Society

Opinion | It is widely assumed that Russia possesses unparalleled powers of manipulation, and that its ubiquitous propaganda is wreaking havoc on public opinion around the world.  In reality, however, Russian propaganda is far from the sophisticated machine it is made out to be.

Covid vaccines, chemtrails, the Great Reset … Why do people invent false conspiracies when there are so many real ones to worry about? There’s only one way to find out: ask a believer

It wasn’t really Jews or Palestinians. It was the U.S. Congress, which closed American borders 100 years ago this month.

The Department of Labor’s new overtime regulation is restoring and extending this promise for millions more lower-paid salaried workers in the U.S.

If billionaires actually cared about saving the planet, they’d pool their vast wealth and buy everyone a heat pump. But it’s not funding, or the technology itself, that’s preventing a full heat pump takeover.

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is the intro: Out of curiosity, I recently cracked open The American Economy in Transition, published in 1980, edited by Martin Feldstein and including contributions from… Nobel-winning economists [Samuelson, Friedman, Kuznets], successful business leaders and notable public servants. Though most of the essays get it wrong, […]

Whistle-blowers say that a group called the Banditos functions as a shadow government within local law enforcement. The sheriff says there is no such gang in his department.

Sam Altman, CEO of firm that developed app, says ethics do matter, but they need to be rethought (and AI isn’t going away).

The air war over Ukraine has become a cat-and-mouse game where drones must constantly evolve to survive.

“Yahoo Boy” cybercriminals are openly running dozens of scams across Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, TikTok, YouTube, and more. And they’re not afraid to show it off online.

Governance by AI is coming. The Coming Cyberocracy explores the failure of world leaders at a time when technology will soon rival human…

Ordoliberalism is the German variant of economic liberalism that emphasizes the need for government to ensure that the free market produces results close to its theoretical potential but does not advocate for a welfare state (and did not advocate against one either).[1]

Overshoot is the reason civilization is going to collapse. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion are merely symptoms.

Today on TAP: Lessons from the Tory wipeout in local U.K. elections

We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak Collective weekly governance study group (Fridays at 9 AM Pacific). Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil…

Athletes are being caught in scandals, yes, but the bigger scandal is that the ease and prevalence of betting is driving a huge rise in addiction—and neither the leagues nor our politicians care.

Otaku is a Japanese word that describes people with consuming interests, particularly in anime, manga, video games, or computers. Its contemporary use originated with a 1983 essay by Akio Nakamori in Manga Burikko.

Happy Friday! What's good? I'll have a longer essay on Monday about my half marathon – about the race and the (mostly) technology-free training block. But I did want to make one related observation: Sunday's race had over 8200 finishers, up from 5900 the year before. That's huge! And that's amazing!

Trump Media, the owner of the Truth Social app, trades under the DJT ticker. Former President Donald Trump is the majority shareholder of the company.

Young people are literally wired to challenge the status quo, to think outside the box. (more) Strategy that an evolution could follow, would be to create a vehicle that reliably tended to start believing that the old power-structure was corrupt, and that the good of the whole tribe required their overthrow... young revolutionary's belief is honest.

Fragmented and focused social platforms might be good for helping you find a knitting community. But extremist groups are also using them to normalize darker content.

Private, for-profit intercity bus services are a remarkable example of free market transportation. Socialists naturally want to shut it all down.

Money, Money, Money by Uganda Lebre Threads has entered the fediverse. There is so much to say about this, and I'm simply not ready to ...

You have probably forgotten about the guy who worked at National Public Radio and got so upset because of how woke it was that he wrote a furious post about it for Bari Weiss’s newsletter, which I believe is called That’s Such A Good Point, Sir. This is entirely for the best. That story wasn’t […]

Film and television writers face an existential threat