Nine anti-ICE activists have received decades long sentences after a July 4, 2025 noise protest outside an ICE facility went horribly wrong. The case has received an alarming lack of attention from liberal, and even leftist opponents of the Trump 2.0 regime.
Part the First: More Cognitive Surrender Where It Just Won’t Do. Last week we considered an essay on AI that used the term “cognitive surrender.” That sums up the current state of that art and the term should gain a following. Last week Nature published Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – […]
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani's slate of progressive congressional candidates swept the Democratic establishment aside in last night's primaries, but some not so happy outcomes occurred in other races.
Nuclear war is often discussed as a weapons problem. It is more accurately understood as a trust problem. As trust between adversaries deteriorates, relationships can move through a predictable sequence of rivalry, suspicion, distrust, hostility, and ultimately existential threat perception. Each stage generates evidence that justifies the next, creating a self-reinforcing cycle that expands the influence of what may be called the War Power ecosystem. In a world of nuclear-armed states, the cycle of trust destruction results in repeated games of nuclear roulette in which global catastrophe is at risk with each spin.
Zohran Mamdani has endorsed multiple candidates in Democratic congressional primaries as part of a "vigorous push by the DSA to claim more ground in Congress."
Part the First: Back to the Past in Science and Medicine. The future of basic science in the United States looks grim for everyone from the aspiring graduate student to the full professor who has met her potential and has several graduate students, postdocs, and technicians working in her laboratory. The precipitous and arbitrary Big […]
Meta's Mark Zuckerberg has seemingly pushed the company to the brink, squandering billions on harebrained tech, destroying the engineering culture that built his Facebook empire, losing badly in the AI race, and enshittifying their core products.
Glen Campbell, who was a member of The Wrecking Crew, once remarked that he had worked hard for ten years to become an overnight success in 1967, with thanks to John Hartford. Without stretching too much, this same trajectory, extended by more than ten years, has been illustrated recently in biomedical research by the case […]
A growing chorus of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists argues that the U.S. defense establishment is overdue for disruption. Defense technology unicorns promise to bring the speed, innovation, and entrepreneurial dynamism that transformed commercial markets. Yet they face a formidable obstacle: one of the most durable institutional ecosystems ever created.
Conor here: Perhaps what the authors call “the holy grail of environmental policy” (economic growth with less emissions) needs a rethink. Sooner rather than later they’ll have no choice as global warming will do the job if conflicts don’t, and degrowth will be imposed on us one way or another. The European Central Bank, for […]
Part the First: The Sabotage of American Science. For much of the past forty years I have been in the “business” of writing grant proposals and/or doing research that has been publicly funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. This includes work supported by the American Cancer Society (ACS) and […]
FIFA hopes that this year's expanded tournament will be the most spectacular -- and lucrative -- yet. However, there's a lot standing in the way of that happening.
This weekend POTUS Donald Trump is hosting the Ultimate Fighting Championship on the White House lawn in a zeitgeist defining event, aired live on the Ellison family's Paramount+ streaming service.
