As the new year begins, resolutions tend to orbit the personal: health, money, maybe a vague commitment to “less screen time” that will quietly die by February. Yet 2026 opens with a resolution that is no longer merely private but infrastructural: how to maintain individual autonomy in an economy increasingly mediated by artificial intelligence (AI). On Dec. 11, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence,” aimed at establishing a unified federal approach to AI governance by challenging state-level regulations deemed burdensome to innovation (The White House). The order directs the…

For more than three decades, the MetroCard functioned as a quiet constant in New York City life, a thin rectangle of plastic bent in wallets, demagnetized in pockets, and occasionally rejected by turnstiles with a small, public humiliation. That era is now ending. Beginning Jan. 1, 2026, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) will stop selling new MetroCards, completing the transition to One Metro New York (OMNY), its contactless tap-to-pay fare system (The New York Times, Dec. 22, 2025). Introduced in 1994, the MetroCard replaced subway tokens and eventually came to dominate the city’s transit economy, powering billions of rides across…

In December 2025, the White House installed a series of plaques beneath the Colonnade, inaugurating what officials have termed the Presidential Walk of Fame. The name itself carries a faintly comic optimism, as though the gravitational pull of celebrity culture might finally solve the messier problem of historical judgment. The plaques are modest in size, durable in material and positioned in a corridor designed less for contemplation than for transit, which may be the point. History, here, is something you absorb while walking briskly to a meeting. The plaques include summaries of each president’s tenure. For example, Barack Obama’s plaque…

In the dimming light of 2025, as the year draws to a close amid the usual swirl of holiday distractions and political maneuvering, President Trump’s announcement that the members of his proposed Gaza “Board of Peace” will not be revealed until early 2026 arrives. One that, for those attuned to the rhythms of American conservatism, might prompt a quiet reevaluation of our longstanding commitments in the Middle East.1 2 This board, envisioned as a transitional oversight body to guide Gaza from the ruins of conflict toward some semblance of reconstruction, was initially floated with the optimism of a pre-Christmas unveiling,…

Senate candidate Graham Platner speaking at a food and medicine event. Maine, that rocky outpost where the Atlantic keeps up its cold percussion against granite cliffs and the pine forests seem to murmur secrets to anyone patient enough to listen, has stumbled into a political drama that manages to feel both trivial and cosmic at once. It begins, as many modern political morality plays do, with a single image posted online. Out of everything we are presented with a photograph of Graham Platner, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate. The symbol, according to anyone with even a slight knowledge of…