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“Many people in Silicon Valley have become obsessed with the simulation hypothesis, the argument that what we experience as reality is in fact fabricated in a computer; two tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation.”

Ignore for a moment any objections you might have to the simulation hypothesis, and everything impractical about the idea that we could somehow break out of reality, and think about what these people are trying to do.

The two billionaires (Elon Musk is a prime suspect) are convinced that they’ll emerge out of this drab illusion into a more shining reality, lit by a brighter and more beautiful star. But for the rest of us the experience would be very different—you lose your home, you lose your family, you lose your life and your body and everything around you

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russian hackers attacked the U.S. on two fronts: the psychological and the technical. Hackers used classic propaganda techniques to influence American voters, bought thousands of social media ads to propagate fake news, and broke into Democratic party email servers to steal information. And it won't be the last time. Russian-backed psychological cyber warfare will only get better, and its methods more sophisticated.

By talking so much about “norms” and the violation of “norms” we’re confusing the situation and even confusing ourselves.

“Norms” aren’t laws for a reason. They are like bumpers on the roads of our civic and political life which are there to keep people of basically good faith from crossing lines they shouldn’t cross. They can also be warning posts so others can see when someone is either going down a bad path or needs to be brought back into line.

One reason that “norms” aren’t laws is that sometimes new or unique sets of facts create situations in which they do not or cannot or should not apply.

It seems to me that one thing our culture has lost is a space for “existential reckoning.” Perhaps its polar opposite is being Very Online.

forcing us into such a reckoning is what religion and brutal reality once did for many: It challenged us to assess ourselves fully, to see ourselves under the eyes of eternity, to live with the knowledge of death under a cloud of unknowing. This perspective was reinforced by modes of pre-secular thought as well as by the lived experience in previous generations of existential danger, illness, hunger, and death.

In a secular world of previously unimaginable comfort and long lives, we rarely get to access the existential fear and dread that counterintuitively can lead to serenity and perspective. Maybe in modernity, psychedelics are therefore the best alternative to traditional religion, and may begin to replace or supplement its function, as our disenchantment blocks our access to the faith of the past.

Speaking in South Korea earlier Wednesday, Mr. Trump made an impassioned call for China and other countries to pull together to confront the North, which he described as a sinister regime that starved and terrorized its people — a tragic failed experiment in the “laboratory of history.”

Since Mr. Trump first played host to Mr. Xi at his Florida estate last April, he has said he is counting on Mr. Xi to do the right thing with North Korea, alternately praising and prodding the Chinese leader about enforcing tougher United Nations sanctions.

To his frustration, however, Mr. Xi has stopped short of targeting Mr. Kim with unilateral sanctions that would threaten his regime, send refugees into China and raise the possibility of a Korean Peninsula under control of the South, a close American ally.

President Donald Trump launched a Twitter attack Saturday morning on San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz for "poor leadership ability," saying she and others in Puerto Rico "want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort."

The President again praised the federal government's response on the island, which is grappling with the devastating impact of Hurricane Maria, saying the 10,000 federal workers there were doing a "fantastic job."

"This is the time to show our 'true colors,'" she wrote. "We cannot be distracted by anything else."

In July, I had dinner with a friend who has worked as a lawyer in the Justice Department for decades. My friend bemoaned the recent tweets by the president of the United States that called into question the integrity of the Justice Department. Why isn’t Attorney General Jeff Sessions “looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations?,” asked President Trump in one such (ungrammatical) tweet. And why didn’t Sessions “replace Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, a Comey friend who was in charge of Clinton investigation?

The critique of these tweets is now familiar. They violate norms of law-enforcement independence from presidential influence. Their proximate aim is to discredit the Justice Department and FBI, probably in order to delegitimize it as the investigation of Robert Mueller gets ever closer to the president. And they appear to be part of an effort to weaken public confidence in American institutions more generally—not just DOJ, but also the “so-called” courts, the “fake news” media, the supposedly lying, incompetent intelligence community, and others.

Trump’s assault on executive branch departments and employees is crippling these cultures of commitment. I know this from talking to several Justice Department friends, including the one with whom I dined last summer. I see it in stories about how the State Department’s ranks are thinning fast. And it stands to reason that employees throughout the government feel the same way. It is hard to work for a president who attacks you weekly if not daily; who calls into public doubt your independence and integrity; and who shames you with his persistent shamelessness, deceit, and ignorance. The president is succeeding not just in diminishing the reputation of these institutions before the nation, but also in wrecking their aspirations within.

in his own administration, after a week of damaging public hearings.

