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Jacob Bruggeman

@jacobbruggeman.bsky.social
199 followers 170 following 44 posts

Intellectual & political historian writing on hackers, libertarians, and tech in the modern US | Examining the ideologies in/of Silicon Valley | Friend, Neighbor, Cat Dad & Baltimorean

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Jacob Bruggeman @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Anthropic is “destructively scanning” millions of books. Should you care? siliconprairies.substack.com/p/anthropic-...
siliconprairies.substack.com
Anthropic is “destructively scanning” millions of books. Should you care?
On the curious debate over AI companies buying, digitizing, and discarding “rare” books.
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Eileen Clancy 🧿 @clancyny.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
... ": "To anyone paying close attention, the electronic keys to the telephone systems of both countries were ready for the taking." 🔗 Jacob A. Bruggeman, "Phreaking the U.K.", Interfaces, vol 6, 2025. cse.umn.edu/cbi/interfaces
cse.umn.edu
Interfaces
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Bribleck @bribleck.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
It’s not a good look to be unable to take criticism.
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Kevin Driscoll 📳੯‧̀͡⬮ @kdriscoll.aoir.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/02/2026
"Phreaking Politics in Modern America", a new paper by Jacob Bruggeman covers "telephone hacking, AT&T's status as an icon of American technology, and the New Left-to-libertarian pipeline in modern American political order." #openaccess PDF from *Modern American History:* […]
aoir.social
Original post on aoir.social
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hilzoy @hilzoy.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Jacob Bruggeman on Henry Farrell’s substack. OpenAI's Rogue Agents Are a Normal Accident siliconprairies.substack.com/p/openais-ro...
siliconprairies.substack.com
OpenAI's Rogue Agents Are a Normal Accident
Lessons from the 1988 Morris Worm
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Jeffrey Yost @justcode.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Please join Us!! (Sept. 16th 1pm C.). Absolutely thrilled to announce an online book talk w/ thought-leading scholar @stanforduniversity.bsky.social @xiaochang.bsky.social on her stellar new book Divination Engines on NLP & AI! #criticalAI #histtech Registration (free): cse.umn.edu/cbi/events/d...
Flyer for talk with an image of Prof. Xiaochang Li other images and maroon, gold, and gray design elements and info on the event.
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Sorry, but this is spot on. The White House believes Donald Trump has a magic ring that turns his thoughts into reality. They demand public praise for things he imagines. And they need a computer program to generate fake imagery to sell it. The (accidentally) most accurate and honest they’ve been.
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 05/09/2026
Not The Onion.
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hannah gais @hannahgais.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Hampshire College started with a grand promise: to serve as "a vehicle for the realization of self in society." This fall, the school will close its doors. I talked to some of its founders, faculty, students, administrators, and board members about what its loss means thebaffler.com/latest/class...
thebaffler.com
Class Dismissed | Hannah Gais
Private liberal arts schools were never going to kickstart the revolution. But the closure of Hampshire College further narrows the political imaginary.
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Becca Lewis @beccalew.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
A great read from @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social siliconprairies.substack.com/p/openais-ro...
siliconprairies.substack.com
OpenAI's Rogue Agents Are a Normal Accident
Lessons from the 1988 Morris Worm
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Jacob Bruggeman @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I authored the review in question, linked here so you can judge. My background beyond a caricature: I'm a professor working on the history of tech at Ohio State. My affiliation with FAI is 100% unpaid. It simply helps open the door for oral histories with techies. www.thebulwark.com/p/dont-look-...
thebulwark.com
Don’t Look Now, But the Tech Bros Are Losing
Despite warnings about techno-fascism, Silicon Valley’s right wing isn’t new, and its alliance with MAGA is faltering.
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The Bulwark @thebulwark.com · 02/09/2026
"On some level, Big Tech’s eager-beaver appeasement of Trump seemed like a surprise. For those watching closely, though, there had been signs." But the love affair might be faltering. @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social reviews "The Nerd Reich" by Gil Durán:
lnk.thebulwark.com
Don’t Look Now, But the Tech Bros Are Losing
Despite warnings about techno-fascism, Silicon Valley’s right wing isn’t new, and its alliance with MAGA is faltering.
