The Zoomers have so little institutional memory. They don’t remember the first Trump administration. Imagine having no memory of the pitched battles of institution versus ego. I envy them.
The Zoomers I talk to seem to have some memory of a good boom year but then their memories are strongly colored by the many traumas of the panic. Persistent online worlds with a global shutdown didn’t do right by them.
Now that we are back to the chaos of a Trump presidency I have no fond simulated idea of nostalgia for Trump for myself.
In 2016 our politics broke my assessment of what was possible and I did not like where the chaos would lead. I definitely could not predicted how much my own position on issues would change though. I still don’t know the best path but I have ironically opened my eyes to the scale of the issue. They used to call that being “woke” but like the term a lot has changed.
Being from the American West, and in particular being a townie of one of the land grant university towns, I have found we have two orientations to federal power in “real America” that can be contradictory.
There is extreme skepticism of how Washington inserts itself into everything fron local land issues to education & regulatory policy. Taylor Sheridan has made a whole cinematic universe out of these issues. The West doesn’t want the long arm of the law reaching onto our land.
But the West also has its own power base. We are tied to the wider industrial and defense power run by the blob by supplying manpower and resources. Land grant universities like CU-Boulder have trained a cadre of science and engineering workers who run important programs like NIST and NOAA.
Federal scientists and their work runs everything from the atomic clock to tide reports. This doesn’t even account for the Air Force Academy and Cheyenne Mountain. The military industrial complex and its funding of the sciences is well integrated into the American west.
It makes for some interesting politics as the land grant towns. They owe some of their wealth and economic base to the training delivered by a university system that is local and regionally powerful.
And yet funding for its surrounding apparatus relies on a complex set of funding arrangements from the Blob from science grants to defense contacts.
If the money is under threat I’d expect regular people are going to have a bumpy ride. And systems will certainly break. Maybe all the burbling in the Blob as it recognizes this threat an opportunity for the western states to assert their own independence. That is a more optimistic outcome than many expect.
I felt it was very important to get off the internet and soak in some restorative aesthetics. We are in a shock and awe moment almost anywhere you look from national politics to geopolitical technology competition. And everyone is jangling for narrative.
Extremism exist in some very weird bubbles. I am concerned seeing rationalist singularity cultists. But I’m also concerned about high frequency hedge funders who manipulate markets. We are in a great power competition and I’m sure we all have totally sensible opinions about open source artificial intelligence models. Right?
It’s all very cyperpunk. Manipulation of financial markets is as grey zone a tactic as sniping the telecoms pipeline from Helsinki to Tallinn. And we should be concerned about being competitive. We’ve been snowblind before
It’s a nuisance as neither you nor I have a clear line of view. Some of us maybe have a few months heads up. The lead feels less and less even as I am as much a part of shaping narratives as anyone. I was using DeepSeek in the fall.
When I was in fashion we had this website called “don’t believe the hypebeast” to mog those overly concerned with cool. Don’t get mogged. The same principle applies here. Don’t try to figure it all out.
Go read something with soul, listen to some Bach, and be with your family. Be frosty in the fog and exist in the real while you still can.
The paper of record just doesn’t know what to make of a political constituency that it has been determined to view as a billionaire bad boys club. And so after almost a decade of hostility between media and Silicon Valley, it is clear the vibe shift has come in the house style at the New York Times as it is dedicating a lot of ink to “Tech Right” and how it views the world.
The editors appear to sense the shift of power. And with new beats come new talent. The Grey Lady has hired an opinion columnist James Pogue who actually does reporting with these elusive new right and tech right figures.
Old timer readers might appreciate that this new talent shares a name with a past technology columnist. Pogue. David Pogue reviewed gadgetsfrom 2000 to 2013.
Despite being millennial, James Pogue is an old school reporter. His popularity derives from his deep reporting. He picks up the phone and talks to people. He shows up to events and reports on what he sees. He does it with verve and style but lets his subjects speak for themselves.
