The Curious Engineer

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Freddie deBoer

freddiedeboer.substack.com

cool but rude. Click to read Freddie deBoer, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

Society / politics / economyEssays / personal

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1,410 from 29 Mar 2017 to 29 Oct 2026
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2026 115

  1. “You Can See Everything” is Critic Bait of the Most Sophisticated Variety
  2. Pub Week: Fucked Up People Are Fucked Up
  3. Four Direct, Reasonable, and Important AI Questions (Which the AI People Will Ignore)
  4. Neuromancer, Chapters 23-24: The Convergence of the Twain
  5. How Do You Reckon?
  6. Neuromancer, Chapters 21-22: Neuromancer, In the Digital Flesh
  7. Two Grandfathers
  8. AUDIO FIXED: Optimistic-Ish Thoughts About the Future
  9. Subscriber Writing, ~September 2026
  10. Neuromancer, Chapters 19–20: Feelings Made of Zeros and Ones
  11. The Politics of Fantasy and Entitlement Are Driving Everyone Insane
  12. All In Your Head: You Be My People Power
  13. The 50-Year Hangover
  14. Call for Subscriber Writing, Septemberish 2026
  15. No School Will Decide Najya Hannah-Jones’s Future or Fate
  16. Neuromancer, Chapters 16-18: Bon Voyage, Armitage
  17. Sooner or Later, You’re Going to Have to Make an Actual Argument
  18. Neuromancer, Chapters 13-15: Immortal No More
  19. Nobody Owns Disability
  20. Germany Proves Again that Censorship Doesn’t Work
  21. Talking FOOTBALL with Neil Paine
  22. Neuromancer, Chapters 10-12: A Doll’s House
  23. When a Mentally Ill Person Kills, How Much Confinement is Long Enough?
  24. We Can’t Help Hurting People by Abandoning Basic Epidemiological Rigor
  25. Neuromancer Book Club, Chapters 7-9: The City of Dub
  26. Sorry to Bother You
  27. I Think LLMs Will Prove to Be Consequential Enterprise Software
  28. Neuromancer Book Club, Chapters 4–6
  29. The Edu-Optimists, Part II: CREDO, the Pro-Charter Research Shop That Won’t Take No Effect for an Answer
  30. Neuromancer Book Club, Chapters 1, 2, 3 - Welcome to Chiba City
  31. Perhaps "Woke 1.0" is an Admission of Past Mistakes and a Commitment to Doing Better
  32. My Dog Died During Lockdown
  33. Neuromancer Book Club: Before We Jack In
  34. Disability is the Current Meta
  35. "I'm Not the Kind of Person Who Criticizes That Sort of Thing"
  36. How to Produce a Pangram 4 False Positive
  37. All In Your Head Excerpt: Psychiatry and The Isolated Demand for Rigor
  38. The Project of Software is Complete
  39. Please, Don't Screw Up Neuromancer (Which Will Be the Subject of Our Next Book Club!)
  40. Imposing Modern Progressive Morality On The Odyssey... and On Christopher Nolan
  41. I Wouldn't Say Pangram is Broken, But I Would Say That It's Brittle
  42. Yes, David Ellison's Merger is Bad, But a Netflix Takeover of Warner Bros Isn't Much Better
  43. The Bear Fell a Little Too Deeply In Love with Itself
  44. Subscriber Writing, July 2026
  45. Let's Avoid the Language-Policing Fingertrap In the Future, OK?
  46. Do the YIMBYs Want to Do Politics or Not?
  47. Call for Subscriber Writing, July 2026
  48. Fat Acceptance : Ozempic :: Heteropessimism : The Right Guy
  49. Recovered Memories Aren't Real
  50. Toy Story 2 is the Best Toy Story Because It's Actually For Children
  51. Google Made a Sad Boomer Mark Out of Me and There's Nothing I Can Do About It
  52. Like All Good Things, Sports Are Owned by the Rich Now
  53. The Watch's Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald in... True Detective Season One
  54. There's No Such Thing as "The Trades"
  55. Of Course This is a Coordinated Ratfucking of Graham Platner
  56. You Can and Should Blame Young People When They Act Like Lazy Cheaters, Actually
  57. LLMs Were Mostly (But Not Entirely) Useless at Extra-Textual Tasks Involved in the Composition of My Next Novel
  58. Why Pose Thought Experiments About Fake Versions of History?
  59. The Edu-Optimists, Part I: Chetty's Just-So Stories
  60. LLMs and the Library Card Fallacy
  61. One More Time: The Average American K-12 Student is Doing Fine Relative to the International Baseline
  62. You Can't Defend a Policy By Getting Angry at the Suggestion That It's Benefitted People
  63. Subscriber Writing, May 2026
  64. The Vicious, Potentially Fatal Anti-Public School Propaganda Cycle
  65. It's Time For Some People to Let Me Go
  66. Call for Subscriber Writing, May 2026
  67. Please Stop Making Reductive Claims About Economic Hardship and Mental Health
  68. The Consensus Draft Board Debate is Sports Culture War at Its Worst
  69. On Shoplifting as Radical Praxis
  70. We Are (Still) Living in the Long Boring
  71. The School Reformer "Accountability Era" Narrative Simply Does Not Add Up
  72. Why People Hate Lena Dunham
  73. What is Left of "Believe Women"?
  74. Young Adult Novels, Starring Various Pundits, That I Made Up
  75. Real Feelings for Fake Beauty
  76. Perhaps There Are Options Other Than "Toxic Confidence" and Insecurity-as-Identity
  77. We Have to Hold the Line Against the Cruel Pseudoscience of Facilitated Communication
  78. Stephen Policoff's "A Ribbon For Your Hair"
  79. Subscriber Writing, March 2026
  80. When People Say They Want to Send Their Kid to a Good School, They Usually Mean Schools Without "Bad Kids"
  81. Stat Inflation is Bigger Than Any of the NBA's (Many) Other Problems
  82. Great Writers "Tell" All the Time
  83. Overlearning
  84. There Are Many Different Ways to Commodify Black Culture
  85. What People Want From Our Schools Has Never Been Accomplished, Anywhere, Ever
  86. Call For Subscriber Writing, March 2026
  87. The NFL Media is Structurally Anti-Player
  88. The Incel's Veto and Other Observations
  89. Twice-Annual Subscription Drive
  90. Hollywood Franchise Reboots Are Full of Overpowering, Stultifying Reverence
  91. If the Las Vegas Raiders Don't Trade Down From the First Overall Pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, They'll Regret It
  92. This Tourette's Controversy is What You Get When Disability Stops Being a Medical Reality and Becomes a Social Culture
  93. What Eileen Gu Has Done is Totally Ordinary, Usually Invites Zero Controversy, and Has Routinely Benefitted the United States
  94. Cozy Girl Lifestyle is a Rational Response to a Winner-Take-All Culture
  95. No, That's Not What "the Research" Says About Exam Schools
  96. The Luol Deng Law
  97. I'm Offering Scott Alexander a Wager About AI's Effects Over the Next Three Years
  98. Live with Freddie deBoer
  99. The Greatest Tension Within 21st Century Progressivism Remains Unresolved
  100. Please Join Me, Michael Angelakos, and Jaime Lowe as We Talk Being Bipolar Out Loud on Substack Live
  101. Two Out of Two Pretentious Born-Rich Ivy League Doctors Agree: Psychiatry is Over!
  102. When Demand for Victims Outruns Supply
  103. Announcing My Next Book, All in Your Head: Illness as Identity, Trauma as Fashion, and the Desire to Be Disordered
  104. The Machine God's Existence Would Insist Upon Itself, Wouldn't It?
  105. Inherent Vice is PT Anderson's Best Film
  106. It's "Mental Illness Doesn't Do That" Season Once Again
  107. If You Want Different Outcomes, You Have to Do Different Things
  108. The Buffalo Bills Are a Mess, But Sean McDermott's Firing Was Totally Justifiable
  109. Oversocialization, the Shackles of the Millennial Generation
  110. Perhaps People Are Cynical About Success in the Creative Arts for a Reason
  111. If You Want Freedom and Democracy For Iranian People and All Peoples, You Must Start By Admitting What America Is and Does
  112. All Kidding Aside, I Find the Creative Arc of Stranger Things to Be Quite Sad
  113. "Defund the Police" Failed Because We Have No History
  114. 2026 Predictions
  115. LLM Hallucinations Are Still Absolutely Nuts

