Posts by Swedan Margen
A Wintry Utopia in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom
Vermont has long been a haven for idealists and iconoclasts, from the Putney Perfectionists of the nineteenth century to Depression-era homesteaders like Helen and Scott Nearing to the prickly Brooklynite who became the state’s most famous senator. In a 2009 book called “The Town That Food Saved,” Ben Hewitt, a northern-Vermont native, chronicled the arrival…
Read MoreCalifornia Progressives Insist on Quota Politics | National Review
Even in deep-blue territory, voters might decide that they have had enough. Source link
Read MoreA Nineteenth-Century Countess’s Sultry Selfies
Virginia Oldoini helped conceptualize and starred in more than four hundred portraits so experimental and expressive that they have drawn comparisons to works by Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman. Source link
Read MoreLessons for Subduing the Oldest Hatred | National Review
Forget grievance. To counteract bigotry takes a particular resolve. Source link
Read MoreBiplanes, Trains, and Super-Fast Ponies, Zip Codes, Stamps, and Ben Franklin | National Review
The fascinating history of the U.S. Postal Service, but, alas, it’s now illegal to mail your child. Source link
Read MoreThe Most Beautiful Freezer in the World
Arrival was a shock. Inside the station, I unzipped my engorged duffel, retrieving my precious scale and cookie cutters. I filled my drawers, tacked up photos of my husband, two children, and dog, and pulled out the recipe book I’d assembled—marzipan cake, ginger-prune upside-down cake, walnut tart. My father was a chef, and I grew…
Read MoreHamit Coskun’s Victories and Losses | National Review
The man who burned a Koran in England won the most recent appeal. But the decision is not a win for free expression. Source link
Read MoreThe Week: Trump Goes to War | National Review
Plus: Goodbye, Kristi Noem. Source link
Read MoreHundreds of applications, no jobs and AI replacements: California’s brutal tech work landscape
Laid-off tech worker Joseph Tinner has spent almost a year hunting for a job. It has been a depressing crash course on the sea change in Silicon Valley. The former product instructor from the San Francisco Bay Area has ridden the tech wave throughout his career, easily jumping from Verizon to Fitbit to Workday. Since…
Read MoreLawsuit alleges Google chatbot was behind a user’s delusions and death
Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini encouraged a 36-year-old Florida man to embark on violent missions and to take his own life, a lawsuit alleges. The man, Jonathan Gavalas, started using the chatbot in August 2025 to help write, plan travel and assist with shopping. But after he activated Google’s most intelligent AI model, Gemini 2.5…
Read MoreCommentary: In two new court cases, judges find that AI does not have human intelligence
It’s becoming clearer with every passing day that the only people making a serious effort to come to grips with the implications of artificial intelligence for society aren’t legislators, or business leaders, or AI promoters themselves. They’re judges. Indeed, in recent weeks, judges in two federal cases have drawn a line that seems to have…
Read More“Hoppers” Is a Happy Leap Forward for Pixar
The script is by Jesse Andrews, who co-wrote the Pixar comedy “Luca” (2021), a sunny tale of youthful self-discovery and the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the human and natural worlds. “Hoppers,” though much unrulier in its construction, is onto something similar. Mabel is a freckle-faced, messy-haired misfit, with a love of nature that she inherited…
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