police officials have been accused of misusing this technology, including to stalk women.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Dave here in this message on behalf of our partner beehiiv, the reason this newsletter even exists! beehiiv recently released a bunch of cool new tools, including a visual editor and community features.

beehiiv is a fantastic platform for creators and independent journalists (like me)! Use my special code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months.

Dave here again (remember me?) after the beehiiv graphic to remind you (in case you’ve already forgotten) to use code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months of beehiiv.

Some creators are taking undisclosed political payments

• Last week, The New York Times reported that California-based creator Josh Greene got money from at least seven politicians or groups supporting them. They included former California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer, who Greene had criticized months before receiving $21,500 from his campaign. After that, he called Steyer “the most progressive viable candidate in the race” without disclosing the payment.

• This goes beyond Greene. The Times also found a creator posting from multiple different accounts, claiming to be in different states, promoting different candidates. Steyer’s campaign also paid another influencer who endorsed him, and the influencer didn’t disclose the payment. In Texas, a company recruited influencers to defend the state’s attorney general as he faced impeachment. Some states (like California and Texas) now have regulations around political disclosures, as do TikTok’s terms of service. But at the federal level, those regulations don’t exist.

• So, how do you know whether an endorsement is genuine or the result of an undisclosed payment? That’s this week’s media literacy tip from our friends at MediaWise! Do the political influencers have a public transparency policy or past posts contradicting what they say now?

“Idiocracy” turns 20

• This week marked the 20th anniversary of the film “Idiocracy,” a movie about a far future where everyone is really stupid. In an interview with Dave a few months back, former President Barack Obama called the movie “pretty accurate.”

• The president of the United States in “Idiocracy” hosts fights, which Variety previously pointed out resembles the White House’s UFC Freedom 250 event, a real-life thing that left the White House lawn also looking the way it does in “Idiocracy.” Police in “Idiocracy” do things like fire relentlessly into vehicles. And while critiques of law enforcement far precede the Trump administration, high profile shootings by ICE officers have amplified those critiques.

• In “Idiocracy,” a cabinet member introduces himself as “the Secretary of State, brought to you by Carl’s Jr.” This year, a cabinet secretary starred in a reality show funded by companies that he oversees. Removals of roses from the Rose Garden and trees from the Kennedy Center (the latter of which Trump was reportedly not involved in, to be fair) evoke a widespread crisis facing plants in the movie.

• There’s another major, highly relevant theme in the movie: automation. “The computer did that auto-layoff thing to everybody,” one character panics. A Reuters poll from June found that more than half of Americans fear AI will take their jobs. And a recent study showed that using AI for just 10 to 15 minutes can lead to “significant impairments in independent performance and persistence.”

The transportation secretary talked about Sydney Sweeney’s boobs before wishing us a Happy Holy Week

• Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy spoke at length about Sydney Sweeney’s breasts on his and his wife’s podcast in 2024. Why are those comments back in the news now? A couple of weeks ago, a new episode of Duffy’s reality show dropped — which, I repeat, is sponsored by companies he oversees. In the episode, he worries that if his daughter goes to Harvard, she will become “perverted and contorted.” In the ensuing social media backlash, a DNC-run account reshared those comments.

• What did he say, exactly? Buckle up! He starts by referencing the “Saturday Night Live” episode Sydney Sweeney had recently hosted. Then, he said that “men appreciate women,” and “God made us a certain way to appreciate and want to mate with a woman.” And if you’re asking, but Sean, what about queer people? On this, he is consistent: He does not like us! He’s opposed marriage equality and voted to ban trans people from the military. In the podcast, Duffy then shares his hypothesis that “there’s probably a lot of fluid boys — or thought they were fluid — out there that saw Sydney Sweeney and go like, ‘actually, no, I’m not fluid.'“ While I must admit she was pretty good in “Madame Web,” Duffy’s theory does not hold up for me.

• Then Duffy says, “Sydney Sweeney’s boobs are a direct affront, a challenge, to climate change.” If you, like me, took this to mean Sean Duffy at least wants to combat the climate crisis, but with some unorthodox methods, this is not the case! He immediately clarifies that “she is going to destroy the climate change movement.” His thesis: the left wants to combat the climate crisis by limiting procreation. (Anti-natalism is a thing, and it is controversial, but it is not the same thing as wanting to stop climate change.) Duffy thinks the right should defy them by conceiving babies after, and this is the technical term, getting horned up by Sydney Sweeney’s 2024 SNL appearance.

• So, why is this news? First of all, Duffy is a really powerful guy, and I think it’s worth taking note when really powerful people say really weird things, because they may be bringing that weirdness to decisions that affect all our lives. It’s easy to draw a direct line between his argument about Sweeney’s boobs making men want to procreate with women and his homophobic, transphobic voting record. His argument about Sydney Sweeney’s boobs crumbling the pro-climate movement reveals a lot about how he may be approaching transportation emissions, one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gases in the U.S. And his ramblings about Sweeney also included critiques of porn and sex work, which other Republicans have attacked on a policy level.

Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered in the past week, I turn things over to him for some analysis. Dave, take it away!

On Friday, barring any big news (like, Sen. McConnell suddenly making a public appearance), I’m going to make a video about the trees in Washington. More specifically, it will be about the trees that President Trump has supposedly cut down in DC as an act of revenge against nature.

My name is not the Lorax and I do not speak for the trees HOWEVER I do consider myself a small voice of authority on misinformation. And all the hubbub about trees in DC this week is an exaggeration, and even false in some cases.

Like George Washington before him, President Trump stood accused of cutting down a cherry tree — dozens actually. But, also like Washington, that wasn’t true. At least, it didn’t happen in the way many posted about it online.

This article used a photo of cherry blossom trees that were not cut down.

Here’s what we know:

• Only one cherry tree was cut down.

• Other trees were removed at the East Potomac Golf Links golf course.

• At least 60 trees were removed as part of routine maintenance because they were dying, according to The Interior Department.

• The Biden administration did the same thing, removing 300 trees, 140 of which were cherry trees.

This article was posted to Reddit two days ago.

And those willow trees that were cut down at the Kennedy Center? Turns out that happened last October. Almost all the countless articles and videos posted about this neglected to mention that those photos were almost a year old. They were removed because they “posed a safety hazard.”

So why does this all matter? Because facts matter! And when we repost misinformation intentionally or unintentionally, the media and people consuming the media help promote the idea of “fake news.” We end up sowing distrust. That means when really important stories happen - like President Trump’s potential overreach, using the U.S. Postal Service to seize control of mail-in ballots — the people who need to hear or read this story don’t necessarily believe it (“remember how the media made up that story about the trees?”).

This is what our upcoming weekly show on YouTube will be about — tackling misinformation on the left and right, and in pop culture, too. For a half hour every week, we’re going to break down how these stories bubbled up and how they got away from the truth. It’s called “What’s Your Source?” And you, dear reader and viewer of our content, are essential to the show. 

In our upcoming Monday newsletter (Sunday, if you’re a paid subscriber!), I’m going to drop our phone number for the show.

Call and leave a voicemail asking about any given topic in the news right now, especially if you think friends and enemies on your social feed are getting it wrong. 

Has it been in the news for a while and now you have no idea what’s going on? Call me! 

Did your relative post about something on Facebook and you want me to correct the record? Call me!

Are you 99% convinced of a conspiracy theory and need me to talk you down (or confirm it)? Call me!

Again, that number will be in our next newsletter, along with a sneak peek of the show. See you then!

If you made it to the end of this newsletter, you get two rewards. The first is a pet picture from a loyal reader. I asked for some last week, and you all delivered, so thank you! This is Ginny.

Your second reward is the reveal for the link scavenger hunt, in which I hide a non-news-related link in the body of this email each week and task you with finding it. While writing about Sean Duffy’s comments on fluidity, I linked to the wiki page about fluid icon Paul Baker of FX’s “Adults,” who I imagine was also not turned by Sydney Sweeney.

Until next week!

Chris

👀 (Re)watching: Psych

🥪 Eating: McLain’s

👨🏼‍💻 Working on: ads

🌎 Analyzing: Google Maps

If you’re blindly following GPS navigation and driving your car into a lake, a la Michael Scott, don’t be surprised if the lake’s name has changed. Like a quiet U.S. ship passing in the night, Google changed Lake Ontario to “Lake America.” I’m talking all about that later in this newsletter. Should we care? Is it a distraction? Why not both?

For now, as expected, I got a LOT of feedback about gun legislation from you all. Once again, LNI readers impressed me with their diversity of opinions, nuance and (very) thorough answers. I also enjoyed those of you who voiced your exhaustion over the topic and opted to send a pet photo instead. Your pets are all officially in consideration for Pet of the Week. Keep checking in on our homepage to see if your furry critter made it.

