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Self in Society Roundup 76
Immigration, AI in journalism, education, Ela Thier, the katechon and the antichrist, mattering, and more.
by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
Immigration Watch
Third-Country Deportations: This is abhorrent behavior by the U.S. government: ACLU: "The Trump administration has deported over 23,000 people over the last year and a half to countries they have no relationship with, where they may not speak the language, and where they generally have no legal status. Sometimes, it deports people to conflict zones or countries where they are likely to face persecution or even torture." Reuters, September 24: "President Donald Trump's administration will ask the US Supreme Court to allow it to continue to swiftly deport migrants to countries other than their own without offering them the chance to raise any safety concerns about their destination, US Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Thursday." This policy is morally evil, and honest people will publicly say so. See also Linda Chavez's report. Also: "They kept us like animals." Greg Sargent: "Stephen Miller Is Paying Monstrous Dictators to Admit Expelled Immigrants."
Traumatizing Children: CNN: "Migrant children as young as 2 are showing up at immigration courts nationwide, many without attorneys, to make their case to stay in the US and avoid deportation."
Detention Abuses: Owen Swallow: "The press conference and protest focused on copies of complaints alleging civil rights violations, medical neglect, and lack of access to adequate nutrition by people who were held at the Aurora immigration detention facility in northwest Aurora."
ICE Abuses: Amnesty International: "The Trump administration has committed a host of human rights abuses, including unlawful killings, some of which may amount to extrajudicial executions; arbitrary and discriminatory incommunicado detentions, including possible enforced disappearances, in some cases in conditions of confinement that may violate the prohibition on torture; violent repression of peaceful protests, and more."
ICE Assaults Citizen: Hill: "ICE leaves US citizen injured on ground in mistaken identity incident." These are the jack-booted thugs conservatives once warned us about.
ICE Violence: Seth Klamann: "A federal judge in Denver says immigration agents involved in the violent arrest of an 18-year-old should be punished for violating a court order, and the federal government should release the teenager and pay his medical bills." More Seth Klamann: "During his time locked up at the Aurora immigration detention facility, [a man] said he witnessed violence and abuse, grew weak from hunger and was, eventually, brutally beaten by guards while handcuffed and suffering a panic attack."
Renée Good's Mom: Via Eric Boehm: "I voted for President Trump, under the impression that these agents were here to protect the citizens of the United States—innocents like our family and the others here—against terrorists, certainly not to accuse those here of being terrorists and take precious lives." Good's family is suing.
Risking Lives: Michael Karlik: "The Denver-based federal appeals court concluded last month that the government’s immigration appellate body was wrong to order a man deported to Mexico after two immigration judges in Colorado concluded the likelihood of torture should prevent his removal there."
Caging Humans Like Animals: This is immoral.
Trump Watch
Applebaum: "MAGA Is Making the World Safe for Corruption. See also her podcast episode with Sam Harris.
U.S.S. Lincoln: NYT: "8 Sailors in U.S.S. Lincoln Strike Group Attempted Suicide, Navy Says."
AI Updates
Reed and AI Use: I have not independently verified The Needle's claims about Erin Reed's purported use of AI in her work. Here I want to reply only to a slice of that article. I think the framing is off in important respects. Yes, I think it's important to disclose when text is written by AI. What I object to is the implication that cut-and-paste from AI is in the same bucket as using AI to "research" articles. Bluntly, if a journalist is not using AI at this point to help research articles, they're missing the boat. I use LLMs to help research practically all of my articles at this point. The key is to prompt well and check out the citations. This is not much different from using, say, the Google search function to help research an article. (Indeed, Google now integrates newer AI into its searches.) Here's one example. I used Chat to help dig up some obscure decades-old documents about Colorado tax policy. I frankly probably never would have found all those sources otherwise, although maybe Google plus hours of hunting eventually would have gotten me there. I make no apologies for spending five minutes to find an important source with Chat that otherwise might take me five hours to find (or five days using paper archives). This isn't somehow cheating; it's using the available tools to do the work. LLMs are powerful data processors, so for journalists not to (intelligently and transparently) use them I think is a waste. Every tool can be used well or poorly.
Machine Intelligence: AI, or, as Tyler Cowen prefers, Machine Intelligence, is much in the news of late. I use ChatGPT nearly every day, mainly as a research engine, secondarily as a sounding board for questions involving music, literature, medicine, and more. Although I have not gotten much into "agentic" use, I do have it set up to conduct a daily search for me and return results. To take a few examples, recently ChatGPT has helped me learn about potential drilling techniques on Mars, translate image-based comments in legal documents, evaluate a novel I was thinking of buying, and convert pdf files into epubs.
AI Face-Off: I've used ChatGPT enough to see with my own eyes how it basically grew from a toddler that couldn't do simple math to a college graduate. The developments have been extraordinary. Now you can watch AI-generated music videos arguing that AI is revolutionary and AI development faces inherent barriers. Either way, the fact that humans used AI systems to produce these videos is a sign of these extraordinary times.
Education Updates
Khan as Mentor: Matt Barnum: "In a recent interview with me, Khan revisited [his] origin story. In hindsight, he now says, it was not just that he was good at explaining tricky math by video or otherwise. It was that he had a relationship with his cousins that encouraged them to work hard. 'The real power of the one-on-one is the accountability and the pushing,' Khan said. That cannot easily be done by video or AI chatbot."
