Is it just me or is there nothing attractive at all about the looks maxing or whatever kid? Then again I’m mostly attracted to Jewish men, preferably over sixty but I make an occasional exception for a very smart one in his thirties. It is very concerning though not surprising to see that toting a terrorist on the campaign trail has been one fashionable. What is wrong with these people? Of course Michigan has lots of radical Muslims and I suppose they are telling us who they are. Hi to Debbie.
I like that you challenged Derek Thompson about the financial aspects of an AI bubble, given how leveraged these companies are (and how much of the debt has been sliced and distributed into financial vehicles that will affect more than tech companies if/when the bubble pops). Thompson has switched his view to seeing AI as a commodity like electricity, but that’s not his big new idea - that’s what Sam Altman has been saying, hyping the idea that we’ll all need “compute” the way we need light. Me, I’m tracking the social and political pushback against AI, which is not all about increasing productivity. People are pissed and worried for a reason - and I’m not yet convinced demand for compute has suddenly taken off (beyond the government partnering with these companies for various nefarious things - another problem).
It's so hard to tell, Martha, what's really going on. Is this an arms race or a race to fulfill a legitimate need,. mostly for businesses. I don't think anyone, including Altman, knows.
I’m sorry Mallory was endorsed by Jew hater Elizabeth Warren. Warren also endorsed Mandani and recently voted to block arms sales to Israel. Only 7 dems can be celebrated for voting with Republicans in this measure. I wonder how Mallory would have voted.
We have a friend who recently left Microsoft. He said upper management threatened to fire anyone who did not make AI a priority.
Hubby would never do cosmetic surgery unless he had to. He doesn’t like when I wear make up but he has to live with the Keratin on my hair. I’m happy to be done with the Jew-fro.
Mallory has said she would vote against offensive weapons sales to Israel. So her views don't track exactly with mine. But I'm MAGA allergic so I want as many decent Democrats to win as possible.
Netanyahu and Trump are really jeopardizing long term American commitment to Israel. The polling on American views on Israel is really worrisome to me.
I find myself having to make compromises to support who I think is best long term.
“You don’t need special status to get access” to a good plastic surgeon is one of the most blindly ridiculous things I’ve read. Of course special status is required. I can’t just go up to Nicole Kidman or Kris Jenner and ask who their surgeon is. I can’t lunch with ladies from the east side of Manhattan. I don’t know anyone in Jupiter Florida. The evidence for the exclusivity of “good” plastic surgery is in the results: check out the botched faces of Lauren Bezos, whose surgery was done years before Jeff’s billions smoothed out the rictus on her face. That surgeon is so deep into his special world that he’s oblivious to the existence of people who lack any social connection much less the folks who have $$ but no social capital.
Ellen, I bet anyone could ask around and find plenty of good plastic surgeons. Most doctors will know of some. The real barrier is the expense. And from what I hear, the celebrity surgeons spend more of their time on P/R than honing their skills.
I love the sampler style! I enjoyed all but the most interesting piece to me was about AI. I think the development of AI mirrors the early days of commercial aviation in that the underlying investment well precedes the payoff. Just as airlines required airports, fuel networks, and air traffic control before they could operate at scale, AI demands massive compute infrastructure, data pipelines, and model APIs before most real-world applications become viable. This is where I think we are, and winners and losers will emerge, possibly with the added differentiator of whether their bond duration coincides with profitability.
I also think that the downstream effects are underexplored. The most durable businesses in aviation were the engine manufacturers and fuel suppliers. The AI equivalent may be the infrastructure, integration, and fine-tuning layer rather than the headline models themselves.
But the more profound parallel may be in what the technology ultimately unlocks: AI’s greatest potential lies in its ability to accelerate discovery in fields where the bottleneck isn’t creativity or insight, but the sheer scale of possibilities to explore. AlphaFold demonstrated this recently by solving the protein folding problem not through a flash of human intuition, but by systematically mapping an enormous possibility space that no research team could traverse manually. As quantum computing matures and begins to operate in concert with AI, that capacity for exploration expands by orders of magnitude.
I saw "Giant" and may write a post about it one day, but I didn't think it was "about" Israel or even antisemitism. Its real point I think was that antisemitism, like any form of racism, is often mainly just an expression of someone's personality disorder.
