via:
Monday, April 27, 2026
A Technofascist Manifesto For the Future
Palantir CEO Alex Karp is a man in charge of one of the most important and frightening companies in the world. Karp’s new book, cowritten with Nicholas Zamiska, is called The Technological Republic. After claiming “because we get asked a lot,” Palantir posted a 22-point summary of the book that reads like a corporate manifesto. It evokes both weird reactionary shit and also trilby-wearing Reddit comments from the early 2010s.
Palantir’s summary of the book is ominous. But even the company’s name is unironically ominous. The palantíri are crystal balls in The Lord of the Rings that let Middle-earth’s worst tyrants spy on the heroes of the story. It’s a fun reference if you have no shame about your company’s mission.
We’ve attempted to translate these 22 points from Alex Karp’s alien words into something more reasonable, like human words from someone who might play him in the biopic. (Hello, Taika Waititi.) In so doing, we’ve become much more sympathetic to why Jürgen Habermas refused to supervise Karp’s research.
1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.
Translation: Silicon Valley has an enormous opportunity to extract as much money from federal government defense contracts as possible. To do this, we will bring back a draft for engineers. We’re really into bringing back the draft. Deepfaked teenagers, low-paid gig workers, and victims of the Rohingya genocide need not apply.
2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.
Translation: We can’t say “we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters” anymore because Elon Musk lets you write essays on Twitter now. Though if you thought the apps were tyrannical, wait until you get a load of us.
3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.
Translation: People are mad at tech billionaires for their obscene wealth and arrogance. Instead of winning them over by providing free access to a useful everyday service, we’re gonna sell a lot of software that will let the government spy on them while demanding tax cuts.
4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.
Translation: Words and feelings are free, which is why we want to sell weapons. Nobody got rich suing for peace. [...]
5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.
Translation: “Soft power” and “ethics” are beta shit for Broadway shows and Dario Amodei. Hear that, Pete Hegseth? We’re warriors — pay up.
But seriously. If our enemies have no oversight then why should we? The future is an AI battlefield and we need rules of engagement that let us cook. Which is to say: Forget the rules of engagement. The government is not coming to save you — we are. The world is too dangerous for us to be governed by the law of armed conflict.
Welcome to the 21st century: safety not guaranteed.
6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.
Translation: We’re going to bring back the draft. Our vision of permanent war only works if we courageously volunteer people 40 years younger than us to die for oil.
7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way.
Translation: Sure, those wimps at Anthropic are selling an AI system they claim has spotted cybersecurity vulnerabilities in “every major operating system and web browser.” But Pete, seriously: We will kill anybody you want with our software guns.
8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.
Translation: We care about wages – which is why we think Washington’s revolving door of lobbying and office-holding should be way more lucrative for everyone. There are mountains of cash for people who will look the other way.
And if you’re not on board? Well, all those pesky bureaucrats who do things like “investigate fraud” and “enforce safety standards” and “administer the social safety net” are holier-than-thou myrmidons who should be fed into the DOGE wood chipper.
9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.
Translation: If you made fun of that video where our CEO looks like he’s on cocaine, you’re responsible for the rise of fascism. Also, we’re going to be conveniently vague about what “those who have subjected themselves to public life” means, because “be nicer to multimillionaires who go on podcasts” doesn’t have the same ring. Oh, and if you complain about the IT Renfields of DOGE, you’re anti-American.
10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.
Translation: Society must stop centering sensitive crybabies who want to feel personally validated by elected officials and filter their politics through emotional reactions. Also, I feel strongly that Zohran Mamdani is a pagan who is going to Wicker Man me. [...]
14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.
Translation: Si vis pacem, para bellum, baby! We’ll conveniently leave out all of the regional and secret wars the US has engaged in over the years or the fact that Trump recently derailed the world economy by launching a war of aggression after campaigning on a promise of no new wars. We will not elaborate on what “next war” Point Six was talking about.
15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.
Translation: We can definitely sell software to a militarized Germany and Japan too! [...]
22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?
Translation: Are you still with us after 21 points? Great. Welcome to the great mystery. It cost you way less to get here than joining Scientology. Here’s the final thesis: Immigration? Bad. Canceling billionaires? Bad. Giving us money to fight (((globalism)))? Good. Just hit us up on cashapp.
We’ve attempted to translate these 22 points from Alex Karp’s alien words into something more reasonable, like human words from someone who might play him in the biopic. (Hello, Taika Waititi.) In so doing, we’ve become much more sympathetic to why Jürgen Habermas refused to supervise Karp’s research.
1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.
Translation: Silicon Valley has an enormous opportunity to extract as much money from federal government defense contracts as possible. To do this, we will bring back a draft for engineers. We’re really into bringing back the draft. Deepfaked teenagers, low-paid gig workers, and victims of the Rohingya genocide need not apply.
2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.
Translation: We can’t say “we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters” anymore because Elon Musk lets you write essays on Twitter now. Though if you thought the apps were tyrannical, wait until you get a load of us.
3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.
Translation: People are mad at tech billionaires for their obscene wealth and arrogance. Instead of winning them over by providing free access to a useful everyday service, we’re gonna sell a lot of software that will let the government spy on them while demanding tax cuts.
4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.
Translation: Words and feelings are free, which is why we want to sell weapons. Nobody got rich suing for peace. [...]
5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.
Translation: “Soft power” and “ethics” are beta shit for Broadway shows and Dario Amodei. Hear that, Pete Hegseth? We’re warriors — pay up.
But seriously. If our enemies have no oversight then why should we? The future is an AI battlefield and we need rules of engagement that let us cook. Which is to say: Forget the rules of engagement. The government is not coming to save you — we are. The world is too dangerous for us to be governed by the law of armed conflict.
Welcome to the 21st century: safety not guaranteed.
6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.
Translation: We’re going to bring back the draft. Our vision of permanent war only works if we courageously volunteer people 40 years younger than us to die for oil.
7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way.
Translation: Sure, those wimps at Anthropic are selling an AI system they claim has spotted cybersecurity vulnerabilities in “every major operating system and web browser.” But Pete, seriously: We will kill anybody you want with our software guns.
8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.
Translation: We care about wages – which is why we think Washington’s revolving door of lobbying and office-holding should be way more lucrative for everyone. There are mountains of cash for people who will look the other way.
And if you’re not on board? Well, all those pesky bureaucrats who do things like “investigate fraud” and “enforce safety standards” and “administer the social safety net” are holier-than-thou myrmidons who should be fed into the DOGE wood chipper.
9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.
Translation: If you made fun of that video where our CEO looks like he’s on cocaine, you’re responsible for the rise of fascism. Also, we’re going to be conveniently vague about what “those who have subjected themselves to public life” means, because “be nicer to multimillionaires who go on podcasts” doesn’t have the same ring. Oh, and if you complain about the IT Renfields of DOGE, you’re anti-American.
10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.
