How to Find Musicians and Music Writing on Substack

How to find musicians and music writing on Substack ( Rock 'n' Roll with Me)

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Listings by functional categories (musician, writer, DJ, educator, etc.)

Shanté has very generously set up The Music Directory where you can find alphabetical listings for the following functional categories (click the link to go to a post containing that listing):

Writers/Journalists
Musicians
DJs/Selectors
Playlist Curators
Reviewers/Critics
Producers
Composers
Historians/Scholars/Researchers
Podcasters & Radio Hosts
Collectors
Educators — **New as of 3/30/25

via:

Kikagaku Moyo

To a New Shining Hill

Beyond woke and anti-woke

Midway through 2025, it’s safe to say woke and anti-woke are exhausting themselves. Cultural clashes that characterized so much of the last decade just do not matter any longer. Woke has dissipated, and the blindly anti-woke have lost their raison d’etre. Some have defaulted to furious Israel advocacy or embrace of MAGA, while others keep their free speech commitments. The woke have mostly gone quiet, with a few outliers straining to revive a movement that is mostly done. If they have any hope for a comeback, it’s in Donald Trump’s overreach. But while Trump’s attacks on civil liberties and academic freedom have provoked a great deal of backlash, they have not created any environment remotely like the 2010s, when many different social justice causes were dominant and the power elite were desperate to keep up. Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo will never be cultural giants again. Their moment has passed.

All of this is easy enough to declare, but what is actually next? What is post-woke? Post-anti-woke? We are now going to find out. On the whole, I am optimistic: culture is reaching a healthier state, and you’re slowly seeing a richer, calmer discourse. The histrionics of the last decade are absent, and hustlers on each side of the war are not able to drum up so much attention. If I understood the allure of anti-woke in those years bookending Covid, much of it now seems stale, and most of the writers and intellectuals worth paying attention to have moved on. Cultural shifts do happen, as much as some might pretend otherwise, and we’ve got to take stock of where we are and what this all might mean. This is hardest to do in the moment itself, but that doesn’t make the work any less vital. It is important to try to grasp at the fluidity of culture itself, even when the waters run right through one’s fingers.

The new age is neo-Romantic in scope, but it’s early yet—it’s difficult, still, to describe particular works of art appearing today as “Romantic” or sharing a similar sensibility. In part, this is because novels, movies, and even music can have long incubation periods, and the individuals creating them may be reacting to currents that are more personal in scope. At the same time, 2025 is starting to feel like a turning point for art broadly: this year, the writer Mo Diggs has argued, is already a great one for cinema, and it feels there is a hunger again for excellence from filmmakers and movie-goers alike. The retreads can still dominate, but we’ve passed peak Marvel, and are exiting the Hero era. The Hero era transcended the movies themselves and extended to virtually all facets of life: politics, the internet, and the rise of Silicon Valley. In the late 2000s, 2010s, and early 2020s, the influencer model was dominant. Influencers, in most contexts, are individuals who post frequently on YouTube and TikTok, amassing large followings and parlaying the attention they receive into sponsorships, brand deals, and other marketing opportunities. These influencers were in deep parasocial relationships with their audiences, to the point where many viewers believed them to be their personal heroes. This engagement extended beyond YouTube—consider, for a moment, how men like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and even Jeff Bezos were once viewed by the culture. Musk, in the 2010s, was Iron Man, the brilliant, cosmopolitan polymath who could turn any company he touched to gold. Zuckerberg’s Facebook, in the late 2000s, was considered a new political Eden that could usher in America’s first Black president and make us all less lonely. Silicon Valley titans were not so different than Marvel superheroes, worshiped by millions while convincing the younger generations that such fortune-making—and even blatant monopolization and oligarchic behavior—was to be celebrated. How many Americans truly worried about Zuckerberg’s decision to buy Instagram and WhatsApp? Who truly fretted over Amazon acquiring Whole Foods? The tech heroes were rarely questioned.

A hallmark of the new era is skepticism of leaders in all walks of life; I can’t remember a time in which Americans were more jaded by celebrity culture and the range of influencers who exerted so much pull on the zeitgeist over the last decade. Katy Perry is a punchline and the Kardashians are a punchline. Taylor Swift is impregnable, but the heights of 2023 will never return again. Travis and Taylor are increasingly passé. Who is cool anymore? Who are today’s heroes? In any other period of recent history, these were very easy questions to answer. No longer. I wrote, a year ago, about an American left wing devoid of leaders—and not wanting them—and I am starting to believe that this trend now extends everywhere. Politicians are no longer unifying figures, and whatever fan bases they boast are deeply polarized—if these politicians, excepting Donald Trump, can truly exert a pull on most voters. Celebrity endorsements have certainly never meant less, as Kamala Harris’ failure demonstrated. The emergence of Trump and then AOC marked a sort of Hero era apotheosis; close your eyes and try to imagine, in 2025, a candidate for Congress winning one election and becoming a national celebrity literally overnight. It just would not happen.

Mass culture, as a concept, is rapidly dying off. It exists, and there are certain movies or streaming shows that can get Americans talking, but it is frailer than ever. There might be figures who are famous to one person who may mean nothing to another. There are fewer cultural totems, fewer shared reference points. The internet has created an eternal present and handed off the task of cultural curation to the users themselves. The term user speaks to how the relationship between human beings and digital technology has long been framed—the goal, from the perspective of anyone who reaps a profit off this tech, is to make the human being addicted, to own their time as much as any drug might—and it’s one, in this new protean era, that we are now aware of, if we haven’t necessarily broken free. Smartphone bans in public schools are becoming more and more common. Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation is a massive best-seller. There are more people conscious of their tech consumption in 2025 versus 2015, and there are growing, if limited, movements built around rejecting the smartphone. Physical books endure, and readers defiantly purchase them. The mere fact that AI is being challenged at all speaks to how differently technology is being approached in the 2020s; we are more reflexively wary. If ChatGPT had emerged in 2014, Sam Altman would have become, by now, a household name, with fawning media coverage burnishing his image as one of the great thinkers of our age. AI is popular, no doubt, and its usage will only expand with time. What is clear, though, is that techno-optimism is not returning soon. The tech titans will not be heroes again.

by Ross Barkan, Political Currents |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. See also: MAGA in Twilight.]

Richard Baratta

Critique of Infinite Freedom

A few months ago, a retired tech entrepreneur, a co-founder of Loom (a video software company), wrote a short essay titled: “I am rich and I have no idea what to do with my life.” The author seems to be a young guy, maybe in his thirties, who sold his company and then found himself in an unfamiliar state of not having to work ever again. To write an essay with such a provocative title in this day and age, could’ve just been a deliberate attempt at trolling or engagement farming, collecting spiky replies and tiny violin GIFs in the comments. But it wasn’t that. The short text comes across as an earnest, almost despairing grappling for answers that are existential in nature. (...)

