Which Side Are You On? Florence Reece and the Harlan County Coal War
The story of the 1931 to 1932 Harlan County coal war that produced Florence Reece's song, and what the song changed in the decades after.
10 min read
How to Change Your Mind Without Becoming a Weathervane
Two ways to fail: the weathervane that turns with every gust, and the bunker that never turns. Five moves from Darwin, Popper, Tetlock, Munger, and Feynman for being a compass instead.
9 min read
The colonoscopy study is right. The lesson is not the obvious one.
Expert endoscopists' unaided detection rate fell from 28.4 to 22.4 percent after a few months beside an AI. Here is one reading of why, and what it does and does not prove.
6 min read
Baphomet was never a devil
A figure invented by a French occultist as a symbol of synthesis, weaponized for satanic panic, then flattened into shorthand for edginess. The actual story is more interesting than any of those uses.
3 min read