Author: nick

[ad_1] Alexander Rodchenko and Lilya Brik, Books (Please) in All Branches of Knowledge, 1924. (Public domain) A few recent AI queries 1) I strained my back lifting a bag of potting soil. What now? 2) Is autarky possible in the U.K? 3) The gauge on our gas boiler is in the red zone. Will it blow up? 4) Did Fritz Lang like Joseph Losey’s 1951 remake of his film M? 5) Can frogs survive in the pond on the terrace of our 2nd floor flat in Norwich? (See answers at end of column.) AI then and now When Chat GPT…

[ad_1] U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said in his keynote address to the graduating class of Yeshiva University on May 28, “I want you to know I’m not a Zionist because I’m Jewish.” It’s worth noting that Huckabee is a Southern Baptist minister from Arkansas and is the first non-ethnically Jewish U.S. ambassador to Israel since 2011. Huckabee continued, “I’m a Zionist and an unapologetic one because I believe the Bible.” Many American evangelical Zionists, including by his own admission here, Southern Baptist Huckabee, believe that the current state of Israel formed in 1948 are the Jews of the…

[ad_1] Musk giving a Roman (fascist) salute at the second inauguration of Donald Trump before saying “My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured.” Public Domain. You can’t have capitalism without racism. –Malcolm X Elon Musk is less an aberration than the grotesque byproduct of a capitalist order that converts inequality into virtue, exploitation into spectacle, and mistakes its own deepest failures for its greatest successes. The media frenzy surrounding the prospect of Musk becoming the world’s first trillionaire is not a celebration of human progress or individual initiative. It…

[ad_1] This morning in the Court I heard Justice Kagan hand down Hunter v. United States. As she announced it, I thought the Court reached a consensus ruling on a criminal procedure issue. But at the end, she said that Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett wrote separately. My immediate thought was “they have too much time on their hands and need to grant more petitions.” But as I read through the decision, I realized how this case reflects the cost of near-unanimity. Of the eight member majority, only Justice Kagan and Chief Justice Roberts did not write separately. There were two…

[ad_1] Donald Trump’s second term has precipitated a tsunami of criticism from Democrats over his foreign policy. Yet when it comes to Washington’s efforts to dominate Latin America and the Caribbean, the substantive dispute – if there is any substance remaining, once stripped of partisan bickering – is less about ends than means. Beneath the rhetoric of inter-party conflict lies a broad bipartisan consensus in favor of promoting US hemispheric hegemony and crushing governments that resist it – with Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua at the forefront. While Democrats frequently portray Trump as reckless, they generally accept the underlying premises of…

[ad_1] Yesterday, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down a pretext that the feds have used to nullify the constitutional rights of more than fifty million Americans. The Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibited gun ownership by anyone who is “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.”  That law was a Damocles Sword that created a pretext for the feds to forcibly disarm and imprison up to 10% of the American public. The court’s landmark decision overturned a conviction by Ali Hemani, a Texan whose home was searched in 2022 by the FBI “after his family had come…

[ad_1] Fictional Truths I have photographed many mid-20th-century artists; famous, interesting and artful. Those voices from my past haunt me like echoes from an asylum. Over time they have become a menagerie of mirages, one thousand fleeting floaters in the eyes. Maybe I am lost in a forgotten time a forgotten place in time but not in mind. My archives have revealed a life behind the camera. Pages alphabetized all in rows; glowing celluloid images reimagined in dreams. They fulfill and linger in my minds like a caress-able bevy of pillowy cygnets floating atop an entire planets estuaries. My portrait…

[ad_1] Twelve score and ten years ago, the 56 signatories to the Declaration of Independence made a break in history. They signed their death warrants on July 4, 1776, to secure unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, i.e., the opportunity to march to your own drummer without fear of domestic predation or foreign aggression—the summit of civilization. The end of government and civil society was to be justice, making everyone’s station in life correspond to character and accomplishments, simpliciter. Justice was to be promoted by the Constitution’s separation of powers and checks and balances to prevent…

[ad_1] Three Cheers for Kevin Warsh's Task Forces [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] Iran Agreement May Be Dud, But Trump Is Getting His Way [ad_2] Source link