Public Shame Is the Most Effective Tool for Battling Big Tech; The New York Times, January 14, 2026

 Jessica Grose , The New York Times; Public Shame Is the Most Effective Tool for Battling Big Tech

"It might be harder to shame the tech companies themselves into making their products safer, but we can shame third-party companies like toymakers, app stores and advertisers into ending partnerships. And with enough public disapproval, legislators might be inspired to act.

In some of the very worst corners of the internet might lie some hope...

Without more public shaming, what seems to be the implacable forward march of A.I. is unstoppable...

As Jay Caspian Kang noted in The New Yorker recently, changing social norms around kids and tech use can be powerful, and reforms like smartphone bans in schools have happened fairly quickly, and mostly on the state and local level."

Trump, Like Sauron, Is Not Inevitable—but Only if We Refuse Despair; The Nation, October 3, 2025

AARON REGUNBERG, The Nation; Trump, Like Sauron, Is Not Inevitable—but Only if We Refuse Despair

[Kip Currier: A good friend sent me this uplifting article tonight. It's good stuff, and even more true and more needed right now than when it was published three months ago.

As the author Aaron Regunberg says:

"If the only way Trump can conclusively win is by convincing us not to fight back in the first place, then every act of resistance matters...Every time we choose hope over despair, and put that choice into practice, our decision echoes out across the Unseen world with real consequences for the Seen one."

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-sauron-tolkien-hope-despair/#

Pass this article on to as many people as you can.

And then send it again, and again, and again...

Hope is contagious.]

[Excerpt]

"J.R.R. Tolkien has a message for us: Don’t give in to Trump...

If the only way Trump can conclusively win is by convincing us not to fight back in the first place, then every act of resistance matters. It sounds trite, but that doesn’t make it less true. Every time we choose hope over despair, and put that choice into practice, our decision echoes out across the Unseen world with real consequences for the Seen one. (Or, if you’re not yet Rings-pilled and want a more materialist translation: Every time you contribute to the opposition in visible ways, you make it easier and more likely that others will join in next time.)

In this age of nightmares, the siren song of despair is tempting, and resisting it takes work. But The Lord of the Rings reminds us that in every way, the case for hope—the maintenance of which is a necessary (if not sufficient) victory in and of itself—is the more pragmatic option.

So let’s end the debate, just as my favorite Lord of the Rings character—and, I strongly suspect, Tolkien’s favorite, too—Sam Gamgee did during his and Frodo’s last, desperate push through the depths of Mordor to the cracks of Mount Doom.

Sam could not sleep and he held a debate with himself.… ‘It’s all quite useless. You are the fool, going on hoping and toiling. You could have lain down and gone to sleep together days ago, if you hadn’t been so dogged. But you’ll die just the same, or worse. You might just as well lie down now and give it up. You’ll never get to the top anyway.’

‘I’ll get there, if I leave everything but my bones behind,’ said Sam. ‘And I’ll carry Mr. Frodo up myself, if it breaks my back and heart. So stop arguing!’…

No more debates disturbed his mind. He knew all the arguments of despair and would not listen to them. His will was set, and only death would break it.

We may have some dark years ahead of us. And whether we allow them to also be despairing years is a choice—our choice. We must set our wills."

Trump Is Getting Weaker, and the Resistance Is Getting Stronger; The New York Times, December 26, 2025

MICHELLE GOLDBERG, The New York Times; Trump Is Getting Weaker, and the Resistance Is Getting Stronger

"It has been a gruesome year for those who see Donald Trump’s kakistocracy clearly. He returned to office newly emboldened, surrounded by obsequious tech barons, seemingly in command of not just the country but also the zeitgeist. Since then, it’s been a parade of nightmares — armed men in balaclavas on the streets, migrants sent to a torture prison in El Salvador, corruption on a scale undreamed of by even the gaudiest third-world dictators and the shocking capitulation by many leaders in business, law, media and academia. Trying to wrap one’s mind around the scale of civic destruction wrought in just 11 months stretches the limits of the imagination, like conceptualizing light-years or black holes.