Translation: Society must stop centering sensitive crybabies who want to feel personally validated by elected officials and filter their politics through emotional reactions. Also, I feel strongly that Zohran Mamdani is a pagan who is going to Wicker Man me. [...]
14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.
Translation: Si vis pacem, para bellum, baby! We’ll conveniently leave out all of the regional and secret wars the US has engaged in over the years or the fact that Trump recently derailed the world economy by launching a war of aggression after campaigning on a promise of no new wars. We will not elaborate on what “next war” Point Six was talking about.
15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.
Translation: We can definitely sell software to a militarized Germany and Japan too! [...]
22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?
Translation: Are you still with us after 21 points? Great. Welcome to the great mystery. It cost you way less to get here than joining Scientology. Here’s the final thesis: Immigration? Bad. Canceling billionaires? Bad. Giving us money to fight (((globalism)))? Good. Just hit us up on cashapp.
by T.C. Sottek and Adi Robertson, The Verge | Read more:
In 2017, BuzzFeed News reported that despite the reputation that connected Palantir to U.S. intelligence agencies (which Palantir deliberately crafted to help it win business), including the CIA, NSA, and FBI, the actual relationship was rocky for various reasons, with episodes of friction and recalcitrance. The NSA in particular had been resistant because it had plenty of its own talent and focused more on SIGINT while Palantir's software worked better for HUMINT. Meanwhile, the CIA had been so frustrated by the publicity associating Palantir with it that it tried to cancel the Palantir contract. But according to Karp, Palantir had a firm hold at the FBI because "They'll have no choice". ~ Wikipedia
Image: Scott Olson / Getty Images
[ed. Someone must be feeling the heat from AI. After all, Palantir is fundamentally a software surveillance company (that would like to solidify and embed their position in government forever, before it's too late). Sometimes it's better to just shut up, keep hauling in your billions, and stay under the radar while working the back rooms. See also: Palantir’s technofascist manifesto calls for universal draft (Oligarch Watch) - yes, there's really a site called that.]
[ed. Someone must be feeling the heat from AI. After all, Palantir is fundamentally a software surveillance company (that would like to solidify and embed their position in government forever, before it's too late). Sometimes it's better to just shut up, keep hauling in your billions, and stay under the radar while working the back rooms. See also: Palantir’s technofascist manifesto calls for universal draft (Oligarch Watch) - yes, there's really a site called that.]
***
In the 2025 book The Technological Republic, Karp and Zamiska argue that American technological dominance requires deeper integration of Silicon Valley and defense interests. Karp contends that China operates with fewer ethical constraints than U.S. defense companies, making technological leadership essential for national security. The authors stress that deterrence through technological dominance could prevent many wars. Bloomberg noted that the atomic bomb the Manhattan Project produced was ultimately used. The New Republic called Karp's formation of Palantir an embrace of techno-militarism to advance American global supremacy through hard power and targeted violence. [...]In 2017, BuzzFeed News reported that despite the reputation that connected Palantir to U.S. intelligence agencies (which Palantir deliberately crafted to help it win business), including the CIA, NSA, and FBI, the actual relationship was rocky for various reasons, with episodes of friction and recalcitrance. The NSA in particular had been resistant because it had plenty of its own talent and focused more on SIGINT while Palantir's software worked better for HUMINT. Meanwhile, the CIA had been so frustrated by the publicity associating Palantir with it that it tried to cancel the Palantir contract. But according to Karp, Palantir had a firm hold at the FBI because "They'll have no choice". ~ Wikipedia
National Science Board Eviscerated
'Bozo the clown move'
All 22 members of the National Science Board were terminated by the Trump administration via a terse email on Friday.
The administration has provided no explanation for purging the board, which helps steer the National Science Foundation and acts as an independent advisory body for the president and Congress on scientific and engineering issues, providing reports throughout the year. The ousters represent another severe blow to the NSF and the overall scientific enterprise in America.
Keivan Stassun, a professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University and director of the Vanderbilt Initiative in Data-intensive Astrophysics, was among those terminated. After reaching out to fellow board members and finding that they, too, had been terminated, he described the move to The Los Angeles Times as “a wholesale evisceration of American leadership in science and technology globally.”
NSB members are appointed by the president and serve six-year terms, which overlap to provide continuity. Other members who spoke to reporters at Nature News told the outlet that the board was set to meet on May 5 and planned to release a report on how the US is ceding ground to China on scientific endeavors.
Assault on science
The NSF and the board were established by President Harry Truman in 1950. “We have come to know that our ability to survive and grow as a Nation depends to a very large degree upon our scientific progress,” Truman said after creating them. “Moreover, it is not enough simply to keep abreast of the rest of the world in scientific matters. We must maintain our leadership.”
The loss of all board members is just the latest attack on the NSF. Last year, the Trump administration proposed cutting its $9 billion budget by 55 percent, terminated hundreds of its active research grants, significantly slowed the pace of new grant awards, and laid off or forced out a massive chunk of its staff. Its director, a Trump appointee, resigned under the assault. Trump has nominated biotech investor Jim O’Neill, who lacks scientific expertise, to be the next NSF director.
by Beth Mole, Ars Technica | Read more:
Image: Bloomberg
[ed. Forget shooting ourselves in the foot, now we're aimed at shooting ourselves in the head. See also: Trump fires the entire National Science Board (The Verge):]***
The NSF has been fundamental in helping develop technology used in MRIs, cellphones, and it even helped get Duolingo get off the ground.In a statement, Zoe Lofgren, the ranking Democrat on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, said:
“This is the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation. The NSB is apolitical. It advises the president on the future of NSF. It unfortunately is no surprise a president who has attacked NSF from day one would seek to destroy the board that helps guide the Foundation. Will the president fill the NSB with MAGA loyalists who won’t stand up to him as he hands over our leadership in science to our adversaries? A real bozo the clown move.”
‘Easily the Worst President in U.S. History’
The damage President Trump has inflicted on the United States and the world is so enormous and wide-ranging that it is hard to grasp.
It runs the gamut from public and private institutions to core democratic customs and traditions, from the legal system to universities, from innocent targets of fraud to those duped into believing vaccines do more harm than good. [...]
I have described in earlier columns bits and pieces of Trump’s destructiveness, but the list grows daily.
Projections suggest there will be millions of dead men, women and children as a result of his budget cuts, which were made without direct Congressional approval. A study published in The Lancet, the London-based medical journal, found that Trump administration cuts in U.S.A.I.D. funding “would result in approximately 1,776,539 all-age deaths and 689,900 deaths in children younger than 5 years” in 2025 alone.
“Over the remainder of the period,” the study continues, “the complete defunding of U.S.A.I.D. would cause an estimated 2,450,000 all-age deaths annually, leading to a total of 14,051,750 excess all-age deaths and 4,537,157 excess under-5 deaths by 2030.”
There are the fraud victims who will never get court-ordered restitution because Trump pardoned the guilty. In a June 2025 report, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee found that “Trump’s pardons cheat victims out of an astounding $1.3 billion in restitution and fines, allowing fraudsters, tax evaders, drug traffickers to keep ill-gotten gains.” [...]
