ArcaMax

Fifteen years ago it was unfathomable -- and a bad idea -- to imagine that your digital messages could automatically self-destruct. Once your message is on someone else's machine, you simply cannot guarantee that it will be destroyed when you want it to be. Fooling people into thinking they have more security and privacy than they really do ...Read more

According to figures released last month, there are a grand total of 19 Black students in the first-year class at Harvard Law School, down from 43 in last year's entering class. You have to go back to the 1960s to find so few Black students in the entering class. In the years since 1970, the number of first years, or 1Ls, who were Black has ...Read more

Elon Musk's aggressive defense of the H-1B visa program -- which permits his companies Tesla and SpaceX to bring engineers and other workers from overseas -- has aroused fury among his erstwhile admirers on the far right. Despite his ongoing efforts to identify himself with the most extreme nationalists, xenophobes and racists both here and ...Read more

You can't understand the presidency of James Earl Carter Jr. unless you contextualize it within the framework of the hysterical aftermath of the 1972 election. While the Republican Party brand suffered tremendous damage due to Watergate, Richard Nixon's decision to prolong the Vietnam War and his resignation, the GOP proved improbably resilient....Read more

NEW ORLEANS QUESTION: What did you do for those beads?

ANSWER: I got run over by a truck and now I'm lying in the street like a busted Barbie.

Yeah. I know. It wasn't Mardi Gras, though everything in the United States now leads uphill to the cross.

I call 'em "Watermelons," those columns that come in like a slow ball over the plate, aimed ...Read more

I enjoy crafting and sewing, but lately I've become hyperaware of the waste produced to sustain this hobby. When I walk into a craft and fabric store, I feel like I could pick up the entire store and dump it directly into a landfill. It's mostly plastic -- yes, even the fabric -- and it likely won't get recycled. But I love to craft and sew. I...Read more

What's wrong with Sriracha? And, by the way, what is Sriracha? Sriracha is a hot sauce of Thai origin made from chili peppers, vinegar, garlic, sugar and salt. The rap against it centers on its high levels of sugar and sodium. But Sriracha is normally used in tiny amounts, so where's the problem? The other complaint, that it's "too hot,...Read more

As we reach the quarter-century mark, the 21st century has turned out a tragic disappointment. Hopes were high, leaving the world wars and Holocaust of the 20th century behind. Once, even globalization sounded good.

If the 21st century were a Broadway show, it would be a flop, closed by now.

The prelude was the Supreme Court giving George W....Read more

I made a few New Year's resolutions this week -- not for me, but as self-improvement ideas for some of the people running our country. No need for them to thank me -- happy to help.

I drafted one for the GOP's whole ultra-rightist gaggle of lawmakers who keep blocking passage of health coverage for poor people. "Resolved: We will forgo the ...Read more

Respect for the rule of law in the United States can hardly be helped by the fact that so many Americans don't know what it means. Last year's annual civics survey by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center found that one-third of our countrymen couldn't name all three branches of government -- and almost 1 in 5 couldn't ...Read more

Donald Trump had a rough couple of weeks. Members of his own party sunk his attempt to escape a vote on the debt limit for two years. Some of Trump's picks for top jobs weren't received with universal applause. A revolt by Republican senators against his choice of Matt Gaetz as attorney general forced the Florida Republican to withdraw from ...Read more

There is widespread concern today about the use of generative AI and deepfakes to create fake videos that can manipulate and deceive people. Many are asking, is there any way that technology can confidently establish whether an image or video has been altered? A number of techniques have been proposed. They include -- most prominently -- a ...Read more

What a Christmas present! In its report released last Monday, the bipartisan House Ethics Committee cited "substantial evidence" that from 2017 to 2020, former Rep. and would-be Attorney General Matt Gaetz "regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him," including an underage 17-year-old, and from 2017 to 2019, had in his ...Read more

Nonvoters are the biggest (potential) voting bloc in American politics. In midterm, state and local elections, more eligible voters choose not to exercise their franchise than to do so.

Pundits and political sociologists ignore nonvoters. Nobody polls them. Nobody asks them why they don't vote. Nobody asks them what issues they care about. ...Read more

Yeah. It was a hell of a Christmas. Elon Musk was in the manger, nursing greedily at Mary's exhausted body. One of the Wise Men was a crooked New York City real estate developer with an impossibly cotton candy combover, and Matt Gaetz was lustily pursuing the sheep who came to see the babe.

By the time the REAL apocalypse gets here, things ...Read more