Interesting, thank you for sharing. I live in western MICHIGAN which is mainly republican unfortunately. We rejected Chump in 2020 and Bernie Sanders did upset Hillary in the primaries one year, but we have too many Christian Reformed, tea party, Hillsdale college Pat Sajak cringeworthy types on this side of the state.
A few thoughts on this pertaining to the Israel debate. I don't have a dog in the Michigan Senate primary and I don't feel strongly about any of the candidates, though I suspect either McMorrow or Stevens are better positioned to face down a Republican.
1) Does Israel hatred lead "inevitably" to antisemitism? I do not agree. I go back to my father, who was an anti-Zionist at the end of his life even though he had lived on a kibbutz in the 1960s, cheered on, as a child, the foundation of Israel, and retained a certain nostalgia for labor Zionism. (My father was proudly Jewish, and I am proudly Jewish. Certainly, a proud American Jew.) He was clear-eyed about what the Israeli government had morphed into: a right-wing de facto theocracy that is, in practice, much more fascist than Trump's United States. The trouble with the "Netanyahu is bad!" thesis (well, he is bad, we agree) is that Netanyahu doesn't exist in a vacuum. He responds to political incentives. He will be gone someday, and a more "moderate" leader might even replace him.
But unlike the United States, which has a relatively strong and vibrant Left (the Democratic Party) and will most likely have a Democratic president and Democratic Congress in the near future - I am sure the "Dem trifecta 2029" odds on Polymarket are rather good - there is no such thing as a "Left" in Israel anymore. Labor Zionism is dead as a doornail. The Israeli people very much wanted to go to war with Iran, and the most powerful and growing voting faction are the Haredi and religious extremists. That is what Israel is. And to be frank, as a progressive/leftist person in the United States, I want no part it in.
This transcends the war in Gaza, which we can debate forever (I say genocide, you say no genocide, and on and on we go) and the slaughter of 20,000 or so Palestinian kids. In a strange way, the war in Gaza was almost a distraction from the sickness and rot within the Israeli project, which is the West Bank. I find this is the stuff liberal Zionists don't really want to engage with. At best, Palestinians face the equivalent of Jim Crow-style conditions, violently evicted from their homes, menaced and outright killed. An Arab born in the West Bank in some ways might be *worse off* than a Black person in 1920s Alabama - at least, under Jim Crow, a Black person was theoretically an American citizen.
America, to its credit, has done much to evolve from its Jim Crow past. I'm an American optimist, generally. Israel has a "right" to be a Jewish state in the sense that it artificially (and violently) preserves its Jewish majority, since the ethnic minority population (Arabs) cannot ever achieve enough citizenship to begin voting in numbers that would make them competitive with Jews. You can argue genocide, but I do not think you can argue apartheid. The West Bank is an apartheid state. And even the Arab Israelis that do exist have fewer rights than Jewish Israelis. That's a fact.
One talking point I have no patience for is "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East" or "what about Iran, what about Saudi Arabia?" These countries, indeed, are autocracies, and they're worse. But that's not my standard for a democracy. My standard is the United States, my standard is France, my standard is Germany etc. (The "West"). In Israel, interfaith marriage is illegal - a Jew marrying a Christian couldn't do it within Israel - as is, still, same-sex marriage. By the standards of the U.S., it is a failure, and I would call the U.S. a deeply flawed democracy/republic.
2. "Mamdani was elected for many reasons but foremost among them was the appeal of his anti-Israel stance among young progressives, including many young Jews. A key difference, however, is Mamdani ran against a very weak candidate, Andrew Cuomo."
This is half true. Of course, being anti-Israel/pro-Palestine held appeal for young people who flocked to him. It gave him a lot of juice. The equivalent would be running as an anti-war candidate in the 1960s. But to call it "foremost" ignores the fact that he spent much of the campaign talking about economic issues and local policy, like free buses and a rent freeze. He won the votes of hundreds of thousands of people in the primary, and more than 1 million in the general. It's not like the cab driver in Richmond Hill or the public school teacher in Harlem cares that much about the Middle East.
Cuomo was weak and fatally flawed. But he and his super PACs spent at least $50 million against Mamdani in that race. He survived a gauntlet. That's talent.
