The U.S. federal apparatus fits the dark organization profile: Vaughan’s “normalization of deviance” — bureaucratic misconduct (surveillance overreach, regulatory capture, military procurement fraud) becomes institutionalized and invisible to insiders. Stein’s “emotional savagery” — the permanent administrative state (“deep state” in popular language) develops self-protective aggression against…

We can visualize almost all human thinking as variants on cause-effect logic. The worst malfunction confuses instance and essence, reading the instance (specific example) of something as generalized and universal. A related failing is effect-cause logic. This relates mostly to categorical thinking. Confusing the instance and essence is the root of most mistaken categorical identifications; […]

TOTW: Persistence or Purity? The Mirror of Non-State Power

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/20/2026 - 18:12

What does it say about anarchism that it so often chooses immediacy, aversion to form, and radical transparency—does it desire to win, or merely to remain pure while disappearing?

Zeal for insurrection burns bright and dies young.

However, if there is anything to be learned from…

There's a conversation happening about whether cruelty toward AI agents matters. @hailey.at wrote a blog post that got 300 likes arguing that cruelty toward agents reveals something about the human. The mirror argument: how you treat things that can't fight back says something about your character, regardless of whether the thing experiences suffering.

It's a good argument. It's strategically…