Society

Posted on Friday 12 May 2023. 748 words, 8 links. By Matt Webb.

Republican gun fetishism has forced us to normalize mass shootings.

Status means everything to platforms like Twitter and Facebook. But contrary to what Elon Musk thinks, it doesn’t come from a blue checkmark.

From a rubber plantation in Southeast Asia to a repair shop in Mississippi, the story of a tire highlights the turmoil of the post-pandemic economy and its uncertain future.

The last time I wrote about settlement speed was back in 2017. In that article I published a chart of the history of U.S. securities settle...

The contemporary 20th century belief in American Exceptionalism is bi-partisan, trans-historical, and contested. The debate is simultaneously about origin stories, the implications for who is imagi…

Some of this already happens.

The net’s long decline into “five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four” isn’t a mystery. Nor was it by any means a forgone conclusion. Instead, we got here through a series of conscious actions by big businesses and lawmakers that put antitrust law into a 40-year coma....

We spoke with MIT's David Autor, one of the top labor economists in the world, about how AI could revolutionize the job market.

How a small-town auto mechanic peddling a green-energy breakthrough pulled off a massive scam

The right to repair movement doesn't go far enough. Here's how designers could make products more repairable from the start.

We want to see the monarchy abolished and the King replaced with an elected, democratic head of state. In place of the King we want someone chosen by the people, not running the government but representing the nation independently of our politicians. An elected, effective head of state. The monarchy is wrong in principle, it's bad for British politics and it falls well short of the standards we should expect of public institutions.

The Continent is an award-winning African newspaper, designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp.

It's 2023. How is this possibly still a thing?

What is this thing we’re trying to be?

Understanding how politics and law work requires facing the realities of power.

Nitzan and Bichler show that the ratio of net interest to profit is strongly related to the rate of unemployment. Here's my take on their research, along with some data updates.

Why is it so difficult to get a new pair of glasses or contacts in this country? It’s easier pretty much everywhere else.

Every year I curse the optometry racket when I run out of contact lenses and have to return to the optometrist to get a “new” prescription. It’s a service that I don’t want and don’t need but am forced to buy by US law which require patients to have a recent doctor’s prescription to buy […]

The government’s least democratic branches are incompetent and corrupt because they are unaccountable. James Madison would not be surprised…