With “deepfakes” and generative artificial intelligence improving exponentially, the internet may soon become filled with more thoroughly convincing lies than ever before. What new dangers will arise? Who will protect us? “As AI-generated deepfakes are being used to spread false information in elections around the world,” NPR reported in February, “policymakers, tech companies and governments are trying to […]
The Jazz Age may have ended in 1929, according to F. Scott Fitzgerald, who called it an age of miracles, an age of art, an age of excess — one that once people lost confidence, “it didn’t take long for the flimsy structure to settle earthward.” However, according to social historian Michael Wolraich, there was […]
It goes without saying that Abraham Lincoln was one of America’s greatest presidents. The strengths he brought to the job included intelligence, inspired leadership, unmatched rhetorical power, and a steady hand in dire times. No political leader is perfect, of course. Lincoln made mistakes during his astonishing journey from a small log cabin near Hodgenville, […]
Seven decades on from his death, George Orwell is alive and well in publishing. Last year alone saw a slew of new releases about the man and his fictive worlds. There was Orwell: The New Life, a second and now definitive biography by Orwell authority D.J. Taylor. Masha Karp’s George Orwell and Russia explored the […]
“I saw a Rohmer film once,” said Gene Hackman in Arthur Penn’s classic mid-’70s neo-noir Night Moves. “It was kind of like watching paint dry.” Funny as it is, this line is the cheapest of cheap shots — in part because Penn’s movie, starring the moody, recalcitrant Hackman as Detective Harry Moseby, is itself so […]
“She made vows to me,” intones Roy Tillman, Jon Hamm’s brutal, chilling North Dakota sheriff in the fifth and most recent season of Fargo, Noah Hawley’s FX television show modeled on the 1996 film by Ethan and Joel Coen. “A pledge, in sickness and in health. Consider it a debt unpaid, leaving me in limbo. […]
I was still at work in my office when the texts started coming in. “Are you watching this?” they all asked. “Get on Twitter immediately!” some suggested. The “this” that the messages referred to was the disastrous press conference held last Thursday night by President (as of this writing) Joe Biden, where he seemed confused […]
The Odysseus lunar lander made a historic moon landing Thursday afternoon, becoming the first private spacecraft to do so and marking the first U.S. moon landing in more than 50 years. “I know this was a nail-biter, but we are on the surface, and we are transmitting. Welcome to the moon,” Intuitive Machines CEO Stephen...
The New York attorney general’s office is asking the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to double down on its warnings and discourage the use of an asthma drug. “The New York Office of the Attorney General writes to encourage the FDA to address the dangers of montelukast, particularly to the most vulnerable population—minor children—and protect...
The U.S. has charged four foreign nationals with shipping Iranian-made weapon parts to the Houthi rebels in Yemen, a shipment that was seized by Navy SEALS in a daring raid last month off the coast of Somalia. The Department of Justice (DOJ) unsealed an indictment Thursday against Muhammad Pahlawan, Mohammad Mazhar, Ghufran Ullah and Izhar...