And yet, as 2025 limps toward its end, there are reasons to be hopeful...

While Trump “has been able to do extraordinary damage that will have generational effects, he has not successfully consolidated power,” said Leah Greenberg, a founder of the resistance group Indivisible. “That has been staved off, and it has been staved off not, frankly, due to the efforts of pretty much anyone in elite institutions or political leadership but due to the efforts of regular people declining to go along with fascism.”"

‘I’ve Been Doing This Work for 25 Years and I’ve Never Seen Such Fear’; The New York Times, November 30, 2025

David French, The New York Times; ‘I’ve Been Doing This Work for 25 Years and I’ve Never Seen Such Fear’

[Kip Currier: Amidst appalling stories of brutality by masked ICE agents against migrants, detainees, immigrants, and even allied clergy members, examples of people helping and loving their neighbors, as described in David French's 11/30/25 New York Times piece, are heartening and inspiring.

Yesterday's 11/30/25 liturgical reading Romans 13:11-14 sees the apostle Paul's letter exhorting followers of Christ to "lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light". It's a particularly timely and pertinent reminder in conjunction with French's statement about present-day darkness and light:

The story of America is far from perfect, but if there is one constant in our history it’s that American darkness is always answered by American light.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/opinion/chicago-ice-new-life-centers.html 

What can each of us do to promote American light -- to put on the armor of light -- over the works of darkness?

To show compassion and generosity over hate and cruelty?

To see ourselves and those we love in the eyes of a stranger or migrant?]

 

[Excerpt]

"In the book of Leviticus, God says to his people, “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

Providing care for immigrants is one of scripture’s clearest commands. It is one of the great tragedies of our time that millions of Christians are cheering and applauding the administration’s brutal crackdown on immigrants.

But not all Christians. There are believers, Catholic and Protestant alike, who are rallying to treat migrants with dignity, compassion and respect. New Life gets government funding for parts of its work, but DeMateo told me that when it began to support immigrant families during Operation Midway Blitz, it did so entirely on its own...

The story of America is far from perfect, but if there is one constant in our history it’s that American darkness is always answered by American light.

The masked agents of ICE make headlines with their aggression. But it’s important to answer those headlines with a different story, of volunteers who fulfill God’s command to love their neighbor — with their time, their money and their friendship."

MacKenzie Scott Expands Giving Spree to Tribal Colleges; The New York Times, November 20, 2025

 Alan Blinder, The New York Times ; MacKenzie Scott Expands Giving Spree to Tribal Colleges

[Kip Currier: Imagine if more billionaires shared their good fortune with more people in need throughout the U.S. and the world, like MacKenzie Scott is.]

[Excerpt]

"The philanthropist MacKenzie Scott is funneling tens of millions of dollars into tribal higher education, months after the Trump administration sought to cut one of the system’s most essential funding sources.

The donations could help shield some tribal schools — which measure their reserve funds and endowments at best in the low millions, not billions — and their students from budget bickering in Washington. Ms. Scott has not made public comments about her recent gifts, but according to the recipients, the funds will support at least one tribal school and a nonprofit group that focuses on scholarships for Native American students.

Little Priest Tribal College, in Winnebago, Neb., announced on Thursday that Ms. Scott had given it $5 million. The school learned of the gift as it was planning a capital campaign that, officials hoped, might raise $10 million over a decade.

“There’s a sense of happiness, a sense of hope,” Manoj Patil, the college’s president, said in an interview. He said of Ms. Scott, “She’s given us hope, hope for success, hope to dream big.”"

‘Children thrive down here’: the secret play centre hidden under Ukraine’s most dangerous city; The Guardian, September 24, 2025

Liz Cookman , The Guardian; ‘Children thrive down here’: the secret play centre hidden under Ukraine’s most dangerous city

"In an underground shelter in Kherson, probably the most dangerous city in Ukraine, children are chasing each other between plastic chairs. Outside,mortars, artillery and drones fly their deadly paths back and forth across the Dnipro River that separates the city from Russian forces.

