While I’ve been going through early extraterrestrial ideas like those of Ronald Bracewell I’ve run back into that most unpronounceable of stellar objects, Przybylski’s Star. This one is worth a return look and I was reminded of it by author and futurist John Michael Godier on his Event Horizonpodcast. I do few interviews but I’ve always admired John and Ross’s work on Event Horizon so much that I made an appearance last week. It was John who summoned up Przybylski’s Star as we moved into the broader topic of technosignatures.
Image: Antoni Przybylski in the early 1960’s. Credit: Mike Bessell (via Charles Cowley’s site).
David Kipping does a gallant job of pronouncing Przybylski in one of his Cool Worlds videos, and Wikipedia recommends pʂɨˈbɨlskʲi, which is itself a challenge. Try jebilskee, which is what University of Michigan astronomer Charles Cowley heard when he asked Przybylski himself how to say his name way back in 1964 (the reference is now offline, as Cowley unfortunately passed away in 2024). In any case, suppress the initial ‘p.’ I can’t resist reprinting an old pre-X Twitter post on the matter:
PRZYBYLSKI'S STAR (HD 101065) Blue dwarf with a peculiar spectrum showing an almost complete absence of vowels.
This star is more than a curiosity. As a matter of fact, if I were to declare the one most intriguing object in the technosignature hunt, it’s this one, although I’ll hasten to add that we’d need a lot more evidence before making that call. Przybylski’s Star is roughly 350 light years out in Centaurus, discovered in 1873 but gaining attention in 1961 when the Polish astronomer Antoni Przybylski examined its spectrum to discover that it didn’t fit our normal stellar classification scheme. I’ve seen it pegged as an F3-class star but also as an F0p, with the p standing for peculiar. If we go by effective temperature, we come up with early F-class, but its spectrum separates it from all else in that category.
It’s also referred to as an Ap star (this is Kipping’s preference), and whereas F0p is a designation based on temperature, Ap refers to stars larger and hotter than the Sun and possessed of intense magnetic fields and slow rotation rates. What to make of the star’s spectrum? It’s laced with oddball elements like europium, gadolinium, terbium and holmium. Moreover, while iron and nickel appear in low abundances, the stellar atmosphere shows the presence of short-lived ultra-heavy elements like actinium, plutonium, americium and einsteinium.
The latter were identified in 2008. Called actinides, these are elements with atomic numbers from 89 to 103 on the periodic table. They force the question of how radioactive elements with half-lives on the order of centuries or even decades could be there. How are these reactions being sustained on the surface of a star? The reference here is an important if strangely obscure one. The work of a Ukrainian team under V. F. Gopka, the paper is “Identification of absorption lines of short half-life actinides in the spectrum of Przybylski’s Star (HD 101065)” (citation below). David Kipping (on an earlier Event Horizon podcast) and Jason Wright (Penn State) have both mused on the lack of follow-up to it, even though the work seems solid and has implications in terms of technosignature searches.
We also have a 2017 paper by Vladimir Dzuba (University of New South Wales) that offers an interesting solution. The idea is that the short-lived actinides in Przybylski’s Star are the result of undiscovered superheavy elements (a theoretical ‘island of stability’ on the periodic table) which can survive for millions of years. In this model, it is the decay of these elements that produce lighter ‘daughter’ products that are found here, including such things as plutonium and uranium. A possible origin for such superheavy elements is a nearby supernova explosion whose shockwave would have fed this matter directly into the forming star.
Image: Przybylski’s star, image center. By Vizzualizer – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,
What we’ve seen in intervening years is discussion of whether the spectral data have simply been misinterpreted, or whether a nearby neutron star might be bombarding the atmosphere of Przybylski’s Star, but there is no observational evidence for such a companion. The island of stability idea has yet to be confirmed in the laboratory, although this work continues. I’ll also mention the star HD 25354, another ‘peculiar’ star, this one in Perseus, which is now being investigated. It contains unstable radioactive elements in its upper atmosphere.
So we have an ongoing mystery, one with tantalizing reminders of a 1980 paper from Daniel Whitmire and David Wright called “Nuclear waste spectrum as evidence of technological extraterrestrial civilizations.” Here the concept is using a star as a repository for radioactive waste. The authors homed in on A stars as being likely candidates. I suspect they were thinking about Sagan and Shklovskii in their book Intelligent Life in the Universe (Delta, 1968), where the authors speculate on the possibility of ‘salting’ a star to call attention to it, a kind of interstellar beacon. Look, a civilization is saying, there is intelligence near this star.
I mention Sagan and Shklovskii pointedly because while both are frequently fused into a single entity in later descriptions of their era, the duo had profound disagreements on a lot of things, especially the kind of SETI embodied in the Drake Equation. On the matter of ‘salting’ a star, it’s Sagan who references Shklovskii as well as a separate Drake paper on the concept, not claiming it for himself. From the book:
Drake and Shklovskii envision the dumping of a short-lived isotope – one which would not be ordinarily expected in the local stellar spectrum – into the atmosphere of the star. In any case, the material of the marker should be of a type that is difficult to explain, except as a result of intelligent activity…. Remarkably enough, the spectral lines of one short-lived isotope, technetium, have in fact been found in stellar spectra… This example illustrates one of the difficulties with such a marker announcement of the presence of a technical civilization. We must know a great deal more than we do about both normal and peculiar stellar spectra before we can reasonably conclude that the presence of an unusual atom in a stellar spectrum is a sign of extraterrestrial intelligence.
So could the spectrum of Przybylski’s Star actually be a technosignature? You can see how difficult this problem is considering the rarity of this kind of star. Even so, a look at The Catalog of Ap, HgMn, and Am Stars reveals over 8,000 ‘peculiar’ stars, ranging across the temperature scale. I dug into the catalog with AI to learn that Ap and hotter Bp stars are the largest subgrouping, both characterized by unusually strong magnetic fields. There is much work here for aspiring graduate students because we need to learn whether the actinides at Przybylski’s Star are simply a rare natural phenomena or a technical marker.
Przybylski’s original paper on the star is “HD 101065-a G0 Star with High Metal Content,,” Nature Vol. 189, Issue 4755 (1961) 739 (abstract). Jason Wright’s three-part essay on Przybylski’s Star is well worth your time. The paper identifying actinides in this star is Gopka et al., “Identification of absorption lines of short half-life actinides in the spectrum of Przybylski’s star (HD 101065),” Kinematics and Physics of Celestial Bodies Vol 24, Issue 2 (April 2008) 89-98 (abstract). The Whitmire and Wright paper is “Nuclear waste spectrum as evidence of technological extraterrestrial civilizations,” Icarus Vol. 42, Issue 1 (April 1980), 149-156 (abstract). Vladimir Dzuba’s paper is “Isotope Shift and Search for Metastable Superheavy Elements in Astrophysical Data,” Physical Review A 95 (30 June 2017), 062515 (abstract).
Welcome back to The Honest Broker interview series —also available on our new YouTube channel. You can also find it on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting platforms.
Today, I’m pleased to share my conversation with Ted Gioia.
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Ted needs no introduction here—The Honest Broker is his newsletter, after all. But I want to tell you a little bit about how Ted and I started this project.
I received a message on Substack last year, and when I saw it was from Ted, I assumed it was fake. But it turns out it was real, and Ted asked me if I wanted to get lunch. After talking for a few hours about books, Substack, and new media, Ted asked if I wanted to launch a podcast on The Honest Broker. His only rule: I needed to find the most interesting people as guests.
Well, this meant that eventually I had to interview Ted. We sat down to talk about media consolidation, building alternative institutions, and human creativity.
Below is a transcript of part of our conversation. For the full interview, check out the video at the top of the page.
I know you’ll enjoy this.
Ted Gioia (Photo by Ariana Gomez)
A CONVERSATION WITH TED GIOIA
JARED: Ted Gioia, thank you for joining me.
TED: Well, thank you for having me. This is something we’ve long awaited.
JARED: I want to start off with a big question. I think it’s fair to say that we’re living in a time of it institutional collapse. We had these prestige institutions that we used to rely on: The New York Times, The New Yorker, academia. And people could rely on them to vet new writers, vet ideas, and movements, and they just did a lot of credibility building for us. It took a lot of the work out of our hands. I think we just don’t have that same trust in those institutions anymore, and people don’t rely on them in the same way anymore. And things are increasingly more decentralized.
Now, part of me finds this really exciting because it means for people who operate outside of those systems—I think you and I would be two examples—it means there’s more opportunity. But it also raises the question of whether or not we need to start building new institutions.
TED: Well, there’s been a great promise that the internet would open up everything to us. All of a sudden, if I’m a writer, a musician, a visual artist, a videographer, all of a sudden, I could reach my audience directly with the internet. And we thought this was going to lead to an enormous blossoming of culture where everyone had this freedom and a thousand flowers blossomed.
But that hasn’t happened, really. And in fact, what you see is that the institutions have become more consolidated and stagnant over time.
Let me give you a few figures. Right now, most of the movies made come out of four Hollywood studios. They control it. Most of the movie distribution into the home comes from just four streaming platforms. In fact, in many instances, it’s the same company doing the movie-making as the streaming.
That was illegal until very recently. In 1948, the Supreme Court said that a movie studio could not own distribution. And that allowed a lot of freedom. After that, there was a real flourishing of indie movies in the United States and overseas. But now we’ve stagnated to the point where there are just four streaming platforms, four movie studios.
In music, it’s even worse. There are just three companies that control most of the hit songs. If you look at publishing, five companies control 80% of the books out there. It’s just ridiculous.
As these industries become more consolidated, they become more bureaucratic, they move more slowly, they’re more cautious. Yet we’re more dependent on them than ever before.
Now, we’re lucky that we still have an opportunity with a counterculture—and I’ll talk about that later. But I think the first thing you see is that the institutions have killed themselves by this consolidation, swallowing up their competitors, and creating this monolithic culture that’s not good for anybody.
JARED: And I think it creates a winner-takes-all mentality, where before you could have movies that did well, but they kind of fall within the middle of a normal distribution. And then you’d have some outliers that did really well, and then you’d have some that bombed. And I think that as things have become more decentralized, you have many more flops. They never get off the ground, or they can’t even get funding to begin with. And then you have these big winners that take everything and maybe that that group has grown a little bit, and then it’s the middle of the culture that seems like it’s been hurt the most by this.
I mean the band that sells well but isn’t going to go platinum. The writer who is a solid mid-lister but may never make the Times list. Someone who could make a living writing for magazines but couldn’t necessarily get 100,000 readers on their own newsletter. And that just seems like a less interesting culture because it doesn’t give that kind of room for experimentation or just that kind of pluralistic flourishing that would allow people to just have interesting ideas.
TED: I lived through much of the transition. I started out life writing books, and I was what they would call a midlist writer. That meant I wasn’t going to sell a million copies. I wasn’t going to be at the top of the New York Times bestseller list, but I would sell enough copies to be profitable. And so my first two books, you know, the expectation was I would sell 5,000 to 10,000 copies, and that would be fine.
My third book really broke out and then it sold hundreds of thousands of copies. But today I wouldn’t even get a chance to get to that third book because from the get-go now they don’t want to publish a book that doesn’t have the potential to do 50,000 to 100,000 right off the bat. This presents a tremendous obstacle to young writers and they don’t have a solution
It’s even worse in movies where the studios don’t want a movie that would be profitable but not have that blockbuster aspect to it—they want a movie that could have a billion dollars in revenue. If you go look at the best movies in the history of Hollywood, very few of them had those blockbuster numbers. But where would we be without the Citizen Kanes of this world and the smart indie films that are being squeezed out?
JARED: There used to be this saying in publishing that the best advertising for your first book was your second book. So it was thought, okay, your first book didn’t sell that well, but you get a second book. Maybe it’ll pick up eventually. If your third or fourth book sells fabulously well, people will say, " What else has this guy written?”
I bet your first book, after it sold a few thousand copies, sold a lot more after your third book sold 100,000 copies.
TED: You’re exactly right. The first book I wrote is called The Imperfect Art. I started writing that the day I got out of the philosophy program at Oxford. Eventually, it was very successful, but at first, no one wanted to touch this.
I had a prominent agent say, "This is not a real jazz book.” You should be a real music writer, not one of these phony music writers. But I did get it published. It sold a few thousand copies. But now, let’s fast-forward to 40 years later. I’ve gotten two translation deals for that book in the last 12 months. And the only reason that happens is that I used that as a stepping stone.
It’s one of the reasons I like Manfred Eicher at the ECM label. He has artists on that roster that he’s recorded for 30 or 40 years and have never had a hit record. But he believes in them. This is part of why his audience trusts the label, because they see his personal loyalty to what he believes in. We need more of that. But in fact, we get less of it.
The loyalty factor is gone. It’s very hard now to find a publisher or a record label that will be loyal to you for more than one project.
JARED: And it seems like consumers have changed their mindset in response to this. There were times in high school that if a new band came out from a label that I liked, I bought the CD. And even if I hadn’t heard it, because I’d say, I trust this label. I like what they do. I’ll keep buying it.
And people used to think about publishers like this too. Knopf used to run ads for Knopf, not just for their books. They would say, if you have the borzoi on the book, it’s a book worth buying. But Consumers don’t think about it like that anymore. Maybe they do in some parts of music, but do they do that with any of the big five in publishing?
TED: Well, they do it in the indie world, and we need to talk about that because in the indie world, you do have loyalty to a specific person, a specific name, a specific creative umbrella. But for example, in music, how can you? Is there anybody at Universal Music or Spotify who we might say is a person whose judgment I trust? No—and if you look at the interviews with them, once again, they just talk about financial metrics.
The whole corruption of aesthetic language is the application of financial jargon to artistic creativity. This is why instead of calling a work of art by its real name, we call it content. This is why we call a movie a brand franchise. This is why the head of the big AI music company talks about the productivity of being able to release 100 tracks in a week. These are all words—this jargon, this terminology—that come from the business world. It has no place in the creative world. But it’s become so pervasive that even artists begin to talk about their own work as content.
This is something that is only happening because we have replaced a tradition where you have a person who has values and applies those values. We’ve replaced that with a business/finance optimization mindset across the creative economy.
“You’re going to start having private equity roll-ups on Substack…..People have no idea what’s coming down the pike.”
JARED: But there are the indies. There is a Texas-based publisher that I like a lot called Deep Vellum. They publish a lot of very experimental literary work. They have a sub-imprint called Dalkey Archive that reprints classic works, a lot of modernist stuff that’s fallen out of print. They just reprinted Gass’s The Tunnel. which was out of print for God knows how long. I actually I donate money to them every month, and they send me a book, and I would only do that because I trust their taste.
TED: And it does exist, but you have to seek it out. Where does the counterculture exist now? It’s indie presses like you mentioned. I think the indie culture operates on Substack. The indie culture operates on YouTube—which is curious because YouTube is owned by Alphabet. But still it’s become a platform where indie people can speak their mind. You find this on Bandcamp, where bands come out with their own album and work directly with their fans.
There is a counterculture out there, but it’s struggling now because it is starved of cash. The media often operates on advertising, but two companies control 60% of the ad money online. It’s Alphabet and Meta. So basically, two companies control that.
The other way is to get your name out through social media. But two billionaires control social media. It’s the same consolidation on the institutional side that we saw on the creative side. I really think there are about 50 people who control the culture now, which is frightening.
Go back a generation. Tom Wolfe made an amazing claim. He said the art world is controlled by 3,000 people. Now what did he mean by that? Well, he’s talking about painters, sculptors, and he says that these 3,000 people decide who’s hot and who’s not. Now 3,000 people, that didn’t seem like much, but that would be great compared to what we have now.
JARED: And we see this even on places like YouTube, where big channels are getting bought by private equity. And I think, inevitably, they kind of get turned into content farms.
I actually received an email a few days ago asking if I would audition to be the host of a spinoff channel of one of these channels, which had been bought by a private equity firm. I’m not going to do this. These channels became their own content engines, but you have to industrialize the production process. These creators made a formula that worked for them, but I know some of the channels that have been bought, and they’ve become worse because they get standardized There’s no authenticity to it anymore.
I wouldn’t be shocked if eventually you saw people buying newsletters on Substack.
TED: I fully expect that. Two years ago, I said you’re going to start having private equity roll-ups on Substack. That will inevitably come to all these channels, to YouTube channels, Substack—that’s going to really take off. People have no idea what’s coming down the pike.
Now, what does that mean for us? Well, for culture, that’s bad news.
JARED: What’s the response to this? Clearly, there are real problems. Do we just sort of remain fiercely independent and say we can’t be bought, or do we try to build competing institutions?
I think tastemaking is a real role in the culture, without those independent tastemakers, you just are kind of ceding all the ground to corporate control. What’s the positive vision that kind of comes with all the doom and gloom?
TED: Well, if you go back in the late 1950s, there was a debate in England. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It was called the Two Cultures Debate, and the two protagonists were C.P. Snow, who was a novelist who had become like a civil servant and a quasi-technocrat and F.R. Leavis, the literary critic. And they debated the two cultures—in which one culture was scientific culture and the other one was humanities. Which one was more important? Did you need both?
I would say we need a similar debate now, but the two cultures are different now. There’s the institutional culture, and then there is the alternative culture. Unless you find some way of mobilizing an audience for them, we’re going to be in deep trouble. So, a lot of what I do on Substack is serving as an advocate for the counterculture. I serve as an advocate for the indie creator. I am always promoting others’ work.
I think the way it has to work is we need to create parallel institutions. I think we’re going to need to support these parallel institutions, and there’s going to be a parallel culture.
“We have monopolies and cartels, and what we need to be is trust-busters….We’ve got to create alternative platforms so that creative people can reach their audience.”
So there are some things we still need to do. For example, look at all the awards and prizes given out in culture—all of them go to the institutional people. This is one of the things I said when I first met the people running Substack. I said you’ve got great writers here, you’ve got great creativity, but you need to get the kind of credibility that comes with awards, and you should do awards every year for indie writers and indie music—because we need to have that institutional support for what we do.
I saw a figure the other day, it was horrifying. It said that if you look at all the big books that have won prizes in this century, they were represented by just 25 literary agents. That’s what you call a cartel! We have monopolies and cartels, and what we need to be is trust-busters. We’ve got to break up the monopolies. We’ve got to create alternative platforms so that creative people can reach their audience. Because the audience is hungry for this.
JARED: There are two paths that come to mind. They’re very different, but maybe they’re mutually supportive. One is just to give people money. You know, there’s a writer who can’t quit his day job so he can’t finish his novel, but you know he’s great. Give him money. There’s a painter who needs more time to paint. Give her money.
The other option is to start building things like more publishers. I mean, I have a fairly simplistic view of the economy, maybe, but my thought is that competition is good. I’ve talked to you about this before, but I have a pipe dream of starting a publishing company one day, and the idea is to find writers I really care about. That’s harder than giving grants, because it requires logistics and overhead and salaries, but I think you need that too. You need those smaller institutions that can serve as disruptors.
TED: Let me make a prediction. I think you are going to find influencers becoming their own institutions. The last time I saw Rick Beato I said, “Hey Rick, we are very disappointed in what the record labels are doing. That means you’ve got to be the next record label.” It sounds like a strange concept, but it really isn’t, because Rick Beato has millions of followers. Why? Because people trust Rick Beato. They trust him more than they trust Universal Music or Sony.
This is the opportunity. The influencer is who people trust. And then the next stage will be the influencers turn into institutions of their own.
JARED: I would want it to be that when I retired or died, someone else was running it, and it was its own institution that could continue right. Knopf was a great publisher even after Alfred Knopf died. You you want institutions that can continue, that can survive any one person. That’s my hope.
TED: And that will happen. I think we are still five years away from that. But the trend I see is, first of all, the mainstream culture will continue to die and stagnate and lose the trust of the audience. That’s already almost played out. They will not be able to turn around their businesses. They really won’t, because they’re so bureaucratic in a consolidated industry.
So the next stage is you’re going to have an alternative creative economy, and you’ll have alternative platforms. These will start as influencers, as individuals. Then the individuals will spin off businesses, and the businesses will survive. And this will be the breath of fresh air we need. What people like you and I want to do is to accelerate that process.
JARED: We talk about trying to build things outside of the clutches of the billionaires and all the conglomerates. But I’m a YouTuber, and I write on Substack. You’ve got a new sort of phase in your career when you started writing on Substack. So we, to some extent, operate within these systems. I’m just curious how you think about that relationship.
TED: Well, Substack, like any platform, is owned by investors, and that always poses a risk because the investors may have completely different goals than you and I have as creative people. And so this is something we need to take seriously, but at least with Substack, we have protections. The first and foremost one is I control all my intellectual property.
But probably our best safeguard is that Substack staked itself out from its early days onward as a supporter of writers and creative people like us. If it starts jerking us around, we leave. So we don’t have any complete and full protection with Substack. But to my mind, this is a gamble I’m willing to take. What I try to do is operate within the Substack system and be a positive influence inside it.
And so far, Substack has allayed my concerns, and they have rewarded my trust. But this is an issue. And whenever you’re involved in any sort of institutional setting, you always have to ask yourself, "Am I aligned with their values? Are their values aligned with mine?”
One of the good things about any indie culture is that in a thriving indie culture, there are thousands of voices. There are thousands of alternative newspapers. There are indie radio stations. In a thriving indie culture, no one has so much power that they can corrupt things. And that’s one of the reasons why we need a widespread counterculture. And even Substack, Bandcamp, Patreon, they aren’t enough. We need more indie institutions.
JARED: And when you started growing on Substack, it seemed like you broke a big rule. When I talk to publishers, they want to place you in a really narrow niche. You write about X and Y, the intersection, something like that. They want to be able to label you really clearly. And if you sell them one book, and then maybe you want to talk about writing another book, they want to know if it is the same sort of book. And I think you see this a lot with people who have successful debuts, especially in nonfiction, and their second book should just have the same title with a 2 at the end. They never sell as well, but publishers seem to push them in that direction. But when I look at your Substack, I see that you write about everything.
TED: For a long time, editors only wanted me to write about jazz. But in fact, what I found after I launched on Substack is that my articles on other subjects actually have reached a larger audience than my jazz articles.
I think, in general, society pushes everybody into tight pigeonholes. You have the person at the factory that just makes part of a widget every day. You have all sorts of talented people who are told to do the same thing over and over again. But when you give a talented person the opportunity to go outside this narrow pigeonhole, they will pleasantly surprise you. So I’ve taken that to heart myself—and I’ve been rewarded for that.
I decided early on that the most scarce thing in media was trust. And that if I could earn the trust of my reader, I would be rewarded, and they would be rewarded. So that was the turning point for me. And I think other writers minimize the importance of this. If you are not earning the trust of your reader you’re creating a problem for yourself.
But there was a second thing I did, and this almost happened naturally, but it proved to be very important. Throughout my career I’ve changed my prose style for every book, and if you look at my various books you’ll see the way I construct sentences and paragraphs changes over time. When I joined Substack, I decided I needed a new way to write for Substack. And what I decided, I think, proved decisive. I decided I would write the way I talk in conversation.
As you know, when we sit down and talk over a meal, we speak very candidly. We speak very frankly. It sounds a lot like what we’re doing right now, too, because we’re very frank here. But that’s what makes a personal conversation so interesting. So, I decided I would write the way I speak to a trusted friend in conversation. I would do that with my Substack. It’s conversational—and it’s fitting for a counterculture or an alternative culture or indie culture to have that conversational vibe.
JARED: How do you think that’s going to translate to when, say, people who blow up on Substack want to write books?
TED: I’ve asked myself this question because I’m toying with the idea of going back and writing books again. And I ask myself: Do I write the same way for a book as I do on Substack? And my feeling right now is no. My thought is that if I write another book, once again, I will reinvent myself for the nature of the book. My style as a writer must adapt. So if I go back to writing books, I will probably change my style and it’ll be less conversational.
But there’s also an argument you could make that the next phase in writing books will be more conversational books. I take that possibility seriously.
JARED: I saw a phrase that was sort of levied against a few recent books that have come out from writers who have gotten kind of big on Substack, and they called them ‘Substack books.’ This was meant sort of pejoratively to say that Substack is really good for developing an idea across maybe 3,000 words, but it’s not lending itself to sustaining an idea across 50,000 or 60,000 words, and that some people, as they’re making the leap from writing essays on Substack to writing a book, tend to group Substack posts thematically into a book.
TED: I think that’s true, but you know I blame the publishers for that. As you know, I made a decision five years ago to put all my energy into Substack. During that period, I’ve turned down every freelance inquiry unless it allowed me to publish what I wrote on Substack. And so I’ve turned down all sorts of book opportunities. But I continue to hear every few weeks from some editor at some publishing house, and the query I get is almost always the same. What they say is, “Ted, I saw this article you wrote last week. Could you turn that article into a book?”
I tell them that’s not a good idea because there’s going to be a lot of padding. You can’t do a book that way.
What you find in publishing now for these Substack books is the editors are doing exactly what I said. They find some Substack writer and say turn an article into a book, and you get a book out there that doesn’t work very well. The problem there, though, is not that the Substack writer doesn’t have talent; it’s that this is how editors operate in the current day.
They have become so cautious. And also once again it’s the intrusion of financial metrics.
JARED: I have a book coming out next year, and it’s a very slow process, but I also had a lot of time to sit with my ideas and that was so helpful. That book is so much better than I thought it was originally going to be, and I hope other people agree. I wrote a proposal, I started working on is, I worked with an editor, and then I thought I’d finished it, but we edited it again for three more months, and it became much better in those three months. There was real value in being able to be slow. And that’s my big worry if we go all in on new media. Sometimes art requires that time. And that’s the one thing I don’t feel when I’m producing stuff for the internet.
TED: Some projects require time, absolutely. But we need to reclaim the publishing industry—the publishing industry and the slow process of making a book. We can’t let that go away, because as you’ve pointed out, sometimes you need to have someone support you for three, four, five years to make it. We need to reclaim publishing with real diversity and a real, broader net. And until we do that, we’re going to be in bad shape.
I would like to see Substack get involved in publishing books, for example. You know, that might be a way to do that. I think with print-on-demand now, you could do publishing without a huge amount of overhead. And so that might be the next step.
JARED: Do you have big projects that you want to take more time with in the future?
