Everything, in order.

Jul 21 The Surveillance Is the Product The Names They Chose Try to do something simple online — sign up for a game, join a community, use a new service — and what should take thirty seconds becomes an involuntary tour o… 5 min Jul 21 The Case for Consuming Less The Fire Is Not on the Sidewalk We knew about climate change in the 1970s. By the late 1990s, the basic physics — the greenhouse effect, the human contribution, the trajectory of s… 5 min Jun 21 The Gay Rights Movement's Overreach What the Movement Built, and What It Is Tearing Down The gay rights movement began with a demand that was ethically unassailable: equal treatment under the law regardless of sexual… 5 min Jun 19 A Crime Without a Victim The Prohibition We Refuse to See The United States tried alcohol prohibition for thirteen years. Consumption did fall — but at a cost so catastrophic and so disproportionate to the… 5 min Jun 18 When Consent Becomes Legally Irrelevant The Law That Solves Nothing Denmark is considering making it a criminal offence for a taxi driver to have sex with a customer. The proposal emerged after a small number of reported… 5 min Jun 18 The Least-Bad Arrangement The Sacred Cow Democracy licenses state coercion through electoral aggregation — through pluralities, slim majorities, low-turnout elections, and coalition deals struck behind clos… 6 min Jun 18 Dumping Toxins into the Psychological Environment The Loudest Voice in the Room Advertising, stripped of its euphemisms, is the practice of paying to alter someone's behaviour without their informed consent. The mechanisms are wel… 5 min May 28 The Machine That Listens We built tools that finish our sentences. The harder question is what happens to the thoughts we no longer have to finish ourselves. 7 min