A weekly report on things I’ve read, heard and seen since last Wednesday. 

Article: “AI’s Market Dominance comes With a Warning” by Jeff Sommer, New York Times, July 12, 2026 – This is the “Strategies” column in the Business section. Despite relatively high inflation driven by tariffs and the war with Iran, the stock market is booming. Most experts attribute this to hopes for artificial intelligence. “Huge sums being funneled into A.I. infrastructure have bolstered returns . . .” The risk is that if those bets turn out to be wrong, the drop in the stock market will be severe. “If the enormous expectations for A.I. aren’t met, those remarkable portfolio returns could suddenly disappear.” The author’s advice is to widely diversify your investments which is difficult given how much everything in the US and around the world seems tied to A.I. My lesson in the wisdom of diversifying came with the collapse of the housing bubble in 2008. I didn’t have a lot of money to invest but half was in an Index 500 stock mutual fund and half was in bank CDs. The return on the stock dwarfed the bank interest and I kicked myself for not shifting that money somewhere with a better return. Then the bottom dropped out of the economy. Overnight, I lost half the value of my stock fund while I still had the same amount of cash in the bank. True, the stock has regained its value since then and has appreciated considerably, but there is no guarantee that will happen. 

Article: “US Eases Rules in Nuclear Deal for Saudi Arabia” by David E. Sanger, et al, New York Times, July 23, 2026.The announcement of a deal selling advanced nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia by the US, technology that might allow that country acquiring a nuclear weapon received so much negative attention that the President added new conditions to the already signed agreement, sabotaging it in the process. My first point: this illustrates why countries will be so hesitant to negotiate anything with the U.S. unless absolutely necessary. Why make concessions to reach an agreement when the agreement is likely to be abrogated by the President if it is poorly received? Second point: Why are U.S. leaders (of both parties) so indebted to Saudi Arabia? After all, Osama bin Laden was Saudi as were 15 of the 19 hijackers in the 9-11 attacks. I’m not saying we should be overtly hostile to Saudi Arabia, but neither should we treat that country as our closest and most reliable ally. 

Article: “He is Helping Trump Reshape Washington” by Zachary Small in New York Times, July 27, 2026. The subheading for this article is “Matthew Taylor, an artist and political strategist, is a cultural czar of sorts for the White House.” I had never heard of this guy but this article portrays him as the moving force behind much of the whitewashing of American history emanating from the White House. Enough said. 

Substack: “When Allen Met Tony, Revisited” by Robert Sullivan, August 1, 2026. A Chelmsford native who formerly wrote for Sports Illustrated, Time and LIFE, Bob Sullivans shares wonderful longform prose pieces with us for free via his Substack newsletter. A recent piece recalled his experience interviewing on consecutive evenings the singer Tony Bennett and the poet Allen Ginsberg and the connections between the two. It’s a wonderful, detail-rich piece of writing that was a pleasure to read.

Article: “What Mount Auburn Cemetery teaches the living” by Joan Wickersham. Boston Globe, July 31, 2026. This essay on the Op-Ed page is by a frequent visitor and neighbor of this famous garden style cemetery in Cambridge. She explains that whether you are interested in gardening, nature, history, biography or architecture, there is something for you in this cemetery. I feel the same every time I visit Lowell Cemetery which is modeled on Mount Auburn. When Lowell Cemetery first opened in 1842, there were no public parks in this region. On Sunday’s residents would come to Lowell Cemetery to enjoy the beautiful natural setting and to have a picnic. While I haven’t seen anyone dining within the cemetery recently, there are many who routinely enjoy it. If you’ve never been, you should go someday, park your car and just wander around to soak everything in.