The pandemic response wasn’t perfect. But the pandemic itself was real, and punishing. Above all, it revealed our vulnerability — biological, social and political. And in the aftermath of the emergency, Americans have largely looked away, choosing to see the experience less in terms of death and illness than in terms of social hysteria and even public health overreach. For many, the main lesson was that in the world of humans, as in the world of microbes, it’s dog-eat-dog out there.

But the consequences and aftershocks were also more subtle and diffuse: it isn’t easy to live in isolation and in fear, often largely online and surrounded by exceptional illness and mortality, as we watched aspects of the world and our own lives we’d long taken for granted be withdrawn or torn apart. And it isn’t easy to get over all that, however eager we thought we were to “return to normal.” We lived through as many deaths as some of the worst-case scenarios predicted, and without an initial spasm of inspiring solidarity and miraculous biomedical intervention, it could have been worse. But when we came out the other side — 1.5 million fewer of us — we were, as a country, exhausted, resentful, deluded and distrustful. A huge amount of the world in which we now reside was formed in that crucible. I will write more about that next week.

Read it all.

The Covid Alarmists Were Closer to the Truth Than Anyone Else https://t.co/431zklvB2r

— judy gitlin (@heyjudenyc) February 26, 2025

After many years of steady decline, the share of Americans who identify as Christians shows signs of leveling off – at least temporarily – at slightly above six-in-ten, according to a massive new Pew Research Center survey of 36,908 U.S. adults.

The Religious Landscape Study (RLS) is the largest single survey the Center conducts, aiming to provide authoritative figures on the size of U.S. religious groups because the U.S. census does not collect that information.

We have conducted three of these landscape surveys over the past 17 years, with more than 35,000 randomly sampled respondents each time. That’s enough to paint a statistical portrait of religion not only nationally, but also in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as in 34 large metro areas.

Read it all.

Whoa, new @pewresearch provides more evidence that the secular trajectory of American life has leveled off: "Decline of Christianity in the U.S… May Have Leveled Off" pic.twitter.com/MDsXc4zQd9

— Brad Wilcox (@BradWilcoxIFS) February 26, 2025

Many Americans are pinching pennies, exhausted by high prices and stubborn inflation. The well-off are spending with abandon. 

The top 10% of earners—households making about $250,000 a year or more—are splurging on everything from vacations to designer handbags, buoyed by big gains in stocks, real estate and other assets.

Those consumers now account for 49.7% of all spending, a record in data going back to 1989, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics. Three decades ago, they accounted for about 36%.

All this means that economic growth is unusually reliant on rich Americans continuing to shell out. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, estimated that spending by the top 10% alone accounted for almost one-third of gross domestic product. 

Between September 2023 and September 2024, the high earners increased their spending by 12%. Spending by working-class and middle-class households, meanwhile, dropped over the same period. 

Read it all.

Households making $250,000+ now account for 49.7% of all U.S. spending.

"Three decades ago, they accounted for about 36%. All this means that economic growth is unusually reliant on rich Americans continuing to shell out."

This chart that accompanies @WSJ's story is striking: https://t.co/uT4cc3Qv05 pic.twitter.com/7gxYPjX4aG

— Marty Swant (@martyswant) February 24, 2025

Friedrich Merz, the man favored to be Germany’s next chancellor after elections on Sunday, is a conservative businessman who has never been a government minister and was forced out of party leadership years ago for challenging Angela Merkel.

As a Christian Democrat and committed trans-Atlanticist, he has been considered a potentially better match for President Trump than the current Social Democratic chancellor, Olaf Scholz. He is also expected to lead a foreign policy more aligned with Mr. Trump’s ideas about Europe’s taking responsibility for its own defense.

But recent comments by Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance have displayed just how difficult any partnership may be with a United States that is less reliable and possibly hostile, and sympathetic to Russia’s narrative on Ukraine and spheres of influence.

That challenge is especially profound for Germany, and after Sunday is likely to fall on Mr. Merz, 69, who is known to be assertive and direct, if a bit awkward.

Read it all.

