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What’s in today’s issue
🥊 Trump vs. the Pope and the 25th Amendment
🤖 An AI too powerful for the public
🤑 Sustainable shoe company sells out
🐒 Chimp civil war?
Hi friends!
Chris Vazquez, your Friday newsletter writer here. While Dave and his LNI co-founders are on a grand tour of the world’s airports en route to a conference, my colleague Sarah and I are holding down the fort stateside. I feel a bit like a kid left home alone without a babysitter for the first time, and I’m excited to have you along for the ride. With that, let’s dive in to the news Dave has covered in the past week.
I’m sorry but the president calling the Pope “weak on crime” is actually hilarious
The stuff that Pope Leo and Trump are fighting about is more serious, though. It’s not just the AI-generated photo depicting Trump as Jesus Christ. That includes Pope Leo calling the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants “extremely disrespectful, to say the least.” The Pope also shared an article critiquing JD Vance power ranking which groups he loves most and least. And he called Trump’s threat to wipe out Iran “truly unacceptable.” (The whole “Thou shalt not kill” thing is a pretty big deal.)
It’s not just the Pope — Democrats in Congress are also escalating their fight against Trump. More than 85 House Democrats have called for his removal. 50 put their money where their mouth is and co-sponsored a bill to remove Trump via the 25th Amendment, which allows for a “written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
The bill would create a commission to determine whether Trump is fit to continue being the president. Congressional leaders from both parties would appoint members to the commission, including former executive branch officials. Vice President JD Vance would then have to sign off, and two-thirds of Congress would have to sign off again after 21 days. But because Republicans control Congress and Trump is likely to veto the bill, it’s likely to fail.
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Why this AI model is freaking everyone out
Anthropic — which gained folk hero status for defying the Trump administration after profiting off of that same administration — is developing something called Mythos. It’s designed to identify security vulnerabilities. And it’s really, really good at it.
That’s great news if you want to find and fix those vulnerabilities. But it’s also great news if you want to find and exploit them. Because of that double-edged sword, and because of how powerful Mythos is, Anthropic isn’t releasing it publicly yet because it’s too powerful. Instead, it’s giving exclusive access to a few big tech companies so they can use Mythos to improve their systems.
One cybersecurity expert told The New York Times that tech like this could make most or all software insecure. Anthropic says Mythos has already found huge vulnerabilities “in every major operating system and web browser.”
Millennial producer teaches Gen Z newsletter writer what Allbirds is
It was a shoe company. And it had a reputation as an eco-friendly brand. But you know what’s more appealing than having a planet to live on? Cold hard cash. Allbirds is changing its name and pivoting to AI.
What does that mean? Who knows! The clearest explanation I could find comes from the Associated Press, which reports that it will rent out “computing power to AI companies. That means selling access to a huge number of graphics processors, or other specialized AI computer chips.”
AI hardware is contributing to a massive e-waste problem, which makes it kind of ironic that a company that built a reputation on sustainability is doing this, lol! Their stock soared when they announced the pivot, and then it dropped again. Look at this stock ticker! $BIRD ( ▼ 35.79% )
The main thing I’m learning from this is that Dave travels with his AI glasses packed. This must also mean that he travels with all of his other costumes as well.
Explaining the chimp civil war like it’s the Last Airbender intro
Long ago (like 1995), three different clusters making up one large group of chimpanzees lived together in harmony in Ugandan forests. They hunted together, mated and hugged. It was nice!
Then, everything changed in 2015. Not because the Fire Nation attacked. In fact, researchers don’t really know why. But Central and Western chimpanzees became wary of each other. Maybe it’s because social networks shifted after six chimps died of natural causes in 2014, or because of a change in alpha male the following year.
Only the Eastern chimpanzees, although they’re allied with the Central cluster, remained mostly out of the ensuing conflict. The Western group killed at least six adults and 17 infants from the Central group, and fighting is ongoing.
This brings us to our media literacy tip for this week from our friends at MediaWise!
Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered in the past week, I turn things over to him for some analysis. But because Dave was traveling for 48 hours through several rebooked and canceled flights, he’s asked me to ghost write his corner this week using four bullet points and two contextless photos he sent me. So for this week, I will be playing the role of Dave.
It’s me, Dave Jorgenson and definitely not Chris Vazquez or JD Vance, coming to you from Perugia, Italy. I love to be in Perugia, Italy and definitely not in a rocking chair in a Chicago apartment. Here’s a photo of me with LNI co-founders Lauren and Micah, plus a mysterious third man, to prove it.
Who is he? Only time will tell.
We’re here for the International Journalism Festival. It’s kinda like the in-person “Boy Meets World” reunion happening at Tribeca this year, except it’s about how to blend journalism and humor so it’s not like that at all. After braving airport chaos for two straight days, I made it to my panel with 15 minutes to spare. And it was worth it! Look how much fun everyone had!
I was definitely there, physically and emotionally, when this photo was taken.
The panel’s topic feels important right now. New research shows that young people want their news to be more fun. Plenty of journalists read that and balked at it, insisting that sometimes, the news just can’t be fun. And I get it. From wars and genocides abroad to fascism at home, there’s a lot of serious stuff happening that we don’t want to undermine. But if journalism scares people into doing nothing, it’s not living up to its core mission.
At LNI, we’re building something that leverages humor not to make light of or distract from how scary the world is right now, but to make it easier to engage with and learn about.
If you’re still here, you get two rewards. The first is a pet picture from a loyal reader. This is Lottie!
Lottie is enjoying her retirement after an illustrious career at a cat cafe.
Your second reward is the reveal for this week’s link scavenger hunt, in which I hid a non-news link further up and you have to go find it and I wait to tell you what it is until we’re down here! What a fun game! You should go play it to increase our click rate!
This week, in the blurb about Mythos, I linked to a synopsis of the first issue of the Dark Phoenix Saga. Anthropic’s approach to this AI model is very Moira Running Tests On Jean At Muir Island coded. That reference was too niche to make in the actual blurb above, but the girls who get it get it.
Until next week!
Chris
