“What Does That Nature Say to You”: Don’t Meet the Parents

“What Does That Nature Say to You”: Don’t Meet the Parents

Filmmakers like to call themselves storytellers for the same reason that politicians like to call themselves public servants: it’s a show of deference toward a popular ideal. Yet few of them treat stories as their fundamental unit of creation. One who does so is the Korean filmmaker Hong Sangsoo, whose narrative imagination is so fertile…

Read More

Commentary: The Pentagon is demanding to use Claude AI as it pleases. Claude told me that’s ‘dangerous’

Commentary: The Pentagon is demanding to use Claude AI as it pleases. Claude told me that’s ‘dangerous’

Recently, I asked Claude, an artificial-intelligence thingy at the center of a standoff with the Pentagon, if it could be dangerous in the wrong hands. Say, for example, hands that wanted to put a tight net of surveillance around every American citizen, monitoring our lives in real time to ensure our compliance with government. “Yes.…

Read More

Block to cut more than 4,000 jobs amid AI disruption of the workplace

Block to cut more than 4,000 jobs amid AI disruption of the workplace

Fintech company Block said Thursday that it’s cutting more than 4,000 workers or nearly half of its workforce as artificial intelligence disrupts the way people work. The Oakland parent company of payment services Square and Cash App saw its stock surge by more than 23% in after-hours trading after making the layoff announcement. Jack Dorsey,…

Read More

Outside group spends $4.8 million on TV ads backing San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan for governor

Outside group spends .8 million on TV ads backing San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan for governor

An independent expenditure committee backed by Silicon Valley executives spent $4.8 million on television ads supporting San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan’s gubernatorial bid that will begin airing Thursday. The two 30-second ads highlight the Democrat’s life story — being raised in a working-class family and working on a grounds crew and as a middle school…

Read More

The Hidden History of Native American Enslavement

The Hidden History of Native American Enslavement

In many cases, Indigenous enslavement adds new dimensions to familiar histories of the Americas—and to some of their most famous actors. Christopher Columbus sold hundreds of Indians into slavery in Europe. Hernán Cortés owned hundreds of enslaved Indigenous people, more than anyone else in Mexico. The Pueblo Revolt, in 1680, during which Indians destroyed missions…

Read More