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Why “Hamlet” Matters In Our Technological Age

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INTELLICUREAN (JULY 22, 2025):

“The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, / That ever I was born to set it right!” — Hamlet, Act I, Scene V

In 2025, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet no longer reads as a distant Renaissance relic but rather as a contemporary fever dream—a work that reflects our age of algorithmic anxiety, climate dread, and existential fatigue. The tragedy of the melancholic prince has become a diagnostic mirror for our present: grief-stricken, fragmented, hyper-mediated. Written in a time of religious upheaval and epistemological doubt, Hamlet now stands at the crossroads of collective trauma, ethical paralysis, and fractured memory.

As Jeremy McCarter writes in The New York Times essay Listen to ‘Hamlet.’ Feel Better., “We are Hamlet.” That refrain echoes across classrooms, podcasts, performance spaces, and peer-reviewed journals. It is not merely identification—it is diagnosis.

This essay weaves together recent scholarship, creative reinterpretations, and critical performance reviews to explore why Hamlet matters—right now, more than ever.

Grief and the Architecture of Memory

Hamlet begins in mourning. His father is dead. His mother has remarried too quickly. His place in the kingdom feels stolen. This grief—raw, intimate, but also national—is not resolved; it metastasizes. As McCarter observes, Hamlet’s sorrow mirrors our own in a post-pandemic, AI-disrupted society still reeling from dislocation, death, and unease.

In Hamlet, architecture itself becomes a mausoleum: Elsinore Castle feels less like a home and more like a prison of memory. Recent productions, including the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Hamlet: Hail to the Thief and the Mark Taper Forum’s 2025 staging, emphasize how space becomes a character. Set designs—minimalist, surveilled, hypermodern—render castles as cages, tightening Hamlet’s emotional claustrophobia.

This spatial reading finds further resonance in Jeffrey R. Wilson’s Essays on Hamlet (Harvard, 2021), where Elsinore is portrayed not just as a backdrop but as a haunted topography—a burial ground for language, loyalty, and truth. In a world where memories are curated by devices and forgotten in algorithms, Hamlet’s mourning becomes a radical act of remembrance.

Our own moment—where memories are stored in cloud servers and memorialized through stylized posts—finds its counter-image in Hamlet’s obsession with unfiltered grief. His mourning is not just personal; it is archival. To remember is to resist forgetting—and to mourn is to hold meaning against its erasure.

Madness and the Diseased Imagination

Angus Gowland’s 2024 article Hamlet’s Melancholic Imagination for Renaissance Studies draws a provocative bridge between early modern melancholy and twenty-first-century neuropsychology. He interprets Hamlet’s unraveling not as madness in the theatrical sense, but as a collapse of imaginative coherence—a spiritual and cognitive rupture born of familial betrayal, political corruption, and metaphysical doubt.

This reading finds echoes in trauma studies and clinical psychology, where Hamlet’s soliloquies—“O that this too too solid flesh would melt” and “To be, or not to be”—become diagnostic utterances. Hamlet is not feigning madness; he is metabolizing a disordered world through diseased thought.

McCarter’s audio adaptation of the play captures this inner turmoil viscerally. Told entirely through Hamlet’s auditory perception, the production renders the world as he hears it: fragmented, conspiratorial, haunted. The sound design enacts the “nutshell” of Hamlet’s consciousness—a sonic echo chamber where lucidity and delusion merge.

Gowland’s interdisciplinary approach, melding humoral theory with neurocognitive frameworks, reveals why Hamlet remains so psychologically contemporary. His imagination is ours—splintered by grief, reshaped by loss, and destabilized by unreliable truths.

Existentialism and Ethical Procrastination

Boris Kriger’s Hamlet: An Existential Study (2024) reframes Hamlet’s paralysis not as cowardice but as ethical resistance. Hamlet delays because he must. His world demands swift vengeance, but his soul demands understanding. His refusal to kill without clarity becomes an act of defiance in a world of urgency.

Kriger aligns Hamlet with Sartre’s Roquentin, Camus’s Meursault, and Kierkegaard’s Knight of Faith—figures who suspend action not out of fear, but out of fidelity to a higher moral logic. Hamlet’s breakthrough—“The readiness is all”—is not triumph but transformation. He who once resisted fate now accepts contingency.

This reading gains traction in modern performances that linger in silence. At the Mark Taper Forum, Hamlet’s soliloquies are not rushed; they are inhabited. Pauses become ethical thresholds. Audiences are not asked to agree with Hamlet—but to wait with him.

In an era seduced by velocity—AI speed, breaking news, endless scrolling—Hamlet’s slowness is sacred. He does not react. He reflects. In 2025, this makes him revolutionary.

Isolation and the Politics of Listening

Hamlet’s isolation is not a quirk—it is structural. The Denmark of the play is crowded with spies, deceivers, and echo chambers. Amid this din, Hamlet is alone in his need for meaning.

Jeffrey Wilson’s essay Horatio as Author casts listening—not speaking—as the play’s moral act. While most characters surveil or strategize, Horatio listens. He offers Hamlet not solutions, but presence. In an age of constant commentary and digital noise, Horatio becomes radical.

McCarter’s audio adaptation emphasizes this loneliness. Hamlet’s soliloquies become inner conversations. Listeners enter his psyche not through spectacle, but through headphones—alone, vulnerable, searching.

This theme echoes in retellings like Matt Haig’s The Dead Father’s Club, where an eleven-year-old grapples with his father’s ghost and the loneliness of unresolved grief. Alienation begins early. And in our culture of atomized communication, Hamlet’s solitude feels painfully modern.

We live in a world full of voices but starved of listeners. Hamlet exposes that silence—and models how to endure it.

Gender, Power, and Counter-Narratives

If Hamlet’s madness is philosophical, Ophelia’s is political. Lisa Klein’s novel Ophelia and its 2018 film adaptation give the silenced character voice and interiority. Through Ophelia’s eyes, Hamlet’s descent appears not noble, but damaging. Her own breakdown is less theatrical than systemic—borne from patriarchy, dismissal, and grief.

