News Vérité

The ceasefire with Iran, so-called, has now been going on longer than the combat, but from all looks and purposes, it’s still a stalemate. President Trump, as is his style, continues to play a broken record, to wit, that a deal is at hand — while Iran says no deal is at hand. For starter number one, we know that you take Iran at its word at your own peril, that is, when it makes promises it has no intention of keeping. In this case, however, the IRGC is making no promises. The Praetorian Guard wants only to stall everything until Trump is forced to cave in because of the midterm elections and ongoing inflation. For starter number two, unfortunately, Donald J. Trump has been known to twist the facts to suit his narrative, and in his case, he must be playing Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” on his gramophone. He’s twisting the facts every time the subject of peace with Iran and opening the Strait of Hormuz comes up. Another interesting twist: When the combat started, the official narrative seemed to be regime change. Now it’s making sure Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. The problem here is, as

If any two abbreviations symbolize the post-COVID era, they are GLP-1 and ChatGPT. The first is doubtlessly the most effective weight-loss compound ever offered as an approved medicine (think Wegovy); the second is the first public application of artificial intelligence, commonly called AI these days. Leaving aside fat thighs and bellies, AI is all the news these days. The Wall Street Journal in just the past two days has run articles about addiction to Chatbots like ChatGPT, and also on the first college class to graduate with AI as their constant companion. Probably the commentary drawing the most headlines, however, was the depiction of AI by Pope Leo XIV as a modern Tower of Babel.  Now, I’m certainly no biblical scholar, so calling something a Tower of Babel is not an easily discernible metaphor for me. Therefore, I asked my AI friend Gemini to dissect the Pontiff’s comments for me. Here’s the answer: Whether artificial intelligence is truly a modern “Tower of Babel” depends entirely on how you view the intersection of technological ambition and human nature. Pope Leo XIV’s metaphor, laid out in his May 2026 encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, is a highly sophisticated critique of the “Babel syndrome”—the idea

Professor Jasper Tempest, fictional star of the British TV drama “Professor T,” during a Season 4 episode compares empathy with compassion. His conclusion was that you should always choose compassion over empathy. Empathy is the act of sharing feelings with another human, or humans, while compassion is the act of recognizing other people’s feelings and sufferings. In a speech to his criminology class, Professor T — played by British actor Ben Miller, reprising a persona from the first two seasons of “Death in Paradise” — blames empathy for leading people to violence to even the score in society. He therefore recommends compassion over empathy. In Professor T’s personal life, empathy versus compassion also plays a significant role. Throughout the series, the professor struggles to recover from the death of his alcoholic, abusive father when he was a kid of seven. In the professor’s case, he blames empathy for his withdrawn personality. After watching the episode in which the professor weighed in on compassion and empathy, I did some research and found a great deal of literature on “toxic empathy,” along with critics who argue that empathy is a positive. In the book “Toxic Empathy,” author Allie Beth Stuckey argues that