“Photographs. Paintings. Editorial cartoons. Cover art. Memes. We are steeped every day of our lives in visual art. And who can doubt the profound effect that a particularly striking image can have on our psyche? Today, James explores the way art and imagery can be used to unlock minds and deprogram the masses with two practicing artists, Anthony Freda and Jordan Henderson.” (07/01/26)
“In recent years the American right’s been inverting phrases taken from the left, taking something that meant well and turning them into cliches. Triggered. Woke. Social justice warrior. Critical race theory. They use these as a shorthand to mock and belittle, while also reducing the left to something separate and less than. At the same time, these phrases are often ill-defined: what is woke, exactly? One may as well ask who leads the oft-cited but hard to find antifa organization. Once one starts looking at how they use these phrases to delegitimize the left, one sees the pattern all over the place: gender ideology, fake news, and perhaps most nefarious of all, cultural Marxism.” (07/01/26)
“Should taxpayers be required to subsidize unions’ lobbying for more taxpayer subsidies? Three states say ‘no, spend our money on students.'” (07/01/26)
“Speaking Sunday night at the Trump Kennedy Center, where he was receiving the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, Bill Maher offered an excellent bit of advice for politicians who do not wish to be mocked: ‘Stop being funny.’ It is a simple thing, and a not-so-simple thing. When politicians are being ridiculous, Maher said, ‘I put them in jokes—jokes that work.’ Jokes that work is the key thing. It is axiomatic in comedy that the way to kill a joke is to explain it, but it is worth thinking about why and how Maher’s jokes, and other jokes about politicians, work. If politicians are to stop being funny, then they will need to answer the question: When are politicians funny? … Naked dishonesty in politicians is funny. So is incompetence. So is howling demagoguery. Quiet, unshowy competence is not very funny.” (07/01/26)
“Anthropic said on Tuesday that the U.S. Commerce Department lifted export controls on its most advanced Fable and Mythos AI models, less than three weeks after the company was ordered to suspend their access over national security risks. Washington has stepped up oversight of new model releases to identify potential threats amid concerns that advanced AI models could be misused by military intelligence in China, Russia or other countries of concern. … Anthropic said the June 12 export-control order followed Amazon researchers reporting a way to bypass Fable 5’s safeguards, allowing the model to identify software vulnerabilities and, in one case, generate code demonstrating how one vulnerability could be exploited. Anthropic said it has now implemented a new safeguard that blocks the behavior described in the report.” (07/01/26)