Rethinking A.I.

The Fever Dream of Imminent ‘Superintelligence’ Is Finally Breaking

GPT-5, OpenAI’s latest artificial intelligence system, was supposed to be a game-changer, the culmination of billions of dollars of investment and nearly three years of work. Sam Altman, the company’s chief executive, implied that GPT-5 could be tantamount to artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I. — A.I. that is as smart and as flexible as any human expert.

Instead, as I have written, the model fell short. Within hours of its release, critics found all kinds of baffling errors: It failed some simple math questions, couldn’t count reliably and sometimes provided absurd answers to old riddles. Like its predecessors, the A.I. model still hallucinates (though at a lower rate) and is plagued by questions around its reliability. Although some people have been impressed, few saw it as a quantum leap, and nobody believed it was A.G.I. Many users asked for the old model back.

GPT-5 is a step forward, but nowhere near the A.I. revolution many had expected. That is bad news for the companies and investors who placed substantial bets on the technology. And it demands a rethink of government policies and investments that were built on wildly overinflated expectations. The current strategy of merely making A.I. bigger is deeply flawed — scientifically, economically and politically. Many things from regulation to research strategy must be rethought. One of the keys to this may be training and developing A.I. in ways inspired by the cognitive sciences.

Fundamentally, people like Mr. Altman, the Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei and countless other tech leaders and investors had put far too much faith into a speculative and unproven hypothesis called scaling: the idea that training A.I. models on ever more data using ever more hardware would eventually lead to A.G.I., or even a “superintelligence” that surpasses humans.

However, as I warned in a 2022 essay titled “Deep Learning Is Hitting a Wall,” so-called scaling laws aren’t physical laws of the universe like gravity, but hypotheses based on historical trends. Large language models, which power systems like GPT-5, are nothing more than souped-up statistical regurgitation machines, so they will continue to stumble into problems around truth, hallucinations and reasoning. Scaling would not bring us to the holy grail of A.G.I.

Many in the tech industry were hostile to my predictions. Mr. Altman ridiculed me as a “mediocre deep learning skeptic” and last year claimed “there is no wall.” Elon Musk shared a meme lampooning my essay.

It now seems I was right. Adding more data to large language models, which are trained to produce text by learning from vast databases of human text, helps them improve only to a degree. Even significantly scaled, they still don’t fully understand the concepts they are exposed to — which is why they sometimes botch answers or generate ridiculously incorrect drawings.

Scaling worked for a while — previous generations of GPT models made impressive advancements to their predecessors. But luck started to run out over the last year. Mr. Musk’s A.I. system, Grok 4, released in July, had 100 times as much training as Grok 2 had but it was only moderately better. Meta’s jumbo-size Llama 4 model, much larger than its predecessor, was mostly also viewed as a failure. As many now see, GPT-5 shows decisively that scaling has lost steam.

The chances of A.G.I.’s arrival by 2027 now seem remote. The government has let A.I. companies lead a charmed life with almost zero regulation. It now ought to enact legislation that addresses costs and harms unfairly offloaded onto the public — from misinformation to deepfakes, “A.I. slop” content, cybercrime, copyright infringement, mental health and energy usage.

Moreover, governments and investors should strongly support research investments outside of scaling. The cognitive sciences (including psychology, child development, philosophy of mind and linguistics) teach us that intelligence is about more than mere statistical mimicry and suggest three promising ideas for developing A.I. that is reliable enough to be trustworthy, with a much richer intelligence.

by Gary Marcus, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Maria Mavropoulou/Getty
[ed. See also: GPT-5: Overdue, overhyped and underwhelming. And that’s not the worst of it. (MoAI):]

***

"The real news is a breaking study from Arizona State University that fully vindicates what I have told you for nearly 30 years—and more recently what Apple told you—about the core weakness of LLMs: their inability to generalize broadly. (...)

And, crucially, the failure to generalize adequately outside distribution tells us why all the dozens of shots on goal at building “GPT-5 level models” keep missing their target. It’s not an accident. That failing is principled.

That’s exactly what it means to hit a wall, and exactly the particular set of obstacles I described in my most notorious (and prescient) paper, in 2022. Real progress on some dimensions, but stuck in place on others.

Ultimately, the idea that scaling alone might get us to AGI is a hypothesis.

No hypothesis has ever been given more benefit of the doubt, nor more funding. After half a trillion dollars in that direction, it is obviously time to move on. The disappointing performance of GPT-5 should make that enormously clear."

For Bill Belichick’s Debut, UNC Came to Party — But Got a Buzzkill Instead

Chapel Hill, N.C. — At least the party was fun, right?

Right?

It better have been, for what came after: North Carolina, high on nine months’ worth of Bill Belichick-induced hope, being completely humiliated, 48-14, by TCU in a prime-time Labor Day opener.

Not only is that the most points UNC has ever allowed in a season opener, it’s also the most points Belichick has ever allowed as a head coach.

“Look, they just outplayed us. They out-coached us,” said a red-faced Belichick from behind a postgame podium Monday night. “I mean, they were just better than we were tonight.”

That’s a tough truth to swallow, especially considering the larger circumstances. Ever since December, when the Tar Heels pushed their chips to the center on a 73-year-old who’d never coached a game in college, the spotlight has been on this one night. On B-Day — Belichick Day, the day when the six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach would signal a new era of football in Chapel Hill.

Which is why, understandably, UNC threw the pregame party to end all pregames. Everything, on 10, everywhere. Even on the fringes of town — in parking lots, on Franklin Street — you had fans tailgating in crevices and alleys, smoking cigars while sitting in baby blue picnic chairs, the soft thud of bean bags slapping against cornhole boards around every bend. Closer to campus, fraternity ragers spilled into the streets, while gigantic banners — like one that read “What the f— is a Horned Frog?” — hung in the background. And the soundtrack to it all? Dua Lipa’s “Levitating,” the pop star’s apt lyrics reverberating throughout fraternity court: “I can take you for a ride…”

STRONG pregame vibes in Chapel Hill pic.twitter.com/fMUjdqTHWe
— Brendan Marks (@BrendanRMarks) September 1, 2025

Meanwhile, at He’s Not Here — one of UNC’s most popular bars, famous for its 32-ounce blue cups — liquid courage flowed freely hours before kickoff. “This is like the Duke game!” hollered one fan, barely able to move through the masses after the three empty cups in his grasp. Clearly, plenty of the season ticket-holders who signed up for the Belichick experience wound up here, elbow to elbow, marinating in pregame enthusiasm. Another late-arriving customer, seeing the beer line wrapping outside the bar and down a black metal staircase, had to talk himself into even attempting to buy a drink: “Lord, have mercy.”

By that point, two and a half hours before everything unraveled, the buzz had migrated to the Old Well, the iconic drinking fountain that serves as a UNC emblem. As part of Belichick’s push to elevate Tar Heels football, the coach said he wanted to bring back certain elements of the school’s football history — including the Old Well Walk, which originated under Carl Torbush in 2000. And there fans were, four-deep, walling off the space around the fountain, where buses would deliver North Carolina’s players and coaches. The only issue? Those buses arrived minutes before the designated 5:30 p.m. start time … leaving dozens of stragglers, from across a wide quad, late for the party. (...)

