It’s been another wild week! After a tragedy it’s the right’s turn to stupidly embrace cancel culture. Pam Bondi says all the wrong things about hate speech. Kimmel gets cancelled by ABC or the FCC? A Post writer is cancelled too. Lots of “normies” — which is to say, non-celebrities that celebrated an assassination — got fired. Jerry quits Ben & Jerry’s. Stephen King apologizes. Vance does a podcast. Trump grieves in his own special way, then heads to Windsor Castle.
The best take remains: “let the crazies speak”. Free speech includes “the right to say rude, hateful, disgusting and inappropriate stuff”.
Meanwhile, Nepal has a new Prime Minister and he was elected over Discord. The Oxford Union starts losing guests and patrons. The FOMC cuts rates into an S&P500 high. Khalil gets deported. Lisa Cook keeps her job. Meta makes some really cool new products, has a couple of demo hiccups. Waymo is safer than people. Elon buys a billy of TSLA.
Robots practice kung fu. Drones make the Pieta over St. Peter’s. Kids rename meditation. People expect something from Anthropic soon. Opendoor names a new CEO and hits $10/share, good for me!
And we had a Pythagorean Day this week, 9/16/25!
On to the reading!
Timely
A Strategic Shutdown is a Terrible Idea - A dive into the strategic machinations and problems with the potential for a shutdown and why the filibuster is dumb.
On Working With Wizards - As Ethan Mollick says, “We're moving from partners to audience, from collaboration to conjuring.” What does it mean to have these remarkably impressive and mysterious machines help us?
The World In Which We Live Now - Nassim Taleb with 7 observations about the ways in which our world has changed.
In Defense of Karen Attiah. Sort of. - I don’t think this is as strong as it should be, but it’s still useful to read and think about the emotion of it. This is all happening, again, as “an intense pressure campaign amid a rapid vibe shift. Only this time, toward the right.” And that’s no good. We should all have more than just an allergic reaction to the roving online mob.
Timeless
The Art of Erotic Curiosity - Helping to recapture the word to describe the passion of a thing, and the ability to “bind knowledge to care”.
Write it down, write it down, write it down - Kidlin’s Law: If you write the problem down clearly, then the matter is half solved.
The Age of Depopulation - A deep look by Nicholas Eberstadt into how the world will change, who will thrive, and how.
You’re overspending because you lack values - Continual home runs have to stop sometime, but right now they just keep coming from Sherry Ning.
Books
How To Win An Election by Cicero - In two thousand years, not a ton has really changed tactically. Build coalitions, win the gatekeepers that matter, share your message well, use surrogates for attacks so you stay pure, stay vague and hopeful. A great read to consider and identify the ways that politics still works.
Tweets
Some good ones, so you don’t need to scroll!
Yes, the world is still amazing. Cheers!
