“Following decades of unprecedented expansion in security, detention, and surveillance, the United States government’s competence in militancy and punishment is now so dominant that it threatens to eclipse its other activities and ambitions. We are close to a point when, regardless of who is elected, the government will function like a hammer and every problem will look like a nail. As a result, at this critical juncture, opposition to the Trump administration will have to decide whether to offer a strategic vision for the direction of the American state, or cast their movement as an objection to just one person, a particular agency, or a certain issue viewed in isolation and presented as aberrational.” (04/11/26)
“As lawmakers of both major parties hustle to regulate their preferred villains, they’re losing sight of the big picture. The possible gains to humanity from AI are enormous.” (for publication 05/26)
“Even as the European Union works to bolster economic and defense support for Ukraine, the continent is confronting increasing Russian aggression on a different battlefield: the online frontier. Over the past year, the Kremlin has intensified its disinformation campaigns in an attempt to weaken Europe’s democratic pillars of truth and civic trust. As the main target of these intensified attacks, France is at the forefront of efforts to document and debunk these claims. ‘The more outspoken France has become about Russia, the more it is targeted,’ The Economist reported April 8. It documented multiple instances in which false claims on social media were launched almost immediately after French President Emmanuel Macron expressed support for Ukraine or European rearmament.” (04/10/26)
“The campaign against jury trials, one of the most free-spirited and universally lauded institutions bequeathed to us by the common law tradition, would be baffling in a healthy constitutional regime. But sadly, it is predictable enough in a regime whose political leaders have developed the habit of tinkering with civil liberties as though they were trimming their lawn.” (04/11/26)
“The neoconservative talk host tried to normalize the use of nuclear weapons and now appears irate that the president hasn’t taken his advice.” (04/11/26)
“This week Anthropic announced that it has a new large language model that’s way more powerful than past models — so powerful that it poses a threat to the world’s information infrastructure. This model can find otherwise unfindable vulnerabilities in software — and in fact, said Anthropic, has found previously unknown holes in every major operating system and browser. … if this model fell into the wrong hands, that could be big trouble — which is why, says Anthropic, there are no plans to release the model for the time being. Some people have wondered whether Anthropic’s claims about the terrifying power of this new model are mainly marketing hype — a suspicion that isn’t exactly discouraged by the model’s name: Mythos. But Anthropic is making Mythos available to big companies that maintain important parts of the digital infrastructure, like Microsoft, Apple, and Cisco. So if these claims were hugely exaggerated, word of that would get out …” (04/11/26)
“I’m a middle school teacher in New York, and what’s happening inside many classrooms today should concern every parent in this country, especially parents of Black boys. Education is supposed to be about reading, writing, history, discipline and accountability. Instead, in too many schools, academics are being pushed aside while politics, ideology and lowered expectations take their place. The students who can least afford to fall behind (particularly young Black boys) are the ones being hurt the most. The data shows this is not just opinion, it’s reality. According to the New York State Education Department’s 2024-2025 assessment results, proficiency rates in English and math remain far below where they should be, with major gaps between racial groups. Black students in New York City were only about 47% proficient in English and 43% proficient in math, compared with much higher rates for white and Asian students.” (04/11/26)
“I’ve previously discussed surprising results around tolerance for hypothetical controversial speakers, including the fact that male college students are substantially more tolerant — so much so, in fact, that male students are often more tolerant of their political enemies than female students are of their own allies. One might wonder whether this is true of the general population as well. Our data on the general population is less comprehensive than our student data. We don’t ask the same speaker-tolerance questions. But we do ask people whether they agree with the claim, ‘Words can be violence.'” (04/11/26)
“Humans can’t perpetually stay on high alert. So when every statement sounds like it could trigger World War III — but then nothing happens — one response is to become inured to the chaos. And once those outrage receptors burn out, we won’t magically reset to normal if and when a serious, competent leader finally emerges. Which raises an uncomfortable question: After years of this high-drama, reality-show version of governance, could a normal, competent politician even hold our attention? For those who aren’t conditioned to crave copious amounts of drama, the other temptation during and after a dramatic rein is to tune out entirely. … Then again, Trump may see American apathy as a feature, not a bug.” (04/10/26)
