A taxonomy of unintended consequences and some potential solutions — If you are like me, you can get frustrated when you hear of well-intentioned government programs and policies that are exploited or abused in unintended ways. …

On Reflected and Referred Emotions — In tenth grade, my English teacher asked our class to try and define love. She mentioned that someone named Carl Rogers had effectively developed one definition, and his definition was “unconditional positive regard.” …

Reviewed: The Fifth Sacred Thing, Walking to Mercury, and City of Refuge, all by Starhawk. Discussed: Hippies, Earth Wind and Fire, Utopias, Problems Encountered When Writing Utopias, Counter-Cultural Trends, The Martian, Francis Bacon, and Humanistic Education. To write Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion lived in the Haight-Ashbury back in ’68…

A Review (and Review Revue): What the Critics Missed About Culture Clash — The film Hillbilly Elegy follows the story of Yale Law student J.D. Vance, who is called away from his shiny, high-society trajectory back to his Appalachian home to deal with an acute family medical crisis. As he visits, we learn via flashback about Vance’s family’s troubled past, and just what…

How modifying three social systems can lead to easier, greener living — In discussing global warming, everyone talks about systemic change; few propose ways to actually do it. …

By now, I imagine, we are all familiar with Wikipedia's Appeals for donations. I am an avid fan of Wikipedia, I use it all the time, and I want the appeal to be successful. I find the text above interesting because the implicit messaging is in direct conflict with the…

Five Tech Policy Proposals — In 1833, near the tail end of the first industrial revolution, the British government passed the Factory Act, which made it illegal to do then-profitable things like employ kids younger than 9 and employ 9–13-year-olds for more than 9 hours a day. Today, a handful of tech ethicists and non-profits…

The latest IPCC report says that we have about 12 years to curb emissions and do something about climate change to keep the world from warming by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Anyone involved in climate science will tell you that the IPCC is intentionally conservative in an attempt to…

An Open, Friendly Letter to Southwest — Dear Southwest, I have been flying with you for roughly ten years, and I routinely travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco. While coming home for the winter holidays, the plane I was on needed be cleared to fly. As we sat on the tarmac with some spare time and…