2025 148

  1. you go first
  2. Awards Season Rivals Sinners and One Battle Another Are Both Very Good, Very Fun, and Very Overrated
  3. God Bless Us, Everyone
  4. Editing is Only Good If the Editing is Good and a Lot of Editing is Not Good
  5. The Argument That Lebron is the GOAT Is Running Out of Time
  6. For Me, Postpartum Testosterone Decline Has Been Very Real
  7. Subscriber Writing, December 2025
  8. Carl Wilson Should Give Himself More Credit
  9. Both Trump's 2024 Coalition and Its Subsequent Erosion Prove the Same Point: Voters of Color Are Not a Monolith
  10. Hating Stranger Things During the Death Rattle of Criticism
  11. Call for Subscriber Writing, December 2025
  12. The New York Times Attempts to Bully Elderly People Into the Disability-as-an-Identity Worldview
  13. Heritability as Stalking Horse for Mutability
  14. Lots to Be Thankful For
  15. I Miss When Homoeroticism Was Erotic
  16. Was the United States Once a Global Leader in Educational Metrics? Have We Fallen From Those Lofty Heights? No and No
  17. Fear is the Heart of All Bad Things
  18. Layoffs Cannot Prove the Efficacy of AI
  19. If You Were to Say "White People Have Good Genes," Yes, That Would Be Racist!
  20. I Love It When Older People Dote on My Baby
  21. Things That Don't Work and the Tail Wagging the Dog
  22. Ambitious People
  23. The NFL Media Needs to CALM DOWN
  24. And He Knows Not What It Means
  25. Sometimes Things Get Worse
  26. Genetics-Obsessed Internet Racists Don't Understand Particulate Inheritance
  27. The New York Times (Accidentally) Endorses Facilitated Communication
  28. It's Not the Crime, It's the Coverup
  29. Nobody, It Seems, Wants to Let the Social Justice Era Go
  30. What Does the Research Really Say About the Phonics Advantage?
  31. In "After the Hunt," the Only Thing Left of #MeToo is the Fear of Being Perceived to be On the Wrong Side
  32. Don't Kill Yourself; First, They'll Make Fun of You, Then They'll Forget You
  33. The Force Field
  34. Subscriber Writing, September(ish) 2025
  35. My New Novel, The Mind Reels
  36. There Are No Miracles in Education
  37. Effective Psychiatric Medicine is Quiet, Psychiatry's Critics Are Loud
  38. Call for Subscriber Writing, September 2025
  39. Every Time Apple Fans Have Flip-Flopped About Basic Questions of Technology and Computing
  40. Things Are Really Bad
  41. The Sad, Sad World of Tech Blogging During an Era of Technological Stagnation
  42. I Think Men Are Just Like This
  43. Constituent Parts of a Theory of Spectacular Acts of Public Violence
  44. Plans
  45. Notes on the Heavenly Aeroplane
  46. What Do Ezra Klein and Miranda July Have in Common?
  47. Education Doesn't Work 3.0
  48. Sick People Are Sick
  49. Writing Today: The Literary Feud is a Trap
  50. Preseason Sunday: With Opening Week Here, a Grab Bag of Football Topics, Notions, and Complaints
  51. Self-Driving Cars Are a Great Lens to Think About Progress, Just Maybe Not the Way You Think
  52. Poptimism and Type-of-Guy Anxiety
  53. I Miss When Tryhards Just... Tried Hard
  54. Preseason Sunday: Fantasy Football is Much More Fun When You Accept What You Can't Control
  55. I Didn't Know I Could Feel This Way
  56. Welcome to the Era of Astroturf Fandom
  57. Things That Are Hard
  58. James Baldwin Was Not Your Figurehead
  59. Our Culture is Addicted to Validation
  60. LLM Hallucination Seems Like a Very Big Problem, Not a Mere Speedbump
  61. Perhaps Your Credibility is Somewhat Dimmed by Trying to Panhandle Off of a "Nazi Problem"
  62. Preseason Sunday: I'm Shorting Travis Hunter's Two-Way Ambitions
  63. Why I Need Your Help with My Novel
  64. Trump's Immigration Nightmare Needs to Be Opposed - So Where is the Opposition's Policy?
  65. The Rage of the AI Guy
  66. Writing Today: As Gawker to the 2010s, so The Ringer to the 2020s
  67. The New York Fed's New Involuntary Commitment Paper is Methodologically Shaky as Well as Irresponsible
  68. Joe Rogan is Still Hiding
  69. Preseason Sunday: I'm Afraid That Justin Fields is Not a Very Good Quarterback
  70. The Cool Professor: When Your "Student Centered" Classroom is All About You
  71. Subscriber Writing, July 2025
  72. Why Don't I Ever Write About Trump?
  73. Preseason Sundays: Baker Mayfield is in the Favre Zone
  74. Adulthood in the Zone
  75. I Guess I Don't Care Very Much About Jeffrey Epstein Because I Know How Child Sexual Abuse Usually Works
  76. What Do You Guys Want This Thing to Be?
  77. Nobody Wants to Hear Good News About Psychiatric Medicine
  78. Writing Today: Scouting Reports
  79. Just Don't Be a Pussy
  80. The Bear Goes Full Bing Bong
  81. I Am Begging Sports Media to Stop Misusing Regression to the Mean
  82. Political Messaging is Ambient Now
  83. Writing Today: The Essay, 2010s v 2020
  84. So is Everybody Giving Up On, Like... Doing Things?
  85. When No One Can Take an L, Or the Upside of Enclave Politics
  86. I Hate 28 Days Later for Killing Off Supernatural Zombies
  87. No, I Mean It - AI Maximalists in the Media Should Really, Actually Take the Shitting-in-the-Yard Challenge
  88. Here's a Perfect Example of Why Matt Yglesias Should Debate Me
  89. Prepare for the Era of the Shy NIMBY
  90. No, Actually, James Frey Can Stay Fucked
  91. AI Hype and the Tech Slowdown are Symmetrical
  92. What Were "Tabs"?
  93. The Parable of a Communally-Bought Lot
  94. Adoption is Good
  95. Are Institutions Cool? Kindof!
  96. Random Subscriber Question Roundup
  97. If Publishing's Efforts to Diversify Haven't Done Anything, Why Did You Fight for Them? Why Do You Defend Them Now?
  98. Subscriber Writing, May 2025
  99. If Everyone Has Trauma, Everyone Has Trauma
  100. John Fetterman and "Nothing is Allowed to Just Be Bad" Culture
  101. I Guess Jameis Winston Gets the Grandfather Clause, Too
  102. Apparently Jane Pratt Doesn't Actually Read Books; Does the Staff at New York Magazine?
  103. LeBron James Should Seek the Democratic Party Nomination for President of the United States in 2028
  104. Call for Subscriber Writing, May 2025
  105. If "The Personal is Political," Why Are You All So Fucking Sensitive?
  106. AI Has No Noticer
  107. Private Schools Don't Want an All-Private-School-Voucher Future
  108. Woke & Anti-Woke, A False Dialectic
  109. Why Can't We Be Honest About the Rise of Mental Disorders as Consumer Products?
  110. John Oliver is (Still) Part of the Problem
  111. Abundance, Like School Reform, is a Just-So Story
  112. Unto Us This Day a Child is Born
  113. Integrating Baseball Had Nothing to Do with DEI
  114. Increasing Diversity by Draining Diversity of All Meaning
  115. The New York Times Remains Utterly Dedicated to Telling Only One Story About Mental Illness
  116. One Day, I Briefly Understood
  117. Goliath Stoops to Conquer
  118. I'm Begging You Not to Make Up Your Mind About Complex Medical & Legal Decisions Based on Celebrity Media
  119. Turns Out That People Care More About Job Security and Purpose Than They Care About Great Deals at Walmart
  120. Living in a Maternal Special Care Ward: Anthropological & Ethnographic Notes
  121. Slowly, Imperceptibly, the Hegemony of the Cult of Smart Loosens
  122. "The R-Slur," Inner Circle and Outer
  123. What Do People with Disabilities Need?
  124. Heads Up
  125. Very Weird Ideas About What It Means to Respect Someone's Political Project
  126. Miranda July's Lucrative Fantasies
  127. Announcing The Mind Reels, and Why Only You Can Make It a Success
  128. Subscriber Writing, February 2025
  129. If Paul Krugman Didn't Have Enough Juice at the New York Times, Who Could?
  130. Doing This Again Makes Me Hate Myself and Hate You, But Yes, Something Happened to Liberalism in the 2010s, and Sometimes That Thing is Called "Woke"
  131. Kendrick Lamar: Talented Musician, Provocative Figure, Emperor of the Whites
  132. Call for Subscriber Writing, February 2025
  133. So When Are We Allowed to Ask the Patrick Mahomes Question?
  134. Here's Your Kanye West Cliff Notes
  135. We Have to Take Some Kind of an L on Immigration, For Now
  136. Losing Medicaid, Winning the Grammys
  137. As a Big Fan of Immigration, I Recognize the Utility of Assimilation
  138. I Told You: Chaos is Coming
  139. The Indoor Plumbing Test
  140. After Liberal Cultural Hegemony
  141. Nothing is Ever Lamar Jackson's Fault
  142. Perhaps You Would Be a Little Touchy Too
  143. A Series of "Parodies," If That's the Right Word, of Podcasts on the Ringer Podcast Network
  144. Destruction Grows From Idealist Hearts
  145. Maybe This is Why You Shouldn't Have Published the Andrew Huberman Story
  146. What the Book Section Likes
  147. With January 6th and Trump, the Truth Has Always Been Bad Enough
  148. "Wouldn't It Be Cool If..." Science is a Scourge and We Will Regret It