"Next Likely Chancellor Promises a Tougher Germany" by Steven Erlanger via NYT New York Times https://t.co/k70kWvVQ7b

— LadyEleanorA (@LadyEleanorA) February 20, 2025

The past week has been the bleakest in Europe since the fall of the Iron Curtain. Ukraine is being sold out, Russia is being rehabilitated and, under Donald Trump, America can no longer be counted on to come to Europe’s aid in wartime. The implications for Europe’s security are grave, but they have yet to sink in to the continent’s leaders and people. The old world needs a crash course on how to wield hard power in a lawless era, or it will fall victim to the new world disorder.

Speaking in Munich last week, America’s vice-president, J.D. Vance, offered a taste of how the home of fine wines, classical architecture and welfare cheques faces humiliation, when he ridiculed Europe as decadent and undemocratic. Its leaders have been excluded from peace talks between the White House and the Kremlin, which began officially in Riyadh on February 18th. However, the unfolding crisis goes far beyond insults and diplomatic niceties.

Mr Trump appears ready to walk away from Ukraine which he falsely blames for the war. Calling its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a “dictator”, Mr Trump warned him that he had “better move fast or he is not going to have a country left”. America may try to impose an unstable ceasefire on Ukraine with only weak security guarantees that limit its right to re-arm.

Read it all.

Europe’s worst nightmare, and what to do about it. Our cover this week @TheEconomist https://t.co/JVwHunz4Cr pic.twitter.com/SCJc0rjs4R

— Sophie Pedder (@PedderSophie) February 20, 2025

The “relevance to the 2020s” of Kindleberger’s [1973] book is greater and gloomier. We have two competing superpowers, the US and China. Both fancy themselves as hegemons; neither is willing to accept the responsibilities of the role. The US vows vengeance on anybody who threatens the primacy of the dollar even as its own actions put that primacy in doubt. China rails against its lack of status in the current economic system, even as it plays a prime role in destabilising it.

With luck, there will be no crisis on a scale that needs leadership and global co-ordination to resolve — but luck always runs out in the end. It makes sense to bolster the international institutions as much as possible. It makes sense, too, to run sensible domestic policies and not end up dependent on the kindness of strangers, an unhelpful truism, like advice not to let your house catch fire.

“If leadership is thought of as the provision of the public good of responsibility, rather than the exploitation of followers or the private good of prestige, it remains a positive idea,” wrote Kindleberger. The US, for all its failings, provided that kind of leadership. The world awaits, with trepidation, the experience of an economic or financial crisis without it.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

Who will now stabilise the world economy? https://t.co/gAb7tUq1jd | opinion

— Financial Times (@FT) February 19, 2025

Donald Trump’s demand for a $500bn (£400bn) “payback” from Ukraine goes far beyond US control over the country’s critical minerals. It covers everything from ports and infrastructure to oil and gas, and the larger resource base of the country.

The terms of the contract that landed at Volodymyr Zelensky’s office a week ago amount to the US economic colonisation of Ukraine, in legal perpetuity. It implies a burden of reparations that cannot possibly be achieved. The document has caused consternation and panic in Kyiv.

The Telegraph has obtained a draft of the pre-decisional contract, marked “Privileged & Confidential’ and dated Feb 7 2025. It states that the US and Ukraine should form a joint investment fund to ensure that “hostile parties to the conflict do not benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine”.

Read it all.

Revealed: Trump’s confidential plan to put Ukraine in a stranglehold

Panic in Kyiv as US president demands higher share of GDP than Germany’s First World War reparations.https://t.co/3rFDHydtCd

— Ruchir Sharma (@ruchirsharma_1) February 18, 2025

Every February, Americans take a day off of work to celebrate the presidents — the chief executives whose ideas, policies and foibles have helped to shape our history. So it’s only fitting that you take a moment to test your knowledge about these 44 prominent Americans with a 20-question quiz from “Presidential,” the Washington Post podcast that explores the presidents’ lives and legacies.

Read it all.

