Today's Liberal News

The Blog Post That Set the AI World on Fire

For the past 24 hours, Silicon Valley has been obsessed with a 26,000-word blog post by the AI researcher Nick Cammarata. The document has been called the “the most important essay,” “the most important result,” and “the single best piece of news” of the year, or in the history of AI research—or, perhaps, ever. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman lauded it.

Five Fabulous Days of Katie Zacharia

The world will little note, nor long remember, the Katie Zacharia era. Indeed, the tenure of the second White House press secretary of Donald Trump’s second term, which ended after five days and a single, 14-minute press conference, is already receding into memory.
Yet what matters more than her press-secretarial contributions, or the ideas she stood for, is the period Zacharia represents: the Trump administration’s reversion to the hapless chaos of the president’s first term.

How Botched Executions Were Handled in Centuries Past

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The botched execution of Christa Pike, who survived two injections of what was intended to be a lethal dose of pentobarbital on September 30, is—horrifically—not unique: As my colleague Elizabeth Bruenig wrote, it wasn’t even the first botched execution in Tennessee this year.

The Real Selling Point of Romantasy

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
Romantasy—the category of fiction in which the supernaturally gifted soar on the wings of love, and also sometimes of dragons—is incredibly successful. Its reigning queen, Sarah J. Maas, has sold about 75 million copies of her novels, my colleague Honor Jones reported in a recent Atlantic essay.

What Newsrooms Should Know Before They Take Money From OpenAI

As a newsroom executive, I have long tried to resist appeals to vet donors to nonprofit journalism for their politics or even the savoriness of their business practices. When you do that, you raise questions about whether you could fairly cover any potential donors on your banned list, and you also run the risk of offering some sort of implicit endorsement to the rest. Both of those perceptions are antithetical to the independent stance that good journalism requires.

“Against Tech Oligarchy”: Inside the Worker Resistance in the World’s Most Powerful Industry

Longtime tech worker organizers Clarissa Redwine and JS Tan’s new book, Against Tech Oligarchy: Worker Resistance in the World’s Most Powerful Industry, draws on the authors’ experiences at major tech companies to chronicle the rise and fall of the tech worker movement, its early victories, and the repression and slide to corporate control that followed.

Meet Estrella, an Undocumented Trans Woman Jailed for 9 Years, Then Deported to Mexico

We’re joined by Latino USA host Maria Hinojosa as she shares the story of Estrella Diamantina González, an undocumented transgender woman and trafficking survivor from Mexico caught up in the United States’ criminal and immigration systems. This summer, after serving a nine-year sentence in a Texas men’s prison, Diamantina González was released, but she wasn’t free. She was immediately transferred to an immigration detention facility and then deported.

“Abolish & Replace ICE”: Rep. Analilia Mejía Blasts ICE for Secretly Using NJ Warehouse

Earlier this week, ICE confirmed it had secretly used a federal government warehouse in Roxbury, New Jersey, to stage and to process detentions in September, despite an order from a judge barring the site’s use until an environmental study was complete. ”ICE and this administration cherry-picks which laws it adheres to, and then breaks due process and equal protection for the many,” says New Jersey Democratic Congressmember Analilia Mejía.