Society

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…

Expanding on his previous thoughts on the relationship between AI and capitalism — “I tend to think that most fears about A.

You might’ve heard about large language models lately. They’re the “brains” behind recent chatbots that seem to know an awful lot. Aatish Bhatia, for NYT’s The Upshot,…

Want to know what kind of jobs there were in the Middle Ages? A unique source from the 15th century gives us some beautiful images of medieval people at work.

A bondholder could simply allege that America failing to pay off its debts is unconstitutional. There’s a good argument for that.

A Financial Times journalist writes about discovering she’d been surveilled by TikTok.

The technology, as it’s currently imagined, promises to concentrate wealth and disempower workers. Is an alternative imaginable?

So, this is a difficult topic, I know that some of you are probably going to lose your minds, but today we are going to talk about politics, at least sort of. Welcome, this is the lecture on conser…

Typically, the things I share are reflective of what’s going on behind the scenes in my life. Even when I’m just recycling memes I’ve harvested from around social media, they tell a story of where I’m at in my own space and mind. A few months ago, I began the process of writing a new book. For me, that looks a lot like laziness to the untrained eye. You might catch me sitting at a dive bar, people-watching as other humans do the dance of living their life. I observe as they experience birth and death, loss and grief, celebration and joy, romance and sex.

A few weeks ago I wrote about an interview that Substack CEO Chris Best did about his company’s new offering, Substack Notes, and his unwillingness to answer questions about specific content modera…

Summer is coming, and COVID experts are watching.

"The Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.”" ― Isaac Asimov, I, Robot

Colectivo Situaciones on the Piqueteros movement, the collapse of the state, and revolutionary autonomy.

China’s first world champion, Ding Liren, and Ian Nepomniachtchi speak about their epic match and what they were really thinking behind the scenes

SEATTLE—Feeling depressed in the midst of several recent personal and professional setbacks, local man Adam Jackson reportedly reminded himself Monday that he was merely going through a phase in which his life was imploding and it was all downhill from here. “I need to remember that everything happens for a reason,…

Are you looking for a way to travel back in time? Well, we haven’t cracked the laws of physics yet, but we have the next best thing – a guidebook from another time. Move over Lonely Planet, Bradshaw’s was one of the original guides that inspired the British to travel the Continent for leisure.  Bradshaw’s…