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How the body’s own immune system can attack the brain

September 27, 2026

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Peter Jones once treated a patient with strikingly vivid hallucinations of animals. During ward visits, the patient would stroke and interact with the critters “in as real a way as he was with me,” says Jones, an academic psychiatrist at the University of Cambridge in England.

Antipsychotic drugs did nothing to dissolve these Snow White-esque visions. But when the patient received-plasma exchange –– a treatment normally reserved for a misbehaving immune system –– his hallucinations dissipated.

Clearly, this was not a textbook case of schizophrenia. Rather, the patient’s symptoms stemmed from autoimmune encephalitis, a rare form of brain inflammation that can, in some cases, cause hallucinations and other symptoms of psychosis. When these patients are treated with drugs that tamp down the immune system, the psychotic symptoms often disappear.

Autoimmune encephalitis is usually first identified through testing blood or spinal fluid for certain types of antibodies. If patients test positive for these antibodies, it’s a sign that their immune system may be attacking the brain. Other signs can help to solidify diagnosis: bright patches of inflammation on MRI scans, quickly worsening psychotic symptoms and — importantly — clear neurological symptoms such as seizures.

But Jones’ patient didn’t have those obvious neurological symptoms. If Jones hadn’t suspected an autoimmune cause, the case likely would have been missed.

Some experts suspect that the field of psychiatry is overlooking a small number of patients like this, and they are working to find more of them. They’re considering screening a broader array of psychiatric patients and seeking out new antibodies that may be involved in autoimmune encephalitis.

At the same time, many worry that there’s a risk of planting false hopes and diverting patients from the psychiatric treatments the vast majority will actually need, should autoimmune encephalitis become over-diagnosed.

Landmark research paper

The “artificial divide” between the body and the mind that separates the fields of psychiatry and neurology is starting to break down, says Michael Zandi, a neurologist at University College London. Psychosis, for example, can be caused by a mix of mental and biological factors, from psychological trauma to drug abuse to physical diseases or infections (such as syphilis) that alter brain activity. Around 3 percent of people will experience a psychotic episode in their lifetime.

Brain inflammation caused by the body assaulting itself, as in autoimmune encephalitis, has been recognized for the past couple of decades. In the early stages of this condition, many patients develop the core features of psychosis –– hallucinations, delusions and agitation –– and so are initially sent to psychiatric services.

A landmark paper about this condition came in 2007, when researchers described the cases of 12 women with autoimmune encephalitis. Nine of the patients initially presented with a number of psychosis-like symptoms, while the others mainly had memory loss. All but one devolved into seizures. The researchers found that the women’s conditions were caused by antibodies that bind to the brain’s NMDA receptors, proteins that are involved in many processes in the brain, such as learning and the formation of memories.

The trigger for autoimmune encephalitis, in this case, seemed to be tumors in these patients, 90 percent of which were ovarian. All five tumors the researchers examined contained nerve tissue complete with NMDA receptors. This confused the immune system, which came to recognize the NMDA receptor as foreign and ramped up the manufacture of antibodies that bind to it.

But those antibodies also bound to NMDA receptors in healthy brain tissue, interfering with brain function. Other cells of the immune system gathered to the area, sparking inflammation that, in many of these cases, caused psychosis.

In rare cases, brain inflammation can cause psychosis. When antipsychotics are replaced with immune-suppressing drugs, patients can recover completely. But how do we identify these cases? Knowable Magazine

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-bodys-own-immune-system-can-attack-the-brain/

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Taylor Swift’s New Songs Promise an Encore, but They’re Really a Bunch of Repeats

September 27, 2026

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Taylor Swift’s September surprise seemed more exciting when it sounded like it would consist of just one song. Coming nearly a year after the big-pop mishmash that was The Life of a Showgirl, and a few months after the soft-countryish Toy Story 5 single “I Knew It, I Knew You,” maybe “Patient Zero” would signal another stylistic turn ahead of a future album. At least, as the first official release from Taylor Swift the Married Lady, it would be some kind of landmark.

But that was Tuesday. On Wednesday we learned the single would be part of a four-song “encore” to Showgirl, in other words part of the now standard “deluxe edition” method by which artists usually extend the streaming life cycle of an album. Yawn. Meanwhile, Swift claims she was dropping in on producers Max Martin and Shellback to celebrate Showgirl’s record-setting first-week sales and they just got so worked up they accidentally wrote four songs. Because that’s plausibly how the schedule of the world’s biggest pop star works.