#OTD in 1799, President George Washington died at his home in Mount Vernon, Virginia at the age of 67. As the leader of the Revolution and first president of the newly-formed US, Washington has left an indelible mark on this country. (cont.) pic.twitter.com/QvWkXJh24h

— Craig Shirley (@CraigSmpa) December 14, 2017

By the article establishing the executive department it is made the duty of the President “to recommend to your consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” The circumstances under which I now meet you will acquit me from entering into that subject further than to refer to the great constitutional charter under which you are assembled, and which, in defining your powers, designates the objects to which your attention is to be given. It will be more consistent with those circumstances, and far more congenial with the feelings which actuate me, to substitute, in place of a recommendation of particular measures, the tribute that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the patriotism which adorn the characters selected to devise and adopt them. In these honorable qualifications I behold the surest pledges that as on one side no local prejudices or attachments, no separate views nor party animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye which ought to watch over this great assemblage of communities and interests, so, on another, that the foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens and command the respect of the world. I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my country can inspire, since there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained; and since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

Read it all.

The last portrait of George Washington. Drawn by Charles de Saint-Memin, when the ex-president was in Philadelphia in November, 1799, organizing plans for an army to defend the United States from the French. pic.twitter.com/ACcUyW0ied

— Salina B Baker (@SalinaBBaker) January 12, 2025

Washington’s Birthday was celebrated on February 22nd until well into the 20th Century. However, in 1968 Congress passed the Monday Holiday Law to “provide uniform annual observances of certain legal public holidays on Mondays.” By creating more 3-day weekends, Congress hoped to “bring substantial benefits to both the spiritual and economic life of the Nation.”

One of the provisions of this act changed the observance of Washington’s Birthday from February 22nd to the third Monday in February. Ironically, this guaranteed that the holiday would never be celebrated on Washington’s actual birthday, as the third Monday in February cannot fall any later than February 21.

Contrary to popular belief, neither Congress nor the President has ever stipulated that the name of the holiday observed as Washington’s Birthday be changed to “President’s Day.”

Read it all.

2/2 George Washington at the Battle of Princeton, 1779. Again painted by Charles Wilson Peale, who portrayed Washington often. And it's his day. pic.twitter.com/rVYMfXoYmB

— Dr. Peter Paul Rubens (@PP_Rubens) July 4, 2018

Throughout its history, citizens of the United States have gathered to commemorate George Washington’s birthday in honor of his service to the nation. See how these celebrations have changed in the more than 280 years since Washington’s birth.

Check it all out.

With egg prices in the United States soaring because of the spread of H5N1 influenza virus among poultry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) yesterday conditionally approved a vaccine to protect the birds. President Donald Trump’s administration may therefore soon face a fraught decision on whether to join the ranks of other nations—including China, France, Egypt, and Mexico—that vaccinate poultry against H5N1.

Although many influenza researchers contend that vaccination can help control spread of the deadly virus, the U.S. government has long resisted allowing its use because of politics and trade concerns that many contend are unscientific. The USDA approval may signal a shift in policy linked to the Trump administration’s worries about egg prices. Even with the conditional approval, USDA must still approve its use before farmers can start to administer the vaccine because special regulations apply to H5N1 and other so-called highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses.

The vaccine, made by Zoetis, contains a killed version of an H5N2 variant that the company has designed to work against circulating variants of the H5N1 virus that have decimated poultry flocks and have even jumped to cows and some humans. (The “H” in both variants stands for hemagglutinin, the surface protein of the virus, and antibodies against it are the main mechanism of vaccine-induced protection.) Researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported yesterday that three cow veterinarians harbored antibodies to the H5N1 virus in dairy cattle. None had symptomatic disease, they noted in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, suggesting the virus may be more widespread in humans than previously thought.

Read it all.

With egg prices in the United States soaring because of the spread of H5N1 influenza virus among poultry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has conditionally approved a vaccine to protect the birds. https://t.co/ArHRIgkmL5

— News from Science (@NewsfromScience) February 14, 2025

Ukraine sent its largest-ever delegation to Washington, DC, last week to rally support for more military defense and plead with Donald Trump not to pull the plug and make a deal that favors Russia. Pastors and religious leaders in the delegation fear that time is running out. 

“We know that President Trump is working on the new negotiations to help bring this war to an end,” said Igor Bandura, vice president of the Baptist Union of Ukraine. “We are here to pray, to advocate, to share our experience, and to remind the American people and American politicians that we are looking not just to end the war, but we need a just peace.”

