Forty Years After ‘The Day After'
Plus: The Battle to Control Wisconsin Elections
Recently in The Bulwark:
CHARLIE SYKES: Mike Lee Refuses to Take the L
ATMA 🎧: How True to History Does Historical Fiction Need to Be?
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A.B. STODDARD: The Day My Father Scared America
MY FATHER HAD A STORY TO TELL that no one wanted to hear. He was repeatedly warned not to, even by the White House. But he wouldn’t retreat until he had dragged President Reagan, and the whole country, through the simulation of nuclear war.
Forty years ago last night, 100 million viewers (out of roughly 234 million Americans) tuned in to The Day After on ABC, making it the most-watched movie in television history. The Nielsen ratings showed that 62 percent of TVs in use on the night of Sunday, November 20, 1983 were tuned in to the movie. And nearly every American had heard about it.
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BILL LUEDERS: The Battle to Control Wisconsin Elections.
DURING A NOVEMBER 8 APPEARANCE on The Coach Mel Show—a podcast hosted by an election denier and QAon supporter named Melody Jennings—guest Brett Galaszewski, a member of the right-wing youth group Turning Point Action and a local Republican party official, advised the show’s listeners on how to help win the critical state of Wisconsin in the 2024 election.
Galaszewski, who serves as vice chair of the Milwaukee County GOP (“the home party of the Republican National Convention happening next year”), urged viewers to do three things: join the county party’s newly formed “Election Integrity Committee,” become a poll worker, and push to get the state’s top elections official removed from office.
BRENT ORRELL: How AI with ‘Theory of Mind’ Could Help in the Workplace.
RECENT ADVANCES IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE demonstrate its growing, and somewhat surprising, potential to imitate sophisticated reasoning tasks previously thought to be reserved to human beings. A new study from researchers at Google, Google DeepMind, the University of Southern California, the University of Chicago, and Carnegie Mellon University reveals progress in developing an AI capacity for theory of mind (ToM)—the ability to infer from nonverbal cues what the people you interact with might be thinking. The direction of this research suggests we may be getting close to seeing machines with a functional ToM, and that may turn out to be a very good thing for workers.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Happy Tuesday! I’ll see you all in the chat tonight for our replay of last week’s live event at the Klein Theatre. Be there at 8 p.m. Eastern. Be there or be square!
It’s that time of year for Overtime readers to share their favorite recipes in….
How to De-Escalate Conflict… In Congress or at Your Thanksgiving Table.
Kyle Rittenhouse’s new book isn’t about the truth…. It’s about power, writes Max Burns at MSNBC.
Right-Wing ‘Moms for Liberty’ Organizer… Is a Convicted Sex Offender.
Why a road on Florida’s Gulf Coast… is named after a newspaper in Ohio.
Though Much is Taken, Much Abides… Remembering Jack Pruden, 1945-2023.
Pouring Cheese on Icy Roads in… Where Else? Wisconsin.
Meet the new President of Argentina… Who is almost beyond parody, and perhaps loves dogs more than one should.
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