$5k Contest Results!
Aemula Writer Spotlight - 11.6.25
We are excited to announce the winner of the $5,000 Essay Contest:
Zachary Elwood, with his article, “Can Republicans and Democrats both be right? Understanding the logic of both side’s narratives”!
On our mission to reverse the trend of polarization in media, we are happy to see an article on the topic resonate so deeply with our readers.
We greatly appreciate Coinbase Developer Platform for the grant to help fund our first contest, as well as all of our existing and new subscribers for supporting Aemula from the start!
In 6 months through October, writers on Aemula have earned $8,492!
The independent writers on Aemula are fully supported by your subscriptions. By removing the reliance on advertising revenue in journalism, we can remove all outside influence over our media environment. Join the community building a healthier information ecosystem by starting a subscription today, and gain unlimited access to all of the writers publishing with Aemula!
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This week, we are highlighting the top 3 posts from the $5,000 Essay Contest! We encourage you to check them out and explore the work of all of the writers on Aemula, including the full contest Leaderboard!
Can Republicans and Democrats both be right? Understanding the logic of both side’s narratives
79 votes
“Americans today live inside competing moral universes, each with its own villains, heroes, and storylines about who’s destroying the country. Scroll through your feed, talk to your friends, or turn on any partisan outlet, and you’ll find a familiar refrain: “we’re not the problem—they are.” It’s often accompanied by angry, self-assured takes that if you don’t see the obvious threat the “other side” poses—and haven’t chosen correctly—there’s something wrong with you.
The truth is that there are defensible grievances in these opposing stories. Both sides can point to real injustices, real threats, and real patterns of objectionable behavior from their opponents. But regardless of whose grievances are more valid, the deeper problem for us as a country is how easily we come to harshly judge people who’ve reached different conclusions—seeing them as naïve, immoral, or even evil and dangerous.”
From Coffee Money to $1.5 Million
30 votes
“‘Kids these days spend too much money on Starbucks lattes and Chick-fil-A’ —your grandparents, probably.
That line gets thrown around a lot, and sure, it’s exaggerated; skipping Starbucks will not buy you a house next year. But small amounts can really drive significant change. Just $25 a week has the power to snowball into something huge. Now that your short-term savings are locked down and growing (and if they’re not, go back to the first article in the Spending and Saving series), it’s time to think bigger. Not just this month or this year, but decades. It’s time to unleash the long-term compounding machine.”
On Trump’s Bullshit
8 votes
“Twenty years ago this month, the late Princeton philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt published his seminal work On Bullshit, which argued that bullshit was worse than lying. His point was that a liar knows the truth and deliberately tries to hide or distort it, while a bullshitter doesn’t care about the truth at all — they care only about the impression they make.
When Donald Trump emerged on the political stage in 2015, Frankfurt wrote in Time magazine that Trump was the epitome of the bullshit artist he had identified a decade earlier.
“Trump freely offers extravagant claims about his own talents and accomplishments,” Frankfurt said. “He maintains, for example, that he has the greatest memory in the world. This is farcically unalloyed bullshit.”
When I managed The Fact Checker for The Washington Post, readers constantly asked: Why rely only on Pinocchio ratings? Why don’t you call Trump a liar?”
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Though I didn’t win, I appreciate the opportunity to compete and am excited to see the future of this project! Good work everyone 🙂