When Peter Thiel and Don Jr. Lose, It’s a Great Week for Humanity
By Virginia Heffernan,
The New Republic
| 05. 29. 2026
For us mere mortals, from the pope’s encyclical to the total failure of the Enhanced Games, it’s been a pretty good week.
Here and there, it’s been a good month for humanity—or “magnificas humanitas,” as Pope Leo XIV calls us poor featherless bipeds.
On May 25, the pope published his encyclical letter “on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.” It made a stern but loving case against AI fatalism, reminding humans of our intrinsic worth and cautioning against seeking transcendence in tech rather than grace.
But the human person got another boost in late May. It came from a less holy figure too: Peter Thiel, net worth $28 billion.
As the founder of omnipresent MAGA AI surveillance machine Palantirand longtime student of the Antichrist, Thiel didn’t mean to help out humanity. Benevolence is not his strong suit. He’s out to live forever and build a master race. But by failing to make the case for transhumanism with his much-hyped Enhanced Games, a pro-doping sports event, Thiel accidentally showcased what’s magnificent about humanity.
What makes Thiel’s Enhanced Games different from other competitions is that at his games, which wrapped May 24 in (where else?)...
Related Articles
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 10.29.2026
At the beginning of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s blockbuster documentary You Can See Everything, Billy Evans (partner of Theranos founder and convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes), says that they decided to do the film for one purpose: “radical transparency.” As they work on “Theranos 2.0,” Evans and Holmes want to show the public that she has been misunderstood –– painted as a liar and a fraud in the public imagination (and the courts) despite, as she claims in the...
By Jan Grue, The Guardian | 10.27.2026
For a very long time, I dreamed of being cured. I was born in 1981. I learned to walk early enough, but I stumbled and fell more easily than other children. My parents began to worry that something was wrong...
By Gary Sernovitz, Bloomberg | 10.21.2026
Three years ago, at the age of 50, I found out I have dangerous genes. So in June, I went to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to see how they could be fixed. Among my 6 billion base pairs of DNA are two...
By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times | 10.20.2026
For the first time, scientists say they have used viruses designed by artificial intelligence to treat a human patient.
Researchers announced on Tuesday that they had administered the virus, known as a phage, to a patient suffering from a deadly...