Faith and governance in the age of thinking machines
https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/big-tech/2026/05/faith-and-governance-in-the-age-of-thinking-machines
Alys Key:
This contributes to another reason why we are getting these missives from on high about AI. It’s a nebulous reason, a public mood, best expressed by a Silicon Valley meme about the “permanent underclass”. Half-joking, half-serious, this term describes the idea that AI brings about an end to social mobility by replacing all human labor, and that there are only a few years left in which to accumulate wealth before that happens. Those AI shareholders will be fine. For the rest of us, it’s anyone’s guess.
This is an extreme scenario, but taps into a feeling that we might get left behind. More than generalized anxiety about inequality, this is a fear that the new wave of wealth and superintelligence will end everything about life as we know it. It is a feeling intermingled with disappointment over stagnant wages, the cost of living, the state of politics, the environmental crisis, the slow loss of newspapers/Saturday jobs/bank branches/whatever it was that made life feel real to you.
How America recovers from all this | Yale Conversations with David Brooks
https://youtu.be/0YRTSA9q-6M
What does it take to rebuild a society fractured by distrust, populism, and eroding civic bonds? In his third Yale Conversations lecture, "How America Recovers from All This: A Hopeful Vision for our Common Future," author and columnist David Brooks traces the shifting cultural paradigms of the past 70 years to diagnose how America arrived at its current crisis. Drawing on philosophers from Aristotle to Max Scheler, Brooks examines how successive waves of cultural change have given way to widespread disillusionment — with institutions, with leadership, and with one another — and how that disillusionment hardens into resentment. The antidote, he argues, is not political but cultural: a renewed commitment to humanistic values, earnest admiration, and what he calls defiant humanism.
A Nordic nation is the world’s happiest country for the ninth year in a row
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/18/travel/worlds-happiest-countries-2026-wellness
What makes the Nordic nations so happy?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/what-makes-the-nordic-nations-so-happy/
Access to space is the obvious answer. It’s no coincidence that these are some of the least densely populated countries on the continent. Iceland has an average of four people living per square kilometer, while trees in Finland outnumber residents by 4,500 to one.
At a political level, a generous social welfare system – nicknamed the “Nordic Model” – promises free healthcare, education and up to a year’s paid parental leave in Denmark. Yes, the taxes are high, but when the money is well spent, and levels of economic inequality are far lower than the global average, who can complain?
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