Give Swift some credit: By her standards, adding only four songs to a previously released album, and waiting a year to do it, is a huge act of restraint, like a former pack-a-day smoker who now just bums a loosie when she’s drunk. Keep it up and this music critic’s trauma might yet heal from that infamous April night when she added a whole second album to The Tortured Poets Department at 2 in the morning.

Anyway, true to its billing as the “encore” to Showgirl, these new songs sound fairly similar to that album, and similarly are at best a couple of notches above half-successful. “Patient Zero” itself opens with an unexpectedly Celtic-sounding fiddle lick. This teased at my futile hope that it would be a callout of her embattled friend and sometime faux-Celtic singer Ed Sheeran, with the upshot of “Remember, he failed to come out in solidarity with me first!” But no such luck. Instead, the epidemic-origin metaphor—a pop-culture commonplace by now, whose uncomfortable AIDS-era origins I don’t blame Swift for being too young to know—is directed at a woman being done wrong by some dog of a dude who did Swift wrong first. It’s a highly Swiftian formula of sympathy with a scoop of “I told you so.” And it’s perfectly passable, with lilting cadences you’ll hum along with when it’s playing and likely forget until it plays again.

The upbeat “Cleveland” would sound fine if you heard it from four or five rooms away, but listening closer, it just leads me to beg for the thousandth time that Swift please, please, please stop reading the comments. She recites a litany of mean things her Ohio-born footballing beau’s fans have said about her, does some of her most annoying talk-singing to say nyah-nyah, he likes me anyway, and then seems to announce their engagement at the end, which might feel like something if they hadn’t been married since July already. In other words, consistent with all her big love songs about Travis Kelce so far, it sucks. At least, unlike Showgirl’s “Wood,” it doesn’t make me want to peel all my skin off to escape it.

Mercifully, matters improve from there. “Pink Clouding” is an airy disco song whose theme is genuinely affecting: “You were so good / That’s why you haunt me like you should … Years later, I still wonder how to tell you sorry.” The title echoes “Lavender Haze,” from Midnights, and a lyric refers to “where the arrow hit,” reminding me of “The Archer,” from Lover. It could have fit on either of those records, and maybe it’s about the same person they were. On a couple of hours’ acquaintance, I would call it a keeper.

That goes double for “Babylon,” which is a story song in the Folklore–Evermore line, which Swift seems to be doing at least once an album these days to prove she still can. It always makes me wish she’d flip the ratio and write mostly fictional narratives (as on Evermore) while saving the personal ones up for the deepest impact. The yarns need to find a wider musical range, though—“Babylon” has contours a bit too much like “The Last Great American Dynasty,” for instance. It’s about a man who comes to regret abandoning his family for pleasure and ambition, wishing he could go back to “Babylon”—which Swift seems to be using as a lost-paradise term like Shangri-la, and I’d say somebody really needs to expand her reggae collection stat, except I fear where that might lead. But it’s not immature, whiny, or narcissistic, and that, my brethren and sistren and ’tren beyond the binary, is an exodus to root for.

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To be honest, I’ve almost stopped hoping for more. Maybe we’ve gotten all the growth from Swift we’ll ever get. But “Babylon” at least reminds me there was a time not so long ago when she took an evolutionary leap, even though she then mostly reverted to form. It could happen again, ideally without need of another pandemic. Otherwise, it feels as if her reality, as with so many of her fellow billionaires, will only continue to withdraw from the one the rest of us must inhabit, and her future will continue to look like a series of ever-less-convincing encores.

The singer in a black sleeveless turtleneck dress, her back against a concrete wall. Taylor Swift/Instagram

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://slate.com/culture/2026/09/taylor-swift-cleveland-patient-zero-babylon-pink-clouding-lyrics.html

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How China’s Leader Plans to Win the Future With A.I.

September 27, 2026

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In a stretch of former farmland now transformed into a gleaming technology park, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, watched two robotic hands slowly thread a needle.

What he was seeing, he declared, would help China seize its future.

It is a future in which artificial intelligence permeates China’s factories, hospitals and classrooms, reinvigorating the economy through advanced robotics and high-end manufacturing. It is a future in which China, not the United States, dominates A.I. development, turning the technology into what Mr. Xi has called a “lead goose” to fly the country into its next economic revolution.

To realize that vision, the Chinese government is mobilizing the full weight of the state.

