Author: Lance Garrison
This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions. general position is a Luddite refusal to engage with AI-generated art.lydia polgreenUntil it fools you.ross douthatExactly. Right now, one of my three co-hosts is actually an AI-generated —michelle cottleShh.ross douthat— version. But I don’t know which.carlos lozadaI knew it!ross douthatI don’t know which one.lydia polgreenNobody knows which one! I think that’s the plot of “Blade Runner.” [MUSIC PLAYING]ross douthatFrom New York Times Opinion, I’m…
When the sultan who presided over the fairly successful climate talks in Dubai looked back on Wednesday at the two-week parley, he pinpointed one day, and one event, that he thought put it on the right path. It was the majlis that he convened this past Sunday. A majlis, from the Arabic word for sitting place, is a tradition in the Gulf region that’s older than Islam.For much of COP — as the Conference of the Parties, the United Nations-sponsored gathering dedicated to fighting climate change, is called — Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber was all over the place trying to…
Dec. 15, 2023 – For much of his life, 32-year-old Michael Smith had a war going on in his head.After a big meal, he knew he should be full. But an inexplicable hunger would drive him to pick up the fork again. Cravings for fried chicken or gummy bears overwhelmed him, fueling late-night DoorDash orders that – despite their bounty of fat and sugar — never satisfied him.He recalls waking up on the couch, half-eaten takeout in his lap, feeling sluggish and out of control. “It was like I was food drunk,” recalls Smith, who lives in Boston. “I had a moment…
Ms. Bogart was reluctant to participate in the focus group. She didn’t think there was anything extraordinary about her circumstances. “I thought I had nothing to offer anybody,” she said. “I’m poor. I grew up in poverty. I was born into poverty, raised my children in poverty.”But her mother encouraged her to try, so she did. Afterward, the employees of the food bank asked her to be part of a training program for skills like public speaking. Ms. Bogart agreed.At the end of the sessions, she gave a speech sharing her story with food bank employees and members of the…
So it should hardly be surprising that public trust in the court has fallen precipitously. According to Gallup, the court’s public approval, which had been running between 60 and 70 percent, dropped to a record-low 40 percent in September 2021. Gallup associated the drop with the justices’ refusal to block Texas’ flagrantly unconstitutional Senate Bill 8, a pre-Dobbs law that effectively shut down abortion in the state by authorizing members of the public to act as vigilantes and sue doctors for performing abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. The public’s disfavor has proved entrenched and unusually persistent. In September of…
In a new essay in the progressive magazine In These Times, the writers Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet grapple with the contemporary version of an old phenomenon: erstwhile leftists decamping to the right. There have been plenty of high-profile defectors from the left in recent years, among them the comedian Russell Brand, the environmentalist-turned-conspiracy-theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the journalist Matt Taibbi, a onetime scourge of Wall Street, who was recently one of the winners of a $100,000 prize from the ultraconservative Young America’s Foundation.What gives this migration political significance, however, are the ordinary people following them, casting off…
It is time.The United States should recognize the state of Palestine and join the 139 other countries that have done so. President Biden, who has the power to grant recognition, should make history and in doing so preserve the possibility of a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians.For decades, U.S. presidents have dangled the prospect of an independent Palestine living side by side in peace and security with Israel. For Palestinians, U.S. recognition has been a mirage. The Israeli government, meanwhile, has actively undermined Palestinian statehood by weakening the Palestinian Authority and fostering deep divisions among the Palestinian people.U.S. recognition…
“We are simply not raised in cultural worlds in which collective agency is a meaningful reality,” Rana goes on to say.Recent expressions of labor militancy have been heartening, but they have also come at the same time that conservative politicians, entrenched financial interests and neoliberal ideologues have targeted what’s left of our commons — and, in particular, our public schools and universities — to be stripped for parts.Democrats have already framed the upcoming presidential election as a battle for the future of American democracy and for good reason. Donald Trump, who threatened not to accept the results in 2016 and…
This term, the Supreme Court will reconsider America’s laissez-faire approach to regulating the internet, and in doing so it will address vital and new First Amendment questions. Can states stop social media sites from blocking certain content? Can the federal government pressure platforms to remove content it disagrees with? In each of these cases, the Supreme Court must decide whether the government can interfere with private companies’ editorial judgments, and I hope the justices will articulate sufficiently clear principles that can endure and continue to protect online speech. Despite the unprecedented new societal challenges created by the internet, the court…
The Florida governor slogs joylessly toward defeat.