Society

Factory farming’s political and cultural influence, and its impacts on American life, explained.

It’s well known that the voting methods we use are highly defective, as they fail to meet fundamental criteria like positive responsiveness, the Pareto principle, and stability. Positive responsiveness (monotonicity) means that if a candidate improves on some voters’ ballots, this should not reduce the candidate’s chances of winning. Yet, many voting methods, including runoffs […]

After two-thirds of Swiss voters rejected the government's proposed e-ID system in 2021, a slightly revamped "Digital Passport Act (E-ID Act)" is back on the political agenda

More realistic takes on BRICS, including by Michael Hudson.

On the fundamental flaws in a study meant to assess the popularity, or lack thereof, of capitalism in the US.

As a new study suggests that a proportion of Generation Z would rather hire a professional to change a lightbulb or hang a picture frame, Ellie Muir looks into why – and explains how DIY has become a privilege in the current economic climate

In a 1958 essay, economist Leonard Read argued that no one knows how to make a pencil. In a complex economy, the components of this simple implement — cedar, lacquer, graphite, ferrule, factice, pumice, wax, and glue — are contributed by a network of specialists who never meet. “There isn’t a single person … including the president of the pencil company, who contributes more than a tiny, infinitesimal bit of know-how.” As if to disprove this idea, student Thomas Thwaites set out in 2009 to build a toaster from scratch. He bought a £3.94 consumer unit and reverse-engineered it, hoping...

Racial threats and slights take a toll on health, but the continual invalidation and questioning of whether those so-called microaggressions exist has an even more insidious effect, research shows.

US climate policy has led to a surge in manure-based “biogas.” Critics say it’s propping up factory farming.

On Twitter/X, I recently suggested that the network effects of the stablecoin market are massive. Tether, which has four times more wallet...

(originally published Summer 2017) Given the longevity of his parents, we can say President Trump is very likely to thrive until he is 90 years old. I posit that those years will be in office or in…

In these times of polarisation it's important to understand Allport's Theory of Escalation and stand back to reflect.

Several fires in California could cause billions in damage, further straining the state’s fragile insurance market.

Why did water hydrants run dry in the midst of a conflagration? City officials stressed that the shortage was due to low water pressure, not a complete…

Why the working class needs to make a hostile takeover of the Democrats.

On the prevalence of claims processing fraud by insurers and what if anything can be done about it.

Eighteenth in the New Commons series. Several generations ago, my pal Jerry and I were cutting a hole between the ceiling studs of a rented house in Durham, North Carolina. This was our first step …

Age verification laws designed to block children from online porn sites are sweeping the US, Io Dodds writes. But do they actually protect children, or is there another agenda at work?

What happens when you treat the world like a game of Risk.

Hey folks, Fireside this week! I’m currently working on a post “On the Gracchi” taking a somewhat darker look at everyone’s favorite Roman reformers (though hardly the same …

In Average Is Over, Tyler Cowen argues that the economy is becoming increasingly bifurcated.

Why did Twitter make my prefrontal cortex feel tight?

My wayward months as the best telemarketer in America.

The ongoing Israeli genocide compares to nothing in the history of Palestine.

Today Arvind Dilawar talks to someone in the West Bank about what life is like there now. “When you lay in your bed at night and you hear the planes and you know exactly a few minutes later someone will be killed…you don’t know what to do with

Apparently there’s been an "incident" at PowerSchool. An incident. A breach. A hack. NBD, just one of the largest ed-tech companies in the world, provider of a student information system for about 16,000 schools (75% of districts in the US), the central piece of digital infrastructure for K-12