# don't read gabestein.com
> Critical and independent thought about media, technology, politics, and society. My newsletter, personal blog, and archive.
Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts.
Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`).
## Pages
### About
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/about/
Last updated: 2026-10-09T20:46:05.000Z
# Pro Forma

Gabe Stein is a technologist, developer, and occasional writer interested broadly in how media shapes society, and vice versa. He is currently the Head of Product at [openRxiv](https://openrxiv.org/?ref=gabestein.com), the non-profit that stewards the [bioRxiv](https://biorxiv.org/?ref=gabestein.com) and [medRxiv](https://medrxiv.org/?ref=gabestein.com) preprint servers, and a partner at [Knowledge Futures](https://knowledgefutures.org/?ref=gabestein.com), a non-profit that builds public digital infrastructure for knowledge communities, including [Underlay](https://underlay.org/?ref=gabestein.com) and [PubPub](https://pubpub.org/?ref=gabestein.com).

He has worked at the intersection of publishing and digital technology in multiple technical and editorial roles, including front-end engineering at Ogilvy, support for Google's display advertising platform, reporting and editing at Fast Company, audience development and product management at Upworthy, and product development at the digital book club startup Heleo (now Next Big Idea Club). In 2016, he co-founded [Massive Science](https://massivesci.com/?ref=gabestein.com), a company that taught researchers how to communicate their work to the public and partnered with scholars to study the impact of public communication using interactive web tools. He has also been a Tow Fellow at the Columbia Center for Digital Journalism and a Joan Shorenstein Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. In his spare time, he bakes a lot of sourdough bread.

This site serves as his personal homepage, archive, and newsletter. On it, he posts about topics ranging from media, science, technology, programming and politics to fashion and sourdough bread.

[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabestein/?ref=gabestein.com) • [GitHub](https://github.com/gabestein?ref=gabestein.com)

![](https://www.gabestein.com/content/images/2025/06/cute-2.jpg)

# How To Reach Me

The best way is via email, correspondence at gabestein dot com. I’m no longer particularly active on social media, because, a, I don’t want to do free labor for companies whose values I don’t share, and, b, it’s terrible for my anxiety. Another good way to reach me is to add a comment to one of my posts on this site.

# The Real Story

I once gave a talk about worrisome trends in the academic publishing industry to a small undergraduate science media class. They graciously quizzed me about my talk for a few minutes, and then asked the question that actually mattered to them: “you’ve had a strange, varied career — did you plan for it? How could we do that?” Here’s, roughly, what I said:

I tell a great story about how I’ve been obsessed with the intersection of media and technology my whole life, and how I’ve spent my career trying to gain experience with just about every part of it, from advertising at Ogilvy and Google to journalism at Fast Company to audience development and product management at Upworthy to launching my own science media startup. Over the years, I’ve gradually combined my love for media with my lifelong passion for science, and honed in on academic publishing and knowledge technology, a niche I really love.

Truthfully, that story is a smoothed over, post-hoc narrative that attempts to explain what was more or less a random walk through the tree of jobs that were both potentially available and adequately interesting to me at various points in my life. It’s true that I love science, technology, and media. But there was no plan to “experience just about every part of it” or “combine my love with my passion.” It only occurred to me that that’s what I was doing when I needed to pause for a moment and look back on what I had been up to. Unless they’re an academic, doctor, politician, or careerist at a big company like 3M, I suspect no one is really making that plan looking forward — at least, no one I know — because late capitalist life is far too unpredictable and unstable to unfold according to any kind of plan.undefined

The truth is, I‘ve been privileged and lucky. I was born into a comfortable middle-class existence in Denver, Colorado during the last (14, but who's counting) days of the Reagan administration, which afforded me a fairly uneventful, though quite enriching, childhood. My [father](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed%5FStein%5F%28cartoonist%29?ref=gabestein.com) was the editorial cartoonist at our local paper, and my mother was a radio DJ and TV and documentary producer, and they indulged my curiosity by letting me [hang out in newsrooms](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/1aocsq69) and video editing suites and play with computers and cameras. Those experiences really did kickstart a lifetime obsession with media. In fact, though I only put this together in my mid twenties, I ended up starting campus publications in elementary, middle, high school, and [college](https://buquad.com/?ref=gabestein.com), including one that [nearly got me expelled](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/4onbcyp4/release/1) when I was in 10th grade.

That’s when my luck started in earnest. Although these publications were primarily distributed in print, my hobby coincided neatly with the news industry’s widespread adoption of the internet in the early 2000s. So, it wasn’t enough just to print my campus publications. I felt they needed websites, too. Which meant I needed to learn how to code. In another stroke of extreme luck and privilege, I attended an alternative private middle school that allowed me to design my own course of study. I promptly chose web design, tethered myself to a library computer and a stack of O’Reilly books, and as my school project built, naturally, an online Harry Potter RPG.undefined Yeah, I had a lot of friends.undefined But, I became “that kid who knows how to build websites," and suddenly found myself in demand developing community forums for classmates, websites for local businesses, my high school newspaper’s first digital edition, and a series of Denver sports blogs that landed me my first paid writing gig covering the Denver Broncos for AOL’s short-lived “Hometown” blogging experiment. On the internet, nobody knows you’re 16.

When it came time to graduate college (after starting another publication, producing a campus TV show, and taking a few computer science courses), I had no plan at all, and because the country was still inching its way out of the great recession, I didn’t believe I could afford to have one. I took the first job that interested me, a contract front-end development gig at Ogilvy, where I had interned the previous summer. I did that for a while, and then one day a Google recruiter sent me a message on LinkedIn — LinkedIn! — that I thought was spam. I told my boss at the time, who, in another lucky break for me, rolled her eyes, sighed “oh, Gabe,” and told me I needed to at least reply to it. So I did, and after the infamously grueling interview process, I was hired to build efficiency-enhancing tools for client-facing advertising platform support teams.

I worked hard ([way too hard](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/i4uj0ehr/release/1#facebook-nation)) and did well at Google, but after a few years, I found myself spending more and more of my time on Twitter, and thought it might be fun to find a way to be paid to do that. I found an opening for a role at the business magazine Fast Company that required a blend of writing and technical skills, but I had no idea how to explain why I was in any way right for the job. So, for the first time, I took a step back and thought about what the hell I had been doing with my life. That process, during which most of what I’ve described above occurred to me for the first time, resulted in a cover letter that may still be the best piece of writing I’ve ever produced. It began:

> Dear Chris,  
>  
> I made a mistake. Despite realizing some time ago that my primary interest is the intersection of technology and journalism, I decided to start my career with only a little hacking and no hacks. I've had a good run, but my life is missing something: a newsroom.

The rest of my career has more or less proceeded apace. When it feels like it’s time to make a change, I try to figure out what I’m interested in and why my current job isn’t fulfilling that interest. Then, I look around for jobs — internally and externally — that might have a better shot at meeting my needs, and put together a story I can tell about why I’m interested in those jobs. It helps that employers tend to value entrepreneurial, curious people, and that most of my stories are about wanting to learn new things. I’ve been ignored and rejected plenty over the years, but when I’m really, truly excited about a role, I tend to at least hear back. And knowing how to tell my story was a crucial skill to have in hand when raising money for Massive, the science media startup I co-founded.

So, in the end, I guess what I’m saying is: don’t plan, lie. Well, not really. All narratives are post-hoc rationalizations, including, most likely, [consciousness itself](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/what-neuroscience-says-about-free-will/?ref=gabestein.com). So in that sense, it’s not so much lying as it is willful self-delusion, which, I suspect, is what most of life is anyway! Sorry, let’s not open that can of worms right before midterms.

My advice is not to worry too much about career planning, and instead figure out what you’re interested in and motivated by, find a job that satisfies enough of those needs, and learn how to tell prospective employers good stories about how your interests and motivations match their roles. Those stories will be true, even if you didn’t realize they were unfolding until after you lived them. More importantly, the process of putting together your personal narrative will help you learn a lot about yourself and what you truly value, a lot faster than if you started by trying to plan out your career from step to step. If you repeat that storytelling process every once in a while, especially when you get bored, and notice how the story changes, you’ll find it becomes pretty straightforward to realize when it’s time to look for the next thing, and how to go about finding it. Over time, as you learn more about yourself and have a range of experiences, you’ll start to hone in on the specific qualities — industries, role types, leadership, company sizes, etc. — that most satisfy you, making the process easier.

I don’t know for certain, but I strongly suspect this is what most people are doing, even if they themselves don’t realize it and have managed to convince themselves there was a plan all along.
### Archives
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/archives/
Last updated: 2025-07-22T13:49:53.000Z
I’ve maintained a number of occasional blogs on various platforms over the years, and even had a brief stint as a professional journalist. I finally got around to aggregating it all in one place. So, if you really, really want to, you can browse through some old, embarrassing, and very weird stuff I’ve written for the last decade+.

## don't read gabestein.com (2020-Present)

I've been writing fairly consistently at various iterations of gabestein.com for the last 5 years now.

[Visit gabestein.com Archive](https://www.gabestein.com/tag/blog/)

## Medium (2013-2018)

For a bit I blogged intermittently on Medium. I've migrated those posts here.

[Visit Medium Archive](https://www.gabestein.com/tag/medium-archive-2015-2018/)

## Fast Company (2013)

I worked briefly as a “News Hacker” at Fast Company’s long-defunct CoLabs vertical, covering a range of topics, with a focus on software development itself and a mandate to experiment with digital media forms.

[Visit External Archive](https://www.fastcompany.com/user/gabe-stein?ref=gabestein.com)

## gabestein.com Archives (2009-2013)

Waaaay back when I was young and annoying I had a very embarrassing personal blog. I don't know exactly why I keep it around, but here you go.

[Visit Embarrassing Old Archive](https://www.gabestein.com/tag/first-blog-archive-2009/)
### Welcome
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/welcome/
Last updated: 2026-03-10T16:46:36.000Z
Thank you so much for subscribing to my little newsletter about technology, media, politics, and culture.

If you have a moment, here are three things you can do to make sure future emails don’t go to spam:

1. Add [correspondence@gabestein.com](mailto:correspondence@gabestein.com) to your address book.
2. Send me a quick note by replying to this email! If you know me personally, check in and let me know what you’re up to! If you don’t, tell me a bit about you and how the heck you found this.

**So, what’s this all about then?** Consider it part of a larger experiment in developing engines and infrastructure for pro-democracy culture that can thrive in our metamodern media environment. You can read a little more about that [in the first issue](https://www.gabestein.com/axgjch00/).

My lane is decidedly on the media and infrastructural side of things. You can learn (too much) more about me [here](https://www.gabestein.com/about), but the cliff notes version is I’ve been thinking about how culture, technology, and media interact, and putting those ideas into practice, both personally and professionally, since…middle school? I’ve worked in big tech, journalism, startups, and now in academia. As a result, I think I bring to the table a unique ability to both sense-make and build, and I intend to explore both theory and practice in this experiment.

Like any experiment, I’m still figuring out the tone, the cadence, and, yes, the business model, if there is one. For now, consider this a place to discuss how we move forward in a world where podcasts seem to matter much more than get out the vote efforts.

I do hope it will be a discussion, not just a monologue. One critical part of the experiment is that it won’t rely on traditional social media for growth. Bluntly, though it needs to exist there, I don’t believe pro-democracy culture will ever develop and thrive in those spaces. I’m much more interested in building new networks on more resilient technologies, like email and messaging (though, of course, that could change).

As a result, to foster genuine conversation, and growth, I’ll need your help. Please share this with folks you know who are thinking similarly, and of course reach out if you’re on the same wavelength yourself and want to share what you’re working on.

But you don’t have to be a, uh, media obsessive (??) to participate. Culture is collective, and I would wager that you have a better sense of what’s going on. You are a critical part of the experiment, and my plan is to share your feedback, criticisms, ideas, and links (always with your permission, of course) regularly. So please don’t hesitate to get in touch anytime. You can reply to any email, which will go correspondence@gabestein.com, my "official" email for this project. But if you know where to find me elsewhere, that’s fine, too.

Finally, if you’re looking for more, my blog, [gabestein.com](https://gabestein.com/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=thank-you-so-whats-this-all-about), contains a lot of the foundational work I’ll be referencing. Here are some of the key pieces I recommend:

- [Hyperobjects, cynicism, and the post-left](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/jz6cim0e/release/3?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=thank-you-so-whats-this-all-about). *Is a new kind of politics possible?*
- [Back on the rails](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/j203in25/release/2?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=thank-you-so-whats-this-all-about)*. Can the environmental movement — and our collective imagination — be rewilded?*
- [Token retreat](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/j203in25/release/2?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=thank-you-so-whats-this-all-about). *Let's talk when the metaverse can directly feed the hungry, house people, or remove carbon from the atmosphere.*
- [The Big Promise](https://www.gabestein.com/zkme9ef3/). *Is Artificial General Intelligence the start of a new era of big tech deception?*
- [Big tech and Trumpism share the same ideology](https://www.gabestein.com/big-tech-and-trumpism-share-the-same-ideology/). *It's time for tech workers to opt out and build a new industry.*

Again, thanks so much for subscribing. Talk soon!

Gabe
### Full-Stack Product Consulting
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/hire-me/
Last updated: 2025-07-22T14:46:16.000Z
There are lots of great product consultants and coaches. Many of them excel at teaching their clients frameworks, giving advice, or being a sounding board. **I'm different.** I specialize in helping leaders develop and implement sustainable solutions for key technology and business problems, quickly. I can offer this service because at some point in [my career](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabestein?ref=gabestein.com), I've dealt with just about every problem a founder or technology executive can face — from recruiting and hiring to making technical decisions — at companies big and small. I don't use frameworks or gimmicks, I [read the research](https://www.gabestein.com/tag/work/) on software development, innovation, productivity, and workplace psychology and apply it sui generis to build products, teams, and companies that deliver real value. I can help you do that, too, as a consultant, coach, or fractional product leader.

## Working With Me

I work in two ways: one-time strategy calls and time-limited, goal-driven engagements.

### Book a paid one-hour call, get unstuck and save thousands.

If you're struggling with a specific problem and need to get unstuck, you can book a one-hour call with me right now for $400 (introductory price). From recruiting and hiring to evaluating tech stacks or deciding whether to pivot, chances are I've been where you are before and know how to move forward quickly, which will save you a huge amount of time – likely thousands of dollars worth. 

[Book A Paid Problem-Solving Call Now](https://cal.com/gabestein/problem-solving-hour?ref=gabestein.com)

I will read everything you send me (within reason), do several hours of research on you and your problem, spend an hour with you discussing my findings and co-designing a solution with you, and send you a transcript and summary of our conclusions afterwards. If I can't help you, I'll return your money and help direct you to someone who can. If we have our call and you're not satisfied with the results, I'll give you $200 back. Calls are always confidential.

### Unsure or want something more? Book a free 15-minute consultation.

If you'd like to design a longer, goal-driven engagement, or if you're just unsure and would like to meet me, you can book a free 15-minute call. I'll listen deeply and provide one of the world's most valuable commodities: total honesty. If I can be helpful, I'll tell you how. If I can't, I'll try to point you in the right direction. And if I think you're way off track on the problem itself or how you're trying to solve it, I'll tell you (in a very nice and constructive way).

[Book A Free 15-Minute Consultation](https://cal.com/gabestein/consult?ref=gabestein.com)

## How I work

There are no frameworks, no special sauce, no magic behind my work (though I have encountered every framework, technique, and grimoire). I have three things going for me: a [diverse array](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) of hands-on experiences in software development, product management, media, academia, startups, and non-profits; a unique gift for quickly learning the "full stack" of almost any problem from the code and minutiae of how people get work done all the way up to the forces and trends shaping society; and, a critic's eye for bullshit.

Send me your problems at the intersection of technology, business, and society. I will dive into them incredibly deeply to help you understand what they actually are, then work with you to develop solutions you can sustainably implement. It's actually quite simple. But it's not easy.

## What people have said

I've never asked for testimonials. Here's what folks have told me or written about me, unsolicited:

> "Gabe Stein is unusually talented. His background is a mix of media and programming; he’s also thoughtful and somehow conversant across the full stack, so to speak—from the bowels of the software all the way to core issues in scholarly publishing."

> "This is a belated note to say “Thanks!” Went live with the new home page and email signup system about a month ago, and it’s working beautifully. We’re on pace to sign up over 1,000 new newsletter subscribers a month—and have already brought in 75 new paying members. Learning to pull the right levers…."

> "You know, you basically roughed out our entire workflow in like two weeks. We're still using most of it two years later. Thank you."

## What I've done

This is a small sample of the types of work I've done. As I said, I've probably been where you are before, and can help you move forward.

- Coached a computer science professor in product management, helping them step into a full-time leadership role at a stealth AI startup
- Helped an AI data brokerage startup vet and hire their first non-founding engineer and product manager
- Optimized the membership funnel for a non-profit science news organization, leading to significant increases in paying supporters
- Developed an employee handbook for a non-profit that helped them get things done faster and more efficiently while maintaining their core values and business needs
- Worked with a team to research and develop actionable digital membership growth strategies for a major public institution
- Lead teams building complex enterprise software products from 0 to 1 and personally sold the first six-figure deals
- Scaled complex consumer software products from the first dozen core users to hundreds of thousands of MAUs
- Raised millions of dollars from VCs, institutional investors, angels, and foundations
- Managed teams of high-performing engineers, designers, and product managers
- Developed media brands that have reached millions of monthly readers
- Built teams and companies that high-performing people love working for
- Managed multi-million-dollar yearly budgets
- Successfully completed non-profit audits with no material weaknesses or significant deficiencies
- Made very difficult personnel and budgetary decisions with grace and humility
- Written production code for dozens of websites and apps
- Developed a repeatable process for extracting actionable brand integrity insights from social network metadata and helped sell it to multiple Fortune 500 companies on six-figure annual contracts
- Developed and deployed complex production features like multi-tenant analytics pipelines and dashboards, PDF generation engines, and CRM systems using a combination of production code and low-code automation tools
- Conducted focused user interviews and research alongside developers and designers
- Developed, deployed, and reported on A/B and split tests, leading to many-X improvements in conversion and activation rates
- Written a lot of prose both for my own blog and top publications like *Fast Company* and *Business Insider* that millions of people have read
- Given public talks on topics ranging from media theory to bitcoin and web annotation standards
- Developed, hosted, and GM'd text-based multiplayer roleplaying games with hundreds of daily active users

## Still Unsure?

[Book a 15-minute consultation](https://cal.com/gabestein/consult?overlayCalendar=true&ref=gabestein.com) or [email me](mailto:correspondence@gabestein.com?subject=Consulting%20Question).
## Posts
### Searching for meaning in the twilight of the neoliberal order
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/searching-for-meaning-in-the-twilight-of-the-neoliberal-order/
Last updated: 2026-10-09T19:21:35.000Z
### Act I: Tension

Early last year, needing something to distract myself from the [rapid collapse of the American project](https://www.gabestein.com/vfwnl291/), I became enthralled by a somewhat more distant crisis. New results from some of the most advanced studies of the cosmos ever conducted appeared to confirm suspicions that, depending on how you measure it, the nearby Coma Cluster of galaxies may be 38 million light-years [farther away](https://www.space.com/space-exploration/hubble-space-telescope/hubble-tension-is-now-in-our-cosmic-backyard-sending-cosmology-into-crisis?ref=gabestein.com) than current models of the universe's rate of expansion predict. Researchers still can’t explain why. If the results continue to hold, they could portend a breakdown in the standard model of physics that has been the basis of our understanding of the universe’s inner workings for the last century.

Far from serving as a useful distraction, the [Hubble Tension](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-hubble-tension-is-becoming-a-hubble-crisis/?ref=gabestein.com), as it's known, became something of a personal crisis. The apparent breakdown of the standard model suggests that there is [something fundamentally wrong](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/frozen-cosmic-sound-bubbles-suggest-dark-energy-is-shockingly-changeable/?ref=gabestein.com) about our understanding of the universe. Yet, instead of bringing us closer to the answer, collecting more data only seems to be pushing us further away from understanding what's really going on.

Like [a quantum entangled particle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum%5Fentanglement?ref=gabestein.com), I began to notice this feature of the Hubble Tension spinning at the heart of nearly every issue we face here at home. From [combatting misinformation](https://www.cip.uw.edu/2023/12/06/rumors-collective-sensemaking-kate-starbird/?ref=gabestein.com) to [building artificial intelligence](https://www.techradar.com/pro/catastrophic-overtraining-could-harm-large-language-ai-models-that-are-trained-on-more-data-for-the-sake-of-training?ref=gabestein.com) to [making important individual decisions](https://www.stevens.edu/news/want-to-make-better-decisions-ask-for-less-information-not-more?ref=gabestein.com), we're increasingly finding that more and better information does not inevitably lead to better understanding or satisfaction — in fact, in many instances it's profoundly destabilizing. And yet, we seem to be in the process of betting the future of our global economy, and our ability to inhabit the planet, on the idea that world-saving conscious super-intelligence can arise out of a large enough pile of data.

Philosophers and scholars have long grappled with this seeming paradox. Theorist Timothy Morton, for example, [calls it](https://www.gabestein.com/jz6cim0e/) the “Age of Asymmetry,” where “increasing science is not increasing demystification." Thirty-six years ago, before widespread adoption of the internet, before blogging or social media, before the glut of LLM-derived slop, media theorist Neil Postman [argued](https://www.gabestein.com/your-local-coffee-shop-probably-has-ai-brain/) in a speech to the German Informatics Society that "everything from telegraphy and photography in the 19th century to the silicon chip in the twentieth has amplified the din of information, until matters have reached such proportions today that for the average person, information no longer has any relation to the solution of problems."

On one particularly sleepless night during my period of cosmos-spanning dread, while my then-pregnant wife was half a world away on a multi-week business trip to the Middle East, I decided to type what I was experiencing into Google, then still my oracle of choice. "Meaning crisis," I offered to the familiar blue box. In a blink of postmodern magic, out popped the website for a 52-episode podcast series by a University of Toronto cognitive science and psychology professor called "Awakening From the Meaning Crisis."

I started listening the next day, during a long drive from upstate New York to an event in Boston. The first few episodes diagnosed all of my ills and assured me I was not alone. They told me the glitch I had recognized in our flagging attempts to understand the universe was, in fact, part of a global crisis caused by a fundamental disconnect between modernity's individualistic meaning-making tools – technology and science – and the human mind's innate need for more "embedded" ways of understanding the world, as demonstrated by pre-modern cultural practices. If I studied carefully, I was promised a solution to my problems in the form of a new way of engaging with the world, a synthesis of "psycho-technologies" old and new.

Exhausted and mildly depressed, hurtling north at 71 miles per hour in my wheeled pollution box, alone yet surrounded by other wayward souls making their own drab journeys, I believed for a moment that I had found an answer to my problems. This man gets it. This man is awake. This man, I started to notice, is banging on his desk with every single point he makes?

Despite running late, I pulled over to watch the video version on YouTube. A middle-aged man dressed in black, his remaining hair cropped short, stands in front of a whiteboard in a wood-paneled lecture hall, peering at an out-of-frame audience over nondescript rectangular glasses. By the middle of the third episode his delivery has shifted from calm and professorial to intense and animated. 

"No!" he shouts, his cheap lavalier microphone distorting his voice, "that's horrible! What you're trying to do is get free from those cycles! Because doing this again, and again, and again, and again, and again" – this is where he starts rhythmically banging his desk – "is terrifying. Moksha! You want freedom! Nirvana! You want cessation! You want release from the cycle! Because there is no purpose to it!"

As he went on, I scrolled to the discussion section to see if anyone else had noticed just how odd the series had become. I lingered over one particularly curious top comment: "I've discovered you as a result of your recent discussion with JBP." Why are those initials familiar, I wondered? The host's initials are JV, for John Vervaeke, professor at the University of Toronto, not JP. My throat tightened as I made the connection. JBP is Jordan B. Peterson, Vervaeke's former colleague at U of T and the [sexist](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/mar/19/beyond-andrew-tate-the-imitators-who-help-promote-misogyny-online?ref=gabestein.com), [climate-change denying](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2023/feb/02/jordan-petersons-zombie-climate-contrarianism-follows-a-well-worn-path?ref=gabestein.com), [disgraced ex-academic](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/01/21/jordan-peterson-retires-u-toronto?ref=gabestein.com) stalwart of the [manosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manosphere?ref=gabestein.com).

A few days later, after the shame of having almost fallen for a guru lifted from its heavy perch on my shoulders, I started looking more into Vervaeke. Unlike Peterson, he’s done a good job of wading right up to the edge of pseudoscience and the culture wars without jumping in. He [publishes](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/John-Vervaeke/2877268?ref=gabestein.com) a lot of peer reviewed articles in cognitive psychology and philosophy journals, and in public appearances seems genuinely open and curious rather than polemical. But it's difficult to find other experts engaging with his popular work. This could be a manifestation of the [Sagan effect](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6602043/?ref=gabestein.com), where peers and institutions punish academics who find too much mainstream success. Or it could be, as [many](https://www.reddit.com/r/DecodingTheGurus/comments/1in0nk3/high%5Fguru%5Falert%5Fjohn%5Fvervaeke/?ref=gabestein.com) [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/cogsci/comments/z9kjzy/john%5Fvervaeke%5Fcognitive%5Fscientist%5For%5Fmystic/?ref=gabestein.com) [threads](https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/10khbqp/is%5Fjohn%5Fvervaeke%5Flegit%5For%5Fis%5Fhe%5Fa%5Fcrank%5Flike/?ref=gabestein.com) and [blog](https://medium.com/@ggreer153/john-vervaekes-pure-bullshit-1-2-1fdc1004e35e?ref=gabestein.com) [posts](https://thisisleisfullofnoises.substack.com/p/a-critique-of-john-vervaeke) assert, that his popular work is merely interesting bullshit.

Over the next few days of research, a familiar pattern re-asserted itself. The more threads, articles, and commentary I read about Vervaeke, the murkier my understanding of him, his work, and particularly his proposed solutions became. If there is a meaning crisis, I realized, he is not immune from it.

---

### Act II: Loss

In early 2015, the culture wars claimed a friend of mine for the first time. It was right at the peak of [Gamergate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate?ref=gabestein.com). Bitcoin was worth around $250\. Seattle's $15 minimum wage ordinance had [just started](https://council.seattle.gov/2014/06/02/city-council-approves-15hour-minimum-wage-in-seattle/?ref=gabestein.com) going into effect. The early Black Lives Matter [protests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%5FBaltimore%5Fprotests?ref=gabestein.com) over the murder of Freddy Grey were in full swing in Baltimore. I was not expecting to discuss any of those topics – except maybe Bitcoin – when I setup lunch with an old boss I hadn't seen in years at a diner in the West Village. 

The catch-up seemed normal enough until he started talking about what he'd learned investing in crypto. I expected him to discuss some technical or financial details, given that we had worked together as reporters covering the rise of cryptocurrencies in 2013\. Instead, he leaned over the table, looked me straight in the eye with a conspiratorial grin, and started ranting about the news. Despite some awful fringe elements, he told me, Gamergate in general had a point: a nebulous "we" was losing control of society. Crypto, he was sure, was the key to taking back control by freeing the masses from the tyranny of state-directed funding.

His fingers began tapping out a staccato rhythm on the formica tabletop as he ticked through a laundry list of examples of state investment gone awry. Eventually, he arrived at the two that most deeply concerned him. The first was how America had put so much into improving black people's lives, specifically black women's lives (generally a good thing, he assured me!), that everyone else was at risk of being left behind by comparison if we continued. The Black Lives Matter protests were absurd, he said, given the relative gains "they" had made during the Bush and Obama years. The second most pressing issue on his mind was how the $15 minimum wage being adopted in Seattle and debated in New York and elsewhere was an absurd handout that every economist, left, right, and center, agreed wouldn't work.

Over a decade later, I remember the walk back to the subway with almost perfect clarity. It was a crisp, early spring day, the sun shining brightly enough for sunglasses but not yet warmly enough to leave my army surplus four-pocket jacket unbuttoned. As I approached the station, an unsettling sensation that would become all too common suddenly leapt from my gut into my conscious mind: loss. Somehow, in the space of just a few years, a person I thought I knew well had been replaced by a stranger. How that had happened, I didn't yet know.

The former boss was eventually accused of fraud and has since disappeared from the internet. Gamergate metastasized into a plethora of conspiracy theories that eventually converged with the greater MAGA movement. Crypto has found a modest niche for enabling scamming and speculation. The Black Lives Matter protests reached their peak in the summer of 2020 but did not transform society the way many of us hoped. 

And the minimum wage? I can still feel the tingle of despair that bubbled up in me as I learned on the ride home that the near-universal consensus among economists, across the ideological spectrum, was that Seattle's experiment was doomed to fail. I refused to follow the logic that if my old boss was right about that part of the story, he might be correct about other parts, too. Instead, I decided that losing some economic growth to a policy that would improve the lives of those least well off was worth the tradeoff, and mostly stopped thinking about or advocating for it.

A few months ago, I encountered an article revisiting those policies in *The Atlantic*. Eleven years later, we now know that my former boss, and every single one of the economists who predicted doom, [was completely wrong](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/05/minimum-wage-experiment-worked/687255/?ref=gabestein.com). As I read about the doctrine-shaking evidence of successful minimum wage experiments across the country, the old feeling of despair dissipated. What replaced it was just as uncomfortable.

---

### Act III: Purpose

In July, several of the group chats I'm part of lit up with the news that Michael Kratsios, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, had released a new report. Both Trump administrations have been [openly hostile](https://www.npr.org/2026/09/24/nx-s1-5931971/trump-nih-science-funding-disruptions-charts?ref=gabestein.com) to research, so I was surprised, and worried, to see many friends and open science advocates praising a document born of the tangled ideological web of MAGA.

The report in question, "[Science: A New Golden Age](https://www.whitehouse.gov/science/?ref=gabestein.com)," draws its title, structure, and ambition directly from science advisor and administrator Vannevar Bush's legendary 1945 report "[Science: The Endless Frontier](https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/2023-04/EndlessFrontier75th%5Fw.pdf?ref=gabestein.com)." The original report launched the modern "linear" research funding model, where the government takes on the risk of funding basic undirected research at universities, and then allows the private sector to productize and distribute successful discoveries. In so doing, Bush laid the groundwork for the information, biomedical, and economic revolutions we're living through — more directly than most people realize.

In his more famous 1945 publication, "[As We May Think](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/?ref=gabestein.com)," Bush described the "memex," a machine that could effectively filter the vast amounts of new knowledge his proposed funding model was bound to create. The combination of that funding model and his technical predictions created the need for, directly inspired, and directly funded both [hypertext](https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/brief-history-hypertext/?ref=gabestein.com), which would form the basis of the world wide web, and [citation indexing](https://bid.ub.edu/en/37/urbano.htm?ref=gabestein.com), which [became](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3967521/?ref=gabestein.com) the primary way research is discovered and judged. The two technologies eventually converged in the 1998 launch of Google, which originally used an algorithm [that built on](http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf?ref=gabestein.com) academic citation indexing to judge page quality from graphs of website hyperlinks. Google also ultimately adopted the [same predictive, surveillance-based business model](https://elephantinthelab.org/surveillance-publishing/?ref=gabestein.com) that academic publishing companies use to monetize their academic citation graphs.

Even as he foresaw these technologies, Bush failed to anticipate two key weaknesses in his system. First, that the need to objectively judge the success of research funding would give rise to the commercial publishing industry and the costly and limiting rents it [collects](https://issues.org/how-academic-science-gave-its-soul-to-the-publishing-industry/?ref=gabestein.com) from the innovation economy. And second, that the decline in American manufacturing as a result of globalization and financialization would make his model susceptible to [corporate capture](https://hewlett.org/disentangling-the-economy-from-neoliberal-financialization/?ref=gabestein.com) in the second half of the 20th century as firms moved production overseas and returned an [increasing percentage](https://conversableeconomist.com/2022/09/13/financial-services-share-of-profits/?ref=gabestein.com) of profits derived from government-funded innovation to the shareholder, rather than working, class. 

Kratsios's report proposes sweeping changes to the way American research is funded, purportedly to fix these flaws in Bush's system, which even the staunchest supporters of research agree has become [too bureaucratic, narrow, and slow](https://goodscienceproject.org/articles/how-to-actually-reduce-the-administrative-burden-on-research/?ref=gabestein.com). Reading the summary and introduction, I found myself agreeing with much of his diagnosis. I understood why advocates were praising some of his proposals, many of which come directly from the [metascience](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metascience?ref=gabestein.com) community. 

And yet, midway through the first chapter, I began to recognize a familiar rhythm right around the point where the report calls an "over-reliance on foreign students" a threat to American leadership and security. The desk-banging continues through discussions of favorite MAGA tropes like diversity as a threat to meritocracy, "opening" laboratories housed at elite universities, and protecting our discoveries from foreign exploitation in the "geopolitical battlespace" of commerce and research.

Around this point, in a Chapter III section on the "failure of the passive model," these pronouncements reach their crescendo in a searing, nationalist critique of neoliberal economics:

> For decades, the United States assumed that open markets would naturally produce American prosperity and that free trade would lift all boats by maximizing global efficiency. Instead, unilateral openness hollowed out the American industrial base. Competitors exploited our markets while protecting their own. The gains from trade accrued to a narrow slice of the economy while entire communities lost their livelihoods. President Trump has delivered a necessary correction, recognizing that economic security is national security.  
>  
> The same logic applies to science and technology. The assumption that federal research investment alone would sustain American technological dominance has proven naive. We funded the discoveries, trained the researchers, and published the papers, but did not ensure that the benefits accrued to our nation. The ideas, as well as the time- and resource-intensive parts of the development cycle, are taken abroad to benefit others.

As I read that righteous screed, a shudder pulsed its way through my body. The logic behind it comes [almost directly](https://chrisrglass.substack.com/p/post-vannevar-bush-science-the-high) from Palantir founder Alex Karp's book *The Technological Republic*, one of [late MAGA's core texts](https://www.techpolicy.press/palantirs-manifesto-is-as-subtle-as-a-maga-hat/?ref=gabestein.com). In it, Karp and co-author Nicholas Zamiska (Palantir's Head of Corporate Affairs) excoriate the titans of Silicon Valley for abandoning American ideals in pursuit of pure profit born of trivial innovations. They blame these industrialists, along with the academic "woke left" and "woke right," for eroding America's national identity and purpose. Their proposed solution is a "new Manhattan project," focused on AI and conveniently run by private-public partnerships with "patriotic" companies like Palantir, to help Americans rediscover our national purpose and ensure "the West" wins the battle for AI supremacy against authoritarian rivals, primarily China.

Karp and Zamiska's book is interesting as a cultural artifact, but tedious as a piece of philosophy. Even potential conservative allies [agree](https://scholars-stage.org/book-notes-the-technological-republic-2025/?ref=gabestein.com) that it reads like an advertisement for Palantir, and that the pair stopped well short of taking their thesis to its logical conclusion of rethinking the value of the nation-state in 2026\. 

Far from envisioning a revitalized national purpose, they seem to think it obvious that America should be reorganized to give billionaires – but don't worry, only the good, patriotic ones like Karp – even more money and power so they can build us artificial gods that will smite our enemies and bathe us in eternal glory. I'm exaggerating slightly on the last part. Even Karp [thinks](https://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-ceo-ai-companies-leaders-unlikeable-fde-competition-2026-6?ref=gabestein.com) the transhumanist AI CEOs are insane. But that hasn't stopped him – or Kratsios – from arguing that we should organize the entire national project around developing AI. 

As I parsed the reactions to the Kratsios report sent by friends and colleagues – some [attempts](https://chrisrglass.substack.com/p/post-vannevar-bush-science-the-high) at good-faith analysis, some [reflexive dismissals](https://www.techpolicy.press/ostp-vision-for-science-is-a-golden-age-for-corporations/?ref=gabestein.com), and even some AI-focused government partnership announcements – one emotion washed over me: exhaustion. We [got here](https://www.gabestein.com/zkme9ef3/) in the first place by believing would-be philosopher-kings who assured us their technology would save the world if we just gave them enough money and power. Why are we spending any time at all debating whether their latest ideas will make us happier?

I want release from the cycle. There is no purpose to it.

---

### Act IV: Myth

Three years ago, I had a vision. Maybe it was the podcast about traditional cultures my wife and I had listened to on our long, slow drive into the Yucatecan jungle. Maybe it was the searing heat of the midday sun reflecting off yellow-painted limestone walls. Maybe it was the mezcal and lack of sleep from the night before. But as the guide pointed to a half-century-old statue of the Virgin Mary watching over the colonial plaza and explained how she had come to stand in for Mayan mother deities of old, I swear I saw it blink. For just a moment something strange, powerful, and impossibly ancient peered out at me from behind Mary's eyes.

I'm an atheist. I'm Jewish. I have no Mexican or Mayan heritage. I had never heard of [syncretism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism?ref=gabestein.com), the gradual merging of discrete belief systems that our guide was describing, before. But in that fleeting moment, I rediscovered something fundamental about the world that I had lost somewhere on my journey from adolescence to middle age. I just had no idea what it was.

The problem with visions, I've come to learn, is that their insights tend to be visceral. The rationalist in me knows that they are the product of [slow hunches](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/learning-work/202002/slow-hunches-curiosity-and-innovative-ideas?ref=gabestein.com) about unexpected patterns that build up over time until, given the right sensory experiences, the brain [suddenly recruits](https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-your-brain-creates-aha-moments-and-why-they-stick-20251105/?ref=gabestein.com) a diverse network of structures involving sight, emotion, and memory that overcome its tendency to throw away observations that defy its predictions and allow those unexpected patterns to click into place. That explanation doesn't make the work of applying thoughts, words, and meaning to insight any easier.

Too often in my life I've ignored hunches – about people, ideas, jobs, you name it – frequently to my detriment. I'm sure we all have. Most of us grew up in a culture that rewards decision-making based on reason and punishes everything else. We're all living with decades of cultural reinforcement that tells us that converting energy and ideas into money is growth, which is progress, and that if you don't see or feel that in your day-to-day life it's because you're measuring the wrong thing.

Perhaps that's why even the smart, powerful people who have started to see our society's foundational myths for what they are think they can fix them with sounder arguments, better measurements, more complete philosophies, new technologies, or reimagined ancient political systems. Perhaps that's why so many of the people searching for meaning are falling for con artists and gurus promising easy solutions based on eliminating propped-up enemies, repackaging distorted wisdom from an idealized past, or making just the right set of policy tweaks. It's far easier, and more convenient, to make choices you can rationalize or measure than it is to pursue deeply personal feelings you often can't even identify, whose paths may lead to unpredictable and uncomfortable changes that you will struggle to explain to yourself, much less your family and friends.

I'm sure I will spend much of the rest of my life trying to fully understand what I saw, or what my brain was trying to tell me, in a yellow city somewhere deep in the Yucatan. But one lesson I've been able to take from trying to make sense of it is that the choice between different ways of making meaning our culture forces on us is a false one.

Alongside every economic doctrine, no matter how data-driven, lies an old web of power. Alongside every new technology, no matter how well meaning, lies a deep history of control. Alongside every flash of insight, no matter how brilliant, lies a dense network of neurons, the product of billions of years of adding, subtracting, and even [trading](https://www.the-scientist.com/bacteria-and-humans-have-been-swapping-dna-for-millennia-32779?ref=gabestein.com) biological code, that has somehow managed to conjure concepts as fragile as "meaning" out of immutable laws of electrochemical physics as ancient as the universe itself. 

These explanations don't replace each other. They're not even wholly understandable on each other's terms. But if you're able to hold and examine each of them on their own terms, they can co-exist. I've come to believe that if there is meaning to be had in this era of upheaval and uncertainty, it is in learning to understand and accept the multifaceted nature of our existence without trying to fuse everything together. 

We are syncretic beings, living in a syncretic universe. Nothing endures forever. And nothing ever completely erases what came before it. Pieces of forgotten decisions, gods, economics, [particles](https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/the-universe/stars/a-spectacular-stellar-finale/we-are-stardust?ref=gabestein.com), and even [fundamental forces](https://physics.mit.edu/news/it-all-started-with-a-big-bang-the-quest-to-unravel-the-mystery-behind-the-birth-of-the-universe/?ref=gabestein.com) are always peering out at us from just beyond the veneer of new creations, patiently waiting to be remembered, examined, broken apart, discarded, and carried forward.
### Your local coffee shop probably has AI brain
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/your-local-coffee-shop-probably-has-ai-brain/
Last updated: 2026-05-26T13:59:23.000Z
A new coffee shop just opened around the corner from me. Its walls are pleasantly speckled with raw plaster and it’s already become the coffee shop of choice for the neighborhood’s young, beautiful people, who fill it daily despite the fact that there appears to be just one small couch and one four-top in the store’s otherwise empty thousand-plus square feet of prime central Brooklyn real estate. 

There are already four other coffee shops within a two-block radius of this one. There are no pharmacies and no decent bagels or slices within a mile (don‘t @ me, you're wrong). But this new coffee shop does offer something the others don't. It is the first of the five that hawks “storytelling” as its flagship product.

Storytelling, gathering, curation, immersive, intentional design, meaningful exchange, design-forward, beautifully crafted, authentic connection – these terms, and more, can be found in the marketing gloss my wife discovered printed on heavy textured paper and slapped on the raw concrete entry table (why is there an entry table?) when she got curious and decided to pay the shop a visit.

These words obviously came out of an LLM, which is why they have precisely zero meaning. None of them were intentional, curated, or authentic. If they tell a story, it is of a marketing guru who outsourced their job to a next-token predictor. These words amount to nothing because they could describe any Brooklyn coffee shop in the year of our lord 2026\. That’s why an LLM can write them, because so many already have. They are so devoid of context and specificity they could describe almost any Brooklyn business. In fact, I think I've seen them used recently to promote my local meat counter. You know the one, the old-school deli that recently got taken over by the nice, but slightly odd failson who has a MOOC certificate in digital marketing — from Stanford, dad!

In fact, here you go. I have thoughtfully remixed the coffee shop’s description to fit the old-school deli (this is the actual text, with just a few carefully curated replacements):

> JERRY’S MEAT HOLE is a design-forward meat counter nestled in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, where thoughtfully curated bulk meat meets beautifully crafted specialty cuts of assorted meat product.  
>  
> Rooted in creativity and connection, Jerry’s Meat Hole is designed as a gathering space-one that celebrates storytelling, intentional design, and meaningful exchange. We partner with factory farms and meat distributors to create moments that feel personal, immersive, and community-driven.  
>  
> Inspired by the ease and intimacy of a lived-in loft apartment, our space offers a refined yet welcoming backdrop for meat producers to connect with meat consumers in an authentic way. Here, ideas are shared, stories are experienced, and visions are brought to life. Book your next event or apply to sell your meat in our store by emailing hello@jerrysmeat.hole

I don’t know anything about the provenance of the coffee shop. I don’t know the people behind it or the kind of coffee they serve and whether it is, indeed, beautifully crafted. I’ve never set foot in there and hope I never will. But I know exactly how this coffee shop happened, beyond a shadow of a doubt. I know, conclusively, that they used AI to generate everything about the shop first — the concept, the design, the menu, the business model — and then tried, not unsuccessfully, to make what emerged from that black box a reality. The same way the hapless third-generation owner of Jerry’s Meat Hole saw an insipid OpenAI ad on the subway and decided to use AI to give their 74 year-old family business a glowup it does not need and cannot not possibly live up to.

I know that this is how this coffee shop came into being because I have seen so many people succumb to AI brain, and this is what it does. It reverses causality. Instead of extracting meaning from information, the way it’s always been done, your brain on AI says that if you supply the meaning, AI can efficiently search all the information in the known universe to find a set of facts that justifies it. This is backwards! This is wrong! This is exactly what is happening all around you, every day, probably even to you and by you.

People will argue that search did the same thing before AI. And libraries before it. And stone tablets before that. Anyone who's ever wanted to justify a bad idea has always been able to find a way to do it, they'll say. Which, sure, except, no, these people are wrong. Search forces you, the searcher, to sift through pre-filtered information to arrive at a your own conclusion, however wrong. It doesn't just serve you a plausible answer on a plate. Our brains work differently when presented with two different technologies with two completely different interfaces. Are we really having this debate?

Search brain gets you gimmicky SEO-driven flavored coffee drinks. AI brain gets you coffee shop concept stores with five seats and no bathroom and descriptions that read like performance art in neighborhoods that desperately need fewer coffee shops and more pharmacies. AI brain gets you meat counters that have decided they can use AI to fake being trendy. Someone said “generate the business plan of the perfect coffee shop for this industrial ground-floor space in Bed-Stuy” or "yo i am the boss of my family's dumb old meat store i kno nothing about meat but i am a marketing wizard wut do i do to make it cool?" and ChatGPT just turned around and answered because that’s what it’s programmed to do. It’s not programmed to wonder if a coffee shop is the right kind of shop for a specific location. It’s not programmed to consider whether a meat counter needs a trendy makeover. It’s not programmed to stop and ask if it has crammed so many buzzwords into a shop’s (I’m going to assume they call it an) "artist’s statement" that the entire enterprise is at risk of collapsing under its own weight. The only thing it is programmed to respond with is, “sure, I can find the information to make sense of your absurd request.”

So, now we have another coffee shop across the street from our four other coffee shops. And it’s constantly full of beautiful people wondering why its owners couldn’t thoughtfully curate any more places to park their beautiful bodies. And the meat shop where we used to get perfectly good meat has raised its prices and hired a social media manager and there are lines around the corner now for new daily “drops“ that I’m pretty sure are just the same average meat they’ve always offered, repackaged for a era of insanity. 

The other day, while I was out taking a stroller walk with my son, some tourists from Los Angeles eating sliced salami out of brown waxed paper wrapped with twine stopped me on my street to ask what my favorite local coffee shop was. When I told them it was the one on my corner with slightly too acidic coffee and slightly too acerbic staff, they looked it up and asked me, “what about that concept store next door? ChatGPT says we might like it better.” I shrugged and went home to put my son to bed.

Only some of these things are literally true. But all of them could easily be true, because I made up the untrue stuff all by myself, using my mind‘s built-in capacity to stretch everyday experiences into meaningful anecdotes that help me make sense of this silly world, even if the events they’re based on aren’t, technically speaking, entirely real.

Contrast that with the coffee shop. It is real in the sense that you can, I assume, buy and, if you're lucky, find a seat to consume coffee there. But it is in no way a place where ideas are shared, stories are experienced (what?), or visions are brought to life, despite the fact that a chatbot with access to all the world’s information thought those would be cute things to say about a coffee shop (why the passive voice, though???). AI has its productive uses. But its most common use, justifying bad ideas and decisions with meaningless drivel, is silly and dangerous. 

Don’t let your hard-won ability to make up useful lies atrophy just because some machine tells you it has access to everything there is to know. It is precisely that unfiltered access to everything that makes it unable to truly know anything. And it is our inability to access everything, our need to filter what we experience to make sense of it at all with our limited hardware, that makes us capable of making meaning out of anything. Cede that gift to the machines and you become them: capable of doing anything, unable to understand why you're doing it. There is no coffee good enough to justify becoming that, no matter how beautifully crafted.
### Messaging Reform
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/messaging-reform/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T14:26:05.000Z
To my surprise and delight, the Supreme Court's disastrous *Callais* decision seems to stiffened the spines of Democrats when it comes to getting on board for real (lowercase-d) democratic reforms. And for good reason. As Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, who has [been](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/with-the-corrupt-supreme-court-its-calvinball-all-the-way-down?ref=gabestein.com) [chronicling](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/are-democrats-warming-to-reforming-the-supreme-court?ref=gabestein.com) [these](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-thoughts-on-the-courts-dire-corruption-and-the-necessity-of-reform?ref=gabestein.com) [developments](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/you-can-have-democratic-self-government-or-the-corrupt-court-not-both?ref=gabestein.com) better than anyone, puts it, it is now unambiguously clear that democratic self-government is simply impossible when you have a court that is essentially operating as a wing of the Republican party, corruptly inserting itself into "[every tissue of American life](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-courts-corruption-seeps-into-every-tissue-of-american-life?ref=gabestein.com)."

It is interesting, and not a little disheartening, that the decision that finally broke through as unacceptably corrupt for Democrats is one that deeply threatens the party's congressional power. In a way, this may represent a real-life example of the competition between branches that James Madison envisioned in [Federalist 51](https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/james-madison-federalist-no-51-1788?ref=gabestein.com), though one so driven by partisan politics, which [Madison](https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/james-madison-federalist-10-1788?ref=gabestein.com), [Washington](https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/the-first-president/political-parties?ref=gabestein.com), and most other founders feared, that I suspect it's not an exactly the purest version of what they had in mind.

Regardless, by so brazenly and corruptly inserting itself into territory that directly challenges the power of another branch of government's partisans, the court seems to have accidentally brought to the surface of elite discourse a nexus of interlinked democratic crises that have long simmered mostly in progressive and reformist circles. In addition to the now [more or less accepted](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/chuck-schumer-outlines-2025-agenda-democrats-sweep-eying-filibuster-ch-rcna167433?ref=gabestein.com) need to eliminate the Senate filibuster, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries [explicitly endorsed the potential for](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/29/democrats-supreme-court-voting-rights-act.html?ref=gabestein.com) legislative Supreme Court reform, and Congressman Jamie Raskin from Maryland, ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, [renewed](https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/ranking-member-raskin-s-statement-on-the-supreme-court-s-decision-in-louisiana-v-callais?utm%5Fsource=substack&utm%5Fmedium=email) his long crusade to eliminate gerrymandering by mandating multi-member districts with proportional representation for all House elections.

Raskin's proposal is the most exciting, and radical, because it has the potential to remake our political system in profound ways. Not only would it effectively eliminate gerrymandering, but it would make it possible, even likely, for multiple political parties to gain a foothold in the House. If you haven't come across multimember districts yet, here's a [good explainer](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/01/14/opinion/fix-congress-proportional-representation.html?ref=gabestein.com) from the *New York Times*. 

The gist is that rather than voting for a single candidate to represent you in a winner-takes-all district, you would vote for the party you want to represent you in a multi-member district. Seats would then be awarded based on the proportion of votes each party competing in a district receives. So, if in a 10-member district Democrats received 50% of the vote, Republicans 30%, and a hypothetical Green party 20%, Democrats would net 5 seats, Republicans 3, and Greens 2\. In a multi-member district, you could vote for a minority party that best represents your views without worrying about throwing away your vote. In such a system, it would be less likely for a single party to establish a House majority, meaning multiple parties would often be forced to compromise with each other to pass legislation, leading to less polarization and laws that represent more Americans' views. 

I like the idea because it checks all the boxes of being a fairly radical reform that could dramatically change American politics; possible to do purely legislatively by majority vote; and [potentially quite popular](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/01/15/nearly-4-in-10-americans-wish-they-had-options-beyond-the-republican-and-democratic-parties/?ref=gabestein.com), if messaged correctly. Americans have long wanted more choices at the ballot box, but the winner-takes-all nature of our elections makes it all but impossible for more than two major parties to exist.

As much as I like the idea, it likely faces two big hurdles. The first is that it requires partisans to vote to cede their own power. The second is that achieving it will require the other two reforms to also pass: Supreme Court reform so they don't arbitrarily strike down multi-member districts (despite the fact that they've been used in America before), and filibuster reform so it can pass via majority vote in the Senate. These barriers create a sort of political paradox. On the one hand, it's somewhat hard to imagine today's Democrats embracing blowing up the two-party system that grants them their power. On the other, we actually need that power to pass multi-member districts and the other needed reforms, because Republicans certainly aren't going to take it up (even though they love railing against the so-called "[uniparty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniparty?ref=gabestein.com)").

What choice do we have, though? The Democratic party is one of the [most unpopular institutions in America](https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54645-democratic-and-republican-parties-unpopular-democrats-lead-race-for-congress-april-24-27-2026-economist-yougov-poll?ref=gabestein.com), and though the [usual](http://noahpinion.blog/p/why-does-everyone-still-hate-the?ref=gabestein.com) [suspects](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/opinion/democrats-senate-moderate.html?ref=gabestein.com) have wasted a lot of digital ink sifting through data debating why in the last two years, one major reason is that during the 4-year Biden interregnum the party did little to either prevent Trump's return or meaningfully address any of the issues that brought him to power in the first place.

Frankly, I've come to believe that reform that merely serves to rebalance the power of the current political system is largely meaningless. The inherent polarization of two-party systems brought us to this breaking point, which is why most modern democracies have [long abandoned](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/12/19/us-stands-out-globally-in-how-it-draws-legislative-districts/?ref=gabestein.com) single-member districts. Without making this reform, or one like it, we'll be right back here again before too long, even if Democrats win in 2026, 2028, and somehow manage to survive [the reckoning coming](https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/28/2030-electoral-college-projections-00750488?ref=gabestein.com) with the 2030 census. Multi-member districts isn't the only reform we need, but it comes as close as any to offering us a potentially popular, and relatively easily achievable path to achieving the depolarization necessary to make the other changes we need to get back to being a representative democracy.

So how do Democrats make the case? The bad news is, I think it will likely require something of an insurgent candidate capable of credibly running on a platform of reducing the party's power. The good news is that if someone is willing to pick up that mantle, I think there's a pretty simple way to tie small-d democratic reform to pocketbook issues that can drive voters. 

The high-level version of the argument goes like this: we can't get anything we want because all of the levers of power — from the Supreme Court to the parties themselves – have been captured by the modern-day robber barons who operate on both sides of the aisle. To fix it, we need to change the system so we the people have the power to get what we want, even if the ultra-rich oppose it. And one of the key ways we do that is by making it so that there are enough parties to actually represent us. 

This isn't all that dissimilar to the argument Trump made back in 2016 when he effectively ran as an insurgent candidate on the GOP side, except it focuses the ire on the actual culprits, rather than immigrants, journalists, Democrats, etc., and proposes a democratic solution rather than an authoritarian one. And it addresses a key problem with the silly "[popularist](https://inthesetimes.com/article/biden-popularism-democrats-immigration-2024?ref=gabestein.com)" take, which has now morphed into the somehow even more insipid "[abundance](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/opinion/abundance-democrats-future.html?ref=gabestein.com)" agenda, which is that Democrats simply don't have the credibility to claim they will pass popular, effective legislation. Again, a key driver of Democratic unpopularity is that party members themselves remember that the last time they were in power they let [two lobbyist-owned](https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2021/10/27/sinema-and-manchin-flush-with-lobbyist-contributions?ref=gabestein.com) Senators block anything that would have helped reform our democracy, and the one major bill they did manage to pass was [effectively repealed](https://iratracker.org/actions/congress-passes-budget-bill-rescinding-funds-and-repealing-ira-programs-and-tax-credits/?ref=gabestein.com) long before [much of its funds](https://climateprogramportal.org/2024/10/25/what-climate-funding-remains-from-the-ira/?ref=gabestein.com) had been spent.

I don't pretend to be an expert at political messaging, but someone should be able to make the case that the reason everything is going so poorly is because Trump is going around starting wars and making deals with oligarchs to benefit himself rather than us, and the reason he's able to do that is because those same oligarchs control the Republican Party, the Supreme Court, and enough Democrats to stop anything actually effective at rebalancing power or wealth in its tracks. The solution to that problem cannot simply be "if you elect us this time we'll do things we've never been able to do before, we promise." It has to be "we'll change the system enough – including ourselves – to make it possible for you to get what you want."

Of course, we're a long way away from that platform being the center of a national election. But I think we're closer than we think. Raskin's bill has been around for most of this decade, and the Court's turn to blatantly obvious corruption has finally forced Democrats to take reform seriously.

One thing you can do to increase the momentum is tell your representatives, local and federal, to support multi-member districts, as well as Supreme Court and filibuster reform. The window for doing something is finally opening, and we might as well give it a shot.
### Welcome to the age of industrial code
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/welcome-to-the-age-of-industrial-code/
Last updated: 2026-04-22T18:36:52.000Z
Over the last 10 years, I've baked somewhere between 500 and 1,000 loaves of sourdough bread. In addition to consuming the end result, I take immense pleasure from the slow, deliberate, and hands-on nature of the craft, as well as the now-intuitive skills I've gained by pursuing it for so long. I've gotten good enough that I can bake many different types of bread entirely by feel, without measuring ingredients or glancing at a clock.

Those of you in the tech world will read this with a knowing grin. I'm [far from alone](https://www.eater.com/2018/11/19/18099127/bread-silicon-valley-sourdough-tech-bros-tartine-chad-robertson?ref=gabestein.com) when it comes to technologists turning to baking as a past-time. Much of coding, too, is best understood as an artisanal craft, and many elements of it, particularly the acquisition of intuitive knowledge of a codebase over long periods of time, bear a [striking similarity](https://increment.com/remote/code-is-sourdough/?ref=gabestein.com) to baking with sourdough. It should come as no surprise that so many engineers have embraced baking as a hobby that translates their hard-won problem-solving skills to the fascinating and delicious world of culinary microorganisms.

Beyond the end result, there is one key difference between the socioeconomics of bread and software. The bread that I, and many of my peers, bake at home or in the [increasing number](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/dining/home-bakers-sourdough-microbakeries.html?ref=gabestein.com) of craft and micro bakeries, is a completely different product than the bread you find at most supermarkets. Like with virtually any other activity, when baking moves from craft to industrial scale, the knowledge of the artisan – how to modify the process in response to variables like temperature, humidity, and starter temperament – becomes a hinderance, rather than a help. Instead of adjusting to variables, at industrial scales you need to turn variables into constants. Doing so requires tools like climate-controlled environments, high-speed mixing and kneading machines, conveyor-belt ovens, dough-stabilizing additives, and, most importantly, commercial yeast, which grows at predictable rates at the expense of texture and flavor.

Unlike industrial bakeries, the code shipped by the Googles and Amazons of the world is not all that different from that produced by a hobbyist for a personal project. In fact, big tech companies [routinely rely upon](https://xkcd.com/2347/?ref=gabestein.com) open-source projects that are essentially maintained by [hobbyist volunteers](https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/18/open%5Fsource%5Fmaintainers%5Funderpaid/?ref=gabestein.com). I'm fairly certain Bimbo has never asked a home baker to borrow a cup of sourdough starter.

Unique across potentially all mega-industries, programming has by and large remained an artisanal pursuit even as it has scaled to dominate the [global economy and, increasingly, global politics](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41267-025-00828-5?ref=gabestein.com). Even at the biggest firms, the process of producing code has until now beared a closer resemblance to the production line at a neighborhood bakery, with small teams of experts producing specialized pieces of output one at a time, than to a factory line producing thousands of loaves a day under the supervision of just a few workers.

There are structural reasons for this difference, of course. Unlike loaves of bread, the freshest artisanal code can be instantly copied and shipped across the world, no preservatives or cargo containers required. Big tech became so successful, so quickly, in part because it never needed to adopt industrial production methods, with their intensive capital costs, to sell its products at industrial scales. 

This feature of the tech business has recently turned into a bug for its owner class. Workers, not capital, have historically been big tech's [biggest cost](https://www.cbre.com/insights/books/scoring-tech-talent-2024/which-are-the-highest-and-lowest-cost-markets?ref=gabestein.com), which gave software developers the power to [command high salaries](https://www.adpresearch.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-software-developer/?ref=gabestein.com) and even [demand values-driven changes](https://www.businessinsider.com/google-caves-to-criticism-over-military-drone-work-wont-renew-project-maven-pentagon-contract-2018-6?ref=gabestein.com) to their company's lines of business. After the 2024 election, when it became clear that the federal government would operate on a [mob-like favors system](https://thefulcrum.us/ethics-leadership/trump-authoritarian-leadership-2675055123?ref=gabestein.com), workers exercising collective power [became untenable](https://www.gabestein.com/big-tech-and-trumpism-share-the-same-ideology/) to the future of big tech businesses. In response, Silicon Valley's elite started [cracking down](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/technology/tech-jobs-silicon-valley-changes.html?ref=gabestein.com), turning cultures that were once renowned for their lavish perks, openness, and transparency into more traditional command-and-control enterprises, particularly where [political expression](https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2025/02/19/silicon-valley-politics-worry-trump-00204971?ref=gabestein.com) and [government contracts](https://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-slam-company-after-it-ditches-ai-weapons-pledge-2025-2?ref=gabestein.com) are concerned.

Tech leaders were able to change the power dynamics so quickly for a few reasons. A major one is that tech workers, who [lean liberal](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00380261231182522?ref=gabestein.com) but with a libertarian streak, [never solidified their power](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/08/technology/tech-companies-union-organizing.html?ref=gabestein.com) by unionizing. But Silicon Valley's elite also benefitted from good timing. The election coincided with an ongoing series of layoffs in the technology and service sectors, which, despite what you may have heard, were [mostly caused](https://www.businessinsider.com/forget-ai-heres-the-real-reason-the-job-market-sucks-2025-12?ref=gabestein.com) by rising interest rates creating a hangover from pandemic-era hiring surges. 

Finally, of course, these layoffs overlapped with the increasing adoption of AI, particularly LLM coding tools. These tools have changed the daily job of coding in myriad ways. But they've had a much bigger impact on big tech's balance sheets, which makes me (and plenty of [other critics](https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-really-weird/?ref=gabestein.com)) wonder if the tail is starting to wag the dog. 

Capital expenditures, mostly in the form of datacenter build-outs to power AI model training and serving, [have exploded](https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/why-ai-companies-may-invest-more-than-500-billion-in-2026?ref=gabestein.com) among all the major tech companies, as well as the new frontier AI labs and "[hyperscalers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperscale%5Fcomputing?ref=gabestein.com)." This "[mother of all pivots](https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/capital-intensity-will-reprogram-big-tech-values-2025-05-07/?ref=gabestein.com)" comes with the enormous risk that, by transforming into businesses that resemble heavy industries like manufacturing, big tech will begin to erode the incredible profit margins that have long justified their premium valuations.

To put these expenditures in perspective, projected AI capital spending for 2026 alone [now exceeds](https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-spending-tech-companies-compared-02b90046?ref=gabestein.com) the amount spent on the entire 1850s railroad boom and the late-20th-century telecom boom, both in real terms and as a percentage of GDP. You can debate whether these comparisons are apt on a technical level given that tech companies are ([maybe](https://www.wheresyoured.at/hatersguide-privatecredit/?ref=gabestein.com)?) largely re-investing their own revenues rather than debt-financing the buildouts, but one thing is certain: for the projected multi-trillion-dollar capital investments to ultimately pay off, LLM-based tools will need to have similar impacts to railroads or broadband. They'll need to become more than just productivity-enhancing, they'll need to transform the actual work of coding – and many other types of knowledge work – from bespoke artisanal pursuits into predictable industrial processes that justify price tags many times their current [heavily subsidized](https://www.axios.com/2026/03/12/ai-models-costs-ipo-pricing?ref=gabestein.com) rates, not to mention the potential future costs of [enormous environmental externalities](https://www.wired.com/story/new-gas-powered-data-centers-could-emit-more-greenhouse-gases-than-entire-nations/?ref=gabestein.com).

Like all good industrialists, a mere trillion-dollar question hasn't stopped tech oligarchs from repeatedly [using](https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unemployment-anthropic?ref=gabestein.com) the [specter](https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/microsoft-all-white-collar-tasks-automated?ref=gabestein.com) of [job](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2meHtrO1n8&ref=gabestein.com) [automation](https://www.ladbible.com/news/technology/bill-gates-three-jobs-survive-ai-407311-20260317?ref=gabestein.com), and the need to invest in it, to [justify poor decision-making](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cde5y2x51y8o?ref=gabestein.com) and cow their workers into submitting to the new industrial order. The great Cory Doctorow [covered this trend](https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/27/rancid-vibe-coding/?ref=gabestein.com#class-war) at Amazon, where he compared the company's shift from producing code with AI assistance to reviewing AI-generated code to the shift from manual to automated textile production that spawned the failed Luddite uprising at the dawn of the industrial revolution.

In the piece, Doctorow identifies a dichotomy that many of us in the tech industry have witnessed first-hand. Depending on how you use them, LLM coding tools can be amazing at removing tedium and increasing time spent on more creative parts of the craft, or heinous generators of bug-filled slop that must be painstakingly debugged by ever-vigilant programmers, assembly-line style. Hacker News, the homepage of choice for many professional developers, is [full](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47282777&ref=gabestein.com) of [threads](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46488576&ref=gabestein.com) debating this very topic. 

Doctorow attributes this separation to whether workers have the power to decide how to deploy them, and that's certainly a major component of it. But I wonder if there's a bigger issue lurking in the way code LLMs have become so polarizing.

Like many technologists, I was fairly skeptical about the value of early code-generation LLMs. Sure, they could help save some time hunting for documentation or writing boilerplate code, but when you asked them to do anything new, they typically failed in, at best, amusing, and at worst, dangerously difficult to catch, ways. Then, in September 2025, Claude Code 2.0 [was released](https://code.claude.com/docs/en/changelog?ref=gabestein.com#2-0-0), powered by the Sonnet 4.5 model, and I was forced to change my perspective.

Since adopting the latest versions of Claude Code and similar tools, the small development team at Knowledge Futures, led by our intrepid founder and Executive Director Travis Rich, has increased its velocity many times over. LLMs have helped us tackle everything from identifying and fixing costly memory leaks and database queries that we'd spent years fighting to shipping long-backlogged features in days or weeks that would have taken months or even quarters previously.

In the hands of our dedicated team, these tools have been so impactful in helping us cut infrastructure costs and build features to automate some of our most manual backend processes that we were able to [save our main product](https://www.knowledgefutures.org/updates/2026-01-update/?ref=gabestein.com), PubPub, from being retired due to funding cuts. Code LLMs still make plenty of mistakes and need lots of handholding, but by and large, the team seems to be enjoying spending more time solving higher level problems and less time in the weeds. For us, and many others like us, the value of code LLMs has suddenly become very real.

Despite these positive changes, I wouldn't say the work we're producing is all that different than before. We're still craftspeople, shipping code finely tuned to our product, our users, our values, and our financial priorities. If you swapped out our developers for ones who had no hard-won, intuitive understanding of our codebase or ecosystem, they would struggle mightily to produce production-quality work. It would take months or years of learning for them to be capable of coming up with solutions that fit our established patterns and conventions, prompting LLMs to follow them, identifying and correcting them when they go astray, and catching bugs unique to our codebase. It would be equally difficult to rebuild our product from scratch, as we've learned when trying to produce greenfield tools. The established codebase, full of carefully reviewed examples for these next-token-predictors to draw on, is critical to their success at generating new outputs.

In other words, our process is still artisanal, we're just using mixers now instead of kneading by hand. The same is true for friends I've talked to at companies big and small whose teams have successfully implemented LLMs. Their work has often been vastly accelerated, perhaps similar to the way [garbage collection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage%5Fcollection%5F%28computer%5Fscience%29?ref=gabestein.com) accelerated development in early programming languages. But even after all this investment, even at the largest scales, the fundamental work of coding, where LLMs have proven most successful, remains a craft.

There are good reasons to believe that coding, and knowledge work, will continue to be fundamentally artisanal for a long time to come. Industrial-scale production processes require extremely high levels of predictability to succeed, and their lower-quality outputs must be significantly cheaper for customers to accept them as replacements for craft alternatives. LLMs are unpredictable by design and extremely expensive to build and run. The degree to which big tech can square these circles will determine whether their gamble pays off. 

Attempts to force the conversion to industrial code, like the ones at Amazon, have mostly resulted in predictable [disaster](https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-tightens-code-controls-after-outages-including-one-ai-2026-3?ref=gabestein.com). The dark vision Doctorow sketches, where poorly-trained and paid coders hunker over a virtual assembly line of automated pull requests trying to catch as many bugs per hour as possible before generated code hits production, has not yet come to pass. All the while, [the clock is ticking](https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-subprime-ai-crisis-is-here/?ref=gabestein.com) as those investments start to depreciate, and [far more rapidly](https://fortune.com/2026/04/15/data-centers-hyperscalers-spending-billions-on-hardware-thats-worthless-in-3-years/?ref=gabestein.com) than in most other capital-intensive industries.

When the AI bubble bursts, I suspect we will look upon this era with great regret. Unlike other products, code has never needed industrialization to scale, fabulously profitably, to the entire world. Code and other specialized types of LLMs could have been developed economically and environmentally responsibly to improve the work of programmers, lawyers, scientists, writers, and other knowledge crafters, rather than with the explicit purpose of replacing them. It is only because the lords of Silicon Valley, like the robber barons before them, became too powerful and too greedy to accept a future of working with creative humans who could limit their own power that we have been forced to trudge once again down this particular path.

Luckily, there is solace to be taken all around us, probably even in your neighborhood. A century and a half after [the invention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharomyces%5Fcerevisiae?ref=gabestein.com) of mass-produced yeast, home and craft bakeries [are on the rise](https://www.bakingbusiness.com/articles/63826-artisan-bread-experiencing-strong-growth-outpacing-rest-of-category?ref=gabestein.com), joined by [farmer's markets](https://www.imarcgroup.com/united-states-handicrafts-market?ref=gabestein.com) and [handicrafts](https://www.imarcgroup.com/united-states-handicrafts-market?ref=gabestein.com), as consumers seek authenticity in an age of slop. Many of these artisans use scaled-down versions of tools originally developed for industry, like spiral mixers and steam ovens, to improve their own work at much smaller scales.

Whether big tech succeeds in its gamble to industrialize code or destroys itself in the attempt, my guess is there will still be plenty of room for artisanal alternatives. The real question is how long it will take us to rebuild the economy enough to support them.
### Plugging back out
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/plugging-back-out/
Last updated: 2026-03-10T16:33:02.000Z
I (re-re-)started this newsletter/blog on November 11, 2024, a few days after Trump was elected for a second term, and a year to the day before my son was born, [with a post](https://www.gabestein.com/axgjch00/) examining how poorly leftist cultural practice performs in what I called the "metamodern miasma." Essentially, I argued that the way [most people](https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2011/americans-spend-just-a-fraction-of-online-time-with-news-compared-to-social-media?ref=gabestein.com) encounter information today lends itself best to a messaging style that matches the unpredictable, ephemeral, and simultaneously silly and serious nature of ascendant social media, [group chat](https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/20026-most-americans-rely-group-chats-keep-family-and-wo?ref=gabestein.com), and AI chat-bot mediums owned by [increasingly right-wing oligarchs](https://www.gabestein.com/big-tech-and-trumpism-share-the-same-ideology/). In other words, almost the exact opposite of the ultra-targeted, focus group-tested messaging that Democratic political campaigns have [long](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/data-driven-campaigns-democrats-need-message-214759/?ref=gabestein.com) relied on.

One year, one fellowship, one baby, and two major versions of ChatGPT later, and I think the argument still holds up pretty well. You could summarize it as: the way most people form their identities and beliefs in today's digitally mediated information environment is, for lack of better terms, significantly weirder and more unpredictable than it has been for at least a century, and maybe longer. 

As a result, paying to reach the right people with your message enough times that they can't ignore it is no longer enough to change hearts and minds (if it ever was to begin with). Instead, you need to be willing, as *the New Yorker's* Nathan Heller put it in [his own version](https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/republican-victory-and-the-ambience-of-information?ref=gabestein.com) of this argument, also published just after the election, to seed "the ambience of information, throwing facts and fake facts (*ed. note: except that part)* alike into an environment of low attention, with the confidence that, like minnows released individually into a pond, they will eventually school and spawn."

If you accept Heller's theory, you can understand why not just campaigners and policymakers, but journalists, media scholars, political scientists, random bloggers (ahem), and really anyone with a stake in understanding how people make sense of the world are struggling to adapt to the modern information environment. The idea that we no longer have even a basic understanding of how information spreads and turns into belief and action is anathema to people whose careers, and often entire worldviews, depend on claiming some amount of control over that process.

Heller's idea adds to a growing canon in both professional and academic media circles that aims to radically rethink the core function of media to account for how individuals and groups form beliefs and identities today. I've enjoyed the "[deep mediatization](https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-mediated-construction-of-reality-andreas-hepp/4c2fc17403eff314?ref=gabestein.com)" framework proposed by media studies scholars Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp and the cross-disciplinary "[collective behavior](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2025764118?ref=gabestein.com)" framework, which I know are among countless others.

At their core, these frameworks are all grappling with the tension between viewing humans as the subject of ambient/deep/emergent media swirling around them and positioning them as the creators and mediators of the same media. At some level, media studies has been trying to resolve this tension since the field's founding. But it's far more pronounced today given the added layers of algorithms and bots, which shows in the amount of effort these thinkers put into analyzing the degree to which various human, computer, and in-between entities and groups are able to command [agency](https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/commun-2020-0079/html?ref=gabestein.com) to influence and form beliefs and identities in today's information environment.

It's in this question of agency where I think the essential weirdness of what we've constructed emerges. Over the last 30 or so years, the amount of effort required to answer nearly any question you can imagine has gone from potentially traveling several miles to a library and spending several hours asking a librarian for help finding the right book, checking it out, identifying the relevant passage, etc., to pulling out your phone and asking your favorite LLM. Finding thousands of people to discuss whatever you're looking for with has gone from nearly impossible to adding "reddit" to the end of any query. Viewed through this lens, individuals have unprecedented amounts of agency to explore almost anything.

At the same time, in the process of asking that LLM, visiting referenced links, and joining the right subreddit, you're constructing a digital profile that allows companies to tailor the results of your next query based on your previous ones for purposes relatively innocuous, like targeted advertising, and much more sinister, like [influencing your political views](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10098-2?ref=gabestein.com). The more you seek out, the more targeted the responses become, which over time constricts the boundaries of what and who you can discover and makes you more of a target to those who seek to surveil and influence you. It's no wonder, then, that prolonged internet (and particularly social media) use causes us to be less trustful of people and ideas outside our preferred bubbles, leading to damaging social effects like [loneliness](https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/internet-and-loneliness/2023-11?ref=gabestein.com), [toxic individualism](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7673976/?ref=gabestein.com), [filter bubbles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter%5Fbubble?ref=gabestein.com), [polarization](https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/16/fast-good-cheap/?ref=gabestein.com), [declines in conscientiousness](https://www.ft.com/content/5cd77ef0-b546-4105-8946-36db3f84dc43?ref=gabestein.com), and [politically driven geographic sorting](https://www.npr.org/2022/02/18/1081295373/the-big-sort-americans-move-to-areas-political-alignment?ref=gabestein.com).

In other words, we've created an information environment where the more agency you use, the less you actually have.

That isn't quite the paradox it might seem to be. Information technology has given us more individual agency than ever before. But we [form our identities and beliefs](https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/isolation-social-media?ref=gabestein.com) socially, in close relationships with groups of people. So the more we turn to tools that make us feel individually powerful, but that constrict our relationships to loose digital ties with the likeminded, promote [behaviors](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/09/toxic-person-tiktok-internet-slang-meaning/670599/?ref=gabestein.com) like cutting people out of our lives who disagree with or inconvenience us, and reinforce those behaviors by making the chaos of offline life feel [unbearably inconvenient](https://www.gabestein.com/your-phone-or-your-freedom/) by comparison, the more power over our ability to form beliefs and identities we cede to those tools and their [increasingly dangerous owners](https://www.gabestein.com/big-tech-and-trumpism-share-the-same-ideology/). 

In my view, this ceding of power is the source of the "ambient" environment Heller identifies. We cannot be reached directly because no one is home to listen. As online individuals we are so ensconced in and enamored of our personalized feeds, groups, and bots that anything that penetrates from the outside automatically carries with it the suspicion of manipulation. As online groups we are largely too loosely connected for new ideas to [properly bounce around and grow](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/05/in-person-protests-stronger-online-activism-a-walking-life/578905/?ref=gabestein.com), and too segmented and polarized for the arguments that do manage to take hold to jump the boundaries from one community to the next. So, the best approach to messaging truly is to give up on the idea that you have any control and assume that, by communicating at once as broadly and specifically as possible, you will organically sow the seeds required for your ideas to take root in a million feeds, group chats, and forums, and that they will eventually grow until their tendrils become too big not to connect and form into a cohesive grand narrative, despite the odds.

As individuals, I believe the pathway out is a similar surrender to our essential powerlessness. I don’t think it’s productive or desirable to expect anyone to opt out of the digital information ecosystem. But perhaps we can acknowledge that the pervasive modern desire to feel powerful, to feel right, and to feel free of inconvenience and friction is often counterproductive. Perhaps we can commit ourselves to, hopefully with some regularity, plugging out of the tools that promise those benefits and plugging into tools, relationships, and communities that [nourish us by challenging and inconveniencing us](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/24/opinion/community-housing-friendship.html?ref=gabestein.com).
### Monday: why we need a new "media theory" for open science
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/monday-why-we-need-a-new-media-theory-for-open-science/
Last updated: 2025-10-03T12:21:19.000Z
On Monday at 12:30pm Eastern, I'm moderating a virtual panel with [the Journalist's Resource](https://journalistsresource.org/?ref=gabestein.com) on what I'm roughly calling the "media theory" of open science as part of my Shorenstein Center Fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School. I think it's going to be a fascinating and important conversation. I hope you'll attend — and why not tell a friend about it while you're at it?

[You can sign up here](https://shorensteincenter.org/new-event/can-open-science-practices-increase-trust-research/?ref=gabestein.com)

What does that mean? Long story short, while observing the regime's [war on research and higher education](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01289-4?ref=gabestein.com), it dawned on me that the way we think about how society encounters and understands research is due for an update. Prior to the internet and the open science movement, the academic enterprise operated a sort of parallel mass media system designed for researchers to learn about and discuss new work with each other. The news media used to be the primary way it overlapped with mass media and non-researchers.

As open science has become more prevalent, particularly online, this once-parallel system is increasingly overlapping with social and mass media in new and unpredictable ways. There have been both positive and negative impacts of these changes, but I've yet to come across many comprehensive theories of how the academic publishing system has co-evolved with the digital information ecosystem, and the downstream effects of that evolution on mainstream news, opinion, policy, and politics as it relates to science and research. In my view, it's vital to develop a better understanding of these changes at a time when the value scientific enterprise itself is, to put it mildly, being questioned in the U.S. and elsewhere. In some cases, government officials are even using features of science's trend towards openness as a way to discredit it.

In particular, I'm concerned that the discourse about these topics tends to be far too siloed. In the decade or so I've been working in science communication and academic publishing, I've been struck by the often rigid boundaries and professional norms that tend to separate active researchers from peers in publishing, communication, policy, and news at a time when most of us are, in some senses, publishing and advocating via social media and other digital tools on a regular basis.

So, with help from the great folks at [the Journalist's Resource](https://journalistsresource.org/?ref=gabestein.com) and the [Shorenstein Center](https://shorensteincenter.org/?ref=gabestein.com) on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, I've convened a panel of folks spanning research, academic publishing, and news to start the conversation. It's an awesome group: [Richard Sever](https://openrxiv.org/about/?ref=gabestein.com), Chief Science and Strategy Officer of openRxiv; [Needhi Bhalla](https://www.bhallalab.com/?ref=gabestein.com), Professor of Biology at UC Santa Cruz; and [Rachel Zamzow](https://www.rachelzamzow.com/about.html?ref=gabestein.com), Deputy Executive Director of [the Open Notebook](https://www.theopennotebook.com/?ref=gabestein.com).

We'll discuss discuss the features of the emerging information ecosystem around research and what researchers, publishers, policymakers, and journalists can do to adapt to it and make sure open science fosters increasing public trust in science, rather than the opposite. And, of course, we welcome your questions and ideas.

[Here's the signup link again](https://shorensteincenter.org/new-event/can-open-science-practices-increase-trust-research/?ref=gabestein.com). I hope to see you on Monday!
### Your phone or your freedom?
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/your-phone-or-your-freedom/
Last updated: 2025-08-19T11:59:22.000Z
Lately, I've been trying to spend more time doing nothing. I'll sit down, or go on a walk, and, instead of reaching for my phone, spend a few minutes letting my mind wander. Or at least, that's what I hope will happen. Instead, and despite investing years in therapy, device hygiene, and meditative practices to rid myself of social media addictions and train my mind to rest, I still find it challenging to sit for even five minutes without reaching for something – anything – to fill the smallest amounts of idle time.

Of course, I'm not the only one facing this challenge. The average American [checks their phone](https://www.pcmag.com/articles/yikes-the-average-american-spent-25-months-on-their-phone-in-2024?ref=gabestein.com) hundreds of times per day, a number that has soared in recent years. That's a problem, because our brains [need idle time](https://qz.com/work/1554702/why-your-brain-needs-idle-time?ref=gabestein.com) to turn our day-to-day experiences into durable memories, to build on [hunches](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/nov/21/my-bright-idea-steven-johnson?ref=gabestein.com) that lead to inspiration and innovation, and even to develop the complex cognitive processes that allow us to make meaning of the world and our place in it. It's no wonder, then, that the so-called [attention economy's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention%5Feconomy?ref=gabestein.com) demand that we fill every second with a distraction appears to be taking its toll on both individuals and society.

Just last week, the *Financial Times* [reported](https://www.ft.com/content/5cd77ef0-b546-4105-8946-36db3f84dc43?ref=gabestein.com) on a large, longitudinal survey of Americans that found a troubling long-term decline in conscientiousness, the personality trait associated with responsibility and follow-through, concentrated among young people. This new data joins research that has found increasing levels of [loneliness](https://shorensteincenter.org/commentary/loneliness-crisis-evidence-causes-solutions-uk/?ref=gabestein.com) and [mental illness](https://www.aecf.org/blog/impact-of-covid-19-on-mental-health?ref=gabestein.com) rates, particularly among the young.

Though the causes of the decline in conscientiousness are complex and will require more research to fully understand, the authors note that the attention economy is a likely contributor:

> The advent of ubiquitous and hyper-engaging digital media has led to an explosion in distraction, as well as making it easier than ever to either not make plans in the first place or to abandon them. The sheer convenience of the online world makes real-life commitments feel messy and effortful. And the rise of time spent online and the attendant decline in face-to-face interactions enable behaviours such as “ghosting”.

Researchers [warn](https://www.aei.org/society-and-culture/the-quiet-crisis-why-conscientiousness-matters-more-than-ever/?ref=gabestein.com) that these crises, if proven to be real and durable, could pose a [civilization-level risk](https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/alarming-new-study-finds-smartphones-ruining-our-brains-at-unprecedented-speed/?ref=gabestein.com). Conscientiousness, in particular, is a trait that society depends on to function. If we can't expect strangers to keep their promises and follow basic norms and customs, we become less likely to hold up our own end of the bargain, creating a vicious circle that can create the conditions for the kind of [widespread resentment and distrust](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/202209/mistrust-misinformation-and-the-possibility-civil-war-in-america?ref=gabestein.com) of our fellow citizens that leads to very dark outcomes.

It's important to understand how technologies are changing individual human behavior from the bottom up. But as with all technological revolutions, the individual experience is only half of the story. As our behavior changes in response to technology, society's most powerful institutions tend adapt to those changes, too, often to reinforce the behaviors most beneficial to them. The more I've been able to distance myself from my devices and observe my own thought processes, and the behavior of others, the more I've been able to understand the coercive ways in which the attention economy's features are being used to change the way we live from the top down.

## Making Time

In one of my first interviews for a technology job, I asked my potential boss the classic question of how he made sure that his work would be used for good. He responded with a still-common line, apparently originated by [Noam Chomsky](https://www.veletsianos.com/2014/01/23/on-noam-chomsky-and-technologys-neutrality?ref=gabestein.com), that technology itself is neutral. It's how we use it that matters.

While generally true, I've come to believe that Chomsky's observation underestimates the ways in which technology's specific features determine its likely impacts. I think it's more accurate to say that technology is neutral, but shifts power in unpredictable ways. Or, as media theorist Neil Postman said in his 1990 speech [*Informing Ourselves To Death*](https://web.williams.edu/HistSci/curriculum/101/informing.html?ref=gabestein.com), "technology always has unforeseen consequences, and it is not always clear, at the beginning, who or what will win, and who or what will lose."

In his speech, Postman cited the example of mechanical clocks. Originally invented in the 12th and 13th centuries by Benedictine monks to help them better track their daily periods of devotion to God, clocks were soon seized upon by capital owners to impose and enforce regular schedules on their workers.

If your initial reaction, like mine, is to ask what's so bad about having regular working schedules, that thought alone is worth examining. Prior to mechanical clocks, people's lives, and the economies they lived in, were more "[task-oriented](https://bigthink.com/the-past/how-humanity-became-slaves-to-the-clock/?ref=gabestein.com)" than time-oriented. Tasks like, say, milking cows, were understood to take certain amounts time and to be possible only when cows were ready to be milked. People were largely compensated based on what they produced, not how long it took them to produce it. 

Of course, clocks, and the derivative inventions built on them, have yielded extraordinary benefits. But one cost of these benefits is that most of us spend our days rushing from one meeting to another, or grinding to shave an extra minute or two off of our assigned tasks, without questioning whether we should. The fact that life without clocks is unimaginable today shouldn't be interpreted only as evidence of progress. It should also be understood as a sign that, once adopted, the changes to power structures that new technologies enable can quickly recede into the background of everyday life until they become invisible to us.

Applying that framework to the attention economy, we should be asking who benefits most from a world where everyone is constantly distracted. Here, too, Postman has an answer: those who are adept at commanding attention. In his seminal 1985 book [*Amusing Ourselves to Death*](https://ia600101.us.archive.org/27/items/Various%5FPDFs/NeilPostman-AmusingOurselvesToDeath.pdf?ref=gabestein.com), Postman argued that television, in turning public discourse into entertainment, has become a sort of mass narcotic, similar to the "soma" of Aldous Huxley's sci-fi classic *Brave New World.* In a world where everything is entertainment, we tend to judge everything, including politics, not on its substance or impact, but on how consuming it makes us feel.

It's easy to draw the through line from Postman's 40 year-old observation to our reality TV president. But the rise of the attention economy, particularly via the medium of social media, has in some ways been even more insidious than television. Unlike television, social media demands participation and dialog. But because its algorithms are designed to sell ads, it prioritizes the types of dialog that get the most engagement, which tends to be [negative, emotional, and belief-affirming](https://hai.stanford.edu/news/the-data-behind-your-doom-scroll-how-negative-news-takes-over-your-feed?ref=gabestein.com). It's no wonder that conscientiousness is receding given that if you spend most of your time on social media, you might believe that half the world is out to get you.

For all its rage-provoking bluster, social media can have curious little impact on real-world behavior. In 2023, a [host of studies](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/09/world/europe/interpreter-social-media.html?ref=gabestein.com) found that, although the majority of content Facebook users see does tend to align with their pre-existing beliefs, it does little to change their views or attitudes. All of that posting, commenting, and liking, signifying nothing. While some researchers found this result surprising, or suspect, given that Facebook (sorry, Meta) funded it, I believe it perfectly illustrates the way the attention economy is shifting power.

## Sound and Fury

In his 1935 essay [*The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction*](https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf?ref=gabestein.com), philosopher Walter Benjamin argued that fascism maintains its power, in part, by giving citizens the ability to express their desire for change without the actual ability to affect those changes. Social media, which allows everyone to shout into the void with limited impacts on anyone else's behavior, while amplifying the most extreme, belief-affirming content, may thus be the perfect enabler for the fascist and populist movements [gaining steam](https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/09/09/fascism-shattered-europe-a-century-ago-and-historians-hear-echoes-today-in-the-u-s/?ref=gabestein.com) around the globe.

There are at least three ways in which the particular features of the attention economy may be shifting power for the benefit of anti-democratic actors. The first is that by concentrating attention on the most extreme voices, social media, in particular, gives anti-institutional political actors who are capable of commanding attention ways to do so outside of traditional power structures, [enabling them](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13569775.2021.1935009?ref=gabestein.com) to bypass formal policymaking apparatuses and claim to rule by decree. Pick just about any one of Trump's 2025 Truth posts as an example. Even, or perhaps especially, when their discourse proves to be hollow, the aesthetics of social media allow these actors to claim to be advancing their agendas, satisfying their followers even when they have done very little, or in fact the opposite.

The second is that by prioritizing and rewarding shallower forms of engagement, digital organizing, while effective at amassing large groups of people and large amounts of donations, tends to [fall short](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/05/in-person-protests-stronger-online-activism-a-walking-life/578905/?ref=gabestein.com) when it comes to developing the deep social ties necessary to build sustained opposition that are typically formed over months and years of activists spending time together. If you've been to any of the major protests this year, you've probably felt this disconnect as you march in your bubble of family and friends without knowing anything about the thousands of people alongside you. Thus, everyone from the Trump administration to New York Governor Kathy Hochul, after her bizarre decision to [extra-legally suspend congestion pricing](https://www.gabestein.com/4d70z7af/), can tolerate significant amounts of discursive opposition and even on-the-ground protest without risking real political backlash. 

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the attention economy strips us of significant amounts of agency by giving us the illusion of choice in how to spend our time. We have nearly unlimited amounts of content we could choose to consume, and hundreds of enraging events we might post about every day. But if our only real choice is to consume or create content, either because we’re functionally addicted or because we believe it’s the best way to fill time, we’re no longer truly in control of our behavior. Increasingly, we're ceding it to those who benefit from keeping us glued to our devices, instead paying attention to what's going on around us.

## State of Attention

In resisting the urge to fill every minute of my time with a screen, I often watch people around me interact with theirs. Seeing people flip through social media, games, books, and messages appears so normal, just like glancing at the clock, waiting for a meeting to start. When I manage not to pull out my own phone, I usually start to feel uncomfortable, like some kind of voyeur refusing to avert my eyes from the intimate activities of strangers. I can understand why conscientiousness is on the decline when the act of not ignoring those around you feels so uncivil.

Of course, I'm far from the most intrusive observer of these moments. Every single app and website each one of us uses is collecting a treasure trove of data about our behavior, then turning around and selling it – or worse, [giving it away to our governments](https://thenextweb.com/news/big-tech-sharing-more-data-with-us-government?ref=gabestein.com). Every extra minute we spend on a device is an extra minute's worth of potential information our government knows about us. Even with the most trustworthy administration in power, that trade shouldn't be made lightly.

In his book [*Seeing Like A State*](https://files.libcom.org/files/Seeing%20Like%20a%20State%20-%20James%20C.%20Scott.pdf?ref=gabestein.com), political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott argued that states are largely in the business of making their subjects legible, so that they can be organized and controlled. To do this, states often coerce subjects into adopting more homogenous behaviors that are easier to surveil and direct. Scott contended that even tools like agriculture, which many of us think of as synonymous with progress, were coopted by early states to make taxation and population management easier than hunter-gatherer and semi-sedentary cultures allowed.

Viewed through Scott's lens, the attention economy should be seen as a particularly attractive tool for states seeking to further understand and control their subjects. Not only does online activity render us extremely legible, [generating](https://www.statista.com/statistics/948840/worldwide-data-interactions-daily-per-capita/?ref=gabestein.com) thousands of data points per person per day, but, as discussed above, even the most viral digital discourse poses very little threat to power. 

I can think of almost nothing more attractive to those in power, regardless of party or ideology, than entire populations who spend the vast majority of their time ignoring each other in favor of consuming and producing content that has very little impact on mass behavior while allowing themselves to be constantly surveilled. It's no wonder that governments left and right have resisted regulating social media companies, used it to vet [immigrants and travelers](https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5364928-trump-administration-social-media-vet/?ref=gabestein.com), and are now actively adopting generative AI, which [promises](https://www.techpolicy.press/ai-surveillance-on-the-rise-in-us-but-tactics-of-repression-not-new/?ref=gabestein.com) to make even more activities, online and off, legible to systematic surveillance.

And yet, I'm no more likely to give up my phone than I am my watch. So what is a powerless subject to do?

## Turn Off, Tune In, Go Out

As usual, kids likely have the answer. In a survey written up by columnist Lenore Skenazy and psychologists Zach Rausch and Jonathan Haidt, children [overwhelmingly said](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/kids-smartphones-play-freedom/683742/?ref=gabestein.com) they want to spend less time on their devices, but struggle to do so because of how addicting they are, and how few other choices they're given for how to spend their time away from adults. The answer, according to Skenazy, Rausch, and Haidt, is to let them loose on the world to spend time amongst each other without the rigid structures imposed by adult supervision.

I suspect adults, who can be even more tied to their phones than kids, can learn a similar lesson. The more time we spend out in the world, interacting with each other rather than our devices, the less time, and information, we give to those who would seek to monitor and control us. 

