S Peter Davis

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The Internet is An Ever Expanding Graveyard

Something has been bothering me for a little while now. It was exacerbated recently by a short essay by Dave Karpf about the fact that Bluesky isn’t taking off. Like, at all.  And I know a lot of you are going to say “Well, of course it’s not

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🔒 Trump's America is a Masculinity Drag Show

Here’s the most fascinating thing I’ve read in a minute: Studies show that voting for Donald Trump makes men feel more masculine.  To be clear, I don’t mean that Trump motivates men to be more masculine. That’s not the effect. He isn’t inspiring men to

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🔒 How Geeks Ate the World: The Red Pill Factory

Pickup Artistry and its roots in quack psychotherapy, pop philosophy, and marketing.

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How the Right's Odyssey Rage Shows They Will Never Win the Culture War

So Christopher Nolan has gone and done it. The absolute madman has committed the perfect sin. An act of treachery and defiance so brazen that only a .gif of Jack Nicholson nodding evilly can do it proper justice. He cast Lupita Nyong’o as, of all people, Helen of Troy.

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🔒 The Internet is An Ever Expanding Graveyard

Something has been bothering me for a little while now. It was exacerbated recently by a short essay by Dave Karpf about the fact that Bluesky isn’t taking off. Like, at all.  And I know a lot of you are going to say “Well, of course it’s not

Home

Richard Dawkins Was Never Truly a Skeptic

Everyone’s dunking on Professor Richard Dawkins right now for coming to the conclusion that Anthropic’s “Claude” AI is a conscious being. There are two lines of thought on this: One is that Dawkins is making some genuine and insightful philosophical inquiries as to the nature of consciousness from

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🔒 How the Right's Odyssey Rage Shows They Will Never Win the Culture War

So Christopher Nolan has gone and done it. The absolute madman has committed the perfect sin. An act of treachery and defiance so brazen that only a .gif of Jack Nicholson nodding evilly can do it proper justice. He cast Lupita Nyong’o as, of all people, Helen of Troy.

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We're Making Pluto a Planet Again, and Dinosaurs Didn't Have Feathers

Editor’s  note:  Due to some nonspecific but nevertheless, let’s say, rather terse communications from the office of US FCC Chairman Brendan Carr regarding my content recently, I have agreed to some changes to make this newsletter less "partisan." To that end, please welcome this week’s

Home

🔒 Richard Dawkins Was Never Truly a Skeptic

Everyone’s dunking on Professor Richard Dawkins right now for coming to the conclusion that Anthropic’s “Claude” AI is a conscious being. There are two lines of thought on this: One is that Dawkins is making some genuine and insightful philosophical inquiries as to the nature of consciousness from

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What is Social Media to Do About Its Monsters?

One thing that Substack and Bluesky have in common as social media platforms is that every so often a local controversy will pop off on one of them that the other will bang on about as another example about why they are great and that other place is an irredeemable

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🔒 We're Making Pluto a Planet Again, and Dinosaurs Didn't Have Feathers

Editor’s  note:  Due to some nonspecific but nevertheless, let’s say, rather terse communications from the office of US FCC Chairman Brendan Carr regarding my content recently, I have agreed to some changes to make this newsletter less "partisan." To that end, please welcome this week’s

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Trumpism is Winding Down, But Complacency is Not an Option

Little by little, glimpse by flickering glimpse, there are signs that we are pushing our way through to the other side of this ten-year chronic societal illness.  Last year there was the one-two punch of landslide federal elections in Australia and Canada that thoroughly rejected candidates who promised to be