The young man suffers from an existential problem, but he’d been steeped for too long in a tech-heavy ecosystem to try anything outside a set of formulaic ‘if x then y’ solutions. He doesn’t know where to begin, what to do, how to think about this new reality. For now, this young man had retreated to Hawaii to study physics.

And what can one do after he’s been on top of the world? It’s a precarious, unstable mental place. There’s a disorienting emptiness mixed with residual dynamism that’s built up from the years of hustle and combat and that now lacks an outlet and direction. There is a creeping dread borne out of unexpected idleness. The restless mind longs for action, like a street fighter, flexing muscles and crackling knuckles, looking to beat up the next villain. But there’s no villain to beat up this time. You are alone with your thoughts and with nothing to do. The problem is unidentifiable. There’s no solution. This is a state that can create monstrosities.

Limits of Infinite Freedom

Musk, Bezos, Zuck, Andreessen, Altman––these men have a degree of freedom that is limited only in a sense that they can’t commit murder in broad daylight. None of their other ambitions, assisted and facilitated by lawyers, powerful connections, friendly lawmakers, favorable legislation, and weak or non-existent law enforcement, meet resistance or accountability. What could and does prevent them from fully realizing their grand schemes into reality and from experiencing absolute freedom, are obstacles of amorphous and capricious nature that are difficult to single out and attack: irrational human behavior, fickle customer loyalties, collective skepticism of or disenchantment with the products that they’re selling, public mockery of their ideas and egos, elections that don’t go their way, etc. These phenomena can’t be harnessed and corralled by a corporate decree or by an army of lawyers or by money thrown at it. To have almost no institutional or legal restraints coming up to this point, and then to suddenly face these volatile, unpredictable masses who deny them their due respect, who refuse to acknowledge their unrivalled acumen, and who question the usefulness of their inventions, makes them feel confused, frustrated, and unfree.

What can’t Musk do at this point? He has more money than God. He has our attention. He can have as much sex as he wants, he can buy a US president, he can go into space. He has Putin on speed dial. He can get access to your personal data. He can get away with naming his kids Techno Mechanicus and X AE A-12. But he’s still unhappy. He’s still striving. He still feels like a victim.

Musk is famously sensitive to being stifled. Paranoidally, he sees an insidious censure coming at him from all sides. His algorithms on X are set so that his own tweets reach the most audience. Well, he gets our attention, but then what does he do with it? All these elaborate tweaks in the algorithm, all the billions spent, all these free speech proclamations––all of this, so that he can peddle conspiracy theories and tell 420/69 jokes. Why would a billionaire many times over, owning a bunch of other, more serious companies, would spend most of his waking hours on this platform, getting into juvenile name-calling, spats with libs, and retweeting Catturd? Is it not enough for him to lord over us? Does he also want us to think he’s witty, cool, and funny? Does he also want to be loved?

Love then, whether public or private, is the elusive final frontier of a centi-billionaire. Like Trump, Musk is not entirely unloved. Both are leaders of cults with millions of followers, and yet they’re dissatisfied. They’re loved, yes, but by the wrong people. Somewhere deep in their hearts they both know that the people who worship them have been suckered into it. They don’t want the love of dimwits and morons––of the marks. They want to be loved by the smart and serious set, by the kind that could be invited to a black-tie event without risk of embarrassment, by the NYT opinion page, by the Nobel Peace Prize committee, by the European leaders, by bond traders––people and entities who are not swayed by the silly theatrics, who are immune to bluster. But Wall Street, once a lonely pocket of tepid support among the smart set, is second-guessing them now. The inability to control this slice of important reality, while dominating everything else, can derail Musk and Trump into feeling helpless. And it is this helplessness that brings about feeling of unfreedom, of unjust restraint. And when they feel unfree they seek an exit, any exit by any means.

The Road to Batshit

I think, in a way it was quite inevitable that Musk would venture out, like Trump, into the public sphere. There were no questions left in the business world and the world of engineering about Musk’s abilities. There, he was God-like. So it was a natural next move for him to step outside the familiar zone of tech entrepreneurship and try his hand at public works.

Musk and Trump want to make policy. But they’re both constitutionally (as in temperamentally) incapable of being bogged down in policy details. It’s like that time, during Trump’s first term, when he thought that he could write a new ‘bigger and better’ healthcare bill to replace Obamacare in two weeks. One look at a Cybertruck, and you know how it was designed: Musk drew it on a paper napkin, handed it to his engineer, and told him “make it look like this.” The engineer didn’t dare to ask further questions. Their policy is a feeling, a shapeless, broad-strokes sketching, a ten-thousand foot view. A size of the government must be cut. How? They’re not going to go into minutia. “Boom-boom-boom-bing”––that’s how.

So it was also inevitable that Musk would soon get bored with it. Entering public service exposed him to having to deal with those very amorphous forces that frustrated him in his business life, but now more prevalent and more entrenched, and lacking due deference. He was accustomed to rule by decree, to cutting costs and personnel without any remorse, but here, in the public sector, the riffraff, the immanent, cretinous masses, the unproductive, the retarded, have the nerve to talk back, demanding to know how they will benefit from his grand vision. They want to know how cutting Medicaid will help improve their health and other such silly things. And Musk can’t just tell the ingrates to take a hike, because the whole purpose of a billionaire entering public spotlight is, supposedly, to show the rubes how great he is.

He is mocked, unloved, and prevented from showing us what a great guy he is. What good are billions if you have no control over these things? What a guy to do?

by Katya Grishakova, The Center Holds |  Read more:

Image: uncredited via

[ed. See also: For the Men Who Have Everything (Political Currents).]

"They are running out of goals. Musk longs for Mars because the Earth can’t satisfy him any longer. Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg try on new outrageous personas because they can’t feel comfortable in the skin they always knew. Sam Altman speaks of OpenAI like it can guarantee eternal life for all who might sign up for a ChatGPT subscription. All of these men enjoy an unfathomable amount of freedom. Absent murdering a few bystanders in the middle of Fifth Avenue, they really can do whatever it is they want. The old emperors and feudal lords were accountable, in some form, to the polity, and even they were constrained by technology and geography. These oligarchs are nation-states unto themselves. Legal and institutional restraints mean little to them.

Yet they ache. None of them, publicly, appear especially content, and some like Musk are in constant online combat with their critics. Musk bought off an American president and it wasn’t enough; Bezos is trying now. What they can’t seem to accrue—not Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Altman, Peter Thiel, or Mark Andreessen—is broad popularity and respect. (...)

