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Saudi-Iran Agreement Is Less Than Meets the Eye
Saudi-Iran Agreement Is Less Than Meets the Eye, Bobby Ghosh, Bloomberg
Who could complain about any of this? Even the Biden administration, which is deeply suspicious of China’s growing global ambitions, was compelled to welcome the announcement. “We support any effort to de-escalate tensions there,” said White House spokesman John Kirby. “We think it’s in our own interests.”

But there is less to this tableau than meets the eye. On closer examination, the mediator’s role is overstated, as is the substance of the agreement. The Iranians and Saudis had been working toward a détente for two years, aided by several intermediaries — notably Iraq and Oman. China entered the picture late, after the terms had been agreed. But it suits Tehran and Riyadh to allow Beijing to supervise the final crossing of t’s and dotting of i’s—and to hog the credit. After all, China is the world’s biggest buyer of what Saudi Arabia and Iran have to sell.

The Chinese stamp of approval gives the deal more gravitas than an Iraqi imprimatur, say. An American sign-off was never on the cards, given the longstanding US-Iran animosities, but the Saudis kept the Biden administration appraised of progress throughout.

Progress toward what, exactly? The two sides have agreed to reopen embassies, the better to “clear up misunderstandings” (as Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s security council, put it) and cooperate over regional security in the Persian Gulf. The first of these is the most certain, ending the standoff that began with the 2016 torching of the Saudi embassy in Tehran by Iranian mobs.
Black Americans view capitalism more negatively than positively but express hope in Black businesses
Black Americans view capitalism more negatively than positively but express hope in Black businesses, Khadijah Edwards, Pew
In an August 2022 survey, 54% of Black adults said they had a very or somewhat negative impression of capitalism, up from 40% in May 2019. Four-in-ten Black adults held a very or somewhat positive view of capitalism in 2022, down from 57% in 2019. Views of capitalism also grew more negative among other racial and ethnic groups during this period, but the movement was particularly pronounced among Black Americans. In fact, the 2022 survey found that Black adults were the only racial or ethnic group more likely to view capitalism more negatively than positively, and also the only group more likely to view socialism more positively (52%) than negatively (42%).

In that survey, a quarter of Black adults said the phrase “gives all people an equal opportunity to be successful” describes capitalism extremely or very well. About twice as many Black adults (49%) said this phrase does not describe capitalism well. [...]

In the same survey, the vast majority of Black Americans said the U.S. economic system does not treat Black people fairly and that major changes to the system are needed. Roughly eight-in-ten Black adults (83%) said the economic system either needs to be completely rebuilt (37%) or needs major changes (46%). Another 11% said the system requires only minor changes.
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2024 Trump Is Even Scarier Than 2020 Trump
2024 Trump Is Even Scarier Than 2020 Trump, Susan B. Glasser, The New Yorker
...I urge you to disregard the conventional wisdom about the former President being a spent force in Republican politics and pay much closer attention to what Trump is actually doing and saying in his campaign—a doomsday-laden frontal attack on American democracy far darker and more threatening to the constitutional order than even his previous two bids. Last weekend, in a speech to cpac that failed to make many front-page headlines but should have, Trump framed his effort to return to the White House as an outright war and vowed that, once reinstalled in power, his mission would be nothing less than “retribution” for all the wrongs that he and his grievance-fuelled followers have suffered. Speaking for more than an hour and a half in front of a crowd that repeatedly cheered his definition of the Presidency as a platform for personalized vengeance, he spoke ominously of “enemies,” and promised to “totally obliterate the ‘deep state,’ ” among other demons, once victory was attained.

His call to arms was not merely the stuff of political symbolism. Echoing the inflammatory language with which he summoned his supporters to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump urged them to fight once again in explicitly end-time terms. “We have no choice,” he said. “If we don’t do this, our country will be lost forever.” In case the comparison was lost on anybody, he explicitly extolled the “great, great patriots” unfairly sitting in jail, recasting the rioters who breached America’s own Capitol building as maga martyrs. “This is the final battle,” he insisted. “They know it. I know it. You know it. Everybody knows it. This is it. Either they win, or we win, and if they win we no longer have a country.” [...]