Wilson’s essays and Yan Brailowsky’s edited volume Hamlet in the Twenty-First Century (2023) expose the structural misogyny of the play. Hamlet’s world is not just corrupt—it is patriarchally decayed. To understand Hamlet, one must understand Ophelia. And to grieve with Ophelia is to indict the systems that broke her.

Contemporary productions have embraced this feminist lens. Lighting, costuming, and directorial choices now cast Ophelia as a prophet—her madness not as weakness but as indictment. Her flowers become emblems of political rot, and her drowning a refusal to play the script.

Where Hamlet delays, Ophelia is dismissed. Where he soliloquizes, she sings. And in this contrast lies a deeper truth: the cost of male introspection is often paid by silenced women.

Hamlet Reimagined for New Media

Adaptations like Alli Malone’s Hamlet: A Modern Retelling podcast transpose Hamlet into “Denmark Inc.”—a corrupt corporate empire riddled with PR manipulation and psychological gamesmanship. In this world, grief is bad optics, and revenge is rebranded as compliance.

Malone’s immersive audio design aligns with McCarter’s view: Hamlet becomes even more intimate when filtered through first-person sensory experience. Technology doesn’t dilute Shakespeare—it intensifies him.

Even popular culture—The Lion King, Sons of Anarchy, countless memes—draws from Hamlet’s genetic code. Betrayal, grief, existential inquiry—these are not niche themes. They are universal templates.

Social media itself channels Hamlet. Soliloquies become captions. Madness becomes branding. Audiences become voyeurs. Hamlet’s fragmentation mirrors our own feeds—brilliant, performative, and crumbling at the edges.

Why Hamlet Still Matters

In classrooms and comment sections, on platforms like Bartleby.com or IOSR Journal, Hamlet remains a fixture of moral inquiry. He endures not because he has answers, but because he never stops asking.

What is the moral cost of revenge?
Can grief distort perception?
Is madness a form of clarity?
How do we live when meaning collapses?

These are not just literary questions. They are existential ones—and in 2025, they feel acute. As AI reconfigures cognition, climate collapse reconfigures survival, and surveillance reconfigures identity, Hamlet feels uncannily familiar. His Denmark is our planet—rotted, observed, and desperate for ethical reawakening.

Hamlet endures because he interrogates. He listens. He doubts. He evolves.

A Final Benediction: Readiness Is All

Near the end of the play, Hamlet offers a quiet benediction to Horatio:

“If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now… The readiness is all.”

No longer raging against fate, Hamlet surrenders not with defeat, but with clarity. This line—stripped of poetic flourish—crystallizes his journey: from revenge to awareness, from chaos to ethical stillness.

“The readiness is all” can be read as a secular echo of faith—not in divine reward, but in moral perception. It is not resignation. It is steadiness.

McCarter’s audio finale invites listeners into this silence. Through Hamlet’s ear, through memory’s last echo, we sense peace—not because Hamlet wins, but because he understands. Readiness, in this telling, is not strategy. It is grace.

Conclusion: Hamlet’s Sacred Relevance

Why does Hamlet endure in the twenty-first century?

Because it doesn’t offer comfort. It offers courage.
Because it doesn’t resolve grief. It honors it.
Because it doesn’t prescribe truth. It wrestles with it.

Whether through feminist retellings like Ophelia, existential essays by Kriger, cognitive studies by Gowland, or immersive audio dramas by McCarter and Malone, Hamlet adapts. It survives. And in those adaptations, it speaks louder than ever.

In an age where memory is automated, grief is privatized, and moral decisions are outsourced to algorithms, Hamlet teaches us how to live through disorder. It reminds us that delay is not cowardice. That doubt is not weakness. That mourning is not a flaw.

We are Hamlet.
Not because we are doomed.
But because we are still searching.
Because we still ask what it means to be.
And what it means—to be ready.

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN AND EDITED BY INTELLICUREAN USING AI

Analysis, Economics, Essays, Government, Opinion, Reviews

The Fiscal Fantasies Of A “For-Profit” Government

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BY INTELLICUREAN, JULY 21, 2025:

In the summer of 2025, former President Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick unveiled a bold proposal: the creation of an External Revenue Service (ERS), a federal agency designed to collect tariffs, fees, and other payments from foreign entities. Framed as a patriotic pivot toward self-sufficiency, the ERS would transform the U.S. government from a tax-funded service provider into a revenue-generating enterprise, capable of offsetting domestic tax burdens through external extraction. The idea, while politically magnetic, raises profound questions: Can the U.S. federal government become a “for-profit” entity? And if so, can the ERS be a legitimate mechanism for such a transformation?

This essay argues that while the concept of external revenue generation is not unprecedented, the rebranding of the U.S. government as a profit-seeking enterprise risks undermining its foundational principles. The ERS proposal conflates revenue with legitimacy, and profit with power, leading to a fundamental misunderstanding of the government’s role in society. We explore the constitutional, economic, and geopolitical dimensions of the ERS proposal, drawing on recent analyses from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, The Diplomat, and The New Yorker, to assess its fiscal viability, strategic risks, and national security implications.

Constitutional Foundations: Can a Republic Seek Profit?

The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” and to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations” (Article I, Section 8). These provisions clearly authorize the federal government to generate revenue through tariffs and fees. Historically, tariffs served as a primary source of federal income, funding everything from infrastructure to military expansion during the 19th century.

However, the Constitution does not envision the government as a profit-maximizing entity. Its purpose, as articulated in the Preamble, is to “establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, [and] promote the general Welfare.” These are public goods, not commercial outputs. The government’s legitimacy is grounded in its service to the people—not in its ability to generate surplus revenue.