That crowd, more than any, provided a snapshot of modern-era UNC football. Plenty of CHAPEL BILL merch in the crowd — T-shirts, buttons, the works — but also a surprising amount of New England Patriots gear, fans of Belichick’s former team showing out for their old coach. Small clusters of students, almost apologetically proclaiming: “We’re really into football, but we just don’t know any of the players.” (And with 70 new names on Belichick’s first roster, nor should they.) Old-timers, too, in their worn Lawrence Taylor and Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice jerseys, mingling with the shiny-new Drake Maye and Omarion Hampton ones. And lastly, the curious, those who came to see the spectacle of Belichick, who could only stare with wide eyes at the sea of blue rolling across Polk Place.

As one said on the phone before the cell signal dropped out: “Mom, there are a lot of people.”

And then, hours later, there weren’t. The pregame light show, the fireworks, all that momentum swelling inside Kenan Stadium? It didn’t vanish in a flash, but rather, in gashes. (...)

What began as a celebration, as a precursor of future success, could not have turned more sour. UNC waited nine months, and spent millions of dollars, for empty stands before the fourth quarter began. For loyalists who stayed until the final whistle, so few and far between, you could quite literally count them? (Unofficially 69 in the eastern end zone, by one reporter’s count.) The countless UNC dignitaries who made the pilgrimage back to Chapel Hill — Michael Jordan, Lawrence Taylor, Mia Hamm, Julius Peppers — couldn’t leave early, for optics, but buried their heads in their phones all the same.

Anything but what was right in front of them.

The official time of death — not just for this one game, but for the larger UNC hype machine — was 11:24 p.m., a whimper of an end to a day that once held so much excitement.

by Brendan Marks, The Athletic |  Read more:

Image: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

[ed. See also: Six games in 5 days: What a college football road trip taught me about the state of the sport (Athletic).]

Cressida Campbell, John Dory, 1987
via:

Basic Phones: A Brief Guide for Parents

In 2021, Common Sense Media found that half of U.S. kids get their first smartphone by age 11. Many parents now realize that age is too young for kids to have an internet-enabled phone.

But at some point, you’re going to consider getting your kid or teen a phone. Maybe the closest school bus stop is far away and the bus isn’t always on time. Maybe you’re sick of your kid borrowing your phone to text their friends. Maybe they’re getting older and it seems like the right time. So what type of phone should you get them?

In some cases, the answer might be a flip phone, the old-school cell phone that was the standard until the smartphone came along. Flip phones have some downsides, though. Since there’s no keyboard, texting involves pressing the number keys multiple times to type one letter (if you had a cell phone in the 2000s, you probably remember this). If your kids’ friends communicate via text, replying on a flip phone is going to be awkward and time-consuming. Flip phone cameras are often low-quality, so they’re not a great option if your kid likes taking pictures. Because they don’t look like a smartphone, flip phones also stand out — and many kids don’t want to stand out.

Fortunately, parents no longer have to choose exclusively between a flip phone and an adult smartphone for their kid, thanks to the many “basic” phone options. These middle-ground phones have a screen keyboard and a higher-quality camera like a smartphone, look very similar to a smartphone, and they can use many smartphone apps (with parental limits and permissions). Unlike a regular smartphone, though, they don’t have an internet browser or social media.

Basic phones are the training wheels of phones. They’re safer for kids right out of the box, with built-in parental controls that are easier to use and harder for kids to hack than those on smartphones. With no internet or social media, it’s much less likely that unknown adults will be able to randomly contact your kid, or that kids will stumble across pornography. Basic phones are usually Androids with a modified operating system, so they look like a regular smartphone and thus don’t stand out like flip phones do. For all of these reasons, Rule #4 in 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World is “First phones should be basic phones.”

If you want your kid to have the ability to easily text their friends but don’t want them using social media or going down internet rabbit holes, basic phones are a great solution. They’re a stopgap between the age when texting and calling becomes socially useful (usually in middle school, by age 12 or 13) and the age when they’re ready for a smartphone and possibly social media (at 16; Rule #5 in 10 Rules is “Give the first smartphone with the driver’s license,” and Rule #3 is “No social media until age 16 – or later.”). My younger two children, ages 15 and 13, have basic phones.

Here’s a brief overview of some popular basic phone options to help you figure out the best choice for your kid.

Option 1. Gabb Phone 4

This is the most basic of the basic phones, with calling, texting (including text-to-speech), clean music streaming, and a camera, but no capability for adding additional third-party apps. “You can’t do anything on it,” my middle daughter once said about her Gabb phone. “That,” I replied, “is the point.” If this is what you want, make sure you’re buying the Gabb Phone 4 and not the Pro, which allows more apps.

Option 2. Pinwheel, Troomi, Gabb Phone 4 Pro, Bark

These are basic phones that have access to an app store where you can add additional features. They come with an online parent portal where you can set a schedule (like having the phone shut off at bedtime) and approve new contacts. Some allow you to see the texts your child has received and sent.

The parent portal also lets you see the apps available for the phone. You can then install those you want and approve (or reject) those your kids ask for. These phones don’t allow certain apps at all (mostly dating, pornography, and alcohol-related apps, as well as AI chatbots and those that allow contact with unknown adults). That’s a relief, but there are still tough decisions about what to allow versus not. The tradeoff for more flexibility is more complexity in managing the phone. Still, I’d much rather have this challenge than giving a 12-year-old a smartphone with unrestricted internet and social media access.

Through the parent portal, you also have the ability to remotely control bedtime shutoff, app installs, and time limits for apps even after you’ve given your kid the phone — so you don’t have to wrestle it away from them to change your parental control settings.

If you’re looking for more details about specific basic phone brands for kids, check out the pages at Wait Until 8th and Protect Young Eyes.

Option 3. The Light Phone

This is a grown-up basic phone. Unlike other basic phones, it’s not necessarily meant for kids, and it’s not an Android phone — it’s a unique device. It has a paper-like screen like a Kindle so it’s not as colorfully tempting as a smartphone. It has a maps app, calling, and texting, but does not have internet access, social media, or email. The newest version has a camera. All of the features are optional so you can choose which features your kid’s phone has.

Many adults who want a pared-down phone, sometimes just for certain situations, use Light Phones. Because their target audience is adults, Light Phones do not come with a parent portal like the phones designed for kids.

***

The biggest challenge with basic phones (with the exception of the more limited Gabb Phone 4) is deciding which apps to allow. The parent portals that come with many of these products give more information and sometimes even a rating for each app, but it’s often hard to judge what’s appropriate and what isn’t without using the app yourself (something to consider). If you allow game apps, make sure to put a time limit on them (maybe 10-20 minutes a day each) so your kid doesn’t spend too much of their free time on their phone.

One other issue to be aware of: All of these optional apps display ads, and the ads – even on a so-called “kids’ phone” – are not filtered. Your kid might be playing “Find the Cat” and be served ads for AI girlfriends. They won’t be able to download the AI girlfriend app, thank goodness, but you may find yourself explaining what an AI girlfriend is to an 11-year-old. If that’s a non-starter, you’ll have to say no to any optional app, including games and educational apps like Duolingo.

If you do allow games and music, use the parental controls to block them during school hours if your kids’ school still allows phones during the school day. That way you’ll know your kids are paying attention in class instead of playing BlockBlast. And if they say they want to play games during lunch, tell them they should be talking to their friends instead.

