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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:
- Dennis Prager v Cedars-Sinai Lawsuit
- Dennis Prager Through Randall Collins: Interaction Ritual Chains
- What is a ‘Received Idea’?
- Jordan Bardella: The Manufacture of Normality
- Everyone Became Television: Bourdieu’s Warning and the 2026 Iran War
- Marine Le Pen
- The Coalition-Proximity Rule
- Nigel Farage
- Bernard Haykel: A Life Between the Text and the Gun
- Walker Connor (1926-2017)
- Benedict Anderson and the Nation as Imagination
- Anthony D. Smith: The Student Who Kept the Question and Rejected the Answer
- Ernest Gellner
- Eric Kaufmann: The Man Who Made the Majority Visible
- Dominic Cummings: A Biography
- Steve Lopez: The Last City Columnist
- California Historian Kevin Starr
- Stephen Kotkin: A Life in Power
- William T. Vollmann: An American Life in Excess
- Rod Dreher: A Life in Exile
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: Epistemics
The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility
Hugo Mercier opens Not Born Yesterday with a claim that runs against a long current in Western thought. Humans did not evolve as credulous dupes. We evolved as wary judges of what we hear. Mercier calls the faculty open vigilance. … Continue reading
Posted in Epistemics, Hugo Mercier
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Covenant Against Empire: The Project of Yoram Hazony
Part Two Yoram Reuben Hazony (b. 1964) belongs to a small group of contemporary thinkers who build not only books but movements. He writes philosophy, founds institutes, recruits donors, organizes conferences, and places himself at the center of a global … Continue reading
Posted in Amy Wax, Benjamin Netanyahu, Carl Schmitt, Epistemics, Leo Strauss, Nathan Cofnas, Nick Fuentes, Orit Arfa, Steve Sailer, Tucker Carlson, Yoram Hazony
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The Reconstructive Mind: An Intellectual Biography of Dan Sperber
Dan Sperber (b. 1942) was born in Cagnes-sur-Mer on the French Riviera. His father, the Austrian-French novelist Manès Sperber (1905-1984), broke from the Communist Party in the 1930s and wrote about ideological capture and political faith. His parents, both non-religious … Continue reading
Posted in Epistemics
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The Experts Are Back in Charge. Should We Trust Them?
Philosopher Dan Williams makes a strong case for AI as a technocratising force, but his argument rests on an assumption that Stephen Turner’s epistemic coercion framework immediately destabilizes: that expert consensus is a reasonable proxy for truth, and that nudging … Continue reading
Posted in AI, Epistemics
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Convenient Beliefs
Convenient beliefs are not just easy beliefs. They are the beliefs that keep you inside the coalitions that sustain your life. Stephen Turner’s observation that going beyond what is convenient to believe is mostly unprofitable sounds mild. It is not. … Continue reading
Posted in Epistemics, Stephen Turner
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Stephen Turner’s Views on Epistemic Coercion: Inherent Struggles, Digital Amplification, and the Politics of Knowledge
Stephen Turner is usually read as a critic of censorship. That is too small. What he is actually doing is stripping away one of the central fictions of modern intellectual life: the idea that coercion is an intrusion into knowledge … Continue reading
Posted in Censorship, Epistemics
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The Coalition Filter: How Admissible Reality Gets Made in 2026
Every expert claim passes through a filter before it reaches public recognition as legitimate knowledge. The filter is not logic, evidence, or even peer review in any pure sense. It is a coalition: a loosely organized but functionally coherent assembly … Continue reading
Posted in Epistemics, Expertise
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The Power Wars
82nd Airborne Division Aborigine Yirrkala Tribe Academia Careers Bias Academic Podcasts ADL AI Aish HaTorah Alexander Technique More Amazon America More American Bar Association American Education Outcomes Authority American Fiction American Medical Association American Legal Elites Fight For Status During … Continue reading
Posted in Elites, Epistemics, Expertise, Journalism, Status
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The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle to Define Reality in America
Actors who compete to define reality in America do not present themselves as competing for power. They present themselves as defending truth, protecting the vulnerable, restoring common sense, or preserving science. This is the central insight of David Pinsof’s Alliance … Continue reading
Posted in America, Epistemics
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The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle for Elite Attention in the Iran War
The Iran war is not just a military conflict. It is a competition for attention among high-status actors. Journalists, think tanks, politicians, academics, and influencers are not merely analyzing events. They are competing to define what the war means, and … Continue reading
Posted in Elites, Epistemics, Expertise, Iran
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