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In today’s edition:
WpGet the full experience.Choose your planArrowRight- The $399 sneakers Trump is selling are a trap
- At last, an AI tool you might want to give your kids
- A mathematically sound, morally right way into reparations
- Renaming “feminine hygiene products” might make them tax-exempt
What have you gotten yourself into?
You are lacing up the new Donald Trump sneakers you purchased for $399 at a shoe convention. You are feeling more and more like the former president. You are starting to panic.
That’s because you — yes, you — are trapped in one of Alex Petri’s second-person stories.
To let you behind the scenes a bit, I (yes, I) am Alex’s editor here at The Post and delight in working on her humor column — rarely more so than when she writes the occasional piece in the second person, plunging the reader right into the often-eldritch action.
In today’s episode, you slowly transform into a Trump dupe as you walk a mile in his shoes.
“You ask for a picture of Mar-a-Lago, and when you see it, you feel tears start to your eyes,” Alex writes. “Nothing has ever seemed so beautiful, or worth so much money. You can’t even put it into dollars. It would be like trying to put a price on Jupiter or the sun! You have forgotten that Tiffany Trump exists.”
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But you’ve gone so many places in previous adventures. You recently served as an anonymized juror in a trial of Trump, and you nearly lost everything. A few years ago, you found yourself trapped in the “Suburban Lifestyle Dream” that Trump, then president, promised to protect. (“You are mowing the lawn. You must mow the lawn. It is imperative that you mow the lawn.”) In 2019, at the start of the crowded Democratic presidential primary, you found that you, too, were running without even knowing it.
But my all-time favorite? That time you were trapped in the White House during the holidays, lost in Melania Trump’s nightmare Christmas forest.
“Clutch only your White House Christmas ornament,” Alex counsels. “You may hear something that is not quite a heartbeat. Walk on.”
Better do as she says.
Chaser: Want to explore Petri’s world but still make your own decisions? Try her choose-your-own-quest Halloween adventure.
2 + 2 = 5? Not on Khanmigo’s watch.
“Decent at computation but easily bullied”? Is Josh Tyrangiel talking about an artificial intelligence-powered education tool or explaining why I used to gossip inside with the assistant teacher during second-grade recess?
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Thankfully, it’s the first thing — in an intriguing column about Khanmigo, the artificially intelligent tutor built by online-learning giant Khan Academy atop OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Josh has been playing around with Khanmigo, and he writes in a “blurbable” compliment that it’s “the first AI software I’m excited for my kids to use.” Whereas GPT rolled over when told that 5 + 7 = 90, Josh writes, Khanmigo is less susceptible to bullying and Socratically steers users to the right answer.
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Josh is bullish on Khanmigo, which he goes on to say is one of the best models out there for harnessing AI for the public good. Imagine how overstretched teachers can use the tool to personalize learning! Actually, don’t imagine; Josh profiles places this is already happening.
The key will be making such products (which require a lot of expensive computing power) sustainable. Josh has a few ideas. Ms. Cantrell and I will put our heads together during kickball, too.
Chaser: A few months ago, Molly Roberts examined in a deeply reported essay how AI is already forcing teachers to confront an existential question about education.
From racial economic justice advocate Jesse Van Tol’s proposal for a “mathematically precise and morally unassailable” way into reparations, or at least the start of them.
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Van Tol gives the historical background of the Freedman’s Bank, whose promise of generational wealth accumulation for emancipated Black Americans netted $3 million in deposits — $77 million in today’s dollars.
But the bank’s White trustees, empowered by the federal government, grossly mismanaged the bank and it shuttered as Reconstruction crumbled.
Its meticulous records, however, survive, which means we know exactly how much money ought to go to exactly which descendants to make things square — a rarity in the wrangling over reparations.
It would be an easy first step toward justice, Van Tol writes: “Congress created this calamity. Congress should fix it.”
More politics
Okay, so no one may want to ask directions to the “menstrual discharge collection device” aisle at the drugstore — there, a little euphemism goes a long way. But that expression, or MDCD for short, is music to Laura Strausfeld’s ears.
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Strausfeld is the executive director of Period Law, an organization dedicated to eradicating sales tax on tampons. She writes that in November, a sales tax governing board with 24 member states adopted the new term for “feminine hygiene products,” providing clarity on a medical necessity that is often (shocker!) “confusing to male legislators.”
Strausfeld offers, in her words, “a little womansplaining” on how for decades tampons and their like have been wrongfully left off sales tax exemption lists — and how the new lingo could lead more states to fix that error.
Smartest, fastest
- Young people just don’t care as much about democracy. We don’t need them all, Danielle Allen reasons — but two-thirds is essential.