Online Escape from Bullying: Matt Barnum: "University of Chicago researcher Chris Campos pointed me to a recent study of his. . . . Using data from Los Angeles, Campos and colleagues show that students report lower rates of bullying after opting into online education. But Campos’ paper, like many others, also finds that most students learn less in online schools. 'Some families appear willing to forego short-run achievement gains in exchange for guaranteed improvements in bullying-related outcomes,' the study says."
Federal Tax Credits: There are a lot of unknowns here. What's clear is that accessing the funds will involve considerable bureaucracy and paperwork. Here's one line from the AP: "Scholarship recipients could use their funding to pay for religious or private school tuition, homeschooling costs, tutoring and special education therapies, books, computers and other expenses connected to enrollment or attendance." Notice what this does: It incentivizes recipients to come up with creative ways to spend all the funds they can access. What it does not do is let a parent pay for regular household expenses so a parent can cut down work hours and spend more time homeschooling or working with a child outside of school hours. I'm still not convinced this should be a federal program; the Constitution does not authorize the federal government to become involved in education. And, by the way, this will only increase pressure on the national debt. That said, at a certain point, we have to live within the rules defined, and I intend to take advantage of this program if I reasonably can.
"Illustrative" Algebra: I'm deeply skeptical of the claim that "math instruction should prioritize open-ended problem solving and student discussion rather than more rote methods." The former devolves to bullshit sessions and not actually teaching kids how to do math. The proper alternative is not "rote memorization" but deep conceptual understanding. Matthew Yglesias argues for "explicit instruction."
Art Updates
Tomorrow Ever After: I absolutely loved this 2017 film by Ela Thier. The set-up is that Shaina (Thier) has accidentally traveled back hundreds of years to 2015, and she has a very hard time fitting in to that New York culture. People in her time refer to our era as the Great Despair. In some ways the film feels like a socialist utopia, with people of the future living in communes and picking "real food" off of trees, but maybe that also can be interpreted as techno-optimism if we think the plants are genetically modified. Shaina also has an "implement" that's like a super-thin and unobtrusive iPad. I have a fascination with films that are very-low-budget but also high quality, where the acting of necessity must carry the film, as it certainly does here. I'm instantly a Thier fanboy.
Widow's Bane: Happy Halloween! Here's the video of the creepy and amazing song, "Don't Be Afraid; It's Only Death." See also an alternate live performance. The main guy subsequently started up Gasoline Lollipops band.
Phenomenon: I rewatched this 1998 film and loved it as much as I did originally. As others have noted, it's something of a Christ story, with a man gaining wisdom and special abilities, scaring some around him, and eventually helping to transform people. I think what I love about it is its benevolence and sense of calm confidence. Obviously it's inspired by Flowers for Algernon, a considerably darker story.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry: In this lovely film, a man (Jim Broadbent) goes on a cross-country walk to visit his sick friend. In the process he meets some interesting people and learns a lot about himself.
Foo Astley: Somehow I'd missed (or forgotten) Rick Astley performing with Foo Fighters in 2017.
Quick Takes
Thompson on Gay Marriage: C. Bradley Thompson has continued his ridiculous attack on gay marriage. Thankfully, I had ChatGPT summarize and analyze the series so I don't have to waste any more time with it.
Thiel on AI and Democracy: Interview in Berlin. HT Cowen. My take: he's right to fear the democratic socialists, but he's foolish to underplay the dangers of Trump and Vance. I was thinking about this: a liberal and capitalist society relies on "creative destruction." Those who pay too little attention to the creative side of that become nihilists. I worry that Thiel is too welcoming of disruption. I also think that Thiel, in his fear of leftist authoritarianism, has blinded himself to the obvious authoritarian leanings of Trump. Maybe obsessive fear of the "antichrist" can help bring it about? See also Thiel's 2024 conversation with Cowen. A key line: "There's always a risk that the katechon becomes the Antichrist." Notice how Trump imposes (aspects of) authoritarianism and socialism in the name of fighting socialism.
Why Matter: I very much enjoyed the Ayn Rand Institute's discussion of Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's The Mattering Instinct. The basic idea, as I take it, is that people should strive to be on the side of life, which in the negative can be described as anti-entropic (in that living things strive to keep themselves organized). Greg Salmieri's main objection seems to be that Goldstein confuses an external, intrinsic standard for objectivity, also that Goldstein doesn't always seem to tightly tie mattering to a pro-life project. See also Goldstein's "The Mattering Map."
Botched Execution: See the AP's report about a case in Tennessee. Government killing people is bad, and this case illustrates why.
Homecoming Queen: Apparently a Georgia school will not allow a trans girl to run for homecoming queen. There is an easy fix for this people! Just stop calling it "king" and "queen" and make it a nongendered "homecoming court" competition.
FCC Licensure as Censorship: ARI: "The FCC's underlying licensing authority [and] the employment mandates . . . violate freedom of association. . . . The only real solution is privatizing the spectrum."
War on Gifted Education: John Stossel: It's real, and it's bad.
Smithsonian: Josh Blackman: "If the Smithsonian truly seeks actual independence, there is only one path forward: formal separation from the federal government."