“Most political consultants will tell you that a quality they treasure in their clients is the ability to stay on message. In the world of political communication, that means limiting the opportunity for the mainstream media to talk about issues not in your candidate’s best interest and instead driving home a poll-tested and winning message. The more the candidate ‘stays on message’ the less opportunity there is for the media to cover the campaign in a less favorable light. Trump is by far the most accessible president in my lifetime. In contrast to his predecessors, he takes questions from the media seemingly every day. … All of Trump’s expounding on a wide range of issues should be a good thing. But it is not. Why? Because when a president answers multiple questions in a day, the White House loses control of what the media reports during that news cycle.” (03/25/26)
“Two protesters were arrested on the first day of Queensland’s ban on the slogan ‘From the river to the sea.’ Authorities enforced the restriction as part of new rules regulating protest speech related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which also cover the chant ‘globalize the intifada.’ Offenders could face up to two years in prison. The first protester arrested was Liam Parry from Students for Palestine, who spoke at a march against the law outside the state parliament house. Parry reportedly gave a talk about the phrase, disputed the claim that it was antisemitic, and ‘discouraged others from chanting the slogan.’ Another protester was arrested for wearing a shirt with the message ‘From the river to the sea.” (03/25/26)
“SUPPORTER: America needs to start talking to China to come up with a bilateral agreement to pause AI. The agreement would need to be transparent, mutually enforceable, and … OPPONENT: We can’t unilaterally pause AI! China would destroy us! SUPPORTER: As I said, we need to start negotiating a bilateral agreement so that both sides will … OPPONENT: You fool! Don’t you know that while we unilaterally pause AI, China will be racing ahead and using their lead to erode our fundamental rights and freedoms? How could you be so naive!” (03/25/26)
“On the one hand, it’s not difficult at all for me to imagine an algorithm that could beat the pants off the smartest human when it comes to making decisions. We are not, classically, as a species, all that great at making choices that lead to the outcomes we say we want. Or even the outcomes we clearly do want. We are predictably irrational. We have all kinds of cognitive biases. I wrote a little about this not long ago in Cathy reads books: Enlightenment 2.0 review. On the other hand, I guess I’m enough of an AI scaremonger to be wary of things potentially going awry in a world in which one or several bots make all major decisions for humanity.” (03/25/26)
“As the Arctic and adjacent ‘near-Arctic’ remilitarize and old Cold War fault lines between East and West re-remerge as salient boundaries defining new blocs of increasing mutually exclusive cooperation and strategic alignment, it’s not just NATO that’s rethinking the strategic foundations for a secure polar world in response to Russia’s military resurgence underway for over a decade now, culminating with its full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Across the Pacific from NATO’s North American member states … the states of Northeast Asia are also rethinking the foundations of Arctic security for their evolving Arctic policies, keeping pace with a fundamental geopolitical transformation of the region with roots that date as far back, ironically, as the Arctic Council’s 2013 cooperative expansion to include among its new non-Arctic observer states five Asian countries …” (03/25/26)
“The only surefire way to keep your devices from being searched and seized is to simply not bring them with you on your trip. If you can’t leave them at home, consider mailing them to and from your destination. Another option is to leave devices that contain sensitive information at home and instead bring throwaway travel devices you’re willing to have searched or confiscated. This doesn’t need to be an expensive proposition. You can reformat and repurpose an old phone or tablet, or purchase refurbished older models that are comparatively cheap. Then buy a temporary SIM card or eSIM so that you’re not using your usual number. Remember to let contacts know that for the duration of your trip you’ll be reachable at a different number. Create a travel account for these devices.” (03/25/26)
“Secretary of War Pete Hegseth would rather use your tax dollars to bomb Iranian families than feed American families. That’s the upshot of news that Hegseth is prepared to request $200 billion in funding for the Pentagon’s new war on Iran. That’s far higher than earlier reports that put the request at $50 billion or $100 billion. And all of these astounding sums would come on top of the $1 trillion already budgeted for the Pentagon, itself a record. It should be clear: Funding this unjust, unpopular, and illegal war comes directly at the expense of ordinary Americans.” [editor’s note: And so would the cost of funding all the “social programs” the author recommends. How about cutting out ALL that spending instead of stealing the money? – TLK](03/25/26)
“Republicans made a calculated bet that by indulging Donald Trump’s ill-conceived and cruel schemes (e.g., unleashing ICE on cities, tariffs, wars with Venezuela and Iran, slashing healthcare to pay for tax cuts for the rich), the country would somehow stumble through. They figured congressional Republicans would share in any successes but somehow avoid any blame when things (inevitably) went haywire. Politics rarely works out that way.” (03/25/26)
“The hateful logic of the Nazis is find your villain and assign all blame to them, then the complexity of the world collapses into a satisfying and murderous solution. Nazis logic did not die with the Third Reich. Paul Ehrlich passed away earlier this month, at 93, and his passing is an occasion to examine another expression of the same underlying habit of mind. Ehrlich was not an antisemite. His villain was humanity itself. … What makes Ehrlich’s life so instructive is not that he was wrong — he was wrong in ways almost beyond reckoning — but that his wrongness was so elaborately rewarded.” (03/25/26)