This makeshift underground play centre is one of the few places where children can socialise with each other in safety. For a few hours, it can be as though the war is not happening. When the explosions get too close, teachers working at the centre clap louder or turn up the music to drown out the noise.

As children returned to school across Ukraine this month, one in three are having their fourth consecutive academic year disrupted. In frontline areas such as Kherson, where schools have been damaged in attacks, children have to study largely online...

Across Ukraine as a whole, more than 3,000 children have been killed or injured since the start of full-scale war in 2022 – equivalent to about 150 classrooms of children.

With such dangers, families are forced to spend much of their lives underground or indoors, calculating every errand against mortal danger. Stuck indoors, teachers say children now struggle to socialise, and their speech and confidence have been set back without access to their peers, while some have not yet learned to read.

Narmina Strishenets, a conflict adviser with the UK charity Save the Children, says: “Instead of focusing on play, socialising and passions, children are focused on physical survival.

“Many are now one or two years behind in core subjects,” says Strishenets. “Childhood is under attack and they are losing hope.” 

The underground play centre, at a secret location in a residential area of Kherson, is one of the few spaces where children get personal support from teachers and psychologists. It was set up last year by the chair of a local housing association, Oleh Turchynskyi."

What Gives Carla Hayden Hope; American Libraries, June 28, 2025

Greg Landgraf  , American Libraries; What Gives Carla Hayden Hope

"The discussion concluded with a series of rapid-fire questions, one of which inadvertently demonstrated the folly of opposing diversity. Alexander asked Hayden about what food she doesn’t like. She responded immediately, “Brussels sprouts.” Alexander—a fan of the sprouts—was surprised. Hayden declared, “Just because I don’t like them doesn’t mean that you can’t eat them. Diversity is just having choices.”"

Hope After Trump; The New York Times, June 7, 2025

Nicholas Kristof , The New York Times; Hope After Trump

"Authoritarians surround themselves with sycophants, so that no one warns them when they proclaim dumb policies that tank the economy. Free from oversight, they yield to dissolution and corruption...

In recent years alone, look at what has happened to some of the most prominent authoritarians around the world. In Brazil, the Supreme Court in March ordered former President Jair Bolsonaro to stand trial on charges of discussing a coup to stay in office. And in Hungary, Orban’s party is now lagging in some opinion polls.

In the Philippines, Duterte targeted the brave journalist Maria Ressa, who faced up to 34 years in prison for committing journalism. But now Ressa has a Nobel Peace Prize and is free while Duterte is in a prison cell in The Hague, facing charges of crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Court.

I caught up recently with Ressa, and her line to Americans is: “If you’re depressed now, think of the Philippines” — and find hope...

Domestically, the United States is showing resilience...

If Filipinos can win back their country, then surely we Americans can as well. Given the enormous stakes, this is a time for a rebirth of liberal patriotism. So don’t emigrate, friends; stay and fight for your country’s future. And the world’s."

The CIA smuggled the Guardian into the eastern bloc during the cold war; The Guardian, February 22, 2025

Ella Creamer, The Guardian; The CIA smuggled the Guardian into the eastern bloc during the cold war

 "The CIA smuggled the Guardian Weekly to eastern bloc countries during the cold war, a new book reveals. Copies of this newspaper were sent as part of a broader secret programme that got literature by authors including George Orwell and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn behind the Iron Curtain.

In the early 70s, Guardian Weekly was sent to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania, said Charlie English, former head of international news at the Guardian and author of The CIA Book Club.

Under the “CIA book program”, the US intelligence agency sent approximately 10m books east over the three decades leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The programme aimed to “combat the stultification that Stalinism imposed on the eastern bloc”, where censorship was rife, and show those living there that “the west hadn’t forgotten about them”, said English...

The CIA Book Club details the significant role of the late Jerzy Giedroyc, a relative of the former Great British Bake Off television presenter Mel Giedroyc, in the CIA’s operations. He was “perhaps the most important person in the west helping the CIA ship books into Poland” and considered a “hero of the Polish independence movement”, said the author.