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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
His actual critique is that "clickbaity analysis of tech’s alliance with MAGA as a flashy-fashy “Nerd Reich” will lead readers to doom-spiraling and #resisting online, when the real-world landscape of electoral politics already suggests fractures in the MAGA/tech alliance." The techbros are "losing"
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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Jacob makes it clear throughout the review that he is not on the side of the tech bros. He just thinks that e.g. their rhetoric about weapons is not that different from the defense primes, that the fascism debate was not that useful etc. You can disagree with all that, but it ain't Thiel apologetics
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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I've been curious about how Duran addresses the complications of Davidson/Rees-Mogg's book, The Sovereign Individual, which seemingly plays a central part in his argument, but which is blistering in its contempt for Trump-style national populism. Now, I really don't want to know. Finis.
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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I am not surprised that Duran doesn't like Jacob's review - no-one wants to be accused of being clickbaity - but substantive responses might be preferable to misleading ad hominems? I've not read The Nerd Reich, so can't comment on whether it's good/bad, but reading this, I'm in no hurry to.
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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I was in a friendly discussion with Gil Duran on NPR last week, but this is guilt-by-association. Jacob Bruggeman, whose dissertation committee I was on, is nobody's idea of a Thiel acolyte. Nor could anyone who had actually read the review (link www.thebulwark.com/p/dont-look-... ) believe he is.
thebulwark.com
Don’t Look Now, But the Tech Bros Are Losing
Despite warnings about techno-fascism, Silicon Valley’s right wing isn’t new, and its alliance with MAGA is faltering.
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Jacob Bruggeman @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
OpenAI's Rogue Agents Are a Normal Accident siliconprairies.substack.com/p/openais-ro...
siliconprairies.substack.com
OpenAI's Rogue Agents Are a Normal Accident
Lessons from the 1988 Morris Worm
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Public Books @publicbooks.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
“The liberal died by assassination and there were multiple shooters.” New at PB: @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social interviews Kevin Schultz on his book “Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals).”
publicbooks.org
“As Good As It Gets”: Talking Liberalism with Kevin Schultz - Public Books
“Up until Franklin Delano Roosevelt, very few Americans actually called themselves liberals or embraced anything that was called ‘liberalism.’”
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Jacob Bruggeman @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Snapshots from the @reaganinstitute.bsky.social's "Cities on a Hill" retreat, which I was honored to co-convene at the Greenbrier in the Alleghenies. Here's our lively panel on history vs. nostalgia with Bev Gage, @kathrynbrownell.bsky.social, and @joshuatait.bsky.social, moderated by yours truly.
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Sara Guenthner @sguenthnerauthor.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
They destroy mountains to get limestone for concrete, the second most used building material in the world, so being able to recycle it is amazing news. #sharegoodnewstoo techxplore.com/news/2026-05...
techxplore.com
Recycled concrete slabs match or beat traditional builds, even at 100% replacement
Steel and recycled concrete composite slabs with equivalent—and in some cases superior—performances compared to traditional ones: This is the outcome of the SARCOS (Steel And Recycled Concrete Slab) p...
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Jacob Bruggeman @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
Very glad to share this piece in @modamhist.bsky.social! I am glad they let me squeeze 7 figures into the article. You can see one of them here:
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Jacob Bruggeman @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
A moving manifesto against despair in higher education from @adapalmer.bsky.social: "Despair is very emotionally tempting." Yet: "We can endure this, and be a guiding light through it, but only by recentering, by teaching citizens, not workers." www.chronicle.com/article/high...
chronicle.com
Higher Ed Is at a Turning Point. 11 Scholars Predict What’s Next.
AI, enrollment, finances, politics, and the turbulent road ahead.
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Jacob Bruggeman @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
An exciting AI an citizenship initiative at Georgetown. It's being led by some wonderful humanists!
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David Simon @audacityofdespair.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
