In my past life, a decade or so ago, I was writing and thinking a lot about topological geon foundations for quantum gravity. The gist of the idea is that general relativity permits closed timelike curves

I've got at least 18 good reasons you should favour representatives who propose a Job Guarantee scheme rather than a UBI. (I think there could be several more reasons, write to me if you can think of more.)

Some incredibly shocking statistics and facts in the book "Not a Crime to Be Poor" by Peter Edelman, talk given at Politics & Prose here: Just pulling out one of them --- after the Columbine

To be fair, this article is not just about how bad Mayor Pete is, it applies to every advocate of centrist neoliberalism (those who promote Reaganomics and light government and quasi-free markets with

I colleague of mine once got me into a civilised and informative, but fairly heated, argument over the US second amendment. After initial exchanges, where I recall I signalled my basic pacifist philosophy

In his book "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" David Epstein makes the case (quite convincingly and robustly) that people with general skills tend to do better in life than

When I was younger I used to think the meritocracy of conservative commentators like David Brooks was a reasonable idea. Why not encourage our best and brightest to lead society? I've always been a Leftie

Like many conservative shibboleths the fear and paranoia intended by using the phrase "big government" is hopelessly reactionary and profoundly simplistic and nonsensical. There are two extreme

It's physics, right? Well, that'd be my bias. Being honest, of the hard and soft sciences, I'd say mathematics was the most beautiful and psychology the most joyful, if for no other reason than "joy"

Shout out here to this dude Steve Grumbine who creates for RealProgressives. Following a few links I found a great 2010 blog post by Bill Mitchell, the Aussie economist, who neatly explains why post-Keynesian

Geeks who are interested in economics no doubt already know a lot at the periphery about "Modern Money Theory", q.v., "Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economics" by Warren Mosler, and

On a recent episode of TMBS historian Harvey Kaye talked about the Bernie Sanders speech where he echoed FDR. Bernie is probably more feared by the oligarchs than FDR was, because they can look back at

On his Deconstructed Podcast, Mehdi Hasan interviews the spineless centrist commentator Ezra Klein on the case for impeachment. Ezra Klein: "The constitutional reason for impeachment is... outweighed

More generally: Universal social programmes are never paid for by tax revenues, they are paid for by government deficit spending. I am beginning to think this simple aphorism of monetary economics is the

A recent episode of The Majority Report had a good discussion on "The People's Republic Of Walmart", in which authors Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski argue that much of the capitalist economy

Bernie's latest campaign add is a good articulation of how Trump is a fake populist and how Bernie is the true working class champion. David Doel and others give good commentary on Bernie's campaign and

At a recent Fox hosted townhall in Bethehem, Bernie Sanders had a hard time convincing the hosts that he could "pay for free healthcare". This is the one thing he gets consistently wrong, but

There's a lot of buzz in geek circles about 2020 US potus candidate Andrew Yang. Let me quickly explain why he's an idiot, and why voting for a true progressive like Warren or Sanders is much more thoughtful

Thoughts following the mosque slaughter in New Zealand First a couple of plugs, then some real substance: recently TMBS (or was it M.R.) guest Joshua Kahn recommended the progressive action manual written

Roko's Basilisk made an appearance on last season's HBO nerd-com Silicon Valley. Since I'm a nerd and a (for a nerd) politically incorrect platonist (metaphysical pluralist) I felt I had to combat the