Five Things Dems Must Do to Fight Trump Now
Plus: Republicans Are Using the D.C. Plane Crash to Peddle Racism
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TOM MALINOWSKI: Five Things Dems Must Do to Fight Trump Now
āFight, fight, fight.ā
I DONāT USUALLY QUOTE DONALD TRUMP, but there is a lot we can learn from the manās instinctive feel for politics and human psychology. He has long understood that you win by projecting strength and self assurance, not weakness and despair, and by pushing forward, forcing others to react to your actions instead of worrying what they will do to you. Everything heās done since being inaugurated is psychological warfare, designed to demoralize his opponents and make them feel helpless.
PHIL CHRISTMAN: Against the Bullshit Machines
LATELY, EVERY COLLEGE ENGLISH TEACHER I KNOW has been struggling to write an āAI policy.ā Even in using that languageāand this is one of many excellent points that John Warner makes in his galvanizing new book, More Than Wordsāwe give up too much conceptual ground. LLMs arenāt intelligent, either artificially or in any other way. They cannot āwriteā the papers that students coax out of them, because, as Warner argues, āLarge language models do not āwrite.ā They generate syntax. They do not think, feel, or experience anything. They are fundamentally incapable of judging truth, accuracy, or veracity.ā
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WILL SALETAN: Republicans Are Using the D.C. Plane Crash to Peddle Racism
IN THEIR FIRST TWO WEEKS since taking power, Donald Trump, JD Vance, and their allies in Congress are restoring a practice that the U.S. government tried to abolish more than half a century ago: officially sanctioned racial prejudice.
Last Wednesday night, 67 people died in a midair collision between a passenger jet and an Army helicopter near Reagan National Airport (DCA) in Washington, D.C. The next day, Trump showed up at the White House briefing room to blame the crash on a ādiversity pushā at the Federal Aviation Administration. He claimed that diversity, equity, and inclusion policies had sapped the agency of ānaturally talented geniuses.ā
JILL D. LAWRENCE: Terrible Nominees, Terrified Americans: Senators Could Actually Make a Difference This Month
ITāS TOUGH TO CHOOSE WHAT TO PANIC ABOUT most as Elon Musk, Americaās first unelected presidentāwho has so many foreign contacts and so much China business that the U.S. government has denied him several sensitive security clearancesāunilaterally shuts down agencies, fires thousands of federal employees, accesses and does who knows what with the personal data of millions of people, and takes over the $6 trillion federal payment system. All while Donald Trump was playing golf in Florida.
DALIBOR ROHAC: Democrats Have to Learn to Love Free Trade Again
TO SALVAGE WHAT WILL REMAIN of American alliances after President Trumpās second term, Democrats must become the party of free trade.
The current occupant of the White House seems willing to disrupt international trade and hurt Americaās closest partners in pursuit of nebulous policy goals. Canada, which has just narrowly avoided being hit by a 25 percent tariff, is neither responsible for nor can do much about the fentanyl crisis in the United States, nor about its broken immigration system. The European Union, with its chronic trade surplus, might be next on the presidentās enemies list.
šØOVERTIMEšØ
šµOn the Jukeboxā¦šµ Sunshine On Leith - Coldplay ft. Laura Mvula (Radio 2 Piano Room) and this rendition of All My Love is worth it, too. Iāve never been steered wrong by BBC Radio 1 and 2ās studio recordings.
Congressman Don Beyerās town hallā¦ On the federal workforce. A constituent of his / reader of ours found this very valuable, and Beyer (a Bulwark contributor!) represents more federal employees than almost anyone. Joining him is Rob Shriver a former Acting Director of OPM who is managing director of "Civil Service Strong" at Democracy Forward. Listen and share.
FBI Agents Sue to Stop DOJā¦ from Creating List of Staff Involved in Trump Cases (Democracy Docket)
I tested DeepSeek against domestic AI chatbotsā¦ to see if Nvidia is screwed (Drew Magary, SFGate).
How to run greenā¦ Hannah Yoest on sustainability at the end of the world (Hellcat).
How Trump Is Turning Canadaā¦ Into America's Ukraine (Daniel Drezner).
It Sure Looks Like Kash Patel Lied to Congressā¦ Patel appeared to mislead senators about the āJ6 Prison Choir.ā Republicans donāt care. (Mother Jones)
Meanwhile, in Floridaā¦ āMan eating 6-9 pounds of butter and cheese a day develops ācholesterol handsā while on carnivore dietā (KTVU)
āThe whole thing is nutsā¦ā JVL on the teevee talking the defrocked priestās salute.
Olympic City remembersā¦ figure skaters, parents, and coaches lost in DC plane crash (KOAA)
Lost Tablesā¦ A fraternity brother / reader shares this neat look back on a forgotten part of Saint Louisās boozy history: Clarkās at SLU. (I worked at Humphreyās, which was sort of a successor in more ways that one.)
Itās Waste Management Weekā¦ The golf tournament named after the trash conglomerate has, perhaps appropriately, famously trashy fans.
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