American conservative and evangelical support for Ukraine has waned as the war has gone on and the Republican Party under Trump has grown increasingly skeptical of international alliances. Past efforts to shore up support for Ukraine among Republicans have yielded results, though, so the delegation remained hopeful, despite deep concerns.

Read it all.

Ukrainian Christians are pleading with the Trump administration not to pull the plug on support and make a deal that favors Russia.

“We are looking not just to end the war, but we need a just peace.”https://t.co/wQ0WrrLZGI

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) February 13, 2025

The COVID-19 pandemic had an enormous impact on how religious communities gather for worship.

In a Pew Research Center survey in July 2020, a few months after the coronavirus struck the United States, just 6% of Americans who regularly attend religious services said their house of worship was open to the public and holding services in the same way as before the COVID-19 outbreak. The vast majority reported either that their house of worship was not open for in-person services (31%) or that it was open but with changes to limit the spread of disease (55%).

More than a year and a half later, in March 2022, fewer than half of regular worshippers (43%) reported that their church, synagogue, mosque or other house of worship had completely returned to normal, pre-pandemic operations.

Yet, despite COVID-19’s widespread effects on how houses of worship operate, most Americans say their religious and spiritual lives have not been changed by the pandemic, according to a Center survey conducted in October 2024.

Read it all.

Despite COVID-19’s widespread effects on how houses of worship operate, most Americans say their religious and spiritual lives have not been changed by the pandemic. (2/5) pic.twitter.com/yOItnccrGF

— Michael (Chip) Rotolo (@mrotolo1) February 12, 2025

Our research shows that over the past three decades, among women ages 15 to 44, marriage rates have fallen much faster for rural women than for their urban counterparts. Between 1988 and 2018, the proportion of rural women who were married fell from (55 percent to 33 percent. Marriage among urban women also declined, but to a lesser degree.

At the same time, cohabitation has risen more sharply and divorce has declined more slowly in rural America. By 2018, rural women were more likely than urban women to be in an unmarried cohabiting partnership (19 percent vs. 14 percent). The proportion of women who have never married has also increased steadily for both rural and urban women. And although the proportion of urban women who never marry remains slightly higher, this is mainly because urban women marry at older ages.

Childbearing in the United States has fallen overall, but the “baby bust” has been larger among rural women. Although they still have slightly more children than urban women, a substantially higher share of rural children (54 percent) than urban children (45 percent) are born outside marriage. This is a significant change from years past. In 2002, the reverse was true. These rapid transformations in both marriage and nonmarital childbearing help explain why many rural residents and politicians are inclined to think the traditional family is under threat.

Read it all.

New WaPo argues retreat from marriage strongest among rural women https://t.co/CbTPvjLLWq

— Brad Wilcox (@BradWilcoxIFS) February 12, 2025

To understand Douthat’s method, recall a scene from the end of the third Indiana Jones film. Indy is faced with a choice: Let his father die or take a leap of faith. The leap in this case is literal, a physical step into a chasm with nothing to hold him up. He takes the step, and by a miracle of movie magic, doesn’t fall. There was a bridge in front of him all along, invisible to the human eye.

For some, this is a picture of true faith: a passionate, even reckless jump into the unknown, based on blind trust, not reason. Douthat demurs. As he writes, “Joining and practicing [some faith] is fundamentally a rational decision, not just an eyes-closed, trust-your-friends-and-intuitions jump.” You can and should consider the case in your mind.

Moreover, whatever the social benefits of church—and they are many!—they aren’t the place to start. They’re a byproduct of the thing itself, and that’s of interest only if it’s true. That’s why Douthat opts to “start with religion’s intellectual advantage: the ways in which nonbelief requires ignoring what our reasoning faculties tell us, while the religious perspective grapples more fully with the evidence before us.”

This is not a case for mere Christianity, then, so much as “mere religion.” Though Douthat ends the book with a chapter explaining why he is Roman Catholic, his aim is to clear the ground for religious commitment in general, to show why Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and Jews as much as Catholics and Protestants are not exotic residue of a superstitious past.

Read it all.

Christianity is having a moment.

