The Extra Mile

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on. – Margaret Atwood, The
“DeepSeek R1,” venture capitalist Marc Andreessen declared last week, “is AI’s Sputnik moment.” And as Sputnik – in its original 1957 instantiation and in its subsequent and repeated invocations – has always shaped education policy, particularly in regard to ed-tech, I thought I’d better say something. But one of the
"AI Will Empower Humanity," says Reid Hoffman, venture capitalist, OpenAI funder, co-founder of Linkedin, and member (along with Peter Thiel, David O. Sacks, and Elon Musk) of the "PayPal Mafia." (Related, from The Guardian's Chris McGreal: "How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’
Ideally, on Monday mornings, I've got an essay for you. (Schedule of events here at Second Breakfast: Monday’s newsletter: essay, most of it for paid subscribers; Friday’s: the week’s news, yay! the news!, for everyone.) Although the word “essay” comes from the French essayer (to