Jay Griffiths writes: Sound is life. The sound of God’s voice created life, in Christian understanding. In the womb, sound is the first of the senses to apprehend the world beyond the body: a fetus is able to hear their mother’s voice, while a chick in the egg hears the song of its parent birds. Hearing is thought to be the last sense to leave us in our dying, and we speak of the silence of the grave. Healing has…
Aaron Blake writes: We don’t know why the Trump administration suddenly reversed itself this summer on its promises to release extensive new documents about the Jeffrey Epstein case. What we do know is that the administration has responded to a bipartisan outcry over its handling of the matter by repeatedly doing things that might seem on paper like significant steps toward transparency, but have proven to be far less than meets the eye. Many of them point to what a…
Yair Rosenberg writes: “The story we got about World War II is all wrong,” a guest told Tucker Carlson on his podcast two weeks ago. “I think that’s right,” replied Carlson. The guest, a Cornell chemistry professor named David Collum, then spelled out what he meant: “One can make the argument we should have sided with Hitler and fought Stalin.” Such sentiments might sound shocking to the uninitiated, but they are not to Carlson’s audience. In fact, the notion that…
The Independent reports: The right-wing think tank behind Project 2025 is now crafting new policy suggestions, including an incentive for married couples to have more children, according to a report. Following its controversial 900-page blueprint for President Donald Trump’s second term, the Heritage Foundation is now drafting a new position paper that includes calls for a “Manhattan Project to restore the nuclear family,” referring to the program to develop the first nuclear weapons, the Washington Post reported. The forthcoming paper,…
Eoin Higgins writes: Speaking to a crowd of over 6,500 in Portland, Maine, on Labor Day, Democratic Senate hopeful Graham Platner offered his assessment of the American political system. “We do not live in a system that is broken,” said Platner, a 40-year-old oyster farmer and combat veteran who aims to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins in 2026. “We live in a system that is functioning exactly as it is intended.” Platner was appearing alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as…
Bill McKibben writes: As I watch the Trump White House and its orbiting debris field of oddballs and charlatans, a single long-ago movie scene keeps returning to my mind. In “Annie Hall,” waiting in line in a movie theatre, Woody Allen’s character becomes irritated by a guy behind him, an academic blowhard pontificating to his date about the culture. When he mentions the Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan, Allen erupts and then, in a delightful spectacle of comeuppance, produces McLuhan…
The New York Times reports: California, Oregon and Washington announced plans on Wednesday to form a “health alliance” that would coordinate vaccine recommendations for the three states. The alliance is intended to provide residents with scientific data about vaccine safety and efficacy, and to issue guidance on vaccines for respiratory illnesses like Covid and the flu, as well as an array of childhood immunizations. The move comes at a time of unparalleled turmoil at the Centers for Disease Control and…
How many AI queries does it take to use up a regular plastic water bottle’s worth of water? kieferpix/iStock/Getty Images Plus By Leo S. Lo, University of Virginia Artificial intelligence systems are thirsty, consuming as much as 500 milliliters of water – a single-serving water bottle – for each short conversation a user has with the GPT-3 version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT system. They use roughly the same amount of water to draft a 100-word email message. That figure includes the…
The Associated Press reports: The largest professional organization of scholars studying genocide said Monday that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The determination by the International Association of Genocide Scholars — which has around 500 members worldwide, including a number of Holocaust experts — could serve to further isolate Israel in global public opinion and adds to a growing chorus of organizations that have used the term for Israel’s actions in Gaza. Israel rejects the accusation and called the resolution…
Politico reports: A federal judge has declared President Donald Trump’s use of military troops in Los Angeles illegal, barring the Pentagon from using National Guard members and Marines from performing police functions, like arrests and crowd control. In a 52-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer warned that Trump appears intent on “creating a national police force with the President as its chief.” Trump billed his deployment of troops to Los Angeles, starting in early June, as a way of…
Michael Scherer writes: Days after Attorney General Pam Bondi tried to put an end to the Justice Department’s revelations about Jeffrey Epstein, captains of the legal resistance gathered by Zoom. Norm Eisen, a former attorney for Barack Obama’s White House, had convened lawyers, Democratic communications strategists, a neoconservative Trump critic, and a former chair of the Michigan Democratic Party. This one was big, Eisen said from his parked car in Baltimore, where he had traveled for a lawsuit to overturn…
The Guardian reports: A group of the US’s leading climate scientists have compiled a withering review of a controversial Trump administration report that downplays the risks of the climate crisis, finding that the document is biased, riddled with errors and fails basic scientific credibility. More than 85 climate experts have contributed to a comprehensive 434-page report that excoriates a US Department of Energy (DOE) document written by five hand-picked fringe researchers that argues that global heating and its resulting consequences…
The Guardian reports: The arrest of a US army veteran who protested against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has raised alarms among legal experts and fellow veterans familiar with his service in Afghanistan. Bajun Mavalwalla II – a former army sergeant who survived a roadside bomb blast on a special operations mission in Afghanistan – was charged in July with “conspiracy to impede or injure officers” after joining a demonstration against federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in Spokane, Washington….
The Guardian reports: One of the world’s most prominent hedge fund billionaires has warned that rising inequality is turning the US into an autocratic state and condemned business leaders for failing to speak out against Donald Trump’s policies. Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, said “gaps in wealth” and a collapse in trust were driving “more extreme” policies in the US. Speaking to the Financial Times, the veteran financier said many western countries were affected by growing inequality, leading…