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May 26, 2024 | 
quillette.com | Rainer Zitelmann |Paul Monk |Ewan Morrison |Timandra Harkness
The widely discussed private space missions financed by billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are only part of a far larger development in the space industry, where the focus is shifting from government agencies to private companies.
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May 24, 2024 | 
quillette.com | Paul Monk |Ewan Morrison |Timandra Harkness |Iona Italia
On Sunday 19 May, a 1970s US-made Bell 212 helicopter carrying the Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian crashed as it flew back to Tehran from Azerbaijan. Both men and several other passengers were killed. Raisi was a widely detested figure known as the “Butcher of Tehran,” and there has been a good deal of rejoicing in Iran at the news of his death. We should share that sentiment.
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May 12, 2024 | 
quillette.com | Ronald A. Lindsay |Ewan Morrison |Timandra Harkness |Iona Italia
A quiet revolution in the practice of medicine in North America has taken place within the last decade. Professional associations, medical schools, and an increasing number of physicians no longer consider the primary duty of the physician to be care of the individual patient, but rather social reform—in particular, the urgent goal of achieving equity by addressing the social needs of identity groups perceived as marginalised.
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May 6, 2024 | 
quillette.com | Helen Pluckrose |Rainer Zitelmann |Paul Monk |Ewan Morrison
Editor’s Note: The following essay first appeared in Areo Magazine in March 2017 and is reproduced here with the author’s permission. In this piece, Helen Pluckrose outlines some of the arguments later explored in depth in her bestselling 2020 book, Cynical Theories (co-authored with James Lindsay). The essay charts the pernicious influence of postmodernist thinking on two generations of academics and activists.
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Mar 29, 2024 | 
thetimes.co.uk | Ewan Morrison
Silicon Valley has done a brilliant job of hyping artificial intelligence’s potential to transform society. “We are witnessing the most disruptive force in history,” Elon Musk crowed approvingly at last year’s AI Safety Summit. Soon “we will have for the first time something that is smarter than the smartest human” and “the AI will be able to do everything”, making boring things like jobs redundant in the shiny future. Little wonder there is such big talk when there is such big money at stake.
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Feb 6, 2024 | 
quillette.com | Richard Goldberg |Ewan Morrison |Timandra Harkness |Iona Italia
Last week, Australian foreign minister Penny Wong indicated that Canberra may soon resume government funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), despite mounting evidence that the organization is a Hamas subsidizer, employer, and collaborator.
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Nov 24, 2023 | 
quillette.com | David Benatar |Paul Monk |Ewan Morrison |Timandra Harkness
The phrases “from the river to the sea” and “Palestine will be free” serve as a call and response in many protests on behalf of Palestinians or against Israel. Both the prevalence and the controversy surrounding the refrain “from the river to the sea” have increased since Hamas’s 7 October attack. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was recently censured by the US House of Representatives, in part for her endorsement of the slogan.
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Mar 15, 2023 | 
areomagazine.com | Ewan Morrison
Something sinister is going on with cuteness. Over the last five years, we’ve seen the sudden appearance of cute Facial ID Recognition surveillance, cute government health messaging, cute military propaganda, cute identity wars and even cute robotic elder care. Beneath all the smiling imagery is a growing phenomenon I call cute authoritarianism. How could authoritarianism ever be cute? Surely, it is “a boot stamping on a human face, forever,” as Orwell writes in 1984.
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Feb 21, 2023 | 
dailysceptic.org | Ewan Morrison
We need to stop panicking about AI Chatbots. No, they haven’t gone mad. No, they’re not actually trying to seduce a New York Times journalist and no we should not take them seriously when they ‘say’ that they want power or crave love or want the end of the world. AI chatbots don’t actually think or feel.
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Feb 20, 2023 | 
dailysceptic.org | Ewan Morrison
We need to stop panicking about AI Chatbots. No, they haven’t gone mad. No, they’re not actually trying to seduce a New York Times journalist and no we should not take them seriously when they ‘say’ that they want power or crave love or want the end of the world. AI chatbots don’t actually think or feel.
