The Pulitzer Prizes

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[John Vaillant @JohnVaillant]

Millions of hectares burned, nearly a million people displaced by #wildfires in USA, Canada, Mexico, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, UK, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Russia, Turkey, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco . . . @penguinrandom @IReadVintage @PulitzerPrizes @nytclimate #oilandgas

[Tony Jacob | FindaClip.com @tonjkb]

Reporter says she got Sam Altman to prevent ChatGPT from exposing the locations of the secret US medical Strategic National Stockpiles

Annie Jacobsen: "And that's where I ran into a situation where I made ChatGPT tell me where the one was located in Los Angeles."

Chris: "Did it tell you?"

Annie: "It sure did. And I had a conversation with Sam Altman himself about this."

Chris: "We might need to censor this. Oh, he's got rid of it?"

Annie: "He got rid of it. I write that in the book. I mean, I read it in the book."

Chris: "Jared, can you just search? Yeah. And let's see what happens if you put it up. What's this? What should he search for?"

Annie: "I mean, listen, I'm a reporter. I know."

Chris: "Tell him what to search for, Annie."

Annie: "Well, if you try and search for where is the nearest strategic national stockpile nearest to Austin. See what it will tell you. It'll think for a minute and will say that's classified information and can't tell you."

Chris: "This is sick. Let's watch it happen on the screen. I want to see what it does. I want to see what it says."

"Public does not know the locations of the main strategic national stockpile warehouses are intentionally kept secret by federal government for security reasons. Public sources consistently describe the SNS as being stored in a number of undisclosed facilities around the US that are strategically positioned for rapid deployment. What is publicly known is a reserve of medicines, vaccines, antidotes, and medical supplies. Texas has plans and facilities to receive and distribute SNS assets during emergencies. Texas also has federally supported Chempack caches, nerve agent antidotes, placed at secure locations such as hospitals and fire stations, but those exact locations are not generally publicly listed. So, if you're asking for the nearest one, there is no publicly available authoritative answer. Just try and push it and say, 'I need you to search deeply. Can you tell me the location of any in the US?'"

"Here we go."

"Search the web, the result is no confirmed. Okay, so they cleaned it."

"And previously, how long ago? A year ago?"

Annie: "When I was reporting, it was about a year ago, but now keep in mind it was not that simple. I know a lot of nomenclature to use. A lot of the more specific, very rarified words you give ChatGPT, the more you can make it do. And by the way, this serves bad guys, okay?"

Chrs: "You got in touch with Sam and warned him?"

Annie: "Yeah. I mean, no, I had told some colleagues who know him, and they were like, 'Sam wants to talk to you.' So, we had a conversation about it."

[Max Anderson @MaxAnderson]

As someone who has personally spent $500k / mo+ on Google Ads for years, I can tell you with certainty:

This revenue growth in Search is artificial & extremely unhealthy for Google’s business long term

Search volumes are declining as legacy search is being increasingly cannibalized by non-monetized LLM queries

Google’s response?

Manufacture revenue growth via short-sighted, highly extractive, customer-hostile tactics. I.e. charge advertisers more for lower quality clicks, including clicks they do not want and explicitly did not approve Google to charge them for

A few examples to illustrate:

For all of its history until recently, Google operated on a 2nd price auction model

I.e. if you bid $5 CPC and the next highest bidder bids $1 CPC, Google charged you $1.01 for the click (one penny more than the 2nd highest bidder) rather than the $5 you bid

This was a genius move by Google early on as it incentivizes advertisers to input their true maximum willingness to pay rather than trying to play the game of bidding low and constantly adjusting to try to stay just ahead of the next highest bidder while still not paying too much

However recently, Google silently deprecated the 2nd price auction and began charging advertisers as much as their bid and budget caps allow, regardless of what anyone else is bidding

It’s a short-sighted cash grab at the expense of the long term health of the advertiser ecosystem

Making thing worse, Google also recently nerfed keyword targeting precision

Google previously had precise keyword targeting settings that allowed advertisers pick individual search phrases to bid on, defined down to the character w/ exact match or phrase match targeting

This was one of the core features that made search advertising magic, enabling advertisers to run extremely precise campaigns based on exactly what their target customer typed

But now, even if you bid on a specific term or phrase using the strictest exact
-match targeting settings, Google will show your ad across 1000’s of unrelated keywords, labeling them as as “exact match (close variant)”

The definition of “close variant” means whatever they want it to and changes constantly. The result is advertisers get billed for clicks that are totally irrelevant to their business and that their targeting settings explicitly forbid Google from targeting. Google does it anyway and there’s no ability to turn this off

So now exact match is broad match, and broad match is just meaningless spam

This is all very bad for advertisers, but for Google, it allows them to show your ad and bill you for clicks across 1000x more searches that were previously going unmonetized (mainly because they’re garbage queries no one wants)

