The author of hard right Republican strategy put racism, division, and ‘red meat’ issues at the heart of campaigns — “The whole secret of politics knowing who hates who.” — Kevin Phillips Kevin Phillips died on Oct. 9 at age 82. Phillips is credited with Nixon’s Southern strategy which is described in his Washington Post obituary as follows: The idea, in essence, was to co-opt White Democrats by associating African…

…or its general vicinity — Heart A decade or so ago, I saw a talk by Dr. Richard Davidson. He began by describing an experiment with highly experienced meditators, i.e., Tibetan monks in Dharamsala. As he and his team were placing a collection of sensors on the skull of their first subject, the monks burst out…

In which I shift my approach to publishing and express some disappointment Back to the blog Some years back, I switched my primary publishing platform from my blog, DarwinianInterlude, over to Medium. That hasn’t totally worked out. I’m shifting back, inspired by Cory Doctorow's explanation in On Media Enshittification (pt 1) that all his…

Short form: Q: Where is everybody? A: A good question; important that we grok(*1) it.

You specifically may be a target — The big picture Next time some social interaction on the internet pisses you off consider that your reaction might be manufactured. A variety of bad actors exploit our fears, love of outrage, and any strong emotion — typically to create fractures in the body politic. The tools to accomplish this, including targeting any…

MAGA for a day — or here’s how you can really own the Libs — Key points: Schismogenesis is a term from Gregory Bateson, noted anthropologist and systems theorist. It names a ‘positive feedback loop’ that can cause societies to break apart. The term was developed as he observed how gender roles progressed in severe opposition to each other in the Iatmul people — and…

Having fun in our Wordle chat thread — How we got here. Step 1: Wordle’s color palette of grey, green, and yellow suggested Japanese scroll paintings of mist on green mountains. That, in turn, inspired haiku Step 2: it occurred to me to extend the rules so that instead of 5/7/5 syllables, the syllable count should be determined…

In Search of the Lost Word — I have an odd love of harmonizing minor human interactions. Here’s an example. Rather than thinking about how to get through an intersection first, it feels best to maximize throughput (an information systems term that should be self-explanatory.) I know this sounds kind of goofy, but if everyone did it…

Unless they’re taxes on you — I’ve resisted for a couple of weeks, but this has been festering. You see, I try to leave timely commentary to other writers. Caren White is a favorite. For my part, I prefer to try and dig in with analysis. It’s my slow-cooking thing. …