Mr. Holmes told impeachment investigators that he had overheard the president ask the ambassador, Gordon D. Sondland, about Ukrainian investigations into his political rivals, a consequential detail in the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

“I guarantee you that never took place,” Mr. Trump said. He added that he barely knew Mr. Sondland, a wealthy hotelier from Oregon who contributed $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee. In his own testimony, Mr. Sondland corroborated Mr. Holmes’s account.

“Lincoln devoted his second term to uniting people rather than feeding red meat to a small base of people,” Holzer said. “Today, the party is more devoted to the accumulation of wealth and restrictions on voting rights."

Another obvious difference is the Lincoln-era Republican Party’s support of immigration. In his last State of the Union address, Lincoln featured a proposal to pay foreigners to come to the United States so the workforce would increase.

“Lincoln was a pro-tariff man, and Trump is sporadically in favor of tariffs as a punitive weapon,” he said, adding that tariffs were not punitive for Lincoln. Then, tariffs were the major source of income.

sticking with the truth is the best strategy for gaining power. Unfortunately, this is just a comforting myth

In fact, truth and power have a far more complicated relationship, because in human society, power means two very different things.

On the one hand, power means having the ability to manipulate objective realities: to hunt animals, to construct bridges, to cure diseases, to build atom bombs. This kind of power is closely tied to truth.

a Chinese court had sentenced journalist Zhang Zhan, 37, to four years in jail for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble." This follows the government indictment, which accused her of "publishing large amounts of fake information."

Zhang's real crime: to report factually on the ground at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, at its then epicenter, Wuhan, in video dispatches that challenged the government's official narrative. And then to stubbornly defy the Chinese government by insisting on her innocence.

Arrested in May, Zhang went on a hunger strike during her detention, according to Amnesty International. In response, prison authorities have restrained her and forced nutrients into her.

The president’s blinkered view has created something of an alternate universe, one not governed by polling averages or independent analysis but by declarative statements that, at times, feel as if they are coming out of nowhere.

This month, Mr. Trump proclaimed on Twitter that he was “winning BIG in all of the polls that matter.”

It has been a hallmark of Mr. Trump’s public commentary since the first time he ran for president that he treats polling as rigged against him if it isn’t favorable for him.

Anyone who has ever written about politics and has used the shorthand “democracy” for our system of government has received a lovely reader email reminding us that yes, America is a rEpUbLiC, not a democracy

And yes, dear reader, that is true. But a healthy and successful republic requires the faith and trust and consent of the governed. If, in large enough numbers, they believe the game is rigged or unfair the system begins to break down

For better (in most cases) or worse, our democratic republic over the last 250 or so years has inched more towards the democratic because it’s what the people demanded. 

Africa’s most populous country and biggest oil producer has been convulsed by protests that started with anger over police brutality and have now broadened, drawing worldwide attention.

Tens of thousands of Nigerians have been demonstrating for weeks against a notoriously brutal and corrupt police agency, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad — a show of popular anger, fueled by longstanding grievances over corruption and lack of accountability, that posed the biggest challenge to the government in years.

Commonly known as SARS, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad was created in 1984 in response to an epidemic of violent crime including robberies, carjackings and kidnappings. While it was credited with having reduced brazen lawlessness in its initial years, the police unit was later accused of evolving into the same problem it had been designed to stop: a criminal enterprise that acts with impunity.

There are two core strains of denialism apparent in mainstream America today: that the election was a fraud and that Covid doesn't exist.

What ties these lies together:President Donald Trump won't admit defeat in the election or missteps on Covid, creating a bedrock of inaccuracyThe democratization of information on the internet enables everyone to publish their thoughts, even if they're totally made upAs the country gets more tribal in its politics, people find satisfaction in blaming villains, regardless of facts.

Either Trump is spinning an alternate reality for followers who agree with him or he is just channeling and amplifying what he hears from them. Regardless, in his four years in office, he has totally normalized bad information.

just how much of the population is vulnerable to misinformation. Meanwhile, climate misinformation has persisted for decades and continues to proliferate on the Internet and social media, even as the influence of climate change is now plainly seen in more frequent and intense extreme weather events.

To win the war against misinformation in the long run, though, we must educate the next generation of information consumers.

“Online misinformation might seem like an incurable virus, but social media companies, policymakers and nonprofits are beginning to address the problem more directly,”