How Extreme Bipartisanism Rose in the United States

Reagan kills the Fairness Doctrine (1987) - Broadcasting used to require stations to present both sides of controversial issues. Reagan's FCC scraps it, which opens the door for openly one-sided political media. Rush Limbaugh fills the vacuum (late 80s/early 90s) - Without the Fairness Doctrine, AM radio becomes a playground for right-wing talk radio. Limbaugh pioneers the format: rage, tribalism, "us vs. them." He builds a massive audience that learns to distrust mainstream media entirely a...

 How to be an Attractive Man

1. Fix your posture Research from Harvard shows that upright posture immediately signals confidence and competence. People literally perceive you differently within seconds. 2. Develop a resonant voice Studies consistently show deeper, well-modulated voices rank higher in attractiveness ratings for men. This isn't about faking a deep voice it's about proper breathing and resonance. Try the "humming technique" where you hum at your natural pitch, then gradually speak from that resonant pla...

 Nobody Knows How the Whole Thing Works

A few years ago, I attended a national conference on technological literacy… One of the main speakers, a sociologist, presented data he had gathered in the form of responses to a questionnaire. After a detailed statistical analysis, he had concluded that we are a nation of technological illiterates. As an example, he noted how few of us (less than 20 percent) know how our telephone works. This statement brought me up short. I found my mind drifting and filling with anxiety. Did I know how ...

 Todo Coleccionista Necesita Su Inventario

En realidad, como explica el ensayista Philipp Blom, todo coleccionista necesita su inventario. Las cosas que se esfuerza en reunir pueden volver a dispersarse algún día, vendidas o saqueadas, sin dejar rastro de la pasión y los conocimientos que impulsaban a su anterior dueño. Incluso a los más humildes coleccionistas de sellos, libros o discos les duele imaginar que seguramente en el futuro esos objetos elegidos uno a uno por íntimos motivos volverán al revoltijo y la mezcolanza de l...

 The Psychology of People Who Don't Care About Professiona...

People who don't obsess over sports often have what psychologists call lower tribal instincts. Their identity isn't as strongly tied to being part of a group. They're more individualistic. They're more likely to say, "I don't need to belong to something bigger to feel complete." And there's actual research on this. A 2019 study found that people with low sports interest showed way less us versus them thinking. translation, they don't automatically hate the other team just because they're not ...

 Why Are Religious Services Unintelligible?

(4) The Church will expect you to attend at least one of its services regularly, every Sunday, and with very, very few exceptions these are universally abominable. In the first place they consist almost exclusively of talk. We tell God what to do and what not to do, and give him information about things which, if he is omniscient, he already knows. We attempt to celebrate his glory with doggerels and religious nursery rhymes called hymns, mostly set to military or sentimental tunes. And then ...

 Heaven Into the Head, Or Head Into the Heavens

G. K. Chesterton once said that whereas the philosopher tries to get the heavens into his head, the poet asks only to get his head into the heavens. So when one asks, in today’s lingo, “Where’s your head at?” it would be ideal to answer that it’s in heaven. The problem is that most of us now live in cities where the view of heaven is blocked by ceilings and smog. People don’t even realize that every home can be a home with a view—the view of the sky—since we are living on the ...

 Rigidness is a Symptom of Death

As Lao-tzu put it two thousand years ago: Man at his birth is supple and tender, but in death he is rigid and hard. Plants when young are sinuous and moist, but when old are brittle and dry. Thus suppleness and tenderness are signs of life, While rigidity and hardness are signs of death.

 Every Brain Plays Its Own World

All knowledge, all experience could be said to be a neural situation inside the skull, and the brain is not merely a receiver and recorder of input through the senses: it also has output because the way in which it structures its senses and nerve patterns shapes the input in the same way that a harpist, by selective plucking, brings formal melody out of a row of uniformly scaled and otherwise silent strings. Thus the brain evokes the sensible world by sounding the strings of all those vibrati...

 The Stream

What happens with your stream of experience if you realize that no one is in control of it? If you see that it is just going along of itself, unpushed and unpulled? (This is what the Chinese writing on this page means: The Tao, the course of nature, flows of itself.) You can get the feel of it by breathing without doing anything to help your breath along. Let the breath out, and then let it come back by itself, when it feels like it. And then out again when it wants to go out. Keep this up un...