“Israelis know and are increasingly angry that Netanyahu is strongly incentivized to keep this war — or any war — going as long as possible, since when it is over, new elections may be impossible to avoid, in which he will likely lose his post as prime minister and thus be liable to be sent to jail if found guilty in his interminable trial for fraud. Gadi Eisenkot, an ex-Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff and an opposition member of the war cabinet, stated at a news conference immediately after Netanyahu’s that the goal of destroying Hamas was now unreachable and called for new elections. Bibi’s only chance of staying in office if Eisenkot’s (and Benny Gantz’s) party, National Unity, leaves the war cabinet is to hew to the demands of his far-right coalition partners, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, whose unconcealed aims are to empty Gaza of Palestinians and annex the West Bank. A ruinous war with Hezbollah is increasingly seen as inevitable by the right, which would also serve to keep Netanyahu in office. Recent Israeli assassinations of senior Hezbollah officials in Lebanon may be goading it to attack, though, so far, its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, is avoiding taking the bait. Increasingly, though support for the war remains widespread, Israeli society is splitting into those who see bringing home the hostages as its primary aim, including some senior army commanders, versus those who still believe that Hamas can be destroyed. That is largely a left-right split.” (MEI)
“Divisions within the Israeli government are deepening after war cabinet minister Gadi Eisenkot suggested the key war aim of defeating Hamas is unrealistic and called for elections within months. ‘Those who say that there was a major blow and demolition of the capabilities in the north of the strip are telling the truth,’ Eisenkot told told Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 News on Thursday evening. ‘Those who talk about an absolute defeat and lack of will and ability do not tell the truth. This is why there is no need to tell tall tales.’ Eisenkot was speaking shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again said Israel’s military campaign would continue until it achieved ‘complete victory’ over Hamas. His comments also come after Israel withdrew some troops from northern Gaza and signaled a new phase of the conflict would begin soon. But Eisenkot said: ‘A strategic achievement was not reached … We did not demolish the Hamas organization.’ The remarks are the latest symptom of rifts within Israel’s coalition government, as well as growing discontent with Netanyahu’s war plans. Established shortly after Hamas’ brutal October 7 attack, the Israeli war cabinet includes some ministers already at odds with one another.” (Nadeen Ebrahim and Vasco Cotovio/ CNN)
“Archaeologists once believed the ancient Amazon rainforest was an inhospitable place, sparsely populated by bands of hunter-gatherers. But the remains of enormous earthworks, pyramids, and roads from Bolivia to Brazil discovered over the past 2 decades have proved conclusively that the Amazon was home to large, complex societies long before European colonizers arrived. Now, there’s evidence that another human society—the oldest yet—left its mark on the region: A dense network of interconnected cities, now hidden beneath the forest in Ecuador’s Upano Valley, has been revealed by the laser mapping technology called lidar. The settlements, described today in Science, are at least 2500 years old, more than 1000 years older than any other known complex Amazonian society. Lidar, which allows researchers to see through forest cover and reconstruct the ancient sites below, ‘is revolutionizing our understanding of the Amazon in pre-Columbian times,’ says Carla Jaimes Betancourt, an archaeologist at the University of Bonn who wasn’t involved in the new work. Finding such an ancient urban network in the Upano Valley highlights the long-unrecognized diversity of ancient Amazonian cultures, which archaeologists are just beginning to be able to reconstruct. Stéphen Rostain, an archaeologist at CNRS, France’s national research agency, began excavating in the Upano Valley nearly 30 years ago. His team focused on two large settlements, called Sangay and Kilamope, and found mounds organized around central plazas, pottery decorated with paint and incised lines, and large jugs holding the remains of the traditional maize beer chicha. Radiocarbon dates showed the Upano sites were occupied from around 500 B.C.E. to between 300 C.E. and 600 C.E.” (Lizzie Wade/Science)
“Nonconsensual sexually explicit deepfakes of Taylor Swift went viral on X on Wednesday, amassing over 27 million views and more than 260,000 likes in 19 hours before the account that posted the images was suspended. Deepfakes portraying Swift nude and in sexual scenarios continue to proliferate on X, including reposts of the viral deepfake images. Such images can be generated with AI tools that develop entirely new, fake images, or they can be created by taking a real image and ‘undressing’ it with AI tools. The origin of the images isn’t clear, but a watermark on them indicates that they came from a years-old website that is known for publishing fake nude images of celebrities. The website has a portion of its website titled ‘AI deepfake.’ Reality Defender, an AI-detection software company, scanned the images and said that there was a high likelihood that they were created with AI technology. (Comcast, the parent company of NBCUniversal, is an investor in Reality Defender.) The mass proliferation of the images for nearly a day shines a spotlight on the increasingly alarming spread of AI-generated content and misinformation online.” (Kat Tenbarge/NBC News)
