-
Jul 2, 2024 | 
opensource.net | Jim Hall |Paul Hibbitts |Don Watkins
Open source projects are about more than lines of code; they’re fuled by passionate people creating lasting change. In June 1994, several of us had a pretty neat idea: Let’s create an Open Source version of the DOS operating system. On June 29, 2024, the FreeDOS Project will turn 30 years old. If you don’t know about FreeDOS, let me briefly set the clock back to the 1980s. When IBM sold its first IBM Personal Computer 5150 in 1981, they needed an operating system to run on it.
-
May 5, 2024 | 
audible.com | Don Watkins |Kristin Hannah |Emily Henry |Lauren Blakely
An Individualist's Guide to Pride, Purpose, and the Pursuit of Happiness Narrated by: Virtual Voice Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
-
Apr 15, 2024 | 
earthlyidealism.com | Don Watkins
David Goggins was lazy, overweight, and going nowhere, so he decided to become a Navy SEAL. Goggins shed 100 pounds and made it through the notoriously difficult BUD/S selection process on his third grueling attempt. He would go on to make a name for himself conquering dozens of ultramarathons and ultra-triathlons, cataloging his journey in two bestselling books. Goggins is an inspiration.
-
Feb 12, 2024 | 
earthlyidealism.com | Yaron Brook |Don Watkins
The purpose of this newsletter is to define and defend a new moral ideal: Effective Egoism. But every moral ideal implies a political ideal. This essay, originally published on economist Bryan Caplan’s Substack, lays out the political ideal that follows from Effective Egoism— laissez-faire capitalism—and contrasts it with the ideal advocated by many libertarians: anarchy. Thanks for reading Earthly Idealism! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
-
Dec 20, 2023 | 
newideal.aynrand.org | Don Watkins
The editors of New Ideal are delighted to republish, with permission, an excerpt from Effective Egoism: An Individualist’s Guide to Pride, Purpose, and the Pursuit of Happiness, by Don Watkins. It’s all about you. Has anyone ever told you that? Probably not. Instead, you’re born into the world without a say in the matter, and from day one people are telling you how unimportant you really are, as if you were an uninvited guest intruding on a party.
-
Dec 18, 2023 | 
open.substack.com | Don Watkins
There’s still time to sign up for my Effective Egoism workshop. Details here. Ayn Rand’s first novel, We the Living, was set in 1920s Soviet Russia—the same Russia she escaped from before immigrating to the United States. Its theme is: the individual vs. the state. And so you might imagine that Rand’s focus would be the bloody brutality of the regime. It wasn’t. Thanks for reading Earthly Idealism! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
-
Dec 6, 2023 | 
newideal.aynrand.org | Yaron Brook |Don Watkins
The editors of New Ideal are delighted to republish, with permission, chapter 6 from Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government, by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins. Most people take it for granted that morality means self-sacrifice. They believe you can be self-interested or you can be moral, but not both. This hasn’t always been the case, though. In ancient Greece, where the science of ethics got its start, morality was not about self-sacrifice.
-
Nov 29, 2023 | 
newideal.aynrand.org | Yaron Brook |Don Watkins
The editors of New Ideal are delighted to republish, with permission, chapter 5 from Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government, by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins. Chapter 6 will be published next week. December 11, 2008. The details were unclear but the bottom line was not: Bernie Madoff had carried out the largest Ponzi scheme in history. His investors had lost billions. One of those investors was the French aristocrat René-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet.
-
Nov 27, 2023 | 
earthlyidealism.com | Don Watkins
Science, Sam Harris tells us, can answer moral questions. At one level, his argument is unassailable. But at another level, it illustrates why no one believes atheists when they say there can be an objective secular morality. According to Harris, the separation of facts and values is an illusion. Values are simply facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.
-
Nov 20, 2023 | 
earthlyidealism.com | Don Watkins
Bari Weiss recently gave one of the most powerful speeches I have ever seen. Observing the celebratory reactions across the world to the 10/7 attack on Israel, she says:When antisemitism moves from the shameful fringe into the public square, it is not about Jews. It is never about Jews. It is about everyone else. It is about the surrounding society or the culture or the country. It is an early warning system—a sign that the society itself is breaking down. That it is dying.
