The Dust Settles On A Tragic Weekend

Hi readers, happy Tuesday! Today we’re covering tragic news from the weekend, Ukraine’s peace deal concession, Chile’s presidential election, a foiled bombing plot, Ford’s EV new strategy, and a year of slop.

“Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt

A Weekend Of Tragedies

Last weekend was punctuated by two shootings. The first took place on Saturday at Brown University in Rhode Island – two students were killed in the shooting, and nine others were injured. Authorities detained one person of interest on Sunday, but they were quickly released later in the day. At time of writing, the manhunt for the perpetrator seems to be stalling out. Investigators haven’t connected any individuals to the shooting, and the only evidence they’ve made public are a pair of short clips that show a person wearing dark clothing. 

The second shooting of the weekend took place at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. At around 6:45 p.m. local time, two men – a father and son duo – opened fire on a group of people gathered to celebrate the first day of the Hanukkah holiday, killing at least 15 people and injuring more than 40 others. The shooters fired their rifles for almost 10 minutes before one was tackled by a bystander. That man, Ahmed el Ahmed, disarmed the shooter he tackled, forcing the pair to retreat before they came under fire from police. The older shooter died during the attack, while his son was wounded and has since been taken into custody.

“It would appear that there is evidence that this was inspired by a terrorist organisation, by ISIS,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters on Monday. A local police commissioner also alleged that officers had discovered IEDs and two homemade Islamic State flags inside one of the shooters’ vehicles parked at the scene of the crime. Albanese labeled the shooting an “act of antisemitism... [and] terrorism.” Bondi Beach is considered the heart of Sydney’s Jewish community, and a crowd of hundreds was gathered at the beach attending a Hanukkah celebration.

Remembering The Reiners

Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner were found dead in their Los Angeles home over the weekend. Romy Reiner, their 28-year-old daughter, found them at their house with multiple stab wounds at roughly 3:30 p.m. local time on Sunday. Roughly six hours later, L.A.P.D. officers arrested the couple’s 32-year-old son Nick Reiner – they publicly announced his arrest on Monday, stating that he was “responsible” for his parents’ deaths. Authorities haven’t yet given any motive in the case, but the father and son reportedly got into a heated argument at a holiday party at Conan O’Brien’s house on Saturday night.

Rob Reiner is best known for directing Hollywood classics like The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, and A Few Good Men. Outside of his Hollywood career, Reiner was a well-known liberal activist, campaigning for Al Gore in 2000 and endorsing Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in recent presidential elections. 

Trump decided to chime in on the Reiners’ deaths via TruthSocial. In his post, the leader of the free world said that the director was dead “due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME,” adding that “he was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump.” Meanwhile, people who personally knew the Reiners took to the media to remember the couple. “They were two of the most beautiful people I'd ever met and they deserved better,” said Sir Elton John.

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Kyiv’s Key Concession

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has shaken up Russia-Ukraine peace talks by making a major concession. Over the weekend, Zelenskyy stated that he would be willing to give up Kyiv’s aspirations to join NATO in order to secure a peace deal. Becoming a NATO country is one of Ukraine’s biggest foreign policy goals; in fact, the country’s intent to join the military alliance is a part of its constitution.

• Zelenskyy’s policy shift was announced after Ukrainian diplomats held five hours of talks with U.S. officials in Brussels on Sunday. According to Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff, “a lot of progress was made” at the talks, which he attended alongside Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. As a substitute for NATO membership (which guarantees that NATO members will help defend Ukraine against a future Russian offensive), Zelenskyy told the media that he’s pushing for legally binding security guarantees with the U.S., the E.U., and other Western allies. 

• Apparently, diplomats are working out a 20-point peace plan that will eventually lead to a ceasefire. Witkoff’s presence at the U.S.-Ukraine negotiations seems to signal that they’re closing in on a deal, as he’s been the lead negotiator in U.S.-Russia peace talks.

Chileans Have Kast Their Ballots

• Over the weekend, Chileans chose José Antonio Kast to be their next president. The far-right politician’s father was a member of the Nazi Party and lieutenant in the German Army during World War II, and his older brother served as a minister under the government of General Augusto Pinochet, the former right-wing dictator who ruled Chile for 17 years. Kast has made it clear that he is a fan of the Pinochet regime, despite the fact that the dictator’s rule resulted in mass imprisonment, torture, and thousands of executions and “disappearances.”

• Kast’s election marks the latest victory for far-right leaders in Latin America – Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, and Ecuador have all seen their governments shift from left to right over the past few years. On the campaign trail, Chile’s far-right president-elect promised to clamp down on immigration and crime. The country has seen a spike in immigration over the past decade, with the number of non-nationals living in Chile increasing 46% between 2018 and 2023. Kast has blamed much of Chile’s crime problem on those immigrants, and has promised to build a border wall and carry out mass deportations to address the immigration issue.