- Jen Rubin makes the case that Vice President Harris is an underrated (and under-understood) asset in the Biden administration.
- If Republicans want to help Trump, they should pass Ukraine aid now, Marc Thiessen argues.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … the Bye-Ku.
Coffee and paper
Sunday laze until — bam! — you’re
In medias res
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
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You’re reading the Today’s Opinions newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox.
In today’s edition:
You are lacing up the new Donald Trump sneakers you purchased for $399 at a shoe convention. You are feeling more and more like the former president. You are starting to panic.
That’s because you — yes, you — are trapped in one of Alex Petri’s second-person stories.
To let you behind the scenes a bit, I (yes, I) am Alex’s editor here at The Post and delight in working on her humor column — rarely more so than when she writes the occasional piece in the second person, plunging the reader right into the often-eldritch action.
In today’s episode, you slowly transform into a Trump dupe as you walk a mile in his shoes.
“You ask for a picture of Mar-a-Lago, and when you see it, you feel tears start to your eyes,” Alex writes. “Nothing has ever seemed so beautiful, or worth so much money. You can’t even put it into dollars. It would be like trying to put a price on Jupiter or the sun! You have forgotten that Tiffany Trump exists.”
But you’ve gone so many places in previous adventures. You recently served as an anonymized juror in a trial of Trump, and you nearly lost everything. A few years ago, you found yourself trapped in the “Suburban Lifestyle Dream” that Trump, then president, promised to protect. (“You are mowing the lawn. You must mow the lawn. It is imperative that you mow the lawn.”) In 2019, at the start of the crowded Democratic presidential primary, you found that you, too, were running without even knowing it.
But my all-time favorite? That time you were trapped in the White House during the holidays, lost in Melania Trump’s nightmare Christmas forest.
“Clutch only your White House Christmas ornament,” Alex counsels. “You may hear something that is not quite a heartbeat. Walk on.”
Better do as she says.
Chaser: Want to explore Petri’s world but still make your own decisions? Try her choose-your-own-quest Halloween adventure.
“Decent at computation but easily bullied”? Is Josh Tyrangiel talking about an artificial intelligence-powered education tool or explaining why I used to gossip inside with the assistant teacher during second-grade recess?
Thankfully, it’s the first thing — in an intriguing column about Khanmigo, the artificially intelligent tutor built by online-learning giant Khan Academy atop OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Josh has been playing around with Khanmigo, and he writes in a “blurbable” compliment that it’s “the first AI software I’m excited for my kids to use.” Whereas GPT rolled over when told that 5 + 7 = 90, Josh writes, Khanmigo is less susceptible to bullying and Socratically steers users to the right answer.
Josh is bullish on Khanmigo, which he goes on to say is one of the best models out there for harnessing AI for the public good. Imagine how overstretched teachers can use the tool to personalize learning! Actually, don’t imagine; Josh profiles places this is already happening.
The key will be making such products (which require a lot of expensive computing power) sustainable. Josh has a few ideas. Ms. Cantrell and I will put our heads together during kickball, too.
Chaser: A few months ago, Molly Roberts examined in a deeply reported essay how AI is already forcing teachers to confront an existential question about education.
From racial economic justice advocate Jesse Van Tol’s proposal for a “mathematically precise and morally unassailable” way into reparations, or at least the start of them.
Van Tol gives the historical background of the Freedman’s Bank, whose promise of generational wealth accumulation for emancipated Black Americans netted $3 million in deposits — $77 million in today’s dollars.
But the bank’s White trustees, empowered by the federal government, grossly mismanaged the bank and it shuttered as Reconstruction crumbled.
Its meticulous records, however, survive, which means we know exactly how much money ought to go to exactly which descendants to make things square — a rarity in the wrangling over reparations.
It would be an easy first step toward justice, Van Tol writes: “Congress created this calamity. Congress should fix it.”
Okay, so no one may want to ask directions to the “menstrual discharge collection device” aisle at the drugstore — there, a little euphemism goes a long way. But that expression, or MDCD for short, is music to Laura Strausfeld’s ears.
Strausfeld is the executive director of Period Law, an organization dedicated to eradicating sales tax on tampons. She writes that in November, a sales tax governing board with 24 member states adopted the new term for “feminine hygiene products,” providing clarity on a medical necessity that is often (shocker!) “confusing to male legislators.”
Strausfeld offers, in her words, “a little womansplaining” on how for decades tampons and their like have been wrongfully left off sales tax exemption lists — and how the new lingo could lead more states to fix that error.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … the Bye-Ku.
Coffee and paper
Sunday laze until — bam! — you’re
In medias res
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
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