In addition to policies inducing sickness and death, Trump has undermined America’s ability to compete with China on clean energy. In September, CarbonCredits.com, an energy news platform, published “The A.I. Energy War: How China’s Solar and Nuclear Outshine the U.S.,” summing up the problem nicely.“China is on track for 1,400 GW, while the U.S. will reach only about 350 GW.”
“China plans to add 212 gigawatts of solar and 51 GW of wind, compared to less than 100 GW combined” in the United States.
“Offshore wind: China already has 42.7 gigawatts installed, compared with the U.S.’s Empire Wind project (816 megawatts in Phase 1, with a potential expansion to 2.1 gigawatts).”
Trump makes no secret of his disdain for renewable energy and the concept of climate change. In a speech in September to the U.N. General Assembly, the president said climate change, is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” He added:
All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their country’s fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success.
Trump’s threats to pull out of NATO, his tariffs, not to mention his endless carping against and routine faulting of European leaders, have alienated allies who have stood with us for more than seven decades.
Over the Trump years, European views of America have nose-dived.
On April 8, Politico published the results of a survey under the headline “More Europeans See U.S. as Threat Than China.” The survey found:
Only 12 percent of those polled in March in Poland, Spain, Belgium, France, Germany and Italy saw America as a close ally while 36 percent saw it as a threat. By contrast, China was seen as a threat by 29 percent of those polled across the six countries.
Trump has assaulted the integrity of the presidency, turning the White House into a corrupt enterprise, pardoning donors as his family’s companies receive millions through cryptocurrency purchases from foreign companies and crypto operators subject to U.S. regulation. [...]
I asked Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland and the author of “The Right-Wing Idea Factory: From Traditionalism to Trumpism,” which will be published in May, to assess — without regard to merit — how consequential the Trump presidency will be.
On this measure he placed Trump in the Top 5 of American presidents, alongside George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, noting, however, that “Trump’s consequences have been aggressive efforts to unravel the ideas of the other four presidents.”
Kettl listed some of the same permanent or semi-permanent Trump legacies that I already described, but he added a few:
As for being consequential, Bailey continued, Trump has been “highly consequential in an overwhelmingly negative way. He will leave a lasting negative legacy.”
Bailey listed three of these legacies: “The erosion of trust in the U.S. by European and Asian allies; the erosion of U.S. dominance of higher education; and huge budget deficits (not only due to Trump, but exacerbated by him).”
Kate Shaw, a constitutional law scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, cited “Trump’s violation of numerous statutes passed by Congress” to note:
The damage to scientific and medical research, the environment, relations with allies and trading partners, disaster preparedness, consumer safety, higher education, military leadership, civil rights, etc. will take years to repair even in cases where that is possible.
It is already clear, Jacobson continued, that “Trump is among the most consequential presidents in U.S. history, and not in a good way.”
In an email replying to my questions, Barbara Walter, a professor of international affairs at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California-San Diego, wrote:
[ed. The problem is that whoever tries to come in and clean up this mess will never get credit because the damage is too deep and wide-ranging. The US has lost all moral authority, good will, and credibility around the world, and nobody should trust that it won't happen again.]
It runs the gamut from public and private institutions to core democratic customs and traditions, from the legal system to universities, from innocent targets of fraud to those duped into believing vaccines do more harm than good. [...]
Projections suggest there will be millions of dead men, women and children as a result of his budget cuts, which were made without direct Congressional approval. A study published in The Lancet, the London-based medical journal, found that Trump administration cuts in U.S.A.I.D. funding “would result in approximately 1,776,539 all-age deaths and 689,900 deaths in children younger than 5 years” in 2025 alone.
“Over the remainder of the period,” the study continues, “the complete defunding of U.S.A.I.D. would cause an estimated 2,450,000 all-age deaths annually, leading to a total of 14,051,750 excess all-age deaths and 4,537,157 excess under-5 deaths by 2030.”
There are the fraud victims who will never get court-ordered restitution because Trump pardoned the guilty. In a June 2025 report, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee found that “Trump’s pardons cheat victims out of an astounding $1.3 billion in restitution and fines, allowing fraudsters, tax evaders, drug traffickers to keep ill-gotten gains.” [...]
In addition to policies inducing sickness and death, Trump has undermined America’s ability to compete with China on clean energy. In September, CarbonCredits.com, an energy news platform, published “The A.I. Energy War: How China’s Solar and Nuclear Outshine the U.S.,” summing up the problem nicely.“China is on track for 1,400 GW, while the U.S. will reach only about 350 GW.”
“China plans to add 212 gigawatts of solar and 51 GW of wind, compared to less than 100 GW combined” in the United States.
“Offshore wind: China already has 42.7 gigawatts installed, compared with the U.S.’s Empire Wind project (816 megawatts in Phase 1, with a potential expansion to 2.1 gigawatts).”
Trump makes no secret of his disdain for renewable energy and the concept of climate change. In a speech in September to the U.N. General Assembly, the president said climate change, is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” He added:
All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their country’s fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success.
Trump’s threats to pull out of NATO, his tariffs, not to mention his endless carping against and routine faulting of European leaders, have alienated allies who have stood with us for more than seven decades.
Over the Trump years, European views of America have nose-dived.
On April 8, Politico published the results of a survey under the headline “More Europeans See U.S. as Threat Than China.” The survey found:
Only 12 percent of those polled in March in Poland, Spain, Belgium, France, Germany and Italy saw America as a close ally while 36 percent saw it as a threat. By contrast, China was seen as a threat by 29 percent of those polled across the six countries.
Trump has assaulted the integrity of the presidency, turning the White House into a corrupt enterprise, pardoning donors as his family’s companies receive millions through cryptocurrency purchases from foreign companies and crypto operators subject to U.S. regulation. [...]
I asked Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland and the author of “The Right-Wing Idea Factory: From Traditionalism to Trumpism,” which will be published in May, to assess — without regard to merit — how consequential the Trump presidency will be.
On this measure he placed Trump in the Top 5 of American presidents, alongside George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, noting, however, that “Trump’s consequences have been aggressive efforts to unravel the ideas of the other four presidents.”
Kettl listed some of the same permanent or semi-permanent Trump legacies that I already described, but he added a few:
He’s driven a deep divide into the country: between the states, between migrants and many others, between classes and between the intellectual elite and the rest of the country.
He’s slashed the size of the federal bureaucracy and made federal jobs much less attractive. It will be a very, very long time until college students will trust the federal government with their careers.He’s fundamentally undermined the idea of an annual budget process and the concept of a balanced federal budget. These ideas were teetering before his presidency, but the Trump administration gave up on any pretense of seeking balance or an annual spending plan.
Michael Bailey, a political scientist at Georgetown, prefaced his assessment of Trump’s consequentiality by pointedly noting that he would rank Trump “as easily the worst president in U.S. history. The corruption and damage to long-term U.S. institutions and reputation are far beyond anything we’ve seen before,” including Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan and Rutherford Hayes.