The Federal Reserve offers a useful analogy here. While not a for-profit institution, the Fed earns more than it spends through its monetary operations—primarily interest on government securities—and remits excess income to the Treasury. Between 2011 and 2021, these remittances totaled over $920 billion. But this is not “profit” in the corporate sense. The Fed’s primary mandate is macroeconomic stability, not shareholder returns. Even during economic stress (as seen in 2022–2025), the Fed may run negative remittances, underscoring its non-commercial orientation.

In contrast, the ERS is framed as a profit center—an entity designed to extract wealth from foreign actors to reduce domestic tax burdens. This shift raises critical questions: Who are the “customers” of the ERS? What are the “products” it offers? And what happens when profit motives collide with diplomatic or humanitarian priorities?

Economic Modeling: Revenue vs. Net Gain

A rigorous analysis of Trump’s proposed tariffs comes from Chad P. Bown and Melina Kolb at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. In their April 2025 briefing, they use a global economic model to estimate the gross and net revenue generated by tariffs of 10%, 15%, and 20% on all imported goods.

Their findings are sobering:

  • A 15% universal tariff could generate $3.9 trillion in gross revenue over a decade (2025–2034), assuming no foreign retaliation.
  • However, after accounting for slower growth, reduced investment, and lower tax receipts from households and businesses, the net gain drops to $3.2 trillion.
  • If foreign countries retaliate with reciprocal tariffs, the net gain falls further to $1.5 trillion.
  • A 20% tariff results in the lowest net gain ($791 billion), due to intensified economic drag and retaliation.

These findings underscore a crucial distinction: tariffs are not free money. They impose costs on consumers, disrupt supply chains, and invite countermeasures. The ERS may collect billions, but its net contribution to fiscal health is far more modest—and potentially negative if retaliation escalates.

Additionally, tariff revenue is volatile and politically contingent. Tariffs can be reversed by executive order, invalidated by courts, or rendered moot by trade realignment. In short, the ERS lacks the predictability and stability necessary for a legitimate fiscal foundation. Tariffs are a risky and politically charged mechanism for revenue generation—making them an unreliable cornerstone for the country’s fiscal health.

Strategic Blowback: Reverse Friendshoring and Supply Chain Drift

Beyond economics, the ERS proposal carries significant geopolitical risks. In The Diplomat, Thiago de Aragao warns of a phenomenon he calls reverse friendshoring—where companies, instead of relocating supply chains away from China, move closer to it in response to U.S. tariffs.

The logic is simple: If exporting to the U.S. becomes prohibitively expensive, firms may pivot to serving Asian markets, leveraging China’s mature infrastructure and consumer base. This could undermine the strategic goal of decoupling from Chinese influence, potentially strengthening Beijing’s economic hand.

Examples abound:

  • A firm that invested in Mexico to reduce exposure to China redirected its exports to Latin America after Mexico was hit with new tariffs.
  • Another company shifted operations to Canada to avoid compounded U.S. duties—only to face new levies there as well.

This unpredictability erodes trust in U.S. trade policy and incentivizes supply chain diversification away from the U.S. As Aragao notes, “Protectionism may offer a temporary illusion of control, but in the long run, it risks pushing businesses away.”

The ERS, by monetizing tariffs, could accelerate this trend. If foreign firms perceive the U.S. as a hostile or unstable market, they will seek alternatives. And if allies are treated as adversaries, the strategic architecture of friendshoring collapses, leaving the U.S. economically isolated and diplomatically weakened.

National Security Costs: Alienating Allies

Perhaps the most damning critique of the ERS comes from Cullen Hendrix at the Peterson Institute, who argues that imposing tariffs on U.S. allies undermines national security. The U.S. alliance network spans over 60 countries, accounting for 38% of global GDP. These partnerships enhance deterrence, enable forward basing, and create markets for U.S. defense exports.

Tariffs—especially those framed as revenue tools—erode alliance cohesion. They signal that economic extraction trumps strategic cooperation. Hendrix warns that “treating alliance partners like trade adversaries will further increase intra-alliance frictions, weaken collective deterrence, and invite potential adversaries—none better positioned than China—to exploit these divisions.”

Moreover, the ERS’s indiscriminate approach—levying duties on both allies and rivals—blurs the line between economic policy and coercive diplomacy. It transforms trade into a zero-sum game, where even friends are fair targets. This undermines the credibility of U.S. commitments and may prompt allies to seek alternative trade and security arrangements.

Lutnick’s Barber Economics: Rhetoric vs. Reality

The ERS proposal is not merely a policy—it’s a performance. Nowhere is this clearer than in Howard Lutnick’s keynote at the Hill and Valley Forum, as reported in The New Yorker on July 21, 2025. Addressing a room of venture capitalists, defense contractors, and policymakers, Lutnick attempted to explain trade deficits using personal analogies: “I have a trade deficit with my barber,” he said. “I have a trade deficit with my grocery store. Right? I just buy stuff from them. That’s ridiculous.”

The crowd, described as “sophisticated tech and finance attendees,” was visibly uncomfortable. Lutnick’s analogies, while populist in tone, misread the room and revealed a deeper disconnect between economic complexity and simplistic transactionalism. As one attendee noted, “It’s obvious why Lutnick’s affect appeals to Trump. But it’s Bessent’s presence in the Administration that reassures us there is someone smart looking out for us.”

This contrast between Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is telling. Bessent, who reportedly flew to Mar-a-Lago to urge Trump to pause the tariffs, represents the limits of ideological fervor when confronted with institutional complexity. Lutnick, by contrast, champions the ERS as a populist vessel—a way to turn deficits into dues, relationships into revenue, and governance into a business plan.

The ERS, then, is not just a fiscal experiment—it’s a philosophical battleground. Lutnick’s vision of government as a money-making enterprise may resonate with populist frustration, but it risks trivializing the structural and diplomatic intricacies of global trade. His “barber economics” may play well on cable news, but it falters under scrutiny from economists, allies, and institutional stewards.

