Tag: historical record
What the Colorado Oral Argument Missed
Often the outcome of a Supreme Court case is hard to predict from its oral argument. Not yesterday’s.
The justices’ questions in Trump v. Anderson made clear that the Court will rule—perhaps even unanimously—that no state can decide to disqualify Donald Trump from serving as president unless and until Congress enacts a statute granting that permission. Because Congress hasn’t done so, the Court, in all likelihood, will order Colorado and every other state to let Trump continue his reelection campaign.
What ‘Shakespeare in Love’ Taught Us About Writing
Earlier this year, Google introduced a chat application powered by artificial intelligence—an experimental competitor to ChatGPT and a tool that it hoped, per its marketing copy, would “be a home for your creativity, productivity and curiosity.” Understanding that some potential users might be less sanguine about a technology that blurs the line between the augmentation of human intelligence and the obsolescence of it, Google gave its new bot a canny name: Bard.
As a general term, “Bard” suggests the lyric
The Supreme Court Begins the Next Fight Over Guns in America
This morning, the Supreme Court struck down a New York State law that limited concealed-firearm permits to those with a demonstrated need to carry arms outside the home. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the 6–3 majority in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, said, “The Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.” Bruen thus opens one of the next major battlegrounds over guns in America:
What Did Medieval Peasants Know?
In the foreword to her book A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, the historian Barbara W. Tuchman offered a warning to people with simplistic ideas about what life was like in the medieval world, and what that might say about humanity as a whole: You think you know, but you have no idea.
The period, which spans roughly 500 to 1500, presents some problems for people trying to craft uncomplicated stories. “No age is tidy or made of whole
‘Dickinson’ and the Power of the Anachronistic Period Piece
Emily Dickinson’s life, according to the show Dickinson, had a lot more gay sex and twerking than your middle-school English class would have had you believe. And, from what we now know of the reclusive poet’s life, at least half of that is true.
The Apple TV+ cult hit—now in its third and final season—retells Dickinson’s life by pairing a modern knowledge of her lifelong relationships with a modern set of anachronisms: The 19th-century residents of Amherst, Massachusetts, dance
Kristen Stewart, Diana Spencer, and the Ghost of Anne Boleyn
In the new biopic Spencer, Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, wanders her decaying childhood home, talking with Anne Boleyn’s ghost. The beheaded second wife of King Henry VIII warns Diana of her dispensability as a royal and tells her to assert her power. It is not, strictly speaking, a faithful reproduction of history.
The surreal film from the Jackie director Pablo Larraín presents Kristen Stewart as the late ex-wife of Prince Charles in a meta bit of casting. Just
Eric Schmidt: AI Could Worsen Our Misinformation Problem
For years now, artificial intelligence has been hailed as both a savior and a destroyer. The technology really can make our lives easier, letting us summon our phones with a “Hey, Siri” and (more importantly) assisting doctors on the operating table. But as any science-fiction reader knows, AI is not an unmitigated good: It can be prone to the same racial biases as humans are, and, as is the case with self-driving cars, it can be forced to make murky