While the book programme is given “almost no credit” for bringing about the end of the cold war, dissidents say literature was vital to the anti-communist movement in Poland, and former CIA officers believe it played a significant role in ending the war."

What happens after you ask Trump to ‘have mercy’? Threats, praise and hope.; The Washington Post, February 2, 2025

 Olivia George, The Washington Post; What happens after you ask Trump to ‘have mercy’? Threats, praise and hope.

"Last month, Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Oklahoma) introduced a resolution calling for the House to recognize Budde’s sermon as a “display of political activism and condemning its distorted message.”

Budde, according to the resolution, promoted “political bias instead of advocating the full counsel of biblical teaching.”

On Sunday, after the service, she pondered the lawmaker’s action.

“It isn’t political activism for a pastor to ask for mercy,” she said. “It is an expression of Christian faith and the teachings of Jesus.”"

Some Protestants Felt Invisible. Then Came Bishop Budde.; The New York Times, January 26, 2025

Ruth Graham and Elizabeth Dias, The New York Times; Some Protestants Felt Invisible. Then Came Bishop Budde.

"It was the first Sunday since a fellow Episcopalian, Bishop Mariann E. Budde, delivered a sermon that many observers heard as an echo of passages like the one from Luke. Speaking at a prayer service at the National Cathedral in Washington the day after President Trump’s inauguration, she faced the president and made a direct plea: “Have mercy.”

After the service, Mr. Trump called Bishop Budde a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” in a social media post. His foes immediately hailed her as an icon of the resistance. But for many progressive Christians and their leaders, the confrontation was more than a moment of political catharsis. It was about more than Mr. Trump. It was an eloquent expression of basic Christian theology, expressed in an extraordinarily public forum...

“A plea for mercy, a recognition of the stranger in our midst, is core to the faith,” Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, the Episcopal Church’s top clerical leader, said in an interview. “It is radical, given the order of the world around us — it is countercultural — but it’s not bound to political ideology.”...

The clergy members addressed it directly in their sermons, too. At Church of the Transfiguration, the associate rector, the Rev. Ted Clarkson, acknowledged to the congregation that aspects of the bishop’s sermon might have been “hard to hear.” But “mercy is truth,” he said, “and I expect a bishop to preach the truth.” (Bishop Budde preached on Sunday at a church in Maryland.)...

Bishop Budde’s message seemed to be resonating beyond the usual audience for Sunday sermons.

Her most recent book, “How We Learn to Be Brave,” was listed as temporarily out of stock on Amazon Friday afternoon. At that time, the book was No. 4 on the site’s list of best-sellers, 11 spots above Vice President JD Vance’s memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.” 

The publisher of Bishop Budde’s book, Avery, an imprint of Penguin Books, was scrambling to reprint “a significant number of books,” said Tracy Behar, Avery’s president and publisher."

Hope going into the dark; The Ink, January 18, 2025

ANAND GIRIDHARADAS, The Ink ; Hope going into the dark

"Is this the last weekend of an era? What new day will Monday bring? We don’t know.

Today I found myself returning to some of the wisdom we have featured here from the brilliant and thoughtful Rebecca Solnit, and I wanted to share it with you as well.

By Rebecca Solnit

They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving. You may need to grieve or scream or take time off, but you have a role no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in. Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is. The pain you feel is because of what you love.

The Wobblies used to say don't mourn, organize, but you can do both at once and you don't have to organize right away in this moment of furious mourning. You can be heartbroken or furious or both at once; you can scream in your car or on a cliff; you can also get up tomorrow and water the flowerpots and call someone who's upset and check your equipment for going onward. A lot of us are going to come under direct attack, and a lot of us are going to resist by building solidarity and sanctuary. Gather up your resources, the metaphysical ones that are heart and soul and care, as well as the practical ones.

People kept the faith in the dictatorships of South America in the 1970s and 1980s, in the East Bloc countries and the USSR, women are protesting right now in Iran and people there are writing poetry. There is no alternative to persevering, and that does not require you to feel good. You can keep walking whether it's sunny or raining. Take care of yourself and remember that taking care of something else is an important part of taking care of yourself, because you are interwoven with the ten trillion things in this single garment of destiny that has been stained and torn, but is still being woven and mended and washed."

