“It’s reasonable to ask how AI might kill us all. We can answer that question on several levels. At the first level, AI can kill humans in the same way that humans kill humans. AI is already being used in lethal ways …. At a second level, we should remember that AI is native to computer systems; that’s where it lives. And these computer systems are increasingly in charge of everything that we do. … But at the highest level, none of these details about how AI might kill us matter. The thing that is dangerous about AI is that it could become massively more intelligent than us, and so massively more capable of controlling the environment in any number of ways.” (09/16/26)
“Peter Max, the German-born artist whose art is said to have captured the colorful, psychedelic counterculture spirit of the 1960s, has died, according to reports. He was 88. … Born in Berlin to Jewish parents in 1937, Max and his family fled Nazis Germany for China when he was still an infant, spending several years there during his youth, according to a biography on Max by Park West Gallery, where the pop artist’s work has been sold. In 1953, a 16-year-old Max and his family moved from Europe to Brooklyn … It was during the 1960s and 1970s that he and his art exploded into the mainstream and he produced some of his best-known Pop Art works that would come to define the look and feel of the Flower Power culture of the United States.” (09/17/26)
“Pharmaceutical forecasting is untested, and the FDA is a conservative organization. Decision makers would not and should not uproot their usual process in favor of a forecasting-based one. We envision applying forecasting to the FDA gradually, increasing its prominence only after low-commitment applications have visibly succeeded. … This summer, as part of its Operation Trialblazer clinical trial reform initiative, the Trump administration announced a pilot program to speed up phase 1 trials. Incorporating forecasting into that pilot would be a concrete way of implementing this initial stage. The FDA could either employ human forecasters, partner with an AI superforecasting company, or create their own in-house software; results from this first stage would be used to calibrate its effectiveness.” (09/16/26)
“A visit by perennial Trump administration negotiators Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, followed immediately by one to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Donald Trump’s claim that a ceasefire in that war is imminent might make critics suspicious of another administration attempt to pressure Ukraine for major concessions to end that bloody war, this time in exchange for a Russian stand-down in helping Iran in the administration’s war with that country. Any such obvious mutually advantageous deal could help both Russia and the United States at Ukraine’s expense.” (09/17/26)
“An Argentinian judge has ordered the suspension of a British-Israeli oil project near the Falkland Islands in a purely symbolic move as Argentina escalates its claim over the British-administered territory. Wednesday’s interim ruling issued by a court in Argentina’s southernmost province, Tierra del Fuego, follows a lawsuit filed by 1982 war veterans and environmental lawyers earlier this month. The plaintiffs sought to block Britain’s Rockhopper Exploration and Israel’s Navitas Petroleum from the Sea Lion oilfield, located about 220km (137 miles) from the islands. … London maintains the islands are British and rejects the jurisdiction of Argentinian courts in the Falklands. The islanders themselves voted overwhelmingly in 2013 to remain British.” (09/17/26)
“The phobia against human judgment is America’s unspoken taboo. As a result, the American state is floundering. The evils of bureaucratic micromanagement include: inability to adapt to new circumstances (sluggish defense procurement), diversion to rule compliance instead of doing the job (doctors and nurses spend half their time on desk work), loss of a sense of individual agency and pride (why bother when drowning in law?) and listless public cultures.” (09/16/26)
“No one today can think Jefferson to have been morally upright in all that he did. His writings and his work to achieve a liberal society—in some areas—are impossible to reconcile with his enslavement of other human beings, or the particularly cruel ways that he treated them. And yet he stands at the founding of our country. His proudest accomplishments survive, and it falls to us to explain how such a man could contain such contradictions.” (09/16/26)
“Two women filed a federal lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, claiming their photographs were found in his vast collection of child pornography. Identified in court papers only as Jane Doe and Amy, the women allege that ‘few if any’ of those whose photos were in Epstein’s collection were informed that these photographs are in the hands of federal investigators. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the Southern District of New York, seeks class-action status and is asking for unspecified damages and requesting the court to ‘design and supervise a single, coordinated program for identifying and notifying’ the other women whose ‘unlawful sexualized images’ were part of Epstein’s collection.” (09/16/26)