Intellectuals are converting. Atheists are softening. Agnostics are hungry.@DouthatNYT’s “Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious” is a response to this moment and to the readers he’s trying to reach. https://t.co/UfEYYzZxbb

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) February 11, 2025

Cartels are deeply entwined with the Mexican economy. Many of the tomatoes, bell peppers and cucumbers consumed in the U.S. are grown in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, where many farmers pay the cartel for water for their fields. Businesses such as mining companies and avocado growers are widely believed to pay extortion money to cartels.

“For better or for worse, this will likely force Mexican businesses and the Mexican government to confront pervasive cartel influence,” said Andrew Kaufman, an international lawyer who is counseling Mexican and multinational firms on the expected FTO designations.

Trump’s executive order took note of the cartels’ vast reach. The order gives the secretary of state—in consultation with other cabinet members—14 days to determine which Mexican cartels should be designated as FTOs. Then, key members of Congress have seven days to comment before the designation takes legal effect.

The order accuses the Mexican cartels of infiltrating governments and destabilizing countries across the Americas.

Read it all.

President Trump wants to deploy a blunt new tool to fight Mexican cartels that flood the U.S. with drugs, by adding them to a list of terrorist groups that includes the likes of al Qaeda and Hamas https://t.co/pZ2amUzOxO

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) February 5, 2025

But when our institutions are weak and frayed, as many say they are now, the mature response is to root out bureaucratic rot while also strengthening our common bonds—the approach of a spade in one hand and sword in the other we see in Nehemiah 4:17. We defend and build simultaneously. We cannot simply critique church without seeking its peace and purity. We cannot tear down without also building up. We cannot sever spiritual growth from the manner and place in which Jesus says it takes place: the church.

Yuval Levin recently reminded us in the journal The New Atlantis that such institutional building is others-centered. We must take attention away from self to build for other (future) people. Levin’s criticism is sharp: “The inability to value those other people and judge them worthy of our work and sacrifice is a characteristic failing of a decadent society.” When we focus exclusively on our self-experience to the detriment of others, in the present or future, our cultural artifacts resemble a stagnant pond. There is no life there. 

In 2020, Ross Douthat identified American society as being in a period of decadence, “something that comes on civilizations when they’ve reached a certain stage, and it’s not clear where they go next.” Decadence, Douthat believes, happens after the ladder of success has been climbed: a sort of stalemate of cultural production and dialogue. Movies rehash the same stories, and sequels rule the day. We often see this stagnation in form before we see it play out in content.

Blue Like Jazz’s form felt new and edgy for young millennials and Gen Xers in 2003. In hindsight, the fruit it bore is that of a decadent society where the self is ultimately authoritative, where individuals self-select into churches that feed their values (rather than sharpen like iron on iron), and where our Christian message is no different from the world’s—if we stay in the church at all.

Read it all.

In 2022 and 2023, the Army missed its recruitment goal by nearly twenty-five per cent—about fifteen thousand troops a year. It hit the mark last year, but only by reducing the target by more than ten thousand. The Navy has also fared badly: it failed to reach its goals in 2023, then met them in 2024 by filling out the ranks with recruits of a lower standard; nearly half measured below average on an aptitude exam. The Army Reserve hasn’t met its benchmark since 2016, and the ranks are so depleted that active-duty officers have been put in charge of reserve units. Some experts worry that, if the country went to war, many reserve units might be unable to deploy. A U.S. official who works on these issues put it simply: “We can’t get enough people.”

At the end of the Second World War, the American military had twelve million active-duty members. It now has 1.3 million—even though the population has more than doubled, and women are now eligible for armed service. “The U.S. military has been shrinking for thirty years,” Lawrence Wilkerson, a former senior State Department official who leads a task force on the challenges facing the armed services, said. “But its global commitments haven’t changed.” The military operates out of bases in more than fifty countries, and routinely deploys Special Operations forces to about eighty. Now, Wilkerson said, “it’s not clear that the military is large enough anymore for America to uphold its promises.”

For decades, the armed forces based their requirements on a defensive doctrine called “win and hold”: the capacity to win one war while fighting a second to a standstill. Today, with the U.S. confronting perhaps its starkest global-security challenges since the Cold War, many analysts fear that even one war would be too taxing. A conflict with China over the disputed island of Taiwan could leave thousands of Americans dead in a matter of weeks—amounting to nearly half the losses the country sustained in twenty years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Read it all.

