Jacob Wolman

@wolmania.com

226 Followers 163 Following

I'm interested in politics, technology, art, and the rule of three. I write a dumb newsletter which may be found at https://newsletter.wolmania.com.

Trump Brings Full Weight of Government to Bolster False Election Claims Intelligence agencies provided the White House with a trove of declassified documents that President Trump cited as evidence of election vulnerabilities.
horrible film
Zachary, 25, Mo., independent, white, scientist I feel like a college degree really isn’t as necessary as long as you get some kind of education, whether that’s trade school, some kind of vocational program or college. I have a graduate degree, and I work in a STEM field and in an area that pays relatively well, given the part of the United States I’m in. And even then, if I could go back, I would go back and do a trade. Most of the trade jobs, like linemen and electricians, make significantly more than I do. And I spent eight years in university to pretty much just get saddled with debt. So now I’m only making less. Not only am I making less; I also have this ginormous bill I have to pay every month. [With a search that shows the word “union” is not found anywhere on the page]
• ACCIDENTAL TECH PODCAST It Seems Petty, But I Endorse It #696 • JUN 15, 2026 • 2:35:46 LEFT
In the interview with Mr. Hewitt, Mr. Trump all but dismissed the importance of his own cease-fire agreement, suggesting that he never expected it to succeed even though the White House had called it “a historic breakthrough.” The cease-fire was a memorandum of understanding and “they don’t mean much,” he said. He added that it “was sort of a test” that the Iranians failed. “These people are crazy,” Mr. Trump said. “We had a deal where we won everything and they basically break the deal. You know, they make deals — to them, deals are made to be broken. They are extremely unreliable people.”
President Trump’s much-touted cease-fire with Iran effectively collapsed on Monday as he ordered the reinstatement of a naval blockade and announced that he will impose tolls on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, despite his own administration’s position that such fees violate international law. Mr. Trump’s actions came shortly after he formally notified Congress that fighting has resumed amid tit-for-tat attacks by both sides in recent days. U.S. forces conducted a third consecutive night of strikes against Iran on Monday, military officials announced. As the cease-fire that he once hailed dissolved, Mr. Trump dismissed its importance, saying in a radio interview that such agreements “don’t mean much,” while outlining no new strategy for how to resolve the conflict.
Iran's Supreme Leader Remains Absent, a Void at the Top of the Regime Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei did not appear at his father's funeral, fueling speculation about his physical condition and leaving a power vacuum in a divided country.
Graham Platner’s goodbye video
Because of the weight of the World Cup, it is impossible for any team's exit from the tournament not to turn into a referendum on the direction of the national team. It is tempting to declare this result a historic disaster, not just because of how sickening the performance was, but because of how quickly it transported everyone who watched it back to the bad old days of 2014. I honestly felt crazy watching it unfold. I had just seen this team, across multiple games against a variety of opponents, play the kind of competent, self-assured, skillful soccer that I had never previously associated with the USMNT, and then suddenly there I was again, watching the team struggle through a knockout game it had no business being in, pathetically muttering, "OK nice here we go" every time they managed to string three passes together.
How Trump Put Himself in the Middle of Americas 250th The president placed his image and initiatives front and center, blúrring the line, critics said, between loyalty to nation and loyalty to him.
Venezuela does not have a national early warning system of its own, but people with Android phones received alerts from Google’s Earthquake Alerts system, which can pull data from more than two billion phones equipped with built-in accelerometers. The same sensor that detects rotation on the screen can also sense vibrations from seismic waves.
Representative Thomas Kean Jr., who has been missing from Washington for nearly four months with little explanation, is back home in New Jersey. He could be seen from the street on Wednesday evening, standing in a brightly lit front room of his Westfield home just before 8:45 p.m. “It’s good to see you,” he said after a reporter for The New York Times rang his doorbell. He was wearing a dark suit and a red tie. “I’ll talk to you next week,” he said. “Thank you.” Mr. Kean’s wife, Rhonda, stood in the background, smiling pleasantly. He declined additional comment and closed the door.
Two people — Savanna Batten and Elizabeth Soto — weren’t involved in planning the protest, arrived separately from the others, and left when guards told them to, before the shooting. They were each sentenced to 50 years in prison. Among other accusations, the government declared they “were part of a group that created and distributed insurrectionary materials called ‘zines.’” Daniel Sanchez-Estrada, who didn’t attend the protest at all, was sentenced to thirty years in prison for moving a box of zines — an act prosecutors claimed was “corruptly concealing a document or record.” Ines Soto, Elizabeth Soto’s husband, was granted a continuance and will be sentenced on July 1st, according to the Department of Justice. (So will seven others who pleaded guilty to one count of providing material support to terrorists, some of whom testified as witnesses in the trial.) The other sentences handed down suggest that his will be similarly harsh.
