Thinking Capped

The Write Stuff, Paxton's Rout

In the early days of the internet, blogging created an opportunity for anyone to express themselves to a potentially wide audience. This was good news for us English majors (or we English majors, I can never remember). But coming face to face with a giant, empty input box did little to entice those for whom the idea of posting long-form content was a perspiration-inducing reminder of homework. Twitter fixed that with a technical limitation that became its superpower. Due to SMS constraints, the original Tweets were limited to 140 characters. That was a welcome invitation for everyone to become a writer (and writers to realize that some of their 10,000 word ideas actually only needed about 8-10 words to get the point across).

In many ways, the AI experience is an inversion of the early days of the internet. The internet enabled you to do it yourself. AI does it for you. That includes the writing, and increasingly, the thinking. But is the technology turning all writing into the samewriting? And will that lead to all thinking being similarly similar? (I’d like to see AI try to pull off wordplay like that.) Rebecca Winthrop in the NYT (Gift Article): What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity. “Brainstorming is the work that’s fundamental to writing. As a researcher studying A.I.’s effects on education, I have concluded that these tools only superficially improve writing. The bigger and more alarming impact they have is to constrict our full range of thoughts and our ability to generate original and useful ideas — what we call creative thinking. This seems to be especially true for students. A.I.’s smooth sentences, elegant transitions and rich vocabulary give the illusion of expansive creativity and individuality. But the underlying ideas often converge into a few homogenized categories. The erosion of creative thinking means young people will struggle to navigate uncertainty. Workers will strain to adapt to a shifting labor market. And society will miss out on the new ideas that can solve complex problems and enhance lives.” (Not to mention the pun headlines and beaglereferences.)

+ While non-writers are leaning on AI to take over, even serious writers are finding themselves distracted by tech. Ian McEwan: It’s harder to write now that phones have killed thinking. “It was much easier to be a writer in the Seventies. The most crucial difference is there [was] no internet and there [was] much more capacity for solitude. One didn’t take out one’s phone. I’m slightly addicted to mine, I have to admit.”

2

A Paxt With the Devil

“Ahead of his Republican primary runoff Tuesday, Sen. John Cornyn highlighted a photo of himself standing next to President Donald Trump as his pinned post on X. He boosted one post disputing that he’s ‘disloyal’ to Trump and another about voting ‘yes on every major Trump law.’ The posts captured an important side of Cornyn: a loyal Republican soldier, standing with his party’s leader. There’s no disputing that Cornyn’s voting record was almost perfectly aligned with Trump.” But it wasn’t enough. None of Cornyn’s Trumpifications were enough to match the MAGAnificent qualifications of Ken Paxton: “A scandal-plagued hack lawyer who has been impeached by members of his own party; forced to take remedial ethics classes; admitted to breaking securities law; reported to the FBI by his employees; investigated by own his state bar association; and whose wife has filed for divorce on ‘Biblical grounds.’” In addition to garnering 20 years of scandals and headlines, he’s been going medieval on women’s choice and healthcare issues for years. That curriculum vitae was enough to earn Trump’s endorsement en route to a rout in Tuesday’s GOP Senate Texas primary. It may seem depressing to you that MAGA voters are still this loyal to Trump, but you’re not alone. Plenty of GOP senators are pretty depressed right now, too. “Mr. Cornyn, who less than two years ago came within a handful of votes of becoming the Republican leader, was a popular and respected senator as well as a prolific fund-raiser, a dependable conservative vote and an able floor debater. His colleagues saw the president’s last-minute endorsement of his scandal-mired opponent as a move to punish a senator whom Mr. Trump deemed insufficiently loyal, an insult to the institution and a self-serving political mistake that put his party’s hold on the Senate at risk.” Cornyn’s Defeat Fuels Tensions With President Trump in Senate GOP.

+ The GOP has a weak candidate. In James Talarico, the Dems have their strongest shot to turn Texas blue. But this race will still be tight and remarkably expensive. And Ken Paxton didn’t take long to let us all know exactly how he plans to run the race. On Talarico: “He’s a threat to our very way of life. I mean, he’s a vegan who thinks God is nonbinary.” (With that knack for imbecilic falsehoods, how could Trump not endorse him?)

