HeyJaredTroy Keith Preston
Some of you know me as Keith, some as Troy, some as "that asshole." Reflections on current events, trends, popular culture, history, politics, psychology, religion, philosophy, science, and whatever else I feel like writing about.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 10
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- Aug 6, 2026
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- Jul 15, 2026
Latest issues
Were Paul the Apostle and Simon Magus One and the Same? (opens the original)
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One of the more provocative theories in modern New Testament scholarship is the suggestion that Paul the Apostle and Simon Magus—the Samaritan magician who briefly appears in Acts 8—may actually represent the same historical individual. This idea is far outside the scholarly mainstream, but it has attracted attention from a small number of influential scholars, including Gustav Volkmar in the nineteenth century, Robert Eisenman, and Robert M. Price. Their proposals raise fascinating questions ab
Jerusalem and Athens: Dionysian Influences on the Gospel of John (opens the original)
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Among contemporary New Testament scholars, few have advanced a more controversial theory regarding the literary origins of the Gospel of John than Dennis R. McDonald. Building on his broader theory of mimesis criticism—the idea that New Testament authors consciously imitated classical Greek literature—McDonald argues that the Fourth Gospel intentionally models portions of its narrative on Euripides’ Bacchae, presenting Jesus as a figure who both resembles and surpasses the Greek god Dionysus. Ra
Round-Table #157: Ideology as Jerry-rigged Mental Engineering (opens the original)
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Learn how ideology can often serve as a form of crude substitution for untrained mental facilities in the form of last-minute constructs. The aporia you have with your ideological rival might not be about matters of fact or truth at all, but something more subtle: badly engineered minds.This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid sub
Anarchical Perspectives: The Dead in Jordan and the Slave Armies of Empire (opens the original)
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Three American soldiers were killed in Jordan on or around July 19, 2026, amid the widening conflict that now centers on control of the Strait of Hormuz and the broader confrontation with Iran. Their deaths were reported with the usual bureaucratic language of “hostile action” and “ongoing operations.” No names were immediately released in the initial dispatches. No families were yet named in the public record. The machinery of the state simply recorded another increment in its ledger of expenda
Anarchical Perspectives: Beyond the Signposts- The Questions Every Economic Arrangement Must Confront (opens the original)
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A meme circulating in certain dissident circles captures something essential. It rejects the familiar demand for a flawless economic system and instead directs attention toward the recurring problems that any arrangement—whether capitalist, socialist, mutualist, or otherwise—must somehow address. The signposts point in multiple directions, but the path they mark is not toward utopia. It is toward a clearer recognition of where power concentrates, where incentives distort, and where coercion inev
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