Speaking of pets, Henry is thriving less than two months after we rescued him.

Here are a few excerpts from your emails. I took the time to read all of them. So, even if you aren’t featured, please know that I did read yours and appreciate you!

From my perspective, the 2nd Amendment seems to indicate that individual citizens should be empowered to resist tyranny … it does not seem to be legal to possess a tank, a bomb drone, or any form of artillery or flak … How are we supposed to demonstrate firm disagreement with immigration enforcement? We can't even stop data centers at a town hall.

The idea of the Second Amendment being outdated came up quite a bit. I thought this reader did a good job of updating the argument to a relevant point of contention (data centers).

But still, we had plenty of people across the political spectrum express their support of the Second Amendment.

I'm in the camp that the Second Amendment is the great equalizer against tyranny … the press is a massive, powerful institution, and the fear of exposure keeps politicians in check. But the Second Amendment is always there in the background. It's the ultimate insurance policy for when "shit gets wild".

This was the first time I had ever seen someone argue that the First and Second Amendments almost work in tandem. I’d never seen them paired together quite like this.

One reader, self-described as “college-educated and work a white-collar job, from West Virginia, strongly progressive in spite of state trends,” provided a few corrections and explanations of the “gun show loophole” I had spoken about, specifically talking about how it came about via the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.

The law was specifically written to include this provision because kitchen-table gun sales were and still continue to be a negligible source of firearms that end up being used in crime … The "loophole" in this context looks a lot more like a well thought out exception to the law itself which was intended for people who legally want to sell firearms in larger volumes.

I think this is a really important point. While some argue (and will argue a few quotes down) that there should be an overhaul of gun control legislation, the “gun show loophole” began with the best of intentions. This reader gave a whole lot more context that I may discuss in a future video. I also just want to call out how thoughtful and respectful their email was, given how contentious the subject is.

Of course, many people had plenty to say about their distaste for the Second Amendment:

I cannot understand how a country where this sort of thing happened all the time has taken so little action on the matter of gun control. My mind-boggling confusion continues when I learn that the right to bear arms IS ENSHRINED IN THE GODDAMN SECOND AMENDMENT.

This came from a Kiwi reader who pointed out that while New Zealand’s buyback program only got rid of a fraction of guns, they still did something and they’ve had far fewer mass shootings.

One person — a fellow journalist! — spoke about going from a more radical approach (total ban and gun buybacks) to something more measured after realizing that they see eye to eye with most gun owners about background checks and mental health evaluations.

I personally would take it a bit further and treat gun ownership like cars. Before obtaining a license to own a gun, prospective owners should be required to take basic gun safety classes complete with a written exam at the end. 

The general consensus echoed polls from the last several years: most people are in favor of more comprehensive gun control. This reader from Montana spoke about his family, who ranged from “old-school Montana Democrats” to “Reagan Republicans.”

I’ve noticed that even some like my family and other hunters who have named children after their favorite manufacturers are in support of gun control, which has been obscured by our recent trend of polarized politics.

One of my absolute favorite emails came from a reader in Oklahoma. I think this one just spoke to me as someone who grew up in the Midwest and also attended school for a year in Tulsa. Everyone around here knows someone like Papa. He sounds like basically every adult leader in my Boy Scout troop.

I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma with a big holler behind my Papa's house. He had himself a Lifetime hunting license and never missed a season, even when the doctors told him not to. As much as he loved it, he had rules too, not just for hunting, but for guns too. You'd go out with Papa for years before you got to hold a rifle in there and years more before you got to shoot anything. He taught you everything NOT to do first. 

Whenever I hear people talk about guns and gun control, I think about my Papa.

I do feel it’s fair for me to say that no matter where you fall on gun control legislation, we should all be more like Papa.

REWATCHING

Through the end of high school and my entire college career — especially as a break from stressful assignments and exams — I used to watch the USA show Psych. Every episode is a perfect mixture of a whodunnit mystery and offbeat humor. Shawn and Gus could do no wrong (even though they break the law almost every episode and it’s sort of just swept under the rug).

I liked it so much that I was almost afraid to go back to it. Would it age well? Was it only funny because I was immature and hadn’t refined my tastes yet?

The answer is yes and yes (I am still immature). After my wife passed out and said “don’t watch The Sopranos without me,” I revisited the show right around where I left off, watching episode one of season six. Back in 2013, it was pretty difficult to stream the show. I may or may not have relied on less legal websites to watch it. But now I am a responsible adult paying for sites with names like ‘Peacock,’ and the entire Psych library is available to me.

Anyway, I am just confirming that the show holds up. It never takes itself too seriously and is extremely rewatchable. It’s kind of wild that a little cable channel had this and Monk on the air at the same time. Makes me wonder if Suits is any good. Should I be watching Suits? Don’t answer that. We’re still watching The Sopranos 15 minutes at a time and it went off the air in 2007.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Dave here in this message on behalf of our partner beehiiv, the reason this newsletter even exists! beehiiv has just released a bunch of cool new features, including a visual editor and community tools.

beehiiv is a fantastic platform for creators and independent journalists (like me)! Use my special code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months.

Dave here again (remember me?) after the beehiiv graphic to remind you (in case you’ve already forgotten) to use code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months of beehiiv.

EATING

I grew up riding my bike to a 7-Eleven in Shawnee, Kansas. We would dig quarters out of my dad’s coin jar — usually 50 cents and a nickel would cover a Slurpee. I just grew another gray hair as I wrote that.

That 7-Eleven is now closed down, but just behind it, as if to say “we know you’re grown up now, Dave,” a very cool and sophisticated spot called McLain’s Bakery sprouted. For my East Coast readers, this is the Tatte of Kansas City but less pretentious and with better prices.

I did not ride my bike to this McLain’s on Friday (I don’t live in Shawnee). But I did visit another location in Kansas City to once again partake in their delicious sandwiches, baked goods and coffee. Every time, it’s a 10/10 experience. Good food for kids, too!

Also on Friday, the barista recognized me and said “aren’t you that guy that makes silly little news TikToks?” and I said, yes and asked if I could quote her. She happily obliged. What great service!

WORKING ON

We’ve got a few partnerships in the works that you’ll see in the coming weeks. This includes more videos with our long-time partner Harry’s, as well as a series of videos on Social Security with AARP. I’m really proud of our work in making sure these videos not only fall in line with our own ethics and standards but also are enjoyable to watch. Most importantly of all, you should actually learn something in these videos, like anything else we produce.

That’s our main goal when we accept money from these companies. It’s not just about keeping the lights on. We want you to know that we’re carefully choosing partners that don’t get in the way of our reporting.

Our own standards (at the bottom of this email) specifically outline that we do not take money from any political parties or PACs. Trust me when I say that it would be very easy to do so. As you can imagine, people attempt to reach out frequently either directly or via agents. Our answer every time is a flat “no.” Saying no can be hard, but taking the money would cost us too much. We have to be able to critique everyone. We also need to be able to say when a controversial political figure is doing something correctly, or at least, is not in the wrong on a certain issue.

This is not a critique of creators who do take political money. In fact, I applaud those who take it and clearly disclose this to their audience. That’s not what we want to do at Local News International, but I recognize that’s a path others choose to take. Unfortunately, some creators take that money and also don’t disclose it. Right now, they’re learning in real time how that can hurt their credibility, via this New York Times story.

ANALYZING

Remember after January 6th when virtually every major tech company turned their back on lame-duck President Trump? Twitter and Meta (briefly) banned him from their social media platforms and Google took some steps to combat misinformation around voter fraud.

That was all performative bullshit, of course. Republicans like Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio did yet another about-face and were back in lockstep with Trump by the 2024 elections, once it became clear that Republican voters had returned to Trump. He’s been reinstated on every platform. I’m not surprised by Graham and Rubio, but I cannot help but feel a little incredulous about Google caving to Trump’s executive orders renaming bodies of water.

Last year, Google changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, which I alluded to in Friday’s video. Then Saturday night, they changed Lake Ontario to “Lake America.” If you are one of our many readers who don’t live in the U.S. (thanks for reading!), this does not affect your view of Google Maps. However, if you click on Lake Ontario, you will probably see “Lake America” in parentheses.

Google’s reasoning for changing this is that they’re following the U.S. Geographic Names Information System. To me, this is a slippery slope and a complete cop-out. Is Google saying that, as a company, they are unable to make exceptions? Like when a name-change comes from an executive order, which can be challenged in court and doesn’t even hold up internationally?

When Trump signed an order renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War, Google didn’t adjust the name on Google Maps.