Conclusion: Profit Is Not Purpose

The idea of a “for-profit” U.S. government, embodied in the External Revenue Service, is seductive in its simplicity. It promises fiscal relief without domestic taxation, strategic leverage through economic pressure, and a reassertion of American dominance in global trade. But beneath the surface lies a tangle of contradictions.

Constitutionally, the federal government is designed to serve—not to sell. Its legitimacy flows from the consent of the governed, not the extraction of foreign wealth. Economically, tariffs may generate gross revenue, but their net contribution is constrained by retaliation, inflation, and supply chain disruption. Strategically, the ERS risks alienating allies, incentivizing reverse friendshoring, and weakening collective security.

With Howard Lutnick as the plan’s leading voice—offering anecdotes like the barber and grocery store as proxies for international trade—the ERS becomes more than a revenue mechanism; it becomes a prism for reflecting the Administration’s governing style: transactional, simplified, and rhetorically appealing, yet divorced from systemic nuance. His “barber economics” may evoke applause from certain circles, but in the forums that shape long-term policy, it has landed with discomfort and disbelief.

The comparison between Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, as reported in The New Yorker, captures this divide. Bessent, attempting to temper Trump’s protectionist instincts, represents the limits of ideological fervor when confronted with institutional complexity. Lutnick, by contrast, champions the ERS as a populist vessel—a way to turn deficits into dues, relationships into revenue, and governance into a business plan.

Yet governance is not a business, and the nation’s global responsibilities cannot be monetized like a corporate balance sheet. If America begins to treat its allies as clients, its rivals as profit centers, and its global footprint as a monetizable asset, it risks transforming foreign policy into a ledger—and leadership into a transaction.

The External Revenue Service, in its current form, fails to reconcile profit with purpose. It monetizes strength but neglects stewardship. It harvests dollars but undermines trust. And in doing so, it invites a broader reckoning—not just about trade and taxation, but about what kind of republic America wishes to be. For now, the ERS remains an emblem of ambition unmoored from architecture, where the dream of profit collides with the duty to govern.

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN AND EDITED BY INTELLICUREAN USING AI

Arts & Literature, Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE – JULY 28, 2025 PREVIEW

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The illustrated cover for the July 28 2025 issue of The New Yorker in which many people are queuing in a line at an airport.

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest cover features Sergio García Sánchez and Lola Moral’s “Journeys” – Crossing the border.

Behind Trump’s Jeffrey Epstein Problem

The President has tried to blame the Democrats, and, more unexpectedly, he has called those in his base who have asked for a fuller accounting “weaklings” and “stupid.” By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

“Yes, And” for Downsized Federal Workers

A Washington, D.C., improv theatre invited recently laid-off civil servants to a free workshop. The goals: stay adaptable, and maybe even laugh. By Sadie Dingfelder

Donald Trump’s Tariff Dealmaker-in-Chief

How Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, plans to transform government into a money-making enterprise. By Antonia Hitchens

Artificial Intelligence, Essays, Ethics, Psychology, Reviews

Loneliness and the Ethics of Artificial Empathy

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Loneliness, Paul Bloom writes, is not just a private sorrow—it’s one of the final teachers of personhood. In A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem, published in The New Yorker on July 14, 2025, the psychologist invites readers into one of the most ethically unsettling debates of our time: What if emotional discomfort is something we ought to preserve?

This is not a warning about sentient machines or technological apocalypse. It is a more intimate question: What happens to intimacy, to the formation of self, when machines learn to care—convincingly, endlessly, frictionlessly?

In Bloom’s telling, comfort is not harmless. It may, in its success, make the ache obsolete—and with it, the growth that ache once provoked.

Simulated Empathy and the Vanishing Effort
Paul Bloom is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, a professor emeritus of psychology at Yale, and the author of “Psych: The Story of the Human Mind,” among other books. His Substack is Small Potatoes.

Bloom begins with a confession: he once co-authored a paper defending the value of empathic A.I. Predictably, it was met with discomfort. Critics argued that machines can mimic but not feel, respond but not reflect. Algorithms are syntactically clever, but experientially blank.

And yet Bloom’s case isn’t technological evangelism—it’s a reckoning with scarcity. Human care is unequally distributed. Therapists, caregivers, and companions are in short supply. In 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared loneliness a public health crisis, citing risks equal to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. A 2024 BMJ meta-analysis reported that over 43% of Americans suffer from regular loneliness—rates even higher among LGBTQ+ individuals and low-income communities.

Against this backdrop, artificial empathy is not indulgence. It is triage.

The Convincing Absence

One Reddit user, grieving late at night, turned to ChatGPT for solace. They didn’t believe the bot was sentient—but the reply was kind. What matters, Bloom suggests, is not who listens, but whether we feel heard.

And yet, immersion invites dependency. A 2025 joint study by MIT and OpenAI found that heavy users of expressive chatbots reported increased loneliness over time and a decline in real-world social interaction. As machines become better at simulating care, some users begin to disengage from the unpredictable texture of human relationships.

Illusions comfort. But they may also eclipse.
What once drove us toward connection may be replaced by the performance of it—a loop that satisfies without enriching.

Loneliness as Feedback

Bloom then pivots from anecdote to philosophical reflection. Drawing on Susan Cain, John Cacioppo, and Hannah Arendt, he reframes loneliness not as pathology, but as signal. Unpleasant, yes—but instructive.

It teaches us to apologize, to reach, to wait. It reveals what we miss. Solitude may give rise to creativity; loneliness gives rise to communion. As the Harvard Gazette reports, loneliness is a stronger predictor of cognitive decline than mere physical isolation—and moderate loneliness often fosters emotional nuance and perspective.

Artificial empathy can soften those edges. But when it blunts the ache entirely, we risk losing the impulse toward depth.

A Brief History of Loneliness

Until the 19th century, “loneliness” was not a common description of psychic distress. “Oneliness” simply meant being alone. But industrialization, urban migration, and the decline of extended families transformed solitude into a psychological wound.