TED: I always have more ideas than I can pursue. But yeah, I could see myself once again going back and spending years on a project or even going into fiction. I’ve written a lot of unpublished fiction, and it would be nice to be able to turn to that.
JARED: Let me ask you about something different. I’m noticing a recurring phenomenon that when a new band pops up, they’re marketed as sounding like a band from twenty years go. Do you see this too in music? Is there more of an emphasis for a new act to say, " Oh, we’re recreating this old thing” rather than making something new?
TED: Once again, I blame the institutions, not the artists. The institutions have created very hardened genre definitions. So if I come out with a country song that sounds different from the other country songs, it won’t get on the radio. It won’t get on the playlist. That’s why if I listen to country radio now, the songs sound the same as they did 10, 20 years ago. If I listen to the jazz radio station, I know that they prefer playing jazz that sounds a certain way.
JARED: I think it’s helpful to remember that ‘genre’ is a marketing term. But if you go in thinking, " Oh, I’m going to play this genre,” you’ve already started by putting yourself in a marketing box before you’ve gotten to the creative part.
TED: The most creative music now is happening on the margins of the genres. As you know, I listen to new music every day, and I take notes. I write a brief description of what kind of album it is. What I find is that often with the best albums, I can’t come up with the words. This person is doing something that doesn’t fit my narrow categories. Now, for me, that’s a great thing. This is mind-expanding, but for the music industry, it’s terrible.
TED: That was a term I started using as a joke. I looked at the Romantic movement that emerged around 1800. It was a reaction to the industrial revolution, to the tech revolution of its time—to this intense rationalism. This was the age of enlightenment, where everything was supposed to be decided by human reason, so you had technology-intense rationalization and urbanization. And all of a sudden a number of artists said “We don’t want this. We want human feeling.”
So, I made a joke saying with technology so dominant and manipulative right now, we might need a New Romanticism. I just said that as a quip, and then over the next few weeks, I started thinking about it. and I said, “You know, this is actually true! This is what we need.” And I know that when I mentioned this, I got a favorable response.
But in terms of actually getting momentum behind the New Romanticism, we’re still in the very early days…..I think it is a broader indication of the direction we’re moving in.
JARED: Ted, we always end by asking for a book recommendation for the audience. Do you have anything for us?
TED: I’m going to return to David Foster Wallace, who’s had a very strong impact on me. In fact, it’s surprising because most of my influences that shaped my creative work came when I was very young. It’s very unusual after I reached middle age for me to find an author who would change how I view my vocation. But David Foster Wallace was one of them because of his focus on compassion, kindness, and also showing that you can still be very creative, intensely creative without abandoning those human virtues.
So I want to turn to a book of his that’s not very well known, but really is a good starting point for anyone who wants to read him. It’s a short novel called Something to Do With Paying Attention. This was part of the manuscripts he left at his suicide in 2008. And it’s a story that I often recommend to people, especially young people. I’ve given out this book as gifts. And it tells the story of a young man who’s lost. And he’s lost in very typical ways for our contemporary society.
He suffers from screen addiction. He’s struggling to find a purpose in life. He’s got depression. He’s trying to find his place in the job market. He describes himself as a wastoid—he just watches TV all day. And then he finds deliverance from this. He finds a purpose and meaning in his life, and it comes from a totally unexpected direction.
It’s a charming story, it’s a funny story, it’s a touching story, it’s a beautiful story—and in just 150 pages.
Justin Weinberg at Daily Nous riffs off my post, Ideas Behind Their Time, to ask for philosophical examples. He nominates Gettier problems–i.e. counterexamples to the idea that knowledge is simply “justified true belief” as a possibility. The classic Gettier paper is from 1963. Wikipedia notes that the Indian philosopher Dharmottara has some clear examples c770 AD but as an element within the Western tradition the idea does seem behind its time.
I would nominate the following as philosophical ideas behind their time:
Hume’s is/ought distinction: the idea that you cannot derive a normative conclusion from factual premises.
Hume’s problem of induction: past regularities do not rationally guarantee future regularities.
Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance: the principles of justice should be derived without knowing one’s own particularities of class, race, gender and so forth. Seems obvious as an idea.
The Trolley Problem: similar ideas can be found earlier but the clean distinction between killing and let die or more generally omission and commission could have come much earlier. One might also think of the Prisoner’s Dilemma in this category of ideas or constructs that cleanly isolate an otherwise present but opaque idea.
The analytic/synthetic truths distinction: some things are true by definition, others are empirical. Obvious and it can be found before say Kant, yet a clear earlier statement would have resolved many issues and seems well within say Aristotle’s capability.
Aumann’s Agreement Theorem, technically, this requires Bayesian machinery and is difficult to formulate with precision, so I would not say the actual theorem was behind its time. But the underlying idea—that disagreement itself, not merely the arguments offered, should cause one to question and refine one’s own beliefs—could have been developed in Athens.
I’d also nominate a package of ideas like abolitionism, equal rights for women, and religious toleration–each of these is tendentious as examples yet the basic package seems fairly obvious as a category and yet late. (Perhaps if the veil of ignorance had been thought of earlier so would these ideas!) Note, that I am not arguing that abolitionism or equal rights for women could have happened much earlier only that these ideas were behind their time–the ideas were morally obvious even if not institutionally feasible.
Note also that I am not arguing that these ideas are all correct, only that they were philosophical ideas behind their time. More examples?
I’m speaking at the Potsdam Conference on National Cybersecurity at the Hasso Plattner Institut in Potsdam, Germany. The event runs June 24–25, 2026, and my talk will be the evening of June 24.
Last month, Anthropic made a remarkable announcement about its new model, Claude Mythos Preview: it was so good at finding security vulnerabilities in software that the company would not release it to the general public. Instead, it would only be available to a select group of companies to scan and fix their own software.
The announcement requires context—but it contained an essential truth.
While Anthropic’s model is really good at finding software vulnerabilities, so are other models. The UK’s AI Security Institute found that OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, already generally available, is comparable in capability. The company Aisle reproduced Anthropic’s published results with smaller, cheaper models.
At the same time, Anthropic’s refusal to publicly release its new model makes a virtue out of necessity. Mythos is very expensive to run, and the company doesn’t appear to have the resources for a general release. What better way to juice the company’s valuation than to hint at capabilities but not prove them, and then have othersparrot their claims?
Nonetheless, the truth is scary. Modern generative AI systems—not just Anthropic’s, but OpenAI’s and other, open-source models—are getting really good at finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in software. And that has important ramifications for cybersecurity: on both the offense and the defense.
Attackers will use these capabilities to find, and automatically hack, vulnerabilities in systems of all kinds. They will be able to break into critical systems around the world, sometimes to plant ransomware and make money, sometimes to steal data for espionage purposes, and sometimes to control systems in times of hostility. This will make the world a much more dangerous, and more volatile, place.
But at the same time, defenders will use these same capabilities to find, and then patch, many of those same systems. For example, Mozilla used Mythos to find 271 vulnerabilities in Firefox. Those vulnerabilities have been fixed, and will never again be available to attackers. In the future, AIs automatically finding and fixing vulnerabilities in all software will be a normal part of the development process, which will result in much more secure software.
Of course, it’s not that simple. We should expect a deluge of both attackers using newly found vulnerabilities to break into systems, and at the same time much more frequent software updates for every app and device we use. But lots of systems aren’t patchable, and many systems that are don’t get patched, meaning that many vulnerabilities will stick around. And it does seem that finding and exploiting is easier than finding and fixing. All of this points to a more dangerous short-term future. Organizations will need to adapt their security to this new reality.
But it’s the long term that we need to focus on. Mythos isn’t unique, but it’s more capable than many models that have come before. And it’s less capable than models that will come after. AIs are much better at writing software than they were just six months ago. There’s every reason to believe that they will continue to get better, which means that they will get better at writing more secure software. The endgame gives AI-enhanced defenders advantages over AI-enhanced attackers.
Even more interesting are the broader implications. The same searching, pattern-matching and reasoning capabilities that make these models so good at analyzing software almost certainly apply to similar systems. The tax code isn’t computer code, but it’s a series of algorithms with inputs and outputs. It has vulnerabilities; we call them tax loopholes. It has exploits; we call them tax avoidance strategies. And it has black hat hackers: attorneys and accountants.
Just as these models are finding hundreds of vulnerabilities in complex software systems, we should expect them to be equally effective at finding many new and undiscovered tax loopholes. I am confident that the major investment banks are working on this right now, in secret. They’ve fed AI the tax code of the US, or the UK, or maybe every industrialized country, and tasked the system with looking for money-saving strategies. How many tax loopholes will those AIs find? Ten? One hundred? One thousand? The Double Dutch Irish Sandwich is a tax loophole that involves multiple different tax jurisdictions. Can AIs find loopholes even more complex? We have no idea.
Sure, the AIs will come up with a bunch of tricks that won’t work, but that’s where those attorneys and accountants come in—to verify, and then justify, the loopholes. And then to market them to their wealthy clients.
As goes the tax code, so goes any other complex system of rules and strategies. These models could be tasked with finding loopholes in environmental rules, or food and safety rules—anywhere there are complex regulatory systems and powerful people who want to evade those rules.
The results will be much worse than insecure computers. Tax loopholes result in less revenue collected by governments, and regulatory loopholes allow the powerful to skirt the rules, both of which have all sorts of social ramifications. And while software vendors can patch their systems in days, it generally takes years for a country to amend its tax code. And that process is political, with lobbyists pressuring legislators not to patch. Just look at the carried interest loophole, a US tax dodge that has been exploited for decades. Various administrations have tried to close the vulnerability, but legislators just can’t seem to resist lobbyists long enough to patch it.
AI technologies are poised to remake much of society. Just as the industrial revolution gave humans the ability to consume calories outside of their bodies at scale, the AI revolution will give humans the ability to perform cognitive tasks outside of their bodies at scale. Our systems aren’t designed for that; they’re designed for more human paces of cognition. We’re seeing it right now in the deluge of software vulnerabilities that these models are finding and exploiting. And we will soon see it in a deluge of vulnerabilities in all sorts of other systems of rules. Adapting to this new reality will be hard, but we don’t have any choice.
"With organ shortages claiming thousands of lives annually, this session explores whether carefully designed market mechanisms can increase donation rates while maintaining ethical standards and preventing exploitation.
Panelists: - Alexander Capron, USC Law/Bioethics https://gould.usc.edu/faculty/profile/alexander-capron/
- (TBC) Gabriel Danovitch, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, https://www.uclahealth.org/providers/gabriel-danovitch
Which society is a better place to live: the U.S., or Europe? This is a very difficult question, for several reasons. For one thing, “Europe” can mean several different things — it can mean the richest northwest European countries like Sweden and the Netherlands, or it can include slightly poorer West European countries like Spain and France and the UK, or it can include East European countries that are still catching up after the fall of communism.
More fundamentally, though, the comparison is hard because life in the two countries is so different. If you like living in an urban apartment, strolling past picturesque old buildings to cute cafes, and taking a lot of vacation every year, then Europe is obviously for you. If you like living in a giant suburban house and having a bunch of friends drive over to barbecue and watch TV on your giant screen, then America is obviously the right pick. If you want to work 80 hour weeks building the future of AI, you should probably live in the U.S. If you want government health insurance and job security, I recommend Europe. There are also differences in politics and culture.
In general, my intuition is that all rich countries are about equally good places to live. One reason to believe this is that migration between rich countries is generally pretty small — it’s not that hard to move between Europe and the U.S., but not that many people do it. Here’s a map of the net migration difference between some European countries and the U.S., as a percent of each country’s population, for 2024:
This means that if you take the number of Germans living in America in 2024, and subtract the number of Americans living in Germany, that net migration number is 1.17% of Germany’s population. In other words, the amount of migration between Germany and America is pretty small.
One thing to notice here, though, is that you don’t see any negative numbers on this map. There aren’t any European countries where significantly more people move from America to Europe than the reverse (for Switzerland it’s about equal). That means that to the extent that people vote with their feet, they choose America over Europe, even if they don’t do so in large numbers.
That’s not a slam-dunk case that America is better off, of course. The people who have the money and skills to move between the U.S. and Europe are probably disproportionately highly paid professional workers (who can earn more in the U.S.), while working-class people who would like to take advantage of Europe’s urban safety and generous welfare states find it harder to move. If there were open borders between America and Europe, we might see a different pattern.
If you ask people how satisfied they are in life, America comes in around the middle of the West European pack:
So my general impression is that Europe and America are about equally good places to live, and it mostly comes down to your own personal taste and your own personal circumstances. I believe that’s about the best answer we’ll ever get.
But an easier question to answer is: Who is richer, America or Europe? This is the subject of a recent debate in the econ blogosphere. It started when Joseph Sternberg wrote a WSJ op-ed entitled “What Happens When Europeans Find Out How Poor They Are?”. Paul Krugman responded with a widely read post arguing that Europe is not in economic decline:
Krugman followed this up with a technical post about how to measure different countries’ growth over time. Pieter and Luis Garicano responded at length to Krugman:
In fact, as Krugman notes, there are two very different questions here:
Is the U.S. richer than Europe?
Has the U.S. been growing faster than Europe in recent years?
The answer to this first question is: Clearly, yes. America is considerably richer than most European countries, although a few top European countries are only a little bit poorer.
The answer to the second question is: Maybe. In terms of living standards, Europe has kept pace with America, remaining a bit behind. In terms of productivity, though, Europe has stagnated while America has grown strongly.
This isn’t a great result for Europe, to be honest. Rich countries should ideally converge to the same level of income; the fact that Europe has failed to catch up with America is a real failure, even if it isn’t falling further behind. And America’s far faster growth in output per hour should be sounding alarm bells.
And even more fundamentally, the main point of comparison for Europe shouldn’t be America — it should be China, which is bankrolling the new Russian imperial project and threatening to outcompete European industry. Given the threats Europe faces, it can no longer afford to be the shabby, comfortable aristocrat of the world economy.
When asked what secondary literature Nolan consulted in working on his epic magnum opus masterpiece, he said none. None save Benardete’s The Bow and the Lyre. “It was my muse” —Christopher Nolan,
This thing turned up at the studio the other day, ‘cause Kris, the sculptor who was upstairs but is now down (but now down-down) stairs, impulse bought it off ebay.
It’s a Delta WASP 40100, 3d clay printer, that reads GCODE, a.k.a. an X,Y,Z plotter that extrudes clay.
GCODE! GeeeeeeeeeCODE, specifically Marlin flavour for GCODE geeks.
I’ve been writing code that writes GCODE for the Bantam Tools ArtFrame for a while, including along the Z-axis. I also have a Drawing Machines 101 video sketched out all about working with polar co-ordinates; basically instead of thinking in x,y axis it’s working with rotation and distance from a central 0,0 point.
Circles, and spirals that go up, pretty much.
Something I really love is when artist share their knowledge about things they are both passionate about and have a deep understand of, so please say hello to Jonathan Keep who’s been making videos like this…
…and this…
And here’s a deep dive into the whole process.
Jonathan works with Blender a lot, but also a bit of Processing here and there.
Meanwhile I’m more comfortable working with code, but I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a lot of trial and error before I get even anything as fancy as an ashtray done.
Besides I still have a lot of videos to make and I’m trying not to get too sidetracked.
🔘 🔘 🔘 🔘 🔘
Speaking, kinda, of working in circles, Heft Gallery, has/had an exhibition called Circle - it was a project with a pretty tight deadline, and Adam asked some of your/my/our favourite artists to create a short series of artworks with the criteria a) a circle with a set inner and outer radius, b) based on some previously created work.
Pretty sure that second stipulation was to help speed things along by encouraging artist to reuse old code/resources rather than dive down new rabbit holes 🤔
I took my kaleidoscope code/logic which I’d been applying to pen plotter SVGs, and threw it at my FALLiNGWATER project, here’s three outputs.
The timing is such that the Heft Circle webpage didn’t exist when the last newsletter went out, and the 7-day window of the project being open means it closed a couple of days ago before this one. Although I’m pretty sure you can still buy one directly if you use the contact info at the bottom of the page, where you can also see all the circles created by the other artists.
I’m not really “doing exhibitions” at the moment as I already have too much on my plate, but this one was quick and fun.
Part of settling on the final 10 designs involved building myself a small webapp that allowed me to adjust various parameters of the kaleidoscope and the FALLiNGWATER source that got fed into it. At the last minute I threw in an “autoplay mode”, hit the screen-recorder and set it away over a lunch break, here’s an extract that’s kinda fun to watch for a short while and/or scrub through.
🍿 🍿 🍿 🍿 🍿
# DRAWING MACHINES 101
As this is clearly turning out to be a YouTube video heavy edition, since last newsletter I’ve managed to squeeze out one more tutorial video, this one about randomness.
In which I mention some of my favourite numbers between 0 and 0.9999999999
Spoiler, here’s some of them…
Also, a small quibble in the comments that “0.9999 is exactly equal to 1” - which while mathematically true, isn’t when it comes to rounding down in javascript 😁
I’m going to carry on recording the next video, about hidden line removal today and tomorrow, with an eye to getting that out next week, which should wrap up Module 2.
For, uh, professional reasons, I’m on LinkedIn, which is… a vibe, and I’m trying to make it more tolerable by following artists so I don’t have to read endless AI think-pieces. So please if you’re in any way sane and creative reach out or circle round or whatever the fuck is the correct LinkedIn thing: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielcatt/
Fair warning, I will probably be posting about archiving shit, preserving born-digital collections, digital death doulas and smuggling mysteriously vanishing Enola Gay photos out of Flickr (eventually one day).
Thanks for reading Drawing Machines & Notes from Art Studio Robots! This post is public so feel free to share it.
The attempt-to-grow-flowers-to-make-natural-ink project continues; in that I keep throwing seeds into cells and pots, then move them into bigger pots and (hopefully) eventually out into the garden. I haven’t yet made any ink, and honestly since the crocuses the other month there’s been very few crushable flowers.
However I am enjoying spending the first hour or so of the day preparing for the rest of the day in the greenhouse.
Part of the whole seeds/seedlings/plants thing is having to harden them off. They’ve started off nice and snug and coddled in the greenhouse, and they’re destined to end up outside exposed to the elements. To make the transition easier they get put out each day to experience the hard realities of being in the big bad world, and brought back in at night - to protect them from, dunno, frosts, bats and weasels, perhaps 🤷♂️
Except today, when it HAILED, SO MUCH!
So I’m hitting send on this and heading out there to see if they’ve survived. Wish me, and them, luck!! 🌱🍃
We examine the impact of California’s Senate Bill 328 (SB 328), the first statewide mandate requiring later school start times for middle and high schools, on adolescent sleep, mental health, and academic outcomes. Using difference-in-differences and eventstudy designs across five data sources, we find that SB 328 increased the share of students sleeping at least 8 hours per night by 13%, meeting the CDC-recommended minimum for this age group. Average mental health effects are imprecisely estimated, but boys show significant reductions in sadness, hopelessness, and suicidal ideation, and Hispanic students, who experienced the largest sleep-timing shifts, show parallel reductions in difficulty concentrating; together these patterns are consistent with a dose-response relationship between sleep improvement and mental well-being. Math and English scores in grade 8 improved by approximately 0.08–0.10 standard deviations, with the largest gains among Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students. A within-state analysis using teachers’ commute arrival times as a proxy for pre-policy school start times corroborates these findings, and shows academic gains accumulating over 2023–2025 alongside a suggestive decline in high school dropout rates. The absence of effects on chronic absenteeism rules out an attendance-driven mechanism, pointing instead to the direct cognitive benefits of aligning school schedules with adolescents’ biological rhythms.
Some parts of the planet are shown to brighten (gold) and some dim (purple) in an analysis of nearly a decade of nighttime lights data from NASA’s Black Marble product.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
Maps can show more than just where things are—they can also show how things change. New maps of artificial light reveal a planet that has been reshaping its nights through patterns of brightening and dimming.
The maps are based on a recent analysis of NASA’s Black Marble data, which found that instead of a gradual increase in artificial light at night over the course of nearly a decade, the patterns are much more nuanced. The analysis portrays a world flickering with industrial booms and busts, construction, and blackouts, as well as more gradual shifts, such as policy-driven retrofits.
NASA’s Black Marble product uses observations from the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) sensors on the Suomi-NPP, NOAA-20, and NOAA-21 satellites to produce records of nighttime lights at daily, monthly, and yearly time scales. The VIIRS day-night band detects nighttime light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe signals such as city lights, reflected moonlight, and auroras.
The map above shows changes in brightness across most of the inhabited world (between 60 degrees south and 70 degrees north). Yellow and gold areas are where there has been more brightening during the study period, from 2014 to 2022, and purple areas are where there has been more dimming.
The visualization below shows the same data for the Eastern Hemisphere. Note that this version includes some artistic touches, such as simulated sunlight and shadows, while the nighttime lights data overlaid on the globe remain grounded in the scientific analysis. The image was featured on the cover of Nature, where the study was published in April 2026.
An analysis of nearly a decade of nighttime lights data (2014-2022) from NASA’s Black Marble product revealed areas of brightening (gold) and dimming (purple) shown here across the Eastern Hemisphere.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
Overall, the researchers found that global radiance increased by 34 percent during the study period, but that surge masks large areas of dimming. Such “bidirectional changes” often happen side by side. In the U.S., for example, West Coast cities grew brighter as their populations increased, while much of the East Coast showed dimming, which the team attributed to the increased use of energy-efficient LEDs and broader economic restructuring.
The authors concluded that internationally, nighttime light surged in China and northern India along with urban development, while LEDs and energy conservation measures coincided with reduced light pollution in Paris and throughout France (a 33 percent dimming), the UK (22 percent dimming), and the Netherlands (21 percent dimming). European nights dimmed sharply in 2022 during a regional energy crisis that followed the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Large versions of the maps on this page can be downloaded below. Animations showing annual changes in nighttime lights throughout the study period are available from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using data from Li, T., et al. (2026). Story by Sally Younger adapted for Earth Observatory by Kathryn Hansen.
Noah Smith has a very good post on development economics, which contains the following list:
The field of economics doesn’t lack for big ideas about why countries go from poverty to riches. These include:
Institutions: The idea that property rights, legal frameworks, and other systems of human organization are long-lasting (“sticky”) and are crucial for development
Geography: The idea that countries’ natural endowments — navigable waterways, farmland, proximity to other regions, etc. — determine which place gets rich
Human capital: The idea that skills — reading, math, etc. — and population health determine national income
Industrialism: Various theories about how promotion of manufacturing, export-led growth, the “development state”, industrial policy, and so on are the key to rapid development
Culture: The idea that countries grow because of a culture of progress, innovation, and openness to technology
Coordination failure: The theory that countries naturally grow rich as long as they don’t have any significant roadblocks to growth, so that development happens when you remove all of the roadblocks at once
Flying geese theory: The idea that growth naturally happens in a sequential pattern as some countries luckily get rich first and then invest in poor countries until those countries catch up
Economic liberalism: The notion that all you really need to grow is free markets and openness to trade
State capacity: The theory that strong, efficient states are crucial for growth
National cohesion: The idea that a populace who see themselves as one unified people will support the public goods and other policies necessary for growth
That’s just a small sample of the huge diversity of big ideas out there.
That seems like a good list, and I suspect that many of those factors play an important role. But I’m a lot older than Smith and I have a slightly different perspective on the issue. I see a sort of “Great Forgetting”, a tendency to ignore the lessons of history.
In particular, a number of the cases cited in Smith’s, including South Korea and Poland, were once highly controversial. Now both countries are viewed as major success stories. Along with thinking about why they might have been successful (I could imagine many possible reasons), it seems to me that it is worth thinking about the following questions:
Why were people once so pessimistic about these two economies?
Why do the people who were pessimistic often not admit they were wrong?
What can we learn from the fact that these countries did far better than expected?
Back in the 1960s, South Korea was poorer than much of sub-Saharan Africa:
The country’s per capita income in the early 1960s was lower than those of Haiti, Ethiopia, and Yemen and about 40% below India’s. With such a low-level income, domestic savings were negligible.
It was widely assumed by experts that Korea would continue to be poor in the decades to come, due to overpopulation and a lack of natural resources. That seems like a pretty bad prediction, doesn’t it?
South Korea was criticized for adopting a policy of export-led growth in the 1960s. Many experts suggested that it should instead stick with its original “industrial policy” that focused on import substitution—the sort of policy used by Argentina (a vastly richer country at the time.) Fortunately, it did not:
Back in 1989, Poland was severely criticized for what was derisively called “shock therapy”, “disaster capitalism”, or “neoliberalism”. In the end, Poland ended up being far more successful than most former Soviet bloc nations that pursued a more gradual path of reform. It seems like there are lessons to be learned in this case, but I don’t recall ever seeing one of Poland’s critics admitting that they were wrong.
While Smith’s post is certainly perfectly fine in terms of the issues he does cover, I worry that his younger readers may not be aware of the history that I just outlined. And without knowing this history, it is difficult to get a full picture of the issues at stake.
Here’s Smith on South Korea:
Why did South Korea grow so much more than Bolivia from the 1960s through the 2010s? The divergence is certainly startling:
But this is an event that only happened once. There were a lot of differences between South Korea and Bolivia during this time, and it’s hard to know which ones were decisive. South Korea was much more highly educated than Bolivia in the 60s, despite its poverty. While Bolivia focused on selling its natural resources for as high a price as possible, South Korea focused on exporting manufactured goods and climbing up the value chain. Korea had a special relationship with the U.S. that provided it with a large, friendly, reliable market for its manufactured products, as well as government procurement contracts, aid, and technological assistance. Korea is ethnically homogeneous and has many centuries of history as a country with its own language; Bolivia is an ethnically diverse post-colonial state. Korea had a strong, professionalized bureaucracy; Bolivia, not so much. Korea has plenty of sea access; Bolivia is landlocked. Korea got to take advantage of Japanese know-how when its companies paid retired Japanese engineers to come teach their own workers; Bolivia had no such advantage. South Korea had to develop in order to ward off the military threat from North Korea; Bolivia had no such pressing imperative.
And so on. Depending on which Big Theory you believe, you could attribute Korea’s relative success to any combination of these natural advantages and policy choices. You could also tell a composite story — for example, in my own assessment of Poland’s economic miracle, I attributed the country’s breakout success to a combination of geography (proximity to the EU), institutions (changes made in order to be admitted to the EU), industrialism (promotion of manufactured exports and FDI), and flying geese (investment from Germany). I could have also mentioned high human capital, ethnolinguistic homogeneity, and the military threat from Russia. This makes for a good story — and you can call Poland’s success a “model” and try to emulate as much of it as you can — but it’s not a scientific explanation.
