Good morning. It is November 19th. It's a sunny morning in New York, getting a little warm again for the season. The smoke of the wildfires in New Jersey is still hanging around, and this is your indignity morning podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

Well, House Speaker Mike Johnson is stumbling around trying to find a rationale for not releasing the ethics report into the behavior of former representative, accused statutory rapist, and attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz. The New York Times is reporting this morning that someone got access to and downloaded a file of exhibits of evidence given against Gaetz. The file of 24 exhibits the Times reports is said to include sworn testimony by a woman who said that she had sex with mr Gaetz in 2017 when she was 17 as well as corroborating testimony by a second woman who said that she witnessed the encounter. So far, the stolen files have not been leaked. The material apparently taken by the hacker, the Times writes, “is un-redacted and includes the names and other personal information of the witnesses, but is otherwise said to be more damaging to Mr. Gates than to his accusers, according to a person familiar with the hack.” 

On the front of this morning's print edition of the Times, the lead story, two columns wide, is “Chop First and Fix Later, How Musk Tames Costs, Billionaires' Business Practices May Foretell his plans for the federal budget.” There's certainly value to the reporting and synthesis, but it's just a little dizzying that two weeks after election day, the news story is about how Elon Musk might go about tearing up the structure of the federal government and not how is this notorious ignoramus and Nazi sympathizer supposed to be in any sort of position of executive power in the US government? And the whole thing, critical and skeptical, though it may be, still runs on the fallacy that the federal government is in any way like a business, such that business tactics and business knowledge would be transferable to it at all. Then again, 70-some million people did just vote for that fallacy. So now they're going to see how it works. “Musk's approach to his businesses,” the Times writes, “involves cutting as deeply as possible, often preferring to cut too much rather than too little. Perhaps most important,” the Times writes, “Mr. Musk has been brutally unsentimental about the cuts, paying little regard to norms and conventions. The mogul has been unabashed about slashing costs to the point that corporate processes, and sometimes even product safety, break down, philosophizing that he can just fix things later.” After the story runs through Musk's largely successful cost cutting at SpaceX, skipping over the part where he refused to build basic launch pad architecture, causing concrete to be blasted all over the vicinity. It gets to Tesla. “At times, the Times writes, Mr. Musk's efficiency measures may have put the safety of Tesla's cars at risk. Since 2021, he has refused to use radar sensors for Tesla's self-driving technology, relying instead on cameras to mimic a human driver's vision. The cost of a camera is one fifth that of a radar sensor, or less, at current prices. Accident victims or their survivors have filed numerous lawsuits claiming Tesla's technology failed to recognize stop signs, vehicles and other obstacles leading to injuries and deaths. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating whether Tesla's camera dependent self-driving system was responsible for four collisions, including one that killed a pedestrian. Mr. Musk,” the Times goes on, “has refused to budge. ‘Vision is really how humans drive,’ he said during an investor call in April.” Right. And cars aren't humans. And that is why for all these years, people have had to keep on clicking the pictures of crosswalks or stoplights or motorcycles to validate that they're human, which is supposed to supply training data to these visual recognition systems, but which also testifies that those systems still can't do it. There's also something about the world's greatest businessman deciding not to try deploying a technology at scale because it costs too much, because it's not being manufactured at scale. 

Down below that on the jump page There's a Matt Gaetz story. That's really a Trump story “Gaetz insult slinger now needs support of targets” Matt Gaetz has been running around antagonizing his fellow republicans for years, now they need to support him if he's going to become Donald Trump's attorney general. How's that gonna go? Exactly the way you think it would go. One of the case studies is Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, who has, the Times reports, “accused Mr. Gaetz of showing sexually explicit photos and videos of underage girls to colleagues on the House floor. Mr. Gates has denied it.” Gaetz has called Mullen a disgrace to the Republican Party. But, the Times writes, “since the news of Mr. Gaetz’s nomination broke, Mr. Mullen has made an about face. He said that even though the two men had their differences, ‘I completely trust President Trump's decision-making on this one.’” Multiply that by every Republican office holder and every nominee, and away we go. 

Back on page one, right below the Musk story, “Trump stands by defense pick who denies sex assault claim. President-elect Donald J. Trump has told advisors he is standing by his nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, after the transition team was jolted by an allegation he had sexually assaulted a woman in an interaction he insists was consensual.” All there really is to say about the situation is that the pronoun “he” in “an allegation he had sexually assaulted a woman in an interaction he insists was consensual” could apply to either the defense nominee or the president elect himself. 

Next to that, “Blitz by Saudis seeks to erase fuel phase out. Dateline Washington, as United Nations climate talks enter their final week in Azerbaijan and group of 20 leaders gather in Brazil, diplomats from Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, are working to foil any agreement that renews a pledge to transition away from fossil fuels, negotiators said. ‘Maybe they've been emboldened by Trump's victory, but they are acting with abandon here,’ said Alden Meyer, senior associate with E3G, a London-based climate research organization who is at the talks in Azerbaijan. They're just being a wrecking ball.” Maybe it wasn't a great idea to let the Saudis buy Trump and his family for cash, on the open market. 

Next to that, “amid Gaza's rubble, desperation for normalcy, finding small pockets of ordinary life as a famine looms.” Maybe “famine looms” could go earlier and higher in the headline package. The photo caption pretty much covers it. “A store selling sweets and pastries in Deir al-Balah, where the ground is slick with sewage and Israel's bombing can shatter the calm.”

Down below that, there's a story that says at least “146,000 public school students in New York City, about one in eight, did not have permanent housing at some point during the past school year, a record number and a 23 % increase from the year before.“

Next to that, “robots still lack touch in warehouses.” The robots are good at moving and stacking things, hopelessly bad at rummaging for things. After the jump, there's another little parable about our tech overlords in which a spokesperson for DHL's warehouse division, said she was “frustrated to see venture capital recently rushing into robots that resemble people, a category of machines known as humanoids. Such machines have long been the robotic holy grail in science fiction and in the visions of some technology executives. But she says they aren't ready for warehouse work, and she would prefer that engineers develop devices that can handle specific tasks well, quickly, and affordably.” 

Inside the paper.,


Flaming Hydra (00:01.187)
Next to that, robots still lack touch in warehouses. The robots are good at moving and stacking things, hopelessly bad at rummaging for things. After the jump, there's another little parable about our tech overlords in which a spokesperson for DHL's warehouse division said she was frustrated to see venture capital recently rushing into robots that resemble people, a category of machines known as humanoids. Such machines have long been the robotic holy grail in science fiction.

and in the visions of some technology executives. But she says they aren't ready for warehouse work, and she would prefer that engineers develop devices that can handle specific tasks well, quickly, and affordably. 

Inside the paper, a quick roundup of headlines from the “Transition in Washington” section. “Ohio shocked by neo-Nazi marchers shouting racial slurs.”

“Abusive texts surge in wake of Trump win, FBI reports.” 

President-elect finds friendly crowd at New York UFC event.” 

Despite his musings, Trump cannot run for reelection in 2028.”

And, “Trump's personal lawyers rewarded with jobs at Justice Department.” 

There we go. Again, Election Day was two weeks ago. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The indignity morning podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. Our podcasting is supported by your cash money. Every morning in the local rehab warmups, I go “money, money, money, money, money.” And then I say “money, money, money, money, money.”

So please click those buttons. I also have to say “red leather, yellow leather,” but that's harder to manifest through the internet and less useful. So “money, money, money, money, money” it is. Enjoy the rest of your day to whatever extent you can, and barring any unforeseen complications, we will talk again tomorrow.