Book Review: 'The Bright Sword,' by Lev Grossman - The New York Times - 0 views
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His journey is poignant and essential as he moves from trying to become part of a story to realizing that stories are lies we tell to make sense of a reality that defies simple narrative.
Opinion | What Democrats Need to Do Now - The New York Times - 0 views
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Over the last eight years, think tankers, activists and politicians have developed MAGA into a worldview, a worldview that now transcends Donald Trump.
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It has its roots in Andrew Jackson-style populism, but it is updated and more comprehensive. It is the worldview that represents one version of working-class interests and offers working-class voters respect.
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J.D. Vance is the embodiment and one of the developers of this worldview — with his suspicion of corporate power, foreign entanglements, free trade, cultural elites and high rates of immigration.
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Opinion | Give Me Laundry Liberty or Give Me Death! - The New York Times - 0 views
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it seemed pretty clear that what really bothered conservatives was the very suggestion that American consumers should take into account the adverse effects their choices might have on other people. That sort of consideration, after all, is what the right mainly seems to mean when it condemns policies as “woke.”
Opinion | J.D. Vance Keeps Selling His Soul. He's Got Plenty of Buyers. - The New York ... - 0 views
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what’s most Faustian about Mr. Vance — and by proxy Mr. Trump. Their belief that a movement built on aggrievement and rage can be easily controlled, that there is some way in which you can trick the Devil while holding onto what he’s given you.
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In my book on Faust, I argue that the politics of authoritarianism is often embraced as a tool by those who believe that they can contain such forces and use them for political gain.
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There is a lesson for Mr. Vance from the Faust story, however, assuming he can hear it. Beyond mere self-interest, what the legend warns against is the embrace of irrational forces and powers, especially when there is the delusion that the person trading their soul can wrangle the Devil
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The Normalization of the Exception - Homepage Christian Lammert - 0 views
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There's now a disturbingly quick acceptance of the argument that "both sides are to blame." It was and remains the Republicans and Trump who have labeled the media as enemies of the people, politicians and refugees as vermin, and have spoken of bloodshed should Trump lose again in the next election. This discourse sharply contrasts with that of Democratic elites and Biden, who critique President Trump based on his policies (see Project 2025), labeling him a potential dictator and a threat to democracy. This critique remains within the bounds of normal political discourse and does not dehumanize political opponents or other demographic groups, as Trump's rhetoric frequently does. Such rhetoric has become "normal" and mainstream within the Republican Party but remains either non-existent or exceptionally rare among Democrats. This clearly indicates an asymmetric radicalization of our political discourse.
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The ideological positioning of the two parties also reflects this asymmetry. Empirical analyses by notable U.S. political scientists show that the Republicans have moved significantly further to the right ideologically compared to the leftward shift of the Democrats. In certain segments, the ideological positions of MAGA representatives in Congress no longer fit within this spectrum, having departed from democratic norms.
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Republicans have successfully shifted the discourse to place equal blame on both sides for polarization and radicalization, but this narrative does not reflect reality and must be addressed. It is the right-wing political spectrum and its associated media network that questions fundamental pillars of democracy and the rule of law. Similar challenges are not found within the left-wing political spectrum
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How 'Rural Studies' Is Thinking About the Heartland - The New York Times - 0 views
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“White Rural Rage,” by the journalist Paul Waldman and the political scientist Tom Schaller, is an unsparing assessment of small-town America. Rural residents, the authors argued, are more likely than city dwellers to excuse political violence, and they pose a threat to American democracy.
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Several rural scholars whose research was included in the book immediately denounced it
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Ms. Lunz Trujillo excoriated the book in an opinion piece for Newsweek as “a prime example of how intellectuals sow distrust by villainizing” people unlike them.
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Year in a word: Polycrisis - 0 views
(1) This Is a Test for America - Yascha Mounk - 0 views
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what does the near-assassination of the most dominant politician in the country reveal about the state of the country, including the strengths on which it can count to get it through the next months, and the weaknesses that make it vulnerable?
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Some of the news is good.
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Most Americans were saddened or outraged by the attempt on Trump’s life. This included his congressional allies and his millions of supporters, of course. Notably, it also included millions of Americans who deeply disdain him
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Opinion | The Reason People Aren't Telling Joe Biden the Truth - The New York Times - 0 views
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They entered with courage and exited as cowards. In the past two weeks, several leaders have told me they arrived at meetings with President Biden planning to have serious discussions about whether he should withdraw from the 2024 election. They all chickened out.
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There’s a gap between what people say behind the president’s back and what they say to his face. Instead of dissent and debate, they’re falling victim to groupthink.
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According to the original theory, groupthink happens when people become so cohesive and close-knit that they put harmony above honesty. Extensive evidence has debunked that idea
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Defeated by A.I., a Legend in the Board Game Go Warns: Get Ready for What's Next - The ... - 0 views
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Lee Saedol was the finest Go player of his generation when he suffered a decisive loss, defeated not by a human opponent but by artificial intelligence.
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The stunning upset, in 2016, made headlines around the world and looked like a clear sign that artificial intelligence was entering a new, profoundly unsettling era.
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By besting Mr. Lee, an 18-time world champion revered for his intuitive and creative style of play, AlphaGo had solved one of computer science’s greatest challenges: teaching itself the abstract strategy needed to win at Go, widely considered the world’s most complex board game.
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AI Has Become a Technology of Faith - The Atlantic - 0 views
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Altman told me that his decision to join Huffington stemmed partly from hearing from people who use ChatGPT to self-diagnose medical problems—a notion I found potentially alarming, given the technology’s propensity to return hallucinated information. (If physicians are frustrated by patients who rely on Google or Reddit, consider how they might feel about patients showing up in their offices stuck on made-up advice from a language model.)
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I noted that it seemed unlikely to me that anyone besides ChatGPT power users would trust a chatbot in this way, that it was hard to imagine people sharing all their most intimate information with a computer program, potentially to be stored in perpetuity.
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“I and many others in the field have been positively surprised about how willing people are to share very personal details with an LLM,” Altman told me. He said he’d recently been on Reddit reading testimonies of people who’d found success by confessing uncomfortable things to LLMs. “They knew it wasn’t a real person,” he said, “and they were willing to have this hard conversation that they couldn’t even talk to a friend about.”
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French Lessons for Defeating Trump - The Atlantic - 0 views
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One of the major differences between France and America, it seems, is that the French have not been beaten into a state of learned helplessness by the possibility of right-wing extremism.
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The majority of French voters saw the National Rally as an existential threat to their values, and were alarmed and motivated enough to react. If Trump is in fact on the cusp of destroying American democracy, as so many have continually warned us, then Americans should respond to this crisis with a similar sense of pragmatism and urgency.
French Lessons for Defeating Trump - The Atlantic - 0 views
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The lesson was clear: Centrists, liberals, and leftists took the credible threat of right-wing authoritarian rule seriously enough to act quickly and strategically. Behaving as though their country’s future was at stake, they reacted to new information in order to maximize success.
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No one spoke about personal loyalty to individual candidates. No one spoke about it being a given politician’s turn to be in office. No one said that it was too late to change the plan.
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The extreme deadline instead became a motivational boon, not unlike the way a capable basketball team may go on a scoring rampage as the clock runs out.
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