Dexter Filkins reports on the U.S. military’s struggle to recruit from a population that’s not just unenthusiastic but unable to serve as it also reckons with political turbulence at home and mounting security threats abroad. https://t.co/bw6y3RY3zT

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) February 3, 2025

Americans are the most optimistic they have been in the past seven years about several aspects of the U.S. economy, particularly economic growth and the stock market. Majorities of Americans expect both indicators of economic health to go up this year, while 41% are hopeful that interest rates will fall, exceeding the 35% saying interest rates will rise.

The public is divided over whether unemployment will increase (38%) or decrease (38%) — although at a time of relatively low unemployment, the 21% expecting the rate to hold steady could be viewed as positive. A slim majority of Americans, 52%, predict that inflation will rise, but that is down significantly from recent years.

Read it all.

"Americans are the most optimistic they have been in the past seven years about several aspects of the U.S. economy, particularly economic growth and the stock market."@Gallup pic.twitter.com/dvNHxgJTA1

— Daily Chartbook (@dailychartbook) February 4, 2025

A key determinant of becoming a global leader in AI is the ability to build an efficient, sustainable and resilient infrastructure that ensures energy is available, reliable and constant. The state of national power grids in China, the EU, and the US remains a significant barrier. China’s creaking grid represents a major constraint to progress and the government is planning to invest more than US$800bn over the next six years. The investment will support Beijing’s Eastern Data, Western Computing initiative, which aims to tap into China’s energy resources in the west and transfer computing power to economic hubs along the coast.

The European power grid is one of the oldest in the world. Moreover, around 40% of the grid is around ten years off its expected lifespan, while over half of the physical grid needs to be repaired or replaced. It remains uncertain whether the estimated US$584bn in European grid investments needed this decade will materialise. In 2024, the EU’s Modernisation Fund handed out almost US$3bn to modernise member states’ energy systems, amongst other activities.

The ageing and fragmented US grid comprises three main regions (Western, Eastern and Texas), which remain inefficient, especially for interconnections between regions. The US Department of Energy (DoE) estimates that power outages cost the US economy US$150bn annually. Modernising the US grid will cost trillions over the coming decades.

Read it all.

Building AI infrastructure is only one part of the story, as sovereign AI capabilities may prove more decisive.

Read the latest analysis by Charlie Edwards: https://t.co/5y4Hb1bd1o pic.twitter.com/HWb7vskEoL

— IISS News (@IISS_org) January 31, 2025

 China’s military is building a massive complex in western Beijing that US intelligence believes will serve as a wartime command centre far larger than the Pentagon, according to current and former American officials.

Satellite images obtained by the Financial Times that are being examined by US intelligence show a roughly 1,500-acre construction site 30km south-west of Beijing with deep holes that military experts assess will house large, hardened bunkers to protect Chinese military leaders during any conflict — including potentially a nuclear war.

Several current and former US officials said the intelligence community was closely monitoring the site, which would be the world’s largest military command centre — and at least 10 times the size of the Pentagon.

Read it all.

SCOOP China builds huge new wartime military command centre in western Beijing – 10 times the size of the Pentagon https://t.co/19nxQg0MqM via @ft

— Demetri (@Dimi) January 30, 2025

The market reaction, when it came, was brutal. On January 27th, as investors realised just how good DeepSeek’s “v3” and “R1” models were, they wiped around a trillion dollars off the market capitalisation of America’s listed tech firms. Nvidia, a chipmaker and the chief shovel-seller of the artificial-intelligence (AI) gold rush, saw its value fall by $600bn. Yet even if the Chinese model-maker’s new releases rattled investors in a handful of firms, they should be a cause for optimism for the world at large. DeepSeek shows how competition and innovation will make ai cheaper and therefore more useful.

DeepSeek’s models are practically as good as those made by Google and OpenAI—and have been produced at a fraction of the cost. Barred by American export controls from using cutting-edge chips, the Chinese firm undertook an efficiency drive, even reprogramming the chips it used to train the model to eke out every drop of power. The cost of building an AI model that can stand toe-to-toe with the best has plummeted. Within days, DeepSeek’s chatbot was the most downloaded app on the iPhone.

