America has been stumbling for quite some time due to its lack of adaptation to a changing world. The classes are separating again (as they always do when there’s no catastrophe), we’re about to lose even more jobs to automation and AI, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for average Americans to afford basic items like rent, healthcare, education,…

I’ve been having a heated discussion with a friend about why I can only take Marvel movies so seriously, and why it’s objectively lower quality entertainment than Harry Potter. There are spoilers below for Harry Potter, Infinity War, Deadpool 2, and The Bible. The answer is death. Humans, as a rule, don’t value that which they cannot lose,…

Facebook didn’t fail anyone. We failed ourselves. Sure, they could have been a bit more careful with some settings, but it’s not like they accidentally shared data with a third party. The way Cambridge Analytica accessed the data was completely authorized—it was just what they did with the data that was bad. Facebook’s entire business model is sharing…

If you’re a fan of Sam Harris or Ezra Klein you know that they’ve been engaged in a year-long online skirmish that recently culminated in a direct face-off in the format of a podcast. Listening to the podcast first would be helpful, but not necessary, to appreciate this analysis. I’ve been waiting to hear this interaction finally play…

Higher education is in the middle of an elaborate suicide ritual. It’s implements are: skyrocketing costs to students financial failure outdated content (often by decades) an academic infrastructure that seeks tenure rather than excellence an extreme-left attack on freedom of speech These are all combining to put traditional universities at risk. It’s hard impossible to predict the future,…

I think one of the least know truths in liberal circles is that family culture determines educational and financial success far more than school quality. I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and we’ve been raised to believe that good schools have lots of resources—like new textbooks, better teachers, etc.—and that students in poor…

We just saw another school shooting—this time in Parkland, Florida. The shooter was some kind of foster kid with serious hate in his heart, obviously. The foster parents were devastated, and evidently tried to give him love, but the damage seems to have been too great. He had a history of violence problems, a fascination with guns and…

I’m not interested in technology for its own sake. I think it’s interesting precisely where (and because) it intersects with our daily lives. We’re at the beginning of many such intersections right now, but one that I’m particularly interested in is The On-Demand Experience Economy. Traditionally, we’ve done two things related to items and experiences: When we wanted…

Finding information on the various U.S. generations (boomer, millennial, x, z, etc.) is non-trivial. I end up Googling 37 different sites—all of which disagree somewhat with each other—and then I eventually give up and pick a set of numbers for that particular piece—which I then forget the next time. Plus there aren’t really (m)any good visualizations of these…

One of the few podcasts that I follow…religiously…is Waking Up, by Sam Harris. As a fan of Sam’s from the beginning of his public life, and someone who’s had a number of email exchanges with him over the years, I think his podcast format is just spectacular. He does one guest per show and takes them through where…