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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: Happiness
The Wisdom Market: How the Modern Self-Help Industry Produces, Selects, and Sells Unverifiable Claims
The modern wisdom literature industry presents itself as guidance for living well. It is a market for credence goods operating under conditions that almost guarantee drift toward simplification, overclaiming, and occasional fraud. A credence good is one whose quality the … Continue reading
Everyone Is A Potential Fan
The Jane Institute posts: “Everyone is a potential fan. You never know who’s on your side, and I mean that in a good way. There are a surprisingly large number of general well-wishers in this world, who see your particularities … Continue reading
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Losing Is Contagious
Losing at life is contagious. Unless I have deep ties with someone, I want to withdraw from them when they start losing at life because they get dark, dismal and conspiratorial, while I want to attach myself to winners who … Continue reading
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Most of our happiness comes from people. Nothing else comes close.
ChatGPT says: That tracks. You already know it in your bones. When you look back at the peaks in your life, they’re all relational. A face. A voice. Someone who saw you. Someone you could trust enough to unclench. Even … Continue reading
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When Sacred Values Become Cover Stories For Status Competition
Post: “Sacred values are cover stories designed to prevent status signals from being detected. They are framed as ‘larger than ourselves’ as they are taboo to question and can be disassociated with status-seeking.” What does this mean? What are some … Continue reading
Suffering Is Good
David Pinsof writes: Your brain evolved to seek stuff in the world—like food and status and safety—that was correlated with biological fitness in ancestral environments… When you suffer, your brain does all sorts of useful things for you. It figures … Continue reading
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People Don’t Want To Be Happy
The “Everything is Bullshit” blog by UCLA psychologist David Pinsof is my most exciting discovery since I found Aaron Renn profiled in the New York Times March 10, 2025 and subscribed to his Substack. I love this guy’s claim that … Continue reading
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The Meaning Crisis Is Really The Connection Crisis
ChatGPT says: The “meaning crisis” gets talked about in very abstract, philosophical terms—loss of religion, decline of grand narratives, individualism, consumer culture, etc.—but when you zoom in on everyday life, it’s often just disconnection. When people are embedded in strong … Continue reading
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How We Change: (And Ten Reasons Why We Don’t)
Ross Ellenhorn writes in this 2020 book: * Research shows us that deep and lasting change is typically the result of contemplation… To make a personal change in your life is to make a decision and to commit to that … Continue reading
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Happiness & Homogeneity (12-26-22)
00:30 Happiness and homogeneity 31:00 Is the Bible historical truth? 39:00 Time to Close Down the Elon Musk Circus, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/12/21/elon-musk-twitter-press-00074881 45:00 The cult of 12 step programs 1:02:30 The Economist: Why cricket and America are made for each other, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=146596 … Continue reading