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'F-, 1 broke my ankle!' California hiker air-rescued off popular mountain trail 1h ago
JACOB WOLMAN SAN FRANCISCO PIANIST-COMPOSER 68 STRENGTH TOP 70% GEMINI 3.1 LITE SAYS A pRofESSIONAL MusICIAN, PIANIST, AND COMPOSER KNOWN FOR HIS WORK IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA MUSIC SCENE. GPT-5.5 IN THE WEIGHTS . COM
The contract shows that the National Park Service bypassed the competitive-bidding process that is typically required, and gave a $1.7 million contract to the firm, Greenwater Services of Brookfield, Ohio.
When Trump and Bezos dined in December 2024, according to the book, Trump told Bezos, "This Washington Post is really unfair. You've got to take better care"—a remark that prompted Bezos to commiserate with the incoming president. "The people there are terrible," Bezos allegedly replied, complaining about the business side of The Washington Post he had hoped to make profitable. "They don't listen. My other companies, they listen." (This exchange was earlier reported by the New York Post.) Months after the dinner, in July 2025, Haberman and Swan report, Bezos sought to capitalize on his relationship with Trump with a business request he hoped would benefit Blue Origin, his space company, which was losing ground to Musk's SpaceX. As the meeting started in the Oval Office, Trump asked Bezos about his recent wedding to Sánchez. Bezos told Trump the wedding had been great and mentioned that the actress Sydney Sweeney had attended. "Oooh," Trump said, according to the book.
Amusing imaginary conversation among imaginary Apple people
Item 4: word of the week Haruspex The haruspex took her blade and, with the practiced flick of a wrist, disemboweled the goat. She peered carefully at the entrails splayed across the cave floor, then closed her eyes and let the gods speak through her mouth. "Knicks in 6."
TAYLOR STITCH Soft Summer Neutrals
Trump invokes 'The West Wing' in apparent justification of latest Iran strikes Trump shared a clip from an episode in which the fictional president, played by actor Martin Sheen, dismisses the idea of a "proportional response" following the downing of a U.S. aircraft. Yesterday at 12:20 a.m. EDT
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. GOP-led House votes to limit Trump's Iran war powers 4m ago • Lindsay Wise, Olivia Beavers, and Terell Wri...
Mr. Bilton, who had never worked in traditional broadcast news, opened Monday's meeting by trying to assuage the anxieties of staff members who believed he might fundamentally change the decades-old DNA of the country's top-rated news program. "For me, the journalism is the journalism," Mr. Bilton said, according to the recording. "That is why I am here. That is why we are all here." He added: "The rumors people are spreading, that I'm going to turn the show into 60 one-minute episodes, that it's going to be like TikTok, that is not changing. The show is going to stay exactly like it is for now."
'Both Parties Kind of Get It Wrong': The Young Men Who May Swing the Midterms Many Gen Z men who voted for the president are dismayed by his time in office. But they are not hearing an appealing pitch from Democrats, either. 7 MIN READ
Freedom 2j0 | THE GREAT AMERICAN STATE FAIR FEATURED PERFORMERS Martina McBride Young MC C+C Music Factory Vanilla Ice Milli Vanilli The Commodores Morris Day & The Time FloRida Bret Michaels ...and many more! June 25 - July 10, 2026 National Mall, Washington, DC RSVP NOW
Thursday 10:58 AM Dog shoots woman with shotgun at Nebraska convenience store
4 minutes ago Christine Zhang Data reporter Cornyn is trailing significantly as the early vote continues to be reported throughout the state. Turning that around will be difficult: In March, the Election Day vote favored Paxton. 16 minutes ago Matt Zdun Data reporter As results from early in-person and mail voting get reported, John Cornyn is lagging in the suburbs of Dallas. In Denton County, which he won by nearly two percentage points in March, Cornyn trails Ken Paxton by 24 points with nearly two-thirds of the vote there having been reported. In neighboring Tarrant County, which Cornyn carried by seven points in March, he lags 18 points behind Paxton with nearly 60 percent of the vote in.
The Theater Chain Asking Moviegoers to Use Their Phones Known for its strict no-phones policy, the Alamo Drafthouse has instituted mobile ordering for its in-seat meals, upsetting some of its biggest fans.