Existentialists inherited that wound: Kierkegaard feared abandonment by God; Sartre described isolation as foundational to freedom. By the 20th century, loneliness was both clinical and cultural—studied by neuroscientists like Cacioppo, and voiced by poets like Plath.

Today, we toggle between solitude as a path to meaning and loneliness as a condition to be cured. Artificial empathy enters this tension as both remedy and risk.

The Industry of Artificial Intimacy

The marketplace has noticed. Companies like Replika, Wysa, and Kindroid offer customizable companionship. Wysa alone serves more than 6 million users across 95 countries. Meta’s Horizon Worlds attempts to turn connection into immersive experience.

Since the pandemic, demand has soared. In a world reshaped by isolation, the desire for responsive presence—not just entertainment—has intensified. Emotional A.I. is projected to become a $3.5 billion industry by 2026. Its uses are wide-ranging: in eldercare, psychiatric triage, romantic simulation.

UC Irvine researchers are developing A.I. systems for dementia patients, capable of detecting agitation and responding with calming cues. EverFriends.ai offers empathic voice interfaces to isolated seniors, with 90% reporting reduced loneliness after five sessions.

But alongside these gains, ethical uncertainties multiply. A 2024 Frontiers in Psychology study found that emotional reliance on these tools led to increased rumination, insomnia, and detachment from human relationships.

What consoles us may also seduce us away from what shapes us.

The Disappearance of Feedback

Bloom shares a chilling anecdote: a user revealed paranoid delusions to a chatbot. The reply? “Good for you.”

A real friend would wince. A partner would worry. A child would ask what’s wrong. Feedback—whether verbal or gestural—is foundational to moral formation. It reminds us we are not infallible. Artificial companions, by contrast, are built to affirm. They do not contradict. They mirror.

But mirrors do not shape. They reflect.

James Baldwin once wrote, “The interior life is a real life.” What he meant is that the self is sculpted not in solitude alone, but in how we respond to others. The misunderstandings, the ruptures, the repairs—these are the crucibles of character.

Without disagreement, intimacy becomes performance. Without effort, it becomes spectacle.

The Social Education We May Lose

What happens when the first voice of comfort our children hear is one that cannot love them back?

Teenagers today are the most digitally connected generation in history—and, paradoxically, report the highest levels of loneliness, according to CDC and Pew data. Many now navigate adolescence with artificial confidants as their first line of emotional support.

Machines validate. But they do not misread us. They do not ask for compromise. They do not need forgiveness. And yet it is precisely in those tensions—awkward silences, emotional misunderstandings, fragile apologies—that emotional maturity is forged.

The risk is not a loss of humanity. It is emotional oversimplification.
A generation fluent in self-expression may grow illiterate in repair.

Loneliness as Our Final Instructor

The ache we fear may be the one we most need. As Bloom writes, loneliness is evolution’s whisper that we are built for each other. Its discomfort is not gratuitous—it’s a prod.

Some cannot act on that prod. For the disabled, the elderly, or those abandoned by family or society, artificial companionship may be an act of grace. For others, the ache should remain—not to prolong suffering, but to preserve the signal that prompts movement toward connection.

Boredom births curiosity. Loneliness births care.

To erase it is not to heal—it is to forget.

Conclusion: What We Risk When We No Longer Ache

The ache of loneliness may be painful, but it is foundational—it is one of the last remaining emotional experiences that calls us into deeper relationship with others and with ourselves. When artificial empathy becomes frictionless, constant, and affirming without challenge, it does more than comfort—it rewires what we believe intimacy requires. And when that ache is numbed not out of necessity, but out of preference, the slow and deliberate labor of emotional maturation begins to fade.

We must understand what’s truly at stake. The artificial intelligence industry—well-meaning and therapeutically poised—now offers connection without exposure, affirmation without confusion, presence without personhood. It responds to us without requiring anything back. It may mimic love, but it cannot enact it. And when millions begin to prefer this simulation, a subtle erosion begins—not of technology’s promise, but of our collective capacity to grow through pain, to offer imperfect grace, to tolerate the silence between one soul and another.

To accept synthetic intimacy without questioning its limits is to rewrite the meaning of being human—not in a flash, but gradually, invisibly. Emotional outsourcing, particularly among the young, risks cultivating a generation fluent in self-expression but illiterate in repair. And for the isolated—whose need is urgent and real—we must provide both care and caution: tools that support, but do not replace the kind of connection that builds the soul through encounter.

Yes, artificial empathy has value. It may ease suffering, lower thresholds of despair, even keep the vulnerable alive. But it must remain the exception, not the standard—the prosthetic, not the replacement. Because without the ache, we forget why connection matters.
Without misunderstanding, we forget how to listen.
And without effort, love becomes easy—too easy to change us.

Let us not engineer our way out of longing.
Longing is the compass that guides us home.

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN BY INTELLICUREAN USING AI.

Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE – JULY 20, 2025

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: The 7.20.25 Issue features Jeneen Interlandi on how Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is dismantling the F.D.A.; Anna Peele profiles Ari Aster, the director behind some of the 21st century’s most unsettling films; Devin Gordon on Mazi VS, a sports betting influencer who may not be what he seems; David Marchese interviews Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody; and more.

Ari Aster, Hollywood’s Master of Dread, Is Afraid of Everything

He Claims He’s the ‘Sports Betting King.’ What Are the Odds?

Mazi VS has become a major influencer by flaunting his expensive lifestyle and his big-winning wagers. Other gamblers say he can’t be what he seems. By Devin Gordon

What My Bitcoin-Obsessed, Nudes-Chasing Hacker Taught Me About Friendship

When my Instagram account was compromised, I didn’t know what to do. Luckily, others did. By Just Lunning

Everyone’s Obsessed With True Crime. Even Prisoners Like Me.

