Current Affairs
currentaffairs.org · Group blog · on HN since 2016
Current Affairs is a left-leaning magazine publishing essays and criticism on politics, architecture, media, and public intellectuals.
What HN saysCommenters cite its piece on The Economist as the best writing on that magazine and link it for critiques of public intellectuals and leadership culture.
340HN people shared it
141linked it in comments
281stories submitted
4.6Kstory points
2 months agolast shared
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Most-shared posts
- 1Why people hate contemporary architecture (2017)24 people · 308 points · first shared 2017 · 151 comments on HN
- 2The Intellectual We Deserve (2018)15 people · 73 points · first shared 2018 · 32 comments on HN
- 3The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari11 people · 153 points · first shared 2022 · 50 comments on HN
- 4The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free9 people · 757 points · first shared 2020 · 474 comments on HN
- 5When is the revolution in architecture coming?7 people · 273 points · first shared 2021 · 204 comments on HN
- 6Surely We Can Do Better Than Elon Musk7 people · 70 points · first shared 2021 · 26 comments on HN
- 7The World’s Most Annoying Man: Steven Pinker Is Selling Reason (TM), Not Reason6 people · 19 points · first shared 2019 · 3 comments on HN
- 8How 'The Economist' Thinks (2017)6 people · 11 points · first shared 2017 · 4 comments on HN
- 9The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”5 people · 118 points · first shared 2021 · 104 comments on HN
- 10How to Pretend That You Are Smart5 people · 89 points · first shared 2020 · 12 comments on HN
- 11Homepage5 people · first shared 2017
- 12McKinsey and Company: Capital’s Willing Executioners4 people · 70 points · first shared 2019 · 29 comments on HN
- 13It's Basically Just Immoral to Be Rich4 people · 26 points · first shared 2017 · 22 comments on HN
- 14Vox: Explaining It All to You4 people · 3 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 15It’s Basically Just Immoral to Be Rich (2017)4 people · 2 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
jonahhorowitz · 2025-05-19
This post in current affairs[0] remains the best piece of writing about the Economist that I've ever read.
[0] - https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2017/05/how-the-economist-thinks
spost · 2024-01-31
> Modern Luddites can go back to churning their own butter.
The history of the Luddites is actually interestingly parallel to what we're seeing with generative AI these days. The book "Blood in the Machine" talks about this in some detail - there's an interview with the author at https://www.currentaffairs.org/2024/01/why-you-should-be-a-luddite that is worth reading, and Time has a piece on the book as well: https://time.com/6317437/luddites-ai-blood-in-the-machine-merchant/
virtualritz · 2023-10-30
It's noteworthy but sadly not surprising[1], that someone like Peterson is listed as an 'intellectual'.
This man talks like ChatGPT when asked to clad a text of the most basic ideas, frequently completely missing the point, into sophisticated-sounding language.
The other names tell me nothing; but having the former in the list kept me from looking up the latter.
[1] https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve
OldGuyInTheClub · 2023-07-27
Excellent takedown. In my area there was a big "Systems Thinking" movement a few years ago. Not sure what happened to it.
It runs deep and wide though. "Unendurable Horrors of Leadership Camp" is another good one.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/06/the-unendurable-horrors-of-lead…
affluentsociety · 2022-07-23
Holman Jenkins is primarily concerned with downplaying climate change effects and ridiculing any attempt to address climate change. Look at his WSJ archives and you will find hundreds of columns that all say basically the same thing: environmentalists are stupid and wrong, climate science is wrong (or, “inaccurate”), renewable energy advocates are wrong. I recommend this survey of WSJ opinion page (and more generally, News Corporation publications like Fox and New York Post) talking points about climate change:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/01/if-you-cant-deny-it-downplay-it
topranks · 2022-05-17
Problem with crypto is pointing to all these problems of centralised systems (be they web giants, banking system etc). But not having a practical, working alternative.
It’s always “in development”, “around the corner” etc.
Blockchain is hugely inefficient and for the most part has failed to scale meaningfully. Look at popular networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum. If it weren’t for the Ponzi scams most people probably would have moved on.
Zksnarks might be great, but absolutely private transactions have downsides too. Most of us would like our daily purchases to remain private. But do we want to enable unlimited money laundering and tax evasion too?
Problems like that are social and political and technology alone can’t give a solution.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/05/why-this-computer-scientist-say…
gautamcgoel · 2022-01-26
Longtermism is increasingly viewed as a respectable moral movement; one of its best-known proponents is Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, which received a $10M donation from Elon Musk. You can read more about longtermism (and some of the really bizarre views its adherents espouse) in this Current Affairs piece:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/07/the-dangerous-ideas-of-longterm…
dv_dt · 2022-01-16
I think the best context to this is this earlier discussion of similar analysis:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/06/is-student-debt-cancellation-re…
pcthrowaway · 2022-01-11
This article from HN a while back was great: How SEO is Gentrifying the internet. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/12/how-seo-is-gentrifying-the-inte…
I just tried to find this article on google by searching "Can cats eat blueberries bad search results" (Can Cats eat blueberries is very relevant to the article) and it showed up on the first page of results, albeit at the end.
