Offering semi-regular, occasionally coherent commentary about social and political matters.
The perspective is unabashedly, uncompromisingly, unapologetically, and unstrategically leftist.
The mode of discourse will usually be irony-laden sarcasm mixed with outraged polemics. Sorry.
Posts
(when I get around to them)
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The Indispensable Nation and the Vulgar Accent of Possession
In 1998 Madeleine Albright called America the indispensable nation. A generation later, Trump says the strong take what they can keep. The accent shifted from mission to possession — from flattering obligation to naked entitlement — but the claim underneath survived intact. We are different. Therefore we decide what is permitted.
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AI and the Logic of Capitalism, Pt. 2: Interrupting the Logic
If capitalism makes its imperatives feel like natural facts, where does resistance enter? Coxon’s resignation from Anthropic and the 2019 collective staff resignation at Deadspin show that while capitalism’s logic makes refusal costly, it cannot make refusal impossible. What is enforced can be resisted.
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The Mirror of the Machine: AI and the Logic of Capitalism
Jacob Coxon’s recent startling resignation from Anthropic warns of a race toward self-improving superintelligence. But the danger he describes—hacking anything, revolutionizing any field, acquiring real power and resources—is capitalism’s own logic. What terrifies us about AI may actually be what we already live under.
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Of MMT, Class Struggle, and the Fate of Democracy
MMT showed money isn’t the real constraint. But without legible, contestable metrics for productive capacity, democratic deliberation is impossible. We cannot debate tradeoffs we cannot see. Replacing bond-market vetoes with expert vetoes solves nothing. Democratizing money is incomplete until we democratize capacity—and the metrics by which we govern it.