How to Keep Your Own Soul Safe in the Dark; The New York Times, December 9, 2024

Margaret Renkl, The New York Times ; How to Keep Your Own Soul Safe in the Dark

"At my lowest, I have never entirely given up my faith that good people working together can change the world for the better. When I have been downhearted in the past, I have always explained to myself that I am not alone in my efforts to cultivate change — by writing, by planting, by loving the living world in every way I can find to love it. Individual efforts gather momentum through the individual efforts of others.

Men in power did not wake up one morning and decide to give women the vote. White Southerners did not wake up one morning and decide to dismantle Jim Crow. Those things happened, if imperfectly and still incompletely, because hundreds of thousands of people worked together for years to make them happen...

So I am taking comfort from Wendell Berry, who has lived a life of ceaseless protest against the desecration of the earth and its creatures (most recently in an essay for The Christian Century called “Against Killing Children”). Even at 90, he is not asking himself what the point is...

In saving the leaves for the moths and the fireflies and the dark-eyed juncos, I am still trying. And in the trying perhaps I can save my own soul."

Climber Sees Wings Trapped Under A Boulder And Saves Majestic Animals; The Dodo, November 13, 2024

Maeve Dunigan , The Dodo; Climber Sees Wings Trapped Under A Boulder And Saves Majestic Animals

"Working together, rescuers removed the heavy boulders and carefully secured both eagles in crates. They swiftly brought the birds to Raven Ridge for further assessment.

Rehabilitators treated the birds’ wounds and tested them for lead poisoning. With continued therapy and care, the eagles recovered. They became increasingly spicy and aggressive, signaling that they were preparing to return to their home outdoors.

The eagles were ready for release by Veterans Day, making the moment especially emotional for all involved...

“By caring for both eagles, we were able to reunite them for their release,” Raven Ridge wrote in a Facebook post. “We believe they are a mated pair, and releasing them together not only honors their bond but embodies the spirit of resilience and hope that Veterans Day represents.”

Hope in dark times, reinventing the fight for democracy, being there for each other; The Ink, November 10, 2024

The Ink; Hope in dark times, reinventing the fight for democracy, being there for each other

"The morning after the election, awakening to a dark day for democracy, we could think of no better thinker to turn to than Rebecca Solnit, who reminded us of the task ahead, a task none of us can afford to give up on.

They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving. You may need to grieve or scream or take time off, but you have a role no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in. Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is. The pain you feel is because of what you love."

Ethical Resistance Is the Answer to Grief and Rage; The New York Times, October 14, 2023

 Peter Beinart , The New York Times; Ethical Resistance Is the Answer to Grief and Rage

"Historically, geographically and morally, the A.N.C. of 1988 is a universe away from the Hamas of 2023, so remote that its behavior may seem irrelevant to the horror that Hamas unleashed last weekend in southern Israel. But South Africa offers a counter-history, a glimpse into how ethical resistance works and how it can succeed. It offers not an instruction manual, but a place — in this season of agony and rage — to look for hope."

The Soviet era’s leading dissident is still a provocation for today’s Kremlin; The Washington Post, May 21, 2021

Vladimir Kara-Murza, The Washington Post; The Soviet era’s leading dissident is still a provocation for today’s Kremlin

 

"“Freedom of thought requires the defense of all thinking and honest people,” Sakharov wrote in his first major political essay in 1968. “[It] is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship.” It was at the end of the 1960s when Sakharov the scientist finally gave way to Sakharov the dissident as he began to focus almost exclusively on defending prisoners of conscience, displaced peoples (notably Crimean Tatars), those seeking to emigrate and others who came under attack from the repressive state...

 

Although it has been more than three decades since his passing, Sakharov’s time has not yet come in Russia. But today’s young people, who may know little about him, unwittingly continue his work as they risk arrests and beatings to demonstrate their solidarity with prisoners of conscience. “Today as always I believe in the power of reason and the human spirit,” Sakharov wrote in the darkest days of his Gorky exile. His own spirit of optimism and hope is very much needed in today’s Russia."