At the park that Mr. Xi visited, on the outskirts of Beijing in February, hundreds of companies have set up offices to develop cutting-edge chips and A.I. models. The city government is giving them tens of millions of dollars in free computing power. An exhibition hall shows off their creations, including chips designed to power nuclear missiles and brain implants that could help paralyzed patients speak.

Mr. Xi, during his visit, said that China’s strength lies in its ability to zero in on a direction and follow through.

“We must give full play to our nation’s advantage of concentrating resources to accomplish major tasks,” he told an assembled group of entrepreneurs, researchers and officials.

China’s A.I. campaign is backed by enormous sums of government money. Economists estimate that state-led funds put more than $184 billion into A.I. firms between 2000 and 2023, and last year, the government and state-owned banks pledged hundreds of billions more. Private A.I. investment in China is far lower than in the United States, where private sources poured $285 billion into the technology in 2025 alone.

Beijing’s approach to A.I. is distinct from the prevailing one in the United States in other ways, too.

Many in Washington and Silicon Valley see A.I. development as a race toward artificial general intelligence, a still-theoretical form of A.I. that could think and learn as well as — or better than — humans.

Chinese officials have hardly mentioned A.G.I., focusing on more immediate goals.

China’s population is rapidly shrinking and getting older, creating an urgent need for intelligent robots to replace retiring workers. Poor rural residents could seek medical care from digital avatars of top urban doctors. The authorities could more easily know where Chinese citizens are, what they say and perhaps even how they feel.

In a stretch of former farmland now transformed into a gleaming technology park, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, watched two robotic hands slowly thread a needle.

What he was seeing, he declared, would help China seize its future.

It is a future in which artificial intelligence permeates China’s factories, hospitals and classrooms, reinvigorating the economy through advanced robotics and high-end manufacturing. It is a future in which China, not the United States, dominates A.I. development, turning the technology into what Mr. Xi has called a “lead goose” to fly the country into its next economic revolution.

To realize that vision, the Chinese government is mobilizing the full weight of the state.

At the park that Mr. Xi visited, on the outskirts of Beijing in February, hundreds of companies have set up offices to develop cutting-edge chips and A.I. models. The city government is giving them tens of millions of dollars in free computing power. An exhibition hall shows off their creations, including chips designed to power nuclear missiles and brain implants that could help paralyzed patients speak.

Mr. Xi, during his visit, said that China’s strength lies in its ability to zero in on a direction and follow through.

“We must give full play to our nation’s advantage of concentrating resources to accomplish major tasks,” he told an assembled group of entrepreneurs, researchers and officials.

China’s A.I. campaign is backed by enormous sums of government money. Economists estimate that state-led funds put more than $184 billion into A.I. firms between 2000 and 2023, and last year, the government and state-owned banks pledged hundreds of billions more. Private A.I. investment in China is far lower than in the United States, where private sources poured $285 billion into the technology in 2025 alone.

Beijing’s approach to A.I. is distinct from the prevailing one in the United States in other ways, too.

Many in Washington and Silicon Valley see A.I. development as a race toward artificial general intelligence, a still-theoretical form of A.I. that could think and learn as well as — or better than — humans.

Chinese officials have hardly mentioned A.G.I., focusing on more immediate goals.

China’s population is rapidly shrinking and getting older, creating an urgent need for intelligent robots to replace retiring workers. Poor rural residents could seek medical care from digital avatars of top urban doctors. The authorities could more easily know where Chinese citizens are, what they say and perhaps even how they feel.

Karolis Strautniekas

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/world/asia/china-ai-economy-xi-jinping.html

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Best VPN Service for 2026: The Top-Ranked VPNs in Our Testing

September 26, 2026

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The best VPNs offer robust privacy protections without compromising on performance or noticeably affecting your internet speeds. ExpressVPN is our Editors’ Choice for best overall VPN, thanks to its top-notch approach to privacy and transparency, paired with great streaming capabilities. It’s followed closely by NordVPN, the fastest VPN we tested. Surfshark is another great option, especially for anyone looking for simultaneous connections. Proton VPN and Mullvad round out our recommendations as particularly privacy-forward services that are also budget-friendly.

What is the best VPN in 2026?

Editors’ note, Sept. 1: We’re making some changes to our methodology this year. We’ve expanded our speed-testing process to include multiple connection types, and we’re adjusting our value assessment to better account for VPNs that offer bundled services. We’ll update this page with new rankings and data when we conclude our testing and evaluation next month, but in the meantime, we stand by the recommendations on this page.