The next time you feel the urge to take out your phone, especially to avoid seeming bored in public, consider pushing against it. Take a few minutes to do nothing. Lean into the awkwardness of being the only one paying attention to the people around you. Maybe even consider making eye contact with one of those strangers. Though they're small, these little acts of resistance may add up to far more than even the most viral social media post. At the very least, they'll remind you that despite living through an era closing civil society and economic opportunity, you are still free to choose how to spend your idle time. These days, any amount of freedom is precious.
### Substack is probably not going to solve academic publishing
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/substack-is-probably-the-answer-to-academic-publishing/
Last updated: 2025-08-05T14:36:39.000Z
Buried in a Brad DeLong [readout](http://braddelong.substack.com/p/notes-on-substack-these-days) of a recent Substack party in San Francisco (thanks to my dad for sending it my way) are the following three bullet points which may be of interest to academic publishing folks:

> Workers for SubStack are very curious about academic publishing—a system with a very broken business model but one in which there are a large group of people who are institutionally driven to write frantically, and then find some kind of audience.

> Is SubStack a way to shift from traditional academic publishing to the open web, fulfilling the university’s mission?

> And nearly everyone at the event is firmly committed to the creation of a rational, accurate information- and analysis-full public sphere.

I don't know what was said other than this very terse summary. There's clearly more to Substack employees' thinking than those three bullets points. But as a long-time participant in and observer of the academic publishing ecosystem, I suspect Substack may be, like many startups before it, underestimating the complexity of the academic publishing market, and I would invite the employees mentioned by DeLong to read [my 2022 post](https://www.gabestein.com/vo87z2qi/) on the subject. Here's the gist, which I think holds up quite well years later:

> At first glance, the staid academic publishing industry seems like a perfect fit for disruption in the form of an enterprising startup. Its total addressable market, or TAM ([\~$19b revenue/year](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science?ref=gabestein.com)), is more than big enough to support a unicorn or two. It relies on centuries-old processes based in the limitations of print that have been proven to be [ineffective and inequitable](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/?ref=gabestein.com). It is [dominated](https://tidsskriftet.no/en/2020/08/kronikk/money-behind-academic-publishing?ref=gabestein.com) by a few large mega-corporation incumbents who, like the newspaper industry before them, have become used to extracting enormous profit-margins for activities that produce questionable value.

> Getting to that end-point is going to be far more challenging than in other, simpler markets, because academic publishing is a byzantine, multi-level enterprise-ish market. The customers who pay most of the bills for publishing directly (libraries) are not the same as the customers who pay for research (foundations and governments), who are not the same as the customers who pay researcher salaries (universities and labs). And none of the payers are the key stakeholders, the researchers themselves. Despite being different customers, their decisions are tightly coupled. Institutions who pay researcher salaries evaluate them based on the success of research that the funders pay for, which is measured as an output of the publishing that the libraries pay for.

Having said that, and drawing on [my open science thread](https://www.gabestein.com/i-am-going-to-try-to-write-more-and-i-need-your-help/) from last week, I do think Substack (and platforms like it) can play a key role in helping the [already very active](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open%5Fscience?ref=gabestein.com), thank you very much, open science movement reckon with the upstream impacts of more science being available to more people by helping provide a trusted analysis layer on top of open science. Some of the top [science](https://substack.com/leaderboard/science/paid?ref=gabestein.com) and [technology](https://substack.com/leaderboard/technology/paid?ref=gabestein.com) Substacks already do this to great effect, and there is clearly more work that can be done to connect the open academic publishing movement to these layers of more public-oriented curation and analysis that are emerging on top of it.

Anyway, if you're a Substack employee or executive and want to save yourself a bunch of time and money, please [get in touch](mailto:correspondence@gabestein.com?subject=Substack%20here) to talk about this.

---

I didn't expect the open science thread to converge with my thread on how rational people struggle to respond to hostile institutions quite so soon, but sometimes the algorithms deliver. I just saw a LinkedIn post that, in response to [OMB Director, Project 2025 Architect, and self-described Christian Nationalist](https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-vought-center-renewing-america-maga?ref=gabestein.com) Russell Vought comparing the NIH to a failed business on CNN, suggested that he read a [journal article](https://issues.org/nih-intramural-research-irp-real-numbers-alexander-zetina-beale/?ref=gabestein.com) assessing the NIH's incredibly positive returns on investment. I won't link to the post because I don't know the person who made it and don't want to pick on them, but, well, that's exactly the kind of cognitive trap well meaning, rational people need to train themselves out of in this moment. If this was some random George W. Bush appointee, you might get somewhere by appealing to the evidence. I'm no Dubya apologist, but he actually did seem to care about U.S. research institutions as long as he could fund them while keeping the wealthy's taxes low enough.

Russell Vought, on the other hand, is on a [very public mission](https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/07/russ-vought-omb-director-agenda-00202969?ref=gabestein.com) to destroy the "administrative state," which includes institutions like the NIH. He knows perfectly well that the NIH is a great investment for the country and the world. He does not care about progress or science, and as a result almost any argument he makes to justify cuts to it is, by definition, going to be made in extraordinarily bad faith. We cannot keep responding to people like this with "well, actually" alone. In fact, people like him want us to get mired in a debate about the value of the NIH, because it distracts everyone from his real goal: not to make the NIH more efficient or effective, but to destroy it.

The [best way](https://climatecommunication.gmu.edu/all/the-debunking-handbook-2020/?ref=gabestein.com) to deal with bad faith actors is to discredit them, [ideally ahead of time](https://www.unhcr.org/handbooks/informationintegrity/practical-tools/prebunking?ref=gabestein.com), by exposing both the fact that they're arguing in bad faith and the tactics they're using to manipulate people. Of course, open science activists also need to make the argument for the value of science to the public at large – but on their terms, not the terms of actively hostile institutional leaders.

---

Finally, a quick follow-up on last week's "[vibe productivity](https://www.gabestein.com/i-am-going-to-try-to-write-more-and-i-need-your-help/)" thread. A friend who works in management at a large manufacturing company noted that at big companies, the "artifacts" I accused of being simulacra of productivity could be considered a form of insurance, essentially evidence that workers are acquiring critical domain-specific knowledge as they do their productive work. He argued that replacing the workers who produce these artifacts by, you know, doing the actual work required to acquire specialized knowledge, with generative AI that produces similar artifacts but does not acquire any of the actual knowledge in doing so, could be catastrophic in scenarios where the business actually needs to access that knowledge.

I agree, and was too flippant in my blanket dismissal of these artifacts. In fact, I think they can be more than just insurance. In well run companies, the exercise of producing them also serves as a way to de-risk the production of new products and features in the first place. But I think my main point still stands: in too many companies, these artifacts have progressed from being a by-product of productivity to a symbol of it, and often have even become the product itself.

That's how you get posts like [this one](https://x.com/realmadhuguru/status/1950336434126336154?ref=gabestein.com) that's making the rounds from a product lead at Google's Gemini. It sounds reasonable on the surface. Many product organizations have [already ditched](https://www.svpg.com/discovery-vs-documentation/?ref=gabestein.com) the formal Product Requirements Document (PRD) in favor of more iterative, prototype-driven discovery processes precisely because PRDs have a tendency to become the output itself. But think about what “writing was a proxy for clear thinking” really means in this context. The main way to prompt an LLM to build a prototype is to, well, write prompts. And LLMs are so unpredictable that “prompt engineering” is a skill now, and PMs are finding that the [most effective](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-prd-prototype-minutes-ai-revolution-product-development-t-noryc?utm%5Fsource=share&utm%5Fmedium=member%5Fios&utm%5Fcampaign=share%5Fvia) way to (sigh) “vibe prototype” is to…feed the LLM a really tightly written PRD.

> At [@Google](https://twitter.com/Google?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=gabestein.com), we are moving from a writing‑first culture to a building‑first one.  
>  
> Writing was a proxy for clear thinking, optimized for scarce eng resources and long dev cycles - you had to get it right before you built.  
>  
> Now, when time to vibe-code prototype ≈ time to write PRD,…
> 
> — Madhu Guru (@realmadhuguru) [July 29, 2025](https://twitter.com/realmadhuguru/status/1950336434126336154?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=gabestein.com)

If Guru’s assertion is true, Google is not becoming a “build first” culture. They’re becoming a “write for bots” instead of “write for humans” culture. That’s fine. I’m actually all for using LLMs to prototype. It may be one of the only truly valuable things they do. But in confusing the work of figuring out what prototype to build for the output of a prototype, Guru is proving himself to be either producing very little actual value or, to my friend’s point above, exposing his division to a huge amount of risk by replacing product documentation written for humans with prompts.
### I am going to try to write more (and I need your help)
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/i-am-going-to-try-to-write-more-and-i-need-your-help/
Last updated: 2025-07-29T21:24:40.000Z
Some..."news?" This little newsletter is close to reaching an extremely modest milestone. About 100 of you now subscribe, and I only know about half of you personally! Given the positive feedback on my last few posts, I'd like to make a go at growing it a bit more, because writing critical tech/media analysis from a place of deep experience is one of the things I most enjoy doing.

Problem is, as most of you will know, it's really hard to get out of your own head and figure out what the heck people really value and want from you. So, I figured I'd just ask: w*hat do you people want from me?!*

Okay, I'll be a little more specific than that. If you have the time and inclination, I'd love for you to take a few minutes to respond to this email with short answers to three simple questions:

1. How would you describe what you get out of my writing to a close friend?
2. What do I provide that you value because you don't find it elsewhere, if anything?
3. What do I provide that you think I should stop doing because others do it better, if anything?

Please don't put a lot of time or effort into this – in some ways, your off-the-cuff, gut reactions are more valuable for this exercise than your considered thoughts. And feel free to be as brutally honest as you want. I can take it, hopefully.

One final ask before I get on with some fun stuff: consider recommending me to one other person who you think might enjoy my work. I'm deliberately avoiding the usual growth paths because I really can't tolerate social media. So if this thing is gonna grow, it'll be thanks to you.

Okay, on to the show.

---

## Threads

*Er, one more meta note. I'm trying out a new "format" of sorts that I'm just gonna call "Threads" for now. More considered essays like my last piece on* [*the shared ideology of big tech and Trumpism*](https://www.gabestein.com/big-tech-and-trumpism-share-the-same-ideology/) *take weeks of time and effort, especially making them short and concise, and I can only do so many given my full-time job. But I frequently find myself wanting to share early versions of the connections I'm making in dialog with folks (including many of you), so I'm going to give myself permission to do quick, paragraph-length hits of half-formed thoughts. You know, Threads! It's specifically* not *meant to be a "briefing" or "link roundup" or that kind of thing (though there may be links). Not that there's anything wrong with those formats, but so many people do it better than I can. I suspect not every thread will interest all of you. But if any of these resonate with you, please do get in touch and let's go deeper! Right then.*

1. **Vibe productivity: generative AI is popular because it's good at simulating work.** It's an [open](https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-remarkable-incompetence-at-the-heart-of-tech/?ref=gabestein.com) [secret](https://code.likeagirl.io/big-techs-love-affair-with-profit-and-its-divorce-from-innovation-e902eb367ef8?ref=gabestein.com) in tech that many well known companies are fabulously unproductive in terms of code shipped. This makes a certain kind of sense. Software isn't a factory. Once you build a profitable platform, you don't actually need to make anything new. You just need to keep the platform online. But shareholders and investors demand growth, so companies keep development teams around to basically pretend to work, even though most actual growth in big tech these days [comes from margin-squeezing](https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-big-techs-growth-and-innovation-slow-its-market-dominance-endures-11675871487?ref=gabestein.com), not new features. What these teams mostly do is generate artifacts that symbolize productivity: roadmaps, sprint plans, requirements and specifications, pull requests, code reviews, and so on. Some code gets written and pushed to production, but it rarely moves the needle. Maybe a rewrite of a system ekes out a small efficiency gain, or a new login system gets good feedback on a user survey and you have a pizza party. But again, the point of the work isn't really to do the work, it's to demonstrate that people are working, to prove to investors that growth is a function of innovation and not financial engineering. My theory is that over time, in the fashion of Baudrillard, many executives and workers alike have internalized the symbols of productivity as the real thing. So when a tool comes along that can produce the accepted artifacts of productivity much more rapidly and inexpensively than humans, it is celebrated as a massive productivity booster, if not a replacement for humans altogether. In a certain sense, it is both, because like the ones many tech workers produce for a living, the contents of the artifacts it produces aren't the point – the existence of the artifact is. Internalizing this logic is how you get truly idiotic ideas like "[vibe physics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMoz3gSXBcY&t=981s&ref=gabestein.com)" and [positively comparing](https://www.gabestein.com/ivrsydjp/) knowledge work to video games. I suspect it's also why tech workers are [so divided](https://thetechbubble.substack.com/p/the-phony-comforts-of-useful-idiots?ref=wheresyoured.at) on generative AI, and real businesses [keep](https://www.ibm.com/downloads/documents/us-en/12f5a711174dc2ac?ref=gabestein.com) [reporting](https://www.forbes.com/sites/cio/2025/01/30/why-75-of-businesses-arent-seeing-roi-from-ai-yet/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai) poor ROI on their implementations. If you're used to actually being productive, not just generating evidence of it, it's hard to understand why so many people are so thrilled that they can save time producing useless documents. But I think we should all be asking a far more important question: when will investors get wise to the fact that many of these companies are running on vibe productivity all the way down, and what will that mean for the industry?
2. **Does open science increase public trust in science?** I'm about as radical of an advocate for open science as they come, but as conspiracy theorists and right-wing movements [continue](https://www.npr.org/2025/06/13/nx-s1-5431935/rfk-hhs-covid-vaccine-schedule-faq?ref=gabestein.com) [to](https://www.science.org/content/article/science-s-reform-movement-should-have-seen-trump-s-call-gold-standard-science-coming?ref=gabestein.com) [weaponize](https://www.statnews.com/2024/12/24/science-journal-retractions-new-study-looks-at-retraction-misinformation-covid/?ref=gabestein.com) it, it seems worth revisiting some of the basic media theory behind the practice. There's no doubt in my mind that open science – particularly the pre-publication sharing of preprints and data – has accelerated the practice of science. But it's also changed the way science [is reported on](https://www.science.org/content/article/preprints-often-make-news-many-people-don-t-know-what-they-are?ref=gabestein.com) on and shared. As we've found with [the internet and social media generally](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2025764118?ref=gabestein.com), and everything from [science communication](https://blog.nature.org/science/2013/03/01/dan-kahan-climate-changescience-communications/?ref=gabestein.com) to [artificial intelligence](https://www.techradar.com/pro/catastrophic-overtraining-could-harm-large-language-ai-models-that-are-trained-on-more-data-for-the-sake-of-training?ref=gabestein.com), [combatting misinformation](https://www.techradar.com/pro/catastrophic-overtraining-could-harm-large-language-ai-models-that-are-trained-on-more-data-for-the-sake-of-training?ref=gabestein.com) and even [making important decisions](https://www.stevens.edu/news/want-to-make-better-decisions-ask-for-less-information-not-more?ref=gabestein.com) specifically, having access to more information does not guarantee better outcomes on its own. And yet [many](https://news.uci.edu/2025/02/28/increasing-public-trust-in-science/?ref=gabestein.com) [people](https://www.the-scientist.com/open-science-an-antidote-to-anti-science-73018?ref=gabestein.com) in open science [assume](https://opusproject.eu/openscience-news/the-irreplaceability-of-open-science-examining-the-challenges-of-alternatives/?ref=gabestein.com), [without much evidence](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09636625221100686?ref=gabestein.com), that transparency and accessibility will automatically lead to increased trust. I don't think we can or should try to stop open science. But I think it's worth considering the impacts of open science on journalist, policymaker and general audiences, and the responsibility researchers, advocates, and infrastructure providers have to understand and mitigate those impacts.
3. **American society is not cognitively prepared to deal with actively hostile institutions.** I keep having conversations with friends and colleagues who "can't understand" why the Trump administration is doing something stupid and terrible. I keep reading articles that try to [decipher Trump's strategy](https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/28/trump-tariffs-trade-unclear-eu-japan-00480793?ref=gabestein.com), [uncritically report](https://www.axios.com/2025/07/26/trump-gaza-negotiations-support-israel?ref=gabestein.com) officials’ obviously post-hoc explanations to justify their failures, or worst of all, [invent hypothetical strategy](https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/07/28/america-is-remaking-its-disaster-relief-system?ref=gabestein.com) for the administration where none exists by trying to divine what it could be from vague inter-agency memos, interviews with friendly officials, and off-the-cuff remarks like some kind of bureaucratic astrology. I understand this tendency to try to apply logic to the administration’s decisions. For most of our lives, America’s executive bureaucracies have acted based on various forms of [institutionalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New%5Finstitutionalism?ref=gabestein.com) which, while often irrational and Byzantine, at least broadly conformed to a knowable internal logic. It’s far more comfortable to believe that there’s still some semblance of strategy at work, even if it’s terrible, than to admit what’s really happening, which is that this administration is effectively a [criminal enterprise](https://presswatchers.org/2025/04/the-trump-regime-should-be-covered-as-a-criminal-enterprise/?ref=gabestein.com) run by people whose main goal, when they have one, is to loot the very institutions they lead for their own private gain. The sooner we can come to grips with this reality, the sooner we can stop trying to figure out how to work with these people and get to the urgent work that needs to be done to ultimately reclaim, restore, or replace these institutions: build a movement outside of politics that rallies people to understand just how dangerously hostile and incompetent this administration is and take direct action to oppose it.
### Big tech and Trumpism share the same ideology
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/big-tech-and-trumpism-share-the-same-ideology/
Last updated: 2025-08-06T15:50:52.000Z
Fellow tech workers, let’s be honest with ourselves: our labor has been used to destroy society for the benefit of a few very rich men. 

There is a direct line between the [draconian welfare cuts](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whats-in-trump-big-beautiful-bill-senate-version/?ref=gabestein.com) and [authoritarian law enforcement funding](https://www-washingtonpost-com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/opinions/2025/07/08/immigration-ice-trump-big-beautiful-bill/?ref=gabestein.com) in the recently passed GOP budget bill and the work we’ve done building big tech companies.

Big tech, particularly social media and marketplace tech, once promised to [bring about world peace](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/how-technology-promotes-world-peace/258400/?ref=gabestein.com) by [connecting the world](https://www.weforum.org/stories/2017/02/mark-zuckerberg-building-a-global-community-that-works-for-everyone/?ref=gabestein.com) and [removing expensive friction](https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/16/reduce-friction-increase-happiness/?ref=gabestein.com). Instead, our work [poisoned the global information ecosystem](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2025764118?ref=gabestein.com), [eroded our political systems](https://pacscenter.stanford.edu/publication/the-internets-challenge-to-democracy-framing-the-problem-and-assessing-reforms/?ref=gabestein.com), [clogged our streets](https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/uber-lyft-traffic-congestion-car-ownership-study/?ref=gabestein.com), [gutted our transit systems](https://freemanmag.tulane.edu/2022/02/05/is-uber-killing-public-transportation/?ref=gabestein.com), [enabled the modern surveillance state](https://theintercept.com/2023/10/16/surveillance-state-big-tech/?ref=gabestein.com), and destroyed millions of [working-class](https://www.eater.com/2020/1/29/21113416/grubhub-seamless-kin-khao-online-delivery-mistake-doordash?ref=gabestein.com) [careers](https://laist.com/shows/take-two/the-human-cost-of-uber-and-lyft-life-in-the-dying-taxi-industry?ref=gabestein.com).

We were promised big things in return for these sacrifices: [clean, ultra-fast travel](https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-hyperloop-a-200-year-history-of-hype-and-failure/?ref=gabestein.com), [solutions for climate change](https://research.google/research-areas/climate-and-sustainability/?ref=gabestein.com), even [the end of death itself](https://time.com/574/google-vs-death/?ref=gabestein.com)! What we got instead was Donald Trump.

Big tech isn’t solely responsible for Donald Trump. But it’s no wonder he was able to exploit people’s grievances with “coastal elites” like you and me to build the MAGA movement. Instead of improving lives, big tech’s intrusive software and abusive business practices are being used to rig almost any market you can think of—from [tractors](https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/?ref=gabestein.com#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it) to [eggs and potatoes](https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/potatotrac/?ref=gabestein.com)—against the common person. And our labor enabled it.

Now, Trump is actively undermining all of big tech’s promises, from [defunding high-speed rail](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/us/high-speed-rail-california-federal-funding.html?ref=gabestein.com) to [greenlighting harmful emissions](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/09/trump-epa-power-plant-emissions?ref=gabestein.com) and [shutting down medical research](https://projects.propublica.org/nih-cuts-research-lost-trump/?ref=gabestein.com). Instead of recoiling, big tech’s oligarchs are [cozying up](https://apnews.com/article/trump-inauguration-tech-billionaires-zuckerberg-musk-wealth-0896bfc3f50d941d62cebc3074267ecd?ref=gabestein.com) [to him](http://busy/?ref=gabestein.com), despite [risks to reputation and revenue](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250515-with-trump-s-second-term-big-tech-embraces-us-exceptionalism?ref=gabestein.com). Why?

For a long time now, big tech’s real mission hasn’t been to improve people’s lives, but to [propagate itself](https://a16z.com/why-software-is-eating-the-world/?ref=gabestein.com). We now know that the promises tech leaders make to justify our work’s worst abuses are mostly [lies](https://newrepublic.com/article/174089/big-tech-watching-drive?ref=gabestein.com). Lies wrapped in the [myth](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/i4uj0ehr/release/2) of abstract user research, as if anyone asked to be [addicted to comparing themselves to their friends](https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2021/10/addictive-potential-of-social-media-explained.html?ref=gabestein.com). Lies designed to allow big tech to spread its corrupt, surveillance-driven business models throughout society (as Cory Doctorow has [documented](https://pluralistic.net/tag/the-american-prospect/?ref=gabestein.com)). Lies made to [divert investments](https://www.noemamag.com/the-loss-of-public-goods-to-big-tech/?ref=gabestein.com) in public transit, education, housing, and healthcare systems to private alternatives.

In pursuing this mission, the big tech oligarchs discovered that they share the core ideology of Trumpism: to eliminate any semblance of the public sphere so they can rule as kings of their own personal fiefdoms.

That’s why the budget bill contains [billions of big tech handouts for surveillance technology](https://www.techpolicy.press/how-trumps-budget-bill-sells-out-the-future-to-big-tech/?ref=gabestein.com). And it’s why the tech oligarchs are so busy trying to replace the civil society they helped destroy with cryptocurrencies, the metaverse, network states, and AI agents. Like any technology, these tools can be used for good or evil, but these men are using them to create private surveillance states. It may sound like a crazy conspiracy theory, but they’re [saying it](https://theweek.com/tech/network-states-the-tech-broligarchy-who-want-to-create-new-countries?ref=gabestein.com) [out loud](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/09/curtis-yarvin-profile?ref=gabestein.com).

Artificial general intelligence is the latest big promise. The Trump regime is already [justifying](https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/10/trump%5Fadmin%5Fleak%5Fgovernment%5Fai%5Fplans/?ref=gabestein.com) its ongoing destruction of the federal government with the promise of more efficient AI replacements.

Are we going to fall for this again? Do we really believe that super-intelligent machines that will save us from ourselves are just around the corner when today’s multi-billion-dollar versions [can’t beat a 48 year-old video game console at chess](https://futurism.com/atari-beats-chatgpt-chess?ref=gabestein.com)? Are we going to ignore the [mass theft of intellectual property](https://jskfellows.stanford.edu/theft-is-not-fair-use-474e11f0d063?ref=gabestein.com) that enabled them and the [inherent privacy nightmare](https://pirg.org/edfund/resources/chatgpt-privacy/?ref=gabestein.com) every user of them is exposed to? Are we really going to keep working for these transparently corrupt people?

I know what you’re thinking, because I am, too. Tech has afforded me wealth, security, perks, and prestige. I have a nice house in a nice neighborhood in a great city. My kid (expected in November!) will go to a great school. A tech job is how I’ll stay afloat through what’s coming.

Except that you and I both know that plan is quickly becoming a fantasy. The perks [are going away](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/technology/tech-perks-culture.html?ref=gabestein.com) and the big tech layoffs — [sorry, “voluntary exits”](https://www.investopedia.com/google-is-offering-buyouts-to-us-employees-throughout-the-company-report-says-11752129?ref=gabestein.com) — are in full swing. The jobs that remain will be [miserable, low-paying AI babysitting gigs](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/business/amazon-ai-coders.html?ref=gabestein.com).

Even if you do manage to stay afloat, what will life be like when the full effects of big tech and Trumpism’s joint project to destroy civil society are realized? Will the newly sick, hungry, and homeless roam the streets? How about unaccountable masked ICE agents? Will the gutted transit system still function? Will the defunded schools be open? Will your kids’ vaccinations that you [got in Canada](https://www.mynbc5.com/article/can-us-residents-get-vaccines-in-canada-experts-say-yes-but-at-a-cost/64832484?ref=gabestein.com) protect them when too few of your neighbors’ kids can afford the shots?

What you should be asking yourself isn’t whether you think you’ll be okay, but what kind of society you want your kids to grow up in.

If your answer is a better one than what we’ve got now, you only have one choice: opt out, like so many cookie banners. Sell your stock, grab as many microkitchen snacks as you can on the way out the door, and never come back.

Here’s the good news: what we’ve built, as powerful as it can be, is also [incredibly brittle](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/07/the-crowdstrike-outage-and-market-driven-brittleness.html?ref=gabestein.com), and adding mistake-prone AI everywhere will only make it worse. Their fiefdoms require our labor to function. If enough of us refuse to maintain the infrastructures that sustain them, they’ll quickly crumble to dust.

And then what? You already have more options than you think. We all have friends who have moved on and are doing just fine. It might look like selling your house, moving to one of America’s many great small cities or towns, and opening the shop you’ve always dreamed of starting. If that’s not for you, opting out of big tech doesn’t have to mean leaving your home, or even tech. 

Scores of companies are thinking critically about applying technology in service of people and society. Researchers are working on alternative approaches to AI rooted in partnering with people rather than replacing them. Some VCs and billionaires are investing in efforts to rebuild civil society. Finding these folks is far less difficult than passing a FAANG interview.

Imagine what would happen if we let big tech fail. Imagine if we ditched the concept of users altogether and actually got to know the people we serve as human beings. Imagine if we applied our talents to building products that actually made a difference in people’s lives, rather than [enshittified](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification?ref=gabestein.com) junk designed to trap them in some oligarch’s attention dungeon. Imagine the new tech industry we could create.

You might make less, but I suspect only at first. There’s good money to be had building things people actually want. In the meantime, having to cook more and travel less for a bit is no different than what most startup founders have been through. Unless you’re already truly set for life, it’s coming for us all anyway in the increased costs and decreased opportunities that the hollowing out of our government and civil society will bring.

We have only two choices: opt out and build a new tech industry on our terms, one that serves society, or keep toiling away at our increasingly painful jobs while society falls apart around us, in the hope that one day our overlords will let us rest because we’ve been so, so good to them.

I know which option I’m choosing.

---

*Many thanks to Ed, Ariel, Chuck, Zach, and Lindsay for the edits and feedback on this piece.*
### The future of generative AI is using it less
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/the-future-of-generative-ai-is-using-it-less/
Last updated: 2025-07-11T22:36:01.000Z
In my experience, the most effective criticism comes from a place of practical understanding of the subject matter. It's why I own a little bit of Bitcoin and Ethereum and one NFT, and why I've been forcing myself to use generative AI more, even if it's not proving all that valuable for me in my day-to-day work. A few months ago, I spent a day generating eminent theorist [Namfits Ezelbergasz](https://ezelbergasz.org/?ref=gabestein.com), and lately I've been working on a collaborative narrative project that I'm actually pretty excited to tell you about.

While reading [the](https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.13575?ref=gabestein.com) [latest](https://arxiv.org/html/2506.10161v1?ref=gabestein.com) [research](https://arxiv.org/html/2402.03483v1?ref=gabestein.com) on generating narratives with LLMs, I found something pretty surprising: a majority of the studies' methods aren't really concerned with LLMs. I expected them to describe statistical methods for training models or steering outputs. Instead, most tend to focus on a problem that will be familiar to both developers and writers: state management.

One of the reasons LLMs struggle to write good stories at length is because they can't efficiently handle very much new information. As a result, when generating stories they routinely produce wacky results, like bringing characters back from the dead or changing locations mid-scene.

Reading these papers is a somewhat surreal experience, because despite being wrapped in a lot of technical jargon, most of them describe researchers trying to figure out what english prompts to write, in what order, to get an LLM to generate the next part of a story according to some kind of narrative framework while keeping track of what came before it. A lot of the work concerns breaking down the storytelling process into smaller sessions, called "agents," that require less input to function, and then automatically extracting the changing "state" of a story – information about characters, locations, events, and so on – from these agents so it can be stored outside of the LLM and loaded back into it later. So, a lot of "summarize the last series of events in 140-character bullet points," "output a list of the character's items in this JSON format," and so on.

The industry calls this bottleneck the "[context window](https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/context-window?ref=gabestein.com)," which you can think of as the LLM's short-term memory. LLMs are pre-trained on giant corpuses of material in a way that enables them to call on that material and generate new responses relatively efficiently. But the new content a user inputs — a text prompt, a reference image, a codebase, etc. — has to be processed on the fly. The longer a session with an LLM continues, the bigger the context window gets, because it needs to store the history of the session's user prompts and all of its responses to generate the next one. 

This processing of new information, which the industry calls "inference," is why querying an LLM is computationally expensive in the first place, and the longer the context window is, the more expensive, and slower, inference becomes. In fact, the compute required for inference generally scales quadratically to the length of the combined input and output, meaning that if you double your context window, you need four times as much compute to return a result.

It's worth noting that with the latest models, you could theoretically write an entire novel within a single LLM session. Google's latest Gemini 2.5 models, for example, support [large context windows](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/long-context?ref=gabestein.com) of up to 1 million [tokens](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot/for-individuals/do-more-with-ai/general-ai/what-are-ai-tokens?form=MA13KP&ref=gabestein.com), which they claim can store eight english-language books. And Gemini gives users the ability to cache contexts at a cheaper rate. 

There are just a few problems with this idea. For one, it's very expensive to use big context windows in inputs, and even more expensive to output large amounts of text. Reddit is [littered](https://www.reddit.com/r/RooCode/comments/1jy4ufj/warning%5Fwatch%5Fyour%5Fapi%5Fcosts%5Ffor%5Fgemini%5F25%5Fpro/?ref=gabestein.com) [with](https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTCoding/comments/1jurtyu/just%5Fgot%5Fcharged%5Ffor%5F300usd%5Fon%5Fgemini%5F25%5Fpreview/?ref=gabestein.com) [stories](https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTCoding/comments/1jtfvmv/be%5Fcare%5Fwith%5Fgemini%5Fi%5Fjust%5Fgot%5Fcharged%5Fnearly%5F500/?ref=gabestein.com) of people (often developers working with large codebases) unexpectedly racking up hundreds of dollars of charges per day working with long contexts, and that's with relatively small outputs — maybe a couple of code files, not thousands of words of writing. 

Another problem is that although eight novels' worth of context sounds like a lot, remember that every new query adds to the length of the previous one. So if you ask an LLM to add 5,000 words to a 100,000 word story that's already in its context, that new query "costs" another 100,000 words of input and 5,000 words of output, and the next will cost 105,000 words of input, and so on. Given the amount of re-prompting required to get good results from LLMs, it wouldn't actually take much writing in a session to exceed even that high of a context limit. 

Most importantly, LLMs [aren't actually very good](https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03172?ref=gabestein.com) at using long contexts, particularly when they're asked to keep track of lots of different bits of information like you need to do when writing a story. In fact, Google's [own documentation page](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/long-context?ref=gabestein.com#long-context-limitations) suggests that heavy caching is necessary to achieve good performance at a reasonable cost, something that's hard to do with a wall of narrative text that you need to be able to edit from beginning to end frequently.

In discussing these studies and limitations with a developer friend of mine, George King, what became clear to both of us is that these kinds of problems aren't particularly novel. Once you reach a certain scale, most software development is fundamentally about optimizing the movement of information through computationally expensive bottlenecks. This usually means trying to optimize and minimize your application's most expensive tasks, which in the case of AI applications, is querying the LLM. In fact, optimizing the process of shuffling information in and out of an LLM's context window is basically the business of most so-called "AI wrapper" tools, including popular developer tools like [Cursor](https://docs.cursor.com/guides/working-with-context?ref=gabestein.com) and [Cline](https://docs.cline.bot/getting-started/understanding-context-management?ref=gabestein.com#context-management).

I've no doubt that long context performance, and pricing, will improve over time. But what this all points to is that LLMs are not immune from the fundamental principles of the software business. Because of the relative expense of querying an LLM, particularly a foundation model, companies will naturally start to invest in lower-cost tools that surround it, using caches, classic NLP tools, and even smaller, fine-tuned models to "gatekeep" calls to the big expensive LLM, as George put it.

That businesses will seek to reduce costs wherever possible shouldn't surprise anyone, but I think it's actually a pretty big problem for the profitability theory of the generative AI industry as a whole. Almost all of the big AI companies are already [losing billions](https://www.wheresyoured.at/longcon/?ref=gabestein.com) of dollars a year on those portions of their businesses, in part because they're massively subsidizing the cost of inference to gain adoption. They're able to justify those losses for now on the assumption that generative AI is unlike anything that has come before it, capable of replacing entire professions with lower-cost alternatives.

If that's not true — if, indeed, it's subject to the same rules as every other kind of software, it seems more likely that instead of replacing entire professions, generative AI will simply become an expensive part of the software stack that companies will have to learn how to deploy efficiently, likely using wraparound optimizations built primarily by humans. In fact, we're already seeing hints that this may be the case. Even at today's drastically subsidized rates, businesses [are increasingly reporting](https://www.forbes.com/sites/cio/2025/01/30/why-75-of-businesses-arent-seeing-roi-from-ai-yet?ref=gabestein.com) that they aren't seeing returns on their AI investments. Meanwhile, as this week's [Cursor pricing kerfluffle](https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropic-and-openai-have-begun-the-subprime-ai-crisis/?ref=gabestein.com) showed, today's leading AI wrapper tools still aren't valuable enough to survive any kind of price hike or service degradation — and it seems unlikely this one would get them even close to profitability.

Generative AI is probably going to be valuable software. But for the moment, anyway, it's still software, and that's a problem for an entire industry predicated on it become something much more.
### You simply cannot trust these people (and should stop using their products)
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/you-simply-cannot-trust-these-people-and-should-stop-using-their-products/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T00:52:32.000Z
I know the last few weeks have been full of news, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why this scandal hasn’t broken through. Tell me if you’ve heard this one already:

Meta (which is Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp) and Yandex (basically Russia’s Google) were [recently caught](https://localmess.github.io/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=you-simply-cannot-trust-these-people) using a feature of the Android operating system to systematically spy on users’ browser activity without their knowledge, consent, or ability to opt out. The method worked even in incognito mode, even if users cleared cookies, and did not show up on common developer tools, making it very difficult for security researchers to find. It allowed Meta/Yandex to track users’ activity on any website with a Meta/Yandex pixel installed (of which there are millions, including many of the most-visited sites in the world), even on third-party browsers, even if they were logged out of Meta/Yandex’s services on those browsers.

In other words, if you had the Facebook or Instagram app installed on an Android device in the last 6 months or so, a significant percentage of your web browsing data was likely collected and linked to your Facebook/Instagram account, whether or not you were logged into those services or using an Incognito window. So if you used an incognito window to visit, say, one of the [tens of thousands of porn sites](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/opinion/google-facebook-sex-websites.html?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=you-simply-cannot-trust-these-people) that use Facebook’s trackers, Meta likely knows about it and were able to link it to your personal Facebook or Instagram account.

Researchers reported the spying two full weeks ago (by which point Meta had [“paused” the “feature”](https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/03/meta%5Fpauses%5Fandroid%5Ftracking%5Ftech/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=you-simply-cannot-trust-these-people)), but as far as I can tell, it’s barely been covered at all outside of cybersecurity trade press. I found out on LinkedIn! LinkedIn!

Yes, I know that we all assume that they’re doing stuff like this all the time, but this one is so audacious I’m kind of shocked they had the guts to do it. In fact, if it wasn’t so horribly abusive, I’d actually be impressed at how clever it was.

Basically, they secretly used their ad tracking pixel to send information over the device’s built-in local network stack from the browser app to the native Facebook and Instagram apps, which had been configured to listen for these specific local network pings. This allowed them to bypass Android’s normal security protections and user opt-out settings, which aren’t applied to local network requests. Not only that, they used WebRTC, a protocol normally meant for real-time applications like audio and video calls, and they sent the stolen browsing information by manually overwriting data normally used by the protocol to establish unique real-time connections. This made the traffic invisible to Chrome’s developer tools, which don’t include detailed information about these types of typically-automated requests.

Meta’s not even claiming to have made a mistake or been led astray by a rogue employee, because they can’t. The technique was too obviously and systematically designed to steal user data. Instead, their statement was: “we are in discussions with Google to address a potential miscommunication regarding the application of their policies.” Translated: “we did it because it was technically possible and we thought we’d get away with it.”

I know Facebook scandal fatigue set in around 2017\. What’s different this time around is that we’re not even hearing much about it from the mainstream media, and Meta’s not even pretending to deny it. The only thing that seems to have stopped them this time is fear of running afoul of Google’s app store policies.

That’s scary, because it means that a company that [has been abusing you](https://www.wheresyoured.at/killingfacebook/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=you-simply-cannot-trust-these-people) almost from the beginning seems to no longer care about getting caught abusing you, and broad swathes of the media no longer seem to care to report it. So from now on, you should assume that if you use any of their services, anywhere, they are doing anything they technically can to spy on you, on every app on every device, no matter how abusive or illegal, no matter what you do to try to avoid it, and the only thing that will stop them is other big tech companies policing their abuse — if they get caught at all.

Really, you should stop using Meta’s services (and Yandex’s, but unless you’re Russian-speaking, you probably aren’t). I know it’s hard, but I promise you’ll be fine. I’ve been off Facebook and Instagram for a long time now and let me tell you I still have lots of friends, as evidenced by how much more time I have to blog to nobody.
### Has anyone actually read the generative AI productivity studies?
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai-productivity-studies/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T00:51:51.000Z
There’s a longer analysis to do here, but I’ve been looking into the gap between the [breathless coverage](https://datainnovation.org/2024/06/evidence-shows-productivity-benefits-of-ai/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai) of studies purporting to show huge productivity gains from adopting generative AI in the workplace and the [increasing](https://www.ibm.com/downloads/documents/us-en/12f5a711174dc2ac?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai) [number](https://www.forbes.com/sites/cio/2025/01/30/why-75-of-businesses-arent-seeing-roi-from-ai-yet/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai) of reports showing businesses are not seeing the ROI on AI investments they expected. Bad ROI has [never stopped](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/iwgpvnuj/release/6?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai) businesses from investing in unproven technologies that promise to replace workers, so that trend’s not all that surprising. But I do want to offer a bit of a corrective — in part because the [last good one](https://hbr.org/2024/01/is-genais-impact-on-productivity-overblown?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai) I found was published over a year ago, and also so I have something to send to folks when I have to admit I don’t use AI much for my work (yet?).

Anyway, I read [a](https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.17866?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai) [bunch](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=4575598&utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai) [of](https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.12813?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai) [the](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working%5Fpapers/w31161/w31161.pdf?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai) [studies](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=4539836&utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai) and it turns out they’re mixed, at best, when you read just a tiny bit farther than the abstracts. Here are the patterns that stand out:

- Most describe small case studies focused on very specific tasks (or worse, toy simulations of tasks designed by researchers), not the overall impact on the business’ bottom line.
- They commonly show uneven, “k-shaped” gains among workers, with interventions benefitting only low-skilled or high-skilled workers and, in some cases, actually making the other end of the workforce worse at their jobs.
- Productivity gains are also uneven depending on the type of task and intervention. In general, today’s AI tools seem to be far worse at assisting with more creative tasks, in part because high-skilled workers tend to “anchor” their work to the AI’s output, ignoring their human intuition and experience and producing results that hew closely to the AI’s output. This same effect is why beginners often benefit more from those interventions: not because AI enhances their skills, but because they tend to just accept whatever the bots give them, which is often slightly above their level.
- When high-skilled workers see greater gains than their less-skilled colleagues, like in this [materials science case](https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.17866?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai), it tends to be because they excel at filtering the prodigious output AI is capable of, a skill they gained by spending years doing the ideation work that the AI is now tasked with. This begs the obvious question of how these workplaces will replace their high-skilled workers when they leave if less-skilled workers no longer have a pathway to build expertise.
- [Study after study](https://hbr.org/2025/05/research-gen-ai-makes-people-more-productive-and-less-motivated?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai) finds that workers across skill levels feel less fulfilled and motivated when asked to use AI because they feel under-utilized and less creative.

My pet theory is that AI tools work *because* they produce average results, which is why beginners tend to benefit most from them (or when experts do, it’s because they’re specifically tasked with filtering wheat from a lot more generated chaff). This result shouldn’t be surprising: producing probable outputs is literally what generative AI tools are designed to do, and the fact that they can at even decent levels of quality is pretty amazing!

That said — and look, I didn’t go to business school so what do I know — I suspect that consistently producing average outputs is not all that valuable to most businesses, especially given the significant tradeoffs. That may explain why the ROI so far has been pretty underwhelming.

No doubt, someone in the dark arts of management science will figure out how to eek out productivity gains while externalizing the costs. But given how expensive AI-driven tools [already are](https://web.archive.org/web/20240629140307/http://goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/gs-research/gen-ai-too-much-spend-too-little-benefit/report.pdf), and the [repeated](https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/21/openais-gpt-5-reportedly-falling-short-of-expectations/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai) [failures](https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta-is-delaying-the-rollout-of-its-flagship-ai-model-f4b105f7?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai) by top companies to make significant gains along current scaling routes, it sure seems like we’re approaching an upper limit to the value current approaches can deliver. Feel free to tell me you told me so if this ends up being totally wrong, but like [Gary Marcus](https://garymarcus.substack.com/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai) and others, I suspect any future big productivity gains in value will be found by implementing approaches outside of today’s deep learning models.

---

**One thing generative AI is really, really good at: parody.** Being designed to produce plausible outputs, but not having any real intelligence to tell if an output (or input) is realistic makes LLMs the ultimate parody machines (and also genuinely good at solving the “blank page problem,” as my friend Chuck puts it).

So, last Wednesday I invented a philosopher. I woke up from a very strange dream, opened my phone, and Googled the first, uh, words that came into my head: “Namfits Ezelbergasz.” There were, predictably, no results. So, I opened ChatGPT, Claude, Dall-e, and GitHub Copilot and began inventing a philosopher.

The result of my efforts, a [website](https://ezelbergasz.org/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=has-anyone-actually-read-the-generative-ai) dedicated to a man who was not just unknown, but un-thought-of, last Tuesday, is, if I do say so myself, pretty hilarious — right down to the site’s simulated fog background to match Ezelbergasz’s pioneering doctrine of Fog Ethics, which was suggested by ChatGPT and (somewhat) coded by GitHub Copilot. With the right subject matter knowledge and a lot of editing of both code and prose, these tools are amazing at producing effective parody.

Some of my favorite Ezelberasz lines:

- “Some truths knock. Others slip into your house wearing your dreams.”
- “I met an idea once. It wore a coat of smoke and laughed backwards. I asked its name, and it replied with my childhood scent. I have never doubted less, nor understood less, than in that moment.”
- “All righteousness should taste faintly of hallucination.”
- “Let go of output. Sit in the unfinished. Eat the calendar. Let the project rot until it whispers its own name.”

I’m too cheap to buy ChatGPT+ to produce a custom GPT, but having successfully laundered the Ezelbergasz Society website onto Google, you can now ask any chatbot with web search capabilities to look him up and generate quotes, articles, or wholesale theories. Send me your favorites!

![Screen capture of the google search result for "who was "namfits ezelbergasz"", showing an AI overview positing that he was real](https://www.gabestein.com/content/images/2025/06/5aaf4f04-4251-49c4-a0bc-4dd6fa771551.png)
### Laughing to the bank
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/laughing-to-the-bank/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T00:50:06.000Z
The ongoing trade war is objectively hilarious. The actual events themselves — from the scorecard to the [bogus AI-generated formula](https://www.theverge.com/news/642620/trump-tariffs-formula-ai-chatgpt-gemini-claude-grok?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank) to the hapless trade representative [defending the indefensible tariffs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq5VTBgKjcY&utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank) in front of congress as they were reversed to the explanation for the pause that people were “[getting yippy](https://www.salon.com/2025/04/09/getting-yippy-says-he-reversed-on-tariffs-because-people-were-afraid/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank)” — is the kind of stuff Veep’s writers wish they had dreamt up. But the backstory is the most hilarious part of it all: apparently, the reason we all have to go through this in the first place is that Trump [literally thinks](https://www.vox.com/politics/407662/trump-trade-deficits-bilateral-tariffs?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank) that maintaining a trade deficit with another country means we’re somehow “losing” (at what, exactly, is not clear).

At the same time, of course, the trade war is very serious. In a matter of days, America’s hard-earned credibility has been ruined, perhaps permanently, and trillions of dollars have been [destroyed](https://www.reuters.com/technology/magnificent-seven-add-more-than-1-trillion-value-after-trump-pauses-some-tariffs-2025-04-09/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank) because of one man’s inability to comprehend basic economics. Which is, well, actually pretty hilarious when you take a step back from checking your portfolio. Take one step further back, though, and it’s actually pretty depressing that even the most powerful narcissist in the world can’t disrupt late capitalism for more than a week.

Back in November when I started this newsletter, I [wrote about](https://www.gabestein.com/axgjch00/) the metamodern nature of today’s political discourse, where seemingly opposed forces like sincerity and absurdity can co-exist and even begin to oscillate against each other, forming a solid substrate on which to construct a political movement. Yesterday’s about-face may be the best example yet of this phenomenon in action. And it might just offer an opportunity to advance the project of building the still-nascent opposition.

As a friend pointed out on a call yesterday, the way Trump will try to spin this is obvious: he’ll negotiate a few “deals” with China, Mexico, and Canada and then claim this was all part of the plan. “Art of the deal” and all that. His cronies are [already starting](https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/09/trump-tariffs-pause-relief-congress-gop-00281973?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank) to provide this cover while privately throwing their arms up and acknowledging what we all know: [there is no plan](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-adventurers-in-the-land-of-there-is-no-plan?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank), and Trump just lost a major battle between his planet-sized [sense of entitlement](https://coldwaters.substack.com/p/why-entitlement-wins?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank) and the [global economic reality](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/business/economy/bonds-tariffs-safe-haven.html?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank). With full acknowledgement of the pain this saga has already and will continue to cause, Trump being forced to walk away from his signature economic policy because it’s too dumb even for this timeline is deeply funny and should be relentlessly mocked, along with all the people applauding the emperor for his newly-discovered clothes.

![A man lighting a dollar bill on fire while saying "Art of the deal"](https://www.gabestein.com/content/images/2025/06/dd6c4df9-a6f6-4d1e-a729-7cf84f292e99.jpeg)

Obligatory self-flagellation for using AI to generate this

I confess, I’m a little concerned that instead of mockery, we’ll mostly see more lectures from well intentioned people trying to reason through what’s happening and what it means as if it can be explained logically at all. For example, the *Vox* article I [linked to](https://www.vox.com/politics/407662/trump-trade-deficits-bilateral-tariffs?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank) above contains lines like (emphasis from the original): “Trump’s obsession with *bilateral* trade deficits — his idea that if the US has a trade deficit with *any* significant trading partner, it is somehow losing — is the really weird thing.”

In fairness, this was written before the reversal. But, I mean, is it really so weird to imagine that this guy — the “getting yippy” guy — just doesn’t understand any of this stuff? I’m not a political reporter, but I can pretty much guarantee you Donald Trump is not actually obsessed with bilateral trade deficits, because as the rest of the article makes clear, he doesn’t know what a trade deficit is to begin with. After the madness of the last decade of U.S. politics, why are we still determined to rationalize events that are so obviously, profoundly absurd?

![A man yelling "90-day pause" at a burning dumpster](https://www.gabestein.com/content/images/2025/06/bd17af80-5ba9-4924-8bb3-50d4f2ae2900.jpeg)

If only this worked in real life

Since the bad man’s address to congress last month, and aided by a string of lively conversations with friends and family, I’ve been playing around with a vague idea that the opposition’s response to Trump so far has been, in some ways, profoundly arrogant. If the 2024 election was anything, it was a cry for a [real, dramatic break](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-change-election.html?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank) from a status quo that wasn’t working for a lot of people. And not just in our country — [incumbents](https://apnews.com/article/global-elections-2024-incumbents-defeated-c80fbd4e667de86fe08aac025b333f95?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank) were rejected in elections around the world last year.

And yet, most of our oppositional responses have been rooted in trying to preserve as much of that rejected status quo as possible. Not just the policies and institutions, many of which, of course, should be preserved if possible, but also the norms, procedures, and discourse that it ran on, almost all of which have been so thoroughly trampled that there is likely [no going back](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/opinion/trump-musk-federal-government.html?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank).

I suspect that’s why, for example, Elissa Slotkin’s traditional, sober Democratic response to Trump’s made-for-TV-and-TikTok fascistic circus last month felt so flat, even though its content was pretty good. And I’m positive that’s why Chuck Schumer’s [ridiculous legislative head-fake](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-kabuki-cave?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank) on the continuing resolution felt like [such a betrayal](https://www.npr.org/2025/03/13/nx-s1-5327600/house-democrats-outrage-spending?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank). In a world where, as I [wrote in November](https://buttondown.com/emails/10d68f8b-c353-417d-857b-b14a236fda47?ref=gabestein.com), politics is increasingly downstream of the practice of culture, acting as if the ship isn’t sinking and on fire is worse than giving up: it’s refusing to acknowledge the problem at all.

So what do we do differently this time? Maybe it’s because I’m the son of a humorist, but I think this particular moment demands to be met with ridicule if it’s going to stick. It’s not a panacea, but effective use of humor has [played](https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501756061/pranksters-vs-autocrats/%252523bookTabs=1/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank#bookTabs=1) a [major](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=2325782&utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank) [role](https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/media/article/why-dictators-dont-like-jokes?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank) in almost every modern example of resisting autocrats. Humor works because it cuts through fear, the currency authoritarians trade on, and gives people a common narrative to rally around that’s hard to spin.

Trump, in particular, is [famously allergic](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/mary-trump-why-donald-trump-never-laughs.html?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank) to humor, for precisely those reasons. It makes him feel vulnerable because it exposes his true nature and hinders his vaunted ability to spin almost any narrative to suit his purposes.

And he should feel vulnerable right now. He was just forced to retreat on his signature issue because the bond market almost collapsed, exposing him as both a dangerous fool and a coward. Of course we should be upset. Of course we should be worried that the bond market might still collapse. Of course we should be [investigating](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/democrats-grill-officials-on-insider-profits-from-trumps-tariff-reversal/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=laughing-to-the-bank) his administration for insider trading.

But I hope we also acknowledge the inherent absurdity of what’s happening. I hope we also laugh and mock everyone, including ourselves. “Nice one, Don, you got us good.” “90-Day Pause” should become a standard way to avoid acknowledging mistakes. Someone needs to get rich making “Liberation Week“ t-shirts. And so on. As much as we should be taking this moment seriously, I hope we also seize on it to start practicing the kinds of metamodern discourse the modern world demands.

![Man wearing a patriotic USA t-shirt that says: liberation week, never forget, April 2-9, 2025](https://www.gabestein.com/content/images/2025/06/aa75c802-7762-4ccd-b387-3dd95be3f546.png)

Remember?
### Soft(ware) power
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/vfwnl291/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T23:14:45.000Z
*Note: This was originally published, with a few other fun notes, to [gabestein.com: the newsletter!](https://buttondown.com/gabestein?ref=gabestein.com), which is where most of my stuff is going these days.*

---

Let’s just say it: DOGE is a coup. Or a hostile government takeover. Authoritarian power-grab. Whatever Very Bad thing you want to call it, call it that Very Bad thing and don’t kid yourself that that’s what it is. As historian Tim Snyder [wrote](https://snyder.substack.com/p/of-course-its-a-coup?r=fhv5&utm%5Fmedium=ios&triedRedirect=true&utm%5Fsource=substack&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power), this may not look like the movie version of a coup, but that’s because the center of power in the modern world isn’t a location you roll up to with a bunch of people with guns, like it used to be. The center of power in the modern world is software.

Today, DOGE seizing control of the software system that makes payments for the federal government is the same thing — in some ways even more effective — as seizing control of, say, the Capitol Building, as the January 6 insurrectionists attempted to do. And, by all accounts, it appears that DOGE [succeeded](https://www.wired.com/story/treasury-department-doge-marko-elez-access/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power).

So, now what? Look, I dunno, I’m just some dude. But here’s one thing that I think is crucial to understand in this moment:

**As I’ve [been](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/i4uj0ehr?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power#facebook-nation) [writing](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/g2l5vtiq/release/7?readingCollection=5636edd4&utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power) for [years](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/zkme9ef3/release/9?readingCollection=25bc8637&utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power), the overarching project of many of the Big Tech oligarchs, once focused on at least nominally beneficial-to-society “moonshots,” appears to have settled on a new target: carving out techno-libertarian fiefdoms where they can play out their [sci-fi fantasies](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/j3bf68yi/release/5?readingCollection=4d2ff7bb&utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power) free from interference or judgement.** When most folks say this, I suspect they mean it in the traditional sense of neoliberal deregulation within existing nation-states. When I say it, I mean that their project is to literally create autonomous state-like structures where they can experiment with whatever they want, without consequence.

I know that sounds totally ridiculous, but the decentralized “[network state](https://thenetworkstate.com/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power)” is already a pretty widespread idea in crypto circles, and bringing about autonomous corporate city-states led by authoritarian CEO-kings is the stated goal of the once-fringe [Dark Enlightenment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark%5FEnlightenment?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power) movement, key figures of which appear to have [gained a foothold](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/21/curtis-yarvin-trump?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power) in the administration. If you’ve ever worked in Big Tech, you’ll recognize exactly where these ideas came from and just how compatible they are with some of Silicon Valley’s core cultural beliefs.

As I [wrote](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/i4uj0ehr?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power#facebook-nation) in 2021 about my brief early-career experience at Google, the degree to which these companies provide not just livelihoods but food, activities, camaraderie, and nonstop, interesting and important-feeling work, can become all-consuming and make it easy to start forming your identity around being part of the company — especially if you’re of the [age and inexperience](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/musk-doge-techies-young-what-we-know-1235256687/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power) of the acolytes Musk seems to be bringing on his raiding parties. Combine that daily experience of total abundance with the cult-like status of some of these companies’ leaders and the toxic myth that, because you can create powerful world-changing software, you’ve earned the right to solve everyone’s problems whether they want you to or not, and you have all the conditions you need for some of these people to believe they should control society — if only they could find a way to force the pesky, and under Biden, [increasingly threatening](https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=65497&utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power), federal government to cede control of territory normally exclusively reserved for nation-states.

Territory like, I don’t know, pretty much all of Big Tech’s most visible innovations over the last few years: autonomous digital versions of currencies (crypto), the trade of goods and services (NFTs/smart contracts), governance and enforcement mechanisms (DAOs), and, well, people (AI agents). If you wanted to force the government to give up its monopoly over some of these critical functions and replace them with your own private versions, a pretty effective way to do it would be to take over its payment software and start [feeding the data](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/02/06/elon-musk-doge-ai-department-education/?utm%5Fcampaign=wp%5Fmain&utm%5Fmedium=social&utm%5Fsource=bluesky) from that system into your proprietary AI to help make spending decisions.

Look, I don’t know where any of this is going and I don’t really know what to do. That’s not my lane. But here’s one recommendation I’ll make:

**Start getting more of your information from trustworthy people who understand technologists and software if you aren’t already. And be increasingly cautious about the daily reporting of the traditional political media (the** **New York Times** **, major networks,** **Politico** **,** **Axios** **,** **NPR** **, etc.).** I’m not insinuating that those outlets have no value or are inherently untrustworthy, although their ongoing [capitulation](https://www.thefire.org/news/media-outlets-must-not-cave-trumps-lawfare?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power) to Trump’s extortionist lawsuits should give you pause. Even if they were all standing strong against the administration’s chilling efforts, though, establishment political reporting is mostly based on the workings of government and the psychology of politicians, not the workings of technology or the psychology of technologists. And that lens just does not capture this moment.

For example, read [this ](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/us/politics/treasury-musk-doge-payment-system.html?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power)*[NYT](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/us/politics/treasury-musk-doge-payment-system.html?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power)*[ article](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/us/politics/treasury-musk-doge-payment-system.html?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power) on DOGE’s motivations and compare it to *[Wired](https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-associate-bfs-federal-payment-system/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power)* and *[TPM](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/musk-cronies-dive-into-treasury-dept-payments-code-base/sharetoken/7eb179ea-4307-42f7-a238-9e1e0d8bf844?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power)*[’s](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/musk-cronies-dive-into-treasury-dept-payments-code-base/sharetoken/7eb179ea-4307-42f7-a238-9e1e0d8bf844?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power) reporting, from two days earlier, on the same thing. The *Times* doesn’t even mention the absolutely critical piece of technical information: even if DOGE only has “read-only” access to the system’s data, can they change its code? Whatever official access the Treasury gave to DOGE, that doesn’t matter if they also gained access to the system’s underlying code and thus can change the way it operates at will. To go back to our coup metaphor, controlling the code to the federal payment system is the pre-digital equivalent of, I don’t know, taking over a central bank and holding all of its workers hostage. Maybe the insurgents are letting the workers carry on as usual for now, but the point is that the bad guys can, at any moment, start forcing the workers to rip up checks and stop recording transactions at gunpoint. According to *Wired* and *TPM’s* reporting, that’s basically where we are. As far as I can tell, the *Times* has only mentioned the issue of underlying code access once to date: in a single bullet point midway through its [Dealbook](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/business/dealbook/trump-carried-interest-tax.html?searchResultPosition=3&utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power) newsletter.

As another example, compare [this ](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/us/politics/trump-musk-bureau-fiscal-service.html?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power)*[NYT](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/us/politics/trump-musk-bureau-fiscal-service.html?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power)*[ article](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/us/politics/trump-musk-bureau-fiscal-service.html?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power) (yes, I am picking on them) on why Musk and his cronies are so obsessed with an obscure part of the Treasury to this *[American Prospect](https://prospect.org/power/2025-02-06-private-equity-hatchet-man-leading-lost-boys-of-doge/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power)* piece on the man who was put in charge of it. The *Times* reads the situation through an institutional lens, assuming that DOGE is trying to stop payments that Trump disagrees with. This is true, and it’s enough to amount to a full-scale constitutional crisis on its own. But what *Prospect* understands is that what’s truly going on is a vulture capital playbook being run on the federal government itself. As much as they relish owning the libs, as I wrote above, I promise you Elon & co.’s core motivation is carving out their own pockets of unlimited power, not institutional power games.

**So if you do nothing else, add more people who deeply understand the modern world to your information diet (and if you can, directly support their work)**. The fact that software [runs](https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2024/07/18/how-software-is-eating-the-world-00169425?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power) much of the world, combined with the fact that tech oligarchs (and [not just Elon](https://www.nj.com/politics/2025/02/bill-gates-explains-why-he-met-with-trump-after-backing-kamala-harris.html?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power)) appear to be calling most of the shots in Washington, makes technology critics and reporters the best people to be reading right now to understand what’s going on. They’re the ones who know how software actually works and [have seen parts of the tech world](https://www.vox.com/politics/397525/trump-big-tech-musk-bezos-zuckerberg-democrats-biden?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power) go from largely liberal political outsiders to incredibly powerful right-wing extremists in a decade. They have better sources among the people who actually seem to be in power than the political journalists. And, just as importantly, my guess is they’re likely to be far less impacted by political media’s institutional weakness — its obsession with access and palace intrigue over accuracy (remember [this gem](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/16/trump-transition-hiring-staffer-ban-00183208?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power)?).

If you’re not already, I would highly recommend subscribing to [Cory Doctorow](https://pluralistic.net/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power), who has been documenting tech abuses forever and makes great recommendations daily, as well as [Wired](http://wired.com/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power), [TPM’s](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power) Josh Marshall, who has unique insight as both a historian and digital media founder, [Lawfare](https://www.lawfaremedia.org/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power), [American Prospect](https://prospect.org/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power), [Waging Nonviolence](https://wagingnonviolence.org/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power), and others who are experts in the way technology, culture, and media influence power in the modern world. If you follow others who you think fit the bill, please let me know and I’ll share them. I’m not yet ready to recommending that you stop reading outlets like the *New York Times*. But I think it’s time to stop putting their coverage at the top of your list for understanding what’s going on, and treating their work with justified skepticism.

**Finally, if there’s any good news in all of this, it’s that the technologists are overplaying their hand in at least two ways.** The first, as Josh Marshall [writes](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-three-headed-chimera-of-trumpian-destruction?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=software-power), is that the factionalism of the new administration is already beginning to show. Right now, the Musk contingent’s goals are aligned with the Christian Nationalism faction, but I promise you that those folks don’t want to replace the administrative state with autonomous techno-states, they want to use it to force us all to re-adopt traditional Christian values, whatever that means.

Second, by focusing too much on the power of technology, they’re setting themselves up for failure when politics has a chance to catch up. In Silicon Valley, code is king. But in Washington, Donald Trump is, and he cares a lot about believing he’s in control. I don’t think this is truly viable, but I wonder what would happen if the opposition started accepting Musk’s theory about power by ignoring Trump and talking directly with the CEO who’s really in charge of the money. How long do you think Trump will tolerate someone going around claiming they’re calling the shots just because they know how to use a computer?
### Greenland Standard Time
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/greenland-standard-time/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T00:46:07.000Z
Wherein we oscillate between personal time zone choices, political silliness, and the lengths people went to entertain themselves when history ended.

_This post is for subscribers only._
### Do we actually make things?
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/do-we-actually-make-things/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T00:45:21.000Z
In 2018 or 2019, I don’t remember exactly when, the writer Manu Saadia posted a (long-since-deleted) tweet thread, the gist of which was: humanity has never actually generated energy, at least at scale. We’ve only ever unleashed it.

I’m not sure if it was an original observation, or if he was riffing off of someone else, but the comment has stayed with me to this day, when a [podcast](https://www.patreon.com/theemeraldpodcast?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=do-we-actually-make-things) I was listening to on the way to work made a similar point about humanity’s millennia-long relationship with fire. We’ve tamed fire. We’ve organized our entire society around it. But we are not its creators. We burn shit, turn the heat into motion, the motion into money, and then we pay to burn more shit and start the cycle again.

That process works just fine, as far as it goes. But problems tend to arise when we trick ourselves into believing there’s more to it than thermodynamics.

**OpenAI just** [**hired its first CMO**](https://adage.com/article/digital-marketing-ad-tech-news/chatgpt-maker-openai-hires-coinbases-kate-rouch-first-cmo/2594261?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=do-we-actually-make-things) **to help the company develop an ad-based business model**, because getting people to pay for its products directly, at a scale that justifies the [massive cost](https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/openai-training-and-inference-costs-could-reach-7bn-for-2024-ai-startup-set-to-lose-5bn-report/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=do-we-actually-make-things) of training its models, doesn’t seem likely.

Training generative AI models literally burns [enormous amounts](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/23/ai-chat-gpt-environmental-impact-energy-carbon-intensive-technology?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=do-we-actually-make-things) of fuel, but now OpenAI’s business model will likely follow suit, at least metaphorically. Like every advertising-driven company before it, if it goes this route, OpenAI will spend massive amounts of money not to provide value to its end-users, but to offgass data it can harvest and sell to advertisers. In so doing, it will inevitably [enshittify](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=do-we-actually-make-things) its products to squeeze out as much as it can before the likely trillion-plus-dollar bill for its excesses comes due.

That’s not to say generative AI isn’t a truly amazing innovation. Of course it is. But at what point does the tail start wagging the dog? If all the field’s leading company can manage to do in the end, after expending so much capital and energy, is produce a technology for retrieving information that’s both [significantly less helpful](https://medium.com/bouncin-and-behavin-blogs/ai-has-made-google-search-so-bad-people-are-moving-to-tiktok-reddit-6ac0b4801d2e?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=do-we-actually-make-things) and [10 times less efficient](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/chatgpt-style-search-represents-a-10x-cost-increase-for-google-microsoft/?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=do-we-actually-make-things) than boring graph-based search, and then sustains itself on the same old advertising business model, why should we reward that company with our attention and money? Are they really creating something of value, or are they just taking credit for burning fuel in novel ways?

I don’t mean to pick on OpenAI, or even tech. It’s just one example that’s in the news. You can pick almost any company that makes money from digital advertising, or makes money by aggressively using advertising networks, and find someone lighting money on fire and calling it innovation.

**“Collapse of the global system, return of agrarian lifestyle, a feasible solution to climate change.”** That’s what an extremely online sixteen year-old who self-identifies as a neo-fascist [recently told](https://jacobin.com/2024/11/gen-z-internet-politics-fascism?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=do-we-actually-make-things) artist and culture writer Joshua Citarella they most want to see change in the next forty years.

I, too, had weird ideas at 16\. But I grew up just before the dawn of social media, when we still believed unfettered access to information would rid the world of all ignorance, bigotry, and oppression. If I was 16 today, and all I had ever known was a world where people could make themselves unfathomably rich by releasing a ton of greenhouse gas emissions to do math in specific ways so that knowledge workers can do the work of what is essentially [playing video games](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/ivrsydjp/release/15?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=do-we-actually-make-things) more efficiently, I might also want to, well, burn it all down in favor of returning to an agrarian lifestyle where the most valuable work to be done is growing food.

I’m old enough now to know that burning it all down risks the fire consuming everything. What we can do, though, is at least acknowledge what Cory Doctorow, who also invented the lovely e-word I linked to above, [calls](https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=do-we-actually-make-things), “the trauma of living through *real conspiracies* all around us.”

We can acknowledge that much of what we call innovation has far more to do with value capture than value creation. We can acknowledge that the global understanding of economic value is way out of balance, particularly when climate externalities are factored in. And we can acknowledge that, until we learn how to truly make things, we are not ready to play with fire.
### I did an AI
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/i-did-an-ai/
Last updated: 2025-08-06T15:52:46.000Z
**I** [**have**](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/04ex75f4/release/3?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=i-did-an-ai)[**been**](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/zkme9ef3/release/9?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=i-did-an-ai)[**somewhat**](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/740fy9c3/release/7?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=i-did-an-ai)[**skeptical**](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/j3bf68yi/release/5?readingCollection=9de40438&utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=i-did-an-ai) **about generative artificial intelligence.** So imagine my surprise when I found myself experimenting with OpenAI’s “custom GPTs.” If you’re not familiar, they’re chatbots, essentially base ChatGPT configured with free-text “instructions,” which act as a sort of setup prompt to guide the bot, “knowledge,” which are files with specific information you can upload that the bot can refer to when generating answers, and “actions,” or the ability to make structured API calls to specific services.

The GPT I built acts as a sort of behavioral psychologist to help you think through purchasing decisions more rationally. It’s based on behavioral finance research I’ve collected and a series of conversations about money some friends and I have been having over many years. (Side note: if you’re interested in being a part of those conversations, let me know). You can play with the bot [here](https://chatgpt.com/g/g-673e2deb972c81918071de0a6647a6b9-purchase-compass?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=i-did-an-ai), if you want. But let’s not get distracted by the psychology of money, fascinating as it is.

What I came here to say is: these chatbots are somehow still pretty bad products?

**Good products create value.** When I say chatbots are not good products, I mean it in the very technical sense that I don’t think they are capable of solving user needs well enough to create value. At least, not on their own. (Have I mentioned I am a capital-PM Product Manager?)

I’ve been struggling to articulate exactly why, so let me start with an example. My, er, GPT produced some interesting, even surprising, results. For example, I’ve been fixating on buying a fancy safety razor hilariously called the Leaf Twig for a while without really knowing why. When I asked my GPT to help me think about whether I should buy it, it drew a line between the fulfillment I get from connecting with people to a desire to be presentable so I can make those connections. That’s a pretty interesting insight I had never considered before!

But is that kind of insight valuable? Only if you, the user, can do something with it. And therein lies the value problem. Generally, good products create value by doing hard things you’re bad at for you. These bots often ask you to do the hard work of converting their (maybe totally wrong!) advice into valuable action.

They are, effectively, what Cory Doctorow has termed “[reverse-centaurs](https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/01/human-in-the-loop?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=i-did-an-ai),” irrational AI brains directing unreliable humans, instead of rational human brains directing perfectly reliable AIs. As he points out, it’s not just chatbots that have this problem. Reverse-centaurism — from AI surveillance tools forcing warehouse workers to meet superhuman quotas to AI code generators requiring coders to be perfectly vigilant in catching their subtle errors — is pretty much the entire AI business model.

That’s not to say there’s no value to be extracted from these bots. But it requires the product developer to carefully scaffold them in tools that flip the reverse-centaur script by training the user to think of the bots as trainers, nudgers, reviewers, and brainstormers rather than problem-solvers while trying to constrain the AI from producing inaccurate results or going off the rails.

In other words, AI product development itself is a kind of reverse-reverse-centaurism. Any value a developer might extract from one of these bots will come not from the bot itself, but from how the developer facilitates the ongoing interaction between the bot and the user to keep the human in control of the interaction.

Sounds fun?

**But back to politics really quick.** Right after I sent my [last newsletter](https://buttondown.com/gabestein/archive/how-to-inoculate-yourself-against-bad-takes/?ref=gabestein.com) about resisting the urge to assign causality to the election result, I came across a *Washington Post* [post-mortem](https://archive.is/vX1A0?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=i-did-an-ai#selection-1025.0-1030.0) wherein the leading progressive SuperPAC reveals it is assigning causality to…literally the thing they should have been most prepared for:

> “There is plenty of blame to go around for another election cycle riddled with misinformation online,” Priorities USA executive director Danielle Butterfield said in a statement. “Big Tech is still unwilling to hold bad actors accountable, Congress is unwilling to step in and write new rules for the 21st century, and Republicans will continue to slander and lie to voters to make their case. Because of all of this, Democrats lose, and we need to acknowledge this reality and figure out new ways to communicate with voters on today’s internet.”

Imagine saying that out-loud, much less to a reporter, in 2024\. I can’t.

Have a great weekend.

Gabe
### How to inoculate yourself against bad takes
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/how-to-inoculate-yourself-against-bad-takes/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T00:43:22.000Z
Resisting the temptation to analyze What Happened may be the most important thing you can do right now.

_This post is for subscribers only._
### A gentle corrective to all the takes
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/a-gentle-corrective-to-all-the-takes/
Last updated: 2025-11-24T18:50:11.000Z
The takes are flying in and they are hot. Everyone has a pet reason why Harris and the Democrats lost, and of course the truth is it’s a little of all, and none of, the above. The main themes I’m seeing are:

1. Inflation and post-COVID disruption
2. Racism/sexism/white supremacy
3. Dominance of right-wing media

Eli Pariser has started a [crowd-sourced bibliography](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CkkzVbW7HTsdBb8rp9kF7aFKBGF5pNkfLMinPpFhLig/edit?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=a-gentle-corrective-to-all-the-takes) of the highest-quality takes that I recommend to understand where the conversation is going, though I wouldn’t say I fully endorse any of them.

Before any one of these themes start to set in, I want to offer a corrective, as much to remind myself as anything else: almost none of these takes are grappling with culture. Culture, as in: what does it mean to be American?

At the end of my last note, I [linked to a thread](https://xcancel.com/paulanleitner/status/1854250419679121824?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=a-gentle-corrective-to-all-the-takes) from someone who studies culture that, in my view, explains what happened far better than any of the takes on their own. Put simply, the right is winning the fight to define the American identity.

There are lots of reasons why they’re winning, which a lot of the takes tackle very intelligently. They say things like “[Democrats walked into the trap of defending the very institutions — the “establishment” — that most Americans distrust](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/opinion/republicans-democrats-trump.html?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=a-gentle-corrective-to-all-the-takes)” or “[we are here because far too many in this country have believed that a healthy democracy can accommodate white supremacy](https://sherrilyn.substack.com/p/why-are-we-here?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=a-gentle-corrective-to-all-the-takes)" or “[Today, the right-wing media…sets the news agenda in this country](https://newsletter.tnr.com/index.php?action=social&chash=2715518c875999308842e3455eda2fe3.1073&s=676743f102a9ff4fffcec6aba947d48f&utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=a-gentle-corrective-to-all-the-takes)” or (my personal favorite) “[when I say I understand why people vote for Trump, my experience with our maddening kludgeocracy is part of it](https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/curiosity-and-conflict?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=a-gentle-corrective-to-all-the-takes)."

All of these takes are smart and right! But, in my view, they miss the forest for the trees by jumping straight to diagnosis. And therein lies the problem. I’m starting to think that this tendency to diagnose, to criticize, and to analyze, rather than to build, is at the core of the problem. Our policy solutions are, broadly, more popular. Our politicians are, mostly, more popular. Our (popular) culture is definitelymore popular. But the *practice* of leftist culture — the diagnosing, the criticizing, the analyzing — that stuff, necessary as it is, is simply a mismatch for the way most people move in the world today.

Allow me to demonstrate. What does it mean to be an American? My first-blush response is: “being an American is complicated! In this essay, I will…” Harris’s was probably: “being an American means that if you play by the rules and work hard, you have the chance to succeed.” The right’s response is something like: “being an American means you should get what you want.”

Yes, that’s incredibly reductive analysis. And my instinct is to fall into the same trap I warned myself against literally one paragraph ago and start to criticize myself and analyze what’s wrong with the right’s view and write another take.

But it’s enough, in this moment, just to acknowledge that their version is better (even if it’s unhealthy and shallow and impossible — okay, I can’t help myself) because it’s simple, and because it doesn’t demand that you analyze it to understand it.

My challenge for the left is to figure out how we engage the average American in a discussion about what America means without requiring them to fully adopt our culture of critical analysis. Until we know how to do that, I’m not sure that any of the takes are going to provide much lasting value.

I’m working on some projects that are bringing together the people trying to answer that question, as a starting point for rebuilding the idea of a pluralistic America. If you are, too, or you’re interested in doing so, please get in touch.

That’s it for now. Thanks to those of you who have reached out to say hello. Keep it coming!

Gabe
### The Metamodern Miasma
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/axgjch00/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:39.000Z
*Programming note: I have “started” a new “newsletter,” which is where most of my writing will go first. The good bits will then end up here on the blog, edited, a bit later. You can subscribe [here](https://buttondown.com/gabestein?ref=gabestein.com).*

---

## Politics is downstream of culture

The late Andrew Breitbart is not someone I like thinking about all that much, but he’s as singularly responsible for where we find ourselves today as any one person can be. In addition to helping start *The Huffington Post*, *the Drudge Report*, and his namesake *Breitbart News*, during the Obama years he popularized the idea that “politics is downstream of culture,” which became the rallying cry of the emerging right-wing media apparatus that has now metastasized into MAGA and the global right populist movement.

Personally, I would argue that the right didn’t so much as start with culture as they just made *everything* political, but I can’t deny that their systematic investment in media paid off electorally. Of course, they got lucky in that the Obama years coincided with a total upheaval in the global information environment that dramatically lowered the cost of both creation and distribution of media, creating fertile ground for experimentation in entire new modes of communication.

While the left invested primarily in messaging tailored to the new modes that emerged from this period, the right invested in the modes themselves — both in the literal distribution channels, as in Elon Musk buying Twitter, but more importantly in the modes of expression that animate them, as in, well, shit-posting and trolling and memeing. This is where Breitbart’s observation comes most into focus. Politics isn’t downstream of the *content* of culture, it’s downstream of the *practice* of culture.

## The Metamodern Miasma

If you’re one of the 9 people who have read my blog, you’ll know that I love abusing theory. My latest kick is metamodernism, which I think best explains today’s dominant modes of cultural expression. Metamodernism describes an emerging reality forming as a consequence of society’s increasing oscillation between modernism’s romanticism and sincerity and postmodernism’s hyperreality and irony. As theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker described it in their *[Notes on metamodernism](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3402/jac.v2i0.5677?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=the-metamodern-miasma),* it “can be conceived of as a kind of informed naivety, a pragmatic idealism.”

Put another way, perhaps we *can* solve the world’s problems, even if they kill us. Maybe we don’t need to shoot a promising idea down just because it hasn’t grappled with the full weight of history. And maybe we don’t need to reject a tactic that works just because it’s incremental or defensive.

Notably, the “meta” comes not from being self-referential, but from “metaxy,” the Greek word for oscillation, though needing to explain that makes it painfully self-referential. Get it? The concept also fits well with a lot of my other favorite theories, like Solarpunk’s [recognition of stagnant culture](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/j203in25/release/2?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=the-metamodern-miasma), hyperobjects being simultaneously [all-encompassing and unknowable](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/jz6cim0e/release/3?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=the-metamodern-miasma), and our tendency to [hypernormalize](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/ku45zwdn/release/5?utm%5Fsource=gabestein&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=the-metamodern-miasma) digital spaces. What it provides alongside those ideas is the notion that you could potentially develop something stable on top of the substrate we have to work with.

The most odious example of the metamodern sensibility playing out in culture right now is the interminable, and terrifying, debate about whether you should take Donald Trump seriously or literally — though never, of course, both at once. But there are many more innocuous, even optimistic, examples, particularly in the resilient hopefulness and real progress of the climate movement despite the increasingly dire outlook.

The good news, then, is that metamodernity is a creation of neither the right nor left and prefers neither. The bad news is that I don’t think most people on the left understand the degree to which traditional leftist culture is a mismatch for the metamodern miasma.

I stole “miasma” from Neal Stephenson’s *Fall; or, Doge In Hell*, because it is just the perfect word to describe what our information environment has become: a reeking emanation of floating shit-particles. And yet, in true metamodern fashion, we’re all totally addicted to it. I mean, most of us spend hours a day quite literally randomly oscillating back and forth between the most sincere and wholesome videos of dogs and cats and snarky memes (with ads for vitamins in the middle).

I think what the left needs to realize is that this is the environment through which most people, including ourselves, understand everything now. Again, it’s not just that we’re consuming information in little bits via social media (in fact, there’s probably less of that and more private messaging, newsletters, and podcasts these days), it’s that the oscillation between sincerity and sarcasm within and between each of those bits is the atomic unit of our entire information universe — including, maybe especially, the one we form our self-identity in. (Side note: we’ve done it, folks, we’ve invented media string theory.)

And so when we see an abstracted clip of Trump somehow managing to complete a thought and promising to fix a problem by doing the one thing guaranteed to make it worse, what we see resonates on the same frequency as other memes: ironically hopeful, a little deranged, funny in a sad way. Trust me, most people know the specific solutions he offers are bullshit at best. What they’re latching on to is the fact that at least he’s promising to fix something. Now contrast that with a clip of Kamala touting incremental reforms that will make a real difference but won’t actually solve anything and, well, you get it. There’s just no amount of “influencing” that can make that work.

Again, it’s critically important to understand that the problem isn’t the messaging. The problem is that the cultural practice of the left, writ large, is either modern (“resist!!!!!!!!”) or postmodern (“sure, but what’s your theory of change?”), and neither work, like, at all, in the miasma. To move forward from here, we need to give the keys (no, not the 13 keys) to the whole apparatus to the people who are inventing the leftist cultural and infrastructural modes that can work in a metamodern media landscape.

The good news is they’re out there on the fringes, doing weird stuff. Now are we finally ready to let them in, invest in them, and start building the cultures that can get us out of this nightmare?
### Las Vegas
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/5ljvkjg8/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T18:30:26.000Z
I love Las Vegas.

The only place we could possibly have built it was in the middle of a desert, a permanent hostage of the colossal fires of the Nevada sun. You can spend a week entirely indoors, hiding from her to your last hour. You can sleep while she is awake and awaken as she sleeps. But every act of avoidance is a reminder of her power over you. The chill of refrigerated air that engulfs you as you roam the carpeted halls makes you yearn for the touch of her. The windows to nowhere and simulated skies make you long for the sight of her. And, in the vacuum left behind by the time she normally keeps lies a stark horizon between the infinite twilight of now and the inevitable sunrise of the future that will take you away from this place, a horizon beyond which you desperately wish to gaze but dare not for fear of being blinded and never finding your way back to the incredible liminal space between light and dark, time and eternity, ordinary life and extraordinary opportunity that is Las Vegas.

Las Vegas is the sun we built to escape the sun. A glittering mass of cultivated fire, a dense concentration of pure energy - physical, psychological, and financial - that consumes all who enter it and that will, eventually, burn itself out when it has expanded so far beyond its original purpose that it can no longer concentrate enough cultural fuel to sustain the reaction that keeps it vital.

Like moths, we humans gravitate towards a particular kind of energy. Not really raw fire, which we keep and tend at a distance, but the energy of life that fire makes possible. The energy that moves, that binds, that drifts and sometimes even explodes apart. That’s why we congregate around oceans, rivers, lakes, mountains, valleys, places where water and air and earth, given life by fire above and below, meet each other and react by mixing, churning, frothing, dissolving. Moving. And that’s why, in the absence of anything other than scalding heat and barren ground, Las Vegas must do more than burn brightly — it must take the raw fuel of the universe and convert it into motion, the energy and evidence of life.

Lights must flash. Cars must race. Cards must shuffle. Money must flow. Crowds must gather, collide, mix, disperse.

Some say Las Vegas is empty, fake, vapid, shallow. But Las Vegas is full of life. Manufactured life, yes. Unsustainable life, yes. But far from empty, it is a bottomless caldron that yet overflows with the purest manifestation of the divine animating force we have ever managed to distill.

You love Las Vegas because, from the second you set foot in it, you are struck by a torrent of energy that wrenches you free of the small, empty rituals of your daily, disconnected, dispirited life and reanimates it with new rituals, new connections, and new spirits that, despite the slogan, you long to carry back with you to your distant lands, an offering from the spark of life we lit in the desert. You love Las Vegas because it is so bright and so alive and, unlike the terrible sun, you can stare at its brilliant glory of lights, fountains, and crushing masses of people as long as you want. No, more than that. You love Las Vegas because when you are in Las Vegas you don’t just stare at its brilliance, you are its brilliance. You love Las Vegas because when you are in it you are the blood pumping through the beating heart of the only God humanity has ever created. And this God is Good.

This God has the power to give and take. To delight. To depress. To deliver. To destroy. But also to create. Friendships and fortunes. Bonds and blessings. Superstitions and stories. You love Las Vegas because you are holy and you love God.

I, too, love God. I love Las Vegas. I love America. I love money and buying things and taking risks, and I love sitting at absurdly themed bars and letting my guard down enough to make instant friends of questionable strangers, and letting it down enough to finally welcome lifelong friends into my heart so that they’re no longer strangers, even if I’ve always found them a little questionable because they’re the ones who brought me to this insane place, and anyway, I love doing it all here in Las Vegas, even if it is totally insane, because we honestly just can’t do what we’re doing right now in our perfectly fine houses with their yards and garages, we just can’t have times like these outside of Las Vegas, because there aren’t enough people around and there aren’t enough convenient places to go and there isn’t even close to enough alcohol and even if there were we’d still have to drive home and besides, when we’re in our perfectly fine houses in those other places we’re all so exhausted all the time, and not because we stayed out until four yelling at each other over the blackjack table but because our kids are yelling at us to make dinner or change their diapers or put on the same fucking song for the twentieth time since we got home and our wives have been alone with them while we’ve been here in Las Vegas so it’s their turn to have some fun for once and so tomorrow, even though we only slept 10 hours in the last three nights, we’ll have to get up to quiet the wails that accompany the first rays of the rising sun.

And there she is. That’s why I hate Las Vegas. That’s why you hate Las Vegas. No matter how hard you try not to, eventually you’ll get so caught up in the rapturous glory of this God and his gifts of easy friendship and crackling happiness and even an unlikely escape from time itself that, at some unknown hour, the night before you leave, after finding a perfect bar tucked a short escalator ride beneath the casino floor with just the right decor and music and just enough seats for all of your old and new friends to launch wholeheartedly into glorious conversation sizzling with the laughter and tears of old bonds being reinforced and new ones being created, that’s exactly when you’ll forget yourself and start to believe that this space is so liminal and so divine that you can tempt a glance at the horizon. And there, inevitably, awaits the sun.

She’s not mad at you. She understands that you needed to try to escape her, just for a little while. If anything, her rays that peek above the rapidly approaching horizon (“didn’t I just get here?” you marvel) meet your eyes with a smile, though one tinged by sadness. She always knew you would return. But she also knows something that you willfully forgot the moment you opened the first door to the first casino and stepped temporarily beyond her reach. She knows that this glory you have tasted will not sustain. That the new creations you bring back with you will not even last the trip home, so dependent are they on the particular, peculiar energy that is only cultivated in a place so empty that it can overcome every other divine presence that reaches it — even the sun.

That’s why you hate Las Vegas. No matter how much money you win, no matter how little sleep you get, no matter how many celebrities you see or food you eat or friends you make or inside jokes you tell or rituals you invent, the moment you leave, all of it dries out and crumbles through your fingers like desert sand.

And while you flee across the continent or the world, flinging yourself through her sky, the sun asks if you would like to look at her again. You know you can’t. Not here. Not in her domain, 30,000 feet in the air, the protective walls of Las Vegas thousands of miles and an infinite amount of time behind you. And that’s when you remember what you knew all along: you never needed to avoid her. True glory cannot be created or destroyed. True glory cannot be touched. True glory cannot even be seen.
### Polling
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/qlt5htca/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:39.000Z
This is a response to Josh Marshall’s [latest blog](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-state-of-the-race?ref=gabestein.com) on his indispensable news site [Talking Points Memo](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?ref=gabestein.com) about the state of the race. I’ve been reading TPM since 2004, almost took a Fellowship gig there about a decade ago, but regrettably, only became a member recently. Don’t make my mistake, you should join now.

Anyway, as usual, Marshall writes an astute, pragmatic take on the State of the Race given his sense of how the vibes around the Harris campaign have translated into polling. It’s hard to argue with the overall conclusion, that Harris is doing much better than Biden but could very possibly lose. That’s true, and we all need to work extremely hard to make sure she wins.

I want to offer a subtly, but meaningfully, different, data-driven take on what we're seeing in the polls that comes to a similar conclusion as Marshall on where the race stands but from a bit more of an optimistic place. The basic take is this: Biden was never really "behind," per se, but his weaker supporters (those less politically engaged folks you mention) were skeptical enough about him to express their doubt by polling as undecided or third party, a trend which accelerated in the weeks after the debate. We can see evidence of this in RFK's support reaching more or less its high point in the polling averages the week following the debate, while Biden's support fell off and Trump's support remained pretty steady:

![](https://resize-v3.pubpub.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJhc3NldHMucHVicHViLm9yZyIsImtleSI6IjhmdG9naWVkL1NjcmVlbnNob3QgMjAyNC0wOC0zMCBhdCAxNC4zNS4zOC0wMTcyNTA1NjY4NTgwMi5wbmciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjgwMCwiZml0IjoiaW5zaWRlIiwid2l0aG91dEVubGFyZ2VtZW50Ijp0cnVlfX19)

What Kamala did, astonishingly fast and well, was successfully consolidate those weaker Biden supporters into stronger Harris supporters, which we see evidence of in RFK's fall from 10% after the debate to below 5% in the averages the day he dropped out (and, of course, the shocking rise in her approval polls):

![](https://resize-v3.pubpub.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJhc3NldHMucHVicHViLm9yZyIsImtleSI6Inl6MmhvZm41L1NjcmVlbnNob3QgMjAyNC0wOC0zMCBhdCAxNC4zOC4yNy0wMTcyNTA1NjcwMjA5Ny5wbmciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjgwMCwiZml0IjoiaW5zaWRlIiwid2l0aG91dEVubGFyZ2VtZW50Ijp0cnVlfX19)

To Marshall’s point about convention bounces, that's what conventions are normally supposed to do: bring any stragglers in from the cold by pumping up the candidate and celebrating party unity so that the campaign can turn its focus to undecideds in the fall. Kamala had already accomplished that by the time the convention started. I suspect that's why none of these "bounces" have yet been ephemeral, and also why Marshall has been writing that he feels, as I do, that something different is going on in this campaign that the conventional press hasn't grasped yet: she hasn't been getting bounces at all, she's been expertly consolidating latent support that's been there all along for the right candidate, at a much faster pace than usual given her talent and the extraordinary nature of this cycle.

That's also why the thematic focus of the convention was cross-ideological stuff like patriotism and American values, not Democratic unity. If Biden had stayed in the race, the convention would have been about consolidating those straying supporters. It's likely many of them would have ultimately returned to Biden, maybe even enough to squeak out a narrow win via the blue wall states. But he would have had to simultaneously fight to keep the coalition together and fight for undecided voters all through November, the political equivalent of pursuing a war on two fronts. By consolidating that weaker support so quickly and decisively, Kamala now gets to fight on only one front, to convince undecideds. That's an enormous advantage, especially against an opponent who has their own consolidation problems.

This analysis all comes from an understanding of polling based on a very technical, scientific view of their purpose that's been afforded to me by my strange career path in academic publishing tech, and heavily borrowed from a scientist name [Carl Allen](https://realcarlallen.substack.com/), who makes a unique, and convincing, argument about how polls ought to be applied to understanding elections. Statistically, polls aren't meant to predict the future in any way. They're meant to predict the current state of an entire population by querying a small, representative sample of it. An election poll's margin of error isn't the margin of error between what it captured and how the electorate will vote on election day, nor is it the margin between what it captured and how the electorate would vote today. It's the potential for error between how the sample population the poll reached responded and how the full population the poll is trying to predict would have responded if the poll had somehow been able to talk to everyone in the entire population. Properly conducted polls are, basically by definition, very good at this particular prediction. Averaging polls can make these predictions stronger and reduce margin of error, but that still doesn't predict the future in any scientific or technical way.

This may seem like a subtle point, but I think it's significant for understanding where we are, because it helps to think of polls not as predictors of future results, but as snapshots in time you can play forwards against various assumptions and evidence. So, when Marshall writes it's quite plausible Harris could lose, even without any polling error, he’s right, and for a specific reason. As of today, Harris is at 47.3% in the averages and Trump is at 43.7%. That means about 9% of potential voters are currently undecided or planning to vote for third parties, which is a bigger source of uncertainty than a typical poll's +/- 3-4% (so, 6-8%) margin of error. If all of these currently non-Harris/Trump voters broke for Trump, Harris would lose \~53-47, way outside the margin of error, and the polls would have been accurate. If all of them broke for Harris, she would win \~56-44, way outside the margin of error, and the polls would still have been accurate. Of course, what will actually happen is some people will stay home, some will vote third party, and the rest will break decisively, but not entirely, in one direction.

And that's where I think it's justified to be a little more optimistic than Marshall — though again, with this understanding, anyone can play the prediction game with their own assumptions and evidence. For one thing, I suspect the gap between Harris's numbers and the relatively better Democratic Senate numbers Marshall mentions is a piece of evidence that may predict how undecideds will break. As he wrote, Senate elections are different because they're more local, and so there's less national polarization at play. For the same reason, however, it also makes less sense to vote third party or to stay home for a race that low-engagement voters perceive as impacting them more personally than the Presidential. Obviously, some will split their ballots, but I also think it's fair to assume that as those voters start to tune in in the fall, their Senate choices will be a decent predictor of how they'll break.

We saw this play out in reverse 2016 and 2020, where GOP Senate candidates in swing states tended to poll better than Trump, and that loosely [correlated with the way undecideds](https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/national/national-politics/trumps-repeat-performance-late-deciding-voters?ref=gabestein.com) broke. Speaking of 2016 and 2020, I think their polling stories also offer a case for optimism, for the simple reasons that there's far less uncertainty today than there was in 2016, and we're approaching levels of support for Harris that, like in 2020, can't be overcome by undecideds breaking decisively. At her polling peak on October 28, 2016, the day of the Comey Letter, Clinton polled at 46% in the 538 average to Trump's 39.6%, meaning a whopping 17% of voters were third party or undecided. It's a lot easier to climb back into contention when you have that big of a pool to draw on.