Smith is correct. Given the complexity of the situation, it is hard to know exactly why South Korea has been so successful. At the same time, we have lots of information from other sources that bears on this question. To begin with, let’s consider whether Bolivia is the best comparison country. Why not pick a country that shares some similarities with South Korea, to better isolate the effect of a few distinctive factors? After all, Bolivia and South Korea seem quite different along a wide range of dimensions.
If you compared South Korea with much poorer North Korea, you could rule out factors that also apply to the North such as culture, educational level, having a seaport, etc. Or you could compare South Korea to a place like Taiwan, which (unlike North Korea) has achieved similar economic success. In that case, we might be skeptical of any explanations for South Korea’s success that do not apply to Taiwan.
To be clear, I am not suggesting that these sorts of comparisons are definitive. Indeed, I suspect that education/IQ/culture does play an important role, despite the fact that the South Korea/North Korea comparison might suggest otherwise. I suspect that many factors play a role in economic development.
Despite the complexity of the problem, I feel like we know at least a bit more about South Korea’s success than implied by Smith’s discussion. For instance, Korea did poorly for about 12 years after the war, and then their economy took off like a rocket after the foreign trade sector was partially (not completely!) liberalized in the 1960s.
When I was young, the South Korean model was generally lumped in with places like Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong as a case of “export-led growth”. Even in the early 1970s, South Korea was still poorer than the North. There was no consensus that East Asia would do better than Latin America (or indeed that America would do better than the Soviet Union.)
I hate the term “export-led growth”, as on its face it would seem to imply that South Korea got rich by running trade surpluses. But exactly the opposite is true. During the three and a half decades of near double-digit growth (roughly 1963-97), Korea ran almost nonstop trade deficits, apart from a few years in the 1980s. This graph is from an excellent Doug Irwin paper that discusses the Korean reforms of 1964-65:
Notice how the trade deficit widened for a few years after 1965. I suppose it’s acceptable to call this “export led growth”—exports did rise—but in my view the term “trade-led growth” or an “open economy model” is more descriptive.
To be sure, this was a relative opening up—Korea maintained high import tariffs on many consumer goods for a considerable period. So, I’m not arguing that Korea had the sort of free trade regime that existed in places like Hong Kong. Nonetheless, if imports rise from 10% of GDP to over 30% of GDP in just a few years, it is hard to argue that it hasn’t moved at least somewhat in the direction of a more open economy.
I would argue that we do know quite a bit about South Korea’s success. Before making my pitch, however, I’d like to briefly discuss Malaysia, another success story highlighted by Smith in another excellent post (from 2023):
But anyway, South Korea is not the only big development success story that we’ve seen in recent decades. Two others that are almost as impressive are Poland and Malaysia, which are now on the cusp of developed-country status. Here’s a picture of how they stack up, with China thrown in as well:
According to the IMF, in 2026 Poland’s GDP per capita (in PPP terms) will exceed the levels of Japan, Spain and New Zealand. It is no longer a developing country.
Smith sees manufacturing success as something that Poland and Malaysia have in common. But he also noted an important difference from South Korea:
Unlike South Korea, they relied heavily on foreign direct investment.
Before addressing this issue, I’d like to briefly discuss demography. A 2019 LSE article suggests that Malaysia has an unusual ethic mix:
The largest ethnic group in the country is Bumiputera, a Malaysian term describing Malays and other indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia — it literally translates as son of the soil. In 2016, the population consists of approximately 68 per cent Bumiputera, 24 per cent Chinese, 7 per cent Indian, and 1 per cent others.
Throughout Southeast Asia, per capita income of a country is strongly correlated with the share of the population from a “Confucian” culture (basically Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese.)
In much of the developing world, economic power is largely concentrated in the hands of a “market-dominant” ethnic minority. The classic case is southeast Asia, where the Chinese, usually a tiny proportion of the population, enjoy an overwhelmingly dominant economic position. In Malaysia, the average Chinese household had 1.9 times as much wealth as the Bumiputera (Khalid 2007); in the Philippines, the Chinese account for 1 per cent of the population and well over half the wealth (Chua 2003). The same is true in varying degrees in Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam.
To be sure, mainland China, North Korea and Vietnam are all poorer than predicted by their ethnic make-up, but of course all three are ruled by a communist party.
Today, Confucian culture and a non-communist economic system is highly correlated with economic success—almost everywhere in the world. The reason that Malaysia is so revealing is that it has the largest share of ethnic Chinese of any country that is not majority Chinese. Both the fact that Malaysia is much richer than other Southeast Asian nations, and that fact that the Chinese residents of Malaysia are much richer than the (majority) Malay residents is quite significant.
So, we know at least two important things about South Korea:
It has the sort of Confucian culture that is relatively rich in any country not ruled by communists.
It was very poor in the early 1960s and grew rapidly after adopting a trade-oriented growth policy.
Of course one could cite many other reasons for Korea’s success, including land reform, foreign aid, being allied to the US, industrial policies, etc. But none of the other factors seem as powerful as the two points listed above. Lots of countries remain desperately poor despite large amounts of foreign aid. Lots of countries trade with the US and are political allies. Several other East Asian economies got even richer than Korea without many of the specific industrial policies cited by proponents of the “Korean model”.
And what exactly is the Korean model? It depends on who you ask. I’ve just said that I view it as Confucian culture plus avoiding communism plus trade-oriented development, but your mileage may vary. In his 2023 post, Smith correctly criticizes the view that South Korea’s success is necessarily due to policies that banned foreign direct investment:
The generally acknowledged development champion of the modern world is South Korea. Joe Studwell, the author of How Asia Works, uses Korea as his paradigmatic success story, as does the economist Ha-Joon Chang (who grew up there). Chang and Studwell’s ideas have forced mainstream economists to take another look at industrial policy — in particular, at the idea that poor countries should promote manufactured exports in order to raise their productivity levels. . . . Ha-Joon Chang and some other industrial policy fans think that FDI is not the basis of a sound development strategy. Chang has gone to great lengths to show that today’s rich countries — the U.S., Japan, and so on — restricted or even banned FDI during their early stages of development. But that doesn’t tell us why it’s bad, or even if it’s bad; the rich countries could have succeeded in spite of this policy.
Here’s how I think about “industrial policies” that restrict the free market. If we look at Maoist China and modern North Korea, we see countries where the government allowed almost no free market, with an economy mostly closed to the rest of the world. No one disputes that modern China and South Korea are vastly richer and more successful than Maoist China and North Korea. No one disputes that modern China and South Korea also allow a far greater role for the private sector and are far more open to international trade and investment.
Consider an economy that is highly dysfunctional due to regulations that restrict the private sector. Now ask yourself the following question: How likely is it that a country that got rich after removing many of those restrictions on the private sector, reducing the role of the state, achieved its success precisely because of the remaining restrictions? Is that the first place you’d look? Especially given that there are even richer places in the same part of the world that lack most of those those restrictions of trade and investment (i.e. Singapore and Hong Kong.) Isn’t it more likely that the economy became rich by removing the sort of barriers to wealth creation that hobbled the economies of Maoist China and modern North Korea?
And yet I frequently see people trying to “explain” China’s amazing success (and let’s not forget that the PRC’s residents remain the poorest ethnic Chinese on the planet) by pointing to the CCP’s remaining interventions in the economy! That’s a logical possibility, but I have yet to see a shred of evidence for this claim. After all, China’s growth has been fastest during precisely those periods when reforms allowed a much bigger role for the private sector and opened the economy to international trade and investment. And its private sector is far more efficient than its SOEs.
Poland’s shock therapy approach of 1989 was adopted by a post-communist government that relied heavily on the advice of Jeffrey Sachs. This is from a 1994 paper by Sachs:
As the economic advisor to the Solidarity movement in Poland in 1989, I urged Poland to undertake a rapid transition to “normal” capitalism, on the model of Western Europe. When the first post-Communist government in Poland came to power in August 1989, the new economic leader, Deputy Prime Minister Leszek Balcerowica, adopted a radical strategy for the rapid transformation of Poland to a market economy. This strategy has subsequently won the somewhat misleading sobriquet of “shock therapy.” The strategy has been widely debated since its inception in Poland on January 1, 1990. . . .
With five years of experience of economic reform in Eastern Europe, the strategy can be more clearly understood and evaluated. The strategy seems to be winning the test of time. Not only have the early “shock therapy” countries — especially Poland and the Czech Republic — outperformed most of the other countries, but the idea of radical, comprehensive transformation to a market economy is increasingly being adopted in countries that earlier shunned the strategy.
Unfortunately, even Sachs seems to have forgotten the lessons of shock therapy. In recent decades he has downplayed the role of bad governance in the developing world and instead suggested that massive foreign aid programs are the key to ending poverty. Here’s Wikipedia:
William Easterly, a professor of economics at New York University, reviewed The End of Poverty for the Washington Post, calling Sachs's poverty eradication plan "a sort of Great Leap Forward".[78] According to Easterly's cross-country statistical analysis in his book The White Man's Burden, from 1985 to 2006, "When we control both for initial poverty and for bad government, it is bad government that explains the slower growth. We cannot statistically discern any effect of initial poverty on subsequent growth once we control for bad government. This is still true if we limit the definition of bad government to corruption alone." Easterly deems the massive aid proposed by Sachs to be ineffective, as its effect will be hampered by bad governance and/or corruption.
By the late 1990s, it seemed like the debate over industrial policies was over. Trade-oriented growth in East Asia was clearly superior to import substitution in Latin America. Shock therapy was a success in Eastern Europe. And then after 2008, a sort of Great Forgetting began to take hold. All the lessons of history were forgotten. Americans elected a president who favored the Peronist model of crony capitalism and import substitution. The left began to re-embrace once discredited statist policies. And here we are . . .
The story of the 21st century is the Great Forgetting. We’ve forgotten the new Keynesian critique of activist fiscal policy. We’ve forgotten why nationalism is an evil ideology. We’ve forgotten the lessons of Orwell’s 1984. We’ve forgotten that statist economic policymaking is counterproductive. We’ve forgotten that integrity and competence are important attributes for a politician or media figure.
I’m about to start reading Hanania’s Kakistocracy. I hope he can explain to me why the world is getting dumber.
PS. If you believe that Argentina failed not because of its closed economy model, but rather due to its Latin American culture, check out a recent post by Constanza Mazzina:
Alberdi recognized that for a desert to become a nation, the law must act as a shield for property and a magnet for capital. He moved [Adam] Smith’s ideas from the realm of political economy to the realm of constitutional law, ensuring that the right to trade, produce, and possess was not a concession from the government, but a pre-existing right that the government was sworn to protect.
The synthesis of Smith’s theory and Alberdi’s law was the engine of the most rapid economic expansion in Argentina’s history. Between 1880 and 1914, Argentina became the world’s laboratory for Smith’s recipes. By following Smith’s advice on free trade and Alberdi’s constitutional guarantees, Argentina during this period achieved sustained annual growth rates that frequently exceeded 5 percent, a feat of consistency that was unmatched by almost any other Western economy at the time. This was not merely a quantitative increase in exports, but a qualitative leap in national standing. By the turn of the century, these institutional foundations had catapulted a fractured and impoverished territory into the ranks of the world’s ten wealthiest nations by GDP per capita, occasionally surpassing established powers like France, Germany, and even its former colonizer, Spain. This “Golden Age” was the empirical proof of Smith’s thesis: that the wealth of a nation is not a matter of luck or ancestral heritage, but the direct result of an institutional framework that protects the individual’s right to create, trade, and accumulate.
Antonio G. Di Benedetto, reporting for The Verge (gift link):
Google is announcing a new line of laptops coming in the fall
called Googlebooks. Details are sparse for now, as the
tease is just a small part of various Android announcements
during Google’s Android Show. But we do know this is a major
new initiative in the laptop space for Google, seemingly designed
to succeed Chromebooks with something more capable: a platform
running a long-rumored new operating system based on a fusion of
Android and ChromeOS.
While there are many outstanding questions to be answered about
Googlebooks, the biggest and most obvious ones are what will these
laptops look like, what chips will be in them, and what will they
cost? We’ve got none of that so far. Google only has some initial
renders of a mysterious Googlebook and the promise that it’s
working with Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo to make the first
models. There are no model names. No specs. Nada. Google isn’t
even saying if the laptop in its renders is made by a partner or a
tease of some first-party Pixel-like Googlebook to come or is just
a cool mockup.
This is so light on details that I was hesitant to even link to it yet. (Di Benedetto is skeptical as well.) But this caught my attention:
Googlebooks will have a Magic Pointer feature that offers
contextual suggestions whenever you shake your cursor and point it
at something on the screen. Google’s examples include setting up a
meeting by pointing at a date in an email or selecting images of
furniture and a living space to visualize them together.
Shaking your cursor over something is an interesting gesture. The only feature I’m aware of that uses that gesture is MacOS’s feature that makes your cursor bigger when you shake it, to help spot on the display. It seems a bit silly to me — why not just add the “Magic” features to a contextual menu? But, then again, here we are in 2026 and the standard gesture to invoke the Undo command on iOS is to shake your whole iPhone like a maraca.
Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg under the headline, “Apple-OpenAI Alliance Frays, Setting Up Possible Legal Fight”:
OpenAI lawyers are actively working with an outside legal firm on
a range of options that could be formally executed in the near
future, said the people, who asked not to be identified because
the deliberations are private. That could include sending the
iPhone maker a notice alleging breach of contract without
necessarily filing a full lawsuit at the outset, according to the
people. OpenAI enlisted the outside firm in recent days to help
with the situation.
OpenAI believed that the companies’ partnership, which wove
ChatGPT into Apple software, would coax more users into
subscribing to the chatbot. It also expected deeper integration
across more Apple apps and prime placement within the Siri
assistant.
But what’s curious about this story is that it doesn’t even hint at what grounds OpenAI would have for legal action. Expecting deeper integration is one thing. Being contractually obligated to provide deeper integration is another. I don’t see how you run this story, with sources entirely from OpenAI, without describing what terms of the contract OpenAI considers breached.
Some quotes from Gurman’s unnamed source:
“We have done everything from a product perspective,” said an
OpenAI executive who asked not to be identified. “They have not,
and worse, they haven’t even made an honest effort.” [...]
“When we heard about this opportunity, it sounded amazing: being
able to acquire a giant number of customers and have distribution
in such a big mobile ecosystem,” said the OpenAI executive. At the
time, though, Apple was unwilling to share exactly what the
product would be, the person said. “They basically said, ‘OpenAI
needs to take a leap of faith and trust us,’” the executive said,
adding that the deal ended up being a failure for the startup.
ChatGPT has been the #1 app in the App Store for most of the last two years. (It’s #2 today, behind Instagram’s new Instants app.) It’s impossible to say how much ChatGPT’s exclusive integration with Siri has helped with that, but it couldn’t have hurt.
Lastly, regarding the deal Apple and Google announced in January to power Apple’s Foundation Models with Google’s Gemini technology (but not Gemini the product), this brave anonymous OpenAI executive says Apple couldn’t break up with them because they wanted to break up with Apple first:
OpenAI wasn’t interested in working with Apple on the new models
because it felt burned by the initial relationship, according to
the people. “Apple has so much market power that they can dictate
terms,” the executive said. “We already took this leap of faith
with you, and it didn’t work out well.”
This would be easier to take at face value if they’d said it before the Apple-Google partnership was announced, not months later.
Trump Mobile CEO Pat O’Brien first confirmed the release plans to
USA Today, telling the outlet that all preorders will be
fulfilled within the next few weeks. The company later confirmed
the news on its social media accounts, using a very normal number
of exclamation marks in the process.
The T1 Phone has arrived!! Those who pre-ordered the T1 Phone
will be receiving an update email. Phones start shipping this
week!!!
In a press release the company added that demand for the phone had
been “incredibly high,” and that “orders are being fulfilled as
quickly as possible.” That means that for early buyers, the long
wait may nearly be over: it’s now been 11 months since the T1
Phone was announced.
The “Trump Mobile” indicia in the camera plateau is, of course, set in Arial.
The president, I’m sure, will soon switch to one of these from his iPhone.
Well, this is ridiculous. Klack is a $5 Mac utility by Henrik Ruscon that simulates mechanical keyboard clacking while you type. Absurd. My keyboard makes its own beautiful sounds as I type.
So of course I went to buy a copy immediately, because I love an absurd utility, that serves no purpose other than fun, crafted with exquisite attention to detail. But when I did, the Mac App Store informed me that a member of my family sharing group had already purchased it. (I presume that was my son, not my wife.)
Update: From a DF reader who shall remain nameless:
I bought Klack out of spite. One of my colleagues brought a
mechanical keyboard to use in an open office space and I figured
it’d be funny to troll him by setting my Mac system volume to 10 and
letting it rip.
Elizabeth Lopatto, reporting for The Verge (gift link):
Today was closing arguments in the Musk v. Altman trial, and I
almost feel bad writing about the unbelievable demolition derby I
just witnessed. Steven Molo, Musk’s lawyer, stumbled over his
words. He at one point called Greg Brockman — a co-defendant — Greg Altman. He erroneously claimed that Musk wasn’t asking for
money and had to be corrected by the judge. He made it clear we’ve
heard from many liars over the past few weeks, but offered little
evidence for Musk’s actual legal claims.
OpenAI’s lawyer, Sarah Eddy, countered this by simply arranging
the mountain of evidence that the company introduced in
chronological order. She didn’t spend time trying to pretend
anyone in this trial is especially reliable. She did, however, get
the zinger of the day, about Musk: “Even the mother of his
children can’t back his story.” William Savitt, who took the
defendant baton after her presentation, demonstrated the number of
times Musk “didn’t recall” some critical detail — and wondered
how a sophisticated businessman couldn’t understand or read a
four-page term sheet OpenAI had sent to him.
I found myself wondering, again, why we were all wasting our time
here. So let’s discuss the gossip, which is the real point of this
trial. How good was it? Here are my favorite nuggets.
After posting the previous item referencing dickpanels, a term I’ve been using since 2022, it occurred me that they could also be called dickovers (like popovers, but dickheaded). The latter sounds more clever, but I worry it’s less clear. I’m seldom so indecisive, so I’m running a Mastodon poll.
A new independent institute dedicated to making artificial
intelligence safer for children will beformally [sic] presented at the
Danish Parliament on Tuesday, with former European Commission
executive vice-president Margrethe Vestager among those co-hosting
the event.
The institute’s approach, as explained in a statement before the
launch, is “modelled on independent crash-test ratings” for cars.
The idea, ostensibly, is that just as consumers can check whether
a vehicle is safe before buying it, parents should be able to do
the same for the AI their children use.
Quite what a crash test looks like for a chatbot, the institute
does not yet say.
Hopefully their AI crash testing winds up more effective than the GDPR “cookie” initiative overseen by Vestager, which led to the nonsense that required me to click through this ridiculous full-window dickpanel just to read the story. (I love that the dickpanel is titled “We value your privacy” and then begins with the sentence, “With your agreement, we and our 399 partners use cookies or similar technologies to store, access, and process personal data like your visit on this website, IP addresses and cookie identifiers.” If Euronews did not value your privacy, they might have 400 partners.)
Geoffrey Fowler, on his blog, which, alas, he calls “a Substack”:
I’m joining the Youth AI Safety Institute as its first new
employee. It’s a research and testing organization launching today
under the umbrella of children’s nonprofit Common Sense
Media. Backed by a $20 million annual budget, the Institute
aims to do something that doesn’t really exist yet: systematically
test the AI products kids use, set safety standards, and publicly
hold tech companies accountable for meeting them. Think crash test
dummies for AI.
On the surface this sounds like a great idea, and Fowler does have a strong background in consumer-oriented product reviews.
My title is Head of Public Engagement — a kind of
editor-at-large. I’ll work alongside researchers, computer
scientists, pediatricians, clinical psychologists and educators
to investigate what happens when kids use AI products,
including chatbots, games, educational apps, furry AI
toys and whatever comes next. My job is to help turn
those findings into something families, educators, policymakers
and tech leaders can use.
“We safety-test kids’ PJs. Why not their AI?” says my new
colleague at Common Sense, Bruce Reed, who helped craft the Biden
White House’s groundbreaking 2023 AI Executive Order.
What exactly did Biden’s AI Executive Order accomplish? As far as I know, absolutely nothing.
Some tech power players, including Anthropic and the OpenAI
Foundation, have joined a consortium of foundations and private
donors funding the Institute’s work. They get no say over what we
publish. (And in my time at The Washington Post, I didn’t let
Jeff Bezos’ ownership of the newspaper affect my
criticismofAmazon.)
I’m not sure I’ve ever in my life used the phrase “Good luck with that” non-sarcastically, but in this case I mean it: good luck with that. I hope it works out, and someone has to pay the bills (and salaries). But color me skeptical about the foxes funding the henhouse inspectors.
The list of tech and financial industry titans joining the
commander-in-chief during his summit with China’s president Xi
Jinping includes Elon Musk, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, and Apple
CEO Tim Cook. [...]
Trump earlier confirmed a number of high-profile attendees in a
lengthy post on Truth Social, albeit referring to Cook as “Tim
Apple” in the process.
While he’s in such a jocular nickname-y mood, he should drop a reference to Winnie the Pooh into some of these posts on his blog.
Two weeks ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Louisiana v. Callais, gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Voting Rights Act provided that no state or local government could impose any conditions or procedures on voting that would result “in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”
In the past, the Supreme Court has recognized that the right to vote alone does not necessarily fulfill the aims of the law. It’s possible—even easy—to dilute the votes of Black Americans to make it impossible for them to elect a candidate they support. Sometimes, then, in order to guarantee Black representation in government, states have had to create districts that are made up primarily of Black Americans. The court has condoned this practice, upholding the idea that in such a case, the state has a compelling reason to draw districts according to race. In the past, the court saw the creation of majority-minority districts as a way to comply with the Voting Rights Act, guaranteeing that Black voters can elect the lawmakers they prefer.
But in 2024, a “non-Black” voter in Louisiana challenged a new majority-minority district drawn so that the state’s congressional delegation might include two Black legislators out of the six allocated to the state. Those districts were designed to remedy the fact that although one third of the people who live in Louisiana are Black, the state has never had a Black senator, and no congressional district other than the majority-Black district has elected a Black representative. The state hasn’t had a Black governor since Reconstruction.
On April 29, by a vote of 6–3, with the right-wing justices in the majority, the Supreme Court declared Louisiana’s construction of a majority-minority district unconstitutional under the Fifteenth Amendment. It was, they said, an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. And, as the court ruled in Rucho v. Common Cause in 2019, the federal courts have no business addressing partisan gerrymandering.
Immediately, Louisiana governor Jeff Landry declared a state of emergency to stop the state’s congressional primary election, which was already underway. His declaration has thrown the election into chaos as 45,000 ballots already cast won’t be counted, and the ballots already sent out will still include the race that Landry has now postponed.
Since then, other Republican-dominated states have rushed to pass mid-decade gerrymanders that will shut Democrats out of power.
Tennessee governor Bill Lee, a Republican, immediately called the Tennessee legislature into emergency special session to get rid of the state’s only Democratic member of Congress, the one representing Memphis. Sixty percent of the people who live in Memphis are Black. Once back in session, the Tennessee lawmakers repealed their own law that prohibited mid-decade redistricting. Then, on May 7, they cracked Memphis into three districts, diluting Black votes by swamping them with voters in white suburbs. The state had similarly cracked Nashville in 2022, flipping that seat, as well, from Democratic to Republican.
“Tennessee is a conservative state, and this map ensures that our congressional delegation reflects that,” Republican state senator John Stevens said. “This is about allowing Tennessee to maximize its partisan advantage.”
On May 8 the Virginia state supreme court voted along partisan lines to strike down a plan Virginia voters had approved to redraw the state’s congressional districts temporarily to favor Democrats as a way to counteract the Republicans’ partisan gerrymanders in Texas, Florida, Ohio, and other states.
The court majority argued that the redistricting measure was invalid because, as Amna Nawaz and Ali Schmitz of PBS explained, the Virginia constitution requires the General Assembly to pass a constitutional amendment twice: once before a legislative election and once after. This should guarantee two different sets of eyes on any such amendment by letting the people elect new lawmakers between the votes. But when the General Assembly passed the measure the first time, early voting was already underway. Thus, the court said, it was not “before” a scheduled election.
On May 11, a week before elections are due to start there, the Supreme Court cleared the way for Alabama to use a 2023 district map that lower courts ruled unconstitutional because it diluted Black voting by spreading Black voters across three districts, thus violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In an unsigned one-paragraph order, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower courts to reevaluate in light of the Callais decision.
On May 12, Tennessee House speaker Cameron Sexton removed all the House Democrats from standing committees, saying they had behaved in a way “aimed at disrupting the democratic and legislative processes” as they protested the mid-decade redistricting that broke up Tennessee’s only majority-Black, Democratic district. As Tennessee state representative Justin J. Pearson notes, this decree removed “every Black elected official in the state legislature from any committee we served on” and stripped “nearly 2 million Tennesseans from the representation they deserve” in the Tennessee state legislature.
On May 13—today—Georgia governor Brian Kemp called a special session of the Georgia General Assembly for June 17 to redraw Georgia’s congressional maps before the 2028 election. He said it was too late to change Georgia’s maps for 2026, but that the Callais decision requires Georgia to change its electoral maps.
Also today, Louisiana legislators advanced a congressional map eliminating one of the state’s two Black-majority districts. South Carolina governor Henry McMaster is expected to call for a special session to eliminate the state’s only Black-majority district and only Democratic seat, and Mississippi governor Tate Reeves said Mississippi lawmakers would eliminate the state’s only majority-Black district before 2028.
Jim Saksa of Democracy Docket assesses that redistricting could net Republicans between 16 and 18 seats in Congress in 2026, while the Democrats will likely pick up six, at least so far: five in California and one in Utah where a court demanded a redrawing of districts. Many of these redistricting plans are being challenged in the courts, and it remains possible that not all of them will flip, but G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers assesses that the Democrats will have to win congressional elections by 3–4 points in order to win a majority.