A three-month national investigation by Beyond Plastics found that not a single tracked Starbucks cold-beverage cup ended up at a recycling facility — even when the cups were placed in clearly marked recycling bins inside Starbucks stores. As detailed in the new report, titled “Tracking Starbucks’ Deceptive Recyclability Claims,” the findings directly contradict Starbucks’ recent public claims that its single-use polypropylene (No. 5 plastic) cold cups are “widely recyclable.” Update at 5:35 p.m. ET on 5/20/26: Within hours of Beyond Plastics publishing its report on May 20, 2026, Starbucks deleted its "Recycling Your Plastic Cup Just Got Easier" page linked in this news release. The original URL (which now produces a 404 error) was: https://about.starbucks.com/stories/2026/recycling-your-starbucks-cold-cup-just-got-easier-heres-why/
Tennessee called off the execution of Tony Carruthers, convicted in connection with three 1994 murders, after staff members were unable to find a vein to administer lethal injection drugs. The state Department of Corrections said in a statement on Thursday that medical staff members were unable to find a "suitable vein" to administer the lethal drugs after a series of attempts. Lawyers for Mr. Carruthers had asked in emergency filings for the execution to be delayed. Mr. Carruthers's case had already drawn attention as his allies and his lawyers argued that he was wrongfully convicted. The American Civil Liberties Union said he would have been the first person in more than a century to be executed after representing himself at trial. Lawyers wrote in a petition for clemency that he has mental illnesses that "continue to impair his understanding of his legal situation and his impending execution."
In particular, OpenAI had advanced a statute of limitations defense, which sought to prove that any harms Musk sought to litigate had taken place before 2021. (The specific date varied by the charge: before August 5, 2021 for the first count; August 5, 2022, for the second count; and November 14, 2021, for the third count.) Ultimately, the jury found that argument persuasive, which made for a short deliberation period. “There was a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury’s finding, which is why I was prepared to dismiss on the spot,” Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said after the verdict was delivered.
David Chang is doing a travel show centered around food
Brit Hume being very smart on X: the Everything App: “The US mission in Iran is being judged by a standard in which only complete capitulation is victory for the US but mere survival is victory for Iran. This is nonsense as the post below makes clear.”
Donlyn Lyndon was born on Jan. 7, 1936, in Detroit. His mother, Dorothea (Zentgrebe) Lyndon, was an educator. His father, Maynard Lyndon, was an architect who chose his eldest son’s first name for its euphony with their surname, creating what Donlyn — who never answered to Don — approvingly called “a syllabic palindrome.”
Flow-chart showing that if you are enough of a jerk, your server will have no choice but to bring you more of the shrimp dishes that are not even included in the endless shrimp promotion.
Waymo notification Magical tech, grounded in safety 2m ago It feels like magic when the wheel moves on its own, but it's backed by millions of miles of rigorous engineering. Enjoy true peace of mind today.
Michelle, 45, Md., Latina, Republican, construction administration I don’t believe that my views toward Trump impact how I see other Republicans. I think that I tend to be pretty levelheaded. As much as I will declare myself to be Republican, I think that my tendencies and beliefs tend to be a little more independent. While I see myself as definitely more conservative, I do believe that in the next election, Trump has nothing to do with how I will vote. I will vote for someone who hopefully isn’t promising more B.S. But really just someone who has a plan, someone who sounds like they actually have been strategically planning some type of improvement. Moderator, Margie Omero So if there were a Republican, Michelle, who either worked for Trump or said he was a big supporter of Trump, how would you feel about that, given the way you feel about your vote for him yourself? Michelle, 45, Md., Latina, Republican, construction administration I mean, it would depend on which aspects of Trump’s beliefs they’re supporting, because I don’t believe that there is any single American who fully supports everything that Trump has done. I might say that I support one or two of the same things, but not everything.
John, 62, Md., white, Republican, packaging specialist Among my circle of friends and compatriots, it’s divisive. Whether you voted one side or the other, I think it’s contempt prior to investigation. It’s just a gut level. That’s bad. Without really hearing or understanding the interest behind the position of what’s actually happening on the macro level. He doesn’t control everything. I mean, there’s other global geopolitical things happening in the realm of things. But with my group, my family, my friends, if you say you voted one way or the other, we can typically have a general discourse. You might not agree with me. I might not agree with you. I might learn something new. But people are just so quick to react right off the bat that it’s just like, nope, I’m just throwing up the block. You’re an idiot.
