“The past year has shown that the concept of ‘abundance’ has legs. A bestselling book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. An expanding shelf of other well-received volumes on similar themes. Policy organizations with abundance in their name. The simultaneous emergence of a more right-coded ‘progress’ movement that identifies many of the same problems and offers similar solutions. … OK, so abundance has legs — but what kind of creature are they attached to? And where are those legs capable of taking us? What are the appropriate contours of the concept — we want an abundance of what, exactly? And what’s the social vision behind this desire for more — we want abundance for what?” (11/13/25)
“In September 2010, I’d been dating my future wife for a while and had successfully turned her from a dog person into a cat person. OK, I don’t know that I so much ‘turned’ her as I exposed her to cats and made her realize how cool they are. Living in apartments at the time helped as well, since dogs weren’t an option. For her birthday that year, I bought her a kitten from the Baltimore animal shelter. We named him Ringo because we’re Beatles fans and it suited him. I also call him ‘Buddy,’ as in ‘Little Buddy,’ because he spent a lot of time with me and my cats in Baltimore, adapting to his new family, and would follow me around, weaving in and out of my feet, before we’d settled on a name. To me, he is ‘LB’ from that time. I’m typing this downstairs as Ringo is upstairs dying.” (11/13/25)
Source: The Peaceful Revolutionist
by David S D’Amato
“The twenty-first century has witnessed global land theft on an unprecedented scale, particularly in the years directly following the historic events of 2008. Overlapping crises of the financial, food, water, and energy systems, among others, led to a frantic global land rush that took hundreds of millions of hectares of arable land from some of the poorest people in the world. The pattern of global landholdings is extremely concentrated. A paper published in 2021 noted that ‘[t]he largest 1% of farms in the world (those larger than 50 ha) operate more than 70% of the world’s farmland,’ a situation that poses a looming threat to global food security. Today, while approximately 84 percent of the world’s individual farms are smaller than two hectares, these amount to little more than one-tenth of the total land dedicated to farming.” (11/13/25)
“It’s easy to get dispirited by America’s political death spiral given that the MAGA faithful remain devoted to their leader no matter what new evidence emerges. They accuse critics — even those making calm, policy-oriented critiques — of suffering from a medical condition (Trump Derangement Syndrome). I’m more inclined to believe adherence to Trump’s grievance-based movement is a condition. Like with all viruses, there are signs this one might someday break. For evidence, I offer none other than U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican from Georgia. Until recently, most pundits have viewed MTG as the epitome of what’s gone wrong with the modern GOP, where there are ‘no enemies on the right’ and conspiracy theories are as relevant as rationally based ones” (11/13/25)
“The November 4 election results are a reality check for the Trump administration. Democrats didn’t just run up the score in deep-blue enclaves. With power prices soaring, they flipped two Georgia utility-regulator seats in rare statewide victories. In New York City, more than half of voters told exit pollsters that their top worry is the cost of living. Seven in 10 Americans say their grocery bills have gone up this past year. Six in 10 say their utility costs have increased. So, yes, the affordability issues that dominated the 2024 election remain central. But President Donald Trump insists there’s no problem.” (11/13/25)
“Two weeks after Tucker Carlson’s scandalous interview with white supremacist, Jew-hating, misogynist ‘influencer’ Nick Fuentes, the MAGA right is still grappling with the fallout — particularly after the Heritage Foundation’s (of Project 2025 fame) president, Kevin Roberts, defended Carlson and took a swipe at Carlson’s ‘globalist’ critics. Meanwhile, some conservatives seem to be waking up to the fact that large segments of the right now normalize Fuentes-style hate.” (11/13/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“The difference between people who supported the British Empire and people who support the US empire is that those who supported the British Empire knew they were supporting an empire. … Supporters of the British Empire understood that the enemies of the Empire were being killed because they refused to adequately subject themselves to the King and his demands. Supporters of the US empire think the US and its allies are always attacking Evil Bad Guys in the name of spreading Freedom and Democracy, and if this happens to advance pre-existing geostrategic agendas and/or resource interests then it is purely by coincidence.” (11/13/25)
“Robert Jackson was a key figure in mid-twentieth-century American liberalism. He rose rapidly up the cursus honorum of the New Deal. In the period between 1934 and 1941, Roosevelt appointed him Assistant General Counsel to the IRS, then Assistant Attorney General for the IRS. He then worked for the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division before becoming Solicitor General, Attorney General, and finally Associate Justice on the Supreme Court, serving from 1941 to 1954. Jackson was the last Supreme Court Justice who never attended college, nor had a law degree (he spent one year in law school and otherwise ‘read law,’ learning the trade as Lincoln had). He took a leave of absence to be the lead prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trial. A zealous liberal in his political career, he became something of a conservative on the Court.” (11/13/25)
“As demand for self-driving services such as Waymo grows, so does evidence of their safety. The autonomous ride-hailing service reports astronomical reductions in motor vehicle–related crashes and injuries in its autonomous vehicles (A.V.s) compared to cars helmed by humans. But with innovation comes those who fear it. … History is littered with failed attempts to resist technological progress—efforts now proven absurd. Civilization didn’t cave when the Luddites resisted textile mechanization in the early nineteenth century, nor did it cave when unions representing gaslight and horse-drawn carriage workers resisted electric lighting and automobiles. If those seeking to hinder advancements like these had their way, humanity would have never climbed out of the Stone Age. And today, we should not allow contemporary Luddites to thwart the unfolding progress of humanity.” (11/13/25)
Source: The Atlantic
by Thomas Chatterton Williams
“In the age of MAGA, ideological lines that once distinguished left from right have blurred. Republicans who said they were willing to die for the market now support a president who tells the government to buy up shares in the private sector. (Bernie Sanders approves.) The right has also embraced cancel culture, a progressive trend it recently despised. But conservatives aren’t the only ones emulating the other side. In perhaps the most striking reversal of this era, progressives are now the ones who tend to speak like moralists. … When people describe the world by appealing to black-and-white morality, they tend to reveal more about themselves than anything else. For many, such language suggests that they hold their own views to be unimpeachable and the other side’s to be irredeemable. But moral clarity, like beauty, is perishable and — at least in practice — subjective.” (11/13/25)