Is it just me or is there nothing attractive at all about the looks maxing or whatever kid? Then again I’m mostly attracted to Jewish men, preferably over sixty but I make an occasional exception for a very smart one in his thirties. It is very concerning though not surprising to see that toting a terrorist on the campaign trail has been one fashionable. What is wrong with these people? Of course Michigan has lots of radical Muslims and I suppose they are telling us who they are. Hi to Debbie.
It’s sad and scary that no one blinks at an Islamist in office.
Thanks April! I hope it turns out to be a fatal error for El-Sayed. Michigan is not NYC!
Sparks from culture in the roundup-style of “The Week…” I like it!!
NYT Opinion worthy.
I like that you challenged Derek Thompson about the financial aspects of an AI bubble, given how leveraged these companies are (and how much of the debt has been sliced and distributed into financial vehicles that will affect more than tech companies if/when the bubble pops). Thompson has switched his view to seeing AI as a commodity like electricity, but that’s not his big new idea - that’s what Sam Altman has been saying, hyping the idea that we’ll all need “compute” the way we need light. Me, I’m tracking the social and political pushback against AI, which is not all about increasing productivity. People are pissed and worried for a reason - and I’m not yet convinced demand for compute has suddenly taken off (beyond the government partnering with these companies for various nefarious things - another problem).
It's so hard to tell, Martha, what's really going on. Is this an arms race or a race to fulfill a legitimate need,. mostly for businesses. I don't think anyone, including Altman, knows.
I’m sorry Mallory was endorsed by Jew hater Elizabeth Warren. Warren also endorsed Mandani and recently voted to block arms sales to Israel. Only 7 dems can be celebrated for voting with Republicans in this measure. I wonder how Mallory would have voted.
We have a friend who recently left Microsoft. He said upper management threatened to fire anyone who did not make AI a priority.
Hubby would never do cosmetic surgery unless he had to. He doesn’t like when I wear make up but he has to live with the Keratin on my hair. I’m happy to be done with the Jew-fro.
Mallory has said she would vote against offensive weapons sales to Israel. So her views don't track exactly with mine. But I'm MAGA allergic so I want as many decent Democrats to win as possible.
Netanyahu and Trump are really jeopardizing long term American commitment to Israel. The polling on American views on Israel is really worrisome to me.
I find myself having to make compromises to support who I think is best long term.
“You don’t need special status to get access” to a good plastic surgeon is one of the most blindly ridiculous things I’ve read. Of course special status is required. I can’t just go up to Nicole Kidman or Kris Jenner and ask who their surgeon is. I can’t lunch with ladies from the east side of Manhattan. I don’t know anyone in Jupiter Florida. The evidence for the exclusivity of “good” plastic surgery is in the results: check out the botched faces of Lauren Bezos, whose surgery was done years before Jeff’s billions smoothed out the rictus on her face. That surgeon is so deep into his special world that he’s oblivious to the existence of people who lack any social connection much less the folks who have $$ but no social capital.
Ellen, I bet anyone could ask around and find plenty of good plastic surgeons. Most doctors will know of some. The real barrier is the expense. And from what I hear, the celebrity surgeons spend more of their time on P/R than honing their skills.
I love the sampler style! I enjoyed all but the most interesting piece to me was about AI. I think the development of AI mirrors the early days of commercial aviation in that the underlying investment well precedes the payoff. Just as airlines required airports, fuel networks, and air traffic control before they could operate at scale, AI demands massive compute infrastructure, data pipelines, and model APIs before most real-world applications become viable. This is where I think we are, and winners and losers will emerge, possibly with the added differentiator of whether their bond duration coincides with profitability.
I also think that the downstream effects are underexplored. The most durable businesses in aviation were the engine manufacturers and fuel suppliers. The AI equivalent may be the infrastructure, integration, and fine-tuning layer rather than the headline models themselves.
But the more profound parallel may be in what the technology ultimately unlocks: AI’s greatest potential lies in its ability to accelerate discovery in fields where the bottleneck isn’t creativity or insight, but the sheer scale of possibilities to explore. AlphaFold demonstrated this recently by solving the protein folding problem not through a flash of human intuition, but by systematically mapping an enormous possibility space that no research team could traverse manually. As quantum computing matures and begins to operate in concert with AI, that capacity for exploration expands by orders of magnitude.
I saw "Giant" and may write a post about it one day, but I didn't think it was "about" Israel or even antisemitism. Its real point I think was that antisemitism, like any form of racism, is often mainly just an expression of someone's personality disorder.