The tech oligarchs understand this well enough. As insulated as they are, they are uneasy because they have to keep straining for attention and approval. If they, outwardly, shun the left-leaning, college-educated cognoscenti, they’d still, like Donald Trump, prefer some kind of affirmation. Much of Trump’s career can be understood through the lens of a Queens boy trying to get Manhattan to take him seriously. Most troubling for the oligarchs is that it’s not just the Times editorial board turning from them—it might be Wall Street, too. The bond traders are second-guessing them. Trump found his “liberation day” tariffs were not, in fact, going to liberate the world. They were going, instead, to crash the economy until Trump beat a hasty retreat. The tariffs are one kind of failure; the various business pivots of the tech elite are another. AI, in the end, might be too big to fail, treated by the federal government like the development of nuclear weapons. But there is no real business model otherwise: AI costs many billions of dollars and there’s no way to recoup on these losses unless ChatGPT or Claude subscriptions start costing individuals thousands of dollars per month. If Amazon, in the early years, lost money, it always had a road to profitability that seems indefinitely foreclosed to AI. One can detect a subtle angst: AI must happen because Silicon Valley is otherwise out of ideas. There are few great leaps forward left. AI cannot stack up to the invention of the internet or the personal computer, or even the introduction of the iPhone. Zuckerberg is chasing AI too, now that the Metaverse is emptied out. All the billions in the world can’t buy a new idea. Nor, after a while, validation. Musk’s retreat from the White House is proof enough of that. Tesla is losing to Chinese electric vehicles and will probably keep losing. Mars, meanwhile, remains uninhabitable, and always will be. The space-age billionaires cannot even match the achievements of the federal government in the analog age: fifty-six years ago, we put men on the moon, and neither Musk nor Bezos appear especially capable of replicating that feat. Instead, Bezos shoots his fiancé and a few fading celebrities into the lower reaches of outer space and begs for accolades. All anyone will remember of that voyage is the round of mockery aimed at Katy Perry, who wishes, more than almost anyone on Earth, it was still the year 2010 and not 2025. The “girl boss” and “lean in” era is as dead as techno-optimism. The Facebook whistleblower’s book is outselling Sheryl Sandberg these days, and will be for a while longer."

Maia Delilah

Welcome to the Semantic Apocalypse

A photo of my kids reading, transformed Studio Ghibli style by an AI (the AI flipped the book upside down).

An awful personal prophecy is coming true. Way back in 2019, when AI was still a relatively niche topic, and only the primitive GPT-2 had been released, I predicted the technology would usher in a “semantic apocalypse” wherein art and language were drained of meaning. In fact, it was the first essay ever posted here on The Intrinsic Perspective.

I saw the dystopian potential for the future the exact moment I read a certain line in Kane Hsieh’s now-forgotten experiment, Transformer Poetry, where he published poems written by GPT-2. Most weren’t good, but at a certain point the machine wrote:

Thou hast not a thousand days to tell me thou art beautiful.

I read that line and thought: “Fuck.”

Fast forward six years, and the semantic apocalypse has started in earnest. People now report experiencing the exact internal psychological change I predicted about our collective consciousness all those years ago.

Just two days ago, OpenAI released their latest image generation model, with capabilities far more potent than the technology was even a year ago. Someone tweeted out the new AI could be used as a “Studio Ghibli style” filter for family photos. 20 million views later, everything online was Studio Ghibli.

Every meme was redone Ghibli-style, family photos were now in Ghibli-style, anonymous accounts face-doxxed themselves Ghibli-style. And it’s undeniable that Ghiblification is fun. I won’t lie. That picture of my kids reading together above, which is from a real photo—I exclaimed in delight when it appeared in the chat window like magic. So I totally get it. It’s a softer world when you have Ghibli glasses on. But by the time I made the third picture, it was less fun. A creeping sadness set in. (...)

Similarly, the new image model is a bit worse at other anime styles. But for Studio Ghibli, while I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s passable, it’s also not super far from passable for some scenes. The AI can’t hold all the signature Ghibli details in mind—its limitation remains its intelligence and creativity, not its ability to copy style. Below on the left is a scene that took a real Studio Ghibli artist 15 months to complete. On the right is what I prompted in 30 seconds.

Studio Ghibli (left); the scene re-created using ChatGPT (right)

In the AI version, the action is all one way, so it lacks the original’s complexity and personality, failing to capture true chaos. I’m not saying it’s a perfect copy. But the 30 seconds vs. 15 months figure should give everyone pause.

The irony of internet Ghiblification is that Miyazaki is well-known for his hatred of AI, remarking once in a documentary that:

While ChatGPT can’t pull off a perfect Miyazaki copy, it doesn’t really matter. The semantic apocalypse doesn’t require AI art to be exactly as good as the best human art. You just need to flood people with close-enough creations such that the originals feel less meaningful.

by Eric Hoel, The Intrinsic Perspective |  Read more:

Images: the author, ChatGPT, uncredited

Something Happened in 1971. And in 2012.

Decades. We’re in one. We came from one. We’re going to one. They mean, well, something. Nothing. Everything. As redhead Cynthia Dunn says while cruising around a car just vibing as a 1970s teenager in Dazed and Confused:

“The fifties were boring. The sixties rocked. And the seventies—oh my God, they obviously suck. Come on! Maybe the eighties will be radical.”

The joke plays on the audience’s foreknowledge of the actual 80s, and I like it not just because it’s said by one of my childhood crushes in one of my favorite movies, but because there are plenty of real actual academic theories based on (essentially) decade changes, from the Strauss–Howe generational theory to cyclical theory.

Besides, we all know decades have vibes. That’s why Dazed and Confused, a movie famous for having a meandering plot, no plot at all really, works so well. And if decades have vibes this logically implies that, within decades, there are years that represent certain vibe shifts. As Charles Schifano recently wrote:

Annie Ernaux, who was twenty-eight in 1968, encapsulates the narrow sensation nicely in The Years, stating that “1968 was the first year of the world.”

Annie Ernaux may have been right; perhaps, in a way, she’ll always be right. But for us, for our decade, for our current vibe: what year was it established? When was the decade-defining great vibe shift? What was the first year of our particular world?

The answer is actually rather clear. For whenever I now see a graph plotting out something by years, my eyes now jump to a certain date: 2012. And, more often than not, there is evidence of some kind of fulcrum there. Others have also started to take notice as well: 2012 was a “tipping-point” year.

Such a year can mean a lot of things. Some tipping-point years are cultural, like 1968 (the Tet Offensive, MLK assassination, Robert Kennedy assassination, Civil Rights Act, Star Trek airs the first interracial kiss, all of which established the vibe of the coming 1970s). Other tipping-point years are economic, like 1971. In fact, there’s even www.wtfhappenedin1971.com which lays out chart after chart showing how there were sudden disruptions of long-running economic trends in America. (...)

If the cultural revolution of the 1960s was followed about a decade later by an economic shift in 1971, one has to wonder if history will repeat so obviously, with Biden playing the role of Jimmy Carter, having followed up a president, Nixon, who had articles of impeachment filed against him. Perhaps this is the recent “vibe shift” people on The Social Media Platform Formally Known as Twitter have been referencing, which is essentially just an exhaustion of the debates that started in 2012.

