There is no administration in the world — beyond this one — where a blunder of these proportions happens and nobody gets fired or resigns. Not in London. Not in Moscow. Not in Tokyo. Not in Pyongyang. Nowhere.

— Playbook from Politico: What’s next for Waltz and Hegseth

The Washington Post on Il Foglio, an Italian newspaper that began experimenting with AI:

The newspaper began publishing one article a week written by AI, without disclosing it, and asked readers to guess which article had been written by AI. Those who guessed correctly would be prompted to subscribe to Il Foglio and get a free bottle of champagne. Cerasa said most readers guessed correctly and were “enthusiastic” about the experiment. The cases in which readers guessed incorrectly convinced him that his writers’ work was too commonplace, not creative enough, and that Il Foglio had to “improve our journalism,” he said.

The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.

I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.

This is going to require some explaining.

— Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic: The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans

Some fascinating details in this Times of London profile of British podcaster Steven Bartlett:

His staff have built a tool, Guest Radar, to determine who to invite on. What they are looking for is someone who “over-performs” — meaning that when they have appeared on other podcasts, the listener numbers have been higher than usual. This strategy is not without problems: it favours controversial characters and last year Bartlett was accused by BBC News of amplifying health misinformation after he failed sufficiently to challenge some guests — including one who claimed that cancer can be treated by following a keto diet.

Another tool, FlightCast, combines listener numbers from Spotify and Apple with viewing figures from YouTube, then uses AI to analyse any issues. “You can ask, ‘Why are my episodes performing badly in January?’” Bartlett explains. “And it will say, ‘Because your audience wants finance or health content’ or ‘because a certain part of the world is on holiday.’ It’s like having a data scientist on your team.”

Two groups of listeners might see different trailers to determine which is more likely to keep people tuned in. The company also uses a pre-watch tool on YouTube that sends the episode before release to 1,000 viewers who are monitored while they watch. “They sign a consent form and it uses their camera to see whether they look away from the screen,” Bartlett says. “If I ask a shit question and we lose 5 per cent of people, we’ll edit that out.” He can spend four hours on an interview, which is then whittled down to about two. All episodes are translated by AI into Hindi, Spanish and Arabic.

Their final tool is Show Radar, which Bartlett’s team are using to find new podcasts to bring under the Flight Studio umbrella. They’re looking for those that are successful at converting listeners to subscribers but are not yet topping the charts.

jay graber, bluesky ceo, wearing a shirt that says "mundus sine caesaribus"

“A world without Caesars.”

— English translation of the Latin text on a t-shirt worn by Bluesky CEO Jay Graber during a session at SxSW. The message was in reference to a similar top worn by Mark Zuckerberg recently, which read “aut Zuck aut nihil” — meaning, “Zuck or nothing.”

(Picture: Emily Liu on BlueSky)

"For much of late modern history, the barbigerous were regarded with skepticism. During the 19th century, the European monarchies associated beards with dangerous radicals. So did the dangerous radicals. Historians tell us that Marx and Engels grew their famously fulsome facial hair, at least in part to symbolize their rejection of middle-class morality."

— Stephen L. Carter for Bloomberg Opinion: What Does Your Beard Say About You?

"There is nothing cryptic about Donald Trump’s endorsement of cryptocurrency. Four years ago, he said bitcoin was a “scam”. Now he wants to make America the “crypto capital of the world”. To see that as a U-turn is to miss how Trump works. The second statement follows naturally from the first."

— Edward Luce in the Financial Times: Trump’s heist in broad daylight

 

"By standing up to Trump and Vance in the Oval Office, Zelenskyy once again demonstrated that he is capable of withstanding pressures that would crush other leaders. Trump and Vance enjoyed playing the tough guys on home turf. But Zelenskyy is the real thing. He stayed in Kyiv, when Russian forces were closing in and the city was under bombardment. Vance, by contrast, chose to move to a secure location when confronted with a few hecklers on a skiing trip this weekend."

— Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times: Europe has bought Zelenskyy some time

"Zelenskyy has learnt the hard way about the mindset and motivations of Trump 2.0. The first lesson is that — as also in the Middle East — for the president, “peace” means the absence of fighting. He appears interested in a ceasefire that takes images of bloodshed off American TV screens and saves the US from stumping up costly military support. But he is less concerned with finding a lasting solution that will prevent the return of war."

— Financial Times editorial board: Zelenskyy’s humiliation in the White House

Meta Apologizes for Error That Flooded Instagram With Violent Content:

A Wall Street Journal reporter’s account featured scores of videos of people being shot, mangled by machinery, and ejected from theme park rides, often back to back. The videos originated on pages that the reporter didn’t follow with names such as “BlackPeopleBeingHurt,” “ShockingTragedies” and “PeopleDyingHub.” 

"It is essential in a democracy for the public to have access to news about their government from an independent, free press. We believe that any steps by the government to limit the number of wire services with access to the President threatens that principle. It also harms the spread of reliable information to people, communities, businesses and global financial markets that heavily depend on our reporting."

— joint statement from editors at Reuters, Bloomberg News and the Associated Press.

"The Yankees, as any Yankee fan will tell you, don’t have a mascot. They don’t put names on the back of their jerseys. And most crucially, they haven’t had a single player with a goatee, Van Dyke, or soul patch since 1976. This was the bedrock of Yankee exceptionalism."

— Steve Rushin in The Atlantic: Goodbye to Baseball’s Most Anachronistic Rule

"Advertisers are worried about their ads on Twitter being placed next to Holocaust denial tweets, or next to porn, or perhaps next to Holocaust denial-themed porn, but they are now weighing that against the imperative to maintain good relations with the people in charge of the government. 

"This is the kind of straightforward corruption that Lyndon Johnson used to do regularly, but he did not approach the scale of it under Trump/Musk. Whatever else you say about him, Trump is now clearly the most personally corrupt president in US history, and it's not even close."

— Wall Street Journal reader John Lacny, in the comments section. X Hinted at Possible Deal Trouble in Talks With Ad Giant to Increase Spending

"Winston Churchill is credited with saying that America does the right thing after exhausting the alternatives. Donald Trump has turned that aphorism on its head. In the past 10 days, he has all but incinerated 80 years of postwar American leadership."

— Financial Times editorial board: America has turned on its friends

Streetsblog NYC:

One of President Trump's anti-congestion pricing mouthpieces has a notable conflict of interest: her husband owns more than a dozen parking garages in the very part of Manhattan where driving has been reduced by the toll.

A study of right-leaning bias shown to German social meda users in the run up to Sunday’s federal elections. Via Nieman Lab.

Struggling dating apps are now zero-ing in on the real problem: men. From the FT:

When a user types an “off-colour” message, Match’s apps will generate an automated prompt asking them if they are sure they want to send it. “We think of it internally as ‘too much, too soon’,” [Yoel] Roth said. A fifth of people who receive these prompts reconsider their messages, according to Match.