Eighteen more days.

Congress has been asleep at the anti-trust wheel for a long time. Meaning you and I are largely responsible for the fact that every sector of our economy is dominated by fewer, ever larger entities. Small promising companies are inevitably gobbled up by larger ones. Economic theory suggests a lack of competitiveness is bad for consumers.

Similarly, if an ever shrinking number of newsrooms translates into less competition for readership, ever larger newspapers should be bad for citizens and our democracy. Right now, The New York Times is serving as a powerful counterfactual to this phenomenon. I’m not sure what to make of the fact that the largest newspaper is doing a lot of the best work.

Two examples.

‘Straight to Gunshots’: How a U.S. Task Force Killed an Antifa Activist. From the article,

“President Trump praised the killing of Michael Reinoehl, suspected of fatally shooting a far-right protester, as ‘retribution.’ Our investigation found that officers may have shot without warning or seeing a gun.”

More and more it’s looking like Reinoehl was murdered by the U.S. government inside the U.S. Four officers fired their weapons around 30 times. Eight bullets hit civilian properties. Some bullets flew right by an eight year old on his bike. Others blew out windows of neighboring cars. Our incredible passivity about this murder will embolden our President. 

As the virus spread, private briefings from the Trump administration fueled a stock sell-off. While we’re making jokes about a fly, the owners of production fuck the proletariat. By calling it “draining the swamp”, their thoughts about us are obvious, they think we’re stupid. Remember what the President said in the run-up to the last election, “I love the uneducated.”

“The president’s aides appeared to be giving wealthy party donors an early warning of a potentially impactful contagion at a time when Mr. Trump was publicly insisting that the threat was nonexistent.

Interviews with eight people who either received copies of the memo or were briefed on aspects of it as it spread among investors in New York and elsewhere provide a glimpse of how elite traders had access to information from the administration that helped them gain financial advantage during a chaotic three days when global markets were teetering.”

Imagine if the President’s base got half as upset about white collar criminality as they do about the occasional criminality that accompanies urban protests.

There are more cases of Covid in the White House than in all of New Zealand.

1. Nice. At 5’4″ Canadian Leylah Annie Fernandez is about to prove me wrong about women’s professional tennis.

2. A young, supe-smart data scientist on why he’s moving on from the ‘rona and the best models to follow.

3. What Blair Braverman’s sled dogs taught her about planning for the unknown. Dig the blingy booties.

A sore Achilles tendon means I’ve temporarily traded running in for walking. I enjoyed a particularly nice one this morning. Until getting here. Nothing prepared me for high tide. Well, except for the “Tides Near Me” app on my pocket computer. 

Blanca is back from the hospital. Travis invited me to loop Mount Rainier. My schedule opened up. In the fourth and final hour of our ride, leg muscles I didn’t even know I had took turns cramping like dominos. But thanks to Travis shepherding me up Skate Creek like George Hincappie used to do for What’s His Name with all the faux TdF titles, somehow I made it.

This is tough, I like them both.

@harriweinreb