Source: Pierre Lemieux
by Pierre Lemieux

“In 2019, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, famously wrote: ‘We train our boys to be killing machines, then prosecute them when they kill!’ The ‘boys’ are US soldiers, but who is we and which possessor does our refer to? … The fundamental problem with collectives is this: hidden under any collective are different and distinct individuals. Without starting from this elemental fact, one cannot understand the behavior of the collectives and sub-collectives that can be drawn around individuals. One cannot understand the social consequences of individual actions.” (12/06/25)

https://pierrelemieux.substack.com/p/our-killing-machines

Source: Racket News
by Matt Taibbi

“The Digital Services Act, the European Commission’s content control law developed across multiple stages dating to the mid-2010s, has finally become fully operational, in Star Wars parlance. Officials announced a long-threatened €120 million (about $140 million) fine of Elon Musk’s X platform, with the major offenses being the use of a ‘deceptive’ check mark program and failure to ‘provide researchers with access to the platform’s public data.’ The fine comes at a strange time. A few weeks ago, the EC began a public campaign of walking back its biggest censorship initiatives, thanks to a growing belief that its stifling regulatory environment was costing Old-World companies a chance to compete for investment in AI technology.” (12/05/25)

https://www.racket.news/p/europe-fires-a-speech-warning

Source: Washington Post
by Megan McArdle

“The short story used to be a viable commercial and artistic proposition, until television killed off the pulp magazines. By the 1980s, short stories were more of a loss leader for novel writers (actual or aspiring). Today, the form is mostly the province of tiny literary magazines, and its author usually survives on grants, gigs teaching creative writing and pedestrian day jobs. I’m afraid I expect the feature film to suffer a similar fate, because everything about the medium is optimized for theaters: its visual language, its lavish production budgets and even its length (long enough to be worth leaving the house for, not so long that your butt goes numb). In the future, storytelling will be optimized for streaming into our living rooms — unless, of course, it’s optimized for YouTube and TikTok, or some other technological medium I can’t yet imagine.” (12/06/25)

https://archive.is/faLgV

Source: New York Post
by staff

“America’s kids are paying a steep price for lower standards and less testing in schools — and there’s no obvious sign of a turnaround. It’s particularly troubling for New York kids, especially as state ‘leaders’ have decided to stop requiring passing scores on Regents exams to graduate high school starting in the 2027-’28 school year. How crucial are hard standards? Well, after colleges (in the benighted name of ‘equity’) stopped requiring SAT or ACT scores as part of the admissions process a few years back, a host of high schools evidently stopped teaching the skills needed to do well on such tests — even though such skills are vital to getting through college, and life. Kids who are unprepared don’t face consequences until it’s too late — i.e., when they’re already in college and struggling to do the work expected of them.” (12/06/25)

https://nypost.com/2025/12/06/opinion/alarming-signs-kids-are-paying-a-steep-price-for-low-standards-and-less-testing-in-schools/

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos

“Europeans at the Doha Forum in Qatar were quite clear in their disdain for President Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy and his peace plan for Ukraine, but his ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker came out swinging in favor of both, unabashedly telling an audience Saturday that U.S. partners need to step up if they want continued support from Washington and not to criticize the sausage (peace deal) while it’s being made.” (12/06/25)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-nato-trump/