• If you have any interest at all in AI, I highly recommend this excellent podcast from Ezra Klein, where he talks with Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind’s CEO, about Hassabis’ personal journey to AI and gets Hassabis’ perspective on its promises and perils.
• David French writes in the NYT about the legal perils besetting Trump and many of his fellow plotters; here’s an excerpt to which the electorate should pay close attention:
“We can’t ask for too much from any legal system. A code of laws is ultimately no substitute for moral norms. Our constitutional republic cannot last indefinitely in the face of misinformation, conspiracy and violence. It can remove the worst actors from positions of power and influence. But it cannot ultimately save us from ourselves. American legal institutions have responded to a historical crisis, but all its victories could still be temporary. Our nation can choose the law, or it can choose Trump. It cannot choose both.”
• Yet another superb essay by Linda Greenhouse in the NYT – “Look at What John Roberts and His Court Have Wrought Over 18 Years“. An excerpt:
“My focus here on what these past 18 years have achieved has been on the court itself. But of course, the Supreme Court doesn’t stand alone. Powerful social and political movements swirl around it, carefully cultivating cases and serving them up to justices who themselves were propelled to their positions of great power by those movements. The Supreme Court now is this country’s ultimate political prize. That may not be apparent on a day-to-day or even a term-by-term basis. But from the perspective of 18 years, that conclusion is as unavoidable as it is frightening.”
• Kate Shaw writes in the NYT about how the current Supreme Court’s recent decisions are overly accommodating toward religion — I agree.
• David Wallace-Wells does a very good interview with outgoing CDC Director Rachel Walensky in the NYT.
• Definitely worth a read: Alexei Navalny’s essay in the Washington Post, communicated via his legal team.
• Once again advocating for these excellent science-based, rational, primarily medically-oriented Substack newsletters:
Kristen Panthagani’s You Can Know Things
and
Katelyn Jetelina’s Your Local Epidemiologist
• Matt Yglesias has it right in his The Orange Man is Bad Slow Boring Substack entry. Excerpted:
“Trump simply stands head and shoulders above the average American politician in his willingness to take things to the edge, to flout the law, and to act with reckless disdain for the consequences his actions will have for anyone. The law is important, and the fact that this particular act of scumbaggery is apparently illegal gives it a special significance. But for my money, the most morally shocking thing about Trump’s post-presidency is still the extent to which he sullenly refused to be a constructive player in promoting Covid vaccination in 2021.
A very large number of people — Trump voters — got sicker than they might have because of this, and a bunch of them died. And I think that’s a crucial fact about Trump that tends to be overlooked despite the volume of coverage he attracts. His efforts to supposedly owns the libs mostly involve deceiving and betraying his own supporters.
Trump markets himself as a down-and-dirty fighter who champions the right’s causes through his refusal to play the game with kid gloves. In truth, he’s a sub-par politician who’s not good at winning elections or advancing a legislative agenda or convincing people of conservative ideas.
He’s a con man, and conservatives are the marks.”
• Devin Gordon writes on the rising use of subtitles in his article in The Atlantic – “Why Is Everyone Watching TV With The Subtitles On?” It’s not just the hearing impaired; the group using subtitles the most on Roku are millennials. There are multiple reasons for doing it, some technical artifacts of streaming compression. A quick, fun read.
• Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that there has definitely been significant human progress in many parts of the world – dramatic drops in infant mortality, neonatal and obstetric deaths, cancer mortality, and poverty. Nicholas Kristof writes about this in his “This May Be the Most Important Thing Happening in the World Today” opinion piece in the NY Times. Some excerpts:
“We happen to live in a transformational era in which 96 percent of the world’s children now survive until adulthood…
…But one reason the world doesn’t do more to help poor countries is exhaustion, a sense that nothing works. I fear that misperception is driven partly by journalists like me, and by aid workers, advocates and other bleeding hearts.
We pounce upon crises, so what the public hears about in Africa is carnage in Sudan, hunger in Somalia and massacres in Ethiopia. Those are real problems that deserve more attention, not less — but we don’t do enough to illuminate the backdrop of gains in health, education and well-being.
Many people believe that global poverty is hopeless — 87 percent said in a 2016 survey that poverty had stayed the same or gotten worse over the previous two decades — while in fact the share of the world’s people living in extreme poverty has plunged from 38 percent in 1990 to about 8 percent now.”