Thanks, Ron DeSantis, for the Laughs

Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign was a humiliating failure from start to finish. He deserved nothing less.

Formulas for Socialist Painting

In the 1960s, artists in Britain and Yugoslavia imagined that the art of socialism might be made with — or even by — computers.

Big Oil’s Marketing Campaign Is Targeting US Classrooms

A nonprofit backed by the fossil fuel industry has wormed its way into Illinois public schools to convince students to pursue careers in oil and gas.

Adulting in Middle Age

Why millennials don’t grow up.

France’s Elites Are Turning Their Backs on Public Education

Emmanuel Macron has sparked protests after appointing an education minister who sent her own children to private school. France’s school system has never delivered real equality — but as the rich flock to the private sector, it’s only getting worse.

Do Not Fear the New Jacobin

Shawn Fain’s New Year’s Resolutions

The UAW has plans to organize more than 150,000 autoworkers in 2024.

Back to the Future

For 19th-century Americans, robots were practical Christians, potential spouses, and a serious threat to labor power.

Odd Bedfellows

Germany is Israel’s ride-or-die.

Economic Ennui

At the beginning of the 20th century, Argentina was one of the world’s 10 wealthiest countries by per capita income. As of 2021, it’s 86th. What happened?

Where Are All the Robots, Anyway?

Automation is booming in rural China, the strongholds of the US auto industry, and the world’s oldest countries.

Hollywood Welcomes Its Silicon Valley Overlords

Hollywood AI boosters claim that “democratized” movies based on personal choice await us, if only we can get rid of those pesky human beings.

Conversations With Friends

When chatbots take over the world, might they do it as members of a vanguard party?

Detroit Techno’s Dance with Death

As automation ravaged Detroit, black musicians created a new sound that merged human and machine. With it came a vision for working-class self-organization in the Motor City.

Cautionary Tales

The English science-fiction writer J. G. Ballard claimed to believe in nothing. Yet his prophetic dystopias reveal a deep awareness of the brutality of class rule and imperialism.

Two Intellectuals Trapped in the Matrix

If you want a picture of the future, imagine Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek talking to each other — forever.

High-Tech Desert Hellscape

Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia has a dream: a futuristic desert city stretching to the clouds. But down in the sand, it’s a cyberpunk dystopia.

Issue 52: Dossier

How to speak machine overlord.

Artificial Intelligence Solves Problems We Don’t Have

AI might take some administrative jobs and cheapen cultural production. What it won’t do is help us care for each other in an age of demographic change and institutionalized neglect.

Issue 52: Letters

Two takes on our rapidly aging “Aging” issue.