Videos

Another week in tech, another splashy AI scandal. This one involves OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the voice (https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/scarlett-johansson-openai-sam-altman-voice-fight-7f81a1aa) of Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson. Dear Sam, Keith Teare’s That Was The Week (https://www.thatwastheweek.com/) newsletter begins, as the SignalRank CEO tries to give the OpenAI CEO advice about how to minimize…

The debate about the supposed “colonial” foundations of Israel goes on and on. But I wonder whether Jehuda Reinharz’s definitive new biography (https://brandeisuniversitypress.com/title/chaim-weizmann-a-biography/) of Chaim Weizmann might help clarify the unintentional colonial foundations of the Zionist project. Reinharz explains that Weizmann made his name (https://brandeisuniversitypress.com/title/chaim-weizmann-a-biography/) as a brilliant chemist in…

The digital revolution has few more persistent critics than John (Rick) MacArthur (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._MacArthur) , the legendarily outspoken publisher of Harper’s Magazine (https://harpers.org/) . His skepticism about Silicon Valley, he confesses, came at the turn of the century when he overheard the gibberish sales talk from a rabble of start-up entrepreneurs…

Bobi Conn’s life (https://bobiconn.com/#abouttheauthor) is an American story. Growing up in a desolate Kentucky holler, her father a drug addicted outlaw who abused her mother, Conn has reinvented herself as a successful writer and mother. But for all Conn’s unflinching honesty about her brutal upbringing, she remains proudly America -…

Is it time to start worrying about the Germans again? Perhaps, at least according to Jacob Kushner, the author of LOOK AWAY: A True Story of Murders, Bombings, and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jacob-kushner/look-away-3/) , a book about an eleven year terror campaign by the National…

Jordan Elgrably (https://jordanelgrably.com/about-jordan-elgrably) , the Morrocan-French editor of the Markaz Review (https://themarkaz.org/) , wants us to read complex stories about the Middle East and North Africa that our simplistic newspaper headlines mostly ignore. In his new anthology, Stories from the Center of the World (https://citylights.com/publishing-forthcoming-titles/stories-from-the-center-of-the-world/) , Elgrably includes short stories…

I’ve always been a big admirer of Steven Johnson (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/93087/steven-johnson/) , whose prolific work focuses on the disruptive role of new technologies in shaping our past and future. In his new book, The Infernal Machine (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/715495/the-infernal-machine-by-steven-johnson/) , Johnson writes about the turn of the 20th century, a period of feverish…

It’s a mind blowing story. In Fat Leonard (https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fat-Leonard/Craig-Whitlock/9781982131630?itid=cb_box_VQAGMUM4N5GMRPBEY2NPYPKNQM_1) , the Washington Post’s prize winning investigative journalist Craig Whitlock tells of a Malaysian contractor called Leonard Glenn Francis who successfully seduced up to a thousand US naval officers with prostitutes, fancy dinners and expensive gifts. The most astonishing thing of…

Ever wondered why the never-endingTrump show seems simultaneously like a reality show remake and sequel? According to Chris Gavaler, the self styled Patron Saint of Superheroes (https://thepatronsaintofsuperheroes.wordpress.com/) , it’s because our view of reality itself has been shaped by all those “sequels, remakes, retcons and rejects” endlessly spewing out of…

Given the situation in Gaza, some might interpret a new book entitled Judaism Is About Love (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374192440/judaismisaboutlove) to be either satirical or slightly chutzpahdik. But its author, Rabbi Shai Held (https://www.hadar.org/about/people/rabbi-shai-held) , President & Dean of New York City’s Hadar Institute, is all too serious in his argument that the…