The strangest things we do are also the things we think least about—for example, drinking cows’ milk, handing our children over into the care of paid strangers, going to gyms, wearing neckties, enjoying war as spectator sport, and shaving.| Compact
In a column published shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, Compact’s editor-at-large Gregory Conti characterized the newfound alliance between MAGA populists and Big Tech oligarchs as an “anti-clerical coalition.”| Compact
If you are inundated this fall with campaign ads alleging that “Republicans claim to support the working-class, but they cut food stamps for low-income kids to pay for a tax cut for millionaires,” just remember that outcome could have been avoided.| Compact
In the prologue to his new book The Last Supper, Paul Elie remembers being a young man in the 1980s, “riding the D train with The Village Voice and the Pensées in a black messenger bag.”| Compact
James Walsh’s viral recent New York article, “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College,” was not notable because it revealed the extent to which AI has taken over education; that much was already obvious to anyone who has been around a school or college lately.| Compact
There is a genre of popular media history that traces the rise of the propaganda-saturated reality we now inhabit to the influence of particular individuals who had (or claimed to have) novel insights into major shifts in communication technology.| Compact
Earlier this month, President Trump became the most pro-nuclear executive our nation has seen in over half a century when he signed four separate executive orders dedicated to quadrupling American nuclear energy capacity by 2050.| Compact
Nearly every major figure in the conservative movement has a biography.| Compact
President Andrew Jackson has always been the favorite historical figure to compare with Donald Trump. The similarities are familiar and recognizable to Trump’s warmest admirers and worst enemies.| Compact
Imagine a 23-year-old recent college graduate working a gig job, managing multiple subscription services, and with only $50 left in her checking account. She might seem unlikely to splurge on a $550 ticket to Coachella, California’s annual pop-spectacle music festival.| Compact
The reactionary blogger’s call for a monarch to rule the country once seemed like a joke. Now the right is ready to bend the knee.| The New Yorker
Stray thoughts inspired by Richard Barbrook| compactmag.substack.com