mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Political ethicist. Podcast host of ReImagining Liberty and The UnPopulist’s Zooming In. Prior: Think tank scholar. Buddhist and radical liberal.
As the New York Times once again defends the underprivileged, marginalized, and oppressed J.K. Rowling, it’s important to remember that a pretty big chunk of hand-wringing about cancel culture is in fact just status anxiety, as people used to having their opinions unchallenged and their prejudices celebrated are now facing criticism, and they hate it.
Louisiana’s law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms is unconstitutional and even the 6-3 conservative majority will balk at it. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/liz-murrill-louisiana-attorney-general-ten-commandments-law-supreme-court-1235134392/
First time it’s been cold enough this fall to turn on the heat. Which means this morning the kitten discovered heating vents for the first time in his life. He’s parked himself in front of the one in my study, and I don’t expect he’ll move from that spot all day.
The kitten gets to lick the dog food can after the dog’s been fed, and this means the kitten is now waking me up each earlier and earlier morning to yell at me that it’s time to feed the dog.
Writing a blog post for tomorrow about what Kim Philby can teach us about the New York Times refusing to take seriously criticism of its political coverage.
The thing with Trump spacing out and swaying to music for 30 minutes seems like a pretty big deal on the cognitive decline front, so we’ll see if it gets covered as such, instead of just another of his eccentricities.
I spoke with media critic Parker Molloy about the reactionary centrist bias of much of mainstream journalism. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/how-the-media-covers-for-the-right/
This article looks at why moral philosophers don’t seem more moral than anyone else, and gives an answer that I think is correct—and which dovetails my own thinking about the need to go back to viewing ethics as a practice. https://blog.apaonline.org/2019/12/10/why-arent-ethicists-more-ethical/
The claims about social media rotting young brains are largely indistinguishable from the claims about how TV would rot our brains when I was a kid, and the people my age breathlessly repeating the former generally don’t think their brains were rotted. This is a panic over novelty, not evidence.
Kim Philby was history’s greatest spy, and the harm he did was prolonged by a British elite who refused to listen to criticism outside their social class. There are lessons in that for America’s journalistic and political elite. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/the-elite-protect-their-own/
There are more than a few similarities between the rhetoric of Trump and other MAGA candidates and that of the KKK a hundred years ago. https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2024/10/15/armstrong-trumps-anti-immigrant-campaign-echoes-the-past/
Gonna play a game few rounds of Legend of the Red Dragon in his honor. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/ward-christensen-bbs-inventor-and-architect-of-our-online-age-dies-at-age-78/
I’m fascinated by the different age distributions Spotify shows me for listeners of my ReImagining Liberty podcast. The first is for my discussion of the ethical questions of democratic participation, and the second is on distinguishing liberalism and progressivism.
I was rereading the convention favorite “Jailbreak” scenario for the Unknown Armies TTRPG, and it got me wondering: Are there RPGs, or full campaigns, structured with no NPCs? Where, like “Jailbreak,” every character encountered in the game is controlled by a player, and none by the GM?
I am sad that the audiobooks of John le Carré’s novels are being redone with Simon Vance, and those new editions are replacing the older with Michael Jayston. Vance is a very good narrator, but Jayston’s George Smiley will always, for me, be the the one true Smiley.
Regardless of what he says when asked, the Browns ownership is 100% forcing Kevin Stefanski to play Deshaun Watson. No coach would start Watson of his own free will. https://sports.yahoo.com/browns-kevin-stefanski-deshaun-watson-gives-us-the-best-chance-to-win-190022138.html
Unfortunately, I can't (yet) use Mastodon aliases to automatically redirect this account, but I bridged my Bluesky account, where I'm much more active, so if you're following me here, you'll probably want to follow that account: @aaronrosspowell.com
Nice try, but that image is clearly AI generated.