Jordan Peterson Plays in the Left’s Cultural Sandbox
I'm low-key fascinated by Jordan Peterson. I bought and skimmed his book 12 Rules for Life and found it to contain interesting if standard self-help fare ("Make Your Bed"). I listened to a few of his podcasts / speeches and found him an independent thinker who clings tenaciously to what he thinks is correct no matter the social consequences. When so much of human interaction is lubricated by bending to each other what do you make of someone who does not bend?
Probably as a result of this stiffness and the insatiable desire of our tribes for in group contrarians (IGC) to cast out and denounce, Peterson has become an absolute lightning rod for the St. Elmo's fire of tribal conflict. The link above contains David French's comments on JP from 2018 when 12 Rules first came out. David French has recently become an IGC on the right as his Christian faith and conscience led him to publicly support Biden. So there are some interesting ouroboros IGC layers here. -B
The Welding Shut of the American Mind
Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Antonin Scalia were extremely good friends. I love that. Give me more of that. -Brian
How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus
From 2015 comes the groundbreaking Atlantic article and associated book publication from Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. If you ever want to go down a cerebral youtube rabbit hole I cannot reccomend more strongly the Haidt hole. Greg is involved with a free speech group called FIRE and Jonathan started the Heterodox Academy. Their critique of modern dialogue comes from a classical liberal perspective and is excellent. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" is more true in 2020 than we could possibly have imagined in 2015. -Brian
Who Really Runs The Drudge Report?
Fascinating. -Brian
A next-level rabbit hole of reporting. And highlights the fact that misinformation and copyright infringement isn't just a social media problem (at least in the section detailing the almost-funny relationship with the site's ad broker and a random Armenian website). -C
Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?
What if part of the solution didn't mean building and automating the entire process, but instead left it to people who actually have the right context for moderating their online experience of your product? Also, this is either in direct conflict with my hot take about YouTube's like/dislike buttons or is reinforcing that hot take. I can't tell at the moment. -C
Why 'Civilization' is a political masterpiece
I need to play this game right now. I can't imagine building something like this and all the thought and historical knowledge that was poured into its design. - C
Just one. More. Turn. Also how is it 3am? I just started playing... -B
Turney W. Leonard | World War II | U.S. Army | Medal of Honor Recipient
When I was a freshman at Texas A&M University many moons ago I met with several other RUF attendees for a men's bible study in the Memorial Student Center. Around the outside walls of that building were plaque after plaque after plaque, each one telling the story of an Aggie Medal of Honor winner. I once spent several hours reading these plaques until I was moved to tears. Here's one story that hangs on the walls of the MSC in Aggieland. -B
The Scholar's Stage: We Were Builders Once, and Strong
I know very little about Tanner Greer (it even took me 5 minutes of searching on his blog to find his name!) so I'm not recommending his whole body of work. But I find this reminiscing on how we've been changed by technology to be extremely well written and interesting. -B