WSJ tech columnist. Dog person. Author of Arriving Today, an unfortunately timely book about the global system of trade we're currently flushing down the toilet: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/arriving-today-christopher-mims
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I feel like in the 1980’s/90’s this would be a major plot point in a Tom Clancy novel, and the operation would be carried out as an off-book, illegal black op, with various characters trying to cover it up lest they face congressional hearings. Now the President just announces it.
In my experience Gen Z and alpha are *exceptionally* smart and talkative! I think maybe there’s been a generational shift and now we take kids more seriously? (When I was a kid it was all benign neglect, we were left to fend for ourselves.)
A single mutation that makes mammals less anxious may be the reason humans were able to domesticate the horse ~4,500 years ago gizmodo.com/the-genetic-...
congrats! forever a fan of all the good work at the Verge
the DOJ atty (& 2x Harvard grad) who suggested Harvard showed "wanton indifference to antisemitism" once wrote a paper from the perspective of Hitler & expressed admiration for Mein Kampf stunning reporting from @hilaryburns.bsky.social @talkopan.bsky.social www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/02/m...
“Nearly 70% of people said they believe the American dream—that if you work hard, you will get ahead—no longer holds true or never did, the highest level in nearly 15 years of surveys.”
Good morning Vol. II
me the second the clock hits midnight and turns to sept 1st
I've had this experience so many times. Sometimes you just have to trust that all the hard work you put into it has left behind a residue which others will transform into the castles you first set out to build.
This firefighter arrived in the US at age 4, has been here for 19 years, was on track to legal status, and was on a crew trying to contain a major blaze (in Washington state, vs Oregon, fwiw.) h/t @joshuajfriedman.com www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
speaking of "when will the AI bubble will burst?" Ed's latest on this is excellent. how much VC investment is left to prop up AI companies? 6 quarters. I have no idea if it will be a fast or slow deflation. there is real revenue here. just not enough for all www.wheresyoured.at/ai-bubble-20...
that said, I am pleased that I got so many people to talk to me about the phenomenon of more-expensive-than-ever AI I dunno that this is an existential threat to all AI startups -- or any AI startups but only because there are macro trends that could be bigger threats www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-c...
shout out to @edzitron.com who is the whole reason my story this week exists -- he turned me on to the trend! go read Ed: www.wheresyoured.at/how-to-argue...
"Her patient had signs of what could be a cancer or could be an unusual infection — diagnoses that would require completely different treatment. Ordinarily, she would confirm an infection after sending a sample to the CDC for testing ...the CDC no longer has the capacity to do that"
Bluesky pig butchering scam bots just keep getting weirder
shhhh, they spook easily!
What a cursed sentence (gift link) “The A.I. companies selected to oversee the program would have a strong financial incentive to deny claims. Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections.”
people really do not want to be told that managed retreat is their only option, even when it's their only option
Y'all, it turns out we don't need to "hide all" before blocking obnoxious trolls (probably you all knew this already but I'm forever behind the curve)
whaaaat
this is seriously the greatest feature ever, I love it so much also when someone is super obnoxious and I hide it for all and THEN block them??
it's amazing how now that it's a non-event to have a good EV road trip there's so much less written about them
THIS. was just thinking this. when people say "why are people reading less" I think, uhhh... maybe they're reading *more*? but just... the wrong stuff?
spent a lot of time skimming on social media over the past few days for work; was reminded that a weekly news and social media fast of at least two days a week is essential
looks like we're going to find out what it's like to not have a functional center for controlling diseases
so, weirdly, I've loaded and fired one, what an unbelievable hassle, would be totally OK with that
I am so tired of reposting this and so sad that there is no sign I will ever live in a country in which it's not necessary to qz.com/37541/how-gu...
to be absolutely clinical about it (and I think that's called for) the guns we have today do not in any way resemble those protected by the 2nd amendment it's like insisting that thought-controlled death rays should be legal because 234 years ago the possession of sharpened sticks seemed reasonable
oooooff
wow, 13 of my works are in here, including (checks notes) the entire text of my 350+ page nonfiction book that required more blood sweat and tears than anything else I've ever done in my life
There are tons of graphic novels, academic papers, film and TV scripts, & prose novels/nonfiction on the LibGen list Anthropic used. As settlement approaches, make it easy for the class action lawyers to contact you! Here’s how Part 1: is your work in Libgen? www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...
Me: this is great, glad to see authors ripped off by AI getting their due. Me after using the search tool: I am one of these ripped off authors. Academics, it only takes a minute. Seven of my papers are in this and I had no idea.