If you enjoy learning how the media sausage gets made Isaac Simpson has an interview with James Pogue on his newfound status, his reporting style and how he ended up at the center of the political and cultural moment.
It is here I do full disclosure myself and say I’ve been interviewed by himtwice and we have social relationship that includes being on a very similar professional and social circuit. Because he actually goes to report on things in person we’ve seen a lot of each other over the years. A reporter grows with their beat.
If you are interested in what establishment media has to say about this new power base of new right, tech right and a rising counter cultural elite and prefer your news to be deeply reported then make yourself familiar with James Pogue and his work.
He has a nuanced understanding of the personalities, always his homework, and incredible access to his sources. I guess this is what happens when you ask questions and then let your subjects speak for themselves. If anyone has the secret to the media rebuilding its trust with readers my money is on James Pogue.
I have now done six days of hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy (HBOT for short) in a row. I also did a vitamin IV with glutathione so my morning was well occupied with maximizing wellness.
Because I was inside a chamber and tied to a chair for a few hours I was able to enjoy my backlog of reading. If you enjoy essays and e-ink books I personally use a combination of Readwise Reader and Daylight.
A fan of Leibniz? The New Yorker reviews two books on his life. The polymath wrote quite a bit which endears me to him but our real debt to him goes beyond calculus notation. George Boole’s logic is partially informed by Leibniz.
Leibniz loved the simplicity and the suggestiveness of binary: he titled a draft paper “Wonderful Origin of All Numbers from 1 and 0, Which Serves as a Beautiful Representation of the Mystery of Creation, since Everything Arises from God and Nothing Else.”
Is middle age sexy? I went to read the styles piece in the New York Times only to discover that one must be over 50 to count. This elder millennial keeps trying to claim the mantle of middle age but Gen X and Boomers refuse to age.
I woke up at 4am with my racing heart. I looked at my Whoop biometrics and my resting heart rate was abnormally high. I’m talking 110bpm at the peak of my REM cycle. I obviously has a nightmare.
I figured that nothing could be that scary so I took my temperature. Sure enough I was running a light fever.
The last few days have been a particularly gruesome one the internet. Rapid change, institutional distrust, and chaos have led us to blood. And instead of sorrow it’s all cheers and memes.
I hope it passes quickly. Both my own fever and the one gripping the timelines. I feel in need of some time off from the world. It’s been an intense year. I pray for more introspection through advent.
Like many fans of Star Trek, I am not at all ashamed of my affection for one of science fictions greatest franchises. I’m proud to love it.
When I visit San Francisco I like to rewatch the classic original series movie from 1986 “Star Trek: The Voyage Home” which is affectionately known as the whale movie.
Future San Francisco is a beautiful paradise where exceptional young people go to Star Fleet Academy. It’s fully automated luxury communism thanks to the not really military (but definitely feels like it) the United Federation of Planets.
The movie involves getting Spock back from previous escapades that had left him for dead. As they retrieve Spock a crisis is unfolding on earth.
A spacecraft is signaling to Earth alas no one can answer it. It disables everything near it. The Enterprise figure out that it’s whalesong and decide the only way to answer is going back in time to find Humpback whales.
The Reagan era was a strange one for environmentalist. The crew goes back in time to rescue Humpback whales and ends up in San Francisco in the 70s at least vibe wise. It was definitely a pop culture “save the whales” moment.
San Francisco was a mess in the past and everyone finds this to be relatable as a plot point though we all know it can be made a paradise.
We see nuclear vessels in Alameda as the brave future. We have to save our whales to save our future though. This was not a universe where environmentalists make the best villains. Environmentalists are the good guys which is almost sweet.
The Voyage Home is a ridiculous movie with a premise stuck in a bubble of social attitudes that is almost comforting.
Leaving San Francisco myself to voyage home myself makes me laugh at one of comedic bits of the movie. “I don’t know how these people made it out of the 20th century!”