“One of the fondest bits of resistance fantasy has been the notion that the nation’s economic elites — the titans of Wall Street, the beautiful people of Davos, the economic masters of the universe— would, in our moment of peril, mount the barricades to defend democracy. To which a reasonable person might have responded: Have you met these guys?” (Charlie Sykes/The Bulwark)
“On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times laid off 115 people, more than 20 percent of its total staff. If those cuts went to the bone, in Washington, DC, it was more like an amputation: four of the bureau’s nine reporters were let go. Personally, this was a gut punch. I’d been freelancing for the paper for much of last year, helping the Washington bureau cover a gap—it already lacked a full-time congressional reporter—and now friends of mine had lost their jobs. But I’m not just mourning for them. As the San Francisco Chronicle’s Shira Stein noted, these latest cuts leave just herself, two people from McClatchy, and the five people at the LA Times as the only journalists covering DC for California-based newspapers. That’s eight print reporters covering the entire federal government—for a state of thirty-nine million people.” (Cameron Joseph/CJR)
“The Bulwark, a clear-eyed conservative news publication that stands in firm opposition to Donald Trump, is not only thriving online, but is in the midst of a ‘growth spurt,’ publisher Sarah Longwell told me on Thursday. The outlet, which features notable investors such as James and Kathryn Murdoch, aims to expand with new hires in the coming weeks … The Bulwark, which now boasts nearly 30 staffers, is "very close to breaking even," Longwell said during our phone conversation. The outlet generates about $3.6 million alone on newsletter subscriptions, she said, and also draws on a separate dual revenue stream made up of advertisements and live events. Since its founding in 2018, the outlet has swelled in size. It now houses 10 podcasts (including Charlie Sykes' hit show, which ranks in the top 25 news programs on Apple Podcasts), five newsletters, and has recently poured resources into a YouTube channel, which has amassed nearly 150,000 subscribers and more than 21 million video views. Think of it like this: For the left, there is Pod Save America. For the reality-dwelling right, there is The Bulwark.” (Oliver Darcy/Reliable Sources)
“Is there a single director working today with a better track record than Martin Scorsese? Ever since breaking through with his gritty, scrappy crime drama ‘Mean Streets,’ the Italian-American’s name has been synonymous with quality, and he’s kept that train going for several years. Some films were more acclaimed than others, but from the ’70s all the way to the 2020s, Scorsese has remained a consistent top-tier filmmaker, pumping out at least one or two stone-cold classics per decade. What’s even more impressive is how adaptable and varied the man has proven himself to be. A refrain popular among internet contrarians is that Scorsese is just a dude who makes gangster movies, but one look at the films he’s made over the years shows that only scratches the surface of his capabilities and tastes. While his mafia films like ‘Goodfellas’ and ‘The Irishman’ are obvious greats, Scorsese is one of the biggest cinephiles on the planet, and his films show an appreciation for all sorts of cinematic traditions and influences. He made a Douglas Sirk-inspired kitchen drama with ‘Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.’ He tackled the musical with ‘New York, New York.’ Whether you’re looking for a period romance (‘The Age of Innocence’), a rambling black comedy (‘After Hours’), a gritty sports story (‘Raging Bull’), or even a Biblical movie (‘The Last Temptation of Christ’), there’s a good chance Scorsese has directed it.” (Wilson Chapman and Alison Foreman/IndieWIRE)
“Hundreds of millions of Africans face two problems holding them back from progress: 600 million lack electricity, while virtually all 1.4 billion people on the continent lack high-quality currency. Compare this to the US, Northern Europe, or Japan, where nearly everyone has access to consistent, affordable power and a widely-accepted reserve currency like the dollar, euro, or yen. The longer that Africans suffer from power blackouts and high inflation, the harder it is for them to get a leg up, despite their best efforts. Worse still, legacy energy and financial providers have no incentive to alleviate this issue, meaning currency debasement, debt traps, and grid shutdowns persist. Most might look at this scenario and conclude that the next African century will be very difficult. Despite being blessed by abundant energy sources like mighty rivers, blazing sun, strong winds, and geothermal heat, Africa remains largely unable to harness these natural resources for its economic growth. A river might run through it, but human development in the region has been painfully reliant on charity or expensive foreign borrowing. Until now. In the eyes of some of the continent’s entrepreneurs, educators, and activists, something has emerged that has the potential to revolutionize access to reliable electricity and high-quality currency -- the building blocks of progress -- for Africa’s swiftly rising population. Believe it or not, that thing is Bitcoin.” (Alex Gladstein)
