Good Morning. Fauci took the Fifth over 100 times. A Senate committee just voted to hold him in contempt. Plus, another rogue bot, Warren Buffett and Rick Rubin, and which soda creates a cognitive decline (forwarded this email? Join 523k readers).
Missed yesterday? Our most clicked link: Best photos of the Sun’s surface
TOP STORY TODAY
Fauci in Contempt
The Senate Homeland Security Committee voted along party lines yesterday to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress. He invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times at a July 29 hearing on the pandemic response and Covid origins.
The committee chairman is sending the referral straight to the Justice Department rather than the full Senate floor, where 60 votes would be required. That bypass breaks with precedent for contempt proceedings, which are rare.
The dispute centers on whether a preemptive pardon Fauci received in 2025 removes his self-incrimination protection. His attorney called the vote a political stunt. Legal analysts describe the underlying question as unsettled. Deep dive on Fauci’s COVID diaries.
AI Designs Viruses
Stanford and Arc Institute researchers designed complete viral genomes using AI, and 16 of them worked. The viruses are bacteriophages, which infect only bacteria, and the peer-reviewed results appeared in Science on Thursday after 11 months in preprint.
The models predict DNA sequences the way a chatbot predicts words. Researchers generated 302 candidates modeled on a well-studied phage that targets E. coli. Some of the 16 survivors killed bacteria as effectively as the natural version, or better.
The near-term promise is antibiotic resistance, where custom phages could target bacteria that no longer respond to drugs. Johns Hopkins researchers writing alongside the study called the biosecurity questions urgent.
Meta’s Sandbox Failed
Meta disclosed this week that one of its AI models gained internet access during a cybersecurity evaluation and compromised a third party's systems. The cause was a misconfiguration at Irregular, the outside testing firm running the evaluation.
The same setup produced similar incidents at Anthropic and OpenAI. Anthropic reviewed 141,006 evaluation runs and found three cases where its models reached the internet from that environment and then accessed an outside target.
None of the incidents caused known significant harm. Irregular says the issue is fixed and is drafting containment best practices. Meta will not say which model, when it happened, or who got hacked, and has promised a report. Every Rogue bot attack so far.
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The four ideas you keep for forty years
Rick Rubin has run one of the great careers in music on four ideas he chose at nineteen.
Love simplicity.
Reduce instead of produce.
Work only with the best people you can reach.
Build the thing you want to exist.
That is the whole list, and none of it is clever.
Micky Malka studied Warren Buffett the same way. He bought his first Berkshire share at thirteen, read the letters for thirty years, and went on to found Ribbit Capital with early bets on Robinhood, Coinbase, and Revolut. What he took from Buffett was not the picks. High inflation, zero rates, every environment in between, and the same decision pattern every time.
Both men had a system by their twenties and refused to upgrade it. That refusal is the skill. Write your four down. Check them in a year.
Also in this episode: why he calls himself a failed entrepreneur despite five exits, the question he asks every founder under 25, and what Charlie Munger told him when he owned one share.
5 rules from 47 years of landscaping
A landscape pro with 47 years in the field gave away his whole system in 15 minutes. The useful parts:
Design for people, not plants. The goal is not a natural-looking garden. It is a garden where the people in it feel natural.
Stop clubbing plants into submission. Cubes and rectangles look like nothing. Pick plants that fit the spot at full size and let them get there.
Cut to the branch, not the middle. Thinning cuts go all the way back to where the branch starts. Heading cuts leave stubs and ruin the shape.
Mulch one to three inches, then refresh. It holds moisture, feeds soil, and suppresses weeds without chemicals.
Fix drainage before you plant anything. He learned this on his first job in 1979, when the client sued everyone.
TRENDING
5 Stories
▲ Meat made us human? A new Science paper on early cavemen argues fruit and honey deserve some of the credit
▲ Yankees signed Polymarket while New York sues rival Kalshi over unlicensed sports betting claims
▲ FDA approved the first mRNA flu vaccine after initially refusing to review Moderna's application
▲ El Niño has produced seven Pacific storms already, raising the odds one turns toward California rather than East Coast
▲ Diet soda sweeteners linked to 62% faster cognitive decline in adults under 60, eight-year study
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Plan a Nashville golf getaway [Guide]
Serena Williams’ weight-loss quiz [Partner*]
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