To reinforce just how much he meant the threats in his cpac speech, the Trump campaign later sent out a gritty meme from it as a fund-raiser. It showed a black-and-white photograph of Trump, glowering as he pointed at the viewer: “I am YOUR retribution,” the caption said. Vengeance-minded in the best of times, Trump is now outright promising a second term filled with unchecked purges and payback.
The Ugly Elitism of the American Right
The Ugly Elitism of the American Right, Tom Nichols, The Atlantic
The American right...now uses elitist to mean “people who think they’re better than me because they live and work and play differently than I do.” They rage that people—myself included—look down upon them. And again, truth be told, I do look down on Trump voters, not because I am an elitist but because I am an American citizen and I believe that they, as my fellow citizens, have made political choices that have inflicted the greatest harm on our system of government since the Civil War. I refuse to treat their views as just part of the normal left-right axis of American politics. [...]

In 2016, I believed that good people were making a mistake. In 2023, I cannot dismiss their choices as mere mistakes. Instead, I accept and respect the human agency that has led Trump supporters to their current choices. Indeed, I insist on recognizing that agency: I have never agreed with the people who dismiss Trump voters as robotic simpletons who were mesmerized by Russian memes. I believe that today’s Trump supporters are people who are making a conscious, knowing, and morally flawed choice to continue supporting a sociopath and a party chock-full of seditionists. [...]

Unlike people such as Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham, I have never told anyone—including you, readers of The Atlantic—anything I don’t believe. What we’re seeing at Fox, however, is lying on a grand scale, done with a snide loathing for the audience and a cool indifference to the damage being done to the nation. Fox, and the Republican Party it serves, for years has relentlessly patronized its audience, cooing to viewers about how right they are not to trust anyone else, banging the desk about the corruption of American institutions, and shouting into the camera about how the liars and betrayers must pay.
ChatGPT's impact on grammar, cyberbullying, and the future of language
ChatGPT's impact on grammar, cyberbullying, and the future of language, The Grammarian, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Machines have “been trained off of probably on the order of a trillion words’ worth of texts from the internet,” said Callison-Burch. “So that includes both grammatical and ungrammatical.” The machines learn language in a way that’s “100% descriptive,” he said, and then use probability to predict what’s likely to come next. So while it’s unlikely to spit out mistakes that are otherwise rare for humans to make, those mistakes that are more prevalent are more likely to become ingrained in the bot’s vernacular. If enough people use a made-up word — say, turnt or stonks or stimmy — machines could pick it up.

That means machines could accelerate language changes already underway. Naturally spreading neologisms — new words or phrases — might end up in a chatbot transcript before they end up in a dictionary. Cool, right?

Despite some humans’ tendency to take new technology and use it for bullying or worse, chatbots show promise for language — especially for non-native speakers looking to improve how they speak. Callison-Burch mentioned Grammarly, a writing assistant that — though its language suggestions are often generic — can prove useful for some who struggle with grammar. “If you compare [chatbots] against what Microsoft Word used to suggest to you, they’ve come a long way,” he said. RIP, Clippy.
The EU must accelerate its next enlargement
The EU must accelerate its next enlargement, Jeremy Cliffe, The New Statesman
That the wheels of the accession process are only creaking forward reflects how demanding this next enlargement would be. Accepting Ukraine, Moldova and the west-Balkan six would take the EU to 35 member states (36 with Georgia, though its slide towards autocracy makes that less likely for now). The additional eight members would add 64 million to the union’s population – roughly the number lost through Brexit, but with well under one quarter of Britain’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Ukraine would become the union’s fifth-biggest member by population and its largest by land area. The accession of this new EU8 would move Europe’s centre of gravity markedly to the east, with a new Warsaw-Kyiv axis perhaps rivalling the Paris-Berlin one.

That would create all sorts of thorny challenges for the EU – possibly greater than those of the 2004 and 2007 enlargements and the westward migration, eastward transfers of regional funds, and strains on the union’s cohesion that they unleashed. If it is to join the EU any time soon, Ukraine might have to do so while still at war (frozen or otherwise), and with Russia occupying parts of its territory. With Moldova would come the Kremlin-backed breakaway republic of Transnistria. Peace in the Balkans looks increasingly fragile and Serbia is again drifting towards authoritarian nationalism and the arms of Russia and China. [...]

