Alex Panetta

Hot dog spill shuts down highway in Pennsylvania commuters' wurst nightmare By Associated Press UPDATED: August 1, 2025 at 5:16 PM ET SHREWSBURY, Pa. (AP) - A truckload of hot dogs spilled across a Pennsylvania interstate Friday after a crash that briefly clogged the heavily traveled artery in both directions.

A writer waits a lifetime for a moment like this.

….more on 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 🇮🇱 🇵🇸

Based on a variety of factors, including the divisions within Trump’s base, plus the vague language of his tweet, I’m smelling limited shelf life on this one

/ and if he’s really speaking like this behind closed doors, I don’t think I’m wrong:

My two cents: Trump doesn’t sound especially exercised about this. Sounds more like someone complained to him about Canada and Israel, he realized he could use it to create some 11th-hour panic in Ottawa, and is squeezing Canada a little harder. I could be wrong, but that’s my take on his post.

Counterpoint: Trump is very capable of drawing a hard line — if he cares about something. He did this for the digital services tax: “Do X or no deal.”

Interesting he chose not to here. “..,very hard for us to make a deal….”

Organized crime. It’s embedded deep in the roots of our evolutionary tree

www.wsj.com/lifestyle/mo...

An entertaining insider account of life at Facebook, Careless People, starts with an awkward meeting between Mark Zuckerberg and Canadian PM Stephen Harper at a 2015 international summit in the Panamanian jungle.

Multiple generations of Roman life, in one snapshot

👍 Non è solo stata importante nell’antichità—è bellissima anche nel 2025. Un gioiello. Seconda volta che ci vado, e la adoro.

A couple of blocks away: one of the oldest Jewish neighbourhoods in the world, dating back to antiquity. Which birthed a unique culinary and linguistic culture. And during the inquisition became a centuries-long ghetto and site of countless unimaginable cruelties.

/ One colourful aside on the Roman inspiration for the American republic.

The Romans built their Senate at the *bottom* of the Capitoline Hill. The Americans built theirs, of course, atop Capitol Hill

A research project. Fortified by pasta, fried artichokes and wine.

A stone’s throw away, the temple of Saturn. Key site of the Saturnalian solstice festival, where Romans exchanged presents and partied. Then became the Sun festival of December 25. Finally, when Rome Christianized, they succeeded at extending the life of this popular holiday for thousands more years

/ With a notable caveat: By the time this specific Senate building was complete, the Roman republic had spiralled into win-at-any-cost factionalism. It became paralyzed by dysfunction. A dictator took over. And republican government disappeared from the face of the Earth for over 1000 years. 😬

Today’s Rome 101: Where do Christmas and Congress come from? Turns out: From the same neighborhood. Two buildings, 100 yards apart

To the left: the Temple of Saturn that hosted the Dec 25 holiday later refashioned as Christmas. To the right: the Roman Senate, inspiration for the American republic

The Pantheon. 10:30 am and 11:30 am. Showing the effect of the light descending to floor level — positioned perfectly to illuminate the doorway every year at noon on Rome’s birthday. Every April 21, the emperor entered as if illuminated by a celestial spotlight. Heck of a visual effect.

The superhighway of the ancient world. The beginning, middle, and end of the old Appian Way. As seen in Rome, Puglia, and by the port of Brindisi which connected the trading routes of Rome to Greece and lots of other places. 🍷 🫒 🥖 🌶️

A definitive history of marketing hype in the AI field, with Artificial General Intelligence as the current pot at the end of the rainbow used to assuage to antsy venture capitalists that their hundreds of billions in investments will, eventually, totally, pay off

ainowinstitute.org/publications...

Artificial Intelligence is a totally new area of focus for me. So far, it’s been fun.

I’ve plunged into reading about it, to prep for school. I’m beginning at, well, the beginning…..

Every political movement has its Achilles’ heel. For a movement rich with low-social trust conspiracy theorists, it turns out it’s…. asking them to trust there’s no conspiracy theory.

/ It’s a holistic look at AI. From its technical foundations, ethical issues, emerging regulatory ideas, the data lifecycle, IP/copyright, how institutions are adopting it, what tools exist, what works — what doesn’t.

The lecturers are all currently working in the field. Looking forward to this.

Here’s my next project: Georgetown University’s new master’s program in Artificial Intelligence management.

scs.georgetown.edu/programs/547...

Shocking that they settled

So Trump gets $16 mil while Paramount admits mo wrongdoing and they release interview transcripts which they already did anyway

So it’s a bribe. It’s literally just a bribe.

This is going to be a big problem. I stuck with them through the rebuild, and now that they’re finally good I have to get up at like 3 o’clock in the morning and fire up a VPN to catch a game.

ANALYSIS | Stepping off the Trump treadmill: A CBC correspondent bids farewell to Washington | CBC News Alexander Panetta, CBC's outgoing correspondent in Washington, D.C., writes that he stopped seeing the U.S. as a two-dimensional entity on a screen as it became the surroundings of his life.

Happy Canada Day from my home the next couple of years — Ankara, Turkey!

Here I bid farewell to the U.S. With some reflections on the country as I experienced it in 12 years as a foreign correspondent.

(And reflections on life covering you-know-who)

www.cbc.ca/news/world/u...

Supposedly going out on Tuesday

/ Confessions of a gun smuggler: How I trafficked weapons into Canada.

Everyone knows many of the guns used by criminals are snuck in from the U.S. This woman knows how, in detail. Because she did the smuggling.

The story, which I completed on my last day at the CBC:

www.cbc.ca/news/world/c...

A couple of years ago I struck up a conversation with a convicted gun smuggler. She was in jail. I’d heard of her case. I reached out, and we started chatting by email, at first. Then in video calls. She told me how she got guns into Canada — guns that wound up in the hands of criminal gangs /

I’ve suspected Canada is merely holding onto it as a bargaining chit. Something to toss away during negotiations — in exchange for something during the USMCA review.

And what I think is happening here is Trump is saying: “Drop it now. And here’s what I’m offering in exchange: nothing.”