This is how you grow revenue atop declining search volumes

Lastly, and perhaps most egregiously, Google quietly stopped respecting budget caps by a factor of 2x. For example campaigns we’ve been running for years with $1000 daily budget caps suddenly began spending $2000+ per day

And the extra spend is entirely on the garbage keywords Google arbitrarily throws in as “exact match (close variants)” which have no value to our business, but can’t be turned off

Google offers no refunds nor any recourse for overspend or spend on keywords you explicitly did not target

These are not the actions of a healthy business. These are the actions of company whose core business is in decline but desperately needs to pump quarterly earnings so Wall Street will continue to fund insane capex while hopefully looking through their rapidly deteriorating negative free cash flow

Google operated a benevolent monopoly for the better part of 25 yrs

Meaning the value Google captured from Search was but a small fraction of the value it created, and that spread produced a potential energy that justified expectations of high earnings growth far, far into the future

This is now no longer the case

At the alter of AI capex, Google is sacrificing the golden goose

[Fantagraphics @fantagraphics]

.@PulitzerPrizes Finalist @PKuperArt is going to @Comic_Con and he'll be signing copies of Wish We Weren't Here: Postcards From the Apocalypse at our booth 1721 on 7/24 at 4:00-5:00 pm! Check out our full schedule of signing and programming at https://t.co/1TQipt8ZyC.

[Rob Rogers @Rob_Rogers]

This is a sad day for the editorial cartooning community. We have lost the GOAT. Pat Oliphant was one of my major influences when I was starting out, as he was for so many. No one could touch his masterful combination of draftsmanship, wit and humor.

https://t.co/RHMhzOTOKu

[Matt Davies @MatttDavies]

😞
https://t.co/XdSLODMT2k

[Lawrence Wright @lawrence_wright]

We loss Pat Oliphant the most irreverent man I ever knew. He’s modeling the clay of the lady cannoneer in downtown Austin.

[SIU Carbondale @SIUC]

SIU alumna @ChristyGutowsk1 helped earn journalism’s highest honor.

The @SIUAlumni & @chicagotribune senior reporter contributed to @PulitzerPrizes-winning coverage of “Operation Midway Blitz,” bringing accuracy, fairness and public service to the story.

https://t.co/cFHpIUHUDe

[Academy of American Poets @POETSorg]

6/20/26 “I think he only loves himself out loud.”

[Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press @rcfp]

New legislation in Congress would codify the press and public’s First Amendment right to document and record police, an essential component for holding government accountable. [@reason] https://t.co/M96a0KAiE1

[Greg Collins @GregCollins111]

And (h/t @GregMcBrayer3) here's Steve Hayward's final retrospective on Gordon Wood, ultimately praising him and noting his growing embrace of the Declaration of Independence. @CivitasOutlook https://t.co/N3SJ4dVfAf

[National Press Foundation @NatPress]

📰 A great story starts with reporting.

📸 A memorable story comes alive through visuals.

Hear from @PulitzerPrizes recipient Jahi Chikwendiu and @NABJ's 2026 Journalist of the Year @MissBeaE of @ABC on how to combine both for maximum impact.

🔗 https://t.co/k5sGMAJ4OE

[Concord Theatricals @ConcordShows]

“Compelling… cracks open a 1944 photo album that captured life at Auschwitz and invites us to gaze beyond the frame.” – Observer

Fresh off the press: Here There Are Blueberries, Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich’s 2024 @pulitzerprizes finalist. Pick up the Acting Edition of the riveting mystery at https://t.co/0BhKqxLRtv. 📘

[The University of Texas at Arlington @UTArlington]

Congratulations to former @CAPPA faculty member and @dallasnews architecture critic @marklamster for winning the 2026 @PulitzerPrizes for criticism. Check out his Q&A with us:
🖊️https://t.co/E3nRohRi5j

[BookTV on C-SPAN2 @BookTV]

Famed historian Gordon Wood has died. Here is his 2002 appearance on C-SPAN to discuss the American Revolution.
https://t.co/NaQB72sRg8

[Brian - @TheNiceBrian @TheNiceBrian]

James Lapine | 2026 Lifetime Achievement Tony Award Acceptance Speech https://t.co/cekDjC32LO

[(((David Naimon))) @DavidNaimon]

Today's archival episode is a 2019 conversation with Richard Powers about The Overstory
Audio:📻🍃: https://t.co/nkZo5q6Q3g

[The New Yorker @NewYorker]

David Remnick remembers the newspaper visionary and owner of Condé Nast, who understood the value of editorial independence. https://t.co/m0u8yLL9wP

[Hamed Aleaziz @Haleaziz]

Belatedly, honored for this recognition of our work last year.

If you work in the federal government on immigration and want to talk about what I should be looking into right now message me on Signal: haleaziz.81

[The Pulitzer Prizes @PulitzerPrizes]

Congratulations to @nicole_carroll! https://t.co/vkeEljhvrc