2024 184

  1. 2024 in Review
  2. For Me, the Lack of Individual Creativity and Shot Creation in the Half Court is the Real Problem with the NBA
  3. Who "Neurodiversity" Left Behind
  4. Subscriber Writing, December 2024
  5. Our Product is Permission
  6. Judith Butler with a Pretty Damn Good Indictment of Identity Politics!
  7. First, Do Not Suck: A Video Presentation on Which Writing Advice to Take (and Which Not To) for Subscribers
  8. Our Healthcare System, a Reign of Terror
  9. Call for Subscriber Writing, December 2024
  10. Being Ghosted by the New York Times
  11. I'll Take the Crypto Industry Seriously When Its Biggest Advocates Stop Saying "What Did You Expect?"
  12. Fighting Discrimination Does Not Entail Defending Shitty Social Behavior
  13. Clintonism Lost in 2000
  14. Not the Right Kind of Provocation
  15. What I'm Thankful For
  16. There Are No Safe Havens
  17. Mailbag Grab Grab
  18. BlueSky, Twitter, Celebrity, and the Is/Ought Distinction
  19. The Endless, Perplexing Controversies Over (How We Talk About) Lamar Jackson
  20. All the Little Unborn Babies
  21. Don't Panic
  22. People with Serious Mental Illness Say Racist and Bigoted Shit All the Time
  23. There is No Ideal Drug Policy
  24. Welp
  25. If the Democrats Want to Win, Someday They'll Need to Give People Something to Vote For
  26. On the Occasion of This Election, Let Me Talk to You About Bill Clinton
  27. Shorter Writing is Not Better Writing: An Argumentative Treatise
  28. Big Mommy is Not Coming to Save Us
  29. Subscriber Writing, October 2024
  30. Who Says Another Google is Coming?
  31. Some Non-Contradictory Statements About Talent, School, and Meritocracy
  32. Everyone Online Sounds Like an Absolute Fucking Poseur Lately
  33. It's Got a Price
  34. Call For Subscriber Writing, October 2024
  35. Affirmative Action, Lost in the Progressive Hall of Mirrors
  36. The Basics: School Reform
  37. They Still Won't Say That They're Sorry
  38. Why Would Someone Want You to "HODL" a Stock They Also Hold?
  39. Away We Go
  40. Luke Skywalker was Never an All-Conquering Badass
  41. Of Course People Make Up Disabilities
  42. When You Know You're Impressive, Just Be Impressive. Please.
  43. Unlike Caroline Calloway, Elizabeth Wurtzel Was Actually a Writer
  44. The Basics: Deference Politics
  45. "brat summer" Will Soon Be Widely Considered a Cringey and Corny Relic Because That's How Culture Works
  46. Fifty(ish) Days Out
  47. To Learn to Live in a Mundane Universe
  48. The NFL Media's Hypocrisy Never Quits
  49. You Have to Be an Absolute Lunatic to Believe That the Trump Assassination Attempt Was an "Op"
  50. Education and Genes Grab Bag
  51. The Temporal Copernican Principle
  52. I Feel Like People Are Plotting to Kill Me Every Minute of Every Day!
  53. You Don't Have to be a Try Guy
  54. Tutoring Undermines the Validity of GPA More Than the Validity of SAT Scores
  55. "Support to Raheem 'Did Not Come with Expectations of Meeting Project Deliverables'"
  56. Liberalism Cannot Produce Outcomes Satisfactory to Liberals
  57. Kamala Harris Isn't Winning This Race Yet
  58. Yes, It's Easy to Defend Social Justice Politics if You Pretend Social Justice Politics Are Just Liberalism
  59. Perhaps Movies Should Make Sense
  60. You Can't Save Addicts by Arresting Their Dealers and Enablers
  61. Do We Really Need More Magic Words?
  62. Clinton & Obama Gave Us Trump
  63. The Wisdom of the Skinned Knee
  64. You Don't Have to Live in New York
  65. You Call That Compassion?
  66. Of Course I Have Sympathy for the MEDICAL DISORDER That Is ADHD
  67. Selfishness & Therapy Culture
  68. Democrats Think Their Candidate is Running for President of Online, Again
  69. I Do Not Need to Defend Myself for Believing That Political Candidates Should Be Chosen Democratically
  70. Celebrity is Not the Only Mask That Eats the Face
  71. Book Club: The Buried Giant, Chapters Sixteen & Seventeen
  72. Open Thread: So Just Literally No Democratic Process From the Democrats
  73. A Few Indisputable Points About Poptimism and Then I Give Up
  74. The NYT Has a 100 Best Books List, plus Alexandra Jacobs Continues to Baffle
  75. The Rolling Stone UVA Hoax at Ten Years Old, A Time Capsule of the 2010s
  76. The Buried Giant: Gawain's Second Reverie & Chapter Fifteen
  77. Violence is Its Own Party
  78. Let's Take a Look at That Rob Henderson NYT Video
  79. Alice Munro is Dead
  80. The Buried Giant: Chapters 11, 12, & 13
  81. Welcome to the Political Era of the Paranoid Delusion
  82. As in So Much in Life, For the Bear, It's All a Matter of Expectations
  83. "Well I Don't Know About This Involuntary Treatment Business!" He Said, Stepping Into the Emotional Safety of a Closed Tab
  84. The Buried Giant: Gawain's First Reverie and Chapter 10
  85. Fuck the Modern NBA
  86. The Kamala Conundrum
  87. Elite Education Journalism: Still Ideology at Its Purest
  88. The Buried Giant, Chapters 7 & 8
  89. Tech Reviewers Write Reviews for Each Other, Not for the Public
  90. I Regret to Inform You That We Will All Grow Old, Infirm, and Unattractive
  91. Boy, Matt Yglesias's Popularist Ideals Sure Seem Arbitrary and Self-Serving!
  92. Subscriber Writing, June 2024
  93. Entitled to the Wrong Things
  94. The Buried Giant: Chapter Five & Six
  95. Many Conspiracy Theories Have in Fact Been Proven True
  96. Perhaps If You're a "Of Course Trans People Can Be Trans, But...." Type, You Should Front the "Of Course" A Little More
  97. Call for Subscriber Writing, June 2024
  98. The Buried Giant: Chapters III and IV
  99. Thermostats Go Up or They Go Down
  100. Twelve of My Favorite Song-y Songs
  101. Book Review Contest Runner Up: Watership Down by Richard Adams
  102. If We Had a Four-Day Workweek, Would You Want the Extra Day Off Tacked Onto the Weekend or Inserted Into the Middle of the Week?
  103. I Think Ibram Kendi is Just... an Academic
  104. The Buried Giant: Chapters One & Two
  105. "The Marginalized Should Just Be Allowed to Break the Rules" is Bigoted and Unworkable
  106. Clutching a Severely Depressed Person's Body Against Yours in Bed to Keep Them From Killing Themselves
  107. "Mad Max is Sidelined in His Own Movie," and Why Patently Wrong Ideas Never Die
  108. Book Club: Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, Introduction
  109. How I (Kind of?) Get It Done
  110. The "Missing Middle" on Israel, Palestine, and the War in Gaza
  111. The Next Book Club Starts Monday, May 27th: Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant
  112. Divvying Up the Pie Between You, Me, & AI
  113. We Closed the Institutions That Housed the Severely Mentally Ill and We Made It Dramatically Harder to Compel Them to Receive Care
  114. It Seems Like "The Reckoning" Has Become Embarrassing
  115. Our Dystopian AI Future Isn't Skynet. It's a "For You" Algorithm Stomping on a Human Face Forever
  116. Disability and Normal, or "Normal"
  117. Progressive Attitudes Towards Sex Are Pretty Damn Incoherent Right Now
  118. The Modern Curse of Overoptimization
  119. We Can't Sacrifice the Miracle of Pain Relief on the Altar of Ending Addiction
  120. Why Doesn't AI Want to Show Me Jesus Washing the Feet of His Disciples?
  121. Two Brain Teasers for the Pod Save America Crowd
  122. Publishing is Designed to Make Most Authors Feel Like Losers Even While the Industry Makes Money
  123. Fat or Thin, We Are Not Meant to Feel Good About Ourselves All the Time
  124. Book Review Contest Runner Up: Patricia Lockwood's No One is Talking About This
  125. The Jonathan Majors Sentence is Exactly What BlackLivesMatter Was Calling For
  126. Shogun Has a Dumbledore Problem
  127. Subscriber Writing, April 2024
  128. What Would Success Look Like in American Education?
  129. Jon Chait Supported Donald Trump in the 2016 Election
  130. Review: Lauren Oyler's "No Judgment"
  131. Call for Subscriber Writing, April 2024
  132. Bring Me Anything But Jokes
  133. Treating Every Meaningless Cultural Issue as a Racial Proxy War Helps No One
  134. Some People Wait a Lifetime for a Moment Like This
  135. The Deepest Bias in Media? Fear of Looking Old
  136. Review: Adelle Waldman's Help Wanted
  137. Mike Tyson, Beloved Rascal, and Other Modern Hypocrisies
  138. The Only Way to Continue to Host Comments Here at All is to Get Ruthless
  139. Palestinian Painted Plates & the Nothing Party
  140. Dreams That Didn't Come True
  141. The Commodification of Queer Culture is Almost Complete
  142. Descriptivism Self-Negates on Multiple Levels
  143. Planet of Person Guys
  144. What (Some) College Administrators Understand That (A Lot of) Wonks Don't
  145. Semaglutide Kind of Life
  146. COVID Still Makes Everybody a Little Bit Crazy
  147. ... No, We Definitely Want to Use Medical Arguments to Defend Trans Children
  148. The ACLU Is Trying to Destroy the Biden NLRB
  149. Book Review Contest Winner: Love in the Time of Incarceration
  150. Screw You Guys, I Root For Muad'Dib
  151. Review: Kyle Chayka's Filterworld
  152. My Forthcoming Novel, and Why I Won't Write a Mental Illness Memoir
  153. The Times
  154. “Think of the Poorest Person You Have Ever Seen, And Ask Whether Your Next Act Will Be of Any Use”
  155. Academia's "Pretendian" Problem Stems From a Few Very Obvious and Basic Realities
  156. One More Time: You Can't Make a Competitive Selection Process "Equitable"
  157. This is Zion
  158. Subscriber Writing, February 2024!
  159. I'm Never One to Yuck Somebody Else's Yum, But True Detective Has Always Been Horseshit
  160. All Things Go, But Nothing Goes Faster Than Sports Glory Goes
  161. To Be Dry and Cutting Your Writing Has to be Good First
  162. Q & Answers
  163. Preemies, Genes, Meritocracy, and the Left
  164. Polyamory is a Luxury of the Affluent, Just Like Everything Else We Have and Do
  165. Review: Freewrite Alpha
  166. Perhaps Taylor Swift Isn't the Defining Political Issue of Our Times
  167. There's Probably Nothing We Can Do About This Awful Deepfake Porn Problem
  168. February Call for Subscriber Writing, Reader Q&A, and the Book Review Contest Winners
  169. The New World Struggles to be Born, The Old World Struggles to Keep Padding Its Resume
  170. Who is the Real Dr. Peter Breggin, "The Conscience of Psychiatry"?
  171. About Marianne Eloise's Response to My Review of Her Memoir, Obsessive Intrusive Magical Thinking
  172. What We've Lost in Music Criticism
  173. Nick Wright and the Shameless Clown Industry
  174. What We Might Mean by "Liberal Bias"
  175. Weird
  176. Gamifying the Self for Status and Profit
  177. How to Quit Substack
  178. Sal Khan, Serial Education Revolutionary
  179. Perhaps Emotional Dependence on Celebrities Has Gone Too Far
  180. No Discourse Has Ever Been More Discourse-y Than Age Gap Discourse
  181. The AI Doomer Scenario Relies on a Key Event That We Have No Reason to Believe Will or Can Actually Happen
  182. What Goes On in the Public Bathrooms Where You're From, Exactly?
  183. I Think You Should Be Kind
  184. These Rules About Platforming Nazis Sure Seem Arbitrary and Incoherent!

