Will Artificial Intelligence Render Writers Obsolete?

In the best case, what ChatGPT is producing, regardless of whether it’s asked to write fiction or nonfiction, is filler.

More, More, More!!

We don’t understand why Gwyneth Paltrow would betray her own talent and her legions of admirers in such a monstrous way.

The Logical Termination of Trump and Trumpism

The greater share of our fury must be reserved for the cowards and opportunists who foisted Trump upon us and who continue to refuse their patriotic duty of atoning for this crime, and making sure it never happens again.

To Stop Mass Shootings, Take Them Seriously as Terrorism

The most important element is aggressive intelligence and preventive action.

Booby-Trapped House

McCarthy’s hangers on are supposedly confident he will still win their party’s nod for the speakership, which will quickly make him the unhappiest man alive.

The Day After MAGA, What Will Be Left?

American culture, to the extent that it even exists anymore, is almost entirely backward looking and nostalgia drenched, while at the same time knowing little to nothing of its actual history.

Israel Drifts Toward Darkness

Bibi may be unique in the entire democratic world in having been in power in the 1990s and for much of this century as a center-right leader interested in remaking Israel on neoliberal (Reagan/Thatcher) lines, and yet having remade himself into a far-right populist along the lines of Trump.

No Power on Earth Can Save Democracy If the People Don’t Care

It’s not the Democratic Party that’s responsible for the yawning indifference of the American people to what we all saw unfold on January 6, 2021.

Where Are the Conservative Scolds of Yesteryear?

America produced way too many conservative moral scolds in the closing decades of the twentieth century and the first decade or so of the twenty-first, and they gained far too much power over the national political and cultural conversation.

Dreaming About God

After the rant against God that I posted on Yom Kippur, the mystical side of my mind expected or perhaps secretly hoped for some kind of response, which might come in a dream. Sure enough, a couple of days later I did have a dream that seemed directly related. In it, I was reading a