Author: nick

What is hegemony? Is the United States losing it? Michael Brenner for Consortium News HEGEMONY. “Hegemony, Hegemon everywhere — but not a ‘definition’ in sight.” Talk about American foreign policy is fixated on the word — omnipresent in all manner of discourse: academic, journalistic, political. It shares characteristics with other trendy terms that have won favor and fervor — e.g. existential or transgender — without any agreement on what real-world phenomena they refer to.  We don’t debate their precise meaning; instead, we make a facile assumption that any person’s individual understanding of its meaning is the implicitly genuine one —…

U.S. households are now 18.79 trillion dollars in debt. In 1980, U.S. households were just 1.4 trillion dollars in debt. Over the past several decades we have witnessed a household debt binge that is unlike anything that we have ever witnessed in our entire history. But if consumers could handle that debt load, there wouldn’t be such a high level of concern. Unfortunately, just like we witnessed prior to the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, Americans are getting behind on their debts at a staggering rate. This isn’t going to end well, but of course many of you know…

As the Trump administration continues its deportation crackdown, it’s finding new ways to make it harder for people to immigrate to the United States legally.  On Thursday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a policy memo requiring anyone seeking an adjustment of immigration status to do so “outside the United States,” unless they qualify for “extraordinary circumstances.” This policy—which is effective immediately but lacks the force of law, as it’s a guidance document—would be a sharp departure from the current process that allows those here on temporary status to apply for permanent residency without leaving the country. According to…

One of America’s top AI companies—Anthropic—refused to sign off on a contract unless the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) promised not to use its technology to power autonomous killer robots or carry out domestic mass surveillance. So, the Pentagon accused it of trying to undermine U.S. sovereignty by dictating how we fight our wars. Defense Undersecretary Emil Michael put it plainly in a March 2026 interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box: “We realized we are dependent on this one provider who wants to insert their policy preferences in the middle of an operation.” Anthropic sued the Pentagon for labeling it a…

I’m delighted to report that Prof. Ronald Den Otter (Cal Poly) will be guest-blogging this week about this new book. The publisher’s summary: In contrast to recent efforts to restrict students by putting more power in the hands of parents and school officials, Ronald C. Den Otter makes a bold and rigorously argued case for respecting the autonomy of students and expanding their free-speech rights. In recent years, the debate over student speech has roiled college campuses and elicited a wave of books and articles, from both the Right and the Left, over what speech is permissible and who should…

From Judge Thomas O. Farrish (D. Conn.) last Monday in Conservation Law Foundation, Inc. v. Shell Oil Co.: The defendants, Shell Oil Company and others (“Defendants”), have moved the Court for an order compelling the plaintiff, Conservation Law Foundation, Inc. (“CLF”), to produce materials on which its expert witness, Dr. Naomi Oreskes, relied upon in producing her expert witness report…. The parties … had resolved all issues identified in the letter briefs except for “their dispute concerning Defendants’ request for the prompts Dr. Oreskes used in conducting her AI analysis and outputs.” … CLF first protests that artificial intelligence prompts…

A Review of This is Not Real Life by Lauren Southern Before the social media platforms Twitter and Facebook took the extraordinary step of banning a sitting U.S. president, before recommendation engines decided who deserved an audience, before the internet hardened into a set of gated timelines where each tribe watches its own curated reality, there was a brief, chaotic era of online media that felt radically open. A loose coalition of independent journalists, pundits, comedians, and provocateurs built a parallel public sphere alongside (and often against) the mainstream media. The barrier to entry was low: a camera, an opinion, and the…

Israel is now saying it will sue The New York Times as Zionists continue their days-long freakout over the outlet’s reporting on the systemic rape of Palestinian captives in Israeli prisons. And Other Notes Reading by Tim Foley: ❖ Israel is now saying it will sue The New York Times as Zionists continue their days-long freakout over the outlet’s reporting on the systemic rape of Palestinian captives in Israeli prisons. Israel apologists aren’t shrieking about the New York Times report because they believe Israel was lied about, they’re shrieking because they’d assumed it’s the Times’ job to administer propaganda for Israel. It’s…

Meet the new Leo, same as the old Leo: On Monday, Pope Leo XIV dropped his first encyclical, Magnificas Humanitas, about how humanity can marshal the tools of AI to serve good and Godly ends and about how we humans can safeguard against its worst effects. Real ones know that Pope Leo’s choice of name is most likely a reference to Pope Leo XIII, who navigated the church through the choppy waters of the end of the 19th century, during the industrial revolution (and composed one of my favorite prayers following a vision of Satan, in which Leo foresaw that…

Photo by Dan Farrell When I was a graduate student in philosophy at Columbia University, I wrote my doctoral thesis in part about Ernst Gombrich. He very generously commented at some length on my description of his claims. Then, near the end of his life, I did for Artforum the last full interview of him. And so I now regret that I never asked him what always puzzled me, the significance of his astonishing early essay “Meditations on a Hobby Horse.” In that account, he describes in some detail the way that a child may treat a simple stick figure…