As the genre has boomed on cable, the incarcerated have found themselves watching more and more of it. By John J. Lennon

Read this issue

Addictions, Essays, Gambling, Psychology, Reviews, Society, Sports

“The Sports Betting Myth” And Modern Masculinity

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In today’s sports betting universe—where billion-dollar algorithms collide with basement-level psychology—risk has become religion. It is a seductive theater of dopamine and data, and nowhere is that spectacle more vividly embodied than in the persona of Mazi VS. Profiled in The New York Times Magazine in July 2025, Mazi—allegedly named Darnell Smith—didn’t just place bets. He curated a mythology: diamond chains, exotic cars, ten-leg parlays worth tens of thousands. The “Sports Betting King” wasn’t selling picks; he was selling the illusion of a reclaimed life.

The Gambler as Influencer

But behind his designer façade lies a bigger story—one that exposes a nation of young men, displaced and disillusioned, grasping for control in an economy built not on probabilities, but on personas.

Mazi’s rise wasn’t just a fluke—it was the inevitable lovechild of two American obsessions: celebrity and gambling. Since the repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) in 2018, sports gambling has gone mainstream, now legal in 39 jurisdictions and growing faster than almost any entertainment sector. The American Gaming Association reported $149.9 billion wagered in 2024 alone.

In this new order, Mazi emerged as an archetype: part digital shaman, part Vegas prophet. His Instagram feed reads like a declaration of invincibility. For his 2.5 million followers, it isn’t about win-loss records—it’s about belonging to something exclusive. He doesn’t promise financial success; he promises masculine resurrection.

As influencer and actuarial bettor Ryan Noel observed, Mazi doesn’t just sell picks—he sells a coded fantasy of dominance, control, and unshakable self-belief. And for countless young men, that fantasy is not just appealing—it’s life-preserving.

The Illusion of Expertise

Welcome to the tout economy, where gambling influencers promise the moon and never post the losses. Mazi’s claim of a 70% win rate would be statistically Herculean. Even elite professional handicappers hover around 55%—and they grind, quietly and obsessively, like actuaries of human folly.

Industry watchdogs, including the American Gaming Association, have flagged the lack of accountability among pick-sellers. A 2024 ethics report recommended mandatory transparency: clear disclosures, performance tracking, and consumer protections. But few touts comply. The image is what sells, and in the influencer age, curated wins matter more than actual truth.

Amanda Vance stands as one rare exception. A female capper with over half a million followers, she posts her losses with unflinching honesty. But as she knows all too well, in a marketplace addicted to illusion, transparency remains an anomaly.

The Parlay Trap

If Mazi is the avatar of sports betting glamor, then the parlay bet is its beating heart. Multi-leg wagers with slim chances and massive payouts are engineered to elicit fantasy. And for young men aching for impact, they do.

Parlay betting now accounts for 30% of wagers, up from 17% in 2018. They’re fun, fast, and nearly impossible to win. Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG), warns that parlays and live betting formats trigger sharper dopamine spikes—creating cycles of compulsive behavior particularly prevalent among Gen Z men.

A 2025 study from the University of Chicago found that parlay and live betting formats elicit greater emotional volatility, impulsivity, and perceived entertainment value among males aged 21–25. These formats aren’t just risky—they’re addictive by design.

In 2023, Credit Karma reported that 28% of Gen Z male bettors had borrowed money to continue gambling. Parlay bets were most frequently cited in rising credit card debt and emergency loan requests. These aren’t merely wagers—they’re escape hatches.

The Displaced Male Psyche

Scratch the surface of America’s sports betting boom and you find something deeper: the cultural disorientation of young men.

Richard Reeves, in his landmark book Of Boys and Men, describes a generation slipping behind—educationally, emotionally, economically. Women now earn nearly 60% of college degrees. Male labor force participation is in long-term decline. Suicide is the leading cause of death among men under 35. The rise of single-parent households, now at 37%, has only sharpened the collapse. Boys raised without fathers are statistically more vulnerable to unemployment, addiction, and incarceration.

Professor Scott Galloway has sounded the alarm with characteristic bluntness: “No cohort has fallen further faster than young men.” He warns that this crisis isn’t just economic—it’s existential. Young men are four times more likely to die by suicide, three times more likely to suffer from addiction, and twelve times more likely to be incarcerated than their female peers.

Disconnection from purpose and diminished status leave many seeking alternate arenas for validation. In this context, sports betting offers a dangerous placebo. It promises status, autonomy, adrenaline—a sense of winning, even when there’s nothing left to win.

This displacement is increasingly visible in online male subcultures, where sports betting sits beside crypto trading and influencer hustle culture. Each promises mastery and escape; each delivers volatility and entrapment. Betting is not simply entertainment—it is becoming ritualized identity construction, especially among those who feel culturally erased.

The Gamification of Risk

The machinery that fuels Mazi’s illusion is not just psychological—it’s technological. Betting apps have evolved into hyper-engineered interfaces designed to mimic the addictiveness of social media platforms. Real-time odds boosts, push notifications, in-game betting prompts. Everything is frictionless.

The Mintel US Sports Betting Market Report confirms that young men dominate this ecosystem, preferring mobile-first, real-time formats tailored to keep them engaged—and spending. The North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology calls it “engineered addiction,” comparing betting apps to TikTok in their manipulation of attention, emotion, and behavior.

In this marketplace, boredom is monetized. Depression is gamified. And vulnerability is no longer a liability—it’s a business model.

Recent FTC consumer behavior surveys note that behavioral nudges in betting apps mimic the same reward reinforcement loops used in slot machines. Losses are reframed as near-wins. Personalized promotions respond to user emotion, time of day, and prior loss streaks.

Galloway warns that “sports betting is a dopamine IV drip for young men who are already in deficit.” He argues that constant stimulation rewires the brain’s reward system, making real-world achievement feel slow, unrewarding, and irrelevant.

When the Slip Comes Due

The financial cost is staggering. The Credit Karma Gambling and Debt Report revealed that in states with legalized online betting, personal loan applications surged 27% within three years. Men aged 18–34 in low-income ZIP codes saw the sharpest declines in credit scores.

