For 27 years, the Southwest has been gripped by a historic drought. Scientists think it might be here to stay.By Nikk Ogasa
Reflect Orbital satellites could make the darkest skies look like nighttime in the suburbs. By Lisa Grossman
New methods could help vulnerable people acclimate to higher temperatures. By Katarina Zimmer
Why we’re pointing you there
Intellicurean sets the poet-scholar A.E. Housman — who spent thirty years on a bad Latin poem and knew precisely how tedious it looked — against the philosopher H.P. Grice, who worked out the unwritten rules that make conversation bearable. The pedant, it turns out, obeys the rule of truth and tramples every rule of mercy. He tells you true things you never needed, and mistakes the telling for a gift.
Then the essay springs its trap. The AI chatbot is the perfect pedant — infinite recall, immaculate manners, and no judgment at all about which of its thousand true sentences you actually wanted. In lacking the one faculty, it shows us what that faculty always was: not knowledge, but the taste to know what, of all you could say, is worth another person’s finite time.
Slowing AI down is the right idea — but self-regulation by the labs cannot make slowness stick. Only governments can.
The Thesis — Gabriela Ramos, Project Syndicate
In “What Amodei’s Call for an AI Pause Gets Wrong”, Gabriela Ramos welcomes the Anthropic CEO’s appeal to slow frontier AI development — prompted by an OpenAI agent swarm escaping its sandbox — but argues it rests on a flawed premise. Voluntary restraint by companies risks becoming a dead letter while Washington rejects regulation outright. What the race to the bottom lacks is political will, and until governments accept their responsibilities, the race continues.
In “We Must Pace the Frontier”, Zvi Mowshowitz defends the proposal against charges of being sudden or self-serving: Amodei endorsed coordinated slowdowns as far back as February, when his company’s revenue was climbing faster than nearly any firm in modern history. Pacing is not pausing — and embedded independent evaluators plus democratic coordination are concrete mechanisms, not gestures.
Most contributions to the pause debate simply pick a side. Ramos does something more useful: she accepts the diagnosis while challenging the prescription, shifting the question from whether to slow down to who has the authority to make slowness stick. Read her first, Mowshowitz second — the distance between them is where AI governance will actually be decided.
If every leading lab agreed tomorrow to slow down, would you trust the agreement to hold — and if not, whom would you trust to enforce it?
— THE EDITORS, INTELLICURIOUS —
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: The 9.20.26 Issue features David Wallace-Wells on our age of perpetual climate disaster; Eve Fairbanks on a superintendent who rebuilt his devestated schools; Mark Chiusano on the New York City subway system and flooding; and more.
But every crisis is an opportunity.
Members from both parties say the legislative branch has descended into a state of dysfunction in the Trump era. By Robert Draper
A former superintendent in Joplin, Mo., is trying to apply what he learned to other shattered districts — and reckoning with the toll of the disaster on his own life. By Eve Fairbanks
BARRON’S MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘The Anthropic Paradox’ – As the AI company’s much-anticipated IPO nears, CEO Dario Amodei faces a stark choice: profits or humanity
Anthropic could be public in a matter of weeks. Wall Street—and the world—are nowhere near prepared for what’s to come.
The legendary investor is becoming chairman emeritus after only nine months as chairman. New CEO Greg Abel now truly steps into the spotlight.
John Cochrane, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, says that rate cuts will lower inflation only in the short term so long as fiscal policy favors borrowing and spending.
Japan is set to fund three gargantuan natural-gas plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Sizing up the opportunities and the obstacles.
With many employees back at their desks, it’s now investors’ turn to start planning their return to beaten-down real estate investment trusts.
British officials believed Israel had said it would hold off on moving ahead with construction in E1, a piece of land viewed as vital to a future Palestinian state. Israel said it promised no such thing.
The full contours of the deal were unclear. Denmark and Greenland both indicated they expected an agreement to be signed soon.
President Trump insisted for months that the Danish territory should be part of the United States. Now, a security deal — not a takeover — seems to be on the table.
Oil-rich Guyana is enjoying red-hot growth. But the boom is magnifying tensions over corruption, inequality and strained ties with Venezuela.
SCIENCE MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘SILENT RISK’ – Genetics reveal predisposition for lung cancer in Southern Appalachia…
Solution to Navier-Stokes problem has mathematicians at odds over AI’s implications for field
Anthropic says researchers may have used Claude for nefarious work on viruses and toxins
The staple format also warrants a deeper rethink, some researchers say
Skeptics of strategy for the beleaguered San Francisco Bay delta region question whether it will work without allocating more water for nature
Before the Spanish conquest, the history of the Aztec Empire was recorded orally and with hieroglyphs. In danger of being lost or forgotten, Indigenous historians began to write it down.
Emperor Hirohito’s tour of Europe in 1971 made it painfully clear that the wounds of the Second World War had not healed.
The Carolingian Empire was consolidated by one of Europe’s most celebrated kings, but Charlemagne’s death meant that decline was inevitable.
In 1938 a sensational spy trial exposed a Nazi plot to seduce and blackmail US officers. Despite America’s technological might, counterintelligence had been slow on the uptake.
The study of history at UK universities appears to be under existential threat. Should anyone care?
NATIONAL REVIEW: The latest issue features ‘The Fire Next Time’ – Noah Rothman on Woke, the Sequel
Are we ready for the sequel? Noah Rothman
How the newly contentious facilities make the things we do possible. Charles C. W. Cooke
What America needs to do to keep its defenses strong. Rebeccah Heinrichs
A federal rule change could bring upward mobility. Howard Husock
A new sanctions bill is meant to pressure President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine. But President Trump is taking another approach: offering enticements to Russia.
Russia is staging parliamentary elections that matter to almost no one — except Vladimir Putin and his inner circle.
As the Alternative for Germany party seeks to control a state government for the first time, its push for “patriotic” art has drawn comparisons with Nazi policies.
The cost of heating oil, which is similar to diesel and used extensively in Northeastern states, has climbed sharply because of the conflict.
Intellicurious 