On Bing I wasn't able to find it
caslon · 2022-01-04
>Why Cryptocurrency Is A Giant Fraud
>Speculators might make money on it, but the arguments for its usefulness fail completely.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/04/why-cryptocurrency-is-a-giant-f…
>Bitcoin is the greatest scam in history
>It’s a colossal pump-and-dump scheme, the likes of which the world has never seen.
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/24/17275202/bitcoin-scam-cryptocurrency-min…
>The Great Cryptocurrency Scam
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jayadkisson/2018/11/20/the-great-cryptocu…
>Dogecoin Creator Says Crypto Is a Scam
>Jackson Palmer went on Twitter for the first time in two years to remind us that the wealthy are ruining everything—even cryptocurrency.
https://gizmodo.com/dogecoin-creator-says-crypto-is-a-scam-1847292956
jim-jim-jim · 2021-12-27
Figured this would be about the SPLC. Current Affairs did a great article about it too.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/03/the-southern-poverty-law-center…
tl;dr - In order to keep getting donations, they need to scare people with the number of hate groups in America. It doesn't matter how many members these groups have, what activities they perform, or if they even exist anymore.
TheOtherHobbes · 2021-11-09
It's worth reading the counterpoint - about reactionary "back to the past" architecture in the UK.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/05/the-royal-dystopia-of-poundbury
I went to visit Poundbury a few years ago and my reaction was "Seriously?!" It's just as ugly and soulless as the output of the concrete box school. Even the name shows a hilarious absence of self-awareness.
The fact that these supposed extremes somehow manage to meet is an interesting clue to what is really going on.\
Edit: to add, another clue is the bizarre absence of gardens and independent greenery. There are some micro-lawns but most of the land is given over to roads or buildings. There is very little integration with nature.
Ericson2314 · 2021-08-11
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Town,_Edinburgh and quite nice too.
The undercurrent behind https://www.leidenmedievalistsblog.nl/articles/why-medieval-city-build… is our romanticized notion of the past actually under-emphasizes the planning that did occur. After those overzealous tower-and-park modernists, we did a big romantic counterrevolution in aesthetics that ironically justifies the even more current neoliberal weak state planning as the default.
I recommend https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/10/why-you-hate-contemporary-archi… for trying to weave the needle right for yes planning but also yes a little relativism and humility.
myspy · 2021-05-02
Read an interesting article that stated that crypto is not private enough to enable good money transfer for criminals. Cash is still the best. In general it stated that crypto currencies are rather useless.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/04/why-cryptocurrency-is-a-giant-f…
And a couple notes about blockchain
https://thecorrespondent.com/655/blockchain-the-amazing-solution-for-a…
Personally I have not dig deeper into the pros and cons of crypto but my gut feeling is that it’s pretty useless.
Would be better to improve existing structures.
thrown67 · 2021-02-19
Jordan Peterson is a charlatan. He is sexist. He is not a typical representative of a psychologist and one should be very wary of recommending him to someone depressed, he can put petrol on their fires [1][2]. I'm Indian and I find him similar in style though very different to the charlatan 'Sadhguru' Jaggi Vasudev. JP spews very poisonous bullshit along with his generic advises. I think the Nathan J Robinson piece about him 'The Intellectual we Deserve' is a good starting point [3].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25534961
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25533794
[3] https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve
hjek · 2021-02-11
Nathan Robinson did a great piece[0] on Ray Dalio's principles and Bridgewater's culture, which looks extremely toxic:
> Make sure, of course, that you always make specific people feel bad about mistakes: “Instead of the passive generalization or the royal ‘we,’ attribute specific actions to specific people: ‘Harry didn’t handle this well.’” And make sure everyone knows it: “Use ‘public hangings’ to deter bad behavior,” he says, by which he means making sure to belittle (I’m sorry, accurately explain the failings of) employees in front of their coworkers so that the lesson is learned widely.