To the skeptics I say a double dumb ass on you! Humans and their colorful metaphors might just might get us to the future after all. And San Francisco will be part of making it.
I am always shocked when people say they read anything I write. This isn’t because I don’t think I’m worth listening to but because I know attention is such a scarce commodity.
It’s so valuable we have entire industries dedicated to grabbing your attention. We don’t need to keep it necessarily we just need you to get distracted.
We downplay how well we know what works by indulging people who think they are immune to such things. Of course marketing on works on fools we sagely nod.
Of course we don’t want you to know how effectively we can move your attention let alone your opinion! You thinks anyone wants you to know propaganda works? Dunk on Jaguars new futura font. Scoff at those bot accounts.
Just know that most of marketing is Cocomelon, slot machines and dopamine hits. You can’t fight that without developing discipline which isn’t an infinite commodity. Most people don’t have much of it and aren’t even encouraged to develop. Good luck out there.
It’s fun watching an entire nation realize none of our citizens functionally have opinions of their own as all of the tribalism of the American system slides off the board into the swamp of personal animus.
The great realignment is in full swing. And no one is sure where they stand. The worst thing you believe about your enemy is surely true just as only the very best things about yourself count.
Ego versus ego blunders against each other. The slow glugging of inertia and bureaucracy and nihilism begins to tug. First time?
“We are so much worse off than the Athenians during their similar stages of decline. Thucydides once wrote, “The Athenians, who were the most democratic of all the Greeks, were also the most prone to make mistakes, for they were always in a hurry to decide, and were swayed by the emotions of the moment.”
The political satire of the poets in Athenian theaters heavily influenced the city’s political decisions, just as TikTok and the Guardiansway millions of malleable minds now.”
What do we believe as RFK Jr discusses previously quite left wing coded hippie truisms about industrial agriculture and pharmaceutical company incentives.
The institutionalists are the left now and oddly they like Monsanto. But now Bari Weiss is arguing for the value of institutionalists against Peter Thiel. Are we really in for a new era of anti-institutionalism? Do we know where the board even is anymore? Don’t slip and slide into the swamp because you don’t like someone.
Many of us read significant amounts of “need to know” publications for our professional lives. I myself read Bloomberg, the Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal every day along with more specialized media like Axios Pro-Rata and various venture and startup specific media.
Culture is different. Wanting to be in touch with the ideas that shape a nation is a luxury you don’t need to be wealthy to enjoy. To engage in ideas is to have the means to enjoy a life of the mind. You must choose to spend your precious time on it. Time is the only luxury which can’t be bought.
Media is changing as news and cultural content diverge. We used to be awash in a sea of periodicals. As a child I’d bike to the Boulder library and read it all. Thats how I became a fan of the Economist. I loved culture magazines just as much. Some still retain their pride of place through institutional nostalgia like Vanity Fair and Vogue. But can the New York Times hold a grasp on culture like it used to do?
As we face down an election with clear cultural and political bifurcations, what does it mean to be a consumer of not simply news but the culture of the moment?
Someone told me they don’t always open Dirt because it’s not framed as “need to know.” Yeah, that’s why it’s luxury content, because you don’t NEED it. Take your ass back to Axios
To be au courant means deciding where our time goes when it’s not an obligation. And I’m sorry to say to Condé Nast that their grip on culture looks more tenuous than ever.
Telescope, Arena, and Palladium are all pointing to new appetites. We want the luxury of futurism. To be caught only in the moment is to reveal a perhaps embarrassingly high time preference for algorithmically forced immediacy. “I want it now!”
Doom scrolling the news may be fun. Many billionaires spend time on Twitter because of its close proximity to sentiment. We all need to know the narratives catching attention.
But want do we want? Well who rather enjoy an essay from a writer who shows you the culture beyond your feed? Giving your attention to those who respect it will always be a luxury.
