A brash, native New Yorker commits the most heinous of crimes, refusing to...
The man is a politician known for his implausible hair, and has certainly made some outrageous remarks about a certain foreign politician, which was no bar to high office. I refer of course to the...
View ArticleThose MEPs, eh?
For me, one of the arguments for getting out of the EU (the list of reasons is very long, but this is a Friday, and the pub beckons) was due to the lack of decent democratic accountability of the EU as...
View ArticleAn Open Letter to a Terrible Podcast
[I’m intensely interested in the current generation of space entrepreneurs. They really do have the capacity to transform the future of our species. I’m obsessed enough to listen to several...
View ArticleA statement of corporate philosophy I can get behind
These days, there is a lot of effort behind what is called the corporate social responsibility movement to inject what some of us might see as Leftist political ideas into the ways companies operate....
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The First Man and the unfashionableness of optimism
A week or so ago I went to see The First Man at the cinema. At first it seemed to do a good job of turning historical figures into real people. The domestic lives of the astronauts contrasted with the...
View ArticleA Dissent
Today is the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I, which killed something between 15 and 19 million people, an astonishing and colossal waste of human life and potential. Sometimes...
View ArticleOn Thanksgiving
Tomorrow is the U.S.’s Thanksgiving holiday. It is a fine time to reflect on the bounty that the productivity increases brought by capital accumulation and technological improvements have brought to...
View ArticleMoney without Kings
It appears that Kenya has some something surprisingly sane: it has decided to remove portraits of real people, especially politicians, from its currency. At one time, policy in the United States was...
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Some Merry Christmas photos
Yes, a rather belated Merry Christmas to all my fellow Samizdatistas, and similar wishes and thanks to all who read us and comment on us and on each other. I’ve been trawling through my photo-archives...
View ArticlePersuading people that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is wrong
Sure enough, it cropped up in my Facebook feed: “As usual, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is right: There should be no billionaires.” What does she say? A system that allows billionaires to exist when there...
View ArticleThe wrongness because of explained rightness argument
It’s a little thing, but I always enjoy it when someone argues back, against what someone else has said, by replying: You’re wrong, because the reason why you’re right is …: FACT CHECK: President Trump...
View ArticleThe constant denial that humans possess agency
Following on from the posting below about the “ISIS bride” is this comment from Brendan O’Neill at Spiked: Indeed, the story of these three London girls who ran off in 2015 was always a very telling...
View ArticleWe owe the relatives of murder victims our compassion but not our belief
Saturday’s Daily Mail carries this headline: ‘He’s a fraud’: Father of London Bridge terror victim Jack Merritt blasts Boris Johnson for making ‘political capital’ out of son’s death – and backs Jeremy...
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Looking back at Christmas Day
It’s now that time of the year between Christmas and the New Year, when we here sometimes do big postings with lots of photos. Usually, these have been retrospective looks back at the year nearly...
View ArticleCould you live in this socialist country?
Is the challenge from YT Vlogger ‘bald and bankrupt‘, in this video, filmed recently in Cuba. ‘bald’ as he is referred to, appears to be a chap from Brighton (if you watch his oeuvre) who walks around...
View ArticleOn the British National Health Service imbalance between lethargic diagnosis...
Yesterday I sent out a mass email to a list of my nearest and dearest, as many of them whose names I could remember, telling them that, just before Christmas, I had been diagnosed with lung cancer, and...
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Chris Tame (1949-2006): A personal memoir
In an earlier posting here just after Christmas, I solicited compliments, to cheer me up after I’d been diagnosed with lung cancer. Commenters on that posting said nice things about my blogging here...
View ArticleSamizdata quote of the day
I saw this via Instapundit and have to share: “Tweedy party-at-the-Verso-loft n+1 leftists aren’t making money. 33 year olds who follow Tik Tok trends for a living and communicate in slang that’s...
View ArticleIdeas are more powerful than armies – a tribute to Brian Micklethwait
I have often disagreed with Steve Baker as of late, but I must say this is good to see.
View ArticleOn Friendship
One of the first things I was told on being diagnosed with lung cancer was ‘you are going to need your friends’. That was said to me by the doctor who diagnosed me and the point is that it was true. I...
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