State-imposed lockdowns in California and other “blue” states have accelerated the already sizeable exodus of businesses and residents from their states. Texas, where I live and teach, has been among the main beneficiaries. Each year since 2015, 100,000 more Californians have…
What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley By Adrian Daub (FSG Originals, 160 pages, $13.50) Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron’s iconoclastic 1995 essay “The Californian Ideology” was the first stab at an intellectual history…
Epic Games, the creator of the immensely popular video game Fortnite, launched an antitrust challenge against Apple and Google last week that has rapidly escalated into an all-in corporate clash that could spell catastrophe for the losing side. If Epic…
American politics are nasty and often counterproductive because we have tried to solve too many problems politically, through government programs, rather than socially, through civil society. We have substituted bureaucracies for individual and community initiatives. Historically, America was built by…
In 1993’s Falling Down, Michael Douglas plays a Department of Defense engineer who rampages across Los Angeles after he’s laid off. When a cop finally catches him, he stammers, “I’m the bad guy? How did that happen? I did everything…
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley continued his crusade against tech giants on Tuesday, introducing a bill to Congress that would force social media companies to mitigate the risks of “psychological exploitation” associated with their services. In a tweet accompanying his announcement,…
Sacramento I’ve always had mixed feelings about conservatives’ long-running disdain for San Francisco. They’re spot on about the city’s crazy progressive politics, extreme libertine attitudes (e.g., debating whether naked people should allowed in public places), and absurd regulatory and tax…
In 2008’s iconic superhero film The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger’s Joker barks at Christian Bale’s Batman: Don’t talk like one of [the cops]; you’re not! Even if you’d like to be. To them, you’re just a freak, like me. They…
Social media giants like Twitter and Facebook that used to brag about promoting free speech now say they’re taking on a new role — the speech police. Twitter is suspending as many as a million accounts a day, with 70 million…