So, clearly they understand that there is some nuance to these executive orders, including when it comes to what a body of water is.

It seems to me this is yet another capitulation to the man in the Oval Office, who can pull the levers of power, affecting their business for better or for worse. If Trump were yet again a lame duck on his way out, it’s hard to imagine Google making these changes to Google Maps. When the president, his Sharpie-riddled maps and his political party eventually do leave the Oval Office, it’s safe to bet that they will switch the gulf and lake back quietly in the night.

So, does it all matter? I can’t really decide. I made a point in Friday’s video of showing all of the far more consequential things happening in the news. There’s no doubt that the legal immigrants being jailed by ICE and the long-forgotten Epstein Files should have far more impact on the news. But there is something to be said about tech companies’ willingness to bend the knee for the trivial middle school whims of the president. If they’re taking the time to entertain silly name changes like this, what else will they entertain?

STILL HERE?

Here’s a video explaining how OneDrive works. Unless you are sitting next to LNI co-founder Micah Gelman, who somehow is able to navigate the platform, this is a pretty good summary:

Instagram post

📚️ Dolly Parton’s book program

🇨🇦 Canada tariffs

💌 Natalie Harp letter

🐴 Horse meat

🤖 AI labels

Hi friends,

Chris Vazquez here, your Friday newsletter writer. Between a trade war with Canada, the fate of wild horses, the death of Dolly Parton and the literacy program she leaves behind, this week’s news gave us a lot to make sense of. Dave’s covered it all, so let’s dig in.

Literacy advocate who also had singing career dead at 80

• Over the last three decades, Dolly Parton oversaw a program called the Imagination Library, which has given out more than 300 million free books to kids, according to its website. The program relies heavily on state-sponsored grants, which public officials have recently cut.

• Indiana’s Republican governor cut state funding for the program last year. His wife then went on a fundraising spree for the program, and imagining the arguments those two may have had is very funny to me.

• The program ended in Maine after losing state funding, leaving a nonprofit partner of the Imagination Library to fill the gap with a similar program. Dave’s home state of Missouri slashed $4 million in funding for the program and ended new enrollment. Even Washington state’s Democratic-controlled legislature has cut funding. Kentucky lawmakers tried to reduce state funding for the program as well. But voters, much like Dolly going toe to toe with Jolene, didn’t let them get away with it.

• The Imagination Library is sticking around. The program has said it’ll keep sending books to children under 5. Newsweek also reports that Dolly Parton could have been a billionaire but instead chose to donate millions to causes like the Imagination Library.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Dave here in this message on behalf of our partner beehiiv, the reason this newsletter even exists! beehiiv recently released a bunch of cool new features, including a visual editor and community tools.

beehiiv is a fantastic platform for creators and independent journalists (like me)! Use my special code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months.

Dave here again (remember me?) after the beehiiv graphic to remind you (in case you’ve already forgotten) to use code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months of beehiiv.

Sullivan, Sullivan, Sullivan, Canada, and you

• Canada put tariffs as high as 50% on hundreds of products from the U.S. It was an effort to get back at the U.S. for putting 50% tariffs on Canadian goods last weekend. President Donald Trump then threatened Canada with “far WORSE” consequences.

• But if you’re not importing goods from Canada, and I’m not importing goods from Canada, then why does any of this matter? USA Today breaks it down pretty clearly. These goods go from importers to retailers to us. Importers don’t want to pay all that extra cost, so they charge retailers more. And retailers don’t want to pay it either, so they charge us more. This isn’t theoretical — we have data showing that we, the consumers, have been hit by price increases after tariffs. But I don’t want to pay these higher prices either, so I’m just buying less stuff. And that frightens retailers, who now have to consider how much to raise prices without scaring us off entirely.

• The Trump administration’s antagonism toward Canada doesn’t end there. It has threatened to annex Canada as the 51st state. But polling from last October showed only 16% of Canadians would vote for that. Meanwhile, just beyond Canada, Alaska’s Senate race is heating up. Trump-aligned Republican Senator Dan Sullivan is running against a Republican challenger named Dan Sullivan. Challenger Sullivan doesn’t like Trump. A third Dan Sullivan, the mayor of Anchorage, just endorsed the incumbent Trump-aligned Senator Dan Sullivan.

White House aide worries she was weird last night

• In what reads like a beat poet sending a hangxiety text, Trump aide Natalie Harp sent a sprawling letter to the president in 2023. In the letter, written around the time Trump traveled internationally with Harp, she apologized for her conduct on the trip.

• The Daily Beast published the letter in full, along with a second letter Harp wrote. “I want things to always be right between us,” she wrote, before recounting how she’d forgotten to eat and sleep. “I never want to bring you anything but joy,” she wrote to the president. And she called Trump her “Guardian and Protector in this life.”

• So, why is this news? Harp has enormous political influence. She works from the Oval Office and is always around the president. As the Financial Times puts it, Harp “has quickly become a symbol of the excessive sycophancy within Trump’s entourage and his own need for flattery at all times.” In other words, loyalty to Trump gets you power in this administration, and Harp has both in spades.

• Harp was thrust into the national spotlight after Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff (D) publicly criticized her. Conservatives called the comments sexist, but a White House spokesperson also called Ossoff a “cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid,” so the outrage over sexism only goes so far.

Horse girls of the world, unite

• To start, there is no evidence that the U.S. government is directly killing wild horses or importing tons of horse meat, contrary to what you may have seen lately. But we do still have reason to worry about wild horses in the U.S., and the federal government may be playing a role.

• In 2007, I was eight years old, which is sure to upset Dave when he reads this. It’s also the year that the last horse slaughterhouse in the U.S. shut down, according to this helpful recap from Horse Illustrated. That’s good news for horses. But worse news for horses: The Bureau of Land Management has been pointing to overpopulation of wild horses — a problem that it says is improving but hasn’t gone away. How does the bureau try to address this? It rounds up wild horses and puts them up for adoption at this website.

• The New York Times found the government has also been increasingly selling horses since Trump’s second inauguration. What happens after that? Legally speaking, that’s none of the government’s business. Horse adopters and buyers can turn around and sell the horses to horse killers abroad. The Times investigation found that some horses that the government sold wound up in Canadian slaughter plants, and I could make a hilarious callback to the tariff story here if I were better at understanding the economy.

• That brings us to our media literacy tip from our friends at MediaWise! Emotional reactions to animal-interest stories can spread fast. Here’s how to get reliable information.

And speaking of media literacy…

• How can you tell if a video is generated by AI? I am, admittedly, not good at it! Many social media platforms have in-app labels for AI-generated content. But a February 2026 survey found that half of U.S. adult social media users want better labeling on AI posts.

• And they have a point: These labels aren’t always reliable. Creators can mark a post as AI-generated even if it’s not, and platforms can also unfairly and inaccurately mark creators’ content as AI-generated.

• Some governments are working to address this. An EU policy passed in 2024 takes effect this year, requiring a visible mark and digital watermark on AI-generated content that’s meant to look real.

Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered, I turn things over to him for some analysis. Dave, take it away!

I made a comparison this week when talking about the government’s technically legal sale of horses:

Stills from Wednesday’s video.

It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it’s pretty close. Basically, it’s a transaction that would otherwise be illegal, if not for a loophole. This is very much the case at gun shows. Licensed dealers have to run background checks, but in many states, unlicensed dealers do not have to run checks. That’s the loophole.

A very small but vocal minority of commenters challenged this comparison. Some in good faith, some not. In this exchange, it occurred to me that not a lot of people know that the “gun show loophole” is very much intact.

The Biden administration closed the loophole in 2024, only for the Trump administration to restore it in April. This was part of a rollback of restrictions that then-Attorney General Todd Blanche described as the “most comprehensive regulatory reform package in the history” of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Longtime followers know that I’ve been covering gun control for years. In 2023, at The Washington Post, I made a duet every time there was a mass killing (in which four or more people died by gunfire). I got to 17 duets before August 4th, when I went on paternity leave. 

I also hope that longtime followers know I’ve been very fair and careful about gun control and how I speak about it. I’ve never made the common mistake of mislabeling AR-15s as AK-47s — something I see a lot of liberal-leaning journalists do. I’m also quick to acknowledge responsible gun owners and vendors. Generally, I’ve made a number of videos about how the vast majority of Americans both support the Second Amendment and want more comprehensive gun legislation.

To put it into perspective, my journalism career basically began just after the Sandy Hook shooting. Twenty first graders and six adults were murdered. President Obama called for better gun legislation, saying it was time to do something about gun violence. A lot of Americans seemed in agreement.