Where there's a real case for worry is a universe where undecideds again break decisively for Trump, which is perfectly plausible. In 2020, Biden hovered around 49-50% in the averages basically from April 2020 until the very end, when he got a late boost, with undecideds and third parties hovering around 5-7%. I wish Kamala was already there, too. But this also isn't 2016\. It's harder to make up ground when only 9% of the electorate is undecided or third party, which is historically pretty normal. Even if we assume no third-party voting and a 6-3 break for Trump, it results in a narrow Trump popular vote loss given today's averages. But since RFK dropped out, and especially as pollsters apply likely voter screens, we're seeing more 50%+ polling for Harris, indicating that of that remaining 5% of Kennedy supporters, about 2% were leaning towards her. Accordingly, I bet we'll see Harris take more like 49-44 leads in the averages in the coming weeks, meaning that even to get close enough to win narrowly in the Electoral College (a gap which [appears](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/12/briefing/electoral-college-gop-democrats.html?ref=gabestein.com) significantly smaller this cycle), Trump would have to win nearly all third party voters and undecideds.

All to say, Marshall is right that this will be a slog. And yes, we all need to buckle down and work hard. But I think there's a real case for being a bit more optimistic about where we stand, and operating from a few assumptions about how and why Harris is likely to win this. The great news is that Harris has basically no consolidation to do. The bad news is that Harris still has to convince enough undecided voters to break for her (or stay home) to eliminate the risk of tipping the thing to Trump. So that's her, and our, task: to get out there and do that convincing. Luckily, that task is much, much easier than Clinton's was in 2016, and is approaching Biden's in 2020.
### Congestion Pricing
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/4d70z7af/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:38.000Z
First, I want to thank you for your work this week in clearly spelling out the grave risks of pausing the implementation of congestion pricing. I'm here for those reasons — because I believe in reducing pollution and carbon emissions that threaten our air and planet. Because I believe in reducing traffic that endangers pedestrians and bikers, and slows emergency services and critical deliveries. Because I believe in improving and expanding our great transit system to reclaim its place as the best in the world. Because I don't want to pay higher taxes and higher interest rates just to keep the system functioning.

But I'm here for another reason, too, one that I hope you'll join me in acknowledging as equal to the others. I'm here because what you decide now may well set the precedent for how our state's government treats its citizens for decades to come. This may seem like an odd argument, especially coming from someone who is very definitely not a lawyer. But I object, in the strongest possible terms, to the text of your proposed resolution that - quote - "New York State has subsequently announced a pause to the implementation of the C-B-D-T-P." - end quote.

Again, I'm not a lawyer. But I have taken civics classes. Unless the Governor is now the Queen of New York, she is not the State itself and cannot rule by video decree. A law — passed by our elected legislature, signed by our elected governor, approved by this board and the federal government and recently upheld in federal court — cannot be annulled by a video this Governor posted on YouTube and dared to call the rule of the land.

I understand the difficult position the board finds itself in, given that the Governor appoints its members and can, for now, choose not to take the final steps required for implementation — even though many lawyers believe she does not have the authority. I understand that you must now plan for an uncertain financial future that may not include congestion pricing revenue. I'm standing here today to remind you that you can plan for the future without imbuing the Governor's mere video posts with the full powers of the State.

In fact, your duty, when the law is unclear, is not to mindlessly carry out the orders of the Governor. It is the opposite. Your duty, as spelled out in the 2009 Public Authorities Reform Act, is to serve the MTA's and the public's interest independently of the officials who appoint you. As you have made abundantly clear this week, the Governor's attempt to coerce you into following her ill-advised, potentially illegal, decree is in no way in the interest of the MTA or the public that relies upon it.

If you choose to move forward with this resolution, you will thus be abandoning your legal duty. But you will be doing much worse. You will be affirming that this Governor, and future ones, can continue to rule New York by fiat rather than being beholden to its laws and its citizens. So I urge you, simply, to do your duty. Reject this resolution and with it the very notion that a Governor can act like a despot — and allow our laws, rather than the Governor's digital proclamations, to direct you.
### Retirement
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/qe6fsf98/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:38.000Z
![](https://resize-v3.pubpub.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJhc3NldHMucHVicHViLm9yZyIsImtleSI6InhuYWc1eGU1L1NjcmVlbnNob3QgMjAyNC0wMy0yNiBhdCAyMC4wMy4xNS0yMTcxMTQ5NzgxMzk3NS5wbmciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjgwMCwiZml0IjoiaW5zaWRlIiwid2l0aG91dEVubGFyZ2VtZW50Ijp0cnVlfX19)

In his annual shareholder letter, Larry Fink warned of an upcoming global retirement crisis. The solution? Markets, baby.

Tonight I spent 20 minutes in a chat session trying to convince some poor Amazon contractor living who knows how many thousands of miles away to waive a return so I could avoid driving 50 minutes round trip to a Staples to send back a single-serving cup of Cheerios that had been mistakenly delivered to me instead of a set of art trays.

I hate that Amazon, multiple overworked contractors, and driving are involved in this story. But I don’t know what other choices we have.

By the same logic, Larry Fink is right. If you’re not currently retired or close to it, and you want to retire, chances are you should be investing more money in the market (preferably, I’m sure he would argue, with his company) so you, too, can enjoy the glorious spoils of what we have made of capitalism. What other choices do we have?
### Promises tracker 1
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/4fzcr98c/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:38.000Z
This is gonna be short and sweet, and relies on my ongoing strand of thinking about the [Big Promise](https://www.gabestein.com/big-promise).

Long story short: tech’s decades of failing to fulfill its promise of moonshot societal change is catching up with it. As a result, companies have subtly shifted from promising to fix society with vaporware like self-driving cars and death cures to promising to replace society with vaporware like web3/the multiverse and AGI. It turns out it’s a lot easier to “fix” a reality that you have total control over than it is to make a positive impact on the one we all have to share.

Anyhow, [here’s a tweet](https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/15/24039463/elon-musk-is-uncomfortable-with-the-amount-of-control-elon-musk-has-over-tesla?ref=gabestein.com):

![](https://assets.pubpub.org/uekvrnjp/elon_musk_twitter_ownership-71705434589330.webp)

And the way you should read it is: after failing to deliver on any of his many promises to ship [self-driving cars](https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/23/23837598/tesla-elon-musk-self-driving-false-promises-land-of-the-giants?ref=gabestein.com) or [labor-saving robots](https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/30/23374729/tesla-bot-ai-day-robot-elon-musk-prototype-optimus-humanoid?ref=gabestein.com), Elon is hoping we’re too wowed by the [Big Promise of AI](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/04/elon-musk-robots-will-take-your-jobs-government-will-have-to-pay-your-wage.html?ref=gabestein.com) to notice that none of the smaller ones he’s made have ever been fulfilled.

Are we?
### Subscribe? Or not!
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/bvdmp0k0/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:38.000Z
Hello my 7 to 13 regular readers. Some of you have pointed out that I might have more regular readers were I to offer ways to subscribe to my blog via methods other than when I remember to post it to social media.

I’ve resisted doing it for a long time because, well, I started this thing as a way to organize my thoughts, very loosely following Cory Doctorow’s [memex method](https://doctorow.medium.com/the-memex-method-238c71f2fb46?ref=gabestein.com). Publishing those thoughts, not to mention distributing them, was (and still is) secondary to simply getting them on the virtual page for an audience of one.

But, it is nice getting feedback on those thoughts to help test and shape them, mostly from friends, so, what the heck. I’ve created a very simple email subscription mechanism that simply, and exclusively, checks my RSS feed every day and sends an email if there’s a new post. And that’s it. I’m not checking it, I’m not sending welcome emails or automations or literally anything else. If it breaks you’ll probably have to tell me. Anyhow, if you still want to subscribe, here you go:

### **[You can subscribe here.](https://buttondown.com/gabestein?ref=gabestein.com)**

(Also, I should mention you can also subscribe the old-fashioned way via this RSS feed, filtered to my blog posts: <https://www.gabestein.com/rss.xml?collections=blog>)

I’ll maintain this list as long as it’s under the free number of subscribers. If it gets bigger than that, I dunno, I’ll have to figure something out I guess. I’ll ask you first if anything changes.

Finally, some fine print. Rather than Mailchimp, which is now owned by Intuit, a champion abuser of consumer data, I’m using a company called [~~mailerlite~~](https://mailerlite.com/?ref=gabestein.com) ~~that stores data in the EU and~~ (ed note: I have switched to [buttondown](https://buttondown.com/?ref=gabestein.com), which also) cannot, contractually, use or sell my subscriber data in any way. And of course, neither will I, ever.
### Back on the rails
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/j203in25/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T15:46:29.000Z
Ending the year on a different subject than my last few posts…

Matt Reynolds published a nice article in *Wired UK* [gently rebuking](https://www.wired.com/story/eco-friendly-myth/?ref=gabestein.com) elements of the left for ecological hypocrisy. The article centers on a 2021 poll that found that most people in rich countries think the most meaningful climate actions they can take are actually some of the least impactful. Here’s the author’s conclusion about one reason why that’s the case:

> Part of the problem is that the way we talk about climate action tends to emphasize nature and the nonhuman world. We think of organic produce as the “green” option and cotton tote bags as more “natural” than plastic alternatives—but when we really [look at the numbers](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-environmental-impact?ref=gabestein.com) the benefits are much less clear. A hulking, high-tech nuclear power plant hardly conjures up images of bucolic hills, but nuclear energy is one of the safest and [cleanest ways of producing electricity](https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy?ref=gabestein.com). Jumping on a crowded, dirty underground train might not bring you any closer to nature, but mass transit is one of the greenest ways to travel.

For full disclosure, I came across this article in the Slack of [Open New York](https://www.opennewyork.city/?ref=gabestein.com), a pro-housing organization of which I’m a member. And it especially resonated with me because I’ve spent most of the last year living either out of the country or with my wonderful in-laws[1](#fn-0-bottom) in the beautiful Hudson Valley while waiting out a long renovation to our place in New York City.[2](#fn-1-bottom) I know, poor me.

Most of our upstate family and friends live where they do precisely because they want to be closer to nature and farther away from other people. I feel differently, but I understand and respect their decisions. That said, I have, at times, felt tension when my reactions to more rural ways of life run against the prevailing wisdom of what Reynolds terms “vibes-based environmentalism.”

For example, one of the nicest new features of the area is the proliferation of “rail trails,” abandoned train lines that have been converted into forested walking and cycling paths. While I enjoy using them as much as the next person, I can’t help but feel a little sad, knowing what could have been, every time I set foot on one. When I point out that you must drive to walk or bike on most rail trails, I’m often met with blank stares that ask “how else would you get there?”

Personally, I’ve come to think of this “vibes-based” approach to naturalism as a sort of environmental [LARPing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live%5Faction%5Frole-playing%5Fgame?ref=gabestein.com). It’s fun (and [good for you](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/spending-time-in-nature-is-good-for-you-new-research-explains-why?ref=gabestein.com)!) to go play in greener spaces, but we shouldn’t pretend that trails people like so much precisely because they were engineered to be wide, flat, and gently curving are particularly natural, and we especially shouldn’t pretend that having a new place to walk is better for the environment than being able to get around by train. To be fair, I don’t think most people would make that argument – but I do suspect the majority of folks mostly understand developments like rail trails as improvements without considering the opportunity costs. The same faulty logic and lack of imagination is how environmentalists find themselves opposing projects like [wind farms](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/17/anti-wind-farm-whale-defenders-fossil-fuel-industry?ref=gabestein.com) and increased [urban density](https://mndaily.com/278673/news/minneapolis-nixed-2040-plan-leaves-housing-in-question/?ref=gabestein.com) — often [with the help](https://theintercept.com/2021/12/08/oil-industry-wind-farm-prevent/?ref=gabestein.com) of oil companies and conservatives

This collective failure of imagination is a major obstacle for the modern green movement. Rather than embracing research and pragmatism, many environmentalists seem to be stuck playing the same old conservationist hits that Reynolds critiques in his article. Unable to fully come to terms with the scale of adaptation that will be required to live well in the [anthropocene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene?ref=gabestein.com), many are instead choosing to deny that it exists.

To take just one example, as the *Wired* piece documents, and recent research [has shown](https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-the-worst-for-carbon-emissions-new-research-149332?ref=gabestein.com), rural and suburban living produce significantly more emissions than urban living on a per-capita basis, for precisely the reasons many people prefer to live outside of cities: residents of bigger houses on larger plots of land use more energy in the form of HVAC and transportation than those of denser dwellings, a gap which [appears](https://gizmodo.com/is-it-more-sustainable-to-live-off-the-land-or-in-the-c-1847813703?ref=gabestein.com) to be growing as cities electrify. The problem doesn’t end with emissions. Even when we fully decarbonize, the idea that most human beings should live “close to nature” will still be inherently contradictory, and an ecological disaster when considered on a planetary scale. Today’s cities, which [house over 50%](https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/urbandevelopment/overview?ref=gabestein.com) of the world’s population, take up [just 3%](https://wad.jrc.ec.europa.eu/urbanplanet?ref=gabestein.com) of the world’s land mass. If you truly want to preserve natural spaces, spreading out humanity’s inevitable impact instead of concentrating it is exactly the wrong approach to take. And yet, time and time again, all across the country, left-leaning groups have used environmental arguments to [vociferously oppose](https://www.planetizen.com/blogs/126529-magical-thinking-and-nimbyism?ref=gabestein.com) the very development required to support denser communities.

At this point, you might expect me to argue that everyone — or at the very least, all my friends and family — just needs to get over themselves and move to New York. But I don’t think that’s an effective argument, even if it is the greatest city in the world. I meant it when I said that I genuinely respect people’s choices to live differently than I prefer to.

In reality, the main environmental problem we face is no more rural living than it is urban living. As I wrote above, I believe the problem is truly society’s collective failure to imagine healthy, efficient, and pleasant ways we might want to live in all kinds of different environments. The more I’ve dug into the politics and history of housing, the more I’ve begun to suspect that this failure is a feature of the way modern society is structured.

After World War II, America radically redesigned its residential development pattern to [prioritize automobile access](https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/national-interstate-and-defense-highways-act?ref=gabestein.com). Although this change was sold to the American public as post-war industrial progress, as Strong Towns, an urban planning advocacy and consultancy, has [documented](https://www.strongtowns.org/curbside-chat-1/2015/12/14/americas-suburban-experiment?ref=gabestein.com), it was in fact an unprecedented experiment that upended thousands of years of collective human urban planning wisdom to serve automobile sales rather than human needs. The result is the ubiquitous modern suburb, with its ghastly environmental and health [consequences](https://qz.com/698928/why-suburbia-sucks?ref=gabestein.com).

Why can’t we imagine alternatives? Well, as Strong Towns notes, now in its third generation, the suburban pattern is the only one most of us have ever known. But I think there’s something else going on, too.

As I’ve [written about](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/wefftx5d/release/5) before, French philosopher André Gorz argued in a [1973 essay](https://unevenearth.org/2018/08/the-social-ideology-of-the-motorcar/?ref=gabestein.com) that cars are self-perpetuating. They make themselves inevitable by forcing us to build our environments to accommodate them, which results in noisy, smog-filled, slow-moving concrete hellscapes we can’t wait to escape by the only means possible: hopping into our cars and driving to rail trails. As a result, in most of the country, the car is the only mobility choice anyone has anymore. In this way, they’re perfect avatars for the ideology they rode in on. To remix the well worn phrase [made popular](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist%5FRealism?ref=gabestein.com) by philosopher Mark Fisher: it’s as impossible to imagine life without cars as it is life without capitalism.

Car culture mirrors broader society in another important way, too. In the same way we can’t imagine a future without cars, in the same way environmentalists can’t imagine futures where we adapt to the anthropocene, you’ve probably noticed that mass media is having trouble imaging new futures, too. Music, movies, television, novels, etc. all seem to be stuck in an endless cycle of retreads, reboots, and sequels of past genres, stories, and franchises — most of which either romanticize the past or describe dystopian futures.

Futurist Jay Springett, a leading voice of solarpunk, [one of my favorite](https://www.gabestein.com/collection/solarpunk) social movements, gave what I think is the best explanation for this phenomenon in a brilliant [2019 speech](https://www.thejaymo.net/long-form/solarpunk-rusted-chrome?ref=gabestein.com). He argued that the internet, which gave everyone the ability to create and access unlimited amounts of content from any era, paradoxically lead to an excess of creativity that destabilized our shared cultural grammar. Because everyone can now find exactly what they want on the internet, new ideas struggle to find an audience beyond the small niches of people who specifically seek them out. As a result, the only way for mass media companies to make a profit is by rehashing the shared popular culture that came before the web, so nothing truly new is elevated to mass popularity. And the vicious cycle continues.

Although the internet and post-war development patterns are two very different phenomena, I’ve come to believe the cause of both our cultural and built environment paralysis is very much the same. Like the internet did to our shared cultural grammar, the suburban pattern significantly destabilized our shared geo-social grammar. Whereas pre-automobile development patterns meant most people, even in more rural areas, [interacted with neighbors consistently](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448008/?ref=gabestein.com), today, because our houses are spread out and set back, and because we travel to and from them almost exclusively by car, we largely go about life without ever [directly interacting](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/20/the-negative-consequences-of-car-dependency?ref=gabestein.com) with the people who live closest to us. In addition to being profoundly isolating, this lack of common interaction patterns between neighbors — no matter how well you might know them individually — makes imagining different ways of living with them impossibly frightening. Without our fenced-in fortress-houses and imposing tank-cars, we feel dangerously exposed to the strangers living all around us. Perhaps that’s one reason why Americans are increasingly [geographically sorting](https://www.npr.org/2022/02/18/1081295373/the-big-sort-americans-move-to-areas-political-alignment?ref=gabestein.com) by political alignment.

Given the self-perpetuating hostility we’ve built into our everyday living environments, it’s no wonder that environmentalists have become reactionaries, embracing a false dichotomy of nature as good and development as bad. If the best we can do is suburbanization, which we’re increasingly [inflicting on our cities](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-11/cities-and-suburbs-are-becoming-pretty-similar?ref=gabestein.com), too, it’s logical to want to resist any attempt to build more of it.

So how do we move beyond this rut in the road? Simple: we imagine our way out together. That may seem glib, but when you [consider the impact](https://papers.cumincad.org/data/works/att/acadia09%5F32.content.pdf?ref=gabestein.com) science fiction has long had on science and culture, it seems natural that the cure for our ills is a better imagination.

This prescription is the purpose of the solarpunk movement Springett describes in the second half of his talk. Solarpunk is essentially a new speculative fiction genre that asks us to imagine what enjoyable life looks like in a climate-adapted present and future, rather than assuming our only options are the post-apocalyptic dystopia offered by mass media franchises or the preservation of a human-free state of nature that doesn’t really exist that many environmentalists advocate for. Although I suspect they wouldn’t consider themselves entirely ideologically aligned with solarpunk, Strong Towns takes a similar approach by focusing on bringing neighbors together to imagine the achievable steps they could take to improve daily life in their towns, and then organizing to implement those improvements.

Though solarpunk is relatively young and only loosely defined, fascinating ideas about how we could live are already beginning to emerge. One of my favorite examples to date is Becky Chambers’ [*Monk and Robot*](https://us.macmillan.com/series/monkrobot?ref=gabestein.com) series. In the first two novellas, Chambers describes a world of rich city, suburban, and rural life only slightly more technologically advanced than our own where humans have learned to live comfortably alongside nature by making one huge concession: they’ve deliberately concentrated human development to just a portion of their planet, leaving the rest untouched to be rewilded. The implications of this decision that Chambers explores are fascinating, and many — like the disappearance of entire species from the human parts of the world — would probably appall modern environmentalists. Which is exactly the point of solarpunk: to engage with the reality of the choices we face. As Springett said in a 2021 *Motherboard* [article](https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx5aym/solarpunk-is-not-about-pretty-aesthetics-its-about-the-end-of-capitalism?ref=gabestein.com), “you can't LARP Solarpunk because LARPing Solarpunk is going out and planting a garden.”

In the comment thread that followed the recent *Wired* article being posted in the Open New York Slack, one member argued that replacing conventional lightbulbs with LEDs is a winning strategy despite its low impact because it requires no personal sacrifice and has no downside. Although I agree with this assessment on its merits, it’s symptomatic of just how trapped we are in a dysfunctional present, facing only dystopian futures, that it’s so difficult to let ourselves imagine ways of living that might make people not just willing, but eager, to make substantive changes to their lives to save the planet and themselves. The future has become another suburb: we’ll all inevitably move there because it’s the only real option we have, telling ourselves we like it for its convenience even as it slowly kills us.

Now we are the conservationist, debating which marginal improvements are the best strategies to preserve a present that doesn’t really exist, and that nobody really likes, while denying the true scale of action required to adapt to the future. We can keep pretending that preservation is effective, or we can, to borrow yet another idea from Springett’s talk, rewild our future by giving ourselves permission to imagine better towns, better cities, better environmental movements — better ways of living that actually induce people to want to make the changes needed to grapple with the problems we face.

I lied when I wrote that I enjoy rail trails. Every time I walk on one I grieve for the present we could have built where quaint walkable towns are still connected by trains. And then I imagine what would happen if we re-connected all the trails, and added covering, and lights, and dedicated lanes for e-bikes — and, heck, why not as long as we’re dreaming, solar powered bunny-slope-esque pulley systems that could clip onto bikes or wheelchairs or wagons and pull them from town to town, and the conversations you’d have at all the cafes that would spring up at the exits, and the demand for car-less access from trails to town centers that would follow — and as I walk, I start planning for the future that’s still possible.

### Footnotes

1. Not a joke, I won the in-law lottery. [↵](#fn-0-inline)
2. These changes are also why I haven’t blogged as much of late. [↵](#fn-1-inline)
### Shock and awe
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/04ex75f4/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T15:46:04.000Z
This week, news [broke](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-22/openai-in-talks-to-raise-new-funding-at-100-billion-valuation?ref=gabestein.com) that OpenAI, waltzing right on past last month’s global melodrama that was the unexpected firing and rehiring CEO Sam Altman, is looking to raise additional funding at a $100 billion valuation, or roughly 100 times annual recurring revenue. That earnings-to-valuation multiple isn’t [unprecedented](https://tomtunguz.com/100x-arr/?ref=gabestein.com) for high-growth SaaS startups, but it’s at the high end of the curve, especially in 2023’s challenging market, and for a startup with [atypically large](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chatgpt-cost-bomb-openais-losses-125101043.html?ref=gabestein.com) (and fixed) operating expenses that almost collapsed last month.

As my seven regular readers will know, I’ve spent the [last](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/j3bf68yi/release/5) [few](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/zkme9ef3/release/9) [sporadic](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/740fy9c3/release/7) posts arguing that AI is not nearly as valuable as we are being lead to believe while positing that the real risk of AI is how its proponents will use our perception of it to remake society for their own purposes.

Last week, Dan McQuillan, lecturer in Creative & Social Computing at UCL Goldsmiths and author of [*Resisting AI*](https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/resisting-ai?ref=gabestein.com), wrote a much more eloquent [version](https://danmcquillan.org/ai%5Fthatcherism.html?ref=gabestein.com) of the argument. It’s worth reading in its entirety, but here’s the key bit:

> The real issue is not only that AI doesn't work as advertised, but the impact it will have before this becomes painfully obvious to everyone. AI is being used as form of ['shock doctrine'](https://danmcquillan.org/house%5Fof%5Flords.html?ref=gabestein.com), where the sense of urgency generated by an allegedly world-transforming technology is used as an opportunity to transform social systems without democratic debate.

“Shock doctrine” refers to activist Naomi Klein’s 2007 [book](https://tsd.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine.html?ref=gabestein.com) that argued that crises such as the Iraq War have been used, or sometimes even deliberately incited, to quickly advance unpopular policies without democratic resistance. McQuillan’s extension of the concept to the tech industry’s obsession with AI feels apt. Just as [false “intelligence”](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jul/09/usa.iraq2?ref=gabestein.com) during the buildup to the Iraq War was used to curtail civil liberties indefinitely at home and declare permanent war abroad, mere predictions of AI’s potential — made by the very people who stand to benefit the most from inflated perceptions of the technology — are being used to justify a [furious torrent](https://sciencebusiness.net/news/ai/what-weeks-flurry-ai-policymaking-means-researchers?ref=gabestein.com) of AI policymaking across the globe.

I would argue that Klein’s concept further explains why what I’ve been calling the “Big Promise” — the shift from big tech promising to fix society to big tech promising to replace society — has become necessary. After big tech’s decades of failures to meaningfully fulfill its already audacious promises, society now requires a much bigger shock to compel it to act. Hence, as McQuillan and [others](https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjvppm/the-open-letter-to-stop-dangerous-ai-race-is-a-huge-mess?ref=gabestein.com) have pointed out, the industry’s constant scaremongering about the hypothetical utopian/apocalyptic potential of AI superimposed with the big tech’s near-total lack of concern for AI’s [already extant harms](https://thesociologicalreview.org/magazine/june-2023/artificial-intelligence/predicted-benefits-proven-harms/?ref=gabestein.com).

As McQuillan notes, though they wrap their work in protectionist language, in practice many policymakers seem all too keen to play along by selling so-called “responsible” AI to the public as a way to revitalize broken civil society, as if sagging bridges can be repaired by throwing computation at them:

> The [Prime Minister says](https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1668170539968475136?ref=gabestein.com) he will "harness the incredible potential of AI to transform our hospitals and schools" while ignoring [leaking roofs in the NHS ](https://twitter.com/RobJimFleming/status/1718598332136706446?ref=gabestein.com)and the literally [collapsing ceilings](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/aug/30/dfe-urges-schools-make-contingency-plans-crumbling-concrete?ref=gabestein.com) in local schools. This focus on the immaterial fantasies of AI is a deliberate diversion.

So far, the US’s regulatory response has been much [better received](https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/31/1082723/the-download-biden-executive-order-and-calling-out-ai-harms/?ref=gabestein.com) by tech activists than the UK’s. But McQuillan’s observation that the UK government is using the unfulfilled promise of digital technology to shirk responsibilities in the physical world is fascinating because it contains shades of what I [wrote about](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/g2l5vtiq/release/7) two years ago in reference to web3:

> …the point of web3 isn’t to interact or reach parity with the physical world, it’s to create a new one where only actions and items that can exist on the blockchain are valuable.

AI is not crypto in that it has proven value in areas like drug discovery and climate modeling. But so far, the main impact of the mainstreamification of AI via large language models has been to [justify layoffs](https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/18/register%5Fkettle%5Fai/?ref=gabestein.com) and to further concentrate power in big tech companies. McQuillan calls this phenomenon “algorithmic Thatcherism”

> Real AI isn't sci-fi but the precaritisation of jobs, the continued privatisation of everything and the erasure of actual social relations.

Remember how web3/the metaverse promised to [trap us all](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/ivrsydjp/release/15) in the gig economy, privatize currency itself, and, as I mentioned above, flatten human relationships into events that can be represented on the blockchain? So far, the AI hype wave is leading us down almost exactly the same path,[1](#fn-0-bottom) just much more effectively.

The only question that remains is how far down it we’ll follow.

### Footnotes

1. As Charles Stross [has pointed out](https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/02/place-your-bets.html?ref=gabestein.com), conveniently powered by the exact same chipsets…make of that what you will. [↵](#fn-0-inline)
### 50K
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/vbbpc8xf/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:36.000Z
I’ll just get it out of the way: I “won” [NaNoWriMo](https://nanowrimo.org/?ref=gabestein.com) last month by writing 50,000[1](#fn-0-bottom) words in 30 days. They aren’t, I don’t think, particularly good words. But they are words, and they are my words, and they are my words in some kind of logical order that forms some sort of story. So that’s nice.

Credit where due: my wife, who also won, is the reason I finished at all. She much better than me at setting reasonable goals and holding herself (and others) accountable for them. Ask me about the *Power Broker* book club she ran.

So, that’s why I haven’t been very active here, because I was busy doing that. Now that it’s over (ish, I should probably be revising right now), I have a few reflections. The first of which is: holy crap, how does anyone manage to write a good novel?

### Footnotes

…133! [↵](#fn-0-inline)
### The Big Promise, revisited
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/740fy9c3/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T15:37:08.000Z
Several months ago[1](#fn-0-bottom), I wrote about what I cheekily called “[the Big Promise](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/zkme9ef3/release/9),” how the tech industry is shifting from justifying its enormous valuations with society-changing technologies that never seem to pan out (AI assistance, self-driving cars, death cures, etc.) to justifying its enormous valuations on new technologies that can replace society entirely (AI overlords, the metaverse, web3, etc.). I also [pondered](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/j3bf68yi/release/5) whether Neil Postman’s 1990 declaration on the fundamental uselessness of computers still holds up in the LLM era, or whether the latest AI boom will finally give computers agency to do something of value without human intervention. In recent weeks, the two thoughts have been interacting in interesting ways.

For example, here’s a new Bloomberg story about [Presto, a fast food ordering “AI” company](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-07/ai-fast-food-drive-thrus-need-human-workers-70-of-time?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTcwMTk1ODgwMCwiZXhwIjoxNzAyNTYzNjAwLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTNDhBUTBUMEcxS1cwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJBMzBCM0NBRkNCNzY0NzBCQkNERDE0RENDQ0NGRERDQyJ9.9VN%5FizK%5FhMe5j3PkDez6lv1Fuf2C1sRwrWZhS72iprk&ref=gabestein.com), getting in trouble for revealing that, in fact, humans mostly or partially handle up to 70% of its orders:

> Presto has said those off-site workers are an added expense that will keep rising as it expands to more locations. Still, the company, which has posted operating losses since going public last September, expects the need for humans to ease as its system gets smarter. OpenAI might help it get there, with Presto saying its development platform will improve its drive-thru chatbot on several fronts, including sounding more natural.

Yup, Postman still looks pretty good. But the Presto story, and others like it, is also a sign that society is catching on to the absurdity of tech’s habit of justifying its value on the promise of future advancements. It’s no different from how Uber, for example, burned billions of dollars on the promise that it would become profitable by investing in driverless cars, before [potentially achieving profitatibility](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/02/business/uber-earnings-revenue.html?ref=gabestein.com) in reality by cutting costs and diversifying — but not before [clogging city streets](https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/uber-lyft-traffic-congestion-car-ownership-study/?ref=gabestein.com) worldwide and [lobbying](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-public-transit.html?ref=gabestein.com) to stop public transit projects across America. This time, regulators and investors caught on a little bit earlier.

Yes, I’m nit-picking from one example, and yes, there are certainly valuable uses of LLMs arising. The question I’m asking is: how valuable are they, really?

So far, about as valuable as Postman might have predicted: marginally, and with significant tradeoffs. Even the [most optimistic studies](https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/11/02/new-study-validates-the-business-value-and-opportunity-of-ai/?ref=gabestein.com) commissioned by the companies with the most to gain from LLMs, like Microsoft, are finding that their value comes mostly from gains in worker efficiency. Efficiency gains are certainly valuable, and they’ll likely increase from the 18% figure cited in the study over time. But efficiency gains are not the kind of world-changing intervention that justifies an [$80 billion valuation](https://news.crunchbase.com/ai/openai-unicorn-valuation-china-zhipu-thrive/?ref=gabestein.com) on [$1b of total revenue](https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-track-generate-more-than-1-bln-revenue-over-12-months-information-2023-08-29/?ref=gabestein.com) (and “unknown,” read, negative net revenue).

To justify that kind of money in today’s high-interest rate environment, after decades of companies burning investors with the promise of exponential leaps just around the corner, you need a better business plan than “don’t worry, we’ll R&D our way to profitability once we’ve captured the market.” You need a Big Promise, like, I dunno, that you’re [creating an AI overlord](https://openai.com/blog/planning-for-agi-and-beyond?ref=gabestein.com) that will eventually solve all of our problems for us. And then, to keep those investors on the hook when your actual product releases [prove disappointing at scale](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/chatgpt-response-quality-decline?ref=gabestein.com), you need to make sure that everyone always believes you’re just a few steps away from that Big Promise, preferably by generating a series of irresistibly juicy stories that lead to international headlines.

Ahem.

Two weeks ago, just after Sam Altman was reinstated as OpenAI CEO after being unexpectedly fired by its board, an event that prompted a global media circus, [The Information](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-made-an-ai-breakthrough-before-altman-firing-stoking-excitement-and-concern?ref=gabestein.com) and [Reuters reported](https://www.reuters.com/technology/sam-altmans-ouster-openai-was-precipitated-by-letter-board-about-ai-breakthrough-2023-11-22/?ref=gabestein.com) that his ouster was due, in part, to warnings from employees about the dangers of a new breakthrough from the company, enigmatically named Q\*. Sources have [since denied](https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/22/23973354/a-recent-openai-breakthrough-on-the-path-to-agi-has-caused-a-stir?ref=gabestein.com) that the board was even aware of Q\* when it fired Altman, but that hasn’t stopped the rumor mill from concocting [wild theories](https://www.fastcompany.com/90989422/openai-q-mysterious-ai-system?ref=gabestein.com) about what [looks likely to be](https://www.understandingai.org/p/how-to-think-about-the-openai-q-rumors?ref=gabestein.com) a modest advance based on work that Google has already published.

I understand that these hype cycles are just the way business works in 2023\. Eventually, the true value of these technologies will be realized, winners and losers declared, and we’ll move on to the next Big Promise. So why pay so much attention?

The danger of the Big Promise isn’t the money and time wasted. It’s that in an era of [increasingly dysfunctional](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2025764118?ref=gabestein.com) global information networks and regulatory regimes, extremists are learning to weaponize the combination of social networks, techno-utopianism and political polarization to influence public opinion and policy at scale.

Again, Postman [had the answer](https://web.williams.edu/HistSci/curriculum/101/informing.html?ref=gabestein.com) all along: “In a world populated by people who believe that through more and more information, paradise is attainable, the computer scientist is king.”

In July, *The New Republic* [published](https://newrepublic.com/article/174089/big-tech-watching-drive?ref=gabestein.com) a fascinating article making the case that at some point, tech’s bold promises to build self-driving cars and next-generation mass transit like the Hyperloop transformed from sincere R&D efforts to cynical strategies to convince policymakers and the public to forestall conventional government action to build public transportation — all while those same companies began to profit not by delivering on their promises, but by ladening car-buyers with subscription-based add-on services and even mining the data that modern, ultra-connected automobiles generate. Learning from those successes, folks like Elon Musk and the Koch brothers are now actively pursuing this strategy of using tech hype to deter much-needed government action in other realms, as well.

The Presto story contains a glimmer of hope: we finally seem to be developing a societal BS detector for those types of promises. As big tech escalates from society-changing to society-replacing promises, however, the stakes are becoming much higher, and it’s important that we don’t repeat the same mistakes. Given the attention our policymakers are [already paying](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/06/technology/artificial-intelligence-regulation.html?ref=gabestein.com) to AI, and how much of society its promoters promise it will impact, we should be just as cautious about how the powerful might manipulate our dreams and fears about AI to serve their ends as the technology itself.

### Footnotes

1. Sorry, non-existent readers. I’ve been out of the country and quite busy with work and personal since then, hence the lack of new posts. [↵](#fn-0-inline)
### Culture Cure
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/xi9pp0v4/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:38.000Z
I'm gonna do an out-of-character experiment and post a really bold ask on a social network: does anyone want to hire me to, for lack of a better word, organize their company culture?

No, I'm not leaving my awesome job — in fact, I'll be hiring soon for a few roles I'm excited to share. But we work 4-day workweeks, and I'd like to try spending a few of those extra days doing more of what I love: helping people build sustainable, healthy, ultra-productive work environments rooted in a sense of shared purpose and strong core values. (Also, transparently, it’ll help me with my job to get a little extra practice).

What I have in mind is pretty simple. Over a few sessions, I'll work with you to do what I've done at several different companies: produce a handbook that includes a mission, values, goals framework, decision-making framework, communication framework, productivity tool suite, meetings framework, management and performance expectations, hiring and promotion policies, structural justice policies, benefits and leave policies, code of conduct, employee satisfaction surveys, and more, all rooted in the purpose of the work you're doing and the values of the team you're building. Then, every few months, I’ll check in with you to see how it’s going and recommend adjustments based on what you learn. Here’s our constantly-updated [Handbook](https://notes.knowledgefutures.org/pub/cqih29xa/release/24?ref=gabestein.com) at Knowledge Futures, as an example.

Of course, the product of this work won’t actually be the handbook (although it is really important to have). The product is the process of making the key decisions about why and how you're going to work and aligning your company around those decisions. Too often, I've seen companies — even large, successful ones — never do this work, merely gesture at it, or, worst of all, copy and paste it from elsewhere. The result is something we've all experienced in our careers: drag. Disengaged employees, ineffective meetings, awkward conversations, difficulty hiring, and vibes that just aren't right — the conditions that stop even very promising companies from executing.

In the past, companies could still succeed by using cheap money to paper over these problems. They could always raise funds to hire more people, train managers to be pseudo-therapists, implement expensive productivity tools, throw perks at employees, bring in consultants to fill in the gaps, HAPPY HOUR!!!, etc. Now that the money spigot is running low, though, I'm having a lot of conversations with folks who are acknowledging that without those crutches, they don't have a productive culture to fall back on, and they're struggling more than they thought they would to make the new math work.

Even several of the FAANGS, or whatever we're calling them now, are realizing that their vaunted culture wasn't actually deeply effective. In reality, they just had high enough margins to support an endless stream of hiring, perks, and PR. And those companies are still making enormous margins. For everyone else to survive in the new environment, they're going to need to focus on building much more productive workplaces.

Transparently, no series of sessions, no handbook, no matter how great, is going to solve all of those problems for you. The key people at your company have to want to do the work to begin with, and they have to be willing to return to it over and over, because it’s not something you can set and forget. And I'd be lying if I told you that any culture I've helped build is perfect — some have been exceptional, some just okay. What I can tell you is that, in my experience, getting the key people at your company to make decisions about why and how you want to work, and committing to those decisions by writing them down and making them official policy, sets in motion a process that leads to less drag and more productivity.

Why? For most companies, simply because the answers to the basic questions every employee has about why they're showing up to work every day and how they’re expected to get things done aren't ambiguous anymore. Your people can stop awkwardly guessing what to do, stop worrying about whether they made the right call, and focus more on their actual work.

That's the baseline, and it's incredibly valuable. But when companies fully invest in effective culture, what happens is even more extraordinary. Suddenly, culture itself becomes a self-perpetuating efficiency engine. Employees start aligning their daily work against the company's mission, values, and goals. They learn to leave behind the noise and focus on what really matters. And, if you really succeed, they start feeling empowered to tell you what they need to be most effective, and even what they should be working on.

To a lot of leaders, including me at times, that kind of employee empowerment can feel like entitlement. This feeling comes from our experience at companies with lackluster cultures. At those companies, culture is a self-perpetuating efficiency-deflating machine. The rare employees who are willing to take risks and speak up are more likely to fail to understand what they truly need, because they have nothing guiding them. They just know something’s wrong and are brave enough to do something about it. And those are your most valuable employees! Everyone else is too afraid to do anything but plod along. Worse still, because there’s no written decision-making framework, and no actually practiced values to fall back on, leaders at these companies have no way to respond to those employees in productive ways. All they can do is ignore them, dismiss them, or send them to HR.

In companies with strong cultures, employees have a clear understanding of what their needs are, and know how and when to speak up when those needs aren’t being met. Leaders have clear methods of productively responding to employee ideas and requests, especially when they disagree.

Of course, for any of this to work, the company’s decisions have to be, well, good. Grounded in research, humanity, common sense, and the needs of the business. And that's why I'm here. I can help guide you and speed up the process because I've done it several times. I've done all the research, made all the mistakes in real life, and know what's important and what's not.

Okay, so that’s basically what I want to do, and why. In truth, I really don’t know if this is something people want. Also, I want to acknowledge that I’ve seen a lot of companies do this way better than me, and more still that do a lot of these things right but haven’t quite figured out how to tie it all together. If you’ve done a lot of this work already, but you’re still feeling a little drag, that’s fine, too. We can build on what you’ve already built.

All that said, I really only have time for one company right now, and I also know my sweet spot to test this out, which is going to be a hybrid or remote company, between 5-50 employees, probably in tech, media, or e-commerce. I’ve done venture-funded, bootstrapped, and non-profit.

Oh, but one thing you should know: I’m going to charge you less than what I think it’s worth, but more than what you’re probably comfortable with. Of course, if you’re not satisfied, I’ll make it right. But I’m pretty confident it’s going to pay for itself almost immediately. How? I’m glad you asked:

- You’ll cut hours of weekly meetings that you thought were absolutely necessary but that you were actually using to continually re-align your leadership and employees against your unspoken mission/values/goals in the least efficient way possible. This alone will likely pay for our work together several times over in like a month.
- As a result, you’ll stop paying for useless “productivity” tools that you only needed because you were spending too much time in meetings. This alone will likely pay for our work together several times over in a year or two.
- Your employees will stop spending hours every week asking themselves and their managers whether they should be doing things and spend that time focusing on their most important work instead.
- As a result, your leaders will stop spending most of their spending time managing “crises” that are actually caused by a lack of policy and start spending most of their time meeting their goals.
- You’ll spend much less time recruiting because candidates will read your handbook like the breath of fresh air that it is and desperately want to work for you.
- As a result, honestly, you’ll spend much more time wading through way more candidates for every job — but because you have an actual hiring policy and process rooted in your values, you’ll hire much more effective people who will stay around longer.
- You’ll spend much less time onboarding new hires because they’ll already have more or less memorized your handbook.
- There’s no “as a result” to this, it’s just really awesome to speed up what is often a really awkward and tedious process.
- If you’re really dedicated, and a bit lucky, your employees will literally start telling you how they should and shouldn’t be working and what they should and shouldn’t be working on — and be right. If you listen to them, and you keep coming back to this work and implementing improvements, your culture will start to become a productivity-enhancing flywheel for your company.

Or at least, those have been the results for us at Knowledge Futures and other places I’ve worked. And I want to see if I can do the same for you.

So anyhow, if you think this is ridiculous, feel free to leave a sarcastic comment. Otherwise, if you’re interested or have questions, comment, DM or email me (gs at gabestein dot com) and let’s chat!
### The Big Promise
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/zkme9ef3/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T23:15:43.000Z
Is it possible the latest artificial intelligence hype cycle is just another scam? Sci-fi author Charles Stross, someone who’s thought deeply and written at length about artificial intelligence, [certainly seems](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/02/place-your-bets.html?ref=gabestein.com) to think so:

> The thing I find most suspicious/fishy/smelly about the current hype surrounding Stable Diffusion, ChatGPT, and other AI applications is that it is almost exactly six months since the bottom dropped out of the cryptocurrency scam bubble.

Suspicious, indeed. I’ll take it one step further. What if this AI cycle, in particular the artificial general intelligence (AGI) discourse/panic kicked off by Sam Altman’s latest [pronouncement](https://openai.com/blog/planning-for-agi-and-beyond?ref=gabestein.com), is a signal we’re entering a new, more dangerous era of tech hype? Whereas past tech promises at least attempted to apply technology to societal problems, AGI, like crypto/the metaverse before it, are doing something else: promising to side-step society entirely.

Until I come up with a better term, I’m calling this escalation the Big Promise. As I [discussed](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/j3bf68yi/release/4) a few weeks ago, information technology companies have always made grandiose claims about what their technology will eventually accomplish as a way of justifying their stratospheric valuations and powerful positions in society, and distracting employees from the fact that they’re mostly in the business of selling gizmos and ads. But in past hype eras, these failed promises — [self-driving cars](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-06/even-after-100-billion-self-driving-cars-are-going-nowhere?ref=gabestein.com), [AI assistants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI%5Fwinter?ref=gabestein.com), [autonomous robots](https://venturebeat.com/ai/is-boston-dynamics-becoming-boring-robotics-company/?ref=gabestein.com), [universal global internet](https://www.makeuseof.com/why-did-google-project-loon-fail/?ref=gabestein.com), [solving death](https://www.businessinsider.com/calico-life-sciences-founder-disappointed-with-progress-2020-5?ref=gabestein.com), etc. — were at least relatively focused on solving specific societal problems.

As most of those smaller promises continue to sputter, tech is now facing a problem it has never really encountered before. Unlike during the dot-com bubble, tech has now come to dominate the global economy. [Seven out of the 10 most valuable companies](https://www.investopedia.com/biggest-companies-in-the-world-by-market-cap-5212784?ref=gabestein.com) are tech firms. In 1999, [that number](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1261140/biggest-companies-in-the-world-by-market-cap-1999/?ref=gabestein.com) was 3-4, depending on if you count Nokia as telephony or tech. The economic stakes are much higher today.

The stakes for societal backlash are much higher, too. Yes, companies in the dot-com era made lots of crazy promises, but because the information technology revolution was still in its infancy — less than half of American households [owned a computer, and just a quarter had an internet connection](https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=119358&page=1&ref=gabestein.com) in 1999 — far fewer people knew about those promises, much less believed that any of them would come true. Today, [near-universal internet penetration](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/?ref=gabestein.com) is creating an accelerating, society-wide [tech backlash](https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/9/17/20869495/tech-backlash-nyt-rob-walker-antitrust-privacy?ref=gabestein.com) just as investment is beginning to dry up due to the global economy facing its first high-interest environment in a generation. In other words, the conditions are set for something of a big tech calamity. If the majority of society ever stops believing that tech can eventually solve all its problems, which is now on the table, those sky-high valuations will drop precipitously and a lot of people — in and out of tech — will lose a lot of money and jobs with no VC dollars available to act as a safety net.

So how do you keep the dream alive and the dollars flowing even now, after decades of failure to live up to your promises? Easy. You pretend the problem isn’t technology, but society itself. And you escalate the promise from fixing society’s problems by replacing humans with computers to replacing society itself. With, you guessed it, computers.

Crypto/web3/the metaverse is a perfect example of the Big Promise. Though very nebulously defined, the concept is essentially a technology stack for allowing the powerful to create their own [bubbles of neoliberalism](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/g2l5vtiq/release/7) to play in, free of the physical world and its annoying existential threats, politics, people we don’t like, and regulated fiat currencies. Its proponents [literally argue](https://gaby.mirror.xyz/zqchiBQhWWS49gaabLU92-BUUwfBL5aHCtNT88VTI8o?ref=gabestein.com) that we should build new societies where only events that can be expressed on the blockchain are valuable. No need for self-driving cars if you can afford the gas fees to teleport to our friend’s virtual party, I guess.

Luckily, just as that fabulous idea started to run out of expensive pixelated steam, another one rose to take its place. Like the blockchain before it, ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, and so on are interesting technologies that will probably prove useful for something, eventually? But, as investor William Eden [argues](https://twitter.com/WilliamAEden/status/1630690021358596096?ref=gabestein.com), if you look beyond today’s demos, you’ll realize that they’re both much more expensive than traditional approaches to information retrieval/creation and also not very reliable. As a result, they can’t actually function in environments where the stakes, and thus the value, are high. So they need the Big Promise to justify all the money being poured into them.

Enter Artificial General Intelligence. Like web3/the metaverse before it, AGI is another fuzzy concept that can mean just about anything you want it to, but is generally understood to mean building a world-saving/destroying superintelligence that runs everything for us. Or, as Altman puts it: “If AGI is successfully created, this technology could help us elevate humanity by increasing abundance, turbocharging the global economy, and aiding in the discovery of new scientific knowledge that changes the limits of possibility.”

In other words, society has failed to solve its own problems, so give us enough money and power and eventually we’ll create a giant brain that will figure it all out for us. I know that sounds a little glib, but that really is the core promise. Here’s Deep Mind, Alphabet’s AI company, on AGI and climate change:

> Advances in AGI research will supercharge society’s ability to tackle and manage climate change - not least because of its urgency but also due to its complex and multifaceted nature.

Big if true, and to be fair, AI has helped scientists better model weather patterns and changes and we should probably keep working on that. But it’s also true that we [already have](https://www.protocol.com/climate/ipcc-renewable-technology-wind-solar?ref=gabestein.com) all the technology we need to solve climate change. We just aren’t yet capable of convincing society to implement it fast enough.

AGI conveniently offers a solution for this problem, too: eventually we’ll just let the benevolent super-intelligence we create run the world for us. Again, I’m not really exaggerating. Back to Altman: “Successfully transitioning to a world with superintelligence is perhaps the most important—and hopeful, and scary—project in human history.”

There’s just one problem. How could anyone actually believe that a man who has already decided that he has earned the power to determine the destiny of the entire world despite acknowledging the literally apocalyptic consequences — “AGI would also come with serious risk of misuse, drastic accidents, and societal disruption. Because the upside of AGI is so great, we do not believe it is possible or desirable for society to stop its development forever; instead, society and the developers of AGI have to figure out how to get it right” — will listen to an AGI that tells him something he doesn’t want to hear?

Here’s a thought experiment by way of [the Register](https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/27/openai%5Fceo%5Fagi/?ref=gabestein.com) (the best/only? tech tabloid) that neatly answers that question:

> Imagine an AGI system that advises taxing billionaires at a rate of 95 percent and redistributing their wealth for the benefit of humanity. Will it ever be hooked into the banking system to effect its recommended changes?

Unfortunately, as tech leaders may have learned from Donald Trump’s [Big Lie](https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/19/politics/donald-trump-big-lie-explainer/index.html?ref=gabestein.com), if you are powerful enough and loud enough, you can convince a significant number of people to believe even the most outlandish falsehood despite all evidence to the contrary — precisely because they can’t believe that a rich, powerful person would be crazy enough to make up something so farfetched.

Thus, first with crypto and now with AGI, we have entered the era of tech’s Big Promise: despite all the harm it has (if I’m being charitable, unintentionally) [wrought on society](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2025764118?ref=gabestein.com), despite [helping to drive](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/technology/income-inequality-technology.html?ref=gabestein.com) an unprecedented amount of worldwide inequality, despite a litany of past failures to solve concrete societal problems, if we just invest even more in big tech, it will deliver a solution to society itself in the form of a literal benevolent God-computer (but don’t worry, we can control it).

God-computer help us.
### Merseyside Rockies
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/k6qnf1sc/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:38.000Z
Something odd happened to me in the last few months. I tuned into the World Cup, like so many others, and then…just didn’t stop watching soccer. Most of the credit goes to my wife, who knows how to get excited about, and study for, a big event like no one else. In addition to assuring our World Cup schedules were cleared and organizing watch parties, she turned me on to Uncles Rog and Davo of [Men in Blazers](https://meninblazers.com/?ref=gabestein.com), who deserve the rest of the credit for being delightful guides for Americans stumbling blindly into the world’s game. As a result, I’ve gone from watching approximately zero sports to tuning into an English Premier League (EPL) game or two a week.

To avoid this new habit becoming an obsession, I’ve so far avoided choosing a team to support. Sure, I have my favorites, but being a relatively neutral observer has allowed me to appreciate the sport, and its culture, more than I likely would if I had decided to dive right into fandom of a specific club. One of those appreciations is for the promotion/relegation system that the EPL (and most other sports leagues on the planet) employ, which makes it so that nearly every game means something, for almost every club, no matter, or perhaps especially if, they’re having a miserable season.

This revelation came to a head while watching Rog’s favorite team, Everton, lose 2-0 in glorious fashion to their hated crosstown rivals Liverpool on Monday. Liverpool’s first goal, wherein Everton managed to hit the post and then, as if shocked they had come so close to scoring, immediately give the ball away for a quick Liverpool counter, was a perfect example of the kind of emotional manipulation only a lifetime of devotion to single team can provide. All teams have their ups and downs over the years. But as any true fan will tell you, every team seems to develop its own unique style of misery that somehow persists from year to year, decade to decade, era to era, slowly coalescing into a cohesive oeuvre of failure even as players, managers, and owners come and go. As Rog wrote: “is this the most Everton moment that ever Evertoned?”

For me, experiencing that quintessential Evertonian moment via Rog unearthed painful memories of another team, and another sport: my hometown Colorado Rockies, the baseball team I was obsessed with as a kid and young adult (see: my first-ever blog, the Rockies Disaster Report) despite their terrible ownership, misplaced loyalty to players and staff who "fit in" despite being, you know, not very good, and uncanny ability to turn every high they managed to achieve, no matter how big or small, into an even worse low. Just like Everton’s “doink to disaster,” fans know all too well when they’ve witnessed another a quintessential Rockies failure.

Unlike Rog and Everton, at a certain point I had to give up on the Rockies for my own sanity. I could only take so many bad drafts, horrible trades, ill-conceived strategies, failure to fire bad managers, humiliating defeats literally at the doorstep of my freshman year dorm — no, I'm not still bitter about 2007, why do you ask? — and most of all, the total lack of responsibility or accountability on the part of the team’s owners, before it was just too painful and too hopeless to continue being an active fan.

Because there’s nothing really at stake when you lose, being a fan of a bad team in America is experiencing the shallow rush of playing the lottery every time you watch a game. Once in a while you might get lucky and win despite the odds, and that’s fun as far as it goes. But the high wears off quickly because no one did anything to earn it, and the rest of the time it’s just a waste.

What I'm noticing about global soccer, by contrast, and particularly the EPL, is that they’ve managed to cultivate a dynamism that doesn't exist in American sports — even though this era of oligarch-owned [cheating super-clubs](https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11679/12805084/man-city-charged-by-the-premier-league-media-reacts-after-unprecedented-charges-levelled-against-the-former-league-champions?ref=gabestein.com) may be the least dynamic the EPL has ever been. Managers are given exquisitely short leashes to succeed with. Players fall in and out of favor on a weekly basis. Owners seem at least somewhat responsive to fan opinion and pressure. And perhaps most importantly, thanks to the promotion/relegation system, where teams are transferred to higher or lower divisions based on their performance, every game matters and owners are held accountable for failure where it matters most: their pocketbook.

Coming from baseball, where there’s been no reason to watch games 50 through 162 of a Rockies season for most of the last decade, the fact that I can genuinely care about whether the [West Yorkshire Yankees](https://ussoccerplayers.com/2023/02/leeds-united-and-other-notable-us-enclaves-abroad.html?ref=gabestein.com) avoid relegation as much as — perhaps more than — exactly how Arsenal inevitably manages to cough up the league championship to Manchester City, is more than a breath of fresh air: it’s a reason to care about sports again. Because, no matter how your team does, you’re likely to feel the whole range of human emotions, as Rog would say, over the course of a season.

The very real consequences of failure for those at the bottom of the table, and on the other end, the never-ending pursuit of grander honors in higher-level leagues and tournaments, has created conditions far more amenable to sustainable lifetime emotional investment than what’s possible, at least for me, in a system where a franchise like the Rockies can produce a terrible product for most of 30 years with no consequences whatsoever. Purists may dismiss me for being a fair-weather fan, pointing to the countless long-suffering Orioles, Browns, Knicks, Kings, Senators, Jets, and so on fans who stay devoted to their teams despite decades of misery and mismanagement. Fair enough, but frankly, those fans are being abused by a bad system.

In an era where [most](https://www.statista.com/statistics/193408/percentage-of-ticketing-revenue-in-the-mlb-since-2006/?ref=gabestein.com) [money](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/062515/how-nfl-makes-money.asp?ref=gabestein.com) in sports is made on distribution and sponsorship deals before the season starts, owners have less and less incentive to field a competitive team or listen to fans. Whether they’re content to coast along or motivated to win depends entirely on the owner’s whims. Thus, American fandom is rarely a shared community project. Instead, it’s usually a hollow exercise in maintaining faith in something that doesn’t particularly care that you exist as long as enough of you tune in.

That’s a shame, because sports can’t survive on belief alone, especially not now when everyone has endless, immediate entertainment options ready at their fingertips. Without consequences for everyone — players, owners, and fans alike — sports is just a slot machine: attention-grabbing and profitable, but not meaningful in any metaphysical or emotional sense.

What Rog has helped me understand is that international football, despite its many problems, provides never-ending high-stakes moments, on and off the pitch, for teams good and bad, by embedding consequences directly into its legal and financial structure. Until American leagues catch on and make substantive, structural changes to our sports to introduce real consequences of failure, nothing on this continent will truly compete, including our own attempts at soccer leagues. So for the foreseeable future, I’ll see you on Saturday and Sunday mornings, investing my limited time and energy for sports in games that matter. Games that make me feel like my emotional and time investment is worth anything at all. Games that make me feel like a kid watching the Rockies, still believing that every moment, exhilarating and excruciating alike, means something.
### Information infatuation
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/j3bf68yi/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T15:35:33.000Z
*Go easy on me, it’s been a while and I’m out of practice. But I’m trying to get back into it. Anyhow…*

---

Just before the holidays, my wife and I visited the now-closed [Analog City](https://www.mcny.org/exhibition/analog-city?ref=gabestein.com) exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. A tribute to obsolescence, the museum had packed a cavernous room, floor to ceiling, with all of the technologies — from rotary phones to punchcard systems and architectural drafting tools — that allowed the city to function before the advent of the computer. I left with two conclusions: first, if you’ll forgive my jeunesse, I was struck by the ingenuity and relative simplicity of the mechanical tools we once invented to fulfill functions now provided by computers, like the [pantograph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantograph?ref=gabestein.com), a tool for creating scaled copies of sketches. Second, I was shocked by the scope of [so-called](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative%5Fdestruction?ref=gabestein.com) creative destruction the exhibit documented. I couldn’t think of a single item mentioned or displayed that hadn’t been wholly supplanted by a single device: the computer. In just a few decades, the computer made obsolete untold millions of jobs dedicated to the use of thousands of specialized devices.

Where once tens of thousands of companies produced these devices, now just a handful are responsible for the majority of the world’s computers. Walking out of that room, I told myself, it was easy to understand why seven of the world’s ten [most valuable companies](https://www.investopedia.com/biggest-companies-in-the-world-by-market-cap-5212784?ref=gabestein.com) are dedicated to producing computer hardware, software, or both.

In the months since, I’ve begun to question that conclusion. Here’s a quote from a [1990 Neil Postman speech](https://web.williams.edu/HistSci/curriculum/101/informing.html?ref=gabestein.com) that made [the rounds](https://indieweb.social/@lmsacasas@mastodon.social/109785756353832133?ref=gabestein.com) on my, yes, Mastodon feed yesterday via [L.M. Sacasas](https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/)[1](#fn-0-bottom):

> As things stand now, the geniuses of computer technology will give us Star Wars, and tell us that is the answer to nuclear war. They will give us artificial intelligence, and tell us that this is the way to self-knowledge. They will give us instantaneous global communication, and tell us this is the way to mutual understanding. They will give us Virtual Reality and tell us this is the answer to spiritual poverty. But that is only the way of the technician, the fact-mongerer, the information junkie, and the technological idiot.

I have to admit I rather willfully forgot about Postman until reading this, er, toot. In my techno-optimist days, when he was force-fed to me via an intro to mass media class, I more or less dismissed him as a pessimist and a polemic. Truth be told, I still find his habit of referring to religion as a coherent ideology a tad reductive. But read that paragraph, written 33 years ago, and tell me he wasn’t more than a little prophetic.

The core message of Postman’s speech is that the computer, like any other technology, has the potential to redistribute power in profound, and potentially destructive, ways. Postman contends that the computer’s fundamental purpose is to collect, organize, and distribute information, and that it has been profoundly successful at fulfilling this purpose. By enabling our present-day information explosion, he argues, the computer has paradoxically made information meaningless, because, as he puts it, “information no longer has any relation to the solution of problems.”

It’s easy to laugh and dismiss this criticism given that you can use your Apple[2](#fn-1-bottom) iPhone to Google[3](#fn-2-bottom) just about any problem — from how to fix a leaky toilet to how to become enlightened — and find hundreds, if not thousands, of solutions, most of which can be received in two days via an Amazon[4](#fn-3-bottom) order. But that knee-jerk dismissal is exactly Postman’s point: we have become so enamored with computers we’ve forgotten that though they can help us find solutions to problems, they can’t actually implement those solutions. And yet, we have largely allowed our society, and especially our economy, to do exactly what Postman warned us not to: reorganize ourselves around people, companies, and technologies who pretend that information alone can do anything and everything, largely at the expense of the people who actually do things with the information computers give them.

The problem isn’t just semantic. Maybe someday the self-driving cars, multi-purpose robots, and universal general AI entities will pan out. But as it stands today, after decades of work and trillions of dollars spent, no amount of information can replace a broken valve or meditate for you. And yet, the salary of the engineer who writes the code that helps you find the video that explains how to replace the toilet valve is much higher than the salary of the plumber who comes and replaces it when you give up on fixing it yourself. Worse still, the video was probably made by the plumber, because the engineer’s employer convinced the plumber they needed a social media strategy to attract customers when the local newspaper shut down because all its major advertisers diverted their marketing budget to the engineer’s employer. All of this economic and technical complexity to accomplish…what, exactly, that a classifieds section or phone book couldn’t?

Now who’s the pessimist? Of course, I don’t want to dip too far into negativity or determinism. Computers are, of course, immensely value, in many ways. The question is: are they really as valuable as we’ve decided they are? Or are they, because of their infinitely flexible, adaptable, and embeddable nature, just really good at capturing value once ascribed to other products?

It’s nearly impossible to step outside of our society and economy and say for sure. But I suspect the fact that most of the world’s tech companies have, from their very beginning, felt an insatiable need to justify themselves with grandiose slogans and amazing promises they’ve never been able to fulfill is a pretty good tell. As I’ve [written](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/i4uj0ehr#n4wnp4cmnk6) about, tech companies are in some ways better thought of as nation-states than corporations, with shared ideologies and mythologies that justify and facilitate their existence. No one at Google finds selling search ads fulfilling or meaningful. But it can feel like more than just a job because the company is designed to convince employees that they’re helping to “[organize the world’s information](https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/our-approach/?ref=gabestein.com#:~:text=Google's%20mission%20is%20to%20organize,height%20of%20the%20Eiffel%20Tower.)” and fund research into “[moonshots](https://x.company/?ref=gabestein.com)” like life-extension therapies and self-driving cars.

Whether these moonshots actually fulfill their promises (and it’s [not clear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X%5FDevelopment?ref=gabestein.com) any really have) is almost besides the point. “[X](https://x.company/?ref=gabestein.com),” and every other tech company’s pet project division, exists as much to explain the enormous market capitalization and provide highly educated employees with a justification for spending their lives optimizing auction algorithms as it does to produce anything of value. In this way, most of these companies are literal examples of Postman’s conclusion: the information they’ve so successfully monetized has almost no connection to the solutions they’ve promised to deliver.

Will some of these projects ultimately bear fruit? Probably, eventually. But if it happens, it won’t be because computers turned information into action. It will be because humans turned computers into money. That’s fine as far as it goes. Let’s just hope that by the time it finally happens, society will have managed to rebalance its understanding of what about these technologies is truly valuable.

### Footnotes

1. Whose work is new to me but seems quite wonderful. [↵](#fn-0-inline)
2. The world’s most valuable company. [↵](#fn-1-inline)
3. Whose parent Alphabet is the world’s fourth-most valuable company [↵](#fn-2-inline)
4. The fifth-most valuable company in the world [↵](#fn-3-inline)
### Not a real post
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/ij70jaht/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:38.000Z
I’m doing [NaNoWriMo](https://nanowrimo.org/?ref=gabestein.com) again, which is where all my writing energy is going and why I haven’t blogged in a bit. Last year I tried a tightly plotted solarpunk thriller using the [Save the Cat](https://www.savannahgilbo.com/blog/plotting-save-the-cat?ref=gabestein.com) method. It was fine! But this year I decided to have a bit more fun, so I’m taking Steven King’s [advice](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439156816?ref=gabestein.com) to “watch what happens and write it down.” So far, what’s happening is an absurdist socialist space opera about a far-future folklorist straight from the depths of my subconscious.

One thing that’s been adding to the fun is using AI image generation to make it a little easier to see what’s happening. I thought I’d share a few of the characters and scenes I’ve generated so far, mostly as an excuse to take a break from a marathon writing session.

It turns out almost everyone in the future will belong to the Intergalactic Church of Vibrations, which believes that AIs allow us to access metaphysical truths by tapping into the galactic subconscious. And this, according to the latent space of our present-day collective subconscious as filtered through Stable Diffusion, is what the ‘High Priest of the Intergalactic Church of Vibrations delivering a sermon’ looks like. Pretty right on if you ask me:

![](https://resize-v3.pubpub.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJhc3NldHMucHVicHViLm9yZyIsImtleSI6Imp6aXY0NGw5LzQxNjY4MjkzNDU0MDk5LmpwZWciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjgwMCwiZml0IjoiaW5zaWRlIiwid2l0aG91dEVubGFyZ2VtZW50Ijp0cnVlfX19)

Here’s ‘Collectors Hall, a large tower on a Dyson ring devoted to studying and preserving intergalactic folklore.’

![](https://resize-v3.pubpub.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJhc3NldHMucHVicHViLm9yZyIsImtleSI6InBubjdqNTZmLzIxNjY4MjkzNjY4MDc0LmpwZWciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjgwMCwiZml0IjoiaW5zaWRlIiwid2l0aG91dEVubGFyZ2VtZW50Ijp0cnVlfX19)

Finally, less successful but still quite evocative, is a ‘dance company performing a weightless ballet about cell division in a giant glass sphere orbiting a Dyson ring.’

![](https://resize-v3.pubpub.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJhc3NldHMucHVicHViLm9yZyIsImtleSI6IndqZWFvbXh1LzIxNjY4Mjk0MjU2OTg3LmpwZWciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjgwMCwiZml0IjoiaW5zaWRlIiwid2l0aG91dEVubGFyZ2VtZW50Ijp0cnVlfX19)

Anyhow, I have lots of links and things I’ve collected to write about here, but it’ll likely be in December. Until then, I wish you the best of reverberations.
### Oh Crossref
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/m3a4se35/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T15:32:03.000Z
Let me preface this by saying I really like and respect Crossref. The people I’ve met and corresponded with who work there are universally nice and well meaning. And I think its potential is drastically underrated, mostly due to its legacy tech stack. I mean, it’s basically living the semantic web/web3 dream as a giant, free-to-query database in the sky that allows machines to understand what’s (supposed to be) living at a given URI independent of the content itself — and, increasingly, what other people are saying about that URI. That’s a pretty amazing feat.

But woof, where it falls short, it really falls short, and ends up hampering innovation as a result. Today, I learned that the service only supports depositing peer reviews with `isReviewOf` relationships to *content already registered at Crossref*. This means that if you review, for example, an arXiv preprint (arXiv uses DataCite to provide DOIs), and you want to publish it openly, you have deposit that peer review to Crossref without the metadata link to the reviewed content.[1](#fn-0-bottom)

This limitation will have a stifling effect on the growing open peer review movement, especially when it comes to preprint reviews, by making it harder for researchers to get credit for reviewing work openly, for authors to find feedback about their work, and for researchers who study research to understand the impacts and growth of open review. Worse still, the Crossref team tells me that this is not even close to a high priority for them, meaning it will most likely be years before we see it implemented, if we ever do. As a result, even as movements like ASAPBio’s #[PublishYourReviews](https://asapbio.org/publishyourreviews?ref=gabestein.com) campaign, open evaluation platforms like eLife’s [Sciety](https://sciety.org/?ref=gabestein.com), and the joint [Docmaps](https://docmaps.knowledgefutures.org/?ref=gabestein.com) effort[2](#fn-1-bottom) to capture editorial processes gain steam, they will be limited by the failure of key infrastructure to support their innovations.

As a product manager, I empathize with Crossref’s prioritization and legacy tech management challenges. So I would understand the decision to deprioritize these types of efforts if this was simply not inline with Crossref’s mission (or [documented](https://www.crossref.org/documentation/schema-library/markup-guide-metadata-segments/relationships/?ref=gabestein.com) at all), or if there was no community support for the idea. But just this June, Crossref [made a big to-do](https://www.crossref.org/blog/seeing-your-place-in-the-research-nexus/?ref=gabestein.com) about their vision for supporting what they call the “Research Nexus,” which is the effort to transparently link together and understanding the full lifecycle and impact of research outputs. Open review is exactly the type of effort that they claim to want to support, and they have the groundswell of community support for it mentioned above forming. So it’s a little strange that this relatively small request — to add support for something already in their schema, no less! — wouldn’t be a priority.

Luckily, the Crossref team is very responsive to feedback, and have kindly [opened a feature request](https://crossref.atlassian.net/browse/CR-777?ref=gabestein.com) where you can (kindly, but firmly!) ask that they support open review.

**So, my ask for you to day is to** [**visit that feature request**](https://crossref.atlassian.net/browse/CR-777?ref=gabestein.com) **and add a comment in support of prioritizing the feature.** Here’s a simple template for adding a comment in the most impactful way:

- Your name
- Any organizations you represent, particularly if they are Crossref members or users
- Why you want them to fully support peer review relationships — making special note if this support is critical for you or your organization’s work
- Anything the lack of support prevents you from doing today
- Any general thoughts about the need to support open peer review

Thanks y’all. We’ll get there. And yes, I am investigating whether DataCite fully supports peer review relationships as an alternative. If anyone knows for certain, please leave a note here.

### Footnotes

1. Actually, I *think* you could create a sort of “pass-through” DOI to the original preprint with an `isVersionOf` relationship (which I believe supports cross-registry relationship identifiers) to the original on arXiv, and then link your review to that DOI, which would at least keep the metadata chain alive. But come on. [↵](#fn-0-inline)
2. Disclaimer: this is a joint project between my company, Knowledge Futures, eLife, EMBO, and CSHL. [↵](#fn-1-inline)
### OSTP
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/tsuyuj9p/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T15:33:39.000Z
I’m a week behind posting about this, but the White House Office of Science & Tech Policy basically lit up the open academic publishing world with its [new memo](https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/08-2022-OSTP-Public-Access-Memo.pdf?ref=gabestein.com) mandating, among other things, immediate, open publication of all federally-funded research, without exclusions for humanities smaller agencies.

That’s good news, but as Jeff Pooley so astutely [points out](https://www.jeffpooley.com/2022/08/the-big-apc-question-mark-hovering-over-the-ostp-announcement/?ref=gabestein.com) on his blog, the current guidance could lead to a lot of unintended consequences and ultimately have the effect of increasing extant inequities in publishing. Here’s how:

> Here’s the basic problem. As a [growing number of studies document](https://www.jeffpooley.com/2022/08/the-apc-damn-is-breaking/?ref=gabestein.com), most of the world’s academic authors (including most humanities and social science authors in the U.S.) can’t afford the often-usurious fees. The APC model, with its tolled access to authorship, is the subscription model seen through a camera obscura: author paywalls in place of reading paywalls. Thus the prevailing APC regime fixes one barrier to access, for readers, by erecting another, for authors.

His [whole analysis](https://www.jeffpooley.com/2022/08/the-big-apc-question-mark-hovering-over-the-ostp-announcement/?ref=gabestein.com) is worth reading for its careful parsing of both the announcement and some of the community responses to it.

My own spin is the same thing I have been saying, to little response, at every meeting with just about every funder, partner, RoR researcher, and anyone else who will listen since 2020: we need a funded, community-driven campaign, similar to the news industry’s [Membership Puzzle Project](https://membershippuzzle.org/?ref=gabestein.com), to research, document, and support the adoption of the types alternative funding models that Pooley mentions.

If anyone out there wants to work with us on that, please get in touch.[1](#fn-0-bottom) We’ve got the plans, partners, and infrastructure to do it. We just need the resources.

### Footnotes

1. gabe AT knowledgefutures DOT org [↵](#fn-0-inline)
### You, Robot
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/8qh6k3j0/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T15:06:39.000Z
As Brian Morrissey discussed briefly in one of his recent [The Rebooting newsletters](https://therebooting.substack.com/) (worth a subscribe if you ask me), U.S. worker productivity [has dropped](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-05/u-s-productivity-drops-on-weaker-output-while-labor-costs-jump?ref=gabestein.com) in the last few months, causing companies already facing a [tight labor market](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/05/jobs-report-july-2022-528000.html?ref=gabestein.com) and inflation-driven wage growth to search for ways to make their workers more productive. Naturally, this search has focused not on whether companies need to reform their practices given the disruption to work brought on by a once-in-a-century pandemic, but on blaming workers for being lazy and coming up with new ways to prod them towards productivity by [spying on them](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/the-rise-of-the-worker-productivity-score/?ref=gabestein.com). Continuing the long tradition of blaming the youth for all our problems, the business media has found a perfect scapegoat to justify corporate tightening in the form of a viral tiktok video from a zoomer about so-called “[quiet quitting](https://fortune.com/2022/08/14/what-is-quiet-quitting-gen-z-tiktok-trend-burnout-great-resignation-quittok-involution-lying-flat?ref=gabestein.com).” At least us millennials can finally [eat our avocado toast](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/avocado-toast?ref=gabestein.com) in peace.

The charge that American workers are in any way lazy is, of course, ludicrous. As this chart from the [Economic Policy Industry](https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-growing-employer-power-have-generated-a-productivity-pay-gap-since-1979-productivity-has-grown-3-5-times-as-much-as-pay-for-the-typical-worker?ref=gabestein.com) shows, if anything, companies have been stiffing workers for decades as productivity has soared while wages…have not. Meanwhile, as Morrisey points out, the majority of these so-called productivity losses may actually be [the result of](https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2022/when-the-disrupters-lose-their-drive?ref=gabestein.com) diminishing innovation in an age of corporate consolidation and decreased R&D spend.

[![](https://resize-v3.pubpub.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJhc3NldHMucHVicHViLm9yZyIsImtleSI6InRka3E4NGlsLzAxNjYwOTE0ODQzNTA4LnBuZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6ODAwLCJmaXQiOiJpbnNpZGUiLCJ3aXRob3V0RW5sYXJnZW1lbnQiOnRydWV9fX0=)](https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-growing-employer-power-have-generated-a-productivity-pay-gap-since-1979-productivity-has-grown-3-5-times-as-much-as-pay-for-the-typical-worker?ref=gabestein.com)

Given those realities, it’s worth examining the way we wield words like “productivity” in our late capitalist milieu: leveling it at individuals but measuring it in the aggregate, so that systemic imbalances caused by financial engineering can be blamed on workers.

This sleight of hand appears to be deeply embedded in the American corporate psyche, and it’s damaging not just for workers, but companies, too. Earlier this year, a stunning [NBER working paper](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working%5Fpapers/w29874/w29874.pdf?ref=gabestein.com) showed that the net effect of bringing in MBAs to run an organization is decreased worker pay but no increase in profit. How is that possible? I suspect the answer is simple: most business leaders don’t actually understand productivity at all, because they don’t think of their workers as human beings.

When you actually [look at research](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/smarter-living/why-you-procrastinate-it-has-nothing-to-do-with-self-control.html?ref=gabestein.com) on what inhibits day-to-day productivity, you find a pretty consistent and straightforward answer: stress. Put simply: when workers are stressed out — whether because of work, situations at home, or, er, global crises — they find it harder to concentrate. This effect is most acute for knowledge workers, who require long stretches of focused time to produce meaningful results. But, of course, stress impacts everyone.

And yet, instead of taking measures to help employees reduce stress so they can focus on their jobs, the modern digital office seems designed to increase it. As Cal Newport has [argued at length](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/airbnb-future-work/release/2), email, digital calendars and Slack, far from increasing efficiency, have actually hoisted the vital work once done by teams of professional coordinators[1](#fn-0-bottom) onto individuals. The productivity hacks that MBA-types obsess over, like no-meetings days, [planning tools](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/u6hlrbif/release/2), and time-boxing similarly do nothing to actually reduce the burden on employees — if anything, they add to it by demanding workers adapt to artificial constraints. Even Silicon Valley’s legendary workplace perks, like game rooms, snack-filled “micro kitchens,” and free lunch [tend to have the effect](https://assets.website-files.com/5cab75b41283e5fbfc0e18e2/5d2cb2b199a69030d338f73e%5FExploring-the-impact-of-office-snacks.pdf?ref=gabestein.com) of reducing employees’ time spent searching for sustenance and distraction away from their desks, even if they weren’t [intentionally designed](https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidburkus/2015/07/02/the-real-reason-google-serves-all-that-free-food/?ref=gabestein.com) to do so.

Despite the mountain of evidence and experience, the response to the latest productivity woes is to add yet another stressor to employees’ lives: [tracking their every move](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/14/business/worker-productivity-tracking.html?ref=gabestein.com) and using the data to conjure up productivity metrics they must meet to keep their jobs. It’s no wonder that “quiet quitting” might be gaining steam. Slacking off while outwardly seeming productive, once mostly a problem in [slacker comedies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4OvQIGDg4I&ref=gabestein.com) and managers’ imaginations, is now the only way to actually take a meaningful, necessary break on the job.

**Instead, I’d like to offer a simple alternative: have you tried treating your employees like human beings?**

In December 2020, the small [tech non-profit](https://knowledgefutures.org/?ref=gabestein.com) I help run hosted a conversation about making our work environment more resilient to pandemic burnout. The response from employees was pretty striking: in a remote, all-digital environment, they felt chained to their desks and phones, unable to take the time for themselves to relieve the daily stressors that cause procrastination and diminished productivity and creativity. So, we set out to restructure our work environment to give employees more time to take breaks. We started a Slack channel to talk about and normalize taking breaks, added 15 minutes at the beginning and end of every week for the team to talk about their lives outside of work, began tracking our minimum vacation day policy to make sure employees were actually using them regularly, and, crucially, adopted a system [called Remeet](https://remeet.com/?ref=gabestein.com) that, unlike so many other tools, actually reduced time spent in and planning meetings from 20+ hours/week on average to fewer than 10 by eliminating real human coordination work.

When companies began experimenting with the four-day workweek that summer, the idea of realizing increased productivity and creativity at work by giving workers more time to tackle external stressors fit perfectly with the results we were already seeing in from our workplace experiments. We adopted 4-day weeks last August, and [never looked back](https://www.businessinsider.com/4-day-workweek-how-our-company-successfully-transitioned-2022-3?ref=gabestein.com).

The results haven’t been perfect, of course — we’re still looking to improve our employees’ sense of connection with their coworkers, for example. And we’re a 14-person organization, so I won’t pretend every technique will apply to a giant company. But if, as the NBER research seems to indicate, the entire professional management industrial complex is a wash at best, maybe it’s time to try something other than blaming your workers and pretending they’re machines who don’t feel stress? Just a thought.

### Footnotes

1. Commonly known as secretaries, but the word is so loaded with misogyny at this point that I prefer a phrase that doesn’t connote gender and actually describes the vital work they perform. [↵](#fn-0-inline)
### Barriers, sustained
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/96fqxgkx/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:37.000Z
Since I started working in academic-adjacent industries about 7 years ago, I’ve been making significantly less money than I could if I had worked at a private tech or STM publishing firm during that time. And I’m pretty lucky, because thanks to our funders’ trust and our new sustainability model, KFG is able to do decently when it comes to competing with tech industry salaries and benefits, and pretty well when compared to for-profit academic publishing roles. Based on the job listings with salary ranges I see posted frequently, I suspect the situation is worse for most of our friends and partners who build infrastructure (not to mention most of the users of our products).

To be sure, underpaying isn’t just an open academic publishing infrastructure issue. It’s a longstanding issue with the [entire non-profit industrial complex](https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the%5Freal%5Fsalary%5Fscandal?ref=gabestein.com). And it’s way beyond my capabilities to fully understand it or offer solutions.

But what I can say with some confidence is that it’s a uniquely troubling problem in my little niche of open academic publishing infrastructure. Despite the community spending a huge amount of time, money, and energy over the last several years focusing on sustainability and equity, I’ve seen little attention paid to, well, pay. Sure, working groups talk about it in conventional non-profit terms, like the [percentage spent](https://investinopen.org/blog/community-discussion-on-nonprofit-financial-health-recap-recordings-slides-and-notes/?ref=gabestein.com) on personnel. But these conversations rarely, in my experience, address whether we’re paying people enough to meaningfully compete with industry for expensive specialized talent. In fact, many of these discussions tend to suggest the opposite: that infrastructure non-profits try to do more with less so they don’t risk out-growing their funders’ ability to support them.

That’s a shame, because in addition to leading to a false understanding of true sustainability, [underpayment is a structural justice issue](https://communitycentricfundraising.org/2022/01/10/underpaid-staff-dont-need-motivation-they-need-dollar-bills-and-benefits/?ref=gabestein.com). People who can afford to work for below-market pay tend to be, well, more like me: privileged and affluent. And so the more we focus on technical, keep-the-lights-on sustainability and avoid addressing what real, deep sustainability would look like, the deeper of an equity hole we dig for the ecosystem.

Again, it’s beyond me to offer much of a solution, except to note that it will likely need to be systemic. Ideally, I’d like builders and funders to reset expectations a bit by having very direct, transparent, and collaborative conversations about what deep sustainability for an individual non-profit infrastructure builder, and the ecosystem as a whole, looks like — and critically, how sustainability intersects with equity. Unless and until that happens, I fear the ecosystem will likely continue to struggle to accomplish its goals of replacing extractive for-profit publishing with a more effective and equitable community-based alternative.
### Road to nowhere
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/wefftx5d/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:37.000Z
Car arguments are happening online again because folks are speculating that Elon Musk [may have](https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-california-high-spee-1849402460?ref=gabestein.com) proposed the Hyperloop to kill California’s high-speed rail project so his company Tesla could sell more cars. Well, I have some bad news for Musk: cars are actually the world’s worst trains.

The argument, of course, isn’t mine. In 2009, a 1973 essay by French philosopher André Gorz made the rounds after being [republished](http://www.copenhagenize.com/2009/11/social-ideology-of-motorcar.html?m=1&ref=gabestein.com) in Copenhagenize. The whole thing is worth reading, but one piece of the essay comparing cars to trains has stuck with me for over a decade.

At the time, I was midway through college in Boston, experiencing being carless in a city with decent transit for the first time in my life. Reading this passage by Gorz at that moment of my life completely changed my perspective not just about cars and transit, but about how our society is organized:

> …Between 8 and 9:30 a.m., between 5:30 and 7 p.m., and on weekends for five and six hours the escape routes stretch out into bumper-to-bumper processions going (at best) the speed of a bicyclist and in a dense cloud of gasoline fumes. What remains of the car's advantages? What is left when, inevitably, the top speed on the roads is limited to exactly the speed of the slowest car?  
>  
> Fair enough. After killing the city, the car is killing the car. Having promised everyone they would be able to go faster, the automobile industry ends up with the unrelentingly predictable result that everyone has to go as slowly as the very slowest, at a speed determined by the simple laws of fluid dynamics. Worse: having been invented to allow its owner to go where he or she wishes, at the time and speed he or she wishes, the car becomes, of all vehicles, the most slavish, risky, undependable and uncomfortable. Even if you leave yourself an extravagant amount of time, you never know when the bottlenecks will let you get there. You are bound to the road as inexorably as the train to its rails. No more than the railway traveller can you stop on impulse, and like the train you must go at a speed decided by someone else. Summing up, the car has none of the advantages of the train and all of its disadvantages, plus some of its own: vibration, cramped space, the danger of accidents, the effort necessary to drive it.

In a few sentences, Gorz eliminated my once-firm belief in the pervasive myth that America exported to the world: that the car is synonymous with freedom. In fact, he makes clear, commuting via car is, in its rough aggregate, almost exactly like commuting via train or bus. You must leave home at a certain time to make it to your destination on time. You must get on at the same place as everyone else in your neighborhood (your local highway onramp), and off at the same place as everyone going to your destination. In the middle, you must go the same speed as everyone else.

The main differences between the car and the train are that the train’s schedule is coordinated, so it moves much faster and with far fewer delays; it’s driven by someone else, so you can spend your commute time reading, playing games, zoning out, or otherwise engaging in activities far [better for your mental health](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0094602&ref=gabestein.com) and [much less deadly](https://www.vox.com/2015/5/14/8606195/train-safety-driving-crashes?ref=gabestein.com) than driving; and once you arrive at your destination you don’t have to waste time parking it, so you don’t have to waste money, time and space storing a machine that [sits unused](https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/technology-driving-innovation/cars-2025/?ref=gabestein.com) for 95% of its life.

In this way, the car is similar to many supposedly time-saving workplace inventions that I’ve [discussed](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/u6hlrbif/release/2) before. Like, for example, email or digital calendars, the car doesn’t actually result in additional time-savings or convenience for its users. Instead, it shifts the labor, cost, and liability of getting people from point A to point B from state-run transit agencies to individuals. And it makes transport a profitable industry for private corporations, rather than a mostly public good.

Of course, most people in this country don’t have a choice but to travel in cars. And that’s exactly Gorz’s point in the larger essay. The car’s primary function is not to move anyone from point A to point B conveniently. It’s terrible at that! No, the car’s main function is to make itself inevitable by reorienting our routines, cities, taxes, and economies to the point where we literally can’t imagine life without it. As Gorz eloquently points out, being forced by society to choose a particular mode of transit is, in fact, the opposite of the freedom the automobile is marketed as delivering.

Until this paragraph, I’ve deliberately said nothing about the [extreme environmental impact](https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/car-emissions-global-warming?ref=gabestein.com) of cars [compared to public transit](https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/docs/PublicTransportationsRoleInRespondingToClimateChange2010.pdf?ref=gabestein.com). That’s because, going back to the jumping-off point of this post, when you leave out the environmental impact of cars and focus on its other impacts on society, it becomes clear that Musk’s much more successful project Tesla is, like the Hyperloop, an attempt to avoid better, but less profitable solutions to the climate crisis.

Yes, electric cars are going to be vital for tackling climate change. But only because our society is oriented around cars. Electrifying cars will reduce their environmental impact, but it won’t change their essential function of extracting more profits for corporations at the expense of everyone else’s time, labor, mental and physical health, and public spaces.

The good news here is Musk’s Hyperloop buffoonery is a great opportunity to see through his Tesla con, too. If we’re willing to look beyond the car, we can imagine a much freer way of life than it could ever deliver, no matter what’s powering it.
### Take the win
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/we0uqr5u/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:37.000Z
Here we go again. On the heels of the Senate passage of the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, the left’s resident Democrat-haters are out in force pointing out just how bad the bill is without any evidence to back up the claim except memes. There’s certainly some small kernels of truth there. Yes, there are bad parts of the bill, like the public land drilling permits. Yes, it’s not everything we wanted. Yes, the Democratic Party is still pretty bad.

But is anyone saying the bill’s perfect? Or the final step to solving the climate crisis? Or the Democratic Party’s salvation? Not that I can see. You either have to be the world’s most advanced and secretive climate modeler, or extremely twisted by your personal hatred for a political party, to take a bill that [every](https://rhg.com/research/inflation-reduction-act/?ref=gabestein.com) [independent](https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Modeling-the-Inflation-Reduction-Act-with-the-Energy-Policy-Simulator.pdf?ref=gabestein.com) [analysis](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/02/climate/manchin-deal-emissions-cuts.html?ref=gabestein.com) says will lead to dramatic emissions reductions and save countless lives and pretend it’s a disaster.

If you care about the climate and you’re making or spreading those arguments right now, you’re engaging in climate denial. Market-based incentive solutions may not be your preferred approach to combatting climate change. They’re certainly not mine. But if you pretend that they do nothing, despite all evidence to the contrary, you lend credibility to the argument that fossil fuel companies have long used to delay climate action, and in fact are [actively making](https://www.protocol.com/amp/united-clean-power-ira-2657816727?ref=gabestein.com) right now, that nothing imperfect is worth doing.

Of course, the opposite is true. Tackling the crisis will require an all of the above approach. This is a start, even if it’s an imperfect one. Arguing otherwise is climate denial that plays right into the hands of oil companies. And frankly, the world just doesn’t have any more time to pander to climate deniers.

So take the win and let’s start working for more.
### Lucy
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/11h6m0wm/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:37.000Z
A [piece](https://www.axios.com/2022/07/28/meta-publishers-news-funding-cut?ref=gabestein.com) detailing Facebook’s latest cutback to funding news on the platform was posted to Axios an hour ago, but, uh, tell me this sentence couldn’t have been written at any time in the last 10 years:

> **Why it matters:** As the company moves forward with [sweeping changes](https://www.axios.com/2022/07/21/facebook-tiktok-feed-changes?ref=gabestein.com) to the Facebook experience, news has become less of a priority.

Just off the top of my head, this is something like the 5th time I can remember Facebook incentivizing certain news publisher behavior on the platform and then abruptly cutting it back. Luckily, the Tow Center maintains an [exhaustive timeline](https://tow.cjr.org/platform-timeline/?ref=gabestein.com) of all the times the platform (and others) have had fun pulling the football out from publishers.

Needless to say, we shouldn’t exactly be surprised at this point, and any publishers relying on Facebook for significant amounts of revenue have, er, not learned anything from the last decade and probably don’t deserve to exist. But it’s funny to see the carousel turn once again — not just on defunding news, but on deprioritizing it on the platform, which the network has gone [back and forth on](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/i4uj0ehr/release/2) so many times that I’m surprised all us industry watchers don’t have permanent cases of whiplash.

The real problem, of course, remains that Facebook’s core business is [not compatible](https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/26/perspectives/facebook-roger-mcnamee-the-chat/index.html?ref=gabestein.com) with promoting high-quality, but less engaging, information. But for once, that could be changing. As Axios mentions, the “[sweeping changes](https://www.axios.com/2022/07/21/facebook-tiktok-feed-changes?ref=gabestein.com)” coming to the platform this time around aren’t due to the whims of executives or once-new features becoming less prominent, but to the business model’s decreasing effectiveness as the network contends with [Apple’s aggressive privacy features](https://www.reuters.com/technology/apples-privacy-changes-tiktok-competition-inescapable-meta-now-2022-07-28/?ref=gabestein.com) and competes with the likes of TikTok (which some news publishers are [cautiously embracing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1n2a8dSLE6ZG5Eql%5FBt9ayPi14WkZ3-IsviEmlI1f11Q/edit?ref=gabestein.com#gid=0)).

With any luck, this time the profit pressure combined with the latest move to drive news off the platform will further cement its reputation as a grist mill for junk and conspiracies and hasten its [necessary demise](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/24/ive-been-waiting-15-years-for-facebook-to-die-im-more-hopeful-than-ever?ref=gabestein.com) as the world’s central information organ.
### Big Leagues
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/7gatnjd7/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:37.000Z
When I first moved to New York I lived in Astoria, Queens, and I used to take the [BMT Broadway Line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMT%5FBroadway%5FLine?ref=gabestein.com) train every day from the end of the line at Astoria-Ditmars to 49th Street in Midtown, Manhattan. The Queens portion of the train is elevated, and about midway through the journey, just before approaching Queensborough Plaza, the train makes a wide, banked turn, delivering stunning views of the Manhattan skyline and, if the driver pulls in a little too fast, a brief, stomach-churning sensation of being on a roller coaster.

![](https://resize-v3.pubpub.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJhc3NldHMucHVicHViLm9yZyIsImtleSI6IjI2YjZocTgwLzExNjU4NDI1NzY3NzI5LmpwZWciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjgwMCwiZml0IjoiaW5zaWRlIiwid2l0aG91dEVubGFyZ2VtZW50Ijp0cnVlfX19)

[By Pi.1415926535 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80365043&ref=gabestein.com)

One day I was taking the train all the way to the other end, to go to the beach at Coney Island, when my happily distracted subconscious train brain, taking in the view for the umpteenth time, delivered to the conscious part of me the following realization: roller coaster operators at theme parks, like Coney’s [Cyclone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coney%5FIsland%5FCyclone?ref=gabestein.com) at Luna Park, must be the “minor leagues” from whence big-city train operators like the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) source, develop, and promotes their conductors.

You can imagine the scene now: a young, pimpled, exhausted rollercoaster operator at a local fair gets called into their middle-aged manager’s office, expecting yet another grilling. Instead, their manager’s eyes gleam with a strange softness they’ve never shown before, the corners filling with…are those tears?

“Kid, you got the call,” they say, a proud grin forcing its way onto their thin, permanently lined mouth, as if against their will.

“The call?” the shocked kid asks, staring blankly at the wall behind their manager.

“Remember that weird single rider the other day? That wasn’t some loser. That was a scout.”

“From Six Flags?” the kid says, voice breaking.

“Six Flags!” guffaws the manager, and for a moment the employee’s shoulders slump. “No, the MTA. The big leagues. Franklin Ave Shuttle, kid. Only four stops but everyone starts somewhere. We all knew you could do it. Just promise me you won’t forget about us and where you got your start when you make it on the big city tracks, okay?”

A moment of stunned silence fills the room and the unpracticed grin spreads on the manager’s wide face.

“But, but…who will take my place on the Whirly Bird?” the kid finally manages to ask.

“Don’t you worry about that. Alex has been on the kiddie train for six months now and needs a change of pace. You’ve taught them well.”

