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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:
- Jim Goad (1961-2026)
- Moira Greyland
- Robert Oscar Lopez: The Inconvenient Witness
- Two Ledgers: Decoding the Gurus and the Price of Talk
- The Pervert’s Progress: Costin Vlad Alamariu and the Making of Bronze Age Pervert
- Curtis Yarvin: A Life Against Democracy
- Mark Helprin: A Life Against the Current
- Mark Brandt: The Man Who Asked Who Else Is Prejudiced
- John T. Jost: The Psychologist of Acquiescence
- Strange Bedfellows in the Academy: Alliance Theory and the Straussian Schism
- Tournier on Desmond Ford
- The Fence and the Blessing: How Jews Have Thought About Gentiles
- Tournier on Luke Ford
- Tournier on The Nostradamus Kid
- An Alliance Theory of Antisemitism
- Tournier on Cinema Paradiso and Desmond Ford
- The Self-Hating Jew
- The Alliance Theory in the Academy
- The Borrowed Robe: How Antisemitism Dresses in Each Age’s Virtue
- A Place For You
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: Expertise
The Outside Auditor: Steven Brill and the Engineering of Elite Transparency
Steven Brill (b. 1950) belongs to a generation of entrepreneurs who treated reporting as an instrument for restructuring elite systems rather than as a craft of observation alone. Across five decades he moved among media, law, technology, public policy, and … Continue reading
Posted in Elites, Expertise, Journalism, Law
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Meta-Expertise and the Accountability Collapse: Columbia, the IMF, and 9/11
Stephen Turner’s two case studies, “Expertise and Political Responsibility: The Columbia Shuttle Catastrophe” in The Politics of Expertise (Routledge 2014) and “Expertise and Complex Organizations” in The Oxford Handbook of Expertise and Democratic Politics edited by Gil Eyal and Thomas … Continue reading
Posted in Expertise, Stephen Turner
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Ten Convenient Beliefs For Leaders At The Counsel On Foreign Relations
Stephen Turner’s convenient beliefs are operating at full institutional speed in the Council on Foreign Relations’ New York ballroom, Washington offices, Foreign Affairs editorial meetings, and the private briefing rooms right now. With the U.S.-Israeli campaign in its second month, … Continue reading
Which Experts Feel The Most Insecure Now?
Groups whose authority rests on institutional trust that has visibly eroded since 2020 feel the most insecure right now. Public health officials sit at the top of this list. The CDC and FDA’s credibility losses during COVID, the mask guidance … Continue reading
Posted in Expertise
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Stephen Turner on Elite Expert Efforts to Curate the Online World
For most of the twentieth century, elite institutions did not need to hide dissent. They could afford to ignore it. The New York Times, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Brookings Institution derived their authority from prestige, access, and … Continue reading
Posted in Censorship, Elites, Expertise, Stephen Turner
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AI and its Enemies
In his 2013 paper, The blogosphere and its enemies: the case of oophorectomy, Stephen Turner noted: The blogosphere is loathed and feared by the press, expert-opinion makers, and representatives of authority generally. Part of this is based on a social … Continue reading
Posted in Blogging, Expertise, Stephen Turner
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The System Still Counts
The Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center (PTMC) does not exist, but it does a great deal of cultural work. The Pitt, Max’s real-time emergency medicine drama, unfolds across a single fifteen-hour shift, one episode per hour, and its formal commitment to … Continue reading
Robert Pape, Jacob Siegel, Edward Fishman & The Pantomime Of Profundity
University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape, Tablet magazine essayist Jacob Siegel, and Chokepoints author Edward Fishman do not compete for authority by saying they want status. They compete by invoking the languages of empirical rigor, regime-level historical theory, and … Continue reading
Posted in Elites, Expertise, Jacob Siegel, Robert Pape
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The Salivation Economy
Deans of public health, senators, tort lawyers, and foundation heads do not compete for authority by admitting they want power. They compete by invoking languages of child safety, evidence-based governance, and protecting the vulnerable. These are not descriptions of what … Continue reading
Posted in Expertise
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Genre Errors: Why the Wrong Rulebook Ruins Everything
Football players follow the rules of football. This is not a profound observation on a pitch. Everyone there already knows it. But move from the field to culture, politics, and media, and the obvious evaporates. We judge people by the … Continue reading