“On Tuesday, after days of tramping around Park City, Utah, griping about the movies and the logistical headaches this mountain resort town presents, I was transported into the Sundance Film Festival that I always hope for, the one in which a movie surprises and moves and maybe delights me, and so successfully makes good on its promise that, after the lights come up, the crowd delivers the festival version of hallelujah with a floor-shaking standing ovation. I admit, I wasn’t expecting that to happen when I walked into the new Will Ferrell joint. That would be ‘Will & Harper,’ a documentary by Josh Greenbaum in which Ferrell and his longtime friend Harper Steele, a trans woman, set off on a momentous cross-country journey of discovery. Former colleagues at ‘Saturday Night Live,’ where Steele was a head writer, they have collaborated on other Ferrell vehicles, including the Spanish-language comedy ‘Casa de Mi Padre.’ Here, prompted by love and interest — Steele yearns to feel more at ease in public, Ferrell wants to support and understand his friend’s transition — they deepen their friendship while traveling through a predictably divided country.” (Manohla Darghis/NYT)
“One of the Right’s great storytellers about allegedly bad equality has been the US Supreme Court, and the latest installment in its running narrative was the decision in June 2023 banning the pursuit of racial diversity in college admissions, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA). If the political majority can’t discredit, flip, or shatter this ongoing delegitimization of full racial equality, we have little chance of producing meaningful social transformation in the 2020s. The current right-wing narrative not only naturalizes existing racial inequalities but also locks in the economic and political inequalities that majorities say they dislike. It’s easy to locate this dislike. There are the predictions of a coming Trump dictatorship. There’s Joe Biden ignoring four-fifths of his party in refusing to support a ceasefire in Gaza. There is the poll where half of respondents agree that, ‘in the next few years, there will be civil war in the United States.’ There is the poll in which the two words Americans most associate with politics are ‘divisive’ and ‘corrupt.’ There is the index where, in spite of good GDP growth, consumer sentiment remains at a 10-year low. There is the poll in which 60 percent of respondents—and 80 percent of Democrats—think there is too much inequality in the United States. There is the poll in which those who see too much economic inequality reference education in four of their top seven remedies, including better skills, free college (two- and four-year), and eliminating college debt. There is the poll in which four in five Black Americans think that, in order to treat Black people fairly, the economy either ‘needs major changes’ (46 percent) or ‘needs to be completely rebuilt’ (37 percent). There is the poll in which nearly four in five Democrats and more than four in five Black Americans think efforts to ensure racial equality haven’t gone far enough. Plutocracy, where gains go mostly go to the wealthy few, is enabled by mainstream storytelling that discredited the ways US society could control capitalist inequalities—from union organizing and progressive wealth and income taxes to financial regulation and race-conscious affirmation action programs. With all of these avenues to equality rendered suspect, the last mechanism standing has been individual mobility. In the Right’s dominant narrative, there have been only a couple of legitimate modes of upward mobility: business entrepreneurship for the overmen, and education for the rest of us.” (Christopher Newfield/LARB)
“It’s been weird to be a Smiths fan for a long time. Being weird was kind of the point for fans in the ’80s and ’90s, who were drawn to the band’s ability to express what it felt like to be a lonely teenager longing for love, or at least some heavy petting at a high school dance. I have come to love the band’s playing and the way Johnny Marr’s jangling guitar created a bridge between Buddy Holly and shoegaze, but if we’re being honest, every Smiths fan first got on board because of the band’s lead singer, Morrissey. Lyrics like ‘I wear black on the outside because black is how I feel on the inside’ spoke to us weirdos and our longing, but they also made us laugh. Morrissey laced the loneliness and anger with enough wit and humor to remind us that it was better to be clever than cool, and that the jocks and the alphas were the real losers … Then we learned about the Trump rallies. A journalist reported on primary day in New Hampshire that the music played pre-rally included one of the Smiths’ most iconic songs, ‘Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want.’ It took no time for video to emerge of the track playing before a rally in Rapid City, South Dakota, last September.” (James Murphy/VF)