Akash Bobba’s Hindu parents came to New Jersey from India after his father, Jay, secured an H-1B visa. Akash wrote artificial intelligence models for Meta when he was 19 years old and interned with Palantir at 20. Luke Farritor was a senior at the University of Nebraska when he designed an AI program that made […]
In a marvelous phrase, Erich Heller credited Franz Kafka with having achieved “the most obscure lucidity in the history of literature.” Heller’s witty oxymoron could be applied with equal justice to the French writer Patrick Modiano, the author of roughly two dozen novels and novellas and winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature. When […]
Over at the group therapy session that is Slate magazine’s advice column, the latest liberal to lament their financial woes whines that after finally becoming a first-time homebuyer, “the absolute worst-case scenario happened.” Did Hurricane Helene wash the home away? Did the Palisades Fire burn it to the ground? Did a career criminal repeatedly released […]
In the wake of the tragic crash of American Airlines Flight 5342 with an Army Black Hawk helicopter over Washington, D.C., and the Learjet 55 crash in Philadelphia, I’m reminded of a plane crash during my time in the Afghanistan War and how a group of soldiers with whom I served barely escaped a terrible […]
“On most Sundays,” the rector of an Episcopal church told me last summer with a smile, “most of my congregation is pretty staunchly Episcopalian. But every now and then, they’re Baptists and they don’t know it.” This is what he meant: The Anglican tradition states that during the Eucharist, there is a “real presence” of […]
What is it about the Wild West that keeps us coming back for more? Surely the popular appeal of the Western, on the page, on the stage, and on the screen, derives at least in part from prurience — the ever-present blood, guts, and sex on prominent display in an untamed land. On top of […]
Some kinds of creativity are harder to capture on camera than others. Eureka moments are fairly easy to present in music or occasionally in art. Architecture can have its napkin sketch epiphanies, but the fundamental requirement of the profession is then to tweak these dreams to hold up floors and keep out rain, a process […]
Nuns, Sylvia Townsend Warner wrote in her historical novel The Corner That Held Them, set in a 14th-century English convent, are “beings who are, in any case, much less interesting when seen from above than when studied sideways.” The nun at the center of Australian writer Charlotte Wood’s new novel, the 2024 Booker Prize-shortlisted Stone […]
Although always popular, revisionist history is an area fraught with pitfalls. This is because, fundamentally, most historians are not idiots, and the standard version of history is more often than not broadly correct. Archives may be opened, errors corrected, and characters added to the storyline, but truly revolutionary reinterpretations, at least sane ones, are uncommon. […]
Bram Stoker’s Dracula begins with an unsettling journey. As Jonathan Harker crosses the Danube River, he remarks ominously, “The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions […]
One would think that after an election in which Democrats were thoroughly trounced on the matter of illegal immigration, their party might be looking for an opportunity to show it is capable of delivering law and order. However, that is not the case in Los Angeles, where Mayor Karen Bass, fresh off letting entire neighborhoods burn […]
The grownups in charge of the Democratic Party have made their share of errors and canoodled with extremists on all sorts of matters. However, in one regard, they’ve been pretty successful in keeping their party kind of normal: speaking about marriage and family as if they are good things. This has taken some effort by […]
I don’t think anybody quite understands what President Donald Trump is proposing in Gaza. At its most idealized form, anyway. Think of the territory reframed as a kind of Dubai. A sparkling, sprawling, high-rise fusion-mix of resort, conference center, Ferrari dealership, off-shore banking haven, yacht marina, and hotel spa. Gazans get rehoused while the futuristic […]
The Democratic Party is adrift in a second Trump era with little idea of where to go from here. That means Democratic governors have been left to come up with their own “resistance” messaging, and the results just keep getting weirder. Democratic governors are trying to boost their “resistance” bona fides by opposing President Donald […]