On a call today, a colleague completely upended the bit by suggesting that perhaps it’s the other way around, and roller coaster operators are more like elite test pilots who do the crazy stunts while subway operators just do the routine work of go back and forth. I’ll have to think on that a little bit. Either way, in an ideal world, if not the one we have, I think we can all agree that train operation hierarchies should function the same way that baseball development programs do.
### Helpful feedback on 'Social cost'
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/f4mst3qq/
Last updated: 2025-07-26T21:13:57.000Z
Well, some people read my [last blog post](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/vo87z2qi) about startups and academic publishing, which doesn’t usually happen. Thanks to everyone for reading, and for providing awesome feedback on Twitter.

I’m not active on Twitter for a variety of reasons, mental health and not wanting to do free work for surveillance capitalists chief among them. But I’d like to meaningfully engage with, and give folks credit for, their helpful feedback. Plus, I realized it served as a great opportunity to experiment with the very new models of evaluation we need to see become mainstream in a low-stakes environment.

So, taking a page from [Arcadia Science](https://research.arcadiascience.com/pub/perspective-publishing-round-one/release/2?ref=gabestein.com), I’m using this post to:

- Collect and acknowledge the most useful feedback on the original post.
- Respond to it where needed.
- Give authors of helpful feedback credit for their thoughts as contributors to this Pub.
- Using our Connections feature, make this Pub a "Reply” to the original article so it’s easily findable from the original.
- Mint DOIs for the original piece ([https://doi.org/10.21428/43418882.9eeb0e4a](https://doi.org/10.21428/43418882.9eeb0e4a?ref=gabestein.com)) and add a reply relationship to this piece ([https://doi.org/10.21428/43418882.d60133f0](https://doi.org/10.21428/43418882.d60133f0?ref=gabestein.com)), so that contributors have a citable piece they can add to their ORCID (automatically if setup) and CV. Once updated, the relationship will also appear in the public [Crossref API](https://api.crossref.org/works/10.21428/43418882.9eeb0e4a?ref=gabestein.com), allowing it this reply to be discovered and surfaced alongside the original.

~~Because this wasn’t an academic piece, I’m not going to mint a DOI for either the original post or this pseudo-review (unless folks think I should/want to cite it, I guess?). But if it were, and I did, it would mean everyone who contributed feedback would have a citable piece that would automatically go on their ORCID profiles (if accepted) and that they could put on their CVs.~~

Finally, I want to acknowledge a few shortcomings/open questions:

- This is too hard to do on PubPub right now from a UX perspective. Among other things, we should make adding connections as simple as adding a link (pretty easy, on the roadmap), and we should be tracking tweets about Pubs and making it simple to pull them into Pubs and automatically (much harder, probably requires special Twitter API access and lots of funding) and link them to ORCIDs (maybe their API can be expanded to include search by “personal websites”?). Also, we should add the ability to Tweet out comments (and put them on other social networks).
- Is it a good thing for the author to curate their own feedback? I’m certainly incentivized to leave out really negative comments. On the other hand, people can show up here and reply inline, or make a lot of noise on Twitter and elsewhere (or their own linked Pubs) if I really act in bad faith. But we could maybe use another layer of evaluation where someone trusted steps in and says “Gabe did a good job summarizing the feedback.”
- What roles should contributors to posts like these have? I invented the “Feedback” role for this because the [CRediT Taxonomy](https://credit.niso.org/?ref=gabestein.com) we support, as well as the other Crossref/Bibtex roles we support natively, don’t really offer a good fit.
- How should we include the tweets themselves in the feedback graph I’m creating? Make each one a connection that gets deposited? Rely on [Event Data](https://www.crossref.org/services/event-data/?ref=gabestein.com)? [DocMaps](https://docmaps.knowledgefutures.org/?ref=gabestein.com)? Relatedly, how can we archive those Tweets so if they’re deleted or otherwise disappear, the scholarly record remains in tact?
- How to ask for permission to include people as contributors at scale? (Note: if you want your name to be removed from the contributor list, please let me know).
- How to automatically notify people that they’ve been included in something like this (probably via Twitter — would happen via ORCID if I deposited this).
- What connection type should this Pub have? It’s clearly not a “review” in the sense that Crossref or Datacite means it, but it’s not just an author response, either. It’s almost like a literature review of feedback — a “feedback review” or something.
- I’m sure new helpful feedback will come in over time. I can always create a new release, but it would be nice to have more of a sense via the UI that the Pub is meaningfully updated.
- What should we title these things? There’s gotta be a more interesting/variable format than ‘Feedback on X’, surely.

---

## Asks for readers

- Please comment on the above open questions if you have any meta-feedback.
- If I have missed any useful feedback you saw on Twitter or elsewhere, please let me know by commenting on this article below or tweeting at me (I won’t respond there, but I will favorite and add them here).
- If you want to respond, please do so either by commenting below or annotating any part of this pub by highlighting it and clicking on the annotation button (PubPub account required).
- If you’d like to be taken off the contributor list, please comment here or ping me on Twitter.

---

## Feedback

> Sharp analysis of why startups haven't fixed our broken scientific publishing system. My conclusions are only slightly different because I want this system to be built on an infrastructure mutually owned by academics with none of the data or metadata siloed in private orgs. [https://t.co/90mWsG0n0J](https://t.co/90mWsG0n0J?ref=gabestein.com)
> 
> — Dan Goodman (@neuralreckoning) [July 8, 2022](https://twitter.com/neuralreckoning/status/1545317724116914177?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=gabestein.com)

This is the end-state I prefer, too — that’s why KFG is a non-profit, produces fully open-source tech, and has adopted a [membership model](https://notes.knowledgefutures.org/pub/oozjbyky/release/3?ref=gabestein.com). But because of the high social switching costs discussed in the piece, and the amount of coordination required, I suspect private organizations with fewer constraints will have do the risk-taking to prove new models and provide examples that can be adopted more widely. I am also cognizant of many academy-led orgs that have failed due to self-imposed coordination costs, and think we need to strike the right balance of startup speed and innovation and community input, experience, and expertise.

> Agreed — worrying to also see less focus on community.  
>  
> I’d also flag [@gabestein](https://twitter.com/gabestein?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=gabestein.com) the risk of focusing on FROs + private labs, where big infusions of 💰 often lead to not coordinating (or often acknowledging) others with longstanding expertise in the space. It’s individualistic. [https://t.co/sp3LsJg5tV](https://t.co/sp3LsJg5tV?ref=gabestein.com)
> 
> — Kaitlin Thaney (@kaythaney) [July 9, 2022](https://twitter.com/kaythaney/status/1545917671090405376?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=gabestein.com)

As I (broke my own rule and) [wrote on Twitter](https://twitter.com/gabestein/status/1545921599509073922?ref=gabestein.com), and expanded on above, I agree — it can’t be purely private labs, and we must rely on community input and expertise. That’s what our services model is designed to do — help folks in the community overcome their barriers and work with them to co-design solutions, leaning in part on the ability of private orgs to take risks and prove out models.

> This is a very accurate analysis. However, I pose that way to address it may be to engender shift of reward function away from citation count, e.g. towards code reuse, process or material adoption, process adoption.
> 
> — Sergei Kalinin (@Sergei\_Imaging) [July 8, 2022](https://twitter.com/Sergei%5FImaging/status/1545371185218732032?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=gabestein.com)

I completely agree, as do most observers of academic publishing I know, and as I wrote in the piece, an ideal “disrupted” system would adopt far more effective and equitable ways of evaluating impact and distributing rewards. However, as the piece goes into in detail, engendering this shift is an incredibly complex coordination problem that I believe will require more than just advocacy or new metrics, but new kinds of institutions. Additionally, I would argue the proposed reward functions are a little too simple and would themselves be easily susceptible to monopolistic re-capture (see, e.g., Altmetric). Hence the focus on disrupting the underlying structure of the market, not just the reward system.

![](https://www.gabestein.com/content/images/2025/07/Screenshot-2025-07-26-at-17.09.36.png)

Originally at: [https://x.com/brembs/status/1545666593061048320?ref\_src=twsrc%5Etfw](https://x.com/brembs/status/1545666593061048320?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=gabestein.com)

This is an important point and one I should have made explicit in my argument. The market is not functional due to supply-side monopolies, which is the core of the problem, and a big reason why disruption by traditional means is so hard. That said, you could have made the same basic argument about the newspaper business at the [peak of its revenue](https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers/?ref=gabestein.com) in 2005\. Although the two markets are not analogous, as I made clear, I do think the example offers reason to believe the supply-side could be disaggregated by the right institutions.

---

> Really interesting piece. 2 important steps in the right direction announced this week:  
> "Statement on peer reviewed publications" [https://t.co/IZ0Ds3upMB](https://t.co/IZ0Ds3upMB?ref=gabestein.com)  
> ANOTHER report of an institution adopting a rights retention policy to help researchers regain control [https://t.co/0PtBhtD3lO](https://t.co/0PtBhtD3lO?ref=gabestein.com)
> 
> — Sally Rumsey (@SallyRumsey1) [July 9, 2022](https://twitter.com/SallyRumsey1/status/1545698860202430464?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=gabestein.com)

Respectfully, I’m not convinced that cOAlition S or rights retention agreements do much to address the underlying incentive issues. The [willingness of conglomerates](https://www.coalition-s.org/160-elsevier-journals-become-plan-s-aligned-transformative-journals/?ref=gabestein.com) to sign on to Plan S and [purchase open review platforms](https://www.thebookseller.com/news/taylor-francis-buys-f1000-research-ltd-1150791?ref=gabestein.com) is good evidence that they do not view them as a threat to their business models. It’s wonderful for these options to be available for researchers, and any momentum helps. But until it is easier build a successful career with entirely open publishing models, and many examples of researchers doing just that exist, I fear these will remain options used by only the most privileged and ideological.

---

> 2/ To the 5 points, I'd add the freedom to innovate.  
> The PublisherAcademicComplex defends itself with copyright, TPMs, lawyers which often chill new ventures. University libraries will often enforce arbitrary "publisher rules" and reprimand innovators (e.g. TextAndDataMining TDM)
> 
> — Peter Murray-Rust (@petermurrayrust) [July 9, 2022](https://twitter.com/petermurrayrust/status/1545759523729727496?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=gabestein.com)

The lack of freedom to innovate is a good point, and one that could have been highlighted more in my piece. That said, I’m not sure the blame falls on libraries anymore. In my experience, many libraries are dropping enforcement of arbitrary rules and even renegotiating their contracts with publishers alongside their faculty to win better rights (e.g. retention rights for institutional repositories pointed out above). I also understand libraries’ ideological resistance to innovations that involve data collection and mining given their experiences watching conglomerates acquire analytics startups as they transform themselves into [surveillance publishers](https://elephantinthelab.org/surveillance-publishing/?ref=gabestein.com). Non-profit, mission-driven organizations like [Our Research](https://ourresearch.org/transparency?ref=gabestein.com), meanwhile, have had no problems innovating with data.

I agree, and should have made more clear, that the victims of the complex, as you call it, are concentrated among less well-funded researchers, particularly in the global south.

---

![](https://www.gabestein.com/content/images/2025/07/Screenshot-2025-07-26-at-17.10.43.png)

Originally at: [https://x.com/Bluefishdude/status/1545782244127776769?ref\_src=twsrc%5Etfw](https://x.com/Bluefishdude/status/1545782244127776769?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=gabestein.com)

I’d never considered PubMed as one of the primary obstacles to innovation before, but as the reply makes clear, it is a major one. Inclusion in PubMedCentral is notoriously difficult to achieve, and its article requirements make it nearly impossible to deviate from the traditional journal article structure. 

[Only last year](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/nihpreprints/?ref=gabestein.com) did the service even begin piloting inclusion of preprints.

---

![](https://www.gabestein.com/content/images/2025/07/Screenshot-2025-07-26-at-17.11.15.png)

Originally at: [https://x.com/manveerbasra\_/status/1546136910027898882?ref\_src=twsrc%5Etfw](https://x.com/manveerbasra%5F/status/1546136910027898882?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=gabestein.com)

N of 1, but it’s interesting that this entrepreneur hadn’t heard of many of the startup attempts that are common knowledge within the industry. There’s a broader commentary to be had here about the startup industry’s inability to acknowledge failure that is beyond the scope of this piece, but makes me think the academic publishing tech community should be documenting them more.

---

> A lot of good food for thought here. As the director of a startup [#OpenAccess](https://twitter.com/hashtag/OpenAccess?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=gabestein.com) press [@punctum\_books](https://twitter.com/punctum%5Fbooks?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=gabestein.com) that’s been around for 10+ years, I believe startups \*can\* overcome the prestige problem (by slowly acquiring it) & libraries will support them, but disruption does feel elusive. [https://t.co/Z2c9IxJ0HW](https://t.co/Z2c9IxJ0HW?ref=gabestein.com)
> 
> — Eileen 🇵🇸 A. Fradenburg Joy (@EileenAJoy) [July 11, 2022](https://twitter.com/EileenAJoy/status/1546524879268130817?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=gabestein.com)

Agreed. I would also respectfully submit that punctum is not a traditional startup given its deep commitment to sustainability and values. I also think the market should demand less sacrifice of new entrants than it has of you if we’re going to change things!

---

> 6/ This is no \[ordinary\] market. "Scholarly publishing is permeated by state action, public subsidies, gift culture, and anticompetitive practices."
> 
> — Peter Suber (@petersuber@fediscience.org) (@petersuber) [December 19, 2019](https://twitter.com/petersuber/status/1207683111229612033?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=gabestein.com)

Naturally, Peter Suber, one of the most astute analyzers of the industry, has more to add. The point about most of the money being public is a particularly important part of the industry’s dysfunction that I didn’t cover in any detail. The point that publishers also have a government-granted monopoly via copyright is obviously an important one as well that I didn’t go into — though as above, I would argue that as publishers have shifted business models towards software, services, and analytics, the copyright monopoly has become less important to their model, hence increasingly agreeing to more lenient stances allowing self-archiving, postprinting, Gold OA-style embargo periods, etc.

---

![](https://www.gabestein.com/content/images/2025/07/Screenshot-2025-07-26-at-17.12.12.png)

Originally at: [https://x.com/manveerbasra\_/status/1548889746398597120?ref\_src=twsrc%5Etfw](https://x.com/manveerbasra%5F/status/1548889746398597120?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=gabestein.com)

Though I am appreciate the thoughtfulness of this thread, I find it does not engage fully with my original piece’s warnings about overcoming the status quo. Many people have attempted to create a “generalized platform that democratizes access to truly Internet-Native research,” with varying degrees of success as a business, but little disruption to show for it. Off the top of my head: Authorea, Experiment.com, ResearchHub, F1000…the list goes on. This is [assumption #5](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/vo87z2qi#its-a-sociotechnical-problem) in my piece, that it’s a sociotechnical problem.

---

Jeff Pooley [writes](https://www.jeffpooley.com/2022/07/social-cost/?ref=gabestein.com) a characteristically astute response on [his blog](https://www.jeffpooley.com/?ref=gabestein.com):

> But Stein’s framing in terms of “social switching costs” hitched to a researcher’s three constituents (the university, funder, and library), while insightful, risks obscuring two facets of the problem. The first is that it’s really one of those constituents, the university, that imposes the switching cost, by way of the tenure, promotion, and hiring systems.

I agree that the focus should be on the universities, but I would still maintain that funders impose heavy switching costs. Even the most progressive ones with open access mandates won’t go so far as to require their researchers opt out of journal publication, even as they [pay T&F-owned F1000](https://gatesopenresearch.org/faqs?utm%5Fsource=twitter&utm%5Fmedium=social&utm%5Fcampaign=JQJ23614&utm%5Fterm=post) to host alternative platforms. There’s some truth to the argument that they can’t do this because of the universities’ role in maintaining the prestige system, but I’d like to at least see one try and dare its researchers and the institutions they work for to refuse funding.

> The second missing piece here is the role of researchers’ own beliefs: Many scholars have internalized the journal prestige economy. It’s not merely a complex opportunity structure or the friction of too many moving parts. The bigger issue is that (1) scholars want to get published in *Nature*, which (2) universities reward in formal and informal ways, often (3) drawing on other scholars who serve every step of the tenure, promotion, and hiring processes. The problem of journal prestige lock-in has a lot to do with belief and culture, in other words. One implication is that culture change, and efforts to overhaul tenure-and-promotion and hiring criteria, are where a lot of our attention should be.

This is a great point, and one I should have made more strongly in the piece. My bias is showing here: most of the researchers I work with do not like the prestige system. As Pooley points out, though, it’s likely true that most scholars support the prestige system. That cultural barrier a key reason why publishing startups of all stripes fail, which they should understand deciding to enter the market. I also agree that much of our attention should focus on advocating for culture change, which is another reason why I think traditional startups are ill-suited to the task and I propose an organization with advocacy as a core function.

> I found the initial framing around for-profit startups and private research labs a bit jarring. In my view, profit-seeking and the university system are [fundamentally misaligned](https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2017/08/15/scholarly-communications-shouldnt-just-be-open-but-non-profit-too/?ref=gabestein.com).

I understand this discomfort, and want to reiterate, as above, that I agree, which is why I proposed a new type of non-profit institution as a possible solution. The piece was written with a primary audience of startup founders (and their funders) considering the academic publishing market in mind, which is why I started with arguments that match the way they think.

I’ll offer a small amount of pushback that will likely be uncomfortable, though: given the academy’s internalization of prestige that Pooley points out, I argue for an all-of-the-above approach to changing culture, rather than a more limited one. Whether we like it or not, next-gen privately funded labs (some non-profit, some for-profit) will be producing an increasing amount of research and publishing it in non-traditional ways. Unlike publishers, their publishing programs are not revenue generators, which is why I feel comfortable working with them. In fact, in my experience so far, many of them are more aligned with radical visions of publishing than even the most progressive university-based publishers (and sometimes even more than independent scholar-led ones). I suspect that by trying new models in environments more conducive to risk-taking, these organizations can provide examples that reduce the anxiety around switching for the researchers at universities who are inclined to be more progressive. All to say, I think it would be unwise to not engage these folks in trying to build the system we want to see, and I think there’s enough value alignment even with many for-profits to do so without replicating the issues of the status quo.
### Social cost
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/vo87z2qi/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T15:06:02.000Z
At first glance, the staid academic publishing industry seems like a perfect fit for disruption in the form of an enterprising startup. Its total addressable market, or TAM ([\~$19b revenue/year](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science?ref=gabestein.com)), is more than big enough to support a unicorn or two. It relies on centuries-old processes based in the limitations of print that have been proven to be [ineffective and inequitable](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/?ref=gabestein.com). It is [dominated](https://tidsskriftet.no/en/2020/08/kronikk/money-behind-academic-publishing?ref=gabestein.com) by a few large mega-corporation incumbents who, like the newspaper industry before them, have become used to extracting enormous profit-margins for activities that produce questionable value.

The market has a nice shape to it, too: it appears to be a two-sided marketplace with researchers on one side, institutions and funders on the other, and publishers in-between — a classic chicken-and-egg situation, ripe for disruption. Researchers need to adopt a new publishing platform that abandons the worst parts of the status quo. To do that, universities, labs, and funders need to give those researchers credit for those alternate modes of publishing so they don’t lose their jobs by opting in.

So, an enterprising startup should be able to succeed by raising enough money to build a slick new publishing platform and pay to subsidize researcher usage of it until their institutions are forced to recognize their contributions and pay to support the platform. Thanks to the rise of a new generation of private labs like Arcadia Science, a [KFG](https://knowledgefutures.org/?ref=gabestein.com)[1](#fn-0-bottom) member and partner, and [Focused Research Organizations](https://www.dayoneproject.org/ideas/focused-research-organizations-to-accelerate-science-technology-and-medicine?ref=gabestein.com) (FROs), the job actually appears to be less complex than ever, because a lot of the initial bootstrapping of the platform can be cross-subsidized by a new type of institution without the constraints of universities, rather than paid for directly by the startup.

In theory, I think this should work. And to be clear, I think private labs and FROs are a key part of the solution, because they can help reduce the risk of adopting new forms of publishing by proving the models outside the status quo. But in practice, what we’ve learned building KFG over the last 7 years is that the startup approach to building disruptive academic publishing technology is often doomed by a failure to understand the complexity of the market.

## An Aside On Disruption

There are lots of different visions of what a disrupted academic publishing industry would look like, and in general, it’s not clear that “disruption,” as understood by many, is desirable. So, for the purposes of this essay, I’ll keep the goal simple and work backwards from there. I (as many before me) imagine a future where:

1. Anyone can publish their work to the web freely and easily, in the form that best suits the work.
2. Anyone can discover that work freely and easily.
3. Anyone can publish feedback about work they find freely and easily, in the form that best suits their needs and the author’s needs for evaluation.
4. Anyone can find and use this feedback for their purposes.
5. Money is distributed equitably and fairly to everyone involved in the publishing and evaluation process, based on the quality of the work and the evaluations.

## The Market *Is* The Problem

Getting to that end-point is going to be far more challenging than in other, simpler markets, because academic publishing is a byzantine, multi-level enterprise-ish market. The customers who pay most of the bills for publishing directly (libraries) are not the same as the customers who pay for research (foundations and governments), who are not the same as the customers who pay researcher salaries (universities and labs). And none of the payers are the key stakeholders, the researchers themselves. Despite being different customers, their decisions are tightly coupled. Institutions who pay researcher salaries evaluate them based on the success of research that the funders pay for, which is measured as an output of the publishing that the libraries pay for.

Because of this complexity, the academic publishing market imposes enormous social switching costs on its customers. For an individual researcher to change their behavior, they need to know that the university or lab which pays their salary, the funder which pays their research costs, and the library which pays for access to their field's top journals won't penalize them for it — or, in the best case, that they’ll be rewarded for it. Many startups in the space build publishing products that compete on price, ease-of-use, time, etc., but none so far have been able to overcome enough of the social switching cost to win the number of customers required to build a viable high-growth business. Instead, to survive, most startups end up capitulating to the status quo, building features that their customers demand that reinforce the worst parts of the current system. Over and over again, once-radical publishing startups find themselves unable to say no, and compromise on their mission to, e.g., build direct connections to journals, sell data to analytics tools owned by their competitors, waste money supporting esoteric formats, and still find themselves without a viable high-growth business.

As a result, a long list of independent publishing tech startups (bePress, Atypon, Editorial Manager, eJournalPress, Hindawi, Publons, F1000, Authorea...) have been acquired by publishing conglomerates, which has damaged the reputation of for-profit startups among the very people they need to win over. Private labs and FROs are a great new market entrant with fewer of these constraints that can help push the ecosystem forward by demonstrating that the social costs are lower than anticipated. But there's not enough of them for startups to build a viable business on, and they still need to interface with the productive parts of the status quo (DOIs, citation graphs, metadata tags, discoverability tools, etc.) to build the communities around their science which they believe will bring about change.

To truly disrupt the market, we need a coordinated, wholesale switch in the way academic careers are evaluated by three different customers: research institutions, libraries, and funders. Doing this will require the product instincts of a startup, the specialized industry knowledge of an incumbent, the coalition-building capabilities of a foundation, and the resources to survive what's likely to be a long, iterative transition. A startup may be able to succeed in that environment, but I believe the path is much more narrow than in most markets, which is why we built KFG the way we did — to build great products that can compete on a traditional cost basis while offering services that help users understand what they really need from the status quo. We’ve learned that great technology is not enough in this market. You also need to help users overcome switching costs by providing the examples, education, guidance, and confidence that allows them to let go of their assumed needs and embrace more radical forms of publishing without worrying about not getting credit for their work. On top of this software and services offering, we’ve built a revenue model that can keep us sustainable during the transition without requiring us to chase the for-profit-level returns that would likely force us to make concessions to the status quo that would compromise our mission and deplete our hard-won credibility.

That doesn’t mean startups and others shouldn’t try as well. But if they do, they would be wise not to make the same mistakes so many others (including earlier iterations of KFG) have. Here are some of the common mistakes I’ve seen startups make in this industry (including my own!).

## 1\. The Academic Publishing Market is Just Like Market X

A core bad assumption many technologists make when entering the academic publishing market is that the market is analogous to another one they’ve seen, often the newspaper market that was so successfully upended by Craigslist, Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, etc. The truth is that it is far more complex than most markets well-suited for startups.

The main inefficiency in the academic publishing market is indeed similar to the one that doomed the newspaper market: misalignment between the value proposition of the industry’s core products, the needs of the people who use them, and the needs of the people who pay for them. In the news market, newspapers subsidized the cost of their main subscription product with advertising. Over time, they became complacent, and began assuming that because their readers paid a subscription fee, they valued their core news product, when in fact they mostly valued ancillary services like classifieds that were easily disaggregated by digital upstarts. The true consumer value of the news product isn’t 0, but it is likely too low to support thriving newsrooms anywhere but in the country’s largest cities, which is why most local news is transitioning to nonprofit models.

In the academic market, the core product produced by publishers is peer-reviewed research. It is subsidized primarily by university libraries, who pay enormous subscription fees so that their faculty can access them — or, alternately, pay enormous article publishing charges so their faculty can publish work open access. This is where the similarities between the two markets end.

## 2\. The Incumbents Are Complacent

Unlike in news, academic publishing conglomerates have not been complacent. Learning in part from the news industry, they realized that there is little intrinsic value in providing access to peer-reviewed content, which is why they have been more than happy to gradually acquire every promising startup and switch to models based on publishing charges, services, and analytics while seeing [record revenues](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/financial-reporting/article/88723-wiley-on-track-to-top-2-billion-in-sales-in-fiscal-2022.html?ref=gabestein.com).

What they realize, and what many startups do not, is that the value of publishing lies in the prestige and opportunity for career advancement an author earns by being published in high-profile venues. Changing the status quo will require researchers to change their behavior in ways that risk their livelihoods. To break through, we must change the way researchers are evaluated and compensated for their work so that they have an incentive to publish in new ways.

## 3\. It’s A Consumer-Driven Market

Shifting compensation also sounds like a classic problem for a startup, but here, too, startups often fail to understand the complexity of the market. In different markets, like hotels or transportation, startups like Airbnb and Uber can quickly change once-hardened behavior at scale by creating alternative markets that provide superior experiences to existing ones. This works because those markets are fundamentally consumer-driven: individuals can vote with their wallets.

The academic market, as I discussed above, is a multi-level enterprise market. Institutions and funders pay the salaries and budgets of researchers, and largely demand that their researchers publish in prestige journals to earn tenure, promotion, and future grants. Because of that demand, researchers in turn demand that their libraries give them access to those prestige journals, so they can learn how to be successful at publishing in them. Worse still, the same companies that publish prestige journals also own and sell the analytics platforms universities and funders use to evaluate research success, and those companies deliberately limit what they will include in those metrics to publishing outputs that look like the status quo.

Thus, even if a startup developed the perfect open publishing platform, and every researcher wanted to publish on it (and many would), they would risk their careers doing so until their institutions and funders decided to change both the method and tools they use for evaluation. Particularly in light of the pandemic, momentum is shifting towards recognizing more contributions like preprints that don’t look like traditional journals. And new types of institutions are pursuing a strategy of delinking compensation from publishing activity to great effect. But even these new institutions have limits to their progressiveness. To get quality feedback from researchers at traditional institutions, and to have their output recognized as legitimate science, even the most progressive labs must make their work legible to the status quo by minting DOIs, adding journal-like structures for aggregators, etc. In a best-case scenario, a progressive lab working with a mission-driven technology builder (again, this is what we are attempting at KFG) could provide just enough ties to the status quo to help outside researchers come along for the ride.

As discussed above, however, traditional high-growth startups need to build features quickly to win customers in the 12-18 month timelines set by their investors. The vast majority of training and research still happens at universities, and the vast majority of funding still comes from foundations and governments that demand adherence to the status quo. As a result, the features built to give progressive users just enough of a link to current system have a tendency to snowball into selling points for more conservative customers that unwittingly reinforce the status quo, compromise the company’s mission, and hurt its reputation among its core users.

## 4\. The TAM is Actually $19B

Startups who understand this reality are faced with a narrow set of choices. Some, like Authorea, Sci.pe, Libero, etc., choose to work within the system by creating better technology to support traditional journal or preprint publishing, in the hopes that if they can attract enough adopters, particularly from established journals, they can eventually use their platform’s scale and network effects to nudge people towards more progressive modes of publishing.

The problem with this approach is it targets publishers as the customer, rather than the place most of the revenue comes from: libraries. Top-tier journals are published on technology owned and operated by their publishers. They have no incentive to switch to better technology they don’t own — at best, they may (and often do) acquire those startups and adopt them internally. Independent publishers like societies and university presses have very limited budgets, and, with some notable exceptions, are often fairly conservative, only reluctantly embracing even open access, much less new publishing formats. New, progressive independent publishers who don’t want to publish with the large conglomerates often do choose to publish on new platforms. But they have even smaller budgets and quickly find that a better technological experience alone is not enough of an incentive to attract authors to publish with them instead of prestige outlets. Worse still, the long history of independent publishing platforms being acquired by large conglomerates discussed above has effectively poisoned the well for new startups, causing most independent editors to value mission alignment above technology and further reducing the capacity of the industry to innovate.

University libraries are incentivized to switch their subscription budgets away from rent-seeking conglomerates, but they ultimately answer to faculty. As several [high-profile](https://cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2021/03/16/uc-secures-landmark-open-access-deal-with-worlds-largest-scientific-publisher/?ref=gabestein.com) failures by large libraries to renegotiate their contracts to send less money to publishing conglomerates have shown, until those faculty are comfortable with both not having access to prestige journals and not being able to publish in them, libraries can only shift very small amounts of budget to new upstarts. Librarians are also among the most progressive actors in the space, and feel the sting of startup acquisition more acutely than most.

Taken altogether, this means that until the social switching cost problem is overcome and libraries can devote more of their budgets to paying for novel publishing experiments, the actual TAM of the academic publishing market is likely a tiny fraction of the oft-quoted $19B figure. In resource-scarce environments, even the best startups will struggle to stay afloat on the short timeframes they’re typically funded to prove traction within.

## 5\. It’s A Sociotechnical Problem

Other startups, like Publons, Pubpeer, ScienceBlogs, and ResearchHub, attempt to more squarely address the social cost problem by eschewing the journal system altogether and inventing simple, highly structured, alternative forms of publishing that can be recognized and compensated for differently. No dominant platform exists to publish work outside of the current system, they argue, so if they can build a simple system with a great UI and novel compensation and recognition schemes, they can convert enough users to build traction until they became a de facto platform for academic publishing that incumbents can’t ignore, much like Facebook or Twitter in social media.

The argument has merit: most academic publishing technology is truly horrendous to use. But there are three problems with this approach: first, it incorrectly assumes that ease-of-use is the key barrier to adoption, when, as we’ve demonstrated above, it is just one of many. If ease-of-use were the main problem, blogs and social networks would have long solved it. Instead, platforms like ScienceBlogs fizzled out, and even successful, purpose-built social networks like ResearchGate and Academia.edu have been unable to change the publishing behavior of the masses, despite numerous attempts.

Second, the approach creates a very narrow success path. Because tech startups are driven by lean principles, they tend to over-learn from early success and underestimate the heterogeneity of the publishing ecosystem. A platform that works for one sub-discipline is often inadequate for an adjacent one — sometimes just because the cultures are different. But these disciplines are so small that even winning 100% market-share of one doesn’t look like meaningful traction to a startup’s funders. Thus, startups are forced to either spread their focus too thin (deadly for any startup), focus on a large discipline that gives them early traction but can’t be easily replicated in other spaces, or produce technology that is too generic to be a meaningfully better alternative than the status quo, despite UX improvements.

Finally, the approach underestimates the technical complexity of the ecosystem, which is itself designed to impede disruption. As discussed above, even the most progressive research producers will need some connections to legacy systems for their work to be considered at all. Publishing a single minimum viable research output requires, at minimum, knowledge of JATS XML, the DOI system, multiple metadata tagging schemes, and direct relationships with dozens of aggregators and indexers. Learning all of these esoteric requirements and developing those relationships takes years for even the smartest team.

It may be possible for the right team with a background in the ecosystem to strike the perfect balance with the right series of pivots, but it’s a much narrower path than exists in most markets.

## We Need a New Type of Knowledge Institution

With the caveat that I’m *incredibly biased* by my employer, I believe the solution, as I wrote above, lies in creating a new type of knowledge institution that combines the best of startups, non-profits, and expert consultants. These institutions must be capable of producing innovative, trusted technology that allows anyone to experiment with new approaches to publishing. But that’s not enough. They must also be able to reduce switching costs by combining those tools with services that help users maintain the right ties to the status quo that give them the credit and credibility in the current system without reinforcing the worst parts of it. And they must find a way to become sustainable on their own merits so that they’re not reliant on grants, of which there simply aren’t enough to support technology organizations over the long term. KFG won’t be the only one of these institutions, and our approach won’t be the only one that works (if it does). But until we acknowledge the complexities of this market, and the challenges new entrants face, we’re going to see a lot of startups come up empty in their attempts to disrupt anything except their own bank accounts.

### Footnotes

1. My employer [↵](#fn-0-inline)
### Spilling it
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/bnlkdpyu/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T12:49:08.000Z
I [wrote a thing](https://notes.knowledgefutures.org/pub/kkcevu38?ref=gabestein.com) for work about our commitment to eventually supporting self-hosting for [PubPub](https://pubpub.org/?ref=gabestein.com) (the platform this blog is published on). People sometimes ask us for it, and it’s certainly mission aligned and something we’d like to do. But it’s difficult, because as the piece notes, the desire to be “fully self-hostable” often conflicts with our desire to serve our core users, who typically can’t or don’t want to self-host.

We’ve been having a lot of conversations internally over the last year or so about how to square this circle, and I think we’ve come up with a pretty good solution: bake it right into our sustainability plans. Because we chose a membership and services model, rather than a pay-for-use model, there’s no incompatibility at all between offering hosted, managed, and self-hosted versions of PubPub. People can choose to become members or contract with us for services no matter how they use PubPub, and because many people do want to self-host, supporting it will likely only increase our membership.

So that feels good, and has led to a lot of technical discussion about how to get there, too, that the post gets into in some detail. It won’t be easy, but we know how to do it, and conveniently, most of the work required is already planned for the hosted version.

The behind-the-scenes here, which hopefully I won’t get into trouble for sharing because no one reads this, is that there seems to have been a bit of a whisper campaign going on in some circles of our little open publishing technology niche claiming that KFG is not *really* committed to “openness.” That word is so broad, and has so many different meanings in different contexts, that I suspect some of these critiques, if not leveled in bad faith, at least willfully trade on the word’s imprecision to conflate open-source with open publishing/access. No doubt this convenient weaponization serves the open publishing ecosystem’s incumbents and gatekeepers well, helping them steer resources to projects that meet the latest openness threshold one must clear to be in the club. But it’s not particularly helpful for advancing the open publishing movement.

Like many other shibboleths our industry has embraced, openness has become an end in and of itself, when it should be understood as a design decision en route to what we really want: an effective, equitable, and sustainable publishing ecosystem.[1](#fn-0-bottom) Much of the time, openness is the right design decision. But as we’ve learned from the [surveillance publishing](https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/jep/article/id/1874/?ref=gabestein.com) industry’s ready embrace of open access, it’s no guarantee of progress. In the open-source world, as my piece details, over-commitment to openness over usability, accessibility, and sustainability often leads to underserved communities, unusable code, abandoned projects, or unexpected pivots that leave erstwhile users with no recourse. And in community spaces, as we know all too well from the [disastrous societal effects](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2025764118?ref=gabestein.com) of social media platforms, too much openness actually prevents functional communities from forming.

As always, our goal is to attempt to strike the fine balance of openness, accessibility, and sustainability. We certainly don’t always get it right, and appreciate being criticized for our mistakes. But we’ll happily continue to brush off the rest of the criticism as the irony it is: gatekeeping “open.”

### Footnotes

1. Why yes, this is KFG’s mission statement. [↵](#fn-0-inline)
### No
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/hnm8vqhf/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:37.000Z
This is a terrible, shameful day in America. Thousands of women are going to die because of the transparently political decision of an unelected tribunal of extremists who were selected for this express purpose by a cabal of reactionary psychopaths who have conspired and plotted for decades to achieve exactly this result. In addition to the many deaths that will follow, many more will be hurt, thrown in prison, and otherwise subjugated. And the specter of being a second-class citizen will haunt everyone with a uterus as long as this new status quo is allowed to endure. Worse still, this will likely not be the end of the backsliding of rights, as the most extreme elements of the court — in particular a man credibly accused of sexual assault whose wife may well have aided and abetted a treasonous conspiracy to overthrow an election — signal they are open to revisiting almost every other fundamental right we’ve grown to enjoy in the post-Civil Rights era, from equal rights to gay marriage and well beyond. It’s not worth sugar-coating anything. The outlook is grim, the horizon dark.

We should take time to mourn, of course. So stop here if you’re in that place right now. But my mind typically wants to race ahead, and so I’ll continue to what’s next.

The only, I hesitate to call it particularly bright, spot, is that this decision, and increasingly [the court itself](https://news.gallup.com/poll/394103/confidence-supreme-court-sinks-historic-low.aspx?ref=gabestein.com), are deeply, deeply unpopular, its most extreme members shielded from this reality by the fact that they are old, warped, and worn in both body and intellect, well on their way to graves on which I someday hope to dance. It is cold comfort, I know, that this insidious conspiracy is now reaching its pinnacle, but we are fortunate, in a sense, to be living through its apotheosis rather than its nadir, because we will have the last laugh. And it may come sooner than we think.

If we are good, and a bit lucky, there remain credible threats to check the court’s egregious overreaches that are well within our grasp. In all the deserved dunking on Democrats for not doing enough to foresee and forestall the ascendance of the conservative judicial movement, it’s easy to miss just how far this court’s radicalism has pushed the stodgy old centrist party. A legislative right to abortion, recently unthinkable in either party (remember the [Stupak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stupak%E2%80%93Pitts%5FAmendment?ref=gabestein.com) amendment?), is now two senate votes away, thanks to the commitment of 48 Democratic Senators and every single likely nominee to eliminate the anti-Democratic filibuster at the heart of the institution’s dysfunction.

Eliminating the filibuster also paves the way for [meaningful and plausible court reforms](https://twitter.com/DissentientOne/status/1540397630274027523?ref=gabestein.com) that do not require a constitutional amendment or supermajority, like changing the composition of the court and decreasing its jurisdiction. That these are becoming mainstream Democratic talking points is itself progress.

As Kevin Elliott [argues](https://twitter.com/DissentientOne/status/1540397650020892675?ref=gabestein.com) on Twitter, pursuing these options must now become our mission, because even credible threats of passage may be enough to impact the court’s decision-making. Indeed, Roberts in his concurring opinion on *Dobbs*, Kavanaugh’s on the gun rights case, and Gorsuch’s surprising votes on justice reform may already be examples of this effect. As we take to the streets and call our representatives today and in the coming weeks, we should demand not just abortion rights, but filibuster reform and specific court reforms, too. Court expansion and jurisdiction limitation should become daily midterm talking points as solutions for the issue of this unpopular court’s extremism. We should be able to tell our disaffected friends that there are steps we can take now to reverse trend, and be able to point to candidates promising to take those steps as evidence.

As the last 4 years of activism has demonstrated, the Democratic party can be moved to take needed positions on critical issues. The failure to eliminate the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation was not, as many have argued, lip service that proved the Democrats’ weakness. Going from rarely discussed to 48 senators, many openly skeptical of process reforms, voting in favor of removing the filibuster in two years’ time was in its way an enormous achievement. If we can understand it as momentum, rather than inertia, we can build a movement that gets us on the path to justice.

It will not be enough to solve all of our problems, to be sure. We don’t need new parties — we need new [economic and social systems](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/1z314izc/release/3), and indeed a [new politics](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/jz6cim0e/release/3) entirely. But today, I am of the mind that we must use **all** our power to resist. And there is credible power to be wielded within the status quo if we can find a way to wield it.

See you out there.
### Moon II
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/vrnhuhro/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:37.000Z
I went to school in Boston and later moved to New York, so like many folks of the megalopolis, I’ve spent a lot of time on busses stuck in traffic between the two. The problem, I’m sure you’ll agree, is Connecticut.

![](https://resize-v3.pubpub.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJhc3NldHMucHVicHViLm9yZyIsImtleSI6ImNzaW1oc3duLzExNjU1NDMyMDQ3NzQ5LnBuZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6ODAwLCJmaXQiOiJpbnNpZGUiLCJ3aXRob3V0RW5sYXJnZW1lbnQiOnRydWV9fX0=)

On a map, Connecticut looks tiny. It’s shorter than Long Island? But when you drive through it, you realize there is just a lot of Connecticut taking up space between New York and Boston. It would be one thing if there was anything at all happening in Connecticut, but it’s Connecticut. The sidewalks close at 9pm, everything’s flat, and the beaches don’t even lay upon a real ocean.

One night at a party (in Boston), a few of us came up with the obvious solution: slice Connecticut out of the earth, send it to space, and move New York and Massachusetts closer together.

![Bugs bunny slices Florida off the map. ](https://assets.pubpub.org/hwu5fp62/21655432121768.gif)

Different state, same principle.

In addition to solving the immediate problem of making the drive between New York and Boston faster and more pleasant, this solution has a number of obvious benefits:

## Moon II

I think we can all agree the night sky is a little boring with just the one moon. Don’t get me wrong, I love the moon, but it’s a little lonely up there and most planets seem to have more moons than us. So why shouldn’t we have at least two? The sky, and frankly entire planet, would be much more interesting. Let’s do it: Moon II.

![](https://resize-v3.pubpub.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJhc3NldHMucHVicHViLm9yZyIsImtleSI6InloNm1sODRkLzExNjU1NDMyMjg5Mjc0LmpwZWciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjgwMCwiZml0IjoiaW5zaWRlIiwid2l0aG91dEVubGFyZ2VtZW50Ijp0cnVlfX19)

Artist’s rendering of the glorious second moon. By [Jorge](https://artstn.co/m/0g8l?ref=gabestein.com) [Magan](https://artstn.co/m/0g8l?ref=gabestein.com), used under granted standard licence.

## Sea Level Rise

By shooting a Connecticut-sized chunk of coastal land into space, we’ll make more space for water to collect, helping stem the tide of sea level rise. Is this a sustainable long-term solution to climate change? No. But we have to keep all options on the table, and I think we should consider the merits of sending a pretty forgettable state to space if it buys the planet much-needed time.

## Yale

Ever heard of it? No? Well now you have, because it’s the first university in space! Trust me, Yale will love this distinction.

## Pizza On The Moon

You’ll know a great pizza place in New New Haven.

## Mottos

This is a new one a coworker pointed out today: Connecticut’s official state motto is *Qui transtulit sustinet*, or, “He who transplanted still sustains.” How perfect is that for the first state shot into space?

When I’m President, we will end the tyranny of Connecticut by sending it into outer space.

---

P.S. No offense Connecticut…ians? I know you, I love you, it’s all in good fun. And I know you agree.
### Leftovers
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/7duze71q/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:37.000Z
A few months ago I was browsing my [bible](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/vkoale7b/release/5), Jeffrey Hamelman’s *Bread,* like one does, when I came across his “Carrot and Walnut Bread” recipe. As he notes in the description, it’s a bit of an unusual one because carrots aren’t a common bread ingredient. He is thinking what you’re thinking, re, orange bread, but assures us that “the crumb reveals little suggestion of the presence of carrots, nor in fact does the flavor.”

I had a bunch of old carrots sitting in the fridge waiting to be thrown out, so I thought what the heck, and made the bread by adding 25% of grated carrots to the mix (he says to squeeze the water out of them, but I’m lazy so I just upped the carrot percentage and reduced the water in the recipe slightly). Much as Hamelman predicted, it turned out just fine, adding a little extra sweetness, a slightly softer crumb, and a slight ruddy brown tinge. But you would never guess it had carrots in it.

“What a great little hack to get rid of leftover carrots!” I thought, and happily started adding shredded carrots to various bread recipes whenever I had leftovers lying around.

Then I bought a parsnip at the farmer’s market and forgot about it. With no plans for it as it neared the end of its life in my crisper, a thought occurred. Into the food processor and then the dough it went, and out came…a really nice loaf of bread with an extra-soft crumb and just a tiny bit of earthiness and sweetness.

From there I went looking and found that this little veggie-saving practice is not particularly well known. There are, of course, recipes for sweet beet breads and spiced parnsip breads, but they’re all a little too try-hard if what you’re really after is a quick way to use leftovers in your everyday sandwich bread.

Lurking at the bottom of the search results, though, you find that there is a small community of people who know. From [beets](https://www.tablespoon.com/recipes/beet-bread/d4d28db2-b1e6-4e85-98b2-d0e03dd3a02d?ref=gabestein.com) to [potatoes](https://edesiascompendium.com/potato-bread-made-with-raw-potatoes/?ref=gabestein.com) and even a [mix](https://fussfreeflavours.com/recipe-root-vegetable-bread/?ref=gabestein.com) of whatever you got, you can just throw root veggies in your ordinary everyday bread, like they’re pumpkin seeds or something. The formula is usually the same, a high-hydration dough with about 25-30% of flour weight in veggies just thrown right in. And the result, according to one of the bloggers linked above?

> Don’t worry if you think the finished loaf will be overwhelmed by the vegetables. There’s a hint of both sweetness and a savouriness, but no more than a hint. It’s a great loaf for slicing thin for sandwiches, or with a bowl of homemade soup.

So there you have it. I’m just doing my part to help you save the half-bag of carrots from the time you made soup, the turnips and celery roots that start to takeover the CSA box come fall, even the endless fucking kohlrabi nobody wants (I actually don’t know if this will work since they’re technically cabbages, but I’ll try some day) from dustbin doom.
### Roe
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/yjpv8kg9/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:37.000Z
Well, fuck.

I don’t have much to add to today’s expected, but devastating, news, except a reminder: multiple conflicting paradigms can coexist. Must coexist.

As soon as I heard the news today, I could predict with stunning accuracy which of my friends would react by blaming Democrats on social media. And you know what? You’re not wrong. Democrats have been [horrible](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/12/the-betrayal-of-roe.html?ref=gabestein.com) at using the power we’ve given them to protect the rights our parents and grandparents fought for.

But while we’re unleashing the circular firing squad, the New Right is [using](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets?ref=gabestein.com) your vocal, visible online disaffection to build a movement for a nationalist, white supremacist plutocracy. If they succeed, overturning the status quo in favor of anything me and my radical friends prefer — from sweet [solarpunk](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/wbt99lyj/release/10) [anarchy](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/22l8d7b4/release/4) to [FALC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully%5FAutomated%5FLuxury%5FCommunism?ref=gabestein.com) bliss — will be much, much harder.

In the meantime, we’re literally two Senators and a few held House seats away from fixing at least some of this mess. Yes, yes, I can hear you scream at me that you can’t trust the lousy corporate Democrats to fix anything. And the problem isn’t even Democrats, it’s capitalism in general, which Democrats exist to protect.

Well guess what? You’re right. Which is exactly why multiple paradigms need to coexist. In one, the one we live under today, voting for Democrats is the best, if highly flawed, way to preserve and strengthen the rights we still have. In the other, the radical one we’re working towards, Democrats, and the entire statist apparatus they rode in on, are the problem.

We can live with both at the same time. In fact, we live under both right now, and they’re increasingly bumping into each other. Your understandable disaffection is evidence of this, as is the growth of the New Right, which shares many of your critiques (though none of your solutions). The problem is that the right is perfectly willing to allow these conflicting paradigms to coexist, wielding their power over the status quo to bring about a new one they prefer.

The vital question is, are we on the left capable of doing the same?
### Omicomm
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/0wnqllz8/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:37.000Z
Because I’ve been cooped up recovering from covid (I’m fine, it was mild, etc.), I was about to write about the glaringly obvious gap between the CDC’s current isolation guidance and the science…when I discovered that economist Joshua Gans had [written](https://joshuagans.substack.com/p/we-need-to-adjust-how-we-are-using?s=r) almost exactly the same post, far better than I would have.

Particularly, his bit about why the CDC’s current isolation guideline that you isolate for just 5 days if symptoms resolve is utterly ludicrous:

> With vaccines, Omicron works a little differently and gives you symptoms before being a danger to others and then, just as you are feeling better, it finally may get to the place where you are dangerous to others.

This may be especially true if you’re boosted. Some [early studies](https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/early-data-suggests-many-individuals-still-covid-positive?ref=gabestein.com) have found that boosted people are more likely to be at their peak levels of infectiousness 5-6 days after experiencing their initial symptoms, precisely because their vaccine-primed immune systems are able to rev up so quickly.

But I’m not sure I think Gans is right when it comes to his proposed update to the guidelines:

> If you develop symptoms, wait 5 days following the onset of symptoms (not exposure), get tested and if the test is negative you can end isolation. Otherwise, get tested again every day or so until you are negative.

For one, it’s simply unworkable to ask people who have any of the long list of potential omicron symptoms to wait at home for five days twiddling their thumbs and wondering if they have covid before testing. I’m as cautious and evidence-driven as they come, and I both don’t think I could wait that long nor convince my partner to isolate from me for five days on suspicion alone. For another, although I understand how he arrived there, it begs a lot of questions that could easily make people suspicious of testing. Why would it work on day 5 but not on day 4?

In a perfect world, people would just trust the experts and behave accordingly. Alas, our unfortunate reality makes this entire flavor of arbitrary day-based guidelines problematic. People aren’t stupid. They know that the number of recommended isolation days is just a rough proxy, and after seeing that number drop from 14 days to 10 to 5, they’re not entirely wrong to wonder if it’s actually maybe just meaningless. The guidelines aren’t meaningless, of course, but they’re also, for lack of a better word, flat. They just tell people to behave in certain ways, without telling them any kind of story about why, which is a shame, because stories are [the best way](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1320645111?ref=gabestein.com) to get people to pay attention to science.

To be clear, I’m not just talking about the narrative surrounding the guidelines, which is also infuriatingly [nonexistent](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/quarantine-isolation.html?ref=gabestein.com), I’m talking about the guidelines themselves. People tend to be naturally curious, so if you ask them to change their behavior in inconvenient ways, they’re going to start asking why the guidelines have changed even though the science really hasn’t. Obviously, the CDC’s most recent change in guidelines wasn’t much based in science, but on [getting](https://www.salon.com/2021/12/28/sick-madness-the-public-reacts-to-the-cdcs-decision-to-cut-19-self-isolation-time-in-half/?ref=gabestein.com) people back to work faster, which is its own special form of cruel insanity. But even if you think getting people back to work faster is worth the tradeoff of extra illness and death (and I don’t), there are surely ways of doing it that tell a clear story based in science that would be much more effective.

A guideline that helps tell the story of the science might be something like: if you feel weird, take a rapid test just before you go out to spend time indoors with others, and wear a mask if possible. Continue doing so each time you go out to spend time indoors with others until you no longer feel weird. If you test positive during that time, isolate for 10 days.

Granted, I’m not a public health expert, so by all means correct me. But I am something of an expert in science communication, and it seems like that guidance (if, of course, tests were widely and inexpensively available) would catch way more positive cases, especially boosted ones, during their infectious period by not giving people a false sense of security if they test negative during the [symptomatic but pre-infectious](https://twitter.com/michaelmina%5Flab/status/1472024457640394756?ref=gabestein.com) period, while also not asking people to shut themselves in and wait five days just because they might have covid. And when people ask why, there’s a clear, logical answer based in science that’s hinted at by the guidance itself: you can feel bad and not be infectious while the virus is first developing.

Yes, of course, it’s not perfect. There are false negatives. There are asymptomatic cases where people will never test. The symptomatic-but-pre-infectious window can be incredibly short and difficult to catch, especially with omicron and boosters. But I have to think it’s better than saying “do this arbitrary amount of quarantining because we said so” or “isolate yourself for 5 days while resisting the urge to test just in case.”

Of course, this is all just me screaming into the void, because the government seems to care more about getting people back to work than saving lives, rapid tests aren’t (yet?) readily available, and the CDC has spent the last two years ruining its credibility. But what are blogs for if not screaming into voids while going insane on your 9th day of isolation trying to figure out whether you can ethically or scientifically end it based on the guidance of an organization that seems to have rather loose definitions of both?
### Hyperobjects, cynicism, and the post-left
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/jz6cim0e/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:37.000Z
In the introduction to their provocative book *Hyperobjects*, theorist Timothy Morton slips in a brief jab at what you might think are their natural political allies, warning, “if there is no metalanguage, then cynical distance, the dominant ideological mode of the left, is in very bad shape, and will not be able to cope with the time of hyperobjects.”

Though the book was written in 2013, its political observations are perhaps more relevant now than they were then, as today we find the American left splintering, like the famous Monty Python [sketch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN%5FG-4&ref=gabestein.com), into endless subgroups, each attempting to be more cynical than the last. The natural end-state of detached leftist irony appears to have been reached in the so-called post-left, which has managed to convince itself that [right populism is the true Marxism](https://www.carlbeijer.com/p/what-is-the-post-left?s=r&ref=gabestein.com).

It’s easy to laugh at this seeming paradox (in fact, the lulz are the point), but you’ve likely already seen its effects at work. It’s present in the edgelord in the group thread who likes to start conversations by saying things like, “I think it’s odd that more of my pro-union friends aren’t in unions.” It’s in the radical Facebook groups you joined during the 2020 protests who have started claiming NATO wanted the war in Ukraine. It’s in the friend who regrams posts blaming the Democratic party for anti-trans laws.

To be totally honest, I understand and sympathize with these people and their arguments. There’s at least a kernel of truth to them all, and my imagined counter-arguments run a lot like Morton’s repeated theoretical exchanges with climate deniers throughout their book. For Morton, climate change (they prefer the more traumatic “global warming”) is the ultimate hyperobject: spanning time and space in ways that make it incomprehensible to the individual, and yet inescapably tangible, present in nearly every aspect of everyone’s daily life.

To take that particular example head-on, you might make the argument to one of your disengaged friends that they should hold their nose and vote for Democrats if for no other reason than to give us a chance to address the existential threat that is climate change. To which those people might respond (as many have already posted on social media) that the State of the Union [featured](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/03/02/remarks-by-president-biden-in-state-of-the-union-address/?ref=gabestein.com) bipartisan applause for releasing oil barrels from the strategic reserve and [coal company-owner](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/27/climate/manchin-coal-climate-conflicts.html?ref=gabestein.com) Joe Manchin has a veto over any possible legislation Democrats might enact. These observations are technically correct and quite depressing. But they’re also fatalist, cynical, even nihilistic to the point of being non-responsive to the argument. You’ve probably had, or imagined, a version of this conversation for every one of the structural crises we face. One begins to suspect some people prefer political modes that allow them to feel emotions whose valence and intensity can match the enormous absurdity of our reality — chiefly cynicism, outrage, and fear — than they do the only real alternatives, depression, despondency, or the dominant mode of the right, outright denial. I certainly empathize.

To make matters worse, as I [discussed](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/nawa98uf/release/1) the other day, it seems unlikely that we can reason our way out of these types of dilemmas, either. The technology we need to address climate change [already exists](https://www.beforetheflood.com/explore/the-deniers/fact-we-absolutely-can-solve-the-climate-crisis-today?ref=gabestein.com). Yet the closer we come to understanding the causes and possible solutions, the farther away we seem to be from understanding how to implement anything at all on a sociopolitical level. My outraged friends are, in this sense, right to doubt the ability of the liberal order, despite or perhaps because of all of its technological achievements, to do anything at all about the largest problems we face. The post-left is offering something in response to this absurdity, even if it’s ultimately destructive. Liberalism in some ways offers the most conservative response of all: denial that the absurdity exists.

Morton calls this the “Age of Asymmetry,” where, paradoxically, “increasing science is not increasing demystification.” They identify three core features of this age that we have already seen above: *hypocrisy*, in the post-left applying Marx to right-wing populism, in leftists arguing that the institutions opposing laws and wars are in fact in favor of them, in liberals running on an agenda they know they cannot fulfill; *weakness*, in the rationalist’s inability to sufficiently explain climate change, in the leftist’s inability to offer anything beyond outrage in response to current events; *lameness*, in everyone’s general inability to have any effect whatsoever on the course of events, no matter how strident their Tweets.

For me, anyway, all of these examples have the general effect of feeling, to use Morton’s language, strange and uncanny. Everyone knows their utopian political project is impossible, yet we continue to tell stories from those universes as if they exist. Everyone knows that there is no single, simple root cause of or solution to democratic backsliding, or misinformation, or climate change, yet we continue to ask ourselves to find them. Everyone knows that we need to act more grandly and swiftly than our political systems are capable of, yet we waste limited time arguing over the smallest details in non-binding agreements and incremental legislation.

It should be clear at this point that I am no theorist nor philosopher. But the more my political consciousness develops, the more I start to grasp how the world truly seems to work, the less confident I am that anyone, left, right or center, has any fucking clue, pardon me, what’s actually going on. The less confident I am that there is any prescription that will fix anything, or that, indeed, there is anything meaningful out there that is fixable at all.

As it turns out, accepting this realization is Morton’s prescription for moving forward in the age of hyperobjects. Rather than pretend that some day we will figure everything out and, in so doing, solve the impending apocalypse, they urge us to admit that every answer we have is wrong, embrace our hypocrisy, weakness, and lameness, and consider the idea that the world, in the sense that we have understood it since the industrial revolution — or maybe, as Harvey Cox [has argued](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/mv4rda7k/release/8), since the rise of monotheism — may have already ended.

Despite what it may seem, this isn’t a fatalist call to action. In rejecting the very existence of a world from which to detach ourselves, Morton offers us a chance to ditch fatalism, cynicism, and nihilism entirely. Without a world full of its forces, animals, and environments to be separate from, our political project cannot be to sit above it all and try to understand the clockwork in the hopes that we might one day intercede and control how it ticks. Instead, the end of the world demands that we de-center ourselves, sublimate our own interests, and start to experience how all objects — human and not, hyper and not — effect us through what Morton calls the “zone of forces” that every object emits.

It is in some ways incredible that we have managed to make it so far without fully acknowledging the ways in which objects, particularly hyperobjects, interact with and leave their marks on us. The language of the modern left is full of gestures towards it — the way white privilege corrupts, the way climate change induces overpowering anxiety — but it ultimately ascribes the causes of these effects not to the objects themselves, but to a never-ending nesting doll of what Morton calls “deep structures” — capital, history, states ([guilty](https://www.gabestein.com/the-state)!) and so on. It’s no wonder that reactionary movements like anti-woke are so quick to form. It’s easy to look at the left’s tendency to obsess over the mechanisms of objects, rather than the objects themselves, and decide that it’s ridiculous. [Think](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/02/the-post-dirtbag-left?ref=gabestein.com) having Ross Douthat on your podcast and asking about his views on theory rather than the harm he has wrought through his intellectually inconsistent career at the country’s newspaper of record.

Instead, I wonder if, somewhere in *Hyperobjects*, there is a foundation for a politics that acknowledges the absurdity of reality and decides to try to cope with it, rather than deny it or interrogate it. In the years since writing their book, Morton has continued down the same path, most recently with the idea of *hyposubjects*, a sort of sketch of a humanity that has adapted to the Age of Asymmetry. Hyposubjects, they and collaborator Dominic Boyer [write](https://culanth.org/fieldsights/hyposubjects?ref=gabestein.com), “do not pursue or pretend to absolute knowledge or language, let alone power. Instead they play; they care; they adapt; they hurt; they laugh.”

There are clear similarities between hyposubjects and one of my favorite political movements, solarpunk, which attempts to imagine plausible climate futures we might actually want to live in. One of the most refreshing, core tenets of solarpunk is that it eschews the empty, but soaring symbolism of much climate discourse in favor of action. Or as Jay Sprinket, one of the movement’s founding members, [put it](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/wbt99lyj/release/10), “Solarpunk is more concerned with delivering the practical things that you can do on route to a better world, rather than the gestural things…you can't LARP Solarpunk because LARPing Solarpunk is going out and planting a garden.”

The seeds of a new politics may lie in the radical humility of the hyposubject and the solarpunk. What form might a political movement take where we embrace our relative hypocrisy, weakness, and lameness? Where we admit that we don’t know, and may never know, how everything works, but commit to trying to move forward anyway? Where we stop centering ourselves and our narrow interests and start thinking in relation to the objects, time, and space around us, within us, and encircling us?

I have absolutely no clue what form it takes. But for the first time, I feel like a lack of understanding isn’t a barrier, but an opportunity.
### On Bridgerton
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/ldq52x34/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:37.000Z
That’s it. That’s the post.
### Maybe it's just us
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/nawa98uf/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T14:45:09.000Z
Normally I don’t spend any time on the old doom machine[1](#fn-0-bottom), because it’s absolutely horrible for my mental health. But this week I had to log in to do some work promos, and I came across an interesting thought from my friend and former boss Eli Pariser:

I was immediately tempted to answer “of course it’s X!” But then I realized there were maybe 10 X’s I could put in that sentence, all of which seem necessary, but not sufficient, to explain the crisis.

Among them: [the last decade’s complete overhaul of global human communication systems](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2025764118?ref=gabestein.com), [“the trauma of living through ](https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?ref=gabestein.com)[*real*](https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?ref=gabestein.com)[ conspiracies all around us](https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?ref=gabestein.com),” [institutional capture of political systems by the global right](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/xflw3pey/release/2?readingCollection=4d2ff7bb), [climate-change driven migration increasing nationalist sentiments](https://news.stanford.edu/2021/06/02/climate-change-migration/?ref=gabestein.com), [wealth inequality](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/4zqyqlth/release/3?readingCollection=297ee358), [late capitalism](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/zyknw825/release/6), [hypernormalization](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/ku45zwdn/release/5), [Newt Gingrich](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/newt-gingrich-says-youre-welcome/570832/?ref=gabestein.com), and the list goes on and on.

The problem, of course, is that all of those potential causes are hopelessly intertwined. You can hardly think about one without finding yourself going, “yes, well, but that’s caused by this,” and so on, in an endless loop of causation.

Maybe the answer is that there aren’t any primary causes. Or, as one Twitter responder [put it](https://twitter.com/ggreeneva/status/1509992934933942273?ref=gabestein.com), democratic decline is a sort of “hyperobject,” nearly impossible to explain concisely because it’s such an obvious, all-encompassing problem.

In some ways, that line of thinking can be freeing. Maybe it’s all of the above. Maybe all of the ways we’re standing against it are valuable. And maybe, just maybe, absent a simple cause or explanation, we might be able to let go of the idea that there’s any singularly sinister effect at work beyond us, the couple of billion people on this rock, and, building on that realization, collectively decide to move on to something better than what came before.

### Footnotes

1. aka Twitter [↵](#fn-0-inline)
### Welp
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/02jsuwb6/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:36.000Z
So much for that [daily, turned weekly](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/cp2cx8zv/release/5), turned…extremely occasional blogging habit, eh? To get back into it, I’m gonna be lazy and just do a random list of things on my mind, like the blogs of yore.

---

**Sometimes, accessing money is a bigger problem than making a sale**. Yes, sure, globally, in the financial sense, especially right now. But also for people trying to build things in the academic publishing ecosystem. My non-profit recently launched a [membership program](https://knowledgefutures.org/membership?ref=gabestein.com). To keep the lights on, we eventually need something like 450 people — a combination of independent journals, publishers, libraries, departments, and funders mostly, but not exclusively situated at universities — to contribute an average of $2800 per year. We know that multiple groups at most universities have that money to spend. And many decision-makers at those groups tell us they want to support us, and open, non-profit projects like us! So in a lot of cases the sale is pretty easy. But the interface for accessing the money can sometimes be absurd in the extreme.

Every university has its own unique procurement process, with its own rules about what and how much it can and can’t pay for, and who can make the decisions about what kinds of payments, and so on. Some of these processes can be so byzantine that we have to strategize with prospective members on how to get their institutions to cough up the money they have already earmarked for us. If we were selling to for-profit corporations we’d mostly be able say “enter your credit card info here” and that would be that. If we were a for-profit corporation ourselves, the interface would be at least a little bit simpler because we’d be able to say “you pay us for these exact services, which we take away if you don’t continue to pay us,” which is at least language procurement interfaces understand. And, with the product and revenue traction we’ve already demonstrated, we’d be able to raise a bunch of money to hire a sales team to navigate the rest of the complexity.

But being a mission-driven nonprofit with values that align with universities has, ironically, made it much, much harder to be supported by those universities. Because when a procurement person sees a line item for nearly $3,000 for a membership, they naturally ask, “hold on, what do we get?” To which we answer: “the ability to email us, invites to some parties, and the vague sense that you’re contributing to the continued existence of the platforms we build that you rely on.” And then they go: “so if we didn’t pay you, what would happen?” And we say “nothing, but there’s a risk we’d go away.” The nice ones ask “can we pay you for a license to the software instead?” To which we can do nothing but shrug and gesture at the IRS.

Anyhow, we’re figuring it out and doing pretty well. But maybe universities that want non-profits like us to exist should make it easier for themselves to support folks like us.

---

**Openness isn’t a panacea.** Back when I worked at Google, I believed the “don’t be evil” bullshit, because big tech companies [organize themselves like nation-states](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/i4uj0ehr/release/2), and I was young and naive and became a patriot. But, as a Twitter thread that made the rounds again reminded me, [Google is actually super, duper evil](https://twitter.com/fasterthanlime/status/1452053938195341314?ref=gabestein.com).

Coincidentally, a friend also asked for advice about buying a new phone and laptop on the same day I read that thread again. My advice was more or less to pay the premium for the Apple ecosystem, because although it’s plenty evil in its own ways, it doesn’t make (much?) money from selling user data, leading to far fewer coercive business practices across the board than Google.

When I make that argument to tech people, they will still often respond with the old standby that Android is de facto better because it’s more open. Which, sure, the software for the operating system is open-source, and iOS very much is not. You could technically, and legally, customize Android to do whatever you want, including to avoid Google’s worst practices. But your decision to buy into the ecosystem still supports a company that has used the reach of its open platform to spy on users without their consent, coerce them into handing over more data, scam small businesses by rigging ad auctions, engage in illegal price-fixing with competitors, lobby against competitors and regulators adopting user privacy practices, and scheme to effectively corner the web itself with its AMP platform, among many other terrible things. Openness is a design decision that can lead to better outcomes for users, but we often conflate it with a value in and of itself.

Also, I *still* use Chrome and Gmail, but this reminds me to finally take the time go back to Firefox and switch to Fastmail.

---

**Conflicting paradigms can coexist.** I don’t spend a lot of time on social media anymore, but I’m still on Instagram sometimes and, well, the war in Ukraine has been a great reminder of just how good social media is at flattening reality’s complexity into jingoistic pronouncements, and just how bad that is for society. Among the justified rage at Russia’s invasion, and the justified rage at how little attention we’ve paid to similar atrocities when we were the perpetrators and/or the victims weren’t white Europeans, there are strands, across the political spectrum, of both outright warmongering and reactionary anti-imperialism that seem kinda dangerous?

The warmongering isn’t anything new, so I’ll just remind you all that Vladimir Putin has enough nukes at his disposal to wipe out most of life on earth and that’ll be that, right? More interesting is the anti-imperialist take that’s being slung around, like the [U.S. DSA’s statement on the war](https://www.dsausa.org/statements/on-russias-invasion-of-ukraine/?ref=gabestein.com). In a few terse paragraphs it manages to mostly blame U.S. expansionism for the conflict, oppose sanctions, military aid, and any other kind of “unilateral coercive measures, militarization, and other forms of economic and military brinkmanship,” and propose leaving NATO as a means of solving the conflict. In other words, it seems that to prove your radical bonafides, you have to basically not want to help people in Ukraine and want to give Putin one of the things he desires most in the world in the dissolution of NATO.

I can hear the howls of activists now — of course we want to help people, just not like this. And to a degree, I get that. I’m just about as radical as they come. I’m so anti-imperialist I’m [not even sure](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/22l8d7b4/release/4) states as a whole are a good idea. I definitely want NATO to not have to exist, and for the U.S. to end, apologize, and pay for its imperialism, past, present and future.

At the same time, I’m sure I don’t need to remind the DSA that the international order we have right now more or less only understands and responds to economic and military violence — particularly the aforementioned maniac with the nukes. No amount of “deescalation and diplomacy” is going to stop the bombs being dropped on Ukraine (and yes, other places, including by the U.S. military) right now unless it is backed by threats of violence the system, and Putin as a central part of it, understands.

So, I think even radicals should be able to acknowledge that within the existing paradigm, and particularly because of the very real threat of global nuclear annihilation, the sanctions and aid deployed by NATO and allies represent the best approach to ending the conflict with as minimal loss of life as possible. And at the same time, we can point out that none of this would be necessary if we were to build a better international order that didn’t automatically equate wealth with power. As the [unprecedented attention](https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/soccer/ct-roman-abramovich-sanctions-chelsea-20220310-jxejytpsqrgilfyeg7htsaa664-story.html?ref=gabestein.com) to previously untouchable ill-gotten foreign wealth in Britain and elsewhere demonstrates, the moral bankruptcy of the system is [showing more clearly](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/14/sanctioning-russian-oligarchs-may-not-stop-putin-but-its-still-a-huge-deal-00015864?ref=gabestein.com) than ever before. Surely we can acknowledge the complexity of our reality and find ways to use this moment to push for the transition to a better paradigm while acknowledging that, within the current one, the most prudent action right now is not to withdraw from NATO.
### HBD
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/xflw3pey/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:36.000Z
Until last year, the most significant thing associated with my birthday was Epiphany, which is traditionally feted with a [cake with a toy baby inside](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%5Fcake?ref=gabestein.com). Well, it turns out that this year is, as folks say, my Jesus year. As a present, I’m hoping for something of a miracle.

It appears that the the democracy (and therefore filibuster) reform showdown we’ve all been waiting for may be coming in the next two weeks. It’s true, we’ve been [Lucy’d](https://media.giphy.com/media/fsnzYr1pgvAQM/giphy.gif?ref=gabestein.com) before, and that could certainly happen again. And it’s also true that a few bills won’t even come close to solving our problems. But they would sure help a lot. And apparently Manchin is actually talking, Sinema isn’t saying no, and, well, if it’s gonna happen, this is probably when it will.

And there’s probably still something we can do to increase the likelihood of it happening. What, you ask? Truthfully, I’m exhausted, so I’ll let Indivisible’s [monthly newsletter](https://indivisible.actionkit.com/mailings/view/74058?ref=gabestein.com) do most of the rest of the talking:

> **What we know: A vote is coming and McConnell isn’t happy.** We now know two important things. First, we know that there will be a vote on filibuster reform on or before MLK Day, January 17th. I’m not reading between the lines here -- the Senate Majority Leader was explicit in that letter: “The Senate will debate and consider changes to Senate \[filibuster\] rules on or before January 17th.” You can’t get clearer than that -- a vote is coming, and soon.  
>  
> …  
>  
> **What we can do to affect the outcome: make some noise.** Senate Democrats are using this week, including tomorrow’s anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, to build the case for democracy reform. In the lead-up to MLK Day, we will then see plans to bring a filibuster reform proposal to the floor for a vote. So this is the time for all of us to amp up public pressure, make some noise, and get attention however makes sense in your own community. The goal is to make sure the media and political ecosystems understand there is public demand for filibuster reform.

So, if you want to get me a birthday present this year, please consider, as the kids say, making some motherfucking noise. Call and write your Senators now and tomorrow and the next day and demand they support filibuster and democracy reform. Show up to a Jan 6 vigil in my honor (you can likely find one near you on [Mobilize](mobilize.us)). Attend or organize an [MLK Day](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/mlk-day-weekend-king-family-rally-voting-rights-n1285971?ref=gabestein.com) rally near you. Whatever you can muster, I’ll take it gladly.

Thanks, as always, for being part of my life.

(If you can/want to spend money on me, please give to my [local mutual aid network](https://chfgma.org/donate?ref=gabestein.com), which directly helps out thousands of my neighbors every month.)
### Caught in the web
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/jln9cwim/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T14:26:15.000Z
So, here’s my basic problem with web3: I find that many of its critiques of web 2.0’s distribution of power are valid, but I’m pretty sure the way web3 tries to solve them are incoherent, at best, and self-defeating, at worst.

A case in point this week is a [piece](https://every.mirror.xyz/y%5FWLA-Tk3VF5uPqHi-glDLVVfHxLUbjXakRI7SMISas?ref=gabestein.com), sent to me by a close friend, in which crypto investor Li Jin and writer Katie Parrot make their best case for web3 as a revolutionary new economic model for creators. Essentially, they argue that by monetizing attention, rather than content itself, web 2.0 gave too much money and power to platforms who could aggregate attention, and not enough to creators who make the content everyone’s attention is spent on.

That critique seems mostly right as far as it goes. But Jin and Parrot’s prescription for how web3 will solve this problem seems to be, [as I’ve predicted](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/g2l5vtiq/release/7), to give more creators access to their own personal pockets of unregulated capitalism.

That sounds more than a little glib, I know, but I’m really not kidding. Here are the four web3-driven changes the pair believe will bring about this inversion of power:

1. By introducing digital scarcity and restoring pricing power to creators
2. By making supporting creators an act of investment, not just altruism
3. By introducing new programmable economic models that spread wealth across the creator landscape
4. Most importantly, by creating pathways for creators to own not just the content they produce, but the platforms themselves

Will these four features lead to a true inversion of power? Count me deeply skeptical. Without getting too far into the economic theory of it all, let’s remember we have all of these features — scarcity, speculation, licensing agreements, and coops — in the physical world, particularly in “creator economies” like fine art, and far from distributing power more fairly, what it mostly seems to do is give more power to the [richest speculators](https://doc-research.org/2019/01/art-market-outlet-wealth-accumulation-mobility/?ref=gabestein.com) and the most [well known](https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-superstar-economics-art-market-threat?ref=gabestein.com) — or, I might say, attention-commanding — artists.

Taking Jin and Parrot in good faith, though, I do understand where they’re coming from. As superstar NFT artists like Pak [literally mint millions overnight](https://www.barrons.com/articles/paks-nft-artwork-the-merge-sells-for-91-8-million-01638918205?ref=gabestein.com)[1](#fn-0-bottom), it certainly feels like some kind of power inversion is happening. I suspect it’s not from platform owner to creator, but, just as we’ve seen in the physical economy with the global financial system, from owner to speculator.

In [another](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-12-21/there-s-inside-information-in-sec-filings?ref=gabestein.com) piece that made its way across my, er, inbox this week, finance soothsayer Matt Levine of Bloomberg’s Money Stuff newsletter compared web3 to a pyramid scheme (not entirely unfavorably). What’s interesting about reading the two pieces against each other isn’t so much where they diverge, but where they agree. Both Levine and Jin and Parrot believe that the core innovation of web3 is its ability to give users a stake in the products they adopt. Jin and Parrot, writing from the creator economy perspective, call this “Patronage+”:

> Web3 takes this idea to the next level, because all tokens are investments that not only fund the creator, but also could benefit the *holder* if the value appreciates. Jesse Walden defines “[patronage+](https://twitter.com/jessewldn/status/1355165547441303554?ref=gabestein.com)” as patronage with the possibility of profit, a phenomenon that is introduced through tokenized ownership. That investment element was an impossibility in web2 without an on-chain record of ownership like an NFT or a [social token](https://linda.mirror.xyz/4PDBWBMpFFPVEsP5EGgg5to2AyEpEHEXasq%5FK0b-yYk?ref=gabestein.com) (imagine trying to resell a TikTok video that was downloaded from the app).

Levine, writing about it through a more corporate lens, likens it to a pyramid scheme, but the basic idea — that web3 schemes benefit patrons, aka early adopters, rather than existing incumbents — is exactly the same:

> This network-effect dynamic favors big incumbents: The big existing networks have better networks than small upstarts. If you are looking for a social network you will probably end up on a big popular one, not a small new one. Not always — Uber and Facebook are pretty new companies, in the scheme of things; disruption is possible — but the incumbents have advantages.  
>  
> But in Web3 the economics are almost reversed. If you were an early user of Bitcoin now you’re a billionaire. If you’re an early user of some Web3 social network, you will probably accumulate some of its tokens, and if it takes off you’ll get rich. This gives you an incentive to join the next thing, because being early to the next thing will make you rich, while joining the existing popular thing won’t.

The latter part of Levine’s argument is pretty important, and one that Jin and Parrot don’t really consider. Notice that Levine’s talking about incumbency advantages for projects, not for creators. In a word where much of the value of web3 projects is based on speculation — that is, user perception of whether supporting it will make them rich — users will have a pretty big incentive to choose projects by creators, like Pak, who have proven that they can, well, command a lot of attention, and thereby guarantee that new users will eventually buy in to pay off the early adopters. That also means that the best patrons will be the ones who can themselves attract enough attention to make their investments pay. And thus, creators will be incentivized to create projects that appeal to those types of patrons.

I’m not saying that all of the value will come purely from speculation, and neither is Levine. But it would seem to give most of the power not to creators, but to patrons and speculators, no? We’re already seeing that dynamic [play out](https://qz.com/103091/high-end-art-is-one-of-the-most-manipulated-markets-in-the-world/?ref=gabestein.com) in the fine art world, where prices are set almost exclusively by a small cabal of elite galleries, museums, and collectors. Which is also exactly what’s happening in web3 economies, where [whales](https://slate.com/technology/2021/12/jack-dorsey-web3-crypto-bitcoin.html?ref=gabestein.com) like Elon Musk can single-handedly move markets with a tweet. Sure, in the web3 world, creators will potentially be able to take a cut of that speculation. But that’s not so much inverting power dynamics as it is letting some more crumbs fall off the table. Progress, sure. But hardly a revolution.

As for the potential for creators and users to own platforms, if Levine is right that web3 will reward novelty, creators may never really see the benefits of ownership at all. Tokenized platforms may end up being incredibly short-lived as speculators hop from old project to new, hoping to find the very top of the next pyramid. And platforms that do have long-lasting utility outside of their ability to generate wealth for early adopters will still have been funded with web3 mechanics, which means most of the benefits will still accrue to those early adopters who could afford to take the risk. The web3 whales may end up being a slightly different set of people than the ones who control Web 2.0 platforms, and some creators and users may be among them. But again, it won’t be a fundamentally different or more equitable power distribution than the status quo.

My own, probably unsurprising, take on all of this is that you’re just not going to solve capitalism with more capitalism. Capitalism’s job, particularly when unregulated, is to concentrate (and commingle) wealth and power. It doesn’t matter how decentralized your token or your organization is at a technical level: if you replace the attention economy with a speculation economy, you shouldn’t be surprised if speculators use it to try to get rich. And the people most likely to take the risks involved in speculating are the folks, like Musk, who are already rich enough to stomach it.

Which brings me back to my main point. The way web 2.0 distributes power is bad. But trying to fix it by replacing an attention-based economy with a speculation-based economy doesn’t seem likely to succeed in meaningfully shifting power dynamics towards creators. If it did, we’d have seen that play out in the boring normal economy already. Instead, web3 seems likely to create a few new winners and mostly give more power to the people who already have it.

Until proven otherwise, I will continue to suspect that most good-faith excitement around web3 is folks confusing the early days of a gold rush for a revolution, and in their excitement, ignoring all the people pointing out that what they’re dragging out of the mines is still subject to the turbulent market for gold (not to mention the swindlers, scammers, and wildcat banks). As Jin and Parrot point out, this happened in the Web 2.0 era, too, where techno-optimists blindly assumed the best of their inventions without thinking through their systemic socioeconomic implications. Now, Jin and Parrot quote Marx in arguing that creators should “own the means of production” while simultaneously believing that artificial scarcity and financial speculation will benefit those creators. Patronage+, indeed.

### Footnotes

1. Disclosure: I bought a single $400 white dot. [↵](#fn-0-inline)
### Gilded Silly
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/4zqyqlth/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:36.000Z
My dad shared Derek Thompson’s [latest piece](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/america-innovation-film-science-business/620858/?ref=gabestein.com) in The Atlantic, about American innovation. The gist:

> Driven by popularity metrics, scientists, like movie studios, are becoming more likely to tinker in proven domains than to pursue risky original projects that might bloom into new franchises. It’s not that writers, directors, scientists, and researchers can’t physically come up with new ideas. But rather that something in the air—something in our institutions, or our culture—was constraining the growth new ideas. In science, as in cinema, incrementalism is edging out exploration.

There’s a ton that could be said here — including questioning, as some colleagues did, whether the pace of innovation we’ve sustained since the industrial revolution is desirable or sustainable. But I’m going to focus on one potential cause that Thompson may have missed.

In the piece, Thompson compares the innovations of the end of the 19th century that turned New York from a sprawling series of hamlets connected by horse-drawn carriages into the towering metropolis it became to the digital revolution that powered the turn of the 20th century, and argues the latter came up short in terms of materially changing everyday life. He lays out three potential reasons why incrementalism may be winning over innovation: the attention marketplace that dominates most modern economies, gerontocracy, and “vetocracy,” or the rise of political and corporate systems built to give entrenched interests veto power over change.

Those are, no doubt, three factors that explain our current incrementalism (though I would argue 2 begets 3). But why do they exist now, when they didn’t then? The answer lies in the shadows of Thompson’s piece, but for some reason, he doesn’t quite get there. It strikes me as odd that you would discuss innovation at the end of the 20th century without discussing one of the key factors that drove it: the end of the Gilded Age and the extreme wealth inequality that defined it — especially because Thompson names multiple institutions founded by railroad and oil barons as proof of progress.

Unlike the turn of the last century, which saw its gilded age decline thanks to unprecedented government regulation, in so doing creating space and marshaling resources for the entrepreneurship and civic investment Thompson lusts for, this century’s rampant inequality is still a dominant feature of our society — in fact, it’s [on the rise](https://news.yahoo.com/super-richs-wealth-concentration-surpasses-gilded-age-levels-210802327.html?ref=gabestein.com), and unlikely, judging from the political winds of the moment, to meet meaningful resistance anytime soon.

To be fair, he does talk about wealth inequality, but strangely, in the context of age, rather than inequality. And he discusses politics, but only to look at the decline in legislative productivity as proof of the “vetocracy.”

May I offer a simpler explanation: all of the structures Thompson mentions are part of the economic project begun under Reagan — under whose watch wealth inequality [kicked into high gear](https://inequality.org/facts/income-inequality/?ref=gabestein.com) — to replace the trustbusting and New Deal structures that leveled the playing field and allowed innovation to happen with structures that protect wealth, and thus, reward incrementalism that doesn’t rock the boat too much. Until we acknowledge that fact and make substantive changes, very little of what Thompson pines for will come to pass.
### Meta
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/tnvr2rdm/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:36.000Z
I’ve been absent for a bit because I spent November doing NaNoWrimo. It turns out 1600+ words per day, even terrible ones, is…a lot. More on that later. For now, here’s something I drafted the day of the Facebook name-change but didn’t have time to finish until now.

---

I’m sure you could do this with any book, but here’s a fun one. Back in 2015, Mark Zuckerberg (in)famously went on a 50-state listening tour and announced he would be reading 26 books that year (one every two weeks, I guess?). Naturally, people took to his platform to recommend countless books which he, like the rest of us, no doubt ignored.

But oh, imagine if he had taken this particular commenters’ [advice](https://www.facebook.com/ayearofbooks/posts/818824891496775?comment%5Fid=818845344828063&%5F%5Fcft%5F%5F[0]=AZU4TaMgPOexRhuG-nQ7vm69jr2joTCEtquuTeMr1bdz5C0lR85v8I8EXV0KkfVFqx3Xy9AfW6d-IwLRVTBl%5FMnW%5FIQoDAMe-6TJtr0dm7rHwfa7vigBtMaXVizuOZUuZW9VWulFtAORPVK7NYZeMrEr&%5F%5Ftn%5F%5F=R]-R):

![A Facebook comment that reads: "Mark, one book I recommend is 'Debt: The First 5,000 Years" by David Graeber. It has really impacted me in how I see the economy, debt, as well as history. I'd say it's a must-read if you are in any way interested in history or anthropology."](https://resize-v3.pubpub.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJhc3NldHMucHVicHViLm9yZyIsImtleSI6ImxrZHYxYnUzLzMxNjM4NjQ3MzUzNzQ0LmpwZWciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjgwMCwiZml0IjoiaW5zaWRlIiwid2l0aG91dEVubGFyZ2VtZW50Ijp0cnVlfX19)

What would his company, and the world, look like if he had decided on a truly bold, critical direction for Facebook rather than the [insipid, dystopian vision](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/metaverse-facebook?ref=gabestein.com) that is the Metaverse? Never read the comments, indeed.
### Just Before Dawn
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/22l8d7b4/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:36.000Z
The new David(s) Graeber and Wengrow book, *The Dawn of Everything*, isn’t out until next week, but the reviews have started coming in, and boy does it seem like it’ll scratch a lot of [my](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/1z314izc/release/3) [particular](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/259pg6uv/release/8?readingCollection=4d2ff7bb) [itches](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/ivrsydjp/release/15?readingCollection=4d2ff7bb). Here’s Gideon Lewis-Kraus [describing](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/08/early-civilizations-had-it-all-figured-out-the-dawn-of-everything?utm%5Fsource=pocket-newtab) the book’s key argument in *The New Yorker:*

> Still, it’s by contending at length with the prejudices of scale—the expectation that there is some natural upper bound on the number of people who can live and work together without significant coördination from above—that the book signals its broader ambitions. “In the standard, textbook version of human history, scale is crucial,” the authors write. “The tiny bands of foragers in which humans were thought to have spent most of their evolutionary history could be relatively democratic and egalitarian precisely because they were small.” We therefore persuade ourselves that, given the problem of strangers, we need “such things as urban planners, social workers, tax auditors and police.”

Referring to a wealth of new archeological and anthropological evidence, Graeber and Wengrow apparently argue that the dichotomy between egalitarianism and modernity is a false one. Freedom does not have to be the price of scale, as a growing list of prehistoric cities and cultures, now undergoing reexamination, seems to show.

It’s a tough lesson to internalize, because, well, our entire society is arranged to reinforce the idea that not having to think about how your sewage gets disposed of is worth submitting to the rule of a state. That’s, of course, a rather severe example of the tradeoff involved. But even for such an extreme and disgusting question, I’m not sure it has an obvious answer, particularly given the technology we have been able to build under states, technology that wasn’t at our disposal (haha?) when the cultures Graeber and Wengrow analyze were self-organizing. Put another way, it seems like it might be less agonizing to worry about where my shit ends up, in a world that’s mastered plumbing, than whether a man from West Virginia I’ve never met and never will decides to open a book about democracy.

That might be a false choice. But it’s why I continue to be attracted to the [Solarpunk](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/wbt99lyj/release/10) movement which asks, among other things, how geographic communities can become meaningfully resilient at scale, even if statist infrastructure begins to collapse around them. That movement, and scholarship like this book, give me hope that it might be possible. Perhaps the message of this book and others like it, combined with the infrastructure and technology we already have, and the emerging climate crisis, will coalesce in the coming years into an ideology that will help us reimagine and reinstate the worlds we gave up where, as Graeber and Wengrow put it, we could “simply laugh \[would-be rulers\] out of court.”
### Philips
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/dr94iprv/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:36.000Z
Last Monday my Philips Sonicare Protective Clean 4100 Plaque Control Rechargeable toothbrush broke, so I requested a replacement under warranty. There’s not much evidence that electric toothbrushes of any kind, sonic or otherwise, are an improvement over analog toothbrushes, but they do make my teeth feel good, like I’ve accomplished something before I go to bed or start the day.

The toothbrush didn’t actually break, per se. It was still kind of functioning, just not well. The metal shaft came loose and I had to press harder to clean my teeth. Too hard? I don’t know. The patented pressure sensor stopped working. So I requested a replacement under warranty. Philips fulfilled it without question. They’re a solid company. The replacement arrived yesterday, and now I’m brushing my teeth electronically again. There’s not much evidence that electric toothbrushes of any kind, sonic or otherwise, are an improvement over analog toothbrushes, but they do make my teeth feel good, like I’ve accomplished something before I go to bed or start the day.

A few weeks ago the 1mm Guide Comb for my Phillips Norelco OneBlade Face QP2520/70 broke. The little plastic tab that keeps it clipped to the blade snapped, and I didn’t even realize it until I was shaving and the guide comb snapped off and I cut my face just a little bit, right above the lip. It was the third, maybe fourth, comb I’ve broken. I’m sure it was way out of warranty, if Philips even offers one for the combs. I wouldn’t. They’re such flimsy pieces of plastic.

The first time I bought a replacement comb I didn’t even think to Google it. Amazon sells replacement combs for insane prices from strange resellers (or in packs of 3 sizes, and I only needed the 1mm), so I found a replacement on eBay for $5.99 plus shipping. I didn’t pay attention to the seller’s location. Imagine my surprise when a small, battered envelope arrived 10 days later with no fewer than 8 Greek stamps affixed to it. But the comb seemed new, and it worked for a year or two until that damn tab broke again. This time I googled, and found a site called Encompass.com (“Simply Parts”) that sells a replacement comb for $6.95 plus shipping.

Philips is a Dutch company that was founded in 1891 to make these new things called light bulbs. In 2016, the lighting division was spun off into a new company that’s now called Signify, for some reason.

When my guide comb broke for the third time, I went straight to the source. The Philips store sells replacement parts now, although the photo of the 1mm guide comb on their site has an Encompass.com watermark on it. That’s interesting. It’s $6.95 plus shipping, or free shipping if you’re willing to pick it up in Albany. I’m not, but I’m tired of buying new guide combs every damn year, and I was told replaceable razor blades are a scam anyway, and didn’t my sophomore year microeconomics class say something about the sunk costs fallacy? So I searched for the best non-disposable beard trimmer instead and found one that looks good: the Philips Norelco Multigroom Series 7000 MG7750\. It’s $54.95 if you buy it directly from Philips, and this time, the shipping is free.
### Killing God, again
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/mv4rda7k/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T14:26:02.000Z
My wife and I are planning to do [NaNoWriMo](https://nanowrimo.org/?ref=gabestein.com)[1](#fn-0-bottom) this year, using each other as readers and accountability buddies. Will we “win?” Will our marriage survive? Find out in December!

Anyhow, I’m deep in research and planning stages now for what I hope will be a [Solarpunk](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/wbt99lyj/release/10) story of some sort. In imagining a world where we’ve successfully transitioned to a sustainable future, however, I’m struggling mightily with what to do about religion.

There’s no shortage of scifi that grapples with the interplay between religion and climate change, but it tends to be deeply dystopian. Octavia Butler’s *Parable* series comes to mind most prominently, as does Robert Charles Watson’s *Spin* series and Paul McAuley’s *The Quiet War*.

By contrast, a lot of Utopian fiction imagines a secularist (though perhaps not always secular) future while hand-waving entirely over how we get there, or indeed whether it’s even a desirable outcome. The absence of religion is most noticeable in Star Trek, where Gene Roddenberry [simply decided](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Memory%5FAlpha:AOL%5Fchats/Ronald%5FD.%5FMoore/ron012.txt?ref=gabestein.com) that religion wouldn’t exist in humanity’s future, and the writers went along with it out of respect or whatever without ever grappling with its implications. This decision has led to narrative problems throughout the franchise, as writers continually trip over the invisible line between the Federation’s core value of respect for all cultures and automatic skepticism that anything even slightly religious is superstition or fraud (except for the Vulcans or the Klingons, for whatever reason?), without explaining any of it in the context of humanity’s own history with religion.

No doubt, much of this reluctance to grapple with religion stems from Utopian writers tending to be secularists, which is a problem [for me](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/vkoale7b/release/4), too. To try to escape this trap, I’ve been looking back at readings from my collegiate International Relations and Religion class, the experience that most challenged my incorrect assumption at the time, that the world is on a steady path towards secularization.

The piece that has stuck with me most through the years is former Harvard Divinity School Professor Harvey Cox’s renowned 1965 book [*The Secular City*](https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691158853/the-secular-city?ref=gabestein.com), particularly its first argument that the Bible, in breaking with prior religions by declaring humanity as separate from nature and outlawing idolatry, lay the groundwork for modernity. Cox covers a lot of ground here, arguing both that stripping rulers of their sacral-political rights lead to the formation of the modern political nation-state, and that the demystification of nature allowed modern science to arise.

Most interestingly, he believes that the spread of Communist ideology played a similar role to christianity in its ability to “exorcise the magical demons and open nature for science.” Naturally, I wondered what Cox would have to say about capitalism, [our modern religion](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/ivrsydjp/release/15). Sure enough, in 2016, some 50 years after the publication of *The Secular City*, he wrote [*The Market As God*](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674659681&ref=gabestein.com), which argues that we have begun to deify the market using language and doctrines straight out of christian tradition.

