KPFA - Against the Grain

For many decades, the idea has held sway that we humans should leave consequential decisions to a higher power: computers. And that assumption has become more deeply entrenched, the more powerful computers have become. How did our world come to be seen as an imaginary casino, with every decision to be stripped down to costs and benefits, risks and rewards? Computer scientist Benjamin Recht traces the development of mathematical optimization, game theory, statistical testing, and machine learning — the basis of AI — to understand how medicine, the economy, and governance have been outsourced to computing, concentrating enormous power in the hands of the few.
Benjamin Recht, The Irrational Decision: How We Gave Computers the Power to Choose for Us Princeton University Press, 2026
Benjamin Recht’s Blog
Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash
The post Deferring to Computers appeared first on KPFA.

The backlash against trans people, which has swept both the United States and the world in recent years, is not as new as it seems, according to historian Jules Gill-Peterson. She traces the emergence of trans misogynistic violence over the last two centuries, which she links to the establishment of colonialism, capitalism, and more recently neoliberalism. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Jules Gill-Peterson, A Short History of Trans Misogyny Verso, 2024
Photo credit: Norbu GYACHUNG
The post Why Trans Misogyny? appeared first on KPFA.

The rise and fall of unemployment, our dependence on the market for our livelihoods — such things are taken as a given. But economist Clara Mattei suggests we need to recognize them as being fundamentally political phenomena, not the product of natural laws outside of our control. She argues that a reconsideration of our capitalist economy is long overdue.
Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention Simon & Schuster, 2026
Forum for Real Economic Emancipation
Photo by Julio Lopez on Unsplash
The post Rethinking Capitalism appeared first on KPFA.

It’s been called a new gold rush, yet not of our external environment, but of our internal environment — of our minds and psyches. Historian of science D. Graham Burnett, one of the Friends of Attention, lays out what’s at stake and how they’re organizing a movement to reclaim our attention.
The Strother School of Radical Attention
The Friends of Attention, Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement Crown, 2026
The post Against the Attention Economy appeared first on KPFA.

The Texas Republican Party has evolved from a corporate libertarian institution to one in which free market capitalism and evangelical Christianity are united in authoritarianism. Political scientist Clyde Barrow warns that Texan Christofascism serves as the rightwing blueprint for the rest of the United States in the coming years.
Gregory Albo and Stephen Maher, eds. Socialist Register 2026: Late-Stage Capitalism? Accumulation in the Ruins Monthly Review Press, 2025
Photo by Pete Alexopoulos on Unsplash
The post Texas: Vanguard of the Far Right appeared first on KPFA.