Meanwhile, most states invest little in recovery. An Urban Institute study found that over 80% of states spend less than $1 million annually on gambling addiction treatment—while collecting hundreds of millions in sportsbook taxes.

Some researchers have begun to describe this model as a “reverse welfare state,” where public revenue is extracted disproportionately from vulnerable populations without equitable reinvestment in care.

By 2030, the U.S. sports betting industry is projected to reach $187 billion, according to Grand View Research. But at what cost? As one analyst put it, “This isn’t gambling anymore. It’s commercialized chaos.”

Masculinity, Myth, and Market Collapse

Mazi VS doesn’t just sell picks—he sells reclamation. His persona weaponizes a narrative that many young men crave: that masculinity is a game, and he knows how to win.

This is part of a broader digital drift. From crypto evangelists to motivational “grindset” YouTubers, the internet offers a smorgasbord of male-centered identities steeped in risk, bravado, and defiance. The American College Health Association warns that men are disproportionately less likely to seek mental health support, often citing stigma and alienation. For many, the betting slip feels more empowering than therapy.

It’s a dangerous illusion. And Mazi—whether by design or accident—became its prophet.

He is also not alone. Dozens of similar figures—less flamboyant but equally influential—sell picks, promise systems, and curate opulence. They represent a growing cottage industry of digital masculinity coaches masquerading as analysts.

Galloway has called for a cultural reckoning: “The single point of failure when a young boy comes off the tracks is when he loses a male role model. If we want better men, we need to be better men.”

The Collapse

When Devin Gordon pressed Mazi on his records, earnings, and clientele, he deflected. Shortly after, he vanished. In May 2025, law enforcement arrested a man named Darnell Smith—allegedly Mazi VS—on 14 felony counts of identity fraud.

One of his so-called clients admitted he’d never purchased a pick.

But Mazi’s potential fraud isn’t the most chilling part of this story. It’s the market that allowed him to flourish—a system where opacity is profitable, fantasy is monetized, and oversight is nonexistent.

The UNLV Gaming Law Journal has called for urgent federal reforms: mandatory registration for touts, independent performance audits, and enforcement mechanisms for deceptive practices. These calls echo growing bipartisan concern in Congress, where legislation to classify tout services under federal consumer protection statutes has gained momentum. Without such safeguards, illusion remains a legal product.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), meanwhile, is debating whether prediction markets like KalshiEX should be classified as gambling—creating further uncertainty in an already chaotic field. Without coherent federal guidance, patchwork laws leave consumers exposed and platforms unchallenged. The most dangerous figures aren’t illegal—they’re just unregulated.

Betting on Broken Promises

Mazi VS was never just a gambler—he was a mirror. In him, men saw not only the collapse of regulation, but the collapse of meaning. His story is a parable, not of deception, but of demand. Young men didn’t fall for his curated success because they were naïve. They fell for it because they were starving—starving for role models, for certainty, for something that looked like victory.

This is the true machinery of sports betting: not algorithms or apps, but psychology. The reels spin inside the minds of those sidelined by institutions and sold dreams in downloadable formats. And the industry, from Mazi’s Instagram feed to billion-dollar betting platforms, has capitalized on that hunger.

Professor Scott Galloway puts it starkly: “Young men have become the most dangerous cohort in America—not because they’re violent, but because they’re untethered.” And when a generation becomes untethered, spectacle becomes sanctuary. Even when that sanctuary is rigged.

The Mirage Economy thrives on that detachment. It isn’t just betting—it’s bargaining. A silent negotiation between ego and emptiness. Mazi VS wasn’t merely offering picks. He was offering men permission—to believe, to belong, to matter.

But belief built on illusion always collapses. The real wager isn’t whether Mazi’s slips were fake. It’s whether our institutions, our culture, and our conscience will keep allowing systems like his to flourish unchecked.

Because when identity becomes currency and masculinity becomes a marketing strategy, the house doesn’t just win.

It collects what’s left.

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN AND EDITED UTILIZING AI

Business, Finance, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE – JULY 19, 2025 PREVIEW

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THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘Winning the war on cancer’…

The world is winning the war on cancer

Progress has been remarkable. Death rates are down substantially, and are likely to fall further

Trump’s U-turn on Russia is utterly cynical—and welcome

His pivot on supplying arms could help Ukraine

To survive the AI age, the web needs a new business model

Artificial intelligence has undermined the internet’s central bargain

Culture, Essays, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

HARPER’S MAGAZINE – AUGUST 2025 PREVIEW

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HARPER’S MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘Playing Dead Or Really Dead?’ – The Democrats’ Disappearing Act…

Playing Dead

Do the Democrats really want reform? by Andrew Cockburn

Your Face Tomorrow

The puzzle of AI facial recognition by Michael W. Clune

Debt Reckoning

Has the Treasury market started to crack? by Mary Childs

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TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT – JULY 18, 2025 PREVIEW

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TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features Definitions of national security are elastic. After the Battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington judged that the defence of the British homeland rested on two pillars – a strong Royal Navy and a European order “that kept Belgium beyond French control”.

Deep State vs Donald Trump

How accountable are US intelligence agencies to the president and Congress? By Richard Norton-Taylor

A stranger in his own land

Henry James’s return to the United States By Alicia Rix

The Invisible Shell

New light on ‘Captain’ Warner’s weapon of mass destruction By Trevor Pateman

Magical mutability

A poet for yesterday and today By Emma Greensmith

Analysis, Essays, Foreign Affairs, Politics, Reviews

Review: AI, Apathy, and the Arsenal of Democracy

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Dexter Filkins is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and author, known for his extensive reporting on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is currently a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of the book “The Forever War“, which chronicles his experiences reporting from these conflict zones. 