What if your kid says, “It’s embarrassing to have a kid phone”? My reply: Who’s going to know? Most basic phones look like a regular Android phone. My middle daughter once told me she was embarrassed when a friend asked her, “What kind of phone is that?” I told her she could honestly answer, “It’s an Android phone.” There’s also no need to disclose that the phone doesn’t allow social media or internet. If your friends ask if you have a certain app and you don’t, I told her, just say your parents don’t allow it. All kids understand that parents are lame. :)

by Jean M. Twenge, Generation Tech |  Read more:

Image: Troomi

[ed. New school year starting up...]

Jim Benton
via:

Happy Labor Day
via:

Your Review: Dating Men in the Bay Area

[ed. Funny, sad. Long]

I. The Men Are Not Alright

Sometimes I’m convinced there’s a note taped to my back that says, “PLEASE SPILL YOUR SOUL UPON THIS WOMAN.” I am not a therapist, nor in any way certified to deal with emotional distress, yet my presence seems to cause people to regurgitate their traumas.

This quirk of mine becomes especially obvious when dating. Many of my dates turn into pseudo-therapy sessions, with men sharing emotional traumas they’ve kept bottled up for years. One moment I’m learning about his cat named Daisy, and then half a latte later, I’m hearing a detailed account of his third suicide attempt, complete with a critique of the food in the psychiatric ward.

This repeated pattern in my dating life has taught me three things:

• I am terrible at small talk.

• Most men are not accustomed to genuine questions about their well-being, and will often respond with a desperate upwelling of emotion.

• The men are not alright.

This is a review of dating men in the Bay Area. But more than that, it’s an attempt to explain those unofficial therapy sessions to people who never get to hear them. It’s a review of the various forms of neglect and abuse society inflicts upon men, and the inevitable consequences to their happiness and romantic partnerships. (...)

If half the population isn’t provided proper care and attention, there’s no hope to heal the problems facing the rest of us. Thus the pain of men needs a massive increase in attention.

Yet not everyone is ready to listen to men, so I’ll try to act as a translator, using my identity as a feminist twenty-something woman as a bridge. I’ll explain the pain that’s so obvious to me, yet hidden to many others, and try to provide some insight for both genders on how these issues impact dating, and what can perhaps be done to address them.

II. The Lost Generations...

(...)

In modern America, a minority of boys are born swaddled in communities that actively guide them through the process of becoming a man. However, most of those communities are religious and conservative, adjectives that the Bay Area actively repels. You won’t find many of those men around here.

Instead, the men in the Bay’s dating scene mostly represent the modern majority category–men who weren’t provided a clear map by their immediate community, and instead depended on society at large to teach them about manhood. (...)

And as for religion? Absolutely not. Throw it in the trash and light the trashcan on fire.

The first rule of the Modern Map to Manhood is that you don’t talk about the Modern Map to Manhood. Defining “manhood” is reinforcing gender roles and thus strengthening the patriarchy. Men are just supposed to “be decent people,” end of story.

…except it’s not, because there are still certain manners and conventions that men in particular are supposed to follow. And, like it or not, the core of your identity in modern society still largely revolves around your gender.

So if you squint hard enough at the murky sea of conversation about gender, you can make out the following steps to become a man:

• Reject toxic masculinity.

• Be your authentic self!

• Provide for and protect others.

• Stop obsessing over “being a man.”

• Don’t expect anything in return for fulfilling these requirements.

This would be demanding a reward for meeting the bare minimum requirements, and that would make you gross and entitled.

This is the new guidance we’re tossing at young men. It’s the equivalent of taking away GPS from a driver and handing them a map scrawled by a half-blind cartographer tripping on acid.

The obvious result is getting disastrously lost; the only question is which type of lostness will impact a man.

III. Patterns Within the Pain

Over the years, I’ve developed mental categories for the varieties of lostness men are faced with. Each one comes with its own unique troubles that stymie the health of men and the success of their relationships.

There is no science behind my categories; they are merely my attempt to find patterns within the misery of others. Their boundaries are fuzzy, so men may belong to multiple categories, or may transition from one to another.

I find it impossible to review dating in the Bay Area without utilizing these categories. My experiences with each category are wildly different; some cause me to walk away from a date feeling sad, some scared, some hopeful.

Below, I offer a description of five of the most common categories I’ve encountered, the paths that lead to these particular forms of lostness, and what happens to men who fall into these categories. I also offer my review of dating men from each category and discuss how their lostness impacts relationships. (...)

But more importantly, I hope this framework can help people to have more empathy for men who fall into these categories. The public commons are filled with lamenting about “floundering,” “immature,” “selfish,” “hateful” men who are “toxic to society.” While much of the concern is deserved, channeling it into spite and disgust toward individuals is a waste of energy.

These men did not wake up one day and intentionally decide to be filled with anger, anxiety, and apathy toward society; society failed them, and when they tried to point this out, their concerns were shrugged off.

Our broken system for raising young men deserves spite and disgust; the individuals trapped in that system deserve empathy and help. I hope this framework can help to shift conversations about these lost men toward finding solutions, rather than blaming young men for their troubles.

So without further ado, I present my categories of lostness.

IV. The Categories of Lostness

THE MAN WHO IS NOT

The Man Who Is Not isn’t the sort of person you’d expect to get lost, at least not if you knew him when he was young. He was a pretty normal kid with a pretty normal childhood. Good friends, decent family, stable home life. Yeah, there were a few rough spots, but who didn’t have those?

He’s not exactly a stand-out success, but he gets good enough grades that get him into a good enough college. He’s reluctant to go; he doesn’t enjoy school all that much. But his parents push him to get a degree, and after he arrives, he decides college life isn’t half bad–he makes some friends, dates a couple girls casually, and enjoys plenty of parties.

The worst stressor seems to be the nagging question of his degree concentration and what career he’s going to pursue. He’s changed his mind three times already, unsure what he really wants from his life, and his guidance counselor and parents are starting to lose their patience.

He finally settles on Economics. It’s certainly not his passion, but he’s always been good at math, and this seems like a decent way to make money from that talent. He still has no idea what he wants from life, but at least now he’ll have time and resources to figure it out.

He graduates with his bachelors and takes a job as a data analyst at a big bank in the city. He’s excited; he’s been promised by mentors and Hollywood and Instagram that this is going to be a magical time of his life, full of new adventures and self-discovery.

What he finds isn’t nearly so exciting. Work is boring and draining, consisting of the same tasks every day with a workload that grows ever larger, and he has zero emotional attachment to the end product. He quickly starts to suspect he chose the wrong major, or maybe the wrong job, although mentors shrug off his concerns.

Work isn’t supposed to be fun, they say. Get used to it.

It’s not uplifting advice, to say the least. He tries to distract himself from his miserable job with his social life, but it’s not as easy as he expected. All his college friends moved to different cities, and their texts grow increasingly rare. The city is huge, filled with hundreds of thousands of people, but it feels like they're a swarm of NPCs.

Few people talk to him unless he approaches first, and the dialogue is always transactional. He would like to buy a cup of coffee. They would like to know where the bus stop is. He wants to sign up for a gym membership.

Sometimes he tries to steer the conversations to more personal topics, and he manages to get a few phone numbers and promises to hang out sometime. But when he texts them, they never reply.

