‘The social and political knock-on effects of global heating will destabilize countries’
Wen Stephenson at The Nation
The “harrowing scenes of Los Angeles burning” did not elicit a “reckoning in our national conversation,” says Wen Stephenson. “The mainstream response has largely sought to contain the wildfire narrative within an Overton window of acceptable, i.e., unalarming, discourse,” and the media is “treating LA’s tragedy” as “ultimately manageable and preventable.” But we are “stumbling headlong into the era of climate consequences,” the “dreadful harvest of 30-plus years of denial, obstruction, delay and centrist greenwashing.”
‘Sociability is vital but true solitude is precious’
James Marriott at The Times
“Loneliness is a scourge,” says James Marriott, but “voluntary, genuine, well-used solitude” counts as “one of life’s high pleasures” — one that’s “rather underrated.” Our “concern with the evils of isolation” means we “forget its rewards.” Those “compulsively sociable characters” head out “every evening” because “they cannot stand their own company,” but “it is only when we are really alone that we see ourselves.” I’m “not opposed to sociability” but solitude is “a source of contentment and self-knowledge.”
‘We have had an oligarchy for years and it’s been the wrong one’
Gerard Baker at The Wall Street Journal
“Bring on the new oligarchy,” says Gerard Baker, including “Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos.” These men “until a few months ago were mostly eager defenders of the old order,” but the “world has changed” and “people with something to sell understand and act accordingly.” If AI is to “define our prosperity,” we should “want the U.S. to be led by people who ensure the maximum space to grow and enhance that intelligence.”
‘Age is perhaps the most important predictor of human health’
Saul Newman at The New York Times
“The allure of extreme longevity has beckoned for centuries,” but the “data on people living to an unusually old age is deeply flawed,” says Saul Newman,” who “tracked down data on 80% of the world’s people 110 or older and found that in many cases their advanced age is highly improbable.” These “errors and anomalies do not stop at individual cases” — they “permeate extreme-age research,” raising “questions about how false claims” about supercentenarians “could persist for so long.”