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Past Futures

billy woods on the Cycles and Patterns of Human History

It just takes the right person, at the right time, to light the right spark and make what previously would have seemed impossible the law of the land. When I was a child, Somalia had a government. They might not have one again for the rest of my life.

Sunbeams

In the past censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the twenty-first century censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information.

Yuval Noah Harari

Dark Corners

Whitney Phillips On Conspiracy Theories, Social Media, And The Spread Of Misinformation

When COVID-19 hit, Dr. Anthony Fauci was portrayed on the Right as a deep-state villain, one of these “elitists” who are trying to tell “us” how to live in Middle America.

Blind Hate

Randy Blazak On Why White Supremacy Persists

Generation Z, my daughter’s generation, is the most racially mixed and most diverse, and they are the worst nightmare of the old white supremacists.

What We Lost

We were losing parts of ourselves. A reporter discovered a trove of ears in a burlap sack. The leader said the papers were lying, and we weren’t sure what was rumor and what was fact. What happened to me, what happened to my neighbors — that wasn’t enough proof of all we had lost.

Sunbeams

It seemed there was no end at all to the lies a person could tell, once she got started.

Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter