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In today’s edition:
Chatting with strangers
If you want to talk to someone about jazz, religion, career mistakes, parenthood and illicit, underground raves, you might not have to get to know them first. You might just have to sit down on the same bench.
In an op-ed, author Annabel Abbs-Streets recounts the surprise intimacy she discovered sitting in a riverside London park on a “chat bench,” which is exactly what it sounds like. Abbs-Streets had been hunting for some perspective on her upcoming empty nest-dom, but she was too timid to talk to friends about it. Strangers fit the bill perfectly. And from her telling, the strangers she spoke to were relieved to get their conversational needs met, too. (“I’m terrified,” a woman about to undergo IVF confided in her.)
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Dutch psychologist Paul van Lange calls the phenomenon Vitamin S — for “social contact” — and Abbs-Streets summarizes his findings: Talking to strangers readily boosts one’s mood, but remember that it “is like an exercise — we need to practice it regularly or risk losing the muscle for it. This ‘mental fitness’ is bolstered when our brains use infrequently activated neural networks to converse with strangers.”
Once you’re wiped from all those sets of chitchat, you can recover in the quiet of the library. Or you can try, because, as author Annalee Newitz reminds us, libraries are smack-dab in the middle of the culture war, with crusaders targeting books, staff and library access for attack. That’s because libraries have the power to end the culture war, Newitz asserts — and nothing could be a bigger threat to authoritarianism.
Strongmen gain power “by sowing information chaos,” Newitz writes. “Libraries, on the other hand, are free, publicly funded places that exist to clear away the fog of uncertainty by providing patrons with access to primary sources, a diversity of recorded experiences and a calm place to consider them.”
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So read up. Once you’re ready to discuss, we’ll meet in the park.
The (better) future of AI
Hey, ChatGPT, can you help me develop a plan to ensure that the future of AI benefits the most people possible rather than cementing authoritarians’ power?
Sure, I’m happy to help with that! Let’s draw from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s op-ed on what a global coalition of open, democratic countries led by the United States needs to do. He lays out four points:
- American AI firms need to beef up security so that bad actors can’t steal cutting-edge tech.
- Policymakers need to keep investing in the physical infrastructure that AI systems run on, as well as in tech workers’ knowledge skills.
- The country needs a “coherent commercial diplomacy policy for AI” that governs export and foreign-investment strategy for AI’s global growth. Altman writes: “The challenge of who will lead on AI is not just about exporting technology, it’s about exporting the values that the technology upholds.”
- The world needs a global decision-making body to uphold AI safety and democratic protocols.
Chaser: Revisit Josh Tyrangiel’s profile from last year of Altman, who he said “is just a boy, standing in front of government, asking it to regulate.”
From Heather Long’s column on Biles’s peak performance at “gymnastics ‘grandma’ age” — fitting, since Heather writes that Biles “has transformed gymnastics from a girls’ to a women’s sport.”
Heather reminds us of (and applauds) Biles’s decision to pull out of the Tokyo Olympics amid mental health concerns, and she updates us on all the ways Biles has pushed to lessen the sports’ abuses on mind and body.
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This bit in particular is great: “Biles even helped change Team USA leotards — from girly pink to patriotic colors with higher necks and a more elegant, mature style.”
More politics
So, can Vice President Harris win, though? Contrary to what the internet would have you believe these past few days, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s main job is not, in fact, making memes.
On the latest Impromptu podcast episode, Ruth Marcus, Perry Bacon and Shadi Hamid discuss the chances of the candidate Democrats very swiftly lined up to support. No spoilers, but it’s a splash of cold water on the recent online excitement.
Marc Thiessen dumps a whole bucket; he calls Harris a “gaffe-prone leftist” whose popularity is on a par with Biden’s (and Trump’s) low numbers. And in other Democrats’ decision not to run against her, Marc sees a quiet confidence that democracy would, in fact, survive another Trump term, giving these rising stars plenty of chance to compete in 2028.
Chaser: Jen Rubin runs through the pros and cons of Harris’s probable top picks for her own VP slot.
Smartest, fastest
- Register here to watch Jonathan Capehart interview Sen. Tim Kaine tomorrow at 9 a.m. Eastern, followed by more Post writers discussing the election in an expanded edition of “First Look.”
- Former CIA officials James Petrila and John Sipher explain how the Trump immunity ruling could have the extra-threatening side effect of turning the intelligence agency into a tool of executive overreach.
- The economy that JD Vance loudly dreams of is long gone, Megan McArdle writes, and she’s pretty sure he knows that, too.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
Strangers in the park
Sit silent, staring at screens
Uh-oh: Chatbot bench
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
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