We are watching, in real time, the creation of a one-party state in the American South.
We have been here before.
The actual name of what we know as the Voting Rights Act is “AN ACT To enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other purposes.”
In the wake of the Civil War, Americans tried to create a new nation in which the law treated Black men and white men as equals. In 1865 they ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing enslavement except as punishment for crimes. In 1868 they adjusted the Constitution again, guaranteeing that anyone born or naturalized in the United States—except certain Indigenous Americans—was a citizen, opening up suffrage to Black men. In 1870, after Georgia legislators expelled their newly seated Black colleagues, Americans defended the right of Black men to vote by recognizing that right in the Constitution.
All three of those amendments—the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth—gave Congress the power to enforce them. In 1870, Congress established the Department of Justice to do just that. Reactionary white southerners had been using state laws, and the unwillingness of state judges and juries to protect Black Americans from white gangs and unscrupulous employers, to keep Black people subservient. White men organized as the Ku Klux Klan to terrorize Black men and to keep them and their white allies from voting to change that system. In 1870 the federal government stepped in to protect Black rights and prosecute members of the Ku Klux Klan.
With federal power now behind the Constitutional protection of equality, threatening jail for those who violated the law, white opponents of Black voting changed their argument against it.
In 1871 they began to say that they had no problem with Black men voting on racial grounds; their objection to Black voting was that Black men, just out of enslavement, were poor and uneducated. They were voting for lawmakers who promised them public services, like roads and schools, that could only be paid for with tax levies. Black voters, they said, were ushering in socialism.
Former Confederates declared it their duty to “redeem” the South from “Black rule,” by which they meant the Republicans and third parties in which white men and Black men worked together for policies that benefited workingmen, policies like education and workers’ protections. White Democrats argued that because such parties, even if overwhelmingly white, could win only with Black votes, they represented “Black rule.”
By 1880 the South was solidly Democratic, and it would remain so until the mid-1960s as white southern Democrats worked to silence the voices of Black Americans in the South to cement their own control over the region. In 1890, fourteen southern congressmen wrote a book to explain to their northern colleagues why Democrats had to control the South. Why the Solid South? or Reconstruction and Its Results insisted that Black voters who had supported the Republicans after the Civil War had perverted the government by using it to give themselves services paid for with white tax dollars.
Later that year, a new constitution in Mississippi started the process of making sure Black people could not vote by requiring educational tests, poll taxes, or a grandfather who had voted.
Eight years later, there was still enough Black voting in North Carolina and enough class solidarity with poor whites that voters in Wilmington elected a coalition government of Black Republicans and white Populists. White Democrats agreed that the coalition had won fairly, but about 2,000 of them nonetheless armed themselves to “reform” the city government. They issued a “White Declaration of Independence” and said they would “never again be ruled, by men of African origin.” It was time, they said, “for the intelligent citizens of this community owning 95% of the property and paying taxes in proportion, to end the rule by” Black men.
As they forced the elected officials out of office and took their places, the new Democratic mayor claimed “there was no intimidation used,” but as many as 300 African Americans died in the Wilmington coup. In the years to come, white Americans would continue to maintain control of politics through violence. They considered it a public duty to purge society of Black Americans, taking photographs of themselves at lynchings.
The region white Democrats ruled at the beginning of the twentieth century enforced white supremacy with extralegal violence. That racial domination helped white Americans swallow the South’s dramatic inequality. A few wealthy men dominated the region, while most people were poor: southerners had about half the average per capita income of the rest of the nation.
It was this world Congress addressed when, after more than 80 years in which state legislatures refused to acknowledge the Fifteenth Amendment, it passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, finally taking seriously the amendment’s charge to “enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
In their 2018 book How Democracies Die, political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt noted that democracies depend on members of each party recognizing the legitimacy of their partisan rivals. Even if they disagree with each other, each recognizes the others’ members as loyal to the nation and accepts their legitimacy as lawmakers if voters elect them. Democracy also depends on parties refusing to use the tools of government to destroy the ability of their partisan opponents to win elections.
A day after a Pennsylvania man was arrested for making a “hit list” of twenty Democratic legislators he called “communist infiltrators” and threatened to shoot, as President Trump calls Democrats “traitors” and as southern states destroy the ability of Black Democrats to elect representatives, the echoes of the past are deafening.
Although the parties have switched sides, the story is the same. Now, as then, a minority is disfranchising voters because it knows its ideas are unpopular and it cannot win on the merits of its policies. What it can do, though, is to deliver white supremacy to its followers in hopes that it will be enough to make them ignore the economic system that is leading them to ruin.
As Joyce White Vance noted tonight in Civil Discourse, Georgia Senate minority leader Harold Jones II reacted to the news of Georgia’s special session for redistricting by saying: “If Republicans ever used their power to help Georgians, they wouldn’t have to waste time and money redrawing the maps every few years to keep their majorities.
“June will be our third redistricting since 2021. Republicans need to undo their last gerrymander because it wasn’t good enough to keep their waffling political party in power. Most parties would try out some new ideas. Republicans choose to strip political power from Black people and undo the progress the South made in the last 60 years.
“Let’s sum it up for everybody. The biggest bloc of middle and working class voters are Black people. When Republicans strip Black people’s political power away, it doesn’t just strip one community of power. It strips political power from every single middle and working class person and hands it over to billionaires and big corporations. That’s what redistricting means for you.”
She says what’s on her mind. She tells you everything. There are no questions to dodge. No embarrassing moments to conceal. She’ll complain about the static on her shirt, yet refuse to dog her election opponent. Not because she’s being nice. “Just have no reason.”
A few weeks ago, Laura and I met for breakfast at Ted’s in Laguna Niguel, where we discussed her inspired run to join the Mission Viejo City Council—a MAGA-corroded entity that does its all to marginalize its single Democratic member and keep general business matters hush-hush.
I found Laura forthright, smart, engaging and sincere. You can visit her website here, and please tell your friends in Mission Viejo that her saga—and her intentions—are worthy of their support …
JEFF PEARLMAN: “So … Laura.”
LAURA LACKO: “So … Jeff?”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “You were a Republican in a past life?”
LAURA LACKO: “Ha. Ha. Yup.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “Explain that one, Laura.”
LAURA LACKO: “Hmm. It’s easier to explain how I’m not. So my sister …”
LAURA LACKO: “Yes. So Jen and my older sister, who has since passed, for years tried to educate me and trying to talk to me about what voting Republican was all about and being a Republican. And years ago I was living in Los Angeles. I had moved up there with my youngest of two daughters. And I was the only white person on my street because I lived in an area called View Park, which is right off of Crenshaw in South LA. And you can’t help but look around and see how people are living.
“And from there we moved across the street to Baldwin Hills. My daughter and I. We bought this great one-level house. I had an aging dog. So we sold the other house, moved into that one, lived there for a couple years and then I was like, ‘I can’t handle LA anymore. And Moshe and I were up and down, in and out, whatever. So I was like, “I’m going back to Orange County.” LA and I didn’t 100 percent mix, but I learned so many lessons. My eyes were opened. I had been anti-abortion, and then I started realizing I wouldn’t want anyone telling me what do do with my body. And we had neighbors who were very patient with me. They invited us to their barbecues, they talked to us, they asked why I—a white woman—was living there. The whole experience opened my eyes. They needed to be opened. I didn’t even know the word gentrification. I had been so sheltered.
“So when I finally moved back here, to Orange County, I was changed. I’d be exposed to the real world." By the time Trump came along in 2015 … and maybe I’d have supported him in a past life. But this time I was a hard, ‘Hell no.’ I’ve always hated that guy.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “Did your family like him?”
LAURA LACKO: “My dad was a Republican. But I forgive him.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “So, Laura—why are you running?”
LAURA LACKO: “So why am I running? I’m running because I see how the city is run and I see the influences that are in it. And what bothers me the most, because I’m an open book— I hate people who hide things, and the city is so good at hiding things. They don’t want to tell people when they’re doing something. They just passed … the parking lot that they’re redoing over at Nadadores, they’re specifically referencing it as the Mission Viejo Recreation Center, but really it’s for the Nadadores. And that parking lot, they are allotting $6 million for that parking lot, which as [council member] Cynthia Vasquez told me … it’s kind of unhinged. That’s $40,000 per parking spot. Now, as someone who had worked in commercial development, I know you don’t need that. I’m like, ‘What kind of grading is going to be going into this?’ I can imagine it being a two or $3 million project, but $6 million seems excessive for the amount of spots.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “Why do you think they’re doing that?”
LAURA LACKO: “It’s all conjecture, but it has to do with somebody who worked with the city before and now he works for the company that they’ve given the contract …”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “So looking at Mission Viejo from an outside perspective … it seems like you have one Democratic board member, Cynthia Vasquez, who’s basically marginalized by the rest of the board. They don’t take her seriously. Don’t really show her any respect. Bypass her for mayor They’re a bunch of MAGA weirdos who just want to ... take what’s happened on the national level and make it local and sorta act like you’re wrong, they’re right and that’s that. Am I right?”
LAURA LACKO: “Pretty much. Yeah. It’s tough. And it’s one of those things I’ve spoken to them and I’ve called them out on their racism and homophobia and I work with the Pride Committee.
“And the Canyon Democrats were looking for people to run, and one of the spots is District Four, because Trish Kelley can’t run again. And I just decided to go for it, and put my heart into it.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “You’re running against Rhonda Reardon …”
LAURA LACKO: “Right. She was on the council way back in the 2010s. I’ve never met her, but everybody says she’s very nice. People say Trish is nice, too. I have no personal anger toward these people. It’s strictly about visions for the city.
My main thing is, because I have a development background and business background, and I studied my dad very hard, we need change in the city as far as housing goes, as well as bringing more attractive business to the city. So I want to focus on … like, it’s like down the list, but there’s the center across the street from the city hall that’s been there for a really long time and there’s a vacant Big Lots and then down to what used to be the Steinmart. And the city owns the Steinmart. A lot of spaces are empty in there, but I want to take that and talk to somebody about redevelopment.
“The problem is there are, I think, at least 13 or 14 different owners of that center, which is outrageous. So it’s crazy to me that that’s what is going on over there, but it’s all in big pieces. But if we can make it attractive to them, knock that down and put up some mixed use and have residential on the top and businesses on the bottom and just make it look better, make it look more attractive … we’d be onto something.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “What are the residential issues of Mission Viejo?”
LAURA LACKO: “So in my district in particular, we have a large population of aging. I believe 23 percent of the registered voters in my district are 65 and older. And when I distributed literature just on the streets around me recently, I was looking at the ages of these people. I’m just like, these people in this house are 95, both of them are 90-something. I’m like, ‘holy cow.’ And I sort of put a note on the door like, ‘If you ever need anything, I’m right around the corner.’ I’m sure they’re being taken care of, but it’s just, we need to make sure that we have caregivers that are in the area that are able to afford to live in the area. So we really need to expand our affordable living. And I know we’ve got some things going in, so hopefully that’ll work, but they’re maxing it out at 15-percent affordable living.
JEFF PEARLMAN: “Do you think certain people, I won’t even say Republicans, recoil at the idea of quote unquote affordable living because they picture brown people coming into your neighborhood?”
LAURA LACKO: “I hear more people concerned that we’re going to be giving this housing out to homeless people. I worked with a lot of the houseless community in Los Angeles just on my own, and I would talk to them. I’d give them rides to the train. I’d give them rides to the motel they were staying at. That was the type of thing that I would do. And it was one of those things where I’m like, ‘What’s going on? Why are you here?’ And some of them you could tell, but a lot of them were just like, ‘COVID hit and this happened, or this happened with my family and I have no resources and nothing,’ and I would try to hook them up with ways that they could get help.
JEFF PEARLMAN: “A lot of people don’t realize what’s available to them …”
LAURA LACKO: “Very much very true. And I don’t understand why we don’t even try.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “I love it. Orange County. But I do feel like, when you tell people about the quote unquote homeless problem, 70 percent are mad because when they buy their $7 Starbucks drink, they don’t want someone homeless outside asking for money. And that’s kind of gross. But I do feel like there’s this ... ‘It’s not how do we help them? It’s how do we not see them?’ It bothers me a lot of actually.
LAURA LACKO: “That’s a large part of it. And it’s one of those things when I was a teenager, I had an allowance and anybody who asked me for money, I’d give them money. And my dad was always like, ‘Stop it.’ I always thought if people are desperate enough to ask for money, I’m going to give them money.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “I feel like your real-world experience led you to that behavior …”
LAURA LACKO: “When my girls were very young and I had to kick my husband out for an assortment of reasons, I was desperate. My dad was helping me. I had a roof over my head, but I was responsible for the food and for the utilities. I’m making seven, eight bucks an hour at this time. Working at Kohl’s …”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “What year was this?”
LAURA LACKO: “That was 2004, 2005. And that’s when I was working at Kohl’s. I was doing all kinds of things. I got a job at an escrow company and I was making like $1,500 bucks a month and I thought, ‘Wow, this is great.’ And I busted my ass, but I couldn’t afford to buy from food sometimes. So I used the free lunch program at school. They had their free lunchs. And then I would go to the food bank. I had to use a food bank. And the soccer fields always had an excess of water bottles and cans. I would go and pick those up and change them in and go get them a bag of chicken nuggets for the kids. And so when I see people talking negatively about people who are using SNAP, I’m like, ‘But we need it.’ Whether they are using it to an advantage or not, I said, ‘It helped me stay on my feet, helped me keep the utilities, keep the lights on for my kids so that we weren’t dealing with the things that we’re dealing with.’”
Laura with her daughters
JEFF PEARLMAN: “How were you able to find your footing? What turned it around for you?
LAURA LACKO: “Well, my mom had died by that time, so 1998. And my dad gave us a certain amount of money. And so I opened a flower shop at that time, then held some other jobs. But after he passed away in 2009 is when I finally was able to live a comfortable life. So it really, really sucks because my mom was only 53 when she passed away. My dad, he was 64. He had pulmonary fibrosis. It was familial. So his mom died from it. His brother died from it. Their younger brother has it, but he’s doing okay. And my dad lived with it for about seven years before it slammed him and he had a lung transplant and he only lived another year after that. And so when he passed away, that’s when the money started getting distributed. I needed it.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “You have a campaign team. Serious question. How much does it cost to run an effective campaign for city council?”
LAURA LACKO: “So I’ve already loaned myself $20,000. I’m sitting pretty comfortably on that. I had a big donation from my twin because I had given her money. She’s like tit for tat. And so that was nice. But I’ve literally received only one other donation from this very nice man, Walt Lawson, who’s part of Canyon Democrats. He and his wife are just super supportive.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “But you’re not out there saying like, ‘Fund my campaign, fund my campaign …’”
LAURA LACKO: “It’s nice to have financial support. But it’s more about knowing that the people know who you are and want you to get there. And so that’s what it is for me. I can fully fund myself.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “Money in politics is gross.”
LAURA LACKO: “It’s terrible. I’m lucky I can do this and not annoy everyone I know to death wit my hand out. But it’s not cheap.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “So Rhonda Reardon—it sounds like you don’t really have anything awful to say about her.”
LAURA LACKO: “I’m not that kind of person. I do have information about her that I will not use. I refuse to use it.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “Why?”
LAURA LACKO: “Because that’s not who I am. I want to win based on people knowing that I’m going to do for them what they need done. And it won’t be what Rhonda does. She’s been there before. This is me, showing people what I want to do.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “You emphasize economics a lot. Which sometimes makes you sound a little … Republican.”
LAURA LACKO: “I had to watch my budget when my girls were young and I didn’t have any money. When I worked for that escrow company, I came in and the manager was named Connie, and I was her direct assistant, but I also did the banking for this office and it was one of the largest escrow offices in Southern California. For the first week or two, Connie would come and literally just stand and watch over my shoulder. And it was odd. And we would have people come in and start their job as an escrow assistant, and they’d leave for lunch and they wouldn’t come back.
“She was really hard. She reminded me of my mom, and she had been a former teacher, and she just really valued the job that she was doing, really valued the office, and she did a good job. So I was her assistant. I was also the second assistant to 34 other escrow officers. And then I also took care of, of course, the banking. I did lots of things in there. When I left that job a year and a half later, it was because they asked me to take on one more thing, answering phones at lunchtime. And I was like, ‘Okay, if you pay me 150 bucks more a month, cool, I’ll do it. They wouldn’t, so they had to bring three people in to take my job.
“I get things done.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “Are you an underdog in this election, what with a fairly conservative city?”
LAURA LACKO: "That’s a tough one because from what I’ve heard, I’ve only given two speeches and Rhonda’s given, I don’t know how many, but she spoke at the Elks Lodge recently and it didn’t go well from what I heard. And so it’s one of those things where, see, most people would be like, ‘Oh, goodie. Hahaha.’ My heart breaks for her, because this person just should be hanging out and watching fucking cooking shows all day. Like, why are you doing this? I think she’s 77. She’s had a full life. She’s done a lot. Why run again?”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “Maybe she’s bored.”
LAURA LACKO: “Could be.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “Do you feel like one of the things you’re running against, maybe even more than Rhonda Reardon, is just general indifference? ‘Yeah. City council, do you guys meet once a year? What is that?’”
LAURA LACKO: “It’s the hardest thing. And you’re in a city, like I said, where people drive through it and it looks great and their programs and everything look great and nobody’s looking at the budget. Nobody’s looking at seeing where things ... And of course, because of the way they run things in closed door sessions, I only know things because Cynthia tells me. And so the funding that they approved for the next step of this project was only like $230,000 of the $6 million. So she knows the total number, but that’s not out there. I’ve tried everywhere trying to find it. It’s really difficult. And they make it even difficult. Even when you search, ‘How do I run for Mission Viejo City Council …’ it doesn’t pull up a page. You can go to the site, but you have to be very specific in what you’re searching for.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “You think they don’t want people running?”
LAURA LACKO: “Yeah. Oh, yeah. A lot of these people were sitting forever. They just want to stay and run the city, no questions asked. It’s frustrating.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “Why is your sister running for secretary of state? In … Kansas?”
LAURA LACKO: “She loves it there. She initially went there to help our former brother-in-law. He was in IT. And so she worked for him. She couldn’t get a job here. She was in Hollywood. She had gone to Pepperdine. She just couldn’t find a solid job. She was doing temp work. He was like, ‘Come here, come here and be here.’ And so she went there and it’s been 35 years now. And so turns out a lot of our family from our dad’s mom’s side is from there. We have a very famous history there actually, not far from where she’s at in Overland Park. So she just feels a kinship there. And I always tell her, ‘I don’t want to come. I hate visiting Kansas.’ But she loves it.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “She’s impressive.”
LAURA LACKO: “No, she’s amazing. Her license plate says PLZ V-O-T-E. She wants people to vote, whatever their party. And over the years, she’s taught me how to look at things more diplomatically and because of her work in the legislature and being able to talk to other people.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “Have you guys talked a lot about running simultaneously?”
LAURA LACKO: “Our phone calls are mostly talking about our campaigns.”
So tonight, while going over my ballot, I came to a race that I’m fairly unfamiliar with: Maria Holly Barraza v. Hugh Nguyen for Clerk Recorder.
And this is one of those battles that—if we’re being honest—five people care about. Or, put different, if the governor’s race is Ali-Frazier, Maria Holly Barraza-Hugh Nguyen is two chipmunks grappling over a breadcrumb beneath the bleachers at a minor league stadium in Boise.
I digress.
In my due diligence, I hit up the website for both candidates. First, I visited Hugh Nguyen—whose personal site is his Facebook page, but (as the current officeholder) also boasts the power of the official Clerk Recorder web home. And what one finds there is a photograph of Hugh driving a van …
Colors! Multiple fonts! And, most confusing/confounding/entertaining/bewildering—a smiling, winking Maria Holly Barraza staring at us beneath an ocean of falling confetti!
There’s also an AI chat option, which allowed me to have this exchange …
To be clear: This is not to say Maria Holly Barraza is a bad candidate, or Hugh Nguyen is a good one. I know too little about this race to endorse or critique.
What’s good for Elon Musk is not necessarily good for America. In fact, it may go the other way around. So why did Donald Trump take Musk and a bunch of other top executives to China with him?
Hi, Paul Krugman, again from a cafe, a little noisy behind me, but I hope it’ll be tolerable.
So Donald Trump has gone to Beijing. I wrote something about it earlier today, about the economics and about the generally pathetic state of the United States in geopolitics right now. But I want to focus for this video on the remarkable decision of Trump to bring a bunch of wealthy executives, in the case of some of them, like Musk, extremely wealthy executives, with him on a trip that is supposed to be something about serving the interests of the United States.
America’s corporations are not America. They really have very distinctive differences in interest from those of the general public. You may have heard the old line that what’s good for General Motors is good for America. That’s not exactly what the CEO of General Motors said. What he said is that what’s good for America is good for General Motors and vice versa.
But in any case he said that a very very long time ago, when corporations’ role in American life was not what it is now. General Motors at the time was a “stakeholder” corporation. That is, it did not see itself as solely serving the interests of stockholders. It viewed itself as having multiple groups that had a stake in the company.
There was the workers who were represented by a powerful union. There were customers who were considered to be part of the story. They played a role in the wider community.
Today corporations ruthlessly maximize value for stockholders, unless they do it for the founder who is considered to be the owner. (It’s not entirely clear that Tesla is run in the interest of Tesla stockholders. To a large extent, it’s run just in Elon Musk’s interest, but it’s certainly not run in the interest of U.S. workers or U.S. national security or anything like that.)
Why then should we care? It’s probably worth knowing that to the extent that corporations are run in the interest of their stockholders, the stockholders of an “American” corporation are by no means necessarily American. We think that something like 40% of US equities are owned by foreigners. So anything that enhances the profits of corporations, you should think of 40 cents on the dollar of that gain actually going to other countries.
And among Americans, stock ownership in the United States is extremely concentrated in the hands of the top 10% of the population, a large fraction just in the hands of the 1% or less. and most Americans have very little stake in stock prices. They may have some stake in the success of business in the United States, but that doesn’t have to be what we consider American corporations.
It’s not really right to think of Tesla or NVIDIA, whose Jensen Huang also went to China, as being somehow America going to China. These are corporations that serve stockholders around the world, serve some tech bros who have a special control over them. What they want is profits . What they want is access to the Chinese market, including being able to sell China stuff that from the US national point of view maybe we shouldn’t be allowing them to sell — you know, highly sophisticated equipment that on national security grounds we should actually try to restrict the access of fundamentally unfriendly powers.
Anyway, we know that’s what’s good for Nvidia is definitely not good for America. What’s good for Elon Musk is more problematic but there’s very little reason to think that any business advantages that Tesla might gain out of this, or xAI, or whatever whatever enterprise is he’s hoping will realize some gain, that this is going to redound significantly to the benefit of US workers.
T,o the extent that it benefit redounds the benefit of these guys the people who are on the plane, why should we care? An extra billion dollars in the hands of Elon Musk or Jensen Huang doesn’t do anything for the great majority of Americans.
And yeah, it does something for them, but not very much, right? When you have that much money, a billion here, a billion there, and what’s the difference? So this is a really peculiar group to be taking. unless you try to think about what does Donald Trump want?
Well, from Trump’s point of view, his son Eric, who runs the family business, was on the plane. They claim it’s just it’s just a family thing — yeah, right. He might as well have been walking around Beijing with a sign that says — in block capitals, of course, this is Trump — BRIBE ME. That’s very clearly what that’s about and as for the rest, well, you know, these corporations are in a way Trump’s base or at least they gave him a lot of money both in campaign funds and directly in one way or another.
I’m still wondering, by the way, why do we need a billion dollars for that ballroom? I thought the corporations were were paying for the ballroom by bribing Trump. But maybe I don’t know where that money is going.
Anywa,y whatever the story, these are not U.S. national interests being represented here. The whole visit — aside from the fact that it’s humiliating, that it’s really a pathetic display of U.S. weakness and Chinese strength — the whole visit is also yet another spectacular example of the corruption that now pervades everything about U.S. governance.
And we should be angry. We should be outraged. We certainly shouldn’t allow Trump and company to spin whatever comes out of this as a victory. We mostly defeated ourselves here, but we certainly aren’t getting anything for us. Maybe something for Elon Musk comes out of this, but there’s nothing for the rest of us coming out of this essentially tributary visit to China.
One of Donald Trump’s signature claims is that Joe Biden made America a “laughing stock”, and that he has made us great again and respected around the world.
Yet this is the opposite of the truth. As a result of Trump’s petulant, self-destructive policies, much of the world now holds him and America as a whole in contempt. As the New York Times reported just before Trump’s visit to Beijing, the Chinese now talk routinely about “American decline,” and describe Trump as “an accelerator of American decay.”
To be clear, China has many significant problems of its own. It faces a demographic crisis: Its working age population has been shrinking for more than a decade. Its economy is deeply unbalanced, relying on unsustainable trade surpluses and unproductive investment to make up for inadequate consumer spending. Its economic growth is slowing. It suffers from high youth unemployment. Discontent is rising, held in check by autocratic, police-state measures.
But despite China’s domestic troubles, in geopolitical terms China is on the ascendant. Trump’s visit to Beijing is a field trip by a failing, flailing would-be autocrat pleading with a real strongman, who leads a much more serious country, to bail him out of the mess he’s made.
To be fair, a portion of China’s relative rise and America’s relative decline reflect trends that pre-date Trumpian chaos. China’s manufacturing output overtook that of the U.S. around 15 years ago, and it was already the workshop of the world by the time Trump took office the first time:
The overall size of China’s economy, measured at purchasing power parity — that is, taking China’s lower price level into account — has exceeded that of the U.S. since 2015, although China’s GDP is still lower in dollar terms.
China remains poorer than the U.S., with real GDP per capita about a third of the U.S. level. But while the U.S. still has higher productivity and technological sophistication, the Chinese have been gaining on us for a long time and narrowing the gap.
Furthermore, China’s still relatively low GDP per capita obscures the fact that the Chinese tech sector is highly sophisticated, in many areas as sophisticated as anything in the West.
As I said, all of this predates Trumpian chaos. Yet Trump has vastly weakened America’s geopolitical position -- in effect,throwing away whatever cards we had.
How so? Let me count the ways.