This how you isolate and capture "the worst of the worst" of these dangerous immigrants. You show yourself to be in need of help, and the worst criminals reveal themselves and their criminality by doing whatever they can to provide you with help. Masterful law enforcement.
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Jacob Bruggeman @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
Glad to share a new article in @modamhist.bsky.social: "Phreaking Politics in Modern America." Come for fun bits about Abbie Hoffman and Steve Jobs, stay for the analysis of how critiques of AT&T planted seeds of the techno-libertarian politics all around us today. doi.org/10.1017/mah....
doi.org
Phreaking Politics in Modern America | Modern American History | Cambridge Core
Phreaking Politics in Modern America
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Lee Vinsel @leev.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Jacob Bruggeman has a neat new article out, "Phreaking Politics in Modern America," which covers telephone hacking, AT&T's status as an icon of American technology, and the New Left-to-libertarian pipeline in modern American political order doi.org/10.1017/mah....
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Berny Belvedere @bernybelvedere.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
"In his search for the Antichrist lurking in college protests and international institutions, Peter Thiel never glances at the mirror. The real threat to his eschatological vision may be staring back from it." 🔥 from @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social in @theunpopulist.net
theunpopulist.net
Peter Thiel Looks Everywhere for the Antichrist Except the Mirror
The tech billionaire’s AI technology is ushering in a dystopian Big Government as he races to beat his political opponents to the end times
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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 14/10/2025
It's out! My review of "Abundance", my review of "Breakneck" and the slogan "rent extraction is always what the other guy does" open.substack.com/pub/hypertex...
open.substack.com
What happens when Chinese resolve meets American rent-seeking?
Reading "Abundance" and "Breakneck" side by side suggests that learning from one another is not enough.
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Matt Gabriele @profgabriele.com · 17/06/2025
Have we acclimated? 5 million people were in the streets, nationwide 3 days ago
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—>realhackhistory.org @bsky.realhackhistory.org · 14/06/2025
These illustrations of the basic components of a home computer in Family Computing Magazine issue 4, from 1983.
Illustration showing a modem, a monitor, a disk drive, a central processing unit, a cassette deck and a printer.An illustration of a livingroom with the family computer. There is a sofa chair, a dog and a fish in a fishbowl, with the computer on a desk beside a cactus,
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Internet Archive @archive.org · 04/06/2025
🚀 New podcast alert! Introducing Future Knowledge—a podcast from the Internet Archive & Authors Alliance exploring how knowledge is created, shared & preserved in the digital age. 🎧 Listen and subscribe: futureknowledge.transistor.fm #FutureKnowledge @archive.org @authorsalliance.bsky.social
Illustration for the "Future Knowledge" podcast. A surreal, retro-futuristic landscape blends past and future elements: a bust of a Roman figure, stacks of books, file cabinets, satellites, DNA strands, skyscrapers, and futuristic buildings. A cartoon mouse steers a ship’s wheel connected to a giant computer mouse. An old desktop computer displays the Authors Alliance logo, and an open file drawer shows a yellow folder labeled Internet Archive. At the bottom, bold text reads: “FUTURE KNOWLEDGE.”
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Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
“The group estimated that reducing the operating budget by $900 million, as the Trump administration wants to do, would require closing 350 of the 433 parks, monuments, historic sites and other locations overseen by the Park Service… we would be witnessing the dismantling of a century-old system”
nytimes.com
Opinion | Is This the Beginning of the End of America’s National Parks?
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Michael Wong @miquai.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
@alisongopnik.bsky.social suggests that there is no such thing as general intelligence, natural or artificial. Instead, multiple intelligences trade off in salience throughout our life histories: As children, we explore. As adults, we exploit. As elders, we empower.
Alison Gopnik stands before a slide explaining that multiple intelligences trade off in human development
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 22/05/2025
“The product will be capable of being fully aware of a user’s surroundings and life, will be unobtrusive, able to rest in one’s pocket or on one’s desk, and will be a third core device a person would put on a desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone.” 🫠
wsj.com
Exclusive | What Sam Altman Told OpenAI About the Secret Device He’s Making With Jony Ive
