I’m wondering as well whether there isn’t a STEM bias in this approach. Yes, it does respond to the constitutive rigidity of an evaluation system born in an industrial culture that bases everything on objects called “credits” and “grades”. And yes society (but not necessarily education alone) should find ways to encourage the so-called gifted. But we have a lot of more basic work to do on how we define classes of people, such as gifted and ungifted, social and asocial and other binary distinctions that may be fundamentally misleading.
To say nothing of the question of “gifted at what”, which inevitably means gifted at the things the teachers or the institutions recognize as being valuable.

Alan, I have to thank you as well for providing Bluto’s last name, which I was unaware of even though I was a devoted fan of Popeye growing up. I still love my spinach.

No one knows for sure, but it’s believed perhaps Âœ or more of the massive U.S. trade deficit is simply an accounting artifact due to methods that fail to capture how goods and services are priced and paid for, the tax games being played by corporations.

Moreover, the defining feature of this particular crop of billionaires is there sense that they are somehow persecuted, victims of the society and economy, the regulatory system that has allowed them to accumulate such wealth. They are bitter about their ability to accumulate vast wealth and enormous power and prestige. They feel hard done by
 Think about this? They think something nasty was done to them, that they were screwed
 This is really hard to understand. These are the worlds greatest winners ever, but they feel they were cheated, by who?

Amazon, Amazon Web Services and Blue Origin, his space launch company. All are particularly vulnerable to President Trump’s displeasure – Amazon through antitrust and other enforcement and AWS and Blue Origin to loss of government contracts. Bezos stands to gain a lot from Trump’s favor and lose a lot were he to antagonise him.

Larry Ellison and his son, David Ellison are yet another example of – they may be politically right wing, but centrally Larry at least is a show me the money guy. CBS News is less important to him than the commercial position of Oracle and his other businesses, or Paramount.

Sarish Jha

Artificial intelligence will not wait for India to get comfortable with it. It will not slow down for parliamentary debates, skilling gaps or power shortages. It will simply reorganize economies — rewarding those who build patiently and exposing those who improvise loudly.

For decades, India has arrived late to technological revolutions. Railways were colonial inheritances. Electricity scaled unevenly. Mobile telephony exploded only after the world had matured the model. Each time, we compensated with scale. But scale is not strategy. And in artificial intelligence, scale alone will not save us.

The question before India is not whether it can rival the United States or China at the frontier. It cannot, not yet. The frontier is built on decades of deep research ecosystems, semiconductor sovereignty and sustained capital deployment that India has never matched. Pretending otherwise risks repeating an old national habit: mistaking aspiration for capacity.

The real question is harder, and more urgent: Can India become the world’s most consequential deployer of AI?

That distinction matters. AI leadership will not belong only to those who build the largest models. It will belong to those who apply intelligence at population scale — in farms, clinics, classrooms, courts and supply chains. It will belong to countries that convert algorithms into productivity. India, paradoxically, is positioned to do exactly that.

Laudable.
But how.?

It’s also fairly safe bet that a range of groups, many ‘astroturfed’ by Russia and/or wealthy US sponsors would be mobilised across the EU to oppose any such changes
 After all they’ve been pretty successful at sponsoring various nativist groups, and they’ve been quite catholic in their support of both the far right and the far left (and it’s reasonable to suggest that this sort of sponsorship of extremism in Europe would be a target for counterintelligence.)

It’s far from clear how you solve this problem, because the member states while pooling sovereignty resisted the idea of pooling everything. Moreover, it’s not just Hungary’s improprieties with EU funds, there are several member of states whose politicians and their patrons might be quite uncomfortable with the idea of extending criminal jurisdiction to the EU, which could then take a hard look at where the money has gone.

While the release of the children is a cause for national relief, several critical questions remain unaddressed by the authorities:

How was the release achieved? The government has attributed the rescue to “intelligence-driven operations” and the efforts of the Office of the National Security Adviser. However, there are conflicting reports regarding whether this was a tactical rescue or a negotiated release.

Was any ransom paid? The government is silent on this.

Have the perpetrators been brought to justice? There have been no official reports of the “bandits” or terrorists being arrested or neutralised. The lack of accountability for the kidnappers fuels fears that they remain a threat to other communities in the region.

Is it safe to return to school? While the students are being reunited with their families, the government has yet to announce a comprehensive security plan—such as the deployment of permanent security teams that would make it safe for academic activities to resume in 2026.

ï»ż

The government must move beyond reactive measures and provide a clear roadmap for securing schools and ensure that such a tragic history of rural insecurity does not repeat itself.

I would never try to justify Putin’s invasion, which surely created an irremediable rift within Ukrainian society and will inevitably lead to the fracturing of the nation. I sympathize with Roger Scruton’s notion of conservatism, without adhering to the various conclusions he may draw from it. It is precisely for that reason that, as a US citizen I deplore the damage my native country has done to other cultures in the world, including France, my current home and second nationality. In some very real and direct sense, Putin is a creation of the US. I would even maintain that he has been crafted by the US to play a role that serves a very real purpose. But at the same time this highlights a deeper problem that is currently undermining the integrity of US society itself.
The real moral of the story is a very Christian (and deeply conservative) one: those who live by the military-industrial complex die by the military-industrial complex. Especially cultures. I personally find it appalling that Europe, in its desperation following the realization that all of its cultures are compromised, has now converted to that same philosophy.

Thank you for your comment.

I fully agree with your thesis that the Poroshenko government, on its part, also began to ban the Russian language and destroy traditions.

However, the trends against the Russian language and the first major wave of nationalism began with Viktor Yushchenko and the “Orange Revolution”. At that time, USAID and the Western intervention you mention played a significant role. Yet Yushchenko, with all these efforts, did not remain in power for more than one presidential term. Even Poroshenko lost the election to Zelensky, who gave interviews in Russian and pursued a conciliatory rhetoric.

Western-funded anti-Russian, nationalist movements never had overwhelming power or broad support among the Ukrainian people, neither on their own nor with U.S backing.

However, Russia’s military invasion is already more than U.S humanitarian involvement in Ukraine. When the Russian army shells houses and people die, it naturally provokes Ukrainian hostility toward Russia.

It was, however, precisely Putin’s military invasion that played a key role in making it possible to justify the course of “banning the Russian language and persecuting the Church”, which has been disastrous for Ukraine.

Respectfully,
Ganpantsura

Thank you for interviewing with us, Ricardo.

The world is eagerly watching Argentina after President Milei’s midterm sweep.

I would be delighted to speak to you again on Argentina’s transformation.

My understanding of the events is that it was the Poroschenko government that banned Russian and fomented a spirit of civil war between the shared traditions. If anyone sought to annihilate that shared heritage — and succeeded in doing so — it was Victoria Nuland and Joe Biden. As an American having lived through the Vietnam war, Yougoslavia, Iraq and Libya (to mention only those), I find that propensity for cultural annihilation of other nations to be a kind of historical constant.

As for the events of 2008, there’s some serious context worth recalling: Bush’s declaration on NATO expansion at the Bucharest conference and the Great Recession Bush conveniently delivered to help destablize the nations of the world’s economies. US presidents tend to be bulldozers, intent not on conservation but on crushing the cultures and economies they meddle in.