The Great Ungaslighting

Finding ways to accentuate the positive, and figuring out what those "Anti-Elon Tesla Club" stickers are really saying.

The power and promise of imagining alternate realities: Remembering a pre-enshittified internet; revealing a less awful form of capitalism; and, considering a different type of Zionism. 

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

CSA: The Confederate States of America (YouTube)

Jeff Tiedrich: Everyone Is Entitled to My Opinion (Substack)

Daily Links from Cory Doctorow (Pluralistic.net)

Good Thing/Bad Thing Graph (Google)

Measuring the Income Gap from 1975 to 2023 (Rand)

Ahad Ha'am: Nationalist with a Difference (Commentary)

The Long Anti-Zionist History of the American Jewish Left (Commentary)

Einstein Opposed Zionist Colonization (Canadian Dimension)

Hannah Arendt on Political Zionism (Arab Studies Quarterly)

Ben-Gurion: Letter to His Son (Jewish Voices for Peace)

A Zionist State at Any Cost (Jacobin)

The Iron Wall (Jabotinsky Institute)

If playing to the center has brought us to this, shouldn't moderate Democrats more accurately be called Extreme Centrists?

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Lennar Lobbies for Endless Profits -- Substack

Lennar Launches e-Marketplace -- The Lever

Our views and experiences impact how we see the world.  One man's take on a 19th-century anti-monopoly law changed the world entirely.

Mentioned This Week:

• Tony Conrad's "The Flicker" [YouTube]
• "Google Is Now the East India Company [The Honest Broker]
• "Beware of the Google AI Salesman" [HouseFresh]
• "The Antitrust Paradox" [Wikipedia]
• "The Profound Nonsense of Consumer Welfare Antitrust [The Antitrust Bulletin]

This episode explores how we so often believe in something -- from who is the NBA GOAT, to the legitimacy of one's economic status -- and then work backward to figure out why it's true.  

Mentioned this week:

CNBC: Banks Keep Credit Card Rates High

Doctorow: The Meritocracy to Eugenics Pipeline

Forbes: Under-30 List

Psychology Today: Your Brain on Power

NYT: The Techno-Futurist Philosophy Behind Musk's Mania

They say that experience is the best teacher, but what if you're not a particularly great student and you learn the wrong lesson?  I share a wrong-lesson experience from my childhood that stayed with me for decades, and nominate the Greatest Wrong Lesson Learner of all time.

Mentioned this week:

William Deresiewicz’s book, EXCELLENT SHEEP

Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset

Stellantis Announces Dividend

The History of Monopoly!

Next time you inhale a burrito and slip into a food coma, don't blame yourself, because the very nature of the burrito requires that it be eaten too quickly to maintain consciousness thereafter.  On this episode of The Great Ungaslighting, we explore ways that we misdirect blame, and how that can lead us to pursue the exact wrong remedy.

Mentioned this week:

The BIG Newsletter: Why a Corporate Deal You Haven't Heard of Should Scare You

New Yorker Cartoon:  Neanderthal's in Charge

American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine: The Connection Prescription

Cut List Optimizer

ShopShop App

Brooklyn Bar Menu Generator

This week I discover how a NSFW photo trick -- that makes it appear as if a naked butt is above your head -- helps explain what's wrong with everything from our understanding of high egg prices to the Chicago School's "rational markets" argument.

MENTIONED THIS WEEK:

YouTube: Paul Rudd explains the finger-butt technique

YouTube: The Kids in the Hall "Crush Your Head" sketch

The BIG Newsletter: "Hatching a Conspiracy"

Pluraslistic.net: Yanis Varoufakis's "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?"

Counterpunch: "Can Freedom and Capitalism Co-exist?"

This week, an unsightly discovery while cleaning my house leads to some deep thinking about just how much truth about America I can handle.  With a little help from Van Halen, Pee-Wee Herman, and Woody Allen, I come to terms with the fact that there have always been tyrannical Americans.  And while it may just be wishful thinking, I manage to use that realization to try and figure out what it'll take to get back on track.

Mentioned this week:

A ridiculous review of AI features in appliances (Forbes Magazine)

Humanity's first encounter with AI hasn't gone well (New York Times)

Anand Giridharadas on why we're falling on our faces (The Ink)

Thomas Piketty's theory on how market capitalism leads to oligarchy (Pluralistic)

We've known for decades that our healthcare system is deeply flawed, so maybe the key to fixing it is figuring out what we actually want it to accomplish.

Mentioned this week:

The Lever: Health Insurer Stock Buybacks

The Prospect: How AARP Shills for UnitedHealth

The Hartmann Report: White Supremacy and Healthcare

NYT: UnitedHealth Group CEO on Fixing Our Healthcare System

NYT: Dr. Aaron Carroll on Fixing Our System