Then… nothing happened. Well, almost nothing. Alex Jones spent years spreading dangerous and hurtful lies that the shooting was staged and the kids never existed.

And the small steps that were made — like Biden’s closing of the gun show loophole — were reversed two years later.

So, for me, there is a ton of anger and frustration around this topic. It’s as if we’re all standing in a room, acknowledging a mental health crisis and the need for better gun control, but nothing ever happens.

We have a diverse audience at LNI, politically and generationally. I’m curious what you think about gun control and how you talk about it. Let me know at dave.jorgenson@lni.media. 

If you made it all the way down here, you get two rewards. The first is a pet picture from a loyal reader. I’m cheating by including a new picture of Athena, who has already been featured in our newsletter. We are in need of new pet pictures! Please send some!

Ready for her close-up

Your second reward is the answer to this week’s link scavenger hunt, in which I hide a non-news-related link somewhere above and reveal where it is down here. While writing about the wild horses, I linked out to a Laverne & Shirley scene where the title characters try to rescue a horse from an untimely death. This is still my comfort show, and I’m sure Laverne and Shirley would feel very mobilized right now.

Until next week!

Chris

👀 Watching: Survivor legend Sue Hawk

🥘 Eating: at Parlor KC

🍔 Correct opinion: McDonald’s vs Burger King

🎙️ Analyzing: Celebrity-hosted podcasts

Amy Poehler and her well-deserved Golden Globe for podcasting.

I was a day-one listener to Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. This is probably not a surprise to many people. O’Brien is a comedic genius, with a massive, ever-growing resume that anyone making anything remotely funny should aspire to.

His podcast only grew during COVID, eventually evolving to include a video version. Even as celebrity guests returned, usually to promote something, I kept at it, devouring the podcast while on long lockdown walks with LNI co-founder, and avid LinkedIn user Lola.

Starting in 2023, some guests returned a second or even third time. The podcast titles reflected that in their naming convention:

• John Mulaney

• John Mulaney Returns

• John Mulaney Returns Again

• John Mulaney Returns Once Again

If John Mulaney comes on the show a fifth time, I’m not sure how else the very talented crew at Team Coco could frame it (“John Mulaney Returns Once More Again?”). More importantly, the original premise of the show — will this person be Conan’s friend? — has completely gone out the window. Sure, it was a bit of a joke to begin with, but with the rise of other celebrity-on-celebrity podcasts, how much longer can they keep this going? I’ll talk about it later on in this newsletter.

Also this week I’m building on a previous segment in a newsletter, in which I gave a full-throated opinion on something that is of zero consequence. I spoke about Smarties being the best candy because they are universally liked (Butterfinger is my personal favorite, by the way). I’m calling it “Correct Opinion.” This week’s is a doozy.

As always, I love to hear from you. Send me your thoughts, opinions and innermost desires at dave.jorgenson@LNI.media.

WATCHING

“You watch Survivor? That’s still on?”

It’s the refrain every Survivor fan hears, and has heard, for the 26 years since the show premiered and just kept going. It stings a bit more recently as I’ve begun to feel that Jeff Probst continues to run the show into the ground, introducing twists and turns meant to keep younger children excited that completely water down the original premise of the game. If you’re a long-time reader of this newsletter, you’ve heard me complain about this before, so I’ll leave it there and get to the main point:

Even the people who ask if Survivor is still on the air will remember arguably the best all-time moment on the show, during the season one finale, when Sue Hawk gave the “snakes and rats” speech. A trucker from Wisconsin, Hawk had leaned into her redneck persona the whole game, gone toe-to-toe with the white-collar eventual winner Richard Hatch. Betrayed by her best friend in the game, Kelly Wigglesworth, she gave what she now calls a “sales pitch” on why Hatch should be the winner.

It was iconic.

“… let it be in the end the way Mother Nature intended it to be, for the snake to eat the rat.”

I know that she now refers to it as a sales pitch because after 21 years being completely off the grid, she reemerged on an episode of Talking with T-Bird, an ongoing series of my favorite Survivor podcast.

Sue talks about getting married in Vegas, going bear hunting in Russia in the 90s, her experience both times on the show and everything in between. And I mean everything. Every answer is packed with five separate stories and completely unrelated anecdotes. It’s amazing. You can listen or watch it now.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Dave here in this message on behalf of our partner beehiiv, the reason this newsletter even exists! beehiiv has just released a bunch of cool new features, including a visual editor and community features.

beehiiv is a fantastic platform for creators and independent journalists (like me)! Use my special code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months.

Dave here again (remember me?) after the beehiiv graphic to remind you (in case you’ve already forgotten) to use code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months of beehiiv.

EATING

Until Sunday, Parlor KC was a food and drink hall in downtown Kansas City. It hosted seven restaurants, everything from Laotian cuisine to a very popular local chicken chain, Mother Cluckers. Naturally, my wife and I didn’t find this place until Friday, two days before it closed, and one day after the closure was announced. Before you get your calculator out, yes, 75 employees and seven restaurants were only given three days’ notice that Parlor was closing.

When we ordered from Elephant Wings, an Indian fusion restaurant, on Friday, employees expressed their frustration and noted that they were scrambling to find a new location. I even spoke to the owner, who is a renowned chef in Kansas City. He seemed politely dumbfounded by the news. It was all pretty fresh (so was their butter chicken, by the way)! You could tell they were still shocked.

No local outlet has been given a good reason for the sudden closure. Downtown Kansas City is a puzzle. There’s ample parking, which is nice for someone coming from the nightmare parking experience of 14th Street in Washington, D.C. But it’s also to the detriment of local businesses. A very recently eliminated surface parking lot law had made it difficult for areas to grow, literally forcing parking lots where businesses could be instead. I had never even been to Parlor before last week, probably because it’s hidden away on a street I’ve never had a reason to walk down.

Hopefully, as the Royals move downtown and the city continues to bask in the glory of a successful World Cup, this will begin to change. For now, I’m going to be on the lookout for all the displaced Parlor restaurants.

CORRECT OPINION

There is a difference between a “hot take” and what I’m calling a “correct opinion.” The former is something you know may not be a popular take, and you likely aren’t trying to change anyone’s minds. With Correct Opinion, I’m aiming to talk about things I believe everyone should agree with.

A Correct Opinion is not something that you should practice on consequential subjects. It’s important to do the exact opposite, to keep an open mind, especially as it relates to the news. But every so often, I just want to say an opinion with authority, so this will be my outlet. Here goes…

Burger King burgers are better than McDonald’s burgers.

Never in my life have I thought a McDonald’s cheeseburger was delicious. On a road trip with no other options, I’ll get a Quarter Pounder and it will do the trick. But I’m never satisfied with that “burger.” The breakfast? You bet. When McDonald’s breakfast shifted to a 24/7 option, I would choose a Sausage McMuffin over a burger at 7 p.m. at a rest stop in the middle of Indiana. With the coffee to keep me going, I was unstoppable. More on their coffee in a minute.

I don’t know if it’s just good advertising, but I can tell the difference between a “flame-grilled” Whopper and a reheated frozen patty Big Mac. It’s bigger, it’s better. It tastes like an actual burger. It’s like McDonald’s is doing a copy of a copy of a burger. Even Burger King’s Impossible no-meat Whopper tastes better than something from McDonald’s.

Eating a superior Whopper after suffering through a Big Mac.

Let’s be clear: there are many burger options better than those offered at both of these fast-food restaurants. Wendy’s, for example, leaves them both in the dust. Especially if you are able to eat it in one of the remaining sunrooms (check out this video from my friend Phil Edwards on the invention of those sunrooms).

I just never understood why, when given the binary choice between Burger King and McDonald’s, someone would willfully choose a Big Mac. Unless you’re going for the coffee, which is better than pretty much any to-go coffee out there, including Starbucks.

In fact, all beverages at McDonald’s are quite good. Their Coke and Sprite really do taste better. You’re not imagining it. In addition to better filtered water, they use a higher syrup-to-water ratio.

Do you have a Correct Opinion of your own on fast-food burgers? Or, heaven forbid, a wrong opinion that McDonald’s is better? Let me know at dave.jorgenson@LNI.media.

CELEBRITY PODCASTS

An unintentionally misleading headline and photo combo on Instagram gave me pause earlier this week. It said “Inside the Fake Celebrity Podcast Scam Fooling Hollywood.” To my horror, Amy Poehler’s face was plastered over it, in a still from her podcast, Good Hang:

It’s not a secret that Good Hang is one of my favorite podcasts. Poehler delivers every week, charming the guests with very specific questions. It’s become a bit of a running joke at LNI that I basically compare everything good to Good Hang. Especially as we’ve begun to prepare for our own long-form series (launching next month on YouTube!), I continuously mention the creative decisions of Good Hang, and why they work so well.

