It’s hard to deny that we’re in a state of rising tension in many nations across the West as right-wing populists try to imitate, for some reason, possibly the most unpopular US president in history. Nevertheless, worrying anti-migrant trends are rising as times get tough and
I hadn’t intended to talk about Graham Platner. I’ll talk about the right and the left using American politics as the reference, but I try to steer away from granularity that I can’t purport to understand. In short, all I really know about Maine is that’s
In today’s context of Elon Musk condemning some millions of people to death in an effort to shock the liberal West out of its addiction to caring about strangers, we’re once again in a discourse, unfortunately, about whether empathy is bad. Unsurprisingly, the richest people in the world
It’s hard to deny that we’re in a state of rising tension in many nations across the West as right-wing populists try to imitate, for some reason, possibly the most unpopular US president in history. Nevertheless, worrying anti-migrant trends are rising as times get tough and
As this is a politically opinionated column, I tend to get three different types of response: Lefties agreeing with me, lefties respectfully disagreeing with me, and occasionally, righties who, in every single case, very obviously did not read what they are responding to except maybe part of the headline. Something
I don't like talking about Substack much because a lot of my Ghost audience subscribes specifically to get away from Substack, and I hear you. But part of my beat is talking about online communities and, for this week's topic, Substack just happens to be my
By 2030, Elon Musk is projected to have killed about 14 million people, and I think that should be the primary thing that he is known for. I think this fact should be in the first paragraph of his Wikipedia entry and that it should come before mentions of him
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
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
Pickup Artistry and its roots in quack psychotherapy, pop philosophy, and marketing.
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.
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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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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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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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
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
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I haven’t written about the Iran War before now because the whole thing just infuriates me, but now I stew in bafflement at its pointless, brutal, stupidity. The most concise way that it can be summed up for future historians is this classic tweet from 2014: But the topic
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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
Home
So, I’m running into an increasingly concerning research problem. Last week, I wrote a piece that took considerably more research than usual, because it’s a topic I’m not great at: Hard science. It’s about why human beings are never going to colonize other planets. I understood
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The Artemis II mission to the moon that was launched a few days ago is a legitimately exciting space adventure that suffered unfortunately little press in the face of Donald Trump’s stupid and pointless resurrection of the Middle East Forever Wars. But what little press it has gotten is
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On the now quite rare occasion that I scroll through my Facebook feed, I see a hell of a lot of this one guy: That’s Jason Pargin, my old boss, who is now a prominent TikTok/Reels influencer. We haven’t spoken in nearly a decade, but Facebook spams
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With everyone all focused on Donald Trump and Benny Netanyahu starting World War III out of a mutual desire to stay out of prison, another major war recently began that hasn’t earned the same headlines: Australia’s war on the internet. Now I know I don’t talk about
Archived discussions for paid members
On the now quite rare occasion that I scroll through my Facebook feed, I see a hell of a lot of this one guy: That’s Jason Pargin, my old boss, who is now a prominent TikTok/Reels influencer. We haven’t spoken in nearly a decade, but Facebook spams
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Pickup Artistry and its roots in quack psychotherapy, pop philosophy, and marketing.