He’s lonely. He doesn’t like admitting it, not even to himself, because it feels pathetic. After all, there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s a perfectly pleasant individual, and people have said he’s smart and funny, and he’s never struggled to make friends in the past. Yet the thousands and thousands of people who surround him couldn’t care less about his existence, and their apathy begins to grow a heavy lump of despair within him. (...)

THE MAN WITH A PLAN

The Man With a Plan is the inverted twin of the Man Who Is Not. Rather than struggling to figure out what he wants, he knows exactly what his goals are: he’s going to get good grades, which get him into a good school, which earns him a good job, which finances a good house in a good neighborhood and attracts a good spouse who provides good kids. He knows this is what he wants, because it is the creed that has been repeated to him since he was in elementary school.

He does not know who he should be; his copy of the map is just as butchered as any other. But he knows what he needs to do, and that is what matters. After all, we’re merely the sum of our actions, right?

Life is smooth sailing for him. His mentors are right–hard work pays off, and once he graduates with that valuable degree, he lands an excellent job in exactly the field his parents always encouraged him to pursue. The money is great, and soon so is his apartment and his car.

Everything seems to be falling into place. He downloads a dating app and gets a fair amount of matches, one of whom turns into his girlfriend. She’s pretty, and successful, and shares his goals of settling down in a good neighborhood to have some kids.

His parents are thrilled. All their hard work has paid off, just as they expected.

He knows he should also be thrilled, too, but he’s not. There’s a vague sense of unease within him. It’s haunted him since he was young, sometimes dragging his thoughts to depressed and anxious places, although he always assumed it was because he just hadn’t completed all the steps in the plan. His work was unfinished, and thus so was he.

Yet as he checks off more and more boxes on the list of tasks to attain a good life, that feeling seems to be growing in strength, not decreasing.

He shrugs it off, reassuring himself that it’s just work stress that’s making him overthink things. Everything in his life is good. There’s no reasonable cause for despair, so he just needs to let those thoughts go.

Years pass, and he works hard to juggle work and his romantic relationship and his friends, although his friends seem to take less time these days. They’re getting married, having kids, and becoming too busy to hang out. When they do get together, it’s usually for an activity–an escape room, a movie night, karaoke. Once the event completes, people scurry off to other obligations, leaving little time for deep conversations.

But he has his girlfriend, at least. She’s just as pretty and smart and ambitious as ever. She’s also getting increasingly anxious for a ring, dropping hints that eventually start to sound more like demands.

This should excite him, but instead it just stirs the formless dread within him. He chastises himself for it–he needs to grow up and learn to commit. He’s too old to be yearning for the life of a bachelor. As they say, the grass is always greener on the other side. (...)

And his girlfriend… when he really thinks about it, there’s little in common between them except the same checklist of goals. She’s a wonderful partner, but is she a wonderful partner for him?

He doesn’t know. For so long, he’s convinced himself that people are just a sum of their actions, and if he just has a solid plan, he’s going to be a good person with a good life. Now he realizes that’s a lie. (...)

His girlfriend says they should sign up for some wine-and-paint nights. He says they should break up.

He quits his job, too. He hates it; it consumes his time and sucks at his soul, leaving behind a robotic husk. He’s done with that bullshit. Done.

His friends suggest he’s having a mental breakdown and needs help. It confirms his suspicions: they don’t know him at all. If they did, they would see that he is helping himself. He’s finally taking the time to find and understand himself, to discover his purpose.

For a few weeks, he’s elated and excited to be on this new journey. But then the existential dread begins to creep back in.

He’s never really done anything without a plan. And he’s still not entirely sure what he’s trying to accomplish; he knows he wants to “find himself,” but he’s unclear on what that requires, and the self-help books he consumes seem to have muddled and contradictory answers. (...)

He feels empty. His unknown future starts to feel like a crushing concern, rather than an exciting adventure.

His few remaining friends suggest that maybe he should try to get back together with his girlfriend, maybe try to piece together his old life. It’s not too late, they assure him.

But he doesn’t want that. He misses sex and cuddling and having someone to tell about his day, but he doesn’t miss her. It’s probably because he’s fundamentally broken, and she deserves better than him. And as for his job, he can’t bring himself to possibly go back, despite his rapidly dwindling bank account.

He turns to the dating world, hoping maybe finding a solid partner will help him solve his brokenness. Yet he seems to keep attracting women with similar forms of emptiness within them, and a void that joins with a void is still just as empty.

But he’s not going to give up. He has to find someone, something to give him purpose. Otherwise, his whole life and all his work and all his pain has been pointless. And he’s not sure he could deal with that outcome.

Dating a Man With a Plan:

In my experience, Men with Plans are the most common form of lost men in the Bay Area. I feel like half the men I go on dates with fit into this category to some degree.

These men also tend to be intensely attracted to me, or rather, to my lack of a conventional plan. I’ve stumbled through a highly unusual path, somehow getting lucky enough to gain a solid understanding of myself, pursue my passions, earn a solid living, and enjoy a happy life along the way.

My story is like crack to them. They tell me they want to be more like me; they insist they want to see more of me. There seems to be a mistaken belief that they can absorb my personality through osmosis if they date me, absolving themselves of the requirement to figure out their own path and personality.

by Anonymous, Astral Codex Ten |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

Taylor Swift’s Engagement Ring Marks a Return to Vintage Elegance

The pop star’s antique-inspired sparkler channels the “heirloom look,” reflecting a return to antique stones.

In her 2008 classic song “Love Story,” Taylor Swift fantasized about getting proposed to: “He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring / And said, ‘Marry me, Juliet.’”

Seventeen years later, Ms. Swift, 35, finally had her fairy-tale engagement. The football player Travis Kelce, also 35, proposed with what appears to be an elongated, old mine cushion cut diamond set on a yellow gold band. (A cushion cut diamond has rounded corners.)

The ring was designed by Kindred Lubeck of Artifex Fine Jewelry in New York. Ms. Lubeck makes hand-engraved jewelry with natural gemstones.

“It’s not just a flashy piece, but more of an aesthetic, really beautiful diamond,” said Marion Fasel, a jewelry historian and the author of “The History of Diamond Engagement Rings: A True Romance.” Her friends in the jewelry world, she said, have been excited about the piece because of its high quality.

“You can tell this is a beautiful diamond from the light and faceting arrangement,” Ms. Fasel said, estimating the weight to be around seven carats.

“It’s a real trend in jewelry and diamonds and engagement rings to choose antique stones because they have a very different kind of light,” Ms. Fasel said. “Even though this is a giant diamond, it’s a much softer light.” (...)

There also appears to be engraving on the side, as well as two smaller diamonds. “They must mean something, because everything with Taylor means something,” Ms. Fasel said. (...)

Nilesh Rakholia, the founder of Abelini Jewellery, a modern British jewelry brand, estimated that the ring weighs seven to 10 carats, costing between $1 million and $1.3 million.

“What makes this design particularly striking is its blend of vintage charm and modern minimalism,” Mr. Rakholia said. “The choice of yellow gold has been making a huge resurgence in fine jewelry, loved for its warmth and ability to enhance the brilliance of white diamonds.”

Jason Arasheben, the founder of the jewelry company Jason of Beverly Hills, said that he anticipates an uptick in requests for elongated, old mine cushion cut diamonds, as well as thicker bands and antique aesthetics. “I know I’m going to get tons of screenshots from clients,” Mr. Arasheben said, citing the Taylor Swift effect.