Now, to be clear, this headline was not saying that celebrity podcasts like Good Hang are a scam. It was about an actual scam that tricks celebrities into coming onto podcasts like Poehler’s, just to get access to their social media accounts.

Even as I read the caption explaining the real scam and my heartbeat slowed, I couldn’t ignore the thought that came to mind — it’s happening. What I believed to be “happening” was the kind of inevitable slow decline of interest which has long plagued Conan O’Brien’s podcast, the SmartLess podcast, Armchair Expert and many, many more.

Despite what some extremely passionate Redditors might say, I don’t believe any of those celebrity podcasts got worse; I think the shine just wore off. What makes them so addictive from the jump is learning what these people are like outside of a talk-show setting. I had no idea what Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes were like before SmartLess debuted. It was a delight to see these actors I already loved showcase their friendship and quick wit on a regular basis. Similarly, discovering that Amy Poehler was exactly who I hoped she was only strengthened our parasocial relationship.

But … where do we go from there?

Very quickly, PR teams everywhere realized that the podcast circuit was fertile ground for actors to promote their projects. No longer were people going on Conan Needs a Friend to find out if they could be friends. They were going to discuss their latest project for at least 15 minutes of the 60-minute podcast — far more time than they would on any late-night show. Even as Poehler arrived on the scene, acknowledging she was quite late to the trend, her fresh approach still ultimately ends with the promotion of a project.

It’s delightful to listen to someone you like talk to someone else you like for an hour. But when that latter person is going around doing the same thing on five other podcasts that week, it loses its shine. With celebrity interview podcasts, we’re speed-running the rise and fall of late-night talk shows in the space of a decade.

In my view, these shows need to evolve or quit while they’re ahead. If they are going to stick around, the end goal can’t be promotion but something else. The celebrity-hosted podcasts that predated this trend like How Did This Get Made? could go on forever. In that podcast, three comedians answer the central question, “how did this insane film get made?” They still have their running gags. Like Conan’s podcast, so much of it is about the rapport between the hosts. The end goal isn’t promotion, it’s to discuss hilarious realities, like how the Jack Frost snowman puppet was designed to look like George Clooney, and they just didn’t bother changing it when they cast Michael Keaton in the titular role instead.

If it’s impossible to evolve or change the show, I hope these podcasts find a graceful exit. And I could be wrong! Maybe Poehler has the secret sauce and people will love it forever. But my parasocial appreciation for Poehler makes me worried that the show, and its host by extension, will fall out of favor first.

Still here?

I performed a letter from President Trump’s aide, Natalie Harp, word for word. It was a LOT with a capital “L.”

… enjoy!

🇨🇴 Colombia earthquake

🗒️ Trump’s press secretary

🤖 AI in Congress

✈️ Spirit Airlines data

Hi friends,

Chris Vazquez, your Friday newsletter writer here. At LNI, a core part of our mission is making the news less scary. But that sometimes poses a tricky question: What do we do when the news is scary? Case in point: last week’s earthquake in Colombia. A disaster that caused hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries is undeniably tragic.

But as Dave said in his video about it, it’s also undeniably heartwarming to see communities come together in rescue efforts. Hundreds of lives were lost; hundreds were also saved. We saw devastating damage; we also saw resiliency plans in action. We absolutely can’t look away from the bad, scary things happening in the world. We also can’t make it impossible to process, and we can’t ignore the good. If we do, we aren’t telling the whole story, and we’re driving ourselves into fear and inaction. With that, let’s dive in.

Recovery efforts after Colombia earthquake

• Last week, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake hit western Colombia, killing over 300 people. The cities of Cali, Manizales and Pereira were hit especially hard, as were the places in between.

• The disaster response has been widespread and ongoing. Al Jazeera reports that emergency response teams have saved over 350 lives. Rescue teams and aid organizations are now focusing on providing shelter and other necessities for people affected.

• Some cities affected by last week’s earthquake had only recently finished rebuilding from another deadly earthquake in 1999. Armenia, a Colombian city devastated by that quake, saw zero deaths from this recent earthquake. Engineers and officials told The Washington Post that’s because of the post-1999 planning and reconstruction efforts, which Colombia dedicated a $1 billion fund to. Those efforts weren’t perfect, but the city is nevertheless being looked at as a model for disaster preparedness.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Dave here in this message on behalf of our partner beehiiv, the reason this newsletter even exists! beehiiv recently released a bunch of cool new features, including a visual editor and community features.

beehiiv is a fantastic platform for creators and independent journalists (like me)! Use my special code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months.

Dave here again (remember me?) after the beehiiv graphic to remind you (in case you’ve already forgotten) to use code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months of beehiiv.

America’s Next Top Liar

• Karoline Leavitt announced on social media this week that she will step down as White House press secretary at the end of this month. Speculation swirled that it was because she was left on a plane that Trump was smuggled off of following a threat from Iran. If my boss left me on a plane that might get attacked without telling me, I’d be mad! But that’s almost definitely not what happened. A New York Times reporter and a White House spokesperson told Snopes that Leavitt wasn’t on the plane. And other reporting shows she was on parental leave while that airplane switcheroo happened.

• We don’t know yet who will replace her. But some people believe it could be Natalie Harp, whose intense love for Donald Trump has reportedly freaked out even the Secret Service. Her job seems to be to go where Trump goes, including onto the non-decoy airplane that Trump was smuggled onto.

• One administration official reportedly told NBC News that Trump isn’t in a rush to replace Leavitt before the midterms. During Leavitt’s last absence amid her parental leave, the administration didn’t name an interim press secretary and instead had administration officials hold press briefings.

• That brings us to this week’s media literacy tip from our friends at MediaWise! News about public figures can be overwhelming. Here’s how to stay on top of it.

Need to write a law? Just ask Chat.

• A lawmaker in New Brunswick, Canada, went viral at the end of last month for delivering a speech to the legislature that was written by AI. The lawmaker read aloud lines like, “Here’s a more natural, flowing version of that section that reads like a legislative speech, rather than a series of short bullet points.”

• Here’s another version of a bullet point on this topic, but about the U.S.: Our former colleague Anna Liss-Roy (who appeared in a bunch of videos with us, including the first iteration of LNI’s long-form show) reported that Congress is widely using AI. Unlike most workplaces, this doesn’t just mean emails from coworkers include more em dashes than usual — it means chatbots’ sometimes incoherent outputs show up in the bills shaping our everyday lives. And Anna found there are few overarching rules for how Congress uses AI.

• Here’s a different bullet point, drawing from a different news source: POLITICO reported this week that as congressional offices and outside groups use AI more and more to write legislative proposals, congressional lawyers are having a hard time keeping up with all the errors that introduces. Those errors could lead to lawsuits. And one person said fixing those errors takes more time than writing a law from scratch.

The Ghost of Data Past

• Spirit Airlines ceased operations suddenly in May. So I can no longer get the worst flight of my life for the price of a special, but not extravagant, meal out. But in some ways, Spirit lives on. In you, in me, and in the 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams chats, HR information and financial data it left behind. Heartwarming.

• Much as how Dr. Frankenstein desecrated the dead to create his monster, AI companies want this dearly departed airline’s data to train their models. Google agreed to pay $10 million for it, beating out another bidder named Mercor that bid $7.5 million.

• So, is Google’s AI gonna know exactly who sent which angry Teams message about a coworker that really should’ve been a text instead? Spirit has said the data will be “deidentified” so that it can’t be traced back to individuals, and Google has agreed not to try and trace it back to specific people, either. But flight attendants still have privacy concerns around how this data will be used. A U.S. bankruptcy court still has to approve the sale.

I want YOU… to play GTA 6

• An Army battalion in Georgia is offering some soldiers a four day pass to play “GTA 6” when it comes out in November. The catch? You have to agree to stay in the Army for at least two more years. “GTA 6” has been in development for over a decade, making it the straight guy equivalent of the MCU X-Men.

• That’s not the only reason the Army is giving this pass. They’ve also been struggling to recruit and retain people the past few years, but since the economy is so severely in the toilet, more people have been enlisting recently for the benefits. Now, the Army is trying to find creative ways of keeping people on.

• This question is maybe not super important, but it is one I cannot help but ask: What happens if you want four days off but you have truly no interest in playing “GTA 6”? If you’re reading this from the 9th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team at Fort Stewart, Georgia, I don’t think anyone is making you play this game. The pass is meant to coincide with when the game comes out, but no one seems to be checking that you’re playing the game while you’re using your time off.

