“If you’ve spent any time around the labor movement, you’ve probably heard the saying: ’an injury to one is an injury to all.’ This is a core principle of our movement, not just because we care for our brothers and sisters, but because we know that if we let those in power come for one of us, the rest of us are next. On March 8, Mahmoud Khalil was forcibly removed from his home — in front of his pregnant wife, a U.S. citizen — by officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A legal resident with a green card, Mr. Khalil was targeted by the Trump administration because of his role in the protests against Israel’s war on Gaza that erupted across U.S. universities last year.” (03/18/25)
“Silicon Valley’s overconfidence in the imminent arrival of Artificial General Intelligence stems from a combination of limited understanding of the humanities, an insular culture, and a business model that incentivizes exaggerated claims about AI’s capabilities.” (03/18/25)
“At less than one 6,750th of last year’s $6.75 trillion federal spending, USAGM may seem like small potatoes, but as the late US Senator Everett Dirksen (R-IL) reportedly said, ‘a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.’ And good reasons for wadding up the agency and tossing it in the dustbin of history go far beyond the financial. What are the agency and its outlets, really? In a word, propaganda. Their entire purpose is and always has been to regale the world — especially that portion of its population ruled by non-US-approved governments — with the US government’s take on every event and every issue.” (03/18/25)
“About half the time it is used, the word ‘law’ is fairly close to a mind trick, and there is nothing noble, righteous, or even ‘conservative’ in that. More or less all of us were pushed into the trick, which complicates things because people don’t like to admit anything that smells like a mistake. Having been taught, repeatedly, to ‘respect the law,’ nearly all of us have decided certain things must be right, simply because they were ‘the law.’ We decided this, not because we understood the benefits that would follow certain actions, but because of repetitive prodding. And so it’s important to be clear on this: To uncritically, reflexively obey is not respect. Respect requires understanding.” (03/18/25)
“Over the weekend President Trump ordered a massive military operation against the small country of Yemen. Was Yemen in the process of attacking the United States? No. Did the President in that case go to Congress and seek a declaration of war against the country? No. The fact is, Yemen hadn’t even threatened the United States before the bombs started falling. Last year, candidate Trump strongly criticized the Biden Administration’s obsession with foreign interventionism to the detriment of our problems at home. … Yet once in office, Trump turned to military force as his first option.” (03/18/25)
“One event I’ve participated in a few times is a 10k race called the Cooper River Bridge Run, in Charleston, South Carolina. When going, I’ve made an effort to try to prep for the run, to try to beat my time from the previous run. (Most recent result, for the 2021 race, was 41:25, better than any of my previous attempts. Hurray!) If someone showed me a massive and time-consuming training program that would improve my run time by 10%, it wouldn’t be worth it to me to take up. My goals about beating my previous times were about little more than flattering my personal vanity – and while I’m willing to pay some price to do that, the margin closes pretty quickly. But the person who comes first place in the run also wins a cash prize of $10,000.” (03/18/25)
“Last week, Georgia’s state legislature declined once more to take up the legalization of sports betting as a ballot referendum in 2025. Georgians will now have to wait until 2026 for the measure to be reconsidered, despite polling from the University of Georgia showing that 63% of voters would have backed legalization. Across the country, 39 states have legalized the practice and nine holdouts remain …. And yet, sports betting is still practiced in staggering numbers in every state. A new report from NEXT/Blask shows that Bovada, a betting site based in Costa Rica, dwarfs the brand strength and earnings of regulated U.S.-based brands such as FanDuel and DraftKings. The rise in offshore sports betting, far from any U.S. jurisdiction, should be concerning for both advocates and opponents of this particular type of gambling.” (03/18/25)
“Alex Karp, the CEO of the controversial military tech firm Palantir, is the coauthor of a new book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. In it, he calls for a renewed sense of national purpose and even greater cooperation between government and the tech sector. His book is, in fact, not just an account of how to spur technological innovation, but a distinctly ideological tract. As a start, Karp roundly criticizes Silicon Valley’s focus on consumer-oriented products and events like video-sharing apps, online shopping, and social media platforms, which he dismisses as ‘the narrow and the trivial.’ His focus instead is on what he likes to think of as innovative big-tech projects of greater social and political consequence.” (03/18/25)
“Last September, under pressure from the Turkish government, Netflix agreed to release one of its new series only in Greece and Cyprus. Famagusta depicts the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The protagonists of the series — a co-production between Greek and Cypriot companies — are Greek Cypriots, and the show is broadly sympathetic to them. Turkish officials insisted that Famagusta was nothing more than pro-Greek propaganda and began a campaign to prevent global audiences from watching it. … Netflix’s decision was met with little furor outside of the Greek press, and the company did not respond to Foreign Policy’s request for comment about the move. It was part of a long-standing pattern of successful Turkish censorship of content that depicts either Turkish or Ottoman history in a negative light. Turkey not only blocks the release of such content domestically — but has maneuvered to do so abroad, as well.” (03/18/25)
“Think the American Revolution was just about taxes, tea parties, and representation? Think again. The real conflict wasn’t about a few policies. It was about power – a British claim to unlimited, centralized power ‘in all cases whatsoever.’ James Madison later called this the ‘fundamental principle’ on which independence itself was declared. And he was far from alone. John Hancock, Thomas Paine, John Dickinson, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, and many others all agreed. Yet, you won’t hear about this in government-run schools. Because teaching the truth means exposing the real problem: unlimited, centralized power.” (03/18/25)
