My motto for today: "Just because we cannot fully understand A.I. does not necessarily make it any more powerful, nor does that make it magical." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/o...

Insightful, in my non-expert opinion, look at social media generally and Tiktok in particular. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/o...

Think you've watched the Times scrape the bottomest part of the barrel? Nope! The race to the bottom continues here. The deaf, dumb and blind leading the deaf, dumb and blind. Read only if you are in need of an emetic. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/o...

Given Lincoln's insistence that we must perish at our own hands or live forever, it is only right that we should look within for our greatest threats. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/o...

Stephens and Bruni sorta spar semiseriously. Bruni wins. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/o...

Brokks is worried about mingling religion and politics, in that "unrestrained faith and unrestrained partisanship are an incredibly combustible mixture." True. cont'd www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/o...

Today with words of warning, You treat Israel with scorning. Today, you say, from the West Bank stay away-- But what will you say tomorrow? Trump promises Arab, Muslim leaders he won’t let Israel annex the West Bank - POLITICO www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

Ugh. Just UGH! Yes, he's changed the way we speak, even if only--or mostly--by way of mockery, and I hate it. Bigly! www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/o...

Bret throws together a lot of situations that are distinguishable from each other, sometimes in very important ways. Virtually no-one says the right to free speech is absolute--else defamation, fraud and incitement law could not exist. I truly wonder where Bret would draw the line.

Sorry, Jamelle, no matter how right you are, you're only as right as six Supreme Court inJustices say you are. MAYBE the Fed will retain its independence, but the outlook for other Congressionally created "independent" agancies is grim. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/o...

Ezra and his guest explore the history of the US government finding a reason to oppress its opponents and restrict freedoms, from A. Mitchell Palmer in the '20s to the Red Scare in the '40s and 50s to today. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/o...

Friedman is typically incisive in his analysis of Ukraine and the US, but he seems unaccountably to have failed to read Benny Gantz on Israel this morning. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/o...

A brutal reminder to the world that changing the Prime Minister will not change many of Israel's fundamental beliefs and policies. cont'd www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/o...

"[W]hen informally deputized vigilantes realize that few real enemies exist, they...direct their manufactured ire toward innocent people, marginalized groups and, eventually, each other." Given Gay's take on civility, can we skip the intermediate steps and go straight to them attacking each other?

From "refrigerator mothers" to "educable mentally retarded" to "autism spectrum disorder", the changing rates of autism diagnoses is attributable more to reclassification and broadening criteria than to any combo of vaccines and pills. And Trump's and Kennedy's lying about the Amish doesn't help.

In contention for most disgusting social media post of the year! Probable winner.

I'll believe it's "something" if he's still singing the same song tomorrow.

You cannot be too pessimistic, because the ne plus ultra of pessimism still would not capture Trump's and MAGA's malign vision. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/o...

No Ross, a revival of true Christianity in the US under the auspices of Trump is *not* a possibility. A God who writes with such crooked lines is not a God to be worshipped. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/o...

If you are unable to celebrate and protect the right of free expression for its own sake, do it to protect yourselves. Amen. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/o...

@davidfrenchjag.bsky.social gets it right, imho, when describing the "bad" MAGA Christianity. But his paean to Erika Kirk for embodying the "good" MAGA Christianity suffered, imho, from failure to recognize the similar behavior of the survivors of the Mother Emanuel massacre, who forgave Dylan Roof.

Props to Justice Kagan. newrepublic.com/post/200761/...

Well, it *was* pre-empted "indefinitely". www.cnbc.com/2025/09/22/d...

Justice Kagan got it right--the Court's decisions have served "to transfer government authority from Congress to the president, and thus to re-shape the nation's separation of powers." Shame!

"As the Supreme Court was making the nation less democratic, it was also working to make its government less responsive and effective." newrepublic.com/article/1997...

A Brazilian drug raises hopes of reversing spinal cord injury. Scientists in São Paulo have developed a treatment based on the protein laminin. In animal trials, it reactivated dormant nerve pathways, restoring movement and sensation after paralysis. buff.ly/Jcj1euy #ShareGoodNewsToo

Thanks to Trump, we will soon be screwed and unscrewed at the same time. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/b...