As for being consequential, Bailey continued, Trump has been “highly consequential in an overwhelmingly negative way. He will leave a lasting negative legacy.”
Bailey listed three of these legacies: “The erosion of trust in the U.S. by European and Asian allies; the erosion of U.S. dominance of higher education; and huge budget deficits (not only due to Trump, but exacerbated by him).”
Kate Shaw, a constitutional law scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, cited “Trump’s violation of numerous statutes passed by Congress” to note:
It’s not that particular decisions to violate statutes can’t be undone or reversed; many, perhaps even most, can. But the combination of the president’s numerous and flagrant statutory violations and Congress’s failure to challenge those violations has created a permission structure for future presidents to disregard statutes any time they find those statutes inconvenient.
Gary Jacobson, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of California-San Diego, expanded the case against Trump:
He has done serious damage to many aspects of American government and politics that will be difficult and costly and, in some cases, impossible to undo.
The mass firing of dedicated and experienced civil servants has made government dumber and weaker and will make it harder to attract talented replacements even if the next administration wants to make it smarter and more effective.
The damage to scientific and medical research, the environment, relations with allies and trading partners, disaster preparedness, consumer safety, higher education, military leadership, civil rights, etc. will take years to repair even in cases where that is possible.
It is already clear, Jacobson continued, that “Trump is among the most consequential presidents in U.S. history, and not in a good way.”
In an email replying to my questions, Barbara Walter, a professor of international affairs at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California-San Diego, wrote:
To flag one thing that belongs on your permanent list that likely won’t show up in the obvious places: norms.
American democracy remained strong for so long because both its political parties and its presidents respected a set of unwritten rules.
Adding that while formal checks “were essential, the oil that would grease the wheels of democracy would be norms,” Walter continued. Trump “has shown that you can violate them and survive politically. He’s torn down the invisible wall that kept the worst impulses of political life in check, and once that’s torn down, a new, ugly world emerges.”
by Thomas Edsall, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Agence France-Presse-Getty Images[ed. The problem is that whoever tries to come in and clean up this mess will never get credit because the damage is too deep and wide-ranging. The US has lost all moral authority, good will, and credibility around the world, and nobody should trust that it won't happen again.]
My Journey to the Microwave Alternate Timeline
As we all know, the march of technological progress is best summarized by this meme from Linkedin:
Inventors constantly come up with exciting new inventions, each of them with the potential to change everything forever. But only a fraction of these ever establish themselves as a persistent part of civilization, and the rest vanish from collective consciousness. Before shutting down forever, though, the alternate branches of the tech tree leave some faint traces behind: over-optimistic sci-fi stories, outdated educational cartoons, and, sometimes, some obscure accessories that briefly made it to mass production before being quietly discontinued.
The classical example of an abandoned timeline is the Glorious Atomic Future, as described in the 1957 Disney cartoon Our Friend the Atom. A scientist with a suspiciously German accent explains all the wonderful things nuclear power will bring to our lives:
Sadly, the glorious atomic future somewhat failed to materialize, and, by the early 1960s, the project to rip a second Panama canal by detonating a necklace of nuclear bombs was canceled, because we are ruled by bureaucrats who hate fun and efficiency.
While the Our-Friend-the-Atom timeline remains out of reach from most hobbyists, not all alternate timelines are permanently closed to exploration. There are other timelines that you can explore from the comfort of your home, just by buying a few second-hand items off eBay.
I recently spent a few months in one of these abandoned timelines: the one where the microwave oven replaced the stove.
First, I had to get myself a copy of the world’s saddest book.
Microwave Cooking, for One
Marie T. Smith’s Microwave Cooking for One is an old forgotten book of microwave recipes from the 1980s. In the mid-2010s, it garnered the momentary attention of the Internet as “the world’s saddest cookbook”:
To the modern eye, it seems obvious that microwave cooking can only be about reheating ready-made frozen food. It’s about staring blankly at the buzzing white box, waiting for the four dreadful beeps that give you permission to eat. It’s about consuming lukewarm processed slop on a rickety formica table, with only the crackling of a flickering neon light piercing through the silence.
But this is completely misinterpreting Microwave Cooking for One’s vision. First – the book was published in 1985.
When MCfO was published, microwave cooking was still a new entrant to the world of household electronics. Market researchers were speculating about how the food and packaging industries would adapt their products to the new era and how deep the transformation would go. Many saw the microwave revolution as a material necessity: women were massively entering the workforce, and soon nobody would have much time to spend behind a stove. In 1985, the microwave future looked inevitable.
Second – Marie T. Smith is a microwave maximalist. She spent ten years putting every comestible object in the microwave to see what happens. Look at the items on the book cover – some are obviously impossible to prepare with a microwave, right? Well, that’s where you’re wrong. Marie T. Smith figured out a way to prepare absolutely everything. If you are a disciple of her philosophy, you shouldn’t even own a stove. Smith herself hasn’t owned one since the early 1970s. As she explains in the cookbook’s introduction, Smith believed the microwave would ultimately replace stove-top cooking, the same way stove-top cooking had replaced campfire-top cooking.
So, my goal is twofold: first, I want to know if there’s any merit to all of these forgotten microwaving techniques. Something that can make plasma out of grapes, set your house on fire and bring frozen hamsters back to life cannot be fundamentally bad. But also, I want to get a glimpse of what the world looks like in the uchronia where Marie T. Smith won and Big Teflon lost. Why did we drift apart from this timeline?
Inventors constantly come up with exciting new inventions, each of them with the potential to change everything forever. But only a fraction of these ever establish themselves as a persistent part of civilization, and the rest vanish from collective consciousness. Before shutting down forever, though, the alternate branches of the tech tree leave some faint traces behind: over-optimistic sci-fi stories, outdated educational cartoons, and, sometimes, some obscure accessories that briefly made it to mass production before being quietly discontinued.
The classical example of an abandoned timeline is the Glorious Atomic Future, as described in the 1957 Disney cartoon Our Friend the Atom. A scientist with a suspiciously German accent explains all the wonderful things nuclear power will bring to our lives:
Sadly, the glorious atomic future somewhat failed to materialize, and, by the early 1960s, the project to rip a second Panama canal by detonating a necklace of nuclear bombs was canceled, because we are ruled by bureaucrats who hate fun and efficiency.
While the Our-Friend-the-Atom timeline remains out of reach from most hobbyists, not all alternate timelines are permanently closed to exploration. There are other timelines that you can explore from the comfort of your home, just by buying a few second-hand items off eBay.
I recently spent a few months in one of these abandoned timelines: the one where the microwave oven replaced the stove.
First, I had to get myself a copy of the world’s saddest book.
