Progressive search for action

12+ min ago (1100+ words) When OpenAI's Sam Altman told reporters in San Francisco earlier this year that the AI sector is in a bubble, the American tech market reacted almost instantly. Combined with the fact that 95 per cent of AI pilot projects fail, traders treated his remark as a broader warning. Although Altman was referring specifically to private startups rather than publicly traded giants, some appear to have interpreted it as an industry-wide assessment. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel sold his Nvidia holdings, for instance, while American investor Michael Burry (of The Big Short fame) has made million-dollar bets that companies like Palantir and Nvidia will drop in value. What Altman's comment really exposes is not only the fragility of specific firms but the deeper tendency Prussian philosopher Karl Marx predicted: the problem of surplus capital that can no longer find profitable outlets in production....

40+ min ago (386+ words) There is an implicit assumption undergirding American political debate: The Republican Party is the party of "normal" Americans, and the party with its finger on the pulse of basic middle-American common sense. This reality has taken the commentariat by surprise over these last few months. Here, I think, is why: I think a lot of pundits, trying to imagine the thoughts and emotional responses of the "normal" Americans they may never have met, assume that people just reflexively fall for tough talk. That tough talk and common sense are the same thing. But they aren't. It's important to understand this, especially this week, because Trump is apparently about to take this country down two very dark and, I suspect, deeply unpopular paths. The first is his thuggishly over-the-top response to the shootings of those two National Guard officers in Washington....

40+ min ago (1021+ words) On one visit, in May 2024, Batres approached a cluster of about a dozen workers, all clad in the same dirtied neon shirts that marked them as employees of Gotham Drywall Inc., one of the biggest nonunion subcontractors on the job'no stranger to managing as much as $258 million in contracts. Yet when he asked each worker who their employer was, their answers were complicated. "Some guy says, "Oh, I work for this guy called Bruno," Batres recalled. "You go to the next guy, and he says, "I was working with M.A.S., and its not around anymore, but Im working for the same guy, Daniel'hes opened another company. And then you go to the next one, and he says, "Yeah, Im working for Atlantic. But these guys, theyre all wearing a Gotham Drywall shirt." Trumps brutal immigration policies have given labor brokers new…...

40+ min ago (1655+ words) When Americans think of the civil rights movement, we may think of the bridge in Selma or the boycott in Montgomery or the march on Washington, but if we remember a single image, it is likely Birmingham, 1963: the protesters battered by the propulsive spray of the fire hoses, the snarling German shepherds, the children in their high-tops and bobby socks, the policemen with their billy clubs aloft. Photos of these scenes shocked the nation. They are widely credited with securing the Alabama city's swift agreement to desegregate and hastening the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act the following year.The story these photos told was one of passive resistance: of protesters putting their bodies in the path of state violence without resorting to force. They remain at the center of the standard-issue narrative of the civil rights movement, that…...

40+ min ago (819+ words) Your Vox Membership goes further this holiday season. When you buy an annual membership, we'll give one to someone who can't afford access. It's a simple way for you to support Vox's journalism and share it with someone who needs it. The GOP justices are about to hand Trump a victory that they have been dreaming about since he was married to Ivana. The outcome in Trump v. Slaughter, which the Supreme Court will hear on Monday, December 8, could not be more preordained. Slaughter involves a struggle over presidential power that has animated many prominent Republican lawyers and judges since the 1980s. And this peculiar faction of right-wing lawyers and judges now controls the Court itself. The Court, in other words, is engaged in a wholesale rethinking of the separation of powers. Some parts of this project seek to transfer power away…...

40+ min ago (1816+ words) Your Vox Membership goes further this holiday season. When you buy an annual membership, we'll give one to someone who can't afford access. It's a simple way for you to support Vox's journalism and share it with someone who needs it. Here's everything you wanted to know about blood donation Donating money isn't the only way you can help people. You can also give your blood. Of the approximately 62 percent of Americans eligible to donate blood, only 3 percent do so each year. But someone needs blood every few seconds in the US. While the average red blood cell transfusion is about three units, a single car accident victim can need up to 100 units of blood. "We know everybody's schedules get really busy," Diane Calmus, the vice president of government affairs at America's Blood Centers, told me. But people "continue to…...

40+ min ago (727+ words) Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, however, is a bit more circumspect. Earlier in November, Bessent told Fox News Sunday that "we will see" about the possibility of issuing checks, acknowledging that Congress would, in fact, need to pass legislation in order for these payments to be issued. "To call it a tariff dividend, I think, is elevating in a way that should not be elevated. It's just simply a stimulus check using taxpayer money," said Zandi. "These stimulus checks, regardless of where the income cutoff is, and regardless of how much money the tariffs actually raise, are just pure deficit spending," said Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the libertarian Cato Institute. There is precedent for issuing these kinds of rebate checks. However, they are typically administered in a time of significant downturn, as with the stimulus payments that…...

50+ min ago (1133+ words) I'm not writing to you today about all the things I am thankful for as our 2025 holiday season visits us, because I am too damn busy with what makes me furious to type otherwise. We are a country at war against fascism, and its racist, evil residue. We are at war against a dark, lawless, centralized force that does not believe all men and women are created equal, and do the bidding of soulless billionaires who fund all this hell to pad their absurd fortunes. You can say I don't have my priorities straight, and in return I will do you the courtesy of suggesting you quit reading now, to save you your precious time. Hopefully, we can catch up again next week. To the brave who have stayed, I will endeavor to put down words of molten steel that…...

1+ hour, 7+ min ago (216+ words) The unions have heard the message sent today by the world of labor. It is evident that the success of the three strike days forces them to reflect, in the coming days, on how to follow up with the social movement. On November 25, strikes spread to the postal service, schools and day care centers, trash collection, and public hospitals, which delayed consultations scheduled for that day. The general strike poses directly the question of the conquest of power by the proletariat. The CGT has turned and is turning its back on this task (the leaders of the CGT turn their faces towards the bourgeois power). " And what about the general strike of February 12, 1934? It was only a brief and peaceful demonstration imposed upon the CGT by the Socialist and Communist workers. Jouhaux and his colleagues themselves took over the nominal…...

1+ hour, 39+ min ago (360+ words) Let it all go. Your pull for the week is the Eight of Wands, which represents movement, progress, change, and the need to make speedy decisions. If you've been feeling stuck or bored, then this card is great news. As you head into December, it won't feel like you're living the same dull day over and over again. Instead, something will spark " either internally or externally " and send you off in a new direction. It could be an exciting work project, a new match on your dating apps, or a little surge of excitement that bubbles up in your stomach and says, "You know what? I'm going to do something different today." Just like that, you'll be inspired to have fun again. In a tarot reading, the Eight of Wands suggests life will unfold in your favor, a lot like…...