“There are two explanations for why the United States ends up with the policies it does. The first blames corruption. For example, six in ten Americans favor a national health plan like Medicare-for-all. That we haven’t adopted such a policy, and instead maintain an awkwardly assembled Rube Goldberg system — hybrid, employer-based, inconsistent — should be taken as damning evidence for the perversion of the democratic process. So you follow the money. … The second explanation appreciates just how complicated politics can be.” (02/04/26)
“The digital publishing platform Substack has told some of its users that their data was stolen in a security breach. The affected account holders had their email addresses and phone numbers scraped in a hack that occurred in October 2025. In an email posted on Bluesky, Substack CEO, Christ Best, said the company became aware of the breach on February 3, which involved an ‘unauthorized third party to access limited user data without permission.’ While internal metadata was also shared in the hack, Best said that credit card numbers and other financial details were not. No passwords were obtained either.” (02/05/26)
“Fifty-seven Republicans in Congress worked with the bulk of Democrats, and the President of These United States, to continue funding development of a ‘kill switch’ on new cars. On Tuesday, the bill became law. You may have thought that most new cars driving down the road could already be switched ‘off’ remotely. After all, the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed by former President Joe Biden, required the National Traffic Safety Administration to develop just such a technology … But government isn’t fast, and the kill switch project ‘needed’ more funding, which was included in the new $1.2 trillion spending package.” (02/05/26)
“Israel is by far the biggest recipient of U.S. military aid over the past 80 years. Is America getting its money’s worth? Advocates say it provides critical support for a small, embattled American ally. … But critics say that, today, Israel is rich enough to pay for its own defense and that the aid effectively discourages an over-armed Israel from reaching peace agreements with its neighbors or resolving the Palestinian issue. Israel’s growing violation of Palestinian human rights shouldn’t be funded by American taxpayers, the argument goes. For Israel, the case for military aid is much clearer. It covers a good part of its defense budget, and because U.S. presidents have never seriously used it to pressure Israel to change policies, it comes with almost no political strings attached.” (02/04/26)
“Prosecutors in Paris opened an investigation Wednesday into allegations that Chinese citizens had sought to capture sensitive French government and military data using Starlink. … The prosecutor’s office said police had been notified last week that the arrested pair were suspected of conducting satellite interception operations from an AirBnB they had rented in the Gironde region, near the city of Bordeaux, after neighbors noticed that ‘a satellite dish approximately two meters in diameter’ had been installed and local residents were experiencing internet outages. ‘The device installed was used to illegally intercept satellite downlinks, including exchanges between military entities of vital importance,’ the statement added.” (02/04/26)
“On episode 145 of Anarcho Agenda, I give a brief update regarding my life in New Hampshire, and discuss issues relating to blindness and the libertarian movement here.” (02/04/26)
“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)