The idea is a “chance to do the biggest thing we’ve ever done as a company here,” Altman told OpenAI employees Wednesday.
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Kori Schake @kschake.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
Giving political donors “dedicated VIP experiences” with the US military is not only corrupt, it will damagingly make Americans think of our military as partisan. Congress should prevent this.
wsj.com
Exclusive | Donors Promised ‘VIP Experience’ at Military Events With Trump
Top donors to a committee supporting events celebrating America’s 250th birthday will receive special access to a military parade and other festivities.
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Jacob Bruggeman @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
Digital criminals depicted in a 1978 issue of an Ann Arbor paper
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Jacob Bruggeman @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
Science as Culture has a CFP for contributions to a forum on "Tech Oligarchy": think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issu...
think.taylorandfrancis.com
Science as Culture Forum on “Tech Oligarchy”
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News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
Monica Isham is the 1st woman & 1st minority to serve as a circuit court judge in Sawyer County. In an email to all Wisconsin state judges she said: “If there is no support for us, l will refuse to hold court. If this costs me my job or gets me arrested, then at least I know I did the right thing.”
wisconsinrightnow.com
Wisconsin Judge Monica Isham Threatens Not To Hold Court Over Hannah Dugan Arrest
Wisconsin Circuit Judge Monica Isham is threatening to refuse to hold court and even raise bail on defendants because of the arrest of Milwaukee Judge Hannah
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Public Books @publicbooks.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
New at PB, Jacob Bruggeman (@jacobbruggeman.bsky.social) interviews historian Steven Conn about his new book “Lies of the Land” (@uchicagopress.bsky.social) which interrogates the myth of the rural in American politics and culture.
publicbooks.org
America’s Pernicious Rural Myth: An Interview with Steven Conn
When you think of rural America, what comes to mind? In his new book, Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is—and Isn’t, historian Steven Conn contends that what we imagine as…
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Satan’s Niece @krissychula.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
This is high art
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Jacob Bruggeman @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
More evidence that Trump 2.0/DOGE is setting the stage for unprecedented cyberattacks. Or, as Bruce Schneier has quipped, this administration represents the most significant hack in the country’s history. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/05/u...
nytimes.com
Trump’s National Security Firings Come as He Weakens U.S. Cyberdefenses
The firing of the head of the National Security Agency was only the latest move that has eroded the country’s fortifications against cyberattacks, especially those targeting elections.
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Dan Goodin @dangoodin.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
A prominent computer scientist who has spent 20 years publishing academic papers on cryptography, privacy, and cybersecurity has gone incommunicado, had his professor profile removed by employer Indiana University, & had his homes raided by the FBI. No one knows why. arstechnica.com/security/202...
arstechnica.com
FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado
Indiana University quietly removes profile of tenured professor and refuses to say why.
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Kori Schake @kschake.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
My thoughts on the Signal business: "nobody wearing an American military uniform can doubt that if they took details of an ongoing operation off a classified system and transmitted them on an unclassified commercial platform, they would be court martialled and probably go to prison."
aei.org
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Jacob Bruggeman @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
A 1980s computer surveillance cartoon to brighten up your morning...
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Serge @hiserge.bsky.social · 23/03/2025
> Every day, about 100 terabytes of material are uploaded to the Internet Archive, or about a billion URLs, with the assistance of automated crawlers. Woah.
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Linus Westheuser @lwestheuser.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
📢 CALL FOR PAPERS 📢 "Moral Economies of the Polycrisis. Conflict, Critique, and Legitimation in Critical Times" Workshop, June 16-17 University of Hamburg Deadline for abstracts: 07/04 Supported by the Economic Sociology section of @dgsoziologie.bsky.social linuswestheuser.com/cfp-moral-ec...
Moral Economies of the Polycrisis
Conflict, Critique and Legitimation in Critical Times

