What I read this week...This is your brain on X
Slower week fam, trying to lower heart rate and recover my brain. Your brain on X is your brain on fire. Fire is good, but sometimes you need to step back. Reply to this newsletter directly if you have feedback for how I present the info. My homie Shawn Dog was unclear what I was saying versus what I was quoting. Maybe the quotes will be in italics and my words will be in...regular. Hit me with your thoughts. Other than that, I continue to be optimistic about the future.
There have only been 6 polio cases in 2023, an incredible achievement of human civilization. If the number goes to zero and polio is eradicated it will be one of the greatest achievements of our time.
First new US nuclear reactor since 2016 is now online. It is America's birthright to produce the most fossil fuel energy and the most clean energy. We must be leaders in both until clean energy is fully viable. Long nuclear.
40% of U.S electricity was green electricity in 2023.
Japan decides to restart Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, one of the world’s largest nuclear power plants (7 reactors) after having been offline for more than a decade after Fukushima. The idea is for Japan to become less dependent on foreign energy sources.
The Nine Breakthroughs of the Year- CRISPR, GLP1s, and other advancements that astonished me. Excerpt: In the 1990s, a small team of scientists got to know the Gila monster, a thick lizard that can survive on less than one meal a month. When they studied its saliva, they found that it contained a hormone that, in experiments, lowered blood sugar and regulated appetite. A decade later, a synthetic version of this weird lizard spit became the first medicine of its kind approved to treat type 2 diabetes.
I got the Meta Ray Ban smart glasses for Christmas from my fiancée. I dig them. Here's a video of me riding around Venice on a scooter.
Humanity has a moral obligation to produce as much energy, as cheaply, and as cleanly, as possible. Anything less is asking the future to be worse than the present. No such thing as a low-energy rich country.
Imagine if there was an experiment of geopolitical history that could perfectly illustrate what the world might look like in the absence of American military interventionism. North Korea vs South Korea. Take your pick.
Patients receiving a new mRNA vaccine for skin cancer are “49% less likely to experience recurrence or death a median of three years after treatment.”
The US suffers from far few recessions than we did pre Great Depression. I have this theory (source? I made it up.) that everything moves so fast now, from capital to information that a great depression lasting 10 years could only happen from something on the order of an asteroid.
When the New York Times lost its way - The reality is that the Times is becoming the publication through which America’s progressive elite talks to itself about an America that does not really exist.
The UK has quietly been practicing “degrowth” for almost 15 years now.
Percentage of police organizations indicating they have a hard time filling policing positions is skyrocketing. Maybe defund the police was a bad idea. Maybe saying all cops are bad isn't productive? When policing fails, it's lower income folks who suffer. That's why it's elites who are the first to dog on our cops.
Make sure you own your AI. Even if you pay, AI in the cloud is not aligned with you, it’s aligned with the company that owns it.
O.K., Christmas is over, now we can all go back to the wars of life. Focus, focus, focus-never accept defeat -push hard for total victory!
America already has a 500 mph high speed rail system linking the country and it doesn’t even take up any land and bugs way fewer people with noise. ITS CALLED A FREAKING AIRPLANE
In 1989 communism was purged from Romania. Since then, the GDP per capita has steadily increased. GDP per capita is the easiest way to determine the quality of a country.
Reuters ran an inaccurate story on Tesla. Tesla responded on X. Back in the day, the story would have ran and Reuters would maybe have issued a small retraction that no one saw. Now, more people are seeing this counter than the actual story. The media gatekeepers are dead. Let the bloodbath continue.
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. Yes there is going to be a bumpy transition, but the media losing its stranglehold on the truth is a good thing. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
New Argentina president explaining basic economics, how tariffs hurt a country.
OpenAI is stealing the New York Times Copyrighted work without permission? No, it’s merely duplicative language.
Warren is a looter but I'm very optimistic that building more housing is quickly gaining bipartisan support. Here is Elizabeth Warren arguing for more supply: 40 years ago, a typical single-family home in Greater Boston sold for $79.4k—about 4.5X a Boston Public School teacher’s salary. Today, that home would go for nearly 11X what that teacher makes now. We must bring down costs, which means we need more supply—plain-old Econ 101.
What does it say about the modern university that it doesn't simply promote the Dean of its management school to President of the university?
Very happy to see WSJ doing work on this. Tiktok is a real national security problem / is feeding our kids (and the future of our democracy) absolute crap - and is ultimately controlled by foreign entities with a stake in us being weak. It needs to be banned.
