‘What’s the value of an hour?’
Joshua Rothman at The New Yorker
Government is “only one participant in a much larger conspiracy to waste our time,” says Joshua Rothman, as “many conveniences also have hidden time-wasting downsides.” All “around us, systems calculate, markets churn and clever people find ways to monetize seemingly everything,” but “hours are thrown away and used up randomly,” as “time, our scarcest resource, feels beyond our reckoning.” People “grapple with time, of course, finding ways to domesticate it,” and “we’re outrageously suggestible when it comes to our temporal attitudes.”
‘We’re paying for climate disasters instead of preventing them’
Sienna Shankel at Newsweek
Home insurance “has become one of the defining economic issues of 2026, yet our response remains dangerously small,” says Sienna Shankel. Americans “argue over premiums, subsidies and regulations while ignoring the structural failure driving them.” Until “that changes, households will pay more.” A “mistake is believing that higher premiums are the crisis,” as “they are only symptoms.” The “real problem is that every climate disaster now triggers an economic chain reaction that extends far beyond damaged buildings.”
‘Black liberation requires investment’
Reginald Thomas Brown at The Progressive
By “no coincidence, Black August and Black Philanthropy Month are observed at the same time,” as “both are rooted in a simple truth: Our liberation is never granted; it is built, protected and sustained,” says Reginald Thomas Brown. The “Black liberation movement commemorated by Black August gave us the blueprint for organizing,” while Black Philanthropy Month underscores what communities have always understood — that collective action, from mutual aid networks to civil rights campaigns, is our greatest strength.”
‘How to squander a superpower’s credibility’
Fareed Zakaria at Foreign Policy
Saudi Arabia and Turkey “pledged to go to war in each other’s defense,” even as they’ve “been bitter regional rivals,” says Fareed Zakaria. What “brought them together? U.S. President Donald Trump — or rather the two countries’ diminishing faith in him and his word.” The “Iran war has been a master class in how to squander credibility.” Trump’s “word is as solid with his counterparts abroad as it was with his bankers in New York.”