The Missing Data About Missing People
Plus: Free speech crackdowns across Europe, Joe Rogan goes head-to-head with Trump on immigration & the NIH’s new animal testing rule.
After six days and unimaginable tragedy, news reports still flow in from Kerr County, Texas. The death toll continues to rise, and news outlets continue to report on the unaccounted for as missing. The word is inexact by necessity, but also less exact than it could be. Some people hear “160 Missing” and think, "Well, they’re just missing—maybe they’ll be found." Others think, "It’s been five days—they’re almost certainly dead." The clarity that is missing from accounts of the missing is how many are known to have been in the way of the waters, and how many have just been put on a list by concerned family members who don’t know where they are a this moment, but also didn’t know before the rain hit.
Some of those reported missing are confirmed to have been in the flood zone, and sadly, many of them likely didn’t survive. Others are only “missing” from the perspective of worried friends or relatives, not missing in the literal sense. They might be safe, but they haven’t checked in yet. The word lumps together very different situations, which makes the reporting both confusing and emotionally misleading.
The fires in Maui are a good example of this kind of reporting. Numbers of the “missing” bounced around in the haze after the fire, going from around 2,000 to 850 to 388, until a list of the “missing” was released, helping friends and family members—and even people on the list—identify who was, in fact, safe after the blaze. The death toll numbers even changed after the fire, going from 115 to 102, after DNA revealed some people had been counted twice. To date, only two people remain unaccounted for.
Welcome to the Gist List—a roundup of news that has definitely been accounted for, things you should know, and my thoughts leading up to today’s podcast episode.
Here’s what’s on my mind:
⛺ How did the homeless get such great lawyers?
💬 The big, wide world of free speech crackdowns in Europe.
🐁 The NIH will no longer consider animal-only testing for funding.
🥊 Joe Rogan goes head-to-head with Trump over immigration.
The Gist List
L.A.'s Camp Sweeps Stirring Conflict (LA Times)
A legal fight is brewing over how Los Angeles measures progress on homelessness and whether the city is overstating success by counting the removals of individual tents as “encampment resolutions.” Due to a settlement with the nonprofit L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, the city agreed to provide 12,915 shelter beds and remove 9,800 encampments by mid-2026.
This story raises many questions for me—particularly after the Grants Pass decision last year that gave cities the green light to enforce anti-camping laws, EVEN WHEN no shelter is available. My biggest question is exactly HOW powerful are the lawyers advocating for the homeless? This isn’t a knock on the cause, but these are people sleeping on city sidewalks and under overpasses, yet they could hold their own in a John Grisham novel.
Europe’s Crackdown on Speech Goes Far and Wide (WSJ)
Across Europe, governments are cracking down on free speech for, among many things, flipping off the French president, burning Qurans and bumper stickers with salty language. While having J.D. Vance banging on the table about free speech issues is not the most likable advocate, he is right, and the U.K. and E.U. are struggling to protect a fundamental right of liberal democracy.
We live in two vastly different philosophical worlds here: While Europe’s loosely-designed laws were very much shaped by their experiences of Nazism and WWII, the U.S. has very few restrictions on speech, including hate speech. Europe sees it as something to pre-empt, prioritizing social order and harmony, while the U.S. views it as something to endure unless it steps up to the line of inciting violence.
And while we in the good old U-S-of-A are fighting each other over hurt feelings on Twitter with next to no repercussions, officials in the even older nothing-between-the U and-the-K have a database of 250,000 “non-crime hate incidents,” which won’t result in charges but can appear on background checks, affecting employment according to the Free Speech Union.
NIH Announces End to Funding for Animal-Only Studies (Drug Discovery and Development)
In a story that I’m surprised isn’t getting picked up everywhere else, the NIH announced it will no longer fund new research proposals that rely solely on animal testing. Of course, the usual suspects, like PETA, view this as a huge win, but it seems unclear what it means for science in general. Apparently, 90% of drugs that pass animal tests later fail in human trials, so an exclusively animal study is unlikely to get us far. It also seems to be an inducement to concoct shaky computational models to get around these requirements.
The NIH now wants to focus its efforts by primarily considering New Approach Methodologies (or NAMS) for funding. This includes computer simulations, human tissue (organ-on-a-chip) testing, and AI-driven predictive models.
Trump's Moves on Immigration Roil MAGA Base (Washington Post)
President Trump is facing growing backlash—even the almighty Joe Rogan—from within his MAGA base over immigration and several other issues. Trump has waffled over whether or not to crack down on deporting agricultural workers, whether to create a special visa, and declaring “There’s no amnesty.”
Behind the scenes, Joe Rogan and UFC President Dana White had dinner with Trump last month, reportedly urging Trump to back off mass deportations of non-criminal migrant workers. Apparently not at issue, though quite interesting, how to explain the non-detention, then quick correction regarding the accused drug cartel-affiliated son of boxing great Julio Caesar Chavez.
Syrian Death Factory & Iranian Prisons (WSJ & NYT)
These two stories caught my eye this week. With the unrest in the Middle East, two notable prisons, Saydnaya in Syria and Evin in Iran, were busted up, revealing some horrifying secrets. Both were horrible symbols of oppression, often imprisoning dissidents, journalists, protestors, and even the people who were Facebook friends with them. While it is ultimately a good thing that both of these prisons are out of commission, it’s hard not to notice that when there is a jailbreak, there aren’t many places to flee to for freedom.
On The Show: When Great Artists Make Terrible Choices
Last week, Daniel Kehlmann joined to discuss The Director, his novel reimagining the life of G.W. Pabst—a brilliant German filmmaker who escaped the Nazis, only to voluntarily return. Kehlmann grapples with how much human suffering we’re willing to accept as the cost of art.
This newsletter was put together in collaboration with Kathleen Sykes. All mistakes belong to Mike Pesca.
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Mike, I'm sorry. I know you like to slice and dice every concept that hits your desk until one can read 6-font type through it. But, in the face of environmental catastrophe, you've got problems with the difficulties of counting up the victims, EXACTLY?? In the moment??
You think the public would be happier with the media saying, "Gosh folks, but we have absolutely NO idea how many folks are in the middle of this god-awful situation."
Re: Animal testing. That 90 % of drugs tested on animals tells you nothing about the superiority or inferiority of NAMS without knowing how many drugs fail with NAMS testing. It likely tells you nothing other than 90 % of candidate drugs won’t be approved. I guess the reasoning could be that if 90 % of these things are going to fail might as well not hurt animals.