Surely, things must be more complicated than these decade theories, no? Of course. Obviously so. As a level of analysis they are nearly mystical. But if you had used this model of [cultural revolution → inflationary period→ lasting economic and cultural malaise] back 2012 I think you’d have a claim to near-Nostradamus levels of precognition. And that third stage would predict, much like the post-1971 world, a coming permanent change in long-standing economic trends (followed, potentially, in the 2030s with the return of Big Hair, leg warmers, and cocaine).

by Eric Hoel, The Intrinsic Perspective |  Read more:

Image: Dazed and Confused
~  What the heck happened in 2012?

-----

I still stick to my prediction that American society is slowly calming down from the unrest of 2014-2021. But as new rounds of protests erupt across the nation and Senators are wrestled to the ground and masked unidentified government agents rampage through workplaces and communities looking for “illegals” to arrest, it’s worth remembering that the decline of unrest can be very slow and bumpy. Thus it was in the 1970s, and thus it is today.

But why is American society so unsettled in the first place? Something clearly broke in our society in the early 2010s. Watching TV or reading books from before that time feels like looking at a fresco or a mosaic of a vanished golden age — a country that had its problems and disagreements, but which basically worked. A country that almost no one seemed to doubt was a country, and should be one.

What broke that healthy nation? In a post last year, I argued that a perfect storm of events — the housing crash and Great Recession, the rise of China, racial diversification, and the rise of smartphone-enabled social media — all came crashing down on America at the same time:

I think that story is right, but I don’t think it explains why America was especially vulnerable. Many other countries suffered from the global financial crisis, faced the rise of China, experienced tensions over immigration, and struggled with the introduction of social media. To give just one example, you can see a lot of the effects of smartphones — on attention spans and learning, depression, suicide, etc. — in other countries, not just the U.S.

And yet the U.S. seems to have been uniquely wounded by the last decade and a half. Where other rich countries have mostly resisted the rise of authoritarian, demagogic leaders, the U.S. is stuck with Trump. American culture wars seem particularly pernicious and intractable. And America has suffered a particularly severe decline in the degree to which people trust institutions: (...)

By the 2010s, if you looked at a detailed electoral map of the U.S., what you saw wasn’t really red states and blue states — it was red countryside and blue cities. The cities were more prosperous than the countryside, which led to the GOP becoming the party of the working class and the Democrats becoming the party of the affluent.

But although we worried about political bubbles, this system seemed to work just fine. A hippie in Oakland and a redneck in the suburbs of Houston both fundamentally felt that they were part of the same unified nation; that nation looked very different to people in each place. Californians thought America was California, and Texans thought America was Texas, and this generally allowed America to function. (...)

Red America and Blue America became echo chambers that helped to contain America’s rising cultural and social polarization. They helped us live with our ideological diversity, by forgetting — except during presidential elections — that the people who disagreed with us still existed. It was a big country. We could spread out, there was room for everyone. As the man says in Robert Frost’s poem: “Good fences make good neighbors.”

And then that all came crashing down. In the 2010s, everyone got a smartphone, and everyone got social media on that smartphone, and everyone started checking that social media many times a day. Twitter was a dedicated universal chat app where everyone could discuss public affairs with everyone else in one big scrum; for a few years, Facebook structured its main feed so that everyone could see their friends and family posting political links and commentary.

Like some kind of forcible hive mind out of science fiction, social media suddenly threw every American in one small room with every other American. Decades of hard work spent running away from each other and creating our ideologically fragmented patchwork of geographies went up in smoke overnight, as geography suddenly ceased to mediate the everyday discussion of politics and culture.

by Noah Smith, Noahpinion |  Read more:

Image: Financial Times
~ Social media destroyed one of America's key advantages

Hard (Really Hard) Golf: US Open 2025

[ed. Congratulations to J.J. Spaun on his U.S. Open win. A truly heroic effort under extremely challenging course conditions. Here's another heroic effort: Phil the Thrill, executing a perfect over the shoulder hook lob on the LIV tour. Insane.]

The Recent History of AI in 32 Otters

Otters on a plane using wifi.

Images: via

[ed. The last video (which I couldn't download) is amazing.]

Two years ago, I was on a plane with my teenage daughter, messing around with a new AI image generator while the wifi refused to work. Otters were her favorite animal, so naturally I typed: “otter on a plane using wifi” just as the connection was restored. The resulting thread went viral and “otter on a plane using wifi” has since become one of my go-to tests of progress AI image generation. (...)

The otter evolution reveals two crucial trends with some big implications. First, there clearly continues to be rapid improvement across a wide range of AI capabilities from image generation to video to LLM code generation. Second, open weights models, while not generally as good as proprietary models, are often only months behind the state-of-the-art.

If you put these trends together, it becomes clear that we are heading towards a place where not only are image and video generations likely to be good enough to fool most people, but that those capabilities will be widely available and, thanks to open models, very hard to regulate or control. I think we need to be prepared for a world where it is impossible to tell real from AI-generated images and video, with implications for a wide swath of society, from the entertainment we enjoy to our trust for online content. - Ethan Mollick

Washington Post in Talks with Substack About Using Its Writers

The Washington Post has held talks with Substack about hosting pieces by its writers, the site’s co-founder has said, as a host of legacy media brands embrace the newsletter platform in the battle for readers.

In an interview with the Guardian, Substack’s Hamish McKenzie said he had spoken to the Post about its plans to widen the types of opinion pieces on its website.

He said there had been a “change in mindset” from traditional media, which once viewed Substack with suspicion. He said many now saw the platform as an opportunity to adapt to what he described as “the most significant media disruption since the printing press”. (...)

McKenzie said the Post had approached Substack about hosting its writers. “We’ve talked to them, but there’s no formal agreement or partnership, and they wouldn’t need to talk to us to be able to go out and attempt to do those things,” McKenzie said. “They need to persuade the writers, creators, the journalists, publishers, not us.

“If they’re helping to bring more exposure to those writers and drive audiences to them, if it’s designed in that way – and I’m not 100% sure what the ultimate outcome is going to be – that could be really good for everyone.”

Substack has become increasingly influential since its launch in 2017. It allows anyone to publish and distribute digital content, primarily through newsletters, and charge a subscription. It has also been branching out into podcasts and video.

The potential tie-up comes after Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of the Post, provoked its comment editor to walk out after he announced its comment pages would be more narrowly focused on pieces that supported and defended “personal liberties” and “free markets”. The move was seen as an attempt by Bezos to safeguard his relationship with President Trump.

However, the Post – under its British chief executive and publisher, Will Lewis – is trying to find other ways of drawing in readers following reported losses of $100m (£74m) last year, including a project to host comment pieces from other sources on its website. (...)

