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Will AI avoid the ‘enshittification’ trap?

Will AI avoid the ‘enshittification’ trap?

Steven Levy writes: As companies like OpenAI get more powerful, and as they try to pay back their investors, will AI be prone to the erosion of value that seems endemic to the tech apps we use today? Writer and tech critic Cory Doctorow calls that erosion “enshittification.” His premise is that platforms like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and TikTok start out aiming to please users, but once the companies vanquish competitors, they intentionally become less useful to reap bigger profits….

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America is sliding toward illiteracy

America is sliding toward illiteracy

Idrees Kahloon writes: The past decade may rank as one of the worst in the history of American education. It marks a stark reversal from what was once a hopeful story. At the start of the century, American students registered steady improvement in math and reading. Around 2013, this progress began to stall out, and then to backslide dramatically. What exactly went wrong? The decline began well before the pandemic, so COVID-era disruptions alone cannot explain it. Smartphones and social…

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‘The greatest hunger catastrophe since the Great Depression’ as Americans brace for food stamps to run out

‘The greatest hunger catastrophe since the Great Depression’ as Americans brace for food stamps to run out

The Guardian reports: Two decades ago, Sara Carlson, then a mother of three, was newly single because of a traumatic event, and the US’s food stamp program, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), helped her feed her children with free food supplies. “I wouldn’t have been able to afford to live,” said Carlson, 45, who lives in Rochester, Minnesota, and now works as an operations manager for a wealth-management firm and serves on the board of Channel One…

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Majority of Black and Latino Americans feel like strangers in their own country, poll finds

Majority of Black and Latino Americans feel like strangers in their own country, poll finds

Axios reports: Black and Latino Americans are reporting record levels of alienation and pessimism about the nation’s direction, as President Trump tightens his focus on immigration enforcement and civil rights rollbacks, per a new poll. Why it matters: More Latinos and Black voters supported Trump in 2024 than in his two previous presidential runs, but early into his second term the sense of exclusion has deepened among communities of color. The big picture: Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction, fueled…

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Ten effective things citizens can do to make change in addition to attending a protest

Ten effective things citizens can do to make change in addition to attending a protest

A crowd gathered for a “No Kings” protest on October 18, 2025 in Anchorage, Alaska. Hasan Akbas/Anadolu via Getty Images By Shelley Inglis, Rutgers University What happens now? That may well be the question being asked by “No Kings” protesters, who marched, rallied and danced all over the nation on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025. Pro-democracy groups had aimed to encourage large numbers of Americans to demonstrate that “together we are choosing democracy.” They were successful, with crowds turning out for…

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After failing to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump prepares for war in Venezuela

After failing to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump prepares for war in Venezuela

Nancy A. Youssef, Gisela Salim-Peyer, and Jonathan Lemire write: As a naval aviator, Alvin Holsey trained to conduct missions that required precise targeting. For years, his job was to fly helicopters over potential targets and, using radar and other detectors, assess whether they posed a threat to the United States; if so, he had to determine whether to launch an attack. On September 2, Holsey, now an admiral leading the U.S. military’s southern command, was put in charge of a…

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Trump 2028 simply means the GOP has no viable successor for their octogenarian Dear Leader

Trump 2028 simply means the GOP has no viable successor for their octogenarian Dear Leader

  Ryan Holiday joins Tim Miller: Members of the administration, like Stephen Miller, who spend hours every day kissing Trump’s ass look so pathetic—but since the time of the ancients, courtiers have gone to great lengths to degrade themselves before the vain and vindictive. And one lesson for the ages is to not compromise with an extortionist: it will only lead to more extortion and more pressure because the extortionist wants everything. Meanwhile, Elon’s brain is broken, Peter Thiel spends…

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Federal judge orders Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino appear in her courtroom

Federal judge orders Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino appear in her courtroom

TPM reports: A Chicago federal judge on Friday demanded that CBP commander and federal escalation impresario Greg Bovino appear next week in her courtroom after he was accused of openly violating one of her orders. Attorneys in the case said on Thursday that Bovino had flung a canister of tear gas at a crowd of protestors in Chicago, days after he returned from a two-week absence due to a purported groin injury. They included an image and a link to…

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Humans have an internal lunar clock – but light pollution is disrupting it

Humans have an internal lunar clock – but light pollution is disrupting it

Flash Vector/Shutterstock By Stefano Arlaud, Queen Mary University of London Most animals, including humans, carry an internal lunar clock, tuned to the 29.5-day rhythm of the Moon. It guides sleep, reproduction and migration of many species. But in the age of artificial light, that ancient signal is fading – washed out by the glow of cities, screens and satellites. Just as the circadian rhythm keeps time with the 24-hour rotation of the Earth, many organisms also track the slower rhythm…

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As Palestinians agree to let technocrat committee run Gaza, an appeal for Marwan Barghouti’s release

As Palestinians agree to let technocrat committee run Gaza, an appeal for Marwan Barghouti’s release

The Guardian reports: The main Palestinian factions have said they have agreed that an independent committee of technocrats would take over the running of Gaza after Hamas said it had received “clear guarantees” from mediators that “the war has effectively ended”. A joint statement published on the Hamas website said the groups had agreed in a meeting in Cairo to hand “over the administration of the Gaza Strip to a temporary Palestinian committee composed of independent ‘technocrats’, which will manage…

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‘We estimate that nearly one million of Gaza’s 1.1 million olive trees have been destroyed’

‘We estimate that nearly one million of Gaza’s 1.1 million olive trees have been destroyed’

Mohamed Suleiman writes: The last time Hajj Suleiman Abdel-Nabi witnessed a normal olive harvest was three years ago. Days before the “ceasefire” went into effect on October 10, the 75-year-old farmer took a saw to what remains of his three-dunam (about three quarters of an acre) olive farm in southern Gaza’s Al-Mawasi area. Alongside the massive destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure wrought by Israel’s two-year war on Gaza, the toll on agriculture and farmland in the enclave has been…

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Robert Malley talks about the Gaza ceasefire and U.S. double standards on Israel

Robert Malley talks about the Gaza ceasefire and U.S. double standards on Israel

  For more on the state of the Gaza ceasefire and the future of Palestine, we speak with Robert Malley, co-author with Hussein Agha of the new book Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine. Malley is a veteran negotiator involved in previous U.S.-backed peace talks between Israel and Palestinian leadership. He says despite the many flaws in the Trump plan, including “deciding everything for Palestinians without Palestinians having a voice,” it has at least…

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The risks of letting Trump become paymaster for the military

The risks of letting Trump become paymaster for the military

Don Moynihan writes: President Trump’s personalist presidency is driven by a simple logic: protect friends and punish enemies. The shutdown encapsulates this worldview. Trump is cancelling spending in blue states and cities and firing employees in “Democrat programs.” Even more worrying: he is using the shutdown to woo our military and other armed agents, with the goal of turning them into loyal friends as he pursues “the enemy from within.” Trump says that he can determine if the armed forces…

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The Supreme Court is the last defense against Trump’s military police state. Will the court do its job?

The Supreme Court is the last defense against Trump’s military police state. Will the court do its job?

Claire O. Finkelstein, Brenner M. Fissell, Mitt Regan and Benjamin R. Farley write: The Supreme Court is poised to decide a potentially momentous question for U.S. democracy: can the president unilaterally deploy federal troops on U.S. soil over the objections of state governors? In Trump v. Illinois, the Supreme Court will soon decide whether to issue a stay of a district court’s injunction of the deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago. The government’s brief argues there is “no reason…

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