• Lest we forget that the U.S. military apparatus is a big, serious thing with big, serious consequences, let’s turn our attention to the USS Abraham Lincoln. Democratic senators have raised concerns about poor living conditions on the aircraft carrier, including reports of supply shortages, contaminated water, plumbing problems and mental health crises. So, things a four day pass to play GTA wouldn’t fix, probably. The carrier has been deployed for 270 days amid the U.S. war on Iran. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also reportedly failed to publicize Iranian strikes on the base tasked with resupplying the carrier.

Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered in the past week, I turn things over to him for some analysis. Dave, take it away!

My entire YouTube algorithm is serving me videos about how YouTube is changing its view counter. In case your algorithm isn’t overrun with creators talking about this, YouTube recently announced that watching a single frame of a video now counts as a view. I had a quick and immediate take on this when I learned the news: it’s not that views don’t matter anymore. It’s that they never mattered that much. Let me explain …

YouTube first started experimenting with this type of a view early last year with YouTube Shorts. In this new way of counting views, if a person watched a frame of video, or if it showed up via autoplay, then it was now the standard “view.” For a while, in the backend, you could simultaneously see something called an “engaged view,” which was the old way of measuring a view (someone watching it for a few seconds, or clicking to play it). 

On average, I would say the engaged view count is about 60% of the normal view count. Here’s an example from our video about Trump’s decoy plane in Turkey.

It’s a significant difference, but it has almost zero impact on how I personally gauge the success of a video. That’s because I’m far more concerned with two other metrics: comments and average view duration.

The comment section is the true measure of actual, real engagement. This is where people decide that watching the video wasn’t enough. They have to engage further — whether it’s a compliment, a complaint, a joke or comparing me to JD Vance.

YouTube can’t fake the comment count number. And YouTube is also far better at detecting bots than most platforms. So it’s rare that a comment section is artificially inflated by AI bots trying to get me to click on their profile for a good time (as the Washington Post TikTok account once experienced for an entire year).

Average view duration, which is quite simply how long people watched the video on average, will correctly predict the success of a video, on any platform, 100% of the time. If the average view duration is low, it didn’t do well. If it’s higher than the length of the video, people watched the whole thing and some of it again. That means it went super viral. Every single time. You can start to see why I didn’t even bat an eye at this new view count system.

I haven’t spoken to a YouTube rep about the change, but I imagine this way of counting views became necessary as standard YouTube videos and Shorts have become more integrated. When the view count method is different between two videos on the same platform, it’s difficult to measure them against each other. It’s even harder now that the “engaged view” count on Shorts is harder to find in YouTube Studio.

The “engaged view” box is automatically unchecked in the advanced video analytics section.

Finally, if you’re trying to sell ads on both your Shorts and long-form videos, it’s hard to share those metrics with potential buyers when the view count works differently. Speaking of long-form … our new weekly series premieres mid-September! It’s finally coming! Make sure to subscribe on YouTube. 

If you made it to the end of this newsletter, you get two rewards. The first is a pet picture from a loyal reader.

I don’t have a name for this cutie, but they look so alert

Your next reward is the reveal for our link scavenger hunt, the weekly game in which I hide a non-news-related link in the body of this email and task you with finding it. In honor of this being the first newsletter since the MCU X-Men cast was announced, I linked out to a comic book issue summary of the X-Men meeting Frankenstein.

Until next week!

Chris

👀 Watching: The Devil Wears Prada 2

☕️ Drinking: Coffee (need recommendations)

🇨🇴 On my mind: Colombia

👨🏼‍💻 Analyzing: The Attention Economy

I heard from a ton of you in the last couple of days after sharing my thoughts in Friday’s newsletter (Thursday, if you’re a paid subscriber!) on the media’s current obsession with Hasan Piker. I was not surprised to hear from people across the political spectrum.

There was no consensus. Some people love Piker, some are neutral and some can’t stand the guy. Within those three groups, there was plenty of variation as well. Like my own stance (that I don’t really watch him, but I also think the reaction is overblown), plenty of takes I saw were thoughtful and nuanced. Here’s a few!

I worry he's taking progressive would-be Democrat voters and turning them into cynical non-voters, a net negative for Democrats. 

I hadn’t considered this angle. If it’s true, it does provide a good answer to my original question: why do liberal podcast bros care so much about him?

This reader, like the vast majority of you, made a point to say they love our content. I am always struck by just how empathetic and thoughtful you all are. Even in the heat of debate, there’s an underlying kindness, and I very much appreciate it.

Here was a top comment on our YouTube Community Post, where I posted screenshots of the newsletter:

More context on the 9/11 comment: He appoligized [sic] 2 days after the stream on the Young Turks. Specifically he said "deserved" was inappropriate, and clarified that he meant that the US shouldn't be surprised that the interventionism policies had blowback.

It’s true. He did walk it back shortly after. My mistake! Your comments on this went both directions. From another emailer:

You frame it as though he’s walked back his comments. However, he recently hung a framed newspaper front page from 9/12/2001 on the wall behind him in his livestreams

I’m grateful to the many who sent corrections and their points of view via email and in the comment section on YouTube. Never stop doing that! It’s part of our policy to own our mistakes.

The following was one of the more strongly worded critiques.

I’m a Gen Z liberal, and my main complaint (although I have many minor ones) with Hasan is that he is fundamentally illiberal … He is a subversive political actor. His praise of Mao is not on accident.

I saw the last piece of this, on Piker’s support for Mao and Stalin specifically, in a few emails. The word “illiberal” came up as well. I think it’s worth exploring further and hope to spend a full half hour on it in our upcoming series, which premieres next month on YouTube. This will also give me a chance to fact-check the many specific critiques — and praises — you all so diligently laid out to me via email.

In some emails, and especially in the YouTube Community Post, I saw a ton of praise for Piker, or general agreement that the criticism was overblown.

Mainstream media always feels more comfortable punching to the left than actually taking the fight to the GOP and establishment dems. Hasan just seems like an easy target to them, but I feel like it'll backfire spectacularly and just show [sic] how out of touch they are

This was echoed in an email that called out the need for “grace and constructive criticism.”

He can say something out of his ass sometimes but I think in the contemporary internet when you are always giving your opinions you’re bound to have some bad ones.

One emailer said they felt Piker could not just be waved away (fair). They also pointed out an interesting contrast in the comparison I had made between Piker and Hunter Biden.

Biden has apologized to those he's hurt with his addiction & is in recovery. Piker's addiction might be a different animal, but he's still actively in it, so there's no room to just come out & say unequivocally that he's sorry.

I think there’s something to consider in the “internet addiction” of it all, if that is what the commenter is alluding to. Most content creators have some form of it, just as a result of spending their entire careers on the internet. Personally, I try to combat it by being extremely offline on Saturdays and most of Sundays.

Now, all that said. Not all the emails were friendly!

I wish you r******* Piker fans would stop pretending to not know him, not watch his content and not be fucning [sic] sycophants.

I can appreciate that someone unfamiliar with me might not take me at my word. But folks, I really don’t watch his content! That was why I wrote the original post — I was only hearing about him because of people complaining about him. With that in mind, I'm going to elaborate more on the “attention economy” later on in this post.

For now, back to the lighter part of each Sunday’s newsletter.

WATCHING

Like John Krasinski, I kind of love The Devil Wears Prada. It’s well-acted, well-written, light but with some intense moments. It’s a very rewatchable movie with some real heart. My wife and I had planned to see the sequel, blandly titled (for marketing purposes, I assume) The Devil Wears Prada 2, but parenting got in the way of that movie night. So, now that it finally started streaming on Disney+, we watched it in two installments (parenting caused us to pass out halfway through the initial watch).

It’s… ok? Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt and Meryl Streep slipped effortlessly back into their characters. I feel that for the second time this year, after seeing The Odyssey, I’m watching Anne Hathaway muscle her way through a poorly written role. I think Hathaway is incredibly talented, but I was more excited when I saw the other three on screen, or local KC-born legend Caleb Hearon.

Anyway, they did what most formulaic sequels do these days and retreaded the same ebbs and flows of the original plot. Totally serviceable. The biggest surprise was the opening few minutes in which award-winning journalists were fired. That was followed by hiring decisions made at the whim of a billionaire and the gradual realization that two characters were clearly based on Jeff Bezos and billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, to whom he used to be married.

I didn’t hate this framing, but it felt a little like they were putting a hat on a hat. I would love to see all of these actors in a separate film about how billionaires are buying and selling great institutions. But it felt weird watching these familiar characters stand in for all the journalists being thoughtlessly fired, with Streep’s Miranda Priestly shoehorned into the hero role. It would be like casting Mickey Mouse and Goofy in a biopic about crypto bros. Sure, that’s interesting, but… are these the best characters to make the point?