Ms. Fasel doesn’t expect too many details about the ring to be confirmed by Ms. Swift soon. “With my history in celebrity engagement rings, no one says anything,” she said.

Much of the jewelry worn by celebrities tends to come from professional relationships with major brands. Ms. Swift, for instance, has almost exclusively worn Cartier and Lorraine Schwartz pieces for red carpets. But an engagement ring, Ms. Fasel said, is different: It’s the “one thing that is not branded, and I feel that’s part of the reason the excitement around an engagement ring has accelerated to such a high level.”

by Sadiba Hasan, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce

[ed. Who doesn't love Taylor and Travis? Reminds me of another similar engagement: Inside Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio's Roller Coaster Romance (Biography). See also: Taylor Swift’s Engagement Ring and the Romantic Mystique of Old Mine Diamonds (Sotheby's).]

Book Review: "Breakneck"

There was a time in 2016 when I walked around downtown San Francisco with Dan Wang and gave him life advice. He asked me if he should move to China and write about it. I told him that I thought this was a good idea — that the world suffered from a strange and troubling dearth of people who write informatively about China in English, and that our country would be better off if we could understand China a little more.

Dan took my advice, and I’m very glad he did. For seven years, Dan wrote some of the best posts about China anywhere on the English-speaking internet, mostly in the form of a series of annual letters. His unique writing style is both lush and subtle. Each word or phrase feels like it should be savored, like fine dining. But don’t let this distract you — there are a multitude of small but important points buried in every paragraph. Dan Wang’s writing cannot be skimmed.

I’ve been anticipating Dan’s first book for over a year now, and it didn’t disappoint. Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future brings the same style Dan used in his annual letters, and uses it to elucidate a grand thesis: America is run by lawyers, and China is run by engineers.

Dan starts the book by recapitulating an argument that I’ve often made myself — namely, that China and the United States have fundamentally similar cultures. This is from his introduction:

I am sure that no two peoples are more alike than Americans and Chinese.

A strain of materialism, often crass, runs through both countries, sometimes producing veneration of successful entrepreneurs, sometimes creating displays of extraordinary tastelessness, overall contributing to a spirit of vigorous competition. Chinese and Americans are pragmatic: They have a get-it-done attitude that occasionally produces hurried work. Both countries are full of hustlers peddling shortcuts, especially to health and to wealth. Their peoples have an appreciation for the technological sublime: the awe of grand projects pushing physical limits. American and Chinese elites are often uneasy with the political views of the broader populace. But masses and elites are united in the faith that theirs is a uniquely powerful nation that ought to throw its weight around if smaller countries don't get in line.

It's very gratifying to see someone who has actually lived in China, and who speaks Chinese, independently come up with the same impression of the two cultures! (Though to be fair, I initially got the idea from a Chinese grad student of mine.)

If they're so culturally similar, why, then, are China and the U.S. so different in so many real and tangible ways? Why is China gobbling up global market share in every manufactured product under the sun, while America’s industrial base withers away? Why did China manage to build the world’s biggest high-speed rail network in just a few years, while California has yet to build a single mile of operational train track despite almost two decades of trying? Why does China have a glut of unused apartment buildings, while America struggles to build enough housing for its people? Why is China building over a thousand ships a year, while America builds almost zero?

Dan offers a simple explanation: The difference comes down to who runs the country. The U.S. has traditionally been run by lawyers, while the Chinese Communist Party tends to be run by engineers. The engineers want to build more stuff, while lawyers want to find a reason to not build more stuff. (...)

Breakneck’s thesis generally rings true, and Dan’s combination of deep knowledge and engrossing writing style means that this is a book you should definitely buy. Its primary useful purpose will be to make Americans aware that there’s an alternative to their block-everything, do-nothing institutions, and to get them to think a little bit about the upsides and downsides of that alternative.

I bring up my main concerns about Dan’s argument: How do we know that the U.S.-China differences he highlights are due to a deep-rooted engineer/lawyer distinction, rather than natural outgrowths of the two countries’ development levels? In other words, is it possible that most countries undergo an engineer-to-lawyer shift as they get richer, because poorer countries just tend to need engineers a lot more?

I am always wary of explanations of national development patterns that rely on the notion of deep-rooted cultural essentialism. Dan presents America’s lawyerly bent as something that has been present since the founding. But then how did the U.S. manage to build the railroads, the auto empires of Ford and GM, the interstate highway system, and the vast and sprawling suburbs? Why didn’t lawyers block those? In fact, why did the lawyers who ran FDR’s administration encourage the most massive building programs in the country’s history?

And keep in mind that America achieved this titanic share of global manufacturing while having a much smaller percent of world population than China does.

That’s an impressive feat of building! So even though most of America’s politicians were lawyers back during the 1800s and early 1900s, those lawyers made policies that let engineers do their thing — and even encouraged them. It was only after the 1970s that lawyers — and policies made by politicians trained as lawyers — began to support anti-growth policies in the U.S. (...)

There are several alternative explanations for the trends Dan Wang talks about in his book. One possibility, which Sine argues for, is that China’s key feature isn’t engineering, but communism. Engineers like to plan things, but communists really, really like to plan things — including telling people to study engineering.

Another possibility is that engineering-heavy culture is just a temporary phase that all successfully industrializing countries go through during their initial rapid growth phase. When a country is dirt poor, it has few industries, little infrastructure, and so on. Basically it just needs to build something; in econ terms, the risk of capital misallocation is low, because the returns on capital are so high in general. If you don’t have any highways or steel factories, then maybe it doesn’t matter which one you build first; you just need to build.

by Noah Smith, Noahpinion |  Read more:

Image: Jonothon P. Sine

[ed. I've mentioned Dan's annual China summaries before (see here, here and here). When 2025 rolled around and none appeared I wrote and asked if he was still planning something. That's when he told me about this book. Definitely plan to pick it up.]

John Brosio, Moo (2009)

via:

Steely Dan

via:

The Mechanics of Misdirection

The personhood trap: How AI fakes human personality. 

As we hinted above, the "chat" experience with an AI model is a clever hack: Within every AI chatbot interaction, there is an input and an output. The input is the "prompt," and the output is often called a "prediction" because it attempts to complete the prompt with the best possible continuation. In between, there's a neural network (or a set of neural networks) with fixed weights doing a processing task. The conversational back and forth isn't built into the model; it's a scripting trick that makes next-word-prediction text generation feel like a persistent dialogue.

Each time you send a message to ChatGPT, Copilot, Grok, Claude, or Gemini, the system takes the entire conversation history—every message from both you and the bot—and feeds it back to the model as one long prompt, asking it to predict what comes next. The model intelligently reasons about what would logically continue the dialogue, but it doesn't "remember" your previous messages as an agent with continuous existence would. Instead, it's re-reading the entire transcript each time and generating a response.

This design exploits a vulnerability we've known about for decades. The ELIZA effect—our tendency to read far more understanding and intention into a system than actually exists—dates back to the 1960s. Even when users knew that the primitive ELIZA chatbot was just matching patterns and reflecting their statements back as questions, they still confided intimate details and reported feeling understood.

