Political ethicist. Podcast host of ReImagining Liberty and The UnPopulist’s Zooming In. Prior: Think tank scholar. Buddhist and radical liberal.
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2024-12-20T14:13:06Z Event JSON
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Last Notes npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ 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? npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ 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/ npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ It’s wild that one of the two major party candidates is running on actually-full-throated-fascism and the only way our papers of record know how to cover it is how does that poll such-or-such random group of voters. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Between the Aaron Rogers's performance on Monday, and Trump's performance yesterday, this has been a bad week for conspiracy-addled, brainwormed wealthy New Yorkers. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ The biggest barrier to an actually just criminal justice system in America is cop unions. Reform is difficult, though, because the left doesn't want to pass legislation breaking the power of public employee unions, and the right likes bad and violent cops. https://www.techdirt.com/2024/09/11/police-union-says-fuck-officers-law-and-order-tosses-endorsement-to-donald-trump/ npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Having played with it, with a number of different topics and styles of documents, the new "Audio Overview" tool in Google's NotebookLM, which generates a natural sounding, two "host" podcast conversation, might be the most impressive use of AI technology I've seen yet. It's mind blowing. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ According to my kids, Trump is polling poorly among their sixth grade peers. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ This is what we call a "moral panic." https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/10/24240920/state-ags-back-surgeon-general-social-media-warning-labels npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ There's a story even bigger than Aurora, Colorado, and even bigger than Springfield, Ohio, that the Democrat Party is hiding from true Americans. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/the-innsmouth-immigrant-crimewave-the-democrat-party-is-hiding-from-you/ npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ People who hate immigrants contribute far less to America's greatness than the immigrants they hate. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Someone should start a rumor in the right wing media about how the patriotic American coastal town of Innsmouth is being overrun by odd looking newcomers with weird mannerisms who come from beyond the sea and see if JD Vance will warn the MAGA faithful about it. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ [James Earl Jones as a Force ghost . jpg] npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ No one has ever embodied the pundit's fallacy quite as thoroughly as Thomas Friedman. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/03/opinion/friedman-harris-debate.html?unlocked_article_code=1.JU4.2YCr.oyFvgHWZnfJy&smid=url-share npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ On phenomenon of men who convince themselves they are the only true meritocrats because women somehow don‘t understand or don‘t appreciate the idea of merit. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/the-misuse-of-meritocracy/ npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ The kids went back to school today. It's so quiet. I'm marking the occasion by putting away my trusty sign until next summer. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ I moved my newsletter to #Ghost yesterday. (Which is awesome.) So just seeing who else among my friends is hosting there as well, so I can add you to my Ghost network recommendations. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ @npub19cv…wg2a How'd it go? I haven't run that one. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Well that's it, guys. Pack it in. The whole AI thing is over. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ I love my children, I really do, but 12 days out from the start of the school year, and with a work-from-home job, I confess I'm longingly imagining being one of those childless cat ladies JD's always talking about. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ The article I very much wish everyone with strong opinions about whether AI art is "art" would read before expressing more strong opinions just got a substantive update. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/art-definition/ npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ A project from JD Vance's VC days? npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Every Marvel movie is just a trailer for the next Marvel movie. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Dan Brown needs to give us a Robert Langdon versus Project 2025 novel. (And Ron Howard can come back to direct the movie as penance for Hillbilly Elegy.) npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ The GOP should've quit with the weird furniture thing after Clint Eastwood berated a chair, but they didn't, and look where it got them. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Write a couple thousand words of fiction today. Which was awfully fun. Fiction writing is a good deal more pleasant than essays. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Quite a shift in the betting markets. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Our idiot kitten has figured out how to leap up and pull the foam windscreen off my podcasting microphone and then use his tiny claws to shred it. He might have to look for another place to live. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ The toughest and most rewarding job in DC was to be staff writer for Cato executive vice president David Boaz. David died in June and I brought together five of us for a conversation about this great man. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/p/remembering-david-boaz-conversation-closest-colleagues npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Now I want a TV miniseries about an elite Ewok unit hunting down the last bits of Imperial forces that scattered through the forests of Endor. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ I wrote this before the outbreak of "Mass Deportation Now!" signs, but it applies even more now. Mass deportations are unspeakably evil, and the urge to bothsides things should be stridently resisted and called out. