Brian Klaas

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is horrific, it's likely to lead to a very dark spiral that will worsen political violence, and it is also a byproduct of a profoundly broken society awash in 400 million guns.

After the latest round of grading papers, I wrote about AI, ChatGPT, the death of the student essay, and what it means for the future of human cognition.

I wrote about the stranger-than-fiction miracles of coevolution in nature and human society—and a smarter framework to understand ourselves. (Or: what connects avocados, ants who farm fungus, karma, and our relationship with dogs?)

Should we just give cash to homeless people? I wrote about what the evidence shows--and a London-based charity called Greater Change that has a simple, innovative way of making a difference:

The film “I Swear” is one of the best movies I’ve seen in the last several years. Funny, but above all, *extremely* moving. The world would be a better place if more people saw it. (And Robert Aramayo deserves an Oscar.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeWq...

One of the better photographs depicting modernity, I'd say:

There are a lot of things happening under Trump that are illegal. The question that determines whether America remains a democracy or a competitive authoritarian regime is whether that matters.

Last year, it was CrowdStrike. This week, AWS. We are engineering critical social systems that are completely contingent on single points of failure. It’s designed fragility and it produces catastrophic risk—all because it’s marginally more efficient. We are foolishly careening toward disaster:

Demolishing American history for a grotesque, gilded vanity ballroom, paid for by opaque donors bribing the president.

I'm super grateful to now be a UK citizen, but I did end up spending £17,000 in visa fees over 12 years to get there. Changing visa types brings you back to zero; in-person appointments are extortionate (thousands of pounds) for little more than scanning documents (often done by other immigrants).

Japan finally has a woman as prime minister: Sanae Takaichi. But Japan's proportion of women in parliament (16%) is still extremely low relative to other developed democracies.

Can you imagine if Keir Starmer got private companies that he had direct power over and rich donors who wanted deregulation to pay £250 million in donations to knock down part of Big Ben to make his own little special tower? Because that's what Trump is doing to the White House literally right now.