Microwave Cooking, for One
Marie T. Smith’s Microwave Cooking for One is an old forgotten book of microwave recipes from the 1980s. In the mid-2010s, it garnered the momentary attention of the Internet as “the world’s saddest cookbook”:
To the modern eye, it seems obvious that microwave cooking can only be about reheating ready-made frozen food. It’s about staring blankly at the buzzing white box, waiting for the four dreadful beeps that give you permission to eat. It’s about consuming lukewarm processed slop on a rickety formica table, with only the crackling of a flickering neon light piercing through the silence.
But this is completely misinterpreting Microwave Cooking for One’s vision. First – the book was published in 1985.
When MCfO was published, microwave cooking was still a new entrant to the world of household electronics. Market researchers were speculating about how the food and packaging industries would adapt their products to the new era and how deep the transformation would go. Many saw the microwave revolution as a material necessity: women were massively entering the workforce, and soon nobody would have much time to spend behind a stove. In 1985, the microwave future looked inevitable.
Second – Marie T. Smith is a microwave maximalist. She spent ten years putting every comestible object in the microwave to see what happens. Look at the items on the book cover – some are obviously impossible to prepare with a microwave, right? Well, that’s where you’re wrong. Marie T. Smith figured out a way to prepare absolutely everything. If you are a disciple of her philosophy, you shouldn’t even own a stove. Smith herself hasn’t owned one since the early 1970s. As she explains in the cookbook’s introduction, Smith believed the microwave would ultimately replace stove-top cooking, the same way stove-top cooking had replaced campfire-top cooking.
So, my goal is twofold: first, I want to know if there’s any merit to all of these forgotten microwaving techniques. Something that can make plasma out of grapes, set your house on fire and bring frozen hamsters back to life cannot be fundamentally bad. But also, I want to get a glimpse of what the world looks like in the uchronia where Marie T. Smith won and Big Teflon lost. Why did we drift apart from this timeline?
by Malmsbury, Telescopic Turnip | Read more:
Images: Microwave Cooking For One/YouTube/uncredited
Sunday, April 26, 2026
Glen Campbell
[ed. Never heard this before, but apparently Brian Wilson gave it to Glen as a thank-you for something or other. Glen does a great job, but you can easily guess who wrote it.]
Engineering the Disposable Diaper
Adventures in product design.
‘You know more than you think you do’, the author told readers. ‘We know for a fact’, he wrote with medical authority, ‘that the natural loving care that kindly parents give to their children is a hundred times more valuable than their knowing how to pin a diaper on just right’.
You want a covered pail partially filled with water to put used diapers in as soon as removed. If it contains soap or detergent, this helps in removing stains. Be sure the soap is well dissolved, to prevent lumps of soap from remaining in the diapers later. When you remove a soiled diaper, scrape the movement off into the toilet with a knife, or rinse it by holding it in the toilet while you flush it (hold tight).On this subject, the 1957 edition contains two telling differences from the original. In 1946, Dr Spock recommended the knife method to those without flush toilets. And starting with the second edition, he advised new parents to buy an automatic washer and dryer if they could possibly afford them. ‘They save hours of work each week, and precious energy’, he wrote. ‘Energy’ in this case referred not to electricity or gas but to maternal stamina.
You wash the diapers with mild soap or mild detergent in [the] washing machine or washtub (dissolve the soap well first), and rinse 2 or 3 or 4 times. The number of rinsings depends on how soon the water gets clear and on how delicate the baby’s skin is. If your baby’s skin isn’t sensitive, 2 rinsings may be enough.
Disposable diapers did exist, but they accounted for a mere one percent of US diaper changes. They were expensive, specialty products and not that great. ‘The full-sized ones are rather bulky’, noted Dr Spock. ‘The small ones that fit into a waterproof cover do not absorb as much urine as a cloth diaper and do not retain a bowel movement as well’. Disposables were mostly used for travel, when washing diapers wasn’t an option.
But even as the second edition of Baby and Child Care was hitting bookstores and supermarket racks, change was afoot. After buying Charmin Paper Company in 1957, Procter & Gamble began looking for ideas for new paper products.
Motivated by the less pleasant aspects of spending time with his new grandchild, the company’s director of exploratory development, Victor Mills, suggested disposable diapers. After analyzing existing products and conducting consumer research, P&G created a dedicated diaper research group.
The research this group conducted, like that of its successors and competitors, wasn’t glamorous. It didn’t advance basic science. It wasn’t even an obvious route to profit. (One percent of the market!) It was a high-stakes gamble that required solving difficult engineering problems. How that happened represents the kind of hidden progress that leads to everyday abundance.
P&G’s first design flopped. Tested in the extreme heat of a Dallas summer, the pleated absorbent pad with plastic pants made babies miserable and left them with heat rashes. Starting over, the group had a one piece diaper ready for testing in March 1959. With an improved rayon moisture barrier between the baby and the absorbent tissue wadding, the new diaper was softer and more comfortable. An initial test of 37,000 hand-assembled prototypes went well, with about two thirds of the parents deeming the disposables as good or better than cloth. The next step was mass production.
Designing one well-functioning disposable was hard enough. Turning out hundreds a minute was practically impossible. ‘I think it was the most complex production operation the company had ever faced’, an engineer recalled.
There was no standard equipment. We had to design the entire production line from the ground up. It seemed a simple task to take three sheets of material – plastic back sheet, absorbent wadding, and water repellent top sheet – fold them in a zigzag pattern and glue them together. But glue applicators dripped glue. The wadding generated dust. Together they formed sticky balls and smears which fouled the equipment. The machinery could run only a few minutes before having to be shut down and cleaned.Eventually, the diaper team mastered the process. In December 1961, Pampers went on the market in Peoria, Illinois. Once again, the test failed.
This time mothers liked the diapers. But the price was way too high for a single use item: ten cents a diaper, equivalent to about one dollar today. By contrast, diaper delivery services, which served about five percent of the market, charged no more than five cents a diaper. Home laundry costs ran to one or two cents.
Lowering the price of a diaper required much larger volumes. Aiming at about six cents a diaper, P&G engineers spent several years developing what Harvard Business School’s Michael E. Porter described as ‘a highly sophisticated block-long, continuous-process machine that could assemble diapers at speeds of up to a remarkable 400 a minute’. After successfully testing Pampers at 5.5 cents each, P&G began a national rollout in 1966. By 1973, disposables accounted for 42 percent of the US diaper market. [...]
The success of Pampers drew competitors into the growing market. ‘Any diaper maker that carved out a modest market share against Procter & Gamble could expect sales to triple as a result of sheer market growth’, write business historians Thomas Heinrich and Bob Batchelor in Kotex, Kleenex, Huggies, a history of Kimberly-Clark. But there was a catch. The bulky diapers took up so much space on shelves that stores rarely stocked more than two brands, plus maybe a discounted private label. Second place meant profits, third place disaster.
by Virginia Postrel, Works in Progress | Read more:
Image: A nurse demonstrating to young immigrant mothers how to diaper their babies: Israel Government (1950)
Saturday, April 25, 2026
Intelligent Parts vs. Physical Parts
Imagine you’re trying to bat in baseball. Your brain does some genuinely impressive computation — predicting trajectories, coordinating dozens of muscles, adjusting for wind — and puts it all together using Bayesian algorithms. But here’s the thing: making your brain infinitely smarter would not allow you to hit all balls. Some are out of reach, others move too quickly. At some point, regardless of your intelligence, you hit physical limits. You can only stretch so far or react so fast. No amount of genius overcomes the physics of your body.
