From Russia, With Regret

Plus: Woman seduces and blackmails Buddhist monks, ChatGPT is changing the way we speak & Gen Z’s obsession with gigantic, gag-sized tumblers.

Donald Trump is not angry, he’s just disappointed. He’s also not done with Vladimir Putin, he told the BBC. “I believed in you when no one else would,” the scorned President announced as he caught the Russian strongman at the airport gate right before boarding a flight that would change the rest of their lives forever.

No, that didn't happen. But neither did all of the messages of ease and assurances of breakthroughs that Trump promised in ending the war.

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev dismissed the threats outright, calling them “theatrical.” Which, to be fair, when your entire political persona is theatre, it gets a little harder to get people to take your threats seriously.

Trump did threaten 100% secondary tariffs on buyers of Russian exports unless a peace deal is reached within 50 days. He also encouraged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to strike even deeper into Russian territory, going so far as to ask if Kyiv could hit Moscow if the U.S. supplied long-range weapons.

Trump might be exiting the friend zone with Putin, or this might all be a mid-season plot twist as part of fan service for the Zelensk-hive.

Welcome to the Gist List—a news roundup, things you should know, and my thoughts leading up to today’s podcast episode.

Here’s what’s on my mind:

😳 Woman seduces and blackmails Buddhist monks.

💬 Delve into this article that takes you on a journey to discover how ChatGPT is changing our words.

☕ Coffee is getting more expensive, and tariffs will make it worse.

🥤 Why the “Big Dumb Cup” is such a status symbol with Gen Z. (🔒)

📈 UnitedHealth reported gains last quarter, at a cost.

The Gist List

Thai Police Arrest Woman Who Allegedly Seduced and Blackmailed Buddhist Monks (AP)

A Thai woman in her mid-30s was arrested for allegedly seducing senior Buddhist monks and blackmailing them to cover up their relationships to the tune of ~$11.9 million over three years. This event has turned Thailand upside down, highlighting public distrust in monastic institutions. At least nine high-ranking monks—who, according to the Theravada sect that most of them belong to, are supposed to be celibate—have been defrocked.

How do you blackmail a Buddhist Monk? Send his friends a tape of him claiming arahantship unjustifiably?

Of course, that might lead to his experiencing a blow to the ego, which would violate his sense of anattā, thus creating an additional ego-trap, which would also be a Pārājika. Then, if he took pleasure in the detention and punishment of his tormented, that's another violation of karuṇā, once more a Pārājika. Maybe it's easy to blackmail a Buddhist monk.

ChatGPT Is Changing the Words We Use in Conversation (Scientific American)

First, ChatGPT started inserting em dashes into all of our text—now it’s changing the way we speak. New research shows that the influence of ChatGPT is causing us to use words in daily speech that we wouldn’t regularly use, like “delve,” “realm,” “boast,” and “meticulous.” The research shows that it’s causing this feedback loop where the humans train AI and then AI turns around and starts telling us what to say, and ultimately gives us bland podcast show notes (because they have been trained on 700,000 hours of podcasts).

While it seems small, some linguists worry that relying on LLMs to write and summarize things might start narrowing our language.

Record-High Coffee Prices Poised to Keep Rising on Upcoming Brazil Tariffs (Sherwood)

With a 50% tariff on imports from Brazil due to take effect in a few weeks, the price of your morning cup of coffee will go up about $0.25 a cup. President Trump suggested the tariffs over Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s “witch hunt” trial for the mere crime of inciting an insurrection. Whomst among us hasn’t incited an insurrection?

Either way, we will see a jump in our coffee prices because Brazil is the largest supplier to the U.S. Coffee prices have steadily increased over the last few years. Between droughts, shortages, high-stakes caffeine capers and Americans’ insatiable need for the staff of life, which is coffee, the cost has already spiked several times, as explained by this satisfyingly brown chart from Sherwood.

Via Sherwood

Water Bottles, the Accessory Gen Z Is Thirsting After (The Economist)🔒

Tumbler. It is both a categorization of our societal trajectory and the bloatedly chaliced source of that decline. The Stanley Cup (no, not the hockey trophy) is the ultimate status symbol—nay, a lifestyle—for Gen Z. Go on social media and you’ll be hit with all sorts of #HydrationInflation content, including videos of people covering their tumbler in absurd amounts of accessories like they’re preparing to scale Mount Everest.

makeitwithmicah

A post shared by @makeitwithmicah

And one does not simply BUY a Stanley. You have to brave their website and hope that your favorite color is still in stock (it’s not). And for something that very much looks like a Minkman Brothers gag cup, it is filling the 40oz Flow State coffers. Sales hit $4 billion in the year ending May 2025, with 270 million bottles sold. Not bad for a company that started out making thermoses for factory workers.

Stealth Stake Sales Helped UnitedHealth Beat Wall Street Targets (Bloomberg)

For over 15 years, UnitedHealth Group has seen consistent growth, often beating Wall Street expectations. That was, of course, until the high-profile murder of their CEO and all the subsequent scrutiny of their business practices and criminal investigation into Medicare billing.

To prop up the earnings from the last quarter, however, United participated in some accounting quasi-chicanery by discreetly selling stakes in several business units to private equity firms, helping it log $3.3 billion in profit. It helps them meet their target, BUT some of these deals require them to buy back those stakes later—likely at higher prices.

---

Yesterday on The Show: Sci-Fi, Sarcasm, and the Robot Who Just Wants to Be Left Alone

Murderbot showrunners Chris and Paul Weitz join to discuss their sci-fi series’ blend of chamber thriller, workplace satire, and reluctant hero tale—all orbiting a security unit who just wants to be left alone to binge his stories. They talk robot servitude, world-building exhaustion (“every chair must be a space chair”), and how Alexander Skarsgård’s performance brings Scandinavian placidity to a roiling interior monologue.

---

This newsletter was put together in collaboration with Kathleen Sykes. All mistakes belong to Mike Pesca.

Listen to The Gist, and upgrade to Pesca Plus for the ad-free version.

Have a story you want us to talk about or an opinion you want to share? Email us at thegist@mikepesca.com or share your thoughts in the comments. We might give you a shoutout in our next newsletter or on the air.