First, before Trump the United States possessed one big geopolitical advantage over China: We were the leader of an alliance of nations bound together by their shared commitment to democracy. As the chart at the top of this post shows, for well over a decade the size of the U.S. economy has been outstripped by the Chinese economy. However, the combined economies of the NATO countries remain much bigger than China’s economy. Furthermore, the free-world advantage is even larger when Japan, Korea, Australia and other non-NATO U.S. allies are included. But thanks to Trump, these democracy-aligned countries are better described as former allies.
Trump has declared that NATO’s members are “useless” because they haven’t rescued him from his Iran debacle. But why should they? Trump has broken all of America’s trade agreements. He has demanded that Canada become the 51st state and that Denmark hand over Greenland. He supported the anti-European Orban regime in Hungary and has made it increasingly clear that he supports Russia’s attempt to conquer Ukraine. Now he expects nations he has insulted and betrayed at every opportunity to come to his aid in a war he started. True, bullying and whining have worked for Trump throughout his nepo-baby life — but they don’t work against sovereign nations that retain their pride.
But that’s not all. In addition to trashing our alliances, Trump is doing all he can to condemn America to scientific and technological backwardness.
While Chinese is at the forefront of the green electrotech revolution, this administration’s anti-renewable energyobsession grows ever more extreme. For example, the Department of Defense is using bogus national security concerns to block essentially all development of wind power in the United States – at a time when many Americans are facing significant jumps in energy bills due to data center energy consumption.
In Congressional testimony yesterday Doug Burgum, the Secretary of the Interior, insisted that solar farms are useless because “when the sun goes down, they produce zero electricity.” Rep. Jared Huffman responded,
Mr. Chairman, I request unanimous consent to enter in the record this amazing new technology that apparently the secretary is unaware of: It’s a battery. China’s figured it out. That’s why they’re cleaning our clock on clean energy.
The Chinese are indeed cleaning our clock on clean energy. Last year solar and wind power accounted for the vast majority of the growth in Chinese electricity generation:
And backward-looking energy policy is part of a broader abandonment of the future, as MAGA wages war on science in general.
Trump’s trade protectionism, which was supposed to revive U.S. manufacturing, is completely failing in that goal. It has, however, graphically revealed U.S. weakness vis a vis China, which has easily weathered the impact of Trump’s tariffs while demonstrating that its ability to retaliate by cutting off the supply of rare earths gives it the upper hand.
And now, of course, Trump is visiting China against the background of a humiliating defeat in the Persian Gulf at the hands of Iran – which China has long supported through oil purchases and dual-use technology transfers.
Thus the formerly strutting Trump is forced to fly to Beijing as a supplicant, hoping that Xi Jinping will offer concessions that will extricate him from the domestic and international trainwreck he has wrought. Yes, Xi might offer some soybean purchases for failing American farmers and some deals to the executives traveling with Trump as a face-saving sop. But rest assured that the Chinese will use Trump’s debilitated status to their ultimate advantage, pressing for concessions on Taiwan while letting Trump bleed away what’s left of U.S. credibility on a failed war.
[...] On the interesting side is how fungible programming languages are nowadays. Programming languages used to be LOCK IN, and they're increasingly not so. You think the Bun rewrite in Rust is good for Rust? Bun has shown they can be in probably any language they want in roughly a week or two. Rust is expendable. Its useful until its not then it can be thrown out. That's interesting!
The datasette.io site was being hammered by poorly-behaved crawlers, so I had Codex (GPT-5.5 xhigh) build a configurable rate limiting plugin to block IPs that were hammering specific areas of the site too quickly.
Many security experts consider Apple devices to be the most secure
consumer platform. The latest flagship example is MIE (Memory
Integrity Enforcement), Apple’s hardware-assisted memory safety
system built around ARM’s MTE (Memory Tagging Extension). It was
introduced as the marquee security feature for the Apple M5 and
A19, specifically designed to stop memory corruption exploits, the
vulnerability class behind many of the most sophisticated
compromises on iOS and macOS. [...]
Our macOS attack path was actually an accidental discovery. Bruce
Dang found the bugs on April 25th. Dion Blazakis joined Calif on
April 27th. Josh Maine built the tooling, and by May 1st we had a
working exploit.
We didn’t build the chain alone. Mythos Preview helped identify
the bugs and assisted throughout exploit development. [...] To the
best of our knowledge, this is the first public macOS kernel
exploit on MIE hardware. Again, we’ll publish our 55-page report
after Apple ships a fix.
The Wall Street Journal ran a story on Calif’s announcement today that was heavy on hyperbole and extraordinarily light on technical details. Unsurprisingly, the team’s own blog post was much more informative and interesting. The achievement here is circumventing MIE.
Up betimes and put up some things to send to Brampton. Then abroad to the Temple, and up and down about business, and met Mr. Moore; and with him to an alehouse in Holborn; where in discourse he told me that he fears the King will be tempted to endeavour the setting the Crown upon the little Duke, which may cause troubles; which God forbid, unless it be his due! He told me my Lord do begin to settle to business again, which I am glad of, for he must not sit out, now he has done his own business by getting his estate settled, and that the King did send for him the other day to my Lady Castlemaine’s, to play at cards, where he lost 50l.; for which I am sorry, though he says my Lord was pleased at it, and said he would be glad at any time to lose 50l. for the King to send for him to play, which I do not so well like.
Thence home, and after dinner to the office, where we sat till night, and then made up my papers and letters by the post, and so home to dance with Pembleton.
This day we received a baskett from my sister Pall, made by her of paper, which hath a great deal of labour in it for country innocent work.
After supper to bed, and going to bed received a letter from Mr. Coventry desiring my coming to him to-morrow morning, which troubled me to think what the business should be, fearing it must be some bad news in Tom Hater’s business.
An anomalous plume is visible from one of the Vulcan’s solid rocket motors during the launch of the USSF-87 mission on Feb. 12, 2026. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now.
United Launch Alliance oversaw the completion of a critical milestone in mid-April on the road to resuming flights with its Vulcan rockets.
On April 15, the company said Northrop Grumman performed a successful static fire test of a Graphite Epoxy Motor (GEM) 63XL Solid Rocket Booster (SRB). A spokesperson told Spaceflight Now on Thursday that the test served to “demonstrate nozzle design enhancements which were already in work and an advanced propellant technology for future solid rocket motors across their portfolio.”
“The information gathered from this test, along with findings from the investigations will provide critical data to validate analytical models and support Vulcan’s return to flight,” the spokesperson said.
During the launch a mission for the United States Space Force, dubbed USSF-87, one of the four SRBs attached to the Vulcan booster suffered a nozzle problem prior to SRB separation. The rocket rolled more than intended following the incident.
“There was some asymmetric thrust when we had that solid motor fail, it reduced performance,” said Gary Wentz, vice president of Government and Commercial Programs at ULA. He spoke with Spaceflight Now in the days leading up to the Artemis 2 launch.
“The BE-4s and our avionics system gimbaled to control that. We did see some roll, and the BE-4s were able to compensate to arrest that roll. We were well within our environments and limits, so it was nothing overly concerning for the BE-4s.”
Both the Vulcan booster and the Centaur upper stage performed as expected and ultimately delivered the USSF-87 mission payload to its intended geosynchronous orbit.
United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, designation V-005, is seen at the pad at Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station prior to the launch of the USSF-87 mission for the U.S. Space Force. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now
“The integrated U.S. government and contractor team is reviewing the technical data, available imagery and have collected any debris,” the ULA spokesperson said. “We are in the process of conducting a thorough investigation and will implement any corrective action necessary before we launch the next Vulcan mission.”
Wentz said where the pieces of the SRB nozzle came off landed in water that was likely too deep for them to recovery, unlike the previous nozzle issue that occurred during the second certification flight of Vulcan back in October 2024.
“Vulcan’s going to get back to flight by the end of the year and then we’ll launch our manifest backlog that we have,” Wentz said in response to a question about the increase in launch demand driven in part by NASA’s Moon Base objectives.
“We’re available for other missions. [The Commercial Lunar Payload Services program] had a lot of smaller landers and things that we could fly to do some of those precursor efforts with the Moon and the mission that NASA’s laying out. So, we’re really excited about the opportunities.”
Return to flight
While the timing of a return to flight mission for Vulcan is still be assessed, during his remarks to Spaceflight Now, Wentz said that the customer for the return to flight mission would more than likely be Amazon.
On Wednesday, ULA hoisted the first Vulcan booster inside its newly finished Vertical Integration Facility – Amazon (VIF-A) near Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Its introduction gives the company two physical lanes with which it can stack its Vulcan rockets in the future.
ULA can now stack either an Atlas 5 rocket or a Vulcan rocket in the original VIF, called VIF-G (Government), while a Vulcan rocket uses the new VIF-A.
“This marks the first operational hardware to be stacked for testing in advance of future launch operations,” a ULA spokesperson said. “This milestone gives the team the opportunity to test first use technology and hardware supporting launch processing as we gear up for a wet dress rehearsal, the next step in preparing for future Amazon Leo launch operations. We will share the date of the WDR in the future.”
Amazon Leo purchased 38 Vulcan rockets to fly its broadband internet satellites into orbit. That’s in addition to the nine Atlas 5 rockets it bought, seven of which have already been used.
“Satellites are already stacked for LV-01 and subsequent Leo Vulcan missions on the manifest, and this integrated test configuration will help ULA teams validate the procedures, interfaces, and ground systems needed to support a sustained, high-cadence launch campaign for Leo,” Amazon Leo said in a post on social media.
Amazon Leo’s next flight is scheduled to be the Leo Atlas 07 (LA-07) mission, which is scheduled for no earlier than May 22. The final batch of Leo satellites to fly on an Atlas V rocket will launch later this year on the LA-08 mission. The launch date of that mission should be announced shortly after the flight of LA-07.
The solid rocket boosters (SRBs) are mounted onto the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket that will launch the Amazon Leo 7 mission for the broadband satellite constellation. Image: United Launch Alliance
AST SpaceMobile may launch some of its direct-to-device satellites on United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket to expand the launch options for its constellation.
With the proliferation of Earth observation satellites in orbit, the increasing sophistication of sensors and surging demand for imagery and geospatial intelligence across a growing number of sectors, it is no surprise that more data is now collected than ever before. But what is perhaps surprising is that the main obstacle to the smooth operation […]
China has added a new batch of satellites to the Qianfan megaconstellation, while the commercial Zhuque-2E made a return-to-flight featuring numerous improvements.
Intuitive Machines has agreed to purchase a company that operates ground stations in the United States and United Kingdom to help build out a lunar communications network.
Iridium Communications is buying the rest of the Aireon aircraft-tracking venture its connectivity constellation hosts to push further into aviation safety, surveillance and data services.
In this episode of Space Minds, Mike Gruss talks with Chris Quilty about the launch bottleneck, the new budget proposals and what to expect in the next 12 months. Sponsored […]
Your post yesterday argued AI will replace papers with meta-papers that synthesize, re-run, and extend prior work. I built one in oncology last month, before reading your post.
I ran my friend Omar Abdel-Wahab’s (MSK) last ten papers through an AI synthesis layer. This came out on top: an integrated, falsifiable hypothesis bridging two of his 2025 papers, one in Cancer Cell on a refractory MEK1 mutation, one in Cell on splicing-derived neoantigens. It comes with seven testable experiments his lab can run today. The move generalizes to any field: surface the questions hidden in plain view, the ones the source papers could answer with their own data but never asked.
The “box” you described already exists in biology. It just doesn’t have a name there yet.
Brennan
Note that if you, in the future, do not do this kind of thing yourself, someone else, or their AI agent, will do it for you. Solve for the equilibrium!
Outside of Sloan and the EECS MEng program, still in the midst of admissions, compared with 2024, our departments’ new enrollments for next year are down close to 20%.
That means that, in total, outside of Sloan, we could have about 500 fewer graduate students. Which means we’ll have many fewer students advancing the work of MIT, and undergraduates will have fewer grad students as mentors in their research.
That is from the president of MIT in a recent speech. It is time to put aside denial about the tsunami coming for higher education.
Online wellness shopping has made products more accessible than ever, but it has also made it easier for consumers to overlook important details hidden behind appealing branding, short product descriptions, and fast-moving marketing trends. Many shoppers scan labels quickly or focus mainly on packaging and reviews without fully understanding ingredients, serving information, or formulation differences before purchasing.
This has become especially important in wellness categories involving hemp-derived products, supplements, beverages, and functional ingredients where products may appear visually similar while differing significantly in composition and intended use. As online wellness markets continue growing, more consumers are learning that reading labels carefully often matters far more than simply following trends or social media popularity.
Serving Information Is Often Overlooked
One of the most common things consumers miss is serving size and concentration details. Products may contain very different ingredient amounts even when packaging or marketing makes them appear relatively comparable at first glance.
Consumers browsing products fromDelta Munchies often compare potency information, formulation details, and serving guidance before making purchasing decisions. Understanding serving information clearly helps shoppers avoid confusion and better evaluate how products fit into personal preferences and routines.
Ingredient Lists Require More Attention Than Branding
Many online shoppers focus heavily on front-label marketing while spending very little time reviewing full ingredient lists. However, sweeteners, additives, flavoring systems, carrier oils, and secondary ingredients may influence the overall product experience significantly.
This is especially important in hemp-derived wellness categories where products may contain different cannabinoid blends, terpene profiles, or formulation approaches depending on manufacturing choices. Careful label reading often helps consumers understand those differences much more clearly before purchasing.
Consumers sometimes assume products within the same category function identically, but extraction methods and ingredient preservation can affect formulation quality and consistency substantially. Terms such as live resin, isolate, broad spectrum, or full spectrum often carry important distinctions that shoppers may overlook initially.
Products such as those available throughCannovia are frequently evaluated by consumers interested in more detailed formulation characteristics instead of simply choosing products based on branding alone. As ingredient awareness grows, more buyers now compare production and extraction details before deciding which products feel most appropriate for their preferences.
Third-Party Testing Provides Important Context
Independent testing remains one of the most valuable details consumers should check before purchasing wellness products online. Lab testing may help verify ingredient consistency, cannabinoid content, and product purity while also screening for contaminants or formulation inaccuracies.
According to Harvard Health Publishing, consumers should carefully review product labeling and testing information when evaluating hemp-derived wellness products. Transparent testing practices often provide stronger confidence because they help verify whether products match the claims presented online.
Marketing Language Can Create Confusion
Wellness marketing frequently uses broad lifestyle language that sounds appealing without always providing meaningful product clarity. Words like “premium,” “advanced,” or “enhanced” may sound impressive while offering little practical information about ingredients or formulation quality.
This is why many experienced consumers now focus more heavily on measurable details such as ingredient transparency, serving information, sourcing, and testing documentation rather than relying mainly on marketing phrases or visual presentation.
Better Label Awareness Leads to Smarter Buying Decisions
As wellness categories continue expanding online, consumers are becoming more research-oriented and selective overall. Many buyers now recognize that informed purchasing depends on understanding products clearly rather than reacting quickly to trends, aesthetics, or influencer recommendations alone.
The products that tend to build stronger long-term trust are usually the ones that communicate openly and provide enough information for consumers to make thoughtful decisions independently. Careful label reading may take slightly more time initially, but it often helps shoppers feel more confident, informed, and comfortable about the products they choose to incorporate into regular wellness routines.
Navigating the ever-expanding universe of online casinos can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. For the seasoned player, especially those in Australia, simply scrolling through endless game libraries just doesn’t cut it anymore. We’re talking about a deeper dive, an almost forensic examination of what makes a platform truly tick, and for a comprehensive overview, it’s worth checking out Melspin. This isn’t just another Melspin review; think of it as an insider’s look, a critical breakdown from someone who’s spent considerable time wrestling with the intricacies of online casino operations. We’re peeling back the layers, going beyond the flashy graphics and tempting bonuses to uncover the real player experience. Get ready for expert insights that cut through the noise and get straight to what matters.
Understanding the Melspin Platform: First Impressions and User Experience
Stepping onto the Melspin platform for the first time is like walking into a well-organized, vibrant arcade. The initial Melspin UI immediately strikes a balance between modern aesthetics and functional clarity. Bright yet not overwhelming colors dominate the visual landscape, creating an energetic atmosphere that hints at the excitement within. The lobby layout is surprisingly intuitive; key sections like the game library, ongoing promotions, and crucially, the customer support access, are readily apparent, avoiding the cluttered feel that often plagues online casinos. This thoughtful casino design isn’t just about looking good; it’s a strategic approach to platform navigation that lays a solid groundwork for a positive user experience . Fast loading speeds and a highly responsive interface mean that transitions between pages are seamless, minimizing any potential lag that could detract from those all-important first impressions. It’s clear that Melspin has invested in creating an environment where players can easily find what they’re looking for, keeping them engaged and confident from the very start.
The Interface: Design and Responsiveness
The Melspin interface boasts a striking visual identity, characterized by a dynamic color palette that’s both engaging and sophisticated. High-quality graphic elements and consistent branding across the site contribute to a professional and polished appearance. Witnessing the website design in action reveals impressive platform responsiveness; pages load with remarkable speed, and interactions, from clicking on a game to opening promotional banners, are almost instantaneous. While there are vibrant visual cues, they never devolve into distracting clutter, instead serving to enhance clarity and guide the user’s eye. This seamless performance directly translates to a heightened sense of player engagement, signaling a well-engineered and trustworthy platform.
Intuitive Navigation and Content Discovery
Navigating the Melspin platform feels remarkably straightforward. Locating specific game categories, such as slots, table games, or live casino options, is effortless thanks to a clearly defined site structure . Finding promotional details or even the essential terms and conditions poses no challenge, a testament to the casino navigation ‘s user-centric design. The search functionality is robust, allowing for quick content discovery, and available filtering options further refine the player’s search, making it simple to pinpoint desired titles. This ease of movement is paramount for a positive player journey, effectively preventing frustration and encouraging players to explore the diverse offerings without a second thought.
Deep Dive into Game Selection and Quality
When you’re scanning the digital shelves for your next big win, the sheer volume and calibre of games on Melspin really punch above their weight. It’s not just about tossing a bunch of titles onto a page; this is a curated collection that speaks volumes about what Melspin values. We’re talking variety that’ll make your head spin – from the classic allure of slot machines to the heart-pounding action of live dealer games. The casino software providers here are the heavy hitters, the names you’d expect to find at the top tier, and their presence is a solid nod to the quality and fairness you can expect. Whether you’re a pokies AU aficionado looking for the latest Megaways slots or someone who craves the authentic buzz of a real-deal casino floor, Melspin seems to have its fingers on the pulse of what discerning players are after. The game library isn’t just broad; it’s deep, ensuring that whether you’re a casual spinner or a serious strategist, there’s always something compelling to dive into.
Pokies Galore: Variety and Features
Prepare for a pokies explosion! Melspin doesn’t just offer slot machines; it presents a sprawling universe of them. The sheer number is impressive, but it’s the diversity that truly shines. You’ll find everything from the timeless fruit machines to the cutting-edge Megaways slots that constantly reshape the paylines, keeping every spin feeling fresh and unpredictable. For those who like a bit of extra spice, the bonus buy options are a fantastic shortcut to the action. Beyond the headline-grabbing game mechanics, keep an eye out for progressive jackpots that can change lives in an instant. Melspin really balances broad appeal with enough niche offerings to keep even the most seasoned slot enthusiasts thoroughly entertained, with handy filters to help you navigate the delightful chaos.
Beyond Slots: Table Games and Live Casino Experience
While the pokies might grab the spotlight, Melspin certainly hasn’t forgotten the classics. A solid array of table games forms the support system for the slot empire. Think all the must-haves: blackjack tables ready for a strategic showdown, roulette wheels spinning with anticipation, and baccarat for those who prefer a sleeker pace. But where Melspin really cranks up the excitement is in its live casino. The quality of the stream is top-notch, making you feel like you’re right there with the dealers. When giants like Evolution Gaming are powering the show, you get an immersive experience with plenty of game varieties, including those electrifying game shows that have become modern casino staples. A robust live casino section doesn’t just add options; it elevates the entire gaming journey, adding a layer of genuine casino thrill to the digital landscape.
Navigating the Player Journey: Deposits, Withdrawals, and Bonuses
Diving into the world of online slots and tables, the thrill of the game is undeniably central. But let’s be real, the actual journey with a platform like Melspin often hinges on the nitty-gritty of its transactional heart: deposits, withdrawals, and those ever-present bonus offers. It’s here you can discover if a casino truly respects your time and money, or if it’s just flashy marketing. We’re taking a critical dive into how Melspin handles your cash, from getting funds in to cashing out wins, and dissecting just how generous – or tricky – their bonus structures really are. Understanding these elements is key to a smooth and ultimately more rewarding player experience.
Payment Pathways: Deposits and Withdrawals in Detail
Getting your game on at Melspin involves understanding the flow of cash, and thankfully, the options largely cater to player convenience. When it comes to getting money in, you’ll find a decent spread, with methods like instant bank transfers and potentially PayID casino integrations showing up, which are a godsend for Australian players craving speed and simplicity. Deposit limits are generally reasonable, ensuring both casual players and high rollers can find their groove. The withdrawal speed is where things can get a bit more… interesting. While some methods boast near-instant bank transfer capabilities, others might take a bit longer. It’s crucial to keep an eye on any potential transaction fees – a small percentage here or there can add up. Melspin’s banking system needs to offer transparent communication about all these details; no one likes a surprise charge or a delayed payout. The efficiency and trustworthiness of these payment pathways are non-negotiable for a solid player experience.
Decoding Bonuses: True Value or Marketing Hype?
Ah, the casino bonuses. They shimmer and beckon, promising epic wins and extended play. Melspin’s welcome bonus and ongoing promotions certainly aim to catch the eye. But here’s the kicker: the real substance lurks within the bonus T&Cs. Wagering requirements are the usual suspects, demanding you play through your bonus amount (and sometimes deposit) multiple times over before you can even think about withdrawing. Then there are game restrictions, often limiting which slots or table games you can use your bonus on, and maximum cashout limits that can snatch away the excitement of a big win. True value isn’t just in the advertised percentage; it’s in how achievable those requirements are. You need to be savvy, understand what you’re signing up for, and choose bonuses where the bonus T&Cs don’t feel like a maze designed to trap your winnings. Approach them strategically, and you might just snag a genuine benefit.
Trust and Security: Licensing, Reputation, and Player Protection
Diving into the world of online casinos, especially those potentially catering to Australian players, requires a keen eye for trust and security. It’s not just about the glitz and the games; it’s about knowing your funds are safe and that the entire operation is on the up and up. An essential examination of Melspin’s licensing, regulatory standing, and overall reputation is key to really gauging its trustworthiness and, most importantly, player safety. When a casino is properly licensed and regulated, it’s a big tick in the box for fair play and having some recourse if things go sideways. We’re talking about casino licensing , the nuances of online gambling regulation , and what it all stacks up to for player safety . The aim is to uncover whether Melspin truly represents a trustworthy casino or if its positioning leaves something to be desired, perhaps by operating under an offshore license. Understanding these elements is paramount before you even think about spinning those reels or hitting that blackjack table.
Licensing and Regulatory Landscape
When we look at Melspin’s operational framework, the first thing that stands out is its licensing. Melspin operates under a Curacao license , also known as an eGaming license . This type of license is quite common for many online gambling platforms, particularly those aiming for a global reach. While a Curacao license signifies that the operator adheres to certain standards of regulatory compliance and aims for fair gaming standards, it’s important to understand its implications, especially for players in regions with stricter local regulations. Unlike licenses issued by authorities in some other jurisdictions, the oversight and player protection mechanisms under a Curacao license can differ. This means that while the games themselves should be fair and random, the avenues for dispute resolution and the direct consumer protection might not be as robust as those offered by a locally regulated Australian operator. It’s a balancing act; the license enables operation, but the depth of regulatory punch varies significantly.
Reputation and Player Experiences
When it comes to Melspin’s casino reputation , it’s a bit of a mixed bag, as is often the case with many online casinos that have a broad player base. Sifting through player reviews and forum discussions reveals a range of experiences. On the positive side, many players highlight the extensive game selection and the availability of lucrative bonuses. However, there are recurring themes in the negative feedback that warrant attention. Some players have reported issues with slower-than-expected withdrawal times, and there are occasional mentions of disputes surrounding bonus terms and conditions. It’s crucial to approach these experiences with a balanced perspective; a few isolated incidents don’t necessarily define the entire platform, but persistent complaints about the same issues can be telling. Understanding these patterns is vital for gauging overall online casino trustworthiness and anticipating potential friction points for new players. The key is that customer experience isn’t a monolith; it’s a mosaic of individual interactions.
The Mobile Experience: App vs. PWA
When it comes to hitting the jackpot on the go, the mobile experience is king. Melspin understands this, and its approach to mobile play is a hot topic among savvy players. We’re diving deep into whether Melspin rolls out dedicated native apps for your iOS and Android devices, a traditional but often slick way to play, or if it’s leaning into the modern wizardry of a Progressive Web App (PWA). This distinction isn’t just technical jargon; it profoundly impacts how easily you can access games, the seamlessness of your gameplay, and the sheer range of features you can unlock without jumping through hoops. Think about it: instant access versus a download, a fully optimized interface versus an all-device friendly responsive design. We’ll dissect what Melspin offers, weighing the sleekness of a potential casino app against the sheer convenience of a PWA, and figure out which really serves up the best mobile casino thrills. Don’t forget, the world of iOS casino and Android casino play is constantly evolving, and Melspin’s strategy is key to your personal gaming convenience.
Native Applications: Features and Performance
If Melspin does offer dedicated native apps – one for your iPhone or iPad, and another for your Android phone or tablet – these are built from the ground up for their respective platforms. This means a potentially super-smooth ride, with the Melspin app features often feeling perfectly integrated into your device’s ecosystem. Expect lightning-fast load times, sharp interfaces that feel as natural as your phone’s own menus, and the kind of stability that keeps the focus purely on the action, not on buffering. The installation process is usually straightforward, a quick download from your app store, and then you’re in. These iOS and Android casino apps often boast direct access to push notifications for bonuses and game updates, something PWAs can sometimes struggle to replicate with the same punch. The downside? You might need separate downloads, and updates are managed through the app stores, a small hurdle in the grand scheme of gaming.