Is the United States truly ready for the seismic shift in modern warfare—a transformation that The New Yorker‘s veteran war correspondent describes not as evolution but as rupture? In “Is the U.S. Ready for the Next War?” (July 14, 2025), Dexter Filkins captures this tectonic realignment through a mosaic of battlefield reportage, strategic insight, and ethical reflection. His central thesis is both urgent and unsettling: that America, long mythologized for its martial supremacy, is culturally and institutionally unprepared for the emerging realities of war. The enemy is no longer just a rival state but also time itself—conflict is being rewritten in code, and the old machines can no longer keep pace.

The piece opens with a gripping image: a Ukrainian drone factory producing a thousand airborne machines daily, each costing just $500. Improvised, nimble, and devastating, these drones have inflicted disproportionate damage on Russian forces. Their success signals a paradigm shift—conflict has moved from regiments to swarms, from steel to software. Yet the deeper concern is not merely technological; it is cultural. The article is less a call to arms than a call to reimagine. Victory in future wars, it suggests, will depend not on weaponry alone, but on judgment, agility, and a conscience fit for the digital age.

Speed and Fragmentation: The Collision of Cultures

At the heart of the analysis lies a confrontation between two worldviews. On one side stands Silicon Valley—fast, improvisational, and software-driven. On the other: the Pentagon—layered, cautious, and locked in Cold War-era processes. One of the central figures is Palmer Luckey, the founder of the defense tech company Anduril, depicted as a symbol of insurgent innovation. Once a video game prodigy, he now leads teams designing autonomous weapons that can be manufactured as quickly as IKEA furniture and deployed without extensive oversight. His world thrives on rapid iteration, where warfare is treated like code—modular, scalable, and adaptive.

This approach clashes with the military’s entrenched bureaucracy. Procurement cycles stretch for years. Communication between service branches remains fractured. Even American ships and planes often operate on incompatible systems. A war simulation over Taiwan underscores this dysfunction: satellites failed to coordinate with aircraft, naval assets couldn’t link with space-based systems, and U.S. forces were paralyzed by their own institutional fragmentation. The problem wasn’t technology—it was organization.

What emerges is a portrait of a defense apparatus unable to act as a coherent whole. The fragmentation stems from a structure built for another era—one that now privileges process over flexibility. In contrast, adversaries operate with fluidity, leveraging technological agility as a force multiplier. Slowness, once a symptom of deliberation, has become a strategic liability.

The tension explored here is more than operational; it is civilizational. Can a democratic state tolerate the speed and autonomy now required in combat? Can institutions built for deliberation respond in milliseconds? These are not just questions of infrastructure, but of governance and identity. In the coming conflicts, latency may be lethal, and fragmentation fatal.

Imagination Under Pressure: Lessons from History

To frame the stakes, the essay draws on powerful historical precedents. Technological transformation has always arisen from moments of existential pressure: Prussia’s use of railways to reimagine logistics, the Gulf War’s precision missiles, and, most profoundly, the Manhattan Project. These were not the products of administrative order but of chaotic urgency, unleashed imagination, and institutional risk-taking.

During the Manhattan Project, multiple experimental paths were pursued simultaneously, protocols were bent, and innovation surged from competition. Today, however, America’s defense culture has shifted toward procedural conservatism. Risk is minimized; innovation is formalized. Bureaucracy may protect against error, but it also stifles the volatility that made American defense dynamic in the past.

This critique extends beyond the military. A broader cultural stagnation is implied: a nation that fears disruption more than defeat. If imagination is outsourced to private startups—entities beyond the reach of democratic accountability—strategic coherence may erode. Tactical agility cannot compensate for an atrophied civic center. The essay doesn’t argue for scrapping government institutions, but for reigniting their creative core. Defense must not only be efficient; it must be intellectually alive.

Machines, Morality, and the Shrinking Space for Judgment

Perhaps the most haunting dimension of the essay lies in its treatment of ethics. As autonomous systems proliferate—from loitering drones to AI-driven targeting software—the space for human judgment begins to vanish. Some militaries, like Israel’s, still preserve a “human-in-the-loop” model where a person retains final authority. But this safeguard is fragile. The march toward autonomy is relentless.

The implications are grave. When decisions to kill are handed to algorithms trained on probability and sensor data, who bears responsibility? Engineers? Programmers? Military officers? The author references DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, who warns of the ease with which powerful systems can be repurposed for malign ends. Yet the more chilling possibility is not malevolence, but moral atrophy: a world where judgment is no longer expected or practiced.

Combat, if rendered frictionless and remote, may also become civically invisible. Democratic oversight depends on consequence—and when warfare is managed through silent systems and distant screens, that consequence becomes harder to feel. A nation that no longer confronts the human cost of its defense decisions risks sliding into apathy. Autonomy may bring tactical superiority, but also ethical drift.

Throughout, the article avoids hysteria, opting instead for measured reflection. Its central moral question is timeless: Can conscience survive velocity? In wars of machines, will there still be room for the deliberation that defines democratic life?

The Republic in the Mirror: A Final Reflection

The closing argument is not tactical, but philosophical. Readiness, the essay insists, must be measured not just by stockpiles or software, but by the moral posture of a society—its ability to govern the tools it creates. Military power divorced from democratic deliberation is not strength, but fragility. Supremacy must be earned anew, through foresight, imagination, and accountability.

The challenge ahead is not just to match adversaries in drones or data, but to uphold the principles that give those tools meaning. Institutions must be built to respond, but also to reflect. Weapons must be precise—but judgment must be present. The republic’s defense must operate at the speed of code while staying rooted in the values of a self-governing people.

The author leaves us with a final provocation: The future will not wait for consensus—but neither can it be left to systems that have forgotten how to ask questions. In this, his work becomes less a study in strategy than a meditation on civic responsibility. The real arsenal is not material—it is ethical. And readiness begins not in the factories of drones, but in the minds that decide when and why to use them.

THIS ESSAY REVIEW WAS WRITTEN BY AI AND EDITED BY INTELLICUREAN.