Author: nick

‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and ‘A Clockwork Orange’ may be the two most prophetic films ever made about the interactions between human nature and our technologically mediated social reality. Which prophecy is coming true? Source link

On March 2, I posted about a court opinion related to a lawsuit brought by lawyer Sonya Shaykhoun. Shaykhoun had sent out a Tweet that proved controversial; sued news outlets for (among other things) copyright infringement based on their including the Tweet in their stories about the controversy; and lost on fair use grounds. She has now filed a Third Amended Complaint in that case (Shaykhoun v. Al Jazeera Media Network (S.D.N.Y.)), and the post makes a cameo appearance. There’s a lot more in the 34-page Complaint, but I thought I’d pass along some excerpts: Plaintiff expands this [Third Amended…

Tariffs on Chinese goods are not effective if those goods can still enter the United States under another label. If a product made in China can be rerouted through a third country, lightly transformed, stamped "Made in Malaysia," and sent into the U.S. market, then even the highest tariffs will not have the intended effect. Source link

Now we all know how the medieval peasants felt when they had to get up to till the fields, after the Viking hordes failed to show up to pillage their town. ‘Not unique to war’: Millions of Americans suffer from moral injury. What’s causing it? Ozempic kills your desire to eat—but can they also stop you from wanting to do anything at all? Entire human populations vanished 3,000 years ago. Scientists figured out where they went. Finding water on the Moon for astronauts to drink and make fuel. Video: What a plant’s decision-making reveals about intelligence. Video: Peter Thiel freaks…

Hello, dear readers! I haven’t posted anything in quite a while, not for any good reason, but because I didn’t want to step into that foolish “Disclosure” mess. David Grusch, who it was once believed would blow apart the whole ‘UFO coverup,’ hasn’t produced anything in several years except more unsupported claims. Luis Elizondo skipped out on a Congressional UAP briefing to attend the Alien Festival in McMinnville, Oregon, where he was a paid speaker (he first claimed to be “sick”), thereby showing where his real priorities lie. And Ross Coulthart says that one crashed UFO was so large it…

The anniversary slipped by without my noticing it, but recently, while hunting down one of my earlier articles, I was reminded that my first online piece for Skeptical Inquirer, “Happiness, Religion, and the Status Quo,” was published on December 4, 2014. So, as of December 2024, I completed a decade writing the “Behavior & Belief” column for SI. As I recall, back in 2014, Barry Karr, then executive director of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, noticed that I’d been writing blog posts on superstition and other skeptical topics for Psychology Today. He contacted me and said, “If you ever want…

I have long argued that free will, as understood by most people, is simply an illusion, and I recently criticized Shermer’s view that it is not. In response, Shermer says I’m mistaken, but concludes that the issue of free will versus determinism is “an insoluble problem because we may be ultimately talking past one another at different levels of causality.” In fact, the problem is not one of levels of causality, but of semantics: Shermer has made up a new definition of free will that’s very different from the one most people hold, and different as well from definitions offered…

When last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed by Donald Trump last July 4, the conventional wisdom in Washington was that it was a one-and-done effort to use the budget reconciliation vehicle for strict party-line lawmaking prior to the 2026 midterms. Source link

An E/A-18G Growler aircraft launches from the flight deck of the world’s largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, during Operation Epic Fury, March 1, 2026. Photo: US Navy. The table below displays the total US National Security budget.  The amounts shown are not restricted to what constitutes Pentagon spending or the larger “National Defense” (050) budget function.  Also included in the broader National Security category are the Veterans Administration (the human costs of wars), the State Department (diplomacy, arms sales, etc.) and Homeland Security (Coast Guard and border and internal security and more).  I also calculate an appropriate share…

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair Donald Trump continues to undermine the U.S. Constitution, reject democratic culture, violate international law, strain relationships with allies, and threaten adversaries with bombing them back to the Stone Age. The obvious question is: When will this end? Even as immediate issues are being raised about the reasons behind the U.S.–Israeli war against Iran and the exact nature of the ceasefire, we should keep asking: When will Trump’s nightmarish influence stop? But the real question may not be when it ends. It may be whether the United States can ever return to what it was before…