Progressive Web App (PWA): Accessibility and Functionality
On the flip side, Melspin might be embracing the power of the Progressive Web App, a technology that blurs the lines between a website and a native app. The beauty of a PWA is its accessibility – no app store gatekeepers here. You access it directly through your mobile browser, and with a simple tap, you can often “Add to Home Screen,” giving you an icon that looks and feels just like any other app. The “instant play casino” vibe is strong here. PWAs are designed with responsive design at their core, meaning they automatically adapt to fit your screen perfectly, whether you’re on a colossal tablet or a compact smartphone. Feature parity with the desktop version is usually a major win for PWAs, ensuring you don’t miss out on any of the action. While they might not always achieve the absolute pinnacle of performance that a truly bespoke native app can, the sheer convenience and broad compatibility make the Melspin PWA a seriously compelling option for seamless mobile browser casino action.
Melspin vs. the Competition: What Sets It Apart?
Navigating the bustling online casino landscape can feel a bit like a treasure hunt, especially for players Down Under. When you line up Melspin against the heavy hitters already on the Australian scene, some dazzling distinctions begin to shimmer. While many platforms offer a standard smorgasbord of slots and table games, Melspin often carves out its niche with some standout features. Think about payment processing – sometimes it’s the speed and breadth of options for things like instant bank transfers that truly grab attention, or perhaps a more curated selection of live dealer experiences that feel less like a generic offering and more like a boutique setup. Don’t even get us started on bonus structures; some competitors might throw out blanket deposit matches, but Melspin could be shaking things up with more player-centric rewards or progressive bonuses that really reward loyalty over time. Yet, it’s not all a one-horse race. Certain established players might have a deeper catalog of niche games or a more universally recognized VIP program. Melspin’s brilliance often lies in its specific integrations and unique bonus philosophies, though it might sometimes lack the sheer volume of games that some veterans boast.
Is Melspin Right for You?
So, after diving deep into the Melspin experience, the big question remains: is this your next online casino home? We’ve dissected the user experience, it’s a bit like navigating a bustling marketplace – lots to see, some areas are top-notch, others could use a tidy-up. The game selection? Honestly, it’s a smorgasbord. From classic slots that’ll bring a tear to your eye to live dealer tables that hum with energy, there’s usually something to catch your fancy. Banking can be a bit of a mixed bag, offering a decent range but sometimes lacking the speed you’d ideally want. Trustworthiness is the bedrock, and while offshore licensing is common, it’s always a factor to consider.
Who’s the ideal Melspin player? Probably someone who cherishes variety above all else, a player who’s patient with the occasional user interface quirk and isn’t necessarily chasing instant cash-outs. If you’re an Australian player looking for a platform with a vast array of games that’s readily accessible, Melspin presents itself as a convenient, albeit offshore, option. The ultimate Melspin decision, however, rests with you. Weigh the vibrant game library and convenience against the less-than-perfect user journey and banking nuances. Make your informed choice, and may your spins be ever in your favour!
Apologies for the extremely lengthy response, but your post today hit upon a perennial hobby horse of mine!
It strikes me that in addition to their own self-image, law professors (and elite lawyers generally) aren’t able to be honest brokers in discussions about court reform because of the enormous quid pro quo and tight knit social ties created by judicial clerkships. The number of students that obtain clerkships plays a big role in law school rankings. Partly as a result of this, having clerked at least for a circuit clerk is now seen as a de facto requirement to be hired as a law professor, barring a PhD in another field (and even then, most still clerk). Professors who clerk help place students with their judges and so on and so forth. There is an *enormous* professional taboo against quitting a clerkship or criticizing the judge that you worked for no matter how bad the experience. It’s viewed as professional suicide, some law schools will effectively ice you out of their career services as you do it, and certain firms will effectively be closed to you for the entirety of your career. Conversely, stay close with your judge and you can expect them to be a letter of rec and introduction-maker for life. All of this adds up to elite law school faculty and elite lawyers having a sizeable material professional and social stake in revering judges, in addition to their psychological investment in feeling learned.
The other issue with the deference to legal elites is that there’s a serious hack gap between liberals and conservatives. If you have bad grades but are willing to sign your name to a law review note saying that actually maybe women shouldn’t vote, there is an entire infrastructure that will spring into place to get you a clerkship. Taking that kind of an overt partisan stance is seen as an enormous plus on the conservative side, and clerkships then flow into academia and elite law firms. There is no equivalent professional reward for law students that are extremely politically liberal. Even the most liberal judges still largely select for grades and school prestige rather than partisanship, with their political leanings likely to be expressed by favoring people who want to work as public defenders or in legal aid (both of which are laudable but do not involve the same sort of raw will to power or desire to push forward foundational change that you see on the conservative side). This continues into academia and firms (and from there into judicial clerkships), where you simply do not see liberal people who are as equivalently anti-system as conservatives. The two sides are rewarding incredibly different things from the moment students enter law school in a way that kills in the cradle any chance of serious efforts to meet the moment coming from inside the legal academy.
And while it’s more tangential than the above point, I think it also shows the fundamental disconnect from the real world that liberal legal elites have: liberal judges and scholars retain an extreme disdain for trial lawyers/class action lawyers/mass tort lawyers, even as this group remains one of the single most reliable sources of fundraising for the democratic party (and from my experience, has been pro court reform for years). They’re happy to reap the benefits of democrats controlling congress, but don’t seem to understand how that actually happens.
If you’re not a regular listener to our podcast, I hope you’ll listen to the episode that will come out later this afternoon. It was, I think, a particularly good episode, in large part because we had such critical issues to discuss: Callais, the wave of emergency redistrictings across the southern tier of the old Confederacy and what seems to be a sea-change moment on Supreme Court reform among establishment Democrats. I want to expand today on some points about Supreme Court reform, offering some of the historical background for this present moment.
Every current member of the Supreme Court comes out of what we might call the elite academic-judicial nexus, which is to say they’ve been law professors at elite universities and judges in the federal judiciary. I believe this applies to all the current justices. It didn’t used to be this way. It used to be relatively common to have justices who had never served as judges before and had never been law professors. Frequently they were ex-politicians. Famously, William Howard Taft was an ex-president when he became chief justice. Earl Warren was a popular Republican governor of California who had never served as a judge until president Eisenhower nominated him as chief justice. If you go further back, many justices never even went to law school, though this was more a matter of the evolution of legal education. The last non-law school justice was James F. Byrnes. (In earlier history, you generally learned the law as a kind of apprentice and then passed the bar to practice.) There was a brief boomlet of chatter when Bill Clinton was elected that he should or would try to re-inject this “politician on the Court” tradition back into the system. Of course that didn’t happen. The idea has scarcely been entertained since.
We are so far gone into the cesspit of judicial corruption that nominating ex-politicians is not a solution to any current problem, though it would be much better if we got back to some version of it. I mention it to note that we now live in a world in which it is taking as a given that justices must come from the world of rarefied, highly theoretical knowledge that is taught in law schools, especially the half dozen or so elite law schools from which most justices come. This is a very new concept and it is part of a history of professionalization which laid the groundwork for today.
Professionalization was a key part of the history of the latter 19th century. In the early 19th century, whether you were a lawyer or a doctor or other position we now recognize as a profession was largely a matter of saying that’s what you were. Over the course of the 19th century there was a process of creating formalized degree programs and academic training as well as systems of accreditation, often allied with binding state authority. In medicine, this overlapped with a growing body of scientific knowledge about the human body and ways of treating it. (I will focus on some of the downsides of the professionalization movement. But obviously it’s a good thing to know that the person who calls themselves a doctor actually has all the knowledge and training they’re supposed to have.) In the legal domain, professionalization also changed the nature of the law, juries and criminal justice.
Today we have a pretty tight division in trial courts over facts and law. The judge decides what the law is, in concert with the lawyer advocates. Juries determine questions of fact. In the pre-professionalization world, that division was far, far murkier. Juries could mostly do what they wanted (as indeed, they mostly still can.) A key element of the movement of professionalization was to make the role of juries increasingly narrowed and controlled. This is where you get the idea of “jury nullification” which is essentially a word for a rogue jury that has exceeded its remit and galloped ahead to deciding facts, law and just what should happen. This is a loophole the movement of legal professionalization was never quite able to close. Judges tell juries they can’t “nullify.” But in fact they can. And we’ve seen over the last year and a half how critical a redoubt against tyranny this can be, as juries have simply refused to indict or convict people for supposed anti-ICE crimes.
This is a complex history, with upsides and downsides. There are many features of legal professionalization we wouldn’t want to lose today. The key point for present purposes is that professionalization created the idea that statutes and indeed the U.S. Constitution was something people needed highly specialized training to understand. This is mostly false. But it has furthered a worldview in which judges must be deferred to, even when they make decisions which are transparently partisan, corrupt, self-interested or dishonest. When you want to know about rocketry or nuclear weapons or radiation, you really want to talk to a physicist. They have real foundational knowledge that you have to study for a long time to understand. The law isn’t like that. Constitutions are written, or should be written, so the average intelligent person can understand them. The same should go for laws. Mostly that is the case.
In the exchange that I noted yesterday with TPM Reader MS, he said I should debate a Supreme Court expert from a prominent law school to air the issues tied to Supreme Court reform. I told him that law professor experts are, as often as not, part of the problem more than a source of helpful information. I should say that I know a lot of great law professors who are very knowledgeable and educate people about important things — some of them are TPM readers and sources for our reporters. But as a profession, the legal academy is still heavily invested in the idea that they are part of a highly specialized area of knowledge which is required to understand the Constitution and know how the law should operate. At its worst, they see it as half akin to a body of knowledge like physics or genetics. It’s simply not. The Roberts’ Court has brought to the surface the ways in which all the fascinating debates, all the arcane knowledge that maybe you debated with those Federalist Society nerds in law school is simply a convenient packaging for political power. And now when the Court’s corruption has grown so extreme they barely even bother with the packaging.
If you’ve dedicated your professional life to the proposition that this base of theoretical and technical knowledge is “real,” it’s a very bitter pill to swallow to see it revealed as no more than packaging for power. This applies to members of the elite academic-judicial nexus across the ideological spectrum. But that is where the Roberts Court has brought us. Don’t get me wrong. I believe deeply in the law, and I believe in the importance of lawyers who are adept in its intricacies and ability to work within it. But today the mystification of formal legal knowledge, embedded in that academic-judicial nexus, is being used to corrupt the democratic and constitutional process. The corruption has been enabled, though not advanced, by liberal members of the legal academy as well. So we need a more disenthralled, realistic view of the role of the legal profession, what it is, and what it has to offer because corrupt forces have used that legal knowledge mystification to steal power from democratic self-government. And democratic self-government, not the gamesmanship of legal professors and judges, is what our system is and must be based on.
In the Southeast right now, we are seeing a no-holds-barred push to obliterate Black electoral power following the decimation of a law for which generations of activists marched and sometimes died. In service of this goal, state officials are going so far as to cancel elections in which voters have already cast ballots.
Yet many news outlets are talking about what’s happening using terms like “political gamesmanship,” noting white Republicans “looking for every advantage.” These terms were already a stretch for describing the mid-decade gerrymandering blitz pre-Callais. They are wildly inapplicable now.
There’s a frog-in-boiling-water quality to it. Its a mode of coverage unmoored from national and global history, which we ignore at our peril.
If you have not heard yet, Marty Makary, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, resigned from the FDA (it was clear he was going to be fired). Makary has said all sorts ridiculous things about COVID, and he was involved in changing how vaccine reviews were conducted, so this is no great loss to the Republic. Unfortunately, the reason for his firing is, well, not good (boldface mine):
Makary’s insiders said the former Johns Hopkins University cancer surgeon resigned after Trump forced his hand on authorizing fruit-flavored e-cigarettes. Makary had reportedly been resisting the sign-offs out of concern that the kid-friendly flavors could again entice youth use and addiction—something public health officials and experts have for years worked to combat. But Makary’s stance was in conflict with Trump’s “save vaping” campaign promise—and with the tobacco industry’s interests.
Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had called Makary over a weekend to scold him for not moving fast enough to authorize flavored vapes, particularly menthol, mango, and blueberry flavors from the Los Angeles manufacturer Glas. The FDA authorized those flavored products days later and issued a new policy that would make it easier to market flavored vapes.
Officials in the Trump administration also noted that Makary had angered anti-abortion activists, who accused him of slow-walking a safety review of mifepristone, a pill used for abortion and miscarriage treatment.
The upshot of this is the next FDA commissioner likely will be worse: more pliant to Trump et alia, and also more willing to push the Republican Party’s traditional theocratic agenda.
There has been a flood of commentary spilled this week as Donald Trump visits Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping today, most focusing on the power dynamics between the two.
Not unfairly, Trump, notorious abuser of the “cards” analogy in poker, is seen as going into this summit with a much weaker hand than he might have wished, forcing a significant scaling back in what Trump would have sought to achieve at such a summit.
The specter of a stubborn war in Iran with no easy out, the abandonment of U.S. allies, Trump’s diminishing popularity at home over the resulting high prices, and the recognition that Trump flies without a destination in mind all contribute to a perceived mismatch with a China whose alternative global influence leadership seems on the upswing.
Rather than a summit after a successful, quick gutting of Iran, Trump basically finds himself in the position of asking for Chinese help in the Middle East and on some kind of normalization of trade and business investment after months and years of battering China and its business practices.
It is no surprise that Trump will face pressures to abandon Taiwan and give way in the South China Sea, amid other concessions. It is fact that even close U.S. allies, including Canada, have moved decisively to improved ties with China, both in business and in global affairs.
Trump’s isolationist, dictatorial, Might-Makes-Right approach to transactional foreign affairs pushes aside strategic approaches for short-term wins, but even those are unclear now when he has lost so much footing abroad and at home.
America First thinking will butt into China First insistence.
Measuring Success
Of course, there are few objective measures of how each leader will describe a successful outcome to these talks.
They always will find something on which to agree, like space exploration, or the planeload of corporate executives that Trump is taking with him will find useful business contacts that both sides will hail as some kind of progress.
Or they can always say they had full and frank talks, probably never a bad thing, but certainly shy of any practical goals that affect you and me.
What I keep hearing, however, is Trump’s disregard for his opponent in his dealings.
It cannot go as unheard that the very Iranians with whom Trump said last week that he was near agreement have sent him a negotiation response that Trump publicly describes as “garbage.” It’s an unneeded slap that neither advances U.S. interests nor helps solve the puzzle of the Middle East’s ever-present desire to self-destruct.
The art of the business deal that a real or imagined real estate mogul might press for is all about power, but the art of the diplomatic deal starts with some at least public respect for the opponent. The goal always is to reach a deal, which is why it requires art, not muscle alone.
In this trip to China, Trump is running into a determined, focused, patient counterpart who has the ability and realistic organization for both diplomacy and military might, as well as economic power galore.
Trump is arriving in China with U.S. farmers believing that his trade strategy has ruined their biggest market, with small businesses and consumers upset over the high prices of his anti-China tariff policies, with U.S. allies suddenly willing to sit back and watch Trump struggle. Trump is facing significantly adverse election prospects for his party and programs in November, and backlash across party lines against his usurpation of power that is benefiting himself and family over that of voters. Trump is deepening racial, religious, and education divides. And he is borrowing from the Chinese approach to demand financial return for government support for private industry, as represented by the array of business leaders on his plane.
The one thing of which we can be sure is that the worst job we can consider is to be the person who must brief a Trump who shows us daily that he cannot take in information that is not his own.
“FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS NOT JUST IMPORTANT TO DEMOCRACY, IT IS DEMOCRACY.” – Walter Cronkite. CLICK HERE to donate in support of our free and independent voice.
NASA announced Wednesday that it will fly the Artemis III mission in low-Earth orbit and that it continues to target 2027 for this stepping-stone flight that will help land humans on the Moon.
The space agency chose the orbit close to Earth—as opposed to a higher orbit—because it would preserve the final remaining Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage for launching the Artemis IV landing mission later this decade. Instead, NASA will use a "spacer" to simulate the mass and overall dimensions of an upper stage but without propulsive capabilities.
The additional information released this week follows a decision made by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman three months ago to shuffle the agency's Artemis plans in order to accelerate a lunar landing.
One good measure of how well the economy is doing is looking at the relationship between population and employment: What fraction of the working age population actually has jobs?
Oregon, which has often lagged the national labor market, has now converged to closely follow the nation. Claims that Oregon’s economic performance is lagging the nation are simply wrong.
More common measures, like the unemployment rate and a total count of jobs don’t necessarily reveal these facts. The unemployment rate calculation excludes people who “aren’t in the labor force”–which includes many people who have given up looking for work, so-called “discouraged workers.” And as a measure of well being, a total count of jobs, or the growth rate of jobs can mean different things depending on whether the population is growing rapidly, is stable or is declining. A total count of payroll jobs is also affected by mulitple job-holding, which can change over the business cycle (one person holding two part-time jobs held by the same person would be counted as “two jobs” in the payroll employment survey (computed from employer records).
An alternate measure of the plentifulness of jobs is the “employment-population ratio,” or EPOP. As its name suggests, it is calculated by dividing the number of people with jobs by the total number of people in the population. This overcomes the discouraged worker problem that plagues the unemployment rate calculation. In addition, the employment population ratio is computed from household survey data: i.e. asking each person in a survey sample whether they have a job or not. (It is unaffected by mulitple job-holding by a single individual). The other key element of the employment population ratio is that it counts only “working age persons.” The definition of working age varies from source to source, for our computations we use the ages 18-65. Our data come from the annual American Community Survey, compiled by the Census Bureau. It has data for the entire nation for the period 2001 through 2024.
As you might guess, EPOP goes up when the economy is strong, and goes down when the economy is weak, especially in recessions (the opposite of the unemployment rate). The Employment Population Ratio is a good measure of labor market “tightness”–how easy or difficult it is to find a job (or how easy or difficult it is for employers to find workers). Except for the Covid recession, the EPOP ratio has been at or near historic highs since about 2017, and the tight labor markets that this signals have been a key reason workers have experiencing increasing wages.
On this chart, the blue line is Oregon, the red line is the United States. Oregon’s EPOP closely paralleled the national trend from 2001-2008. The Great Recession hit Oregon harder, and it took us longer to recover: EPOP fell from 72 percent to 68 percent for the nation, but fell from 72 percent to 66 percent for Oregon. This suggests that the recession was about half again more severe (-6 percentage points in Oregon) compared to -4 percentage points nationally. Oregon recovered more slowly, but by 2017, our EPOP was basically the same as the national average, and very close to the pre-recession level of 72 percent.
Since then–in the economic expansion through 2019, through the Covid-recession of 2020, and the recovery since, Oregon’s EPOP has closely mirrored the national average. At the current moment, Oregon’s EPOP is about half a percentage point higher (75.2 percent) than the national average (74.7 percent). Notably, both for Oregon and the nation, EPOP is as high as it has been at any time this century. As State Economist Carl Riccadonna says, Oregon’s economic transformation has meant that the Oregon economy is now much more closely integrated with the national economy.
Now it’s [Oregon’s economy is] much more diversified. It’s much more linked more tightly with national economic performance. So if the national economy is improving, then most likely it’s going to drag Oregon along with it. And in fact, that is our view for 2026.
As we look to the future, Oregon is likely to closely parallel trends in the national labor market. Contrary to some of the pessimistic voices one here’s from the business community, Oregon’s economy is not structurally flawed, nor are we somehow cursed with public policies that have paralyzed our prosperity. The opposite is true: we’re well poised to perform well when the US economy is healthy.
Every US president since Nixon has called for freeing the US from ‘dependence on foreign oil’ (within ten years!). Every president has failed. Fracking, however, has delivered the goods. Fracking has reduced the price of energy, reduced net emissions of greenhouse gases and turned the US into an energy exporter.
In How Much Has Shale Gas Saved U.S. Consumers? Lucas Davis compare LNG prices in the US ($5.3 Mcf), Europe ($14.4 Mcf) and Japan ($16.1 Mcf) to offer some plausible back of the envelope calculations:
Advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling caused U.S. natural gas production to increase significantly, and the U.S. went from being a net importer of natural gas to being the world’s largest exporter. This paper calculates how much shale gas has saved U.S. natural gas consumers. Using price differences between the United States, Europe and Japan, we calculate that U.S. natural gas consumers have saved $4.5-$5.3 trillion between 2007 and 2025, equivalent to $237-$276 billion annually. Access to low-price U.S. natural gas has been particularly valuable during major supply shocks such as the war in Ukraine, and the benefits of shale gas have been experienced broadly across sectors and states.
The UK’s AI Security Institute evaluated GPT-5.5’s ability to find security vulnerabilities, and found that it is comparable to Claude Mythos. Note that the OpenAI model is generally available.
Moral Economics: A Book Event with Sally Satel Thursday, May 14, 2026 | 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM ET AEI, Auditorium | 1789 Massachusetts Ave. NW | Washington, DC 20036
4:30 p.m. Opening Remarks: Sally Satel, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
4:40 p.m. Presentation: Alvin E. Roth, Professor, Stanford University
5:00 p.m. Panel Discussion
Panelists: Nick Gillespie, Editor at Large, Reason Judd Kessler, Professor, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Alex Tabarrok, Professor, George Mason University
Moderator: Sally Satel, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
5:45 p.m. Q&A
6:00 p.m. Adjournment
"What should the government ban, and why? Questions surrounding the legal status of prostitution, marijuana use, abortion, euthanasia, and more are typically answered in the language of morality or religion. In his new book,Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner Alvin E. Roth contends that we should judge policies by their consequences, not only by their intentions. A panel of economists and cultural commentators will address Dr. Roth’s arguments.
Submit questions toJillian.Holley@AEI.org. If you are unable to attend in person, a video livestream will be made available on this page.
The proliferation of AI-generated and AI-assisted text on the internet is feared to contribute to a degradation in semantic and stylistic diversity, factual accuracy, and other negative developments. We find that by mid-2025, roughly 35% of newly published websites were classified as AI-generated or AI-assisted, up from zero before ChatGPT’s launch in late 2022. We also find evidence suggesting that increases in AI-generated text on the internet bring about a decrease in semantic diversity and an increase in positive sentiment. We do not, however, find statistically significant evidence supporting the hypothesis that an increased rate of AI-generated text on the internet decreases factual accuracy or stylistic diversity. Notably, our findings diverge from public perception of AI’s impact on the internet.
Paresh Dave, Lauren Goode, Steven Levy, and Zoë Schiffer, reporting for Wired (News+ link):
As Meta employees brace for layoffs next Wednesday, May 20, many
say the vibes are horrifically, historically low. “Everyone is
unhappy; the only people who are not unhappy are, literally,
executives,” says an employee who works on Instagram.
I’ve never heard of a company bracing for layoffs where the morale was good. But this Wired report — with some all-star bylines — paints a particularly dark picture of the mood in Menlo Park:
“I don’t know anyone having a good time,” says a policy staffer.
“The vibe is a bit ‘over it’ — lack of connection to the mission,
upcoming layoffs, American employees being used to train the AI
models that will replace them.”
Anyone who can afford to leave is hoping to be laid off and
receive the 16 weeks minimum of severance and 18 months of paid
health care that come with it, several people say. As the
Instagram employee put it, “Everyone is just like, do it now,
jesus fucking christ.” Only the individuals with the best pay
packages and involved in the core development of AI seem to be
thriving, a longtime senior leader at Meta says.
Regarding the new employee surveillance tracking software:
Opting out is not possible, according to three employees. “Nobody
is happy about it,” says a current employee. “And we have no
choice.” Some employees claim they have found workarounds to dodge
tracking or have managed to delay installation.
The software, known as Model Capability Initiative, or MCI,
suddenly turned people across the company into privacy zealots, a
legal staffer says. When employees protested the rollout in
internal messages, including by referencing Meta’s history of
user data breaches, chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth
“belittled and berated” the dissenters, one veteran employee says
and another confirms. “These billionaires can’t even feign
empathy,” the first person says. “The social contract is
completely shattered at this point.”
Donald Trump is headed to China with a whole bunch of top U.S. CEOs in tow to talk about trade. There is probably a post to be written here about how Trump is creating a new kind of “America, Inc.” centered around his own person, using a combination of tariffs, export controls, federal government equity stakes, and personal bullying. But this is not that post. Instead, this is a post about decoupling. Trump was elected in 2016, and again in 2024, on promises to reduce American economic dependence on China. How well has he succeeded?
First, some background. In the mid-2010s, when Trump came to power, the U.S. and China had a pretty well-understood economic relationship. America did R&D and designed products, then shipped the designs to China where they were manufactured — often using components from Japan/Korea/Taiwan, but sometimes using Chinese components. China would then ship the products back to America, where they were marketed and sold and serviced by the American companies.
Both countries chafed at this arrangement. Americans complained that the relocation of labor-intensive assembly to China put American factory workers out of a job (which was true) and worried that outsourcing assembly would eventually lead to the outsourcing of more valuable activities (which was probably true), while Chinese leaders were annoyed at being stuck in the low-value-added middle of the production chain. So both countries implemented policies to break up this arrangement and create a new trading system.
China used industrial policy to onshore high-value component manufacturing and create its own “national champion” brands, while U.S. Presidents Trump and Biden strove to reduce U.S. trade dependence on China.1 I wrote about this breakup in 2022:
Everyone agrees that China has succeeded in its half of the decoupling — far more Chinese-made goods are now made with Chinese components. The country has climbed up the value chain, and developed top brands like BYD, Huawei, Xiaomi, DJI, CATL, and so on.
Whether the U.S. has succeeded in reducing its dependence on Chinese manufacturing, however, has been a subject of hot debate. On one hand, the percentage of America’s imports that it gets from China has plummeted:
That’s from a WSJ story in February of this year, entitled “The American and Chinese Economies Are Hurtling Toward a Messy Divorce”. A few more details:
Some businesses have moved production from China to the U.S. to avoid tariffs, but the flow is still modest. Mexico and Southeast Asian nations are more common destinations for manufacturers leaving China…About 9% of Ohio manufacturers in a recent survey said they had reshored some production to the U.S. in 2025, up from 4% in 2021. About 60% of the reshoring in 2025 relocated from China[.]
