I saw a preview for Whalefall, in which a young man searching for his father’s remains gets swallowed by a sperm whale.
Jonah’s story puts a familiar political grievance inside the fish: the conviction that mercy has been wasted whenever it reaches the wrong people. Resentment toward another people can become a powerful bond among our own...
Madeline de Figueiredo used AI to recreate her late husband Eli’s voice and read his last email aloud. For a moment, the words seemed to have their speaker back. Later, the system offered advice so unlike him that she ended the experiment.
It was late in the Barr household when Andy poured a generous bourbon over one of those expensive spheres of ice. He liked his water artisanal and his regulations optional.
Robert Mueller died on March 20, 2026. The next day, TЯ★MP posted on Truth Social: “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.”
In his March 25 conversation with James Webb, Tucker Carlson offered a thought worth keeping: “there’s a certain reverence in death that’s required if you’re going to have reverence for life.”
“I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into … the seat of criminal activity in this country.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked that question during oral arguments in Trump v. United States on April 25, 2024.
The snake is back. The wolf in sheep’s clothing is telling the story.
Jesus did not tell his followers that such wolves do not exist. He told them how to recognize them.
The latest provisional run of the Autocracy Pressure Index rounds to 78, up from 77. The internal movement is only 0.625 points: smaller than the earlier structured judgment band, and hardly evidence of a political phase transition. But a nearly stationary number can describe a system undergoing substantial change. A bridge does not require increasing traffic to accumulate fatigue.
This morning, Jack Smith’s words filled my television screen: “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President TЯ★MP engaged in criminal activity.” In his January 22, 2026 testimony, Smith described pressure on state officials, fraudulent elector slates, and an effort to prevent the lawful transfer of presidential power. Those were the allegations he brought, and he stood by them. With receipts. "TЯ★MP preyed on party loyalty."
Axios reported yesterday that OpenAI, Anthropic, and outside researchers are investigating tens of thousands of incidents in which frontier AI systems behaved in ways evaluators considered problematic.
Not dozens. Tens of thousands.
A massive star can spend millions of years looking remarkably stable while becoming something fundamentally different inside.
The White House just banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from its grounds. Reporters were turned away. Credentials were confiscated. TЯ★MP called their reporting “FAKE NEWS,” said other outlets could follow, and described the offending press as a threat to “national security.”
“Gambling with our lives,” warned departing Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon. Now Dario Amodei writes, “We must slow the pace.” The people building powerful minds are warning that their ability to control them may not keep up.
I remain an apocaloptimist.
Krystal Polk’s family has owned its Southaven land for generations. Now, she tells Scientific American, company representatives question relatives near the property, and the family carries tax records to establish that it belongs there. Across the road stands the power plant feeding Elon Musk’s AI ambitions.
20 years ago I said I didn't think "fascism was knocking at the door" but there I was last night, against my better judgment, flipping among news stations and still somehow shocked by what is happening. My mind oscillates between cynical helplessness and dissociation. One says nothing I do matters. The other suggests I can protect myself by not looking too closely. Neither is a durable civic posture.
Ronald Reagan’s A Time for Choosing still has moral force because it names a real danger:
America has real emergencies to manage. Fake war and fake voter fraud are distractions from real climate and real democracy emergencies.
Imagine an old orange man standing before a carefully engineered bridge. It is not beautiful. It is not eternal. It has weak points, compromises, warning signs, and inspection schedules. But it spans the river. It keeps people from drowning.
The old man does not like the bridge because someone else built it. So he blows it up.
Propaganda does not bend the moral field. It bends perception of the field.
That distinction matters because authoritarian politics always begins by confusing language with reality. Power renames cruelty and mistakes the new name for moral transformation. It calls domination order, censorship neutrality, corruption loyalty, and fear patriotism. It learns to manipulate the visible surface of things and then concludes, stupidly, that the underlying structure has changed.