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Dave here in this message on behalf of our partner beehiiv, the reason this newsletter even exists! beehiiv has just released a bunch of cool new features, including a visual editor and community features.

beehiiv is a fantastic platform for creators and independent journalists (like me)! Use my special code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months.

Dave here again (remember me?) after the beehiiv graphic to remind you (in case you’ve already forgotten) to use code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months of beehiiv.

DRINKING

Or rather… drinking less coffee than I’d like.

Folks, the coffee carafe for our KitchenAid coffee maker is broken again. And the more I read the reviews, the more I realize it’s a common problem, which is why the replacement carafe keeps running out of stock. It may be time to just start over and get a brand-new coffee maker. As much as I love going to our local Caribou Coffee as a temporary fix, it’s getting expensive to keep up this addiction.

So, what coffee maker should we get? Eagerly standing by, awaiting your suggestions at dave.jorgenson@LNI.media.

ON MY MIND 🇨🇴

I made an uncharacteristically personal video on Friday, speaking more plainly about the earthquake in Colombia. The majority of my wife’s family lives there. In short, it’s devastating. All of them have been impacted in big and small ways. The recovery will take years, likely decades. Many kind people in the comments asked how they can help. I found this article from AP News especially helpful.

In particular, I like that they give options for both US-based and Colombia-based organizations.

THE ATTENTION ECONOMY

Circling back to our main discussion, another email asked that I speak more about the “attention economy”…

I would love to get your take on the “attention economy” as you put it as a content creator. My take on it is that everyone is trying to feed the social media beast and from that you get rewarded with likes and subscriptions which turn into dollars for people like the Pikers, and Cenk Uygurs, Carlsons and even Joe Rogan. 

As a jumping-off point, I pretty much agree with this on its face. Yes, content creators are trying to feed the social media beast. And yes, it’s all in service of more engagement and subscribers that can be turned into dollars. In this very newsletter, every week, we ask if you’d like to become an LNI member, after all (here’s the link!).

This is why I was not shy in pointing out last week that I, too, want your attention and also benefit from this content creator ecosystem. I think that it would be ridiculous to denounce content creators who turn your attention into money, while simultaneously benefiting from it myself.

In my view, this job is not unlike any other job. There are noble ways to do it and there are less-than-noble ways. Think of your own job. There are likely good and bad actors. You may have a co-worker who takes shortcuts. You may have another who works hard and makes a genuine effort to help customers. This is how I view my job, and it’s informed by my previous jobs (ice cream vendor, barista, Sea Base Island Mate, Colbert Report intern, VIP concert ticket helpline, rainwater garden consultant, etc.). Most importantly, my previous bosses — the majority of whom were very good people — taught me that it’s the person up top who sets the tone for the company.

So, if the product or currency is “attention,” then we have to go about collecting it in an honest way. That’s why at LNI we don’t accept money from super PACs or political parties. We don’t take money from prediction markets, which I personally find morally bankrupt. These aren’t just our policies. We have turned down these opportunities multiple times in the last year. Here’s where I remind you, again, that you can support us by becoming a member or making a contribution.

I don’t view “the attention economy” as a bad thing. I view it as something that can be corrupted or compromised by the ways people go about getting and benefiting from it.

Still here?

Then you have to hear my latest dad-take.

Why did they add another SuperKitty? I like Willa the Wildcat but she ruins the pace of the SuperKitties song! And what’s her skill? Preparedness? She’s “ready”? Come on, Disney Junior. Get it together.

To end on a positive note: I love the Glamsters, who were also introduced in season 3.

I’m not good with change.

🪄 Harry Potter protests

✈️ Trump’s airplane switcheroo

💉 Vaccine executive order

🇺🇸 Patriot Games

Hi friends,

Chris Vazquez, your Friday newsletter writer here. This week’s news feels like a case study in how very silly stories can have very serious consequences. Dobby the House Elf has a dedicated fan base (who knew!) that’s shaping energy supplies. The president reportedly played an elaborate game of musical chairs on a tarmac, jeopardizing my colleagues’ lives. And very silly people are making very silly, debunked claims about vaccines. Dave’s covered it all and more, so let’s dive in.

Harry Potter and the Rerouted Pipeline

• Harry Potter fans banded together in an act of protest. Not against author J.K. Rowling’s rampant transphobia, which recently drew criticism from a star of the latest series adaptation. Rather, fans organized to stop a pipeline.

• For me, the word “pipeline” evokes things like Keystone XL, which former President Joe Biden canceled. That decision came amid activists’ concerns that the oil the pipeline would have carried would emit lots of greenhouse gases, and additional concerns that it would violate Native Americans’ tribal sovereignty. Environmental activists in Montana are now successfully organizing against a similar project.

• So, did these fans protest against climate catastrophe and for Indigenous sovereignty? Not exactly. This pipeline would have actually moved energy generated by wind and solar power. And Potterheads were upset because the pipeline would’ve run through the beach where the death of Dobby the House Elf was filmed, and where fans have paid tribute to the character. After the backlash, the CEO in charge of the project has said he’s rethinking the pipeline’s route.

• My two cents: Back when Dave and I worked together at The Washington Post, I did a lot of reporting on how fan culture shapes politics and vice versa. This story feels like a validation of that thesis, and a reminder of how pop culture can shape our everyday lives. When a fan group bands together to quite literally alter the course of how we combat the climate crisis, what does that mean for all of us?

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Dave here in this message on behalf of our partner beehiiv, the reason this newsletter even exists! beehiiv recently released a bunch of cool new features, including a visual editor and community features.

beehiiv is a fantastic platform for creators and independent journalists (like me)! Use my special code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months.

Dave here again (remember me?) after the beehiiv graphic to remind you (in case you’ve already forgotten) to use code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months of beehiiv.

Trump’s Airplane Switcheroo: Electric Boogaloo

• President Donald Trump reportedly escaped Turkey in a catering truck to evade a possible assassination threat from Iran. (The Washington Post also learned that the CIA didn’t think the threat was that serious.) If you, like me, read headlines about this and pictured Trump crammed inside of something like this, the reality is unfortunately much less “Suite Life of Zack & Cody” coded. The “catering cart” that some headlines refer to is actually a catering truck. After Trump was seen boarding Air Force One, the president reportedly then snuck into a truck typically used to transport food and other supplies, then boarded another smaller airplane from there.

• Why does it matter? There’s the question of what this escape tells us about the Iran War. Analysts and critics have pointed out that if the president or the people around him feel the need to take such elaborate measures to evade a threat from Iran, it’s probably a sign that things aren’t going great. Iranian sources have told Reuters that there haven’t been talks around extending the current ceasefire agreement.

• Also, the White House press corps wasn’t told about the switch. So, journalists and some White House aides were left to fly on a plane that was deemed too unsafe for the president to fly on. In other words, had this threat materialized, those are the people who would have suffered and possibly lost their lives. And by lying to these journalists, the very people in charge of telling us all what the president is up to were effectively blocked from doing their jobs, which has serious repercussions for press freedom.

• This also wasn’t the first time an operation like this happened. (See: Bill Clinton’s airplane swap in 2000.) That brings us to this week’s media literacy tip from our friends at MediaWise!

  

Public health experts HATE him

• Trump signed an executive order this week that called for revising childhood vaccine recommendations to push for spacing out shots instead of getting multiple in one go. Public health experts have pointed out the obvious: if you space out these vaccines, it becomes easier for kids to get these diseases because it’ll take longer for them to get immunized against them.

• The executive order doesn’t change which shots are available right now. Your kids can still get all of the shots on the child vaccine schedule. The order also doesn’t make any changes to insurance coverage — even if you’re uninsured, you can probably still get these vaccines without paying a copay.

• In the press conference where Trump signed the executive order, he repeatedly lied about autism being linked to vaccines. There is no link between autism and vaccines.

What are the Patriot Games?

• Remember when the Trump administration set up a controversial nonprofit called Freedom 250 to celebrate America’s 250th birthday? It wasn’t subject to congressional oversight and Trump himself was in charge. That group put on a dodgeball game that kicked off a larger sporting event.

• If that doesn’t sound enough like the subject of a nightmare where you’re stuck back in middle school with the worst people you know, get this: this sporting event, called the Patriot Games, picks two teenagers from every state to come together and compete for $125,000 each, and I’m being so big and brave by avoiding the obvious “Hunger Games” joke there.

• The Patriot Games are over now. ABC and ESPN aired them while their parent company remains under investigation by the Trump administration. One crew member told The Washington Post that it’s “difficult to not think ESPN is doing this in response to the investigation.” The games are just kinda too weird to air otherwise, they said.

Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered in the past week, I turn things over to him for some analysis. Dave, take it away!

If you made it to the end of this newsletter, you get two rewards. The first is a pet picture from a loyal reader!

Me lying down after writing this newsletter

The second is the reveal for this week’s link scavenger hunt. Every week, I hide a non-news related link somewhere in this newsletter and see if you can find it. This week, when writing about Trump’s airplane ruse, I linked out to a clip from “Frances Ha” where the main character plans her flight to Paris. I turned 27 this week and to celebrate, I watched this cute little movie about being 27 for maybe the millionth time.

Until next week!

Chris

👀 Watching: Her (again)

🍬 Eating: The objectively best candy

👨🏼‍💻 Working on: Captions

🏀 Analyzing: NBA players declaring for the WNBA draft

The three-year-old birthday party weekend extravaganza was a massive success and I’m excited to return to the concept of sleeping at night after a week’s worth of splash party prep. We’ve got another busy week at LNI, including a brief trip to New York. As always, email me with any story pitches you have from New York or Kansas City or anywhere else in the world. And if you ever see a funny, relevant clip you’d like to see get the cue card treatment, send that too: dave.jorgenson@LNI.media

A quick morning walk before the heat obliterates us.

An important reminder: there’s only one day left to take advantage of our anniversary sale. Please consider supporting my independent journalism with a membership to LNI. I’m offering 25% off annual subscriptions at all levels if you sign up by tonight! I’ve been so grateful for everyone’s support over the last year on this wild ride.

WATCHING

I have a few tattoos on my back and they’re all quotes, ranging from Ernest Hemingway to SpongeBob Squarepants. But one I’m most fond of is a common adage rephrased from the movie Her.

It’s a bit dramatic, this quote, but I do find it increasingly relevant in the misinformation age, as information spreads so fast we have a hard time keeping track of the actual narrative.

And I suppose it’s ironic I have a tattoo from an AI bot character but, to be fair, the movie was written by a human. And it’s one of my all-time favorite movies. I watched it a ton when it first came out. But somehow, it’s been a solid 7 or 8 years since I saw it last (maybe because it’s not streaming? Why is the most relevant movie of today not streaming?).

Last night, I rented it on YouTube and started my rewatch. I didn’t make it far. The 3-year-old birthday splash party really took a lot out of me. Still, just the opening scenes are remarkable in how prescient they are to 2026. Even fashion is pretty accurate, from the clothes to the mustached men. The touchscreen flip phone that some smartphone companies have started to push is here, too.

The huge advantage of having seen this film when it first came out is remembering what it was like to watch in 2013, how some scenes felt foreign or strange. Today, they wouldn’t feel that way at all. The way Joaquin Phoenix’s character Theodore walks through the world in his headphones, oblivious to those around him, is completely normal today. We used to make fun of Bluetooth earpiece bros talking to themselves. Now, with AirPods (which this film also predicted), it’s a common experience in everyday commutes.

And of course, there’s the driving force of the film, an AI bot - far smarter than its human - that Theodore falls for. In just a few short years since AI made a massive leap in its capabilities, this has become all too common. Magazine profiles about AI significant others have become almost a trope. It’s everywhere and happening more often. Most impressive (and sad) of all, the film predicted just how lonely this would make people feel. AI isn’t technically the villain. It’s the world humans built to make this kind of loneliness possible.

There’s gonna be a ton to unpack when I finish this film. Don’t be surprised if I find a way to reference it in an upcoming video. I’ll also talk about it on the Film Club at the End of the World podcast soon. I’ll link it in this newsletter when it’s published.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Dave here in this message on behalf of our partner beehiiv, the reason this newsletter even exists! beehiiv has just released a bunch of cool new features, including a visual editor and community features.

beehiiv is a fantastic platform for creators and independent journalists (like me)! Use my special code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months.

Dave here again (remember me?) after the beehiiv graphic to remind you (in case you’ve already forgotten) to use code DAVE30 and get 30% off your first three months of beehiiv.

EATING

After many 3-year-olds tried and failed to break open a piñata yesterday, my 7-year-old nephew finally broke it open with a fury and determination I’d only ever seen from his mom. Many candies spilled out, including lollipops and gum (yuck, I hate gum). But one candy stood out. As I watched some parents quietly grab this candy after the kids had cleared out, I realized a simple truth: Smarties are the best candy.

Now, hold on, before you send in your furious emails. Let me make my case. My favorite candy to eat is probably a Butterfinger, Snickers or Reese’s (in that order). But Smarties don’t melt in the summer heat. Smarties are good at Halloween, in Easter eggs or Valentine’s Day cards. They are sweet, they are versatile, no one dislikes them. If we had to create a median candy that most people would be satisfied with in any situation, it would be Smarties.

Did I convince you? Do you have a better argument? Let me know at dave.jorgenson@LNI.media. And allow me to leave you with a far more controversial opinion: Sixlets are better than M&M’s.

WORKING ON

Back at The Washington Post, we started “burning in” captions into our videos. This means that the text on screen is on the video file too, not just captions in the app. When you download the video on TikTok, for example, the captions are still there because I typed them out in Premiere Pro when editing and placed them on the screen (often strategically, so they don’t go over a patterned shirt or other difficult-to-read section of the screen).

We started doing this after Chris Vazquez, our current LNI colleague and former Post co-worker, highlighted how this made the videos more accessible. He was right! And honestly, as tedious as it can be sometimes, I really like writing in captions, especially when I can sneak in a joke, or use it to punch up the timing of a dialogue reveal.

When we created our caption format, we tried to make it near-identical to the TikTok in-app captions. That way it wasn’t distracting and the videos didn’t look too polished. Believe it or not, at one time, making a video feel too produced really hurt it on TikTok, an app where people went viral for seemingly effortless moments. We’re mostly past that, and I can now flex my editing skills even more, producing full-fledged three-minute news shorts almost every day. So, I think it’s time to start coming up with a brand new caption style.

I’ll be working on this with LNI graphics designer Sarah Hashemi, finding a font (and possibly color!) that matches all other LNI assets. I’m excited for this to add some pop to the videos without distracting from the content itself. And hopefully, it’ll help to immediately signal to you that you’re watching one of our videos, on whatever app you’re on.

ANALYZING

There seems to be a common trend with transphobic public figures and it’s that they are no longer in their prime. They are no longer at the peak of their career and while they may still have many devoted fans, it’s just not the same. This is the case for J.K. Rowling, who naturally still basks in the royalties of Harry Potter and the entire sections at Barnes & Noble devoted to her seven books and companion books. The spin-off Fantastic Beasts films did okay but ultimately were prematurely canceled. The jury is out on how the TV series will perform when it premieres in December. But it’s not the red carpet Potter film premieres and midnight book release parties of the early 2000s.

When Rowling attacks a trans person or trans people as a whole and earns some attention from it, you have to wonder what her motivation is to keep going after a small minority of people with her disinformation campaigns. I can’t see inside her head. I don’t know what Horcrux locket hangs on her neck. But I did think of her when I saw this news about two former NBA players declaring for the WNBA draft.

Enes Kanter Freedom misses a shot.

Former NBA player Royce White, who played three games in one season, declared for the WNBA draft, in a clear transphobic stunt. Another former NBA player and sometime political activist, Enes Kanter Freedom, also declared for the same purpose. They both are claiming to self-identify as women in an attempt to mock trans people and the WNBA’s vague policy.

The WNBA has not taken an explicit stance on transgender women in the league. The league’s collective bargaining agreement says, “Only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA.” If you support trans people and their existence, you likely have said that trans women are women, which would qualify a trans woman for the league. Strangely, I do agree that the vagueness of the policy is not helpful. I just happen to disagree with White and Freedom’s view of trans people. If the WNBA would like to be trans-inclusive, then the above sentence should clarify their stance on trans women. They are meeting this week to review the policy (look out for my video on this when that happens).

The issue of trans women in sports continues to be a controversial topic. Different countries and sports leagues have continuously changed policies in all kinds of directions in the last few years. But here’s what I know: saying that you “identify as a woman” to then declare yourself for a women’s professional league is transphobic. It’s not an attempt to engage in the discourse in good faith. It’s a gross, attention-seeking stunt to make trans people feel small - or worse - nonexistent. So, here’s your attention, White and Freedom. You may not like how it looks in history books.

Still here?

As a semi-sequel to my Friday newsletter thoughts on the Hank Green discourse, here’s a really good video (below) that mostly echoed my feelings and also touched more on the addictive aspects of AI.

You can also watch Hank’s latest video, which includes a new Hank AI policy in the caption. Go Hank!

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