It’s clear that tariffs have had an effect on the shifting of U.S. imports away from China. Even Trump’s far weaker tariffs in his first term showed results — America started buying tariffed goods from countries other than China, even as it kept buying non-tariffed goods from China:
Despite all the hullabaloo of “Liberation Day”, Trump’s tariffs on China — which built on previous tariffs on China by the Biden and first Trump administrations — dwarfed his tariffs on friendly countries:
Which kind of products is America no longer importing from China? Trump’s first-term tariffs mostly hit low-value products like furniture, shoes, and clothing (where China’s share was slowly declining anyway as its labor costs rose). But more recent tariffs have hit China’s sales of electronics — PCs, phones, etc. Two years ago, most of America’s PCs were made in China; now, most of them are made in Vietnam.
It’s not just trade, either; on the investment side, too, decoupling has been very apparent. There were a whole bunch of stories in 2025 about U.S. businesses wanting to relocate their production out of China. These anecdotes represented a trend that was highly visible in the data — the collapse of foreign direct investment into the Chinese economy:
Why has investment shifted? Tariffs are one reason. Traditionally, a lot of what the U.S. imported from China was made by American companies — for example, Apple manufacturing iPhones in Shenzhen and shipping them back to the U.S. Tariffs make this a more expensive thing to do, so they provide an incentive for American companies — and any multinational companies that sell stuff to the U.S. — to stop investing in Chinese factories.
A second reason is what I call the “China Cycle”. Multinationals have learned the painful lesson that when they put their factories in China, their technology will be appropriated by Chinese indigenous companies — often with the help of the Chinese government — and then later used to outcompete them in global markets. Again and again, companies fell for the lure of the huge Chinese domestic market, only to lose their technological crown jewels to fierce Chinese competitors who rarely played fair. This has naturally chilled the desire to invest in China.
A third reason, of course, was the threat of war. As China grew more bellicose over Taiwan and the South China Sea, multinationals began to realize that having their factories in China, where they would be either blockaded or expropriated in the event of a conflict, posed a big risk.
So it’s possible to tell a pretty coherent story here. U.S. companies had plenty of reasons to move out of China, but tariffs gave them a big extra push. And with the exodus of those companies, China’s exports to America plunged.
But in fact, there are lots of people who don’t believe the decoupling is real. One group — call it the “macro camp” — has argued that because U.S. trade deficits and Chinese trade surpluses are still about the same size (or larger), there must be some sort of hidden conduit by which Chinese products are still reaching American shores, possibly by a circuitous route.
The macro camp included some strange ideological bedfellows — people like Brad Setser and Robin Brooks who were frustrated with tariffs’ inability to curb global imbalances and wanted to see sterner protectionist measures taken, and free-traders like The Economist and the Peterson Institute who seemed to think that if Trump & co. can be convinced that tariffs are futile, the free-trade consensus will reappear. I had some ferocious battles2 with some of these folks back in 2023:
My key argument was that you can’t just look at macro imbalances — China’s trade surplus with the whole world, and America’s trade deficit with the whole world — and conclude that Chinese goods must be making their way into America. It just doesn’t follow. China could be finding alternative markets for its exports, while America found alternative sources for its imports, and these could roughly be the same countries. The macro imbalances would persist, but China and America would have decoupled.
That said, it’s also possible that the macro camp was right — China might be finding some way to get around tariffs. And sure, multinational companies are divesting from China, but that doesn’t mean China’s exports to America have to fall; China’s indigenous companies, like BYD and Huawei, are perfectly capable of selling their own products to America.
So before we conclude that decoupling is definitely real, we need to actually check the data in greater detail.
How might Chinese goods be sneaking into America? Decoupling skeptics often posited transshipment — basically, the idea that Chinese companies responded to tariffs by slapping a “Made in Vietnam” label on their products and sending them through Vietnamese ports on their way to American shores. But while a little of this probably did happen, Gerard DiPippo estimates that transshipment is minor — at most 18% of China’s lost exports to America, and probably a lot less.
He got this estimate by looking at specific products — examining what China stopped selling to the U.S., and what it started selling to Vietnam, in the wake of tariffs. If products are being transshipped through Vietnam, the two numbers should line up. But they usually don’t — the things China has started selling to Vietnam since Trump’s tariffs went into effect are, by and large, not the same products Vietnam has been selling more of to America. Transshipment can’t be the big story here.
A more convincing argument is mismeasurement. There is a gap between how much the U.S. says it imports from China, and how much China says it exports to the U.S. As of 2024, the latter had fallen by much less than the former:
The biggest reason for this was probably the “de minimis” exemption, which let China ship small packages to America without paying tariffs. Chinese manufacturers took advantage of this rule by breaking down their shipments into a bunch of small packages:
But Trump closed the de minimis loophole by executive order in the summer of 2025. So that loophole can’t explain the continued collapse in China’s exports to the U.S. over the last year.
There is one far more believable way that Chinese-made products might still be flooding into America: intermediate goods. Just as a “Made in China” iPhone was mostly made out of Japanese and Korean and Taiwanese parts back in 2011, a “Made in Vietnam” iPhone today will contain a lot of Chinese parts. Since complicated components represent a lot more of the actual value of an electronics product than the actual final assembly, this means that it’s still mostly China selling stuff to America. Hsu, Peng, and Wu estimated in 2024 that this effect was substantial:
Utilizing transaction-level customs import-export data, we develop a novel measure to assess firm-product-level indirect dependence of U.S. importers on China via their suppliers in Vietnam and Mexico. Our findings indicate a substantial increase in indirect dependence on China post-Trade War…suggesting that despite efforts to reduce dependence on China, U.S. supply chains remain indirectly dependent on China via third-party nations.
Annoyingly, however, this data is only through 2022. In fact, we also have another data source on indirect trade — the OECD’s value-added trade numbers. But that’s also released very slowly; the most recent data set also only goes through 2022.
Looking at that data is still interesting, though. In fact, before the pandemic, America’s share of imports from China was falling on a value-added basis. The pandemic bumped it back up, but then it started to fall again in 2022:
The pandemic throws a wrench into the trend, making it hard to see if there’s been a recent drop that mirrors the recent drop in gross import flows. It’ll take some time to get that data. But in the meantime, it looks like Trump’s first-term tariffs really did reduce America’s import dependence on China a bit — and that decoupling might have resumed in 2022.3
Intermediate goods trade changes the basic story about decoupling. Tariffs and other factors broke the old arrangement between the U.S. and China, where American companies outsourced production to China and sold the products back to American customers. That old world is gone. In its place is a new relationship, in which Chinese companies sell parts and components to assemblers in other countries, who then sell the goods to America.
This is not a trivial change. On one hand, it shows how Chinese companies have moved up the value chain, becoming direct competitors to multinationals. On the other hand, final assembly of goods isn’t trivial or meaningless. It’s the least profitable part of the value chain, but it’s still important — after all, China industrialized in the 1990s and 2000s while doing mostly that sort of work.
So the fact that American tariffs are causing that assembly work to move out of China is significant. It doesn’t remove U.S. dependence on Chinese manufacturing, but it reduces it. China itself started out doing assembly but later moved into component manufacturing; there are some signs Vietnam may be starting to do the same. And if Vietnam can do it, so can India, Mexico, Indonesia, and so on. China doesn’t have some magic secret sauce that makes it the only country that can make physical objects; other countries can learn, just like China did.
A non-Chinese supply chain won’t be built quickly or easily, and it hasn’t been happening as fast as the headline numbers suggest. But we’ve made a promising start, and the tariffs on China were part of that. A lot of Trump’s protectionist policy has been haphazard, misdirected, stupid, and downright corrupt, but this one — which was continued by Biden and the Democrats — was actually starting to yield some results. It would be a shame if Trump throws that all away on this trip in exchange for the promise of a few soybean purchases or whatever.
The U.S. also started using export controls to limit China’s development in key strategic industries like semiconductors, and China eventually followed suit with its own export controls on rare earths.
One additional note of caution here: Even when the components are also made in Vietnam or Mexico, they may be made by Chinese-owned factories, meaning that some portion of what America pays to its Vietnamese and Mexican suppliers flows through to Chinese shareholders. Those profit flows won’t show up in any trade numbers at all.
I’m unsure where Joe was headed, but I’m on a Northwest Orient flight from Boston to Orlando, Florida. It’s April of 1980.
This was only my fourth or fifth time on an airplane, and my first time sitting in first class. It was a morning departure. You can’t quite see it, but I’m eating a cheese omelette.
Bob Spitz has written major biographies of the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, and now the Rolling Stones — but also, somehow, Ronald Reagan and Julia Child. In rock, his credentials were hard won: he started out hustling gigs for an unknown Bruce Springsteen for six years, moved on to handling Elton John’s American business, and spent long enough in the world to find himself jamming with Paul McCartney and chatting with Bob Dylan on a stoop in the Village. The Reagan and Julia Child books are harder to explain, and perhaps that’s the point—Spitz seems to do his best work when he has no business writing the book at all.
Tyler and Bob discuss how the Stones became so great so quickly, what they added to the blues, how their melodies stack up against the Beatles’, whether Exile on Main Street deserves its canonical status, which songs are most underrated, what Charlie Watts actually got out of playing in a rock band, the rise and fall of Brian Jones, how the Stones outlasted nearly everyone, the influence of Mick’s London School of Economics training, why popular music has lost its cultural influence, what we should still be asking Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, whether the Beatles’ breakup was good for the world, how senile Reagan really was in his second term and whether he was ever truly a communist, how good a cook Julia Child actually was, his next book on Lennon’s second act, and much more.
Excerpt:
SPITZ: Mick, from a very early age, was an exercise freak.
As we know from my investigation in the book, Mick’s father was the Jack Lalanne of the United Kingdom. He had a television show, an exercise show like Richard Simmons, and he always had a great person to show off the exercises, young Michael. He would say, Mike, get down, show him 50 pushups. Mike, do 100 chins, and Mick would jump to it and do it. That man still has a 27-inch waist at the age of 83.
Keith, on the other hand, is a medical miracle.
And this:
COWEN: Mick once said his favorite economist was Friedrich A. Hayek. Do you know anything more about that?
SPITZ: I do not, actually. I think it’s incredible that Mick had favorite economists. We do know that Mick was a scholarship student to the London School of Economics, and that for two and a half years, he attended and got pretty good grades. He did fairly well. The one thing that amazes me about Mick coming out of that London School of Economics is this. After 1967, when Andrew Loog Oldham stopped managing the Stones, they have never had another manager. They’ve had some money managers, but as far as managers go, Mick Jagger was their manager.
And:
COWEN: How good a cook was Julia Child? That’s another of your biographies. Actually, how good was she?
SPITZ: She was great. She was a wonderful person, but here’s the little secret. Julia was a great cooking teacher, but not a very good cook. There were people who left her house—and John Updike told me this. He was a frequent guest with her. Corby Kummer, who was a wonderful food writer, told me this as well. They’d leave Julia’s house. They’d go to a little park around the corner, and they’d get physically ill. They’d get sick. Julia used too much butter, too much cream. She really had no reins on her when it came to using things like that.
A frozen river winds from east to west past Aniak, Alaska. Nearby meandering channels are also frozen, and much of the surrounding land is snow-covered.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
A river winds from east to west past Aniak, Alaska. Some stretches of the wide channel are still frozen over, while others contain broken-up ice. Most of the surrounding land is snow-free.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
A frozen river winds from east to west past Aniak, Alaska. Nearby meandering channels are also frozen, and much of the surrounding land is snow-covered.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
A river winds from east to west past Aniak, Alaska. Some stretches of the wide channel are still frozen over, while others contain broken-up ice. Most of the surrounding land is snow-free.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
April 21, 2026
May 7, 2026
The landscape along the Kuskokwim River near Aniak, Alaska, is frozen on April 21, 2026 (left), while spring melt and river ice breakup are evident on May 7, 2026 (right). Both images were acquired with the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9. NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison.
Thawing may be a welcome sight for Alaskans following a remarkably cold winter and early spring in much of the state. But with melting comes the threat of rapid flooding in low-lying areas as river ice breaks up and periodically jams.
The landscape along the Kuskokwim River appeared frozen in a Landsat 9 image acquired on April 21, 2026 (left). According to observations published by the Alaska-Pacific River Forecast Center, river ice near the town of Aniak was thick and still covered in deep snow as of April 16. The Kuskokwim ice road connecting numerous villages traces a dark line down the river. The thick river ice supported a route that extended about 350 miles (560 kilometers) in winter 2025-2026 and shut down for the season on April 10, according to news reports.
Conditions were changing quickly around May 7, when the right image was acquired. The previous day, the front of the ice breakup had nearly reached Aniak, and a sheet of grounded ice caused a jam that stretched 21 miles (34 kilometers) upstream. News reports showed ice chunks several feet thick piled up on riverbanks around the town. Ice became unstuck by May 7, and the backup, visible above (right), had started to flow downstream.
Aniak remained at risk, however, as ice clogged the river later that night, this time several miles downstream from the community. Waters began to rise, and a flood watch was issued for the town on May 8. Water inundated low-lying areas and encroached on homes and businesses near the east side of the runway, according to reports, before receding two days later.
Flooding caused by spring breakup can be most hazardous when heavy snowpack and thick ice remain in place from the winter and there’s a sudden transition from freezing to warmer temperatures. In what is known as a dynamic breakup, snowmelt encounters intact ice and causes water to back up quickly. On the other hand, if ice weakens before significant snowmelt or ice from upstream arrives, jams are less likely to form.
Forecasters noted that spring 2026 showed warning signs of a dynamic breakup. Snowpack was above average in some major river drainages, and historically low temperatures marked the winter and spring months in many places. For example, the March average temperature in Bethel, downstream of Aniak, was 14 degrees Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius) below normal. However, floods had been relatively minor along the large rivers through early May, experts noted, while cautioning that more severe flooding still has the potential to develop quickly.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Lindsey Doermann.
US Space Command is inviting commercial companies to participate in a new series of classified wargames. The first exercise simulated a scenario involving a potential nuclear detonation in orbit.
Gen. Stephen Whiting, the senior officer in charge of Space Command, discussed the new wargame series Tuesday in a discussion hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Space Command is responsible for military activities in space and is separate from the Space Force, which provides the people and equipment to support those operations.
The new wargames, called Apollo Insight, combine military and commercial expertise to respond to simulated threats in space. Space Command plans to conduct four Apollo Insight "tabletop exercises" this year.
Last June, Meta pried Alex Wang away from Scale AI, the company he co-founded and ran, in a deal valued at $14 billion. Zuck could feel Meta fading in the AI race and decided that Wang was the rescue plan. He would work full-time at Meta, assemble a super team and hopefully make the company more competitive against the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic and Alphabet.
Wang has basically been in hiding ever since. He moved from San Francisco to the South Bay to be closer to Meta’s headquarters and has been working non-stop. Last month, the world saw the first fruits of the revitalized AI effort in the form of Meta’s new Muse Spark model. And now Wang is speaking for the first time about the model, Meta’s grand AI ambitions and all the happenings over the last year in an exclusive interview here on the Core Memory podcast.
Wang arrived at our studio sporting a mullet and a powerful whitetail deer camouflage shirt. He was in good spirits and tried his best to convince us that Meta can catch up to its rivals.
We hit on his personal beef with Sam Altman, Zuck delivering soup to AI recruits, the incredible pay packages Meta has been handing out, the vast amount of work Meta still has to do and the Meta AI hierarchy that includes all-stars like Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross and Shengjia Zhao, who seems to have blocked me on X for reasons I know nothing about.
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you like the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
Do you make stuff? Do you need metal parts fast and believe in truth and justice? Then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
Windows Notepad is, more or less, the Windows peer to MacOS’s TextEdit — the built-in system text editor. For years, it was really basic — so much more basic than TextEdit that it engendered no affection. You don’t see paeans to Notepad in The New Yorker. Recently though, Microsoft has started beefing it up, culminating last year when they added fucking Markdown support. Which still blows my mind.
Notepad++ is a longstanding open source (GPL) Windows text editor by Don Ho, which debuted back in 2003. Just adding “++” to the name might be misleading. The name implies that it’s like Microsoft’s Notepad plus a little more. But Notepad++ is in fact a wholly independent programming text editor, with a rich plugin library. It doesn’t resemble Microsoft’s Notepad much at all anymore. It’s over two decades old but remains quite popular. To some extent Notepad++ is sorta kinda the Windows peer to BBEdit.
Nextpad++ is something new, from Andrey Letov. It’s a Mac port of the Notepad++ GPL code. It launched a few weeks ago under the name “Notepad++ for Mac”, but Letov had no right or permission to the name. That dispute has been settled, and Letov has renamed this project Nextpad++. The website’s About page has entire sections for “How Nextpad++ for Mac Was Built” and “Technology Stack”, and neither of those mentions AI, but this thing has to have been built using AI vibe-coding agents. That same About page also says the project only started on March 10, and the 1.0 version (under the defunct “Notepad++ for Mac” name) shipped just a few weeks after that. Something of the scope of this port couldn’t happen at that pace without AI. Update: On the Author page, not the About page, it states, “multi-agent AI development workflows are what make a one-person project at this scale practical.” Possible, sure, but I wouldn’t call this practical.
Nextpad++ feels like a fever dream. Like what Mac apps would be if the Nazis had won WWII. Look, there are all sorts of foreign apps on the Mac. Electron apps. Apps ported with Wine. Web apps running in browser tabs or saved to the Dock. The curious new generation of lean-and-mean apps that are, in a technical sense, “native”, but are decidedly not Mac-assed apps, like Zed and Tolaria. All those types of apps feel alien on MacOS. Like different species. They are apps for the Mac but aren’t Mac apps. The Mac, however, is welcoming to them all, like the Mos Eisley cantina. We do serve their kind here. Nextpad++ isn’t like that. It doesn’t feel like an alien. It feels like Vincent D’Onofrio’s alien-bug-in-human-skin character from Men in Black.
Letov’s website describes Nextpad++ as “A real Mac app, not a Wine wrapper: Objective-C++ on top of Scintilla and Cocoa, shipped as a Universal Binary for Apple Silicon (M1–M5) and Intel Macs.” Ostensibly that’s a good thing. The download is only 14 MB. But Nextpad++ looks and feels like something that should not exist. The promotional screenshots on the app’s own website show it with 50 inscrutable toolbar buttons. It closes document tabs on mousedown, not mouseup. Its default font is 10-point Courier New. This is a real dialog box. It offers four settings for font antialiasing — “Default”, “None”, “Antialiased”, and “LCD Optimized” — but the default is not “Default”. No human being would port a complex Windows app like Notepad++ to the Mac like this.
I’m not anti-AI. I’m very much intrigued by the whole incipient vibe-coding phenomenon. But this app feels unholy.
The biggest story in the country, today and always, is that the president of the United States is mentally unwell.
Over the course of three hours last night, he posted on social media fifty-five times. Those posts accused a number of those Trump considers his personal enemies, including former president Barack Obama, of treason; claimed that investigations of the ties between his 2016 campaign and Russian operatives were an attempt to damage Trump; insisted the 2020 presidential election was stolen; reposted a fake quotation from Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) accusing Obama of making a personal fortune of $120 million from the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare; labeled Obama and others “traitors” and called for their arrest; and demanded to know why acting attorney general Todd Blanche hadn’t indicted any of those people yet.
This morning, he started in again with a long screed attacking the New York Times for its coverage of his alterations to the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and insisting that Democratic presidents Obama and Joe Biden had “botched” renovations that he was now fixing for “a ‘tiny’ fraction of the cost!” He posted an AI image of Obama, Biden, and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) apparently swimming in a filthy version of the reflecting pool with the caption: “Dumacrats Love Sewage.” Then he posted an image of himself on the $100 bill. And then he was back to calling House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) “Low IQ.”
After posting a number of AI images showing the U.S. military destroying the Iranian military, Trump posted: “When the Fake News says that the Iranian enemy is doing well, Militarily, against us, it’s virtual TREASON in that it is such a false, and even preposterous, statement. They are aiding and abetting the enemy!”
Then he posted an image of a map with Venezuela overlaid with the U.S. flag. The caption read: “51st State.”
Trump seems to be comforting himself by lashing out at his perceived enemies and insisting he is competent and popular. Before he left for China today, he claimed: “We have Iran very much under control. We’re either going to make a deal or they’re going to be decimated. One way or the other, we win.”
Mosheh Gains, Courtney Kube, and Monica Alba of NBC News reported today that if Trump decides to restart major combat operations against Iran, military leaders are considering renaming the operations with a new name, like “Operation Sledgehammer,” to suggest those operations would be different than the current “Epic Fury.” They argue that renaming the military operation would restart the clock of the 1973 War Powers Act that requires congressional authorization to continue it after sixty days, a deadline that ran out on May 1.
War Powers Act expert Brian Finucane, who was a lawyer for the State Department, commented: “Nope. Changing the name of the authorized war with Iran does not alter the application of the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day clock.”
In the meantime, there is no apparent movement toward opening the Strait of Hormuz, even as numbers released today by the Department of Labor show that inflation in April hit its highest level since 2023. Trump’s own intelligence agencies assessed earlier this year that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and that Iran’s leader had not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003. An assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency said that Iran would not be able to reach the U.S. with an intercontinental ballistic missile until 2035.
Nonetheless, the administration and its supporters appear to have settled on the idea that the cost of the war has been worthwhile because the U.S. was under imminent threat of nuclear attack by Iran. When a reporter asked Trump today, before he left for China, to what extent Americans’ financial situation is motivating him to make a deal with Iran, he answered:
“Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran—they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing—we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.”
A CNN/SSRS poll released today shows that 70% of Americans disapprove of the way Trump is handling the economy.
Trump is, however, thinking about his own financial situation. Tonight Andrew Duehren and Alan Feuer of the New York Times reported that the Department of Justice is in talks to settle Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service for damages after a contractor during Trump’s first term leaked tax information, including his, to the media.
The judge in the case has ordered Trump’s lawyers and the Department of Justice to file briefs by May 20 explaining why this is a true case in which the two sides are opposed when Trump both is the plaintiff and runs the agency that is the defendant. If they settle before then, the judge will not be able to say much about whether the case was valid in the first place.
Duehren and Feuer note that the Department of Justice has fought similar cases brought because of the leak, arguing that the government can’t be held liable for something a contractor does. The government settled a case with hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin in 2024 by making a public apology.
The New York Times journalists report that one of the options for settling with Trump would be for the IRS to drop any audits of Trump, his family members, or his businesses. Since 1977, IRS policy has been to conduct a mandatory audit of the sitting president every year, although it failed to audit Trump’s taxes for his first two years in office during his first term. Clearly, he would like for it to fail to audit his taxes this time around as well.
The special treatment certain people enjoy in the U.S. that enables them to get around accountability was in the news earlier today, too, as the victims of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein testified before a panel made up of the Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee. The top Democrat on the committee, Robert Garcia of California, began the day by introducing a new report called “The Price of Non-Prosecution.” It explained that the sweetheart deal U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Alexander Acosta—later Trump’s secretary of labor—negotiated with Epstein to protect him from federal prosecution left him able to continue his sex-trafficking operation and to expand it.
The survivors recounted their anger and frustration when they discovered the federal government had made a secret deal with Epstein. One survivor, who identified herself as Roza, detailed how Epstein sexually assaulted her over three years when he was supposed to be serving a jail sentence. She broke down as she recounted how the Department of Justice under then–attorney general Pam Bondi continued that favoritism, exposing her name publicly while leaving the names of the perpetrators’ names redacted.
“I stepped forward along other survivors hoping those who allowed this to happen will be held accountable. I kept my identity protected as ‘Jane Doe.’ I woke up one day with my name mentioned over 500 times. While the rich and powerful remain protected by redaction, my name was exposed to the world. Now reporters from across the globe contact me. I cannot live without looking over my shoulder. I can only imagine the long-term impact this ‘mistake’ will have on my life.”
In Tennessee today, Tennessee House speaker Cameron Sexton removed all the House Democrats from standing committees, saying they had behaved in a way “aimed at disrupting the democratic and legislative processes” as they protested the mid-decade redistricting that broke up Tennessee’s only majority-Black, Democratic district. As Tennessee state representative Justin J. Pearson notes, this decree removed “every Black elected official in the state legislature from any committee we served on” and stripped “nearly 2 million Tennesseans from the representation they deserve” in the Tennessee state legislature.
“We will not stop fighting,” state representative Justin Jones posted. “We will not stop getting in good trouble. We will not go back!”
An experiment that shows that you can load an app in a CSP-protected sandboxed iframe (see previous note) and have a custom fetch() that intercepts CSP errors and passes them up to the parent window... which can then prompt the user to add that domain to an allow-list and then refresh the page.
I built this one with GPT-5.5 xhigh running in the Codex desktop app.
Dear CA40 voters: if you live in CA40, your June 2 ballot includes an extremely important choice that has urgent implications for our district and our entire nation.
In our district, two well-funded Republican incumbents are at war with each other over who is more loyal to Donald Trump. Five Democrats, including me (Esther Kim-Varet), are running to replace them, alongside one candidate not affiliated with a party. Eight candidates total. Under California’s top-two primary, only the top two vote-count candidates advance to November, regardless of party and regardless of percentages. This is a “sudden death” primary that offers no second chance.
Because both the Republican and Democrat votes are split, this is a very similar dynamic to the Governor’s race, but even riskier because CA40 has more registered Republicans than registered Democrats. Compare my campaign to Xavier Becerra’s: well-funded, organized, and competitive in the polls. The other Democratic candidates’ campaigns are comparable to Antonio Villaraigosa’s: well-intentioned and hardworking, but mathematically stalled and at risk of dividing the vote enough to pre-emptively hand the election to Republicans on June 2.
I do not say this to disparage anyone. I respect every Democrat who has stepped forward to run in this district. But in this particular primary, with only three weeks left, we need to move past mud-slinging and wish-casting and instead focus on the facts, the math, and the stakes.
The facts. Tulchin Research’s latest poll of five hundred likely CA40 primary voters shows me at 20 percent, statistically tied with Republican incumbents Ken Calvert and Young Kim. Among Democratic voters specifically, my support has surged to 42 percent in just four months, since the earlier January poll. My closest Democratic rival lost ground and is down to 6 percent overall support. The next closest Democrat is at 4 percent. Both of those other Democratic candidates are trending downward since January. To date, my campaign has raised $3 million dollars (mostly from 65,000 small dollar grassroots donations), run paid television advertising, deployed mail across the district, and built a social media audience of more than one hundred and fifty thousand supporters. My Democratic opponents, after trying for six months since redistricting, have done none of these things at scale, not because they lack character or commitment, but because they lack the resources and operational infrastructure required to compete with two well-funded Republican incumbents.
