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"Luke Ford reports all of the 'juicy' quotes, and has been doing it for years." (Marc B. Shapiro)
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff) LATEST POSTS:
- What Might Survival Cost For Israel & Jews?
- If Mearsheimer Is Right
- Forty Thousand
- Vox Day
- Page 261
- The Oven
- Table Six
- For Money
- Live Questions in Torah
- Another Exciting Scold About AI From A University Professor!
- Sociologist Philip N. Cohen
- Herb K – Recovery Teacher
- Live Questions in Philosophy
- The List Problem
- Fred Luskin: Forgive for Good
- James C. Weidmann and the Making of Chateau Heartiste
- If the Populists Gain Power, Who Will be Their Favorite Economists?
- Live Questions in Psychology
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- The Gap
BEST POSTS:
- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
* Centering Marginalized Voices (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
* San Francisco and Los Angeles as Rival Models of Urban Access (5-27-26)
* Social Cliques in New York, 2026 (5-25-26)
* Social Cliques in San Francisco, 2026 (5-25-26)
* The Rival Courts of Washington (5-25-26)
* The City of Private Rooms (5-25-26)
Category Archives: America
My Top Ten Sacralized News Events In 2026
The following list identifies ten sacralized news events in 2026 America and it is inspired by Stephen Turner’s work on expertise, David Pinsof’s evolutionary psychology analysis, and Jeffrey Alexander’s analysis of Watergate as democratic ritual. These events moved beyond the … Continue reading
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NYT: Trump’s Immigration Policy Is 100 Years Old – The White House seems to be mining the Coolidge era for inspiration. But America is not the country it was in 1924.
The New York Times reports: They are channeling an immigration regime instituted in 1924, when strict racial quotas — driven by fears of foreigners and a rise in eugenic thinking — led to a bottoming-out of foreign-born Americans that lasted … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory, America, Immigration
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Decoding America’s Moral Landscape
Gemini says: Alliance Theory suggests humans treat moral disagreements as loyalty tests rather than searches for objective facts. People signal their belonging to a coalition by adopting the group’s moral stance. This mechanism turns public debate into a series of … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, America, Epistemics
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The Blob vs Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner
It’s hilarious watching these two New York real estate guys doing major American diplomacy around the world. There’s got to a comedy film in here. It’s also hilarious watching the foreign policy establishment trash them without any acknowledgment of what … Continue reading
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Ten Quietest Figures Doing The Most Consequential Work
Gemini says: In Alliance Theory, the “structural ghosts” are the individuals who manage the plumbing of power. They are the directors of cost assessment, the chief program officers, and the deputy-level officials who stay in place as political administrations cycle … Continue reading
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America’s Top Ten Taboo Zones
Gemini says: In the architecture of Alliance Theory, curiosity is a corrosive force. It threatens the structural integrity of a coalition by probing the “blank spaces” where power operates. If an alliance depends on a specific narrative to maintain its … Continue reading
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‘Once a coalition confuses spectacle for power, the fire is already lit.’
I love this insight from ChatGPT: “Once a coalition confuses spectacle for power, the fire is already lit.” That explains the slew of dumpster fires on the far right. Gemini says: The collapse of the Alt-Right illustrates how spectacle functions … Continue reading
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Decoding Stephen Miller
ChatGPT says: Alliance Theory explains Stephen Miller as a perfect coalition enforcer who is now flirting with coalition rupture. Why he succeeds. Miller solves Trump’s core alliance problem. Trump’s base wants boundary enforcement more than policy elegance. Immigration is the … Continue reading
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Hatred Scales Fast
David Pinsof notes: “Hatred is designed to detect negative correlations between our biological fitness and someone else’s.” According to the The Neutralization Theory of Hatred: Hatred is triggered by cues that an individual’s existence causes fitness decrements for the hater. … Continue reading
Posted in America, Anti-Semitism, Blacks, Honor, India, Los Angeles
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When Status Games Collapse
David Pinsof writes: When a status game collapses, the players experience something like an inversion of the social hierarchy. The higher one’s rank, the more people one must have stepped on to acquire it. The more time and energy one … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory, America, Status
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