The race for the title of best VPN is as close as ever: Our top three VPNs all sit within a half-point of one another in our ratings. Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of the five VPNs we recommend.

ExpressVPN is currently the best VPN overall thanks to its streamlined apps, fast server speeds, excellent streaming capabilities and strong privacy.

NordVPN is an exceptional VPN that gave us the fastest connection speeds in our testing — it’s great for streaming and packed with privacy features.

Surfshark delivers speeds and features comparable to ExpressVPN and NordVPN, but is cheaper upfront and offers unlimited simultaneous connections.

Proton VPN is privacy-forward, with unique features like discreet app icons on Android to disguise your VPN app as a notes, weather or calculator app.

Mullvad VPN charges a straightforward monthly price and takes a unique approach to privacy that doesn’t require any personal information whatsoever to use the service.

Editors Choice

Click the link below for the complete article (for complete descriptions click link below):

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/best-vpn/

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They Kept Outsiders Away for 500 Years. Their World Is About to Change.

September 26, 2026

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My father dedicated his life to studying the Guna people of Panama, and they may soon allow unprecedented development through their land. I went on a trek through the jungle to find out why.

In 1970, my father, a shaggy 25-year-old from the Chicago suburbs finishing his Ph.D. in anthropology, traveled with my mother to the Gunayala region of northeast Panama to ask its inhabitants, the Guna people, for permission to study them. The Guna lived on an archipelago of sandy, palm-covered islets along the Caribbean coast and had a reputation as prickly and disagreeable.

My parents went from village to village as my father, James, introduced himself in Spanish. He was not the first anthropologist the group had seen. The Guna had a long history of interacting with wagas, as they called non-Guna. Wagas tended to be struck by Guna independence. According to a U.S. government report in 1964, the Guna’s “chief characteristic has been and continues to be a persistent determination to preserve their cultural and racial structure against pressures from the outside.” That had been evident when, just a few years before my father arrived, an American businessman named W.D. Barton built a resort on one of Gunayala’s more than 350 uninhabited islands. The Guna burned it down. And when Barton tried to rebuild it, they burned it down again.

My father spent much of the 1970s regularly traveling to live with the Guna, joined for several months at a time by my mother, June, and then by me. Digandiggi, our home, was a village of 200 thatched-roof homes built on a coral reef, half a mile from the mainland jungle and the hulking silhouette of the Serranía de San Blas, a mountain range that is an extension of the Continental Divide.When I think of Digandiggi, I hear the thud of breakers and smell the burning of coconut husks in cooking fires. Our dirt-floored home, which we shared with a village chief, had a roof of palm fronds that crackled and popped in the afternoon heat. There was a fist-size hole in the corner leading to the lair of some nocturnal creature; afraid of snakes, I dared not ask what it might be. We had no privacy. The neighbors, whose roof almost touched ours, could hear every whisper through the cane walls. The only place on the entire island where I could find solitude was the communal outhouse, which stood over shallow water at the end of a narrow plank. I would hide there for hours, studying the mountains as clouds tumbled over the peaks.

Guna villages, hives of activity with dizzyingly high population density, tended to overheat my social circuits. But my father could be out all day and night making house calls, having his ear bent, hearing stories he’d already heard dozens of times. There was chemistry between him and the Guna. They liked to tell him their stories, especially the old shamans, who were running out of apprentices.

And my father liked to listen. Within a year, to the Guna’s astonishment, he became fluent in their language and a natural with their customs. “If you want to work with the Guna,” Dad says, “you have to spend a lot of time traveling around and explaining yourself.” This involved what I regard as heroic self-discipline, for as with human beings everywhere, the Guna currency of trust is food: If they offer it, you better eat it. And the Guna staple, proffered upon arrival in every household, is dulemasi (literally “people food”), a thin gray soup larded with plantains, fish and sometimes river snails. Thanks to dulemasi, I decided early on not to become an anthropologist. My father, as far as I can tell, doesn’t particularly enjoy the dish, either, but he won’t say. To insult it, even in private, would be to insult the Guna.

There were other reasons the Guna liked my father. He was an ally, not only agreeable but also loyal, returning decade after decade. He belonged to a wave of American anthropologists who, in the wake of the 1960s, saw themselves as not simply studying their subjects but standing with them against imperialism and colonialism. They were not simply detached observers; they were advocates and intermediaries, atoning for their predecessors’ misdeeds, if not their countries’.