The contrast with America’s approach could not be starker. Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, has spent years telling investors—and America’s new president—that vast sums of money and computing power are needed to stay at the forefront of AI. Investors have accordingly been betting that a handful of firms stand to reap vast monopoly-like rents. Yet if fast followers such as DeepSeek can eat away at that lead for a fraction of the cost, then those profits are at risk.

Read it all.

"However, the real winners will be consumers. For AI to transform society, it needs to be cheap, ubiquitous and out of the control of any one country or company. DeepSeek’s success suggests that such a world is imaginable."https://t.co/8aZ4eM5PV5 #USChina #Geoeconomics #地経学

— Ken Doi土居 (@kitakazethomas) January 30, 2025

US fourth- and eighth-grade students are struggling with reading comprehension with last year’s nationwide testing showing the worst results in over two decades.

Average reading scores deteriorated among students who took the Congressionally-mandated assessment in 2024, according to results released Wednesday from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

“This is a major concern,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the test known as the Nation’s Report Card every two years. “Our nation is facing complex challenges in reading.”

Read it all.

US fourth- and eighth-grade students are struggling with reading comprehension with last year’s nationwide testing showing the worst results in over two decades. https://t.co/mHk2GPQyId

— Bloomberg Markets (@markets) January 29, 2025

Almost overnight, DeepSeek has upended many of the assumptions inside Silicon Valley about the economics of building AI, as well as the best technical methods for developing the technology and the extent of the US lead over competitors in China. For much of the past two-plus years since ChatGPT kicked off the global AI frenzy, the industry has bet that the path to better AI depends largely on spending heavily on more advanced chips from companies like Nvidia Corp. and increasingly massive data centers to house them.

US President Donald Trump welcomed the development as “good, because you don’t have to spend as much money.” Industry leader Nvidia, whose shares took a huge hit from DeepSeek’s debut, also lauded it as an “excellent AI advancement” in a statement on Monday.

The market fallout was staggering. Hype over DeepSeek’s feat drove a nearly $1 trillion rout in US and European technology stocks on Monday as investors questioned the spending plans of some of America’s biggest companies. The share plunge in AI chipmaker Nvidia alone erased roughly $589 billion in market value, the biggest wipeout in US stock-market history.

Meanwhile, in DC, lawmakers are left to figure out the best route to beat back China’s progress on a technology some see as crucial to its military and economy, given the Biden administration’s chip export curbs were not enough. David Sacks, President Donald Trump’s crypto and AI czar, said DeepSeek shows the global AI race will be very competitive — while blaming the Biden administration for regulation that “hamstrung” AI development.

Further complicating matters, the renewed uncertainty over large AI investments comes just days after Trump championed a $100 billion joint venture from OpenAI, SoftBank Group Corp. and Oracle Corp. to boost US competitiveness by investing in data centers and other physical infrastructure. Now, there are new questions about the rationale for stratospheric AI budgets.

Read it all.

The censorship part here is eerie. Had a physical reaction while reading that.

Bloomberg: DeepSeek Challenges Everyone’s Assumptions About AI Costs https://t.co/8ewlGlxrkD pic.twitter.com/0R1ns25aoM

— Emily Binder (@emilybinder) January 28, 2025

The viewer first recoils at this dystopian society’s upside-down standard of beauty. “Eye of the Beholder” asks us to think about where we get our standards of beauty in the first place. But more importantly, the show invites us to recoil even more at what they do with those who fail to achieve their standard. 

The Christian knows that God offers sure and true answers. But what is the Christian to do in response to those who have different answers? Who don’t know the truth? That question was settled by the founders of this country when they wrote the U.S. Constitution and its First Amendment, but that foundation is being undermined by Christian nationalists who seek to “merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy.”

The original audience Serling sought to challenge were communist sympathizers and Cold War-era dictators and all who would fall for the false comforts offered by such. That challenge is recurring. 

Janet offers timeless wisdom when she cries out to her physician: 

“Who are you people, anyway? What is this state? Who makes up all the rules and the statutes and the traditions? The people who are different have to stay away from other people who are normal. The state isn’t God, Doctor.”

