Compared with their European counterparts, both American political parties are strange beasts: no members, open primaries and a seemingly unlimited access to private funds. To inhabitants of the Old World, they seem more corporate brand than mass organization.
~ Anton Jäger via The New York Times
:::
Some research has cited the Antonine Plague as part of a vicious cycle that hastened Rome’s long fall. Food shortages, internal migrations, and overcrowding had already signaled a slippage in imperial power, and created a fertile environment for disease. The pandemic, in turn, spread panic and left behind mistrust, weakening faith in civic and religious authorities.
~ Vann Newkirk via The Atlantic
:::
If you control the choke points of social mobility, then you control the nation’s culture. And if you change the criteria for admission at places such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, then you change the nation’s social ideal.
~ David Brooks
via How the Ivy League Broke America
published by The Atlantic
:::
We have now, for better or worse, entered the Age of Artificial Intelligence. AI is already good at regurgitating information from a lecture. AI is already good at standardized tests. AI can already write papers that would get A’s at Harvard. If you’re hiring the students who are good at those things, you’re hiring people whose talents might soon be obsolete.
~ David Brooks
via How the Ivy League Broke America
published by The Atlantic
:::
Financialization has made American businesses less resilient, less innovative and less competitive. It has been a major cause of slow wage growth and rising inequality. It has fueled the loss of manufacturing jobs across the heartland.
~ Oren Cass via The New York Times
:::