- Minneapolis and the war on truth;
- Jerry Coyne on prayer, triggering off Savannah Guthrie;
- How Jeff Bezos is killing The Washington Post just as Trump has done with America;
- Short takes.
It’s only getting worse. We’re succumbing to our worst instincts. Our idealistic institutions to overcome those worst instincts are being torn apart by the current administration.
NY Times, 3 Feb 2026: Chaos in Minneapolis Exposes an Internet at War With Truth, subtitled “Technological advances and an erosion of trust have transformed the way news unfolds online, distorting shared reality.” [Gift link via File 770]
The deaths of two protesters in Minneapolis at the hands of law enforcement have plunged the country into a political crisis much like the one after the police killing of George Floyd in the same city in 2020.
Now, though, advances in technology and an erosion of trust are distorting realities, both online and off, like never before.
Enormous changes have transformed the internet in the six years since Mr. Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. Artificial intelligence tools did not exist for general use in 2020; now they are everywhere. Social media has become even more toxic. Efforts to moderate it have loosened.
The influencers behind some of the most pernicious digital lies, who once toiled in the dark corners of the internet, are now emboldened, promoted on major platforms and even mimicked by some of the most powerful people in the country.
The current situation:
Experts fear that Americans are losing their ability to distinguish between fact and fiction — and that fewer people seem to care about the difference. The online churn that now accompanies any major news event obscures the common reference points that once helped guide the country forward. With technology, impudence and apathy all colliding at once, the shock to American attitudes toward reality — and the public consensus required by the democratic experiment — may be a permanent one, experts said.
(Of course the audience involved here hardly cares what “experts” think.)
The audience for fact checks is far outstripped by interest in false and misleading posts. Initiatives at social media platforms such as X and Facebook to limit or remove such content have been slashed or abandoned, leaving the digital sewage to flow directly to users.
The result: an “authenticity collapse,” said Alon Yamin, the chief executive of Copyleaks, which offers tools to detect the presence of A.I. in content.
“The internet is lying by default, and the media ecosystem is just flooded with content that you know looks real, sounds real but is definitely not real,” he said. “There is a danger here of almost losing touch with reality.”
With examples from Minneapolis, and A.I.
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This is more-or-less on the same theme, and I would have led with this today except that I couldn’t find a suitable photo. Let’s try this one from Wikipedia’s article on the Efficacy of prayer, displayed above.
The article under discussion is this:
Jerry Coyne, 3 Feb 2026: God: celestial dictator or kindly father?
His subject is prayer, and the case in point is the abduction this week of the mother of NBC’s Today Show host Savannah Guthrie, from her home in Tucson, a story that NBC has been covering extensively. (The latest I’ve seen is that Savannah’s brother-in-law is somehow implicated.)
This is a tragedy for the Guthrie family, especially because Savannah and her mom were so close, and I won’t be dismissive of the call for prayers by nearly all the reporters. It did, however, get me thinking about people’s views about what prayers are supposed to accomplish, how they’re received by the God people imagine, and how educated people (Savannah has a J.D. from Georgetown Law) come to think that prayers are useful.
(Well, because we all inherit base human nature, with its inclinations toward perceiving meaning and agency in everything, and projecting those inclinations onto the entire universe; to make everything about us.) But let’s return to Coyne.
It’s clear that all the calls for prayer by newspeople reflect the still-pervasive religiosity of America, though I’m not sure whether, for some, the call for prayer is just a pro forma expression of sympathy. But surely for many prayers are supposed to work: God is supposed to hear them and do something—in this case intercede to help bring Nancy Guthrie back alive. And that got me thinking about how people connect prayer with the listener: God. Religious Jews are, by the way, among the most fervent pray-ers, with prayer serving as a constant connection with God. And, like prayers in other religions. Jews sometimes use prayer to ask for personal benefits or simply to propitiate God.