Yet as fraught as all this would be – particularly if pursued on an accelerated timetable – it is worth comparing with the potential costs of continued limbo. Imagine that latter scenario in, say, the early 2030s. Imagine an Ukraine worn down structurally and industrially by years of war; its economy sclerotic and investment sparse; a slow-motion failed state; its voters and leaders resentful of an EU that failed to stand by its promises. Imagine Moldova or the west-Balkan states at war or turned into satellites of Moscow, Beijing or even Ankara. Imagine an archipelago of instability and poverty across eastern and south-eastern Europe, its fractures and crises creeping across the borders into the EU itself.
When will Silicon Valley Bank depositors get their money back — and will they be made whole? Questions swirl after lender goes down
When will Silicon Valley Bank depositors get their money back — and will they be made whole? Questions swirl after lender goes down, Rob Wile, NBC News
The bank's funds are currently in the hands of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Since SVB was an FDIC-insured lender, all who banked with it had their money guaranteed by the federal government — but only up to $250,000.

That's left anyone with more than that amount — totaling 90% of SVB’s deposits — in financial limbo. It's a group that includes Roku, which said it has nearly $500 million with SVB; Roblox, which said it has $150 million with SVB; and numerous others — SVB claimed to have approximately half of all U.S. venture-backed tech and life science companies and more than 2,500 venture capital funds as its customers. Other firms, including Etsy, have already told customers they are facing payment processing delays. This weekend, the FDIC will attempt to find an entity that will buy SVB outright, said Morgan Ricks, a professor of banking and finance at Vanderbilt University.

But the FDIC has already telegraphed that it does not expect to find such a purchaser, Ricks said, having announced Friday that it intends to issue "receivership certificates" to customers for deposit amounts in excess of $250,000. The FDIC also announced that "as it sells the assets of Silicon Valley Bank, future dividend payments may be made to uninsured depositors."
The many reinventions of Ron DeSantis
The many reinventions of Ron DeSantis, Andrew Prokop, Vox
Being a Tea Party conservative got him into Congress. Becoming a staunch Trump defender got him the Republican nomination for Florida’s governorship. Being a pragmatist who avoided national controversies helped boost his approval rating early in his governorship. Now, his latest reinvention as an “anti-wokeness” culture warrior has helped make him the leading alternative to Trump in polls of national Republican primary voters. Each shift was optimized for his next political objective.

Some on the right like to mock what they see as liberals’ tendency to champion “The Current Thing” — falling in lockstep behind a new cause suddenly in vogue in the media or among their peers. DeSantis has made supporting the right’s version of The Current Thing the core of his political strategy, and it has paid off immensely. (Asked for comment, DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin said, “Vox is not a serious or objective publication,” and that this amounted to “dressing up wild leftist talking points as truthful analysis and reporting.”)

The problem with shifting so often and so blatantly is that it opens you up to criticism for being a phony who lacks all principles. But DeSantis has embraced each new identity so fervently that he’s avoided that pitfall up to this point — though Trump will surely go after him with that line of attack.

It also makes it difficult to assess what his actual underlying policy beliefs are and how he’d govern as president.
Disinformation Is Not The Real Problem with Democracy
Disinformation Is Not The Real Problem with Democracy, Jamelle Bouie, New York Times
The information environment of the early American Republic — the first years of the Constitution, leading up to the election of 1800 — was saturated with conspiracies and misinformation. For all intents and purposes, there was no press but the partisan press well into the 19th century, to the extent that local political machines produced their own newspapers for their supporters and patrons. And conspiracies, again, were the common currency of American politics.

We tend to remember the 20th century as the age of the broad-minded and objective journalist, but until the Second World War, the information environment of American life looked much like it did in the previous century, with tabloids and broadsheets competing with partisan outlets and ideological journals.

Our world of misinformation, disinformation and partisan news is a departure from the years during which a handful of large institutions dominated national news-making, but it’s a return to the world before those years, when the information environment was fractured and often unreliable.

If our information has almost always been fractured and unreliable, then our particular information environment can’t actually explain the problems facing American democracy.
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