The math. The two candidates with the highest vote totals on June 2 advance to November, regardless of party. With Calvert, Young Kim, and me locked in a statistical tie at the top of the field, this race is an unusual “sudden death” primary. There is no second chance for Democrats. If our Democratic vote splits between multiple challenger candidates while the Republican vote consolidates behind Calvert and Young Kim, two MAGA Republicans WILL advance to November together. A vote for any Democrat other than the only Democrat in striking distance (me) is implicitly a vote to forfeit CA40 to Trump-enabling Republicans. Like it or not, like me or not, that is just the factual math of this high-stakes dual-Republican top-2 primary.
The stakes. They could not be higher. After this week’s Virginia ruling, the path to a Democratic House majority has narrowed to a perilous knife’s edge. CA40 is the LAST MAGA-held seat in Southern California that Democrats can realistically flip in 2026, and the ONLY red-to-blue seat in the nation that is at risk of forfeiture in the primary. If we surrender this district because our coalition could not unite around the only candidate in position to actually get a spot in the general election, we will all share responsibility for a Republican-held House through the remainder of President Trump’s second term. That means no oversight of an administration that has already targeted civil liberties, environmental protections, the press, and the basic machinery of American democracy. The cost of disunity in CA40 would be paid by every American who believes in free elections and the rule of law.
I am not your only option in this primary. I am your only viable option. I have made missteps in this race, as every first-time candidate does, and I will make more before June 2. If you need to hold your nose to vote for me, please do. Hold your nose. Cast the ballot. Move on. Let’s make CA40 blue together. Let’s help put checks and balances on the Trump administration together. The only alternative is a CA40 represented by two of the most corrupt and harmful incumbents in Congress.
For those who want more detail on my policies and platform, I welcome and encourage you to review them here and here, and hope you will reach out to me to discuss at ekv@estherforcongress.org.
My door is always open.
I am asking every Democrat in CA40, every independent who values democracy, and every Republican who recognizes that something has gone deeply wrong in their party and our nation, to join me on June 2. We have only three weeks to prevent this critical House seat from being forfeited to Trump-enabling Republicans.
Here is a link to the detailed poll analysis of 500 CA40 primary voters taken last week by highly respected pollster Ben Tulchin, who also works with among others Bernie Sanders, Gavin Newsom, Dave Min, Fiona Ma, and Sharon Quirk-Silva. This is the best information available today on where the CA40 race stands and how we can prevent a Republican lock-out.
Thanks for listening …
— Esther
Esther Kim Varet is a Democratic candidate in the CA-40 congressional race.
The so-called experts ridiculed Donald Trump’s claims during the 2024 campaign that he would bring grocery prices down on Day One and cut energy prices in half.
The so-called experts said that Trump’s tariffs would raise consumer prices while failing to bring back manufacturing jobs.
The so-called experts said that Trump appointee Pete Hegseth’s emphasis on “warrior ethos” rather than competence and his purge of officers he doesn’t consider sufficiently loyal to Trump would degrade the U.S. military and be disastrous in a war.
The so-called experts warned that Trump’s attack on Iran would lead us into a quagmire and cause a global energy crisis.
The so-called experts said that Trump’s contempt for international agreements and his threats to friendly nations would undermine the world’s trust in America, and that we would find ourselves without allies when we needed their help.
The so-called experts were completely right.
Right now inflation is surging; manufacturing employment is down; the Strait of Hormuz remains closed; and Trump is traveling to Beijing as a supplicant, in effect begging China for help getting out of his Iran mess.
But it would be foolish to expect Trump and his minions to learn anything from their humiliation.
To be fair, experts aren’t always right. For example, many prominent military analysts have been repeatedly, profoundly wrong about the Russia-Ukraine war, grossly exaggerating Russian strength and vastly underestimating Ukrainian resilience. Many economists, myself included, understated the risks of inflation in 2021. Many prominent economists, this time myself not included, then greatly overestimated the costs of getting inflation back down.
But political figures who think that they know better than the so-called experts are much more likely to be wrong than right. And they’re especially likely to be wrong if their rejection of expertise stems from wishful thinking, personal obsessions and, last but by no means least, corruption.
Trump is, of course, a perfect example of the kind of political figure who absolutely shouldn’t disregard experts and absolutely will. When deciding to take us to war with Iran he dismissed warnings about what could go wrong and insisted that it would be easy. His economic policy reflects his decades-old fixation on tariffs; his energy policy is still shaped by his anger over a wind farm that he thought spoiled the view from his golf course; his Iran policy has been driven in large part by a determination to reject everything Barack Obama achieved. And on all issues what he does is strongly influenced by who is able and willing to offer the biggest bribes.
Yet the catastrophic stupidity of current U.S. policy shouldn’t be attributed purely to Trump’s personal unfitness to lead. Willful ignorance and rejection of expert advice have characterized the U.S. political right for many years. Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein published “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” a warning about the growing extremism of the Republican Party, fourteen years ago. Even then they wrote that
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; scornful of compromise and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. [My emphasis]
Trumpism may represent the apotheosis of willful ignorance as a political principle, but we’ve been heading here for decades.
Why does the right hate expertise?
The rejection of science, like so much of the U.S. political landscape, has a lot to do with the influence of the fossil fuel industry. Warnings about climate change threatened that industry’s profits, so it was necessary to attack climate science, and this generalized into hostility toward scientific research as a whole.
Beyond this specific issue, anti-democratic movements have an inherent distrust of expertise, of anyone who knows what they are talking about. Experts can’t be trusted, because they might think independently. In her classic book The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt wrote that
Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.
The Trump administration isn’t a full-on totalitarian regime, at least not yet, but its instincts obviously run in that direction. The degradation of the federal government’s competence, the gutting of American science, and the epically bad judgment that led to Operation Epic Fury are all part of the same story.
So how will Trump and his party respond to their string of high-profile policy failures, from Iran to inflation? Trump may find a way to accept defeat in the Persian Gulf while claiming victory, although that’s looking harder by the day. But there’s no reason to believe that policymaking will get any better, that the experts and the grownups will be let back into the room. The beatings — and the willful ignorance — will continue until morale improves.
We have a bunch of neat Datasette announcements in the pipeline so we decided it was time the project grew an official blog.
I built this using OpenAI Codex desktop, which turns out to have the Markdown session transcript export feature I've always wanted. Here's the session that built the blog. See also issue 179.
Lay till 6 o’clock and then up, and after a little talk and mirth, he went away, and I to my office, where busy all the morning, and at noon home to dinner, and after dinner Pembleton came and I practised. But, Lord! to see how my wife will not be thought to need telling by me or Ashwell, and yet will plead that she has learnt but a month, which causes many short fallings out between us. So to my office, whither one-eyed Cooper came to see me, and I made him to show me the use of platts, and to understand the lines, and how to find how lands bear, &c., to my great content.
Then came Mr. Barrow, storekeeper of Chatham, who tells me many things, how basely Sir W. Batten has carried himself to him, and in all things else like a passionate dotard, to the King’s great wrong. God mend all, for I am sure we are but in an ill condition in the Navy, however the King is served in other places.
SES has canceled two satellites Intelsat ordered before being acquired by the Luxembourg-based multi-orbit operator, joining France’s Eutelsat in pulling back from GEO expansion plans drawn up just a few years ago.
SpaceX has set a date for the long-delayed first launch of its next-generation Starship vehicle, which is critical to the company’s ambitions as well as NASA’s lunar plans.
The 2026 International Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) is rapidly approaching. Thousands of engineering students, representing 150 teams from 20+ countries, will converge at the Midland Spaceport (aka, the West Texas […]
All three are from Queens College, I thought they did a great job, and mostly fresh material. They describe the episode as such:
Xavier, Tristan, and Nick talk about everything interesting under the sun, including aesthetic convergence, the probability that Tyler lives for many centuries, if Spain was the most culinarily optimal culture to colonize Mexico in the 16th century, if Tyler would have joined the fellowship of the ring, why we don’t yet have a GMU lunch podcast, and much more. We hope you have as much fun listening to it as we had recording it!
Recommended, this is a good argument for sometimes doing podcasts with semi-random people, though choose them wisely.
Getting pulled over without insurance is a stressful experience that results in an immediate financial shock. Most drivers are caught off guard by the severity of the initial fine and the administrative hurdles that follow. It is a moment that changes your financial outlook for several years to come.
The state of Texas takes a very aggressive stance on financial responsibility to protect all motorists on the road. When you cannot provide proof of a valid policy, the officer has the authority to issue a significant citation. This event triggers a long list of secondary legal and financial burdens.
One of the first questions people ask after being stopped is how much is a no insurance ticket in Texas. The answer is often much more than just the base fine written on the paper. It involves a cascade of expenses that make it the most expensive ticket you can receive.
Breaking Down Fines for First Time and Subsequent Violations
For a first-time offender, the base fine typically ranges between one hundred and seventy-five dollars to three hundred and fifty dollars. This might seem manageable at first glance, but it is often just the beginning of the state’s intervention. Courts rarely show leniency for those who ignore the basic safety laws.
If you are caught a second time, the stakes rise dramatically for your wallet and your driving record. Subsequent violations carry fines that can reach as high as one thousand dollars per incident. The state views repeat offenders as a significant risk to public safety that must be discouraged through heavy penalties.
These mounting costs can quickly lead to a cycle of debt for families who are already struggling to make ends meet. Paying the citation is just one part of the total financial obligation required by the local court system. The long-term impact on your household budget is often felt for many months.
The Hidden Costs of SR-22 and High Risk Premiums
Perhaps the most hidden and persistent cost of an insurance ticket is the mandatory SR-22 requirement. This is a formal certificate that your insurance company must file with the state to prove you have a policy. It is essentially a high-risk label that follows you for several consecutive years today.
Maintaining this certificate leads to a massive spike in your monthly premiums because you are now seen as a dangerous driver. Many standard carriers will refuse to insure you at all, forcing you into expensive secondary markets. You will likely pay double or triple for the same basic liability coverage.
A single lapse in payment during this time will result in an immediate suspension of your license once again. The state receives a notification the moment your policy is canceled, leading to more fines and legal headaches. This cycle of high premiums is a direct result of that first initial traffic stop.
Administrative Fees and Potential Impoundment Expenses
If your license is suspended following a conviction, you must pay an administrative fee to have it reinstated. This surcharge is an additional burden that must be cleared before you can legally get back behind the wheel. The state uses these fees to cover the costs of managing high-risk driver files.
In many jurisdictions, the officer also has the legal authority to order the immediate impoundment of your vehicle. This leads to towing fees and daily storage costs that accumulate very quickly at the local yard. Recovering your property often requires paying several hundred dollars in cash within just a few days.
These combined expenses create a massive barrier for anyone trying to regain their mobility and return to their daily routine. The logistical nightmare of being without a car adds even more stress to an already difficult situation. Every administrative step carries a price tag that further drains your personal savings accounts.
Impact on Driving Records and Future Employment Options
A conviction for driving without insurance becomes a permanent part of your driving record for all to see. This mark is visible to insurance companies, law enforcement, and even potential employers who conduct background checks. It suggests a lack of responsibility that can be difficult to explain during a professional interview.
If your career involves driving a commercial vehicle or a company car, this citation can be a deal breaker. Many businesses have strict safety standards that prevent them from hiring anyone with a history of insurance violations. Your ability to earn a living in the transportation industry is put at risk.
Protecting your reputation requires a clean record that demonstrates your commitment to following the laws of the road. A single mistake can close doors to high-paying opportunities and limit your career growth for several years. The cost of the ticket is also measured in the opportunities you lose over time.
Conclusion
Final reflections on the true cost of an insurance ticket highlight why it is never worth the risk of driving uncovered. The amount written on the citation is only a small fraction of the total financial and legal burden you will face. It is a lesson that stays with you for years.
By following the rules of the road and maintaining a policy, you protect yourself from these avoidable and expensive headaches. The peace of mind that comes with being fully compliant is worth every cent of your monthly premium payments. Safety and responsibility are the keys to a stable future.
Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that you are never in a position where you have to answer for a lack of coverage. Taking the time to secure an affordable policy is a vital investment in your own physical and financial security today. Accountability on the highway starts with your choice.
A bright spot for Democrats, as Republicans’ scramble to gerrymander the old confederacy plows forward: Over in Nebraska, the path is cleared for an independent who supports things like strengthening the social safety net and taking on corporate power.
That candidate, Dan Osborn, is mounting a second independent Senate run with Democratic support, the logic being the Democratic Party brand might be too toxic in the state, but that voters may still want an option to reject Trump Republicans. Sen. Pete Ricketts (R) is up for reelection this year.
But a “Democrat” no one was expecting got into the race earlier this year: an anti-abortion, Trump-voting pastor who, CNN found, had posted on his Facebook page about attending a Republican training session — then deleted the post. CNN confronted the candidate, William Forbes, about all this back in March:
Asked repeatedly to name a Democrat he voted for, Forbes grew frustrated and said the party needed to return to the “morality” it represented under President John F. Kennedy.
So that was the first Democrat to get into the Senate primary. Didn’t seem great!
Cindy Burbank, another Democrat, soon entered the race, promising to immediately drop out if she won, clearing the field for Osborn. Because she didn’t plan to run in the fall, the state’s Republican Secretary of State initially tried to boot her, but she sued and was able to say on the ballot.
On Tuesday night, Burbank trounced Forbes. The race was called just a few minutes after polls closed. As of this writing, Burbank has 89% of the vote; Forbes has just over 10%.
NASA has enabled scientists to study the impact of microgravity on drug development for decades, beginning with the Space Shuttle. This work accelerated in the 2010s, with the completion of the International Space Station and full-time crew members devoted to scientific research.
There have been some notable successes during this timeframe, such as the ability to grow a more uniform crystalline form of the cancer drug Keytruda in 2019. This opened up the possibility of administering the drug via injection rather than requiring a patient to spend hours in a clinic setting to receive the drug intravenously.
NASA subsidized much of this work, typically paying the considerable costs to transport research to the ISS and for astronaut time to conduct research there. There were, however, trade-offs, such as long lead times to get research into space. Nevertheless, it has become clear that there could be some commercial applications for making drugs in space.
Some of the podcasts I participated in have or will come out this week, to mark the official publication of Moral Economics in the U.S. Here are those I became aware of yesterday. I suppose you could binge on them if you want (or sample them, or even buy the book and read it or listen to it yourself:)
"Alvin Roth is a Nobel Prizewinning Economist whose work on designing markets has had real world impacts that may have saved thousands of lives around the world, while arousing strong emotions both for and against the programs he has helped put in place. Clearly not one to shy away from controversy, he represents the best of what The Origins Project is trying to promote: applying science and reason to public policy. In short, connecting science and culture!
"Roth’s new book, which is fantastic, and comes out the same day this podcast is released deals with issues that often raise the public’s ire, from legalizing prostitution, to assisted suicide, and finally to a rational market for kidney transplants..."
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Here's my conversation with Yascha Mounk (there's also a transcript accompanying his podcast The Good Fight, at the link):
"In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Al Roth discuss the impact of moral disgust on solving economic problems, whether we should allow financial payments for organ donation, and what the rise of OnlyFans tells us about changing attitudes towards the self and economic transactions.
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And here's my conversation with Sean Carroll on his Mindscape podcast (with transcript):
I do not find the mass unemployment hypothesis persuasive, and I have covered this extensively in the past. But here are three other problems which may end up being noticeable in the short run, though likely absent longer term:
1. Many of the new jobs to be created may come in highly regulated sectors, and that will slow their creation. Energy and health care — especially biomedical trials — are two examples I have in mind here. Let’s say we opt for more nuclear power to ease constraints of compute — how long will it take for most of those jobs to come on line?
2. At least initially, job search and matching might be less efficient. We have lots of practice judging which workers are best for which jobs in a pre-AI world. But say most jobs involve working with AI in some manner? How well can actual HR departments judge who is good at that? Are the HR departments themselves even decent at that?
So expect slower matches, though at some point AI itself might give us better and faster labor market matches.
3. Government fiscal policy might be less effective at putting people to work in an efficient manner, given that the government is likely, at least for some while, to be a poor judge of who is good at working with AI. That may slow hiring, or lead to quicker dismissals and quits, or simply result is less output from the fiscal policy investments, thus making them less effective.
These features of the problem all could use a bit more consideration, and likely there are others I have not thought of.
Data centers are the physical infrastructure behind cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and enterprise software. The rapid diffusion of artificial intelligence (AI) is intensifying demand for compute, accelerating investment in data centers, and raising concerns about the local economic and environmental footprint of these facilities. Their expansion creates a local policy tradeoff. A data center can bring capital investment, construction activity, and specialized employment, but it can also increase demand for electricity, land, and grid capacity. This paper studies these effects at the U.S. county level. We assemble a facility-level panel of global data centers with precise coordinates, scale metrics, and annualized revenue. We map facilities to U.S. counties and combine them with County Business Patterns, county-level IRS income, county-level house prices, and electricity prices. To address endogenous siting, we instrument for data center growth using two shift-share instruments, which leverage pre-existing proximity to InterTubes long-haul fiber nodes and the 1980 county share of U.S. urban college population as shares, and both Chinese and rest-of-the-world data center revenue growth as shifts. The IV estimates show positive effects on total employment, data-processing employment, construction employment, establishments, house prices, and electricity prices at different horizons after data center growth. We also find positive effects on tax returns, adjusted gross income, and wages, while annual payroll responds less robustly. The results suggest that data centers create measurable local activity, increase house prices, and affect local electricity markets through higher prices.
In a process that played out over thousands of years, a retreating ice sheet carved, scoured, and shaped the landscape of the present-day Great Lakes. In northern Lake Michigan, this sculpting left distinct ridges and valleys running north-to-south along the lake floor. Some parts of those ridges, made of erosion-resistant rock, have remained above the waves of the big lake, forming the Beaver Archipelago.
The OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 captured this image of several of the archipelago’s islands on August 2, 2024. These patches of land contain upland forests, dunes, wetlands, and marshes—habitats that support rare plant and bird species and provide spawning grounds for fish. The bright, sandy perimeters of the islands are surrounded by shallow, turquoise waters and deeper, dark blue areas, where depths reach up to about 330 feet (100 meters).
This image centers on Beaver Island, the largest island in Lake Michigan at 13 miles (21 kilometers) long and 6 miles (10 kilometers) wide. It is also the only inhabited island of the Beaver Archipelago, and many of its approximately 600 residents are of Irish descent. In the mid-1800s, scores of immigrants from County Donegal, Ireland, and Irish fishermen from nearby islands and ports in Michigan settled on the island, which subsequently took on the moniker of “America’s Emerald Isle.”
The farming and fishing, in particular, were productive for the new arrivals. In the 1880s, Beaver Island became the largest supplier of freshwater fish in the United States. Due to overfishing, however, such abundance would be short-lived.
Ship traffic on the Great Lakes was also increasing during this time. Two lighthouses were constructed on the island to help the growing number of vessels traveling between Chicago and the Straits of Mackinac. The Beaver Head Lighthouse operated from 1852 to 1962 on the southern end of the island. On the northern side, the Beaver Island Harbor Light, pictured below, was first lit in 1870 and remains an active beacon more than 150 years later.
Today, people travel to Beaver Island by boat or plane to explore its history and enjoy activities such as biking, fishing, and kayaking. The island’s remote location and minimal light pollution led to the establishment of the Beaver Island State Wildlife Research Area International Dark Sky Sanctuary in 2024. Sky gazers may be drawn to the sanctuary for a chance to glimpse the aurora borealis and other celestial phenomena.
Neighboring islands in the archipelago are more difficult to access and have remained relatively undisturbed. Perched, or cliff-top, sand dunes are found up to 200 feet (60 meters) above the lake level on the western side of High Island. Unique plant species, including the Pitcher’s thistle and Lake Huron tansy, grow in the island’s dunes. On Hog Island, patches of old-growth northern hardwood forest remain. Wetland communities known as Great Lakes marshes along the shoreline provide spawning grounds for perch and smallmouth bass.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Wanmei Liang, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Photo by Kelcie Herald/Unsplash. Story by Lindsey Doermann.
New TokenRestrictions.abbreviated(datasette)utility method for creating "_r" dictionaries. #2695
Table headers and column options are now visible even if a table contains zero rows. #2701
Fixed bug with display of column actions dialog on Mobile Safari. #2708
Fixed bug where tests could crash with a segfault due to a race condition between Datasette.close() and Database.close(). #2709
That segfault bug was gnarly. I added a mechanism to Datasette recently that would automatically close connections at the end of each test, but it turned out that introduced a race condition where an in-flight query could sometimes be executing in a thread against a connection while it was being closed. I ended up solving that by having Codex CLI (with GPT-5.5 xhigh) create a minimal Dockerfile that recreated the bug.
SpaceX’s first Starship V3 rocket stands at Launch Pad 2 prior to a fueling demonstration on Monday, May 11, 2026. Image: SpaceX
SpaceX is now targeting no earlier than Tuesday, May 19, for the long awaited debut of the third major iteration of its Starship-Super Heavy rocket. The announcement came the day after it completed an integrated tanking test on Monday.
The mission, dubbed Flight 12, will not only be the first launch of what is collectively referred to as Starship V3, but also the first launch from Pad 2, the updated version of the launch infrastructure supporting both launch and catch capabilities. Starship V3 will also use a new iteration of the Raptor engines, referred to as Raptor 3 engines.
“The flight test’s primary goal will be to demonstrate each of these new pieces in the flight environment for the first time, with each element of the Starship architecture featuring significant redesigns to enable full and rapid reuse that incorporate learnings from years of development and test,” SpaceX said on its website.
The flight profile of the mission is similar to previous Starship test missions, in that it will be a suborbital flight. However, because of all the new elements at play, SpaceX will not attempt a catch of either the upper stage, called Ship 39, or the first stage, called Booster 19.
SpaceX will have Booster 19 perform a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico (referred to as Gulf of America by the U.S. Government) about seven minutes after liftoff. Meanwhile, Ship 39 will aim for its own aquatic landing a little more than an hour into the mission out in the Indian Ocean.
Launch rehearsal complete. During a flight-like countdown, more than 5,000 metric tonnes (11+ million pounds) of propellant were loaded on the fully stacked Starship and Super Heavy V3 vehicles for the first time pic.twitter.com/e9oZlzc0yz
Unlike the previous iterations of its Super Heavy booster, this time around, SpaceX is using an integrated hot stage, which exposes the forward dome of the booster’s fuel tank during hot staging. Engineers included a non-structural steel layer that will work in concert with tank pressure to help shield the liquid methane tank from the fire of the upper stage engines.
As it did with Flight 10 and Flight 11 last year, SpaceX also intends to deploy simulator Starlink satellites from the ship upper stage. This time around however, there will be 22 of them onboard – about double from previous flights – with two of them featuring new capabilities.
“The last two satellites deployed will scan Starship’s heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators to test methods of analyzing Starship’s heat shield readiness for return to launch site on future missions,” SpaceX said. “Several tiles on Starship have been painted white to simulate missing tiles and serve as imaging targets in the test.”
SpaceX will be testing a far more complete version of its heat shield with Flight 12. Unlike previous missions, during which multiple tiles were intentionally removed, this time only one is intended to be missing at liftoff.
“For Starship entry, a single heat shield tile has been intentionally removed to measure the aerodynamic load differences on adjacent tiles when there is a tile missing,” SpaceX said.
Starship’s twelfth flight test will debut the next generation Starship and Super Heavy vehicles, powered by the next evolution of the Raptor engine and launching from a newly designed pad at Starbase. The launch is targeted as early as Tuesday, May 19 → https://t.co/2gZQUxS6mmpic.twitter.com/JxmpL2WE4w
The Raptor engines also underwent notable upgrades since their last flight, offering greater promised performance.
“Raptor 3 engines deliver increased thrust, with sea-level variants now producing 250 tf (551,000 lbf) up from 230 tf (507,000 lbf), while vacuum engines produce 275 tf (606,000 lbf) up from 258 tf (568,000 lbf),” SpaceX said. “Sensors and controllers are now internally integrated and covered by engine thermal protection, eliminating the need for individual engine shrouds on both Starship and Super Heavy. All engine variants will also now feature a redesigned ignition system.
“Mass of the Raptor sea-level engines has been reduced to 1,525 kg from 1,630 kg. Overall vehicle-level mass savings reach approximately 1 ton per engine through simplification of the engine itself, vehicle-side commodities, and supporting hardware.”
The debut of Starship V3 is a long time coming and will be critical for NASA’s plans to return humans to the Moon. This iteration of the rocket will eventually demonstrate propellant transfer capabilities, which will be needed to support flights of the Human Landing System iteration of the rocket.
Both Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mk.2 designed mission architectures that require multiple launches and for fuel to shift from a tanker to their respective landers. A propellant transfer as such has never been done before in space.
“That first prop transfer flight is going to be really important to us for SpaceX and we expect to see that and get some real great data from it,” said Tom Percy, NASA’s HLS Systems Engineering and Integration Manager, based at the Marshall Space Flight Center. He spoke with Spaceflight Now prior to the launch of NASA’s Artemis 2 mission in April.
“I think more importantly for me, just as a long-term vision for space exploration, we know that multi-launch architectures for deep-space exploration are going to have to become a common thing. And so all the things that both providers (both SpaceX and Blue Origin) are doing to manage the development and the understanding of how to coordinate multiple launches to be able to build these bigger exploration systems is going to help us not only for the Moon, but also for Mars and beyond.”
This small driver enables the Griffin PowerMate, a nifty little
device from days gone by. What does the PowerMate do? It is a knob
that you can twist or that you can press. That’s it. It also has a
blue LED in the base that can change intensity based on what
you’re doing.
When it was released, it was intended to assist video and audio
production by adding a scrollable knob to your desktop. Of
course, modern controllers exist that offer many more literal
bells and whistles, but there is something... quaint... about
this early device.
I never bought a PowerMate but I was always on the cusp. I didn’t have a need for it all but it just seemed cool. What a fun idea to create a modern driver. (Lockman credits Cursor Agent as a co-contributor, so this probably wouldn’t have happened if not for AI coding.)
Market Design
Who looks cooler in a 727, me or Joe Strummer?