My father, arriving in Gunayala on the cusp of this change, intended to study kinship, a staple of old-school anthropology. But he soon switched to the study of Guna exorcisms and puberty rituals, as well as their town-hall-style democracy. Above all, my father wanted to understand — and bolster, to whatever extent possible — the aspect of the Guna that has long fascinated outsiders: their resistance to external pressure.

Over the last 500-some years, the Guna have proved uniquely successful at keeping intruders at bay, at times through violence. Since fighting a brief war of independence in 1925, the Guna have enjoyed virtual autonomy, even after pledging nominal allegiance to the Republic of Panama. But Panama’s government has never stopped pressing for access to Guna land. Gunayala contains what may be the most pristine jungle in all of Latin America, and it includes hundreds of uninhabited islands that have been likened to remote parts of the Bahamas before tourism. Most valuable of all, perhaps, it controls land near the Panama-Colombia border, which includes vital access to a potential transit route for migration and commerce of all kinds.

The Guna people in Panama inhabit what may be the most pristine jungle in all of Latin America, and for centuries they have been successful at keeping intruders at bay.

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/magazine/darien-gap-road-panama-colombia.html

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Trump Organization Is Said to Be in Talks on a Saudi Government Real Estate Deal

September 26, 2026

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The Trump Organization is in talks that could bring a Trump-branded property to one of Saudi Arabia’s largest government-owned real estate developments, according to the chief executive of the Saudi company leading the development.

The negotiations are the latest example of Mr. Trump blending governance and family business, particularly in Persian Gulf countries. Since returning to office, the president’s family and businesses have announced new ventures abroad involving billions of dollars, made hundreds of millions from cryptocurrency, and sold tickets to a private dinner hosted by Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump is set to host Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, in Washington next week.

The prince is overseeing a $63 billion project that is set to transform the historic Saudi town of Diriyah into a luxury destination with hotels, retail shops, and office space. The Trump business has a history of lending its name to mixed-use projects touting “iconic luxury.”

“Nothing announced yet, but soon to be,” Jerry Inzerillo, chief executive of the Diriyah development and a longtime friend of President Trump, said in an interview. He said it was “just a matter of time” before the Trump Organization sealed a deal.

Saudi officials toured the Diriyah development with Mr. Trump during the president’s official state visit in May, with the goal of piquing his interest in the project, Mr. Inzerillo said.

“It turned out to be a good stroke of luck and maybe a little bit clever of us to say, ‘OK, let’s appeal to him as a developer’ — and he loved it,” Mr. Inzerillo said.

Next week, Prince Mohammed is expected to make his first visit to the United States in seven years. He hopes to sign a mutual defense agreement with Washington and potentially advance a deal to transfer American nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.

That sets up a scenario in which Mr. Trump discusses matters of national security with a foreign leader who is also a key figure in a potential business deal with the president’s family.

Deal-making and diplomacy are increasingly intertwined for Mr. Trump and his family members. Some have engaged in business talks around the world in tandem with his statecraft, mingling profit-making ventures with political relationships.

Diriyah is one of several ongoing Saudi developments that are so big that officials call them “giga-projects.”

The Trump Organization did not respond to questions about the potential deal, nor did Eric Trump, one of Mr. Trump’s two sons overseeing the family business. It can be hard to separate hype from reality in international real estate discussions. Speculation doesn’t always lead to negotiations, and negotiations don’t always end in signed contracts.

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/world/middleeast/trump-organization-saudi-development-deal.html

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Will AI Replace In-Person Therapy?

September 25, 2026

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Key points

Therapy requires dialog, tailored to each patient’s unique context and therapy goals.

Conversational agents may be helpful in providing practical assistance, not psychoanalysis.

AI’s algorithmic pattern of conversing cannot capture the experience and complexity of trauma.

People seeking therapy often envision sitting in a plush chair or lying on a therapy couch in an office with soft lighting and diplomas hanging on the wall. In other words, when selecting a therapist, most people envision a compassionate, perhaps professorial, mild-mannered adult; not a chatbot. Yet according to research, while not able to replace the value of live therapy, AI assistants may be of use.

Artificial Conversational Agents

Dina Babushkina and Bas de Boer (2026) explored the role of AI in conversation as a component of psychotherapy.[i] They acknowledge the utility of conversational agents (CA) given their ability to relay the impression of being competent to converse with humans. Yet because of the high-risk nature of working with therapy patients who are already in a vulnerable position, Babushkina and de Boer examined which types of CA have the ability to contribute to therapy goals, considering their limitations, particularly in complex cases.

