ArcaMax

It seems half the country's political figures have been instructed to grin like a theme-park greeter. Supposedly, that makes them seem friendly, approachable, relatable.

When I want humanoid patter, I turn to chatbots. They're more convincing.

Why this epidemic of wax museum smiles? One reason, certainly, is social media, where every sour ...Read more

Searching for an apartment online, applying for a loan, going through airport security or looking up a question on a search engine -- you might not think anything of these exchanges other than that they are mundane things you do, but, in many of these instances, you're actually interacting with artificial intelligence.

Avoiding AI in our ...Read more

The news on Friday morning that a CDC panel is now recommending that newborns not be vaccinated for Hepatitis B is frightening. As The New York Times put it, "the divisiveness and dysfunction surrounding the decision raised questions about the reliability of that process -- and the future of the C.D.C." Not to mention questions about the ...Read more

To ordinary MAGA voters in the American heartland -- who may have witnessed the ravages of narcotics up close in their own families -- the recent conduct of their favorite president must be troubling. While they may not know all the details, many have heard by now that President Donald Trump ordered deadly missile strikes against boats ...Read more

Americans know that they discriminate against one another by race, sex, religion, looks, income, etc. Yet they're unaware that the United States has a caste system every bit as rigid and objectively odd as India's -- and it's so subtle that almost no one notices it.

None of this is to say that the forms of bigotry that journalists and ...Read more

Like the song says, it's time for mistletoe and holly. The holly tree has been a winter favorite throughout human history, but the genus, which includes hundreds of species, goes back much further than that. The oldest holly tree fossil came from Victoria, Australia. It lived alongside dinosaurs in the Cretaceous period more than 90 million ...Read more

"You're a columnist," the wing-tipped, gray-haired inner voice bellows. "Write about politics. Write about impending disaster. The Federal Reserve Bank. Gunfire. Donald Trump."

"It's almost Christmas," my 8-year-old self says. "Write about Frosty the Snowman."

I'm happy to say the 8-year-old won. He should win sometimes, too. Anyone who is a...Read more

Sean Duffy's entreaty to "dress with respect" on airplanes rapidly ran into some turbulence. The transportation secretary's request had a bumpy touchdown, landing so close to Donald Trump boorishly telling a female reporter on Air Force One, "Quiet, Piggy."

Duffy's boss often struggles to maintain the thinnest veneer of courtliness -- a ...Read more

The "fog of war" is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's latest explanation for what was going on with the second strike on the boat in the Caribbean. He told a Cabinet meeting, "I did not personally see survivors. The thing was on fire. It exploded, there's fire, there's smoke. This is called the fog of war."

Not exactly, according to military ...Read more

Reader, who are the people who have stood up to President Donald Trump and confronted him, face to his furious face?

Answer: Women, and only women, have done so publicly.

Running for president, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris put Trump's misogyny on public display in 2016 and 2024, but that's...Read more

Look out -- the corporate cat is out of the bag!

This particular "cat" is the fast-metastasizing software technology called "artificial intelligence." A cadre of multibillion-dollar high-tech giants has surreptitiously been advancing AI for a couple of decades, literally creating a new, autonomous species of thinking beings. These are computer-...Read more

In a major overhaul of immigration enforcement leadership, the Trump administration is replacing nearly half of top leaders at ICE offices across the country with current or retired Border Patrol officers.

For months, masked immigration agents have brought terror to communities across the U.S., arresting parents in carpool lines, dragging ...Read more

Gary Tyler, 67, spent more than four decades in one of the most notorious prisons in the country for a crime he didn't commit.

In 1974, Tyler was one of a group of Black students bused into a formerly all-white Louisiana high school under court-ordered desegregation. When a white mob attacked their bus on Oct. 7, a white boy was killed. Tyler...Read more

The First Amendment is a cornerstone of American democracy. It allows us to express our views, challenge authority and engage in public debate. In recent years, however, these freedoms have come under intense scrutiny, from debates over protests on college campuses to concerns about government retaliation against journalists and activists. ...Read more