Month: January 2026

“I can see this all happening. I hate it. Science — and the social sciences, in particular — will get worse, while the capabilities of a few distinct technologies improve. The people who most love these technologies will insist that the future is bright, and they’llspeculate on the wonderful possibilities that have just been unleashed, and they’ll never once notice the obvious parallels between today’s digital future and digital futures’ past”

https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/what-comes-next-if-claude-code-is

“For just one instance, in the run up to Operation Desert Storm, both President Bush and Secretary James Baker openly talked about our reliance on Middle Eastern oil and preventing a recession and therefore the loss of US jobs. But then the administration’s rhetoric shifted, pointing to Saddam’s human rights abuses and how horrible his regime was in general.

As the analysis of one historian contends, the public pretty much bought the oil explanation; the human rights stuff didn’t add much and may have even muddled the overall case, contributing to the rather short political gains of the war.

So maybe Trump has some good reason to believe that being openly rapacious is a better political path than making up fairy tales about democracy and human rights”

https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/crude-ideology