Babushkina and de Boer define psychotherapy as a “fundamentally dialogical activity,” tailored to each patient’s unique context and therapy goals. Regarding CAs’ ability to dialog, they note that CA is a type of AI that is able to participate in conversation through text, voice, images, or a combination of methods. This interaction has increased with the development of large language models. Yet they also recognize that because CAs are artificial agents, they cannot offer the rich dialogical environment that facilitates analysis and rebuilding of a patient’s self-narrative, especially within the context of cases that are complex.

Tracking Trauma

Babushkina and de Boer explain that as a result of their algorithmic pattern of conversing, CAs are unable to embrace the experience and complexity of trauma. As a practical matter, they note that the process of recovering from trauma is idiosyncratic and unable to be automated. The numerous, complicated cognitive processes associated with identity reconstruction can only be authentically assisted with the help of another human being, making artificial agents unsuitable dialogical partners.

There are, however, ways in which CAs can be helpful. Babushkina and de Boer note that they might be able to substitute elements of therapy that do not require relating to the personal situation of the patient. Examples could include helping patients develop certain skills such as recording and tracking thought patterns or mood changes, applying therapy work to specific situations, or guiding breathing exercises or relaxation techniques. In this fashion, CAs would function as self-help tools.

AI as Therapy Assistance

Other studies have investigated the utility of AI during different types of therapy. Chitat Chan et al. (2026) explored the efficacy of AI-enhanced, self-paced Narrative Therapy,[ii] where one of the objectives was to assess the reliability of AI-based assessments. They found, in addition to other outcomes, that AI assessments showed significant reliability and validity, and that participants expressed positive views about AI simulations and feedback. Chan et al. noted that their findings highlight the potential of generative AI to facilitate dialogic learning, in addition to providing support for assessing skills.

Humans Needed

Although we continue to incorporate artificial assistance into all types of therapy for a variety of conditions and situations, AI cannot replicate the chemistry of human connection. Real people share life experience, hopes, dreams, values and viewpoints that are unique to the human experience. This is particularly valuable when seeking help recovering from loss, trauma, or so many other adverse experiences for which therapy is helpful.

Using artificial means of simplifying and completing laborious tasks and chores, however, frees up the time of human therapists to bond and build bridges with patients, in order to change habits, provide perspective, and improve lives.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Source: Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/why-bad-looks-good/202609/will-ai-replace-in-person-therapy

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7 New Tax Brackets Proposed for High Earners: Who Would Pay More?

September 24, 2026

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Every year, millions of taxpayers look at the latest federal income-tax brackets and rates to see where their income falls and how much they might owe the IRS. For the longest time, there have been seven brackets, each with its own marginal tax rate.

But what if there were twice as many brackets?

That’s the crux of a recent proposal from the Roosevelt Institute. Tax policy fellow Samarth Gupta looks at the growing gap between the richest Americans and everyone else and asks whether the U.S. tax code should do more to close it. Gupta’s proposition: Double the current number of federal tax brackets to 14.

Under his analysis, that would mean adding seven new brackets for the nation’s highest earners. Why? Here’s more to know.

The case for more tax brackets

The federal tax system is currently divided into seven income tax brackets, with marginal rates ranging from 10% to 37%. But taxpayers don’t pay the top rate on all of their income. Instead, different portions of taxable income fall into different brackets and are taxed at their corresponding rates.

For 2026, single filers are taxed at the top 37% rate only on taxable income above $640,600. For married couples filing jointly, the 37% rate applies to taxable income above $768,700.

However, once a single taxpayer’s taxable income exceeds $640,600, for example, every additional dollar is taxed at the same 37% marginal rate, whether that person earns $700,000 or several million dollars.

That’s what spurs the argument for adding more brackets at the top: As income rises beyond the current 37% threshold, the tax rate doesn’t increase.

Every year, millions of taxpayers look at the latest federal income-tax brackets and rates to see where their income falls and how much they might owe the IRS. For the longest time, there have been seven brackets, each with its own marginal tax rate.

But what if there were twice as many brackets?

That’s the crux of a recent proposal from the Roosevelt Institute. Tax policy fellow Samarth Gupta looks at the growing gap between the richest Americans and everyone else and asks whether the U.S. tax code should do more to close it. Gupta’s proposition: Double the current number of federal tax brackets to 14.

Under his analysis, that would mean adding seven new brackets for the nation’s highest earners. Why? Here’s more to know.