The train of thought continued. What kind of God is more likely to effect changes requested in prayer? If God is omniscient, omnipotent, and good, wouldn’t He know that people want things, like Nancy Guthrie’s return, and not need their prayers to find out? (He presumably can read people’s minds.) A god who requires prayers to effect change would be dictatorial and mean-spirited, demanding that obsequious people supplicate and propitiate him. But surely that’s not the kind of God most Christians imagine. (My feeling is that Jews envision a somewhat angrier God—the one in the Old Testament.)
Nevertheless, despite quasi-scientific studies showing that intercessory prayers don’t work, people ignore that data, as of course they would; it’s tantamount to admitting that there’s no personal God who has a relationship with you.
Then quoting Sam Harris and Dan Dennett.
So why do I think this piece is related to the previous one? Because they’re both about what people want to believe, rather than what’s objectively real. And how, as I’ve said before, this indicates a limitation to human cognition that may cap the survival of our species within the next century or two, let alone its expansion into the universe.
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What Trump has done to the US, Jeff Bezos — a billionaire who depends on the kindness of the Trump administration to stay in business — is apparently doing to the once-respectable Washington Post. Tearing it down.
The Atlantic, Ashley Parker, 4 Feb 2026: The Murder of The Washington Post, subtitled “Today’s layoffs are the latest attempt to kill what makes the paper special.”
We’re witnessing a murder.
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of The Washington Post, and Will Lewis, the publisher he appointed at the end of 2023, are embarking on the latest step of their plan to kill everything that makes the paper special. The Post has survived for nearly 150 years, evolving from a hometown family newspaper into an indispensable national institution, and a pillar of the democratic system. But if Bezos and Lewis continue down their present path, it may not survive much longer.
Over recent years, they’ve repeatedly cut the newsroom—killing its Sunday magazine, reducing the staff by several hundred, nearly halving the Metro desk—without acknowledging the poor business decisions that led to this moment or providing a clear vision for the future. This morning, executive editor Matt Murray and HR chief Wayne Connell told the newsroom staff in an early-morning virtual meeting that it was closing the Sports department and Books section, ending its signature podcast, and dramatically gutting the International and Metro departments, in addition to staggering cuts across all teams.
The Books section. Where Michael Dirda reigned until his recent retirement.
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Shorter takes.
- NY Times, Jamelle Bouie, 4 Feb 2026: Common Ground Is for Suckers
- He only cares about people who voted for him, and is at war with everyone who didn’t.
Isn’t this *obvious*?
- John Pavlovitz, 3 Feb 2026: Bad Bunny, Kid Rock, and MAGA’s Super Bowl of Racism
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Sometimes you don’t have to work to figure out where the racists are.
Sometimes they out themselves.Back in the Fall, within nanoseconds of the NFL announcing that Latin rapper Bad Bunny would be performing the Super Bowl Halftime Show, the Trump cult tore itself away from Charlie Kirk martyrdom, MAGA church shooter retcons, restaurant logo crusades, and pro-ICE posturing to launch into a full-on frenzy of performative histrionics in protest.
Since then, they’ve continued their tortured pearl-clutching unabated, with the white supremacist stalwarts at Turning Point USA recently announcing an “alternative” halftime show (called, of course, The All-American Halftime Show), featuring Olympic-level cultural appropriator-turned MAGA bootlicker Kid Rock and an undercard of similarly pigmented, patriotism-peddling, Bible-brandishing, shameless deep South virtue signalers.
You see the “alternative” they’re offering here, right?
And of course:
Let’s just say it’s primarily a melanin issue, with a side order of MAGA cultism, a heaping portion of Christian nationalism, and a healthy dash of homophobia thrown in.
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Two more, from JMG.
- Nicki Minaj: “I Don’t Think We Landed On The Moon”. Of course she would say that, given her other claims.
- Idaho Advances Bill To Ban All Local LGBTQ Rights Laws. Because conservatives *want* to discriminate.