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ "Mass Deportation Now!" is a slogan of absolute evil. The ugliest, most vile thing I've ever seen as a political convention. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ The JD Vance selection is a gift to Democrats. He's the apotheosis of the kind of far-right reactionary social conservatism they've been warning Trumpism will seek to coercively force upon the country, and the kind of that is most repulsive to moderates and independents. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ If you want to understand the rise of the authoritarian, (proto-)fascist Trumpist right, Karen Stenner's work on the authoritarian personality type is critical. Her Wikipedia page provides a good summary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Stenner npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ The closed recommendations network is one of the ways Substack tries to lock writers into its platform. Ghost's approach is much cooler—and more ethical. https://ghost.org/changelog/recommendations/ npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Celebrity spotting at the DC airport is so much more disappointing than, say, LA. For example, right now I'm waiting at the same gate as Greta Van Susteren. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ One of social media's canonical and most tedious exchanges: npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ This paragraph is a good explanation of why the opinion section of the New York Times is the way it is. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ @npub14nr…7rlr I have Mona, and have used it a fair amount, but Ivory's UI is just a lot cleaner and prettier. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ A thought experiment to help clarify some of the issues regarding whether training and using AI tools amounts to theft of artists' and writers' work. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/p/ai-theft-thought-experiment npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ I checked out the Amazon AI summary of the reviews of the novel I wrote during law school, and it's pretty fair. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ I think often about something David Boaz told me a few years into Trump's administration: That he was constantly saddened to discover how many libertarians turned out to hate the left (and here he meant the cultural left as much as the economic left) more than they loved liberty, and were enthusiastically willing to sacrifice the latter if it meant getting to hurt the former. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Politics needs more emotion, not less. Today's show is a conversation about how thinking more emotionally can make politics more humane, and why trying to abandon emotion in the name of reason is a mistake. Listen here: https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/p/need-emotion-politics-a5a4 npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ One thing I liked about this season of Doctor Who is that there were no Cybermen or Daleks. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Is the new season of Doctor Who at a higher than typical frame rate? There's something off about the picture, but I can quite figure out what it is. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Moral progress is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ July 4th is when we celebrate independence. But the proper day to celebrate American freedom is Juneteenth. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ It's shocking just how unequipped, culturally and intellectually, the mainstream of American journalism turned out to be in responding to the rise of a genuine authoritarian to the heights of American politics and the pivot of many elite institutions to wholesale support of him. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Self-inflicted unhappiness results from the interaction of aversion, clinging, and ignorance. The rise of the authoritarian right in America shows us how damaging these traits are when turned outward to influence politics, demanding that government weaponize that aversion, clinging, and ignorance against society as a whole. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/p/politics-broken-values-warped-perspectives npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ One of the reasons our contemporary political culture feels so broken, and why so many willingly embrace authoritarianism, is because of the rise of a mutually reinforcing perspective and a set of values grounded in the poisons of aversion and clinging. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/p/politics-broken-values-warped-perspectives npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ There are plenty of novels staring Sherlock's brother, Mycroft Holmes. But they all seem to cast him as basically another Sherlock, solving murders and other mysteries. This is such a missed opportunity. Mycroft should instead be a George Smiley type spy master doing dreary espionage things. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ I'm much more active on #Threads, and so you should now probably follow me at @npub1age…e65c instead of this account. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ I wrote about Scott Adams's bizarre explanation of American politics, the way evolutionary psychology gets used to justify misogyny, and how Roland Barthes's theory of mythology explains all of it. https://aaronrosspowell.com/blog/scott-adams-scientific-misogyny-and-roland-barthess-mythology/ npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ Substack's leadership is engaging in "normative sociology," which, Robert Nozick joked, is "the study of what the causes of problems ought to be." Nazi ideas are a problem and #Substack *wants* the solution to be platforming (and monetizing) those ideas, so Nazi ideas are exposed more broadly, and receive more criticism. Of course, the data and historical record are overwhelming that this isn't at all the solution, and only makes the problem worse, but Substack has an interest in ignoring that. npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ With the reporting on Richard Hanania's white supremacist writings, here's your reminder that Scott Alexander, another darling of the same people promoting Hanania, back in 2014 was talking about how he'd use his hugely popular Slate Star Codex blog to push the same white supremacist race science (along with far-right neoreactionary philosophy).