This is intelligence saturation. For a given task, more intelligence helps. But it helps less and less as you add more intelligence. And it’s the key concept missing from most debates about AI and the future of work.
On one side, we have AI researchers who see exponentials everywhere: compute resource doubling every six months, costs halving faster than every six months, model performance doubling every seven months. The AI folks see that “intelligence” is scaling at unbelievable rates and conclude we’re headed for an economic singularity. In one popular scenario, human wages will go up as automated tasks make the not-yet-automated parts of a job more productive, until AI takes over everything and their wage goes to zero as there is no work left to be done. Then, the theory goes, everyone will have to be on Universal Basic Income.
On the other side, economists look at 200 years of steady growth despite countless “revolutionary” technologies and shrug: AI is just another general-purpose technology, nothing special. In a scenario popular with these econ folks, it is hard to make human workers obsolete even in the intelligence domain. In this view, AI replaces workers in some jobs that it can do better or more cheaply, but new jobs are also created, and AI makes people overall more productive. Overall growth is then just like without AI, only a little bit faster.
Physical Meets Intelligence
Economists traditionally divide the economy into two complementary sectors: capital and labor. We can replace capital, which includes machinery, equipment and technology, with human labor and vice versa, but that replacement is often difficult. The more we replace one with the other, the harder it is to replace more, because the easiest tasks to replace are targeted first. In our paper we argue that it is crucial to also divide the economy into the “intelligence parts” and the “physical parts.”
The intelligence sector comprises things that can be done virtually, remotely, purely through information processing. The physical sector comprises things that require bodies, presence, and manipulation of the actual world.
We believe that AI may be eating the pure intelligence sector alive. But here’s the catch: intelligence and physicality are complements, not substitutes. You need both.
by Konrad Körding and Ioana Marinescu, Transformer | Read more:
Image: Getty/Alex Bierens de Haan
[ed. Not if you have the Terminator standing at the plate. Besides, the more the work force transitions to "physical professions" (plumbing, electricians, beauticians, etc.) the more wages are likely to decline because the market can only absorb so many workers. I don't need a plumber every week.]
[ed. Not if you have the Terminator standing at the plate. Besides, the more the work force transitions to "physical professions" (plumbing, electricians, beauticians, etc.) the more wages are likely to decline because the market can only absorb so many workers. I don't need a plumber every week.]
Dump the Jones Act. Permanently.
Image: uncredited
[ed. Expect to hear a lot more about this as a 90-day waiver has now been enacted to counteract rising oil prices. Alaska and Hawaii in particular have been held hostage to the Jones Act for decades, resulting in higher transport/shipping costs. See also: Jones Act Watch (Zvi).]
Sports Go Sports
The Trump administration tries to set broad NCAA policy by fiat, as in Executive Order, demanding a five-year eligibility cap, one free transfer, national agent registry, medical care protections for athletes, women’s/Olympic sport protections and a ban on NIL collectives it calls ‘fraudulent schemes.’
This is not how our government works, but Trump would to just declare things, so he’s trying to threaten NIH or other funding to force the universities to do what he wants, even when what he wants has been ruled illegal by courts and doesn’t actually have a working legal definition or plan to deal with the existing court rulings. He just thinks he can say ‘implement these things or else I will cut your funding, even though the courts probably think that is illegal, I don’t care,’ and sit back.
How did we end up with a legal system where there is no punishment for repeatedly issuing orders that you yourself know are illegal, other than ending enforcement of those illegal orders after someone sues, thus allowing this to be used as leverage?
Shrug.
This is not how our government works, but Trump would to just declare things, so he’s trying to threaten NIH or other funding to force the universities to do what he wants, even when what he wants has been ruled illegal by courts and doesn’t actually have a working legal definition or plan to deal with the existing court rulings. He just thinks he can say ‘implement these things or else I will cut your funding, even though the courts probably think that is illegal, I don’t care,’ and sit back.
Kyle Saunders: And here’s the thing Heitner caught that deserves more attention than it’s getting. Section 4(b) of the order conditions the NCAA’s rulemaking mandate on actions taken “to the extent permitted by law and applicable court orders.”The good news is that there seems to be momentum behind passing something, and everyone smiled about the order. The bad news is that all of that is meaningless.
The order contains its own limiting principle. It knows it can’t override the courts. It says so, in its own text, and then directs the NCAA to do things that courts have already ruled are antitrust violations.
How did we end up with a legal system where there is no punishment for repeatedly issuing orders that you yourself know are illegal, other than ending enforcement of those illegal orders after someone sues, thus allowing this to be used as leverage?
Shrug.
by Zvi Moshowitz, DWAtV | Read more:
[ed. Don't know much about the issue in question, but this short description of Trump administration strong-arm tactics is near perfect. It's a strategy. Here's another Republican doing exactly the same thing (using the legal system to run out the clock): DeSantis plots end run of Florida law to create more GOP House seats (Axios).]
We Absolutely Do Know That Waymos Are Safer Than Human Drivers
In a recent article in Bloomberg, David Zipper argued that “We Still Don’t Know if Robotaxis Are Safer Than Human Drivers.” Big if true! In fact, I’d been under the impression that Waymos are not only safer than humans, the evidence to date suggests that they are staggeringly safer, with somewhere between an 80% to 90% lower risk of serious crashes.
“We don’t know” sounds like a modest claim, but in this case, where it refers to something that we do in fact know about an effect size that is extremely large, it’s a really big claim.
It’s also completely wrong. The article drags its audience into the author’s preferred state of epistemic helplessness by dancing around the data rather than explaining it. And Zipper got many of the numbers wrong; in some cases, I suspect, as a consequence of a math error.
There are things we still don’t know about Waymo crashes. But we know far, far more than Zipper pretends. I want to go through his full argument and make it clear why that’s the case.
But fortunately, no city official has to decide whether to allow “robotaxis” in full generality. Instead, the decision cities actually have to make is whether to allow or disallow Waymo, in particular.
Fortunately, there is a lot of data available about Waymo, in particular. If the thing you want to do is to help policymakers make good decisions, you would want to discuss the safety record of Waymos, the specific cars that the policymakers are considering allowing on their roads.
Imagine someone writing “we don’t know if airplanes are safe — some people say that crashes are extremely rare, and others say that crashes happen every week.” And when you investigate this claim further, you learn that what’s going on is that commercial aviation crashes are extremely rare, while general aviation crashes — small personal planes, including ones you can build in your garage — are quite common.
