currincy

I reviewed … “The Star-Spangled Banner” for Pitchfork?

It is a big, beautiful, warped, and wild expanse, full of landscapes and cities and communities that constantly twisted my perception of what this country actually was and is and can be. One of the United States' real governance problems is its size, how diverse its locations and situations are; that is also a boon, because, even after 250 years, it remains so undefined and heterodox.

currincy

I reviewed … “The Star-Spangled Banner” for Pitchfork?

It is a big, beautiful, warped, and wild expanse, full of landscapes and cities and communities that constantly twisted my perception of what this country actually was and is and can be. One of the United States' real governance problems is its size, how diverse its locations and situations are; that is also a boon, because, even after 250 years, it remains so undefined and heterodox. There's so much to figure out but also so much space in which to do it.

whyisthisinteresting

The Saturday Selection, Vol. 109

The Blue Line is running. The trains arrive. The system works. But the people maintaining it are still flown in from China, the contract that keeps it running is approaching expiration, and there is no public maintenance budget.

noahpinion.blog

America needs liberal nationalism back

I believe that in the 20th century, under the leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the United States devised the single best governing ideology that any country has ever created: liberal nationalism.

noahpinion.blog

Are you tired of the Trump era yet?

In his second term, the DDOS is actual policy; Trump inflicts real damage on such a broad array of U.S. institutions, with such incredible speed, that the news can't keep track of them all.

noahpinion.blog

Is China's soft power really rising, or is America's just crumbling?

China is a deeply repressive nation, with universal surveillance, fine-grained media and speech control, and ubiquitous censorship. That's the kind of society where only anodyne, cautious artistry can flourish, except in tiny subcultural pockets too small for the government to worry about.

platformer.news

Why Anthropic’s new model has cybersecurity experts rattled

Given the rate of AI progress, it will not be long before such capabilities proliferate, potentially beyond actors who are committed to deploying them safely. The fallout — for economies, public safety, and national security — could be severe.

3quarksdaily.com

The Achilles Heel of Trump’s Mafia-State Authoritarianism

What is different today is Trump's view that the exercise of state power is no longer in need of ideological excuses, that he possesses a king-like divine right to do as he pleases, unconstrained by norms or law, which people must simply accept as legitimate.

dwarkesh.com

I’m glad the Anthropic fight is happening now

Once the technical capacity for mass surveillance and political suppression exists, the only thing standing between us and an authoritarian surveillance state is the political expectation that this is not something we do here.

3quarksdaily.com

Finland Is Designing Europe’s Sovereignty

For more than a century, Finnish architecture and design has functioned as an instrument of nation-building. It supported the country's independence process, then its consolidation as a highly functioning trust society, and finally the development of its comprehensive defense strategy.

platformer.news

The shallow impact of India’s AI summit

The US government still can't think beyond "winning." The rest of the world is still thinking too small