2023 230

  1. 2023 Year in Culture
  2. Retrospective 2023: To Sing as a Seagull Should
  3. Every Annoying Letterboxd Behavior
  4. Ants in the Server Racks: 21st-Century Anti-Tech Terrorism in Theory & Practice
  5. December 2023 Programming Notes
  6. Therapeutic Nationalism and Other Opportunistic Decouplings
  7. There Are Many Shades of Regret
  8. Why Does Taylor Swift Want More?
  9. It's Still $5, Plus Final Book Review Contest Reminder
  10. I Assure You, I Am Permitted to Oppose the Existence of Any and All Nation-States
  11. An Ode to "I Hate Myself and I Want to Die"
  12. To Everything There is a Season
  13. Why Don't Self-Interested Arguments Against Helicopter Parenting Deter Parents?
  14. The Effective Altruism Shell Game 2.0
  15. What Purpose Do I Serve in Your Life?
  16. What's Left for Tech?
  17. Gratitude Feels Easy This Thanksgiving
  18. Subscriber Writing, November 2023
  19. Where Are the AI Skepticism Stories?
  20. Ayaan Hirsi Ali Worships the God-Shaped Hole
  21. The Curse as Nathan Fielder's Penance
  22. Ah, Freedom
  23. Hillary Clinton Lost Because She's Deeply Unpopular
  24. We're Still Stuck with "Strong Female Characters" Who Are Smug, Mean, & Reductive
  25. Book Review Contest 2023 and Subscriber Writing for November
  26. Abortion Rights Are a Revealed Preference
  27. What's the Problem with Disability Studies and the "Disability Rights" Movement?
  28. You Can't Just Say "Oh, That Doesn't Matter" About Every Single Political Question
  29. Everyone Can't Do Everything
  30. Can the Liberal Democratic Project Incorporate Israel? Will It Survive If It Can't?
  31. We Broke Hollywood's Finances
  32. Mimetic Collapse, Our Destiny
  33. Here's a Little Rosetta Stone for the TikTok Era of Mental Health
  34. No One Wants Independence
  35. Goliath, Who Aspires to be David
  36. Please Stop Having Your Characters Just State the Themes of Your Show or Movie to the Audience, Thanks
  37. Big Media Freddie Roundup
  38. For Jessica Short, and For David Peterson Too
  39. Why Has Social Justice Yelling Lost Steam?
  40. Weaponized Introspection
  41. The "Is College Worth It?" Conversation Doesn't Mean Much Without a Sense of What Teenagers Will Do Instead
  42. Trauma is Indeed Like a Car Crash
  43. I Don't See How "Player Empowerment" in the NBA is Sustainable
  44. Subscriber Writing, September 2023
  45. I'm Telling You, Save Yourself from the Irony Cult, Save Yourself
  46. I'm Confused by Sam Tanenhaus, But There's Nothing Confusing About Why I Shared Information About My Substack Deal
  47. I'm Looking for More Ghostwriting Work
  48. Review: Chasing the Intact Mind, by Amy Lutz
  49. The Stations of the Meritocrat Cross
  50. Aging White Men, Like Everyone, Are Aware of the Discursive Reality in Which They Live
  51. Editors, I Love You, But Nobody is Pitching the Way That You Say They Should
  52. "Was the Past Better Than Now?" is, Unsurprisingly, Not a Coherent Question
  53. Call for Subscriber Writing, Plus the State of Things Here
  54. No Soft Landings
  55. The Washington Post's Review of My New Book Contains a Direct Factual Error
  56. There Are No Vibe Shifts, Just Endless Change
  57. Why Government Intervention in Healthcare is Necessary (and Inevitable)
  58. No One is Kenough
  59. Digest, 8/27/2023: And a Real Hero
  60. Winner: The Derek Chauvin Defund Challenge
  61. Can There Be a Theory of the Email Job?
  62. Why Can't You and I Get Rich Quick?
  63. Digest, 8/19/2023: An Eternal Flame
  64. Excerpt, How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement: Whatever Happened to 2020?
  65. Does AI Just Suck?
  66. Does Political Message Matter or Not?
  67. "Race vs. Class" is a Tactical Question Masquerading as a Question of Values
  68. Let Me Reiterate the Questions I Asked in My AOC Essay
  69. Butterfly Theory
  70. Marvel Problems, One Project at a Time
  71. Subscriber Writing August 2023
  72. Prologue to an Anti-Therapeutic, Anti-Affirmation Movement
  73. Digest, 8/3/2023: King of Kings
  74. Beware the Man Who Brings a Graph to Show What a Statistic Reveals More Precisely
  75. I Keep Writing the Same Poptimism Piece Because Nothing Ever Changes
  76. Technically July Call of Subscriber Writing
  77. The Internet is Broken and Will Never Be Fixed
  78. Subscriber Open Thread, 7/30/2023
  79. Digest, 7/29/2023: And Miles to Go Before I Pee
  80. Let Me Repeat Myself: The SAT's Predictive Power for College Grades is Systematically Underestimated Because of Range Restriction
  81. My Official Response to Critics of My New York Magazine AOC Essay
  82. What Would a Functioning System of Equal Opportunity Look Like for the Losers?
  83. The Paradox of Vermont
  84. Digest, 7/23/2023: Eating Snowflakes with Plastic Forks
  85. Beloved: End of Book
  86. You Can't Understand Physics Without Understanding Its Math and I'm Certainly Too Dumb to Understand the Math
  87. Like All Economic Forces, NIMBYism is the Product of Structures, Not Personal Choice
  88. I'm Not Trying to be Dramatic, But I'm in Hell
  89. Open Thread, 7/16/2023
  90. Video: Affirmative Action Can Only Help a Small Fraction of Black Youth
  91. Beloved: Part II, Chapters Two to Six
  92. The Bear May or May Not Be the Best Show on Television, But It's Certainly the MOST Show On Television
  93. No, I'm Not "Alice From Queens"
  94. "Greedflation" is a Proxy Battle in a Long War
  95. Digest, 7/9/2023: Pocket Full of Sunshine
  96. Beloved, Last Chapter of Part I, First Chapter of Part II
  97. There is No Such Thing as an Identity
  98. The Point of College, My Dear Glaucon...
  99. AI, Ozymandias
  100. Digest, 7/1/2023: All God's Love Means Nothing to Me Now
  101. Affirmative Action Thoughts in an Inelegant List Format
  102. 15 Years of Writing
  103. Beloved, Chapters Twelve Through Seventeen
  104. Pixar Was Never a Masterpiece Factory
  105. Think Less, Agnes
  106. Beloved: Chapters Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven
  107. It Appears That Quasi-Mystical Self-Empowerment Culture Will Just Keep On Getting More and More Deranged
  108. Beloved Book Club Delayed to This Weekend
  109. Are Social Justice Politics Serious, or Not?
  110. We're All Just Having Fun Here
  111. Casualties of "The Future"
  112. Vague Recriminations Can't Fix American Mental Healthcare
  113. Beloved: Chapters Four, Five, Six, & Seven
  114. At the Other End of Your Educational Technology There's a Student's Brain
  115. Digest, 6/10/2023: This is Clickbait
  116. The Real Media Bias is Writing for Each Other (But, Like, They're All Liberals, So... )
  117. Complexity is Good, Actually
  118. Book Club, Beloved: Chapters One, Two, Three
  119. Following the Word
  120. Digest, 6/4/2023: Dearly Beloved
  121. A Housing Abundance Movement Can Help Save America's Wild Spaces
  122. Open Thread, 6/1/2023
  123. Politics, Not Apology, or What My New Book is Actually About
  124. Book Club, Beloved: Introduction
  125. Goodbye to "Goodbye to All That"
  126. Digest, 5/27/2023: Gnash Gnash Gnash
  127. Not If Representation Matters, But How and When It Matters
  128. The Paradox of Assimilation
  129. Psychotic Disorders Do Not Respect Autonomy, Independence, Agency, or Freedom
  130. Stanford Law Students Are Your Class Enemy
  131. "Beloved" Book Club Starts 5/30
  132. Subscriber Writing, May 2023
  133. It's All in Your Hands
  134. The World Needs Taylor Swift Goblin Mode
  135. By (Repeated) Request: Capital is So Good at Rebuilding Pipelines
  136. What is n+1 for?
  137. It Only Counts When It Hurts
  138. Digest, 5/5/2023: Taking You Seriously
  139. The Demographic Dating Market Doom Loop
  140. A Defund/Derek Chauvin Challenge
  141. Open Thread, 5/4/2023
  142. If You Don't Like Writing, Do Something Else
  143. The Bet You're Making
  144. Digest, 4/29/2023: Nerds on the Warpath
  145. Do We Have a Responsibility to Deal with the Worst Elements of Our Own Coalitions?
  146. Perhaps a Wave Has Crested
  147. What Regression to the Mean Does and Doesn't... Mean
  148. It's Good to Just Be Honest About What You Care About
  149. Digest, 4/23/2023: Just Break Up with the Clintons Already
  150. Yes, We Have to Deal with the World as It Really Is - All of Us, All of It
  151. Most People Aren't Funny
  152. I Can't Play Subscriber Whackamole, Plus Call for Subscriber Writing, April 2023
  153. A Conversation About Crime
  154. Open Thread, 4/15/2023: Nothing Left
  155. Anton Ego's Lesson
  156. I've Finally Made Real Progress in Korean
  157. The Almond Butter Test
  158. Digest, 4/9/2023: Happy Easter
  159. Before Politics, There's the World
  160. The NFL Rookie Pay Scale is Somehow Still Under-Discussed
  161. Review: Stephen Policoff's "Dangerous Blues"
  162. Digest, 4/2/2023: There's a Dream in My Brain
  163. Theory of the World, Theory of Mind, and Media Incentives
  164. May "Destroy My Enemies" Be All of Our Law
  165. What's Happened with the Socialist Left
  166. The EduSkeptic's Guidebook 1.0
  167. You Are You. We Live Here. This is Now.
  168. Digest, 3/26/2023: The Past is Epilogue
  169. Greater Than
  170. How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement
  171. Why Irony, Bro?
  172. You Get Better at Being Psychotic
  173. Education Commentary is Dominated by Optimism Bias
  174. Of Course You Know What "Woke" Means
  175. Subscriber Open Thread, 3/14/2023
  176. Review: The Best Minds, by Jonathan Rosen
  177. Digest, 3/12/2023: House in Hand
  178. I'm Addicted to the Gentle Pleasures of Kim's Convenience
  179. The Lamar Jackson Overcorrection
  180. Some Reasons Why Smartphones Might Make Adolescents Anxious and Depressed
  181. And Now I Will Again Ponderously Explain Why I Am Trans-Affirming
  182. Digest, 3/5/2023: Fire Moonwalk with Me
  183. I Cannot Stress Enough That Grade Point Average is Racially Stratified Too
  184. Being Offensive is an Essential Part of Roald Dahl's Books
  185. The Left Has Never Stood for No Rules or Expectations on Personal Behavior
  186. Subscriber Writing, February 2023
  187. Reggie Fils-Aimé’s Disrupting the Game Is About as Underwhelming as a Wii U
  188. The YIMBYs and Social Capture
  189. Digest, 2/25/2023: Rare Pokemon
  190. The Democrats Are Bad, But We Can't Leave the Working Class to the GOP
  191. Making the Sausage
  192. Call For Subscriber Writing, February 2023
  193. The Bitter End of "Content"
  194. Digest, 2/19/2023: All Alone
  195. We'll Get Dolezals Until the Incentives Change
  196. The Enduring Mystery of Friends
  197. Review: Patrick Bringley's "All the Beauty in the World"
  198. No, Francis Fukuyama is Wrong, Not Just Not Even Wrong
  199. Digest, 2/11/2023: Let This Be Our Little Secret
  200. These Deranged Rich Ladies Are Convenient for Explaining Why We're Leaving New York
  201. Pitchfork and the Death of Things as Themselves
  202. It's So Sad When Old People Romanticize Their Heydays, Also the 90s Were Objectively the Best Time to Be Alive
  203. The NFL is Structurally Broken
  204. Do You Want Cancel Culture to Exist?
  205. Once Again, I Will Have to Take a Heavier Hand with the Comments
  206. Of Course Drag Isn't Dangerous, It's Just Played Out and Corny
  207. Digest, 1/28/2023: I Go Numb
  208. Subscriber Open Thread: I'm In the Weeds
  209. If I Have to Keep Hearing "Nobody Believes In Us" I'm Going to Jump Out a Window
  210. Remember Rich Uncle Pennybags
  211. Remote Work Shifts Costs From Management Onto Employees
  212. Digest, 1/21/2023: Can't Please the Masses
  213. Let's Read Some Lyrics - Iron & Wine's "The Trapeze Swinger"
  214. Book Club: Jesus' Son, "Beverly Home"
  215. Why is Everyone Suddenly Obsessed with "Generational Wealth"?
  216. Be Independent! No, Not Like That
  217. Digest, 1/14/2023: Doctor, Doctor
  218. There is No Such Entity as Productivity
  219. Subscriber Writing, January 2023
  220. ChatGPT and Winograd's Dilemma
  221. Subscriber Open Thread, 1/11/2023
  222. Book Club, Jesus' Son: Steady Hands at Seattle General
  223. LOSE YOURSELF, GET A LIFE
  224. The Creative Underclass is Still Raging
  225. New Commenting Rule
  226. Digest, 1/7/2022: And We Watched Them as They Fell
  227. Richard Linklater, Ranked
  228. Book Club: Jesus' Son, "Happy Hour"
  229. This is Why You Shouldn't Humor Woowoo
  230. Resilience, Another Thing We Can't Talk About

