History & Politics
Notes and visualizations on power, government and their history.
- Doxxing — a reader's summary
The early-1990s hacker-culture term for “dropping dox” on a pseudonymous rival — its Usenet-era spread, the 2014 Gamergate campaign that made it a household word, New Jersey's 2020 Daniel's Law, and why the accusation keeps blurring into ordinary public-records reporting.
- Concern Trolling — a reader's summary
The mid-2000s forum-and-blog term for someone who poses as a sympathizer to sap a cause's morale — its feminist-blog taxonomy, Daily Kos's 2008 explainer, and why the accusation depends on a read of sincerity no one can verify.
- Dog Whistle Politics — a reader's summary
A coded-language accusation borrowed from an 1876 device for testing animal hearing — its mid-1990s Australian polling origin, Ian Haney López's 2014 book, and why a claim about covert meaning can never quite be settled.
- Brigading — a reader's summary
The term for coordinated online pile-ons, born on Reddit around 2010 to describe vote manipulation between subreddits — the 2011 ShitRedditSays downvote controversy, Reddit's 2015 quarantine policy, and why the accusation is as contested as the behavior itself.
- The Straw Man Fallacy — a reader's summary
Refuting a weaker substitute for an opponent's real argument — the phrase's own false Westminster Hall etymology, Douglas Walton's 1996 formalization, and the 2006 blog contest that named its “weak man” cousin nutpicking.
- Sanewashing — a reader's summary
The 2024 media-criticism term for coverage that renders an extreme or incoherent statement more reasonable than what was actually said, and why it's nearly indistinguishable from ordinary editorial compression in any single case.
- Dunbar's Number — a reader's summary
Robin Dunbar's 1992 estimate that the brain sustains roughly 150 relationships, Gladwell's Gore-Tex anecdote, and the 2021 reanalysis that challenges the precision of the number.
- The Spiral of Silence — a reader's summary
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann's 1974 theory that fear of social isolation mutes minority opinions — its West German polling origin, and why anonymity hasn't broken the spiral online.
- Tragedy of the Commons — a reader's summary
Garrett Hardin's 1968 essay on shared resources destroyed by rational self-interest, and Elinor Ostrom's Nobel-winning evidence that real commons usually avoided the tragedy on their own.
- Groupthink — a reader's summary
Irving Janis's 1972 theory of how cohesive groups suppress dissent to preserve consensus, the Bay of Pigs case that inspired it, and the mixed evidence for whether cohesion itself is really the culprit.
- Slacktivism — a reader's summary
The 1995 coinage that started with a hopeful meaning, its pivot to an insult for likes and hashtags, the Kony 2012 case study, and the split research verdict on whether it helps or replaces real engagement.
- Cunningham's Law — a reader's summary
The internet adage that the fastest way to get a right answer online is to post a wrong one — Ward Cunningham's wiki-era observation, a secondhand quote, and why it's folklore about provocation rather than a tested law.
- Illusory Truth Effect — a reader's summary
The 1977 finding that repetition alone makes a claim feel truer, and why knowing the right answer doesn't fully protect you. Also in Philosophy.
- Horseshoe Theory — a reader's summary
Jean-Pierre Faye's bent-spectrum model of the far left and far right curving toward each other, and the political-science case that it measures authoritarian style, not ideological substance.
- Virtue Signaling — a reader's summary
James Bartholomew's April 2015 Spectator column that named cheap public moral display, Collins Dictionary's 2016 shortlisting, and the academic pushback that says the label presumes insincerity it can't actually prove.
- The Gish Gallop — a reader's summary
Named for creationist debater Duane Gish, coined by Eugenie Scott in 1994 — the tactic of firing off more claims than an opponent can rebut in the time allowed, and its kinship with Brandolini's Law.
- Whataboutism — a reader's summary
A Cold War deflection tactic with a 1970s Irish name (“whataboutery”), the 2008 Russia coverage that spread the “-ism” spelling, and why the accusation is nearly as abusable as the tactic it describes.
- Sealioning — a reader's summary
The 2014 Wondermark comic that gave bad-faith “just asking questions” harassment a name, and why the accusation can be turned against sincere questions as easily as the tactic it describes.
- Overton Window — a reader's summary
Joseph Overton's mid-1990s range of politically acceptable ideas, the ladder built after his death, and how it became both an activist strategy and an online conspiracy accusation.
- Purity Spiral — a reader's summary
A group's internal contest over ideological commitment that escalates until only the most extreme position counts as pure — far older than the internet, and symmetric across ideology.
- Godwin's Law — a reader's summary
Mike Godwin's 1990 Usenet adage that long enough arguments always produce a Nazi comparison — the deliberate meme experiment behind it, and the blunter corollary he never fully endorsed.
- Cancel Culture — a reader's summary
From a jokey personal put-down to a #MeToo-era term for organized public consequence, the 2020 Harper's letter, and why the same events read as accountability to one side and a mob to the other.
- Power structures through history
A timeline map of the major power structures — from Achaemenid Persia and Rome to the Byzantine Empire, the Mongols, the British Empire and today's superpowers — and their relative strength in people ruled, GDP and military might.
- Occupations of humans
How humanity spends its time — learning, food, physical and non-physical work, care, research, retirement — as a slice of total human time from 10,000 BCE to today.
- 10×, then 100×: the case for scaling R&D
If we are serious about becoming a multi-planetary species, we should multiply fundamental and operational R&D by 10 to 100 — especially as AI automates operative jobs.
- Forms of rule through history
The share of humanity living under each form of rule over time — counting the enslaved.
- French law — map, debates & reform directions
The main branches of French law, what's contested in each, and editorial directions for reform.
- Seeing Like a State — a reader's summary
Legibility, high modernism and metis: why grand state schemes fail. Also in Philosophy.
- The circles of interest
Politics as a trade-off of resources across circles around the individual — a methodology, ten probes, a research program. Also in Philosophy.
- Measuring λ: a first estimate for France
The circles-of-interest coefficient computed once, crudely: smooth private decay, plateau-and-cliff public settlement.
- The Age of Surveillance Capitalism — a reader's summary
Behavioral data, prediction products, and instrumentarian power — the book behind the vocabulary of today's data-regulation debates. Also in Philosophy.
- Preference Falsification — a reader's summary
Timur Kuran's theory of the gap between public and private opinion — why 1989 looked sudden, and what it explains about online conformity and opinion cascades.
- Echo Chambers and Filter Bubbles — a reader's summary
Sunstein's echo chamber and Pariser's filter bubble — and what the empirical record says about how much algorithms are really to blame for online polarization.
- Context Collapse — a reader's summary
danah boyd and Michael Wesch's term for what happens when a platform flattens every audience you'd normally address separately into one.
- The Streisand Effect — a reader's summary
Mike Masnick's 2005 term for how trying to suppress information guarantees its spread — the 2003 case that gave it a name, and why it keeps recatching people who know the term.
- Astroturfing — a reader's summary
Lloyd Bentsen's 1985 term for a faked grassroots campaign — how it migrated online to sockpuppets and state-run bot networks, and why the accusation is as easy to weaponize as the tactic.