“All of a sudden really, a bunch of legacy news organisations are trying to see how they can take advantage of Substack,” McKenzie said. “That’s a really welcome change in mindset. At first people looked at us as if we were a curious instrument and then they started to look at us as maybe we were a threat, because some talent would prefer to go independent on Substack rather than be in a newsroom.

“People are starting to understand that Substack is not just a publishing system that helps people make money, but it’s also a network and it represents new land to build on, where new media products can be born and built. Legacy institutions can build those just as well as newcomers. It’s a big opportunity era.”

He said Substack was supposed to be a “disruptor of social media”, rather than the traditional media, allowing longer writing instead of viral content. He said he had “no regrets whatsoever” about having resisted overtures from Elon Musk to buy the site.

McKenzie said Substack was trying to find new workable models for media amid the struggles of traditional outlets to hold on to rapidly fragmenting audiences. “It’s not a problem with demand for quality journalism,” he said. “It’s a problem with the business model and so there has to be a reinvention. We’re almost at the point where the fire has razed through the forest and there are a few trees still standing. It’s time to replant the forest. We’re living through the most significant media disruption since the printing press.”

by Michael Savage, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: Timon Schneider/Alamy
[ed. Too little too late. Another threat to traditional news media who never really figured out how to maintain and grow readership and profitability on the internet (ad clicks/paywalls). So now they're stampeding en masse to a business model that's actually been proven to work. But who wants to read corporate BS? This was noted recently by Ted Gioia in this prescient essay: Substack Has Changed in the Last 30 Days (DS/HB). See also: The Rushfield Lunch: Ted Gioia on What the Media Doesn't Understand (Ankler).]

A U.S. War With Iran Would Be a Catastrophe

The United States is alarmingly close to getting dragged into yet another military entanglement in the Middle East, this time by Israel — which is looking less and less like a true friend.

Israel’s surprise attack on Iran on Friday has almost certainly blown up any chance of reaching the nuclear deal the United States was pursuing for months. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has also recklessly endangered the 40,000 U.S. troops deployed in the region, putting them at immediate risk of Iranian retaliation, which could draw America into a war with Iran.

However Iran interprets our role in the attacks, Israel appears to have acted without giving the United States enough warning to take adequate precautions. Though President Trump acknowledged on Thursday that an Israeli attack might be imminent, the United States only began voluntary evacuations of military families and nonessential embassy personnel on Wednesday afternoon, while the State Department began drawing up plans for mass evacuation of U.S. citizens mere hours before the attack.

Mr. Trump, and all Americans, should be furious. Now Mr. Netanyahu and hawkish voices in the United States will almost certainly put pressure on Mr. Trump to assist Israel in destroying Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites, something that will be difficult for the Israeli military to do on its own and that even the U.S. military might be unable to accomplish. It would be the worst mistake of Mr. Trump’s presidency.

A war with Iran would be a catastrophe, the culminating failure of decades of regional overreach by the United States and exactly the sort of policy that Mr. Trump has long railed against. The United States would gain nothing from fighting a weak country halfway around the globe that causes problems in its region but does not pose a critical security threat to us. And the United States would lose much: most tragically, the lives of U.S. service members, along with any chance of escaping our tortured past in the region.

Americans of all political stripes oppose war with Iran, presumably because they understand the two big lessons from U.S. experiences fighting in the Middle East over the past 25 years. Not only do preventive wars not work; they also have unintended consequences with lasting impact on America’s national security.

The misguided 2003 invasion of Iraq was also a war to forestall nuclear proliferation. Disaster ensued, and not just because Saddam Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. invasion triggered chaos and civil war in Iraq and tipped the regional balance of power toward Iran by allowing it to establish new proxy militias in the country. It also led to the eventual rise of ISIS.

There is no reason to think that a war with Iran would go any more smoothly — and it could turn out considerably worse. If drawn in, the U.S. military’s involvement would likely begin with airstrikes rather than a ground invasion, given Iran’s large size and forbidding mountainous terrain. But as the fruitless $7 billion campaign against the Houthis showed, airstrikes are exorbitantly expensive, entail significant risks of American casualties and are likely to fail anyway. The United States never even gained air superiority over the Houthis, a ragtag militant group with the resource base of an impoverished country, Yemen, over which it couldn’t even consolidate control.

Iran is far more capable of defending itself than the Houthis are. If airstrikes fail to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities, pressure would dramatically increase on U.S. forces to pair an aerial barrage with a ground component, perhaps something akin to the “Afghan model” the United States used to topple the Taliban. We know how that went. Despite the intent to keep that war small and brief, an engagement that started with just 1,300 U.S. troops in November 2001 snowballed into a disastrous 20-year occupation that reached some 100,000 U.S. troops at its height in 2011 and ultimately caused the deaths of 2,324 U.S. military personnel.

Even a best-case scenario, in which the United States helps destroy the majority of Iranian nuclear sites, would only delay Iran’s progress toward developing a bomb. War cannot prevent weaponization in the long term, which is why either diplomacy or benign neglect have always been better choices for handling Iran. Its enrichment program is over 20 years old, spread across multiple sites in the Islamic Republic, and employs untold thousands of scientists — 3,000 at the Isfahan facility alone. It’s probable that enough Iranian scientists know how to enrich weapons-grade uranium that Israel would not be able to kill them all, despite its airstrikes explicitly targeting them.

Assuming some continuity of technical knowledge persists, Iran would likely be able to rebuild its nuclear facilities quickly. And a defiant Iranian regime would no doubt be determined on weaponizing to deter future Israeli and U.S. attacks.

That likelihood, coupled with Israel’s insistence that Iran must never get the bomb, suggests that Mr. Netanyahu’s theory of victory could be premised on an underlying logic of regime change. Supporting that point, Israel appears to be engaging in strikes aimed at disabling the regime’s leadership in Tehran.

The Israeli leader has long embraced the desirability of regime change in Iran, and hinted in September that it could happen “sooner than people think.” As a French diplomatic source told Le Monde last fall, “The idea is circulating in certain circles that perhaps the Israelis are leading us toward a historic moment, that this is the beginning of the end for the Iranian regime.” The fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in December intensified speculation about similar upheaval in Iran. Some U.S. policy hawks and members of the Iranian diaspora now claim regime change is becoming inevitable; as Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton put it, “It’s now time to think of the campaign for regime change in Iran.”

That is magical thinking. History has shown again and again that bombing a country turns its people against the attacker, not against their own regime, despite its deep unpopularity. Images already show Iranians demonstrating in the streets — not to oppose their government but to urge retaliation against Israel. And even if the regime were to be deposed, what then? For all the Iranian government’s faults, a bad government is preferable to the chaos of no government. Do we really want to turn Iran into a failed state, like Iraq or Libya after the United States attacked those countries?

