The US political system is in turmoil because the Republicans have been high-jacked by Trump and the Democrats have become hypocritical technocrats. I have written a fair bit about Trump and will write more, but today’s post is reserved for “everything” I find wrong with the Democrats. There is more and also more detail to each of these criticisms, so consider this to be an overview: Democrats have embraced an intrusive ninny state that patronizes citizens. I blame books like Nudge and the th...

The US political system is in turmoil because the Republicans have been high-jacked by Trump and the Democrats have become hypocritical technocrats. I have written a fair bit about Trump and will write more, but today’s post is reserved for “everything” I find wrong with the Democrats. There is more and also more detail to each of these criticisms, so consider this to be an overview: Democrats have embraced an intrusive ninny state that patronizes citizens. I blame books like Nudge and the th...

One tried and true tactic for suppressing opinions is to slap them with a disparaging label. This is currently happening in the Israel/Gaza conflict with the allegation of bothsidesism, which goes as follows: you have to pick a side, anything else is bothsidesism. Of course nobody likes to be accused of bothsidesism, which is clearly bad. But this is a completely wrong application of the concept. Some may be repeating this allegation unthinkingly, but others are using it as an intentional tac...

One tried and true tactic for suppressing opinions is to slap them with a disparaging label. This is currently happening in the Israel/Gaza conflict with the allegation of bothsidesism, which goes as follows: you have to pick a side, anything else is bothsidesism. Of course nobody likes to be accused of bothsidesism, which is clearly bad. But this is a completely wrong application of the concept. Some may be repeating this allegation unthinkingly, but others are using it as an intentional tac...

Silicon Valley’s tribal boosterism has been bad for tech and bad for the world. I recently criticized Reddit for clamping down on third party clients. I pointed out that having raised a lot of money at a high valuation required the company to become more extractive in an attempt to produce a return for investors. Twitter had gone down the exact same path years earlier with bad results, where undermining the third party ecosystem ultimately resulted in lower growth and engagement for the netwo...

Silicon Valley’s tribal boosterism has been bad for tech and bad for the world. I recently criticized Reddit for clamping down on third party clients. I pointed out that having raised a lot of money at a high valuation required the company to become more extractive in an attempt to produce a return for investors. Twitter had gone down the exact same path years earlier with bad results, where undermining the third party ecosystem ultimately resulted in lower growth and engagement for the netwo...