For years, the strategy among U.S. allies was to wait President Trump out. Now many are preparing for a world in which the United States is no longer indispensable—not simply during Trump’s presidency but afterward as well, regardless of who occupies the White House.
~ Vivian Salama via The Atlantic
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The American age that followed World War II was bound to end eventually. What’s shocking is how suddenly that moment has arrived.
~ Phillips Payson O’Brien via The Atlantic
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via The Atlantic:
The Pangram Backlash Unfolding on College Campuses
by Will Oremus
published on September 21, 2026
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via the report published by MIT’s Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training:
“MIT should use this moment to ask what forms of presence, collaboration, mentorship, and shared intellectual life are essential to residential education – and then design AI policies, pedagogies, and research practices that strengthen them rather than allow their erosion, replacement, or collapse.”
Published on August 13, 2026.
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Like the people of Albert Camus’s Oran, we are understandably reluctant to recognize just how much the world has changed. The problems are thorny, complex and tedious, and it’s easier to look away. So we holiday on beaches while wildfires rage; we ask A.I. how to train a new puppy, how to write that letter — to do our thinking for us. We hope that the wars will end, that the guardrails, institutions and alliances will be rebuilt, and that the world as we understand it will recover and endure.
~ Margaret MacMillan via The New York Times
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If you want to understand the deepest malfunctions of systems, pay attention to the rules and to who has power over them.
~ Donella Meadows
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