International Workshop. 16-17 June 2025. University of Hamburg. Organizers: Laura Lüth (University of Hamburg), Till Hilmar (University of Vienna), and Linus Westheuser (Humboldt University Berlin).


By disrupting what is taken for granted, moments of economic, political, and ecological crisis reveal the implicit modus operandi of a society. As routines get derailed and settled arrangements come under strain, institutions are forced to explicate the “implicit social contract” (Barrington Moore) underpinning power, domination, and inequality. Who deserves protection when times get rough? Whose suffering matters and whose claims are made to count? Who is blamed? And what even counts as a crisis and what is shrugged off and fades into a ‘new normal’? 

These questions touch on a tacit structure of social expectations commonly discussed under the heading of moral economy. Drawing on thinkers like E.P. Thompson, James C. Scott, or Marion Fourcade, the moral economy perspective examines expectations of unequal reciprocity and distributive claims in economic relations; ideas of systemic legitimacy resting on mutual obligations between dominant and dominated groups; or political priorities tied to assumptions about the (un)deservingness and moral worth of social groups. Moral economy approaches focalize the ideational and institutional architecture of capitalist societies by parsing how legitimacy and hegemony are embedded in everyday moral reasoning. In addition these approaches also often look at social practices, struggles, and forms of critique centered around the violation of moral claims. 

At our workshop, we want to discuss work in the moral economy paradigm that sheds light on the current “polycrisis” composed of geopolitical turmoil, economic shocks, ecological breakdown, as well as crises of care and political legitimacy. 
    What can the moral economy perspective teach us about the way capitalist societies navigate these crises? 
    To what extent do crises open up a space in which dominated groups can critique inequality and demand a renegotiation of the implicit social contract? 
    How do demands and political responses informed by existing moral economies deepen inequality and domination? 
    How do institutions like the welfare state or social and eco-social policies seek to mend rifts in the moral economy? 
    What are moral background assumptions that make some developments (such as migration) but not others (such as poverty and extreme wealth) appear as crises? 
    And what is the explanatory status of moral economy as a concept? For instance, are popular moral sentiments and subjective aspirations a driver of political and economic action, or are they merely a symptom of existing power relations? Is moral economy about agency or structure? And if both, how exactly? 

These are some of the questions we want to discuss with a group of international scholars. 

We invite papers taking a moral economy perspective to empirically research or theorize the current conjuncture. Papers can be at all stages of development, the event is meant to collaboratively discuss work in progress. We especially welcome submissions from doctoral and post-doctoral researchers. Limited funds are available to assist with travel and accommodation for those lacking institutional support.

Please send an abstract of max. 500 words to: laura.lueth@uni-hamburg.de, till.hilmar@univie.ac.at and linus.westheuser@hu-berlin.de 

Deadline for abstract submissions: 7 April, 2025

The workshop is supported by the Economic Sociology Section of the German Sociological Association (DGS), the Research Unit Economic Sociology at the University of Hamburg, and the Research Unit Macrosociology at Humboldt University Berlin.
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Mei, lvl. 38 Warlock of the Expensive Paper @meithemouse.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
Money quote:
Text: 

Liberal freedom isn’t just about finding the life that best suits you, it’s a grand experiment in us all finding the best ways we can care for one another. Arnade characterizes modern liberalism as favouring “the individual over the community”. This is wrong; liberalism values both. Its canonical texts—On Liberty for instance—are self-consciously about finding a balance between the two. In recent times, the great push for unconstrained individualism, the tearing down of structures of communal aid, and the bleak insistence that “there’s no such thing as society” have come from the political right. Liberalism has compromised too much with this vision of men reduced to want fulfillment, but never let go of the insight that freedom, choice, and pluralism are both better for individuals and better for society.
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Jacob Bruggeman @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
Spotted in Midtown Atlanta
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Alex Hern @hern.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Absolutely perfect illustration of comparative advantage here: Japan builds the bullet train but Britain provides the bullshit design agency copy about it being inspired by cherry blossom www.designboom.com/technology/j...
designboom.com
japan railway unveils E10 shinkansen bullet train, with design inspired by sakura flowers
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