‘This Is an Insane Scandal’: How Jensen Huang’s Downfall Could Change Everything
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A newsletter about abundance and building a better world.
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30 of 64The Trump Decade Is Over
And a new chapter in American politics begins.
What Is 'You Can See Everything' Really About?
Three theories
The AI Story Wall Street Doesn’t Want to Hear
How much money is AI actually making? “The market is panicking right now,” one analyst said, “because the market is saying, ‘We don’t know.’”
Everything Is Changing, and Nothing Is Changing
Ethan Mollick, Wharton professor and AI analyst extraordinaire, on how to use and think about AI—without losing your agency, intelligence, or sanity
I Know Why the Mathematicians Weep
On technological grief
Why Americans Stopped Falling in Love
Americans—and young Americans, in particular—are dating less, coupling less, marrying less, and having fewer children. A new book offers several theories for why.
The 26 Most Important Facts About AI and the Economy
News about artificial intelligence feels both overwhelming and starving for context.
We’re Missing a Key Reason Why Americans Hate AI
AI’s prophets predicted cheap abundance. The AI buildout has delivered the opposite.
You Are No Longer Invited to Dinner
We’re witnessing the death of hosting in America. The share of adults who say they regularly have friends over has declined 70 percent since 1975
How China Thinks About AI
7 big questions—and many answers—about the thing that everybody’s talking about
Bad Feelings
We spend so much of our life trying to deny, judge, or banish negative feelings. What would happen if we just tried to listen to them?
Why Harvard's Dean 'Encourages' Students to Use AI
The end of summer brings a fresh throng of Americans to college campuses.
AI Safety Is Having a Moment
Why are the AI labs building a technology that they say might destroy the world?
We Can't Let AI Writing Take Over the Internet
An interview with Pangram founder and CEO Max Spero on how AI writing has flooded the internet, why it matters, and why it’s worth cleaning up
How to Survive the AI Cyberpocalypse
Or: A comprehensive explanation for why it’s time for everybody to clean up their password game, immediately
The American Sports Plutocracy Is Bullshit
American sports laws amount to a kind of out-in-the-open conspiracy to help a lucky few billionaires get much, much richer
The Great American AI Rebellion
Americans hate data centers. But most of AI's builders are clueless about why.
The 9 Questions I’m Obsessed With Right Now: AI, Politics, Movies, Drugs, and Western Civilization
Why are socialism, marijuana, and original blockbusters ascendant? Where do "Western values" come from? Why do modern people torture ourselves with comparison and guilt?
The Four Horsemen of the AI Bubble Apocalypse
The smartest reasons to worry about the state of AI in an age of intense volatility—and my best attempt to explain why each of those worries might be wrong.
The Next Miracle Drug Might Already Be in Your Medicine Cabinet
If we want AI to solve every disease in our lifetime, super-intelligence is not enough. We need an equally ingenious policy to guide the discovery of new drugs.
What Is Lost When We Make 'The Odyssey' Modern
Christopher Nolan's 'Odyssey' is an extraordinary, modern epic. Homer's Odyssey is an even more extraordinarily strange one.
A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird
Once you learn what the "uni-context" is, you won't stop seeing it everywhere
Is This the End of Booze?
The turn against moderate drinking has been sudden and sharp. But it's not often based in science.
America, 1926: What a Forgotten 100-Year-Old Report Says About Who We Are
America in 1926 was obsessed with technology, immigration, women, work, and money. Sound familiar?
It’s the Best Time Ever to Become a Millionaire by Working Alone
There are more—and richer—tiny companies. AI could be playing a big role.
The U.S. Went to War to Take Away Iran's Superweapon. It Gave Iran a New One.
Trump lost the country. The U.S. lost a half-hearted war. Israel lost an ally. The Middle East lost the illusion of security. Asia lost growth. Global trade lost a dependable artery.
The Derek Thompson Substack Turns 1! Here's How the Newsletter Is Doing
Thank you for being a paid subscriber! And please use this birthday to tell me what you want this newsletter to grow into
The Cult of the Enhanced Self
Americans have never been healthier, or more alone. These things might be related.
Why Do the Best Leaders Fail at the Most Important Job?
What do Marcus Aurelius, Bob Iger, Bill Belichick, and William Shawn have in common? Succession failure.