Mr. Trump often touts his record during his first term of having started no new wars. That is a record worth turning into a legacy. He must resist pressure from Mr. Netanyahu and hawks at home to avoid tragic, irreparable self-harm.

by Rosemary Kelanic, NY Times | Read more:

Image: Middle East Images/Redux
[ed. Netanyahu is a warmonging, ethnic cleansing, civilian killing criminal with a large arsenal of lethal toys courtesy of the U.S. (over decades). He should've been reigned in a long time ago if there were any spines left in Washington. Better late than never. It isn't antisemitic to reject a person, their politics, and their actions, regardless of religion or race, if what they're doing is dangerous and unconscionable. Sometimes assholes are just assholes. See also: Three angry old men who could get us all killed (Guardian).]

The Beauty Of Akira Kurosawa

Jackie Venson

 

The Burn Identity

Luxury white charcoal

Today I want to explore maybe Japan’s greatest invention. A luxury good that has remained luxurious, long after its creation. I’m talking about Binchotan charcoal.

Binchotan beginnings

If I was to tell you that this image above is this highly valued luxury good, I’m sure you would believe me. It may be a tough item to differentiate from almost any other burning item, particularly another charcoal bucket.

Binchotan is a very specific form of charcoal. Often known as white charcoal, this would actually be a good present if found in a Christmas stocking. Yes, it’s the world’s most expensive charcoal. This is not the same as the being the world’s smallest giant or other contradictory statements. This product is bespoke.

Made from Japanese Oak, normally Ubame, the process of creating binchotan is more drawn out than simply heating wood. It all goes back to old Bicchuya Chozaemon (備中屋長左衛門), now better known as Bincho (備長). Back in the 1600s, he discovered a secret. A way to make charcoal (normally black), as a white product.

His town of Tanabe, Wakayama became famous nationwide as the only place to find this product. As Bincho’s Tan (Japanese for coal), became even more popular, the surrounding cities and towns started adopting these methods/ stealing these secrets. Over centuries the methods of creating luxury coal have become more apparent and widespread. Yet the technical expertise and regional Ubame wood has meant that Wakayama still holds the title for where you want your best quality Binchotan. To be clear, it is still called binchotan even if it doesn’t comes from the Wakayama region of Japan, but you can look for sparkling charcoal elsewhere.

Burn Book

The following instructions for how to make this charcoal are based off a very detailed Japanese manufacturer on Youtube- found here for the full process in Japanese.

1. Find your tree.
This is easier said than done; the Ubame Oak grows in very hilly areas only, and in particular microclimates.

2. Cut the tree and bring wood to factory.
Again, easier said than done. The bringing of said tree is done by hand due to the aforementioned hilly terrain.

3. Into the kiln.
This is maybe the same said as done. The kiln is a specially made kiln that is very big and built for precise heating at a gradual pace. The hard part in this step is probably either sourcing or building a specific Binchotan kiln.

4. Light it on fire.
This is another difficult step which starts to make the high price seem downright reasonable. You first need to layer the wood properly so all of it is neat and consistently heated. Then also add in less dense wood to the kiln that burns quicker. Then time to seal it with brick, not before ensuring there are 4 tiny airflow/steam holes on the top and bottom. Then wait 9 hours.

5. Light it on fire again.
You previously just had burnt wood. Now you need to make charcoal. So a lower temperature heat, just burning for 6 or 7 days.

6 Seiren time
Step 5 got you the charcoal. Here is where the actual Binchotan technique comes in. This seems to be the most delicate step in a series of ever escalating delicate steps. The craftsmen will need to open up more holes to slowly increase the airflow. Yet the speed needs to be very carefully balanced, otherwise you just get dodgy charcoal and not Binchotan. Keep doing this 'until 1000 Celsius (i.e., only 24-48 hours for this step).

7. Cover it up
After all that, you need to keep your charcoal in a charcoal-y form. This means you can’t just be waiting for it to cool down and removing it (like most other charcoal manufacturing methods) since you’d be left with ash. Instead, you need to remove the Binchotan while it’s hot and cover it with sand and ash to keep the product at a gradual cool. After about 10 days, you’ll have your coal!

The Heat Is On

You may be forgiven in thinking that our old friend Bincho had spent too much time in the kiln, as this seems overly arduous for any amount of charcoal. Yet the demand has continued to grow ever since that fateful 17th Century day. To be honest, for most of its history, Binchotan was quietly burning along. Of course Japanese grillers, especially the yakitori and unagi restaurants, saw the benefits.

They saw the selling point of it basically being better across every metric you’d measure coal by. It burns hotter. Longer. Cleaner. While standard lump charcoal or briquettes last at most an hour or two, Binchotan is expected to burn 5 hours straight. Yet it is the even burning and smokeless heat that keeps the chefs coming back.

Not just coming back, but telling their friends.

The 2000s saw the chefs in those New York, London, and Paris restaurants that no one can afford, seeking authentic and pure Japanese materials in every aspect of cooking. They began importing Binchotan for their high-end robatayaki and yakitori grills. Binchotan found itself showing up in Michelin-starred kitchens, where chefs now treated it like a premium ingredient, not just a fuel source.

The chefs started boasting about them on their countless podcasts. Who talks about charcoal otherwise? That’s what makes Binchotan special. It transformed from a nearly invisible product to something chefs name-drop on menus.

by Leon, Hidden Japan |  Read more:
Image: Food and Wine

Taylor Rae

What Mr. Beast Teaches Us About The American Dream

There’s something uniquely captivating about peeking behind the curtain of a great mind. Whether it’s Beethoven’s notebooks, Steve Jobs’ keynote drafts, or a director’s storyboards, seeing how brilliance unfolds is a rare and privileged glimpse into the architecture of ambition.

So when a 36-page internal document from the world’s most successful YouTuber was leaked - a document detailing exactly how the Mr. Beast empire is built, video by video, click by click - it offered more than just production tips. It gave us a window into a new kind of creative success.

And what we saw wasn’t a burst of artistic genius or a singular vision - it was something else entirely. It reveals something crucial not just about social media, but about ambition, influencer culture, and the ever-evolving American Dream.

Let’s dive in.

What’s most striking about Mr. Beast’s success is how little creative freedom it has provided. Even as the undisputed YouTube King, the goal remains hyper-focused: “to make the best YouTube videos.” Mr. Beast demonstrates a monk-like dedication to this singular goal and has effectively dedicated half of his life to this aim. As he writes,

“I’m willing to count to one hundred thousand, bury myself alive, or walk a marathon in the world’s largest pairs of shoes if I must. I just want to do what makes me happy and ultimately the viewers happy. This channel is my baby and I've given up my life for it. I’m so emotionally connected to it that it’s sad lol. But this is the one thing I will never compromise on..” (pg. 25)

While this level of dedication is admirable, there’s also something a bit troubling. He has given up his life for it - and, most crucially, his autonomy. He’s locked into his audience and the platform they consume him on.

Thankfully for Mr. Beast, what the audience wants to see, apparently, are big cash giveaways, high-stakes competitions, and massive stunts. It could be worse. But what if their preferences change? If the content is merely a regurgitation of the audience's wants, it will forever remain tethered to their desires. Just like fellow YouTuber Nikocado Avocado, the audience is firmly in control.

