Category Archives: Culture

Alternative Political Realities

I continue to find examples like these fascinating. I know they are extreme examples, and not representative of conservatives in general. But that these claims and attitudes still exist, and are widely circulated, suggests to me that, in the big … Continue reading

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Essays by Harari and Chiang

Both about technology, about AI. The Sapiens author has a new book out next week: Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. This is an excerpt. NY Times, Yuval Noah Harari, 4 Sep 2024: … Continue reading

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Borders and the Fringe

A speculation by Adam Lee about what will happen when we give up national borders; Items from the fringe about Trump’s three rules; Musk’s preference for high status males; Christian nonsense about evolution; simply lying about the Arlington story; and … Continue reading

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Cory Doctorow on Marshmallow Longtermism

I read Cory Doctorow’s latest column for Locus Magazine last week, when I browsed through my advance PDF copy of the September issue. It’s a fascinating piece that considers the difference between the political left and the political right in … Continue reading

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Lukianoff & Haidt, THE CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND

Here’s a book that was published six years ago this month, and which I read one year ago last month. Subtitle: “How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure” (Penguin Press, Sept. 2018, 338pp, including … Continue reading

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Infrastructure, the Constitution, Changing Minds, and Fringe Items

How expanding America’s highways doesn’t solve their congestion; Ten ways the heat is changing us, including impacts on the infrastructure; Another perspective on issues with the US Constitution; Changing minds, appeals to fear, or persuasion; Fringe items about a fake … Continue reading

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Robert Reich, THE COMMON GOOD

Here’s another shortish book I read recently, not a memoir but a book at the intersection of politics, morality, and human nature, which is itself another theme of my reading the past two or three years. It’s by Robert Reich, … Continue reading

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About Expanding the Human Population

Two items today on this topic, first an essay in NY Times, then a letters column today responding to it. I addressed a similar piece Saturday. Here’s the NYT essay. NY Times, Victor Kumar, a philosophy professor at Boston University, … Continue reading

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Friends and Neighbors, Conformity vs. Liberty

How the Walz/Vance debate revealed two different views of America: conformity v liberty; How we depend on friends and neighbors, and Oprah’s DNC speech; How morality evolved, and religion merely captured it; Brief items about crowd sizes and looks; taking … Continue reading

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Sebastian Junger: FREEDOM

Then I looked over my shelves to see if there was some other memoir type book, preferably short, that I could read before returning to another big science tome. I found this, by the same author as TRIBE, which I … Continue reading

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