Reflections on Media and Politics
There is an entire industry built around you that you have never knowingly interacted with, whose products are dossiers about your life, and whose customers are anyone willing to pay. It is the data broker industry, and it operates in a de…
MHB Admin · August 5, 2026
Most people assume that in a country built on the presumption of innocence, the government cannot take your property unless you have been convicted of a crime. Most people are wro…
MHB Admin · July 28, 2026
On television, forensic science is infallible. A technician glances at a hair under a microscope, matches it to a suspect, and the case is closed. The jury nods; the audience is s…
MHB Admin · July 22, 2026
On any given night, most of the people sleeping in America's local jails have not been convicted of anything. According to the Prison Policy Initiative's most recent national acco…
MHB Admin · July 17, 2026
No other wealthy country produces medical debt at industrial scale. People get sick everywhere; only in the United States does illness routinely convert into a collections account…
MHB Admin · July 15, 2026
Two people are arrested on the same charge, in the same county, on the same night. A judge sets the same bail for both. One writes a check and sleeps in her own bed until trial. T…
MHB Admin · July 13, 2026
The non-compete clause was invented for a specific, narrow problem: an executive walks out the door with the customer list, the pricing model, and the product roadmap, and sets up…
MHB Admin · July 11, 2026
A generation ago, being watched at work meant a manager who could see your desk. Today it can mean software that counts your keystrokes, cameras that track your movements, scanner…
MHB Admin · July 10, 2026
The public image of criminal justice is the trial: the courtroom, the jury of twelve, the evidence tested by argument, the verdict delivered after deliberation. It is the image en…
MHB Admin · July 7, 2026
For most of the internet's commercial history, digital products were built for an imaginary "average user" — a statistical composite who did not actually exist. Every visitor saw…
MHB Admin · June 29, 2026
The Freedom of Information Act, signed in 1966, was built on a radical and democratic premise: that government records belong, by default, to the public, and that officials should…
MHB Admin · June 19, 2026
A generation ago, being watched at work meant a manager who could see your desk. Today it can mean software that counts your keystrokes, cameras that track your movements, scanner…
MHB Admin · July 10, 2026
For most of the internet's commercial history, digital products were built for an imaginary "average user" — a statistical composite who did not actually exist. Every visitor saw…
MHB Admin · June 29, 2026
In 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery did something that, a generation earlier, would have been almost unthinkable. It took a finished film — Batgirl , completed, scored, ready to relea…
MHB Admin · June 12, 2026
There is an entire industry built around you that you have never knowingly interacted with, whose products are dossiers about your life, and whose customers are anyone willing to…
MHB Admin · August 5, 2026
The Freedom of Information Act, signed in 1966, was built on a radical and democratic premise: that government records belong, by default, to the public, and that officials should…
MHB Admin · June 19, 2026
Ask someone why they play a game of chance and they will usually mention winning. Ask them, weeks later, what they actually remember, and you will hear something else entirely — t…
MHB Admin · June 5, 2026
No other wealthy country produces medical debt at industrial scale. People get sick everywhere; only in the United States does illness routinely convert into a collections account…
MHB Admin · July 15, 2026
The phrase "forever chemicals" is doing a great deal of quiet work. It sounds almost whimsical, the kind of marketing line a company might once have been proud of. In fact it desc…
MHB Admin · June 5, 2026
The non-compete clause was invented for a specific, narrow problem: an executive walks out the door with the customer list, the pricing model, and the product roadmap, and sets up…
MHB Admin · July 11, 2026
The promise of modern commerce is that the gap between wanting something and holding it should approach zero. Tap a screen in the evening, and the package is at the door by mornin…
MHB Admin · June 16, 2026