Free Love is Boring
The Week in Review: February 2, 2026
Back in October, I lamented the loss of subtle eroticism. No porn film “could ever replicate the erotic tension […] of fully-clothed actors in 1950s and 1960s cinema.” Take the the iconic scene in Federico Fellini’s 1960 La Dolce Vita where Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroiani “just barely touched each other while wading in the Trevi Fountain during the wee hours of the morning.” The allure of such a scene “banks on the fact that it leaves so much room to the imagination.”
While porn has played a major role in steamrolling the sense of mystery from our imaginations, I also point the finger at those pushing to normalize “sex work.” There’s nothing less sexy—or more sad—than turning prostitution into a mere form of labor. In her interview with famed-prostitute Xaviera Hollander, Julie Bindel wrote this week that “of the hundreds of women in the sex trade that I’ve interviewed, including those that campaign for legalization, I’ve never met a happy one.”
In addition to not delivering the happiness it promises, the myth of free love carries more deadly consequences. In her piece on recent abortion statistics, Carmel Richardson wrote that laws enacted between 2019-2021 that allowed women to procure abortion pills via telehealth consultations led to a considerable spike in abortion rates.
We would all do well to take the advice that my friend’s grandmother recently gave her: “try to be ‘basic,’ because constraints are almost always a creative spur. It’s better,” she added, to not unleash all of your emotions and desires, and to pour your “wounded soul” and repressed longings “into tragic works of art.”
Also in Compact this week:
Brandon Goldman on the new documentary about Melania Trump
Felice Basbøll on Trump’s latest moves in Greenland
Juan David Rojas on how Trump made the Colombian left great again
Razib Khan on how ancient DNA solved the Indo-European mystery
New Epstein files are disclosed and and a new AI social media site is launched. The team discusses it all on the pod.
The podcast was really good — I could say a lot more about the gnostic drive in AI research. It’s not just about escaping the unpredictability and limitations of the flesh, it’s about being saved by unlocking hidden knowledge of what makes human beings special.
That’s the dream of AGI. It’s a philosophical and religious one more than a technological one.
1). It is “role,” not “roll.” 2). If more women are having abortions, why is it any of your concern?