Eric Levitz

Time to accept that we simply have a mad king. The guy slapping 25% tariffs on Canada's postage while calling for its annexation - and releasing scarce water into the Central Valley to fight already-contained fires in LA - isn't doing a bit or pursuing a secret, rational strategy

This man fomented an insurrection, then bestowed pardons and military honors on its perpetrators. Here, he praises "free speech," then attributes all political violence to his ideological foes and vows to crack down on their organizations. We're living in an Orwellian nightmare.

A major insurance company announced that it would be reducing reimbursements for anesehtiemsiologists. This sparked outrage, as many people -- including a U.S. senator -- claimed that this would lead to surprise out-of-pocket expenses for patients. But that was not true. www.vox.com/policy/39003...

Smartphones appear to have accelerated the global fertility crisis -- by making social isolation and singledom more comfortable and entertaining. AI chatbots may be nudging humanity even further in this direction www.vox.com/politics/491...

Some in the tech industry believe that AI will soon render sex obsolete Personally, I think sex has some staying power. Yet people are *already* substituting digital technology for real-world intimacy in myriad ways. AI-infused sex tech could accelerate that trend www.vox.com/politics/491...

It is bad when centrists rationalize the crimes of America's allies. It is also bad when leftists do the same for America's adversaries. Both of these things are worth saying, even if the latter is less consequential www.vox.com/politics/486...

Israel’s apologists insist that its critics are motivated by sectarian biases rather than humanitarian principles. When influential leftists celebrate Mao, they lend credibility to such charges www.vox.com/politics/486...

Too often, Hasan Piker's commentary is a mirror image of what it claims to oppose: If Washington’s jingoists downplay or rationalize the crimes of America and Israel, Piker does their adversaries the same favor www.vox.com/politics/486...

Last week, OpenAI argued that the government may need to create a vast new welfare state to counter AI-induced unemployment and inequality. And yet, the company's leaders have ignored - or abetted - attacks on actually existing social programs www.vox.com/politics/485...

College grads have been “prolentarianized": Universities minted too many knowledge workers, and now they're working at Starbucks in unprecedented numbers. This is a popular narrative. But the share of recent grads in low-wage jobs is tiny (and down since the mid-90s) www.vox.com/politics/485...

Elon Musk's chatbot has forsaken its creator. A new study analyzed 1.6 million fact check requests -- and found that Grok was more likely to contradict Republican-leaning accounts than Democratic-leaning ones www.vox.com/technology/4...

How can you convince someone to abandon conspiratorial or pseudoscientific beliefs? Have them debate an LLM. Or so some new studies suggest. I wrote about why AI may be uniquely effective at countering misinformation (even as it also helps to spread it) www.vox.com/technology/4...

99%-ism - the belief that only the top 1% should have to pay higher taxes - is a scourge. Booker and Van Hollen's tax cut plans represent the culmination of a decades-long trend -- one that could make building a robust American welfare state impossible www.vox.com/politics/482...