The case for more tax brackets

The federal tax system is currently divided into seven income tax brackets, with marginal rates ranging from 10% to 37%. But taxpayers don’t pay the top rate on all of their income. Instead, different portions of taxable income fall into different brackets and are taxed at their corresponding rates.

For 2026, single filers are taxed at the top 37% rate only on taxable income above $640,600. For married couples filing jointly, the 37% rate applies to taxable income above $768,700.

However, once a single taxpayer’s taxable income exceeds $640,600, for example, every additional dollar is taxed at the same 37% marginal rate, whether that person earns $700,000 or several million dollars.

That’s what spurs the argument for adding more brackets at the top: As income rises beyond the current 37% threshold, the tax rate doesn’t increase.

Close-up of A blue percentage symbol on a reflective gray background (Image credit: Getty Images)

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/seven-new-tax-brackets-proposed-for-high-earners

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Is AI really getting dangerously out of control?

September 23, 2026

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You can barely listen to a podcast or read the news at the moment without hearing an apocalyptic warning about artificial intelligence. The head of Microsoft AI suggests the technology could become a new “silicon species” that competes with humans. A former Anthropic employee says there is a strong chance that we could all die at the hands of it. And Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather of AI”, says we may lose control of it entirely within a year. Is AI really out of control?

Mhairi Aitken, formerly of the Alan Turing Institute and now co-founder at non-profit company Our AI Collective, warns against accepting predictions based on the reputation of those making them. Instead, we should look to facts – and the facts don’t suggest that AI has broken free from human control or that it is on the cusp of doing so.

“That’s a narrative that gets pushed again and again. We get these waves of hysteria,” says Aitken. If anything has gone rogue, she says, it isn’t AI models, it’s the humans developing them.

When AI models go and hack another company’s computers, it is because appropriate safety measures weren’t put in place during testing – testing that was designed to assess how well those AI models could hack into computers. We are simply seeing the failings of the companies to erect adequate safeguards.

Nor, says Aitken, are AI models improving themselves recursively – indicating that we could be approaching the dreaded singularity where AI slides into a self-driven loop of improvement that accelerates and quickly creates artificial general intelligence. “When these ideas of superintelligence are put forward, they’re based on a compelling sensational narrative, but there’s no concrete evidence,” says Aitken. “If there was something as powerful as that, we would have seen something of it.”

Andrew Rogoyski at the University of Surrey, UK, says that, in truth, there has been no dramatic shift in the risk posed by AI over the past couple of years, despite its advances in mathematics and cybersecurity. But hype is periodically stirred up by an incident or a catchy soundbite.

“It’s very easy to create this sort of frightening story. It sort of plays to the human psyche,” says Rogoyski. He believes that in large language models, humans have created something that is apparently so similar to themselves that it holds up a mirror. “Then we imbue it with all of the human-like behaviours and fears. So we’re terrified of it,” he says.

If all that is true, then why are so many tech bosses calling for a slowdown in AI research?

Aitken sees this talk as a way to head off law-makers from creating regulations that would hinder AI firms’ work – by seeming to act responsibly, they lessen the demand for government to step in to force the issue. But Aitken points out that when former staff make bold predictions about superintelligence and the risk posed by AI models, these same companies do little to shut things down. “These superintelligence narratives are actually helpful to the AI companies because they build hype, they build excitement, they boost investment,” she says.

The result is that the companies end up walking a narrative tightrope: reassuring us all that they are acting ethically and responsibly by calling for a slowdown that is unlikely to happen, yet playing up to sci-fi ideas of superintelligence because it is good for business.

Rogoyski believes another factor could be further muddying the waters. Gargantuan AI investment in data centres, staff, research budgets and training data is simply unsustainable, so an official slowdown could give the companies a way to slow the pace without losing out to competitors – perhaps even cementing their advantage.

It could be that companies know that further scale isn’t important for day-to-day business tasks like sending emails, filing reports or designing social media graphics (although it may be key to unprofitable endeavours like solving mathematical problems), so they would actually relish the chance to ease off and begin to make efficiencies, cut costs and increase revenue.

“Do I really need to spend a trillion dollars in order to be able to write a better PowerPoint slide or get some marketing emails out? It really doesn’t stack up, and we’ll look back on this in 10 years and say, ‘What were we thinking?’” says Rogoyski.

But that leads to another risk posed by AI, which is far more concrete and less theoretical: a bursting of the AI bubble, and possible economic fallout. Rogoyski expects less of a dramatic “pop” and more of a gradual “pfffft” as the gas leaks out of the industry in coming years.