This would seem to imply, although Cox [has been criticized](https://syndicate.network/symposia/theology/the-market-as-god/?ref=gabestein.com) for not quite going there, that in place of the divine rulers of old, we have re-endowed our political leaders with sacral rights to rule in the best interests of capital, rather than people, as Pope Francis [might say](https://www.npr.org/2020/10/04/920053203/pope-francis-laments-failures-of-market-capitalism-in-blueprint-for-post-covid-w?ref=gabestein.com). That idea fits nicely with some of Solarpunk’s guiding maxims, from Ursula K. LeGuin’s [famous exhortation](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/20/ursula-k-le-guin-national-book-awards-speech?ref=gabestein.com), *“*We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings,” to Frederic Jameson’s [lament](http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/city/life/215749-solarpunk?ref=gabestein.com) that “It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”

So, perhaps one project of Solarpunk is to put an end to this latest God and the State it rode in with. But that doesn’t mean religion will go away. If anything, Cox argues (positively) that secularization can strengthen religion by allowing it to claim a separate, higher ground of morality above the fray of the political sphere. Thus, Solarpunk must have an answer for how to redirect and/or replace today’s dominant religions towards forms that return humanity to nature without, as Cox warns, succumbing to the rigidity of secularism that leads to dehumanizing and radicalizing outcomes like [banning hijabs](https://time.com/6049226/france-hijab-ban/?ref=gabestein.com) or romanticizing the environment in ways that reject our role in the climate crisis and the the science we need to climb out of it.

Should be accomplishable by a single person spending a month writing, right?

### Footnotes

1. A yearly “competition” where you attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November. [↵](#fn-0-inline)
### Reclaiming rye
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/vkoale7b/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T23:15:54.000Z
Is sourdough goyish?

It’s a question that has plagued at least one person other than me. Yes, says Helen Goldrein, author of the [top search result](https://www.jewthink.org/2020/08/07/sourdough-is-goyish-challah-is-jewish/?ref=gabestein.com#:~:text=While%20the%20gentiles%20were%20busy,make%20it%20a%20good%20one!) for the query. Reflecting on the early-pandemic baking craze, she notes that while gentiles posted Instagrams of sourdough, Jews stuck to challah. Challah, she argues, “has all the charm and artisanal delight of a sourdough boule, while also being inextricably *of our heritage*.”

On an emotional level, I can’t help but agree. The thought that sourdough, delicious as it is, is simply not Jewish, has grown into something of an identity crisis for me. I grew up cooking with my mother and sister, and particularly cherish memories preparing holiday staples like latkes, matzo ball soup, and brisket. That fondness did not extend to baking. In fact, scarred by youthful misadventures involving soupy pies, giant paper-thin cookies, and even a series of demotions from roller to hole-puncher to scrap-collector at the local Chabad’s shmura matzo-making party, I long identified as Not A Baker. The precision and fine artistry of baked goods and pastry belonged squarely to my sister and her legendary weekly challah.

Then I decided to change my life out of spite. A few years ago, a friend graciously brought me as his date to a baking class in Bushwick. In response to a question about sourdough, the instructor sighed and told the class that he did not and would not teach it to amateur bakers. Sourdough was, he declared while absentmindedly rolling freshly milled flour around the tips of his fingers, simply too hard to learn. Challenge accepted!

Five years later, sourdough has become an inextricable part of my life (ask me about my bread-themed birthday party). It has also provided me with a hobby that gets me up out of my office chair at regular intervals several times a day, and a living thing to nurture that, unlike plants, pets, or children, can be safely shoved in the fridge and neglected for weeks at a time.

As I’ve reclaimed my baking identity, I’ve been grappling with the destabilization of another one. I’m not a religious person. In fact, I’m more or less an atheist, belief-wise. But when it comes to food and culture, I’m unavoidably Jewish. And from challah to the bagel, bialy, babka, and Jewish rye — it’s right in the name! — we have more than a thing or two to say about bread. But none of those breads, as Goldrein rightly notes, are, traditionally, sourdoughs.

Of course, there are plenty of Jewish sourdough bakers. And there’s nothing wrong with sourdough challah, bagels, or babkas, all of which I’ve made. Still, baking with sourdough feels a bit like belonging to a country club: sure, anyone can be a member these days, but the lunch cart only serves ham and cheese on a baguette.

The sourdough estrangement hit me powerfully last weekend when our friend Marc, the best friend of my wife’s late *zaida*, came to town and gave us a fish. Marc isn’t Jewish, but he grew up in Brooklyn and loves Jewish food so much that he might as well be. Case in point: the whole smoked whitefish he gifted us from ACME’s legendary [Fish Fridays](https://northbrooklynnews.com/2018/10/02/acme-fish-fridays-its-worth-the-wait/?ref=gabestein.com), despite the fact that he has yet to forgive me for missing the last Russ & Daughters herring festival for a work trip.

When you give a sourdough baker smoked fish, they’re going to bake a rye bread. But not a light rye, or a deli rye, or a Jewish rye. Those are not, in the eyes of the bread world, serious ryes.

In Jeffrey Hamelman’s *Bread*, the textbook of most professional baking classes, you’ll find a multi-page rant glorifying European “true pumpernickels” and excoriating North American ryes that basically boils down to “your bread doesn’t belong here.” The way the man who wrote the canonical book on bread describes his hatred for the bread most associated with my people borders on comical.

Despite being full of folks whose poor, peasant ancestors immigrated from the Eastern and Northern European rye belts, Hamelman laments, North American ryes are “bland and insipid,” made with “no clear understanding of the special requirements of rye bread,” which often results in an “assault of excessive sourness.” Don’t get him started on the practice of adding caraway to deli rye (“lamentable”), color-enhancing additives to American pumpernickel (an “egregious insult”), and worst of all, the “baffling idea of braiding together a couple of strands of this tasteless black dough with a couple of strands of equally bland white dough” that is the marble rye.

The real stuff is cooked slowly at low temperatures to produce a rich, aromatic, easy to digest loaf whose dark color is the product of the natural caramelization of the grain’s sugars, not additives. This rye, Hamelman says, “became the grain of life for many of the poor folk there,” and he makes a special reference to “the German Christmas specialty Lebkuchen,” which translates as “life cake.”

Though I cannot confirm it, I suspect that Jeffrey Hamelman is not Jewish.

And still, I love the man. Like so many other bakers, his bookis my bread bible — er, talmud? — and it’s hard to deny his main point, which is that what we call “rye bread" here usually contains small amounts of actual rye flour and derives most of its characteristic flavor from caraway seeds, not the grain it’s named for. There’s a deeper message for bakers embedded in his rant, too. Although Hamelman’s book contains recipes that use both commercial yeast and sourdough, the exalted “true Pumpernickels” that contain high percentages of rye flour require the lactic acid produced by sourdough cultures to rise properly.

For the Jewish baker, then, the message isn’t just that your version of rye is bad, it’s that your traditional recipes are fundamentally incompatible with the ideal version of the very bread that bears your name. For the Jewish sourdough baker feeling a tad verklempt at abandoning those traditions in pursuit of better bread? Welcome to the country club.

Over the years, I’ve dutifully tried several European-style rye recipes from *Bread*. Each attempt has yielded a disaster on the scale of my youthful baking misadventures. A gloopy, wet porridge. A sticky, gummy caramel. A charred, crumbly brick. I began to suspect that perhaps I was the problem.

When you seek the Internet’s help making these breads, you find that they are German, they are Russian, they are Danish, they are European or Scandinavian ryes. They have names like *rugbrød* and *volkornbrot*, although *pumpernickel* was definitely a German-Jewish comedian’s joke name that stuck, because it literally means “[devil’s fart](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-is-pumpernickel-bread%5Fn%5F7019078?ref=gabestein.com).” The people who make the instructional YouTube videos about these breads tend to have blond hair and blue eyes and just a little trouble pronouncing the word “whole.” Serving and eating these breads properly requires adhering to a complex [set of rules](https://www.npr.org/2011/01/04/132627711/the-art-of-the-danish-open-face-sandwich?ref=gabestein.com). These breads are not, as Goldrein would say, *of our heritage*.

Except that everywhere you look at the history and culture of rye — even in Hamelman’s diatribe — you find coded evidence of Jews. We were, of course, often peasants who lived in areas inhospitable to wheat cultivation but friendly to rye. Our ancestors were among those who came to America’s shores from the rye belts of Russia, Poland, Germany, Austria, and yes, Scandinavia too, most famously [Denmark](https://www.history.com/news/wwii-danish-jews-survival-holocaust?ref=gabestein.com). And the *volkornbrot*, the “true Pumpernickel” that is featured in no fewer than three recipes in Hamelman’s *Bread*? You’ll have to forgive me: I read the first four letters, thought of Hitler like one does, and flipped the page. Not so fast. The name is a slightly unfortunate portmanteau of *voll*, German for “full,” and *korn*, the [Yiddish word for rye](https://blog.bakewithzing.com/jewish-rye-bread-history/?ref=gabestein.com).

A *YIVO Encyclopedia* [entry](https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/food%5Fand%5Fdrink?ref=gabestein.com) confirms my suspicions that, far from being goyish, sourdough was part of the daily lives of my Ashkenazi ancestors. The Yiddish word for their sourdough starter is *roshtshine*, and they subsisted in part on “their own coarse black rye bread,” baked for hours at low temperatures.Hamelman would, no doubt, approve of this Jewish rye.

Sourdough, it seems, is unmistakably, unimpeachably *of our heritage*. So why do we feel so disconnected from it? Stanley Ginsberg, the author of several Jewish bread tomes, including *The Rye Baker: Classic Breads from Europe and America*, gave a compelling answer in a 2016 [interview](https://www.myjewishlearning.com/the-nosher/what-makes-rye-bread-jewish/?ref=gabestein.com):

> But there’s also a more complex and nuanced answer as to what makes a rye bread “Jewish.” As a matter of historical fact, wherever in Europe Jews established communities they adopted the local breads – perhaps modified slightly to reflect the strictures of kashrut. And so the dark, sweet-sour ryes of Lithuania are really every bit as Jewish as the light caraway ryes of southern Poland and Ukraine. The rye breads that managed to survive the journey to America were those that best lent themselves to American conditions, namely, low-percentage ryes that took advantage of the low cost and easy handling of the abundant wheat the European Jewish bakers found when they arrived here. The high-percentage ryes that represented the taste of home for Jews from Lithuania, Belarus and northern Poland all but disappeared from American bakeries by the end of World War Two.

It seems we lost touch with traditional sourdough ryes out of necessity on our way out of Europe. Or perhaps, like so much of our legacy, our contributions to sourdough were conveniently forgotten. It’s not the first time we’ve left yeast behind to save ourselves. Just ask Moses.

Sourdough is Jewish. Which is a relief, because I’ve got to do something about this fish. So, yesterday, after years of experimentation and failure, after consulting and combining recipes, tips and techniques from an amalgamation of cookbooks, recipe sites, YouTube videos, and online forums, I finally turned out my own dark, subtly sweet and slightly sour, moist but not gummy (ever-so-slightly-overproofed if I’m being honest), beautiful loaf of fully rye sourdough bread. Though it shares plenty of characteristics with *rogbrød* and *pumpernickel,* it is, respectfully, neither of those delicious breads*.* It’s a *fulkornbroyt*. A Jewish full rye.

![](https://resize-v3.pubpub.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJhc3NldHMucHVicHViLm9yZyIsImtleSI6IjRhdjExMXpyLzExNjMzNDg4NjQxNDYzLmpwZWciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjgwMCwiZml0IjoiaW5zaWRlIiwid2l0aG91dEVubGFyZ2VtZW50Ijp0cnVlfX19)

---

## Jewish Fulkornbroyt

- Yield: 2 standard loaves (8-1/2 x 4-1/2 x 2-1/2 inches)
- Prep time (active): 1 hour
- Prep time (passive): \~24 hours
- Bake time: 6+ hours

### Ingredients

655 grams Whole rye flour or meal

655 grams Water (BP: 100%)

90 grams Sourdough starter at 100% hydration (BP: 13%)

330 grams cracked rye berries, soaked (BP: 47%)

21 grams salt (BP: 3%)

90 grams golden or maple syrup (BP: 13%)

70-140 grams Sunflower seeds or seed mix, optional (BP: 10-20%)

### Directions

1. Mix half of the rye flour and water with the starter to form a levain.
2. Pour 330 grams of boiling water over the cracked rye berries.
3. Let the levain and soaker sit overnight.
4. Add the salt, syrup, and remaining water and rye flour into the levain and mix until the flour is dissolved.
5. Drain any excess water from the soaked rye berries and then add them to the mix.
6. Add Sunflower seeds at this point if desired, up to 20% of the flour weight, or about 140 grams.
7. Mix well, with a mixer or spoon. The dough will be quite sticky, almost a paste.
8. Cover to avoid water loss and let the dough rest for 1-3 hours or until it rises about a third in volume.
9. Grease two standard loaf pans (8-1/2 x 4-1/2 x 2-1/2 inches) with butter or oil, then dust with a small amount of rye flour.
10. Put dough into loaf pan with a spatula or spoon. It should fill about 2/3 of the pan.
11. Let the dough rise for 2-3 hours at room temp, or overnight in the fridge, until the dough is just at the top of the pan and 6-8 small holes have formed in the top of the dough. Under-proofing will result in cracked bread, over-proofing will result in sunken bread.
12. Wrap the loaf pans tightly in tin foil to avoid water loss.
13. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F and bake for 1 hour.
14. Turn the oven down and bake for 4-7 more hours until the air is extremely, deliciously fragrant.
15. Turn off the oven and let the bread sit in the residual heat of the oven overnight, or until the oven is cool.
16. Remove the foil and extricate the bread from the tins.
17. Allow the bread to cool completely on a rack for 30 minutes or so.
18. **Do not cut into the loaves!** Rye needs time for water to spread throughout the loaf. If you don’t give it that time, the bread will be unpleasantly gummy. So:
19. Wrap the loaves in foil, a baker’s linen, or put in a plastic bag to keep moisture in and let them rest for 24-48 hours before slicing. As Hamelman says, a 72 hours “is not excessive.”
20. Slice thinly and enjoy with whatever you want, in any way you want, rules be damned.
### A nice pairing
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/tro5z1kn/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:36.000Z
If you’re one of my low hundreds (humblebrag-much?!) of monthly readers, you know I love a good [Internet-as-early-state](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/1z314izc/release/3) metaphor. So, I’ve got a nice pairing for you. Here’s Chris Hayes, [writing](https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/on-the-internet-were-always-famous?ref=gabestein.com) in *the New Yorker* about the perils of extending fame, of sorts, to everyone via social media:

> Never before in history have so many people been under the gaze of so many strangers. Humans evolved in small groups, defined by kinship: those we knew, knew us. And our imaginative capabilities allowed us to know strangers—kings and queens, heroes of legend, gods above—all manner of at least partly mythic personalities to whom we may have felt as intimately close to as kin. For the vast majority of our species’ history, those were the two principal categories of human relations: kin and gods. Those we know who know us, grounded in mutual social interaction, and those we know who don’t know us, grounded in our imaginative powers.  
>  
> But now consider a third category: people *we* don’t know and who somehow know *us*. They pop up in mentions, comments, and replies; on subreddits, message boards, or dating apps. Most times, it doesn’t even seem noteworthy: you look down at your phone and there’s a notification that someone you don’t know has liked a post. You might feel a little squirt of endorphin in the brain, an extremely faint sense of achievement. Yet each instance of it represents something new as a common human experience, for their attention renders us tiny gods. The Era of Mass Fame is upon us.

To be sure, it’s a bit of a simplification of sociology and biology, but it’s a provocative one. How do we escape being constantly visible online, while still reaping the benefits of connection? Political scientist David Stasavage and journalist Nathan Schneider [propose](https://www.noemamag.com/ancient-democracy-for-an-online-world/?utm%5Fsource=noematwitter&utm%5Fmedium=noemasocial) a possible solution in *Noema* by applying the early history of Hayes’ “gods” to the Internet:

> The core feature of early democracies was that rulers relied on their people to provide information about production and to aid with governance, whether it be raising revenues or engaging in external defense. They did this in the form of councils and assemblies and by delegating authority. It resembled an online platform where those at the center are always dependent on outside developers for content.  
>  
> The other core feature of early democracies was the threat of exit: Instead of voting at the ballot box, people could vote with their feet. Here again, we see a parallel in many, though certainly not all, online contexts. It is the threat of moving to another community that keeps would-be dictators benevolent.

The authors are referring here to loose organizations like open source codebases, Facebook groups, and sub-Reddits, where benevolent moderators really do seem to be kept in check by the fear that their communities will turn on them and go elsewhere. There are a few problems with the metaphor, though. The main one, which Stasavage and Schneider readily acknowledge, is that the moderators in this case are just demi-gods. The real pantheon sits well above, at the level of Zuckerberg and Huffman, and at that scale, we the people have no ability to vote with our feet.

Still, there’s a potentially interesting path forward if one dreams of an online ecosystem (and beyond?) that pairs resistance to Hayes’ permafame with the organizational structures of Stasavage and Schneider’s early democracies. What we have now is, I don’t know, something sorta-kinda like a vast feudal system. Most platforms are made up of many estates of varying sizes. These estates are nominally run by self-appointed noblemods who have some control over their communities within the bounds set by what their members will reasonably accept, on one end, and the constraints of both form and function imposed by the central platform’s authority, on the other. Their communities are simultaneously extremely insular, promoting group-think via mob rule in the comments, and highly porous, with effective content spilling over into other groups and centralized feeds.

What we want is more of a patchwork of small, niche-adapted communities. Their constraints are built with and for the communities they serve. They’re run by the people who want the responsibility, kept in check by the ease with which communities can leave and re-aggregate, both on-platform and off. They’re fairly private and self-maintained by nature, but not isolated. They can trade ideas and talk with others, but they aren’t designed to encourage mimetic spillover (or, for that matter, memes at all). They share some central ideas and infrastructures, but not authority, indexing, or aggregation.

To be honest, the anti-patterns Hayes describes are so prevalent that it’s hard to even imagine what this would look like in practice. A sort of form-builder for social media is the thought that most readily comes to mind, where the basic structures are interoperable, but everything from the types and structures of posted content to the interaction modes, distribution mechanisms, and moderation policies can be added, removed, combined, remixed, and adapted.

Anyone know something forming along these lines?
### Under review
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/craq4xd8/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:36.000Z
Stefano Bertozzi, UC Berkley School of Public Health Dean Emeritus and Editor-in-Chief of *[Rapid Reviews: COVID-19](https://rapidreviewscovid19.mitpress.mit.edu/?ref=gabestein.com)*, pointed out something odd about a [news article](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02457-y?ref=gabestein.com) on the (apparently high!) effectiveness of masks in preventing COVID spread making the rounds on Nature’s news section. Normally, this wouldn’t be notable. Nature publishes [tons](https://www.nature.com/news?ref=gabestein.com) of news summaries about notable studies — from both their own portfolio of journals and others’s — all the time.

What’s interesting about this one is that the source material it’s writing up isn’t a published study, but an [unreviewed preprint](https://www.poverty-action.org/publication/impact-community-masking-covid-19-cluster-randomized-trial-bangladesh?ref=gabestein.com). It’s also [not](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02330-y?ref=gabestein.com) the [only](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02146-w?ref=gabestein.com) recent Nature news article citing preprints. The piece doesn’t hide the fact that it’s reporting on a preprint, but it doesn’t exactly call it out, either. Here’s the lede of the story (the fact that it’s a preprint is mentioned in paragraph 3):

> Face masks protect against COVID-19\. That’s the conclusion of a gold-standard clinical trial in Bangladesh, which backs up the findings of hundreds of previous observational and laboratory studies.

This may seem like a trivial observation, or even a bit of a gotcha, but I think it’s a pretty significant development. Nature’s flagship journal, after all, is one of the [most-cited](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view%5Fop=top%5Fvenues&hl=en&ref=gabestein.com) and [prestigious](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2678438/?ref=gabestein.com) scientific publications in the world by most measures, and many of its downstream titles [feature highly](https://library.comsats.edu.pk/Files/Impact%5FFator-wise%5FTop100Sciene%5FJournals.pdf?ref=gabestein.com) in rankings as well. The brand’s value proposition rests almost entirely on the exclusivity produced by its peer-review selection process (despite [scant evidence](https://www.vox.com/2015/12/7/9865086/peer-review-science-problems?ref=gabestein.com) that it’s effective), which it makes abundantly clear on its own [about page](https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/about/nature-and-nature-branded-research-journals?ref=gabestein.com):

> Over 50 thousand manuscripts are read and assessed for quality and integrity each year by *Nature* and the Nature research journals, but less than 10% of these papers will be selected by our highly qualified professional editors for publication. The exceptional research in these journals has a profound effect on the disciplines to which it relates and the wider world.

Of course, we’re not talking here about a journal article. But even the published [editorial criteria](https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/other-subs?ref=gabestein.com) for Nature’s News & Views section makes it clear what the venerable institution considers valuable:

> These articles inform nonspecialist readers about new scientific advances, as reported in recently published papers (in Nature and elsewhere). This is a commission-only section.

So, what’s going on here? Has Nature decided that preprints are published works? Have their editorial standards changed a bit due to the pandemic? Are they getting into the preprint curation business?

If it were a one-off, you might be able to argue that in this case, because it’s citing a much-anticipated and apparently methodologically sound RCT from a respected group of researchers about COVID, it’s perhaps an omission that proves the rule (though that argument would beg some of its own questions about the value of review). But as the examples I linked to above show, it’s not a one-off, and it’s not limited to the pandemic.

Whatever’s going on, the fact that the company’s own news team is willing to cite unreviewed work signals that that work has value, and calls into question what value the journal itself provides. To be clear: I think there is value to Nature’s News team engaging in this type of curation, and I’m not arguing that italicized-*Nature* provides no value. I also don’t think that Nature is trying to pull a fast one on us or anything like that.

But I do think we should pay more attention to developments like these, and ask the questions that they beg.
### Solarpunk reading list
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/9gngcp8l/
Last updated: 2025-09-02T18:39:59.000Z
An extremely incomplete list of solarpunk things that I’ve personally consumed and find useful/inspiring/fun/good/interesting. May update over time.

## Manifestos

### [*Solarpunk: Notes towards a manifesto*](https://hieroglyph.asu.edu/2014/09/solarpunk-notes-toward-a-manifesto/?ref=gabestein.com)[, Adam Flynn, 2014](https://hieroglyph.asu.edu/2014/09/solarpunk-notes-toward-a-manifesto/?ref=gabestein.com)

The original pseudo-manifesto. Probably best to start here.

### [*Life in the Future Beyond the Rusted Chrome of Yestermorrow*](https://www.thejaymo.net/long-form/solarpunk-rusted-chrome?ref=gabestein.com)[, Jay Springett, 2019](https://www.thejaymo.net/long-form/solarpunk-rusted-chrome?ref=gabestein.com)

A brilliant look at mass media and the need to imagine new futures.

### [On the Political Dimensions of Solarpunk, Andrew Dana Hudson, 2015](https://medium.com/solarpunks/on-the-political-dimensions-of-solarpunk-c5a7b4bf8df4?ref=gabestein.com)

As advertised, delves into the politics of solarpunk in an extremely compelling way.

## Research

### [Solarpunk: Post-Industrial Design and Aesthetics, Eric Hunting, 2020](https://medium.com/@erichunting/solarpunk-post-industrial-design-and-aesthetics-1ecb350c28b6?ref=gabestein.com)

Illustrated exploration into infrastructure and industrial design systems, tools, and technologies needed to achieve solarpunk futures at various states of imagined solarpunk societal development.

## Fiction

### [*Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation*](https://bookshop.org/books/sunvault-stories-of-solarpunk-and-eco-speculation/9781937794750?ref=gabestein.com)[, 2017](https://bookshop.org/books/sunvault-stories-of-solarpunk-and-eco-speculation/9781937794750?ref=gabestein.com)

I’m only a few stories in, but so far it’s the most mature and interesting collection of stories I’ve read.

## News & Commentary

### [*Solarpunk Is Not About Pretty Aesthetics. It's About the End of Capitalism*](https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx5aym/solarpunk-is-not-about-pretty-aesthetics-its-about-the-end-of-capitalism?ref=gabestein.com)[, Hannah Steinkopf-Frank, 2021](https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx5aym/solarpunk-is-not-about-pretty-aesthetics-its-about-the-end-of-capitalism?ref=gabestein.com)

A re-introduction covering some of the latest developments in solarpunk, with quotes from some of its biggest names.

### [*Solarpunk wants to save the world*](http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/city/life/215749-solarpunk?ref=gabestein.com)[, Ben Valentine, circa 2017](http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/city/life/215749-solarpunk?ref=gabestein.com)

An optimistic take on the budding genre from a few years ago, including quotes from some of its early proponents.

## Communities

### [solarpunks.net](https://solarpunks.tumblr.com/?ref=gabestein.com)

The original tumblr, curating solarpunk-y things.

### [r/solarpunk](https://reddit.com/r/solarpunk?ref=gabestein.com)

The sub-reddit, where people are mostly discussing whether bits of news are/are not solarpunk.
### Going solar
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/wbt99lyj/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:36.000Z
Late last week I came across solarpunk, the emerging sci-fi sub-genre/art movement/sociopolitical movement dedicated to imagining hopeful near-term climate futures, via [this](https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx5aym/solarpunk-is-not-about-pretty-aesthetics-its-about-the-end-of-capitalism?ref=gabestein.com) Motherboard article. Naturally, many of my friends had become familiar with it years ago (and why didn’t you tell me?!), often via renderings of futuristic, plant-filled cityscapes. For that reason, most believed it to be mostly an art movement.

In the intervening years, it seems to have taken on more heft. As the Motherboard piece points out, more [literature](https://www.amazon.com/Sunvault-Solarpunk-Eco-Speculation-C-Wise/dp/193779475X/ref=asc%5Fdf%5F193779475X/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=270513300429&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15158430411020291565&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1022762&hvtargid=pla-491803449526&psc=1&ref=gabestein.com), [magazines](https://dreamforgemagazine.com/?ref=gabestein.com), and [online communities](https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/?ref=gabestein.com) are beginning to emerge, and in the surest sign of mainstream breakthrough potential, the solarpunk aesthetic and ethos was recently borrowed/coopted in a [Chobani ad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS-sJQkr0H4&ref=gabestein.com) that, as one friend put it, is the Studio Ghibli movie set in 2150 North America you didn’t know you needed.

Eat today, feed tomorrow

The media traction is certainly heartening, and with any luck a solarpunk work will soon reach mainstream pop culture appeal. But it was this quote, from solarpunk [Jay Springett](https://www.thejaymo.net/?ref=gabestein.com), that had me most excited about the movement’s potential:

> “Solarpunk is more concerned with delivering the practical things that you can do on route to a better world, rather than the gestural things,” Springett said. “You can't LARP Solarpunk because LARPing Solarpunk is going out and planting a garden.”

Or, taking a more positive view of the power of fandom, solarpunk is one of the few genres where your LARPing has an immediate real-world impact.

If there is a solarpunk urtext, it is Adam Flynn’s 2014 *[Solarpunk: Notes toward a manifesto](https://hieroglyph.asu.edu/2014/09/solarpunk-notes-toward-a-manifesto/?ref=gabestein.com).* In it, he explains the movement in two taught paragraphs worth reading in full (emphasis his):

> Solarpunk is about finding ways to make life more wonderful for us right now, and more importantly for the generations that follow us – i.e., extending human life at the species level, rather than individually. Our future must involve repurposing and creating new things from what we already have (instead of 20th century “destroy it all and build something completely different” modernism). Our futurism is not nihilistic like cyberpunk and it avoids steampunk’s potentially quasi-reactionary tendencies: it is about **ingenuity, generativity, independence, and community.**  
>  
> And yes, there’s a -punk there, and not just because it’s become a trendy suffix. There’s an oppositional quality to solarpunk, but it’s an opposition that begins with *infrastructure as a form of resistance*. We’re already seeing it in the struggles of public utilities to deal with the explosion in rooftop solar. “Dealing with infrastructure is a protection against being robbed of one’s self-determination,” said Chokwe Lumumba, the late mayor of Jackson, MS, and he was right. Certainly there are good reasons to have a grid, and we don’t want it to rot away, but one of the healthy things about local resilience is that it puts you in a much better bargaining position against the people who might want to shut you off (We’re looking at you, Detroit).

There is so much to love here, but I want to draw out one simple thought that it took me a few days of exposure to the movement to understand fully. Once it sunk in, it was clear as day that this is what people were getting at all along, but I wish I had come across it earlier, in plainer terms (ah, [here’s one example](https://web.archive.org/web/20210512171958/http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/city/life/215749-solarpunk) via an unfortunately dead link, let me know if there are others). So here goes:

The “solar” in solarpunk has multiple connotations. It functions literally in describing renewable energy, spiritually as a reminder of our reliance on the sun, and, crucially, metaphorically in describing solar energy’s unique decentralized, locally controlled, but interconnected-by-necessity nature. Something that is “solar” is something that is resilient.

In this way, any action that helps build a meaningfully resilient community is solarpunk. “Meaningfully” in that phrase is important, because it acknowledges that there are unsustainable ways to build temporary resilience, and those acts are not solarpunk. But this metaphorical interpretation really helps me tie the movement’s aesthetics to its philosophies and understand it as more active than an art movement or sub-genre. It’s why actions like helping your friend get into therapy is solarpunk; why getting involved in local government is solarpunk; why your community fridge is solarpunk, even if it has to be powered by a gas generator for now.

So, let’s get solar and go LARP.
### Token retreat
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/g2l5vtiq/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T23:15:59.000Z
*Disclaimer:* As of writing, I own about $4,950 in BTC and ETH, which I bought (and converted from Keybase’s Stellar Lumens drop) in February, 2021, when it was worth about $2,800\. I did this mainly so I could write about it intelligently. I have not touched it since. I have considered using it to buy a token or NFT, again to be able to write intelligently about it.

---

I have a hammer, a concept called [HyperNormalisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation?ref=gabestein.com), the gist of which is that large swathes of society have given up on the complexity of the real world and instead retreated into a simpler and more stable, but manufactured, reality propped up by neoliberal financial and governmental institutions. I’ve [applied](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/ku45zwdn/release/5) it [to](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/ivrsydjp/release/15) [several](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/s9dbouca/release/6) concepts recently, so, you’ll have to forgive me if, in a couple of months, it turns out I was just seeing nails everywhere.

Reading some of the crypto and metaverse posts making the rounds, however, I’ve begun to wonder if “[web3](https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/web2-vs-web3/?ref=gabestein.com),” as the decentralized web is becoming known, is a technology stack for democratizing access to neoliberal HyperNormalisation. A decade ago, only the most powerful elites could create [unregulated private value built on bad economics and environmentally catastrophic practices](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2017/jul/17/neoliberalism-has-conned-us-into-fighting-climate-change-as-individuals?ref=gabestein.com). Today, anyone can [convert fossil fuels into unregulated, sketchy-at-best value](https://fortune.com/2021/05/13/musk-bitcoin-mining-bad-planet-heres-how-bad/?ref=gabestein.com) via a token sale.

On a very literal level, the comparison rings true. At its core, web3 is concerned with creating autonomous digital socioeconomic communities with their own [organizational structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized%5Fautonomous%5Forganization?ref=gabestein.com), [governance mechanisms](https://aragon.org/?ref=gabestein.com), [goods](https://opensea.io/?ref=gabestein.com), and [currencies](https://cryptoslate.com/coins/?ref=gabestein.com) that can function more or less independently from the rest of society. Diving deeper into the philosophy of web3, you start to see the psychological dimensions of HyperNormalisation emerge as well.

One of the main value propositions of the current wave of web3 activity is that it makes reality easier to understand by reducing complex, abstract human relationships and social structures down to literally tradable “[social tokens](https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/social-tokens%3A-get-ready-for-the-next-massive-crypto-trend-2021-04-29?ref=gabestein.com).” For example, here’s Gaby Goldberg [writing](https://gaby.mirror.xyz/zqchiBQhWWS49gaabLU92-BUUwfBL5aHCtNT88VTI8o?ref=gabestein.com) about a core problem with social tokens, that their exclusivity tends to drive up their prices and quickly make them inaccessible to those without significant amounts of capital (emphasis hers):

> So how do we solve the Social Token Paradox? As an ecosystem, we need to rethink the value of a token from the ground up. The decentralized communities of tomorrow will be centered around what we *do*, instead of what we *have*. This will be accomplished through both pre-existing on-chain data, as well as through a more robust DAO onboarding process that enables communities to better understand prospective members, their values, and their goals. This will come as a tectonic shift to decentralized organizations and communities over the next few months.

I guess it’s nice, on some level, to be arguing for more inclusive social tokens? But her proposed solution, making actions as visible on the blockchain as purchases, only works for actions that can be easily tracked and represented as bits of code. For her, this limitation is actually a benefit of retreating from the “real world” (her term), because it flattens the complexity of a human being’s social life into their browsing history:

> Once we solve the Social Token Paradox, capital will no longer be the primary status symbol in web3\. Instead, status will be composed of how many communities you are a part of, or how many things you’ve done online. The more online history you have, the richer your own story is, and the more things you can be a part of in the future.  
>  
> …  
>  
> In the real world, when we look in the mirror, we can only see a small fraction of who we are. In the metaverse, we’ll be able to go a whole lot deeper. And it’s going to start with social tokens.

The underlying piece she [references](https://j.mirror.xyz/k0yCgq0bjgn2X0AujhwjKIYk4SDBpdNayjU5%5FE8Wm4I?ref=gabestein.com), written by John Palmer, similarly hand-waves over the central question that has plagued crypto since its arrival a decade ago: what is it actually good for? (emphasis mine)

> It’s true that many digital objects will be purely cosmetic, like a rare avatar or piece of art you can display within different applications. But **if digital objects are as versatile as physical objects** (how many different things can “objects” do?), many NFTs will provide functional benefits to their owners. Digital items will move with their owners across the Internet and allow them to perform special actions across independent pieces of software.

Digital objects approaching parity with physical objects feels like a pretty big if! But it’s not even a question in Palmer’s world, because, I would argue, the point of web3 isn’t to interact or reach parity with the physical world, it’s to create a new one where only actions and items that can exist on the blockchain are valuable.

It can be tempting, at this point, to say, “so what? Let these people have their fun. They’ll run into [Dunning-Kruger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger%5Feffect?ref=gabestein.com) eventually and that’ll be that.” I have that instinct, too, except that I worry that the societal effects of web3 will be just as damaging as the social web has been.

On its present course, even with the corrective proposed by Goldberg, I think web3 is a nightmare. At best, it gives more people the ability to build their own neoliberal bubbles where they can get rich without solving any real problems like hunger or inequality or climate change. Yay, democratization? At worst, it helps [accelerate us](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/blockchain-of-command/528543/?ref=gabestein.com) towards a very dark, fascist future.

One of the only interesting philosophical ideas hanging out on the liberal margins of the metaverse is the idea that web3 could be about creating [abundance economies](https://alexdanco.com/2020/08/21/homesteading-the-twittersphere/?ref=gabestein.com) where the main currency is reputation, which is kinda-sorta [Star Trek-y](https://www.amazon.com/Trekonomics-Economics-Star-Manu-Saadia/dp/1941758754?ref=gabestein.com). Golberg gestures at this with her point about status vs. capital, and a lot of the apologia written by [crypto-leftists](https://www.reddit.com/r/cryptoleftists/?ref=gabestein.com) focuses on the idea that crypto mechanisms could ultimately be used to replace capitalism.

Of course, there are two major flaws with the web3-as-abundance-economy idea. The first is that abundance economies and crypto economies would seem to be fundamentally incompatible because the former relies almost entirely on trust, whereas the latter is, infamously, a [failed attempt](https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-blockchain-technology/?ref=gabestein.com) to completely eliminate trust. Ironically, I think that failure is one of the only reasons why web3 remains interesting at all. As Goldberg mentions, one way to make DAOs better is to enable “communities to better understand prospective members, their values, and their goals,” which, uh, sounds a lot like building a trust-based community to me.

The second, and more pressing, flaw, is that web3 seems to have nothing to say about creating the baseline material abundance that would be required to create a true, worldwide reputation economy. At best, I’ve read a few posts about using crypto to [fundraise for mutual aid](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4cclz3/mutual%5Faid%5Fsocieties%5Fon%5Fa%5Fblockchain/?ref=gabestein.com).

This is where I worry most about web3’s ability to HyperNormalize. For all the talk of its ability to democratize and level the socioeconomic playing field, for the most part that democratization seems to be limited to the buying and selling of digital goods. That’s all great if your basic needs are already easily met, like the majority of web3’s well-to-do techno-utopian proselytizers. But if you’re hungry, or unhoused, or worried about the climate crisis? What then?

I can already hear the crypto-optimists yelling, as they have for the last decade, “just wait, it’s early, soon you’ll be able to do real things with crypto.” Well, you can stop yelling, you were right. You can do real things with crypto, because you've invented realities where that’s true.

The problem is that, so far anyway, it’s not really possible to do anything with crypto in the realities that need help the most. So, here’s my challenge to web3: come talk to me when your DAO is distributing food, or housing people, or scrubbing carbon. Seriously, I’m interested in what happens when web3 collides with reality. Until then, though, I would be wary about getting too caught up in your own invented worlds. It can be hard to find your way back.

---

Thanks to [Dan Hunt](https://danhunt.substack.com/), [Joel Christiansen](https://joelc.io/?ref=gabestein.com), [Rob Hardy](https://ungated.media/?ref=gabestein.com), and [Foster](https://foster.co/?ref=gabestein.com) for feedback on an early idea for this post.
### A corrective to the disinfo corrective
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/s9dbouca/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:36.000Z
In Harper’s, Joseph Bernstein [writes](https://harpers.org/archive/2021/09/bad-news-selling-the-story-of-disinformation/?ref=gabestein.com) a corrective to some of the prevailing wisdom about disinformation. It’s a provocative piece that questions whether “Big Disinfo,” as he calls it, is real at all, or whether, like most advertising before it, social media writ large offers far less than it would have you believe:

> This is perhaps the deepest criticism one can make of these Silicon Valley giants: not that their gleaming industrial information process creates nasty runoff, but that nothing all that valuable is coming out of the factory in the first place.

It’s an important question. Clearly, Facebook and Google are impactful, at least culturally. Why else would we spend so much time with them? The question is how impactful, and in what domains. As I [wrote](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/ku45zwdn/) a few weeks ago, arriving in a very similar place while reading another Harper’s [piece](https://harpers.org/archive/2021/06/tiktok-house-collab-house-the-anxiety-of-influencers/?ref=gabestein.com) about TikTok influencers:

> Like quantifying the impact of advertising, making the causal link between culture online and behavior offline is notoriously difficult. Sure, the January 6 insurrectionists organized much of their activities on Facebook, and right-wing messaging on the platform almost certainly had an effect on their mistaken belief that the election was rigged. But the actual violence occurred on the ground, well away from the platform, and was stoked not by digital content but by an in-person rally by the then-President of the United States.

Rather than tackling the contradiction head-on, however, Bernstein steps to the side, arguing via Jacques Ellul’s studies of propaganda that if you eliminate mass media persuasion as a factor, the only thing you have to blame for our current woes is ourselves, or as he puts it, the “context” of America — our weird electoral system, history of racism, libertarian streak, and so on. He takes it a step further, arguing that “the specific American situation was creating specific kinds of people long before the advent of tech platforms.” In other words, the role Facebook and their ilk played in January 6 was simply to expose what was already there:

> To take the whole environment into view, or as much of it as we can, is to see how preposterously insufficient it is to blame these platforms for the sad extremities of our national life, up to and including the riot on January 6\. And yet, given the technological determinism of the disinformation discourse, is it any surprise that attorneys for some of the Capitol rioters are planning legal defenses that blame social-media companies?

Bernstein is right. It’s preposterous to blame the January 6 insurrection, or any of the mess we’re in, solely on social media, precisely because it offers such a tantalizingly simple answer to all of our problems.

And yet his argument also features a kind of technological determinism, or, at minimum, technological nihilism, when it comes to society, our species’ quintessential technology. In Bernstein’s telling, the reason anyone believes that social media (and maybe even media writ large) is impactful is because we need to believe it has power for society to function at all:

> But there is a deeper and related reason many critics of Big Tech are so quick to accept the technologist’s story about human persuadability. As the political scientist Yaron Ezrahi has noted, the public relies on scientific and technological demonstrations of political cause and effect because they sustain our belief in the rationality of democratic government.  
>  
> Indeed, it’s possible that the Establishment needs the theater of social-media persuasion to build a political world that still makes sense, to explain Brexit and Trump and the loss of faith in the decaying institutions of the West.

No doubt, large parts of the Establishment are performing as if the Big Disinfo theory of everything is true, desperately trying to construct a reality that is, as Bernstein puts it, is “legible and useful to capital—to advertisers, political consultants, media companies, and of course, to the tech platforms themselves.”

And yet, it’s easy to use this line of reasoning to construct a hyperreality of our own, where we pretend that nothing about our political culture was ever real to begin with. Bernstein winks at this notion in his opening parable about the ideal Midcentury American media-consuming man, noting that even then, “over frequencies our American never tuned in to, red-baiting, ultra-right-wing radio preachers hyperventilated to millions.”

That’s true enough, but it’s also true that every mass media technology has been used to spread ultra-right propaganda. Until the last decade or so, that propaganda never reached mainstream prominence. Why? If indeed Bernstein’s “specific kinds of people” have always existed, it seems more likely that something about information technology altered our society’s political discourse in a way that granted them more political capital than ever before, than it does that their moment simply happened to arrive.

Even in the simplest version of Bernstein’s provocation, “what if the people believe crazy things, and now everyone knows it,” information technology is at fault for finally letting everyone see that the people believe crazy things. In fact, if Bernstein is right, what information technology may have done is allowed the most nihilistic, opportunistic elites to understand just how irrational the people really are, and use that to their advantage.

(As an aside, I don’t think the people are, in fact, irredeemably crazy, whether due to “context” or nature, and I vehemently dislike the special brand of leftist nihilistic thought that welcomes that conclusion, but that’s another post.)

Thus, explaining away attempts to understand the information ecosystem as merely the theater the Establishment needs “to build a political world that still makes sense,” as Bernstein does, is just as much of a simplification as the Big Disinfo theory. Even if Bernstein’s own conspiracy is true, and politics and advertising have been nothing but theater the whole time, the Establishment has been remarkably successful at guiding everything from the stage for centuries, and large parts of it are having little trouble adapting to whatever’s going on now.

If we’re ever going to build a functioning society, we need to understand how that stage worked, and why it failed. This need is especially great if Bernstein’s conspiracy is true, because replacing the irreality will require building something that actually resists the twin temptations of conspiracy and simplicity, and the nihilists who would use them for their own corrupt ends.
### NSF...
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/qhnjvvvm/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T12:54:14.000Z
Consider the infamous Internet axiom: “There is porn of it. No exceptions.”[1](#fn-0-bottom) When it comes to radical thought, [rule 34](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule%5F34?ref=gabestein.com) just barely holds. Only one result pops up when you search “marxist” on PornHub, though you may be interested to know that you can find a nude model to read you the first 5 chapters of Petr Kropotkin’s [Bread Book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FConquest%5Fof%5FBread?ref=gabestein.com).

Of course, that search is, in itself, more than a little self-defeating. Most marxists would probably argue that pornography, at least today’s mainstream misogynistic version, is inherently exploitative, a commodification of human sexual relationships that should not be allowed to exist. You won’t find me disagreeing.

The reason I’m thinking about marxist porn is not due to what would be a very particular kink indeed, or out of some quest to disprove the rule. No, I’m interested in that search because it neatly illustrates just how well our society has squeezed radical thought out of even its most permissive spaces.

The thought process that lead me here began a few weeks ago when I re-read *The Dispossessed*, Ursula K. Le Guin’s masterwork that vividly imagines a working anarcho-syndicalist society. As its famous subtitle, “an ambiguous utopia,” hints at, the book’s genius is that it functions simultaneously as a scathing critique of our capitalist society, a vision of a better world, and a thorough exploration of that same vision’s shortcomings. I last read the book when I was in my early teens, and I don’t think I was quite able to appreciate it. This time, the novel completely consumed me, allowing me to live for a few precious days in Le Guin’s ambiguous utopia, and emerging from it, to imagine versions of our own world that look more like the one she described on the fictional “moon” of Annares. Needless to say, I’ll be sharing more thoughts on it in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, though, in sharing these nascent ideas and prototypes with others, I’ve been struck by just how difficult it is for anyone, myself included, to allow themselves even to imagine the possibility of a society on Earth that looks like the anarcho-syndicalist Odonians from *The Dispossessed*. The book, like Le Guin, is well known and widely celebrated. It is also, for lack of a better word, non-memetic. Unlike, say, any of Ayn Rand’s rubbish, Le Guin’s ideas and ideologies for organizing society, inspired by anarchist literature and the workers’ movements of the 20s and 30s, seem to hit some kind of psychic barrier in our digital information environment that stops them from spreading, at least in mainstream spaces.

Of course, we all know why that’s the case. Complex socioeconomic systems go to great lengths to protect themselves from destabilizing radical thought. Le Guin depicts these mechanisms to great effect in the book, and we see it at play daily in our own world in the prevailing algorithms’ [preference](https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/03/tech/facebook-right-wing-misinformation/index.html?ref=gabestein.com) for right-wing thought.

And so I find myself wondering if even pornography, the mainstream digital space that supposedly makes room for anything and everything, can abide radicalism. I’ll save you the embarrassing search history: unless there’s a deeper meaning to rubbing one’s genitals on a Karl Marx pillow that I’m failing to comprehend, the answer is no.

### Footnotes

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule\_34 [↵](#fn-0-inline)
### 4 x 8
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/cp2cx8zv/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:35.000Z
It’s been about a month since we started [experimenting](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/n78srcnf/release/2) with 4-day (8 hours/day) workweeks, where we all work Monday through Thursday. I’ve gathered a few personal reflections from the first two weeks, though I look forward to being able to report on qualitative and quantitative feedback from the team, as well.

The main reflection I have to share is just how quickly the new schedule has set in both functionally and emotionally, at least for me. Starting the second week, I began to think of Thursday as the last day of the workweek, even referring to it as Friday in a few calls and Slack messages. Just as quickly, I’ve become incredibly protective of the time off. On the Fridays I have had to do a little bit of catch-up work, I’ve felt — guilty’s not quite the right word, but certainly a tad disappointed at myself for needing to use the time on my day-job.

Which leads to the second reflection: I don’t have anything quantitative to point to, but qualitatively, I’m pretty sure my productivity has gone up, not down, in the shortened week. For me, producing more in fewer hours has worked exactly the way [the research](https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/06/four-day-workweek/619222/?ref=gabestein.com) said it would. I find myself much less anxious and stressed about household chores and tasks than I was before the change, because I know I’ll have ample time to take care of those odds and ends on Fridays (including, sometimes, work odds and ends that otherwise stack up). Instead, the biggest source of stress is knowing that if I don’t get everything done before Friday, I’ll need to spend some of my newly found free time at work. I’m working on not allowing that to be a stressor as well, giving myself permission to work a few minutes on Friday if needed, or to let things go into next week. So far, though, the feeling of emotional space has allowed me to focus intensely during working hours without worrying that I’m tempting burnout by pushing aside external stressors.

In addition to experiencing less stress, shortening the work-week has helped me prioritize like never before. When part of your motivation becomes protecting your time off (and that of your colleagues and partners), you find it much easier to understand which tasks are vital, and which ones can wait or be dropped altogether. And because you always have the backstop of uninterrupted time to catch up if you make a mistake and accidentally drop something vital, there’s less stress in making prioritization decisions in the first place. Because the entire company is also operating this way, it feels like a bit of a cheat code for the giant unsupervised todo list that’s secretly running our lives, which I [wrote about](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/u6hlrbif/release/2) last week.

What do I do with my extra downtime? So far, very little, and that feels great. I initially worried that it would be hard to resist the temptation to be productive that our society relentlessly presses upon us, but I haven’t succumbed yet. I’ve been reading a lot, for pleasure. Playing a video game for the first time in many years. Doing neglected household chores. Writing blog posts like this one. Cooking. Taking walks. It’s been, frankly, fabulous. The only thing that would make it better is if all of my family and friends had similar schedules, so we could share in the luxury of time.

This isn’t to say that there have been no negatives to the change. Despite discipline built from over 5 years working from home, I’ve found my work days stretching just a bit longer than before. And I spend more of those days engaged and focused on work, which is as bad for me physically as it is great for my productivity. I suspect some of my colleagues are having similar experiences, and when we survey ourselves again, we may find we need to work on creating a culture of taking breaks for physical health and starting and ending days reasonably. I’ve also had one or two of my busiest meetings days since we [switched](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/iwgpvnuj/release/6) to using [Remeet’s](https://www.remeet.com/principles/topic-first-meeting-principle/?ref=gabestein.com) topic-first meeting system, because we still have to schedule external calls with partners, and there’s now less time for them. Like I’ve found with almost every other stressor since the switch, though, a long day of calls feels less draining than it did before, because we already eliminated most of our unnecessary internal meetings, and I have fewer external anxieties and more time to address the ones that do creep up.

Indeed, the biggest downside so far has been that, during the week, I have less time to carry on my (now rarely) daily blogging habit, because I find myself with fewer gaps during the actual workday to spend on tasks out side of work. On the other hand, though, I have more time to think and process, which makes writing longer pieces, like this one, much easier. I’m giving myself some time to adjust to this change and decide whether I need to rededicate myself to my goal or alter my expectations. Either way, though, whether it’s because the new schedule made space for creativity at work, or because it gave me an extra day to air out my mental laundry, I feel more creative and expressive than ever. That, perhaps, is as good a result to the experiment as any.
### GSD
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/u6hlrbif/
Last updated: 2026-02-19T15:48:40.000Z
In *Wired*, Clive Thompson has a [new piece](https://www.wired.com/story/to-do-apps-failed-productivity-tools/?ref=gabestein.com) about the psychology of todo apps that, if you’re anything like me, will make you feel very seen, as the kids say. Long story short:

> This is the black-metal nature of task management: Every single time you write down a task for yourself, you are deciding how to spend a few crucial moments of the most nonrenewable resource you possess: your life. Every to-do list is, ultimately, about death

To reach this conclusion, Thompson interviews psychologists and todo software makers, in the process making clear something I think we’ve all known all along but have been too ashamed to admit: task management software’s purpose isn’t to help us get things done, but, literally, to help us sleep at night.

Thompson posits that todo apps mainly help us avoid the Zeigarnik effect, the mind’s tendency to fixate on unfinished tasks, by giving us a place outside of our brains to stash all of our unfinished business so that we can sleep at night. Thompson even cites a study that concludes people with todo lists fall asleep faster.

But that doesn’t mean we ever finish that business. As Thompson notes, even the makers of todo apps, who track their users’s task completion, admit that in the best case, fewer than 50% of tasks ever get checked off.

So what’s going on here? Thompson gets at the root cause in an almost-embarrassed parenthetical. As I’ve been [thinking](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/iwgpvnuj/release/6) [about](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/airbnb-future-work/release/2) a lot, it’s not our fault. It’s, well, read for yourself:

> (We could snap the lens open even wider and have a fuller reckoning with capitalism. Focusing on our individual ability to tread water—with apps and lists—can look like a bleak exercise in blaming the victim, when in reality the only solution is not better apps but non-hideous workloads, debt relief, and a saner landscape of civic care. Frankly, if you took “managing grotesquely useless and bloodsucking for-profit health insurance” off people’s to-do lists, it would remove one remarkably stressful item, as my Canadian upbringing compels me to suggest. But I’m writing this particular article from within the belly of the whale, as it were.)

Bingo. My own Cal Newport-inspired “belly of the whale” take continues to be that the knowledge economy’s relentless focus on optimization, productivity, [better returns](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/ffatrfdw/release/5) and so on operates not by realizing any actual workplace efficiencies, but by foisting more responsibility on a smaller number of individual workers. For instance, managing a todo list *and* getting the list done. Factory workers aren’t using todo apps, because their next task literally comes down the line at them. Someone else decides what comes next. They just have to do it.

I’ve long suspected that most knowledge workers effectively operate by foisting responsibility for what comes next onto...something else. Unlike a factory, though, that system is far from coordinated. In fact, I don’t think most people even know it exists.

Per the stats Thompson cites, most people spend a lot of time offloading their todos into task management systems only to complete less than half of them and eventually declare task bankruptcy. That completion rate is bad enough on the individual level, but I suspect it’s much worse when you consider organizations as a whole. Think of how many times you’ve been asked by your boss or a colleague to complete something they weren’t able to. In effect, they’re using you as a human todo app, getting another task out of their brains so they can sleep at night and delay their own task bankruptcy, whether or not they actually expect you to get it done. Which means that much of what you end up doing, whether you realize it or not, isn’t dictated by you, but by a tangle of other priority systems.

In a very real sense, this means most companies operate on a completely unsupervised, distributed todo app. When a task gets assigned to an individual employee, it goes into their individual system, where it has a less than 50% chance of actually getting done. The remaining 50% of tasks are either given up on or passed to another employee, where the same coin flip happens again. Each individual employee’s system’s efficacy, their ability to judge priority, their productivity, and the amount they delegate are all variables that determine what gets done.

Compare that system to how a factory works. It’s completely insane, and a miracle that anything gets done at all. Of course, knowledge work isn’t factory work, and I’m not advocating for strict central planning, which, at least in software development, [doesn’t seem](http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci201/lectures/Lecture11/royce1970.pdf?ref=gabestein.com) to work that well either. But I have to think there’s a better way to do things — or at least, a better way to understand what’s actually happening inside the black box that seems to be running things.
### Don't go to space like this
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/wiyjc75k/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:35.000Z
Look, I’m not space hater. I grew up on a heavy diet of Star Trek and classic sci-fi and pop-sci books. I can’t wait for us to build the Federation and explore the shit out of the universe. But dammit, not like this. We were supposed to solve our problems on Earth first and head out as peaceful explorers — wishful thinking, even in the Star Trek canon, I know — not this shitty mirror universe oligarch dick-wagging competition.

In the meantime, I can’t believe we’ve built a society that allows, and worse, celebrates, these egomaniacs wasting billions of their [ill-gotten dollars](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/20/bezos-space-travel-blue-origin-amazon-criticism?ref=gabestein.com) jetting out of here while a single human being on this planet starves or lives in fear of climate disasters. What Bezos and Branson did this week should be unthinkably immoral. We should be waiting for them to land with pitchforks in hand, not cameras.

But we’re not. And worse still, it’s nearly impossible to imagine how we’d move society to that point. Hence, all I’ve got is this primal scream.
### The struggle is real
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/inh4heoy/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T12:53:55.000Z
A friend sent along Jason Barrett Prado’s [thoughtful](https://venturecommune.substack.com/p/go-where-workers-are-and-organize?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozNjEwOCwicG9zdF9pZCI6Mzc4MzE1MTEsIl8iOiJEcERaaSIsImlhdCI6MTYyNjgxNTM4OCwiZXhwIjoxNjI2ODE4OTg4LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMjA2MTciLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.vN84o%5FMAAEbOz591hhwXa5jLB0ijlmO0Ig-mWHhXNNA) newsletter on how tech workers can meaningfully engage with the political movements of our time. The summary:

> If you are a technologist or otherwise a person possessing skill and talent (which you almost certainly are), and if you have the means to do so while sustaining yourself (which if you worked in tech for long you likely are), and if you have come to understand that the problems facing our planet are primarily political, not technological, then what you need to do is find a group of people who are struggling collectively to shift power from entrenched tyrannies towards the masses, and then you need to use your skill and talent to make that group successful.

There’s a lot of useful thinking in the post, particularly when it comes to resisting design thinking and technological determinism and what Prado calls “folk technologism,” which is, to paraphrase, the leftist tendency to be so distrustful of power that you fail to build anything that can actually solve problems at scale. I whole heartedly agree with the argument about power. In particular, I think too many left-leaning techies treat decentralization as an ethos in and of itself rather than an architectural decision.

I'm not sold, however, on the core idea Prado advances, which is that technologists need to pursue technologies of "revolutionary scale" to do any good. I suspect the assumption that that achieving large-scale societal change requires large-scale technological change may itself be a form of tech determinism. It’s very possible that large-scale technological change is necessary, but it could be just as valuable to do things entirely outside of tech.

Put another way, I'm not quite convinced that building tools with workers that could scale is meaningful praxis for socialist-leaning tech workers. Frankly, I’m not sure there is a meaningful praxis for tech workers that differs from any other kind of workers.

So, I think we should start the discussion with the question of whether we can do good in tech at scale, rather than assuming the answer is yes. Prado’s piece is a great first step. It provides most of the scaffolding to ask this very question, and almost gets there when he questions Facebook’s work on its blockchain-based remittances product[1](#fn-0-bottom) in the context of the global labor market. But he doesn’t quite succeed at focusing the lens back on himself.

In a future post, I’d like to give it a shot myself and see where we land.

### Footnotes

1. Also, sorry to nit-pick even more than I already have, but I really, really, really think the blockchain is [inherently fascist](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/9k94j19r/release/2) and people need to give up on it being anything else and let it die. [↵](#fn-0-inline)
### Know how they're paying your bills
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/ltm4o5y1/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:35.000Z
Writing can be an incredibly stressful experience in the best of environments. If you’re a professional, the activity is often made infinitely more difficult by the financial instability that [plagues the industry](https://theconversation.com/journalism-jobs-are-precarious-financially-insecure-and-require-family-support-157012?ref=gabestein.com), particularly in journalism, because it’s hard to be creative when your [basic needs](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/smarter-living/tips-to-stop-procrastinating.html?ref=gabestein.com) aren’t met. Given the horrific tales of continual abuse, pay-cuts, layoffs, and general misery my friends in the industry tell me, I’m frankly awestruck they manage to produce anything at all.

So when the leading platform for [destroying writing careers](https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/24/22349175/medium-layoffs-union-evan-williams-blogger-twitter-subscription?ref=gabestein.com) [tweets](https://twitter.com/Medium/status/1416080186639065089?ref=gabestein.com) glib shit like this:

…I’m inclined to answer in kind. Maybe the best advice is to know how your employer pays you. If they’re funded mostly by VCs, with an opaque algorithm-driven payment model and a hand-wavy-at-best monetization plan, it’s [probably a scam](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/writing-mediums-partner-program-payment-scam-david-b-grinberg/?ref=gabestein.com). If you’re conscious of that fact, maybe you won’t be caught entirely off-guard when the next pivot comes, and thus better able to compartmentalize your existential dread and put words on the page. Or at least that’s how I assume pro writers do it, because honestly, I don’t know any other way I could.
### Nopecoin
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/9k94j19r/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:35.000Z
The co-creator of Dogecoin, the original meme coin, published a heck of a [Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1415353984617914370?ref=gabestein.com) today, spelling out his view of cryptocurrency in no uncertain terms:

He goes on contextualize cryptocurrency within the global economy’s worsening [plague of inequality](https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-global-economy-inequality-worse-bde02bc8-a35f-4dd7-ad15-d386cb149c9d.html?ref=gabestein.com), writing that it “is almost purpose built to make the funnel of profiteering more efficient for those at the top and less safeguarded for the vulnerable.”

I can’t help reading Palmer’s critique against Packy McCormick’s “great online game” and Cory Doctorow’s observations about the trauma of living under surveillance capitalism, which I [discussed](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/ivrsydjp/) a few weeks ago. As I argued in that piece, comparing McCormick’s game framing to studies of QAnon:

> What if the same forces collapsing the distinction between work and play, currency and reward, and market manipulation and Twitter joke are also collapsing the distinction between reality and conspiracy, for the same reasons McCormick thinks the Game is succeeding: because participating in QAnon is more fun, or at least more hopeful, than facing the reality of what Cory Doctorow [calls](https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?ref=gabestein.com) “the trauma of living through *real* conspiracies all around us.”

In Palmer’s telling, crypto is one of those real conspiracies that Doctorow believes makes people more susceptible to fake ones. And yet folks like McCormick are successfully selling it as the antidote to those same conspiracies. As Palmer notes, it’s almost impossible to have a good-faith conversation about these issues, precisely because so many people have already bought into the conspiracy, financially and emotionally.

So here’s a terrifying question: if crypto is simultaneously a game-like escape from trauma and the real-life conspiracy that causes it in the first place, how do we help people escape from a self-perpetuating trauma machine without doing enormous social, economic, and psychological damage?
### 32
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/n78srcnf/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T12:53:37.000Z
A few weeks ago, thinking about how to spend as much time as possible engaged in deep work, I [wrote](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/iwgpvnuj/release/6):

> We still have a long way to go before we can afford to compress our days to only take time for deep work.

Just days later, [tons](https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/06/four-day-workweek/619222/?ref=gabestein.com) of [research](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57724779?ref=gabestein.com) discussing pandemic-induced experiments with 4-day workweeks started trickling out. The basic premise of these experiments is that for knowledge work, productivity is highly variable and depends largely on mental state, not number of hours worked. A number of companies’ experiments have found that moving to a four-day workweek (or from \~40 hours/week to \~32) paradoxically increases productivity during time spent working by giving workers extra time to take care of needs outside of work that otherwise intrude on the workday and lead to [productivity-hindering stress](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/smarter-living/why-you-procrastinate-it-has-nothing-to-do-with-self-control.html?ref=gabestein.com). This also seems to have the effect of increasing overall happiness and satisfaction because workers have more time to spend on their friends, families, and lives outside of work, reducing external stress while at work.

Looking at others’ experiments, particularly [Buffer’s](https://buffer.com/resources/4-day-workweek-2021/?ref=gabestein.com), and feeling some fatigue ourselves, we decided to experiment with making Fridays optional as a special benefit, starting this week and continuing at least through October 1\. For us, that means that neither productivity expectations nor compensation will change. But we’re no longer meeting at all on Fridays, and no one is expected to respond to Slack or email. We expect that some folks may use a few hours on Fridays to catch up a bit on work odds and ends, and that’s okay. Over time, we hope the change results in a decrease in average weekly hours worked for full-time employees from \~40 to \~32.

I’m lucky to work at a small, nimble non-profit[1](#fn-0-bottom) that sits at the intersection of academia, technology, and publishing and has both the ability and the will to try experiments like these. But we didn’t rush into it headlong. In a way, we’ve been preparing for it for years by continually working with our employees to [co-create and refine](https://notes.knowledgefutures.org/pub/cqih29xa?ref=gabestein.com) our culture, hiring, benefits, and work expectations as we’ve moved from a loose group inside MIT to a fiscally sponsored non-profit to our own entity.

Before last year’s winter break, we spent 2 days meeting as a team to discuss improving our working environment, which included, among other topics, a long and fruitful discussion about the definition of work itself in a knowledge environment (i.e., is a midday bike-ride work if you’re using it to integrate the morning’s meetings?[2](#fn-1-bottom)). Following those discussions, we’ve worked hard to compress “shallow work”[3](#fn-2-bottom) into as little time as possible to provide more time for deep work, principally by implementing the brilliant [Remeet](https://remeet.com/?ref=gabestein.com) system.

To make sure the experiment is successful and keep track of any unintended consequences, we’ll be tracking our progress both qualitatively and quantitatively. We’ll be holding regular feedback sessions for the team to weigh in on how it’s going, and we’ve already rolled out an employee satisfaction survey[4](#fn-3-bottom), which we’ll send around again in the middle, and at the end of, the experiment.

My guess is that, like other companies who have tried the experiment, we’ll see concrete gains in worker satisfaction and happiness without any decreases in productivity. However it turns out, I’m very happy that we’re in a position to try it with employee buy-in and ways to meaningfully measure the results.

### Footnotes

1. [https://knowledgefutures.org](https://knowledgefutures.org/?ref=gabestein.com) [↵](#fn-0-inline)
2. Resounding answer: yes. [↵](#fn-1-inline)
3. As opposed to Cal Newport-esque “[deep work](https://www.calnewport.com/books/deep-work/?ref=gabestein.com).” [↵](#fn-2-inline)
4. Here's our survey. Feel free to re-use!

> (On a 5-point scale, except where indicated with \*)  
> How much do you enjoy KF's culture?  
> How connected do you feel to your coworkers?  
> How open to change are we as an organization?  
> How much do your managers value your feedback?  
> How much do you feel valued for your contributions?  
> How meaningful do you find your work?  
> How transparent do you feel leadership is?  
> How well defined do you feel your job responsibilities are?  
> How well do you feel your job utilizes your skills and abilities?  
> How well does KF provide the structure, tools and technologies you need to do your job well?  
> How productive do you feel in your day-to-day work?  
> How stressful would you say your job is, generally?  
> How many hours would you estimate you work per week, on average?\*  
> How happy are you at work?  
> Do you have any other feedback on the experience of working at KF you'd like to share?\* [↵](#fn-3-inline)
### How to talk to conspiracy theorists about Atlantis
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/yj5ko7ji/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:34.000Z
In a fascinating and somewhat controversial [newish preprint](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.07993.pdf?ref=gabestein.com), a group of MIT and Wellesley researchers dive deep into COVID anti-mask belief, relaying insights both from a quantitative study of thousands of images and from qualitative “infiltration” of anti-mask Facebook groups. Their core finding is one that everyone working in news, misinformation, and related fields ought to internalize:

> Far from ignoring scientific evidence to argue for individual freedom, antimaskers often engage deeply with public datasets and make what we call “counter-visualizations”—visualizations using orthodox methods to make unorthodox arguments—to challenge mainstream narratives that the pandemic is urgent and ongoing. By asking community members to “follow the data,” these groups mobilize data visualizations to support significant local changes.

It’s tempting to think of all conspiracy theorists as uneducated, unintelligent, insane, or bad-faith actors. But we’re increasingly finding that the inverse is often true, particularly when it comes to areas like [climate change](https://www.pnas.org/content/114/36/9587?ref=gabestein.com) where science and politics intersect.

I think we need to start most of our analyses with a basic amount of empathy. Knowing is hard. The world is an incredibly complex place, made nearly indecipherable by our species’ limited senses, which may not [reflect reality](https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality-20160421/?ref=gabestein.com) in any meaningful way. It’s a wonder we manage to get anything done at all.

Despite, or perhaps because of, these shortcomings, humans are [incredibly good at recognizing patterns](https://bigthink.com/endless-innovation/humans-are-the-worlds-best-pattern-recognition-machines-but-for-how-long?ref=gabestein.com). In fact, we’re much too good. We routinely see patterns where none exist, spawning false beliefs ranging from [potentially self-preserving](https://philosophynow.org/issues/124/Why%5FFalse%5FBeliefs%5FAre%5FNot%5FAlways%5FBad?ref=gabestein.com) to [responsible](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting?ref=gabestein.com) for many millions of deaths over thousands of years.

The scientific method provides useful guardrails against this tendency to find false patterns, which is why using it has yielded so much progress. But it’s far from perfect and notoriously hard to follow, particularly if you come into research with any preformed opinions, like that you shouldn’t need to wear a mask.

The same week the anti-mask preprint was making the rounds, Dartmouth archaeologist Flint Dibble wrote a long and fascinating [Twitter thread](https://mobile.twitter.com/FlintDibble/status/1393689542914359297?ref=gabestein.com) dissecting the Discovery Channel’s upcoming “Hunting Atlantis” show, based on research by presenter Stel Pavlou.

To keep this post brief, I’m skipping some important meta-level discussion. That Pavlou, a science fiction writer, and his cohost Jess Phoenix, a vulcanologist, are being given a show by a major cable network to discuss a topic way outside of their expertise is ridiculous on its face. The show should never have been made. But it was, and it gave Dibble the opportunity to write his commentary.

The thread is worth a read on its own. It’s (mostly) a masterclass in constructively responding to conspiracy theories while demonstrating how expertise works in the real world and why it’s important.

Rather than dismissing Pavlou’s claims out of hand, Dibble acknowledges that they did a lot of clever research. And he takes the paper’s central claim — that a close reading of Plato reveals that Atlantis existed much more recently than we’ve always assumed, which is why we haven’t yet discovered evidence for it — seriously. From that point, Dibble uses his expertise to show why the evidence doesn’t match the paper’s claims, mostly because Pavlou relies on an incomplete understanding of the archaeological record and a poor reading of Plato to make his case.

In other words, Dibble doesn’t just debunk Pavlou by providing an alternative set of facts, he shows readers the errors Pavlou made via a thoughtful, evidence-based narrative that ought to feel aesthetically familiar to a conspiracist. It’s a textbook example of the [latest research](https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/DebunkingHandbook2020.pdf?ref=gabestein.com) in effective debunking, which can not only cut through misinformation but, by exposing readers to common fallacies and misinformation patterns, [provide inoculation](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9781119399926.ch1?ref=gabestein.com) against future misinformation.

I don’t believe Dibble’s approach offers a silver bullet for countering all conspiracy theories. There are [larger, more systematic issues](https://www.pnas.org/content/118/27/e2025764118?ref=gabestein.com) with our information environment we need to grapple with. But within this environment, Dibble’s approach offers a refreshing, effective, and even fun (if exhausting) method for understanding and countering conspiracies and the people who spread them. Rather than being dismissive, we should view the similarities between the processes real researchers use and the ones conspiracy theorists grab onto as a bridge to teach them about fallacies and show them the value of expertise. I hope more educators, policymakers, and journalists follow the evidence themselves, and learn from examples like Dibble’s.
### It's all abstract
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/6f4itpqs/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:35.000Z
Here’s a [fascinating look](https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/philosophicaltransactions/where-did-the-practice-of-abstracts-come-from/?ref=gabestein.com) at the history of the research paper abstract from Aileen Fyfe of the University of St. Andrews. I love media stories like these, where necessity generates a new format with unexpected value, which becomes a useful standard, and then totally falls apart as new trends emerge.

In the case of abstracts, it seems the first versions were written by secretaries into Royal Society minute-books as a short-hand for describing the papers that were read aloud during meetings. Because they were such an easy way to understand a paper, editors began using them to make publishing decisions for the Society’s semi-annual *Transactions* journal. Then someone realized they could be published much faster and cheaper than full articles, and in the 1830s, started publishing just the abstracts in the Society’s monthly *Proceedings*. A century later during the post-war research boom, the abstract became a vital tool for researchers to keep up with the increasing volume, and specialization, of research.

At a certain point, though, it seems the abstract became a victim of its own success. According to Fyfe:

> Third-party summaries might be better-written and more widely-comprehensible, but they did take time and money to produce, usually appearing retrospectively. This was why the Royal Society’s 1948 conference supported the wider use of author-generated abstracts, despite their disadvantages.

> ‘The present general unsuitability of authors’ summaries for use as abstracts is recognised; nevertheless, if these could be used it would increase the speed of publication and reduce the cost of journals publishing abstracts.’ (Circular letter from Royal Society to UK learned societies, 12 April 1949)

Three-quarters of a century later, not much has changed. Abstracts are mostly author-written today, and, as researchers knew full well by the mid-20th century, highly variable in quality. Some are written as they were originally intended, as executive summaries describing an underlying article’s background, methods, and conclusion. But many take the form of a sort of academic click-bait, advertising the marvels of the underlying paper rather than describing it.

Despite these issues, because abstracts have now been around for going on two centuries, they’ve embedded themselves into the basic structure of research. Today, websites can be penalized by academic aggregators and search engines for not providing them, and many academic sites provide an incentive for authors to write abstracts in more promotional styles by using them for other metadata like the meta description tag, which shows up in search results, and open graph tags, which show up on social media sites. We’ve resisted this trend on PubPub both by not enforcing that authors write an abstract and by providing separate fields specifically for promotional search and social text. That way, publishers, authors, and readers can theoretically have the best of both worlds. But we’re in a very small minority when it comes to academic publishing tools, and our decision causes problems when authors, and particularly aggregators, assume that we use the abstract for metadata fields that are intended for other purposes.

None of this is to say that high-quality summaries aren’t useful in research. They plainly are: good abstracts that provide details about, for example, sample sizes and methodologies are a joy to read. But, like any long-lived structure, it’s worth taking a step back to see how well they match today’s media contexts. As the trend of asking authors to provide “[lay summaries](https://peerj.com/blog/post/115284883065/what-is-a-twitter-abstract/?ref=gabestein.com),” and even “[Twitter abstracts](https://peerj.com/blog/post/115284883065/what-is-a-twitter-abstract/?ref=gabestein.com)” indicates, we may need to reevaluate the purpose and audience of the abstract, as well as how they interact with today’s very different distribution and discovery mechanisms.
### Vacation
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/har2k2wg/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:35.000Z
I’ve [written before](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/airbnb-future-work/release/2?readingCollection=297ee358) about the need to take vacations, a view backed by [scores of data](https://hbr.org/2016/07/the-data-driven-case-for-vacation?ref=gabestein.com). It’s been fun to build a company that [can act](https://notes.knowledgefutures.org/pub/cqih29xa/release/9?ref=gabestein.com#paid-vacation) based on that research. To practice what I preach, I’m taking one for the next week into the long weekend, and probably won’t be doing much blogging here.

As a self send-off, here’s another break-related thought from *the Atlantic’s* recent [summary](https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/06/four-day-workweek/619222/?ref=gabestein.com) of results from pandemic-driven experiments with the 4-day workweek. At minimum, a pile of new research finds that moving knowledge workers to a 4-day workweek while keeping the same amount of pay doesn’t seem to reduce productivity. In many cases, it might even increase it.

I’m particularly intrigued by how folks suspect workers realize these productivity gains while working less:

> Barnes found that even though weekly working hours were cut by 20 percent, employees’ time spent on nonwork websites fell by 35 percent. It also helped that employees had more time outside of work to manage the rest of their lives, so nonwork responsibilities were less likely to intrude on the workday. “Because people have no time for home duties—trying to track down that plumber or sorting things out with the kids—all of that was eating into the day,” he told me. “So if I gave people more time outside of work to do those tasks, that would stop those things interfering in the business hours.”

This theory tracks nicely with recent research into [procrastination](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/smarter-living/why-you-procrastinate-it-has-nothing-to-do-with-self-control.html?ref=gabestein.com), which suggests that workers put off tasks not out of laziness or lack of self-control, but due to anxiety caused by baseline needs not being met. The four-day workweek could, paradoxically, make knowledge workers much more efficient when they are at work by giving them an extra 8 hours every week to manage other parts of life — chores, childcare, and so on — that would otherwise creep into their workdays and add, in so doing, add an extra layer of productivity-killing anxiety.

I’m already of the view that we should try to build The Federation (as in *Star Trek*), where no one has to work at all — aka [Fully Automated Luxury Communism](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/18/fully-automated-luxury-communism-robots-employment?ref=gabestein.com). The COVID-era movement towards four workdays isn’t exactly the beginnings of a utopia, and the research so far excludes lots of classes of workers. But it is driven, in part, by an [incredibly tight](https://www.wsj.com/articles/tight-labor-market-returns-the-upper-hand-to-american-workers-11624210501?ref=gabestein.com) labor market buoyed by unprecedented pandemic-driven government assistance. If the shortened workweek becomes widespread, and permanent, we may look back on it as one of the only positive developments to come from the last year and a half.
### Oops
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/4g0y3ch2/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:35.000Z
21+ years ago:

Two days ago:

I’ll be reading the paper more deeply later, as it touches on many of the themes I like writing about. The summary brings up an important point, though, about what’s been guiding the reorganization of humanity’s information ecosystem: ads.

Four years ago, I [wrote a corrective](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/i4uj0ehr/release/2) to Facebook’s favorite defense of their actions, that anything they’re doing is “just following the data” about what users want:

> When scientists “follow the data,” they put a ton of effort into controlling for the impact their presence has on the data they collect. Facebook doesn’t. It is essentially a giant, global, uncontrolled experiment run by people who seem uninterested in even understanding what they’re really doing.

What Facebook (and everyone else) are actually doing, of course, is designing their product’s information flows to make as much money on advertising as possible, with a little bit of Mark Zuckerberg’s personal philosophy thrown in. As Bergstrom points out at length, the result of this uncontrolled experiment has been disastrous, and I heartily agree that we need new, interdisciplinary ways to study, understand, and regulate (both individually and legalistically) digital information flows to prioritize effective collective decision-making, not ad-driven profit.

As a bit of an amateur media critic, [I’ve enjoyed comparing](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/1z314izc/release/3) the reorganization of society resulting from the information revolution to the opportunistic and coercive rise of early states following the agricultural revolution. I’m intrigued that Bergstrom also sees parallels to human evolution and societal structure, and I look forward to digging into Bergstrom’s more expert analysis and recommendations.
### All eyes on the primary
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/le2hqs2z/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T12:51:59.000Z
Although it’s gotten better in recent decades, New York City politics is still quite [machine-driven](https://rossbarkan.substack.com/p/eric-adams-the-machine-mayor). The Brooklyn Democratic Party, the machine from which mayoral frontrunner and current Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams hails, is a [particularly corrupt](https://bushwickdaily.com/news/how-did-the-brooklyn-democratic-party-get-here/?ref=gabestein.com) outgrowth of it.

The machine [does not like](https://gothamist.com/news/lawsuit-seeks-block-start-ranked-choice-voting-next-year?ref=gabestein.com) ranked-choice voting, primarily because it decreases party leaders’ control over election outcomes[1](#fn-0-bottom). Ahead of an election that [may well be decided](https://www.dropbox.com/s/qvizm3xxx1jjvyv/dfp%5Ftech%5Fteam%5Fmemo%5Fnyc%5Frcv%5F2021%5F06%5F21.pdf?ref=gabestein.com) by ranked choice, the machine candidate and his surrogates are already trying to [sow doubt](https://gothamist.com/news/adams-campaign-calls-garcia-yang-alliance-voter-suppression-on-final-day-of-early-voting?ref=gabestein.com) about the potential result, absurdly comparing a completely normal last-minute [alliance](https://gothamist.com/news/three-days-go-until-primary-garcia-and-yang-strike-allegiance?ref=gabestein.com) between Kathryn Garcia and Andrew Yang to “voter suppression.” Never mind the fact that this low-turnout, off-year election for the mayor of the nation’s largest city is being held in [one of the worst](https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/apr/08/ask-politifact-are-new-yorks-voter-laws-more-restr/?ref=gabestein.com) states when it comes to voter access, thanks to longstanding laws supported by the very machine Adams represents.

In echoes of a certain recent election, Adams even had to be asked to clarify that he would [accept the result](https://twitter.com/Kiki%5FNYC%5FYG/status/1406428002028822531?ref=gabestein.com), and that he did not think the election was [likely to be stolen](https://twitter.com/gloriapazmino/status/1407078167886635016?s=21&ref=gabestein.com) or [rigged](https://twitter.com/rossbarkan/status/1406257718558695427?ref=gabestein.com). Make of that what you will.

As a voter, ranked-choice was a [fascinating](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/xnhk36ou/release/4) experience. In theory, it allows ideology and pragmatism to coexist on the same ballot. And for me, in this election, it very much did, as I was able to effectively choose both a pragmatist, in Garcia, and a true progressive, in Wiley. The extreme pragmatist in me loved this added strategic layer of voting, as well as the strategy of campaign alliances like the Garcia/Yang pairing. The hardcore progressive in me felt guilty for ranking Garcia first, and for loving her last-minute strategic alliance with Yang, whom I intensely dislike.

Hopefully, future elections offer us better choices, and less drama, as politicians and voters alike get used to strategic decision-making and odd alliances of convenience. In the meantime, I’m not looking forward to what looks like an early Adams lead, followed by [weeks of waiting](https://www.thecity.nyc/2021/6/21/22544497/when-will-nyc-mayoral-primary-election-winner-be-announced?ref=gabestein.com) to see if Wiley or Garcia can make their way back into the fold.

Though I don’t particularly fear Adams’ wannabe Trumpism, I am disappointed that we have to even consider it. One of the lovely features of machine politics is that appointed positions like election boards tend to become [bastions of corruption and nepotism](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/nyregion/nyc-voting-election-board.html?ref=gabestein.com). In this case, the synergy between the NYC Election Board’s incompetence in quickly administering the election and the machine candidate’s desire to delegitimize ranked-choice may work to set off another round of lowercase-d democratic stress that none of us need right now. At least it’s almost over.

### Footnotes

1. Some lawmakers make what I find to be good-faith complaints about RCV potentially limiting the impact of minority and poorer voters. But judges have [largely rejected](https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/us-elections-government/ny-nyc-ranked-choice-voting-lawsuit-rejected-20210506-jdg7mo6hpvfwldlptc2kx7xmd4-story.html?ref=gabestein.com) the argument, particularly because lawmakers waited until the last minute to register their complaints against the new system, and the city truly appears to have [gone all-out](https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/315-21/new-york-city-launch-15-million-ranked-choice-voting-education-campaign?ref=gabestein.com) in promoting it. [↵](#fn-0-inline)
### My NYC Mayoral Rankings, Part II: Candidates & Rankings
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/xnhk36ou/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:35.000Z
Last week, I [wrote](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/anjg2d79/) about my debate judge approach to ranking candidates. Today, I’ll discuss how I used that approach to rank the four major candidates.

As a refresher, I wrote the following “resolution” based on my preferences:

> Resolved: New York city should be more affordable, equitable, and produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

I’m planning to test these candidates against my resolution first by looking to their websites to construct a sort of “case.” In particular, I’ll be looking for their overall vision, their top priorities, and their plan for achieving their priorities. If you wanted to be very technical, you could compare these elements to a debate case’s plan, advantages, and solvency, respectively.

If needed, I’ll then look to The City’s [Meet Your Mayor tool](https://www.thecity.nyc/22233474/the-race-for-nyc-mayor-whos-running-to-run-this-town-in-2021?ref=gabestein.com) to weigh candidates’ specific policies against each other, before putting together a final analysis.

If you want, you can skip straight to [my rankings](#final-rankings). Or read on for details.

## Eric Adams

### Overview

Honestly, it’s hard to know exactly what Adams’ vision, priorities, or plan is. The closest thing to a coherent vision (his “Vision” tab doesn’t actually link to a single vision page) I could find on his [website](https://ericadams2021.com/?ref=gabestein.com) was a box at the bottom of his about page:

> All New Yorkers need to know, including Latinos in Spanish, that Eric Adams is a progressive Democrat who believes that New York’s comeback starts with making sure every kid has a fair shot at a safe and secure future. Eric’s plan – investing in early childhood education, improving our public schools — and safe, affordable housing. And it also means getting illegal guns off of our streets and tackling violent crime — head on.

He does not list top priorities on his homepage. The closest I found is his “[100+ Steps Forward for NYC” document](https://ericadams2021.com/eric-adams-100-steps-forward?ref=gabestein.com), which lists five top sections: Smarter City, Safer City, Fairer City, Educated City, and City of the Future. Of these, Fairer and Future speak to my priorities of equity and greenhouse gas emissions in their descriptions.

There are so many ideas listed that it’s hard to know which ones are actually priorities, and there certainly doesn’t seem to be a cohesive, or particularly coherent, argument for any of them. Some steps are labeled “big steps,” but ironically, these tend to be either the most vague (“ensure diverse, equitable growth”) or fairly small in potential impact (“return to urban agriculture”).

The most coherent single argument for Adams I could find is:

> Eric is deeply passionate about creating positive change in the lives of all New Yorkers. For over 30 years he has been a dedicated servant of the People. Now is our time to stand with Eric for an equitable New York City.

Overall, Adams doesn’t seem to have an overall vision, clear priorities, or an argument for how he will accomplish his priorities.

## Kathryn Garcia

### Overview

Garcia’s [website](https://www.kgfornyc.com/?ref=gabestein.com) contains a fairly straightforward vision statement on her about page:

> I envision not the New York of our past, but the New York of tomorrow. A city where every child has the opportunity to pursue their dream. Where everyone can make a good living. A city where families are safe and healthy and people thrive. The most climate forward city on Earth. A city with world-class infrastructure, and subways that run on time. A city government known more for its efficiency than its mistakes. As we plan for the revival of this great city we must plan for a city that will be more equitable, more just, and climate-resilient. I can get it done.

Her homepage lists her top priorities: Recovery, Climate Change, Housing that Heals, Transportation, Public Safety + Police Reform, and Education. In her descriptions, all of them speak to at least one of my priorities. Her homepage also contains a clear argument for how Garcia plans to accomplish her goals:

> Kathryn Garcia is a lifelong New Yorker and a public servant. She has 14 years of government experience delivering services that New Yorkers rely on every day. Kathryn has been the go-to crisis manager for our toughest moments as a City. During COVID-19, she created an emergency food program that has delivered 200 million meals to New Yorkers in need. She served as incident commander during Hurricane Sandy. She stepped in to protect children from lead poisoning in our public housing. Kathryn knows how to build a healthier, safer, more liveable New York. She’s done it before and she’s ready to do it again.

Overall, Garcia’s vision is a city with strengthened and expanded infrastructure. Her priorities are making the city safer, healthier, and more livable. Her plan is to leverage her demonstrated knowledge of city bureaucracy and infrastructure to achieve her goals.

## Maya Wiley

Wiley’s most coherent single vision statement is found on her [website’s](https://www.mayawileyformayor.com/?ref=gabestein.com) Meet Maya page:

> Maya Wiley is committed to a New York City where every New Yorker can afford to live with dignity, that’s why she is running for Mayor. She will fight for New Yorkers of all races, all religions, all classes, all types; so that no matter who we are or how we see ourselves, we can find a home here. Maya is the progressive choice for New York — her vision is a New York that rises from the ashes of twin pandemics — coronavirus and systemic racism that denies opportunity to people of color. New York must rise together; rising above hate, rising from joblessness to dignity, rising from homelessness to hope, rising from an affordability crisis to communities that sustain all of us.   
>  
> This is within our reach, but it requires courageous leadership that fearlessly confronts the realities New Yorkers face. Leadership that marshals all of the government’s resources to make history, not deals; and that transcends the business-as-usual governmental tinkering to make truly transformational progress. New Yorkers cannot afford the politics of least resistance and deserve leadership that will beat a path to shared prosperity — to become one city, rising together, out of the ashes, and into a future we build and live together.

Her website homepage makes a clear argument for Wiley as a leader who will stand up to powerful forces in the city to make it a more equitable place to live:

> I am a civil rights lawyer and a mom, and I won’t stand by while we risk losing a generation of our kids to the trauma of injustice and violence when we should be investing in their futures.  
>  
> With courageous leadership, we have a chance to not just come back from this crisis but actually fix what’s broken, and rebuild as a stronger, more equitable, and a better New York City  
>  
> I am running for mayor to make sure that we don’t just hand the keys over to Wall Street or Big Tech, but build a recovery that lifts up all of our communities.

Her top priorities are a little less clear. The homepage rotates between multiple plans, and her Plans page itself lists no fewer than 14\. However, most of her plans focus on giving communities a voice in reforming the criminal justice system and making education and housing more equitable, speaking to the first two points of my resolution. She has a robust climate plan, but it is less central to her platform than Garcia’s is.

Overall, Wiley’s vision is a city with that focuses on solving for inequity at every level. Her priorities are transforming the police and criminal justice system and making education and housing more equitable. Her plan to achieve her priorities is to give less represented communities more input in governance and use her experience both in government and civil rights to take on the powerful and force the system to serve the least powerful as well as it does the most powerful.

## Andrew Yang

Like Adams, Yang doesn’t really articulate a vision other than “a City that works for all New Yorkers,” taken from his "Why” page.

His homepage helpfully lists his top priorities, which cover the affordability part of my resolution, but not equity or emissions:

> We need to launch the largest basic income program in history, invest in a human-centered economy, return to fact-based governance, and create an accessible healthcare system. We will move New York forward —together.

Yang also doesn’t present much of a clear argument for himself. The closest I could find on his [website](https://www.yangforny.com/?ref=gabestein.com), from his “Why” page, argues that as a businessman, Yang can bring innovative solutions to solving the city’s problems:

> I want to serve my community in this time of need and bring bold, innovative solutions to the table. I want to lead us forward as we rise above our current politics. I want to see every last New Yorker thrive in our City.

Overall, Yang doesn’t have a particularly clear vision for the city of New York. His priorities are enacting a universal basic income, investing in economic recovery, and making healthcare better. He does not have a clear plan for how he will achieve his priorities.

## Initial Evaluation

Just by reading what the candidates wrote about themselves against my resolution, I’ve been able to draw some meaningful conclusions. It’s unclear whether Adams or Yang’s top priorities meaningfully address my resolution. But even if they did, neither of them really make an argument for how they will accomplish those priorities. So right away, I’m inclined to rank them lower than Wiley and Garcia, or not at all. Their relatively weak arguments for themselves also speak to some more personal criticisms levied at them by opponents. In Yang’s case, his plans’ vagueness echoes [criticism](https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/nyc-elections-2021/ny-nyc-kathryn-garcia-andrew-yang-mayor-20210602-gg4lu3sdjvflrpzs57r3csnty4-story.html?ref=gabestein.com) that he is not serious or experienced enough to run the city. In Adams’ case, his unfocused grab-bag of priorities reinforces [criticism](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/andrew-yang-accuses-eric-adams-corruption-heated-nyc/story?id=78046766&ref=gabestein.com) that he is a potentially corrupt, [machine politician](https://rossbarkan.substack.com/p/eric-adams-the-machine-mayor) trying to cater simultaneously to everyone and no one. So, although my debate judge method of evaluation doesn’t explicitly focus on more subjective qualities like personality or leadership style, which, as my father (and only reader?) [points out](https://twitter.com/edsteinink/status/1405873178639888399?ref=gabestein.com) is an important part of evaluating any political candidate, I think it can help shed light on those harder-to-gauge strengths and weaknesses by asking candidates to argue how they will accomplish their goals, not just what their goals are.

In contrast to Adams and Yang, Garcia and Wiley both make strong arguments about why they can accomplish their goals, in both cases mirroring some of the criticisms they’ve faced. Garcia’s more understated equity plans and focus on infrastructure and working within the current system lend some credence to the [argument](https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/opinion/commentary/barkan-kathryn-garcia-moderate-yang-and-adams.html?ref=gabestein.com) that she’s not a particularly progressive candidate. Wiley’s focus on standing up to the system echo the [criticism](https://citylimits.org/2021/06/07/as-maya-wiley-pledges-to-transform-policing-a-look-back-at-her-tenure-at-nypd-oversight-board/?ref=gabestein.com) that she may not be capable of accomplishing her ambitious plans.

In my own initial evaluation, Garcia comes out slightly ahead, mostly because climate change, one of the parts of my resolution, is a top priority for her in addition to equity and affordability. However, Wiley is far stronger on equity than Garcia, and on the surface, both of them seem quite committed to affordability.

So, I think it’s worth a deeper dive to see where they stand on the specific parts of my resolution. For this analysis, I turned to The City’s Meet Your Mayor quiz.

## Affordability

In this category, I’m looking at The City’s COVID Recovery, Transportation, Housing, Labor, Taxes and Build NY Better sections. In general, I tend to be persuaded by the idea that New York’s biggest affordability problem is its lack of housing and crumbling transportation infrastructure. Garcia matches my views on 19 out of 24 questions, and is a particularly good fit when it comes to housing, transportation, and labor. I particularly like her answers on zoning, where she basically supports doing whatever she can to get around New York’s [notoriously](https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-revive-nyc-reinvent-the-zoning-code-20200930-2eseyril7ndz7kf7ijqdoiruuu-story.html?ref=gabestein.com) NIMBY-friendly land use process. Wiley, on the other hand, matches my views on just 15 out of 24 questions, and is a particularly bad fit when it comes to housing. Her answers on zoning are particularly concerning to me, because they include lots of references to “community input,” which often means allowing the rich and powerful to block needed development in their well-to-do neighborhoods.

## Equity

In this category, I’m looking at The City’s NYPD, Education, Criminal Justice, Homelessness and Quality of Life sections. In general, I tend to be persuaded by abolitionist arguments that the criminal justice system in general is designed to perpetuate systemic inequality rather than repair it. Here, Garcia matches my views on just 6 of 20 questions, and is a particularly bad fit on Education and Criminal Justice. I’m particularly concerned about her answers on drug decriminalization, which speak to a lack of knowledge about the science of addiction, economics of drug use, and the systemic racism of the War on Drugs. Wiley, on the other hand, matches my view on 13 out of 20 questions, and is a particularly good fit on Education and Quality of Life. It’s clear from her answers that Wiley has thought much more deeply than Garcia about education in particular, and how improving it can fight injustice. Interestingly, I’m significantly to the left of both of them when it comes to reforming the NYPD, though Wiley is more aligned with my views.

