Since a spontaneous blockade of a Paris suburb high school last month quickly turned into violent protests across the country, up to 500 schools have been closed, and more than 5,000 people have been arrested, 85% of them minors. With the unrest showing no signs of slowing down and presidential elections coming up, the government is on tenterhooks. Ever since the student demonstrations of May 1968, successive French leaders have “run scared of angry French youth,” said the BBC. 

Why sparked the unrest?
A “main complaint” is a shortage of teachers and support staff, said Time. In the 2024-2025 school year, nearly 10% of teaching hours in public secondary education went untaught, according to data from the education ministry. 

Students have had to put up with “overcrowded classes of up to 40 children in crumbling buildings,” said The Guardian. “Ceilings partially collapsing during class, leaks, cockroaches and buildings in disrepair” are fairly common experiences. And “unbearable temperatures in classrooms during heat waves in May and June” have exacerbated discontent.

How has the government responded?
France’s Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said on X Friday that he would pursue a “firm” criminal response and hold parents of minors civilly liable “wherever possible.” But the government has also tried to “placate” the rapidly spreading protests and has “acknowledged some of the students’ grievances,” said The New York Times. 

Education Minister Édouard Geffray plans to introduce a new online platform on which students can voice their thoughts on education reform. The protests, which were “legitimate at the outset,” have been “taken hostage by ultra-left groups,” he said to France 2 last week.

What could happen now?
Student representatives who met Geffray said their talks “failed to produce the concrete measures they were seeking,” said The Wall Street Journal. And student unions have called for a third day of nationwide protest tomorrow.

We cannot forget that French presidential elections are “only months away,” said the BBC. These protests, like many youth movements, are “unpredictable and shapeless” and have “no clear structure” that would allow for negotiation. They will surely have President Emmanuel Macron’s team in “cold sweats.”

With artificial intelligence permeating nearly every aspect of life, therapists are seeing more people expressing anxiety about the technology. And the number is likely to rise exponentially in the coming years.

‘Techistential dread’
Rapid technological advancement can “induce a sense of overarching anxiety,” said therapist Mark Wilkes at Deseret News. Think of it as “techistential dread,” or the “vertigo of wondering if a new advancement will help or hurt, increase opportunities or threaten human thriving.”

For Silicon Valley therapist Candice Thompson, “discussing fears and worries about AI has now become a regular part of her workday,” said The New York Times. During her “clinical lifetime,” she has “never seen an existential threat like this,” said Thompson to the outlet. No one is immune, “even my clients who are not working in tech.”

Worries about AI are becoming increasingly common among therapy clients, as the technology “reshapes the workplace, gobbles up natural resources” and raises concerns about “privacy and security,” said the Times. For those who “already have a diagnosed disorder,” such as generalized anxiety, the “distress over AI may feel even more intense.”

There’s a “parallel” between this and “depression over climate change,” said Sherry Turkle, a sociologist and the author of “Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines,” to the Times. “You feel that things are deeply amiss.” But action may feel “futile, so the depression becomes diffuse.”

‘No simple answers’
For people anxious about AI, there are “no simple answers,” but experts recommend “doing what you can to move the needle in your own life or in public life,” said the Times. The “existential dread” that some express often stems from a “sense of having lost control and any sense of meaning,” said psychologist Yuxin Sun to the outlet. It may help to ask: “What are the things I am not going to outsource to AI?”

For therapists, one place to begin is to “distinguish between goals and values,” said Psychology Today. It seems “plausible” that some clients’ “medium-term goals” will be “usurped by machines.” So goals, at least “certain kinds of professional goals,” will arguably “no longer be as central to clients’ self-conceptions as they have traditionally been.”

A tiny sunbird cools off in water pooled in a banana blossom petal. The photograph, by Vietnam’s Thong Duy Vu, has been shortlisted out of more than 10,000 entries for this year’s Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards.
Thong Duy Vu / Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards

Autumn is for drinking a mite more seriously, not in a snobby way but by sipping your well-crafted drink instead of tanking endless low-alcohol beers or cheery rosés. These bars serve admirable cocktails without taking themselves or the drinks too seriously.

Allegory, Washington, DC
Whimsy and political materiality crash into each other at Allegory, where a mural of “Alice in Wonderland” stars the inadvertent child civil rights icon Ruby Bridges. The bar, with its lively cocktails, is “very much about storytelling, and our drinks reflect that,” said beverage director Princess “P.J.” Johnson to Punch magazine.

Holywater, New Orleans
Any time a new bar opens in New Orleans’ French Quarter serving cocktails that are made well and might get you righteously tipsy, an angel gets its wings. Holywater is a bar, yes. But it’s also an oyster house and, thanks to the return of beloved chef Alex Harrell to town, a destination for great eats.

Lonely’s Bar, Minneapolis
How refreshing to see a bar debut that “doesn’t exist to serve the algorithm but rather to be a true respite for bargoers looking to meet friends face-to-face,” said Callisto Martinez at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine. Lonely’s Bar serves solid drinks at admirable prices in an 1890 building.

Mothership, San Diego
Tiki remains a forever fraught concept. Is it still appropriation if a bar like Mothership harnesses the “same tropical escapism but in a different non-earthly way”? said Kory Stetina, the co-owner of this space-inspired bar, to Imbibe. Drink up and discuss.