[0]: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/06/how-to-make-everyone-in-your-vi…
twright · 2020-10-29
When it comes to distribution on the internet, no, unless the network infrastructure is owned by the commons which is very hard to do even with small portions of it. There is a great Current Affairs piece from this summer (with what looks like some good further reading) which explores this more and better than I can here: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/08/reclaiming-the-physical-interne…
Perhaps you circumvent the internet and distribute software on USB thumb drives, if you’re the sole creator and owner of the software then yes!
bag531 · 2019-12-31
My list for mostly political and non-corporate media.
https://theintercept.com/
https://jacobinmag.com/
https://www.currentaffairs.org/
dj_gitmo · 2019-05-18
I actually like some things about the Economist and I subscribed for years. I feel like people would be better informed about the world if they read it. That said, it's absolutely dripping with ideology and you need to know how to read it. It's a cheerleader for Capitalism, kinda like the Financial Times.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/05/how-the-economist-thinks
pj_mukh · 2018-11-05
Seconded. Tried to read some of his stuff. If he stuck to self-help, I think it'd be great. I have no idea why he tries to make (mostly nonsensical) political arguments/connections.
Edit: For a deeper dive into why I specifically used the term "nonsensical". See this article [1]. I was thinking these exact things while reading his writing.
[1] https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve
rndmize · 2018-08-17
https://www.currentaffairs.org/
I didn't realize how many years I'd been looking for a serious, entertaining, well-written leftist perspective on news and the world until I ran across this magazine.
781 · 2018-06-21
There was a great article about this recently which basically says that modern architecture schools drills into you that any sort of ornamentation is a sin.
It also made another interesting point: modern buildings have no context, if you see just a picture of one, it's impossible to say if it's from London, Madrid or Shanghai.
And a great quote:
> There’s an easy test for whether a building is beautiful or not. Ask yourself: if this building could speak, would it sound like the Rubaiyat or the works of Shakespeare, or would it make a noise like “Blorp”? For nearly 100 years, we have been stuck in the Age of Blorp. It is time to learn to speak again.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/10/why-you-hate-contemporary-archi…
JoshMnem · 2018-05-11
This[1] is worth reading.
"Jordan Peterson's popularity is the sign of a deeply impoverished political and intellectual landscape"
[1] https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve
OmarIsmail · 2018-05-10
Here's a fantastic article that covers the absurdity of the "Intellectual Dark Web". I highly recommend anybody that's interested in this topic to read it.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/05/pretty-loud-for-being-so-silenc…
antinomy · 2018-04-02
The New Yorker and NYRB have already been mentioned; they'd be my top two.
In terms of less mainstream sources, for thought-provoking long-form pieces mostly arising out of an economic justice perspective, I'd suggest Current Affairs.
https://www.currentaffairs.org
And though it isn't a periodical, for long, smart pieces on sociology, history, economics, contemporary society, etc., I'd suggest Slate Star Codex.
i.e. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch
Oh, and if you're interested in literature, which more broadly extends to culture throughout the decades, then the Paris Review has an incredible tradition of long-form interviews.
https://www.theparisreview.org
akvadrako · 2017-07-02
I have a hard time finding news sources I can stand; basically all the major outlets just turn me off with their bias and verbose irrelevant analysis. Over the part year I've collected a few lesser known options you may find valuable too:
https://theintercept.com - mostly anti-propaganda efforts
https://phys.org - an aggregator often linking to primary sources
https://www.currentaffairs.org - political opinions that generally seem thought out
http://www.realclear(politics|world|*).com - a network of aggregators with a good balance
http://evonomics.com - economic perspectives I also don't mind reading.
I would really love to find more options - especially something in a debate format so I can judge arguments from multiple sides on an issue.
edavis · 2017-03-17
> Maybe that's a good example of how to get right-wing politicians to agree to some left-wing ideals: prove that it will save money and let them lower taxes.
I think this is a fine approach for the left to take, as long as the moral foundation is never sacrificed.
In other words, it should always be "we should do this because it's the right/moral/dignified thing to do (and if it saves money too, great)" rather than "we should do this because it saves money." Because what if new research comes out saying it _doesn't_ save money?
(See https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/02/even-when-it-doesnt-save-money for a more fleshed out version of this argument.)
RodericDay · 2017-03-05
Emmett Rensin is the author of that piece, and he's an incredibly talented commentator and rising star. Now that he's building some credibility, he can be a bit pickier about where he publishes.
I happened to be plugging him just yesterday on a discussion about the Obama administration on here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13791139
If you want pieces like that "Liberal Smugness" one, I strongly recommend Current Affairs magazine, and Jacobin (but Jacobin is more hit or miss). Current Affairs is pointedly against Vox.com, and has a piece explaining their opposition to it here:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/11/explaining-it-all
draw_down · 2016-12-16
Great piece by Yasmin Nair about this book: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/11/killing-you-softly-with-her-dre…
eli_gottlieb · 2016-12-15
Thomas Frank wrote his latest book about it. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/08/review-listen-liberal
>For Frank, the central defining tendency of the modern Democratic Party is its domination by “professionals,” the highly-credentialed, data-driven Best and Brightest that Obama stuffed his cabinet with.