Kind: Reads

Not with a bang. But with a shrug.

Two Hatreds Empower Anti-Semitism on the Right by David French

When a movement loses its moral voice and its moral will

Right-wing talkers love slapping their faces on anti-“woke” alternatives to big companies, but in the case of PureTalk it’s actually no alternative at all.

Christian Humanism by Beca Bruder

An invitation to a truer story.

Cities with progressive prosecutors may not exactly resemble the dystopian landscapes you’ve heard so much about.

Zero cheers for Kanye West and Vladimir Putin

Setting the record straight.

An October 2022 tweet from lawmaker Rep. Mike Johnson mentioned a proposed Republican bill, the "Stop the Sexualization of Children Act."

My Pregnancy vs. the State of Texas by The Meteor

Eighteen weeks into her pregnancy, Amanda Zurawski felt something “off”—and learned from doctors that her child could not survive. Miscarriage was inevitable—”but what happened next was not,” she writes. Under Texas’s abortion ban, doctors could not provide her with care, starting a medical disaster that ended with her in the ICU. Now Amanda and her husband Josh are speaking out: “This will happen to many women,” she writes, “if we do not fight back.”

Once a “rising star” inside the Democratic Party, Tulsi Gabbard’s star has since fallen. Republicans, in all their wisdom, have decided to pick it up, dust it off, and follow it into a cul-de-sac. “I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party,” Gabbard revealed last week. She said ...

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse Has Really Bad Ideas About Section 230 by Mike Masnick

Over the summer I got a copy of the new book from Lee Bollinger and Geoffrey Stone, two formerly staunch 1st Amendment supporters who have apparently decided to go back on their earlier views, with a collection of essays by a variety of authors about “social media, freedom of speech, and the future of our […]

Tornado Cash is a deathless artificial being, animated by magical words to circumvent the law.

The chilling effects of the Treasury Department’s unprecedented sanctions against code itself are being felt well beyond the cryptocurrency community, threatening the entire open source software ecosystem, and raising existential questions for all privacy-promoting technologies.

The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)'s placement of “Tornado Cash” as an entity on the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) sanction list raises important questions that are being discussed around the world. OFAC explained its sanction by saying “Tornado Cash (Tornado) is a virtual...

Stop Projecting America’s Democratic Decline Onto the World by Allison Meakem

Washington’s institutions are faring far worse than those of its peers.

Religion doesn’t flourish when it is compulsory. Look to Iran for an example.

Back in August 20 people were arrested in Florida as part of a sting operation on "voter fraud" heavily publicized by Gov. DeSantis. Each person had a felony conviction and voted, but I wrote about how each person was specifically told by election authorities that they were legally able to vote. The confusion stems from how felony voter right restoration was implemented in Florida, where the state insisted that everyone had to pay all outstanding fines while at the same time

The journalists behind a controversial series of stories tell us they haven't been hoaxed. We're not so sure

I regret to inform you that this newsletter may make you fat. The Wapo reports that things like inflation, pandemics, wars, and coups “have caused stress levels in the United States to surge to new highs,” and that for many of you, “that stress is showing up on the scale.” I won’t go into the “many

It’s sunday evening; there’s a lot to be said for being a stay-at-home-dad, and honestly I actually like having stuff like meal-prep and laundry to do, after 35+ years of “All Unix Network Security, All The Time” living. But I don’t like having to write this post. Not least I need to be br...