2022 354

  1. My Favorites of 2022
  2. Call For Subscriber Writing and Rating My 2022 Resolutions
  3. If You Hate Billionaires, Stop Fixating on "Undeserving" Billionaires
  4. Over a Hundred Years Later, People Are Still Shocked by Non-Representational Art
  5. Subscriber Open Thread for the Heathens, 12/25/2022
  6. Digest, 12/24/2022: Ho Ho Ho, I'm Hu-Hu-Hungry!
  7. I Continue to be Unimpressed by ChatGPT
  8. We Need to Talk About Nepo Babies Because We Live in a "Just Deserts" Culture
  9. Book Club: Jesus' Son, "The Other Man"
  10. You Have to Assume Everyone is Terrible at Understanding Art
  11. Up You Go
  12. Digest, 12/17/2022: The Dice Was Loaded From the Start
  13. How Should We Feel About the ADHD Epidemic?
  14. How We Got to "Unhoused"
  15. Book Club: Jesus' Son, "Dirty Wedding"
  16. The Twitter Files and Writing for the Maw
  17. Digest, 12/11/2022: The Doppelganger
  18. Terrence Malick, Ranked
  19. Yes, Supply and Demand Applies to Computer Science Degrees
  20. Book Club: Jesus' Son, "Emergency"
  21. Who Cares Where the Holidays Come From, If the God They Celebrate is Dead?
  22. Digest, 12/3/2022: Dead to Me
  23. What Do I Do Now, with This Old Body of Mine?
  24. Announcing Our Annual December RAINN Fundraiser
  25. Review: Elbow Grease by John Cena
  26. Book Club: Jesus' Son, "Work"
  27. This NFL Season Sucks
  28. Your Personality Has To Be Load-Bearing
  29. You Should Check Out Daniel Bergner's Interview with Bari Weiss
  30. Digest, 11/26/2022: Gobble Gobble Gobble
  31. You Can Hate Your Country and Love Its Rituals
  32. Pushing Everyone Into College was a Policy Response to Other Policy
  33. I Assure You, Writers Would Be Fine Without Twitter
  34. Book Review Contest 2022 Winners!
  35. How Do You Know If You're Bipolar?
  36. Subscriber Open Thread, 11/16/2022
  37. Book Club, Jesus' Son: "Dundun"
  38. The Agony of the Radical Democrat
  39. Subscriber Writing, November 2022
  40. Digest, 11/12/2022: If I Only Could
  41. I'm Afraid I Have No Grand Conclusions That I've Drawn From the Election
  42. The Romance of Madness
  43. Book Club: Jesus' Son, "Out on Bail"
  44. Paywalls or Constant Intrusive Ads: Pick One
  45. Homelessness and What "No One Is Saying"
  46. Mom Jokes
  47. The Incoherence and Cruelty of Mental Illness as Meme
  48. Digest, 10/29/2022: The Chosen
  49. Mad Max in Park Slope: Alternate Side of the Street Parking
  50. Call for Subscriber Writing & Vacation
  51. Shayla, They Bought Their Tickets. They Knew What They Were Getting Into.
  52. Book Club: Jesus' Son, "Two Men"
  53. Two Education Stories That Are Just Begging for Good Journalism
  54. Subscriber Open Thread, 10/24/2022
  55. The One That Looks
  56. Digest, 10/22/2022: Memento Mori
  57. Words, Words, Words
  58. Book Club: Jesus' Son, "Car-Crash While Hitchhiking"
  59. I Like Movies That Don't Quite Work
  60. Subscriber Open Thread, 10/17/2022
  61. The Tribe Still Comes First
  62. Digest, 10/15/2022: Hating My Shelf
  63. People Disagree About What Constitutes Accountability
  64. No, Bernie Shouldn't Run Again
  65. Jesus' Son: Introduction
  66. The Existence of Random Dog-Killings Would Seem to Imply the Need for Some Sort of Constabulary Force
  67. Fall Subscription Drive
  68. Open Thread, 10/9/2022
  69. Digest, 10/9/2022: Don't Worry
  70. How Convenient, That Kanye West's Behavior Could Not Possibly Be Influenced by His Mental Illness
  71. Book Review Contest Confirmation Emails Will Go Out This Weekend, Plus Next Book Club
  72. Postmodern Religion Still Doesn't Make a Lick of Sense
  73. History is Long and There's Nothing Special About Now
  74. NYU Students Punch Down at Adjunct
  75. On Free Speech and Cancel Culture: Letter Six
  76. Digest, 10/1/2022: My Time of Year
  77. Trapped in Systems
  78. Subscriber Writing, September 2022
  79. But Do I Need It?
  80. We Can't Constructively Address Online Mental Health Culture Without Acknowledging That Some People Think They Have Disorders They Don't
  81. I Would Like to Gently Suggest that Perhaps Everything Everywhere All at Once is Just a Touch Overrated
  82. Digest, 9/25/2022: Sentimental Melody
  83. Book Review Contest Reminder & Call for Subscriber Writing
  84. On Free Speech and Cancel Culture, Letter Four
  85. My Rules for Sports Gambling
  86. Building More Housing Supply is Sort of Like Automation Creating More Jobs
  87. No, Covid Learning Loss Doesn't Prove That School Works*
  88. On Free Speech and Cancel Culture, Letter Two
  89. Digest, 9/17/2022: The Light Changes When You're In the Room
  90. Hiding in the Flow
  91. The "Left" Can't Take a W Because Performative Ironic Cruelty is All It Has
  92. Modern Games Should Do Less
  93. Why Are Identitarians Such Cheap Dates?
  94. War as Cope: Ukraine as Desert Storm, Iraq-Afghanistan as Vietnam
  95. Digest, 9/10/2022: Nolita Fairytale
  96. Nope Should Be Just My Kind of Beautiful Mess, and Yet....
  97. If You're a Living Language Type, Then You Have No Right to Dictate to Traditionalists How They Use Language
  98. Subscriber Open Thread, 9/7/2022
  99. They're Just Going to Start a New Hate Site, Obviously
  100. Perhaps There Can Be No Ombudsman
  101. Digest, 9/3/2022: RIP Barbara Ehrenreich
  102. The Glory of Adulthood is Finding Something You Love to Futz Over
  103. Subscriber Writing, August 2022
  104. Open Thread, 8/31/2022
  105. The Giver, Chapters 20 to 23
  106. Let's Get You Started with... Drone
  107. Multiplicity Horror, the Intelligibility Urge, Categorization Imperative, & the Mosquito-in-Amber Effect
  108. Congratulations, Like Condolences, Should Be Private
  109. Whether PPP Loans Were "Really" Cash Transfers Isn't Relevant
  110. Is “Woke” just PC with faster internet?
  111. The Giver: Chapters 16, 17, 18, & 19
  112. If Everyone Learns to Code, the Value of Knowing How to Code Will Be Destroyed!
  113. Book Review Contest 2022!
  114. Subscriber Open Thread, 8/22/2022
  115. Five Years in Recovery
  116. Prospect Park Walk 2.0
  117. Digest, 8/20/2022: Teenage Martyr Superstars
  118. The Rehearsal is Another Comedy That Just Bounces Right Off of Me
  119. If Michael Jordan Played In Today's NBA, He'd... Enjoy the Benefits of Modernity
  120. The Giver, Chapters 8 to 15
  121. Hard Work is Only Sometimes Necessary and Never Sufficient, But What Else Can You Do?
  122. My Brief Brief Against Utilitarianism
  123. Digest, 8/13/2022: It's You
  124. You Have to Put Your Hand on the Dirt, You Have to Feel It, Cold and Damp
  125. Subscriber AMA, 8/11/2022
  126. Effective Altruism Has a Novelty Problem
  127. The Giver, Chapters 1 to 7
  128. I Finished Serializing My First Novel
  129. Chapter Twenty-Eight & Twenty-Nine
  130. You Don't Have ADHD Feelings. You Just Have Feelings.
  131. Digest, 8/6/2022: Kafka, Esq.
  132. It's Funny, I Don't Feel Fragile
  133. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  134. The Giver, Introductory Post
  135. Chapter Twenty-Six
  136. If You're Traveling, Hire a Tour Guide
  137. Where Should Affluent People Live?
  138. Subscriber Writing, July 2022
  139. Digest, 7/30/2022: In the Gloaming
  140. Subscriber Open Thread, 7/29/2022
  141. Going Through It
  142. Sometimes, You Just Have to Take a Fucking L
  143. No, We Have Not Proven That There is No Neurological or Physiological Influence on Depression
  144. So Here's How It's Gonna Be
  145. Be a Writer or Don't Be One
  146. Digest, 7/14/2022: Glad as I Can Be
  147. Chapter Twenty-Five
  148. More Commenting Sadness, A New Piece I'm Very Fond of, Last Call for Subscriber Writing, and the Next Book Club
  149. Towards a Normie Politics
  150. The Left is a Labor Movement, the Left is a Worker's Movement
  151. We Could Use a Reinvigorated Skeptic Movement
  152. Open Thread, 7/18/2022
  153. YIMBY Social Culture Prevents Progress, Again
  154. Digest, 7/16/2022: 🤔
  155. Chapter Twenty-Four
  156. Hard Work For My Kid, Not for Yours
  157. Anti-Anti-Woke Physician, Heal Thyself
  158. Call for Subscriber Writing, Links, and Open Thread
  159. Questions for Pure Environmentalists
  160. Education Doesn't Work 2.0
  161. Everything You Need to Know About the Popularism Debate
  162. Chapter Twenty-Three
  163. Until We Too Are Buried in the Sky
  164. Open Thread, 7/5/2022
  165. Sadder Things
  166. Here Are My Actual Dumb Opinions
  167. Digest, 7/3/2022: Independence Daze
  168. My Brief Brief Against "Mental Illness is Just Capitalism, Man, the System"
  169. Trying Sex Crimes in the Court of Public Opinion Was Never a Good Idea
  170. How to Sell a Shark Book
  171. Short Story Club Postponed
  172. Review: Electric Wizards: A Tapestry of Heavy Music 1968 to Present, by JR Moores
  173. The Time for Leftist Extralegal Action Has Finally Come
  174. Digest, 6/16/2022: Dead Arm
  175. Girl, Interrupted: Memoir and Movie
  176. Ah, Carceral Liberalism
  177. A Brief Word on Pain Management with Opioids
  178. Open Thread, June 20th 2022
  179. "a couple days" lol
  180. The Invisible Man Does Elegantly What Promising Young Woman Fails to Do with Lectures
  181. The Good White Man Roster
  182. Social Justice Advocates Don't Get to Just Exempt Themselves From Politics
