Source: Washington Monthly
by Alex Bronzini-Vender
“Theo Baker’s debut book is a film-worthy investigation of Stanford’s culture of fraud. But his disdain for the tech bros keeps him from understanding them.” (05/19/26)
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/05/19/fear-and-loathing-in-palo-alto/
Source: Students For Liberty
by Ilia Zhuzhunashvili
“When the state keeps taking more, it often ends up with less. The idea is usually treated as a modern insight, associated with tax curves, supply and demand, and other economic buzzwords. But Ibn Khaldun, the 14th-century North African historian and thinker, laid out the logic long before any of that language existed.” (05/19/26)
https://studentsforliberty.org/blog/ibn-khaldun-and-the-original-case-against-big-government/
Source: Common Dreams
by Nazaneen Shokri
“A delayed shipment of medication does not make headlines. A generator failing in a maternity ward is not breaking news. A woman rationing insulin or postponing prenatal care is not framed as political violence. And yet, from Iran to Gaza, these are the quiet consequences of policies described in distant capitals as ‘pressure,’ ‘security’ and ‘strategy.’ Whether through sanctions or siege, the mechanism is different, but the message is the same: Women’s health is negotiable. The Women, Life, Freedom movement born out of Iran has captured global attention. Women in Iran are disproportionately affected by the intensity of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, with stricter restrictions on their dress, behavior, and livelihoods. The Iran sanctions regime, beginning in 1979 following the US Embassy crisis, refers to the network of international economic, trade, and financial restrictions imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran.” (05/19/26)
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Kym Robinson
“Social media and our relationship to the digital realm inside our screens has twisted the real world into a filtered and inhuman perception. Influencers and content creators who falsify their image turn humans with imperfections into streamlined products for a cultivated audience, with particular aesthetics and quality they are now accustomed to. In turn, LLMs and these versions of AI all seek to duplicate the human experience or perspective through devious means of humanizing machines. LLM’s are expected to provide prose filled with flowery and grandiose language, its software chatting in a way the human being on the other end feels flattered and ingratiated towards. This cognitive bias can both affirm pre-established beliefs while also satiating the human ego to the point of addiction and dependency.” (05/19/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-so-called-ai-revolution-will-make-us-less-free
Source: Niskanen Center
by Gabe Menchaca
“Underlying every federal program are federal workers; underlying every federal worker is an obscure taxonomy that defines their job. Every year, when it hires a couple hundred thousand people, the U.S. federal government sends millions of signals about itself to the job market, its own workforce, and the broader country. A cursory glance through its job postings reveals some of the most obvious ones: that federal employment is narrow, bureaucratic, procedural, and intelligible only to insiders. It prioritizes and selects for task specialists rather than outcome specialists.” (05/19/26)
https://www.niskanencenter.org/classification-rules-everything-around-me
Source: EconLog
by David Hebert
“For your decisions, there are three options: you can get the decision right or you can get it wrong. ‘But Dave,’ you say, ‘that’s only two options!’ In the following nuance lies the heart of this piece: there are two ways in which you can be wrong. You can act when you shouldn’t have or you can fail to act when you should have. Getting things right all the time is not possible. So which type of mistake are you more likely to guard against? It depends on which one will get you fired. In most government settings, the answer is biased in particular (and predictable) ways.” (05/19/26)
Source: Liberal Currents
by Janet Bufton
“Classical liberals must rejoin left liberals in fighting for emancipatory politics and against the illiberal right.” (05/19/26)
Source: Persuasion
by Tim Requarth
“In 1981, a young Steve Jobs — bearded, bespectacled, brown corduroy blazer over an open-collared shirt — sat in front of an Apple II and explained what he thought a personal computer was for. He’d read an article in Scientific American that compared the efficiency of locomotion across species. The condor, he said, came out on top. Humans ranked about a third of the way down, ‘not too proud a showing for the crown of creation.’ But then someone had the insight to test a human on a bicycle, and the cyclist blew the condor away. … The computer, he said, was ‘a 21st century bicycle’ for the mind. In the age of AI, Jobs’ quaint bicycle has received an update from Silicon Valley. With the launch of ChatGPT, gushed Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in early 2023, ‘We went from the bicycle to the steam engine.'” (05/18/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/what-the-inuit-know-and-ai-doesnt
Source: Fox News
by Stephen Moore
“One of the goals of President Donald Trump’s trip to China is to help ensure continued American tech dominance. One worry is that China steals our technology. But sometimes we foolishly handicap our tech companies with bad policies here at home. An example is export controls, which are a threat to U.S. dominance and limit markets for American-made tech products. The politicians and bureaucrats have decided that they, and not the free market, are best equipped to manage the global semiconductor trade. It’s not going well. We’re still winning the chip war against China, but not by much. Even after years of stringent export controls that have crushed NVIDIA and AMD’s sales into China, recent tracking shows that the U.S. lead over China in AI has almost completely evaporated. Instead of slowing Beijing down, we have effectively subsidized the development of their domestic chip manufacturing by blocking and/or taxing their American competitors.” (05/19/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/stephen-moore-government-control-chip-sales-shocking-downside
Source: The Bulwark
by Jonathan V Last
“On Friday, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis announced that he would commute Tina Peters’s sentence. On the one hand, this is a tiny thing. Inconsequential. If we make it out of this period, then it will hardly be worth a footnote in the history of Trumpism. On the other hand, what Gov. Polis did for Peters is everything. It is the foundational question about how liberalism responds to an illiberal attack. And I’m going to swerve and tell you that I’m not really sure what I think about it. This might seem like an easy call — but it only seems that way.” (05/18/26)