“Pain at the ‘plug’.” That’s a new one. ⚡️ @bloomberg.com @bobburgess.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
A federal magistrate judge said an arrest in Northeast Washington was preceded by the “most illegal search I’ve seen in my life” and described another arrest as lacking “basic human dignity.” wapo.st/3Jyc2QI
...this was also a primary plot mechanism in the latest Superman film and it left me equally confused (was it purposely retro?)
I'm not a professional politics opiner so I've been confused about why this is. But now I'm convinced it's because becoming a politics opiner in this day and age, given this particular media environment, selects for a certain type.
I don't have the full statement yet but the Fed has finally spoken *FEDERAL RESERVE: GOVERNORS MAY ONLY BE REMOVED 'FOR CAUSE' *FEDERAL RESERVE WILL ABIDE BY ANY COURT DECISION: FED STATEMENT *FEDERAL RESERVE: REMOVAL PROTECTIONS SERVE AS SAFEGUARD
just go see what the tech-right-adjacent accounts on X have been posting lately
also, in a possibly hopeful sign, I'm seeing more signs of rebellion from the growing ranks of people who genuinely wanted small government and thought that was what they were going to get
turning them into action items?
so many startups are convinced the thing I want most is to record every word ever uttered around me and I cannot think of anything I'm less keen on
I had to check to see this is real; yes it is
this is so devastating
We wrote about Democrats’ favorite messaging nerds advising the party not to talk about Trump’s military takeover in D.C., and instead pivot to tariffs www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...
National Weather Service meteorologist applicants are now being asked to pledge their support for Trump’s executive orders. (Image reposted with alt-text)
achievement unlocked: looked at a chart and, without even glancing at the y-axis, knew it was log scale
or even about 1985
Here's the link jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
The funny thing is animals actually can suffer and we slaughter them by the billions but sure let’s have an existential panic over whether a software program screams when we turn it off
The U.S. is the world champion of people dying too early, for no good reason. (Drivers: drugs, guns, cars, metabolic diseases.) Via @pbump.com, here's a chart showing that starting with the pandemic, we pulled away from all other high income countries in this grim race.
"Technologies aren’t a rising tide that lifts all boats, unless we very specifically design them that way. With computing, they have not been designed that way" This @histoftech.bsky.social interview is so good www.fastcompany.com/91384078/not...
Federal Reserve Board Member Lisa Cook: “I will not resign."
how is your play for Canadian citizenship going?
good stuff
Updated this piece to reflect that Trump said he has fired Lisa Cook, something the Supreme Court said he does not have authority to do.
If Trump were operating in the best interests of America's businesses, his move to fire Lisa Cook would cause stocks to shrug, or maybe rise. But they're saying: This is dangerous. This move serves Trump, but not America. Our economy is at risk when the President undermines the Fed.
Yes, the stakes here are large. Very large.
It’s hard to overstate how big a deal this is - for the economy (ours and globally), for the rule of law, and for the proper and efficient function of government. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/08...
Co-signed times a thousand. “Other people have no interiority” is, fundamentally, a deeply evil belief to hold which will lead you exclusively to terrible places
when you put it that way
I mean this person literally makes their living off Substack and given the publications they've written for in the past, and the way they write, I would think is ideologically inclined to not want to be on Substack so there must be reasons they're staying
interesting to me who is and is not on Substack, and who does and does not get called out for it not gonna blow up their spot, but one of my favorite newsletter writers is on Substack I suspect they stay because Substack's discovery engine drives many more subs than being indie on e.g. Beehiiv
yikes: "Its web crawler was blocked from accessing the site, but it lied to me and said that it pulled them. When I manually compared the data, I saw it used a simple function to fake it"
I knew there was a reason I loved panera
dead, lol
honestly same
this morning my corporate Gemini account suggested that I try out the new video generation engine Veo and I'm so terminally online that this was all I could think to ask it to produce
UPDATE: Kilmar’s lawyer announces he has been taken into ICE custody.
Here in Baltimore this morning, where clergy and activists have gathered in support of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who is set to check in with ICE this morning. Heavy faith presence in addition to, just, a lot of people for 6:45am. Kilmar himself is about to speak.
It was a particularly good morning for Uggi, as the fine gentlemen of Hlöllabátar noticed him and gave him a treat.
