i generally have that effect on people. i've such talent i've never understood why i'm not invited to all the parties.

Intellectual property is the most explicit version of the create-and-defend sources of market power approach. But look where it's taken us. Is culture, art subsidized, or are huge rents captured by distribution channels and art made ever more derivative?

Who in the leadership of the EU is a stalwart defender and proponent of European social democracy?

first humanoid robot i worry could replace what i actually do. ht @niedermeyer.online

when the third term thing inevitably comes before the Supreme Court, they could just publish this piece as the unanimous opinion, if they were actually calling balls and strikes and devoted to enforcing the original intent of the Constitution’s text. unfortunately a big if.

i feel the same hopelessness and anger. also i’d point out that a growing political tendency elevates UAE as aspirational, perhaps a template for a new world order. those enthusiasts should not be spared accounting for UAE’s intercessions in Sudan.

can’t wait for the new cheetos to drop…

if you’ve written for a long time, you have to hope you don’t become a stereotype of yourself. it’s not an easy thing to avoid.

(or you need to assume both a one-dimensional issue space AND precisely two parties for the logic to hold. otherwise the party that captures the median can be a minority party, which might win a plurality or not.)

the average american and the median american just hate each other.

“anti-fascists should be attentive not merely to civil society as a general category, but to different kinds of civil society. The Internet and mass media are a form of civil society, but…they are not a substitute for in-person association. (The same applies to professionally managed nonprofits.)”

and makes the case for including universal pediatric dental care in the, um, basket!

it's amazing we all still have hands, rather than vague remnants of fingers twisted into vaguely cylindrical stumps.

also worth keeping in mind that "people who feel like they were 'canceled'" is a category largely orthogonal to "progressive" or "moderate". (perhaps not so orthogonal to the contemporary version of "right", for straightforward reasons.)

self-criticism as much as anything: we're very aware of how plutocrats use race, nationality, etc to divide us, but how about faction? when we devote time to countering searchlight etc and the pugnacious internet personalities who promote them, are we really countering or falling into a trap?

boo, y'all!

isn't he doing to grok what they did to HAL 9000?

makes me nostalgic, but not in a great way…