The Post-Partisan Emporium

  A Game of Musical Chairs John Michael Greer Some turning points in history are impossible to miss. They involve battle-cries and the clash of weapons, gatherings making decisions that can never be undone, and equally obvious events. Then there are the turning points that slip past unnoticed by most of the people whose lives they will overturn. I’ve come to think that one of those latter is taking place around us right now. One of the very few announcements I’ve seen so far didn’t involve bugles or proclamations.    It appeared in a news story covered in a few corners of the tech industry press last month. The story’s simple enough.  Ryan Breslow, founder and returning CEO of hotshot financial-tech company Bolt, laid off the company’s entire human resources department and replaced it with a smaller and more focused team with much more limited responsibilities. His explanation for the change? “We had an HR team, and that HR team was creating problems that didn’t exist,” he was quo...

  You're Not Allowed To Look Away A Reality Check about Civilization J. Daniel Sawyer Killing What You Eat This tweet crossed my feed a few days ago. Although the original poster is talking about men and women, I don’t think what she’d observing is really about men and women at all. In fact, believe it or not, it made me think about steak. When I was four years old, my grandfather came for a visit—a rare treat. He spent most of his time on his little cattle ranch in a foreign country, and only returned to the states once every few years. Dinner, too, was a rare treat: steak. This was back when steak was rich-people food—the poor (such as we were) ate hot dogs, chicken legs, and (if it were a very special occasion) hamburgers. I’m not sure I’d ever had a steak before, or if it was just unusual. I do remember being very excited about it. I had paid attention during ad breaks in my favorite cartoon shows and I had learned from the all-powerful television that there was a right-and-pro...