Society
When It Comes to January 6 Lawsuits, a Court Splits Donald Trump in Two
Donald Trump, the president, may well be immune from any civil action for allegedly inciting an attack against the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. But Donald Trump, the candidate, is not, an appellate court in the District of Columbia says. “When a first-term President opts to seek a second term, his campaign to win…
Read MoreGeorge Santos Was All Hot Air
American politics is a circus. In the arena of Washington, DC, lawmaking and lawbreaking is a fanatical kind of entertainment, a warped experiment that, in recent years, has taken on the veneer of blind zealotry. Republicans, in particular, have thrived on a diet of chaos since the rise of former president Donald Trump, turning the…
Read MoreAmerica’s Far Right Is Calling for Civil War in Ireland
“Ireland is on the brink of civil war,” white nationalist Nick Fuentes declared Monday during his show on Rumble. “It’s going to be ugly.” Ireland is not on the brink of a civil war, but riots did break out in Dublin last week following a stabbing outside a school that left three children and two…
Read More‘Authentic’ Is 2023’s Word of the Year. You Read That Right
At first it looked unbelievable, but Henry Kissinger had died. At 100 years old, news outlets—and the world—had been preparing for the passing of President Nixon’s secretary of state for a while. Still, when people were finding out via emoji-filled chain texts, it seemed unreal. Everything does now. Deepfakes, the metaverse, Elon Musk telling advertisers…
Read MoreThe Year of ChatGPT and Living Generatively
No human celebrating a first birthday is as verbose, knowledgeable, or prone to fabrication as ChatGPT, which is blowing out its first candle as I type these words. Of course, OpenAI’s game-changing large language model was precocious at birth, tumbling into civilization’s ongoing conversation like an uninvited guest busting into a dinner party and instantly…
Read MoreCoffee Lovers, It’s Time to Stop Using K-Cups
Coffee keeps the world turning. Or, at least, it makes it easier to pry your eyelids open and maintain some semblance of normalcy every day. There have been many research studies, technological innovations, and passionate arguments dedicated to brewing a better cup of coffee. A recent wave of impressively designed coffee gadgets aims to dial…
Read MoreSam Altman Officially Returns to OpenAI—With a New Board Seat for Microsoft
Sam Altman marked his formal return as CEO of OpenAI today in a company memo that confirmed changes to the company’s board, including a new nonvoting seat for the startup’s primary investor, Microsoft. In a memo sent to staff and shared on OpenAI’s blog, Altman painted the chaos of the past two weeks, triggered by…
Read MoreThe 26 Best Movies on Max (aka HBO Max) Right Now
As the birthplace of prestige TV shows like The Sopranos and The Wire, HBO—and, by extension, Max (aka the streamer formerly known as HBO Max)—is best known for its impressive lineup of original series. The network has also been upping the ante with feature-length content that is the stuff of Oscar dreams. However, because Max is not (yet)…
Read MoreAn AI Dreamed Up 380,000 New Materials. The Next Challenge Is Making Them
The robotic line cooks were deep in their recipe, toiling away in a room tightly packed with equipment. In one corner, an articulated arm selected and mixed ingredients, while another slid back and forth on a fixed track, working the ovens. A third was on plating duty, carefully shaking the contents of a crucible onto…
Read MoreA Civil Rights Firestorm Erupts Around a Looming Surveillance Power Grab
United States lawmakers are receiving a flood of warnings from across civil society not to be bend to the efforts by some members of Congress to derail a highly sought debate over the future of a powerful but polarizing US surveillance program. House and Senate party leaders are preparing to unveil legislation on Wednesday directing…
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