vaccines, coercive like a market

Chris Christie, the gift that just keeps on giving, says that parents should have choice when it comes to whether or not to having their children vaccinated. And, you know, in a certain sense he’s right. I think that nobody should be forced, by governmental power or corporate, to have their children injected with any […]

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you should pay Yasmin Nair to write for you

I have a relationship of mutual antagonism towards many people in the world of professional political writing and commentary. This isn’t personal, though some think it is, but rather a reflection of my criticisms of the basic economic incentives of professional writing in its current era. For this reason, I often don’t know how to […]

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don’t be an accelerant

So this is deeply related to the post yesterday, but it reflects on the online version of things. It’s complex and so I have to write at length, so if you don’t feel like reading a couple thousand words, please exercise your privilege not to read it. As with my post yesterday, I want to take a […]

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I’m still fresh out of ideas

So, to state the obvious: Jon Chait is a jerk who somehow manages to be both condescending and wounded in his piece on political correctness. He gets the basic nature of language policing wrong, and his solutions are wrong, and he’s a centrist Democrat scold who is just as eager to shut people out of […]

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listen to Adolph Reed

Here’s a really interesting conversation on the Remix with Dr. James Peterson with Dr. Adolph Reed, one of the most prescient, brilliant commentators on left-wing politics, race, and activism. I highly recommend you listen to it; it’s less than a half hour. I don’t agree with Dr. Reed on everything. In particular, I’m much less […]

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Winograd’s dilemma

Via the Dish, I read this hype-ridden piece on the “astonishing” progress of Google Translate, and this far more sober piece by Lance Ulanoff. Ulanoff writes, “Initially… the translation was perfect, but when I started to speak in longer sentences, it basically fell apart and got a lot of it wrong. As I tested with others […]

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