three links (1 minute)
The new Paul Krugman newsletter is excellent. (His editors at the NYT were doing him dirty.) Today’s read is VERY STRONGLY recommended.
I had a fun debate with my friend Tom yesterday wherein he, correctly, wanted us all to be skeptical about the damage that the DOGE campaign has done.1
I recommended that he, and now you, read Nathan Tankus on this unfolding catastrophe.
I spend a lot of time watching YouTube (Premium) and putting YouTube videos in front of our 12 and 11 year old sons.2
This is what I added to their library this week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yhMpwSYKlcMusk’s scam is a widely covered topic (on YouTube), and the above rundown is excellent.
As I learned in high school, when the late Mr. Connelly taught us Camus and Sartre, you may not be able to unshackle yourself from your fate, but understanding it is its own freedom.
My position is that Musk, Thiel, Andreessen et al have already pilfered every single file they’ve accessed, because that’s the way tech people (I am one) treat data: as a free thing to be hoarded and exploited later on. Musk’s claim that we should “use [his LLM] to run the government” confirms to me that this unprecedented theft is already happening. ↩
Of course, our sons are watching things that I wouldn’t – but these are videos that are recommended to them by Alphabet’s advertising optimization machine, based on what I’ve “assigned” them. For example, lately they’re devouring Coffeezilla and Evil Pinely. They’ll be alright. ↩