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Elon Musk is on a collision course with Stephen Miller

Elon Musk is on a collision course with Stephen Miller

Andrew Prokop writes: A bitter public feud split the MAGA movement over the holidays, as supporters of high-skilled legal immigration like Elon Musk argued vociferously (and sometimes profanely) with the right’s immigration critics over the topic of H-1B visas. Musk, like many tech executives, strongly supports that program, which lets companies bring skilled foreign workers to the US for specific jobs — indeed, Musk said he once had such a visa himself. Critics on the right have long argued that it suppresses wages…

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How much do Democrats need to change?

How much do Democrats need to change?

Peter Slevin writes: The mood among Democrats on a December morning in the Wisconsin state capitol was celebratory. Ten Assembly candidates—among them a school administrator, a tavern owner, an accountant, and a county politician—had flipped Republican seats after the state Supreme Court threw out a heavily gerrymandered map. “I am super excited. Who else is super excited?” Representative Lisa Subeck, the caucus chair, said. Some of the newly elected spoke about what they hope to deliver: affordable housing, broadband, clean…

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Turkey’s jailed PKK leader is reported to suggest he might be ready to end insurgency

Turkey’s jailed PKK leader is reported to suggest he might be ready to end insurgency

Reuters reports: The jailed leader of Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, has been quoted as indicating he may be prepared to call for militants to lay down arms, after a key ally of President Tayyip Erdogan urged him to end the group’s decades-old insurgency. Two parliamentarians from the pro-Kurdish DEM Party met Ocalan for talks on his island prison on Saturday, in the first such visit nearly in a decade. DEM requested the visit after a key…

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Behind the dismantling of Hezbollah — decades of Israeli intelligence

Behind the dismantling of Hezbollah — decades of Israeli intelligence

The New York Times reports: Right up until he was assassinated, Hassan Nasrallah did not believe that Israel would kill him. As he hunkered inside a Hezbollah fortress 40 feet underground on Sept. 27, his aides urged him to go to a safer location. Mr. Nasrallah brushed it off, according to intelligence collected by Israel and shared later with Western allies. In his view, Israel had no interest in a full-scale war. What he did not realize was that Israeli…

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Facebook and Instagram to unleash AI-generated ‘users’ no one asked for

Facebook and Instagram to unleash AI-generated ‘users’ no one asked for

Rolling Stone reports: Since burning through tens of billions of dollars on its flop “metaverse” concept and laying off thousands in the aftermath of that gamble, tech giant Meta has strained to reinvent itself as a company poised to capitalize on the overhyped AI revolution. Last year, for example, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled animated AI chatbots modeled as alter egos of celebrities including Snoop Dogg, MrBeast, Paris Hilton, and Kendall Jenner. But licensing the voices and likenesses of famous people did little to endear Meta to the younger demographics it wants to turn…

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Large Language Models don’t actually model human language

Large Language Models don’t actually model human language

The Register reports: In May, Sam Altman, CEO of $80-billion-or-so OpenAI, seemed unconcerned about how much it would cost to achieve the company’s stated goal. “Whether we burn $500 million a year or $5 billion – or $50 billion a year – I don’t care,” he told students at Stanford University. “As long as we can figure out a way to pay the bills, we’re making artificial general intelligence. It’s going to be expensive.” Statements like this have become commonplace…

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An archeological revolution is transforming our image of human freedoms

An archeological revolution is transforming our image of human freedoms

David Wengrow writes: Contemporary historians tell us that, by the start of the Common Era, approximately three-quarters of the world’s population were living in just four empires (we’ve all heard of the Romans and the Han; fewer of us, perhaps, of the Parthians and Kushans). Just think about this for a minute. If true, then it means that the great majority of people who ever existed were born, lived and died under imperial rule. Such claims are hardly original, but…

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Jimmy Carter elevated human rights above Realpolitik

Jimmy Carter elevated human rights above Realpolitik

Daniel Fried writes: Official Washington and most of US academia regarded the Soviet Bloc­­—communist-dominated Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea east of West Germany—as permanent and, though this was seldom made explicit, stabilizing. Talk of “liberating” those countries was regarded as illusion, delusion, or cant. Maintaining US-Soviet stability, under this view of Cold War realism, required accepting Europe’s realities, as these were then seen. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Final Act of Helsinki, a sort…

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Jimmy Carter on Israeli apartheid and why U.S. political leaders avoid taking action

Jimmy Carter on Israeli apartheid and why U.S. political leaders avoid taking action

Jimmy Carter: "The word 'apartheid' is exactly accurate…they are absolutely & totally separated…the Israelis completely dominate the life of the Palestinian people." "There are powerful political forces in America that prevent any objective analysis…"pic.twitter.com/58qIJBWcmy — Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) December 29, 2024

Unheralded environmentalist: Jimmy Carter’s green legacy

Unheralded environmentalist: Jimmy Carter’s green legacy

Kai Bird writes: The angry Alaskans gathered in Fairbanks to burn the president’s effigy. It was early December 1978 and President Jimmy Carter was that unpopular in Alaska. A few days earlier Carter had issued an unusual executive order, designating 56 million acres of Alaskan wilderness as a national monument. He did so unilaterally, using a little known 1906 Antiquities Act that ostensibly gave the president the executive power to designate buildings or small plots of historical sites on federal…

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German politicians decry Elon Musk’s AfD support as election ‘interference’

German politicians decry Elon Musk’s AfD support as election ‘interference’

Reuters reports: U.S. billionaire Elon Musk drew criticism from German politicians from the government and opposition on Sunday for an opinion piece he wrote backing the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) which they deemed “intrusive” outside influence. The support of the AfD from Musk, who is set to serve U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s administration as an outside adviser, comes as Germans are set to vote on Feb. 23 after a coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz collapsed. The commentary…

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How Trump went from backing a TikTok ban to backing off

How Trump went from backing a TikTok ban to backing off

The New York Times reports: Four years ago, President Donald J. Trump denounced TikTok, the Chinese-owned video sharing app, as a threat to America’s national security. This week, as Mr. Trump prepares to retake the White House, he called it a “unique medium for freedom of expression.” The comment was part of a brief he filed to the Supreme Court on Friday, asking the justices to pause a ban on TikTok set to take effect next month so that he…

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Mexico, betting Trump is bluffing on tariffs, sees an opportunity

Mexico, betting Trump is bluffing on tariffs, sees an opportunity

The New York Times reports: Like much of the Mexican business world, Daniel Córdova finds himself grappling with an enormous variable looming across the American border: the imminent return of Donald J. Trump to the White House. Mr. Córdova oversees a factory outside the city of Monterrey that makes heating and air-conditioning units for Trane, an American company. The last time Mr. Trump was president, he unleashed a trade war against China that proved beneficial to Mexican industry. Companies that…

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The extraordinary memories of food-caching birds

The extraordinary memories of food-caching birds

Matthew Hutson writes: A while ago, I searched for a beard trimmer in my bedroom. I spent probably forty-five minutes looking in every likely location at least twice, and every unlikely location at least once. I swore up a storm; the trimmer never turned up. I’ve played similar games with pants. There’s a reason for the burgeoning market in electronic tags that track your belongings. Our poor memories can seem mystifying, especially when you consider animals. This time of year,…

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