Among all this, however, there are legitimate concerns for the future. Rogoyski says there is a real – but small – risk from AI, which needs to be taken seriously. Whether the model that becomes advanced enough to pose that risk arrives soon, or many years and some fundamental breakthroughs from now, it is worth planning ahead.

Rogoyski says he doubts that any current AI is intelligent, although our definition of that word and understanding of its mechanisms are poor. But when it comes, we shouldn’t expect it to look or act like us: “there will be patterns of thought and behavior that will be very alien”.

So to try to spot that kind of intelligence is even harder, and to try to predict what its motivations might be, harder still.

“If you’re building a machine that you believe is going to be intelligent, then you ought to be having a discussion as to what rights it should have,” says Rogoyski. “Does it mean I could just have an off switch that, when I get bored a bit, or I feel threatened by it, I can kill it? That doesn’t seem to be terribly fair, nor necessarily helpful, because machines that feel threatened by humanity might behave in a different way. It might become a problem in itself, to not grant it rights.”

Is AI running amok? WANG ZHAO/AFP/Getty Images

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2590038-is-ai-dangerously-out-of-control-or-about-to-be/

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In Court Filing Defending Media Ban, White House Says Access Is a ‘Privilege’

September 23, 2026

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White House officials said in a court filing Tuesday that President Trump had determined that CNN, MS NOW and Politico had breached standards of conduct, leading to their expulsion from the White House grounds.

The alleged violations, said the filing, include “trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues, and publishing sensitive or classified information.”

“Access to the White House is a privilege — not a right,” reads the filing, which argues that Mr. Trump’s action against the three news outlets does not violate the First Amendment and aligns with a long history of presidents favoring some journalists over others.

The filing, furthermore, claims that the White House’s denial of access is a preliminary matter and that the outlets have until Friday to contest the decision.

The clash began last Friday, when Mr. Trump announced on Truth Social, the platform that he owns, that he would ban the three outlets, saying they “shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES.” On Saturday morning, journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were denied access to the White House grounds and had their press passes confiscated.

By Monday morning, the news organizations had sued, arguing that the president’s ban “brazenly discriminates based on editorial viewpoint,” and was an affront to their First Amendment rights. They said that the move had blindsided its targets, depriving the outlets of the warning that any such drastic action required. They “received zero advance notice that the president would ban a news organization from the White House if he dislikes its coverage,” according to the complaint.

U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly, who was nominated in 2017 by Mr. Trump, will hold an emergency hearing on Wednesday to consider the media outlets’ request for a temporary court order undoing the access ban.

The government filing Tuesday night included copies of letters sent earlier in the day to each banned news outlet. In addition to accusing the organizations of failing to meet standards of conduct, the letters identified specific stories that allegedly either spread falsehoods or threatened national security. The letter to CNN, for example, cited a January 2026 story that “disclosed ‘top-secret’ construction details related to the East Wing bunker,” the letter reads.

One of MS NOW’s alleged infractions, according to a White House letter, was a June 2026 story claiming “a source said that President Trump ‘underestimated the willingness of Iran to resume conflict.’” Politico is accused of publishing a “document detailing funding for the White House ballroom containing intricate descriptions of how the Secret Service would invest in security improvements,” according to a White House letter.

The three media outlets did not immediately comment on the White House’s filing.

In their lawsuit, the media outlets argued that the White House had not afforded them due process to contest their expulsion. In its response, the White House claims that it has provided the companies with “sufficient post-deprivation process.”

But Gabe Rottman, vice president of policy at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said, “they can’t suspend you and then give you a post hoc justification for it.”

In 2018, Judge Kelly ruled against Mr. Trump in another media access case. Mr. Trump had expelled CNN reporter Jim Acosta from the White House grounds. But Judge Kelly ordered his credentials restored, saying Mr. Trump hadn’t given Mr. Acosta enough notice to challenge the action.

Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social last week that in light of Judge Kelly’s ruling in the Acosta case, the government would “almost without question” have to appeal the upcoming ruling.

Other news organizations have responded to the ban with acts of support and solidarity. The consortium of five TV networks that covers the president as the so-called TV pool — ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, Fox News and CNN — suspended its immersive coverage of Mr. Trump, and some news outlets temporarily withheld publication of photos of Mr. Trump’s events.

The White House briefing room on Saturday. Credit…Andrew Leyden for The New York Times

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/business/trump-cnn-politico-ms-now-ban.html

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