What I read this week...

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C.S. Lewis

• Free speech is in trouble (Nate Silver)
• Hundreds of secret reports show how DHSgov, CISAgov, The GEC, StateDept, Stanford and others worked together to censor AMERICANS before the 2020 election, including true information, jokes, and opinions. (Rep Jim Jordan)
• Western civilization is what gave the world pretty much every god damn liberal precept that liberals are supposed to adore. Individual liberty scientific inquiry, rule of law, religious freedom, women’s rights, human rights, democracy, trial by jury, freedom of speech (Bill Maher)
• Same as Ever, a guide to what never changes- book released (Morgan Housel)
• End DEI- It’s not about diversity, equity, or inclusion. It is about arrogating power to a movement that threatens not just Jews—but America itself. (Bari Weiss)
• US actively increasing obstacles to critical minerals projects (Compass Minerals)
• Congress blew SBF kisses. Journalists gave him applause. Regulators promised to take no action. So it was only Crypto Twitter that uncovered his deception. (Balaji)
• Peter Thiel is taking a break from democracy (The Atlantic)
• Coinbase Q3 shareholder letter- "We believe the onchain companies of today will be the tech giants of tomorrow" (Coinbase)
• Europe’s most valuable tech company is ASML, the only manufacturer of the machines needed to make advanced computer chips. (Samo Burja)
• The Case Against Work-Life Balance: Owning Your Future (Shyam Sankar)
• Stanley Druckenmiller says government needs to stop spending like "drunken sailors," cut entitlements (CNBC)
• DHH on the Model S Plaid (DHH)
• Palantir Q3 earnings call-"We have been saying & building products for a world that is violent, disjointed, irrational. A world in which you have to show strength. A world in which, if you do not show strength, people who are biased, xenophobic, dare I say it, antisemitic, will rear their head. A world in which you really have to pick sides." (Palantir)
• Waymo autonomous vehicles much safer and easier to insure than humans (Swiss Re)
• "Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen. As God as my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work. I don’t ever give up. I’d have to be dead or completely incapacitated." (Elon Musk)
• "Allah allows Muslim men to rape non-Muslim women to humiliate them." (Female Islamic Scholar)
• "There are two jewish heads of state in the entire world - Zelensky and Netanyahu... it says something that they are leading the two nations defending western liberalism in global proxy wars... against deeply illiberal regimes."(Sam Lessin)
• No evidence diet soda is bad for you (Washington Post)
• Sorry, Obama: 'We' Aren't Complicit. It's You Who Has Blood on Your Hands- It's you, because you're the one who gave that stentorian speech about red lines in Syria and then sat by and did nothing as those red lines were crossed and Assad continued to slaughter his own people (Newsweek)
• Biden was a LOT older than any other president at the start of his term. We don't know how much of a penalty to expect from voters because there isn't really any precedent. That makes it hard to be confident of what the "fundamentals" of the election imply. (Nate Silver)
• The electorate, on balance, is very pro-Israel. (Matthew Yglesias)
• Announcing the xAI PromptIDE, Elon's AI company to compete with OpenAI (xAI)
• Zambia bans GM foods, people face starvation (New Scientist)
• White Pill Newsletter- buried relics of theia, off-world mammalian reproduction, synthesizing hydrocarbons from thin air, airships, and notes on hbo's scavenger's reign (White Pill)
• American boys from the Great Plains and the Rockies going to tend to the fields and animals of Israeli farmers that were killed. (Max Meyer)
• United States GDP up, carbon emissions down (Our World in Data)
• EU economy increasingly dwarfed by US (FT)
• The massive divergence between consumer sentiment and economic reality is mind-boggling. Economy doing better than people think. (Alec Stapp)
• "In the international arena, China has recently intensified its efforts to position AI as a domain for international cooperation." Of course they are- all the better to slow AI advancement abroad. (Concordia Consulting)
• Block on genetically modified rice has cost millions of lives (Guardian)
• How Hamas frames the civilian casualties of war in Gaza (Jake Tapper)
• University of Austin is the first new elite US 🇺🇸 university to launch in generations. (Joe Lonsdale)
• Columbia faculty issued two open letters, one defending and one condemning students' defense of Hamas. Business, Econ, Law, and STEM condemn, "Humanities" department supports (Ram Fishman)
• EV sales slowing in the US (CNBC)
• Hillary Clinton on the Israelis and the Palestinians (The View)
• Gen Z men are much less likely than Millennial guys to say they’re feminists (AEI)
• Humane AI Pin product launch, ex Apple folks aim to replace smartphone (Humane)
• Disrupt the government (Geohot)
• Remember when the NYT tried to frame EV trucks as bad because the absolute largest ones had worse lifecycle emissions than 1% of gas-powered cars (Alec Stapp)
• Omegle shutting down, letter from founder- the Internet opened the door to a much larger, more diverse, and more vibrant world (Leif K-Brooks)
• Fertility rate in US dropping like a rock (CDC)
• Nuscale canceled plans to build an SMR nuclear power plant in the US because of surging costs (Bloomberg)
• As it turns out, building more homes gives renters more options and makes it harder for landlords to raise rents. (California YIMBY)
• Most of America's assistance to Ukraine is spent within the United States. (AEI)
• Investment & ETF Strategist Jared Woodard: "Every analyst I spoke to was bullish on prospects for nuclear power as a technology that's clean and meets the kinds of goals that so many policymakers are eager to hit." (NEI)