The Syrian Civil War is over. It is a bitter pill to swallow for those in the West who hoped all the years of sacrifice, suffering, and chaos endured by the Syrian people would ultimately end in regime change.

While we grapple with our whiplash, courtesy of the consequences of a sudden U.S. withdrawal, we must remember that we sit at a delicate and dangerous time for the future of the Syrian people.

Where do we go from here?

While many in the West are uncomfortable ceding control and working with Vladimir Putin and the Assad Regime, that is currently the path that allows us to…

Too often, international negotiations are treated like the zero-sum game they aren’t, with players trying to rush a premature outcome in order to feel powerful. Lack of empathy and an unwillingness to put in the hard work of building genuine trust create the largest roadblocks.

Because empathy is such a critical factor in negotiations, this article and the book it summarizes take a radically different viewpoint than Westerners are used to; They describe the situation from the point of view of the Kim Regime and give the recommendations I would actually provide if North Korea was my client.

North Korea…

I unequivocally condemn the disgusting anti-Muslim display and sentiment shown in the West Virginia Statehouse against U.S. Senator Ilhan Omar.

I am appalled people in my own party did something that’s not only hateful and discriminatory but puts lawmakers’ lives at risk.

While I object to such discrimination on fundamental, moral grounds, I also believe there’s a practical aspect we must face head-on and that is protecting innocent American lives. Not only are the sentiments displayed by this poster morally wrong, they encourage domestic terrorists and further endanger the lives of American Muslims generally but especially Representative Omar herself.

It…

There is no American history without black history. Black history month is necessary because this truth is often ignored.

Being reminded of various aspects of black history throughout the month caused me to reflect on how perfectly the history of black Americans exemplifies many of our most important American values.

In America we value independence, hard work, and self-determination; We can’t stand it when others try to tell us who we are and what our limits are. …

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) affect and will continue to affect many aspects of our everyday lives at an increasing rate. Because it affects everybody, it is important for everybody to understand these issues at a basic level.

The content of this blog post will likely seem a gross simplification to people who are deeply technical. It’s purpose is to shed light on and make comprehensible at a high level the current and future issues we face as a species when it comes to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

This blog post is divided into three sections:

• Introduction…

I began Holocaust Remembrance Day with a tweet from Tim Cook:

But as a pragmatic person, it quickly made me ponder what it means to make sure history never repeats itself.

How do we prevent horrors like the Holocaust from happening again?

I don’t know what the definitive answer is but these are the three basic guidelines I was able to come up with:

1. Have Each Other’s Backs
2. Learn From History
3. Monitor Current Trends

1. Have Each Other’s Backs

Jewish groups in America have a long history of supporting the rights of vulnerable and marginalized groups, a recent example being a letter organized by…

I used to think of the Book of Job in a very shallow way. I viewed it as a story about how if you allow God to allow you to arbitrarily suffer for long enough, you will be rewarded. I imagined it as God wanting to win a bet against the devil with Job as collateral damage who ended up getting reimbursed for said damages at a very favorable rate.

But in reading the story again, in light of recent personal events, I connected with Job on a much deeper level and identified three major themes I’d missed previously:

• The…

Now probably seems like the oddest time in history for an educated, millennial woman to become a Republican. So why am I doing it?

Basically, I stopped caving to social pressures, focused on my personal values, started thinking critically about the things I read, see and hear, and allowed myself to trust my own judgements and decisions.

There’s a lot of propaganda on both sides of the aisle. Because I grew up in a pretty liberal town, I honestly used to think of Republicans as evil. …