Open laptop displaying an online news article on a desk with a notebook nearby. Preparing us to talk about news media ownership.

News Media Ownership, BlackRock, and the Illusion of Choice

The modern information economy presents itself as endless. Millions of websites exist. Thousands of news sources compete for attention. Social media creates the feeling that every voice can be heard and every perspective can find an audience. Yet beneath this appearance of diversity lies a reality that has become increasingly difficult to ignore: much of…

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The Onion is set to buy Infowars, so here is a picture of an Onion.

The Onion vs Infowars: How Satire Might Finally Undermine Conspiracy Media

In a media landscape where misinformation often spreads faster than truth, the idea of a satirical publication stepping into the shell of one of the most infamous conspiracy platforms in modern history feels almost surreal. Yet that is exactly what is unfolding with The Onion and its plan to license the Infowars brand and infrastructure. While headlines may frame this as a bizarre twist or a cultural punchline, the deeper implications run far beyond humor.

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Person silhouetted against galaxy backdrop a metaphor for the idea of Consciousness in the universe

Are We the Universe Experiencing Itself? Consciousness, Meaning, and the Interconnected Question

This is not our normal subject matter. Most of the time here we explore economics, climate systems, global inequality, technology, or the way social structures shape human lives. Yet one of the most fundamental forms of interconnectedness is not economic or environmental. It is experiential. Everything we know about the world comes through the experience…

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Bots in a line doing work, a symbol of bot farms

Bot Farms and the Synthetic Internet: Power, Perception, Labor, and the Philosophy of Attention

Most people know bots exist. They have seen spam replies, suspicious follower spikes, strange comment threads, and engagement that feels artificial. The surprise is not that bots are online. The surprise is how much of the internet they now occupy, and how deeply they shape systems that affect politics, wealth, labor, culture, and even mental…

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White Sci-Fi robot with a cables coming out of it sitting meditating

How Sci-Fi Becomes Reality: When Speculation Turns Into Systems, Products, and Power

Science fiction is often treated as entertainment, escapism, or metaphor. In practice, it functions as an informal research and development lab for civilization. Writers imagine futures, audiences absorb them, engineers and policymakers internalize them, and corporations eventually build them. What begins as speculative narrative becomes technical roadmap, corporate product strategy, and state policy architecture. This…

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Pixelated video game shows a game over screen display, is it over for the video game industry

Why the Video Game Industry Feels Like It’s in Decline

For years, the video game industry was treated as one of the few “unstoppable” sectors of the global economy. Even when other industries slowed, gaming continued to grow. More players, more revenue, more studios, more investment. By the early 2020s, video games were bigger than film and music combined. So why does the industry now…

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