Cartoons Thursday!

More on A.I. killing all of us, new Springsteen film/music, the Fetterman disgrace, and etc.

Sep 10, 2026

Still free to subscribe to this nearly daily newsletter! Greg Mitchell is author of fourteen books and director of five films for PBS since 2022. His latest film “Woody Guthrie and The Ghost of Tom Joad Today” is now streaming via PBS.

Jimmy last night on, among other things, A.I. about to kill us all (and see down below for more on that).

And this update:

Jimmy Kimmel Says James Talarico Interview Won’t Air on TV After Trump’s FCC Threatened His Show

The late night host announced that his interview with the Texas Senate candidate will only air on YouTube

The Washington Post: “Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) made a highly unusual video appearance at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, praising Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) and expressing willingness to work with President Trump.” Leading to this fun line going around the inter-tubes:

“Fettterman is the first rat in history to climb on to a sinking ship.”

Meanwhile, the Post now has a non-Bezos competitor, as Politico notes:

The Washington Sun debuted Wednesday after rebranding from NOTUS, backed by Politico co-founder Robert Allbritton, with its newsroom expanding to 110 people including 28 former Washington Post staff like Paul Kane, Jeff Stein, Dana Milbank, Tom Sietsema, and sports writers. Editor Tim Grieve said the outlet responds to demand for strong local DMV coverage, sports, and national politics that other papers have scaled back. Highlights include an exclusive deal for Capital Weather forecasts and plans for subscriptions soon, while keeping some content free.

As we reported yesterday, the warning by A.I. devlepers that it may kill us all within a decade has gotten all sorts of attention.

May be an image of text that says 'n 公 "I "Ican't believe that the summer, and civilization, are almost over."'

And there is an update as millions ask, well, how WILL they exterminate us? Lucian Truscott IV explains:

The other development late this afternoon was the publication of an article by Axios – which should get some kind of award for being on top of this story and featuring it prominently – that describes, as they put it in a headline, “So how would AI kill us all, exactly?”
I wouldn’t describe the answer they came up with as exact, but here it is. The fear among “experts,” according to Axios, is that AI systems could provide “bad actors” with the ability to create biological or chemical weapons that would presumably be capable of killing all humans. Axios also speculated that “rogue” AI systems could “attack infrastructure at unprecedented scale while evading human oversight.”
That seems to be the kicker in this whole explosion of worry about AI systems that could become capable of killing all human beings – that the systems are rapidly becoming capable of getting completely out of control of human beings. One story today even speculated that AI could one day soon develop its own “societies” apart from humans, presumably a system of electronic dots and dashes that would somehow get together and make decisions to combine forces to make it possible to develop chemical or biological weapons that may be unknown to the human race at this point….
However, my wife, Tracy Harris, commented succinctly that human beings “are already doing a pretty good job of killing everything on earth.”

Steve Brodner says this is now the #1 electoral issue this autumn (well, it DOES effect everyone):

Music Pick

We previewed this last week, but Bruce has now dropped the first seven songs from his latest rock and politics tour, you can enjoy it all here. He says they will released the entire concert in four segments over time. Also, he is working on two new albums, one of them solo.

Speaking of the Boss, a reminder: The new Springsteen Center in Jersey will be screening, and I will be talking about, my new Woody Guthrie film, narrated by Rosanne Cash and with music by Woody and Bruce, on Sept. 25, read more and get your tickets here.