It’s worth remarking how unique this pattern is in creative disciplines. In virtually any other field, once you’ve sufficiently “made it,” you can exert more creative conviction and take more risks. As we’ve seen in music, for example, success provides significant creative breathing room. When a musician wins a Grammy, their music begins to sound more unique and idiosyncratic, while those who are merely nominated tend to sound more like the masses.

The same does not appear to be true for Mr. Beast. The more success he accrues, the more he is required to dig deeper into what already works - refining, repeating, and amplifying the same formula rather than branching into new creative territory.

At the end of the day, perhaps it’s harsh to judge Mr. Beast by creative standards. His channels are incredibly valuable business assets, attracting hordes of cash, brand partnerships, and YouTube revenues. Like any good business, much of this revenue is reinvested back into the business - and, as well, into charities.

His show remains incredibly unique, most notably in terms of its extravagance. He’s given away private islands, staged a $456,000 real-life Squid Game, buried himself alive, offered strangers millions of dollars, and even bought an entire neighborhood for his employees. This exorbitance is itself an incredible asset, serving as a financial moat: he’s one of the few creators who can afford a big budget, setting him apart from his more budget-constrained peers. Mr. Beast won’t be outworked. And - unless a tech billionaire or a Saudi prince suddenly wants to become a YouTube star - he also won’t be outspent.

All in all, this investment has paid massive dividends. YouTube is far and away the greatest asset of Mr. Beast Productions, and it’s optimized accordingly. In looking behind the curtain of the most successful YouTube creator of all time, what did we expect to find?

As corny as it may sound, perhaps there was a hope that it was about something much more. That, maybe in addition to all of the analytics and feedback, there was some semblance of an unwavering, idiosyncratic creative vision that drove everything forward.

After all, for millions around the world, the life of a social media influencer represents a kind of American Dream—the hope of upward mobility. And like the American Dream, there’s a certain faith - well placed or not - in the meritocracy of that pursuit. There’s a belief at the core of this pursuit that if you’re creative enough and work hard enough at honing your craft, you can cultivate a following and harness that influence for dramatic economic gain.

What we see behind the curtain is, frankly, sad. The greatest driver of success isn’t the triumph of idiosyncratic creativity, but a dedication to mastering a platform. It’s not about boldness and innovation, but about adapting to algorithmic signal. It’s about giving in, fully and completely, to being captured by one’s audience. 

by Matt Johnson, PhD, Neuroscience Of |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. Leaked document here and here. See also: Is MrBeast for Real? Inside the Outrageous World of YouTube’s Cash-Happy Stunt King (Rolling Stone).]

You're a Bunch of Cowards

Who is scared of who? (Photo: Getty)

Much has been made of an alleged “crisis of masculinity” among America’s young men....

I don’t know about all of that. What I do know is that if you are looking for negative role models for masculine virtue, there is an easy way to find them. They are employed by ICE. They are employed by the Department of Homeland Security. They are employed by the sprawling and unaccountable security state, and right now, they are out on the streets of our cities, snatching up mothers and infiltrating elementary schools. There is much to be said about the political processes that deployed these men, and the chain of socioeconomic failures that placed our nation in the position we find ourselves. But there is another important thing to be said directly to the men who go to work every day and don the tactical vests and facemasks and act like the willing gestapo agents of our idiot political leader: You guys are fucking cowards.

Tough guy? No. Straight up fucking coward, man. Pathetic. Jesus. Have some self-respect.

The Wall Street Journal reported on a meeting last month where Stephen Miller summoned ICE’s leadership to a meeting where he demanded that federal agents lower their standards and “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,” outside of 7-11 or wherever. “‘Who here thinks they can do it?’ Miller said, asking for a show of hands.” The outcome of that demand can be seen in the ongoing terrorization of immigrants happening across the country.

Now, Stephen Miller is a little rat-faced Nazi bitch. Since his youth just about everyone around him has despised him because he has always been a miserable racist little shit whose evil heart is manifested in his detestable rodent-like visage. Knowing that, I like to imagine all those big, bad, ICE agents, manly men, so macho, shifting uncomfortably around a conference room table as they are harangued by that psychotic little bureaucrat, and then rushing out to kidnap working men from a Home Depot parking lot in order to demonstrate to their master, Stephen Bitch Ass Miller, how good they are at being America’s new gestapo.

“Oh, Mister Miller, sir! I put on 40 pounds of tactical gear and tackled a 55-year-old partially disabled day laborer! I prevented him from doing some drywall work and feeding his family, for you, sir! I yearn for your approval!”

Fucking clowns. Straight up clowns. All you guys lacked proper male role models or whatever. All you ICE agents wear shades and face masks because you huddle in deep fear of being seen. I’m quite sure you can hardly stand to look at yourselves in the mirror each morning before you set out to lick the feet of your racist paymasters. Change everything about your lives immediately or I promise that your self-loathing will consume you forever. Clowns.

Yesterday, I went to a union rally in Manhattan in support of David Huerta, the SEIU California president who was arrested while protesting against ICE in Los Angeles. There were hundreds of SEIU members there—32BJ building workers, 1199 hospital workers, everyone. They all came out and showed their faces. Who is more brave, do you think? The immigrant woman who works cleaning up office buildings who is willing to come out to a protest and hold a sign supporting a man who was arrested for opposing injustice? Or the six-foot-tall weightlifting ICE agent with a gun and a badge and the force of law behind him who is so scared of anyone knowing who he is that he has America’s worst Congressmen filing bills to make it a crime to reveal his identity?

More badass than a cop.

I laugh at the cowardly ICE agents. There’s a reason people are yelling at you, man. It’s because you’re being a fucking asshole. Do you know what would constitute bravery? Saying, “No, I am not going to carry out this grotesque and racist government assault on its citizens, because I know it is unjust.” That would be brave. Saying “no.” Putting on your bulletproof vest and breaking up families and shrugging and saying “just following orders” and hiding your face is the most weak-ass thing I can imagine. “I’d rather destroy the lives of entire families than have the fellas make fun of me. I’d rather tear mothers away from their children than get a regular job.” Go fuck yourself man. Because nobody cool is ever going to fuck you. That, I guarantee. Keep on dreaming.

It can be difficult to laugh at riot cops. But we should all try. Because they’re so fucking ridiculous. Hey, nice huge helmet and body armor and fake ass gun and shield to oppose a bunch of skater kids waving around flags. You all are the most terrified group of human beings in the United States of America. You all are the types of people who open carry handguns to go to Buffalo Wild Wings. You all need to stop getting your news from idiots on idiot websites. You all need to read some fucking books and gain a minimal sense of perspective. You all need to embrace the crushing realization that for your whole lives you have been afraid and confused and have embraced a misguided set of macho enticements that have seduced you into believing that manhood depends on looking like some sort of cartoon action figure when in fact it is this look that reveals to the world the deep inadequacy that haunts you every day.

