Sally Rooney, Censorship, and the Purpose of True Art
Should art go beyond politics?An older perspective on the arts offers a respite to those who might be starved for something that outlasts the controversies of the age.
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Peter Biles
Concern Rises Over AI’s Hacking Incidents
Can AI really go off and "do its own thing"?How to respond: Vigilance and caution? Sure. Terror and passively giving in? Human exceptionalism says “no” to that.
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Is writing really not important any more?
A New York Times op-ed claims writing isn't as essential as we might assumeFor those who want to grow and develop as thinkers and communicators, writing is still a time-tested option.
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Meta to Pay Billions to Several States
People like Jonathan Haidt have been warning the public of social media's dangerous algorithmic power over young people for years29 states sued Meta, alleging that its platforms were designed to be addictive and users were misled about the risks.
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Douthat Exits New York Times, Final Podcast Hosts Biohacker Bryan Johnson
Should all writers be podcasters, too?He documented the chaos and drama of our political life from the rare perspective of a conservative addressing a largely liberal audience.
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More Books for the Bots
AI companies are buying (and destroying) rare booksAI companies are using physical books to train them for their large language models since these texts aren’t already ridden with AI-generated writing.
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Horowitch and Harrington Chime in on the “Post-literate Society”
Is the age of longform reading truly over?Despite good reasons to be optimistic about reading’s ultimate survival, Horowitch and Harrington are putting their fingers on something real and concerning. Even for someone like me, who grew up reading books, the allure of digital distraction is often overpowering.
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George Washington Beats Supergirl at the Box Office
Maybe American audiences are ready for more optimistic and patriotic storiesBox office failures are a staple in the film industry, but every so often, a movie tanks so badly that it causes one to wonder whether Hollywood is drastically misjudging the country’s pulse and interests.
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New Study Finds Many Pastors Use AI in Various Ways
It's not just schools. AI is in the churches, tooThe way AI is creeping into our cultural and religious institutions is worth keeping an eye on, especially since so many of us look to these places to understand what it means to be human in the first place.
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Smartphones Have Contributed to the Declining Fertility Rate, Says New Study
It's easier these days to stay inside and on a screen instead of going outside and trying to meet peopleIt’s at the point now, nearly twenty years later, that many colleges and universities are seeing significant drops in enrollment simply because there aren’t enough college-aged students in the application pool.
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AI-Generated Stories, Books, and More
Instances of AI-generated fiction are now all too common.In March of 2026, the horror novel Shy Girl was pulled from publication after the author was suspected of using AI to help her write it.
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AI Got Booed Off the Stage
Graduating seniors don't all approve of the technology's growing presence in societyMany graduating students may just want a simpler life where they can work, afford to live, and enter life-giving relationships.
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Does Mental Health Awareness Actually Help People?
A new study and a forthcoming book argue that hyperawareness of mental health and illness can harm more than helpMatthew Loftus has a new book coming out on this topic later in 2026 called Resisting Therapy Culture: The Dangers of Pop Psychology and How the Church Can Respond.
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AI is Forcing the Return of Writing by Hand in the Classroom
Sometimes, the old ways are still the best waysSkipping the process of working through problems and arguments will end up ensuring students learn less, not more.
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College Closures Are Getting More Common
What’s the state of higher education halfway through the 2020s?If the demographic problem fails to get any better in the coming years, then it seems clear that higher education will continue to see these kinds of financial challenges.
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Longform Nonfiction in Decline?
We still need to read long books about complicated topicsPerhaps it isn’t coincidental that this kind of longform writing is having trouble at the same time that the online news cycle gets ever more ephemeral.
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Meta Retreats from the Metaverse
While Meta is scaling back on the metaverse, it is reportedly switching focus to artificial intelligence.The ambitious project never paid its expected dividends. Consumers simply weren’t as interested in these VR headsets as Zuckerberg thought they would be.
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What is Meta Up To? Big Tech Turns to AI Investment
The social media giant bought a social media site made up of bots.Maybe AI will force us to reckon with the reality of the soul, which I also wager that no computer system can generate.
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Are Young People Getting Tired of AI?
A new article suggests teens are not universally excited about the blossoming technologyJulie Jargon wrote an interesting piece for The Wall Street Journal about teen attitudes towards AI and found that their view of it isn’t so optimistic as many might assume.
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Washington Post Fires Hundreds of Journalists
The Post has struggled in recent years and even saw a major dip in subscriptions back in 2024Owner Jeff Bezos has not yet succeeded in making the company financially viable in a time when so much media and journalism is now being independently created.
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