Donald Trump has long exhibited authoritarian impulses, but his policy operation is now more sophisticated, and the buffers to check him are weaker.
White House Warns Ukraine Aid Is Running Out, Pressing Congress for More
The warning, in a letter to congressional leaders, comes as Republican support for funding Kyiv’s war effort is waning, and an emergency funding package is stalled in Congress.
The Globalist Podcast (December 4, 2023) – A look at how the Cop 28 summit is going with Andrew Freedman, senior climate reporter at Axios. Plus: Venezuela’s referendum and a murder conspiracy in Delhi.
The New Yorker – December11, 2023 issue: The new issue‘s cover featuresBarry Blitt’s “Special Delivery” – The artist discusses holiday shopping and his prized Popeye punching bag.
After the Civil War, Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, was to be tried for treason. Does the debacle hold lessons for the trials awaiting Donald Trump?
Jefferson Davis, the half-blind ex-President of the Confederate States of America, leaned on a cane as he hobbled into a federal courthouse in Richmond, Virginia. Only days before, a Chicago Tribune reporter, who’d met Davis on the boat ride to Richmond, had written that “his step is light and elastic.” But in court, facing trial for treason, Davis, fifty-eight, gave every appearance of being bent and broken. A reporter from Kentucky described him as “a gaunt and feeble-looking man,” wearing a soft black hat and a sober black suit, as if he were a corpse. He’d spent two years in a military prison. He wanted to be released. A good many Americans wanted him dead. “We’ll hang Jeff Davis from a sour-apple tree,” they sang to the tune of “John Brown’s Body.”
The companies had honed a protocol for releasing artificial intelligence ambitiously but safely. Then OpenAI’s board exploded all their carefully laid plans.
At around 11:30 a.m. on the Friday before Thanksgiving, Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, was having his weekly meeting with senior leaders when a panicked colleague told him to pick up the phone. An executive from OpenAI, an artificial-intelligence startup into which Microsoft had invested a reported thirteen billion dollars, was calling to explain that within the next twenty minutes the company’s board would announce that it had fired Sam Altman, OpenAI’s C.E.O. and co-founder. It was the start of a five-day crisis that some people at Microsoft began calling the Turkey-Shoot Clusterfuck.
Eighty percent of Gazans are displaced from their homes as Israel orders more evacuations. See where thousands have been sheltering amid the war’s destruction.
Ego, Fear and Money: How the A.I. Fuse Was Lit
The people who were most afraid of the risks of artificial intelligence decided they should be the ones to build it. Then distrust fueled a spiraling competition.
‘Medical Freedom’ Activists Take Aim at New Target: Childhood Vaccine Mandates
Mississippi has long had high childhood immunization rates, but a federal judge has ordered the state to allow parents to opt out on religious grounds.
Cornell Lab of Ornithology (December 3, 2023) – Papua, Indonesia’s easternmost province, encompasses the western half of New Guinea and several other islands. An area of cultural and biological diversity, its rainforests and mountains are inhabited by indigenous Melanesian tribes and diverse wildlife including tree kangaroos and birds of paradise. Whale sharks swim amid the hard coral gardens of Cenderawasih Bay National Park, a dive site off the north coast.
Yurara Sarara Films (December 3, 2023) – Saihō-ji is a Rinzai Zen Buddhist temple in Matsuo, Nishikyō Ward, Kyoto, Japan. The temple, which is famed for its moss garden, is commonly referred to as “Koke-dera”, meaning “moss temple”, while the formal name is “Kōinzan Saihō-ji”
Monocle on Sunday, December 3, 2023– Monocle’s editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, brings us a festive programme as our Christmas market takes place in Zürich. Featuring Florian Egli and Damita Pressl plus Monocle’s Andrew Tuck and Georgina Godwin.
Beleaguered Gazans, having fled the territory’s north, emerged from a night of bombardment wondering where to go next for safety.
Drunk and Asleep on the Job: Air Traffic Controllers Pushed to the Brink
A nationwide shortage of controllers has resulted in an exhausted and demoralized work force that is increasingly prone to making dangerous mistakes.
Divided by Politics, a Colorado Town Mends Its Broken Bones
Two years after death threats and aspersions roiled little Silverton, the town has found a semblance of peace and a lesson for a ruptured nation.
A Russian Village Buries a Soldier, and Tries to Make Sense of the War
In Russia, the pain and loss of the war in Ukraine are felt most profoundly in small villages, where a soldier’s burial produces not just grief but a yearning to find meaning in his death.
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (December 2, 2023): The latest issue features Sunday Night Lights – How America’s most spectacular TV show gets made; The Chicken Tycoons vs. the Antitrust Hawks – As part of a broader campaign against anticompetitive practices, the Biden administration has taken on the chicken industry…
Months of preparation, hundreds of staff, convoys of cutting-edge gear: inside the machine that crafts prime time’s most popular entertainment.
By Jody Rosen
Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the Kansas City Chiefs, the N.F.L.’s defending champions, is a very loud place. Players say that when the noise reaches top volume, they can feel vibrations in their bones. During a 2014 game, a sound meter captured a decibel reading equivalent to a jet’s taking off, earning a Guinness World Record for “Loudest crowd roar at a sports stadium.” Chiefs fans know how to weaponize noise, quieting to a churchlike hush when the team’s great quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, calls signals but then, when opponents have the ball, unleashing a howl that can even drown out the sound of the play call crackling through the speaker inside the rival quarterback’s helmet.
As part of a broader campaign against anticompetitive practices, the Biden administration has taken on the chicken industry. Why have the results been so paltry?
By H. Claire Brown
At Kentucky Fried Chicken, sales tend to peak at the same time every year: Mother’s Day. This has been the case since the 1960s, when the chain began to experiment with TV advertising. In a spot from that era, a man in an office answers a phone call from an anonymous male narrator who asks, “Sir, do you have any idea what your wife has to do to run your house?” Cut to a sped-up montage of an impeccably dressed 30-something as she dusts, irons, vacuums and balances the checkbook. Newly enlightened, the husband shows his appreciation by stopping at Kentucky Fried Chicken on his way home. Cut to a close-up of a happy wife biting into a drumstick. “Colonel Sanders fixes Sunday dinner seven days a week, and it’s finger-lickin’ good.”
Monocle on Saturday, December 2, 2023: Join Juliet Linley and Georgina Godwin for a look through the week’s news and culture from Monocle’s Christmas market in Zürich with special guests Deputy Head of Radio, Tom Webb, and Editorial Director, Tyler Brûlé.
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Yurara Sarara
Boomers Daily 