Welcome to The Weekend Press! Today, River Page has two drinks with the AI policy adviser who thinks “a lot of crazy and destabilizing shit might go down.” Doree Lewak wonders if playing mah-jongg will make your kid smarter. And: What should you read this summer? Abigail Shrier, Douglas Murray, and many more Free Pressers have recommendations . . .
But first: Happy Father’s Day!
When’s the worst possible time to decide to have a baby?
When you’re about to go to war? When you’ve just lost your job?
P.G. Sittenfeld and his wife decided to try for a second child when he was battling his way through the courts, trying to prove his innocence after being implicated in an FBI sting.
There are so many twentysomethings who don’t want kids, and when you ask them why, the answer boils down to: The future is uncertain and scary. They need to make more money first. They don’t want to bring a baby into a world that’s burning.
But in his essay today, P.G. gently suggests that uncertainty isn’t a good reason to reject fatherhood. He should know. When he was eventually sentenced to 16 months in prison, his wife was 32 weeks pregnant.
“Being an inmate and a father at the same time was anguishing,” he writes. Still, he never questioned his decision for a second. Don’t miss his moving case for becoming a dad—despite it all.
Even for those who aren’t in prison, fatherhood is no cakewalk—and society doesn’t offer a ton of good blueprints. “The media has stereotyped fathers as goofy, hapless fools who depend on their superhero wives,” Alex Berenson writes, in our second story today about fatherhood. “The only good dad is a feminized ‘gentle parent’ who never raises his voice, is always ready with a hug, and never lets his kid take a risk or get hurt.”
“In other words,” says Alex, “the only good dad is a mom.”
But in his piece, he rejects this very modern idea, and makes the case that dads must be free to be dads—with a few tips that any father might find useful . . .
Hollywood may have a long history of daddy issues—but there’s a new movie that finally gets it right: Toy Story 5. Pixar’s latest offering, which came out yesterday, follows our cowboy hero Woody—now a rotund, balding father to dozens of discarded toys—as he and the gang face a new villain. But according to Liel Leibovitz, the real story is about fathers confronting perhaps the hardest realization of parenthood: Their children are becoming adults, and there’s nothing they can do to stop it.
“Our kids grow up,” Liel writes in his marvelous review, “and we don’t get to decide how or when that happens. All we can do is be there to help them along as best as we can.”
Summer is here! And that means, if you’re lucky, some long, lazy days when you can, at long last, immerse yourself in a few great new books. But which ones are actually worth your precious time? We asked a dozen contributors: What’s the best book you’ve read that didn’t exist last summer? Douglas Murray told us about a masterpiece of a novel about Gustav Mahler’s final voyage. Abigail Shrier said she loved Lena Dunham’s memoir, Famesick. The result is a list you’ll find in no other publication. Enjoy!
This week, the U.S. government effectively banned Anthropic’s AI models—saying they were a national security risk—and, once again, America found itself asking: If robots are about to upend society, how are we supposed to prepare? “I think you just gotta let it play out. We don’t have enough information to make a good judgment about what to do,” says Dean Ball. That is an unsettling opinion, given that it was literally his job to advise the Trump administration on AI policy. This week, he joined OpenAI to do the same thing. Before his new job, Ball met River Page for two drinks in Manhattan. He talked about the real reason people rebel against data centers, whether SpaceX is overvalued, and how “a lot of crazy and destabilizing shit might go down.”
A tile-based game from China, which used to be associated with 80-year-old bubbies in retirement homes, is taking American kids by storm. “I always ask my mom, ‘Can I play mah-jongg with you?’ ” one 11-year-old told Doree Lewak. Is this a wholesome sign that kids really do want to tear their eyes away from their screens and hang out? Or just another way for tiger moms to optimize their kids? “Everyone’s looking for an edge, a way to show how their kid is a little bit smarter, a little bit more creative and better at problem-solving than the next kid,” said a mom who is hosting a mini-mahj night in the Hamptons this summer.
Second Thought
This week on Second Thought, Suzy Weiss sat down with Luke Burgis, founder and director of the Catholic University of America’s Cluny Institute, which exists to “invest in the human person.” They talked about his new book, The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion. From the mobs of Knicks fans flooding the streets to endless Froyo lines, Burgis is fascinated by the ways in which we follow the herd—and has thoughts on how you can break out of the “cult-like” conformity that defines our culture in order to find your “solid self.”
You can listen to their conversation by clicking the link below, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to keep up-to-date with everything Suzy does (this week, she interviewed the new AI millionaires about how they’re spending their fortunes)—subscribe to her newsletter!
Knock, Knock, It’s Cupid!
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We’ve published plenty of other culture pieces this week, including . . .
How should you spend your weekend? We asked our features editor, Dana Schuster, for her recommendations . . .
See . . . Giant on Broadway, starring John Lithgow as Roald Dahl. It closes next week and is on my personal to-list list. My best friend, whose opinion I trust on everything (though apparently she didn’t think to invite me to the show), said that Lithgow “did a brilliant job portraying Roald Dahl as a charming egoist” and that the play shows just how little has changed in the conversations about antisemitism during the last 50 years.
Watch . . . I feel a little weird recommending Off Campus after my love-fest of an article devoted to the show. (Can you be too into a college romance series?) So may I instead suggest the second season of Beef? While there’s no hot hockey player seductively dancing, Beef will still delight. It’s weird, it’s dark, and it’s funny. Eat up!
Read . . . Among Friends. The debut novel from Hal Ebbott first came out a year ago, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Ebbott tells the story of two men who met in college and stayed best friends through middle age. Despite their seemingly perfect bond, the book explores the resentment and jealousy that festered for decades and comes to a head during a weekend away. The novel is out in paperback next week.
Last but not least, feast your eyes on one of the most beautiful paintings on fatherhood, in all its beauty and melancholy: Breaking Home Ties, by Norman Rockwell.
That’s all, folks! Have a great weekend.
ISRAEL’S “GENOCIDE” OF GAZANS
When I’m wrong, I try to recognize it and admit it.
Back at the start of the war I crossed swords with a number of fellow commenters over the issue of whether Megyn Kelly was an antisemite.
I thought then that her position on the Jewish State of Israel was horribly wrong but that she was NOT an antisemite.
I defended her despite getting pummeled by a number of folks here whose opinions I greatly respect.
I continued to listen to Megyn’s podcast.
Great elliptical trainer material.
Over the past few months, I have grown more and more disturbed by what she sees as the Jewish State’s growing insidious control over President Trump.
BUT yesterday I realized how wrong I’ve been.
Better late than never.
And yes, I know the corollary… BUT better never late.
Megyn referred to the “Carpet-Bombing” campaign the Israelis conducted in Gaza.
She obviously doesn’t know what carpet bombing looks like.
She went on to say that the Jewish State conducted “GENOCIDE” against the Gazan People.
Sorry but when folks get so radical that they trivialize the term genocide, I’m done.
Apologies to those of you who saw her stripes far sooner than I did.
P.S. I can’t comment on Tucker one way or the other because his hideous cackling is like nails on a chalkboard for me. I cannot listen to him