It’s good to know that the plane that you built in your garage is quite dangerous. It would still be extremely irresponsible to present an issue with a one-engine Cessna as an issue with the Boeing 737 and write “we don’t know whether airplanes are safe — the aviation industry insists they are, but my cousin’s plane crashed just three months ago.”
The safety gap between, for example, Cruise and Waymo is not as large as the safety gap between commercial and general aviation, but collapsing them into a single category sows confusion and moves the conversation away from the decision policymakers actually face: Should they allow Waymo in their cities?
Zipper’s first specific argument against the safety of self-driving cars is that while they do make safer decisions than humans in many contexts, “self-driven cars make mistakes that humans would not, such as plowing into floodwater or driving through an active crime scene where police have their guns drawn.” The obvious next question is: Which of these happens more frequently? How does the rate of self-driving cars doing something dangerous a human wouldn’t compare to the rate of doing something safe a human wouldn’t?
This obvious question went unasked because the answer would make the rest of Bloomberg’s piece pointless. As I’ll explain below, Waymo’s self-driving cars put people in harm’s way something like 80% to 90% less often than humans for a wide range of possible ways of measuring “harm’s way.”
[ed. I'd take one any time (if reasonably priced), and expect to see them everywhere soon. See also: I Was PromisedFlying Self Driving Cars (Zvi):]
A Waymo moving 17mph hits the breaks instantly upon seeing a child step in front of it from a blind spot, hits the child at 6mph and dialed 911. If a human had been driving, the child would likely have been struck at 14mph and be dead.
What did some headlines call this, of course?
“We don’t know” sounds like a modest claim, but in this case, where it refers to something that we do in fact know about an effect size that is extremely large, it’s a really big claim.
There are things we still don’t know about Waymo crashes. But we know far, far more than Zipper pretends. I want to go through his full argument and make it clear why that’s the case.
***
In many places, Zipper’s piece relied entirely on equivocation between “robotaxis” — that is, any self-driving car — and Waymos. Obviously, not all autonomous vehicle startups are doing a good job. Most of them have nowhere near the mileage on the road to say confidently how well they work.But fortunately, no city official has to decide whether to allow “robotaxis” in full generality. Instead, the decision cities actually have to make is whether to allow or disallow Waymo, in particular.
Fortunately, there is a lot of data available about Waymo, in particular. If the thing you want to do is to help policymakers make good decisions, you would want to discuss the safety record of Waymos, the specific cars that the policymakers are considering allowing on their roads.
Imagine someone writing “we don’t know if airplanes are safe — some people say that crashes are extremely rare, and others say that crashes happen every week.” And when you investigate this claim further, you learn that what’s going on is that commercial aviation crashes are extremely rare, while general aviation crashes — small personal planes, including ones you can build in your garage — are quite common.
It’s good to know that the plane that you built in your garage is quite dangerous. It would still be extremely irresponsible to present an issue with a one-engine Cessna as an issue with the Boeing 737 and write “we don’t know whether airplanes are safe — the aviation industry insists they are, but my cousin’s plane crashed just three months ago.”
The safety gap between, for example, Cruise and Waymo is not as large as the safety gap between commercial and general aviation, but collapsing them into a single category sows confusion and moves the conversation away from the decision policymakers actually face: Should they allow Waymo in their cities?
Zipper’s first specific argument against the safety of self-driving cars is that while they do make safer decisions than humans in many contexts, “self-driven cars make mistakes that humans would not, such as plowing into floodwater or driving through an active crime scene where police have their guns drawn.” The obvious next question is: Which of these happens more frequently? How does the rate of self-driving cars doing something dangerous a human wouldn’t compare to the rate of doing something safe a human wouldn’t?
This obvious question went unasked because the answer would make the rest of Bloomberg’s piece pointless. As I’ll explain below, Waymo’s self-driving cars put people in harm’s way something like 80% to 90% less often than humans for a wide range of possible ways of measuring “harm’s way.”
by Kelsey Piper, The Argument | Read more:
Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images[ed. I'd take one any time (if reasonably priced), and expect to see them everywhere soon. See also: I Was Promised
***
A Tesla Model S drove itself from Los Angeles to New York with zero disengagements. Full reverse cannonball run.Mike P: I don’t mean to say this in a way that discredits what they’ve done, but ngl, this stuff isn’t even surprising to me anymore like ya, makes total sense. I went from Philly to Raleigh NC to Tennessee and back to Philly and the only thing I had to do was re park the car at 2 charging stops when the car parked in the wrong place.
Tesla did the thingThere’s still a difference between full self-driving (FSD) that can take you across the country, and the point when you can sleep while it drives.
A Waymo moving 17mph hits the breaks instantly upon seeing a child step in front of it from a blind spot, hits the child at 6mph and dialed 911. If a human had been driving, the child would likely have been struck at 14mph and be dead.
What did some headlines call this, of course?
TechCrunch: Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa MonicaThis was another good time to notice that almost all the AI Safety people are strongly in favor of Waymo and self-driving cars.
Samuel Hammond: A more accurate headline would be “Waymo saves child’s life thanks to superhuman reaction time”
Rob Miles: Seems worthwhile for people to hear AI Safety people saying: No, self driving cars are not the problem, they have the potential to be much safer than human drivers, and in this instance it seems like a human driver would have done a much worse job than the robot
Friday, April 24, 2026
Iran War Updates: April 24, 2026
Image: USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) sails in the Indian Ocean, April 23. CENTCOM/X
[ed. Updates from a variety of sources. Draw your own conclusions. See also: Iran War: Team Trump as Narrative War Captives? (NC).]
What I Saw Inside the Kennedy Center
Image: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty
[ed. An order of magnitude worse than I imagined.]
We Haven’t Seen the Worst of What Gambling and Prediction Markets Will Do to America
Here are three stories about the state of gambling in America.
1. BaseballIn November 2025, two pitchers for the Cleveland Guardians, Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, were charged in a conspiracy for “rigging pitches.” Frankly, I had never heard of rigged pitches before, but the federal indictment describes a scheme so simple that it’s a miracle that this sort of thing doesn’t happen all the time. Three years ago, a few corrupt bettors approached the pitchers with a tantalizing deal: (1) We’ll bet that certain pitches will be balls; (2) you throw those pitches into the dirt; (3) we’ll win the bets and give you some money.
2. BombsOn the morning of February 28th, someone logged onto the prediction market website Polymarket and made an unusually large bet. This bet wasn’t placed on a baseball game. It wasn’t placed on any sport. This was a bet that the United States would bomb Iran on a specific day, despite extremely low odds of such a thing happening.
A few hours later, bombs landed in Iran. This one bet was part of a $553,000 payday for a user named “Magamyman.” And it was just one of dozens of suspicious, perfectly-timed wagers, totaling millions of dollars, placed in the hours before a war began.
It is almost impossible to believe that, whoever Magamyman is, he didn’t have inside information from members of the administration. The term war profiteering typically refers to arms dealers who get rich from war. But we now live in a world not only where online bettors stand to profit from war, but also where key decision makers in government have the tantalizing options to make hundreds of thousands of dollars by synchronizing military engagements with their gambling position.