  183. Digest, 6/11/2022: Satan, Satan, Satan Get Beside Me
  184. Let's Read a Poem - Thomas Hardy's "The Convergence of the Twain"
  185. Subscriber Writing, June 2022
  186. We Don't Throw People Away
  187. Seventeen Theses on Disability
  188. Subscriber Open Thread, 6/6/2022
  189. Depp-Heard Seems Like a Civil Liberties Disaster to Me
  190. Digest, 6/4/2022: Surgery Time
  191. Losing It
  192. It's Time for YIMBYs to Stop Picking Low-Hanging Fruit
  193. Yes, I Got That Reference. But Who Cares?
  194. Digest, 5/29/2022: And I Want a TV Embrace
  195. The "Socialist" Success Two-Step
  196. Perhaps the Barriers to Entry for Creative Work Have Become Too Low
  197. I Have Sold My Second Book
  198. The Gentrification of Disability
  199. Call For Links to Subscriber Writing!
  200. Digest, 5/22/2022: Joy Cometh in the Morning
  201. Bodega Discourse is Downstream From the Fact That No One is Particularly Interesting
  202. Can an Unattractive Person Be Attractive?
  203. My Response to Daniel Bergner's New York Times Magazine Piece on Psychotic Disorders
  204. Pity Writing Studies, the Field That Hates Itself
  205. Digest, 5/15/2022: It Went Pop
  206. When I Was Young and Free
  207. Comments Are Off For One Month
  208. Safetyism is the Water in Which We Swim
  209. The People Hurt By The "It's a Beautiful Journey" School of Mental Health Are the People with Mental Disorders
  210. Open Thread, 5/9/2022
  211. Just Stop Apologizing
  212. Digest, 5/7/2022: The Next Episode
  213. You End Up Becoming Yourself
  214. It's a Marathon, Not a Sprint
  215. Let's Talk About Comments
  216. A Confederacy of Dunces, Chapters Thirteen & Fourteen
  217. "Birds Aren't Real" Sucks
  218. Digest, 5/1/2022: Mr. Cool
  219. Drug Review: Dextroamphetamine
  220. It's All Grift, It's All Brands
  221. Nobody Walks Around Feeling "Valid"
  222. Just Keep It Off My Timeline!
  223. The Politics of Pure Affiliation Has Driven Everyone Absolutely Insane
  224. Digest, 4/24/2022: Bring It Back
  225. "Multiple Personality Disorder" Probably Doesn't Exist, And There Certainly Hasn't Been an Explosion of It Among the Youth
  226. A Confederacy of Dunces, Chapters Eleven & Twelve
  227. I Thought The Batman Was Pretty Dumb
  228. For Democrats, It's the Worst of Both Worlds
  229. People Just Want to Feel Good About War Again
  230. A Confederacy of Dunces, Chapters Nine & Ten
  231. Self-Actualization Is Not the Sole Purpose of Human Existence
  232. It's a Business Where You Never Know
  233. Nothing Happened to Zoe Kravitz
  234. Digest, 4/9/2022: At the Hop
  235. Prestige Disease
  236. Rich Kids Can Always Get Algebra or Calculus or Whatever Else They Need
  237. A Confederacy of Dunces, Chapters Seven & Eight
  238. It Would Be Cool If You Would Refrain From Just Making Shit Up About Me and Trans Issues
  239. The Deprivation Model Hurts Us All
  240. Digest, 4/3/2022: You Think of Everything
  241. Open Thread, 4/2/2022
  242. Suavecito at 10
  243. Review: Thomas Insel's "Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health"
  244. A Confederacy of Dunces, Chapters Five & Six
  245. A Broken Model of Brokenness
  246. Psychosis is Not the Absence of Consciousness
  247. Digest, 3/27/2022: I Give Up
  248. One Game for the Bros, One for the... Girlfriends
  249. Sometimes People Legitimately Disagree on Difficult Questions
  250. A Confederacy of Dunces: Chapters Three and Four
  251. Correlation Is Not Causation, But What is It?
  252. Please Just Throw Me a Bone with the Wesleyan Argus Controversy
  253. Chapter Twenty-Two
  254. Digest, 3/19/2022: My Mother is Crying Blood Dust Now
  255. Sometimes Misinformation is a Matter of Convenience
  256. There's Always Going to be a Little Assimilation with Social Acceptance
  257. The More Density We Build, the More Valuable "Neighborhood Character" Will Be
  258. A Confederacy of Dunces, Chapters One and Two
  259. Chapter Twenty-One
  260. My Approach to Subscriber Perks, Plus Announcing a Place to Share Your Work
  261. The "Myth of the Model Minority" is Just an Average
  262. Subscriber Open Thread, 3/12/2022
  263. Digest, 3/12/2022: And Ever in Good Stead
  264. I Want a New Show Like Star Trek: The Next Generation or Law & Order
  265. A Confederacy of Dunces - Introduction
  266. Culture War is Fractal
  267. William Gibson's "New Rose Hotel"
  268. Drug Review: Trazodone
  269. Please Use Common Sense When Performing Supersets
  270. Let's Get You Started with... Modest Mouse
  271. At the Kids Table
  272. Subscriber Open Thread, 3/3/2022
  273. I Am Asking for a Coherent Set of Consistent Principles That Are Equally Applied to the United States and Russia
  274. Since I Can Please No One This Week, I May as Well Leverage My Incompetence at Video Games for Your Entertainment
  275. It's Not Enough to Not Want to Lionize Your Protagonist
  276. The War in Ukraine is Many Things, and One of Them is a Consequence of American Imperialism
  277. Not Everything is For Everyone
  278. One Year!
  279. Digest, 2/26/2022: Everything Was Running Smooth
  280. I'm Not Sure I Want to Run the New York City Race Much Longer
  281. Subscriber AMA, 2/24/2022
  282. A Future Where We Never See Each Other
  283. What is Effect Size?
  284. I'll Be Against the Next "Good War" Too
  285. We Are Experiencing Definitional Collapse
  286. The Buried Book: Introduction
  287. Digest, 2/19/2022: Rolling Home
  288. Could Be a Tough Time for the "All-Digital Middle" in Media
  289. Subscriber Open Thread, 2/17/2022
  290. Let's Take a Walk in Prospect Park
  291. No One Will Miss Her: End of Book
  292. Are You Sure You Want to Say That White People Are the Lone Agents in Human Affairs, the Main Characters, the Sole Movers of History?
  293. Let's Get You Started with... Sludge
  294. Time to Pick the Next Book for the Book Club!
  295. I Want a Political Movement That's...
  296. Digest, 2/13/2022: The Gig Bame
  297. Chapter Twenty
  298. It's Not What Happens with Joe Rogan, It's the Chilling Effect Around Him
  299. This is the World in Which We Live
  300. Statistical Significance, in Plain Language
  301. No One Will Miss Her: Chapters 24, 25, & 26
  302. White Journalists Are Terrified of Appearing to Criticize BlackLivesMatter, Obviously
  303. I've Been Underwhelmed by the Upright GO S Posture Trainer
  304. To Popularize a Movement, There Needs to Be a Movement in the First Place
  305. Subscriber Open Thread, 2/6/2022
  306. Capitalism's Productive Capacity is an Argument for Socialism
  307. Digest, 2/5/2022: Do Your Thing
  308. "Made the Harbor" is Just One of Those Albums, Man
  309. Chapters Eighteen & Nineteen
  310. Against Voldemorting
  311. No One Will Miss Her, Chapters 19-23
  312. I'm Somehow Less Concerned with Whether the Holocaust was "About Race" Than I Am with the Six Million Murders
  313. If Only Simple Were Simple
  314. Rejoice, for Copy Editing is Coming
  315. Covid as Liberal 9/11
  316. Subscriber Open Thread, 1/29/2022
  317. Digest, 1/29/2022: Santy Anno
  318. Things I Can't Be Recruited Into Hating
  319. By Request, How I Structure My Week
  320. Human Capital is Real, and Some People Are Smarter Than Other People
  321. Six Minutes on Giving Me Effective Feedback
  322. No One Will Miss Her, Chapters 11-18
  323. Shovel More Dirt on Pre-K
  324. Q&A: Ethan Sherwood Strauss
  325. Subscriber Open Thread, 1/24/2021
  326. Gen X Was the Political Generation
  327. Digest, 1/22/2022: No One's Gonna Play the Harp When You Die
  328. To Return to a Theme: If You Dislike the Behavior, Consider Changing the Incentives
  329. Ditching the SAT is a Money Maker
  330. You Don't Get to Withdraw "Your Share" of Public Expenditures, Doofus
  331. No One Will Miss Her, Chapters 5-10
  332. There is No Such Thing as a Takedown
  333. Perhaps Not Everything is Eugenics
  334. Sneer if You'd Like, But Engineered Solutions Are a Lot More Plausible Than Behavioral Change in 2022
  335. Subscriber Open Thread, 1/15/2022
  336. Digest, 1/15/2022: God doesn't always have the best goddamn plans, does he?
  337. For Your Edification or Enjoyment: If You Absolutely Must, a Free ebook on How to Make It as a Writer
  338. It's Not the Politics, It's Their Expression
  339. It's With Some Reluctance That I Say That Bill Simmons Got It Right With the Ringer
  340. "Get Some Help" is Often Necessary, Sometimes Unkind
  341. No One Will Miss Her: Prologue - Chapter Four
  342. Review: Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset
  343. You Already Know the Normal Distribution
  344. One More Time: What Do You Want Us to Do About Covid that We Aren't Doing Already?
  345. Review: The Medium is the Message
  346. Many Kids Don't Have a Warm, Safe, Healthy Home in Which to Do "Remote Learning"
  347. Digest, 1/8/2022: Ah Ah
  348. The Buried Giant, My Favorite Ishiguro
  349. Subscriber Open Thread
  350. Imagine If Everyone Who Tried to Write Like Choire Sicha Had His Emotional Integrity
  351. No One Will Miss Her: Introductory Post
  352. You Can't Be Good Enough
  353. Welcome to Group
  354. Digest, 1/1/2022: The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives

2021 283

  1. My Favorites of 2021
  2. The Party's Over
  3. For Subscribers: End-of-2021 AMA
  4. Wanting to Convince People to Support You is Not "Popularism"
  5. Perhaps High School is Not Always a Relentlessly Brutal Nietzschean Hellscape
  6. Why Are We Pouring Money Into a Black Box? Why Are We Subjecting Our Young People to a Process with Such Little Transparency? Why Are We Risking Our Economy On It All?
  7. A Christmas Carol, a Story You Know By Heart
  8. The Irony Human Centipede
  9. Student Loan Debt Relief is Self-Interest, and Self-Interest is Politics
  10. Social Responsibility... To Do What?
  11. Covid Panic is a Site of Inter-Elite Competition
  12. Digest, 12/19/2021: You Better Not Cry
  13. Why the Fuck Do You Trust Harvard?
  14. The Wire is a Masterpiece That Gets Worse Every Time I Watch It
  15. Where to Now, Chris? Where to Now?
  16. Book Review: An Alien Light
  17. State of the Newsletter, December 2021
  18. Destruction is Still Mutually Assured
  19. Who Wouldn't Want Weightlifting Advice From Someone Who's No Longer Strong, Cut, Fit, Healthy, or Particularly Big?
  20. Digest, 12/12/2021
  21. The Dawn of Everything: Wicked Liberty Part Two
  22. Everybody Should Go to Yosemite, At Least Once
  23. Yes, Sabermetrics Ruined Baseball
  24. You Don't Have to Be a Marxist
  25. Perhaps You Should Not Spend All Day Ridiculing Others From Afar
  26. Chapter Seventeen
  27. Digest, 12/4/2021: I Can Please None of the People All of Time
  28. Book Review Contest Winners, December Fundraiser, and the Next Book Club
  29. Demian: Eva and the End Begins
  30. The Problem with the 1619 Project Isn't Accuracy, It's Triviality
  31. What Does It Mean For Music to be Overproduced?
  32. Racial Disparities in the SATs Are Exactly What Antiracists Should Predict
  33. Life Goes On
  34. Book Review Contest Results Coming and NFL Picks in Lieu of a Weekly Digest
  35. What Was the "Neoliberal?" Was It Anything?
  36. It Could Be So Much Better Than This
  37. The Witching Hour Approaches
  38. The Failure of Occupy is Almost Complete
  39. Some Preliminary Thoughts on the Dawn of Everything: Chapter 2
  40. Digest, 11/20/2021: Only the Red Line Lives On
  41. Portnoy's Tale, or MeToo, Social Sanction, and Leverage
  42. Spotters Don't "Help"
  43. I Would Like Closure, But I'll Take Honesty
  44. Demian: “The Bird Fights Its Way Out of the Egg” and "Jacob Wrestling"
  45. The Dawn of Everything: Chapter One
  46. Simple Statements of Values That Highlight the Popular and Material Consequences of Our Agenda and Stress Shared Need and Universalism
  47. Now We're Here
  48. Digest, 11/13/2021: Things Are Different Now
  49. Pre-K Research is Mixed, Running to Discouraging, at Best
  50. deMoore's Law
  51. Chapter Fifteen and Sixteen
  52. When You Condone Chaos, You Condone the Consequences of Chaos
  53. Demian: "Among Thieves" and "Beatrice"
  54. Why Does the Universe Need a Teacup?
  55. Video: Academic Professional Incentives and CRT (or "CRT")
  56. Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand
  57. Our National Conversation on Higher Ed Has Next to Nothing to Do With Higher Ed's Real Problems
  58. Read the Bending Cross
  59. There Are No Refs
  60. CRT Could Use a Little Cost/Benefit Analysis
  61. Demian: "Two Realms" and "Cain"
  62. Here's Two Examples of the State Enforcing Social Justice Norms
  63. I'm Still Here
  64. Record of a Failed Academic, Pt. 1: The Epideictic Rhetoric of Celebrity
  65. Digest, 10/31/2021: And We're Back
  66. Who Asked For This Shit?
  67. Short Week: Fight Club Explains Itself in Less Than a Minute and a Half
  68. Short Week: Think Cruise Control to Driver Assist to Driverless Cars, But for the Economy
  69. Demian: Introductory Post
  70. Short Week: The Stupid Baseball Hypothetical I've Chewed On For a Decade
  71. Short Week: My "Cancellation" Was Quite Effective, As a Matter of Fact
  72. Short Week: The Main Thing with Kids is to Keep Them Alive
  73. Short Week: As If Politics Mattered
  74. Chapter Fourteen
  75. Every A Nightmare on Elm Street Movie, Ranked
  76. I Miss Taking Drugs
  77. The Cement Garden: Chapters Nine & Ten
  78. Review: Ross Douthat's The Deep Places
  79. Actually, Tourists Should Go to Times Square
  80. That One Side Would Like to Utterly Destroy the Other Side Seems Significant, To Me
  81. Programming Notes: Book Review Contest, Vacation, Book Club Next Steps and, God Help Me, Let's Game
  82. Digest, 10/9/2021: There's a Heaven for a GPU
  83. the Second Part of Life
  84. Chapter Thirteen
  85. The Cement Garden: Chapters Seven & Eight
  86. The Problem with Liz Phair's Self-Titled Album is That It's an Irredeemable Piece of Shit
  87. The End Times Are Comforting
  88. Will BlackLivesMatter Fall Into the Elephant's Graveyard of Social Movements?
  89. Digest, 10/3/2021: Beware of the Blob
  90. My Last Jedi Thoughts Are Substantially More Correct Than Those of Ross Douthat
  91. Chapter Twelve
  92. "Blue No Matter Who" Gets You Sinema
  93. The Cement Garden: Chapters Five & Six
  94. There is No Such Thing as "Punching Up" or "Punching Down"
  95. My mother, who I have made in paper
  96. Weekly Digest, 9/26/2021
  97. Chapter Eleven
  98. the Heart Wants What It Wants
  99. Smoking Weed Doesn't Feel Good for Me Anymore, and It Hasn't For a Long Time
  100. The Cement Garden: Chapters Three & Four
  101. Book Review Contest!
  102. Joe Rogan, Parody of the Open Mind
  103. Digest, 9/18/2021: Right Now, All You Have is Time Time Time
  104. Emotional Overinvestment & Meaning
  105. Chapter Ten
  106. The Original Matrix is Pretty Bad
  107. Charles Kuralt's "Place of Sorrows"
  108. The Cement Garden: Chapter One & Two
  109. Let's Take the Alex Pareene Challenge
  110. Beware Berkson's Paradox
  111. Digest, 9/11/2021: Seek and Destroy
  112. I Feel Conflicted About Saying This, But I'm a Grad School Success Story
  113. The Cement Garden: Introductory Post
  114. Why Resist Blank Slate Thinking? For One, Look to No Child Left Behind
  115. Welcome
  116. Genes Believe in You
  117. All White Men Are White Men
  118. Digest, 9/4/2021: I Can't Fall Asleep Without a Little Help
  119. One Post on the Wayside School Books, One Book Club Announcement, and One Mysterious Reference to a Subscriber-Only Bonus Hopefully Soon to Come
  120. First Book Club: The Cement Garden
  121. Review: Baby-Sitters Club Super Special #7 - Snowbound
  122. Chapters Eight & Nine
  123. Do You Hate Catcher in the Rye, or Are You Just a Ball of Perpetual Insecurity and Self Doubt?
  124. Some Friendly Advice on Reviewing Books (or Anything Else Really)
  125. Digest, 8/28/2021: Come Rub Upon My Belly with Your Guava Jelly
  126. Quickie: For a Lot of Parents, the Point of Private School is to Keep Their Kids Away from Black Kids
  127. The Center Holds, For Good and Ill
  128. Chapter Seven
  129. Planet of Cops
  130. Antifa is a Fatherless Child
  131. "Old School Lifting" is Not the One Noble Path of Exercise
  132. Funding Gaps Cannot Explain Academic Gaps
  133. Digest, 8/21/2021: Goines Tale
  134. When Nothing is Worked Through, Nothing is Explained, Nothing is Understood
  135. Chapter Six
  136. There's No Alternative to Cultural Appropriation
  137. Review: Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  138. Who Tells Them Things They Don't Want to Hear?
  139. Digest, 8/14/2021: Batter My Heart
  140. Lottery Ticket America
  141. Anti-Zionism is Perfectly Mundane
  142. Chapter Five
  143. Sooner or Later, Ability Rules
  144. "NO ONE SAYS" & What a Strawman Is
  145. If You're Bound to Be Bad, Why Bother Being Good?
  146. Digest, 8/8/2021: When Life is Hard, You Have to Change
  147. Five Books for Readers Aged 10-14
  148. Chapter Four
  149. We Walk Among You
  150. I have not "endorsed hate speech"
  151. Anatomy of a Bad Idea: Affirmative Consent
  152. Nü-Metal and Twilight Are the True Outsider Art, the Only Rebel Poets
  153. Digest, 7/31/2021: America I've Given You All and Now I'm Nothing
  154. What's a Benefit?
  155. Everything Gawker Existed to Satirize Has Been Destroyed
  156. Chapter Three
  157. I'm Pro-Natalist But Don't Get the Moral Case for Pro-Natalism
  158. Genes Still Matter
  159. To Slightly Reduce How Much the Internet Sucks, Use Positive Reinforcement
  160. Digest, 7/24/2021:
  161. my bus ride
  162. Please Don't Let Political Contrarianism Turn You Into a Lunatic
  163. Chapters One & Two
  164. Do Liberals Have a Plan Other Than Whining About White People and the Senate?
  165. Digest, 7/18/2021: Aurora
  166. Five Favorite Movie Trailers (That I Remember)
  167. This Too Shall Pass
  168. Anti-Racism is an Inter-White Struggle
  169. A Reductive Explanation for Recent Changes in Math Pedagogy
  170. Digest, 7/10/2021: Make Me New
  171. Things I Read
  172. Max Isn't Marginalized, Matriarchy Isn't Feminist
  173. Stop Debating Definition
  174. A Materialist Alternative to "Antiracism"
  175. Digest, 7/3/2021: I Used to Ask My Melville Professor if He Was Really Into Cape Horn
  176. Call Me a Normie If You Must, but Valheim is Great - with Friends
  177. Accountability is a Prerequisite of Respect
  178. brief programming note
  179. What Bari Weiss Won't Tell You About Human Rights and China
  180. Digest, 6/26/2021: Never Meant to Cause You Any Sorrow
  181. Education Week: Review of The Education Trap
  182. Education Week: Educational Assessments are Valid, Reliable, and Remarkably Predictive
  183. Announcing the Red, the Brown, the Green
  184. the Red, the Brown, the Green
  185. Education Week: Yes, Harvard Could And Probably Should Enroll Many More Students, But Let's Be Realistic
  186. Education Week: How is Power Distributed in American Public K-12 Education?
  187. Digest, 6/19/2021: All of the Lights
  188. Yes, Mass Home Ownership is a Dumb Policy Goal, But...
  189. quickie: Who I Voted For, Dem Primaries
  190. The Selfish Fallacy
  191. Toni Morrison's Sula, the Great Underrated American Novel
  192. Critical Race Theory, a Consolation Prize
  193. Digest, 6/12/2021
  194. Can News Survive Being Unbundled?
  195. The Movement Threw the First Brick at Stonewall
  196. Zipcar Sucks and So Does App World
  197. Maybe You Could YIMBY a Little Bit Less
  198. Orange Cheeto Man Bad?
  199. Digest, 6/5/2021: Lawless, Winged, and Unconfined
  200. Those Who Didn't Make the List
  201. At the Heart of It All
  202. Review: Jenny Offill's Weather
  203. What Do We Do with Education Research?
  204. They Tell Me the Cruelty is the Point
  205. Digest, 5/29/2021: A Year Without Miles
  206. Red Handles
  207. I'm afraid I can't dunk about the lab leak
  208. Please, Think Critically About College Admissions
  209. from the archives: the Aum Example
  210. You (Still) Can't Sit with Us
  211. People of Color Have Agency
  212. Digest, 5/22/2015: Let the Dead Poets Make Way for the Others
  213. Other People's Lives
  214. The Age of Kayfabe
  215. by request: The Cult of Smart
  216. You Aren't Actually Mad at the SATs
  217. Digest, 5/515/2021: Cruel World
  218. Bill Zeller, Ten Years Gone
  219. David Foster Wallace Won
  220. a bad partner is worse than rain
  221. it works in traditional media too, Helen
  222. DSA Shows Up
  223. Digest, 5/8/2021: Buy the Dip
  224. Even the Best Star Wars Gets Graded On a Curve
  225. All of This Shit is High School
  226. Addendum: "Why didn't she just...?"
  227. Letter from a Reader: My New Therapist
  228. Annoying Connoisseurs Make Things Better for the Rest of Us
  229. Is Covid moralism forever?
  230. Digest, 5/1/21: Gone to See About a Girl
  231. A Portrait of Ross
  232. More Music For You, Volume One
  233. Elizabeth Wurtzel, 1967-2020
  234. What Became of Atheism, Part One: Wearing the Uniform
  235. What are you, 12? There's no "deserves"
  236. you are exhausted because life is pain
  237. I Can Please None of the People All of the Time, and a Potential Publishing Schedule
  238. Love Isn't Rational and Neither Are You
  239. Cynical Motives for a Cynical Time
  240. About the Actual Writing Part
  241. Review: Lauren Oyler's Fake Accounts
  242. Am I Publishing Too Much?
  243. the lee of the stone
  244. Education Doesn't Work
  245. I don't get what Adam Curtis is saying
  246. Attention Please: Listen to Boris
  247. on trans issues
  248. Some Principles & Observations About Social Justice Politics
  249. Nitro Edition: None of This is New
  250. On Essays and SATs: Some Students are Just More Prepared Than Others
  251. People Believe in Conspiracy Theories Because People Conspire
  252. Women Do Not Need Lunatic Overconfidence
  253. If You Want to Make It As a Writer, For God's Sakes, Be Weird
  254. Trauma Memes Are Dangerous
  255. briefly, on selling writing
  256. The Autodidact Fantasy
  257. the humor in the Marvel movies makes me want to shoot myself directly in the face
  258. Charter School Lotteries Are a Black Box. Why Don't Charter School Advocates Care?
  259. Financial Transparency
  260. It's All Just Displacement
  261. Let's Pick a Tight, Contained Subject for the First Subscriber-Only Post, Such as "Reading"
  262. Could It Be... Genes?
  263. since you asked
  264. Assessing the Nation of Islam
  265. Perhaps We Cannot Do Both
  266. You Can't Censor Away Extremism (or Any Other Problem)
  267. What is the #BLM ask?
  268. Canceling Is Powerless
  269. the Synecdoche Problem
  270. The Skywalker Saga: Strangest Story Ever Told?
  271. non-Nitro Edition: Substack & Media
  272. the weight
  273. welcome
  274. Will Wilkinson logrolls the night away
  275. of course Israel is different
  276. Scott Alexander is not in the Gizmodo Media Slack
  277. grievance games
  278. antiracism is not a PR campaign for Black people
  279. you aren't the shit you like
  280. the affirmative action conundrum
  281. "A New Sense of Direction"
  282. the object of your appeal
  283. there is no such thing as justice