Additional World News

• ‘It’s outrageous’ - JetBlue pilot decries near collision with US military aircraft (BBC) 

• Australia announces strict new gun laws. Here's how it can act so swiftly (NPR)

• Human‑wave attacks and drones: How Myanmar's junta is fighting back (Reuters)

• Trump pledges retaliation after 3 Americans are killed in Syria attack that the US blames on IS (AP)

• Ukraine Claims First Strike by Underwater Drone on Russian Submarine (NYT, $) 

• Trump sues BBC for $10 billion, accusing it of defamation over Jan. 6 speech edit (NPR)

Blowing Up The Plot

• The Justice Department has arrested four people who were allegedly planning to set off pipe bombs in the Los Angeles area on New Year’s Eve. According to the federal court complaint (read here), three of the individuals were planning to plant “backpacks with ieds” (the “ieds” being “complex pipe bombs”) at “five locations targeting two U.S. companies.” 

• The bombs would be detonated at midnight on New Year’s Eve, when the buildings were likely to be empty. The complaint states that the group was not trying to hurt people with – in fact, the FBI agent who wrote the complaint stated that the bombings would be called off if any of the group spotted people in the vicinity of the buildings.

• The four individuals allegedly involved in the bombing plot are supposedly part of a group called the Turtle Island Liberation Front, which the feds say is an “anti-capitalist, anti-government movement.” The defendants used Signal, an encrypted messaging platform, to organize their plot – information shared in their group chat included methods for purchasing the materials used to make the bombs, as well as tactics for avoiding surveillance before and after the planned attacks.

Ford Pulls The Plug

• Ford is switching gears on its electric vehicle strategy. Yesterday, the automaker announced that it plans to stop producing the F-150 Lightning, its flagship electric pickup – to replace it, Ford wants to start building a lineup of hybrids and cheaper EVs. As a consequence of that change, Ford projects that it will likely record at least $19.5 billion in one-time losses in the fourth quarter of this year. “The last couple of months have been really clear to us,” said Ford CEO Jim Farley. “The very high-end EVs — the $50,000, $70,000, $80,000 vehicles — they just weren’t selling.”

• “The American consumer is speaking clearly and they want the benefits of electrification like instant torque and mobile power,” said the president of Ford’s commercial and electric divisions. “But they also demand affordability … rather than spending billions more on large EVs that now have no path to profitability, we are allocating that money into higher-returning areas.” Ford’s shift reflect larger trends in the EV industry – automakers are finding it harder to stay profitable as the $7,500 EV credit and other government incentives have been eliminated under the Trump administration.

Additional USA News

• Trump designates street fentanyl as WMD, escalating militarization of drug war (NPR) 

• Fed decisions distorted by ‘phantom inflation’, says Stephen Miran (FT, $)

• Puerto Rico governor signs bill that critics say will restrict access to public information (AP)

• House GOP moderates signal they’ll fall in line with Johnson’s health plan (Politico)

• The FDA Rarely Forces Manufacturers to Recall Dangerous Medical Devices, Watchdog Report Finds (ProPublica)

• Harvard’s President Will Stay in the Role Indefinitely (NYT, $)

The Year Of Slop

• If you could describe the past year with one word, what would it be? According to Merriam-Webster, that word is “slop.” Slop, in the words of the dictionary-maker, refers to “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” 

• AI-generated slop – in video, audio, text, and image form – has become commonplace on platforms like Youtube, TikTok, Pinterest, Spotify, and Twitter. The deluge of slop is being pushed by the AI industry via chatbots like ChatGPT, image generators like Midjourney, and AI video generating platforms like Sora.

• Other top words for 2025, according to the company include “gerrymander” (thanks to the ongoing gerrymandering battle between red and blue states; “touch grass” (a slang term telling people to get off their phones and go outside); and “performative” (here’s the Wikipedia article for our less-hip readers).

Additional Reads

• The existential balm of seeing yourself as a verb, not a noun (Psyche)

• Women who say they were tricked into servitude for Opus Dei to meet in Argentina (Guardian)

• This Startup Wants to Build Self-Driving Car Software — Super Fast (Wired, $)

• In a Remote Jungle, the Gruesome Poaching of Rare Elephants (NYT, $)

• Comedy on 'prescription': Why performing stand-up is good for your health (BBC) 

• The biggest mosquito-borne disease in the world has a cure. There’s just one problem. (Vox)

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Peanut For Your Thoughts

Here’s an interesting/charming/creative 11-minute performance from an artist I’ve been enjoying recently. 

Editor + Writer: Marcus Gee-Lim

Designer: Joe Stella