Autumn in Griftopia
There is a sick symmetry to Kolfage’s scam. Fourteen years ago he was literally blown to pieces in a war that was, itself, a trillion-dollar con.
Category: Culture
Max Boot Upgrades His Network
In time, we’ll likely recognize malformed social networks as a problem on par with income inequality or rural poverty. Ironically, the same social media technologies that helped create this problem probably hold our most promising solutions.
What It Means to ‘Believe Women’: The Kavanaugh Choice
Believing women does not mean setting aside critical thought. It means confronting our own inconvenience.
Joseph Campbell on Netflix
Forty years ago, PBS released a series of Bill Moyers’ conversations with professor Joseph Campbell, who is famous research on mythology. Netflix has commemorated this anniversary by making the series available on their streaming service.
What It Means To Be An American
Our greatest dreams are our most dangerous, our most volatile. No one said the dream would be cheap.
Boredom, a Eulogy
Boredom has disappeared from our lives and with it, the ingenuity it spawned.
Bribery Is An American Tradition
Our government is for sale, but don’t blame Donald Trump. His clumsy cast of cartoon Mafiosi have merely taken the finesse out of the game, placing the oily guts of the machine out in the daylight.
‘Free Speech’ Won’t Rescue Dumb Ideas
Neither the 1st Amendment, nor any moral or intellectual notion of free speech grants me a right to be taken seriously. No one has a 1st Amendment right to appear in a particular media platform. No one has a 1st Amendment right to be invited to speak on campus, be interviewed on TV, teach a class in a university, or get a featured column in The Atlantic. Freedom of speech is not equality of ideas.
Fake news highlights the instability of monocultures
Diversity is about more than the humane tolerance of others, it is an evolutionary imperative. We will master a world of looser, more diverse cultural ties, or fall behind those who do.
The world we face in 2018
Though many aspects of this emerging environment seem disturbing or disheartening, life for human beings is improving on nearly every measurable axis. Humans are freer, wealthier, healthier and happier than at any point in our evolution. It may not seem like it, but the world is getting better.