Which is worse: the risk of giving aid to someone who is cheating the system in a small way, or the risk of denying needed aid to someone who isn't cheating?

When the state's aid to those who are honest is not enough to get by, it systematically compels them to cheat in every small way that they can find. If that is bad, the blame falls those who run the state.

Texas has adopted a state law requiring local thug departments to arrest people for deportation.

Can virtual reality games provide a sense of meaning for our lives?

The end of work won't be an unprecedented situation for humanity. Hunter-gatherers typically had lots of leisure time. They needed to do some work, but that was far less than 6 hours a day (the equivalent of 42 hours a week). They had plenty of time for rituals, games, whatever they wanted to do. We know people don't have trouble living that way.

The article helped me understand something about myself: I am completely insensitive to "deep play" that has no intrinsic interest for me. I don't care deeply about baseball or football in the US, any more than about about cockfights in Bali or soccer in Argentina. I don't try to learn to care deeply. I don't pretend to care deeply. The fact that other people do care deeply about these things has no influence on me because it makes no sense to me.

I can be curious about a sport — for instance, I read a book about cricket so I could understand how it works. I'd be interested in watching part of a game one day, to understand it better. But that is simply curiosity. I would never get worked up about whether team A wins or loses.

And the only way I want to play a computer game is without competition.

As the troll blatantly embraces dictators, he is trying to destroy the US's national conscience.

Quietly embracing other dictators, which the US did before and still does, does damage in some ways; embracing them openly does that damage and other kinds too.

Stephen Fry faces possible criminal charges for talking about a "a mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world so full of injustice and pain" on Irish television.

That law is evidently unjust.