‘How can I know these words originated in their heart and not some data center in northern Virginia?’

‘AI is killing the magic’

Jemima Kelly at the Financial Times

“Will I ever again laugh quite so heartily at a comedian when I don’t know whether some of their jokes are artificially authored?” says Jemima Kelly. People are turning “increasingly to generative AI” to bypass “effortful activity.” But what “utilitarian tech bros like Sam Altman don’t seem to get is that creativity is not just about the final output; the act of being creative is itself in many ways the point.”

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‘Gaza’s traumatized children urgently need the hope education offers’

Nada Hamdona at Al Jazeera

Education is the “only means of reviving hope and helping children start to overcome the trauma of two years of genocide,” says Nada Hamdona. It can “provide a sense of normalcy and purpose,” and “ought to be Gaza’s top priority.” While the recent truce “may have put a stop to the bombs, my students are still without paper and pens.” Learning will give Gaza’s “600,000 schoolchildren” back the “structure, self-assurance and hope for a brighter future” necessary for “psychological rehabilitation.”

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‘The “anti-woke” tax that all Americans are paying’

Adam Serwer at The Atlantic

“Trumpist culture wars have made almost everything more expensive, effectively forcing all Americans to pay an anti-woke tax,” says Adam Serwer. Tariffs have not brought back any “manly jobs” and “making America whiter” is “driving food prices up and wages down, because the administration is terrorizing and deporting the immigrants who do most of the planting and picking of the American food supply.” U.S. “economic policy is now justified by a particularly silly form of right-wing identity politics.”

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‘Politics makes for bad therapy’

Jonathan Alpert at The Wall Street Journal

“Instead of acting as neutral guides, too many therapists now act as transmitters of political polarization,” says Jonathan Alpert. “Therapists often pathologize politics, treating patients with particular viewpoints as abnormal or unhealthy.” They may “label progressives as stuck in ‘woke fantasies’” or “shame conservatives for ‘bigoted thinking.’” But by “validating partisan rigidity in clients,” therapists “function less as healers than as vectors of this new disorder.” Neutrality “isn’t etiquette — it’s the foundation of therapy.”

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