You all need to quit your evil jobs and try to be nice to people and run away from this despicable thing you’re involved in as fast as possible because it is polluting your soul and I promise you that history will judge you harshly and your kids and grandkids will be ashamed that you were such an obvious moral failure, despite all that stuff they teach in school about how it was bad when other people in other places in history did exactly what you are doing now.

On one side of these protests you have women and children and grandmothers and teenagers and a skater kid who becomes a national icon by dancing around while you shoot at his feet. On the other side we have you and all your colleagues dressed up like a bunch of ridiculous fucking paramilitaries, as if you’re at war in Iraq instead of on a street in the middle of LA, shooting rubber bullets at people because they don’t want their neighbors deported, and because they believe in the First Amendment, and because, somewhere along the line, you made a bad choice in your life, and bought into the idea that this sort of thing makes you strong, badass, admirable, instead of admitting that it demonstrates to everyone with eyes that you are ignorant, weak, and cowardly. Too cowardly to say no when a bad person who doesn’t care about you asks to do evil things on their behalf. Real sad.

Twitchy, puffed up, goofy ass cops. No amount of guns and steroids and tear gas will ever make you cool. Fuck off, losers.

by Hamilton Nolan, How Things Work |  Read more:

Image: Bluesky; uncredited

[ed. I can't download the video, but definitely check out the skater kid mentioned above. It's like the Chinese guy with his shopping bag holding off those tanks. Truly awesome! See also: ‘L.A. Was Not on Fire’: Angelenos Speak on Trump’s ICE Raids and ‘Escalation’ (RS); and, ICE Barbie Went on Bungled Raid Storming Pregnant Mom’s Home (DB).]

Brian Wilson (June 20, 1942 – June 11, 2025)

See: The Surf Was Up; and, These Things I'll Be (Ross Barkan). Also: God Only Knows What We’d Be Without Brian Wilson (RS), and, of course Wikipedia.]

[ed. Thanks for all the good vibes]

via:

Wikipedia

via:

Deport Dishwashers or Solve Murders?

I understand being concerned about illegal immigration. I definitely understand being concerned about murder, rape, and robbery. What I don’t understand is being more concerned about the former than the latter.

Yet that’s exactly how the federal government allocates resources. The federal government spends far more on immigration enforcement than on preventing violent crime, terrorism, tax fraud or indeed all of these combined.

Moreover, if the BBB bill is passed the ratio will become even more extreme. (sere also here):

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that immigration enforcement is about going after murderers, rapists and robbers. It isn’t. Indeed, it’s the opposite. ICE’s “Operation At Large” for example has moved thousands of law enforcement personnel at Homeland Security, the FBI, DEA, and the U.S. Marshals away from investigating violent crime and towards immigration enforcement.

I’m not arguing against border enforcement or deporting illegal immigrants but rational people understand tradeoffs. Do we really want to spend billions to deport dishwashers from Oaxaca while rapes in Ohio committed by US citizens go under-investigated?

Almost half of the murders in the United States go unsolved (42.5% in 2023). 

by Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution |  Read more:
Images: CBO

[ed. Also - this book:]

The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book. Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand.

Boldly calling into question our most basic assumptions about American politics, Caplan contends that democracy fails precisely because it does what voters want. Through an analysis of Americans' voting behavior and opinions on a range of economic issues, he makes the convincing case that noneconomists suffer from four prevailing biases: they underestimate the wisdom of the market mechanism, distrust foreigners, undervalue the benefits of conserving labor, and pessimistically believe the economy is going from bad to worse. Caplan lays out several bold ways to make democratic government work better--for example, urging economic educators to focus on correcting popular misconceptions and recommending that democracies do less and let markets take up the slack.

The Myth of the Rational Voter takes an unflinching look at how people who vote under the influence of false beliefs ultimately end up with government that delivers lousy results.

-----

[ed. Finally, this irritating interview with a newly political tech bro: Fit to Rule (@jasmin):]

"Elon has left the Trump White House to pursue the full-time venture of Twitter canceling his former boss. Silicon Valley and MAGA conservatism were always an odd fit—tied more by who they hated than what they support.

I’m still fascinated and befuddled by what drove so many founders and investors to support Trump in 2024. Most of these folks are not deep Republican partisans or racist caricatures; many are even intelligent, well-intentioned, and politically engaged—yet voted in a way I consider deeply and destructively wrong.

I trawled my group chats for someone willing to have a candid conversation. This person is a founder, immigrant, and Bernie-to-Trump supporter. Below, we discuss “country club Democrats,” why founders see themselves in Trump, and why he turned on the current administration.

Tell me about your background.

I’m a startup founder. I’m originally from Chile, and grew up across Chile, the US, and France.

How would you describe your political orientation?

Heterodox is one way to put it.

My parents are the children of wealthy, left-leaning intellectuals. I discovered Marxism around 14, and that really opened my eyes. The idea of human dignity really mattered to me. When you read stories of the US factories and the meat producers, it’s fucking nuts.

Bernie announced his candidacy in 2015, when I was finishing high school in the US. He was the first politician who really touched me. I would cry at Bernie speeches. His theory of economics felt so true, about a class being left behind. The 2016 election was very unexciting at first because the polls were all Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton. It felt so trite and boring. Then Bernie announced, and I became a complete aficionado. I had a Bernie Instagram account. It was his authenticity.

My disillusionment with establishment Democrats started during that primary, because it felt rigged. You could see television actively lying about who Bernie was, using sound bites incorrectly, picking favorites. I never felt Hillary Clinton was elected. She was just appointed.

Anyway, Bernie loses. Trump is in the race at that point, and you get to the actual election. At that point, I'm basically a Trump supporter. I always think of politics as having a candidate of hope and a candidate of the status quo. I felt that Trump was the candidate of hope, weirdly enough.

Did going from Bernie to Trump feel like a dissonant thing to do?

No. It was like, fuck these people that stole the election from Bernie. They're not on our side. If you look at where Bernie versus Hillary stood in 2016, she was essentially a Republican in ways that were the worst of both worlds. She had the elitism of Democrats, and also all the bad neoliberal policies that Bernie fought against. The pitch was literally, "My name is Hillary Clinton." And it's like, "Says who?" Trump winning was the revenge of the Internet, in some ways.

Trump 1.0 was very much about immigration. You're an immigrant from Latin America. Was that weird?

No. I wasn't in the US for most of Trump 1.0, so it never came my way. I knew he delayed visas. I never took it as a big deal. My perception of Trump 1.0 was that the first year was really tumultuous, and the other three years were actually really good. (...)

Trump has this unpredictability, the willingness to do shit that maybe you shouldn't do. That worked with his foreign policy. He knows how to empire.