Why our elections are about to get rigged beyond repair — Well, it was a good run. But government of the people, by the people, and for the people isn’t likely to survive the Supreme Court’s next term. There are a lot of cases where the Court’s six-Justice conservative majority looks poised to shove the law rightward, but one, in particular…

Why truth and science are essential to morality — Anyone who’s ever taken an introduction to philosophy class has heard about the naturalistic fallacy. That’s the idea that you can’t just say something is right or good simply because it’s natural. Sometimes the idea is referred to as Hume’s Guillotine, after the Scottish philosopher David Hume, who argued that…

Woke Twitter is taking a useful concept and making it meaningless — Over the weekend, model and influencer Hailey Bieber incurred the wrath of the woke Twitterati over a TikTok video that simply shows her filming herself at the mirror, with the caption “ready for all things fall including brownie glazed lips.” Her offense is having “appropriated” a technique — long used…

If you’re not doing these simple things yet, you need to start now — I joined Medium back in 2019. For the first two and a half years, I didn’t write a whole lot, and I didn’t see much return on what little time I invested in it. …

Think of it as a kind of insurance against economic shocks — Most arguments for progressive income taxation take one of three forms. First, people at the higher end of the income scale actually benefit a lot, if indirectly, from government spending. Things like infrastructure, defense, and public health and safety all allow our markets to operate more smoothly to the benefit…

What bugs me about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. — I get that the MCU is all about entertainment. It’s action and adventure on the big screen, so it’s better if you just buckle up and enjoy the ride without asking too many questions. …

There’s a difference between lying and saying something untrue — There’s a meme circulating on Facebook that says: If Pinnochio’s nose grows whenever he pronounces a false statement, it would make a marvelous tool for science, and Pinnochio could test any hypothesis easily and instantly. Now, this claim is itself an interesting philosophical conjecture. It also happens to be false…

Today’s conservatism is all aesthetic and no substance — Just today, I found the following three headlines in the New York Times: “Trump Support Remains Unmoved by Investigations, Poll Finds” “Herschel Walker’s Company Said It Donated Profits. But Evidence Is Scant” “A Trump-backed House candidate in Ohio promotes himself as an Afghanistan veteran. The Air Force has no record of it.” Reading over these articles, it’s clear that the individuals in question have behaved either unethically or irresponsibly, or both. …

Shipping migrants to liberal cities is probably illegal, and definitely bad politics — Most first-year law students know the case Coblyn v. Kennedy’s, Inc. The plaintiff was a seventy-year-old man who had been shopping at Kennedy’s Department Store. He had taken off his ascot to try on a sportscoat, which he subsequently purchased. He put the ascot in his pocket. But on his…