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What can't a computer do? Most of all, it can't take responsibility and be accountable. And the demand for accountability is limitless. There is always something that could work better than it does. The solution seems to be to make a person accountable for handling every little problem. They are tasked with checking that nothing goes wrong, in any area where something can go wrong. They become building inspectors who are supposed to make sure that people don't build things wrong, social workers that are supposed to make sure that people don't parent wrong, health inspectors who make sure restaurants don't poison people, environmental inspectors who are supposed to make sure the environment does not get degraded, animal inspectors who are supposed to make sure that animals are are not treated wrongly.

AI development is the fastest road to idiocracy

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John Darkow

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No, Mr. Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months, your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000—70% of whom are women and children," said Sanders (I-Vt.). "It is not antisemitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving more than one million people homeless—almost half the population.

Bernie Sanders

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Is it totally lost on the American people, that the very same Supreme Court who ruled that 172 million women should no longer have the freedom to decide to their own pregnancy choices, is now, all of sudden, struggling with the idea of whether ONE MAN should have the freedom to commit crimes without punishment?

Gene Trevino

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If Biden loses in November, one of the primary factors will be its overreliance on a smaller universe of dedicated voters. If Trump loses, it will be partly attributable to his overreliance on a large population of Americans who cannot be bothered to cast a ballot.

Trump’s Unlikely Voter Problem

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Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality.

Ursula K. Le Guin

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Garth German

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The current situation in Gaza is this: more than 33,000 people confirmed dead (the number is rising daily); an estimate of about 7,000 additional dead who are still buried under the rubble (this number is rising too); almost 2 million refugees, most of them are twice-refugees whose families were displaced during the Nakba (this number is not rising much anymore, because almost the entire population of Gaza has lost their homes); all universities destroyed (this count has come to a full stop, as there are no universities left in Gaza); close to 14,000 children, toddlers, and babies dead; entire cities and towns that were wiped off the earth almost completely; an entire generation of children, and a cohort of toddlers, who are growing up knowing intimately the smell of rotting human flesh, the taste of animal food their parents fed them until they ran out, and then, finally, the physical pain of starvation.

Why Should We?

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The words bold and fearless action were repeated on a loop today, as a kind of mantra of how effective presidents must be free to act quickly and decisively to save democracy from the many unanticipated threats it faces. And yet the court—which has been asked to take bold and fearless action to deter the person who called Georgia’s secretary of state to demand that he alter the vote count, and threatened to fire DOJ officials who would not help steal an election—is backing away from its own duty. The prospect of a criminal trial for a criminal president shocked and appalled five men: Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch suggested that Smith’s entire prosecution is unconstitutional; meanwhile, Roberts sounded eager at times to handle the case just a hair more gracefully: by cutting out its heart by preventing the jury from hearing about “official acts” (which lie at the center of the alleged conspiracy). Justice Amy Coney Barrett was far more measured, teasing out a compromise with Dreeben that would compel the trial court to tell the jury it could not impose criminal liability for these “official” acts, only “private ones.” Remember, drawing that line would require months of hearings and appeals, pushing any trial into 2025 or beyond. The president who tried to steal the most recent election is running in the next one, which is happening in mere months.

Supreme Court immunity arguments: The court just showed how and why it will let Donald Trump get away with it.

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The conservative justices had a opportunity to rally to the defense of democracy, to gird the system against further attack, to righteously defend the rule of law, and to protect its own prerogatives and powers against a wannabe tyrant who is counting on them to be his supplicants. They could have drawn a sharp line. They could have summoned indignation and outrage. They could have overlooked their partisan priors in favor of principle – or more cravenly in favor of self-preservation. With the possible and limited exception of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, they did none of that.

Rogue Supreme Court Abandons Democracy In Her Hour Of Greatest Need

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Adam Zyglis

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The Roberts Court is a corrupt institution which operates in concert with and on behalf of the Republican Party and to an ambiguous degree right-wing anti-regulatory ideology. If we believe in a different set of policies or even democratic self-governance we will have to succeed at that with the Supreme Court acting as a consistent adversary.

The Court is Corrupt. Say It With Me.

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How many books are sold in the United States? The only tracker we have is BookScan, which logs point of sale—i.e., customer purchases at stores, websites, etc.—for most of the market. BookScan counted 767 million print sales in 2023. BookScan claims to cover 85% of print sales, although many in publishing think it’s much less. It does not capture all store sales, any library sales, most festival and reading sales, etc. (Almost every author will tell you their royalty reports show significantly more sales than BookScan captures. Sometimes by orders of magnitude.)

Yes, People Do Buy Books

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Tom Tomorrow: Freedom from speech

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American capitalism is coming apart because of people like Elon Musk, who insists on getting the largest pay package in corporate history while extorting his shareholders and shafting his workers.

Elon Musk’s grotesque distortion of capitalism

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Many experienced a culture shock. The bustling cities of Taiwan are densely packed and offer extensive public transport, ubiquitous street food, and 24-hour convenience stores every few blocks. In northern Phoenix, everyday life is impossible without a car, and East Asian faces are scarce.

Inside TSMC’s Phoenix, Arizona expansion struggles