ROSS DOUTHAT & CBS NEWS: CONTEMPTIBLE CRAVEN TRUMP SANE-WASHING EPISODE OF THE DAY
It’s not even an ethos, editing Trump videos to make him look less like a completely abnormal fantasist than he is. It is just a grift and a scam...
Economics
Grasping Reality.
Brad DeLong on economic history, political economy, and the long arc of growth and policy.
Recent essays
30 of 233Discussion of: Paul Reitter, Trans. 2024. Marx, Karl (1867). “Capital: A Critique of Political Economy”: (EARLY) FRIDAY FOG & FLATLANDS
Life & work in Berkeley, CA, in 2026: in this case the fall 2026 ISF Symposium, and my brief talk at it...
Hexapodia LXV: The Re-Industrialization of America, with Noah Smith & Brad DeLong
A recording from Brad DeLong's live video
On Split-Personality Disorder & MAMLM Agent-Harness Systems: LAUGH OF THE DAY
"Please resend it as a fresh message": Claude knew I was me, but refused to believe I was me and so would not move forward...
CROSSPOST: JARED BERNSTEIN & RYAN CUMMINGS: Tech Stocks Had a Terrible Day [on Thursday November 5]. What’s Coming Could Be Worse
Builders who fund themselves with their own cash hurt only themselves when they fail. Once they borrow, as AI builders now are, the lenders get hurt too, and debt-driven busts heal slowly...
In Which I Declare Cognitive-Supervisory Bankruptcy: LAUGH OF THE DAY
I Told My AI agent "go." it then broke my other AI agent, then handed me a wrench, and delegated to me the task of fixing it...
There Were Some Very Good Moments in This Movie: CLIP OF THE DAY
The 2004 “Troy”, Wolfgang Petersen, David Benioff, Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Diane Kruger, Brian Cox, Sean Bean, Brendan Gleeson, Peter O’Toole, Rose Byrne, Saffron Burrows...
Hexapodia LXIV: Understanding the Anthropic IPO & the Near-Term Future of AI
Back after another year and a half on hiatus! Now on the very low-friction SubStack Live platform. Aspirationally, bi-weekly (meaning every other week: twice a week would be semi-weekly).,,
Combine Blacks & the Moderate Non-Racist White Vote & You Ought to Have a Solid Majority in the South: TRENDS & TURMOIL
Jamelle Bouie calls the 2026 midterms an earthquake in the South, and G. Elliott Morris’s numbers back him up, as turnout held near 90% of 2024 levels in the Blackest districts...
A 1/14 Swing in the Electorate Has Consequences: SCHADENFREUDE OF THE DAY
Remembering what the Always-Trump Republicans were saying back before Tuesday night dropped...
The Ghost of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Drives Men Mad: ANNOYANCE OF THE DAY
Morning-after takes on the 2026 midterms from Prokop, Thompson, Burke, Smith, Beauchamp, Yglesias, and literally thousands of others see "the voters" as a unitary actor with agency; it repudiates...
Well, That Was a Thing!: BULLET DODGED OF THE DAY
A swing from an R+1 in 2024 to a D+13 in 2026 electoral map in the United States in two years? Yes: I realize that this is only that 1/14 of those who showed up to the polls chose differently...
CROSSPOST: JOHN GANZ: American NeoFascism: Where We Are At
John’s subheadline: “How Fares the Fascism Thesis?”; in a nutshell: Mussolini-minus rather than Hitler-adjacent (or even); or perhaps intended-but-failure-to-launch syndrome...
Anomalous Corporate Earnings Numbers?: CHART OF THE DAY
A 4%-point rise in inflation over the next year or so? Or a big shift in wealth from labor to capital? Or has firm accounting gone haywire?...
Election Night 2026
Superwave, shrug, or something in between? By the time the Pennsylvania polls close at 17:00 pst, five races in Virginia, Florida and Ohio will already have told you what kind of night it is...
CROSSPOST: NIALL FERGUSON: The [Nixon-Like] Method to Trump’s Foreign Policy Madness
Niall’s subheadline: “To understand Trump’s approac... look to... Nixon... [also with an] instinct for superpower dealmaking reflect[ing] a hard-nosed realism, backed by the American economy”. NOT!
CROSSPOST: NOAH SMITH: Anthropic’s Moat Is Claude
Ash gûl durbatulûk, ash gûl gimbatul, ash gûl thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul department...
Not a Good Use of My, or Your, Time, But: CHART OF THE DAY
Democrats leading in Senate races in Michigan, Texas, Maine, Ohio, Kansas, and Iowa, with a D +11 generic ballot behind them...
The Visual Æsthetics of Cheesecake Factories: (LATE) FRIDAY FOG & FLATLANDS
Looking at life, work, & the world here in & from the vantage point of Berkeley, California; today’s burning question: should the People’s House look like a restaurant franchise?
CROSSPOST: NOAH SMITH: Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: TNG: Farewell, My Captain
Noah’s subheadline: “ A TV character gave us a glimpse of what humanity might become”;
Trump & Co. Do Not Claim to Be Angry at Comparison to Saddam Hussein: LAUGH OF THE DAY
In which “Wall Street Journal” pretends that a Great Republic really ought to make its public spaces look like the kitsch-glitz of a successful carbmaxxxing chain restaurant...
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, & Co.: They Are Not Brains, They Are Kernel-Smoother Functions: HOISTED FROM THE ARCHIVES
If your large language model reminds you of a brain, it’s because you’re projecting—not because it’s thinking. It’s not reasoning, it’s interpolation And anthropomorphizing the algorithm doesn’t...
CROSSPOST: HENRY FARRELL: Agentic AI Is Myth Set in Motion
What Is the Difference Between Consulting Jacques Barzun’s ‘House of Intellect” & Being It?...
CROSSPOST: JOSH BUSBY & DUCK OF MINERVA: Israel's Dead End
Is America chained to Netanyahu? Josh Busby of the Duck of Minerva says yes, and that it is costing the US dearly. But, more importantly, Netanyahu has brought long-term disastrous ruin to Israel...
My Guesses with Respect to the True State of Anthropic: WEDNESDAY WEALTH
In the aftermath of Anthropic’s Draft S-1 pre-IPO filing, I still have lots of questions, but there are at least a few hints at answers.
500,000 “Lines of Code” to Try to Track the Economy: TUESDAY TRENDS & TURMOIL
Jason Furman attempts to recreate his entire Council of Economic Advisors staff, via python scripts created, glued together, and presented by anthropic/claude...
The Ancient Courts & The Infinite Scroll: MONDAY MAMLMS
Who Gets to Think in the Age of MAMLMs?: Parasocial Minds, Deep Reading, & c.; Part I of “The Infinite DoomScroll, The Ancient Courts, & The House of Intellect”...
JD Vance: “You Don’t Turn the Titanic Around Overnight”: LAUGH OF THE DAY
Too much can be made of Sigmund Freud’s guess that your slips-of-the-tongue—your parapraxes—tell what you are really thinking about; but too little can be made of that as well...
Smartest Thing I Have Seen This Week: Thompson of StraTECHery & Moffett of MoffettNathanson on SpaceX & Bubbles: PODCAST OF THE DAY
The real text for SpaceX: how fast it can learn relative to its competition. The real test for the AI-bubble: how much money will start flowing in from the non-tech business world outside...
CROSSPOST: JOSH BERNHOFF (2019): Why Books Work: A Rebuttal to Andy Matuschak
Josh’s thesis: It's not books, it's lazy, boring books that don't work; plus you probably do remember more than you think you do—just because you can’t recite it doesn’t mean you didn’t learn it...