What grade would you give Donald Trump's second term?
Moderator, Margie Omero John, you said “apathetic.” Tell me why. John, 62, Md., white, Republican, packaging specialist I think the government is apathetic and not necessarily in tune with our concerns as citizens. But then I’m somewhat apathetic in that same regard because I’m just a guy. I vent with my friends, I vent with my family. In the scheme of things, is it going to move the needle? Probably not, but it’s nice.
The U.S. Helped Start the War. The Rest of the World Is Feeling the Effects. In eight weeks, much of the global economy has been knocked sideways by the conflict in the Middle East. America has mostly been spared from the tumult. 5 MIN READ Linh Pham for The New York Times
It was a holiday party at a crypto titan’s estate in Marin County, and Sergey Brin had a bone to pick with Gavin Newsom. Mr. Brin, a Google co-founder and one of the world’s richest people, is a longtime friend of Mr. Newsom, the California governor. Both men attended each other’s weddings. But now Mr. Brin pulled Mr. Newsom aside to a different part of the property for a serious talk. Mr. Brin told Mr. Newsom that he could not stand the state’s proposed billionaire tax. They were soon joined by Mr. Brin’s girlfriend, Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto, a Trump-loving gut-health influencer. Even as she tried to defuse the tension — joking that she would let Mr. Newsom’s bad policies slide because he was handsome — she argued that the measure would wreck California’s economy. Mr. Newsom, who had never seemed inclined to support the tax, came out the next month and pledged to defeat it. He declined to comment on the interaction.
Image of the sombrero galaxy – a wide, shallow disk of light.
Journalists who cover the White House regularly spend time with senior administration officials, and evening events are part and parcel of the reporting process. On Saturday, much of the Washington press corps is set to attend the black-tie dinner of the White House Correspondents' Association, where Mr. Trump is scheduled to speak. But it is rare for a national media organization to sponsor an event intended to fete the powerful politicians who are covered by its news division, and rarer still when it has a major transaction pending before the federal government. Invitations to the event, which were distributed by Paramount and listed Mr. Ellison as the host, described the evening as "honoring the Trump White House" Several CBS News journalists said they were taken aback by the existence of the dinner. They described consternation within the CBS newsroom over the event's potential to create a perception of coziness between the news division and the Trump administration. The journalists requested anonymity to share sensitive, private discussions.
Moonrun, don't moonwalk, to see Antoine Fuqua's MJ biopic Get ready to see MJ like never before in MICHAEL, directed by Antoine Fuqua (TRAINING DAY). Watch Michael Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson bring young MJ to life, from his early days in the Jackson Five to his rise as the King of Pop. See it at Alamo and order from our full menu, quietly moonwalked right to your seat.
iPhoto has “Optimize Mac Storage“ on but…
Donald Trump blathering on Truth about Tim Cook, noting that he was ‘very impressed with myself to have the head of Apple calling to “kiss my ass.”’ Great stuff and an incredible legacy for both men.
Fuqua hadn’t planned to downplay the controversy that engulfed Jackson in his final decades. Instead, he envisioned a film that might have read as a provocative defense of its subject. Describing the scene of the raid, he told me, “I shot him being stripped naked, treated like an animal, a monster.” Fuqua is not convinced that Jackson did what he is accused of doing, despite the number of accusers (five) and the fact that Jackson publicly talked about sharing his bed with boys. “When I hear things about us—Black people in particular, especially in a certain position—there’s always pause,” Fuqua told me. He mentioned the facts of Elvis Presley’s life, suggesting there was a double standard. (Presley met his future wife, Priscilla, when she was fourteen, and she moved to Memphis to be with him at seventeen.) He was skeptical of some of the accusers’ parents, particularly Chandler’s father, a dentist and sometime screenwriter named Evan Chandler, who was recorded threatening to insure that Jackson was “humiliated beyond belief.” (Evan Chandler died by suicide in 2009, a few months after Jackson’s death.) Fuqua stressed that he didn’t know the truth of the allegations against Jackson. But, he said, “sometimes people do some nasty things for some money.”
Altman on attack 2m ago OpenAl CEO Sam Altman suggests attack on his house could be tied to tensions surrounding Al and his role in its growth
NYTimes iPhone alerts: A Tumultuous 36 Hours After careening from one diplomatic extreme to another, President Trump finds himself with a deal that is already fraying. 1m ago Trump Finds Iran Offramp President Trump's intimidation may have worked, but the fundamental divides with Iran are as sharp as they were in February. 6:48 AM