3

Track of My Tears

“With my system in place, I wondered if I would feel guilty spying on my husband. But as I began tracking him, following his dot on a digital map, I felt connection. When his dot appeared at a favorite record store, I pictured him flipping through LPs. When his dot paused on Central Park’s Great Lawn, I imagined joining him on the grass. If he knew I was watching, he would feel like I’d betrayed him. But I felt like I had given him, and us, an extension on the routines that had held us together for more than 20 years.” Caroline Bailey with a touching piece in the NYT(Gift Article) on keeping tabs on the subway trips of her husband who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s: Tenderly Tracking My Husband. “In recent months, my husband’s tracking dot has shown him switching train lines with no clear logic behind the transfers. His trip summaries zigzag across neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Sometimes I can see that he has taken the D train straight to midtown and back without ever surfacing, or that he takes a quick hop from an R to an F to a neighborhood where we used to live, and he’ll just hover on a street corner for 20 minutes or so before coming home.”

4

Your Pilates or Mine?

“At Sentiré Pilates in London’s Belgravia, founder Iza Recelj says younger clients often use the space for social events. ‘We have a lot of birthday parties and bachelorette parties,’ she says. ‘People are booking the whole studio, doing a class together and then staying for mocktails or food afterwards.’” Young people are going to have a lot of things to fix in this world. But they just might have the abs to pull it off. Bloomberg (Gift Article): The New Social Scene Swaps Bars for $300 Gym Memberships.

5

Extra, Extra

A Perfect Ebola Storm: “In both cases, the news has been not only frightening but also confusing, even to scientists. The hantaviruses didn’t seem to be acting like hantaviruses, and the Ebola viruses weren’t behaving like Ebola viruses.” The Viruses Causing New Outbreaks Are Much Less Familiar to Science. Is climate a factor? From The New Yorker: Our Warming Planet Is a Petri Dish for New and Deadly Microbes. Meanwhile, the Democratic Republic of Congo is facing an ongoing conflict and Ebola at the same time. And war isn’t the only factor hindering the response. Vox (Gift Article): This is what happens when you defund Ebola prevention.

+ Divine Divers: “After a week of squeezing through the dangerous, mazelike cave network, divers Mikko Paasi and Norrased Palasing emerged from its muddy waters Wednesday to find a cause for hope. There, huddled on a rock, their headtorches still illuminated, were five villagers who had been trapped, missing — unknown if alive or dead — for eight days inside the flooded caves in Laos.” Many of the rescuers were part of the Thai cave rescue in 2018. Like then, locating the villagers is only the first step. They still need to get them out. 5 villagers stuck in a flooded cave for more than a week found alive in Laos.

+ Bluster’s Last Stand: “Responding to a question from a reporter about the possibility that a deal might include a pact between Iran and Oman, a U.S. ally on the other side of the strait, to jointly control the waterway, President Trump rejected the notion: ‘Oman will behave just like everybody else or we’ll have to blow them up. They understand that. They’ll be fine.’” Here’s the latest bluster about a potential deal with Iran. While the ceasefire is mostly holding between the US and Iran, the same is not true when it comes to Hezbollah and Israel. Meanwhile, the US will need years to replenish stockpiles of advanced weaponsused in Iran war, new analysis finds. (Bad news for our defense, good news for weapons manufacturers.)

+ Adding Gruel to the Fire: “A combination of factors including bad weather, tariffs and a dwindling cattle herd are already pushing up grocery prices at an above-average pace. In April, they rose by the most in nearly four years, and economists say the impact of the Iran war and a potential El Niño weather pattern will only add to pressures into 2027.” Americans Are About to Pay Even More at the Grocery Store.

+ Get the Scoop: This is my kind of climate activism. Why an Ice Cream Cone is an Easy Environmental Win.

6

Bottom of the News

The greatest threat to America has always come from within. Even in survivalist communities. WSJ (Gift Article): A Luxury Survivalist Community Is Tearing Itself Apart. “Lawsuits, countersuits and disputes are piling up over septic systems, property taxes, off-leash dogs and a growing list of community rules. The legal skirmishing has reached the state supreme court—twice. Promised amenities, including a restaurant bunker, a pool bunker and a horse-stable bunker, have yet to materialize. Guns have been drawn, and there have been offers to settle things with fists.”

+ UFC fighting cage rises on White House lawn for a bout celebrating America’s 250th anniversary. (The official song of America’s 250th: It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.)