Matthew Loftus 🧻

Will Democrats defend society?

"The distance between the winning Obama coalition and the campaign-by-meme Democrats we have now might well be the distance between Obama’s “I am my brother’s keeper” and Walz’s “mind your own damn business.”"

unherd.com/2025/07/will...

Slop Will Eat Itself Against the ugliness to come

"It is a sin as grave as Babel to turn that creative mandate inward, retreating, slimebound and snaillike, into manmade caverns of virtual reality porn and metaverse narcissism."
thearkofhistory.substack.com/p/slop-will-...

"Should pastors use Artificial Intelligence to help write their sermons?"- sounds urbane, philosophical, important

"Should pastors let a word guesser machine teach their flock?"- far more accurate, makes you sound stupid for even asking the question

Someone on here compared AI produced material as "digital asbestos " which in a few decades' time we will have to work out how to eradicate from the fabric of research.

Opinion | Thinking Is Becoming a Luxury Good

Strange that one of the best things that a privileged upbringing can buy you is... self-control. "Across the developed West, obesity has become strongly correlated with poverty. I fear that so, too, will be the tide of post-literacy."

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/o...

YouTube video by Arnesen Tom Lehrer - Poisoning Pigeons In The Park (live, 1998).

Stephen Sondheim introduced his childhood pal Tom Lehrer in 1998 for an exceedingly rare stage performance, part of a tribute to Cameron Mackintosh.

(This will always be my favorite Lehrer song. Interestingly, he here changes one word: "squirrel" becomes "sparrow.")
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf-e...

Some thoughts on the sorts of policies that produced this map: kenopalo.substack.com/p/a-historic...

Taking artificial dyes out of Froot Loops and using cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup in Coca-Cola is the land acknowledgements of public health & nutrition.

more evidence for “a bunch of AI cultists dismantled large parts of the federal government because they believed that their LLMs were intelligent and could do the work better” thesis

We Can’t Fix the Deficit by Taking Medicine from the Poorest of the Poor Over the past few decades, we have seen incredible progress in the fight against HIV, hunger, and other infectious diseases. We could choose to either accelerate that progress and demonstrate American...

Out today: a piece I wrote about how slashing foreign aid can't fix the deficit and other common objections about U.S. foreign aid spending.

www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2025/07/98438/

Opinion | This Is Who’s Really Driving the Decline in Interest in Liberal Arts Education

"for the liberal arts even when it attracts both students and major financial gifts. The tragedy of the contemporary academy is that even when traditional liberal learning clearly wins with students and donors, it loses with those in power." www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/o...

just wanted to let you know what you're missing over at the bad place

Great post. I think we have endure stuff like Rings of Power because someone (perhaps not in our lifetime) will eventually adapt the First Age tales and get them right.

Nobody Has A Personality Anymore We are products with labels

Therapy-speak is our generation's clockwork orange.

www.freyaindia.co.uk/p/nobody-has...

This is pretty grim but I suspect it describes a lot of electoral strategies around the world in the past few decades, not just Kenya.

If the possibility of a better country is unrealistic, why not vote for the devil you know?

Reelecting William Samoei Ruto Electoral politics is a game of numbers, and right now the numbers and fundamentals favor William Ruto

Brutal assessment by @kopalo.bsky.social:

"All Ruto needs to win in 2027 is to successfully extinguish Kenyans’ hopes of structural change on both the economic and political fronts."
www.africanistperspective.com/p/reelecting...

It’s Time to Prosecute Pornhub Long-dormant obscenity laws should get a new look in the age of pervasive and extreme porn.

Good work here from Charles Lehman on how porn sites could be prosecuted for obscenity- even if the bar for obscenity remains ridiculously high.
thedispatch.com/article/porn...

This sort of error will lead to insurance denials, medical errors and lawsuits. It also puts the burden on patients to check and correct their own records, if they can. Just utter madness

In Sudan, where children clung to life, doctors say USAID cuts have been fatal The Trump administration’s cuts to USAID had an immediate and deadly impact in war-ravaged Sudan, according to civilians, doctors and aid officials.

What Elon hath wrought: No country has stepped into the role that USAID played across the globe. That has led to many children in the poorest and war-torn countries losing life-saving drugs and dying. Absolutely devastating story.
www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

How Mission Hospitals Are Combating Africa’s Medical ‘Brain Drain’ Plus: Quick questions with Ryan Burge.

I'm in @thedispatchmedia.bsky.social talking about brain drain, the new face of medical missions in Africa, and the exciting things that the good folks at the Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons are doing!

thedispatch.com/newsletter/d...

Neighbor and Stranger Or, "I am a conservative because..."

Eve Tushnet on the need for order when the people who promise "law & order" are just unleashing evil chaos: "I am a conservative because… we need order, which means we need to be neighbors."
evetushnet.substack.com/p/neighbor-a...

you know another 33-year-old man who shocked the establishment when he pulled off a miracle?

The Growth of Maternity Deserts Women in many areas have nowhere to go...

Similarly, I won't argue opening maternity units in rural hospitals will reverse declines in birthrates. But the fact that these units are closing should grab the attention of pronatalists (and then they need to do something about it.)
edwinleap.substack.com/p/the-growth...

Hospitals stunned by Senate GOP’s Medicaid plan Republicans want to curtail taxes states have imposed to increase payments to hospitals.

"The hospitals hate it" is not always the best heuristic, but it is certainly fair to take them at their word that if this budget passes the Senate many of them (particularly in rural areas) will have to close.

www.politico.com/news/2025/06...

Just Say No to Online Church - Christianity Today Michael Huerter’s The Hybrid Congregation is an earnest effort to enrich our worship. It is also naive, superficial, incurious, and wrong.

"Keep it analog, keep it bodily, keep it physical and difficult and full of friction. Say no to metaverse church. Say yes to the body of Christ."- Brad East
www.christianitytoday.com/2025/06/just...

how is it that every few weeks they double the number of illegal immigrants in America

8 year old me staring at the windows media player for hours

RFK Jr. announces 8 appointees to CDC vaccine panel—they’re not good Robert Malone and Martin Kulldorff are two of the most concerning picks.

It would appear that RFK Jr.'s approach to telling the truth is about as consistent as his approach to marital fidelity.
arstechnica.com/health/2025/...

you seem to be more interested in a sense of self-righteousness than the rule of law or a reasonable discussion. I hope it's a nice consolation for continued electoral losses. fare thee well.

attempted border crossings have decreased dramatically since January; people risk their lives trying to cross less often when they think they'll be sent back. I agree that no border can be "secured" to the extent of zero illegal crossings but dangerous behavior can be discouraged by enforcement.