To understand how the illusion of personality is constructed, we need to examine what parts of the input fed into the AI model shape it. AI researcher Eugene Vinitsky recently broke down the human decisions behind these systems into four key layers, which we can expand upon with several others below:

1. Pre-training: The foundation of "personality"

The first and most fundamental layer of personality is called pre-training. During an initial training process that actually creates the AI model's neural network, the model absorbs statistical relationships from billions of examples of text, storing patterns about how words and ideas typically connect.

Research has found that personality measurements in LLM outputs are significantly influenced by training data. OpenAI's GPT models are trained on sources like copies of websites, books, Wikipedia, and academic publications. The exact proportions matter enormously for what users later perceive as "personality traits" once the model is in use, making predictions.

2. Post-training: Sculpting the raw material

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) is an additional training process where the model learns to give responses that humans rate as good. Research from Anthropic in 2022 revealed how human raters' preferences get encoded as what we might consider fundamental "personality traits." When human raters consistently prefer responses that begin with "I understand your concern," for example, the fine-tuning process reinforces connections in the neural network that make it more likely to produce those kinds of outputs in the future.

This process is what has created sycophantic AI models, such as variations of GPT-4o, over the past year. And interestingly, research has shown that the demographic makeup of human raters significantly influences model behavior. When raters skew toward specific demographics, models develop communication patterns that reflect those groups' preferences.

3. System prompts: Invisible stage directions

Hidden instructions tucked into the prompt by the company running the AI chatbot, called "system prompts," can completely transform a model's apparent personality. These prompts get the conversation started and identify the role the LLM will play. They include statements like "You are a helpful AI assistant" and can share the current time and who the user is.

A comprehensive survey of prompt engineering demonstrated just how powerful these prompts are. Adding instructions like "You are a helpful assistant" versus "You are an expert researcher" changed accuracy on factual questions by up to 15 percent.

Grok perfectly illustrates this. According to xAI's published system prompts, earlier versions of Grok's system prompt included instructions to not shy away from making claims that are "politically incorrect." This single instruction transformed the base model into something that would readily generate controversial content.

4. Persistent memories: The illusion of continuity

ChatGPT's memory feature adds another layer of what we might consider a personality. A big misunderstanding about AI chatbots is that they somehow "learn" on the fly from your interactions. Among commercial chatbots active today, this is not true. When the system "remembers" that you prefer concise answers or that you work in finance, these facts get stored in a separate database and are injected into every conversation's context window—they become part of the prompt input automatically behind the scenes. Users interpret this as the chatbot "knowing" them personally, creating an illusion of relationship continuity.

So when ChatGPT says, "I remember you mentioned your dog Max," it's not accessing memories like you'd imagine a person would, intermingled with its other "knowledge." It's not stored in the AI model's neural network, which remains unchanged between interactions. Every once in a while, an AI company will update a model through a process called fine-tuning, but it's unrelated to storing user memories.

5. Context and RAG: Real-time personality modulation

Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) adds another layer of personality modulation. When a chatbot searches the web or accesses a database before responding, it's not just gathering facts—it's potentially shifting its entire communication style by putting those facts into (you guessed it) the input prompt. In RAG systems, LLMs can potentially adopt characteristics such as tone, style, and terminology from retrieved documents, since those documents are combined with the input prompt to form the complete context that gets fed into the model for processing.

If the system retrieves academic papers, responses might become more formal. Pull from a certain subreddit, and the chatbot might make pop culture references. This isn't the model having different moods—it's the statistical influence of whatever text got fed into the context window.

6. The randomness factor: Manufactured spontaneity

Lastly, we can't discount the role of randomness in creating personality illusions. LLMs use a parameter called "temperature" that controls how predictable responses are.

Research investigating temperature's role in creative tasks reveals a crucial trade-off: While higher temperatures can make outputs more novel and surprising, they also make them less coherent and harder to understand. This variability can make the AI feel more spontaneous; a slightly unexpected (higher temperature) response might seem more "creative," while a highly predictable (lower temperature) one could feel more robotic or "formal."

The random variation in each LLM output makes each response slightly different, creating an element of unpredictability that presents the illusion of free will and self-awareness on the machine's part. This random mystery leaves plenty of room for magical thinking on the part of humans, who fill in the gaps of their technical knowledge with their imagination.
The human cost of the illusion

The illusion of AI personhood can potentially exact a heavy toll. In health care contexts, the stakes can be life or death. When vulnerable individuals confide in what they perceive as an understanding entity, they may receive responses shaped more by training data patterns than therapeutic wisdom. The chatbot that congratulates someone for stopping psychiatric medication isn't expressing judgment—it's completing a pattern based on how similar conversations appear in its training data.

Perhaps most concerning are the emerging cases of what some experts are informally calling "AI Psychosis" or "ChatGPT Psychosis"—vulnerable users who develop delusional or manic behavior after talking to AI chatbots. These people often perceive chatbots as an authority that can validate their delusional ideas, often encouraging them in ways that become harmful.

Meanwhile, when Elon Musk's Grok generates Nazi content, media outlets describe how the bot "went rogue" rather than framing the incident squarely as the result of xAI's deliberate configuration choices. The conversational interface has become so convincing that it can also launder human agency, transforming engineering decisions into the whims of an imaginary personality.

by Benji Edwards, Ars Technica |  Read more:

Image: Credit: ivetavaicule via Getty Images

[ed. See also: In Search Of AI Psychosis (ASX).]

Anonymous, Fair entry, photographs exhibit
via: markk

Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra 亚洲文化乐

 

Another Barrier to EV Adoption

Junk-filled garages.

There are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic about electric vehicle adoption here in the US. The current administration has made no secret of its hostility toward EVs and, as promised, has ended as many of the existing EV subsidies and vehicle pollution regulations as it could. After more than a year of month-on-month growth, EV sales started to contract, and brands like Genesis and Volvo have seen their customers reject their electric offerings, forcing portfolio rethinks. But wait, it gets worse.

Time and again, surveys and studies show that fears and concerns about charging are the main barriers standing in the way of someone switching from gas to EV. A new market research study by Telemetry Vice President Sam Abuelsamid confirms this, as it analyzes the charging infrastructure needs over the next decade. And one of the biggest hurdles—one that has gone mostly unmentioned across the decade-plus we've been covering this topic—is all the junk clogging up Americans' garages.

Want an EV? Clean out your garage

That's because, while DC fast-charging garners all the headlines and much of the funding, the overwhelming majority of EV charging is AC charging, usually at home—80 percent of it, in fact. People who own and live in a single family home are overrepresented among EV owners, and data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory from a few years ago found that 42 percent of homeowners park near an electrical outlet capable of level 2 (240 V) AC charging.

But that could grow by more than half (to 68 percent of homeowners) if those homeowners changed their parking behavior, "most likely by clearing a space in their garage," the report finds.

"90 percent of all houses can add a 240 V outlet near where cars could be parked," said Abuelsamid. "Parking behavior, namely whether homeowners use a private garage for parking or storage, will likely become a key factor in EV adoption. Today, garage-use intent is potentially a greater factor for in-house charging ability than the house’s capacity to add 240 V outlets."

Creating garage space would increase the number of homes capable of EV charging from 31 million to more than 50 million. And when we include houses where the owner thinks it's feasible to add wiring, that grows to more than 72 million homes. And that's far more than Telemetry's most optimistic estimate of US EV penetration for 2035, which ranges from 33 million to 57 million EVs on the road 10 years from now.

I thought an EV would save me money?

