How much does the core idea matter?
Wall Street legend Stanley Druckenmiller is forcing that question on a big stage this week, when he made major news in the WSJ opinion section strongly disagreeing with his protégé, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, over aggressive moves Bessent attempted in the bond market. The core idea was well received by analysts and market watchers, but the substance of the column was written with the assistance of AI.
Sam Jefferies leads off this week with an important question: How much should we care? For his part, Druckenmiller doesn’t seem to care about the backlash one iota.
MaryGrace follows with a strong endorsement of my decision never to download TikTok, because apparently a fake mom is using it to sell Oreos, and this consumed some element of the algorithm recently. Then again, I suppose I spent half of last week tweeting about the lunar eclipse; to each their own.
Detroit sports fan Steffen Newman correctly celebrates the LA Clippers’ comeuppance from NBA brass this week, in which owner Steve Ballmer was hammered with sanctions for illegally routing payment to his star guard outside of the salary cap. Looks like the Clips will... continue to do nothing of consequence in the league for the time to come.
And as the father of a girl who is obsessed with capybaras, I was delighted to read Phil Bogdan’s entry about a capybara that has asserted dominance and achieved king-like status among his fellow rodents at an animal sanctuary in Florida. I’ll be sharing that one at the dinner table this weekend!
Have a great holiday weekend, and thanks, as always, for reading along with us.
Here we go.
Op-ed Slop.
SAN. How an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal reignited a debate about AI use in newsrooms.
I love a good op-ed. I adore the feeling of flipping to the back of the newspaper and reading the debate before I read the news. And the true diamond in the rough is a “point-counterpoint” side-by-side, where in truly old-fashioned fashion two debaters go at it. Make your case, and may the best viewpoint win. And while I am mindful that statements of certainty don’t age well in today’s fast-moving world, I can say with certainty that, right now, no chatbot can generate a convincing piece of commentary that makes the case the “author” is trying to make. Taking it one step further, AI slop within op-eds makes all readers less engaged, at a risk of losing the attention the writer was trying to capture in the first place.
This week’s debate about Stanley Druckenmiller’s AI-enhanced op-ed in the Wall Street Journal has been fascinating to watch and read. Mark Keierleber at Straight Arrow News breaks down the various questions that the news industry is grappling with regarding ethics, disclosure, practical realities v. nostalgic recalls, ghostwriting, and more. I don’t quite know what to think. But I do know that I’m going to keep reading, and thinking, about the many questions without good answers.
– Sam Jefferies
Don’t Get Mad at Me If You Read This and Want Oreos.
Garbage Day: #Oreogate is just the beginning
I gotta give it to Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day for delivering the most honest subhead of the week: “It Happened To Me: I Almost Fell For #Oreogate”
Same, dude. Same.
It all started with people on X re-posting TikTok posts that purported to be from a mom sharing dramatic songs in a group chat, after one parent asked others to stop letting their kids bring Oreos to school because her daughter was jealous.
I also almost fell for it, too; until after five seconds, I took the quick secondary step we apparently must now all take: I clicked the main profile feed to figure out whether the story was real or might instead be content created to promote a product.
Business Insider’s Katie Notopoulos took the time to DM the “mom” in question to ask if the chat was real. The response was, “I’ve deliberately not been getting into the specifics of the people/messages behind OreoGate while everything is still happening, just because there are so many people following it and discussing it at the moment.”
Seems like a very long way of not exactly saying, “Yes, it’s real” or “No, it’s an ad.”
Whether it’s real, exaggerated, or a fake, but sly promotion, people laughed and shared and a good time was had on the internet once again. I don’t love that the internet glommed on to content about negative stereotypes of mom and parent group chats, but that’s a discussion for another day.
– MaryGrace Lucas
Sorry, LA Sports Fans. You Can’t Have It All.
The Athletic. NBA docks Clippers 5 first-round picks, levies $30 million fine after Kawhi Leonard probe
It’s been exactly one year since Pablo Torre first reported on a scheme within the Los Angeles Clippers organization to circumvent the salary cap.
Basically, the Clippers directed payments from corporate “sponsors” to star player Kawhi Leonard, to whom they were already paying a max contract. These faux sponsorship deals often gave Leonard millions of dollars and didn’t require him to do any actual work.
Yesterday, the NBA brought the hammer, docking the Clippers 5 first-round picks and fining the team for $30 million.
As a lifelong Detroit sports fan, it’s hard not to feel jaded in a sports landscape that relentlessly promotes the biggest markets, names, and spenders. And today, I couldn’t be more pleased with the NBA.
Between the Dodgers’ $430 million payroll, the return of Aaron Donald to the Rams, and an 18-year championship drought for my Detroit teams, I sleep a little easier at night knowing there’s at least some justice left in the sports world.
– Steffen Newman
Capy is King.
Yahoo! Life. Clever Capybara Uses River Otters to Massage His Head While He Naps Like a King
I’ve covered a lot of fuzzy animals in Dez Reads, but there’s no animal I’ve covered quite like King Milo the capybara, who rules the Hope & Joy Sanctuary in Alva, Florida.
King Milo is nature’s equivalent of the dancing queen: He doesn’t do much, mainly sitting and grazing and sleeping by the river; yet his lively otter neighbors nearby are magnetized. There’s just something about Milo they can’t quite put their little paws on, yet they still have to do their little dance around him. It’s actually on my bucket list to meet a capybara, ever since I heard about capybara cafes in Japan. But until reading this article, I couldn’t even have told you why.
Now I think I know: First, they’re just so cute and approachable. But second, and more importantly, they let you be you while unabashedly being their dull little selves.
Without saying a thing, they invite you into their little worlds so you can rock theirs with a satisfying scratch behind the ears. Keep on dancing, King Milo. You may not know it, but your moves are a masterclass in human-animal relations.
– Phillip Bogdan
