Trump Is Making the 250th Small; The Atlantic, June 24, 2026

 Tom Nichols, The Atlantic; Trump Is Making the 250th Small

"To the extent that Trump’s appearance was about anything besides Trump, it was about a kind of vulgar nationalism. Trump cannot comprehend patriotism, the love of one’s country. Instead he defaults to nationalism, the sour and hostile glorification of one’s own nation over everyone else’s. He does this because he views the world the way he apparently has viewed most things in his life: as a competition...

All Trump had to do tonight was walk out on the stage and remind the American people that the nation and its ideals are bigger than all of us. He could have told us that we are blessed to live in freedom and plenty. He could have reminded us that the survival of the American experiment, and the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution, are miracles that bless every person who lives here.

Instead, he told America that he is great, and that because he is great, America is great, and thanks to him, it is now better than everywhere else. And then a handsome man in a bright military dress uniform sang “YMCA” to him, as the president of the United States danced and smiled."

Anthropic ditches its core safety promise in the middle of an AI red line fight with the Pentagon; CNN, February 25, 2026

 Clare Duffy , 

Lisa Eadicicco, CNN; Anthropic ditches its core safety promise in the middle of an AI red line fight with the Pentagon

"Anthropic, a company founded by OpenAI exiles worried about the dangers of AI, is loosening its core safety principle in response to competition.

Instead of self-imposed guardrails constraining its development of AI models, Anthropic is adopting a nonbinding safety framework that it says can and will change.

In a blog post Tuesday outlining its new policy, Anthropic said shortcomings in its two-year-old Responsible Scaling Policy could hinder its ability to compete in a rapidly growing AI market.

The announcement is surprising, because Anthropic has described itself as the AI company with a “soul.” It also comes the same week that Anthropic is fighting a significant battle with the Pentagon over AI red lines."

Artificial Intelligence, Copyright, and the Fight for User Rights: 2025 in Review; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), December 25, 2025

 TORI NOBLE, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Artificial Intelligence, Copyright, and the Fight for User Rights: 2025 in Review

"A tidal wave of copyright lawsuits against AI developers threatens beneficial uses of AI, like creative expression, legal research, and scientific advancement. How courts decide these cases will profoundly shape the future of this technology, including its capabilities, its costs, and whether its evolution will be shaped by the democratizing forces of the open market or the whims of an oligopoly. As these cases finished their trials and moved to appeals courts in 2025, EFF intervened to defend fair use, promote competition, and protect everyone’s rights to build and benefit from this technology.

At the same time, rightsholders stepped up their efforts to control fair uses through everything from state AI laws to technical standards that influence how the web functions. In 2025, EFF fought policies that threaten the open web in the California State Legislature, the Internet Engineering Task Force, and beyond."

Opinion: Here’s the difference between Jeff Bezos and me; The Washington Post, March 6, 2022

 Bradley Graham, The Washington Post; Opinion: Here’s the difference between Jeff Bezos and me

"Even through the pandemic of the past two years, most independent bookstores have managed to survive. Doing so has meant doing what indies do best, which is adapting, innovating and staying focused on community. At P&P, we started offering curbside pickup and local delivery services, moved our author talks and literary classes online, and expanded our Web order capabilities, all while keeping staff employed and protected from covid-19.

But Amazon remains a major threat to us and to independent bookstores everywhere. Though it’s now shuttering its physical book outlets, the company persists as a dominant presence online, choking competition and engaging in unfair practices."

Now at Starbucks: A Rebound; New York Times, 1/21/10

Claire Cain Miller, New York Times; Now at Starbucks: A Rebound:

"Then, in a one-two punch, consumer spending plummeted, and Starbucks, selling a luxury rather than a necessity, was one of the first to feel the pinch. Meanwhile, competition emerged from a new corner of the market when McDonald’s began serving espresso.

When Mr. Schultz, standing at the bar in one of the new Seattle shops and sampling espressos with whole milk, talks about Starbucks, he uses phrases like “the authenticity of the coffee experience” and “the romance, the theater of bringing that to life.”

But that does not match the reality of many Starbucks customers, who rush through each morning on their way to work, or many of its former customers, who have rejected the chain’s cookie-cutter shops in favor of small local shops that serve more carefully made coffee.

Mr. Schultz’s first job upon returning was to halt the marathon store openings, lay off 1,500 United States store employees and 1,700 global corporate employees and figure out how to get the remaining 150,000 to think like employees of a scrappy little company that just wants to serve a good cup of coffee. Starbucks’ coffee buyers, for example, had chosen only varieties of beans that were produced in large enough quantities to supply all Starbucks stores. They rejected coffees made in small batches, which artisanal coffeehouses specialize in. Mr. Schultz changed that. “We’re not one size fits all.”

Even as Mr. Schultz tries to manage more like a start-up founder, he has given in to traditional big-company ideas that he had previously resisted. Last year, Starbucks embraced customer research surveys and ran its first major advertising campaign...

Mr. Schultz brought Cliff Burrows, who was managing stores abroad, back to Seattle to run American operations. One of the first discoveries he made talking to customers seemed basic, but had been lost in Starbucks’ push to open stores.

Coffee drinkers in the Sun Belt, it turns out, prefer cold drinks, while those in the Northeast generally like drip coffee and those in the Pacific Northwest drink more espresso. Yet the executives in charge of regions of the country were divided along time zones and out of touch with what different customers wanted."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/21sbux.html?scp=2&sq=starbucks&st=cse