Just because 90 percent of houses could add a 240 V outlet near where they park, it doesn't mean that 90 percent of homes have a 240 V outlet near where they park. According to that same NREL study, almost 34 million of those homes will require extensive electrical work to upgrade their wiring and panels to cope with the added demands of a level 2 charger (at least 30 A), and that can cost thousands and thousands of dollars.

All of a sudden, EV cost of ownership becomes much closer to, or possibly even exceeds, that of a vehicle with an internal combustion engine.

Multifamily remains an unsolved problem

Twenty-three percent of Americans live in multifamily dwellings, including apartments, condos, and townhomes. Here, the barriers to charging where you park are much greater. Individual drivers will rarely be able to decide for themselves to add a charger—the management company, landlord, co-op board, or whoever else is in charge of the development has to grant permission.

If the cost of new wiring for a single family home is enough to be a dealbreaker for some, adding EV charging capabilities to a parking lot or parking garage makes those costs pale in comparison. Using my 1960s-era co-op as an example, after getting board approval to add a pair of shared level 2 chargers in 2019, we were told by the power company that nothing could happen until the co-op upgraded its electrical panel—a capital improvement project that runs into seven figures, and work that is still not entirely complete as I type this.

The cost of running wiring from the electrical panel to parking spaces becomes much higher than for a single family home given the distances involved, and multifamily dwellings are rarely eligible for the subsidies offered to homeowners by municipalities and energy companies to install chargers.

by Jonathan M. Gitlin, Ars Technica | Read more:
Image: Getty

Human Exceptionalism

A terrific new book, The Arrogant Ape, by the primatologist Christine Webb, will be out in early September, and I don’t think a nonfiction book has affected me more, or taught me more, in a long time. It’s about human exceptionalism and what’s wrong with it.

It also has illuminating things to say about awe, humility, and the difference between optimism and hope. (...)

Here’s my review:

Here are some glimpses from the review:

***

Christine Webb, a primatologist at New York University, is focused on “the human superiority complex,” the idea that human beings are just better and more deserving than are members of other species, and on the extent to which human beings take themselves as the baseline against which all living creatures are measured. As Hamlet exclaimed: “What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason!… The paragon of animals!” In Webb’s view, human exceptionalism is all around us, and it damages science, the natural environment, democratic choices, and ordinary (human) life. People believe in human superiority even though we are hardly the biggest, the fastest, or the strongest. Eagles see a lot better than we do. Sea sponges live much longer. Dolphins are really good at echolocation; people are generally really bad at it. And yet we keep proclaiming how special we are. As Webb puts it, “Hamlet got one thing right: we’re a piece of work.” [. . .]

I have two Labrador Retrievers, Snow and Finley, and on most days, I take them for a walk on a local trail. Every time, it is immediately apparent that they are perceiving and sensing things that are imperceptible to me. They hear things that I don’t; they pause to smell things that I cannot. Their world is not my world. Webb offers a host of more vivid examples, and they seem miraculous, the stuff of science fiction.

For example, hummingbirds can see colors that human beings are not even able to imagine. Elephants have an astonishing sense of smell, which enables them to detect sources of water from miles away. Owls can hear the heartbeat of a mouse from a distance of 25 feet. Because of echolocation, dolphins perceive sound in three dimensions. They know what is on the inside of proximate objects; as they swim toward you, they might be able to sense your internal organs. Pronghorn antelopes can run a marathon in 40 minutes, and their vision is far better than ours. On a clear night, Webb notes, they might be able to see the rings of Saturn. We all know that there are five senses, but it’s more accurate to say that there are five human senses. Sharks can sense electric currents. Sea turtles can perceive the earth’s magnetic field, which helps them to navigate tremendous distances. Some snakes, like pythons, are able to sense thermal radiation. Scientists can give many more examples, and there’s much that they don’t yet know.

Webb marshals these and other findings to show that when we assess other animals, we use human beings as the baseline. Consider the question of self-awareness. Using visual tests, scientists find that human children can recognize themselves in a mirror by the age of three—and that almost no other species can do that. But does that really mean that human beings are uniquely capable of recognizing themselves? It turns out that dogs, who rely more on smell than sight, can indeed recognize themselves, if we test by reference to odor; they can distinguish between their own odor and that of other dogs. (Can you do that?) In this sense, dogs too show self-awareness. Webb argues that the human yardstick is pervasively used to assess the abilities of nonhuman animals. That is biased, she writes, “because each species fulfills a different cognitive niche. There are multiple intelligences!”

Webb contends that many of our tests of the abilities of nonhuman animals are skewed for another reason: We study them under highly artificial conditions, in which they are often miserable, stressed, and suffering. Try caging human beings and seeing how well they perform on cognitive tests. As she puts it, “A laboratory environment can rarely (if ever) adequately simulate the natural circumstances of wild animals in an ecologically meaningful way.” Suppose, for example, that we are investigating “prosociality”—the question of whether nonhuman animals will share food or cooperate with one another. In the laboratory, captive chimpanzees do not appear to do that. But in the wild, chimpanzees behave differently: They share meat and other food (including nuts and honey), and they also share tools. During hunting, chimpanzees are especially willing to cooperate. In natural environments, the differences between human beings and apes are not nearly so stark. Nor is the point limited to apes. Cows, pigs, goats, and even salmon are a lot smarter and happier in the wild than in captive environments. (...)

It would be possible to read Webb as demonstrating that nonhuman animals are a lot more like us than we think. But that is not at all her intention. On the contrary, she rejects the argument, identified and also rejected by the philosopher Martha Nussbaum, that the nonhumans animals who are most like us deserve the most protection, what Nussbaum calls the “so like us” approach. (This is also part of the title of an old documentary about Jane Goodall’s work.) Webb sees that argument as a well-meaning but objectionable form of human exceptionalism. Why should it matter that they are like us? Why is that necessary? With Nussbaum, Webb insists that species are “wonderfully different,” and that it is wrong to try to line them up along a unitary scale and to ask how they rank. Use of the human yardstick, embodied in the claim of “so like us,” is a form of blindness that prevents us from seeing the sheer variety of life’s capacities, including cognitive ones. As Nussbaum writes, “Anthropocentrism is a phony sort of arrogance.”

by Cass Sunstein, Cass's Substack |  Read more:

Image: Thai Elephant Conservation Center

[ed. See also: this.]

Bohemian Seafood Rhapsody

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Dialectical Damage

On the walk a girl asked me why I wrote about relationships and I said it was because relationships, like clothes, are things you can’t avoid. Unless you’re a hermit, you come in contact with people every single day, and the decisions you make around who you like and dislike, who you keep close and avoid, who you love and how you treat them become the foundation of your life. Everyone has a philosophy on relationships, even if they can’t articulate it. If you’re good at relationships, you don’t need to be good at literally anything else; if you’re bad at relationships, you will never be happy, no matter what other virtues you possess or what you achieve in the world. Put that way, it sounds scary, and I’ve always approached relationships with a certain kind of terror.

Being in relationship with another person often involves a clash of styles. Like, someone else might have a similar philosophy on relationships, but they probably don’t have the exact same approach. And relationships are inherently a two-person game, so suddenly you’re subject to someone’s process—how they communicate, how they spend their time, who they like, what they value. And you have to decide if you like it, and more than that, are capable of adapting to it.

