Explaining the past two years
The bully doesn’t want the victim to do X, Y, and Z for their own sake. He wants to establish the principle that the victim will do X, Y, Z, or A, B, or C, on demand. That’s why arbitrary,...
View ArticleSamizdata quote of the day
“The pandemic tempted governments and their elite allies to treat citizens as passive objects to be dictated to, bullied and coerced en masse—an attitude not unlike that found in China, Cuba and North...
View Article“Legal but harmful”
“The draft Online Safety Bill delivers the government’s manifesto commitment to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online while defending free expression”, says the gov.uk website. It...
View ArticleCentral banks and cryptos – what could possibly go wrong?
An interesting article in Reason, the US magazine, about central bank digital currencies, which appear to the reverse of the libertarian, ground-up approach of Bitcoin’s original champions: You know...
View ArticleSamizdata quote of the day
“If you scare people enough, they will demand removal of freedom. This is the path to tyranny.” – Elon Musk: entrepreneur, spacefarer, and annoyer of the Woke. (Quoted by Yaron Brook here.)
View ArticleThe rot goes deep
I was going to say the rot goes deep in Scottish politics, but it ain’t just Scotland. It started with a minor story about a senior member of Scottish National Party getting into hot water. Until this...
View ArticleSamizdata quote of the day
“The old truths remain unchanged: The free world isn’t free because it is rich — it is rich because it is free. Freedom is not only a moral good but also a practical one: Because we have a system that...
View ArticleBreaking the Chains: a Guide to Nudging You
A superb video-fisking by PANDA of a Covid-propaganda video:
View ArticleWhat comes next?
To reiterate. The mRNA shots don’t stop infection or transmission, we don’t know whether they interfere with the development of durable immunity post-infection, and whether the next variant is deadlier...
View ArticleMy dear friends on the Left: what happened to you?
Half a century ago, when I was a young man, you were the ones celebrating individuality and anything-goes self-expression. Back then, you were the ones burning the draft cards and defying authority....
View ArticleIn order to save freedom of expression it became necessary to destroy it
“Protect women from chilling effect of misogyny, Ofcom urges tech firms”, the Times reports: Ofcom has told social media companies to stamp out misogyny, arguing that it is having a “chilling effect”...
View ArticleAn end to medical progress
Mark Johnson writes about ‘Health misinformation’: the latest addition to the Online Safety Bill … we have seen Big Tech increasingly taking on the role of online speech police in recent years. During...
View ArticleBanishing the demon drink from Wales
My late mother-in-law used to tell a funny story about how, when she was a child in Wales during the 1930s, she was taken to the doctor. Her mother feared there must be something terribly wrong with...
View ArticleThe seige
“I’ve farmed this land my whole life. I won’t sell.” “We’ll see about that, old man. We own the land all around yours. We control your water supply.” A scene like this could have come from the trailer...
View ArticleShould we be obliged to register a death?
When I first saw this story, “Daughter who buried father in illegal woodland pagan funeral avoids jail”, my outrage-meter went off the scale at the apparent violation of religious freedom....
View ArticleSalman Rushdie stabbed on stage in New York, condition unknown
“What’s on your mind?” asks the WordPress dashboard at the top of the little box where you put your content. This. This is on my mind. Salman Rushdie getting stabbed. Back in the 1990s I bought a copy...
View ArticleSecular political fanatics
Dr. Douglas Young, political science professor emeritus at University of North Georgia-Gainesville, has some interesting views about political fanatics: secular edition. There are loads of obsessives...
View ArticlePolarisation, intolerance and Americanisation
Just 20 years ago when this site got rolling, many of the best ideas flowing into UK came from USA, whilst at the moment, I would say they tend to be the very worst. Yet outside the distorting funhouse...
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