3. Bombs, againOn March 10, several days into the Iran War, the journalist Emanuel Fabian reported that a warhead launched from Iran struck a site outside Jerusalem.
Meanwhile on Polymarket, users had placed bets on the precise location of missile strikes on March 10. Fabian’s article was therefore poised to determine payouts of $14 million in betting. As The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel reported, bettors encouraged him to rewrite his story to produce the outcome that they’d bet on. Others threatened to make his life “miserable.”
A clever dystopian novelist might conceive of a future where poorly paid journalists for news wires are offered six-figure deals to report fictions that cash out bets from online prediction markets. But just how fanciful is that scenario when we have good reason to believe that journalists are already being pressured, bullied, and threatened to publish specific stories that align with multi-thousand dollar bets about the future?
Put it all together: rigged pitches, rigged war bets, and attempts to rig wartime journalism. Without context, each story would sound like a wacky conspiracy theory. But these are not conspiracy theories. These are things that have happened. These are conspiracies—full stop.
“If you’re not paranoid, you’re not paying attention” has historically been one of those bumperstickers you find on the back of a car with so many other bumperstickers that you worry for the sanity of its occupants. But in this weird new reality where every event on the planet has a price, and behind every price is a shadowy counterparty, the jittery gambler’s paranoia—is what I’m watching happening because somebody more powerful than me bet on it?—is starting to seem, eerily, like a kind of perverse common sense.
From Laundromats to Airplanes
What’s remarkable is not just the fact that online sports books have taken over sports, or that betting markets have metastasized in politics and culture, but the speed with which both have taken place.
For most of the last century, the major sports leagues were vehemently against gambling, as the Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins explained in his recent feature. [...]
Following the 2018 Supreme Court decision Murphy vs. NCAA, sports gambling was unleashed into the world, and the leagues haven’t looked back. Last year, the NFL saw $30 billion gambled on football games, and the league itself made half a billion dollars in advertising, licensing, and data deals.
Nine years ago, Americans bet less than $5 billion on sports. Last year, that number rose to at least $160 billion. Big numbers mean nothing to me, so let me put that statistic another way: $5 billion is roughly the amount Americans spend annually at coin-operated laundromats and $160 billion is nearly what Americans spent last year on domestic airline tickets. So, in a decade, the online sports gambling industry will have risen from the level of coin laundromats to rival the entire airline industry.
And now here come the prediction markets, such as Polymarket and Kalshi, whose combined 2025 revenue came in around $50 billion. “These predictive markets are the logical endpoint of the online gambling boom,” Coppins told me on my podcast Plain English. “We have taught the entire American population how to gamble with sports. We’ve made it frictionless and easy and put it on everybody’s phone. Why not extend the logic and culture of gambling to other segments of American life?” He continued:
It is a comforting myth that dystopias happen when obviously bad ideas go too far. Comforting, because it plays to our naive hope that the world can be divided into static categories of good versus evil and that once we stigmatize all the bad people and ghettoize all the bad ideas, some utopia will spring into view. But I think dystopias more likely happen because seemingly good ideas go too far. “Pleasure is better than pain” is a sensible notion, and a society devoted to its implications created Brave New World. “Order is better than disorder” sounds alright to me, but a society devoted to the most grotesque vision of that principle takes us to 1984. Sports gambling is fun, and prediction markets can forecast future events. But extended without guardrails or limitations, those principles lead to a world where ubiquitous gambling leads to cheating, cheating leads to distrust, and distrust leads ultimately to cynicism or outright disengagement.
“The crisis of authority that has kind of already visited every other American institution in the last couple of decades has arrived at professional sports,” Coppins said. Two-thirds of Americans now believe that professional athletes sometimes change their performance to influence gambling outcomes. “Not to overstate it, but that’s a disaster,” he said. And not just for sports.
Four Ways to Lose (Or, What's a 'Rigged Pitch' in a War?)
There are four reasons to worry about the effect of gambling in sports and culture.
Nine years ago, Americans bet less than $5 billion on sports. Last year, that number rose to at least $160 billion. Big numbers mean nothing to me, so let me put that statistic another way: $5 billion is roughly the amount Americans spend annually at coin-operated laundromats and $160 billion is nearly what Americans spent last year on domestic airline tickets. So, in a decade, the online sports gambling industry will have risen from the level of coin laundromats to rival the entire airline industry.
And now here come the prediction markets, such as Polymarket and Kalshi, whose combined 2025 revenue came in around $50 billion. “These predictive markets are the logical endpoint of the online gambling boom,” Coppins told me on my podcast Plain English. “We have taught the entire American population how to gamble with sports. We’ve made it frictionless and easy and put it on everybody’s phone. Why not extend the logic and culture of gambling to other segments of American life?” He continued:
Why not let people gamble on who’s going to win the Oscar, when Taylor Swift’s wedding will be, how many people will be deported from the United States next year, when the Iranian regime will fall, whether a nuclear weapon will be detonated in the year 2026, or whether there will be a famine in Gaza? These are not things that I’m making up. These are all bets that you can make on these predictive markets.Indeed, why not let people gamble on whether there will be a famine in Gaza? The market logic is cold and simple: More bets means more information, and more informational volume is more efficiency in the marketplace of all future happenings. But from another perspective—let’s call it, baseline morality?—the transformation of a famine into a windfall event for prescient bettors seems so grotesque as to require no elaboration. One imagines a young man sending his 1099 documents to a tax accountant the following spring: “right, so here are my dividends, these are the cap gains, and, oh yeah, here’s my $9,000 payout for totally nailing when all those kids would die.”
It is a comforting myth that dystopias happen when obviously bad ideas go too far. Comforting, because it plays to our naive hope that the world can be divided into static categories of good versus evil and that once we stigmatize all the bad people and ghettoize all the bad ideas, some utopia will spring into view. But I think dystopias more likely happen because seemingly good ideas go too far. “Pleasure is better than pain” is a sensible notion, and a society devoted to its implications created Brave New World. “Order is better than disorder” sounds alright to me, but a society devoted to the most grotesque vision of that principle takes us to 1984. Sports gambling is fun, and prediction markets can forecast future events. But extended without guardrails or limitations, those principles lead to a world where ubiquitous gambling leads to cheating, cheating leads to distrust, and distrust leads ultimately to cynicism or outright disengagement.
“The crisis of authority that has kind of already visited every other American institution in the last couple of decades has arrived at professional sports,” Coppins said. Two-thirds of Americans now believe that professional athletes sometimes change their performance to influence gambling outcomes. “Not to overstate it, but that’s a disaster,” he said. And not just for sports.
Four Ways to Lose (Or, What's a 'Rigged Pitch' in a War?)
There are four reasons to worry about the effect of gambling in sports and culture.
by Derek Thompson, Substack | Read more:
Image: Eyestetix Studio on Unsplash
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