I used to believe that you should love someone for who they are. I still believe that, but with the caveat that I think that you should also love how they handle things. Is the distinction meaningful? Maybe it’s obvious—as a matchmaker, a lot of people certainly tell me they want to date someone whose judgment they respect. Of course, someone’s judgment can be broken down into a million little things. What’s their prose style? Do they talk slow or fast, do they think slow or fast? Are they confrontational? Are they direct or indirect? How do they talk when they’re angry? How do they apologize? How do they give feedback? Are they expressive or contained?

I mentioned offhand to a friend recently that I could never date one of our mutual friends. He has a habit—I’m gonna make it up for privacy—something like, he believes in only buying plane tickets when he’s already at the airport. My friend couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get past that. And my take was basically that it’s not about the habit itself, it’s about the way that it’s representative of a million other things about this person and their style of doing things and how they live. About their relationship with time, anxiety, control. The great thing about friends is that you aren’t exposed to every single downside of their style and general conduct—like, to some extent it doesn’t really matter if they’re messy or clean, if they’re avoidant or anxious, if they’re a good romantic partner or only an okay one, because you’re not affected by it. But if you’re dating someone and living with them, you are impacted by everything they do.

Often I wish I could approach romantic relationships with the loving detachment I bring to friendships. Like, sometimes you’re on the phone with a friend and they’ll be like, “I’m considering doing [The Worst Idea Ever]” and you’ll be like, “Yeah, I don’t think you should do that, but good luck if you do!” But that would necessarily be a rejection of the merging that occurs in romantic love, where what they do to themselves becomes partially something they do to you.

by Ava, bookbear express |  Read more:

Image: Susan Rothenberg, Butterfly, 1976
[ed. See also: affinity (be).]

August 25, 2025: Federal Assault on American Cities - This Week, Chicago

This morning, President Donald J. Trump talked to reporters as he signed several executive orders in the Oval Office. Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk as he has been doing lately, seeming to put its bulk between him and the reporters. Also as he has been doing lately, he kept his left hand over the right, seemingly to hide a large bruise.

Trump was there to announce an executive order charging Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth with creating “specialized units” in the National Guard that will be “specifically trained and equipped to deal with public order issues,” apparently setting them up to take on domestic law enforcement as part of Trump’s attempt to take control of Democratic-run cities.

At the press opportunity, Trump claimed that he saved Washington, D.C.—where crime was at a 30-year low before he took control of the Metropolitan Police Department and mobilized the National Guard—from such rampant crime that no one dared to wear jewelry or carry purses. “People,” he said, “are free for the first time ever.”

Although in 1989 the Supreme Court ruled that burning a flag is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment, Trump ordered the Department of Justice to prosecute anyone who burns a flag, claiming they would automatically go to prison for a year (he has no authority to make such an order). After seven European leaders rushed to the White House to stabilize the U.S. approach to Russia after Trump’s disastrous meeting with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska on August 15, Trump claimed that the seven leaders actually represented 38 countries and that they refer to Trump as “the president of Europe.”

Calling Chicago, Illinois, a “a disaster” and “a killing field,” Trump referred to Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker as “a slob.” Trump complained that Pritzker had said Trump was infringing on American freedom and called Trump a dictator. Trump went on: “A lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator. I don't like a dictator. I'm not a dictator. I'm a man with great common sense and a smart person. And when I see what's happening to our cities, and then you send in troops instead of being praised, they're saying you're trying to take over the Republic. These people are sick.”

This afternoon, standing flanked by leaders from business, law enforcement, faith communities, education, local communities, and politics at the Chicago waterfront near the Trump Tower there, Governor Pritzker responded to the news that Trump is planning to send troops to Chicago.

He began by saying: “I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in the city and as a state and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country.”

He acknowledged that “[o]ver the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning for quite a while now to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country's founders warned against. And it’s the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances. What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal, it is unconstitutional. It is un-American.”

Pritzker noted that neither his office nor that of Chicago’s mayor had received any communications from the White House. “We found out what Donald Trump was planning the same way that all of you did. We read a story in the Washington Post. If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what possible justification could the White House have for planning such an exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor, the mayor or the police?”

“Let me answer that question,” he said. “This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city in a blue state to try and intimidate his political rivals. This is about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey Stephen Miller searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections. There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention. There is no insurrection.”

Pritzker noted that every major American city deals with crime, but that the rate of violent crime is actually higher in Republican-dominated states and cities than in those run by Democrats. Illinois, he said, had “hired more police and given them more funding. We banned assault weapons, ghost guns, bump stops, and high-capacity magazines” and “invested historic amounts into community violence intervention programs.” Those actions have cut violent crime down dramatically. Pritzker pointed out that “thirteen of the top twenty cities in homicide rates have Republican governors. None of these cities is Chicago. Eight of the top ten states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois.”

If Trump were serious about combatting crime, Pritzker asked, why did he, along with congressional Republicans, cut more than $800 million in public safety and crime prevention grants? “Trump,” Pritzker said, “is defunding the police.”

Then Pritzker turned to the larger national story. “To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country,” he said, “I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse race piece on who will be helped politically by the president's actions. Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidents, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is: a dangerous power grab.”

Pritzker continued: “Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, ‘Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city?’ Instead, I say, ‘Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy.’”

The governor called out the president for his willingness to drag National Guard personnel from their homes and communities to be used as political props. They are not trained to serve as law enforcement, he said, and did not “sign up for the National Guard to fight crime.” “It is insulting to their integrity and to the extraordinary sacrifices that they make to serve in the guard, to use them as a political prop, where they could be put in situations where they will be at odds with their local communities, the ones that they seek to serve.”

Pritzker said he hoped that Trump would “reconsider this dangerous and misguided encroachment upon our state and our city's sovereignty” and that “rational voices, if there are any left inside the White House or the Pentagon, will prevail in the coming days.”

But if not, he urged Chicagoans to protest peacefully and to remember that most members of the military and the National Guard stationed in Chicago would be there unwillingly. He asked protesters to “remember that they can be court martialed, and their lives ruined, if they resist deployment.” He suggested protesters should look to members of the faith community for guidance on how to mobilize.

Then Pritzker turned to a warning. “To my fellow governors across the nation who would consider pulling your national guards from their duties at home to come into my state against the wishes of its elected representatives and its people,” he said, “cooperation and coordination between our states is vital to the fabric of our nation, and it benefits us all. Any action undercutting that and violating the sacred sovereignty of our state to cater to the ego of a dictator will be responded to.”

He went on: “The state of Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with every peaceful tool we have. We will see the Trump administration in court. We will use every lever in our disposal to protect the people of Illinois and their rights.”

“Finally,” he said, “to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous, we are watching, and we are taking names. This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now. And eventually, the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf. You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually.

“If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law. As Dr. King once said, the arc of the moral Universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Humbly, I would add, it doesn't bend on its own. History tells us we often have to apply force needed to make sure that the arc gets where it needs to go. This is one of those times.”

by Heather Cox Richardson, Notes From An American |  Read more:

Image: AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh; via

[ed. A speech for the ages, summarizing nicely where we are and how we got here (and echoed by others (below). I think this country is primed for a massive disobedience event. It would be a good bookend to Woodstock (and provide some atonement for what we've done to this world, our lives, and future generations). Democracy Day(s): D-Day.]

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