# Climate

The City has a specific climate section, and both Garcia and Wiley match me on 3 out of the 4 questions. Predictably, Garcia and I differ on the proposed 2030 gas hookup ban, where affordability and climate clash. I come down on the side that we should ban new gas hookups, even if it makes development somewhat more costly. In her statement on the issue, Garcia says she supports an outright ban once it’s affordable to do so. On the other hand, Wiley and I differ on the question of flood zones. Wiley prefers limiting development and allowing landowners to sell back to the city, even though it risks worsening the housing crisis by eliminating stock. Garcia and I think we should build protections, both natural and manmade, to decrease the risk of flooding without reducing our already short supply of housing.

## Final Evaluation

In the end, both Wiley and Garcia present very strong cases for themselves when tested against my resolution. It’s a very tough decision. Garcia is far stronger when it comes to affordability. She’s focused on removing the roadblocks that prevent the city from building enough housing and better transit infrastructure, which I think are the biggest affordability problems facing the city. Wiley, meanwhile, is much better on equity, on pretty much every issue, and particularly on the NYPD and criminal justice. Garcia is slightly stronger on climate given its centrality to her plans, but the two are fairly close, and closer than I suspected at first glance.

Thus, my decision ultimately comes down to affordability vs. equity, and who I think has a better chance of achieving their goals as stated. It’s pretty much impossible to prioritize the two goals, which are deeply interconnected. So, I have to look to the two candidates’ frameworks for getting things done and consider what the worlds in which they win might look like.

Wiley prioritizes community input and standing up to the powers that be in nearly all of her plans. In some areas, like education, this approach seems like a very good idea. In others, like housing, such approaches can be seized upon by affluent liberals to reinforce the status quo. And for some, like police reform, I’m skeptical that her approach will have any impact at all. In a world where Wiley wins, I think education and the criminal justice system get a lot more fair, and the NYPD is threatened with meaningful reform, but not much changes. Overall affordability probably also doesn’t change much. There are some decent pushes to build moderately better transit infrastructure, and we get more affordable housing units, but the same people who hold the power to decide whether, how, and where development happens today continue to do so under Wiley.

For Garcia, leveraging the city’s ability to build and shape infrastructure is her main strategy. In some areas, especially criminal justice and the NYPD, working within the system may be self-limiting compared to Wiley’s desire to use the bully pulpit, and as a result less likely to bring about radical change. But in others, principally housing, wielding the city’s existing levers of power could actually be much more transformative. In a world where Garcia wins, I think the way we build housing in the city changes dramatically thanks to her zoning and land use policies, opening up richer neighborhoods for more development of housing of all types, in turn making the entire city more affordable for all. Meanwhile, potentially huge numbers of streets are reclaimed from cars for use for sanitation, biking, recreation, and transit. We see some modest criminal justice reforms, but the NYPD remains a pox on the city, and the education system continues to serve the rich and powerful better than anyone else.

Again, it’s really tough on the merits and the candidates’ approach. Overall, though, I still lean ever so slightly towards Garcia. Although I desperately want Wiley to completely reshape the NYPD, I find that outcome unlikely. And in a world where that doesn’t happen, I think her changes to criminal justice and education, though positive, will be less transformational — both for affordability and equity — than what Garcia could accomplish on housing, street use, and transit. In Garcia’s New York, I can envision a city where housing truly does start to become affordable for all, transit serves everyone, and our streets are designed for people, rather than cars. If that were to happen, I think it would be truly transformative for pretty much every aspect of our city, in ways we’ll find hard to predict. One outcome I can imagine is that future candidates who take Wiley’s stand up to the system approach may be more likely to succeed, because a broader, more diverse, and more stable base of voters will have been able to set down roots in the city and have more of a vested say in its future.

Fortunately, ranked-choice voting affords me the ability to essentially vote for both candidates. If the race looked like it were coming down to Wiley and Garcia, I’m not sure what I’d do. As it is, however, it looks like Adams is likely to face one of these women (or maybe Yang) in the final round. Thus, my vote against Adams effectively goes to whomever out of those three candidates survives, and no matter who does, I’m quite happy to be able to vote not just for my candidates, but against him.

## Final Rankings

In addition to ranking Garcia and Wiley, I’ve decided to rank a few candidates who don’t have much of a chance, and to strategically rank Yang last and omit Adams. By ranking two long-shot candidates, I’ll be giving support to their ideas, hopefully inspiring future candidates to run campaigns on similar platforms. I like Paperboy Love Prince’s progressive positions a lot, and their playful campaign and clear love for New York City are infectious. I’m not a huge fan of Dianne Morales personally given the way she apparently [ran her campaign](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/05/dianne-morales-and-the-lefts-implosion-in-nyc-mayoral-race.html?ref=gabestein.com), but I do like her policies, and as a one-time potential consolidator of progressive votes, it seems like she has as much of a shot of winning as Scott Stringer, without the entitlement and baggage of [sexual misconduct allegations](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/10/nyregion/scott-stringer-sexual-misconduct.html?ref=gabestein.com). By ranking Yang last, I’m effectively saying that in a run-off between Adams and Yang, I’d prefer Yang. Although I don’t want him to become mayor, I prefer Yang to Adams because he’s not part of the Democratic machine and at least seems to be genuinely interested in making the city better, not just serving the party system. So, my final ballot is:

1. Kathryn Garcia
2. Maya Wiley
3. Paperboy Love Prince
4. Dianne Morales
5. Andrew Yang
### My NYC Mayoral Rankings: Part I, Approach
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/anjg2d79/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:35.000Z
As I [wrote](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/do5o2l2j/release/2) a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of judging a middle school Public Forum debate, my first in fifteen years. My default judging style is what debaters call a “[hypothesis tester](https://mbhsdebate.wixsite.com/debate/judge-types?ref=gabestein.com),” which means I evaluate the resolution as a hypothesis, and the affirmative’s plan as a test of that hypothesis. This approach allows both affirmative and negative teams to be far more strategic, and leads to decision-making that can consider multiple different, and even contradictory, branches of argumentation at the same time. Since my re-introduction to that mode of thought, I’ve been realizing that it might also be a good way to evaluate mayoral candidates — particularly in a ranked-choice election, where you must make strategic, and sometimes contradictory, choices.

In this metaphor of the election as a debate, the resolution is simple: “Resolved: candidate X would be the best mayor to lead New York City.” Each candidate is effectively an affirmative team, arguing for a particular set of issues and strengths that tests the hypothesis that they are the right candidate. As the judge, you can get a long way just testing the various candidates’ plans against each other, as if one candidate’s platform is an affirmative case, and all the rest are negative counter-plans.

I believe that’s a much more realistic way of evaluating candidates than the typical approach, which is to vote for whomever comes closest to your exact views, because it considers a candidate’s platform as a series of arguments testing the proposition that they will be good leaders, rather than centering their ideology. However, there is a major shortcoming to the approach: it assumes you are neutral. That’s a good quality for a debate judge. But as a voter, you should have pre-defined ideas about what issues you think are most important for the future of the city. Thus, you’re not only the judge in this metaphor, you also get to write the resolution.

For me, the most important issues facing the city are affordability, equity, and emissions. So, I might rewrite the resolution to be: “Resolved: New York City should be more affordable, equitable, and produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions.” This has the benefit of narrowing the universe of policies I need to consider, and allowing me to play out the candidates’ platforms as cases that test my resolution. One small, but important note, is that while I have notions of what I mean by all three terms in my head, I’m going to stick to my hypothesis tester roots and try not define them too tightly, allowing the candidates themselves to debate their meaning.

I’m running out of time for today, but tomorrow, I’ll use the candidates’ websites and The City’s incredible “[Meet Your Mayor](https://projects.thecity.nyc/meet-your-mayor/ultimate-match.html?ref=gabestein.com)” project to run the candidates’ platforms against my resolution. For the sake of brevity, I’m only going to do this exercise for the top four candidates according to most polls: Eric Adams, Kathryn Garcia, Maya Wiley, and Andrew Yang, as it’s almost guaranteed one of them will win, making ranking other candidates less impactful.

To be continued…
### Not today!
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/iwgpvnuj/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:35.000Z
The description says it all. I’ve been trying to carve out time to write every day, but sometimes I’m going to fail. So, in lieu of any meaningful commentary, check out this [interesting story](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/working-day-time-five-hours?ref=gabestein.com) from *Wired UK* about the ideal workday I read this morning. It serves as a useful meta-commentary on why my output will be less today.

Spoiler alert: the headline reports that the ideal workday is about 5 hours. The actual story and research it summarizes is far less conclusive. It does seem that in some industries, particularly creative and knowledge-based ones, productivity and happiness peaks around 5 hours. That seems to check out. Many creatives, [most famously](https://www.openculture.com/2019/01/ursula-k-le-guins-daily-routine-the-discipline-that-fueled-her-imagination.html?ref=gabestein.com) Ursula K. Le Guin, have reported working similar schedules before diminishing returns set in.

But the findings are hardly universal. In fact, some companies found that shortening the workday led employees to cram the same amount of work they currently manage into less time, leaving them more stressed and less able to bond with coworkers over time. To me, it sounds like an echo of the paradox of workplace digitization [I discussed](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/airbnb-future-work/release/2?readingCollection=4d2ff7bb) a few weeks ago. We’ve thrown a ton of technology at the workplace and managed to eliminate jobs like secretary, file clerk, and switchboard operator in the process. But it’s not clear that we’ve actually eliminated the work. Instead, folks like Cal Newport [argue](https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/e-mail-is-making-us-miserable?ref=gabestein.com), we’ve redistributed that work to fewer workers.

My own pet theory is that the 5-hour workday would probably work very well for a range of knowledge and creative industries if workers were also freed from having to manage the overhead of their schedules and correspondence. As it is, the 8-hour workday still seems crammed for most knowledge workers, because they’re probably engaging in 4-5 hours of [deep work](https://medium.com/@nina.semczuk/5-practices-from-deep-work-by-cal-newport-thatll-change-your-life-303847ec5f3c?ref=gabestein.com) and 3-4 hours of logistical overhead per day. I think we may have made some rare progress at eliminating some of that overhead at my workplace by implementing tools like [Remeet](http://remeet.com/?ref=gabestein.com) that truly do automate, rather than redistribute the responsibility for, tasks like scheduling.

Unfortunately, though, we still have a long way to go before we can afford to compress our days to only take time for deep work. And that’s why, sometimes, I’m not going to be able to write as much as I want to.
### Are "ugly produce" startups good?
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/fivxe5uf/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:35.000Z
At the start of the pandemic, my wife and I started ordering from Imperfect Foods, one of the many “ugly produce” startup services that claims to be saving the planet from the [very real scourge](https://www.usda.gov/foodlossandwaste?ref=gabestein.com) of food waste. It seemed like a perfect fit for our lifestyle, wallet, and morals: it would minimize our need to make potentially dangerous trips to the grocery store, save us a little money, and lessen our personal environmental impact, all at the same time.

That convenient narrative worked on me for a while, until I started paying a little more attention to the company’s branding and noticed a familiar, and uncomfortable, pattern. Like so many modern subscription services, Imperfect’s user experience is incredibly well thought-out. The pink cardboard boxes themselves thank you for eliminate greenhouse emissions, and serve as advertisements for your neighbors to do the same. The house-branded “upcycled” products contain cute stories about the the food you’re “saving” from a life in the landfill. A generous referral program makes it easy and rewarding to recommend the service to your friends. In other words, I started to feel like I was being [growth hacked](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth%5Fhacking?ref=gabestein.com). So, after a few months of denial, I Googled.

As is so often the case with startups that promise to disrupt existing systems, the real story is far more complicated than the slick marketing would have you believe. Unsurprisingly, there’s [no shortage](https://newrepublic.com/article/152596/hungry-harvest-box-ugly-produce-help-planet-or-hurt-it?ref=gabestein.com) of [criticism](https://econreview.berkeley.edu/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-produce-movement/?ref=gabestein.com) of the services, including the most well known piece, a [2019 Vox interview](https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-waste-ugly-produce-myths-farms?ref=gabestein.com) with crop scientist Sarah Taber.

In the interview, and the [Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/SarahTaber%5Fbww/status/1086055092321697794?ref=gabestein.com) that spawned it, Taber essentially argues that the business model of Imperfect, Misfit Foods, etc. is actually just marketing:

> People now panic if they don’t know where food comes from, and the constant messaging about how you “should” be reinforces the anxiety. Any time people are having these anxieties, marketers take advantage of it. But the market-based solutions that marketing endorses don’t fix the root cause.

In fact, Taber and others argue that the food system is already [incredibly good](https://twitter.com/SarahTaber%5Fbww/status/1086055096071401472?ref=gabestein.com) at maximizing profit, and that the problems that truly lead to food waste, like [labor issues](https://twitter.com/SarahTaber%5Fbww/status/1086055093852622853?ref=gabestein.com), can’t be solved by the market alone. According to [other critiques](https://newrepublic.com/article/152596/hungry-harvest-box-ugly-produce-help-planet-or-hurt-it?ref=gabestein.com), the ugly produce movement may even be exacerbating the environmental problems it claims to solve by incentivizing farmers to grow more food than they need to. I haven’t come across a solid economic analysis of the ugly produce economy yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case.

In the end, Taber believes the ugly produce movement is inherently [classist](https://twitter.com/SarahTaber%5Fbww/status/1086055099007451137?ref=gabestein.com), because it assumes that any food that doesn’t show up at top-tier stores must be going to waste, rather than, as she argues, sold at discount grocery stores frequented by working class consumers or repurposed for other downstream uses like salsa, smoothies, or animal feed. If the story of disruptive startups creating classist parallel systems to perfectly functional alternatives sounds familiar, it’s because that’s the exact story of Uber, which gained a toehold by marketing itself as a superior, and more exclusive alternative to public transit and regulated taxis that all the riff-raff could use. It’s true that ordering a taxi on your phone is an improvement over hailing a cab in the old days, but the price for this convenience [appears to be](https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-02-21/cities-traffic-uber-and-lyft?ref=gabestein.com) more pollution, more congestion, worse public transit, and replacing decent local taxi jobs with Uber’s [anti-competitive, and barely-above-poverty-level](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-08/uber-drivers-earn-pay-that-s-just-above-the-poverty-line?ref=gabestein.com) wage-fixing scheme.

To be fair, the nation’s food system is far more complex than its for-hire transportation networks, and it’s not clear yet what effect the ugly produce movement is having. Because we do waste so much food, Taber says you shouldn’t feel bad about using ugly food services if they suit you. You just shouldn’t be fooled into thinking you’re doing much good over going to the grocery store. For now, I’m continuing to get a weekly box because it saves me a trip to the store, though I’d replace it with my local CSA in a heartbeat if there wasn’t already a giant waitlist.

The lesson, then, for consumers like me is to always take promises of disruption with a grain of upcycled celtic grey sea salt. It’s worth remembering that markets are, for all their shortcomings, typically incredibly efficient distribution machines. Any company that promises to improve an established market’s efficiency must prove it with more than press releases and self-published “studies.” Otherwise, they’re likely rent-seeking, creating unsustainable and destabilizing conditions by subsidizing themselves with VC funds, or using fancy marketing and growth hacking techniques to hawk the same old rotten eggs.
### Inequality is the abberation
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/1z314izc/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:35.000Z
In a [new piece](https://aeon.co/essays/for-97-of-human-history-equality-was-the-norm-what-happened?ref=gabestein.com) in *Aeon*, philosophy professor Kim Sterelny puts a unique spin on one of [my favorite](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/259pg6uv/release/8) themes — the rise of the early state — this time examining its role in advancing inequality, which he argues is a relatively new phenomenon:

> Our particular species of humans has been around for about 300,000 years and, best as we can tell, for about 290,000 of those years we lived materially poorer but much more equal lives.

In his telling, two “scaffolds” of inequality, hereditary clan structures and information economies, arise even in forager societies. But inequality really starts to accelerate as soon as farming enters the picture:

> Farming and storage make inequality possible, perhaps even likely, because they tend to undermine sharing norms, establish property rights and the coercion of labour, amplify intercommunal violence, and lead to increases in social scale.

In his fascinating book *[Against the Grain](https://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States/dp/0300182910?ref=gabestein.com)*, James C. Scott challenges some of Sterelny’s determinism. Scott agrees that agriculture’s unique ability to create surplus drove much of the agricultural revolution. Far from being a likely outcome of farming, however, he thinks that early state elites had to coerce populations into joining them by taking advantage of the surplus, primarily by taxing it in exchange for protection.

After all, as Sterelny and especially Scott note, early subsistence farming was a far worse lifestyle than foraging, requiring much more labor in exchange for a worse diet, more disease, susceptibility to attack, deference to elites, and so on. Why would anyone willingly make that trade? According to Scott, they wouldn’t. In his telling, inequality didn’t arise out of farming. Farming, particularly of cereal grains, made it possible for elites to create and enforce the structures of inequality that exist today.

Sterelny’s examination ends on a compelling call to action not for scholars or policymakers, but technologists:

> Bottom line: egalitarian, cooperative human communities are possible. Widespread sharing and consensus decision-making aren’t contrary to ‘human nature’ (whatever that is). Indeed, for most of human history we lived in such societies. But such societies are not inherently stable. These social practices depend on active defence. That active defence failed, given the social technologies available, as societies increased in scale and economic complexity. There’s no going back to Pleistocene equality, and I for one wouldn’t embrace the social intimacy and material simplicity of such lives. But we do have new social technologies. China (especially) is showing how those can be used to enhance elite surveillance. Let’s hope they can be reconfigured to support more bottom-up social action, to mitigate some of the effects of imbalances of wealth and power.

Looking to our early history to understand how technology can shape society is useful on its own merits. I’ve also long suspected that today’s technological revolution is replaying some early agrarian history, at least on a metaphorical level. We use lots of agricultural language — data silos, data harvesting, etc. — to describe the practices of modern surveillance capitalism businesses. And just like farming, new web technologies that at first promised more independence and access seem to have been coopted and used to build [truly insane](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/?ref=gabestein.com) wealth concentration machines that past generations of elites could only dream of.

The theory behind surveillance capitalism, most popularly advanced by [Shoshana Zuboff](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/04/shoshana-zuboff-surveillance-capitalism-assault-human-automomy-digital-privacy?ref=gabestein.com), is stunningly similar to Sterelny and Scott’s arguments, both in the overall narrative and the words used to describe it. In [her view](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-google-facebook?ref=gabestein.com), large platforms coopted the earlier, more egalitarian and cooperative methods of publishing and info-seeking like usenet and blogging by exploiting a unique feature of these new technologies: user data.

In the early days of the web, this data was primarily used to inform product development and sell ads on a site-by-site basis. But Google, Facebook, et. al. realized that, like farming before it, data harvesting creates a surplus that can be concentrated and stored in data silos, where it is analyzed and sold as predictive insights about user behavior. By providing no-upfront-cost services — many of them focused on social proof or protection from fraud — in exchange for the ability to collect this surplus data, these companies managed to supplant the ecosystem that existed before them and completely dominate online advertising, commerce, and publishing. In the process, they seem to have established themselves as [pseudo-states](https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/4/9/17214752/zuckerberg-facebook-power-regulation-data-privacy-control-political-theory-data-breach-king?ref=gabestein.com), capable of wielding enormous amounts of power to shape behavior, policy, and even society for their own benefit.

Like farming before it, the information age has produced an unimaginable abundance — in this case of information, connection, and access to goods. And for many, the internet has become [just as inseparable from everyday life](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/a-world-without-internet/476907/?ref=gabestein.com) as agriculture. But, much as Scott argues about the rise of the state, it’s [far from clear](https://medium.com/team-human/the-internet-used-to-make-us-smarter-now-not-so-much-c328ef0343da?ref=gabestein.com) that we’re better off as a result.

Where do we go from here? In some ways, I find the comparison to Sterelny and Scott’s works hopeful. As Sterelny says, technologists should learn from the fact that inequality, and the structures that reinforce them, are relatively modern inventions, and in no way built into our nature (whatever that is). If deep history is any guide, there is opportunity for us to build equitable, cooperative communities. Along these lines, I’m encouraged by groups like [New\_Public](https://newpublic.org/?ref=gabestein.com) and the [Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure](https://publicinfrastructure.org/?ref=gabestein.com), which attempt to re-cast information technologies as public goods and spaces.

Scott’s work provides a slightly more instructive scaffolding for those brave enough to build on it. [According to Scott](https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/11/22/16649038/civilization-progress-humanity-history-technology?ref=gabestein.com), life under the state has finally outpaced life before it in the last two centuries thanks to advances in industrial technology and public health. I don’t think we can turn back the clock on surveillance capitalism any more than I think we can return to pre-agrarian societies. But I do think that we can use the data-as-grain metaphor to help us understand what the digital versions of those quality-of-life enhancing developments might be, and as we develop them, identify and build defences against the ways in which they might be coopted by these new digital states.

With the right conviction, effort, and luck, we might be able to make our nascent digital states a true improvement over what came before. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take 10,000 years.
### The kids are alright
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/do5o2l2j/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:35.000Z
It’s going to be a different kind of post today, because I spent most of it judging an NYC Middle School Public Forum debate tournament. It was incredibly fun. The kids are super impressive. The coaches and teachers unbelievably dedicated to making this opportunity possible for their students. They’ve truly created something special.

I was a fairly serious policy debater in high school, and, like many policy kids will tell you, believe it was a far more important part of my intellectual and social development than any other parts of high school, including classes and other extra circulars. No matter what event you participate in, speech and debate exposes students to new people and ideas, teaches them how to express themselves, and most importantly, provides a controlled environment where it’s okay and even encouraged to bend, and sometimes break, the rules.

Every speech event has its rule-benders, from performative debaters to evidence-based original orators to drama and humor competitors who blur the line between interpretation and creation. Sometimes they get away with it, and sometimes they don’t, but it doesn’t matter. Speech teaches you — either via your own exploration or frustration at competitors who flaunt the rules and succeed — to question the system itself rather than accept it as given.

Debate, particularly policy debate, is especially prone to this kind of exploration because of its complete lack of universal judging criteria. Rather than instruct judges on how to decide debate rounds, most tournaments leave judging criteria completely up to the judge. It’s not total chaos: a handful of common judging styles have emerged in this vacuum. But to be successful, competitors must learn to adapt both their delivery style and method of argumentation to whomever is sitting “in the back of the room.”

For me, the most interesting debates were the ones where judges took a “tabula rasa” approach. That is, they were open to hearing arguments not just about the topic of the debate, but the rules, and sometimes even purpose, of debate itself. Sometimes, those arguments became too heady; I never loved rounds that were decided on these arguments, which debaters call “theory,” alone. But there is a certain intellectual satisfaction that comes with reaching the meta level of the theory debate, where you argue that you should win because, according to your successfully-argued framework of how debate should be judged, your arguments are better. As a tabula rasa judge, a great theory debate makes deciding a round much easier, and more predictable for competitors, because you don’t have to build the judging scaffolding on your own. Instead, competitors tell you that they won, how they won, how to evaluate the way they won, why they won the debate over how to evaluate the way they won, and in some cases, why it’s important that they won beyond the imagined world of the debate itself.

I didn’t expect middle schoolers to get to that level of debate. And I was judging Public Forum, which is meant to be a more accessible and less technical event. They didn’t quite make it to theory, but in one particularly impressive moment, a team came awfully close, making what I thought was an incredibly cheeky meta-argument in the best tradition of theory debates.

The topic of the round was that the United States should implement compulsory voting for all citizens over the age of 18\. In a fairly risky move, the Con team, arguing against the resolution, conceded the point that higher turnout of a more informed populace would lead to a better society. Their argument was that compulsory voting would actually lead to a less informed voting population, and thus worse leaders and policy outcomes.

During the “Crossfire,” a round of back-and-forth questioning, the Pro team saw an opportunity to use the concession to their advantage. They asked Con if there were any other ways they could think of to achieve the mutually desired outcomes of higher informed turnout other than compulsory voting. To which Con replied that they could not answer the question because it is against the rules of Public Forum debate to extend or speculate on alternatives to the resolution itself.

Is it? I have no idea, though I suspect not, if for no other reason than they themselves argued for multiple different ways of achieving the desired outcome during the round, such as stronger voting rights protections. They might have been referring to the (debatable!) philosophical concept of the burden of proof, which typically falls on the Pro side, which is, after all, advocating for changes to the status quo. They might have been referring to general guidance from their coaches and interpreting it as a rule. Or they might have been trying it out as a gambit, taking advantage of the fact that most judges (me included!) don’t know the rules well enough to know whether that rule is real or not. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. It’s up to the debaters to convince the judge.

In this case, the tactic worked. The Pro team was, I think, fairly surprised, and dropped the issue entirely rather than either arguing the rules point or using it to their advantage, by, for example claiming the non-response as evidence that the Con team could not provide a viable alternative. In the end, the Con team very narrowly won by my vote (the only one that counts), in part because of their argument that there are more democratic ways to increase the turnout rates of informed citizens than making voting compulsory.

It was a pretty awesome, and shrewd, tactic to witness at any debate, much less one featuring four pre-teens. I’ll fail to avoid the cliché and just say: I’m entering into the weekend seriously impressed, and not a little more hopeful about the future than at the start of this week. Anyone know a West Virginia Senator who might want to judge a round on this topic next? Asking for…all of us.
### What if it's just taxes?
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/zyknw825/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:35.000Z
Yesterday I [wrote about](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/ivrsydjp/release/13) the increasingly complex interplay between money, work, and digital life. I concluded that a lot of the digital economic artifice we’ve built serves to obscure, and protect us from what Cory Doctorow [calls](https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?ref=gabestein.com) “the trauma of living through *real conspiracies* all around us” — rampant wealth inequality, corporate malfeasance, political corruption, and so on

The complexity of this trauma avoidance mechanism is a feature, not a bug. It’s can be hard to make the link between, say, Elon Musk’s egregious Twitter behavior and tax evasion from the point of view of someone living in, and often benefitting from, the global digital economy.

Once in a while, though, simplicity breaks through, as it did with today’s predictable, but still stunning *ProPublica* [analysis](https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax?ref=gabestein.com) of thousands of leaked tax returns. Go read the whole thing, but here’s the summary:

> ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. The data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of America’s titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. It shows not just their income and taxes, but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the results of audits.  
>  
> Taken together, it demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most. The IRS records show that the wealthiest can — perfectly legally — pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year.

When you look at it from both the bottom up, as I did yesterday, and the top down, as ProPublica did today, it sure seems that Davos folk hero Rutger Bregman [was right](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/30/historian-berates-billionaires-at-davos-over-tax-avoidance?ref=gabestein.com):

> “I hear people talking the language of participation, justice, equality and transparency but almost no one raises the real issue of tax avoidance, right? And of the rich just not paying their fair share,” [Bregman tells the Time magazine panel on inequality.](https://nowthisnews.com/videos/politics/billionaires-called-out-for-tax-evasion-by-historian-rutger-bregman?utm%5Fcontent=Billionaires+Called+Out+for+Tax+Evasion+by+Historian+Rutger+Bregman&utm%5Fsource=twitter&utm%5Fmedium=social-media)  
>  
> …  
>  
> Industry had to “stop talking about philanthropy and start talking about taxes”, he said, and cited the high tax regime of 1950s America as an example to disprove arguments by businesspeople at Davos such as Michael Dell that economies with high personal taxation could not succeed. “That’s it,” he says. “Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit in my opinion.”

Given the ProPublica revelations, it seems like the story could be told much more simply than I managed to yesterday: the world’s mega-billionaires are refusing to pay taxes, leading to [historic inequality and societal instability](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-review-of-social-history/article/global-history-of-inequality/DAEFC004BAF5EA157D49DA7F37A93268?ref=gabestein.com). Instead of taking responsibility, they’re using the same [addictive technology](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/23/social-media-addiction-gambling?ref=gabestein.com) that made their fortunes to create a worldwide [digital casino economy](https://www.notboring.co/p/the-great-online-game?ref=gabestein.com) that keeps us from noticing their abusive behavior and taking steps to reign it, and them, in.

It’s become so bad that even the G7 is [taking action](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/07/g7-tax-reform-what-has-been-agreed-and-which-companies-will-it-affect?ref=gabestein.com), which is good. As a next step, maybe we need to stop pontificating about late-stage capitalism (sorry!) and just demand these fuckers pay their fair share?
### If the internet is a 'Great Online Game,' capitalism is the religion it pays tribute to
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/ivrsydjp/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:35.000Z
I’ve been meaning to look at Packy McCormick’s [newsletter](https://www.notboring.co/p/the-great-online-game?ref=gabestein.com) that compares the internet, writ large, to a giant global game for some time now. It’s an entertaining read, and frames the hypernormalization of influencer culture I [described](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/ku45zwdn/release/5) a while back in a new, compelling way:

> We now live in a world in which, by typing things into your phone or your keyboard, or saying things into a microphone, or snapping pictures or videos, you can marshall resources, support, and opportunities. Crypto has the potential to take it up a notch by baking game mechanics -- points, rewards, skins, teams, and more -- right into the whole internet.   
>  
> The Great Online Game is **free to play**, and it **starts simply**: by **realizing that you’re playing a game**. Every tweet is a free lottery ticket. That’s a big unlock.

The argument certainly has merit. From the Ancient Olympics to the Mesoamerican ballgame, games have been large, often integral, parts of human cultures and societies across the globe for a very long time. They’re often associated with a culture’s dominant religion, which typically lends them symbolic importance that confers elite social status to its players. McCormick’s argument functions flawlessly at that level, too, if you think of [late capitalism](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/05/late-capitalism/524943/?ref=gabestein.com) as today’s dominant religion, with commodified consumption as the object of its worship. What is a viral post if not the world’s perfect postmodern good? Immensely valuable, instantly reproducible, and infinitely consumable across the entire world at almost no marginal cost.

McCormick takes the metaphor several steps further. If the religion is also the economic system, then work must be part of the Game:

> The *Oxford English Dictionary* defines a **video game** as, “A game played by **electronically manipulating images produced by a computer program** on a television screen or other display screen.”  
>  
> If you’re working remotely from a computer, what you’re doing perfectly fits the definition of a video game.

In McCormick’s telling, those of us working in the knowledge economy are functionally already playing online games. They’re just way less fun than Facebook, Instagram, Twich, TikTok and so on, which, as McMormick notes [via investor Josh Buckley](https://joincolossus.com/episodes/15214417/buckley-identifying-legendary-start-ups?tab=transcript&ref=gabestein.com), are basically slot machines. Thus it’s only natural, he contends, that people will want to start earning “rewards” for their “play” in the same way they [expect them](https://longreads.com/2017/08/09/the-beauty-and-predictability-of-a-slot-machines-algorithm/?ref=gabestein.com) from slot machines and video games.

Via this metaphor, McCormick offers the only even somewhat compelling explanation for crypto’s staying power and potential value I’ve read to date:

> … **crypto is in-game money for the internet**. It rewards participation directly. Early users, supporters, builders, stakers, validators, and community members get tokens.

There are functional reasons, like financial regulation, that explain why cryptocurrencies are easier to implement as in-game rewards than conventional currencies. But I suspect crypto operates on a deeper, more psychological level as well.

As I noted above, the most impactful games operate on symbolic, as well as functional levels. Successful play confers a sense of societal achievement that goes beyond the technical rules of the game itself. It’s why we give children trophies and Olympians medals, to reward them tangibly in a way that currency can’t capture. McCormick calls this property “the meta-game,” which for him is essentially career advancement.

Cryptocurrency is the perfect fit for the postmodern careers he describes because it functions at multiple levels at once, in the game itself and in the “meta-game,” collapsing the distinction between symbolic reward and money. Earning it is both a “reward for participation,” as McCormick puts it, and, for increasing numbers of people, a livelihood. You can both sound cool by talking about your favorite tokens at parties and readily convert them to U.S. dollars to pay your bills. It is both the gold medal and the six-figure endorsement deal. NFTs are just a natural extension of this culture collapse, or as McCormick puts it: “the digital trappings of digital wealth.”

For the first time, I can see some potential, though unlikely, upsides to crypto via McCormick’s game metaphor. McCormick believes that the expansion of the Game will break down barriers and create more opportunity for the masses by making it “easier for people to float in and out of projects at internet speed instead of committing to climb the ladder within a company,” and giving “the Great Online Game tools that were previously only available within the walled gardens of specific virtual or corporate worlds.”

Unfortunately, McCormick shares a blind-spot with the [rest of](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber-utopianism?ref=gabestein.com) the techno-utopianists: consequences, particularly systemic ones. At the beginning of the piece, he argues that in playing the Game, “the downside is limited.” Towards the end of the piece, he doubles down by adapting Shopify President Harley Finkelstein’s [advice](https://twitter.com/packyM/status/1390775211264462849?s=20&ref=gabestein.com) to entrepreneurs about the cost of failing to the internet itself:

> The cost of failure is as close to zero as it’s ever been, and it will continue to fall. That’s true for entrepreneurship, and it’s even more true for the Great Online Game. Because entrepreneurs are trying to build a business; when you start to play the Great Online Game, you’re just building optionality.   
>  
> …  
>  
> When people ask me my title, I don’t have a good answer. Writer? Founder? Investor? Some guy with a newsletter? They all fit, and I’m sure I’ll add more over time. Playing the Game is about having fun and opening doors that you didn’t even know existed.   
>  
> It’s a lot of work, but it’s fun work, with exponential upside and compounding returns.   
>  
> Go play.

McCormick is thinking and speaking here only about himself and people like him. People who are not Packy McCormick have [lost their retirement](https://money.com/make-money-trading-crypto-difficulty/?ref=gabestein.com) to crypto, committed suicide because of [crypto](https://cryptonews.com/news/police-south-korean-suicide-linked-to-usd-180-000-crypto-los-10097.htm?ref=gabestein.com) and online bullying, and been subjected to [systematic online harassment](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/01/13/the-state-of-online-harassment/?ref=gabestein.com). The cost of failure is not zero for many people, it’s much, much worse.

Then there are the systemic consequences. McCormick doesn’t stop for a moment to question his own comparison between social media and slot machines, despite the fact that unlike tech companies, gambling is a [highly regulated industry](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/12/losing-it-all/505814/?ref=gabestein.com) because it often caters to addicts. He celebrates Elon Musk “getting away with things that people didn’t think were legal,” acknowledging that Musk is “playing a postmodern game against modern rivals,” without engaging in any critiques of Musk’s behavior or postmodernism.

Those may seem like abstract and academic criticisms, but the consequences of dismissing them are real. The same factors driving McCormick’s fun, low-downside “Great Online Game” are also behind a far less fun, far more dangerous game: [QAnon](https://www.wired.com/story/qanon-most-dangerous-multiplatform-game/?ref=gabestein.com). In fact, what if, as the [many](https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/qanon-game-plays-believers/2021/05/10/31d8ea46-928b-11eb-a74e-1f4cf89fd948%5Fstory.html?ref=gabestein.com), [many](https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5?ref=gabestein.com), [many](https://thegeyser.substack.com/p/qanon-a-most-dangerous-game) analyses of QAnon-qua-game seem to indicate, they’re one and the same? What if the same forces collapsing the distinction between work and play, currency and reward, and market manipulation and Twitter joke are also collapsing the distinction between reality and conspiracy, for the same reasons McCormick thinks the Game is succeeding: because participating in QAnon is more fun, or at least more hopeful, than facing the reality of what Cory Doctorow [calls](https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?ref=gabestein.com) “the trauma of living through *real* conspiracies all around us.”

I fear McCormick’s Game might be, however compelling, not much different than QAnon: just another conspiracy theory, another momentary escape from our monstrous reality that allows the real conspiracies to continue. Perhaps until, as even Musk himself recently [seemed to recognize](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57096305?ref=gabestein.com), it’s too late for any of us to get out.
### Defend Democracy Now
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/tguec0dv/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:35.000Z
I often let systemic issues like the, er, rapid descent of American democracy into authoritarian minority rule, depress and de-motivate me. And that was the story of much of today. But it helps to refocus my anxiety into action, and this was mine today, in a letter to our Majority Leader, following the advice of the indispensable [Indivisible](https://indivisible.actionkit.com/mailings/view/72236?t=13&akid=72236%2E362265%2EJheLOF&ref=gabestein.com).

Long story short: Speak the fuck up, Chuck.

> Dear Leader Schumer,  
>  
> Where were you today? On the day Joe Manchin [tried](https://www.wvgazettemail.com/opinion/op%5Fed%5Fcommentaries/joe-manchin-why-im-voting-against-the-for-the-people-act/article%5Fc7eb2551-a500-5f77-aa37-2e42d0af870f.html?ref=gabestein.com) to preemptively stop democratic reform to save himself a tough vote, our Majority Leader said nothing about the bill for which he supposedly believes "[failure is not an option](https://www.fixoursenate.org/press/icymi-senate-majority-leader-schumer-says-all-options-on-table-to-pass-for-the-people-act-including-filibuster-reform?ref=gabestein.com)."  
>  
> I am writing today, as your constituent, to urge you to show up to the fight for democracy, today and every day. Republicans across the country are hell-bent on establishing autocratic, minority rule. I have a lifetime to live, and I am terrified it will be in an America that is no longer free. Is that the legacy you will leave me?  
>  
> You must, right now, re-affirm your commitment to passing voting rights reform before the August recess, re-affirm you commitment to scheduling votes on it, and, behind the scenes, work with Manchin and any other reluctant Democrats to do whatever it takes to get them to act. The future of our democracy, and possibly our world, depends on your actions right now. And right now? You are silent.  
>  
> Stop being silent. I am depressed. Anxious. A wreck. Terrified for my future. But I have found my voice today. Find yours and lead like you're supposed to.  
>  
> Sincerely,  
>  
> Gabriel Stein
### It's the business model
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/edxqmao6/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:34.000Z
In Nautilus on Wednesday, Haixin Dang and Liam Kofi Bright published a [“general audience” version](https://nautil.us/issue/100/outsiders/how-to-make-sense-of-contradictory-science-papers?ref=gabestein.com) of their fascinating [recent paper](https://philpapers.org/rec/DANSCN?ref=gabestein.com) on the philosophy of academic publishing. The paper’s title, *Scientific Conclusions Need Not Be Accurate, Justified, or Believed by their Authors*, helpfully gets right to the point. It’s a compelling argument, and one that feels philosophically sound to me, especially in the example the pair cites:

> For scientists to collectively inquire effectively, they need to communicate interesting ideas to each other that are worth pursuing. Consider Avi Loeb, a theoretical astrophysicist who proposed the provocative hypothesis, not without some supporting data, that [‘Oumuamua wasn’t a comet but an alien light-sail](https://nautil.us/blog/the-alien%5Fhaunted-world?ref=gabestein.com). He, presumably, knew that more data would need to be gathered, and a more thorough study would need to be conducted, before the hypothesis could be justifiably believed.  
>  
> Nonetheless, perhaps it was appropriate for Loeb to publish his data and his hypothesis. He himself might even be agnostic toward the truth of the hypothesis. He likely knew that most of his colleagues would dispute his interpretation of the data, and with good cause. In spite of all this, it was still valuable for him to publicly communicate the possibility of a new hypothesis, because it can—and maybe actually did—spur more research into, and garner attention for, astronomy. Publishing those findings was not about communicating the truth but about saying that there is something exciting and interesting that requires further inquiry.

But there’s a problem with this more permissive theory of publishing, which Dang and Kofi Bright readily acknowledge. As science becomes more visible to lay audiences via breathless news reporting and preprint servers, misinterpreting conjecture and exploration as fact becomes more likely. When those “facts” are reversed by subsequent studies or publicly knocked down by well-meaning scientists, it leads to an erosion of trust in science.

Dang and Kofi Bright read the problem as a mismatch between how scientists write and how the rest of us read:

> Why might it be worth worrying about how and when scientists decide to share their work? The threat of misinformation spreading, you might say. But that isn’t all. As it stands, there is a mismatch between the rules scientists *write* by compared with those that laymen *read* by. And given that non-scientists are daily called on to make important decisions on the basis of scientific results, the potential for miscommunication makes possible momentous mistakes.

There’s some truth to that view, to be sure. Except, as University of Texas psychology professor Tal Yarkoni notes [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/talyarkoni/status/1400514226741985281?ref=gabestein.com), that interpretation doesn’t match how scientists actually publish:

Why don’t authors behave this way? Later in the Twitter thread, Trinity College psychology post-doc Richard Lombard Vance puts it this way:

I’m willing to be a bit more charitable than Lombard Vance. In an ideal world, scientists ought to be able to publish conclusions that acknowledge considerable uncertainty and nuance, both narratively and statistically. And they ought to be rewarded for doing so.

In the real world, researchers can’t write like that and expect to put food on the table. Academic research is an infamously [competitive, underpaid, and unfair industry](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/jun/05/insecure-employment-for-postdoc-researchers-is-leading-to-bad-science?ref=gabestein.com). Grant money and jobs go to the people who get the most attention, via citations and media mentions. To maximize their chances of attention, and thus making a living, scientists play fast and loose with statistics and overstate results within the bounds of acceptable behavior. It’s only human.

Thus the mismatch isn’t, as Dang and Kofi Bright contend, between how scientists write and how the rest of us read. The mismatch is between how scientists ought to write and how they must write to keep food on the table.

How do we solve for that mismatch? Honestly, it’s a little frustrating to write this again here, because it’s become a cliché among folks who spend their time thinking about academic infrastructure. But here we go again: the only way is to address the root of the problem and change the way researchers are evaluated and compensated to incentivize the kind of responsible (and, frankly, more interesting!) research we’d all like to see.

Doing so will require [a fundamental shift](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/x5ng8rb1/release/1) in the business models of research, publishing and impact evaluation. There are lots of organizations, [including my own](https://knowledgefutures.org/?ref=gabestein.com), doing their part to initiate these shifts. To get there, though, we’ll need well-meaning folks like Dang and Kofi Bright to dig a little deeper in their analyses of the industry to help bring others along.
### Covid and the conspiracy conspiracy
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/ct1yox5e/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:34.000Z
I’m going to dive into an uncomfortable topic today: the theory that the novel coronavirus escaped from a lab, rather than, as is generally thought, made the leap from bats to an intermediary species and finally to humans via a wet market. I’m no virologist, and can’t pretend to have any insight into the science itself. The [global scientific consensus](https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/covid-19-virtual-press-conference-transcript---9-february-2021?ref=gabestein.com) is that the virus originated in nature, which ought to be everyone’s default assumption.

Having said that, I worry that the public scolding that awaits anyone who even mentions alternative possibilities could backfire for the same reason the CDC’s early contradictory mask messaging [did](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-masks.html?ref=gabestein.com): the corrective is far too black and white.

My [work](https://knowledgefutures.org/?ref=gabestein.com) building academic publishing tools has [introduced me](https://rapidreviewscovid19.mitpress.mit.edu/?ref=gabestein.com) to scientists who study viruses and public health. Though most of them believe the natural origin consensus to be by far the most likely scenario, few of them have entirely ruled out the possibility of lab escape. Which makes this sentence, from Ethan Siegel of *Starts With A Bang* fame’s [harsh corrective](https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2021/05/20/no-science-clearly-shows-that-covid-19-wasnt-leaked-from-a-wuhan-lab/?ref=gabestein.com) to the latest round of speculation set off by [disgraced journalist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas%5FWade?ref=gabestein.com) Nicholas Wade, rather awkward:

> Despite what many prominent voices would have you believe, the virology is open-and-shut: there is no compelling reason to believe that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a lab.

Siegel’s intentions in writing the piece are undoubtedly good. Given his history of cherry-picking research to fit his conclusions, we shouldn’t be taking much that Wade writes seriously. And Siegel usefully pushes back against some of the more spurious scientific claims in Wade’s piece.

But just like the CDC’s early mask messaging, Siegel’s conclusion isn’t completely accurate, and is driven not by science, but by a fear that speculating about the virus’s origins will unleash another pathology: rampant conspiracy theories that could undermine science itself.

To wit, Siegel spells out two specific dangers that could arise from inquiring about the virus’s origin, neither of which have anything to do with whether the lab leak theory is plausible:

> Seriously considering this shocking, ill-founded accusation serves to further undermine the autonomy and academic freedom of researchers around the world who work in highly specialized fields.  
>  
> …  
>  
> Attempting to shift the blame onto the very scientists who have been instrumental in understanding and combating the virus is a tactic straight out of [Operation Himmler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation%5FHimmler?ref=gabestein.com), and must be opposed by the entire scientific community in full force.

Both of these are valid fears, but trying to stop them from coming to fruition by shaming anyone who dares to “seriously consider” the lab leak theory is unlikely to work. In fact, it has likely already backfired. Many of the researchers I work with are loathe to admit in public that they consider the lab leak theory [plausible enough to investigate](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/health/wuhan-coronavirus-lab-leak.html?ref=gabestein.com), precisely because they fear facing the kind of backlash Wade received. As a result, a pseudo-[data void](https://datasociety.net/library/data-voids/?ref=gabestein.com) has formed around the theory, creating an information environment where skeptics of the global consensus seeking more information about the lab leak theory can find only shame-inducing pushback like Siegel’s, or true conspiracy theories like the infamous [Yan report](https://rapidreviewscovid19.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/r94z275c/release/2?ref=gabestein.com).

Study after study [has found](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-twitters-fact-check-of-trump-might-not-be-enough-to-combat-misinformation/?ref=gabestein.com) that fact-checking based in challenging and shaming belief-holders doesn’t work. Which means that when faced with an information environment that won’t even take their ideas seriously, skeptics are likely to turn to conspiracy theorists for answers rather than scientists.

At times, it’s hard to blame them. By being so vociferously opposed even to entertaining skepticism, Siegel likely unintentionally reinforced the skeptics’ leanings. Just one day after his first article was published, one of the strongest arguments against the lab leak theory, that no lab workers were infected by the virus, was [called into question](https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/25/politics/wuhan-lab-covid-origin-theory/index.html?ref=gabestein.com) by the U.S. government, prompting President Biden’s renewed investigation into its origins. In [another article](https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2021/06/03/the-wuhan-lab-leak-hypothesis-is-a-conspiracy-theory-not-science/?sh=77e4134fdd8c&ref=gabestein.com) published today that again pejoratively labels any interest in lab leaks conspiracy-mongering, Siegel sloppily dismisses the news of the possible infections as not contributing to the science, despite having used the argument himself a week ago.

Ironically, events like these that drive skeptics further to the fringes can be far more dangerous to science than entertaining speculation of far-fetched theories. Conspiracy theorists often do have the ulterior motives Siegel fears, whereas scientists at least have the opportunity to explain the value of gain-of-function experiments and how even in the extremely unlikely event of a lab leak, it almost certainly would have been inadvertent rather than nefarious.

Well-meaning science communicators must start believing the research about their own field and stop falling into the trap of thinking they can keep conspiracies from spreading by shaming away inquiry entirely. At best, doing so creates data voids that can drive skeptics further to the fringes. At worst, the tactic risks strengthening the overarching conspiracy theory behind science denialism, that scientists manipulate the public by [suppressing dissent](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2897118/?ref=gabestein.com).

Instead, communicators should look to [inoculation theory](https://theconversation.com/inoculation-theory-using-misinformation-to-fight-misinformation-77545?ref=gabestein.com) and similar, well-researched methodologies. Rather than trying to shame skeptics, these methodologies take their ideas seriously and use their natural curiosity to teach the differences between true scientific inquiry and the manipulative tactics conspiracists use. Taking a more inclusive, proactive, and research-driven approach isn’t just more likely to be effective at combatting individual conspiracies, it can also fight back against the more systemic threats Siegel fears by introducing skeptics to the messy reality of science rather than trying to obscure it behind overly certain conclusions.
### Minding the gap
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/dr8z8l3s/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:34.000Z
Pardis Mahdavi’s new book *Hyphen* gets the [Paris Review treatment](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/05/27/new-yorks-hyphenated-history/?ref=gabestein.com) in the form of an excerpt on New York’s lost punctuation mark. Anyone who’s been to the New-York Historical Society building has probably wondered about the grammatical oddity embedded in its facade. It turns out that the story behind its absence in modern renderings of the city and state’s name is a rather sordid one:

> What Curran either didn’t know, or wanted to erase, was the fact that up until the late 1890s, cities like “New-York” and “New-Jersey” were usually hyphenated to be consistent with other phrases that had both a noun and an adjective. In 1804, when the “New-York Historical Society” was founded, therefore, hyphenation was de rigueur. The practice of hyphenating New York was adhered to in books and newspapers, and adopted by other states. Even the *New York Times* featured a masthead written as *The New*–*York Times* until the late 1890s.  
>  
> It was only when the pejorative phrasing of “hyphenated Americans” came into vogue in the 1890s, emboldened by Roosevelt’s anti-hyphen speech, that the pressure for the hyphen’s erasure came to pass.

The tale serves as a perfect example of the paradoxical silliness and power of culture wars. A buck and a quarter later, the turn-of-the-century war on punctuation seems almost absurd. In time, the hyphen seems to have won. Today’s political and cultural discourse readily acknowledges the complexity and diversity of Americans, with enough hyphens to make a Bull Moose sputter.

At the same time, the campaign was successful not only in changing the names of thousands of places throughout the country by removing the hyphen (and, given the topic of the book, likely much more), but in partially erasing itself. No one stares at the gap between a New York ‘w’ and ‘Y’ and wonders what used to be there. And few look at the dash that still graces the Historical Society’s building and suspect a legacy of racism and xenophobia.

There’s no special insight here, other than a helpful reminder for us all to be as attentive to absence as we are to presence. The scales are very different, but the centennial of the [nearly unremembered](https://apnews.com/article/tulsa-racial-injustice-race-and-ethnicity-fc9c5f49f5be1d14a5a6f8321b210239?ref=gabestein.com) Tulsa Massacre and the recent attempts to forget what happened on January 6, 2021 are poignant examples of the power of erasure to remove from history not just a chosen target, but knowledge of the fact that they ever existed in the first place.
### Bread, beer, and the state
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/259pg6uv/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:34.000Z
*The Atlantic’s* latest issue features[a new piece](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/america-drinking-alone-problem/619017/?ref=gabestein.com) that explores the biology, history, and anthropology of why we drink (the headline, unfortunately, both over- and under-sells a fascinating piece). Buried about halfway in is this tantalizing new bit of speculation about the provenance of fermentation that, for this bread nerd, anyway, could easily be the subject of its own article:

> Which came first, the bread or the beer? For a long time, most archaeologists assumed that hunger for bread was the thing that got people to settle down and cooperate and have themselves an agricultural revolution. In this version of events, the discovery of brewing came later—an unexpected bonus. But lately, more scholars have started to take seriously the possibility that beer brought us together. (Though *beer* may not be quite the word. Prehistoric alcohol would have been more like a fermented soup of whatever was growing nearby.)  
>  
> For the past 25 years, archaeologists have been working to uncover the ruins of Göbekli Tepe, a temple in eastern Turkey. It dates to about 10,000 B.C.—making it about twice as old as Stonehenge. It is made of enormous slabs of rock that would have required hundreds of people to haul from a nearby quarry. As far as archaeologists can tell, no one lived there. No one farmed there. What people did there was party. “The remains of what appear to be brewing vats, combined with images of festivals and dancing, suggest that people were gathering in groups, fermenting grain or grapes,” Slingerland writes, “and then getting truly hammered.”

I’m no food historian nor anthropologist, but I have been baking with sourdough for 6 years, threw a birthday party where I taught friends how to bake, and, unsurprisingly, am quite into the science and history of the craft. My favorite pet theory: sourdough starters, which [appear to](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/11/12/665655220/sourdough-hands-how-bakers-and-bread-are-a-microbial-match?ref=gabestein.com#:~:text=And%20the%20most%20common%20yeasts,in%20particular%20on%20the%20hands.) colonize bakers’ hands as much as bakers colonize them, somehow form symbiotic relationships with their cultivators that result in silly practices like the earnest naming of sourdough cultures.

Like most, I’ve always assumed that bread came first. After all, calories are essential for staying alive; alcohol is not, and with all of its negative effects on our bodies and minds, seems like a far more dangerous way of ingesting carbohydrates than eating aerobically fermented grains, which feature more nutrition and no ethanol. From this assumption also follows the dominant narrative about the agricultural revolution: that the caloric efficiency of cereals caused the species to settle down in larger communities dedicated to domesticating and cultivating grains, necessitating the state and its political apparatuses.

Except that that dominant narrative is also increasingly being challenged. In his brilliant book *Against the Grain*, Yale political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott [convincingly argues](https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2017/10/30/book-review-against-the-grain-by-james-c-scott/?ref=gabestein.com#:~:text=Against%20the%20Grain%20focuses%20on,specialisation%20%28along%20with%20stratification%29.) that the straight line of progress from agriculture to modernity was anything but. In fact, according to Scott, humans achieved many of the benefits we attribute to the organizational powers of the state — sedentism, plant and animal domestication, leisure time, etc. — well before the development of the state. When the state did arise, he argues, it did so not by offering benefits over the status quo, but by using the unique features of cereal grains — which must be harvested at predictable times of the year and can be stored after harvest for long periods of time — to collect taxes, thus imposing its will on otherwise self-sufficient populations and gradually forcing them to become reliant on it. This imposition, Scott argues, came at a considerable cost: worse nutrition, less leisure time, rampant disease, wealth inequality, and so on. In fact, Scott [argues](https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/11/22/16649038/civilization-progress-humanity-history-technology?ref=gabestein.com) that for most of us, life under the state has only improved upon life before it only thanks to the medical and technological advances of the last 200 years.

Substitute beer for bread, though, and the story potentially changes quite a bit. It seems possible that, rather than being coerced by the state into believing they needed its organizational structures for sustenance, our long-ago ancestors may have traded their relative freedom in pre-state societies for the deeper social ties that living in larger, more communal settings affords. Or perhaps the coercive state arose more naturally around the desire to be social rather than being an opportunistic outgrowth of cultivating grain for food.

That possibility doesn’t make Scott’s point about the path of modernity any less interesting or vital to understand, or his conclusion about the relative poverty of state-organized life any less valid. But it does suggest that, at least where grain and alcohol are concerned, the story of our species’ paradoxical tendencies towards socialization and self-destruction is more complex than anyone has yet understood.
### Rugged individualism vs. privacy
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/l1go3ect/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:34.000Z
The theme of the week continues in this [important piece](https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/05/25/1025297/collective-data-rights-big-tech-privacy/?ref=gabestein.com) on data privacy from the MIT Tech Review:

> [Individuals](https://www.ft.com/video/0685a4ba-7b0b-442b-b38e-3f73101a6943?ref=gabestein.com) should not have to fight for their data privacy rights and be responsible for every consequence of their digital actions. Consider an analogy: people have a right to safe drinking water, but they aren’t urged to exercise that right by checking the quality of the water with a pipette every time they have a drink at the tap. Instead, regulatory agencies act on everyone’s behalf to ensure that all our water is safe. The same must be done for digital privacy: it isn’t something the average user is, or should be expected to be, personally competent to protect.

The question of what individuals should be expected to do, and what can only be accomplished via collective action, pervades nearly every important question of our time, from pandemic recovery to labor practices to climate change and beyond.

In the last 14 months, we’ve seen the limits of America’s addiction to individualism laid bare in our disastrous response to the coronavirus pandemic that focused mostly on convincing individuals to comply with confusing mask and travel regulations rather than sweeping government responses. We’ve also seen the promise of collective action, both in civil society and in government, in the form of the George Floyd protests last summer and the pandemic recovery bill, latter of which has helped the United States [lead the world’s economic recovery](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/04/04/us-economy-global-recovery/?ref=gabestein.com).

I wouldn’t say I’m particularly optimistic about the future, but perhaps there is some hope to be had that the pandemic has chipped away some at the poisonous “small government” philosophy that has dominated the last 50 years of political discourse. A renewed interest in what government can do, as opposed to what it can’t, is borne out in both [opinion polling](https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/politics-and-elections/reports/2021/03/10/496744/americans-want-federal-government-help-people-need/?ref=gabestein.com) and the fact that the largest spending bill in the country’s history is also [one of the most popular](https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2021/3/9/voters-support-american-rescue-plan-25pjp?ref=gabestein.com) pieces of legislation of all time.

Whether, and how, a renewed public interest in government action will translate to regulation in the tech sphere remains to be seen. But if one thing is clear, it’s that only government regulation has the power to reign in tech companies and protect user privacy, particularly when it comes to Facebook. Almost nothing — not “quit Facebook” movements on the user side or even [multi-billion dollar boycotts](https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/26/tech/facebook-boycott/index.html?ref=gabestein.com) on the advertiser side — has lead to a meaningful change in the company’s policies or revenue.
### Venture, crypto, and the better returns trap
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/ffatrfdw/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T12:51:07.000Z
Everyone on the planet seems to be spending their free time chasing better returns right now. I know because, thanks to the financial hygiene practices my parents taught me growing up, I tend to be one of the people my friends turn to for financial advice.

There’s only one thing friends want advice on right now: whether I think the hot new investment vehicle that just hit their inbox is crazy or worth their consideration.

It’s not hard to understand why everyone is obsessed with returns:

The Venture Capital cult has somehow convinced nearly everyone I know that so-called linear businesses, the ones that generate solid profits year after year and [have powered](https://www.thebalance.com/rule-of-thumb-for-average-stock-market-return-5115017?ref=gabestein.com#:~:text=Key%20Takeaways,is%20only%20a%20starting%20place.) steady 10% average stock market returns for the last century, are somehow worthless. As they watch their friends exit companies with multi-million dollar payouts and hear rumors of overnight crypto millionaires, they start to believe that they need to have access to those types returns, or risk falling behind.

Here’s my answer: just like Venture Capital’s pursuit of 10x returns, that way of thinking is a destructive trap. Money is fundamentally incompatible with mindfulness, because it is, by definition, a store of future value. Anytime you’re thinking about finances, you’re not living in the present. If you are lucky and privileged enough to afford not to think about money, you should be willing to pay for the privilege.

For me, the bright-line has always been that I don’t want managing my money to become a job in and of itself. I already have a full-time job that pays me well enough not to have to think much about money, and I’m more than willing to sacrifice some better returns for the ability to take some breaks from capitalism.

Cryptocurrencies and blockchains may be the ultimate example of the returns trap, both at the institutional and individual level. Not only are many of them [literal scams](https://twitter.com/CryptoWhale/status/1396100822245777408?ref=gabestein.com) disguised as replacements for systems — currency, contracts — [that aren’t broken](https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html?ref=gabestein.com), but they are designed to distribute the work of keeping money functioning from a few trusted actors to everyone.

Here’s a post from a crypto enthusiast earnestly arguing that to scale properly, “it's crucially important for regular users to be able to run a node, and to have a culture where running nodes is a common activity.” In other words, the price of achieving the promised, [but rarely achieved](https://money.com/make-money-trading-crypto-difficulty/?ref=gabestein.com), returns of crypto is to do the work not just of an investor, already labor [workers didn’t need to perform in the days of pensions](https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattcarey/2017/06/05/5-ways-a-401k-isnt-as-good-as-a-pension/?sh=6412d1fa567f&ref=gabestein.com), but of a bank. Thanks, but I’ll keep my day job and my 10% returns.[1](#fn-0-bottom)

### Footnotes

1. Disclosure: To be able to speak knowledgeably about crypto to my friends who asked about it, I bought $1,000 of BTC and $1,000 Ethereum, and transferred \~$700 of Stellar Lumens that had been given to me in a Keybase drop to ETH, on February 14, 2021\. In the process, I accidentally gave myself a $126 tax bill. As of publication, as if to prove my point, that stake is worth $3,044, after reaching a peak of $5,258 on May 11, 2021\. [↵](#fn-0-inline)
### Influencer marketing, fascism, and the hypernormalization of culture
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/ku45zwdn/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:34.000Z
The latest *Harper’s* has [bad news](https://harpers.org/archive/2021/06/tiktok-house-collab-house-the-anxiety-of-influencers/?ref=gabestein.com) for those of us who decided to pursue conventional career paths:

> Whereas the average college grad rakes in $50,000 a year, an influencer with more than a million followers could net that much in a month. And at a moment when virtually every other industry is shrinking if not flatlining, the influencer marketing industry is projected to be worth $15 billion by 2022 and currently accounts for roughly 15 percent of the total global ad spend.

The story, which follows an English professor’s mid-2020 visit to a TikTok “collab house,” where influencers are given free room and board in exchange for making content for brands, covers a surprising amount of territory, from economics to the diminishing role of the academy to politics.

One particular section stands out, a discussion about whether these young influencers have any kind of real power. The boys are obviously (if not consciously) conflicted, in one breath asserting that the government is afraid of the voice and influence TikTok gives them, and in another explaining that they never get involved in political discussions, lest engaging in controversial topics make them less attractive to the brands who pay their bills.

The piece’s author, University of Wisconsin professor Barret Swanson, reads this cognitive dissonance against Walter Benjamin’s 1935 book *The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction*, a tome that is shockingly relevant some 85 years later.

> Benjamin suggests that fascistic governments aim to maintain the status quo by providing citizens with the means to express themselves aesthetically without reforming their lives materially. Thus the aforementioned government that Brandon thinks TikTokers have scared shitless actually, as Benjamin writes, “sees its salvation in granting expression to the masses—but on no account granting them rights.”

This reading feels mostly right, but the metaphor may be just a bit off. In this case, the fascistic governments in question aren’t nation-states (indeed, one of the only things our own government [can agree on](https://hbr.org/2020/12/what-will-tech-regulation-look-like-in-the-biden-era?ref=gabestein.com) is that big tech needs to be regulated), but the tech companies themselves.

As I [argued way back in 2017](https://www.gabestein.com/pub/i4uj0ehr/release/1#facebook-nation), ad-tech companies operate a lot like fascist regimes, both in the way they organize and motivate their employees, and in the way they police their platforms and users. They’ve built companies of enormous economic value based on the perception that, by spending money on their platforms, brands can change the behavior of users. Influencers, as the very name implies, are merely the latest, and most direct, way that platforms are keeping that perception afloat.

The youths Swanson interviews demonstrably do have the ability to influence behavior, often en masse. Successful TikTok videos can quickly become memetic, spawning not just tens of millions of views, but thousands of copycats and news stories. And this has real cultural power. Or at least, companies large and small are betting it does. As Swanson notes at the beginning of the article, brands are willing to spend increasingly large amounts of their ad budgets to harness this potential power.

And yet, as a *Freakonomics* episode from last year explored, there’s [not a lot of good evidence](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-2/?ref=gabestein.com) that digital advertising, and even [advertising as a whole](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-1/?ref=gabestein.com), is particularly effective at changing behavior. At best, its influence on consumer behavior appears to be grossly exaggerated.

How can this be true, when at the same time it’s clear that social media platforms do have a huge impact on global life and culture? There are several likely explanations, but I believe Benjamin has the simplest and most impactful answer. Like the fascist regimes of his day, social media platforms have tailored their expression spaces to operate on purely aesthetic levels, on their terms. Within the carefully designed confines of the platforms, memes can go insanely viral and generate enormous amounts of attention, at least according to the metrics that the platforms also invented (and in some cases, [inflate](https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/facebook-online-video-pivot-metrics-false.html?ref=gabestein.com)). This energy can and does spill over into other media spaces like TV, but once it does, it usually loses its momentum. It simply cannot survive contact with more material mediums.

Despite that crucial shortcoming and lack of real evidence, the idea that social platforms can influence behavior beyond their own boundaries has become reality to an ad industry already built on shaky epistemological ground. And digital ad platforms all-too-willingly feed this delusion because they have trillions of dollars at stake in maintaining the status quo.

Tim Hwang, a former Google employee who’s currently a research fellow at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University, likens it to a financial bubble in Freakonomics:

> One of my favorite arguments that people are using right now is, “Companies wouldn’t put money into this if it didn’t work. So, isn’t that proof that the ads actually work?”   
>  
> Which is kind of this crazy circular mind maze, if you think about it. But I do think that, again, this is very parallel to the kinds of psychology that have driven market bubbles in the past.

Because the same illogic applies to both everyday users and customers of social media, I believe that the platforms have gone beyond creating a bubble, achieving a sort of “hypernormalisation.” [Coined by](https://books.google.com/books?id=628u2gG4XXcC&pg=PA213&ref=gabestein.com#v=onepage&q&f=false) anthropologist Alexei Yurchak to describe the dissonance of living through the collapse of the Soviet Union and [extended by](https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/12/06/the-antidote-to-civilisational-collapse?ref=gabestein.com) BBC documentarian Adam Curtis, hypernormalisation is the self-fulfilling prophecy of accepting fakeness as normal for long enough that the facsimile becomes the reality:

> There is a sense of everything being slightly unreal; that you fight a war that seems to cost you nothing and it has no consequences at home; that money seems to grow on trees; that goods come from China and don’t seem to cost you anything; that phones make you feel liberated but that maybe they’re manipulating you but you’re not quite sure. It’s all slightly odd and slightly corrupt.

Or, as Swanson puts it so eloquently in *Harper’s*:

> The news has just broken that Oracle, an Austin-based company, was the final bidder for TikTok, ensuring that the app will continue to be available in the United States. Democracy is dying, the university is crumbling, and ash is raining from the sky. But for now, at least, the platform and the entire ecosystem it spawned has been saved. “To the best house ever!” the kids shout, and as their glasses begin clinking, my mind goes strangely quiet.

Who can really blame them? Somewhere along the line, what started as a way to find information, keep in touch with people and meet new ones, and share ideas became something more. Friendships, culture, movements, and careers blossomed from it. But so did hatred, violence, and destabilization. And yet, like quantifying the impact of advertising, making the causal link between culture online and behavior offline is notoriously difficult. Sure, the January 6 insurrectionists organized much of their activities on Facebook, and right-wing messaging on the platform almost certainly had an effect on their mistaken belief that the election was rigged. But the actual violence occurred on the ground, well away from the platform, and was stoked not by digital content but by an in-person rally by the then-President of the United States.

The result is that we all know that the lives we live on social media have become slightly odd and corrupt. We know that they are both extremely important within their self-contained aesthetic spaces and essentially meaningless beyond them. And yet, like bureaucrats in the last days of the Soviet Union, because we can no longer imagine life without them — because many of us make our living off of them (or believe we do) — we pretend that everything is fine.
### The Diamond Age arrives?
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/kgdbpkjz/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T12:50:41.000Z
Here’s a lovely piece in [the New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-computers-are-getting-better-at-writing/amp?ref=gabestein.com)[1](#fn-0-bottom) about Open AI, GPT-3 and the latest advances in AI writing. The tool it covers, Sudowrite, produces some amazing results, like an alternate second paragraph to *The Metamorphosis* that reads like something Kafka could have easily written and left on the cutting room floor.

The discussion of the high end of potential use-cases for the technology is predictably fun, asking what it means, philosophically, for AI to write after it generates a truly sublime extension of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s *Kubla Khan*:

> But what is writing this? *Who* is writing this? In a sense, Coleridge wrote it. He articulated the pathways of its manufacture. I suppose that I could be the author insofar as I selected the passage and pressed the button. Or, thinking broadly, the author of this passage is the entire corpus of human language processed through GPT-3.

For his part, Sudowrite cofounder Amit Gupta seems to have already answered the question with an awesome prediction that implies the tool might be able to help you access parts of your own creative subconscious:

> “I see a future where it gets super more sophisticated and it helps you realize ideas that you couldn’t realize easily on your own.”

The rest of the article speculates about the technology in a similar vein, waxing poetic about the potential for human-computer cyborg teams to generate credible new works “by” Austen or Wodehouse.

My mind goes in a slightly different direction, though, to the lower-end potential uses of the technology. I couldn’t help being reminded of Neal Stephenson’s *The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer,* the 1992 steampunk classic that [apparently inspired the Kindle](https://medium.com/message/the-kindle-wink-4f61cd5c84c5?ref=gabestein.com) and features a children’s book that adapts fantasy storytelling tropes to a child’s life in real-time, helping them develop intellectually and socially.

What Sudowrite can do today is not very far at all from the capabilities that Stephenson described, and, when paired with rapidly advancing [AI animation generation tools](https://www.fastcompany.com/3020128/type-your-own-animated-movie-with-this-crazy-software?ref=gabestein.com), could quite plausibly lead to a new industry of personalized children’s entertainment, designed to enrich their lives as dictated by their parents.

As with every technology, there’s a potential dark side, too. James Bridle’s [deep dive](https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2?ref=gabestein.com) into the bizarre and terrifying world of children’s YouTube describes a nightmare where the platform’s ad-based business model, paired with its autoplay feature and notoriously bad recommendation engine and cheap off-shored animation has created a market for children’s videos that are generated seemingly at random by recombining tropes from popular videos like Surprise Egg.

Far from enriching their lives like envisioned in *The Diamond Age*, Bridle worries that the platform is being used to “systematically frighten, traumatise, and abuse children, automatically and at scale.”

That’s my worry, too, about getting caught up in the excitement surrounding tools like Sudowrite and GPT-3\. Yes, the technology is truly incredible and begs many fascinating philosophical questions. And it may very well advance the art of writing and storytelling-driven mediums to new heights. But when paired with the web’s dominant business models, the results of the low end of the technologies could be disastrous. Indeed, they already are, with the much less sophisticated [infinite monkey-style](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite%5Fmonkey%5Ftheorem?ref=gabestein.com) “AI” that seems to be generating millions of creepy kids videos to earn a couple of cents per view.

What happens when those videos become intimately personalized, and as subtle and well written as a Stephenson novel? We’ll find out.

### Footnotes

1. Thanks to my friend Jenny for sending it along! [↵](#fn-0-inline)
### Resisting impact algorithms in academic publishing models
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/x5ng8rb1/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:34.000Z
One of the projects I work on, [DocMaps](https://docmaps.knowledgefutures.org/?ref=gabestein.com), concerns modeling peer review (and other editorial processes) in machine-readable ways so that services like preprint servers can display information about reviews to readers. It’s all part of a broader effort to move away from the inefficient and inequitable journal review model to what we call [Community Publishing](https://communitypublishing.pubpub.org/?ref=gabestein.com), (also known as [Publish, Review, Curate](https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000116&ref=gabestein.com) \[PRC\]).

The current model, wherein authors submit a paper to one journal, wait months for feedback, and then receive a binary accept/reject decision, is designed to serve the business models of journals, rather than the needs of science. It has myriad shortcomings for scientists and society, all described in the PRC paper above. It is, however, very good for large publishing companies, which are increasingly [becoming data surveillance](https://commonplace.knowledgefutures.org/pub/kp81ylos/release/5?ref=gabestein.com) companies in the mold of Amazon, Netflix, and especially Facebook.

In the Community Publishing model, authors post their work openly, community members ranging from individuals to review companies evaluate the work (if they decide it needs to be evaluated! Not all work does), and curators, ranging from ad-hoc reading groups to journalists to societies to what we think of today as journals, evaluate the evaluations and decide that a set of them meet their standards for qualifying the work as impactful for their purposes. This model has numerous benefits, including that different communities can decide for themselves both how to evaluate work and what counts as impactful based on their needs.

We’re commonly asked how this model will avoid being captured by “algorithms,” meaning the same surveillance capital business models that are busy [undermining democracy](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/03/harvard-professor-says-surveillance-capitalism-is-undermining-democracy/?ref=gabestein.com) and being pursued by the large academic publishing giants. Of course, no technology can ever fully avoid anything, and it would be naive to expect it to. But technology can be designed with core values that make it resistant to the knowledge and power concentration currently playing out in multiple tech-disrupted industries.

We’re attracted to Community Publishing models because of the way they center community needs when considering both evaluation and impact measurement. And we’re working on building DocMaps with the same principles in mind. Rather than trying to force everyone to model their process in a single way, we provide a framework, developed with community input, that allows different communities to model their processes as they see fit. Your job as the evaluator is to model your evaluation process in the way that best communicates the value it adds to the original publication. Your job as the curator is to decide what about the processes you consume you believe are valuable for your purposes, and how to communicate that value to the readers you serve.

It’s not as easy as reducing everything to a [single field-normalized score](https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/article/introducing-the-journal-citation-indicator-a-new-field-normalized-measurement-of-journal-citation-impact/?ref=gabestein.com), and that’s exactly the point. The problem with impact evaluation and recommendation algorithms isn’t that they exist, but that when they dominate, they can force everyone to conform to the shape they require for their needs, usually profit-driven, rather than adapting to shapes developed for community needs, usually value-driven. In a world with multiple algorithms processing multiple shapes, there’s much less profit-motivated coercion, and much more value in analyzing impact in the first place.
### The black holes are leaking
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/8044yqwe/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:34.000Z
I love this bit from [Quanta magazine’s article](https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-black-hole-information-paradox-comes-to-an-end-20201029/?ref=gabestein.com) on the latest breakthroughs in the black hole information paradox:

> But almost everyone appears to agree on one thing. In some way or other, space-time itself seems to fall apart at a black hole, implying that space-time is not the root level of reality but an emergent structure from something deeper.

It’s not even about the breakthrough, but about why we keep looking for them in the first place: we’re not sure what reality even is. I try to remember that when I get worked up about the state of American democracy, or issues at work, or whatever it might be, to put things in perspective. And then I wish that other people would join me in having a little perspective.

At the same time some of us are finally starting to get to the bottom of what, exactly, reality is, others of us are busy arguing about who should be able to afford to eat and live in peace. I dream of a *Network* moment that will never come to pass where someone finally breaks through the chaos and noise and says, “damn all this petty nonsense, the real conspiracy is happening inside the black holes,” and Q drops are replaced with furious arguments over the latest preprint drops on arxiv.

Of course, the far more likely scenario is the one Stewart Lee [envisioned](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5vzbk0?ref=gabestein.com) in his brilliant, bizarre reductio ad absurdum meditation that on the surface is about immigration, but really tackles conservative thought as a whole. “Reality is too full,” he begins, arguing that life was better when there was an infinite void and you didn’t have to lock your house (because it didn’t exist).

But now we actually know who to blame for reality being too full. The damn black holes are leaking!
### Airbnb and the future of work and leisure
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/airbnb-future-work/
Last updated: 2025-06-25T12:49:49.000Z
Per [Protocol](https://www.protocol.com/airbnb-future-of-travel?ref=gabestein.com), Airbnb[1](#fn-0-bottom) is making some big bets on the future of travel:

> In general, Airbnb doesn't seem to expect a return to pre-pandemic life once everyone is vaccinated and life returns to normal. Instead it seems to expect some key trends to continue, like remote work and long-term stays. Those things have helped keep Airbnb afloat during the pandemic, and have become a core part of the platform going forward.

As the article mentions, there’s nothing new here, per se, more a gradual increase in the already well-documented (and unfortunately named) trend of “[bleisure](http://www.bbc.com/storyworks/capital/bleisure-bound/bleisure-travel-trend?ref=gabestein.com)” travel. And who doesn’t appreciate getting the chance to experience the local scenery during a work trip? Except I wonder if there’s something more insidious afoot.

> "The lines between travel, living and working are blurring," Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said.

I’ve been working almost exclusively remotely for the last 8 years, and although there are numerous benefits, including the flexibility of being able to work from distant locales, there are big disadvantages, too. One of the major ones is the tendency to overwork, which scores of workers [learned the hard way](https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-news/pages/remote-employees-are-working-longer-than-before.aspx?ref=gabestein.com) this last year. It’s taken me years to build the discipline to establish durable, healthy work-from-home routines, which requires the opposite of blurring lines. In fact, for me it requires erecting not just lines, but walls — physical and temporal — around the space-time where I do my work.

Then there’s this bit from the Protocol article, which is even more worrisome:

> As more companies let employees work from anywhere, some travelers might switch from taking two vacations a year to just working from somewhere new for a few months.

Americans famously take very little vacation despite the [wealth of evidence](https://hbr.org/2016/07/the-data-driven-case-for-vacation?ref=gabestein.com) that it’s beneficial for employer and employee alike. The slippery idea that working from someplace else could count as a vacation ought to be vigorously resisted from the start.

The description of Airbnb’s vision of the future reminds me all too much of Cal Newport’s [ongoing](https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/was-e-mail-a-mistake?ref=gabestein.com) [analysis](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/slack-is-the-right-tool-for-the-wrong-way-to-work?ref=gabestein.com) of [office](https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/e-mail-is-making-us-miserable?ref=gabestein.com) tools, wherein he argues that the digital revolution, far from eliminating “unnecessary” (read: undervalued) work via efficiency, actually just placed it at the feet of fewer and fewer workers. Before widespread workplace digitization, he argues not-unconvincingly, the labor of scheduling, writing and responding to memos, taking calls, and so on was seen as work in its own right. Now, employers expect most individual knowledge workers to take on all of that cognitive overhead and produce the main output that they’re being paid for. And that pay? [No more than ever](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/?ref=gabestein.com), in real terms, even as productivity has, no wonder, shot through the roof.

If that’s what happened when we eliminated an entire class of office workers and replaced them with computers, is it so surprising to think that vacation might be the logical next thing to go when technology eliminates the office itself? After all, if you don’t need to be anywhere in particular to put in a days’ work, why not answer a few emails and take a quick call from the beach? You can still go to that show tonight and sleep in. After all, you’re on vacation!

Note that Chesky’s words aren’t actually *vacation*, living, and working, but *travel*, living, and working. Your annual holiday is already on its way to join the switchboard operator in irrelevance.

And if life, work, and ~~vacation~~ — excuse me, travel — are all becoming intertwined, don’t expect it to stop there. From the company that [brought you](https://www.epi.org/publication/the-economic-costs-and-benefits-of-airbnb-no-reason-for-local-policymakers-to-let-airbnb-bypass-tax-or-regulatory-obligations/?ref=gabestein.com) decreased tax revenues, housing shortages, rent increases, and higher food costs, here’s the thought the Protocol article leaves us with when it comes to Airbnb’s next disruption:

> What WeWork wants to do for offices — unbundle them, and simplify the process of getting and using them — Airbnb wants to do for homes. It's not just out to get the Hyatts and Hiltons of the world anymore. It's coming for the one-year leases and the mortgage payments too.

### Footnotes

1. Disclosure: my wife works in travel marketing for Atlas Obscura, which received investment from Airbnb. Neither of us own individual stock or have material interest in Airbnb, but their investment did have a positive material impact on my life. [↵](#fn-0-inline)
### Getting Started With Sourdough
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/9gjxdi7w/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:29.000Z
When people talk about sourdough baking, they’re typically referring to baking using a homemade (some folks will call it a “natural”) leavening agent — a starter — instead of store-bought yeast. It’s called sourdough baking because homemade starters produce acid as a byproduct of fermentation, which can give your treats a unique sour flavor. But sourdough baking doesn’t have to taste sour - in fact, you can use the technique for all kinds of sweet and savory treats.

In this guide, written for all my friends and family who have asked for help getting started now that they have too much time on their hands and not enough yeast, I’ll share everything I’ve learned the hard way about sourdough baking over the last 4 years. I don’t mean for that to sound scary, though. People like to talk as if sourdough baking is a complex alchemy that takes years to learn. In truth, there are just a few new concepts that take a little getting used to. Your first couple of attempts may not turn out great, and you may need some troubleshooting. But after a few tries, you’ll be able to churning out loaves that rival anything you can get at a grocery store.

The guide is meant to be self-contained and mostly focuses on the basic methods I use at home. But because a number of folks who have asked have children who are also at home, I’ve included sections called Starter Science that go into some of the physics, chemistry and microbiology of sourdough baking. You can safely skip these sections if you just want to get to baking. But if you do want a way to engage your kids in some learning during this weird time, baking is a terrific way to learn some serious science while making delicious treats. I’m not a scientist, though, so do treat my writing as what it is — a best effort by an amateur — and feel free to have your kids do their own research and fact-check me using the discussion feature. I’ve tried to cite sources wherever I can.

Lastly, I would be lying if I told you I learned anything about baking on my own. I still frequently rely on a host of sources, including friends, books, and especially communities of online enthusiasts. So, where appropriate, I’ll link out to other folks whose work helped me learn and level up.

# Special Offer: Text-based troubleshooting

I love helping people learn sourdough baking, and have successfully coached a few people through some early challenges via text. I’m happy to do it any time, but thrilled now to have an excuse to connect with people and bring something fun into my day. So if you run into any issues or have questions, please feel free to text me a photo and ask for help.

# Equipment You’ll Knead

You can probably do just fine with things you have at your house. I’ve also included an advanced section that includes some of my favorite specialized gear.

- Two non-metal containers with sealable lids, for your starter (canning jars, takeout soup containers, etc. work great)
- A large mixing bowl
- A medium sized non-metal bowl, for proofing
- A dish towel that doesn’t shed or pill, for proofing
- A stiff spatula or bench scraper, for shaping
- A sharp knife, for scoring
- A serrated bread knife
- A cutting board

## Advanced

- A plastic bench scraper. If you buy just one thing, buy this. It makes working with dough of all kinds easier, and I also like to use it to clear kitchen surfaces of crumbs.
- A Dutch oven. If you buy a second thing, buy this. You can do just fine baking on a sheet, but baking your bread in cast iron will greatly improved the texture of your crust. Lodge makes an inexpensive combo cooker that can be used for this purpose, will last you a lifetime, and also give you two new useful pans.
- A banneton, or proofing basket. You can do just fine with a flour-covered towel in a mixing bowl, but this makes the loaves more consistently shaped and the cleaning load lighter.
- A lame, for scoring. You don’t need this at all. But if you want to be the type of person who has a special tool just for scoring, by all means.

## Starter Science

For containers that are going to be holding your dough for extended periods of time, I’ve specified that they should be non-metal. This is because metal can react with …

# Ingredients

- White all-purpose flour (I like Bob’s Red Mill, King Arthur Flour, and Trader Joe’s best for their texture and consistency, but any all-purpose will do)
- Whole wheat flour (best to stick with one of the above brands if you can - in my experience, other common brands’ whole wheat can have an unpleasant texture)
- Water
- Salt
- Butter, for eating!

## Advanced

- Rye flour, for your starter
- Brown rice flour, for dusting
- Spelt flour

# Getting Startered
### Wanted: Late Capitalist Tech Worker
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/kf1jtsn8/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T23:16:05.000Z
We are seeking a highly motivated and extremely intelligent individual to dig into the minutiae of a tiny, mostly boring problem that we have identified as vital to our business because, at our unfathomable scale, even a minuscule improvement will lead to millions of dollars in extra profit for our stock-compensated executives and investors.

## **Core Responsibilities**

- Quickly learn the ins and outs of your team’s small niche within the organization, knowledge that is completely useless outside the remarkably narrow world of our company’s core business.
- Help your team accomplish its OKRs by driving KPIs such as automating key product lines, reducing FTEs, and securing offshore partnerships without stopping to consider whether our obsession with reducing your output to quantifiable, acronimified metrics is, in part, a tactic to obscure the fact that you will ultimately eliminate your own job.
- Organize numerous meetings with a cross-functional group of key stakeholders, the majority of which will be re-scheduled minutes before or after they are set to begin, and none of which will actually lead to any decisions or discernible progress.
- Without being explicitly instructed, spend 30–40% of your time learning to play the political game behind our supposedly unbiased performance review system that actually determines who climbs the corporate ladder and who gets stuck as a high-level IC.
- Passionately debate the ethical and legal implications of the questionable work you find yourself contributing to before ultimately deciding that helping the company accomplish its lofty mission statement justifies the destruction of your moral compass, even if your work appears to be completely unrelated to that mission.

## **About You**

You will succeed in this position if you have demonstrated an ability to sufficiently sublimate the banality of existence at a company like ours in exchange for perks that create a false sense of stability and progressivism. We have no specific requirements for this role and encourage anyone who believes they could succeed to apply, but other people in this role whom you will talk to as part of the interview process have the following characteristics:

- 5–10 years of experience in the exact role they are currently filling, despite the fact that it has only been in existence for 3 years
- A list of extremely specific technical skills that they appear to have been born with
- An impressive-sounding degree from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, or a very expensive small liberal arts college

## **About Us**

We strive to be the world’s leading company at coercing billions of people into over-paying for our objectively useful, but quite limited, core product with hours of their attention and nearly unlimited access to their personal data. We have succeeded at functionally cornering this market, putting us in a monopolistic position that has allowed us to expand into other, more interesting product areas that we use in our advertising and recruiting material to make potential employees like you more excited about the opportunity of working for us than they should be. Although we theoretically offer employees pathways to much more exciting and impactful jobs than this one, most of them are highly experimental or not revenue-generating and thus are very competitive or tragically underfunded.

We pay competitive salaries for a marketplace that we have artificially constrained via an illegal anti-poaching agreement with our competitors. We offer seemingly incredible but historically quite pedestrian benefits, including the same mediocre healthcare you get anywhere in the U.S., 401(k) matching that is not a pension, daily free meals that are not union-mandated lunch breaks, snack rooms that allow you to take fewer and shorter breaks, unlimited PTO that no one actually uses, exercise and game rooms, and a sense of connection with your coworkers we call culture but is actually just the inevitable result of spending 8–12 hours per day with the same people for years without ever leaving the building during work hours.

*We are an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status. Despite this, roughly 60% of our company is white, 70% male, and we release only vague statements about our efforts to improve our diversity and aggregated employment data to demonstrate progress that obscures the fact that things are worse if you filter our workforce data by role or salary.*
### The National Consensus News Index (NCNI)
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/opyu75xm/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:29.000Z
# **See the Index**

- [Twitter List](https://twitter.com/gabestein/lists/ncni?ref=gabestein.com) (canonical source)
- [Filtered by Paper.li](https://paper.li/gabestein/1519607656?ref=gabestein.com#/)

# **About**

The National Consensus News Index, or NCNI, is a stable index of national and local journalists on Twitter. Inspired by the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the idea is to see if collecting the tweets of a predictable group of top journalists from multiple mediums, political leanings, and geographies can, over time, generate a consensus view of the top national news stories that people from across the political spectrum can turn to and trust for authoritative information about what the nation’s top stories are at any given time.

The components were chosen in an attempt to maximize two competing goals: consensus and diversity (of mediums, political leanings, geographies, and demographics). Like the DJIA, the idea is that over time both the categories and individual components of the index will change to better reflect the American news landscape. Right now, the components are chosen by me, because I created it. If the idea takes off, I’d like to create some kind of independent, self-governing entity to maintain it.

The NCNI is broadly based on [this proposal](https://misinfocon.com/a-prototype-for-stemming-the-flood-of-misinformation-during-breaking-news-events-4310392d05d4?ref=gabestein.com) to create a cooperative “reverse wire” that can combat hoaxes and misinformation on social media, particularly during times of breaking news, by allowing news organizations to add their stories to “consensus” topic pages. Because that idea requires a high degree of coordination among media outlets that is unlikely in the current business environment, this index will serve as a proof of concept of creating consensus news from a diverse array of sources.

Right now, it’s just a Twitter list and a pretty bad Paper.li. In the near future, I’ll build a basic site that includes multiple ways to filter, stream, and share the output of the NCNI, particularly by story, which should make the output far more interesting to browse. I invite others to contribute their ideas for filtering, measuring, and composing the NCNI.

# **How to Help**

- Send feedback on the structure and components of the index by replying to this post or tweeting at me ([@gabestein](https://twitter.com/gabestein?ref=gabestein.com)). I basically made this up on the fly, and I’m sure there are many ways to improve it, particularly when it comes to diversifying voices, sources, and mediums.
- Suggest or build useful ways to quantify the goals or tweet-output of the index.
- Build, apply, or suggest a new filter for the index (let me know on Twitter or in a reply to this post if you do). The raw tweets, while interesting, aren’t particularly useful. I’m interested in coming up with ways to filter the tweets on the index by link, topic, entity, geography, sentiment, authority, medium, etc. Paper.li, which is the first, easiest filter I’ve turned to, is obviously a short-term stop-gap – although the results are intriguing.

# **Current Index Components**

*Last update: Feb 25, 2018*

**(10) Lead anchors from “big 3 + 1” primetime weekday and weekend broadcast news: ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS**

- Jeff Glor, CBS Evening News
- Reena Ninan, CBS Evening News (weekend)
- Elaine Quinjano, CBS Evening News (weekend)
- Lester Holt, NBC Nightly News
- Jose Diaz-Balart, NBC Nightly News (weekend)
- Kate Snow, NBC Nightly News (weekend)
- David Muir, ABC World News Tonight
- Tom Llamas, ABC World News Tonight (weekend)
- Judy Woodruf, PBS NewsHour
- Hari Sreenivasan, PBS NewsHour (weekend)

**(5) Lead anchors from “big five” Sunday morning talk shows: ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CNN**

- Chris Wallace, Fox (no personal account, via show account)
- Jake Tapper, CNN
- George Stephanopoulos, ABC
- Chuck Todd, NBC
- Margaret Brennan, CBS

**(11) Lead anchors from “big 3” afternoon/evening (4pm–11pm EST) weekday cable news: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC (news and politics only, as defined by Wikipedia — no opinion, panel, talk, commentary, “current affairs” style shows)**

- Jake Tapper, CNN (repeat)
- Wolf Blitzer, CNN
- Don Lemon, CNN
- Anderson Cooper, CNN
- Erin Burnett, CNN
- Neil Cavuto, Fox News
- Martha MacCallum, Fox News
- Brett Baier, Fox News
- Ari Melber, MSNBC
- Nicole Wallace, MSNBC
- Chuck Todd, MSNBC (repeat)

**(6) 1 White House correspondent each from NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Politico, Daily Caller, Washington Times**

- Maggie Haberman, NYT
- Philip Rucker, WaPo
- Rebecca Ballhaus, WSJ
- Annie Karni, Politico
- Sagaar Enjeti, Daily Caller
- S.A. Miller, Washington Times

**(6) 1 national correspondent each from NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Politico, Daily Caller, Washington Times**

- Simon Remro, NYT
- Scott Wilson, WaPo
- Shayndi Raice, WSJ
- Cristiano Lima, Politico
- Christian Datoc, Dailey Caller
- Valerie Richardson, Washington Times

**(6) 2 mainstream liberal commentators, of choice**

- Josh Marshall, TPM
- Catherine Rampel, WaPo

**(2) 2 mainstream conservative commentators, of choice**

- Jonah Goldberg, National Review
- Ross Douthat, NYT

**(2) 2 mainstream non-aligned commentators, of choice**

- Noah Smith, Bloomberg View
- Dan Drezner, WaPo

**(1) 1 far left commentator, of choice**

- Seth Ackerman, Jacobin

**(1) 1 far right commentator, of choice**

- Joel Pollack, Twitter

**(1) 1 media critic**

- Brian Stelter, CNN

**(20) 1 anchor/host for one local news station in each of the top 20 DMAs (chosen more or less at random due to lack of Nielsen access)**

- Pat Harvey, CBS NYC
- Robert Kovacik, NBC LA
- Eric Horng, ABC Chicago
- Mike Jerrick, Fox Philladelphia
- Steve Eager, Fox Dallas
- Will Tran, Kron San Francisco
- Liam Martin, CBS Boston
- Justin Farmer, WSB Atlanta
- Pat Lawson, NBC Washington
- Rekha Muddaraj, CBS Houston
- Huel Perkins, Fox Detroit
- Alison Rodriguez, ABC Phoenix
- Gayle Guyardo, NBC Tampa Bay
- Mark Wright, NBC Seattle
- Michelle Tuzzee, ABC Minneapolis
- Lauren Pasterna, CBS Miami
- Tracy McCool, Fox Cleveland
- Kyle Clark, NBC Denver
- Vanessa Echols, ABC Orlando
- Liz Kreutz, ABC Sacramento
### No, Facebook does not just “show people what they want”
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/i4uj0ehr/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:30.000Z
*This started as a [Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/gabestein/status/923884722417225728?ref=gabestein.com) in response to some arguments about Facebook’s responsibility for its effects on society. I’ve expanded the argument here.*

Okay, you want proof that Facebook doesn’t just “show people what they want?” I’ll give it to you. It’s known as clickbait.

I worked at Upworthy, which [invented clickbait](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/upworthy-i-thought-this-website-was-crazy-but-what-happened-next-changed-everything/281472/?ref=gabestein.com). Guess what? Despite the narrative in media circles, most people liked it, by almost every conceivable measure. We have the receipts: people didn’t just click, they spent huge amounts of time with content, shared it, and came back for more. Most people didn’t feel duped or manipulated when they clicked on our stories. If they had, we would have seen it in the form of enormous bounce rates and tiny share rates. We saw the opposite, mostly because our editorial team was very careful about making sure the stories delivered on the promise of the headlines.

