I spent a good portion of yesterday researching an upcoming piece, but I wanted to share a few stories that caught my attention. So, without further ado, here’s your Wednesday Reading List:
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“You can’t serve a ‘truth sandwich’ without the truth: Media’s need to ‘both sides’ Biden and Trump leads to a pretzel of lies.” (, 4/3/24)
Unfortunately, the press hasn’t learned much in nearly a decade of covering Trump as a political figure. Obviously, they need a reminder of the most basic tool of covering a serial liar and aspiring authoritarian like Trump.
It’s called the “Truth Sandwich.”
What is a Truth Sandwich?
By this point in history, everyone should start with the framework that Trump’s lies and statements aren’t the blather or harmless tripe that they may have seemed to be at first.
“A humanitarian catastrophe” (, Tesnim Zekeria, Judd Legum, 4/3/24)
This week, Israeli airstrikes killed seven aid workers at World Central Kitchen (WCK) — the food relief group founded by chef José Andrés. Workers had been traveling in branded vehicles and had coordinated their movements with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), yet were still targeted, WCK said. Notably, this was not the first time the IDF attacked WCK. Just days prior, WCK filed a complaint with the IDF demanding the safety of its workers after an Israeli soldier shot at a WCK staff member. Following the latest attacks, WCK said it was “immediately” pausing its relief efforts. Israel acknowledged it was responsible for the deaths of the WCK workers and said it is investigating the strike.
“A Study in Senate Cowardice: Republicans like Rob Portman could have ended Donald Trump’s political career. They chose not to.” (The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, 4/3/24)
Portman was one of 43 Republican senators who voted against conviction. Sixty-seven votes were required to convict. If 10 additional Republican senators had joined the 50 Democrats and seven Republicans who voted for conviction, Trump would not today be the party’s presumptive nominee for president, and the country would not be one election away from a constitutional crisis and a possibly irreversible slide into authoritarianism. (Technically, a second vote after conviction would have been required to ban Trump from holding public office, but presumably this second vote would have followed naturally from the first.)
“The Idiot Box: The Rot in TV News Starts at the Top and Trickles Down” (, Nina Burleigh, 4/2/24)
Political TV is a venal game. It is nominally designed to inform the public, but it is actually conceived, packaged and broadcast to ensure, first, eyeballs on the screen and second, continuing access to the gets, a combination with one goal - to maintain or increase profits.
When the history of this era is written, the venality of TV and the soullessness of the execs will be recorded as the main enablers of the rise of fascism in America.
“Tennessee Passes Bill Allowing Non-Accepting Parents To Adopt LGBTQ+ Kids” (, Erin Reed, 4/2/24)
On Monday evening, Tennessee passed a bill allowing parents with "religious or moral beliefs" that being LGBTQ+ is wrong to adopt LGBTQ+ children. This bill could expose these children to harmful practices such as conversion therapy or familial rejection of their gender identity or sexuality. If signed into law, it could also come into conflict with federal rules that require safe placements for LGBTQ youth. The bill now goes to Governor Bill Lee's desk, amid calls from leading LGBTQ+ organizations for a veto.
Senate Bill 1738, which passed on a party-line vote of 73-20, states that prospective foster parents cannot be required to "affirm, accept, or support" any policy regarding sexual orientation or gender identity if it conflicts with their "religious moral belief." Furthermore, the bill mandates that non-affirming foster parents have access to LGBTQ+ children for fostering or adoption. It asserts that beliefs "regarding sexual orientation or gender identity… do not create a presumption that any particular placement is contrary to the best interest of the child."
“ChatGPT Looms Over the Peer-Review Crisis” (404 Media, Emanuel Maiberg, 4/2/24)
For years, researchers have warned that they are stretched too thin to properly carry out the labor involved in one of the most important pillars of the scientific process: peer-review. Ironically, as a number of academic papers have argued, the problem is that more academics are asking for peer reviews than there are willing and available peer reviewers. Researchers have a professional incentive to publish papers, but peer review is often unpaid, time-consuming work. A 2018 report on the global state of peer review found that in 2013, editors at journals had to invite an average of 1.9 reviewers to get one review done. By the end of 2017, that number increased to 2.4 invitations for every completed review. The same report also found that it takes a reviewer a median of 16.4 days to complete a review after agreeing to the assignment.
It is a mostly text-based task that in one way seems like it was tailor made for ChatGPT. Reviewers need to read the submitted paper and provide constructive feedback. According to a paper titled “Monitoring AI-Modified Content at Scale: A Case Study on the Impact of ChatGPT on AI Conference Peer Reviews,” which is currently submitted for peer review, between 6.5 and 16.9 percent of peer reviews submitted to a number of AI conferences “could have been substantially modified by LLMs.”
“A Video Game Can’t Tell You Why New York Times Headlines Suck, But It’s A Start” (Aftermath, Riley MacLeod, 4/2/24)
Last week, Paolo Pedercini released The New York Times Simulator, a free, browser-based game where the player tries to juice the subscriber numbers of the eponymous newspaper while keeping various stakeholders happy. It was a game that felt very relevant last week, and feels relevant today, as the situation in Gaza and mainstream outlets’ coverage of it continue to get worse.
World Central Kitchen pausing its relief efforts in Gaza, if the goal is the starve Palestinians, and it sure seems like it is, Netanyahu can now pose in front of the "Mission Accomplished" banner.