Today, those advocating Christian nationalism might heed Janet’s words.

Read it all.

A good one from @KSPrior:

“Who are you people, anyway? What is this state? Who makes up all the rules and the statutes and the traditions? The people who are different have to stay away from other people who are normal. The state isn’t God, Doctor.”https://t.co/xgKwAHsFG3

— W. David O. Taylor (@wdavidotaylor) January 24, 2025

President Trump’s landmark executive order designating major drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) marks a watershed moment in America’s approach to national security and strategic competition against China. This reclassification acknowledges an uncomfortable truth: the fentanyl crisis is not merely a law enforcement challenge but a sophisticated form of irregular warfare targeting American society, with cartels serving as proxies in a broader strategic campaign orchestrated by China against U.S. interests.

The devastating impact of this proxy warfare is reflected in stark statistics. According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, were responsible for over 70,000 deaths in 2022. The Drug Enforcement Administration has meticulously documented how Mexican cartels have industrialized fentanyl production using precursor chemicals sourced predominantly from China, creating what amounts to a chemical weapons supply chain targeting American communities. These aren’t merely crime statistics – they represent casualties in an irregular war being waged through proxy forces, with networks stretching from Beijing through Sinaloa and into every major American city.

The Brookings Institution has documented how this crisis disproportionately impacts working-class communities, creating zones of social instability that strain local governments and emergency services – precisely the type of internal disruption that aligns with China’s strategic objectives. The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates the economic burden of the opioid crisis exceeds $1 trillion, representing a significant drain on American resources and societal resilience. This continued deficit reduces our ability to reinvest in competition with China, while contributing to the ballooning national debt.

Read it all.

https://t.co/T0XizEzRfs

— Small Wars Journal (@smallwars) January 22, 2025

If there is a single technology America needs to bring about the “thrilling new era of national success” that President Donald Trump promised in his inauguration speech, it is generative artificial intelligence. At the very least, ai will add to the next decade’s productivity gains, fuelling economic growth. At the most, it will power humanity through a transformation comparable to the Industrial Revolution.

Mr Trump’s hosting the next day of the launch of “the largest ai infrastructure project in history” shows he grasps the potential. But so does the rest of the world—and most of all, China. Even as Mr Trump was giving his inaugural oration, a Chinese firm released the latest impressive large language model (LLM). Suddenly, America’s lead over China in ai looks smaller than at any time since ChatGPT became famous.

China’s catch-up is startling because it had been so far behind—and because America had set out to slow it down. Joe Biden’s administration feared that advanced ai could secure the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) military supremacy. So America has curtailed exports to China of the best chips for training ai and cut off China’s access to many of the machines needed to make substitutes. Behind its protective wall, Silicon Valley has swaggered. Chinese researchers devour American papers on ai; Americans have rarely returned the compliment.

Read it all.

The success of China’s large language models could turn the economics of AI on its head. America must prepare for a world in which China is breathing down its neck https://t.co/RGElwLsoIN 👇

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) January 23, 2025

Phillips Brooks died on Monday, 23 January 1893, at the age of 57. On the day of his funeral, 26th January, Boston came to a virtual standstill. “The Boston stock exchange many of the business houses of the city closed from 11 o’clock until two, “reported the New York Times, “and brokers and clerks swell the throng that blackened Copley square“ in front of Trinity Church and filled the surrounding streets. Brooks’s body had lain in state on the west porch of the church since 8 AM while 15,000 mourners filed by.

–John Frederick, Wolverton , The Education of Philip Brooks (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), page 1

"Topical preaching may be interesting but it grows unsatisfactory because it does not fasten itself to the authority of Scripture. It tempts the preachers' genius & invention, but is apt to send people with a feeling that they have heard more from him than God"
–Phillips Brooks pic.twitter.com/xDvPmswNa2

— Expositors Collective (@expositcllctv) January 20, 2025

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Read it all.

Get a glimpse of the man beyond the momentous speech he delivered at the March on Washington. https://t.co/Zo3sMwtkJB

— Smithsonian Magazine (@SmithsonianMag) January 20, 2025