He came out of the Carolina low country where the sand is white as bone and the rivers run red with the iron of old earth. No father to name him. No mother to bury. Just a sister and the long empty road that led him north into the law and the war rooms of…
Islam is a Paperclip Maximizer
The paperclip maximizer, as Nick Bostrom described it, is a thought experiment about blind optimization. It takes one goal, no matter how trivial, and relentlessly subordinates the world to it. The paperclip maximizer is not wicked for wickedness requires imagination. It has the focused simplicity of having only one end, and converts everything else into…
Successful Companies are the Worst
I worked for a company that was failing once. One day I came in and the doors were locked. That was the end of it. The market had changed. No one had decided to hurt me in particular. It was simply over, and when it happened I felt almost nothing. Later I worked for a…
Nithya Raman Is a Patsy
Look, I’m gonna be straight with you. Years from now, when they ask me about the greatest score I ever pulled, I’m gonna tell ‘em about the Raman job in Los Angeles. We didn’t break into anything. That’s what makes it so beautiful. The politicians had already done all the heavy lifting for us. They…
One in Ten Indians Scrapes Average
You know what really gets right up my nose? Scotland. This wee tiny country, with a population the size of a decent Indian traffic jam, has been punching so far above its weight for centuries it’s a miracle we didn’t rupture something. James Watt, Alexander Graham Bell, John Logie Baird, Adam Smith, David Hume –…
Progressive Aztec Economics
You ever notice how the government takes your money and then uses it to do shit that would make a crackhead pimp blush with embarrassment? They snatch it right out of your paycheck, call it “taxes,” and then blow it on programs designed by people who couldn’t run a lemonade stand without a $400,000 consultant…
Too Late For Reform
A healthy political order works the way any durable human institution works. It has a purpose that can be named without embarrassment. It has offices with real authority, boundaries with real meaning, and a chain of responsibility that can be followed from decision to consequence without getting lost in fog. It produces outcomes that ordinary…
Not Just NPCs
Everybody calls everybody an NPC now. That’s the great insult of the age. NPC. Like the fellow saying it has uncovered a secret code in the universe. But I don’t know. I’ve met people. They’re not robots. Robots are built for a purpose. That already gives them a leg up. No, people are something stranger….
Utopia is Just One More Purge Away
You ever notice how these true-believer assholes keep hawking the same rancid fairy tale? “Just one more purge, one more cleansing, one more loyalty test, and paradise is right around the corner!” They’ve been peddling this shit for a hundred goddamn years. Every time the bodies stack up and the whole thing collapses into a…
Wagging Dogs
The Southern Poverty Law Center just got busted red-handed like a televangelist caught with his hand in the collection plate and a hooker in the motel room. They secretly shoveled over three million bucks from 2014 to 2023 to bona fide Klan wizards, Aryan Nations goons, and Unite the Right planners, all while sobbing to…
Democracy is Slow Motion Murder-Suicide
You wanna know what democracy really is? It’s a murder-suicide with ballots instead of bullets. Just ask Justin Fairfax, former Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. Dude shot his wife then ate his own gun. Boom. Perfect metaphor. Because that’s exactly what your government is doing to you. Slowly, painfully, while smiling and calling it “progress.” They…
Surveillance State Support
I used to be dead set against this whole surveillance state thing. I mean, come on, it sounded like the worst kind of dystopian nightmare, right? Cameras everywhere, watching you buy your groceries, filming you while you’re just trying to scratch an itch in public without starting a riot. Big Brother with a better battery…