What we are reading, May 20, 2026
Wishing a great friend the very best as they retire, along with all the news that made headlines this week.
Building speakers, building people: Jeff Przybylo’s 30 years at Harper: Harper College
Harper College News Bureau
AI’s cyborg problem: you have to embrace it to really succeed but 90% of people can’t or don’t want to | Fortune
Vivienne Ming has been sounding the alarm about a “cognitive divide.” She told Fortune that “most of our fears about AI are fears about other people.”
Nick Lichtenberg
It Was One of DOGE’s Most Absurd Abuses. A Court Finally Exposed It.
Projects were deemed wasteful “because they related to Blacks, women, Jews, Asian Americans, and Indigenous people.”
Shaun Ossei-Owusu
Did Zohran Mamdani’s New Budget Really Eliminate New York City’s Deficit?
The plan relies heavily on state aid, delayed pension payments, and optimistic revenue projections – raising new questions about whether the city has solved its fiscal problems or merely postponed them.
Philip Wang
‘Thucydides’ Trap’: What to Know About China’s Favorite Reference for U.S. Relations
Xi Jinping wondered to Donald Trump if the U.S. and China could overcome drifting toward war.
Chad de Guzman
The Chinese whiz kids of Silicon Valley
Chinese-born tech workers have fueled Silicon Valley for decades. In the AI era, they’re superstars.
Viola Zhou
Consider the Sister
Amy Wallace has spent two decades guarding the human her brother was—against a world that prefers David Foster Wallace as a puzzle.
Lindsey Adler
Starbucks shares tank in Korea after promo evokes memories of brutal crackdown on democracy | CNN Business
The head of Starbucks Korea has been fired after a marketing campaign sparked public outrage for evoking painful memories of a brutal military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 1980.
Reuters
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