Happy Friday!
I’ve been in New York this week, which is something I highly recommend doing in September: the skies are blue, it’s warm but not boiling, and there’s enough light after work to sit outside in one of the pavement cafes that America has finally given into. I’ve been down in SoHo, where the national pastime appears to be queuing . . . to be allowed to buy clothes? Not even for a restaurant or takeout food item? I also saw young women in heels, which is vanishingly rare in London these days, and some 90s throwback fashion so nostalgia-inducing it made my heart hurt. (But I had that bias-cut mid-calf silk satin skirt!)
The differences with London are also pretty noticeable, starting with fentanyl addicts near my hotel in the Bowery. The NY subway also feels considerably less safe than the Tube, although I’m never sure if that’s just because of the higher tolerance for horsing about—eg there was a man in my carriage once doing pull-ups on the overhead bar, which isn’t hurting anyone, but is also kinda unsettling as a violation of social norms.
The money here feels less imported, too. London’s ultra-rich are often originally Russian, Chinese or Middle Eastern—Igor Tulchinsky, who sponsored the Bayeux tapestry exhibition, was born in Minsk; mega-philanthropist Len Blavatnik comes from Odessa—whereas the latest Met Costume Institute exhibition was sponsored by homegrown American billionaire Jeff Bezos of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Could I live here? I don’t think so. (London is so walkable, and so historic.) But coming to New York is like having a strong coffee in the morning. Energising.
Helen
The Firebrand
As an Arab American, El-Sayed faces the same challenge that Black politicians have long struggled to negotiate: What might look like passion in a white candidate is interpreted instead as aggression. Mehdi Hasan, who founded the left-wing online news start-up Zeteo, contrasted the Senate nominee’s political persona with that of New York City’s smiley and charming mayor, Zohran Mamdani. “I put him more in my camp,” Hasan said of El-Sayed. “We have RAMF: resting angry Muslim face.” As a result, half of the Republican attacks on El-Sayed paint him as a rabid Islamist who wants to institute Sharia law. (The other half imply that he’s a cheesy and effete Millennial, another Democratic soy boy clowning for the camera.)
As you might remember, I spent a chunk of August in the Midwest, following the Michigan Senate primary race. Here is the result: a profile of the Democrat candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is a compelling, smart, divisive politician. He won the primary as a Bernie Bro, with added opposition to pro-Israel donors, and he has pivoted to talk about affordability in the general. Except that a figure El-Sayed was close to in the primary—the Twitch streamer and Mao fan Hasan Piker—keeps popping up like Marley’s ghost to talk about “Zionists” and his belief that Iran getting a nuclear weapon would be good for the Middle East.
I found El-Sayed intelligent and eloquent, and there’s a lot riding on this race: can you run against AIPAC and win a swing state? Can you run on Medicare for All in a swing state? The polls suggest that El-Sayed is underperforming other candidates in the state, but that a “blue wave” will carry him into the Senate nonetheless. If that happens, he will not be content to be a seatwarmer1.
The AI Apocalypse is Extremely Boring Now
Perhaps these people are being driven slowly mad because they’ve peered into the abyss, they have seen the future better than any of us, and this hysteria is actually proportionate response. After all, the Vikings were real! But if AI does represent a threat to our way of life, this still is still not rational or constructive behaviour. I don’t believe that people talking to Claude all day and rambling to their friends about the rapture all night are going to help us any more than Wulfstan’s apocalyptic sermons helped the English in 1014.
Martin Robbins has written about the AI apocalypse in a way that I know will appeal to Bluestocking readers: by comparing it with Aethelred The Unready’s attitude to the Viking invader Thorkell the Tall (Substack).
Quick Links
“Bin Laden experienced the 2000s as a series of disappointments. After nine years of continuous hunting of his comrades, and after one of them had ignited his scrotum somewhere over southeastern Michigan, he was ready to concede privately that his theory of political change was ill-considered.” Graeme Wood’s bone-dry prose style is one of my favourite things in the world. Here he is on the post 9/11 fate of Al-Qaeda (Atlantic, gift link)
Thank you to The Browser for the link to this excellent centrist dad bait: the best equestrian statues, ranked (Substack).
James O’Malley has created a game where you have to name as many MPs as possible in three minutes. I only managed 38, entirely because I wasted 30 seconds each going “Barry…. Corbynite?” (Gardiner) and “Who is Prue Leith’s Son?” (Danny Kruger). In my defence, I think I would boss a version of this for Senators these days.
“I had braced myself for this moment, spent nearly a decade expecting it, preparing for it. When Najya was entering pre-K, my husband, Faraji, and I decided to send her to the type of school that wealthier families with choices uniformly avoid — one that is low-income and mostly Black.” This article by Nikole Hannah-Jones ignited a schadenfreudegasm over on X, but I thought it was honest and reflective, two things it’s hard to be when you’re a culture-war pinata, and I respect her for writing it (NYT, gift link)
“If 2024 was the first serious influencer election, then 2026 digital campaign strategy will be remembered as the first clipping election.” Politico on how the Democrats are also getting serious about working with online content creators—who sit awkwardly between journalists and campaign staffers.
Wow, this is brutal: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s SNL sketch: Meet Your Second Wife.
One of the Mitchell & Webb sketches removed by the BBC. Think it should be fairly obvious to anyone with more sophisticated comprehension abilities than Nathan Robinson (see footnote) that this is not racist.
See you next time!
Because this is my newsletter and I can whine here if I want to, enjoy Nathan J. Robinson—the socialist magazine editor who dresses like a Batman villain and fell out with all his staff—failing to understand that I was being explicitly critical of AIPAC here. “The Atlantic is admitting that AIPAC is trying to take down El-Sayed!” No, I’m not admitting it, I’m reporting it. You haven’t caught me out here; this is the point I was making.
I don’t think any analysis of frontier AI technology could really be called complete unless you take a clear stance on Thorkell the Tall
That SNL sketch is very funny and brutal.