Jan
1
2026

To Start the New Year On a Slightly Pessimistic Note…

We'll see how mangled Uncle Stupid looks 365 days from now.

Also of note:

  • A history lesson from David Burge.

    The Hawk didn't mention some of the PhD's other accomplishments: the Federal Reserve, imprisoning and deporting dissidents, a botched peace treaty, resegregation of the Federal workforce, imposition of the income tax, his disrespect for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, …

    Twitter commenters also point out that Vladimir Putin has a PhD in economics from Saint Petersburg Mining University of Empress Catherine II. (Although many sources view that degree as "controversial".)

  • Perhaps your first chuckle of 2026. Wesley J. Smith observes that famed philosopher Peter Singer Decries AI "Speciesism"

    Princeton “moral philosopher” Peter Singer has co-authored a piece decrying the “speciesism” of AI. What is speciesism, you ask? The misanthropic argument made by many bioethicists and animal rights activists that treating an animal — like an animal — is an evil akin to racism. In other words, herding cattle is as depraved as slavery.

    And now AIs are being programmed to promote speciesist immorality. Oh, no! From “AI’s Innate Bias Against Animals,” published in Nautilus.

    Even though significant efforts are being made to reduce the harmful biases in LLMs [large language models] against certain groups of humans, and other kinds of output that could be harmful to humans, there are, so far, no comparable efforts to reduce speciesist biases and outputs harmful to animals.

    When an AI system generates text, it reflects these biases. A legal AI tool, for instance, might assume that animals are to be classified as property, rather than as sentient beings entitled to have their interests considered in their own rights. Most legal texts throughout history have made this assumption and frequently reinforced this perspective.

    So, Singer is upset because AI systems accurately describe the status of animals in law when they should regurgitate his ideological obsessions instead. But that would be disastrous for the sector, making AI responses untrustworthy and biased against humans.

    Wesley gently suggests that Singer "learn to code" and develop his non-speciesist AI to give the canned responses he wants.

  • Kat Rosenfield looks at boycotts and quislings. It has to do with The Trouble with Quitting the ‘Trump-Kennedy Center’.

    It began early this year, when Trump ousted the center’s bipartisan board and replaced them with his own people, who immediately elected him chairman. Changing the building’s name was an insult heaped on an already substantial injury—and also probably illegal, given that altering the name of a federal memorial is supposed to require an act of Congress—and so Trump’s name on the building is probably going to last only as long as it takes either for an unfavorable court ruling (a lawsuit is pending), or for the next Democratic president to take a ceremonial sledgehammer to it, whichever comes first.

    As such, one might wonder why the president bothered—except as part of a trollish campaign to enrage Washington’s liberal apparatus by dismantling, disfiguring, or otherwise marking his territory on as many of its cultural landmarks as possible. In which case, mission accomplished. The Kennedy Center’s ticket sales immediately tanked once Trump took an interest in it, as journalists decried the move as an “attack on the arts” and applauded artists like Redd for refusing to participate in “the regime’s new fascist vision” for the venue. Overall, the discourse more or less suggests that people would rather see the center stand vacant for the next three years—or better (worse) yet, play host to a rotating series of Kid Rock tribute bands—than have its stage graced by a single moment of artistic brilliance for which Trump could take credit.

    Critics of the president present this as a binary choice for artists: cancel your Kennedy Center appearance as an act of resistance, or take the stage and be labeled a collaborator. But this Manichaean worldview misses the existence of a third option, one that allows artists to step outside the binary, and outside politics. Which, in truth, is where they belong.

    Kat, as usual, makes a lot of sense. And I see she's got a new book coming out in March. Goody!

  • Noah Smith's got opinions! And (despite his D-team membership) they're pretty good: At least five interesting things: Buy Local edition (#74). His second item is: “Luxury” houses reduce rents for people who live in “affordable” houses. Love those sneer quotes!

    Speaking of abundance, the quest to lower rents by building more housing is starting to bear a little fruit. Emily Flitter and Nadja Popovich report that a few big American cities have built a bunch of housing, and that almost all of these cities have seen big drops in rent. Meanwhile, the cities that build less housing have seen much less of a drop:

    Now, correlation isn’t causation, as we all know. But reverse causation is probably not happening here — it makes absolutely no sense that falling rents would spark a building boom. And what other thing could be causing cities like Austin, Raleigh, Phoenix and Denver to both build more housing and have lower rents at the same time? If rents were falling because demand for housing in these cities were falling, we would probably not see housing booms there (and we can just look and see that all of these cities have growing populations anyway).

    So unless this pattern is purely random chance, or there’s some other factor that’s hard to imagine, it means that building more housing lowers rents. Which is exactly what the simple, “Econ 101” theory of supply and demand would predict. And which is exactly what careful studies of natural experiments have shown again and again.

    Note that as Flitter and Popovich report, the housing being built in these increasingly affordable boom-towns is almost entirely market-rate housing, or what anti-housing activists often pejoratively refer to as “luxury” housing. The activists have trouble understanding how building housing for high-income yuppie types could possibly lower rents. But it’s very simple — if you build places for high-earning yuppies to live, they don’t go bidding on older housing and sparking a price war that pushes middle-class and working-class people out of their homes.

    Essentially, high-end housing acts as a “yuppie fishtank” that prevents an influx of high earners from raising rents for everyone else[…]

    A long excerpt, sorry, but I did want to get in that "yuppie fishtank" phrase.

  • Just 40? At Issues & Insights, James D. Agresti provides 40 Examples of Fake News in 2025. Let's go all the way down to … number two:

    PolitiFact claimed that a Republican bill to reform Food Stamps “would bar increases to monthly SNAP benefits” for “inflation” and “in effect become cuts.”

    In fact, the Republican bill barred presidents from increasing SNAP benefits above and beyond the rate of food inflation, like Joe Biden did for the first time in the history of the program.

    As detailed by the Government Accountability Office, the Biden administration raised SNAP benefits by “21 percent compared to the previous inflation-adjusted” amounts without adequate “economic analysis,” “disclosure,” or “documentation.”

    My prediction for 2026: Politifact will keep its name, despite my suggestion that it go with "PolitiMindlessRegurgitationOfDemocratTalkingPoints".


Last Modified 2026-01-01 12:16 PM EDT