Interesting, thank you for sharing. I live in western MICHIGAN which is mainly republican unfortunately. We rejected Chump in 2020 and Bernie Sanders did upset Hillary in the primaries one year, but we have too many Christian Reformed, tea party, Hillsdale college Pat Sajak cringeworthy types on this side of the state.
Looking forward to voting for Mallory.
Mallory wins my vote, no beauty war needed.
A few thoughts on this pertaining to the Israel debate. I don't have a dog in the Michigan Senate primary and I don't feel strongly about any of the candidates, though I suspect either McMorrow or Stevens are better positioned to face down a Republican.
1) Does Israel hatred lead "inevitably" to antisemitism? I do not agree. I go back to my father, who was an anti-Zionist at the end of his life even though he had lived on a kibbutz in the 1960s, cheered on, as a child, the foundation of Israel, and retained a certain nostalgia for labor Zionism. (My father was proudly Jewish, and I am proudly Jewish. Certainly, a proud American Jew.) He was clear-eyed about what the Israeli government had morphed into: a right-wing de facto theocracy that is, in practice, much more fascist than Trump's United States. The trouble with the "Netanyahu is bad!" thesis (well, he is bad, we agree) is that Netanyahu doesn't exist in a vacuum. He responds to political incentives. He will be gone someday, and a more "moderate" leader might even replace him.
But unlike the United States, which has a relatively strong and vibrant Left (the Democratic Party) and will most likely have a Democratic president and Democratic Congress in the near future - I am sure the "Dem trifecta 2029" odds on Polymarket are rather good - there is no such thing as a "Left" in Israel anymore. Labor Zionism is dead as a doornail. The Israeli people very much wanted to go to war with Iran, and the most powerful and growing voting faction are the Haredi and religious extremists. That is what Israel is. And to be frank, as a progressive/leftist person in the United States, I want no part it in.
This transcends the war in Gaza, which we can debate forever (I say genocide, you say no genocide, and on and on we go) and the slaughter of 20,000 or so Palestinian kids. In a strange way, the war in Gaza was almost a distraction from the sickness and rot within the Israeli project, which is the West Bank. I find this is the stuff liberal Zionists don't really want to engage with. At best, Palestinians face the equivalent of Jim Crow-style conditions, violently evicted from their homes, menaced and outright killed. An Arab born in the West Bank in some ways might be *worse off* than a Black person in 1920s Alabama - at least, under Jim Crow, a Black person was theoretically an American citizen.
America, to its credit, has done much to evolve from its Jim Crow past. I'm an American optimist, generally. Israel has a "right" to be a Jewish state in the sense that it artificially (and violently) preserves its Jewish majority, since the ethnic minority population (Arabs) cannot ever achieve enough citizenship to begin voting in numbers that would make them competitive with Jews. You can argue genocide, but I do not think you can argue apartheid. The West Bank is an apartheid state. And even the Arab Israelis that do exist have fewer rights than Jewish Israelis. That's a fact.
One talking point I have no patience for is "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East" or "what about Iran, what about Saudi Arabia?" These countries, indeed, are autocracies, and they're worse. But that's not my standard for a democracy. My standard is the United States, my standard is France, my standard is Germany etc. (The "West"). In Israel, interfaith marriage is illegal - a Jew marrying a Christian couldn't do it within Israel - as is, still, same-sex marriage. By the standards of the U.S., it is a failure, and I would call the U.S. a deeply flawed democracy/republic.
2. "Mamdani was elected for many reasons but foremost among them was the appeal of his anti-Israel stance among young progressives, including many young Jews. A key difference, however, is Mamdani ran against a very weak candidate, Andrew Cuomo."
This is half true. Of course, being anti-Israel/pro-Palestine held appeal for young people who flocked to him. It gave him a lot of juice. The equivalent would be running as an anti-war candidate in the 1960s. But to call it "foremost" ignores the fact that he spent much of the campaign talking about economic issues and local policy, like free buses and a rent freeze. He won the votes of hundreds of thousands of people in the primary, and more than 1 million in the general. It's not like the cab driver in Richmond Hill or the public school teacher in Harlem cares that much about the Middle East.
Cuomo was weak and fatally flawed. But he and his super PACs spent at least $50 million against Mamdani in that race. He survived a gauntlet. That's talent.