You are not free. At the very least, you’re nowhere near as free as you like to think you are. What it even means to be free isn’t really all that clear. The things you are free to do depend to some extent on where you live. In today’s world, you live in a “nation” Continue reading

An updated retelling of It’s a Wonderful Life. The best(?) version of Carol of the Bells. Even pseudo-political figures are described as “brands” now. But the question remains, at least for me, why media-based branding works so damned well on so many people. Interesting but incomplete and not fully considered notes about, of all things, Continue reading

I live in a house, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of my deed has been signed by the clerk, the mortgage officer, and I signed it. My name is good for anything I choose to put it to. My house is where I live. In my house there Continue reading

“Coal” in US politics is not a fossil fuel; it’s an ideology. Coal used to be a very important fuel that powered the engines of expansion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mining coal back then was difficult, dangerous, and poorly paid, and the people who did it took pride in their barely-compensated Continue reading

This is a really interesting analysis of the business of AI models. It’s a pretty convincing argument that it’s a pretty bad business, for some very thoughtful reasons. Continue reading

I’ve been noticing something for years, after (in order): What I’ve been noticing is that US education has been in decline for a long, long time. I managed to do well in school, but I’m not sure I could have been as successful in earlier decades because the material back then was more difficult and Continue reading

Just like the Republican presidential campaign, apparently everything is TV now: “…a 27-year-old social media huckster, beat a 58-year-old man with a long history of health problems, both physically and mentally, in a boxing ring late on Friday night.“ Meanwhile, Dave Winer observed a campaigning shift by the Repubs, who: “…didn’t worry what Jake Tapper Continue reading

This is just great. Continue reading

I’ve always had the feeling that the conventional wisdom on politics and the economy is that Republicans are “better” at managing and growing the economy than are Democrats. The actual data says something quite different: “Since World War II, the United States economy has performed significantly better on average under the administration of Democratic presidents Continue reading