Does ’Semafor’ Know That Gossip Is Polarization?

For years now in these pages I’ve wondered about trauma absent memory, by which I meant the impact of the sensory envelope of aphantasia upon the laying down of trauma in the brain. It’s of interest to me not just as an aphantasic but as an autistic adult in a world of normativity, and what’s more as someone who was unknowingly autistic in that...

As various parties grapple with Representative Nancy Mace’s bigoted and transphobic campaign against Representative Sarah McBride, as well as McBride’s decision to “accept” Speaker Mike Johnson’s rule banning transgender people from bathrooms matching their gender despite disagreeing with it, I want to focus on something from Representative...

When any startling piece of war-news comes, it keeps repeating itself in our minds in spite of all we can do. The same trains of thought go tramping round in circle through the brain, like the supernumeraries that make up the grand army of a stage-show. Now, if a thought goes round through the brain a thousand times in a day, it will have worn as...

In the end, after the past week of watching this take and that take, but mostly just avoiding any real bothering with any takes at all, about how the election went the way it did, I’ve settled in the only place that makes any sense to me. Whatever the perceived self-interest of any given Mine Furor voter—be it caste allegiance or aspiration,...

Ashley Fairbanks: Let me share my lifelong dream for the left: taking over fraternal organizations (Moose, Oddfellows, Etc.) They are 501c8s, which is basically impossible to get now. Most of them own property, they often have liquor licenses that are grandfathered in. We could have clubhouses! This morning, via Rob Horning, I saw Henry Farrell...