But some people, especially people in media circles, hated clickbait. I understand why. The style was and is, frankly, grating. It was also easy to copy, and lots of unscrupulous folks who didn’t care about not being manipulative borrowed the tactic. So, media pundits [spilled](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/11/clickbait-what-is/382545/?ref=gabestein.com) [a lot](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/03/outrage%5Fclickbait%5Fits%5Finternet%5Fdominance%5Fis%5Fabout%5Fto%5Ffade.html?ref=gabestein.com) of [virtual ink](https://www.fastcodesign.com/3028193/upworthys-headlines-are-insufferable-heres-why-you-click-anyway?ref=gabestein.com) [criticizing](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/mar/16/upworthy-website-generation-y-awful-headlines?ref=gabestein.com) it. They even tried to re-define words like “smarm” to describe it. In the end, the criticisms worked. Facebook decided to put a stop to clickbait.

But I’m not sure anyone ever stopped to ask why Facebook made that decision. After all, according to the data, their users loved clickbait. In fact, in those days Facebook representatives fairly regularly asked us if we would share insights, claiming we knew more about how users were responding to content than they did.

# **The ‘Ideal’ Feed**

So what happened? Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to find out, because Mark Zuckerberg and then-VP of Product Christopher Cox [told Mike Isaac and Peter Kafka](http://allthingsd.com/20131210/facebook-wants-to-be-a-newspaper-facebook-users-have-their-own-ideas/?ref=gabestein.com). What happened is Zuckerberg and Cox read all of that criticism and became convinced that clickbait was bad for their users, even if those users didn’t know it. They decided that what their users really needed was “high quality” news, even if they didn’t signal to Facebook that they liked those stories. So they started a project to create the “ideal” News Feed, free of the tyranny of clickbait. A project which [continues to this day](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/05/news-feed-fyi-new-updates-to-reduce-clickbait-headlines/?ref=gabestein.com).

## **[Facebook Wants to Be a Newspaper. Facebook Users Have Their Own Ideas.](http://allthingsd.com/20131210/facebook-wants-to-be-a-newspaper-facebook-users-have-their-own-ideas/?ref=gabestein.com)**

### [Most people think of Facebook in a similar way: It's a place to share photos of your kids. It's a way to keep up with…](http://allthingsd.com/20131210/facebook-wants-to-be-a-newspaper-facebook-users-have-their-own-ideas/?ref=gabestein.com)

#### [allthingsd.com](http://allthingsd.com/20131210/facebook-wants-to-be-a-newspaper-facebook-users-have-their-own-ideas/?ref=gabestein.com)

Their immediate newsfeed changes cut Upworthy’s traffic in half overnight. Literally. We all remember the day — Thursday December 19, 2013 — when the graphs changed. Everyone else in media was hit by the change, too.

So, yeah, you can spare me the “Facebook just does what users want” bullshit. Facebook has decided over and over again what’s good for users based on the opinions of its executives. Now, in the wake of a devastating political event, we’re asking them to think about what’s good for society and suddenly, magically, that capability seems to have vanished.

Ironically, in some ways I think that shows growth. Looking back, it is crazy that in 2012 and 2013, Christopher Cox took it upon himself to decide what quality of news people needed, and what constituted quality news in the first place.

But it seems clear now that clickbait, and the ensuing fallout, was a tipping point. The changes that began as Cox’s quest to eliminate clickbait and create the “ideal” News Feed [led to](https://medium.com/@gabestein/the-viral-publishing-game-is-over-and-we-all-lost-f789b43498ca?ref=gabestein.com) today’s [ever-minimizing](http://www.adweek.com/digital/facebook-news-feed-test-two-separate-feeds-pages/?ref=gabestein.com), ultra-personalized stream of content. And Facebook’s habit of using “just following the data” as a shield to avoid responsibility for its impact on global society started as a way to justify changes to the News Feed. In fact, Facebook [started its News Feed FYI blog](https://www.facebook.com/business/news/News-Feed-FYI-A-Window-Into-News-Feed) series in August 2013 specifically to message around those first changes. In that first post, the company explains that all the News Feed does is “let users decide” and “listen to feedback.”

# **Just Following the Data**

As the story I’m telling here shows, the problem with that excuse is that it’s really hard to “just follow the data.” I work with scientists every day at my company [Massive](http://massivesci.com/?ref=gabestein.com), and one of the things I’ve learned from them is that even the best scientists can unintentionally arrange data to fit their pre-existing beliefs. That’s why the scientific method and all of its safeguards —peer review, protocols, etc. — exists. To counteract the natural, human tendency to re-arrange the world to fit your beliefs.

If you read [the AllThingsD article](http://allthingsd.com/20131210/facebook-wants-to-be-a-newspaper-facebook-users-have-their-own-ideas/?ref=gabestein.com) I mentioned above (and you really should — it’s remarkable), it describes exactly that: Zuckerberg and Cox trying to get the data about what kind of news users *want* to click on to fit their beliefs about what they think users *should* click on. There’s nothing wrong with that process on the face of it — in fact, it’s probably what I would do if I was in their position and believed clickbait was bad.

The problem is that you can’t search for fit while simultaneously claiming to be a neutral actor just “letting users decide.” Facebook’s product decisions have an enormous impact on user behavior, which creates the data they “follow.” When scientists “follow the data,” they put a ton of effort into controlling for the impact their presence has on the data they collect. Facebook doesn’t. It is essentially a giant, global, uncontrolled experiment run by people who seem uninterested in even understanding what they’re really doing.

# **Facebook, Nation**

That’s a terrifying thought, but I’ve found a way to make some sense of it. I’ve come to believe that Facebook (and similar companies) are better thought of as nation-states than companies. I mean that quite literally. When I worked at another giant tech company, Google, I got more than a taste of the types of cultures they create.

Life at those companies is awesome, in the full sense of the word. So awesome — from smart people to free food to interesting, endless work — that it starts to subsume your life, especially if you’re young and it’s one of your first jobs. You start to feel an allegiance to the company that provides so much for you, and you start accepting more and more of the internal logic of the place. Don’t be evil. Our great mission is to organize the world’s information. Google+ is a good product (:trollface:).

At times during my tenure, I felt so aligned with Google that I found myself asking if I had more of an allegiance to my company or to my country. I frequently ran a thought experiment: if Google asked me to do something illegal (but moral —hey, it’s my thought experiment), but promised to whisk me away to Paris and take care of me forever if I did, would I do it?

On day one of Intro to International Relations (which I studied in college for some reason), you’re taught not to assume that other entities use the same logic as you when they make decisions. It’s one of the foundational principles of the field. You’re also taught that the personalities of individual leaders within organizations matter a lot more than history books usually indicate.

I think both of these principles apply well to big companies like Facebook and Google.

To us on the outside, it is crystal clear that if Facebook can influence purchasing decisions, it can influence voting decisions. But using Facebook’s internal logic, they’re “just following the data” and trying to give individual users exactly what they want. They don’t believe they really have an impact on their users’ behavior. And they are so focused on individual user needs that I suspect they have very little concept of the larger effects of the system and, yes, society they’ve created.

So, while it makes sense that an advertiser using Facebook can convince an individual to spend money on something, it probably seems crazy to many people on the inside that the platform could have had any impact on a national election at all.

This logic is driven by the personalities of the people in charge. Zuckerberg, in particular, seems to sincerely care about individual user needs above all else — remember the [infamous squirrel news comment](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/opinion/23pariser.html?%5Fr=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1400077941-CjC2f40gpC0CCTKiT7VZeQ&ref=gabestein.com)? And Cox was so moved by criticism that (in my admittedly slanted view) had little evidentiary backing that his team has [spent the last 4 years](https://newsroom.fb.com/?s=bait&post%5Ftype=any&ref=gabestein.com) fighting clickbait while missing the growing problem of [deliberate misinformation](https://misinfocon.com/a-prototype-for-stemming-the-flood-of-misinformation-during-breaking-news-events-4310392d05d4?ref=gabestein.com) almost entirely. The changes they continue to implement haven’t just impacted so-called clickbait producers, of course. They’ve hurt the entire news industry and, as we’re now finding ourselves arguing, the foundations of democratic society itself.

There’s actually some good news buried here: Facebook can be moved. But, like a good international relations analyst, make sure you understand how a foreign entity is likely to respond before you act.
### A Prototype for Stemming the Flood of Misinformation during Breaking News Event
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/f5rcxnqr/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T23:16:10.000Z
Monday morning, as news of the mass shooting in Las Vegas greeted the awakening East Coast, something almost as ugly reared its head: gross misinformation about the attack pouring out of the nastiest corners of the internet, rising straight to the top of algorithmically defined trending lists on Google, Facebook and YouTube.

For society to function well, this has to stop. I applaud the media critics, scholars, activists and politicians who are taking platforms to task and forcing them to make tough decisions (or at least release awkward statements) about their role in spreading misinformation. But I also think that relying on platforms to clean up their mess will, at minimum, take a very long time and a lot of sustained effort. And I don’t believe that it’s responsible for media companies to wait for them.

Yesterday, as I watched horrific bile bubble up to the top of every single platform, I started thinking about whether there was a simple way folks in the media could act, now, to stem the tide and use the power of platform trending algorithms to direct more people to high-quality information during breaking news events, especially in the initial hours.

It occurred to me that there might be a simple way for media companies to come together and, well, game the algorithms. Even if it fails, at the very least it would speak to the problems caused by algorithmically compiled trending sections in a language platforms will understand.

There’s just one catch. For the idea to work, folks in the media will have to minimally cooperate. Here’s why.

## **How deliberate misinformation spreads on social and search**

Propaganda sites deliberately spread misinformation by [taking advantage](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/google-and-facebook-have-failed-us/541794/?ref=gabestein.com) of the way breaking news algorithms work. These algorithms favor sites that publish stories quickly, update them frequently, use words likely to lead to engagement throughout the content (“terrorist,” “shooting,” “communist,” etc.) and, of course, get a lot of early traction in the form of clicks, shares and links from other sources. Often, this early traction comes from a devoted network of core followers, some of whom are likely bots, who have been primed to share a particular narrative and page on social media and blogging platforms.

Platforms typically [catch up](https://twitter.com/WilliamTurton/status/914930155998629889?ref=gabestein.com) and remove these stories and social media posts from trending modules after a few hours, but not before the damage of having them at the top of rankings for substantial periods of time has been done.

I propose that news organizations counter this misinformation by using the combined power of their algorithmically authoritative websites and reporters on social media as one of these cooperative propaganda networks. With any luck, this coordinated effort will have the effect of getting high-quality news to the top of algorithmically compiled trending sections during breaking news events.

I know that getting the media to coordinate on anything of this scale isn’t exactly easy. But it’s not entirely unprecedented, either. News organizations have historically cooperated on efforts like pool reports, election coverage and, of course, the Associated Press ([hat tip to Joe Murphy](https://twitter.com/joemurph/status/915651197704572928?ref=gabestein.com)). And they’re increasingly working together on larger impact efforts like the [International Consortium of Investigative Journalists](http://icij.org/?ref=gabestein.com) and [Climate Desk](http://www.climatedesk.org/?ref=gabestein.com).

Moreover, the coordination I’m proposing could be achieved with minimal investment and disruption to current workflows. Here’s how it could work.

## **A cooperative “reverse wire” for breaking news events**

Media organizations that cover breaking news should create a cooperative site that publishes automatically updating topic pages that link to high-quality coverage of breaking news events. Becoming a member of the cooperative would require adhering to a set of fact-checking, journalistic, and security standards that the founding members would jointly agree to.

Once the cooperative is setup, its website would publish “topic pages” during breaking news events. These topic pages would automatically aggregate all coverage of the event from member news organizations. Member news organizations could automatically populate these topic pages simply by linking to it in any articles they file about the breaking news event and notify the topic page of the link using a widely supported protocol like [trackbacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackback?ref=gabestein.com) or [Webmentions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webmention?ref=gabestein.com).

In addition to auto-population, linking to the topic page serves an important purpose: these links would quickly signal to search engines that the page is highly authoritative about the breaking news event, causing it to quickly rise to the top of results. And because the pages would be updated frequently as organizations file new articles, they would remain high in rankings throughout the news lifetime of the event.

![](https://resize-v3.pubpub.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJhc3NldHMucHVicHViLm9yZyIsImtleSI6Inc1c2Ewb2t2LzIxNjAzNDA2NDkyNzU4LnBuZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6MTkyMCwiZml0IjoiaW5zaWRlIiwid2l0aG91dEVubGFyZ2VtZW50Ijp0cnVlfX19)

Sorry, I should never be allowed to wireframe.

To achieve the same effect with social media algorithms, human editors (perhaps loaned by member organizations) would create optimized headline, image and description packages for these topic pages. Member organizations and their employees would be encouraged to share links to the topic pages in addition to their organization’s coverage, particularly in the early stages of the event. To ensure that member organizations don’t lose out on traffic, the page could support custom links that put a sharing organization’s stories on the top of the page.

In theory, participating organizations would make up for lost traffic because other organizations and savvy news readers would link to topic pages, too, driving more traffic to their articles. And it’s possible that, over time, readers would develop the habit of visiting the cooperative site during breaking events and share topic pages. The cooperative would thus function as a sort of “reverse wire” (coined by my friend [Jason Bade](http://twitter.com/jasonwbade?ref=gabestein.com)), collecting verified information that could be safely shared by people who care about quality and veracity.

## **Would it work?**

If a large enough group of companies commit to the project, I think it has a shot of achieving its technical aim: to game algorithms to display high-quality news at the top of searches and trending sections during breaking news events. It’s true that, if the effort succeeded, platforms could quickly alter their algorithms to counter it. But I doubt they would. Imagine the headlines: “Google knocks down a consortium of journalists in favor of 4chan trolls.”

*(Update, 10/22: several folks in the position to know have said that far from trying to counteract a cooperative like this, platforms might want to participate and even partially fund it. I’m told they increasingly see misinformation as a risk, but lack the teams/will to solve for it internally. I’m now imagining a scenario where platforms even supply the cooperative with trending topics to create topic pages for, and link to those pages at the top of their trending sections. More tk on this soon.)*

And the cooperative could even take on a life of its own, becoming a new destination for readers during breaking news events that’s owned and managed by media companies, not platforms.

But even if it fails, the primary purpose of the cooperative wouldn’t be to become a destination news site, to provide verification services, or to educate readers. The primary purpose would to provide media companies with a simple, quick, low-effort and low-investment way to start counteracting misinformation on platforms using language and techniques the platforms understand. If nothing else, the unprecedented media coordination on a technical solution could help finally bring platforms to the table to talk with media companies about how to better serve society. That would be a win, whether or not anyone clicks.

## **[Interested? I’d love to work with folks to make it happen. @ or DM me on Twitter @gabestein](http://twitter.com/gabestein?ref=gabestein.com)**
### Why I’ll be treating 2018 like a presidential election
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/pf7lkkz6/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:30.000Z
I had a clarifying chat with [my father](https://twitter.com/edsteinink?ref=gabestein.com) last night. He’s been observing and covering politics professionally for 40+ years. Growing up, he taught me that politics isn’t a battle and Republicans aren’t “the enemy.” The refrain was always: they want the same things, but have different ideas about getting there.

Well, that’s not the case anymore, at least right now. Today’s GOP leadership is now solely concerned with making liberals upset and winning, not with the best interests of the country.

You can’t work with that. You have to go through it (and peel off concerned conservatives as you go — I am proud of many of my conservative friends who have had the courage to do this, and know they’ll be there for me if I ever have to do the same). And going through it means one thing: getting people to vote. Let’s not forget, this country leans left, by big margins (see: popular vote). Messaging is still important. Policy is still important. But getting people to show up is what matters. And that’s work, especially come midterm season.

2018 is the most important election of your lifetime. It’s the whole ballgame. Either we tell the GOP they can’t abandon the country’s foundational principles, or we let them get away with it, probably forever.

To do the former, we need to turn it into a presidential-like year for turnout. We do that with boots on the ground. I’m in New York City, in a totally noncompetitive Democratic district. But my girlfriend’s family lives in NY-19\. Their Representative, John Faso, cast a deciding AHCA committee vote. And he won’t hold town hall meetings.

So, I’m treating that race like a presidential race. I’ll be volunteering for the Democratic candidate — making calls, canvassing, registering, etc. My advice: find your nearest competitive district and treat it like a presidential. Because it is. [Swing Left](http://swingleft.org/?ref=gabestein.com) is a great resource for that.

And there’s a bonus: if you get involved now, during the primaries, you can help get a candidate you \*really\* like on the ballot. For me in NY-19, that’s [Dave Clegg for Congress](http://davecleggforcongress.com/?ref=gabestein.com).

By the way, and thanks to my friend Jordan Bernhardt for the reminder, it’s true that there’s also work to be done in your local districts — state rep, school board, city council, etc. You can and should be active there, too. But the 2018 House race is uniquely important and may be more motivating for you like it is for me. And even if you live miles and miles from the nearest swing district, you can pick one that’s important to you — probably because you grew up or have friends or spent a lot of time there — and help out by donating, volunteering to make calls, or just making sure your family and friends there vote.

That’s what I’ll be up to for the next 16-odd months.
### Why I’ll be treating 2018 like a presidential election
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/od5fijp9/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:32.000Z
I had a clarifying chat with [my father](https://twitter.com/edsteinink?ref=gabestein.com) last night. He’s been observing and covering politics professionally for 40+ years. Growing up, he taught me that politics isn’t a battle and Republicans aren’t “the enemy.” The refrain was always: they want the same things, but have different ideas about getting there.

Well, that’s not the case anymore, at least right now. Today’s GOP leadership is now solely concerned with making liberals upset and winning, not with the best interests of the country.

You can’t work with that. You have to go through it (and peel off concerned conservatives as you go — I am proud of many of my conservative friends who have had the courage to do this, and know they’ll be there for me if I ever have to do the same). And going through it means one thing: getting people to vote. Let’s not forget, this country leans left, by big margins (see: popular vote). Messaging is still important. Policy is still important. But getting people to show up is what matters. And that’s work, especially come midterm season.

2018 is the most important election of your lifetime. It’s the whole ballgame. Either we tell the GOP they can’t abandon the country’s foundational principles, or we let them get away with it, probably forever.

To do the former, we need to turn it into a presidential-like year for turnout. We do that with boots on the ground. I’m in New York City, in a totally noncompetitive Democratic district. But my girlfriend’s family lives in NY-19\. Their Representative, John Faso, cast a deciding AHCA committee vote. And he won’t hold town hall meetings.

So, I’m treating that race like a presidential race. I’ll be volunteering for the Democratic candidate — making calls, canvassing, registering, etc. My advice: find your nearest competitive district and treat it like a presidential. Because it is. [Swing Left](http://swingleft.org/?ref=gabestein.com) is a great resource for that.

And there’s a bonus: if you get involved now, during the primaries, you can help get a candidate you \*really\* like on the ballot. For me in NY-19, that’s [Dave Clegg for Congress](http://davecleggforcongress.com/?ref=gabestein.com).

By the way, and thanks to my friend Jordan Bernhardt for the reminder, it’s true that there’s also work to be done in your local districts — state rep, school board, city council, etc. You can and should be active there, too. But the 2018 House race is uniquely important and may be more motivating for you like it is for me. And even if you live miles and miles from the nearest swing district, you can pick one that’s important to you — probably because you grew up or have friends or spent a lot of time there — and help out by donating, volunteering to make calls, or just making sure your family and friends there vote.

That’s what I’ll be up to for the next 16-odd months.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [July 26, 2017](https://medium.com/p/c92bc1a1ae5a?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/why-ill-be-treating-2018-like-a-presidential-election-c92bc1a1ae5a?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### These are the assholes who just voted to kill millions of Americans
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/6ean499v/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:32.000Z
I’ll never forget the day my mom told me she had been left out to die. Before the ACA, my dad lost his job and the healthcare that came with it. Shortly thereafter, my mom, who survived breast cancer when I was five and lives with multiple sclerosis, received a letter from her insurance company telling her they wouldn’t cover her at all. At any price. She was devastated. She felt worthless. She felt that society had thrown her to the wolves for no reason. I will always remember the fear, sadness and anger in her voice on that day. She ultimately ended up on a high-risk pool, which gave her almost worthless coverage at a nearly unaffordable price, a luxury she only had because my parents saved prudently throughout their careers. Today, thanks to the ACA, she has affordable, real coverage on the exchanges. It’s not perfect, but society has emphatically decided that she isn’t worthless.

That’s hardly the world’s worst story of life before the ACA. But it’s enough to fuel me with white-hot, incandescent rage at what happened today. If you don’t know: Republicans in congress [just voted](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/04/us/politics/house-vote-republican-health-care-bill.html?%5Fr=0&ref=gabestein.com) to return to the world that abandoned my mom. Their evil, cruel bill will end up [killing millions of Americans](https://qz.com/975717/trumpcare-the-macarthur-amendment-to-the-ahca-could-hurt-four-big-groups-of-americans/?ref=gabestein.com) by effectively taking away coverage from babies, veterans and anybody who’s poor. It also makes all of us more susceptible to bankruptcy by allowing employers to adopt plans with lifetime coverage caps, something the ACA put an end to.

**So, Republicans below: you are the so-called moderates who just voted to leave my mom out to die. Again.** For no reason other than to give a [tax cut to the wealthiest Americans](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/05/03/republicans-just-hatched-a-last-ditch-strategy-to-destroy-obamacare-its-a-total-scam/?utm%5Fterm=.925fe205e995&ref=gabestein.com) and settle a political score. You are cruel, evil, hypocritical and wrong. You are bad people. You have blood on your hands. I will hold you all personally responsible for the harm your actions will cause my mom, veterans, parents of infants, disabled kids, the mentally ill, and the rest of us. I will make sure your names are known and reviled. You will never be able to show your faces in public again.

### You can help me.

1. [Go here to donate to the campaigns of Democrats who will oppose these monsters in 2018.](https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/noahca?ref=gabestein.com)
2. If your congressperson is listed below, call them right now and let them know their career is over. Or better yet, visit their office in person.
3. Share your own stories and outrage by responding to this article.
4. Share and favorite this piece. Make sure thousands of people know these names.

### We Know Your Names

You voted to kill us. Your career is over.

*Shamelessly copied from* *[Trump Care Toolkit](https://trumpcaretoolkit.org/?ref=gabestein.com). Let me know if I should add others.*

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*pRPDiKT53Rvisi1B.jpg)

Hi Gabe, I voted for your mom to die from treatable diseases!

### Rep. Don Young (AK)

(202) 223–5765

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*kK0eGS5ogNExE50F.jpg)

Babies need to start taking responsibility for the health problems they’re born with. That’s not my problem.

### Rep. Adam Kinzinger (IL16)

(202) 225–3635

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*YVCRgwzzdOh4F6Pb.jpg)

I believe veterans shouldn’t have affordable health care. It’s not like we owe them anything.

### Rep. Carlos Curbelo (FL26)

(202)225–2778

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*RjD1myKRmxVfEfIt.jpg)

I wish insurance companies could charge hardworking, everyday Americans more for pre-existing conditions.

### Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (FL25)

(202) 225–4211Type caption for image (optional)

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*_jdKWP9uLiD7xk_f.jpg)

I believe being raped should disqualify you from getting health coverage.

### Rep. Randy Hultgren (IL14)

(202) 225–2976

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*FyXRGtCaKh8NZEfI.jpg)

I yearn for the days when my constituents could easily go bankrupt just because they got sick.

### Rep. Mark Amodei (NV2)

(202) 225–6155

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*ZEchWN8qDgVRmNI1.jpg)

Hey Gabe, my thoughts and prayers are with your mom. But my vote and wallet are with my rich donors.

### Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA8)

(202) 225–4276

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*mzQI8rLWmGYr1qHf.jpg)

Lol, sick babies.

### Rep. Rick Crawford (AR1)

(202) 225–4076

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*Povci0E53eFJsrMO.jpg)

These glasses make me look smarter than someone who just voted to end their career.

### Rep. Peter Roskam (IL6)

(202) 225–4561

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*RWIUHmeEND_eYzxI.jpg)

Good thing bushy eyebrows aren’t a pre-existing condition!

### Rep. Bruce Poliquin (ME2)

(202) 225–6306

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*pQI56rm0g0BKnAkZ.jpg)

I forgot how fun taking away people’s health care is!

### Rep. Mike Bost (IL12)

(202) 225–5661

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*Pb6yXMCNit_s4CFo.jpg)

This is my “poor kids are gonna lose their Medicaid!” smile.

### Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (NJ11)

(202) 225–5034

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*ZP83IYE0K9bcmG0w.jpg)

\*Incoherent guttural noise\*

### Rep. Peter King (NY2)

(202) 225–7896

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*pqD1Jw414gNq8qNo.jpg)

At least my premiums won’t go up! And you’ll pay for them if they do! Haha, suckers. Crap, am I saying this out loud?

### Rep. Steven Stivers (OH15)

(202) 225–2015

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*fRqHNn-gWiTwWxvN.jpg)

May preventable death visit you all in the new year! Huzzah!

### Rep. Evan Jenkins (WV3)

(202) 225–3452

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*BoxFxzwuPDmkYqxj.jpg)

My mustache may look approachable, but behind it you’ll find only a profound lack of empathy for human beings.

### Rep. David McKinley (WV1)

(202) 225–4172

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*a6oI_KsCZj5Myirt.jpg)

\*raises eyebrow\* Ooo, tax cuts for my rich friends.

### Rep. Rod Blum (IA1)

(202) 225–2911

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*ZqVOahYRExhIH0dA.jpg)

“…and I said that’s not a giant tumor, that’s my wife! Get it??”

### Rep. Glenn Thompson (PA5)

(202) 225–5121

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*7naRl7kCYmSoP1rT.jpg)

I voted yes just for the free Bud Light and orange slices we get after signing death warrants for millions.

### Rep. Bill Johnson (OH6)

(202) 225–5705

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*9vAXpboNOvXvN2T9.jpg)

Get wrecked, America.

### Rep. Bob Gibbs (OH7)

(202) 225–6265

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*HtT6nLAp46c21YYzEeV14Q.jpeg)

I’m pretty sure I just lost my job, but at least I’m rich enough to afford insurance.

### Rep. Darrel Issa (CA49)

(202) 225-3906

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*lylxBHOFjQJhvjol1nzy-w.jpeg)

I know my face looks like a plastic mask, but trust me, it’s the real one I use to lie to my constituents.

### Rep. John Faso (NY19)

(202) 225–5614

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*vamZmMjQfua5aLCThWH_gw.jpeg)

Any chance you’ll buy the Appalachian trail excuse again?

### Rep. Mark Sanford (SC1)

(202) 225–3176

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [May 4, 2017](https://medium.com/p/3d8fb25d87ff?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/these-are-the-assholes-who-just-voted-to-kill-millions-of-americans-3d8fb25d87ff?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### Hey Nathan,
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/594yogte/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:32.000Z
Hey Nathan,

Fwiw, I want to apologize for my part in that story. I loved your work and loved editing it when I had a chance to, and I’m horrified to learn you weren’t paid for it. As a staff writer, I had little insight into the arrangement you had with FC, but in hindsight, I should have done more to understand the agreements of the people I was asked to edit. And I could have certainly been better at communicating, as you suggest. I don’t think anyone I worked with at FC had bad intentions, but I do think the Labs project in particular wasn’t particularly well organized or supported (and I certainly played a part in that), which lead to a lot of problems like this. That’s not really excusable, especially at FC’s level, and again, I’m really sorry it was a negative experience for you.

I’m glad you’ve found a way to write that works for you, because your writing is great, and I suspect helps a lot of people (as it has long helped me). For my part, I’m starting a media co myself now, and trying to learn the right lessons from your experience and others I’ve had since. We’re trying to be as transparent as possible about payment, licensing, funding, etc., pay people quickly and simply, and our entire mission is to help our writers (scientists in this case) learn to communicate and build an audience — not just build our brand with their work.

I’m not sure if that’s comforting to know or not. But I did want to apologize, hearing your side, and let you know I’m learning and trying not to repeat the same mistakes.

Also, I’m checking out Highrise for our co. to help manage relationships with scientists, which are getting unwieldy and could lead to bad communication like what you described if we don’t find a solution soon. It’s on my radar because of your continued great writing.

Gabe

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [April 2, 2017](https://medium.com/p/ca70caa4d8b5?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/hey-nathan-ca70caa4d8b5?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### Use post flagging tools to teach basic media literacy to the masses
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/qopenokp/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:32.000Z
Facebook appears to be [rolling out](http://mashable.com/2017/03/04/facebook-fake-news-rollout/?ref=gabestein.com#oWsk9O%5F5SOqO) the features it announced last year that label fake news as “disputed” and allow users to [join established fact-checking organizations](http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/12/news-feed-fyi-addressing-hoaxes-and-fake-news/?ref=gabestein.com) in reporting false news. This is a much-needed first step in the fight against news designed to deliberately mislead audiences on social media. But Facebook could have a deeper, more lasting impact if it used this new flagging feature to teach basic verification skills to its users.\[1\] **Facebook already has the tools** to implement a basic media literacy screener. It just has to extend them to its fake news flagging.

#### Facebook’s Existing Flagging Features

Here’s how it could work. Right now, when you report fake news, the only action items it gives you are marking a post as fake news or blocking the page entirely.

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*isOdQtThvGbPKbAwefV0iA.png)

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/600/1*_ZULNSIfGb44DY-wLEYqow.png)

Yes, I deliberately chose to use a post from a satire site so as not to appear biased against a particular source.

When you report a post for any other reason, however, you’re asked to help Facebook understand why you’re reporting the post.

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*V9fx49SVq6UM8kD5k00oCA.png)

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/600/1*sSPFUPDmuQJ5lzDM3NIAgQ.png)

In fact, **you can’t report the post without selecting an option**. If you select “See more options” and “It’s something else,” Facebook doesn’t let you file a report, just block the source.

#### The Media Literacy Screener

Imagine if Facebook employed a similar screener for fake news reports. Instead of flagging something in one click, you would be required to choose from a list of common fact-checking red flags. Here’s a mockup I made by cribbing from [this guide to self fact-checking](http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/12/05/503581220/fake-or-real-how-to-self-check-the-news-and-get-the-facts?ref=gabestein.com).

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*VgMaKLbDGZYmIpZoYqBlmw.png)

The theory behind this is simple, and similar to a Norweigan site’s new approach to [fighting comment trolls](http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/03/this-site-is-taking-the-edge-off-rant-mode-by-making-readers-pass-a-quiz-before-commenting/?ref=gabestein.com) ([thanks to Heidi Moore for the comparison](https://twitter.com/moorehn/status/838082086296760321?ref=gabestein.com)). I suspect many people, from across the political spectrum, will flag news that isn’t fake at all, but simply doesn’t conform to their beliefs. As a result, Facebook will either rely heavily on the professional fact-checking organizations it’s working with and/or build some kind of user reputation score for fact-checking to weigh fake news reports. In addition to those techniques, it should use fake news flagging as an opportunity to teach users basic media literacy and get better flagging data to boot, potentially without triggering confirmation bias.\[2\]

As a teaching tool, it could be effective. The idea first came to me (I’m sure others have had it, too) after reading [elipariser](https://medium.com/u/a8d3beb90978?ref=gabestein.com)’s crowdsourced *[Design Solutions For Fake News](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OPghC4ra6QLhaHhW8QvPJRMKGEXT7KaZtG%5F7s5-UQrw/edit?ref=gabestein.com#heading=h.l4uvrs8m75xh)* document a few months ago.\[3\] Lots of people mentioned one underlying cause of misinformation — bad media literacy — and recommended fixing it by adding media literacy education to school curriculums. While I agree that adding media literacy training to formal education is a good approach, that solution could take decades to have an impact. It also doesn’t take into account a [growing body of evidence](https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2004/2004050.pdf?ref=gabestein.com) that adults learn a great deal in informal settings throughout their lives, potentially more than they learn at school.

To be clear: I don’t think this is any kind of silver bullet. It’s one idea that seems like it would be simple to implement and add one more tool to fight misinformation. Even if you think this particular idea isn’t useful, I’d ask you to consider this: platforms like Facebook have fundamentally changed the way we receive and process information. We should think about what role they should play in helping their users healthfully adjust to the new media dynamics they’ve created.

---

#### Notes & Discussions

1. Whether and how Facebook should teach media literacy to its users is a discussion worth having, and I’d love to hear your thoughts there. Personally, I think it not only should, but has an obligation to teach media literacy for the internet age given its worldwide impact on how we process news and information.
2. There does seem to be some evidence in research for training and nudging as a debiasing strategy, but I’m not enough of an expert on the field to link to a paper on the subject, and articles are scarce.
3. I added the idea to Pariser’s doc at the time, but it seems to have since been either folded into other ideas or removed. If you’re super curious, you can see it on [page 86 in this revision.](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OPghC4ra6QLhaHhW8QvPJRMKGEXT7KaZtG%5F7s5-UQrw/edit?ref=gabestein.com)

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [March 4, 2017](https://medium.com/p/4e898113af8e?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/use-post-flagging-tools-to-teach-basic-media-literacy-to-the-masses-4e898113af8e?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### You’re not alone.
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/3ipgq9ha/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:32.000Z
You’re not alone. I’m sitting up at 5am, jet-lagged after a long trip, reading the speculation that this may be preamble to a coup in near-paralyzing terror. What’s keeping me going right now is watching people across the country speak up and share their hopes and struggles, like you are. We’re not going anywhere without a big, big fight. Tomorrow we get on the phone and tell our reps to get President Bannon the fuck out of there. And we’ll keep taking to the streets until it happens.

Also, come over sometime with C. Hugs.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [January 30, 2017](https://medium.com/p/88bb789f6715?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/youre-not-alone-88bb789f6715?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### Democrats should refuse to work with Trump until he upholds basic Presidential norms
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/bagd47u8/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:32.000Z
There are [a few](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/21/dems-can-t-afford-to-say-yes-to-trump.html?ref=gabestein.com) [pieces](http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/22/13708648/democrats-won-popular-vote?ref=gabestein.com) [out](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-democrats-owe-america/2016/11/20/b872237a-adf1-11e6-977a-1030f822fc35%5Fstory.html?utm%5Fterm=.ded22e59853e&ref=gabestein.com) early this week that make the point that Democrats should start protecting the will of the people by acting like a true opposition party. They’re right, and it’s now up to us to make it to our Democratic representatives. Today, I’m calling my Democratic reps and telling them something very simple: they should make it clear that they refuse to work with Trump on *anything* until he conforms to three basic norms:

1. Denouncing hate speech at every turn.
2. Divesting his business assets to guard against corruption.
3. Stopping attacks on free speech and the press.

Here’s a new wrinkle: I am telling my reps that if they compromise with Trump despite his continued violations, I will hold them accountable and consider supporting challengers in their next primary. Why? Because our representatives need to know we’re serious this time.

---

*As always, you can* *[look up your reps’ numbers (and party) here](http://www.whoismyrepresentative.com/?ref=gabestein.com). This particular argument only applies to your Democratic reps. And as always, make sure to* *[call, not email](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/us/politics/heres-why-you-should-call-not-email-your-legislators.html?ref=gabestein.com).*

---

Here’s the larger argument:

First and foremost, Trump and the GOP *do not represent the will of the people.* Write that down. Stick it on your fridge. Remember it. Democrats [won more votes](http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/22/13708648/democrats-won-popular-vote?ref=gabestein.com) in the Presidency, Senate, and likely the House than Republicans did. Democrats, not Republicans, are the majority party in this country. Our system, for reasons not worth getting into now (but worth talking about later), handed more political power to Republicans. But power is not a mandate. Democrats have absolutely no responsibility to work with Republicans. If anything, Republicans have a responsibility to moderate to represent the will of the plurality/majority of Americans who voted (yes, okay, you can can stop laughing now).

Second, Trump and his enablers are already abusing their newfound political power to violate basic Presidential norms. The list is long, but the areas I choose to focus on are: enabling and refusing to condemn hate speech by [appointing Bannon](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/democrats-demand-trump-rescind-steve-bannon-231422?ref=gabestein.com) and [Sessions](http://www.slate.com/articles/news%5Fand%5Fpolitics/crime/2016/11/jeff%5Fsessions%5Fcould%5Fbring%5Fback%5Fthe%5Fworst%5Fof%5Fthe%5Fwar%5Fon%5Fdrugs.html?ref=gabestein.com) and [not disavowing](http://www.timesofisrael.com/after-nazi-salutes-trump-camp-denounces-racism-but-not-alt-right/?ref=gabestein.com) hateful attacks done in Trump’s name, [profiteering from political power](http://time.com/4578431/donald-trump-conflicts-of-interest-list/?ref=gabestein.com) by refusing to divest business assets, and chilling free speech by attacking the [media](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/22/hes-tweeting-again-trump-cancels-meeting-with-new-york-times.html?ref=gabestein.com), [protesters](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/10/president-elect-trump-attacks-media-on-twitter-for-inciting-protests.html?ref=gabestein.com) and, yes, [the cast of Hamilton](http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2016/11/20/trump-slams-snl-doubles-down-hamilton/94162650/?ref=gabestein.com).

Not only is this alarming, dangerous and unprecedented (#notnormal), but again, it is against the will of the people. [Over 1.5 million (and counting)](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/clintons-popular-vote-lead-will-grow-and-grow/507455/?ref=gabestein.com) more Americans voted for Clinton, who largely campaigned against Trump’s flouting of political norms.

Democrats don’t have a lot of power right now, but they do have one tool: the filibuster for legislation in the Senate. They should use it to teach Trump how to be a President for all of us. It’s very simple: no compromising on anything — infrastructure, Obamacare fixes, Supreme Court nominees — until Trump disavows hate (Bannon firing would be best symbol of this), divests his business assets, and stops attacking protesters and the press.

Then, and only then, can we even begin to talk about compromise.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [November 22, 2016](https://medium.com/p/b28fa0db24e4?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/democrats-should-refuse-to-work-with-trump-until-upholds-basic-presidential-norms-b28fa0db24e4?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### Action for Today: Call the House Oversight Committee
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/pwkk9ip8/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:32.000Z
It’s now clear that Trump’s presidency is going to be exactly like his candidacy. We’re going to have to pick our battles wisely, because otherwise we’ll be spread too thin. Bannon still seems like a good one. [Call your reps today if you haven’t already](https://medium.com/@gabestein/something-you-can-do-for-me-to-oppose-bannon-4b7f1fb0d875?ref=gabestein.com#.i99xgrcp8). Cabinet nominations that require Senate confirmation will also be good ones, but we have a little time there.

Here’s a good one for today: demand the House Oversight Committee investigate Donald Trump’s finances. Why? Because Donald didn’t release his taxes, we have *no clue* what ties he has to foreign governments, to lobbyists, to government contractors, to anything. That’s a huge problem, it’s not normal, and it’s not okay. The President serves the people, not his interests. If we don’t know what conflicts of interest he might have, we don’t know he is serving us or himself.

Donald’s opacity is absolutely unprecedented and not okay. Congress can and should use its power to demand accountability and transparency before he assumes office.

### Call the House Oversight Committee Today

1. **Call the committee directly: (202) 225–5074**

Tell them you demand they conduct a bipartisan review of Trump’s finances to make sure he is free of foreign influence. If no one answers and/or their voicemail box is full, check out [the full committee](https://oversight.house.gov/subcommittee/full-committee/?ref=gabestein.com).

[If one of your congresspeople is on the committee](https://oversight.house.gov/subcommittee/full-committee/?ref=gabestein.com), call them. If you know someone who’s congressperson is on the committee, tell them to call.

**2\. Call your rep if they are on the committee:** **[the list is here](https://oversight.house.gov/subcommittee/full-committee/?ref=gabestein.com)**

Representatives usually don’t listen to calls from non-constituents, so it may be a waste of time to call Jason Chaffetz, the head of the committee, which I’ve seen suggested, unless you live in his district in Utah. This may be an exception, so give it a try if you want, but it’s even better to call your own rep if they’re on the committee.

**3\. Call your local reps and tell them to demand an investigation: 1-844 872–0234**

Enter your zipcode at that number when prompted and it will call all your reps in succession. It’s awesome. Even if your members aren’t on the right committees, they can still speak out and demand investigations, much like [Lindsey Graham and John McCain have done](http://www.mediaite.com/online/lindsey-graham-wants-congressional-investigation-into-potential-russian-hacking/?ref=gabestein.com) about wanting investigations into Russian influence on the election.

Congressional oversight is a good angle to test right now because it is one of the strongest institutional checks against executive abuse that we have. And appealing to power crosses party lines.

We can win this one, too.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [November 18, 2016](https://medium.com/p/53cdf2f0d314?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/action-for-today-call-the-house-oversight-committee-53cdf2f0d314?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### Another thing you can do right now: get involved in local government
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/8v3blhek/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:32.000Z
[Have you called your reps about Bannon yet?](https://medium.com/@gabestein/something-you-can-do-for-me-to-oppose-bannon-4b7f1fb0d875?ref=gabestein.com#.qufc8i8dw) Okay, good. You may read on.

Check out [this story](http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/11/cities-will-be-the-best-answer-to-a-trump-white-house.html?ref=gabestein.com) from my friend [Drake Baer](https://medium.com/u/3a0fcd69326c?ref=gabestein.com). It’s an important one to get in the mindset to resist for the next few years.

---

**[Cities Will Be the Best Answer to a Trump White House](http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/11/cities-will-be-the-best-answer-to-a-trump-white-house.html?ref=gabestein.com)**  
*[As the United States seeks to understand what the hell happened on Election Day, one of the most helpful frames for…](http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/11/cities-will-be-the-best-answer-to-a-trump-white-house.html?ref=gabestein.com)*[nymag.com](http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/11/cities-will-be-the-best-answer-to-a-trump-white-house.html?ref=gabestein.com)

---

**TL;DR:** cities are sanctuaries for liberalism and the best ways to push back against the sure disaster of the Trump administration. They’re blue (even in red states), they can do things quickly that have real, large, lasting effects on the world, and crucially, they’re one of the last institutions in this country that actually functions well.

I’ll even go a step further than Drake: cities are the inevitable future of the species. We should use this moment of crisis to hasten that eventuality. In truth, they’re already our present. [62.7% of the U.S. population resides in cities](http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-33.html?ref=gabestein.com), and the number is growing. For the first time in history, [more people worldwide](http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/world-urbanization-prospects-2014.html?ref=gabestein.com) now live in cities than rural areas, and the divide is growing.

Even though we tend to romanticize ruralism, these trends are really good news. If we’re going to do anything about the climate, dense cities, which are far more efficient than spread out than rural alternatives, are [going to be a key factor](http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/energy/environment/want-to-save-the-environment-build-more-cities?ref=gabestein.com). And, cities tend to be progressive. Critically, this is not because progressives prefer cities, but because cities [make people more progressive](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/red-state-blue-city-how-the-urban-rural-divide-is-splitting-america/265686/?ref=gabestein.com) by exposing them to different people and ideas. The faster we can get more people into cities, the better off we’re going to be.

So, what can you do? It’s simple. If you live in a city, invest in making it better. Help make it a nice and affordable place for current residents and more attractive and welcoming to newcomers. There are lots of ways to do this. But one simple, easy first step is to attend the smallest local government meeting you can find.

Here in NYC, I went to my Community Board meeting for the first time ever on Monday. I was a bit nervous about it, which must have shown, because the security guard at the entrance smiled when I asked where the meeting was and said, “you look like you don’t want to be here.” When I explained that I was just nervous about doing something new, she said, “don’t be. Just go on in, sit down, and listen to what some old-timers have to say.” I took her advice.

Far from deserving my apprehension, the meeting turned out to be a salve for my still-open wounds. I walked in and found a group of people of all different ages, races, classes and, I’m sure, politics, discussing their neighborhood together. They were incredibly civil, and surprisingly jocular. There was even laughter! Laughter!

The issues they discussed — replacing phone booths with wifi stations, re-routing a bus line during road construction, a job fair for local teenagers — at first struck me as hilariously small given the unprecedented and unacceptable news at the national level. But as I listened, drawn in by a debate over wifi access vs. security, my local issues become a welcome relief from national concerns, and a needed reminder that progress will continue, in small but nontrivial steps, here and at thousands of meetings like it across the country.

But the meeting wasn’t just business as usual. New York has already [reaffirmed itself as a sanctuary city](http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-11-16/sanctuary-city-mayors-gird-for-fight-as-trump-threatens-budgets?ref=gabestein.com), and every elected official who spoke informed us that their office would be providing free legal services for immigrants in the next 60 days. One councilman even bragged that his office had helped more constituents become citizens than any other in the city!

Another councilman spoke directly about Trump and the efforts the city is taking to fight back against the normalization of hate. Multiple flyers on the entrance table advertised opportunities to get involved in activities ranging from speak-outs to street festivals to recycling fairs. I left feeling more optimistic and relaxed than I have since the election. I’ve already found a few activities that I want to participate in. And I’ll be back, next time to meet more people and ask what I can do.

Now it’s your turn ([after you call your rep about Bannon](https://medium.com/@gabestein/something-you-can-do-for-me-to-oppose-bannon-4b7f1fb0d875?ref=gabestein.com#.r5yeqtp23)). Figure out what your city’s equivalent of the Community Board is (when you do, leave a response to this article and I’ll add it to the list at the bottom), and make a plan to go. Bring a friend. Bring two. A word of caution: don’t go to speak (you probably have to sign up to talk anyway) or to propose ideas right away. Remember that the people you find there have been doing this for a long time, and, in most cities, doing it pretty well. They’re the experts. So go to listen, go to learn, go to introduce yourself to people and take a flyer on opportunities to help out. But go.

Now, I’m under no illusion that attending one meeting actually does a whole lot on its own. But that’s not really the point. The point is to get started by doing something small, easy and surprisingly soothing. If you take the first step and keep going, by the time Trump actually takes office you’ll have attended a few meetings, you’ll have met your neighbors, you’ll have figured out where you’re going to be most impactful. You’ll be on your way to helping us build a better district, a better neighborhood, a better borough, a better city: a better life raft for the societal models that will carry us into the future. Let’s go.

### Local Government in Your City

Respond to this piece with your city’s most basic local governance body, and I’ll add it to the list below.

- [NYC: Find Your Community Board](http://www.nyc.gov/html/cau/html/cb/cb.shtml?ref=gabestein.com)

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [November 16, 2016](https://medium.com/p/3d6c1017c6a4?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/another-thing-you-can-do-right-now-get-involved-in-local-government-3d6c1017c6a4?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### GOP Senators Who Might Block Kleptocratic Trump Nominations
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/9gfpjj81/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:32.000Z
Here’s your moment of terror for today, courtesy of Vox’s [Matt Yglesias](https://medium.com/u/6db5e5e667c7?ref=gabestein.com).

---

**[100 days to save the Republic](http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/17/13626514/trump-systemic-corruption?ref=gabestein.com)**  
*[The transition period is the last best hope to avoid the systemic corruption of American institutions](http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/17/13626514/trump-systemic-corruption?ref=gabestein.com)*[www.vox.com](http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/17/13626514/trump-systemic-corruption?ref=gabestein.com)

---

You can believe this argument, or not. But it is true that the independence of majority senators is one of the checks in our system, and that the first appointments are a battle worth fighting. And the good news is, Trump, and many of his potential nominees, are deeply unpopular *in their own party.* Using [this Atlantic piece](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/where-republicans-stand-on-donald-trump-a-cheat-sheet/481449/?ref=gabestein.com), I’ve compiled a list of GOP senators who either did not or only tepidly supported Trump during the election and who may be convinced to take a stand. Even though I don’t agree with many of these people, many of them are courageous, patriotic people of principle who will do what’s right…if we convince them.

The problem is that everything will be lined up against GOP senators taking a stand. The GOP will consider it treason. Many of these senators’ own supporters (especially the ones in red states) who voted for Trump will be furious. In other words, it will fall to us to do the convincing by pressuring the heck out of them, largely with phone calls and letters.

Truth be told, I’m a bit out of my depth here. I don’t know the best way to start this fight. I’ll look for the ways (or you can tell me by responding) and report back. The good news is, we have some time before these appointments start. I suspect that right now, if you live in one of these states, the best thing you can probably do is *write a physical letter* to your senator’s *local* office letting them know that you’re counting on them to make sure Trump’s nominees are qualified and not compromised by ties to foreign entities or Trump’s businesses. Then, when the appointments are announced, you call the office asking them to oppose.

### The List

#### [Kentucky: Rand Paul](https://www.paul.senate.gov/?ref=gabestein.com)

(202) 224–4343

A fiercely independent libertarian who has often broken with his own party, Paul has [already indicated](http://www.businessinsider.com/rand-paul-jon-bolton-rudy-giuliani-secretary-of-state-2016-11?ref=gabestein.com) he will not accept a Secretary of State who approved of the war in Iraq.

#### [Maine: Susan Collins](https://www.collins.senate.gov/?ref=gabestein.com)

(202) 224–2523

A moderate from a blue state known for its independent streak who didn’t vote for Trump.

#### [Arizona: John McCain](http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/?ref=gabestein.com)

(202) 224–2235

A deeply patriotic hawk with an independent streak who is [already speaking out](http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/15/politics/john-mccain-donald-trump-vladimir-putin-reset/?ref=gabestein.com) against Trump’s cozying up to Putin and Russia.

#### [South Carolina: Lindsey Graham](http://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/?ref=gabestein.com)

(202) 224–5972

A hawk who was unabashedly anti-Trump during the primaries. He’s already [promised to check Trump](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/russia-dnc-hack-lindsey-graham%5Fus%5F582bb306e4b0e39c1fa703d5?ref=gabestein.com) on immigration and foreign relations and [called for an investigation](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/russia-dnc-hack-lindsey-graham%5Fus%5F582bb306e4b0e39c1fa703d5?ref=gabestein.com) into Russian influence during the election.

#### [Nebraska: Ben Sasse](http://www.sasse.senate.gov/public/?ref=gabestein.com)

(202) 224–4224

One of Trump’s most out-spoken GOP critics during the election who [wrote at length](https://www.facebook.com/sassefornebraska/posts/561073597391141) about why he couldn’t support him. Unfortunately, Sasse is [currently tweeting](https://twitter.com/BenSasse/status/799235355371249664?ref=gabestein.com) about paid protestors, but who knows, he may be convincable.

#### [Utah: Mike Lee](http://www.lee.senate.gov/?ref=gabestein.com)

(202) 224–5444

Lee is apparently Ted Cruz’s only and best friend, so make of that what you will. But the guy did apparently [fly to Florida](http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/17/politics/mike-lee-unprecedented-ted-cruz-marco-rubio/?ref=gabestein.com) to try to block Trump from winning the nomination there. He’s also a devout Mormon and outspoken libertarian from a state whose Mormon population was ambivalent at best about Trump, and voted for Evan McMullin in protest.

#### [Arizona: Jeff Flake](http://www.flake.senate.gov/?ref=gabestein.com)

(202) 224–4521

Flake is a devout Mormon, stood up to Trump during the election (Trump told him he’d [lose his nonexistent reelection bid](http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/johnwright/donald%5Ftrump%5Ftells%5Fgop%5Fsenator%5Fhe%5Fll%5Flose%5Fre%5Felection%5Fbid%5Feven%5Fthough%5Fhe%5Fs%5Fnot%5Fon%5Fballot?ref=gabestein.com) as a result), was [critical](http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jeff-flake-merrill-garland-supreme-court?ref=gabestein.com) of his party’s SCOTUS obstructionism, didn’t vote for Trump and seems to be [tepid, at best](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gop-sen-jeff-flake-trump-team-steve-bannon/?ref=gabestein.com), about the early transition.

#### [Alaska: Lisa Murkowski](http://www.murkowski.senate.gov/?ref=gabestein.com)

(202) 224–6665

A moderate who lost her Republican primary to a tea partier on 2010, then won election as a write-in candidate. Didn’t vote for Trump.

#### [Nevada: Dean Heller](http://www.heller.senate.gov/?ref=gabestein.com)

(202) 224–6244

Heller is up for reelection in 2018 in an increasingly blue state where Hispanics surged to defeat Trump. He didn’t vote for Trump.

#### [Colorado: Cory Gardner](http://www.gardner.senate.gov/?ref=gabestein.com)

(202) 224–5941

An outspoken Trump critic from an increasingly blue state. Did not vote for Trump. He’s also [leading the NRSC for 2018](http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/cory-gardner-takes-helm-nrsc?ref=gabestein.com), so will be particularly tuned in to how constituents respond to Senators’ actions when it comes to Trump.

#### [Alaska: Dan Sullivan](http://www.sullivan.senate.gov/?ref=gabestein.com)

(202) 224–3004

Was firmly in the anti-Trump camp during the election.

#### [Ohio: Rob Portman](http://www.senate.portman.gov/?ref=gabestein.com)

(202) 224–3353

A swing state senator who campaigned as a moderate. His [initial post-election comments](http://wksu.org/post/rob-portman-welcomes-new-white-house?ref=gabestein.com#stream/0) indicate he’s probably not going to be a check. But maybe?

#### [South Carolina: Tim Scott](http://www.scott.senate.gov/?ref=gabestein.com)

(202) 224–6121

Apparently, somehow, Scott voted for Trump. But he did kinda-sorta agree with Black Lives Matter about police abuse, [famously noting](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/tim-scott-capitol-racism-senate-225507?ref=gabestein.com) that he himself has been stopped many, many times by Capitol Police.

#### [Florida: Marco Rubio](http://www.rubio.senate.gov/?ref=gabestein.com)

(202) 224–3041

A swing state senator who has dabbled in compromise on immigration, sure to be one of the hottest issues this year, in the past. In the end, Rubio voted for Trump because he is a coward. But he was still outspoken in his belief that Trump is unfit for the presidency. If others lead, Rubio might follow.

#### [Pennsylvania: Pat Toomey](http://www.toomey.senate.gov/?ref=gabestein.com)

(202) 224–4254

Swing state senator who never said how he was voting. He won Pennsylvania by much more than Trump did.

#### [South Dakota: John Thune](http://www.thune.senate.gov/?ref=gabestein.com)

(202) 224–2321

Thune called for Trump to step down after the Access Hollywood tape. But he also previously endorsed Trump. So…who knows.

#### [Texas: Ted Cruz](http://www.cruz.senate.gov/?ref=gabestein.com)

(202) 224–5922

Ted Cruz is a gutless, spineless excuse for a human who managed to ultimately support Trump despite the fact that the President-elect [criticized his wife’s looks, suggested his father might have assassinated President Kennedy, started a Cruz birther movement, said he wouldn’t even accept a Cruz endorsement, and attacked his faith](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/23/9-truly-awful-things-that-were-said-between-ted-cruz-and-the-man-hell-now-support-donald-trump/?ref=gabestein.com). Also, [nobody who knows Cruz likes him](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/why-dc-hates-ted-cruz/426915/?ref=gabestein.com) (except “best friend” Mike Lee), and [he might be the zodiac killer](http://www.gq.com/story/ted-cruz-loves-soup-zodiac-killer-maybe?ref=gabestein.com).

But as we can see from the above above, he’s just craven enough that if other people are rewarder for taking a stand, he might, too.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [November 17, 2016](https://medium.com/p/c3ab1c29aec2?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/gop-senators-who-might-block-kleptocratic-trump-nominations-c3ab1c29aec2?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### Something you can do for me to oppose Bannon.
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/cdklvmmi/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:32.000Z
**Read on for the story.** **[Click here to skip to the action](#e058).**

Hey, friends. You may have heard our new President-elect [is planning to appoint](http://www.slate.com/articles/news%5Fand%5Fpolitics/politics/2016/11/donald%5Ftrump%5Fs%5Fpick%5Fof%5Fstephen%5Fbannon%5Fmeans%5Fwhite%5Fnationalism%5Fis%5Fcoming.html?ref=gabestein.com) a literal, actual, real-in-every-sense white supremacist, racist, anti-semite and misogynist to one of the top posts in the White House. Don’t believe me? Take it from his fans! [The KKK and American Nazi Party are celebrating.](http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/305912-kkk-american-nazi-party-praise-trumps-hiring-of-bannon?ref=gabestein.com)

I’m going to spare you the alarmism and hand-wringing and just say: please help me (and your other non-white/protestant friends) oppose this, right now. There are many battles to fight, but this feels like an important early one, and one that [we might be able to win](https://www.facebook.com/lawrence.glickman/posts/10207145784594502).

Good news! There’s something really easy that you can do, that we can all do: call your two Senators and your Representative’s offices and tell them to publicly and vigorously oppose the appointment. [Don’t email. Don’t tweet. Don’t fill out the online form. Call.](http://qz.com/836737/fomer-congressional-staffer-twitter-tips-on-how-to-get-congress-to-listen-to-you-went-viral/?ref=gabestein.com) Calling works best. Especially if a lot of us do it.

You should do this whether your representatives are Democrat or Republican. In fact, it’s probably more important to do it if your representative is a Republican, because they need more pressure to oppose their own party (even if it’s for the right reasons). Here’s the site to [look up the phone numbers](http://www.whoismyrepresentative.com/?ref=gabestein.com).

This is where, like me this morning, you’re probably hesitating. You worry that whoever picks up the phone is going to be grumpy or yell at you. You’re feeling a little nervous as you start to type in the number on a cell phone that, let’s be honest, you had kind of forgotten actually makes calls. You start mentally running down a list of small excuses, like, “I don’t have time for this right now, I’ll put it off until lunch.” Or, “I only have two bars of service right now and I want my voice to be crystal clear.” Or, “I never really liked Gabe anyway.”

I was feeling and thinking all of that this morning. I almost backed out. I almost pulled all of my classic procrastination tricks, like getting in the shower, doing laundry, and alphabetizing books. And then I read a terrifying thread about someone whose name rhymes with, uh, *schmitmer,* and I realized the least I can do is get over the fear of calling a number which is expressly set aside for this exact purpose.

And guess what? It was super easy, and felt great. I live in New York, so I called Chuck Schumer’s office first. He has a switchboard that features an hilarious recording of him assuring you that your call is important to him in his nebishy Brooklyn accent. You should call his office just to experience that recording. (Side note: he should voice all call-in lines. That would *really* piss off Bannon.)

Anyhow, I waited about 2 minutes. Then a staffer picked up. I gave my spiel (see below) in a calm, confident, friendly voice. The staffer didn’t have much to say, but was pleasant enough. Done. Breathe. Move on.

Next, I called Kirsten Gillibrand. Surprise: she doesn’t have a switchboard! The phone rang for about a minute, and then a human picked up. He was super friendly! I told him why I was calling and he said they had gotten a lot of calls about it. I said that’s great, and gave my take. He said thanks for calling, he’d make sure to pass my feedback on to the Senator.

Finally, I called my representative, Yvette Clarke. I didn’t know much about her, so I googled her first. She seems pretty awesome ([this is her Facebook cover photo](https://www.facebook.com/repyvettedclarke/photos/a.320230848039401.76879.135031389892682/528426387219845/?type=1&theater)), and it turns out she had already made a statement about Bannon. So when I called, I made sure to thank her for the statement, and urged her to continue.

Now, it’s your turn. You promised you would get active. This is something simple you can do that’s real. If nothing else, it’ll get you off the 🔥💣😭 that is social media right now and talking to real people.

---

#### How to Call Your Congresspeople About Steve Bannon

It’s easy, quick and feels surprisingly good.

1. [Look up your representatives’ phone numbers here](http://www.whoismyrepresentative.com/?ref=gabestein.com). OR call this number, enter your zip code, and it will automatically connect you to them, one-by-one: 1-844-872–0234 (yes, it is that awesome, h/t to my friend Steven for letting me know).
2. (Optional) See if they’ve made any statements about Bannon yet. Just google their name and Bannon. If you find something, it’s appropriate to praise them and ask them to continue making statements.
3. Use this template (or a version that better fits you):

> Hello, I’d like to make a comment to *\[Senator/Representative X\]* about the appointment of Steve Bannon to Senior White House Strategist.

> *\[short pause, then the staffer will tell you to continue\]*

> This is not a partisan or political issue. It’s a moral issue. Steve Bannon is a dangerous man whose anti-semitic, misogynistic and white supremacist views represent a clear danger to a large number of constituents. His appointment is being celebrated by the KKK and American Nazi party. His presence in the White House is unacceptable. I urge *\[Senator/Representative X\]* to publicly, forcefully and continuously oppose the appointment.

> *\[The staffer will thank you and ask for your address or zip code, so they know you’re a constituent. Give it to them.\]*

> Thank you, have a great day.

4\. Hang up. Realize how quick and painless and actually even a little fun it was. Smile and feel good about yourself. Okay not that good, it was just a phone call.

5\. Repeat for all of your representatives.

6\. Tell all your friends how easy and fun it was and do the same. Feel free to send them this article.

7\. Do it again tomorrow.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [November 15, 2016](https://medium.com/p/4b7f1fb0d875?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/something-you-can-do-for-me-to-oppose-bannon-4b7f1fb0d875?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### Democracy is my side project now.
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/vgk4lcnd/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:32.000Z
I could spend a lot of time writing a nice preamble to this, but let’s just cut right to the chase: like a lot of privileged white, straight, cis millennials, I make a good living, I donate to various causes, and I read and amplify progressive ideas from a diverse group of people. I want to be a decent ally. But the truth is I largely don’t follow through and really get involved beyond reading and donating. I’ve wanted to, and made a lot of justifications for my lack of action before. Mostly, I’ve been busy! Busy earning a living, busy doing jobs that, I tell myself, have a net-positive impact on the world.

But everyone’s busy. During the sleepless night and morning, I started asking myself: what have I *really* been busy with? And the answer is crystal clear. I spend much of my time on a favorite millennial past-time: the side project. You know, dreaming up various business ideas or building websites and apps. These projects are fun, and they fulfill two key needs for me: they’re mentally engaging in a different way than work is, and they give me the illusion of a safety net because I get to tell myself that one of them might take off, or that at least I’ll learn some valuable skills along the way.

But at the end of the day, I spend a lot of time on endeavors that don’t amount to much. Last night, watching friends in despair brought that home for me (I know: why did it take so long to understand this? I can only offer my apologies). It is spectacularly painful to realize I’ve spent so much time and energy on projects for myself that had little chance of succeeding, when I could have applied my need to engage my brain to something more immediately productive and impactful with the people suffering right now.

Today, that changes. I’m not at the place where I can commit myself to a life of full-time activism. I have a mortgage to pay and a promising main gig that I hope will be hugely impactful in a positive way. And honestly, I’m not sure if I would make the best activist. At the same time, if there’s something I’ve learned about myself (and a ton of friends like me), it’s that I’ll always need a side project to keep different parts of my brain engaged.

From now on, my side project is helping to undo the damage we did yesterday. Yes, that is a pretty glib way of saying, “I’m gonna do the work.” But you know what? It’s a convenient metaphor that matches the way I’ve structured my life. And I suspect it will be for a lot of other people, too.

So. This is the place where this essay could turn into a problematic mess of me promising some sort of crazy catch-all technological solution to our problems that is at once insanely privileged and guaranteed to fail.

But I’m not going to let that happen. Instead, what I’m going to do first is really simple: try a few of the things [Anil Dash](https://medium.com/u/a75df5e8a16c?ref=gabestein.com) suggests [here](https://medium.com/@anildash/forget-why-its-time-to-get-to-work-c49ac5f0da20?ref=gabestein.com#.h5owzf59g), starting with going to my local community board meetings and listening. I’m also going to start volunteering for local organizations that put me in situations where I get to listen to people in my neighborhood. I’m going to donate as much as I can (initial target: 10% of income) to organizations that provide community resources. And of course, I’m going to be even more compassionate to all the people in my life, especially those suffering the most right now.

I’m also going to be on the lookout for opportunities to do work on issues that are highly motivating to me (mostly because I think they could solve for some of the larger issues our country faces). In no particular order, here are some specific things I’d most like to work with people on, that either can be achieved at the state level, or have some bipartisan appeal:

- Top Two Non-Partisan Primaries
- Automatic Voter Registration
- Universal Health Care at the State Level
- Universal Basic Income
- Ban Private Prisons at the State Level

We all know what the bad news is, so here’s the good news: my new side project will be just as mentally engaging and, at times, as fun as building websites and scheming about business ideas. In fact, building websites and tools for people will likely still be some part of it, once I figure out where I can put those skills to real use. And like before, I’ll learn a lot of new and valuable skills in the process. But instead of giving myself a false sense of security, it will actually help build a society where everyone has real security. Instead of being a pipe dream, it will do some real good, right away, even if nothing “takes off.”

I was able to write this because I’m one of the lucky people who isn’t really afraid for their safety today. I’m feeling incredibly listless and depressed, but not actually in danger. This really isn’t intended for people who are working on how to stay safe. (If you are one of those folks, please get in touch and let me know what I can do for you right now.) Instead, it’s directed at people who are already wondering what they can do, which probably means they look a lot like me.

If you’re one of those people; if, like me, you’re feeling despondent today but have fantasized about doing impactful side projects, I invite you to join me. Take on something [from this list](https://medium.com/@anildash/forget-why-its-time-to-get-to-work-c49ac5f0da20?ref=gabestein.com#.h5owzf59g) instead of your next website or app or business idea. Respond to this post, write your own, and [get in touch](http://twitter.com/gabestein?ref=gabestein.com).

Let’s get to work.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [November 10, 2016](https://medium.com/p/f4c4d4385e58?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/democracy-is-my-side-project-now-f4c4d4385e58?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### November 6, 2016: Restoring the Republic
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/a5mdohnw/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
Forty-eight hours before the election, I’m increasingly (and very cautiously, still planning on doing some last-minute phone banking) optimistic about the fact that Hillary Clinton will be elected President on Tuesday (gonna knock on some wood just in case tho). However, I’m also increasingly aware that November 8 is just the beginning. We may rescue our republic from a would-be tyrant on Tuesday, but now we have to rebuild it. Trump’s campaign has torn apart fragile political, social and institutional. It will take years, possible decades, to fix the damage.

My hope is that the uncomfortable, fearful energy so many of us feel now—over-caffeinated and under-rested — will morph, after election day, into a steadfast resolve to keep fighting well after the election. But here’s a question that’s been sneaking into my head like an uninvited guest crashing a party: how and where do we start?

Like the 15-month barrage of lies Trump calls a campaign, the list of incredibly basic institutions we now need to fix is so long that it’s easy to forget that the country will still need to be governed after Tuesday. Don’t get me wrong, I think Hillary will (knocking on so much wood rn) make a very good president. But she’s going to start deep in the hole. For starters, she’s going to face a hostile GOP-lead House intent on weighing down her administration with frivolous hearings instead of doing their job of working with her to govern the country. If Democrats don’t win the Senate, she’ll have to deal with a Republican-held upper chamber intent on starting a constitutional crisis by shamelessly refusing to even hold hearings on any of her Supreme Court justice nominations despite arguing just months ago that the reason they’re refusing to do so now is to give the next President a chance. The FBI’s partisan tantrum will have to be addressed to restore the independence of the intelligence community. And that’s just the problems from inside the government itself. Never mind the fact that because of how irresponsibly Trump has campaigned, a full quarter of the electorate may not believe she actually won the election (all the wood) fairly. And even if that very real threat of discord never really materializes, the whole torn in civil society by Trump’s pandering to white nationalists, neo-nazis and other racist, anti-semitic and Islamophobic nasties will need to be repaired somehow. And of course, those of us working in tech and media will need to do some serious soul-searching about how the choices we’ve made facilitated these problems, and how to rebuild trust in our own institutions.

Reading that ghastly paragraph, I’m frankly surprised Hillary still wants to be President of this country. I’m not sure I would. Because even if we do somehow manage to repair all of the above damage, well…we’ve still got immigration, education, health care, welfare and social security, income inequality, climate change, economic competitiveness, instability in the Middle East, the emergence of Russia and China, and all the other things that were supposed to be issues this year to worry about.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [November 7, 2016](https://medium.com/p/1b6fbdd75d31?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/november-6-2016-restoring-the-republic-1b6fbdd75d31?ref=gabestein.com)

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### October 31, 2016: Some thoughts on candy
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/dgnc6mng/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
Following up on an [earlier tweetstream](https://twitter.com/gabestein/status/793195871068426240?ref=gabestein.com)…

Hi. It’s halloween, one of my favorite holidays because you can earnestly debate and discuss various candies. As any of my friends, dentists and my mom will tell you, I am an expert in this subject.

My qualifications: the far too many cavities I have had filled over the years (including a root canal or two that slipped in), the fact that most of my friends know what a Kazoozle is (see below), and the fact that my favorite thing to do on road trips is stop at remote gas stations and buy the weirdest-looking candy they carry.

I would also submit an additional, important qualification that sets me apart from many of the [so-called](https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/09/21/the-mount-rushmore-of-candy/?utm%5Fterm=.09d40a13ea02&ref=gabestein.com) experts out there: I love all kinds of sweets, without bias. I have my favorites, but they’re all over the map. I don’t automatically rank chocolatey things higher than fruity things or minty things or plain sugary things. I don’t categorically dislike any candy, except Sour Skittles, which ought to be outlawed because they are not candy, they’re powdered acid spheres designed to bore holes in your tongue.

Today, my friend and converted Kazoozler [Drake Baer](https://medium.com/u/3a0fcd69326c?ref=gabestein.com) sent me [this Candy Hierarchy](http://boingboing.net/2016/10/31/the-candy-hierarchy-for-2016.html?ref=gabestein.com) from Boing Boing. If I understand it correctly, it’s a list mostly made up from a survey of their readers. So, rather than debate the list itself (and there is much to debate), I figured it would be a better use of everyone’s time to offer a few tips that I’ve learned over my years of consuming almost every type of candy there is. I’ve also included a few candies that are rare or missing from most lists.

---

#### Tip 1: Improve candies by eating the coating first

Many American candies, especially of the chocolate variety, include too much coating and not enough filling, leading to a disappointing, fairly one-note experience. These candies can be dramatically improved if you eat away much of the surrounding coating first, and then consume the rest. For example: a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup is much better if you eat the hard chocolate edge around the peanut butter, take a swig of water, and then eat the peanut butter puck with a thin layer of chocolate on the top and bottom that remains. This also applies to things like Kit Kat, Twix, filled M&Ms, and Brookside chocolate-covered berries, if you count that as a candy. Oddly enough, American Smarties are also better if you eat the “lip” of the candy first — you almost have to scrape it off with your top and bottom teeth — and then eat the rest. I have no idea why, but it’s true.

#### **Tip 2: Fancy candy bars aren’t worth it**

There will come a time when you will be at a cute store in some college town in the Midwest that offers a fancy version of a popular candy bar, usually a Snickers, for four times the price. Said store will promise you that you have not truly experienced a candy bar until you have paid four times the price of a Snickers for one. It will use words like “ganache,” “fondant,” and “gianduja” to describe its contents. You will pay four times the price of a Snickers for one, and you will be very excited to experience a “true” candy bar. You will open the sturdy cardboard box it comes in, bite off a third of the surprisingly small bar and chew. It will taste like…huh, a Snickers. I have fallen for this more than once, at more than one cute shop, and I have regretted it each time. In truth, these bars are often marginally better than their vending machine counterparts. But not four times better. Not even close. You will regret your purchase. Do not make my mistake.

#### Tip 3: Candy corn and peanuts are an unexpected and amazing combination

I am sorry if you feel a little gaslighted by this “tip” but I swear it is true and you — no, the world — needs to know about this. Nobody knows why (they’re researching it but studies have been inconclusive), but for some reason, candy corn and peanuts make an amazing combination. I know it sounds crazy and maybe even a little unappetizing, but it’s true. The crunch of the peanuts against chewiness of the candy corn creates a delightful textural contrast. And something about the toasty saltiness of the peanuts perfectly balances out the otherwise overwhelming sweetness of the candy corn, creating the purest sweet/salty mixed food known to exist. It’s right up there with kettle corn. Get over yourself, go and buy some discounted post-Halloween candy corn and give it a try. You’re welcome in advance.

#### Tip 4: Uncommon candies you should try

- **Kazoozle**  
Truly a hidden gem, I can’t believe more people haven’t come around to the joy that is the Kazoozle. It’s a package of several hollow tubes of flavored licorice filled with tangy paste. They’re made by Wonka, and taste as though no natural ingredient was ever involved in making them. Weird and glorious.
- **Chick-o-Stick**  
It’s a big red flag that Boing Boing’s writers don’t know what a Chick-o-Stick is. It’s basically the middle of a Butterfinger coated with toasted coconut. It’s impossible to eat without making a huge mess, but it tastes great and has the added benefit of getting stuck in your teeth for days, so you can enjoy it for a while.
- **Pearson’s Salted Nut Roll**  
It’s almost inaccurate to call this candy, since it’s mostly peanuts. But somehow, like, ahem, candy corn and peanuts, it just works.
- **Jolly Rancher Soft Chews**  
Okay, these aren’t exactly uncommon anymore. But I feel like they suffer from the association with the unwieldily original Jolly Rancher. Rest assured, these Kazoozle cousins are unbelievably addicting and deserving of their own place in the pantheon of great sweets.
- **CVS Canada Wintergreens**  
The best flavored chalk you’ll ever eat. I swear they’re not as bad as they sound/look/are described by me. If you crave a satisfying chocolate-free mint experience (gum doesn’t count because it is *not* satisfying), these are the best you’re going to find now that Brach’s has ruined Valentine’s Day (see below). Don’t tell me you like candy canes — candy canes?! — better, and don’t give up on them until you get a good package with soft mints. They can be, uh, rather stale.
- **England: Licorice Allsorts**  
Apparently there’s a lot of hatred for these among Brits. But as usual, they’re dead wrong, because this mix is amazing. The combination of not-too-sweet but not-too-strong licorice and weird coconut bits in multiple varieties is unusually satisfying. Even though our neighbors across the pond are making a colossal mistake by leaving the European Union, they can enter their long years of decline knowing they contributed a standout to the world of cheap confections. The Marks and Spencer-branded allsort is the best version.
- **France: Lutti Fili-Tubs**  
These small sour-on-the-outside, sweet-on-the-inside tubes appear to be available solely in France and Belgium. And even then, I’ve found them only at select G20 grocery stores and occasionally at Monoprix. Most French people I’ve talked to don’t know about them. But if you do come across a package of Fili-Tubs, buy as many bags as you can. These unassuming gems are one of the best candies on the planet. Don’t bother with the multi-flavored XL version, go straight for the small, pink strawberries and cream variety.

#### Tip 5: A Note on Brach’s Conversation Hearts

Valentine’s Day used to be a holiday I looked forward to for one reason: large Brach’s Conversation Hearts, sold exclusively at CVS (as far as I know). Unlike the often stale, flavorless Necco version, Brach’s hearts were always delightfully soft and bursting with a variety of pleasant mint flavors. For what it’s worth, they also included more interesting messages (“Fax me?” go home, Necco, you’re old). Then, out of nowhere, a year or two ago Brach’s decided to change *every single flavor* from a perfectly good mint variety to a horrible fake fruit concoction that even I couldn’t manage to eat more than a few of — and I’ve consumed hundreds of bags of CVS Canada Wintergreens in my life. I still cannot believe these flavors made it out of R&D. If I had been in charge, I would have burnt the entire lab down rather than allow any part of this shameful, twisted experiment to survive. These flavors are so obviously bad that the only even somewhat positive review I could find online calls them “good enough” and [compares them](https://www.amazon.com/review/R12ZDETZC33B1U/ref=cm%5Fcr%5Fdp%5Ftitle?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00AWI49SO&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=16310101&store=grocery&ref=gabestein.com) to children’s Advil. They’re so bad that they make banana Runts taste good by comparison. Banana. Fucking. Runts. A flavor that so bad that someone once accused me of being “charitable” for describing it as “basically inedible.” And these new hearts are *worse*. So yeah, fuck you, Brach’s. I’m not a violent person and I even try to avoid violent language when I can. But as you can tell, your desecration of one of my favorite candies really struck a nerve here. I truly hope that everyone who had a part in the decision to turn a great candy into something so awful suffers in some small way. Not, like, a major way. But, maybe you all get a paper cut every day for a year, or something. I don’t know, I’ll think about it and get back to you. Anyhow, I’ve heard rumors that you’re bringing back the mint flavors this year because you’ve realized the truly destructive error of your ways, and yeah, I’ll probably buy a bag just to see if that’s true, but I’m still hugely disappointed. Fuck.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [November 1, 2016](https://medium.com/p/cb156cfb723b?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/october-31-2016-some-thoughts-on-candy-cb156cfb723b?ref=gabestein.com)

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### October 26, 2016: Otto
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/ctg3cvmu/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
Some news: Otto, the self-driving trunk company owned by Uber, [made its first automated delivery](https://www.wired.com/2016/10/ubers-self-driving-truck-makes-first-delivery-50000-beers/?ref=gabestein.com) (in my home state, no less) yesterday. Of course the first delivery was beer, because you can be sure someone in Uber’s PR department got wind of this stunt long ago and made sure to capitalize on it with a delivery sure to generate social media-friendly headlines.

There were two odd things about the delivery, and the way the press covered it. First, it’s odd that despite the news representing a towering effort of achievement and a culmination of the last 100 years of human innovation, the actual facts of the delivery were, by 2016 standards, pretty dull. A truck driver pulled onto the highway, flipped a switch, and then sat back for several miles as a truck drove itself. It’s something that every Tesla owner is already doing on a regular basis (although as Wired makes plain, Tesla’s technology isn’t technically full “Level 4” automation), and compared to non-highway self-driving efforts like Google’s and Uber’s own trial in Pittsburgh, it doesn’t feel particularly special.

And yet, as the Wired article makes plain, automating trucking will have a much larger impact on the country, at least in the short term, than automating other kinds of driving. The trucking industry is facing a huge driver shortfall because, put bluntly, the job of sitting in a tiny cab directing a truck on mostly a straight line is miserable. No one will be harmed by automating this job, because no one really wants to do it.

Or that’s what we’re lead to believe. And that brings me to the second odd thing about the news. The view of economics presented in the Wired article is completely insane.

First, as if ripped from the mouth of the same PR person who came up with the beer stunt, the article claims, without a moment’s reflection: “Don’t worry. Otto, which Uber bought last summer for roughly $680 million, doesn’t want to put Martin or anyone else out of work.”

A mere four paragraphs later, the article describes changes to trucking that would have a giant effect on the jobs of millions of people: “\[Otto cofounder Lior Ron\] sees a day when trucks do their thing on the interstate, then stop at designated depots where humans drive the last few miles into town. Drivers, in effect, become harbor pilots, bringing the ship to port.”

Think about that for a moment. The trucking industry [employees 8.7 million people, 3.5 million of whom are drivers](https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961?ref=gabestein.com#.n0auk6d36). That doesn’t take into account the trucking infrastructure — rest stops, restaurants, motels, etc. — designed to serve the needs of human drivers. If trucking becomes a local industry, where all humans do is drive the last few miles, it’s going to put millions of people out of work.

The Wired article is particularly egregious for its parroting of a corporate line. But not one article I can find about the delivery mentions this. The tech press is completely incapable of considering the economics of the inventions it covers.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [October 27, 2016](https://medium.com/p/144a6e03f3a4?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/some-news-otto-the-self-driving-trunk-company-owned-by-uber-made-its-first-automated-delivery-144a6e03f3a4?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### October 25, 2016: Herschel’s Backstory
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/gveoo6iz/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
According to his mother Irene, Herschel Lubowitz Gold was born on October 25, 1947 at “a very nice hospital.” He spent the first ten years of his life in New Jersey, probably, before the family moved to the Upper East Side to help his uncle Gilly open a deli. It wasn’t Second Avenue or Sarge’s, but it was an okay deli. Maybe even decent on the best of days.

In high school, Herschel was mostly known for an incident involving gefilte fish jelly. It was junior year and he was sitting at lunch with his two friends Dave Kaufman and Jerry Schaevitz discussing the new BBYO president, that jerkoff Howard Steiner. The toothpick he was using to remove a large piece of fish from a freshly opened jar snapped, sending a glob of jelly flying. It landed just in front of Kelly Newman, the new homecoming queen. She was carrying a tray full of chicken nuggets and did not notice the jelly. She slipped, broke her collarbone, and sent chicken nuggets flying everywhere. One even stuck on the ceiling! Which is obviously impossible and didn’t happen. Do you believe everything you read on the internet?

After the incident, Herschel never ate gefilte fish again until that Saturday, when, struck by a particularly good harmony that an older girl he had never noticed before belted out to *adon olam* at the end of services, he forgot he had sworn off the fish and absent-mindedly ate two pieces — with horseradish, the good kind without beet juice — at the synagogue potluck. Can you guess what else was at the potluck? You’re right: mac and cheese with bread crumbs on top, sweet kugel that some idiot put under the broiler for too long — noodles aren’t meant to be that crunchy, Susan! — those yellow bagels you find at the corner store, and of course, Italian dressing soup with lettuce.

After high school, Herschel accidentally dodged the draft by drifting off in mid-sentence during his answer to the question, “how are you today, son?” He started to answer, but noticed he had a popcorn kernel stuck in his teeth that was really bothering him. So much that it might distract from his answers, which wouldn’t be good for the country. He thought he could get it out with a quick flick of the tongue, but it turns out it was really stuck in there. He spent about 30 seconds trying to remove it with his tongue while simultaneously smiling nervously at the draft board, which had at that point already concluded that he was not a fit for this man’s army.

During the war, he spent most of his time working at his uncle Gilly’s diner, where he still works today, making ‘during the war’ a pretty irrelevant part of this sentence. It’s still not a very good diner, but as Gilly always says, “it hasn’t gotten worse!” In fact, it’s gotten a lot worse by just about every objective measure.

In 1986, Herschel moved out of his mother’s apartment and into a small studio on the Upper East Side that he bought for $96,000 with his life’s savings and the Israeli bonds from his bar mitzvah. Little did he know that, while cleaning out leftover items from the apartment’s previous tenant, Herschel would make a discovery that would change his life…forever.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [October 26, 2016](https://medium.com/p/e2990ac90291?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/october-25-2016-herschels-backstory-e2990ac90291?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### October 20, 2016
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/3u9sehhz/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
The persistent whistling. Like cold air rushing through a partially cracked car window at high speed. That’s what he noticed first.

It reminded him of those early morning drives to high school through the snow. There was hot brown coffee in his travel mug that spilled over into the cupholder as he drove along icy local roads onto the main boulevard on the way to school. The sky was blue, but not a bright, pleasant blue of summer. A graying blue of winter, laced with wisps of frozen clouds the color of iced over pavement.

He would turn the heat on, but it would fog up the windshield so that he could barely see, and so he would have to crack the window while the defroster started up. And the cold air would whistle in through the crack as he drove. The persistent whistling again.

He would wear his big grey winter coat in the morning, but leave it unzipped, even on the way down the front walk to the street where he parked. He’d put his coffee mug on the roof and slip off his glove to operate the keys. If it had just snowed, he’d have to wipe the snow off the lock with his bare hands, his chewed fingernails digging into the metal groove to clear it of debris.

Once the car started and the heat came on, it would swelter. That’s why he would leave his jacket unzipped. Swelter until the windshield fogged over and he had to open the window just to see where he was going. Then the frigid air would whistle in through the crack in the window and somehow go right to the gap in his unzipped jacket and burrow its way down past his sweater and past his undershirt, hitting what might as well have been bare skin.

The sound was unmistakable, but he wasn’t in high school, in his car, now. He opened his eyes. The sky was the same blue-grey of an early winter morning of his youth, but he wasn’t looking out at it through a windshield. He was looking straight up at the sky, the wisps of frozen cloud suspended in the air like exploded darts.

He strained to pick his head up off the ground, but his aspect wouldn’t change. He couldn’t turn. His eyes wouldn’t move. His gaze was static, the only movement the clouds drifting lazily with the high gusts of the troposphere.

Had he truly opened his eyes, or had his vision been switched on? He closed his eyes again. The scene went dark, but he didn’t feel his eyelids sliding over his retina, and the sound of whistling didn’t abate.

Instead of opening his eyes again, he merely requested vision. It — whatever it was — obliged. This time, he was looking down from the vantage point of one of the clouds, his periphery changing slowly as he drifted on the wind. He noticed a dark spot in the grey fields below, and focused on it. There he was, lying motionless in the wind.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [October 21, 2016](https://medium.com/p/3285382f4355?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/october-20-2016-3285382f4355?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### October 19, 2016: Welp.
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/li30cgb6/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
More than anything else this election cycle, watching the after-math of this debate is exposing the inability of the media to fulfill its core function of informing people in the modern world. Yeah, I know, it’s easy to hate on the media, especially if you work in it. That’s why I’ve avoided doing it so far this election cycle. They’re dealing with a totally unique candidate who is a master at using media for his benefit. It’s taken folks a while to adjust. They’re finally getting better (thank goodness), but the bare truth is that despite the sheer insanity of the Republican candidate for president, the media is still covering this election like a fucking horse race.

Let me get something clear: nobody — not in the media, not in the country — should give a single fuck whether or not the completely unprecedented remarks about the rigged election will be seen negatively or positively by voters. Whether it was an unforced error. Whether it will dominate headlines. It’s not just that the answers to all of those questions are self-evident, those questions are not important. The answer’s sheer ridiculousness completely transcends the horse race. The media has a duty, all lowercase-d democrats, in fact, have a duty to do what [the AP has done](https://twitter.com/i/web/status/788939711205236736?ref=gabestein.com): to call out that comment for what it is: a complete repudiation of what makes democracy successful.

Here’s the thing: even if you believe that the media should be completely objective in its reporting, that basic fact, that democracy’s success relies on the peaceful transition of power, is objectively true. A candidate refusing to accept the results of an election in front of the nation therefore undermines democracy. These statements are indisputable, and if your question, as a reporter, is whether or not it will hurt or help the candidate who said them, you have already failed in your duty to inform the country.

Many journalists will pass this easy test tomorrow. So will many politicians on both sides of the aisle. Unfortunately, just as many journalists will fail the test. And many of the politicians will continue to spinelessly support the candidate who said it despite the fact that they will simultaneously say that it undermines the very foundation of our country.

The good news is, the candidate who made that tragic statement will not win the presidency. American democracy will probably continue on for a long time.

But my sincere hope is that those who failed in their duty to protect the American experiment by reporting the statement for what it is and supporting the candidate who said it despite the implications of his remarks will be remembered by history as people who nearly, and willingly, sent America to its doom. Because it is not enough simply to survive threats to democracy. We must make sure those threats are dealt with seriously, so that they can never recur.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [October 20, 2016](https://medium.com/p/5aefedf27d9e?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/october-19-2016-welp-5aefedf27d9e?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### October 18, 2016: Bad Sci-Fi
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/91930evn/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
“My purpose here is to inform you of a conspiracy that plans to destroy your little Utopia.”

The Malgorians were one of the first species humans ever encountered. They were largely benevolent, but like every other people mankind encountered beyond the Milliwave, their gestures were inscrutable to the unaided human eye. Clark’s Overlay displayed typically unhelpful guidance: *Sarcasm or amusement.*

“You’re serious?”

The envoy’s gaze — composed of eight spider-like eyes — shifted subtly before freezing, as Malgorians do when they speak. The U.S. government’s techs had nicknamed it Stalky.

“Oh yes. Why do you think they’re working in our territory?” asked Stalky.

*Sincerity*, Clark was informed by his overlay.

“Actually,” he said, waving his hand, “what I want to know is how any human is working in your solar system at all. We’ve only even known about you for 700 years. Malgoria is 230 light-years away.”

“Yes, that is a mystery, isn’t it?” said the envoy.

Malgorian anatomy was fascinating. They looked for all the world like a smooth, green, leather ottoman with eyes. Except that the four legs could telescope, which they did presently, moving the Malgorian downward. The eyes moved again, too, each in a slightly different direction.

*Curiosity,* Clark’s overlay reported.

“You don’t have any theories, do you?” said Clark.

All 8 eyes stilled again, one after the other. “No.”

Malgorians and humans together knew of only 8 species in this sector of the galaxy. All were an average of 300 light-years apart, and the fastest travel anyone possessed was 1/8th of the speed of light.

“It is possible, of course, that my species has solved the riddle since I was sent this information. It came only days ago. We’re 230 years behind wherever they are.”

“Surely if someone was capable of FTL, we’d know by now,” said Clark.

“Yes. And it would save us a lot of trouble. Our contact fleets are still 500 years apart.”

“So you remind me every day.”

“My memory is not as good as yours.”

“Because we scrub it daily.”

“Speaking of which, I received another plea for you to stop doing that yesterday. It’s just wasting bandwidth,” said Stalky.

The first thing Malgoria had sent humanity was a simulation of one of its leading emissaries. It had taken about five years to figure out what it was, and another five to install it on a computer and teach it english, human gestures, and basic world history. They had never connected it to the global networks, just the deep space relays, and had basically wiped and re-installed it every day. The first half millennia’s worth of conversations were pretty boring, but apparently the Malgorians back home had learned quickly, because since they had received its first reports, they had been sending it back its own recordings every day.

“Are you not doing the same thing to our simulation?” Clark asked.

“We have more faith in our security than you do,” the simulation replied.

*Flat*, said the overlay. It was telling the truth.

“Congratulations, Stalky.” said Clark. The simulation’s eyes shifted simultaneously in the same direction. Clark knew what it was before his overlay sent back its analysis. *Embarrassment.*

“Back to this conspiracy,” said the human. “You said they want to destroy our Utopia. What did you mean? What exactly have you intercepted?”

“You haven’t already analyzed the data?” Stalky asked.

“We have. We just want your unfiltered interpretation.”

“Our interpretation is that a group of you discovered us long before it was officially announced, long before the Sol Coalition was formed. And now that word has reached them that you’ve re-found us, this initial group is upset with what you’ve become.”

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [October 19, 2016](https://medium.com/p/d7bf24593f34?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/october-18-2016-bad-sci-fi-d7bf24593f34?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### October 17, 2016: Part 1
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/4b749jlt/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
They were in the car when it happened for the first time. The vehicle came to a slow stop in the middle of the deserted road. It was technically a drive zone, so the car reverted to offline mode and crawled over to the side of the road, its warning lights blinking, before it abruptly shut down its engine.

They sat in confused silence for a few long moments.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“I don’t know, exactly,” she replied. “My map views are all down. But I have some historical data. We were on 9\. Uh, I think we’re probably not far from Hyde Park.”

“Okay. Well this is weird. I’m down, too. It’s not just Comcast.”

“That is weird. It’s like the old days, when neither of us had service out here. Remember that?”

“Mmm.”

They fell silent again. There were no lights except for the blinkers of their car reflecting on frosted over windows, no network response at all from their overlays. No sound except for their breathing.

“Caleb?”

“Mari?”

“I don’t like ‘mmm.’ What are you thinking, my dear?”

“Well…”

He confirmed the worst of her fears. They subscribed to different networks for redundancy. If both were down, it meant something non-localized had happened. They guessed that they were in range of microwave generators in Kingston, New Paltz and Poughkeepsie. If it was power, it was effecting the entire Hudson Valley.

“So what do you think it is?” asked Mari.

“Hold on,” he said. “Ping the power directly.”

“How? Oh. Through the local swarm?”

“Yeah. I can trace it all the way back to New Paltz. And look, on through to New York.”

She instructed her overlay to locate nearby localizers. There weren’t many so far upstate, but there were enough. Tiny specks glowed gold in her vision as the local versions reported in. She pinged New York City out of habit, expecting her viewpoint to swing upward into the drone net, and then up to satellites. But of course, they were down, too. Instead, her vision raced south from local camera to local camera, almost fast enough to make her dizzy. She cut it off and watched a simulated view instead. A fuzzy map swung into view, a golden line racing downward towards the city.

“That’s it!” she said aloud.

“What?” asked Caleb.

“Wait a second.”

She asked the swarm to display local messages. There weren’t as many as she would have expected, but a few people had left some on the swarm itself. Reports were already spreading across the localizers from as far as Boston. The global network was down there, too. She reached even farther, searching not just for network messages, but broadcasts over the seldom-used radio antennas.

“Um, Caleb?” she said.

“Yeah. I hear it.”

“The global net isn’t down locally.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m listening to the old HAM frequencies. It’s kind of incredible that so many people even remember to fall back to them!”

“Caleb. Forget the frequencies they’re using.”

“Sorry.”

“The whole world is down.”

