On James Talarico The Democratic Senate candidate is campaigning on his faith.; The New York Times, Believing Newsletter, January 18, 2026

 Lauren Jackson, The New York Times, Believing Newsletter; On James Talarico: The Democratic Senate candidate is campaigning on his faith.

"James Talarico has been taking classes to become a Presbyterian minister. And he wants you to know it.

At packed rallies, on Joe Rogan’s show and to his nearly two million Instagram followers, Talarico is constantly repeating his religious bona fides. He cites Scripture from memory and uses it to give theological answers to political questions. Even his campaign slogan has biblical roots. “It’s time to start flipping tables,” he says, referencing Jesus’s wrath in response to corruption at the temple in Jerusalem.

I’ve been watching Talarico for months, and I’ve been most struck by how deft he is at fusing philosophy with policy. He speaks often about compassion, care and even love. Not as a lofty ideal, but as something urgent. Something measurable.

“I believe love is a force as real as gravity,” he said in a long interview that aired on “The Ezra Klein Show” last week. “Love to me is the most powerful thing in the universe. It is not weak, it is not neutral, it is not passive. It doesn’t paper over disagreement.”"

Ethics Alone Can’t Fix Big Tech Ethics can provide blueprints for good tech, but it can’t implement them.; Slate, April 17, 2019

Daniel Susser, Slate;

Ethics Alone Can’t Fix Big Tech

Ethics can provide blueprints for good tech, but it can’t implement them.

"Ethics requires more than rote compliance. And it’s important to remember that industry can reduce any strategy to theater. Simply focusing on law and policy won’t solve these problems, since they are equally (if not more) susceptible to watering down. Many are rightly excited about new proposals for state and federal privacy legislation, and for laws constraining facial recognition technology, but we’re already seeing industry lobbying to strip them of their most meaningful provisions. More importantly, law and policy evolve too slowly to keep up with the latest challenges technology throws at us, as is evident from the fact that most existing federal privacy legislation is older than the internet.

The way forward is to see these strategies as complementary, each offering distinctive and necessary tools for steering new and emerging technologies toward shared ends. The task is fitting them together.

By its very nature ethics is idealistic. The purpose of ethical reflection is to understand how we ought to live—which principles should drive us and which rules should constrain us. However, it is more or less indifferent to the vagaries of market forces and political winds. To oversimplify: Ethics can provide blueprints for good tech, but it can’t implement them. In contrast, law and policy are creatures of the here and now. They aim to shape the future, but they are subject to the brute realities—social, political, economic, historical—from which they emerge. What they lack in idealism, though, is made up for in effectiveness. Unlike ethics, law and policy are backed by the coercive force of the state."

Publishers Call Out Target for 'Censoring' Book Descriptions; Publishers Weekly, September 13, 2018

Claire Kirch, Publishers Weekly; Publishers Call Out Target for 'Censoring' Book Descriptions

"According to Ohio State University Press director Tony Sanfilippo, Target’s move might be a well-meaning policy gone awry. “I understand that they might want to avoid controversy. But if they want to keep Nazis off their site, or Nazi-themed products out of their search results, there are ways of doing that that don’t censor. If you can’t say 'Nazi,' you can’t stop Nazis. And if you can’t search for books about the trans community and trans issues, your search engine and your corporate philosophy are morally flawed.""

It’s not just America: Zuckerberg has to answer for Facebook’s actions around the world; The Washington Post, April 10, 2018

Karen Attiah, The Washington Post; It’s not just America: Zuckerberg has to answer for Facebook’s actions around the world

"In many countries around the world, Facebook is the Internet. And with little ability to influence how the social media site operates, such nations are vulnerable to any policy action — or inaction — the company decides to take.

So while Zuckerberg struggles to answer for how his company is affecting Americans, let’s not forget that he has a lot more to answer for...

Time will tell if countries outside of the United States will ever be able to compel Zuckerberg to appear before their citizens and lawmakers to answer for Facebook’s actions. He may never appear in say, Germany, India, or Nigeria on his whirlwind apology tour. Nevertheless, he should not be absolved from the global consequences of the digital empire that he has built."