“By the golden rule, humans are primary entities. By the iron rule, nearly all of them are demoted to the role of secondary or derivative entities. And this is made very clear by the fact that enforced hierarchies (states, large corporations and so on) require every occupant of their structure (save a very few at the pinnacle) to relinquish a good deal of their agency, their scope, their cognition, to the larger entity. It’s of great significance then, that humans of the bourgeois model are free agents, and not bound within an enforced hierarchy. These people are almost entirely free to operate via the golden rule, while people within hierarchies are forced to live by the iron rule for large portions of their lives.” (01/24/25)
“What takes the place of politics, however dirty and corrupt it was, once politics has broken down? This is where my fears show their faces. If it is true that we already live in an age of superintelligent agents, and if those agents are growing more powerful by the day, and if, on a separate track, our politics is broken and getting broken-er and broken-er, then the convergence of the two trends, superintelligence and political dysfunction, seems almost inevitable. What happens next, to my mind, is unpredictable, except that it will surely not redound to the benefit of mankind.” (01/24/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“If I spoke critically of something abusive that India was doing in Kashmir, would you expect me to be accused of an anti-Hindu hate crime? If you criticized an Indian military operation, would you have to preface it with ‘I don’t hate Hindus or their religion and am not the slightest bit Hinduphobic?’ If there was worldwide opposition to something that Indian military forces were doing, would you expect western governments to start frantically churning out laws to ban that opposition because it was making members of the Hindu community feel unsafe? Would it ever in your wildest imaginings occur to you that a criticism of the violent actions of the government of India could in any way be interpreted as an attack on the Hindu faith and the membership of that religion? You can probably see where I’m going with this.” (01/24/25)
“For centuries, the greatest protection against unjust convictions and punishments was the institution of jury independence, including so-called ‘jury nullification.’ The prosecutions of John Moore and Tanner Mansell illustrate a scenario in which jurors — apprised of their historic injustice-preventing powers — would have rendered a not guilty verdict. But because John and Tanner’s jurors, who appeared desperate for a way to acquit, weren’t informed of their historic prerogative to acquit against the evidence to prevent injustice, they had no option but to convict.” (01/23/26)
Source: Macroeconomic Policy Nexus
by David Beckworth & Kaleb Nygaard
“This week’s Supreme Court arguments over President Trump’s attempt to remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook have put an unusually bright spotlight on a question most people rarely stop to consider: what, exactly, is the Federal Reserve as an institution and how did its internal governance come to look the way it does? While the headlines focus on removal protections and presidential power, the deeper issue is the Fed’s evolving architecture: who sits at the table, who doesn’t, and how those patterns have changed over time.” (01/23/26)
“[T]he U.S. has a severe shortage of merchant marines. The Navy has had to sideline 17 support ships because of the shortage. The decline in merchant mariners has been dramatic: in 1960, there were 50,000, but now there are only 13,000. America needs more sailors and cheaper sailors. Many proposed solutions to the shortage would increase funding, promotion, and recruitment for merchant marine schools. While increased promotion and funding may modestly increase recruitment, they are unlikely to solve the shortage.” (01/23/26)
“Who could have predicted that hiring thousands of agents with no background checks, giving them barely any training, sending them into communities where they’re not wanted, and making it extremely clear to them that they would never be held accountable for any violence they perpetrate would lead to them escalating from hurting people with no remorse to increasingly murdering folks, in cold blood, on camera? Indeed, who would have thought that allowing Jonathan Ross to murder Renee Good in broad daylight, on camera, with zero consequences, would have emboldened other ICE officers to murder more innocent people in broad daylight on camera? … I just think it bears repeating, at this time and always, that illegal immigration was never an actual problem. Illegal aliens commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans, on average. They create more jobs and boost native-born wages, on average.” (01/24/26)
“The forecast is grim for New York City school kids. On Friday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that, no matter how many inches of the white stuff drop during Sunday’s looming storm, there will be no snow day to start the week. ‘I know to the disappointment of any student that’s watching this right now, Monday is either going to be a remote learning day or it’s going to be an in-person school day,’ Mamdani said on NY1. ‘It’s not going to be a traditional snow day. That is a determination we’ve made.’ Give these kids a damn break. Remote learning — a horrifically ineffective holdover from the Covid lockdown era — has essentially wiped out the glorious snow day, a rite of passage for so many American kids, including right here in the Northeast.” (01/23/25)
“I really don’t know what to write. The first month of 2026 has provided a series of events that have simply broken my heart as well as my brain. Sure, I knew this was possible; I predicted it ten years ago. The word I came up with in the week before the 2016 election to describe a Trump presidency, when I saw it coming, was ‘abyss.’ Why that word? ‘To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, we live in a republic, if we can keep it. And yet, more than two centuries later, we are openly contemplating throwing it up in the air and seeing where it might land.’ An abyss is being in mid-air in this rupture in our civilization.” (01/23/26)
“Accepting the Russian offer to abide by treaty limits for another year is obviously the right thing to do. It is extremely easy, it costs the U.S. nothing, and the U.S. and Russia continue to derive benefits from the treaty despite its official expiration next month. Adhering to the treaty limits for another year doesn’t solve the problem that there is no replacement treaty anywhere on the horizon, but it buys a little more time. It is not surprising that this administration has failed to seize the opportunity.” (01/23/26)
