“In April 2007, a relatively unknown fellow going by the pen name of Mencius Moldbug started a new blog. ‘The other day I was tinkering around in my garage and I decided to build a new ideology,’ he writes. (A Formalist Manifesto, Unqualified Reservations, Apr. 24, 2007) But the new theory he created was ideological dynamite. It has become the favored ideology of the New Right. But it did not spring wholesale out of nothing. In his formalist manifesto he writes favorably of libertarianism, particularly the Rothbardian version. ‘I love libertarians to death,” he writes. “I would love to live in a libertarian society. The question is: is there a path from here to there?’ But as Yarvin told Ava Kofman for a recent essay at The New Yorker, he moved on from libertarianism after reading Hoppe’s Democracy: The God That Failed.” (02/04/26)
“Close the cover on the CIA World Factbook: The spy agency announced Wednesday that after more than 60 years, it is shuttering the popular reference manual. The announcement posted to the CIA’s website offered no reason for the decision to end the Factbook, but it follows a vow from Director John Ratcliffe to end programs that don’t advance the agency’s core missions. First launched in 1962 as a printed, classified reference manual for intelligence officers, the Factbook offered a detailed, by-the-numbers picture of foreign nations, their economies, militaries, resources and societies. The Factbook proved so useful that other federal agencies began using it, and within a decade, an unclassified version was released to the public. After going online in 1997, the Factbook quickly became a popular reference site for journalists, trivia aficionados and the writers of college essays, racking up millions of visits per year.” (02/04/26)
“Dan Denvir, host of the Jacobin Radio podcast The Dig, sat down with three organizing leaders behind the January 23 action — Emilia González Avalos, Greg Nammacher, and JaNaé Bates Imari — to discuss how that day came to be, and how their fight continues.” (02/04/26)
“For critics — particularly on the left — sprawl represents environmental waste, excessive consumption, car dependence, and the aesthetic or cultural vulgarity of mass suburbia. For conservatives, sprawl is not a pathology but a feature: quiet neighborhoods, good schools, and safe places to raise families. Libertarians tend to avoid the culture war surrounding sprawl, but there has nonetheless been internal disagreement over its merits. It usually turns on a single question: is sprawl a market outcome, or the result of government social engineering? The honest answer is: both.” (02/04/26)
“Fears of a looming market bubble have returned as stock prices climb and artificial intelligence spending accelerates, but several leading economists argue that the broader economic picture remains more stable than the headlines suggest. From Wall Street valuations to U.S. growth and global resilience, their message is consistent: conditions look stretched in places, but not fundamentally broken.” (02/04/26)
“More than 300 former federal prosecutors and civil rights attorneys are urging the Justice Department to allow state and local investigations into the killings of two Minnesota residents by federal officers, according to a new letter obtained exclusively by Axios. Minnesota officials have accused feds of obstructing their ability to investigate the deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti amid President Trump’s federal immigration blitz in the Twin Cities. ‘Blocking a state law enforcement agency from investigating potential violations of state law in its own jurisdiction would mark a severe departure from established DOJ norms and pose a serious threat to the rule of law,’ states the letter led by the Prosecutors Alliance in coordination with The Vera Institute of Justice.” (02/04/26)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Adam Schwartz
“Federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have descended into utter lawlessness, most recently in Minnesota. The violence is shocking. So are the intrusions on digital rights. For example, we have a First Amendment right to record on-duty police, including ICE and CBP, but federal agents are violating this right. Indeed, Alex Pretti was exercising this right shortly before federal agents shot and killed him. So were the many people who filmed agents shooting and killing Pretti and Renee Good – thereby creating valuable evidence that contradicts false claims by government leaders. To protect our digital rights, we need the rule of law.” (02/04/26)
