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Washington, DC — and pieces with no single place

279 pieces · page 11 of 14
Give grace
August 13, 2026
Civics only works if people can disagree without being disagreeable -- which requires assuming the other side is arguing from an honest position, even standing somewhere you'd…
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4.4 million mining claims, not enough engineers left to work them
August 13, 2026
BLM's own database tracks 4.4 million active and historical mining claims on US public land. The same week that number got pulled, a $180 million federal program launched for one…
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Why we don't know what we know
August 12, 2026
Nearly every fact needed to answer a real question about American life is already sitting in a public government database somewhere. The problem was never access. It's that no…
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We make our own
August 12, 2026
Most countries get their identity sharpened for free, by everyday contact with a different culture right next door. The US, in general, doesn't have that kind of foreign cultural…
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The school was built to make the people, not just educate them
August 12, 2026
Benjamin Franklin argued for public education in 1749. Horace Mann called it "the great equalizer" in 1848. Both were solving the same problem: a country with no shared ethnicity…
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A queer ladder of social mobility
August 12, 2026
Establish a foothold by whatever means are actually available, convert it into legitimate wealth, then open doors for the next generation. That's not a loophole in the American…
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Nothing is isolated
August 12, 2026
A border is a line on a map, agreed to by people, enforceable against people. Smoke doesn't read the agreement. Neither does a falling company, a failing crop, or a signal that…
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The great equalizer, for sale
August 12, 2026
Horace Mann called public education "the great equalizer." Even in Fairfax County and Palo Alto -- some of the best-funded, highest-ranked public school systems in the country --…
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The chokepoint doesn't care why it was built
August 12, 2026
A government-sanctioned monopoly built the phone network you still dial through. A theocracy built two gateways that carry all of a country's internet. A one-party state built…
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Who preserves the record
August 11, 2026
Three storytellers, working in two completely different disciplines, have each shaped what a huge number of Americans believe is true about a place, an era, or a people. Two of…
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Two kinds of memory, one process
August 11, 2026
One kind of memory is built in order, one book or one year at a time, with judgment earned by having been wrong before. The other is built flat and all at once, comprehensive but…
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The African version of "birth of civilization"
August 11, 2026
The standard American classroom runs the origin story one way: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome -- and even Egypt usually gets taught as adjacent to Africa rather than of it.…
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Lived, not adopted
August 11, 2026
Growing food and being a farmer are not the same thing. The distinction isn't modesty -- it's the whole argument. Almost everything anyone knows about the world falls into one of…
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Get in where you fit in
August 11, 2026
Three career choices, thirty years apart, opened three unrelated rooms -- a Navy oceanographic command, the New York publishing world, repeated trips to France. None was chosen…
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Where we look, whose culture we grieve
August 10, 2026
In 2015, ISIS destroyed monuments at Palmyra and UNESCO called it a war crime within days. Since 2023, Sudan's National Museum has lost more than 60% of the largest Nubian…
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Who's allowed in the room keeps changing, on purpose
August 10, 2026
A 1975 garage in Menlo Park was open to whoever showed up. The room that decides who gets to found a billion-dollar American company today has different admission rules entirely…
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The US already tried this once, and lost
August 10, 2026
In 2002 the US put tariffs on steel, the WTO ruled against them, and the government repealed its own policy under threat of $2 billion in sanctions -- the largest penalty the WTO…
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The NPR fight and the ABC fight are the same fight
August 10, 2026
"Soda" versus "pop" is proof that local shorthand is real, and exactly what national media structurally can't carry. Congress defunded public broadcasting, the FCC let one…
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Fifty-one companies, one dinner, five left standing
August 10, 2026
In 1993 the Pentagon told the CEOs of America's 51 defense contractors, over dinner, to go consolidate. By decade's end, five were left, including Boeing and Lockheed Martin -- a…
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Door by door is how society changes
August 10, 2026
In February 2004, a self-funded millionaire was leading a little-known Illinois state senator by 9 points. Barack Obama won that primary outright, 53% to 24%, on the same…
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