I'm biased, but I've always adhered to the belief that the West coast is the best coast. But for the last couple weeks, the West coast has been the test coast. We're living in a steaming petri dish as nature's latest and extended heatwave tests just how much heat people can take. Almost everyone in the West has been involuntarily entered into this clinical trial. But maybe no place tests how the human body might be forced to react in the future more than the locale that is increasingly living up to its name: Death Valley. I can't lie. I do wonder what it feels like to walk outside into unthinkable heat. For now, I'll settle for reading about it as I watch the Bay Area fog roll in. Ross Anderson in The Atlantic (Gift Article): I Went to Death Valley to Experience 129 Degrees. "129 hits different. When you emerge into that kind of heat from an air-conditioned space, you feel its intensity before the door even closes behind you. It sets upon you from above. It is as though a clingy gargoyle made of flame has landed atop your head and neck. This gargoyle is a creature of pure desire. It wants only one thing, to bring you into thermal equilibrium with the desert. It goes for your soft spots first, reaching into the corners of your eyes, singeing your nostrils. After a few minutes pass, it tries to pull moisture straight through your skin. You feel its pinches and prickles on your forearms and calves. The breeze only makes things worse, by blasting apart the thin and fragile atmosphere of cooled air that millions of your pores produce by sweating. Your heart hammers faster and faster. Your cognition starts to blur. Only eight minutes in, I looked down at my phone. It had shut down entirely. I chose to view that as an act of solidarity."

+ What happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas. It's spreading. Las Vegas hits record of fifth consecutive day of 115 degrees or greater as heat wave scorches US.

+ "Amid frustrations with the local utility company CenterPoint Energy, which doesn’t offer an app, some Houstonians got creative with their attempts to track the power outages. They turned to the Whataburger app instead."

2

An Age Old Question

Joe Biden has been a very good president. But things are looking really bad. You can blame the media for overemphasizing his age-related deficiencies. You can blame the Trump campaign for its constant attacks on a man who is clearly 100x more mentally fit than the addled criminal they support. You can blame leading Democrats for so publicly attacking Biden before they were sure about his willingness to step aside. You can blame the two weeks of media/donor/insider age-fixation that have probably done more damage than the debate itself. You can blame Freud who explained what's going on in the Democratic party a century before it happened: "In psychoanalysis, the narcissism of small differences is the idea that the more a relationship or community shares commonalities, the more likely the people in it are to engage in interpersonal feuds and mutual ridicule because of hypersensitivity to minor differences perceived in each other." No matter who's to blame, the numbers aren't good. Polls are notoriously bad. But they're powerful when they confirm a gut feeling people have. And right now, a presidential race that should be all about the crimes and craziness of the most dangerous man to ever sit in the Oval Office is all about Biden's age. WaPo (Gift Article): Most Democrats want Biden to drop out, but overall race is static, poll finds. "Overall, 2 in 3 adults say the president should step aside, including more than 7 in 10 independents." Meanwhile, The Embattled Biden Campaign Tests Kamala Harris’ Strength vs. Trump.

+ In The Atlantic, Tim Alberta explains why Trump's campaign is all but praying Joe Biden doesn’t drop out. "Biden quitting the race would necessitate a dramatic reset—not just for the Democratic Party, but for Trump’s campaign. Wiles and LaCivita told me that any Democratic replacement would inherit the president’s deficiencies; that whether it’s Vice President Kamala Harris or California Governor Gavin Newsom or anyone else, Trump’s blueprint for victory would remain essentially unchanged. But they know that’s not true. They know their campaign has been engineered in every way—from the voters they target to the viral memes they create—to defeat Biden. And privately, they are all but praying that he remains their opponent."

+ NYT Editorial Board (Gift Article): Donald Trump Is Unfit to Lead. "Election Day is less than four months away. The case against Mr. Trump is extensive, and this board urges Americans to perform a simple act of civic duty in an election year: Listen to what Mr. Trump is saying, pay attention to what he did as president and allow yourself to truly inhabit what he has promised to do if returned to office." (It's good advice. But while they tell you to listen what Trump is saying, they're spending a hell of a lot more coverage telling you to focus on Biden's age.)

3

The Prosecution Defends

Russell Maze has been in prison for nearly 25 years since being convicted of killing his baby. But a lot of people are now convinced that he wasn't responsible and that the conviction was based on bad and/or outdated science. Among those convinced he's innocent are people in the prosecutor's office that convicted him. Yet, that might not matter. A remarkable story well reported from ProPublica and NYT Mag: The DA’s Office Says He’s Innocent, but That Might Not Be Enough. "Bewildered, Eaton tried to grasp what she had just read: The judge was penalizing them because everyone — the state, the defense, the witnesses — agreed that the Mazes committed no crime."

4

Patchwork

"As a skin-care tool, pimple patches, which gained traction in the late 2010s, were a game-changing development in skin-care technology. But they’ve also become a fashion trend. And although their proliferation heralds a shift in attitudes toward acne — one of the most universal discomforts of being a human — they’ve also begun to act as a social signifier." WaPo (Gift Article): The pimple patch becomes a breakout fashion statement. (If this election-related stress doesn't abate soon, I may need to order a full bodywrap.)

5

Extra, Extra

Bus(iness) as Usual: "The French government has put thousands of homeless immigrants on buses and sent them out of Paris ahead of the Olympics. The immigrants said they were promised housing elsewhere, only to end up living on unfamiliar streets far from home or flagged for deportation." (The problems around the world are remarkably similar. The solutions are similarly evasive.) NYT (Gift Article): France Is Busing Homeless Immigrants Out of Paris Before the Olympics.

+ You Want Healthy Fries With That? "These are among the offerings sold by an Idaho-based company, Homestyle Direct, which is paid millions of dollars each year by taxpayer-funded state Medicaid programs to deliver what the company calls medically tailored meals." Medicaid is paying millions for salty, fat-laden ‘medically tailored’ cheeseburgers and sandwiches.

+ Deflating News: Another bit of news that in normal times would be a big factor in the presidential race. Confidence is building that inflation is receding.

+ Elon's Seed Investing: Thermonuclear Blasts and New Species: Inside Elon Musk’s Plan to Colonize Mars. "SpaceX employees are working on plans for a Martian city, including dome habitats, spacesuits and researching whether humans can procreate off Earth. Mr. Musk has volunteered his sperm." (Can we send all of it to Mars?)

+ Power Plant: "Balsamico cut out all animal products from her diet at the age of 14, justifying the decision to her parents in a '39-minute PowerPoint' on the health benefits of plant-based eating. The weight lifting came a couple of years later, mostly out of curiosity: 'I just wanted to see if I could do it,' she said. And she could — in 2022, she began winning first place for her age and weight class in every strongman competition she entered, racking up a streak of victories that she has yet to break." On vegan powerlifters.

6

Bottom of the News

"Estate attorneys are creating trusts aimed at extending wealth until people who get cryonically preserved can be revived, even if it’s hundreds of years later. These revival trusts are an emerging area of law built on a tower of assumptions. Still, they’re being taken seriously enough to attract true believers and merit discussion at industry conferences." This gives new meaning to frozen assets.