2020 30

  1. it's all just arms and noses
  2. oh you've got a particularly pessimistic and mature attitude towards Covid? that's so fucking brave
  3. New York's Best Book List
  4. the anti-genius game
  5. I am not afraid of Jordan Peterson
  6. the only way to save reading is by reading
  7. the wastes
  8. immigration rhetoric and the Cult of Smart
  9. my biggest regret about the book
  10. Here is an email Nathan Robinson once wrote about my book
  11. the Ty Cobb principle
  12. the nobody problem
  13. if genes contribute nothing, my conclusions are all the same
  14. grit, or the moralist's fable about education
  15. about those 12 year old dropouts
  16. today's the day
  17. individual genetics, group environments
  18. not if teachers matter but how they matter
  19. against political Calvinism
  20. addendum to my point on Jonathan Haidt
  21. taking yes for an answer
  22. Haidt's belief in belief
  23. goodbye Miles
  24. remember the ways of the queen bee
  25. the left is powerless before all things
  26. I am recover'd
  27. I think I might have Covid-19 but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  28. you should mourn
  29. goodbye Nick
  30. you can't choose to be trad

2018 2

  1. statement
  2. climbing up the walls

2017 64

  1. standardized tests are tools of inequality, not equality
  2. Study of the Week: More Bad News for College Remediation
  3. transitioning out of freelancing
  4. Syllabus: Public Writing in de Tocqueville's America
  5. throwing out the individual differences baby with the group differences bathwater
  6. I can teach you regression discontinuity design in two images
  7. The Academic "Success Sequence" - Get Lucky at Birth, Mostly
  8. for lack of what is found there
  9. yes, campus activists have attempted to censor completely mainstream views
  10. Study of the Week: Hitting the Books, or Hitting the Bong?
  11. restriction of range: what it is and why it matters
  12. cultural studies, ironically, is something of a colonizer
  13. Study of the Week: Modest But Real Benefits From Lead Exposure Interventions
  14. Mechanism Agnostic Low Plasticity Educational Realism
  15. "Education is the only tool to reduce poverty and inequality"
  16. the mass defunding of higher education that's yet to come
  17. Study of the Week: To Remediate or Not to Remediate?
  18. Lesson Plan: Teaching Prose Style to Freshmen
  19. Study of the Week: Academic Outcomes for Preemies
  20. two concepts about sampling that were tricky for me
  21. genetic behaviorism supports the influence of chance on life outcomes
  22. Study of the Week: We'll Only Scale Up the Good Ones
  23. public services are not an ATM
  24. Reporting Regression Results Responsibly
  25. g-reliant skills seem most susceptible to automation
  26. Study of the Week: Of Course Virtual K-12 Schools Don't Work
  27. Study of the Week: Trade Schools Are No Panacea
  28. why universities can't be the primary site of political organizing
  29. correlation: neither everything nor nothing
  30. you learn by being taught
  31. Study of the Week: Feed Kids to Feed Them
  32. two economists ask teachers to behave as irrational actors
  33. Study of the Week: Better and Worse Ways to Attack Entrance Exams
  34. two sets of universities, two countries, two futures
  35. "Like the validity of intelligence testing, the heritability of intelligence is no longer scientifically contentious."
  36. Campbell's Law and the inevitability of school fraud
  37. Study of the Week: What Actually Helps Poor Students? Human Beings
  38. no, really, race is a social construct
  39. norm referencing, criterion referencing, and ed policy
  40. Study of the Week: Rebutting Academically Adrift with Its Own Mechanism
  41. let's take a deep dive into that Times article on school choice
  42. nihilism in, nihilism out
  43. Study of the Week: Nicaraguan Sign Language and the Speaking Animal
  44. why would school choice improve outcomes?
  45. Study of the Week: When It Comes to Student Satisfaction, Faculty Matter Most
  46. selection bias: a parable
  47. the Official Dogma of Education (version 1.0)
  48. it turns out we're all locked up in here together
  49. Study of the Week: Discipline Reform and Test Score Mania
  50. lots of fields have p-value problems, not just psychology
  51. I am not, it turns out, the agent of faculty death at Brooklyn College
  52. from the archives: physical restraint as the least bad option
  53. Study of the Week: Computers in the Home
  54. addressing some complaints
  55. disentangling race from intelligence and genetics, or how to rescue behavioral genetics from racists
  56. Too Hot for Academic Journals: Lexical Diversity and Quality in L1 and L2 Student Essays
  57. if formal music education is a privilege, spread the privilege
  58. journalists, beware the gambler's fallacy
  59. another day, another charter school scandal
  60. Study of the Week: the Gifted and the Grinders
  61. Success Academy Charter Schools accepted $550,000 from pro-Trump billionaires
  62. do peer effects matter? nah
  63. looking beyond test scores in defense of after school programs
  64. why selection bias is the most powerful force in education