“They claim to read the same books” is such a multilayered burn, I LOVE it
I'm PhD in graphic design and Cracker Barrel's REAL problem is they didn't go *far enough*
Something surprising is happening -- despite Trump admin's rollbacks of incentives for EVs and related tech: America's fast charging infrastructure is exploding. We'll see a 3x increase in chargers in just the next 4 years. I hit the road to experience it first hand: www.wsj.com/business/aut...
lol are they?? I haven’t checked
It’s very funny to watch people who everyone on this app specifically and individually hates because of their stated public opinions and who they are as a person run into that and go “well this must be a universal experience of using this app, I’d imagine”
incredible!!
I'd been to like one Pilot / Flying J / Love's in my whole life and then I did these two EV road trips and went to like, 10 of them America's whole gas-and-go culture is gonna get so much better
The other thing they don't tell you about fast-charging on a road-trip -- it's fast enough now, and the chargers available enough, that it's *better* than gas, because you just do it while you're eating lunch, taking a bathroom break, etc. At places vastly better appointed than gas stations.
The build-out of America's fast-charging EV infrastructure is at this point inevitable. Trump can't stop it, unlike wind farms and solar power plants. *Automakers* are behind it & are financing it. They know they simply can't sell their EVs if people aren't confident they can charge away from home.
Three years ago it was possible to attempt the Great American Road Trip in an EV and end up stranded. Two years ago it was touch and go. Now you can just wing it. There are 60,000 fast charging ports in the U.S. today, mostly Tesla. By 2030 there will be *180,000*, mostly not-Tesla.
Something surprising is happening -- despite Trump admin's rollbacks of incentives for EVs and related tech: America's fast charging infrastructure is exploding. We'll see a 3x increase in chargers in just the next 4 years. I hit the road to experience it first hand: www.wsj.com/business/aut...
Steve Shirley escaped the Holocaust as a child & went on to found one of the earliest software startups. The really impressive part? She employed women programmers who had been pushed out of the workforce after having kids, & allowed them flexible, family friendly, work from home jobs—in the 1960s!
The reason conditions in trucking are so brutal is Jimmy Carter signed an act that deregulated the industry in 1980. It made transporting goods way cheaper; it also created our modern system of unreasonable demands on truckers' minds, bodies, time. www.businessinsider.com/truck-driver...
"America runs on trucks" is not an exaggeration. We should all care about solutions that make this industry less terrible for truckers. Excluding immigrants from trucking doesn't strike me as that solution. www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...
Hot take: Trucking is a brutal industry that pushes its workers to their limits & so has high turnover. This is one reason it's yet another sector of the economy where immigrants can get a toe-hold, because native-born people don't stick around. The real move is to improve conditions overall.
Been listening to Bad Company by @greenwell.bsky.social and it is amazing! You cannot understand America today without understanding the nature of private equity and her book on how it too often goes wrong is excellent. Gift link to review: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/b...
The FBI is raiding John Bolton's house, apparently at Kash Patel's personal direction, the NY Post is reporting:
The Trump administration has moved to end temporary protected status for immigrants from Honduras and other countries. Among them are health care workers tending to older and disabled people. n.pr/3UC6neN
life hack: just use Gmail, set a filter for each one to instantly archive it and label it "newsletter" - check that tab when you want to read
someone on here pointed me to Stag Dance which I never would have picked up on my own it's one of the stranger & more unexpected sci-fi (?) books I've read in a decade, & so creative and genre-bending www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...
An open secret of the media world is that in general the best-written and most accessible content any organization produces is its email newsletters. The simple reason is that there's no committee fussing over it; it's entrusted to a handful of the most bookish & thoughtful people in the newsroom.
god's work
moving the majority of my news consumption to email newsletters has made me healthier, happier and better informed really!
I like this graphic because it implies that the opposite of violence is Irishness
![How Boston became the safest big city in America Murder is declining across the country, but Boston has led the way [Graphic of a handgun with a shamrock protruding from the barrel]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:3h6xtls7ue7q7hlmwb77ukjw/bafkreih27a6p73z6xhkujytlrou7o4dony5yqaio3bjl2jfaze3q2afa6a@jpeg "Click to view full size")
certainly that's what I was taught
my happy place
Have you or someone you know been harassed, stalked, or verbally abused by someone who is clearly using ChatGPT or a similar bot to compose their messages? Have you gotten the sense that the LLM is enabling their threatening behavior? Looking to hear from you — email me at mklee@rollingstone.com
we could really use a major Hollywood picture about union soldiers being turbo woke pilled
🫠