I used to hate Mister Rogers. Then I discovered how much I needed him.; The Washington Post, November 22, 2019

Martha Manning, The Washington Post; I used to hate Mister Rogers. Then I discovered how much I needed him.

"Mister Rogers gave comfort. He didn’t sell it. He didn’t knock us over the head with it. It wasn’t cool or sexy or easy. He considered the space between the television set and the viewer to be “sacred,” something millions of children understood — and that their parents forgot.

That’s a shame, because we were the ones who needed Mister Rogers’s wisdom most of all. The big words, long explanations and instructions about how to be and what to do that we favored often gave us little solace. Instead, we needed an honest voice who considered the darkness and met it with hope, who recognized self-hatred and met it with compassion.

As a child, Mister Rogers became extremely frightened by something on the news and wondered how he would ever be safe. His mother gave him simple but profound advice. “Always look for the helpers,” she told him, with the quiet certainty that they could always be found. Who are the helpers right here, right now, in our troubled lives?"

It’s About Ethics in Comic Book Journalism: The Politics of X-Men: Red; Comic Watch, December 19, 2018

Bethany W. Pope, Comic Watch; It’s About Ethics in Comic Book Journalism: The Politics of X-Men: Red

"The central thesis of these eleven issues is that the act of compassion is a more powerful tool than the most brutally cinematic superpower. Empathy is the thing which slaughters fear. Looking at your enemy and seeing a person, woven through with hopes and loves, fears, the usual mixture of frailties, transforms disparate (possibly violent) mobs into a functional community by revealing that there is no ‘us versus them’. There’s only ‘us’. The X-Men are the perfect superhero group to make this point, because their entire existence is predicated on the phrase ‘protecting a world which fears and hates them’. The X-Men have always represented the struggle that othered groups (racial minorities, religious minorities, women, members of the LGBTQIA community) have faced when trying to live in function in a world that is slanted, dramatically, in favor of straight, white (American) men. Such a group is a necessary force in the current, fractured, geo-political climate.

The world needs a message of hope and unity in a time when real children (mostly brown) are being locked in cages at the border of America. And Western audiences, who are either complacent in their ignorance or else furious at their own seeming impotence, need to understand the ways in which their outlook, their opinions are being manipulated so that their complacency is undisturbed and their hatreds are intentionally focused against highly specified targets. Allegory has always been a gentle way to deliver a clear shot of truth, and the technique has functioned perfectly in this series...

In this run, Taylor assembled a team which was primarily composed of characters who are valued for their empathy and capacity for forgiveness."

Why We Shouldn’t Mourn The Obamas’ Departure From The White House; Huffington Post, 1/19/17

Zeba Blay, Huffington Post; 

Why We Shouldn’t Mourn The Obamas’ Departure From The White House

"The Obamas meant many things to many people. To some they meant the fruition of the American Dream. To others they meant the destruction of it. There are millions of Americans who are emphatically glad to see Obama go, who are blissfully excited about a Trump presidency and its vague promise to “make America great again.” 

And there are millions of Americans who feel as if a loved one has just died. But no one has died. If we should take anything away from the legacy of these last eight years, it’s that there is no president who can save us from our collective demons. Only we can do that.

For those whose hearts are breaking, it may seem pithy and banal to use the quote: “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”

But really. Don’t cry. Because the Obamas get to be citizens again, for one thing. They get to move out of the line of fire of an almost constant, condensed stream of racial hate. But also ― we got to witness this. For better or worse. We witnessed a black president. And for centuries to come, children of all races and backgrounds will see his face looking up at them from their history textbooks, and they will take for granted the profundity of it.  

There’s actually a streak of that intangible thing called “hope” to be found in the Obama’s departure. For many of us, the prospect of the next four years seems bleak. But if Barack Obama could get through eight years as a black president in America with his sanity and his dignity intact, and even effect a little change, perhaps there is room for some cautious optimism. At the very least, we can try."