Posts by Swedan Margen
The Age-Old Urge to Destroy Technology
Our go-to tale of resistance to technology is the story of the Luddites: In England in the early nineteenth century, skilled weavers and craftsmen found their livelihoods threatened by automated machinery, so they began to attack textile factories, destroying the machinery with hammers. Less familiar are the revolutionaries who used large clubs to smash thousands…
Read More“The Drama” Is One Long Troll
Zendaya and Robert Pattinson are charismatic as a couple confronting the fallout from an appalling revelation, but the film itself seems engineered solely to stimulate discourse. Source link
Read MoreIran attempting cyberattacks against critical U.S. infrastructure, officials say
WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence agencies are “urgently warning” private-sector companies nationwide that Iranian actors are conducting cyber operations targeting critical U.S. infrastructure, a campaign that has already caused disruptions, according to a government notice. The activity comes as President Trump threatened Iran’s infrastructure, particularly its bridges and power plants. Iran’s attack targeted products by Rockwell Automation’s Allen-Bradley,…
Read MoreTrump’s Iran Rhetoric Is Not a War Crime | National Review
His threats are overheated and politically unhelpful, but his domestic opponents are skewing the facts in response. Source link
Read MoreA First Step Toward Shrinking Government | National Review
Following the Trump administration’s cuts, the federal government employs the lowest percentage of U.S. workers since World War II. Source link
Read MoreThe Paradoxes—and Problems—of the Family-Vlogging Industry
“Like, Follow, Subscribe” is decently reported, if clunkily written; it lacks the legal and philosophical acumen of Leah A. Plunkett’s “Sharenthood” or the sociological insights that Kathryn Jezer-Morton brings to her studies of momfluencers. The strongest and most original passages of Latifi’s book, however brief, are devoted to her survey participants, who say that clicking…
Read MoreThe Iranian Sharia-Supremacist Regime and ‘Civilian’ Infrastructure | National Review
There are no ‘civilians,’ in the Western sense, in Iran, and the IRGC uses the infrastructure for its war aims. Source link
Read MoreIn Marie NDiaye’s Spellbinding New Novel, Witchcraft Stays in the Family
Witchcraft was traditionally a form of occult knowledge: esoteric, hidden, available only to initiates. Now, though, with the widespread circulation of magic manuals, grimoires, and related compendia—with the recording, on paper, of words, spells, histories, stories—witchcraft has taken an irreversible step into the exoteric realm. The chain through which it once passed, from trusted person…
Read MoreWill Biblical Womanhood Box You In or Set You Free?
Twenty years ago, Hatmaker was much like Waters: a young pastor’s wife raising three little kids while writing her first books on Biblical wisdom for Christian women. She practiced the same schedule sorcery as Waters, writing from 8:15 A.M. to 12:15 P.M., three days a week, plus occasionally during nap time. In “Make Over,” from…
Read MoreWe Are All Constantly Mutating—and That’s a Good Thing
Genetic research has been complicating the idea of the genome as a determinative blueprint. Source link
Read MoreIn Film, Sometimes the Greatest Drama Is Offscreen
-copy.jpg?w=1024&resize=1024,1024&ssl=1 "In Film, Sometimes the Greatest Drama Is Offscreen")
Directing movies is also a matter of production—of the interpersonal, the administrative, and the technical practicalities that go into creating the images and sounds that end up on the screen. The vast implications of that casual notion unfold in fascinating, appalling, comedic, and nearly tragic detail in “Cinematic Immunity” (Feral House), Michael Lee Nirenberg’s oral…
Read MoreChristoph Niemann’s “New Horizons”
For the cover of the April 13, 2026, Future Issue, the artist Christoph Niemann depicted an army of machines filling the horizon, one of whom cradles a human in its hand; that person is happily reaching toward a screen. “A.I. seems to evoke doom,” Niemann said. “Not surprising since the dominant narrative has been that…
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