dead trees
Dead trees still
cast shadows
Gathering thoughts…
Gathering thoughts…
I. Best-case scenario Donald Trump is elected president in November. An Iranian proxy, whether Houthi, Hezbollah, or Iraqi Shi'ite militia, attacks an American naval vessel in the Persian Gulf. Trump orders a brutal retaliation that decimates the Iranian oil industry in Bandar Abbas. Iran, humiliated, pulls back its military offensive capabilities and redirects its dwindling…
Sometimes it's easy to forget, with how big the internet seems, how small the world is. I clicked on a link to read an article by Raina Raskin, a new mother, about how the first time her baby smiled at her shattered her illusions about what mattered in life. All that status-seeking, career-promoting bullshit didn't hold a fingernail to that split second of joy. It was a good…
There are two categories of approaches for apprehending the world: rational and empirical. Rationalists have a cognitive bias towards thinking in terms of models, systems, and logical consequences. As a result, they tend to develop models of reality based on a limited set of direct sense data and then try to impose that highly developed, internally consistent model onto their…
For many, the idea that one ought to support marginalized people in the face of oppression and injustice seems like it should go without saying. It is synonymous with rightful moral conduct in civilized society. As it turns out, there is some distance one must travel to arrive at the realm of action from the realm of thought. In dialectical terms, this is the gap between…
Who decides what the truth is? In liberal mythology, various factions and individuals are constantly making arguments and propositional claims about what is true. This dynamic "marketplace of ideas" is presented as the powerful engine that has propelled liberal democratic societies to global dominance. This myth turns out to work fairly well, on condition that everyone…