Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, started spewing antisemitic conspiracy theories this week. It’s not the first time something like this has happened — and a reminder that LLMs aren’t truth-telling machines but aggregators of undifferentiated online scribblings.
Not only was Trump intimately close to Jeffrey Epstein, but there is a wealth of reporting tying the billionaire pedophile to intelligence circles. Trump is once again protecting the elites he claimed he would fight on the campaign trail.
Knowledge workers, whose jobs involve handling information rather than producing goods, were supposed to be the beneficiaries of neoliberalism and globalization. But generative AI and a hypercompetitive employment market is immiserating them too.
Observing media coverage of the bombing of Iran, you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching a rerun of Iraq two decades ago. Mainstream outlets were all too happy to parrot the Trump and Netanyahu administrations’ line.
The Jewish communist Ben Gold’s recently reissued 1944 novel, Your Comrade, Avreml Broide, offers a glimpse into a world in which a radical tradition of egalitarianism and cosmopolitanism overshadowed Zionist nationalism.
Jurassic World Rebirth is another entry in the dinos-eating-humans megafranchise. It is exactly what you would expect. For me, that works.
Rent controls can help to make housing more affordable in cities like New York. But they must be part of a broader solution to the housing crisis that involves increasing density and building more housing.
French right-wingers don’t yet have a leader like Donald Trump. Yet the creation of Fox News–like TV channels, harsh culture wars, and the decline of class politics are pushing France along a path troublingly similar to the United States.
The National Education Association, the United States’ largest teachers’ union, has voted to cut all ties with the Anti-Defamation League over the group’s weaponization of antisemitism and attacks on supporters of Palestinian rights.
Philadelphia’s blue-collar municipal workers have entered their second week on strike. The city’s lowest-paid employees, AFSCME District Council 33 members are demanding a living wage.
Despite the rising threat of climate disasters like last week’s deadly flash flood in Texas, US lawmakers continue to underfund the federal government program supporting a nationwide flood warning system.
The enactment of Donald Trump’s horrendous Big Beautiful Bill is an indictment of the Democrats’ decision to split their agenda into two separate bills in 2021. It’s a reminder that Build Back Better’s failure wasn’t guaranteed — it was a political choice.