Ms. Nossel expounds, better than I could, my view of free expression and where it stands today in this country. If not ripe for grieving, it's certainly ripe for deep concern. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/o...

A very dense interview, touching on many big and important questions. (Full disclosure: I have known and admired Elizabeth Warren for thirty years, since her HLS days.) Please read the whole thing! cont'd www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/o...

"When leaders let emotions or personal chemistry determine their policy, volatility replaces credibility with both adversaries and allies alike." A fair summary of both this column and present-day US foreign policy. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/o...

If you read this all the way through and don't think you know (1) what the author thinks of Bhattacharya, or (2) whether the author believes Bhattacharya will be good or bad for America's public health, join the club! www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/o...

Arguments can be made from many different perspectives about whether this move will benefit various groups. I look foward to reading, e.g., Bret Stephens' and Tom Friedman's takes. And I'm sure I will! www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/w...

For my friends who believe no well-to-do person could conceivably back Mamdani. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/b...

The weirdest zigzagging I have ever seen from Ross: 1. There is a reasonable civic principle behind the deplatforming of Kimmel et al. 2. America's "leading cultural institutions" have a civic duty of stewardship which prohibits extreme partisanship. cont'd www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/o...

I obviously come at politics--and life--from a very different perspective than Walther. But I very much liked his take on Kirk's apparent killer. It is our "duty...to resist" "calls for political reprisals" in order to reject the "erzatz online reality" that has threatened to engulf us. Kudos!

"[T]he sense [Harris' books] give collectively is that of a prosecutor, a senator and a presidential candidate genuinely wanting to do good, but letting that good be defined by the party orthodoxies of the moment." As Lozada concludes, more time would not have helped, instead exposing her further.

"If our laws depend on Trump’s voluntary compliance — and Congress won’t lift a finger to defend the laws it has passed — then the president is unleashed." No shit, @davidfrenchjag.bsky.social! Tik-Tok in the Oz universe is a soulless robot. In the Trump universe, just add "CCP-controlled".

M. Gessen's latest is noteworthy more for its tone than its content. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/o...

It's not just that the Adams mayoralty has unleashed more corruption than any other in memory, it's that the Supreme Court, with the wholehearted (nay, exuberant) support of the Trump administration, has contrived to emasculate prosecutorial weapons to fight corruption. Fiat corruptio ruat caelum!

I would FAIN TIFFIN were accepted!

The sin against the Holy Ghost isn't despair--it's telling Trump a truth he doesn't want to hear. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/u...

Does David Brooks have a treatment as well as a diagnosis? Do we really have to abandon a "never bring a limp banana to a gunfight" mindset and go back to "when they go low, we go high"? Unilateral disarmament feels so wrong, but is it our only hope? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/o...

The Arab Spring did not work out so well in the long run. If there really is an "Asian Spring", I doubt it will either. Nor an American Spring, but one can hope. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/o...

Good to find again opinion from my old, one-time, friend Peter Beinart with which I can agree. He may have lost me on the one-state solution, but I'm with him on the threat to American democracy. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/o...

A very rosy mirage of Trumpism. The Fed should lose some of its independence, but be subject not to the president but to Congress? The people, through their elected representatives, should determine the target for the rate of inflation? Gimme a break! www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/o...

In case you didn't know it, RFK's vaccine panel is making policy that will be devastating to American kids and families. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/o...

Sorry, Mr. Hirschorn, the mask was never on. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/o...

Apart from social media and hyperpolarization and all the rest of the crud in which we are struggling to swim, we MUST get away from the obsession with demonizing trans people. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/o...

Two guys who have taken a lot of shit over their reactions to Kirk's killing, Ezra Klein and Gov. Spencer Cox, talk to each other at length about where we are and how we get to someplace better. Not exactly optimistic, but creating a space for optimism. Eschew social media is the main takeaway.