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [October 18, 2016](https://medium.com/p/5a349b53890e?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/october-17-2016-part-1-5a349b53890e?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### October 14, 2016: Trek
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/8caqxp8w/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
I’ve been reading Manu Saadia’s Trekonomics for the last few weeks. It’s a little bit lighter than I expected, but in many ways it reads like it was written for me. As I wrote in my [very first journal](https://medium.com/@gabestein/october-10-2016-2067b7695af1?ref=gabestein.com#.3cngrvylk), at my most extreme, my political views can be fairly well defined as “scrap the system and build the Federation already.” What makes Saadia’s book satisfying is that it demonstrates that if we’re willing to look past the technology, squint a little, and assume a whole lot of progress establishing some very progressive norms, we’re actually that far away from accomplishing my glib Facebook-worthy political view. At a particularly difficult time for the American psyche, I can’t help but appreciate this wholly optimistic view.

I’ve always understood viscerally that Star Trek is different. Even before I really knew what it really was, catching the occasional rerun after school, it felt like nothing else on TV. And only a few of the hundreds of sci-fi books I borrowed from my dad’s library downstairs even approached the feeling of watching a single good episode of TNG.

I used to joke that what made Star Trek special was that they spent the first two thirds of every episode desperately trying to avoid conflict with diplomacy, until it inevitably broke down and they had to break all the rules (and a few necks) to make things right. I still think the fact that most of the dramatic tension in the show stems the Federation’s stubborn, but not unreadable, commitment to do what’s right is a stroke of genius.

In fact, what makes Trek unique is that unlike most science fiction, which uses the future to comment on our present, Star Trek uses our present to comment on what could be if we realize its future. Its essential optimism and progressivism sets itself apart from nearly every other work of fiction produced in the last 50 years.

That same optimism also makes it somewhat difficult to swallow today in the face of a norm-shattering election and the international challenge of climate change. And yet, if you can squint just enough, if you can put skepticism aside and give in to a little optimism, you can see the bright Trek future beginning to appear over the horizon. Saadia’s book draws a clear enough path. Yes, it’s going to take establishing a lot of new norms and tearing old ones apart. Yes, it’s going to take solving some pretty difficult problems and a fair amount of luck. But the point of Trek is that when things are properly aligned, humans tend to be good at all of those things — and pretty darn lucky.

We’re not the Federation yet. But I won’t be surprised if, after overcoming the hurdle of this election, we start to look more and more like it.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [October 18, 2016](https://medium.com/p/ae0c9b53106b?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/october-14-2016-trek-ae0c9b53106b?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### October 13, 2016: Isfahan
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/4gc5kgqz/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
Not the city, although I imagine, given its history, that it is spectacular. No, I mean the Duke Ellington standard. One of my favorites that seems to come up on shuffle more often than it should, thank the algorithm.

Written and composed by Duke and Billy Strayhorn during (or, depending on which history you read, just before) a world tour in 1963 and recorded as part of the misnamed “Far East Suite,” Isfahan is one of the most sublime melodies ever put to music.

What makes the composition and indeed the entire suite special is that despite the name, it’s not appropriative. Duke and Strayhorn were inspired by the places they visited and people they met on their tour, but they didn’t try to imitate the music they must have heard. Instead, confident as ever, the duo applied the foreignness of the experience to the mature style they had developed together over the previous three decades.

The result is a unique suite of music that is at once both familiar and uncomfortably exotic. Blue Pepper is a standout for its bluesy chords backed by a dizzying, driving rhythm that almost sounds like the theme song to an action movie set in the Middle East. Almost, yet it holds together thanks to typically strong solo work and never quite strays into pastiche.

But Isfahan is the gem of them all. Certainly of the suite, arguably of the Ellington/Strayhorn collaboration, and maybe even of the entire postwar, pre-Miles American jazz canon. Its smooth, soaring, sentimental saxophone line was written specifically for the talents of Johnny Hodges, the Orchestra’s legendary and longtime soloist. Nothing in the rest of the Ellington/Strayhorn oeuvre quite approaches the standard version of Isfahan, not even the rare alternate arrangement of Take the ‘A’ Train with Duke’s brilliant piano solo from the Centennial recordings.

The Suite was the last record Billy Strayhorn would compose before succumbing to cancer in 1967\. The next album the Orchestra recorded was “And His Mother Called Him Billy,” which is a genius work born of despair, but also marks the end of an era. Duke would continue to move his music forward in the twilight of his long, brilliant career, but he would never match the beauty of Isfahan.

Strayhorn was a part of Ellington’s soul that he could never decide whether to keep for himself or share with the world. The two had an intimate, but not always even relationship. Biographers retrospectively criticized Ellington for being paternalistic, overbearing, and for taking too much credit for Strayhorn’s work. Despite this, the pair worked together across three decades, and today Strayhorn is widely recognized as a legend in his own right, thanks in part to Duke’s many tributes to him.

Indeed, you get the sense that Billy, or Bill, as his mother called him, didn’t mind Duke’s rough edges. He may have even fed off them. Strayhorn was a classically trained virtuoso with a rebellious streak who needed a partner to simultaneously reign him in and set him free. He found just that in Duke, and never questioned it too much. For his part, Ellington knew talent when he saw it, and understood how to infuse it with his own genius without trampling it — even if it meant he was sometimes the undeserving center of attention.

Isfahan is the purest expression of their combined brilliance that we have. Even in the first few bars, Duke’s restrained exoticism and unmatched talent for mood combine with Strayhorn’s refined compositional style and signature melancholy to form the perfect standard. Once the song starts, it doesn’t matter who composed it, or who deserves the credit. All that matters is that somehow, some way, the pair made it past difference and strife and decline and comeback to this pinnacle. May we be so lucky to visit Isfahan again.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [October 14, 2016](https://medium.com/p/4b77fd8ace0d?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/october-13-2016-isfahan-4b77fd8ace0d?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### October 12, 2016
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/p5xg5syl/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
It’s 11:30 and I haven’t written my 500 words yet. Fuck. This has been one of those days where a few extra hours really would have come in handy. But as I discussed with my girlfriend last night, doing so while keeping the Earth habitable would be surprisingly hard. Slowing the Earth’s rotation (by, I assume, strapping a rocket to it and firing it in the opposite direction) would presumably have horrific effects on weather and tidal patterns, not to mention send it spinning out of orbit thanks to lost angular momentum. Keeping the spin rate constant but making the surface area of the globe bigger would probably fuck all kinds of things up by increasing the gravitational pull of the Earth. And let’s not even get started with actually trying to slow time down. First of all, we don’t even really know what time is! Second of all, slowing it down wouldn’t actually accomplish anything, because we’d still experience time in our native frame of reference. And finally, a neuroscientist friend assures me that it would be impossible to change our frame of references by somehow speeding up our brain’s processing speed (yes, this option has occurred to me), even if we use nanobots!

So, I reluctantly admit: the real thing to do is probably make myself less busy (or less prone to procrastination). I’ve read all the science about 6 hour work days, about the power of focusing and single-tasking and why doing less leads to accomplishing more. But it’s psychologically difficult to get there, because…well, I think because we’re just not wired, as a species, to be satisfied.

Or maybe it’s our technology, which demands an increasing amount of front-brain attention? A new spate of studies have come out in the last few weeks about just how addictive we design our devices — or more accurately, the apps we use on them —to be. And hoo boy have I been feeling that of late, especially with the election glaring at us like your uncle’s crazy neighbor down the barrel of his sawed-off rifle. Sorry, I promised myself not to write about the election, but there it is.

I’ve also promised myself not to blame technology for my woes. After all, the academics (or their historical equivalents) have had a multi-thousand-year knack for claiming the harsh end of life as we know it of just about everything we humans invent to relieve ourselves from the burden of labor. I’m sure fire was roundly condemned for burning things down in its day. I’m sure we can adjust to phones.

In the meantime, it’s interesting to observe that it’s rarely the the actual, bulleted, top tasks that keep me up into the night. I get my shit done. What suffers is doing them well. What always seems to come up short is the time for the extra polish, the once- or twice-over, the final edit. In short, all the satisfying shit. And that may be why being busy is so unbearably unsatisfying. You can still manage to get things done in 24 hours, you just can’t stop to enjoy it.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [October 13, 2016](https://medium.com/p/c1b3dab2c31b?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/october-12-2016-c1b3dab2c31b?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### October 11, 2016: For My Conservative Friends
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/mrshby2k/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
Politics again, today. Mostly, I liked [this article](http://whatever.scalzi.com/2016/10/11/trump-the-gop-and-the-fall/?ref=gabestein.com) about the state of the GOP by writer [John Scalzi](https://medium.com/u/831660b6cc6a?ref=gabestein.com) (side note: I highly recommend his Old Man’s War series) because a particular line in it reminded me to close my gaping yap and step back from enjoying today’s schadenfreude:

> I feel sorry for many of my individual friends who are Republicans and/or conservatives, who have to deal with the damage Trump is doing to their party and to their movement, even if I belong to neither.

Earlier this year, discussing the election with my girlfriend, I realized that for a firmly [en-bubbled](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter%5Fbubble?ref=gabestein.com) liberal millennial, I have a lot of conservative friends. In fact, despite the fact that I am personally *waaaay* left of center (my views fall somewhere between progressive and “wipe the system clean and build [the Federation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United%5FFederation%5Fof%5FPlanets?ref=gabestein.com) already”), at least half of most of my close friends are conservatives. And we talk about politics a lot.

I don’t want this to disintegrate into a self-serving explanation of why that’s the case. Suffice it to say that I had a pretty unique upbringing, at least when it comes to politics. [My father](https://edsteinink.com/?ref=gabestein.com) is a liberal editorial cartoonist who himself counts people from across the political spectrum as close friends. Political discussion was constant at the dinner table, but ideological difference was always understood to be different means to a shared end goal of advancing the nation, not a zero-sum game. It was a nice way to grow up, and I would recommend all young readers find a political cartoonist parent, except that cartooning doesn’t seem to be a viable career path anymore.

Anyhow, the point is that while I’m not exactly upset at watching Trump take the GOP down in flames with him, I’m saddened for my friends and what has become of the conservative movement. As my dad has reminded me many times, conservatism is a necessary balance to progressivism. The two ideologies competing and compromising to move the country forward is what makes American democracy work. Either functioning alone for too long is a bad thing.

As Scalzi points out, this didn’t happen overnight, and the GOP itself is to blame for its own demise. And to be clear, as I [wrote yesterday](https://medium.com/@gabestein/october-10-2016-2067b7695af1?ref=gabestein.com), I don’t think there’s an easy fix for the dilemma, and I think the effects of what the GOP and Trump have unleashed — particularly the normalization of white supremacy, xenophobia, racism and sexism — will take years to resolve. I suspect we’ll probably have to make structural changes to the way the system works to make it harder to win elections with retrenchment alone (here’s [a possible solution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan%5Fblanket%5Fprimary?ref=gabestein.com) to hyper-partisanship that I’d love us to think about more seriously).

But none of that makes the decline of conservatism any less saddening, and here’s why. I think Hillary Clinton will make an excellent president, mostly because she seems like a fundamentally good person who has a lot of experience with the depths of government machinery. She might even be able to get our stuck governance engine ticking again in a way that the less-experienced Obama has not been able to.

But I also question a lot of her positions, and wish she was being forced to defend them by a functioning opposition. Bernie Sanders did a good job doing that from the left. But there’s plenty I would like examined from the right (especially the libertarian right), particularly her about-face on TPP, her pretty shallow answer on Syria at the last debate, and her word-salad on energy policy.

I’m glad Trump isn’t going to win this election (as are most of my conservative friends, for what it’s worth), and I’m glad his defeat may force the GOP to finally, actually rebuild itself after nearly wrecking the country by bringing about the logical conclusion of the culture wars despite all of the warning signs.

But I’m sad that Hillary will get a free pass on so many things as a result. She’ll be a worse president because of it, and that is truly a tragedy.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [October 11, 2016](https://medium.com/p/9db0743f41c7?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/october-11-2016-for-my-conservative-friends-9db0743f41c7?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### October 10, 2016
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/v0ff8rr3/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
I promised I’d write 500 words per day, starting today. It’s just to get back in the habit of writing something (other than emails and tweets) every day. There are no other goals. I suspect I’ll publish some of these posts, while others will be relegated to the [secret depths](https://twitter.com/gabestein/status/584777932410859520?ref=gabestein.com) of my Medium drafts. But there’s no real audience for any of this. It’s just about getting back in the habit of writing.

In general, I’ll write about what’s top of mind for me on any given day. And today, there’s only one thing I’m really thinking about: the debate.

I’m conflicted. On one side, it seems clear at this point that, barring the unforeseen, Donald Trump is going to lose the election, which should literally help me sleep better. He may have halted the total collapse of his campaign by being somewhat more composed than a toddler would have been, but it certainly wasn’t the type of performance that will shake things up.

Contrary to some of my friends, who are depressed that Clinton “played it safe” and didn’t try to finish Trump’s campaign by baiting him into some sort of final and critical error, I think her strategy was probably the right one. Had Trump completely failed last night, down-ballot GOP candidates would have been able to concede the election and continue to distance themselves from him, essentially arguing that swing voters should split the ticket to prevent a complete Democratic takeover.

Because Trump didn’t completely fall down, however, GOPers are [feeling the pressure](https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/785489162178797569?ref=gabestein.com) to stick with him for the remainder of the race. It’s a lose-lose proposition, and I wouldn’t be surprised if, after the spectacular #TrumpTapes meltdown over the weekend, Clinton’s team didn’t deliberately pull back a little to keep him in the race so that Dems have a better chance of taking the House and the Senate.

So, that’s the good side. The bad side is that this debate — and in particular, Donald’s “[quip](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/trump-jail-clinton-quip-229531?ref=gabestein.com)” that he would jail Clinton if he becomes president — made crystal clear a fact that has been challenging my [usual optimism](https://medium.com/@gabestein/https-twitter-com-gabestein-status-751375709998764032-5a21bbf4b6b6?ref=gabestein.com#.poyz92w4l) throughout this election season: Donald Trump would probably be winning if he weren’t so personally unstable.

Put another way, I can now run the thought experiment where the American version of Vladimir Putin wins the election. In this scenario, someone who — unlike Trump — is perceived as confident, competent and stable by educated white voters, but who does the same overt dog-whistling to white nationalists and has the same authoritarian inclinations, comes to power. Then, over the years, this theoretical candidate uses the [ever-expanding powers of the presidency](http://www.vox.com/2014/9/9/5964421/obama-lawsuit-republicans-abuse-of-power?ref=gabestein.com) to effectively end American democracy.

This person could use the exact same blueprint to exploit the media for free (and fact-free) publicity that Trump has. Although they’ve gotten better as the campaign has dragged on, I’m skeptical that the American media has learned its lessons about false equivalence and how to deal with an essentially fact-free campaign.

If the last two presidential cycles are any indication, despite lots of “soul-searching” on November 9, the GOP will do nothing to reform itself to be more inclusive ahead of the next election, setting the stage for another dangerous nominee. I mean, even after all of the outrageous sexism, racism, Islamophobia of the Trump campaign, the ranking member of the party [can’t even bring himself](https://twitter.com/nytpolitics/status/785535635016839168?ref=gabestein.com) to un-endorse an obvious albatross because he commands the attention of most of the party’s base.

And even if they do undertake some reforms, it may not matter. The base for this person will be ready to go with or without establishment approval. This theoretical tyrant will be able to use the media infrastructure that Trump [will probably set up](https://politicalwire.com/2016/10/09/reaction-second-presidential-debate/?ref=gabestein.com) once the campaign ends to get a much faster start in the primary than Trump was able to.

The best we can probably hope for is a re-alignment that causes the “establishment” wing of the GOP to bolt and join forces with more centrist Democrats. If that group can keep progressives in the fold for a few cycles (no small order given Bernie’s performance this year), maybe demographic changes will finally make it impossible to win with an all-white coalition, even in an election split between left, right and center factions.

Even if that is the most likely scenario, it’s scary to even start to entertain the idea that we might be that close to authoritarianism and the end of the American experiment.

And it’s not like even getting there will be easy. Last night, by promising to persecute his political opponent if he wins, a candidate for President of the United States crossed a line that is usually reserved for third-world would-be dictators. Yet this morning the headlines are that that same candidate actually stemmed the damage to his campaign by not venturing even further into the abyss!

Undoing the damage caused to our political norms by that one statement alone will take years. That’s to say nothing of allowing extreme, dangerous and regressive views on everything from race to nuclear weapons to have a mainstream platform for the last year and a half. Maybe it was naivety, maybe it was youthful optimism, but that’s why, despite a pretty good debate result last night for a candidate I like and believe will be a great president, I’m more despondent today than yesterday.

Prove me wrong, please?

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [October 10, 2016](https://medium.com/p/2067b7695af1?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/october-10-2016-2067b7695af1?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### A few hopefully encouraging thoughts for my currently despondent friends.
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/p8prl7kt/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
On days like these it’s hard to be an optimist.

Police murdering black people. Snipers murdering police. Rising anti-semitism. Nativism in Europe. Predictions of global war. And those are just the stories I’ve read since 7am this morning.

What’s most shocking is how quickly the tides seem to have turned. Just a few weeks ago no one thought it possible that the UK could vote to leave Europe. Last summer we were still joking about Donald Trump. Police kept murdering innocent people of color (and LGBT people), but at least the national consensus seemed to be moving in the right direction thanks to the tireless work of Black Lives Matter.

In just a few months, it feels as though the false floor of the world has been torn away. And what lies beneath is far more terrifying than any of my childhood fears about the dark corners of the basement. For the first time that I can remember, people I know and love and respect are themselves turning inwards in response to these evils. Drawing lines around themselves and their communities. Using the language of fear, anger and resentment themselves in response. Most frightful of all, lights seem to be turning off all around me. Friends I once counted on to join me in optimism now respond with muted expectations for our future.

This morning as I sat reading on the couch, surrounded by a vibrant city, on a world teeming with life of all kinds, in a galaxy that we increasingly believe must be full of living beings stranger than we can fathom, part of a universe that we are finding expresses itself in unexpected and beautiful ways, I felt alone.

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2560/1*o6C2RUcM9QsazyI-o46OOw.png)

Then I got a phone call.   
About work.   
About how to use Facebook.   
It doesn’t matter.

It was a person trying to solve a small problem to make their part of the world just a tiny bit better so they could move on to the next problem. And I realized something important: even though to me — to a lot of us — it feels like the world is spinning out of control, that there’s nothing we can do, that we’re alone in history and in cause, we’re not. We’re just young. These moments are unique to us, but not to the history of the world. And we’re still here, because that’s the way the world works. Problems crop up. We work to fix them. We move on to the next problems.

With that in mind, here are a few hopefully encouraging thoughts for my currently despondent friends:

1. **Every generation faces its challenging times, and the world goes on.** I think it is genuinely difficult to take the long view as a young person, especially now when news is so fast and so accessible. Whenever I feel despondent about the present, I try really hard to remember that the world and the country has survived many periods of crisis and change before. To name just a few: the War of 1812, the Civil War, the labor movement, World War One, women’s suffrage, the Great Depression, World War Two, the civil rights movement, Vietnam, the Reagan recessions, the gay rights movement, and so on. All of those events featured periods of violence, instability and fear that echoed around the world. All of them lasted for years. I’m not saying what we’re dealing with now isn’t awful and isn’t deserving of hard work to fix. I’m just saying that what we’re experiencing today isn’t exceptional, and we’re not alone. Ask your parents and grandparents what those last few were like and how they survived. I bet you’ll notice lots of similarities to how you feel today, which makes sense because…
2. **The country didn’t come unhinged overnight, even though it feels like it.** First of all, if you ask people of color, they’ll tell you that this is the America they’ve always lived in, it’s just more visible to privileged people now. Credit the tireless work of Black Lives Matter, amplified by the same technology that spreads news quickly, for that. And they’re right. What we’re seeing now is not new. It’s years of systemic, subtle racism our predecessors never dealt with coming back to the foreground for the first time in our lives (but hardly the first time in any previous generation’s life). It’s being amplified by economic uncertainty, which causes fear and instability, and is also the result of years of bad economic policy from previous generations. Ditto the gradual loosening of gun laws around the country. So listen, bad shit is still happening, but at least it’s not nihilistic. There are root causes and there are things we can do.
3. **We can fix these problems if we start now.** It won’t be easy, and it won’t happen overnight. But solutions to almost all of our problems exist, and our generation — the most tolerant and socially conscious ever — is just about ready to take over control of the world. Lots of smart people are already working on solving these problems. If we can turn all the despondency I’m seeing from my friends into the desire to fight for what we need (once again, BLM leads the way here), we can win. I have no idea how to do that, but I bet there are people who do. Find them. Listen to them. Learn from them. And then fight. We can make this world better. Previous generations did (not perfectly, but hey, neither will we), and so will we. Maybe better than ever. But only if we use these moments to fuel us instead of letting them extinguish us.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [July 8, 2016](https://medium.com/p/5a21bbf4b6b6?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/https-twitter-com-gabestein-status-751375709998764032-5a21bbf4b6b6?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### The viral publishing game is over and we all lost
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/eamwve6a/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T23:16:15.000Z
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*hDttSd3bq_P56HMZZ-kDnA.jpeg)

I was embarrassed that Facebook/Twitter picked up my dumb mug as the share image. Enjoy this only slightly kludgy visual metaphor instead! ([ESO/C. Malin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antenna%5F%28radio%29?ref=gabestein.com#/media/File:The%5FAtacama%5FLarge%5FMillimeter%5Fsubmillimeter%5FArray%5F%28ALMA%29%5Fby%5Fnight%5Funder%5Fthe%5FMagellanic%5FClouds.jpg))

A lot of the conversations I’m having about audience development these days quickly devolve from focused discussions about acquisition and retention strategies — you know, analytical stuff — to talking about, er…brands.

Why brands? Because that’s all anyone has left to talk about. The murmurs from early 2016 are that the days of gaming social media, which is essentially what audience development has been in the last few years, are pretty much over. The signal the jig is up is that volume publishers are suddenly finding that they can’t post too much on Facebook, and reps at the Network are unofficially confirming this. Even a few months ago, the conventional wisdom and unofficial recommendation from Facebook was to space out posts by a few hours to make sure you didn’t overwhelm your audience. When I worked at Upworthy, there was a period when friends and family would complain that they saw us *too* much, something we had almost no control over.

That will never happen again, but not only for the reasons you might think. The much-told story of the last two years on Facebook has been reduced organic reach due to an [improved algorithm](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/cover%5Fstory/2016/01/how%5Ffacebook%5Fs%5Fnews%5Ffeed%5Falgorithm%5Fworks.single.html?ref=gabestein.com) that uses, among other things, human feedback to deliver stories only to the people most likely to engage with a post. That’s only one piece of the puzzle. Thanks to its recent focus on trending news, Facebook has also quietly become terrifyingly good at identifying and grouping news stories; that is, collating articles about the same subject and showing each user the one most likely to appeal to them.

---

**[Who Really Controls What You See in Your Facebook Feed-and Why They Keep Changing It](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/cover%5Fstory/2016/01/how%5Ffacebook%5Fs%5Fnews%5Ffeed%5Falgorithm%5Fworks.single.html?ref=gabestein.com)**  
*[Every time you open Facebook, one of the world's most influential, controversial, and misunderstood algorithms springs…](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/cover%5Fstory/2016/01/how%5Ffacebook%5Fs%5Fnews%5Ffeed%5Falgorithm%5Fworks.single.html?ref=gabestein.com)*[www.slate.com](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/cover%5Fstory/2016/01/how%5Ffacebook%5Fs%5Fnews%5Ffeed%5Falgorithm%5Fworks.single.html?ref=gabestein.com)

---

Put together, these two developments have made building an audience on Facebook much harder. A few years ago, a good insurgent could grow by inventing a tactic that allowed them to play a different game than everyone else for a while. Upworthy’s (in)famous “curiosity gap” headlines were an example of this. For a time, the algorithm treated them so differently than everything else that you would often see the Upworthy version of a story right next to a traditional publisher’s version in your newsfeed.

That doesn’t happen anymore, because Facebook deliberately decided to stop publishers from succeeding at this kind of gaming. Instead of competing against every other piece of content for every slot in the newsfeed, your article now competes against other similar articles for a specific slot set aside for that story. Facebook has narrowed the game for publishers, effectively making it zero-sum: one publisher’s article wins, everyone else’s loses.

Like every other zero-sum game, the newsfeed for publishers is now naturally minimizing and consolidating, because the advantages you gain by playing become baked-in over time. The more games you play, the more data you have about how to test and optimize for the next battles, the quicker you can react to future changes in the algorithm, the more games you win, and so on.

It’s not impossible for insurgents to compete in this environment, but it’s a lot harder and requires much more investment to gain a foothold. That’s why you’re seeing all but the biggest publishers top out at around 30 million uniques a month these days. There’s just too much competition and not enough newsfeed to do more than that unless you’re publishing a thousand times a day. Put another way, 30 million a month is the supply ceiling Facebook has imposed on the market.

Perhaps more importantly, this game does not lend itself to a good business unless you’re already at scale. As Dave Cohn [put it nicely](https://medium.com/@digidave/how-defensible-is-your-content-e98767ee903c?ref=gabestein.com) in an article last year, viral content companies are essentially promising advertisers that they have the scale to figure out how to reach the same people in new ways a few months before everyone else. They’re not selling their brand, content, talent or even distribution anymore. They’re selling arbitrage.

---

**[How Defensible Is Viral Content?](https://medium.com/p/e98767ee903c?ref=gabestein.com)**  
*[Here’s a not too uncommon video. “Americans Try Latino Sodas.”](https://medium.com/p/e98767ee903c?ref=gabestein.com)*[medium.com](https://medium.com/p/e98767ee903c?ref=gabestein.com)

---

I know some people who are confident that this is a viable long-term business, that they can continually adjust to take advantage of whatever the next big thing is. Today, that’s native Facebook video. We’re now seeing [insane](http://blog.upworthy.com/post/138608345296/thanks-to-all-of-you-upworthy-has-200-million?ref=gabestein.com) [video](https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/distributed-news-how-nowthis-reached-one-billion-monthly-video-views-on-social-/s2/a612332/?ref=gabestein.com) [view growth](http://www.reelseo.com/facebook-video-views-december-2015/?ref=gabestein.com) from the same places that were pulling in uniques hand over foot two years ago. But there’s no reason to believe that video won’t eventually meet the same fate that viral articles did, except that native video is in some ways less valuable because it lives on Facebook, which will surely want in on monetization some day soon.

---

**[Food and News Dominate Facebook Video Views: December 2015](http://www.reelseo.com/facebook-video-views-december-2015/?ref=gabestein.com)**  
*[There were over 8.3 million native videos uploaded directly to Facebook in December 2015, generating over 179 billion…](http://www.reelseo.com/facebook-video-views-december-2015/?ref=gabestein.com)*[www.reelseo.com](http://www.reelseo.com/facebook-video-views-december-2015/?ref=gabestein.com)

---

What do you do if you don’t love the idea of that business? You chuck the numbers and start talking about your brand. That’s what a lot of the people I’ve spoken to recently have been doing. The thinking goes that if you can grow to a few million uniques per month, convert a decent percentage of subscribers to fully-owned platforms, and do some really good events and press to convince advertisers that you are uniquely trustworthy to your incredibly valuable niche, you’ve got a decent business there.

I think this is a pretty good strategy if you’re content to run a small, profitable publishing business (and frankly, you should be). There are a number of publications — Quartz, Digiday, PSFK, Skift — who seem to be executing on the brand strategy nicely.

But I worry that the brand strategy won’t be viable forever, or even all that much longer. It’s already harder than ever to build a strong brand in the new [distributed media environment](http://www.vox.com/2015/7/22/9013911/is-the-media-becoming-a-wire-service?ref=gabestein.com) where the majority of your reach happens on platforms you don’t own, can’t brand, and worst of all, where publishing brands just aren’t a natural fit.

Social media is, after all, designed to connect people to other people. Brands have always had a tougher time spreading messages on Facebook than individuals, because they’re playing in a space that’s fundamentally not designed for them. The only reason publisher brands feel different is that they once held a unique, trusted position in society. [That trust is now gone](http://www.gallup.com/poll/185927/americans-trust-media-remains-historical-low.aspx?ref=gabestein.com). What if our kids find the idea of *any* brands communicating as if they’re people [even more awkward](https://twitter.com/ProfJeffJarvis/status/650019890036899840?ref=gabestein.com) than we do?

Even if media brands are always viable in some form, though, I feel a tad verklempt that the two most promising futures we’re embracing right now are playing an eternal game of arbitrage in a market we don’t control and giving up dreams of big reach and impact and building small businesses with outsized brands. There must be some other ways to address the changing media landscape, right?

I bet lots of people in unexpected places have some really interesting ideas. We should seek and hear them out. And there are certainly a few things I’d like to try.

At the most extreme, I believe there are opportunities to re-think the role publishing plays in society, moving beyond providing information — now a commodity — and into providing (measurable) ways that readers can act in response to what they read. Post-reading actions that go beyond sharing, like Medium’s highlighting or Instapaper’s notes are the most basic implementations of this concept. In some ways, WNYC’s [various](http://project.wnyc.org/cicadas/?ref=gabestein.com) [crowdsourced](http://project.wnyc.org/snowfall-map/embed.html?ref=gabestein.com) projects gesture at the idea by asking readers to bring the station’s stories into the real world. And there are a few companies like [Change.org](https://www.change.org/?ref=gabestein.com) and [Public Good Software](https://publicgood.com/?ref=gabestein.com) offering to help publishers deepen the engagement funnel. But no one seems to be interested in taking big steps in this direction yet.

Or, you could dramatically re-imagine the publisher’s role on social media. While Facebook has drawn a line in the sand with publishers, that doesn’t seem to be the case [for](http://www.npr.org/2016/02/19/467297584/univision-s-ramos-seeks-new-audiences-on-facebook-and-draws-millions?ref=gabestein.com) [individual](https://www.facebook.com/georgehtakei) [pages](https://www.facebook.com/ezraklein), and the Network is still somewhat desperate for a certain class of public intellectuals to take it as seriously as Twitter (hello, [live video](http://digiday.com/brands/facebook-live-rolls-masses-tepid-brand-enthusiasm/?ref=gabestein.com)). Some of these individual pages must be big traffic drivers for their affiliated publications. I suspect it’s only a matter of time before some publishers start to operate more like agencies, promoting the brands of writers above that of the publication and providing them with optimization and social management services, monetization opportunities and affiliations with similar writers in exchange for loyalty and partial control of social channels. We’re starting to pursue something like that with non-fiction book authors at [Heleo](https://heleo.com/?ref=gabestein.com), and seeing interesting results.

---

**[Univision's Ramos Seeks New Audiences On Facebook - And Draws Millions](http://www.npr.org/2016/02/19/467297584/univision-s-ramos-seeks-new-audiences-on-facebook-and-draws-millions?ref=gabestein.com)**  
*[On the campaign trail, the chief anchor of the Spanish-language network Univision, Jorge Ramos, chases three quarries…](http://www.npr.org/2016/02/19/467297584/univision-s-ramos-seeks-new-audiences-on-facebook-and-draws-millions?ref=gabestein.com)*[www.npr.org](http://www.npr.org/2016/02/19/467297584/univision-s-ramos-seeks-new-audiences-on-facebook-and-draws-millions?ref=gabestein.com)

---

On the safer side, trying to establish a niche on an up-and-coming channel that Facebook doesn’t totally own yet but that young people are flocking to, like messaging apps (or should that read [notifications](https://medium.com/@Borthwick/notification-the-push-and-the-pull-87af21ee69fa?ref=gabestein.com#.pcxuvvmta)?), seems like an okay hedge. Forbes’ [new Telegram bot](http://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbin/2016/02/23/introducing-the-forbes-newsbot-on-telegram/?ref=gabestein.com#27cf3a453117) is a good example of this. Layering some machine learning on top of that experience would be an even more ambitious foray into the [future of computing](https://medium.com/@cdixon/what-s-next-in-computing-e54b870b80cc?ref=gabestein.com).

Along those same lines, I’ve been chewing on a thought experiment about what a digital publication with mass audience ambitions that deliberately avoided Facebook might look like. You’d have to be crazy to actually try it, of course, but the direction that limitation prods you in is quite interesting. My thinking so far is that you might start with a notification-driven mobile app ([Quartz’s new effort](http://qz.com/613700/its-here-quartzs-first-news-app-for-iphone/?ref=gabestein.com) comes to mind), try to develop some kind of viral mechanism that combines interesting post-read actions with messaging, and then let developers, advertisers and even other publishers hook into it once you establish a user-base. On second thought, that might just be Yo. Hopefully you can do a lot more with this thought experiment than I can.

If there’s a point to any of this, it’s that the mass audience publication that we all grew up with has reached an end point, and we need to accept that. Nothing that I’ve written about above— especially not the distributed model most folks seem to be settling on — works if we continue to see a publication as a big brand that people get information and entertainment from. If we can get past that, accept that publishing has to mean something else now, and explore what that could be, I think there are a ton of fascinating opportunities that could make this industry vital again. That thought makes me far less verklempt.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [February 24, 2016](https://medium.com/p/f789b43498ca?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/the-viral-publishing-game-is-over-and-we-all-lost-f789b43498ca?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### Towards A Wide Definition Of Programming And Universal Computational Literacy
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/cp6rprx4/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
It took thousands of years of written language for us to consider universal language literacy important to society, and the shift largely happened as a byproduct of the industrial revolution (with pretty clear lines to the enlightenment and the printing press). Per most definitions, we’ve only been computing for about 400 years, and in the modern sense for less than a century. In terms of the information revolution, I would put us at a few hundred years after the creation of the printing press (recognizing that we’re moving a lot faster now than we were then). We are pretty close to having powerful computers in the hands of every human being on the planet, something that didn’t happen with printed text until the 20th century.

As that continues to happen, it seems natural to conclude that some sort of universal computational literacy will become important to society. Does that mean everyone will be capable of writing complex, elegant programs from scratch in a variety of programming languages? I suspect not. But at minimum, I imagine a world where we expect everyone to understand the basic building blocks of computation — boolean logic, control flow, variables, and so on — just as we expect everyone to understand how to add, subtract, multiply and divide today.

When we do this, we’ll be forced to redefine what constitutes programming. Today, we seem to define it roughly as writing functions using a written programming language. But this is clearly an over-narrow definition. What about complex excel spreadsheets? Mac OS X’s Automator? IFTTT? If those examples don’t represent programming, what are they?

Each of those examples seems different from what we consider to be programming today because they were all designed with the express purpose of allowing people to write complex programs without understanding the principles behind them. This kind of abstraction has been useful as we make the transition to a computerized society. But when everyone has a basic understanding of those principles, we won’t need the abstractions, and we’ll be able to accomplish a lot more as a result.

In the future, we will come to accept that anything that modifies the contents of a stored instruction is an act of programming. And we will make it possible for anyone who possesses a basic computational literacy to engage in that act.

Instead of abstracting limited collections of functions into self-contained and largely unmodifiable apps, we’ll build interfaces that allow any computationally literate person to build their own apps out of those functions using the basic building blocks they already understand. Thus, instead of abstracting away those building blocks as we do today, we’ll work to make them useful at any level of abstraction.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [March 2, 2015](https://medium.com/p/3523ba76208e?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/it-took-thousands-of-years-of-written-language-for-us-to-consider-universal-language-literacy-3523ba76208e?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### About That Title II Argument…
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/1nlrw9kh/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
As near as I can tell, [this article](http://www.wsj.com/articles/holman-jenkins-google-leads-from-behind-on-net-neutrality-1414794978?mod=hp%5Fopinion&ref=gabestein.com) by Holman Jenkins is the one that ignited a lot of libertarian concern trolling about Title II that basically didn’t exist until the end of 2014\. And it’s essentially being read word for word in the FCC meeting right now. There are some interesting arguments in it worth considering. I don’t think anyone thinks Title II is an absolutely perfect solution.

But at a certain point, Jenkins says this:

> We’re having this debate, though, not because net neutrality has become an urgent need of the marketplace. A long, long time ago, perhaps it was reasonable to fear telephone companies might try to block voice and messaging apps like Skype and FaceTime that compete with their traditional services. It was plausible that cable might slow or block [Netflix](http://quotes.wsj.com/NFLX?ref=gabestein.com) or YouTube to protect its TV business.

> That was a different eon. Consumer demand for these apps is now what keeps traditional phone and cable companies swimming in broadband profits. Their self-interest has been transformed. Verizon, a favorite net neut baddie, is giving away a year’s worth of free Netflix to new triple-play subscribers. Why? Because getting customers addicted to Netflix helps Verizon sell more broadband.

Lovely theory. Except, Netflix paid Comcast to deliver its services to end-users faster just last year, because they were throttling last-mile traffic, and the FCC is actively investigating Verizon for doing the same without telling anyone ([link](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/13/netflix-slow-fcc-verizon%5Fn%5F5492542.html?ref=gabestein.com)). That is not “a different eon.”

Jenkins ignores half the evidence because he wants to believe the market solves everything. And maybe on the surface it looks like the market is behaving well because Verizon is using Netflix to gain more customers, but the real situation is this: Verizon can make more money by promising consumers Netflix while simultaneously not delivering it to them unless Netflix pays for access. At the same time, it can privilege its own services, which don’t have to pay extra. So really, this is the market allowing a company to promise and charge consumers for services it doesn’t actually deliver. That’s the very definition of a vertical monopoly behaving monopolistically.

And that doesn’t even get into the fast lane stuff on the consumer side, which is an entirely separate problem. Oddly, he mentions is a problem and perhaps the main the flaw with Title II, all without explaining how doing nothing would fix it. So, maybe we need to do better than Title II as it exists today, but sorry, we need something, not the nothing Jenkins is advocating for.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [February 26, 2015](https://medium.com/p/ddddedc407fe?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/about-that-title-ii-argument-ddddedc407fe?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### A Branching Method For Covering News Efficiently
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/k58sto9b/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
A year ago, I spent a weekend covering the winter storm of 2013 with my friend [Allan Lasser](http://twitter.com/allanlasser?ref=gabestein.com), who is the current publisher of the magazine I co-founded in college, [The Quad](http://buquad.com/?ref=gabestein.com). This was done as part of an experiment with an alternative way of structuring news coverage I originally called the [Experimental Newsroom](http://branch.com/g/experimental-newsroom?ref=gabestein.com) (now branded Koncurrent). At the time, I piggybacked off the technology of a very cool structured discussion startup called [Branch](http://branch.com/?ref=gabestein.com). I learned a lot over that weekend that I would like to share with anyone who’s interested. Read on for my post-mortem. If you want to skip straight to the learnings, scroll down to “Learnings and Observations.”

### Acknowledgements

Several people must be thanked for their contributions to this little experiment. Thanks to the Branch team, in particular Libby Britain, for not only allowing but enthusiastically encouraging me to use their platform for this experiment, including using their Twitter account to promote it. Thanks to Allan Lasser for volunteering to help me with coverage and contributing ideas. Thanks to Lauren Hockenson for being a sounding board and contributing her ideas and expertise to the project. Finally, thanks to my father and mother for listening, contributing their thoughts and encouraging me to do this.

### Background

At the time of the experiment, I was not a journalist (I now contribute to [FastCoLabs](http://fastcolabs.com/?ref=gabestein.com)), but I am the son of a quintessential and quite literally ink-stained wretch. I grew up hanging around the newsroom of a [major daily newspaper](https://medium.com/on-the-news-media/34bbfabea4ae?ref=gabestein.com) in Colorado and worked there for a few brief weeks as a video producer during the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. I have a high level of respect for the institution of journalism and was heartbroken when the newspaper my father worked for became one of the first to shut down in early 2009 due to a host of factors. It was like [a death in the family](https://medium.com/@gabestein/a-death-in-the-family-34bbfabea4ae?ref=gabestein.com).

I am also a lifelong technologist. I taught myself HTML in the sixth grade to build a Harry Potter website and kept learning throughout school. I have used my skills to co-found publications and build their websites in middle school, high school, college and professionally.

The combination of these two passions of mine has, over the years, flowered into a borderline obsession with what some have termed “the future of news”; in particular, the writings of media critics such as [Jeff Jarvis](http://twitter.com/jeffjarvis?ref=gabestein.com), [Jay Rosen](http://twitter.com/jayrosen%5Fnyu?ref=gabestein.com) and [Mathew Ingram](http://twitter.com/mathewi?ref=gabestein.com). I believe that journalism is a necessary pillar of democracy. Specifically, I think that for-profit journalism is necessary and possible. I also believe that the advances in technology that destroyed the traditional business models on which journalism subsisted offer through their disruption opportunities to propel the craft to new heights. In the process, I suggest we be willing to radically rethink what journalism is as long as we advance the goal of informing people about the world around them in ways they would not be able to do on their own.

It is through this prism that I began to think, over the last few of months of 2012, about a different way of covering news that would address some of the criticisms leveled at both so-called “traditional” news outlets and modern “aggregators”. My thinking coincided with two personal events: The run-up to the presidential election, during which time I became addicted to news articles and poll results and my formal introduction to Git, the source-management tool, during a few freelance projects.

The election was a frustrating time for me, because for the first time I experienced the mismatch between tools like Twitter — which are good providing new information to informed audiences but bad at facilitating deep discussion of topics — and traditional news articles — which make readers dig through paragraphs of context to find new information but handle deep topics well. The result was a lot of fatigue and, over the course of a few months, days of wasted time spent parsing highly repetitive news articles for new nuggets of information teased in headlines and on Twitter.

Meanwhile, working with Git for the first time was a revelation compared to the Subversion-based systems I had worked with before. Git’s elegant “branching” system allows developers to easily spin off sub-projects, or branches, from the main code base. This means they can focus on developing specific new features without the overhead of copying the entire repository and without worrying about disrupting other developers working on the project. When work on a feature is complete, it can be merged back into the main branch fairly painlessly.

You can probably see where my mind went with this. In many ways, newsworthy events follow a similar pattern. They often start as one unified event and then branch into lots of sub-stories as time goes on, sometimes converging back into larger stories and sometimes not.

Traditional inverted-pyramid news articles were once the best format for news when information moved less freely and more slowly. The format is still great for longer retrospective pieces, but because it is designed to offer a “complete” story to readers, it is not only wrong but uniquely bad for reporting evolving stories today. Moreover, the focus on completeness inherent in the inverted-pyramid is highly inefficient, requiring reporters to spend time repeating non-essential contextual information every time they publish (or copy entire previous summary articles into new ones, as some outlets do). The effort required to produce such an article also encourages some over-grouping of related events into one piece, forcing readers to hunt for the specific information they want. It is also insulting of today’s news readers in a least common denominator sort of way to assume that every reader of every article needs the contextual cruft of the background paragraph to understand the piece.

For over 100 years, this type of 800-word news article has been the basic fabric of written news coverage. It is time for a new fabric. So, I imagined — inspired by many products, ideas and people, notably Anil Dash’s seminal [post on streams](http://dashes.com/anil/2012/08/stop-publishing-web-pages.html?ref=gabestein.com) — a structured way of covering news that would allow editors and reporters to follow evolving stories and “branch” their coverage into related, deeper sub-stories as they become newsworthy without disrupting the flow of higher-level stories. Readers could then choose to subscribe to the topics they care about, receiving updates only when something new and noteworthy happens in those streams.

In a turn of serendipity, a structured conversation startup, fittingly called Branch, launched late last year with three key features: Embedding of multimedia, subscriptions, and branching of conversations (sadly, the branching feature has since been removed). Rather than building my own software I decided to go lean and piggyback off of their excellent work to test and validate my idea, even though Branch isn’t designed specifically for my purpose. They have been kindly accepting and even enthusiastic about my experimentation.

That test occurred during the course of one weekend in February 2013 when I decided to cover the winter storm unfortunately known as “Nemo,” a name which I regret using in our coverage. Call this version 0.1.

### Goals

The goals of the weekend were very simple:

- Cover as many newsworthy events related to the storm as possible, using any methods necessary.
- Update streams only with new and relevant information.
- Avoid repeating information in the same stream.
- Focus on accuracy and consistent velocity over speed.
- Try to tell stories by piecing together data and branching off more specific streams as necessary; don’t just provide one-off updates.
- Provide both breadth and depth, but not necessarily in the same stream.

### Methodology

It is important to note that this concept is intended as an exercise in replacing the news article as the primary product of an online journalist. There is an implicit assumption that goes along with that experiment, which is that the role of a journalist is changing. Without getting into a protracted discussion of what that means, it is my view that the first job of a journalist today is to parse through and piece together the overwhelming amount of information that flows through society — building narratives from disparate pieces of information, verifying reports from people on the ground, recognizing and investigating inconsistencies in data and, of course, being efficient by linking out to the work of others when it provides the best experience for readers rather than trying to reproduce everything. In my view, this has always been the real value of a journalist to society, but it has been overshadowed by the data collection process, which was once difficult. Now that data is available in abundance, that part of the job should take on less importance while the verification and parsing of data should take on more.

Given this assumption implied by our structure and also, to be blunt, a lack of time and resources, I decided to use mostly online methodology to report on the storm. I relied mainly on the US Severe Weather Twitter list created by then-Reuters journalist Matthew Keys and supplemented it with Twitter searches, Google News alerts and eyewitness reports from myself in New York, Allan in Boston and other friends in both New York and Boston. This isn’t to say I wouldn’t send reporters to the field or email or call sources if I had more resources to devote to the project. But as we shall discuss in the learnings section below, this limitation revealed an interesting fact about the process of news today.

It is also worthwhile to talk about how I judged the newsworthiness of an event. Like most reporters, I relied to some degree on instinct and the usual data-points journalists use: The number of people affected by the event, the severity of the event relative to other, similar events in the past, the way the event fit in or stood out from past data and narratives, the value to the public of disseminating information about the event for safety or educational reasons, the relative certainty of the facts surrounding the event, etc. I also judged newsworthiness based on the stream I was posting to, which I’ll get into in the learnings section below.

I tried to attribute every fact reported to the source, whether it was a tweet from a politician or journalist, a press conference or press release, an article from a news organization, a utility website or API or a photo from a friend on the ground. I also took special care to verify reports of snow levels, power outages and restorations and other events where the interests of news organizations, public officials or Twitter trolls might serve to stretch the truth. I did this mostly using Twitter searches to confirm other people with large networks or reasons to maintain credibility in the area confirmed official reports.

I was limited by Branch to 750 characters per update and to their embed system. I also had no ability to edit or delete updates once they had been posted.

Finally, I tracked open branches using a Google Drive Spreadsheet and used Google Talk for real-time backchannel communication with Allan.

### Results and Stats

We opened 7 Branches and posted 151 updates:

- [Main Branch](http://branch.com/b/winter-storm-nemo?ref=gabestein.com): General coverage of the storm as a national event. Major updates and statistics. (28 updates)
- [Nemo naming controversy](http://branch.com/b/re-winter-storm-nemo-3?ref=gabestein.com): Nested under the main branch. Coverage of reactions to TWC’s controversial decision to name the storm. (5 updates)
- [Tri-State](http://branch.com/b/re-winter-storm-nemo?ref=gabestein.com): Updates specific to New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. (34 updates)
- [Tri-State Transit](http://branch.com/b/re-re-winter-storm-nemo?ref=gabestein.com): Nested under the main Tri-State branch. Updates related to Amtrak, MTA subways, buses, bridges and tunnels, Metro-North, the LIRR, the LIE, NJ Transit subways and buses, the PATH and general roadway updates (29 updates)
- [New England](http://branch.com/b/re-winter-storm-nemo-2?ref=gabestein.com): Nested under the main New England branch. Updates specific to Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Vermont and Maine. (45 updates)
- [Blizzard of 1978](http://branch.com/b/re-re-winter-storm-nemo-2?ref=gabestein.com): Nested under the main New England branch. A look back at and comparisons between this storm and the blizzard of 1978 such as the travel ban (2 posts)
- [Coastal Flooding](http://branch.com/b/re-re-winter-storm-nemo-3?ref=gabestein.com): Nested under the main New England branch. Updates specific to coastal flooding occurring mainly along the East Coast of Massachusetts (8 posts)

I am unable to provide exact traffic statistics, although the goal was not to court an audience. I know that the main branch had at least 200 views and the Tri-State and New England branches at least 100\. The Tri-State transit branch had at least 50\. The rest presumably had fewer than 50, which is the minimum level at which Branch reports statistics. One person subscribed to the main branch.

### Learnings and Observations

I am proud of what Allan and I produced that weekend. Following any one of our Branches, a reader would have received an accurate and up to date account of the events of the storm from multiple angles and depths of their choosing. The experiment scaled extremely well and, in my mind, proved that newsroom resources can be further optimized without sacrificing the quality of reporting.

This last point will be contentious to some as neither of us made any phone calls to government officials, conducted any interviews with utility companies or traveled to view events with our own eyes other than those happening in our immediate locations. But this was more a limitation of resources than intent. I did verify reports, engage in conversations with people experiencing the storm and, I will argue, added value to readers above and beyond traditional reporting methods. That is not to say we did perfectly or that there were not problems with our coverage. There were many. Below, I will discuss both successes and failures with more specificity.

#### **Process/Workflow**

The central goal of this experiment was to prove that the method of streaming updates and branching topics into more focused sub-stories works as a way of delivering news to an audience. Specifically, that it is a more efficient way to apply newsroom resources because it removes the need to repeat contextual background information before publishing. It also allows the newsroom to better serve users by focusing on both broad and narrow topics in a way gives users the choice to subscribe to distinct sub-topics within a story that they’re interested in rather than assuming that every reader of a particular story has the same interests.

Of course, every story is different and will have unique requirements. This is only the first test of this methodology. That said, weather stories are not particularly unique and I think much of what we experienced can be generalized to other types of stories.

Acknowledging those limitations, I believe that the methodology was a success for a number of reasons. The main reason was that it forced me to exercise editorial judgement in relation to the audience of each stream. Before each post I performed a quick thought experiment in my head: Given the title and topic sentence of each stream and assuming I had thousands of subscribers who would take time to read an update if I posted it, would it be a waste of their time to read a particular update or would the majority of subscribers find it valuable? This line of thinking created a very natural newsworthiness scale as branches went from more general to more specific. The more general the branch, the higher threshold an event had to pass in order to be considered a worthwhile update and vice versa for more specific branches. As a side note, I made a conscious decision not to treat death as newsworthy by default. I hate that.

This framework allowed Allan and I to cover the storm locally as well as nationally. If you followed the national branch, you received only major updates from regions — like airport closures and emergency declarations — and general interest information — like satellite images, the incredible snowfall counts and safety tips — that was either sourced from every affected region or applied equally across the regions. The main branch was also updated less frequently, reflecting the higher bar an event must clear to be considered news of national importance.

If you followed one of our regional branches, on the other hand, you received updates at a much higher velocity, reflecting the lower bar required to be considered important at the local level. You saw most of the statements made by government officials and agencies as well as local snow totals, power outages, business closures and eyewitness reports. Branching thus proved to be a great methodology for stories with local effects.

It also allowed me to pursue multiple angles of the story without having to rewrite the context from the main branch or bury it in a larger story. For example, remembering Hurricane Sandy and paying attention to meteorologists meant I saw the possibility of a coastal flooding story developing on Friday night and was prepared to open a branch about it during the high tide on Saturday morning. When news broke about the [evacuation of Salisbury Beach](http://branch.com/b/re-re-winter-storm-nemo-3?ref=gabestein.com#TVygTg%5FsfLs) I had a place to report it and follow coastal flooding as the storm lingered over Cape Cod without polluting the main New England feed, which was focused on massive power outages and transit suspensions in Boston. I was also able to cover how every single Tri-State area transit system coped with the storm in the transit sub-branch at a high velocity without forcing car owners following the main Tri-State feed to read every update.

That’s not to say the weekend was without failure. One thing that became apparent as Allan and I started opening more branches was that branches make it easy to overextend yourself. Allan opened a branch focusing on the similarities between this storm and the blizzard of ‘78 that had great potential, but due to time constraints neither of us were able to expand it into a full-fledged story. In reaction to that, I decided not to open a New England transit branch, which proved to be a mistake Sunday when the Massachusetts driving ban was extended to its second day and the MBTA unexpectedly reopened that afternoon. In this way, I learned that keen editorial judgement — when to pursue a story and when not to — is perhaps even more important for this methodology because opening a new branch is in some ways more of a commitment than assigning an article and choosing not to open a sub-branch branch can have devastating effects on the flow of higher-level stories.

I also failed at times to weave incoming data into a coherent story and reverted to posting Twitter-like updates. Part of this was due to resource constraints and part of it was simply fatigue. Part of it was also due to technological limitations, which I’ll discuss below.

Speaking of technological limitations, I struggled to deal with a particular story: Amtrak’s service disruptions. These events clearly belonged under Tri-State transit, but because they also affected New England I found myself [cross-linking](http://branch.com/b/re-winter-storm-nemo-2?ref=gabestein.com#ckPzo%5Ft5kRo) between the New England and Tri-State transit streams. I’ll address this special case in the next section on technology.

Finally, an important note on scale. Two people were able to cover most aspects of this major winter storm, including local events across eight states. Some of it was not as in-depth as we would have liked and some of it relied on aggregating news from other sources. If more people had been working on the story we would have done better. But given the time and resources we had available and compared to liveblogs at other news organizations, national and local, it was remarkably efficient and effective.

One of the reasons it worked at scale was that the branching methodology naturally lead to reducing duplication of efforts by covering stories from the inside out. What do I mean by this? On Friday, the first day of coverage, I oscillated between branches, trying to make sure each one received unique updates at regular intervals. By the time Saturday rolled around, I had realized that it was much easier and more effective to instead focus my efforts first on the most in-depth branches and then “bubble up” the most important updates from those branches to the next level by rewriting them in the context of the higher-level narrative and linking to the more complete updates in the deeper branches.

By repeating this until I got to the top level, I was able to significantly scale my efforts, using the high-velocity, in-depth narratives of the sub-branches to fuel the slower, more general narratives of the top branches. That isn’t to say I didn’t post updates specific to middle and top-level branches or violate my newsworthiness test. Instead, “bubbling” the most important stories from the bottom of the stack up to the top allowed me to save time and provide readers at all levels with the most important updates, tailored to their streams. The practice also encouraged readers to dive deeper into our coverage if they were interested, but didn’t require them to do so to understand the story.

#### Technology

Although Branch is a great product built by a talented team, it was not built for my specific purposes. Thus, the experiment exposed significant shortcomings in the technology as a news CMS, which is to be expected. Unexpectedly, these limitations proved very useful in illuminating the key functionalities needed for a news platform.

One limitation of Branch did serve me very well. The maximum post length on Branch is 750 characters, which is about two paragraphs. This turned out to be an ideal length for updates — long enough to tell small stories, like the story of the MTA 7 train’s [continuing reliability and construction problems](http://branch.com/b/re-re-winter-storm-nemo?ref=gabestein.com#QGPusde2vL8), but too short to include any unnecessary cruft. I wouldn’t necessarily impose this limit if I were building a news system, but I would make 750 characters the target length for most updates in editorial guidelines.

Some of Branch’s other limitations were too severe for my purposes. The system lacks rich-text capabilities and, at the time, did not allow users to edit updates after they were posted, a feature that has since been added. I also couldn’t manually title sub-streams (they were all auto-titled *Re: Winter Storm “Nemo”*), which made the reading experience confusing.

The most common feedback from readers was that they had difficulty understanding how to travel from branch to sub-branch. They also found it hard to understand where they were in the stream hierarchy at any given time. Branch’s UI in this regard was very subtle so as not to distract from conversations (and indeed, they have since removed the branching feature altogether), but for a news interface I would make it very clear how to move to deeper and shallower streams. I would also work on developing a graphical representation of the hierarchy to make it simpler for readers to understand where they are and how to navigate up and down the stack.

In terms of editorial functionality, one of the key insights of the weekend was that an ideal CMS would have a natural way to “bubble” updates up the hierarchy, rewriting them for higher levels but maintaining their connection to lower-level streams. We got around this by linking to [our](http://branch.com/b/winter-storm-nemo?ref=gabestein.com#hTYwBx-tu7Q) [own](http://branch.com/b/winter-storm-nemo?ref=gabestein.com#ddL6WRZ0smM) [updates](http://branch.com/b/winter-storm-nemo?ref=gabestein.com#FC0Vy%5F9TQpA) in lower-level streams from higher-level ones, but it was never clear for readers that I was linking back down to the bottom of the stack. Similarly, an ideal CMS would allow journalists to start a new stream by recombining existing updates from other streams. This would allow reporters to create new streams out of stories that emerge gradually and make up for missed opportunities to branch out of higher-level streams. For example, in the Tri-State transit stream I made [several](http://branch.com/b/re-re-winter-storm-nemo?ref=gabestein.com#gfDSflk3JuQ) [disparate](http://branch.com/b/re-re-winter-storm-nemo?ref=gabestein.com#pe7MtXrtoTU) [posts](http://branch.com/b/re-re-winter-storm-nemo?ref=gabestein.com#z-Mg0-oFRNQ) on the Long Island Expressway that could have become a more coherent and focused story had I been able to recombine them into their own stream. This also would have enabled me to post more in-depth updates on the situation on the LIE without worrying about polluting the broader transit stream.

Finally, the ideal CMS would allow updates to have more than one parent stream. This would have taken care of the special case of the Amtrak story that clearly belonged in multiple streams.

#### Reporting and Curating News

Using Twitter and networks like it as a source for news and tips is nothing new, and my findings here only validate previous observations about the curation/validation approach to journalism made in publications like [Post-Industrial Journalism](http://towcenter.org/research/post-industrial-journalism/?ref=gabestein.com).

Because I made the decision to cover the storm on the day the it was set to hit, I had to act quickly. Using Matthew Keys’ list of news organizations, politicians, government agencies and reporters, supplemented by Google News Alerts and Twitter searches worked wonderfully. It provided a real-time stream of updates from every affected state that missed few major developments.

What’s worth noting here is that, in effect, the list creation that enabled my experiment was itself an act of journalism. Keys used his understanding of Twitter as a platform and knowledge of trusted local Twitter accounts to create that list. I could have attempted to duplicate it, but would not have been able to nearly as quickly or as well. The value of these types of skills and knowledge and the way they contribute value to news organizations should not be overlooked.

One of the interesting things I noticed using this list was, to be blunt, how little I relied on news media or aggregation of traditional articles to cover this story. Even though I embedded a lot of tweets from news organizations and journalists into posts, very few of those tweets added any kind of value to readers beyond facts that were already readily available. Most were just repeating information from official government or utility company statements, news conferences or releases that were already available, direct from the source, on Twitter! When I embedded media Tweets, I usually did so only because I happened to read them first. The only value they provided was raw speed over government social media managers.

Thus, it would seem the days of the journalist providing value as a mere collector of information are over. That information is already flowing from the source and needs no arbiter. The people who added useful information were folks like then-Wall Street Journal meteorologist [Eric Holthaus](https://twitter.com/EricHolthaus?ref=gabestein.com), who collected crowd-sourced weather reports from his followers and used his domain-specific expertise on the science of meteorology to report things like the moving location of the rain/snow line in Manhattan and predict when sleet would turn to snow.

Accordingly, I tried to add value by not just providing updates on our Branches but deciding when not to. The more Twitter became an echo chamber, the more time I spent deciding whether an update was worth posting. It quickly became apparent that providing an update to my readers would not be useful unless the info was either very important or I could tie it into the overall narrative of the storm using some personal schema, research or storytelling.

I also decided to add value by choosing to focus on accuracy in reporting rather than speed. To accomplish this, I developed a very useful algorithm to verify changing and sometimes contradictory information coming from disparate government offices. Simply put, it was very possible to verify things like wind gusts, snow totals and power outages simply by searching Twitter for “name of location + event name” (ie, cape cod snow). It was almost always possible to find someone reacting to the [event itself](https://twitter.com/giselessecret/status/300297199248605184?ref=gabestein.com) on Twitter, and projects like WNYC’s [snowfall tracker](http://project.wnyc.org/snowfall-map/mobile.html?ref=gabestein.com#9.00/41.1293/-73.4160) made data readily available from non-official sources.

There were some areas where this method failed. I reported that subways were running smoothly based on the MTA website’s reported service status even though I later saw photos on the MTA’s Twitter account of aboveground stations in Queens made impossibly dangerous due to being covered by a foot of ice. I should have been more skeptical of the official definition of “good service.”

Additionally, although it was possible to verify the location of power outages using Twitter, it was not possible to verify the magnitude. Official power company Twitter accounts rarely reported on the number of customers without service until they could report that service had been restored to X number of customers, and their real-time outage maps seemed designed to obfuscate the magnitude of outages. Instead, that information largely came from government agencies or journalists who had talked to power companies. In the future, I would call utility companies and government agencies and compare their numbers with Twitter results and population maps to verify numbers.

I’m sure this still applies to lots of circumstances where official reports don’t pass the gut check and someone has an incentive to look effective even when they’re not. Verification has been made easier by real-time reports from people experiencing conditions on the ground. This makes the journalist’s instincts for trustworthiness more important because falsehoods can spread just as easily as the truth through these networks.

### Was It A Success?

My goal with this experiment was simply to show that the branching format is a successful news-telling device from both an editorial and reader perspective. I believe we successfully demonstrated this, particularly from the editorial side. That said, there were several issues that came up during the course of the experiment that merit further testing, especially how to insert more narrative storytelling into the streams, thus making it less Twitter-like.

I also recognize that this was one experiment with one type of story and that I need to pursue different types of stories to test the limitations of the method in different circumstances.

### Next Steps

I’m not sure if I will be able to continue the Experimental Newsroom project, which is why I’m posting this. I did spend some time creating a first, very rough version of what such software would look like for both readers and editorial staff that I’m calling [Koncurrent](http://koncurrent.herokuapp.com/?ref=gabestein.com).

Maybe someday I’ll be able to put more time into that project. For now, I’m treating this post-mortem as a blueprint in the hopes that someone in the news industry trying similar stuff (and I know from my brief experiences at Fast Company that there are many) can learn something, however small, from my experiment.

I’m happy to discuss it in more depth with anyone. Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter ([@gabestein](http://twitter.com/gabestein?ref=gabestein.com)).

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [September 11, 2013](https://medium.com/p/ad00832b8f3?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/a-branching-method-for-covering-news-efficiently-ad00832b8f3?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### A Death In The Family
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/1aocsq69/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T23:16:26.000Z
In 2009, a member of my family died. Fortunately, it wasn’t a flesh-and-blood relative, but four and a half years later, the loss still stings. It was my hometown newspaper and employer of my father, its editorial cartoonist, for 31 years: The Rocky Mountain News of Denver, Colorado.

There was a wake for the Rocky, held at the legendary Denver Press Club. Editors, reporters, photographers and friends gathered to share war stories from the venerable paper’s 150-year history (it was also the oldest continually-running business in Colorado). Tears were shed, hugs exchanged. I wasn’t there, but my dad left me a barely audible message from the crowded bar to say that a few friends from the media department, where I briefly worked as an extra video producer during the 2008 Democratic National Convention, had asked how I was doing. In the recording, his voice sounds hoarse from hours of reminiscing.

Though she won’t admit it, I don’t think my mom liked me hanging around journalists when I was young, which makes sense given the stories my dad used to tell. There was the time a man walked into the newsroom claiming he knew how to save the comic strip character Kerry Drake and demanding to be drawn into the next day’s frame. The time (before my dad’s tenure) a reporter paid a little person to scare an editor by jumping out of his locker. The only time I ever saw my dad do anything even remotely crass in public: Moon a softball umpire who made the Rocky’s team (the Newshounds) forfeit because at 11 years old, I wasn’t technically old enough to be the bat boy. That didn’t stop me from logging quite a few hours in the newsroom, mostly after school, waiting for my dad to finish his drawing for the day and drive me home.

I especially loved sitting in my dad’s cubicle during election nights before broadband Internet, when the newspaper was still the first place in town to get the latest results. They would order food for everyone and set up a bank of old CRT TVs at least as high as the stack of pizza boxes. When new results came in over the wire, you could feel the wave of energy as editors ran across the room to yell new results at reporters, who strained to update pre-written stories on their old green-on-black computer screens. There was a family-friendly picnic to celebrate the retirement of these ancient terminals in exchange for a modern, GUI-based system, held in a park near the Rocky’s building in 1998 or 1999 (nobody I talked to was able to confirm the exact date).

The paper’s death came as no surprise. Despite mostly beating its main competitor, The Denver Post, in circulation since the 1970s, the Rocky entered a [Joint Operating Agreement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper%5FPreservation%5FAct%5Fof%5F1970?ref=gabestein.com) with the Post in 2001, agreeing to split production costs and ad revenues and, shockingly, cede the profitable Sunday edition to the competition. To most of its employees and readers, the move was seen as giving up on the Rocky’s prospects instead of trying to keep it alive by beating the competition. Shortly after the announcement of the quasi-merger, my dad had 100 t-shirts printed with a cartoon depicting the newsroom engulfed in the flames of hell, and offered them to his co-workers for ten dollars. “Welcome to the JOA,” the Devil tells an exasperated reporter. The shirts sold out in an hour. The JOA lasted six years.

In December 2008, Scripps Inc., the Rocky’s parent company, half-heartedly put the paper up for sale in the middle of the fiscal crisis, announcing that the paper was losing $15 million a year. Two months later, with no buyers in sight, Scripps closed the Rocky for good. My dad’s last cartoon for the paper depicts a man standing on his porch in his robe, holding his coffee, looking down at an empty sidewalk composed of only two black lines that takes up the bottom two-thirds of the frame. “Where’s my Rocky?” he asks.

![](https://assets.pubpub.org/2jkbg3yl/11603643055838.gif)

Courtesy of [Ed Stein](http://edsteinink.com/?ref=gabestein.com)

#### A Communal Loss

Looking at that stark cartoon still makes me uneasy, but the paper’s employees and their families aren’t the only ones to feel the loss. To this day, friends in Colorado tell me that the Rocky’s closure has created an information gap in the state. The Denver Post, which was itself struggling to keep open, hired only a handful of the Rocky’s most popular columnists in a bid to win some of the Rocky’s subscribers rather than expand to fill the vacuum. Four years later, only a few remain employed at the Post, which still faces financial trouble of its own.

In a [goodbye video](http://vimeo.com/3390739?ref=gabestein.com) produced by the Rocky’s Pulitzer Prize-winning media department, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, then Denver’s mayor, admitted that having two papers in town kept his administration in check:

> By having two newspapers compete so voraciously for the news, that there’s a higher opportunity that when there’s corruption, when someone’s doing something wrong, it’s a higher probability that it will get uncovered because there’s just more reporters working harder with a greater sense of urgency to uncover that.

Four years after the paper’s death, Denver government officials still privately echo Hickenlooper’s statements. They tell my father that they simply don’t feel as much pressure to perform as they did when Capitol Hill was swarming with double the number of reporters.

#### Not For Lack Of Trying

Many articles were written about why the Rocky Mountain News died. Some blamed the [failed leadership](http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1883345,00.html?ref=gabestein.com) of the mid-90s that gave back much of the paper’s subscriber lead to the Post. Others took the paper to task for [not embracing the digital revolution](http://www.westword.com/2008-12-11/news/the-rocky-mountain-news-is-going-down/2/?ref=gabestein.com) fast enough. There is some truth to both of these points, but for the most part, the Rocky, lead by John Temple, its last editor-in-chief and publisher, was progressive for a major daily. It was a relatively early adopter of Twitter, joining the service in September 2008\. Six months later, the staff [live-tweeted](https://twitter.com/rmn%5Fnewsroom?ref=gabestein.com) the announcement of the paper’s death.

Temple also invested heavily in increasing the paper’s video capabilities, which I experienced firsthand as a line producer during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. The paper produced hundreds of hours of convention video, including one of a Code Pink protester being [slammed to the pavement](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfISlq1gzK8&ref=gabestein.com) by an over aggressive police officer that went viral on YouTube and was shown on news stations across the country that night. When some conservative commentators began complaining that we had edited the footage to make it look more dramatic, Temple stormed into the media department and demanded an explanation. When he got it, his response was not to pull or modify the video, but to [post the uncut version](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzrBYF99QKI&ref=gabestein.com) on YouTube along with the photographer’s commentary about what he witnessed.

What killed the Rocky wasn’t a lack of trying, it was a lack of investment. It is an all too common story: Over the years, the Rocky went from being owned by an individual, to a family newspaper chain, to a media conglomerate with little stake in the newspaper business. Unlike the Graham family, which valued the newspaper above everything else and for years allowed the Washington Post Company’s profitable Kaplan education division to subsidize the paper’s declining revenues, the E.W. Scripps company spun off its flailing newspaper division from its profitable TV entertainment business in 2007, just before the financial crisis hit. The writing was on the wall.

Dave Krieger, one of the paper’s most popular sports columnists who moved to the Post but [later quit](http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2012/01/dave%5Fkrieger%5Fleaves%5Fdenver%5Fpost%5Fkoa.php?ref=gabestein.com) when they were unwilling to let him host a radio show and write for them at the same time, said it best in his [final column](http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2009/feb/27/krieger-we-were-the-best-of-teams/?ref=gabestein.com) for the Rocky:

> I still don’t get how a newspaper with 200,000 paying subscribers and hundreds of thousands more readers on the Web cannot make a go of it. Obviously, I’m not an MBA.

> Not our fault, the suits say. Business model’s fault. So who came up with the business model?

If the Rocky had been stewarded by a journalism-first family like the Grahams or Sulzbergers, owners of the New York Times, it might have survived. It was beating its competition, winning top journalism awards and experimenting with new formats and technologies. If it had weathered the recession and made it just a few more years, Scripps might have found that buyer. The paper, an institution as important to the community as a family member, might still be alive.

#### The New Gilded Age

Last month, two communities fearing the worst learned that they would not have to mourn the loss of their major dailies the way Denver, Tuscon, Baltimore, Cincinatti, and others did. Instead, both The Boston Globe and The Washington Post were acquired by billionaires: The Globe by John Henry, owner of the Red Sox, and The Post by Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.

Whether or not this represents a new Gilded Age, where the country’s elite “re-invest in the infrastructure of our public intelligence,” as James Fallows [writes in The Atlantic](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/why-the-sale-of-the-washington-post-seems-so-significant/278383/?ref=gabestein.com), is beyond the scope of this piece (I wrote about Bezos’ [potential interest in the publishing business](http://www.fastcolabs.com/3015344/jeff-bezos-bought-the-washington-post-for-one-thing-distribution?ref=gabestein.com) for FastCoLabs). What’s more important is that the papers survived at all, and landed with individuals who have deep enough pockets to fund them and, it seems, little agenda beyond keeping the papers in existence.

Having owners who are willing and capable of investing in them will mean that, unlike the Rocky, the Globe and the Post can continue to experiment until they find something that works. Even under their previous ownership, who valued the papers but were increasingly unable to support them, both the Post and the Globe made strides towards embracing new opportunities and becoming profitable. Both launched modestly successful paywalls, the Globe completed an ambitious responsive website re-design, and the Post released an industry-best API.

In a few years, we may find that these investments were ultimately for naught. It is very possible that the [unlikely market forces](http://archive.pressthink.org/2008/04/22/business%5Fmodel.html?ref=gabestein.com) that combined to create the profitable newspaper company of the last century and a half are gone for good. But it’s also possible that under new, more innovative leadership, with more investment and more time, newspapers will find a way to re-invent themselves for the digital era.

Regardless of what happens to these institutions in the next two years, for the moment, two more newspapers will live to see another day. We can analyze, debate and come to terms with what that means later. Right now, we should celebrate the fact that folks in Washington and Boston are breathing a collective sigh of relief instead of attending a funeral.

By [Gabriel Stein](https://medium.com/@gabestein?ref=gabestein.com) on [September 11, 2013](https://medium.com/p/34bbfabea4ae?ref=gabestein.com).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@gabestein/a-death-in-the-family-34bbfabea4ae?ref=gabestein.com)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com/?ref=gabestein.com) on October 22, 2020.
### So is the Academy trolling us or what?
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/dk1xsrh1/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:29.000Z
*This post was originally published on gabestein.com.*

Dear Internet,

Are we being trolled by the Academy, ABC and Seth MacFarlane? Before I get into that, let me do some housekeeping: I agree with the general consensus that he was a terrible host, mostly unfunny and very offensive. He managed to be sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-semitic and a lot more while mostly not being very funny. So yeah, let the floodgates be opened and the valid criticism be unleashed upon all who deserve it. It’s real, it’s fair and we should be having conversations about why all these things continue to stubbornly persist in society.

But okay, this is Seth MacFarlane, creator of the most offensive show on television that is nonetheless so popular that *the Fox network* brought it back on the air after cancellation because of its cult following (cough, but not Firefly?!?!?!, cough). Did we, the Academy, ABC and everyone else really expect him to not be offensive? Was it worse because it was a human being, not animations this time?

Or…was that the idea all along? Remember the Oscar’s intro where Captain Kirk shows MacFarlane the newspaper articles from the day after as he changes his performance? Look at the comment numbers on the articles as his performance goes from bad to good (sharing also appears to follow the pattern, but it’s hard to tell).

- ‘Seth MacFarlane, Worst Oscar Host Ever’ – 2236 comments
- ‘Seth MacFarlane, pretty bad Oscar host’ – 1256 comments
- ‘Seth MacFarlane proves to be mediocre host’ – 893 comments

Now reflect on the media storm his terrible performance generated. How many of you tuned in because your friends were whining about his jokes on Twitter? Did any of you, like me, at one point even feel bad for advertisers who were being associated with this stuff without knowing it ahead of time?

There’s a lot of [backwards thinking](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120127/10005717568/mpaa-exec-admits-were-not-comfortable-with-internet.shtml?ref=gabestein.com) in Hollywood when it comes to technology, but they still know how to get eyeballs in front of things. Someone may have left an easter egg to that effect right in the middle of the show.
### Henry Blodget Thanks Me For Aggregating Him
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/56zjv1uo/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:29.000Z
Henry Blodget of [Business Insider](https://web.archive.org/web/20161027043129/http://businessinsider.com/) personally thanked me for aggregating his content today in a note that I just had to share with you, my dear readers. The note is produced in its entirety below, but please DO NOT SCROLL DOWN, DO NOT CLICK CONTINUE READING. Instead, [click on this link](https://web.archive.org/web/20161027043129/http://www.businessinsider.com/thank-you-for-aggregating-us-2013-2#ixzz2K9LVWbbm) and read it at the original site. Thanks!

READ MORE ABOUT HOW AGGREGATION ROCKS AFTER THE JUMP!

Sorry, that gets put in there automatically. There’s nothing I can do. Stop reading now and [click through to BI](https://web.archive.org/web/20161027043129/http://www.businessinsider.com/thank-you-for-aggregating-us-2013-2#ixzz2K9LVWbbm).

> *I just wanted to post a quick note of thanks to every blogger, media organization, and reader who has ever shared our work and spread the word about Business Insider.*  
>  
> *Thanks to you, we’re now privileged enough to have more than 23 million unique readers a month–a milestone we would never have achieved if so many of you weren’t writing about and linking to our work every day.*  
>  
> *We occasionally hear other media organizations speak ill of such “aggregation,” as though it’s some sort of a bad thing. This has always been mystifying to us.*  
>  
> *It is not mystifying because we now have a large readership, by the way. It was also mystifying five years ago, when we were a tiny tech site and needed every reader and page view we could get. We were thrilled when our stories spawned a follow-on story that earned us a mention in, say, the New York Times, even without a link. The New York Times chose to share our existence and story with their readers! Cool!*  
>  
> *Now, to be clear, there are good and bad forms of aggregation, and we’re certainly not in favor of the latter. If another site completely rewrites one of our stories and doesn’t credit or link to us, we get frustrated. Our policy here is to use others’ work the way we want our own work used–which is usually to say, “provide full credit with our names and a link” or just “direct-link.” If a writer who chooses to aggregate us in that way gets more pageviews from our story than we get from it, that’s fine. It takes the writer and publication time to write their article, and we’re grateful that they found our work important enough to share it with their readers.\**  
>  
> *We assume the knee-jerk anti-aggregation attitude at some companies stems from the era in which big media organizations were like hydrants in the desert–the only place to find news and information–and therefore came to view their immense power, control, and profits as something they were entitled to.*  
>  
> *Now, of course, media organizations are like hydrants in the ocean, and readers are drowning in choices So the idea that we would frown on someone for recognizing and highlighting our work sounds not just ungracious, but self-defeating.*  
>  
> *Another thing to remember about aggregation is that media companies have always aggregated from each other. When I worked at CNN in the early 1990s, much of the news we reported came from Reuters. The New York Times frequently runs stories on stories that were first reported by [the Wall Street Journal](https://web.archive.org/web/20161027043129/http://subscribe.wsj.com/) (and vice versa)–and the Wall Street Journal doesn’t get anything more than credit for that. TV networks constantly broadcast news uncovered by print and digital publications, often without credit. The fact that digital companies often build on each others’ stories, therefore, is certainly nothing new. The key is to do it in a way that is a win-win for both sides.*  
>  
> *In short, your aggregation of our stories helps spread the word about our work to a wider audience. In the past, publications like ours would have had to hire PR firms to send their articles around and beg other journalists to write about them. Now you not only choose to read our posts with no prodding, you write about them, link to us, raise awareness of our brand and writers, and make it easy for more readers to find us.*  
>  
> *And we’re grateful for every mention and link.*  
>  
> *We know that you and your readers are busy people with millions of articles and sites you can visit every day. So the fact that you’re reading us and telling your readers about our work is a huge compliment.*  
>  
> *We’re thrilled you enjoy our site, and we look forward to continuing to get better every day.*  
>  
> *In the meantime, thank you for aggregating us!*  
>  
> **SEE ALSO:**  
>  
> *\* Yesterday, for example, I had a back-and-forth with the editor of an excellent ad-industry site called Digiday, Brian Morrissey, who was unhappy with [the way we had written about one of his stories](https://web.archive.org/web/20161027043129/http://www.businessinsider.com/tumblrs-rick-webb-when-he-was-a-teenage-goth-2013-2). This is rare for us: Other publications email us frequently in the hope that we will write about their stories, and normally we get thank-you notes from other writers for highlighting their work, not frustration. We gave Brian[enthusiastic and full credit for the story](https://web.archive.org/web/20161027043129/http://www.businessinsider.com/tumblrs-rick-webb-when-he-was-a-teenage-goth-2013-2), but we used a screenshot from his story and got more pageviews from our story about Brian’s story than Brian did with his original story. Brian felt both were unfair. We would not look at it that way, but we’re not Brian, and we never want someone to be frustrated with our use of their work.*
### Dear Internet: Has someone written this piece on drones?
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/awokvzxa/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:29.000Z
I need to read a news article that asks: are drones logical as a replacement for troops, are they really cost-effective and (how) do they work as both deterrents and killing tools. The problem with everything I’ve read, on all sides of the issue, is that they’re filled with emotion and innuendo, name-calling and drama.

What I want is a data-driven article that examines the assumptions the military is making that drone warfare is cheaper and more effective than ground warfare. It should also look at the effects drones have on people – economical, sociological, psychological – in targeted areas vs. the effects of ground combat. It would be nice if this article also touched on drone-based warfare in the broader context of technological disruption.

The problem I have with the articles I’ve read so far is that they don’t seem grounded in reality. Drone opponents largely ignore the fact that we’re a society that tolerates some violence and death in exchange for security and that, broadly speaking, air power is probably the best asymmetric deterrent the US has right now. Drone proponents tend to overstate the “surgical” nature of strikes, ignoring the side effects of reigning terror down from the sky on populations and to dismiss the fact that the permanent, global war on terror has been extremely inefficient, only partially successful and has dangerously altered civil rights in this country.

Has someone written this article? If so, link me. If not, someone get on that. I’ve had enough demagoguery from everyone.
### Student work owned by the school district? Old news.
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/4onbcyp4/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:29.000Z
There’s an [interesting article](http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/prince-georges-considers-copyright-policy-that-takes-ownership-of-students-work/2013/02/02/dc592dea-6b08-11e2-ada3-d86a4806d5ee%5Fstory.html?ref=gabestein.com) from the Washington Post up today about Prince George County Board of Education’s proposal to claim ownership over all the work done by students and teachers (somewhat related side note: Mr. Weinstein, [where do I send the check](https://twitter.com/mathewi/status/298078022467207169?ref=gabestein.com)?). It’s a ridiculous proposal for many reasons, most of them involving the work of teachers. But interestingly, the student side of it is not entirely new. It brought up an incident from high school that I had almost forgotten about. I’m recording it here so I don’t forget it again, and also to serve as an example of how ridiculous this proposed policy would be in practice.

I attended George Washington High School in Denver, Colorado, graduating from the International Baccalaureate program in 2007\. I was a captain of the speech and debate team, co-founder of a controversial underground magazine, managing editor of the newspaper and probably the biggest nerd in the whole place. Perhaps a bit too far ahead of my time, I bought a palm pilot with bar-mitzvah money on the first day of high school and used it with a portable folding keyboard to take notes. I also secretly used my bluetooth feature phone and some free dial-up providers to connect to the internet on the Palm Pilot during class to read news and play games. This was still years before the iPhone made high school teachers hyper-sensitive to technology. Because my phone was always in my pocket, because Palm Pilots had a reputation for being offline assistants and because most teachers didn’t know about bluetooth’s capabilities, they were delightfully ignorant about what I was doing.

Despite some bad learning habits, I got a great education there. GW’s IB program was one of the best in the country. The teachers were excellent and the students were there to learn. This was the case 90% of the time, except every year in the spring, when we were forced to spend an entire week participating in the mandatory Colorado Student Assessment Program, or CSAP, Colorado’s implementation of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act. For those who don’t remember this particularly dreadful attempt at education reform, the tests were designed to grade the school as a whole and allocate funding based on those grades. Students’ results were not collected or reported on individually.

Now, there are some very difficult social issues that come into play in this next bit and in the interest of telling this story I’m going to tread over them lightly. Suffice it to say that the NCLB was completely backwards and reinforced a lot of institutionalized racism. Test results are not the way to allocate funding. The IB program at my school was also controversial. On the one hand, it was pretty segregated from the rest of the school and mostly white, whereas the rest of the school was mostly black. On the other hand, the program’s high test scores helped the school get more money. I still have difficulty unpacking my feelings about it and this isn’t the right place to do it.

At the time, however – and remember we were teenagers – my friends and I absolutely detested the CSAPs. We hated them for being an utterly useless waste of time, for the stupidity of the way they distributed resources and in no small part because they reinforced the discomfort IB kids felt for being simultaneously disdained by most of the rest of the school and at the same time responsible for a lot of its funding. We protested the CSAPs in some interesting ways. A group of us founded an underground print magazine called The Green Light (which paid for itself with advertising) and distributed copies of CSAP opt-out forms with the first issue. This drove the administration crazy because each opt-out counted as a zero for the school.

The CSAP had an essay portion, which usually asked you to respond to an insipid prompt. One year the prompt asked students what non-profit group they would volunteer for. Responses from Green Lighters included “Drugs for Tots,” a fake organization that supposedly “teaches kids the metric system,” and the Boy Scouts, an essay filled with innuendo. These essays became citywide news when the school somehow discovered them and suspended the two students for “[defacing school property](http://susanohanian.org/show%5Fnclb%5Foutrages.php?id=1148&ref=gabestein.com).” This was especially absurd because schools weren’t supposed to look at completed tests before sending them to the state.

We responded by re-writing the essays and publishing them in The Green Light.

The next year, the prompt was “what would you change about the world?” My response was the CSAPs. I pointed out the flaws with the test in an essay that felt to my teenage mind like a pretty awesome takedown. Eager to republish this too, I pulled out my Palm Pilot – it had an epic 1.2 megapixel camera, way better than most phones at the time – and without thinking took a picture of the essay. A teacher who was apparently watching from the hallway through the window of the classroom door saw me, burst through the door, confiscated my Palm Pilot and dragged me to the principal’s office.

What awaited me there may have been one of the weirdest disciplinary meetings ever. I knew the principal pretty well because I was active in lots of school activities, and he seemed as amused as he was angry. The problem was, no one really knew what I had actually done wrong. The test rules said nothing about using electronics except graphing calculators. I wasn’t copying anyone else’s answers, so I hadn’t technically cheated. They didn’t really know what to do, so they called Denver Public Schools to ask for help.

Eventually, someone from the district called to inform them that I was guilty of “copyright infringement.” They said they were sending my Palm Pilot “downtown” to delete the photos I had taken and that I would face suspension. Then they called my parents.

This is where I got pretty lucky. My dad was in the media and knew what to do. He first told me I had made a stupid mistake. Then he asked the administration how they could possibly accuse me of infringing on the copyright of an essay I had written and how it could be grounds for a suspension. He said he would expect the Palm Pilot to be returned undamaged. He mentioned what an interesting story it was.

The administration took the hint. They dropped the idea of suspension and instead asked that I perform some community service around the school (they never followed up to arrange this). They returned the Palm Pilot a few weeks later, forcing me to rediscover my awful handwriting. The memory card had been wiped but it was undamaged.

Was it smart to photograph the test? No, I was being a dumb teenager. But why shouldn’t that essay be my property? Far from being paid to write it, which is the usual implicit agreement behind workplace IP assignments, I was required to write it to help the school. And more generally: what does it say to kids just starting to learn about academic building blocks like plagiarism and citation that their work doesn’t belong to them? What kind of message does that send about the value of intellectual work? And this was 2006\. Given the role technology plays in education today, doesn’t it limit a student’s ability to connect their work to broader academic discussion?

Of course, they made me finish the test to avoid giving the school another zero. The next day, an entire page of new language had been added to the proctor’s notes. Anything written during the test, it claimed, was property of the state. Copying it would be considered copyright infringement and grounds for suspension, expulsion and possible criminal charges.
### Let’s politicize America’s death problem, or, guns may not kill people, but someone still died
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/auips2lj/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:29.000Z
Another day, another horrific shooting in America. And every time progressives come together and whisper to one another, “maybe this will be the one that sparks action.” But not one seems to spark anything but “gun control now” on the left, “more guns” on the right and complete stasis in Washington.

If there is a common theme after these things happen, it’s the call that we not “politicize” the event right now, in the immediate aftermath. Some people really are too heartbroken to discuss much of anything after tragedies like these. But most people fall into one of two camps: either they think “politicizing” the issue will look bad and draw false ire and outrage from the other side, making reasonable discussion impossible, or they think that by producing conditions where it’s impossible to discuss fixing the issue right away, the strong feelings brought about by events like these will gradually drift away, leaving behind the status quo.

I question what these latter two camps think “politicize” means. A society that can’t protect its children, its future, has a huge problem. Politics, perhaps too indirectly these days, is about solving society’s problems in some way or another. So let’s politicize, if it means solving the problem.

To get there, I beg all of you to look in earnest at what happened today. Here it is, gloves off: six adults and twenty children, the oldest of them ten, were murdered today. Period. Full stop. It shouldn’t matter where, by whose hand they were slain, what their racial composition was, what kind of community it was, who there parents were, how rich they were, what kind of school it was or even how they were killed. I mean, these were people. Living, breathing human beings. There’s no excuse for them to be gunned down. Less so because they were mostly completely innocent children, but we need to get to the place where it is universally unacceptable for human beings, sans qualification, to die of anything but natural causes in this country. Yes, nothing but natural causes. Impossible as it might seem to prevent all gun violence, war, car accidents, cancer and every other mortal evil, until we reach that mindset I don’t think the American project – life being the first of the unalienable rights – will ever be complete.

There are many different opinions on how we can solve the gun violence problem we have in this country. But I don’t know if it’s limited to a gun violence problem. We have a death problem. We glorify it. Make television shows, movies, books, games about it. Most of this media involves guns, yes, because they are the most efficient tools of death an average person can wield effectively. So we can’t ignore that they and their glorification are a large part of the problem. But they aren’t the only problem. The overarching problem is that we tolerate preventable death in this country. Death from gun violence, death from starvation, death from preventable illness, death from accidents in badly regulated environments, death from pollution…death.

One mistake a lot of activists make is getting bogged down in the gun problem alone, opening themselves to an avalanche of slogans, (often shaky) statistics, stories of unlikely (and likely unrepeatable) heroism and two-bit constitutional law theory designed to stop the conversation in its tracks. But it’s hard to defend death.

So, I beg us all to focus the discussion on the tragedy and how to stop it from recurring. Twenty young kids are not going to be at the dinner table tonight because somebody shot them. We should all be talking and listening, in earnest, about how to prevent this specific ill – the loss of human life. Not talking in terms of statistics or constitutional theory. Not hiding out of fear that politicization will taint the process. Not trying to shut out voices by crying foul or deliberately shutting the conversation down.

We should be coming together to solve death in America, whatever it takes.
### Why No One (Especially Facebook) Will Control Your Online Identity
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/e7n8s9xu/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
What does the following paragraph remind you of?

> They were however still **disjointed separate networks**, served only by **limited [gateways](https://web.archive.org/web/20110131222232/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway%5F%28telecommunications%29) between networks**. This led to the application of packet switching to develop a protocol for internetworking, where multiple different networks could be joined together into a super-framework of networks.  
>  
> \- [Wikipedia’s History of the Internet](https://web.archive.org/web/20110131222232/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History%5Fof%5Fthe%5FInternet) (Emphasis Added)

If you took out a few instances of specific language and put the word “social” before every instance of the word “network” in the above paragraph, you would be writing an article about *one* possible future of social networking systems. In fact, the language in the above graph sounds so much like current conversations surrounding the social web that it leads me to believe that we are probably in the process of redefining the internet altogether along social lines.

It’s not like this is a totally new idea. Mark Zuckerberg has said he wants to “create a web where the default is social,” and all the big players realize that there is a lot of money to be made in the future of the social space. The problem is, unlike in the case of the networks that became the Internet, these companies are all driven by profit motive and feel a need to win the race to become the “default” social network. Unfortunately for them, by competing to become all-encompassing, they are all going to lose. Why? Because they are aiming at defining something that is fundamentally out of their reach: your online identity.

**An Identity Problem**

The problem with the modern social network (read: Facebook) is that it aspires to be your entire online life. By so doing, however, it is duplicating the very problem that lead to its creation, which is that the Internet doesn’t have a built-in method of establishing user identity.

This goes beyond just software. When the internet was first invented, identity wasn’t much of a concern. The dissociated networks that first developed were small and self-contained enough that merely identifying the limited number of workstations that could connect to them was enough. Moreover, because each network served a specific function, identity was also highly contextual. Even when networks like Usenet began to expand and become popular, establishing the firm identity of a user wasn’t important given that the network’s purpose was only to exchange information, and confined to specific subjects. In this context, there was no need for personal identity, only a need for one that could be established in relation to the content a user distributed. Trust could be established not based on any personal information but on the quality of the content distributed.

This all changed when TCP/IP was invented to unite these disparate networks. In solving one problem, it created the biggest problem set we are still grappling with today: on an open Internet, there is no built-in context for establishing identity,just as there is no built-in software for it.

Before the open internet (and even on the net before the rise of highly interactive websites), the internet was just a tool, used for sending and receiving information. In these contexts, identity was only as important as the data being sent. As more and more information was ported to the internet, and more linkages established between that information, the Internet moved from a mere tool to the de facto information source.

With so many people connecting to retrieve information, it was only natural that at some point or another, especially as web technology caught up, users would begin wanting to port their own personal data to the Internet. When this happened, originally in the form of personal website builders (ah, the fond memories of AOL Hometown, Expages, and Geocities), the web went from being a resource to being a lifestyle. Once we began to think of “people” as being online rather than just “information,” the person submitting and reading information became more important than the information itself, especially, as a side note, to advertisers. The problem remained, however, that unlike the contained environments of email, Usenet, and IM, these pages were just scattered haphazardly across the information superhighway, lacking any context, and were thus untrustworthy (remember that high school lecture about how geocities pages are usually not valid sources?) and nearly impossible to keep track of. They were also somewhat difficult to construct and time-consuming to maintain. Social networks – networks of people rather than information – were born to solve these problems by, as Zuckerberg is so fond of saying, creating a “graph of your social life.”

**Integration is the ‘Killer’ App**

This was all well and good as long as social networks stayed just that – graphs. As graphs of a particular part of your life, these websites function just fine because they provide a context for identity. Facebook is the place for friends. LinkedIn is the place for professionals. Twitter is the place to show how much of a nerd you are. It’s better this way, and it’s more realistic: just as in life I act differently and talk about different things at work than when I’m with my girlfriend, on the web I want to present myself differently based on who’s accessing my information. And the only way to control that, given that the Internet lacks that built-in identifying software, is to compartmentalize and self-select the information I share on a given site and select who gets access to what information.

Unfortunately, today Facebook has expanded so that it is not so much a graph of a preexisting social life as it is the place where you define what your social life, and increasingly professional and family life, is in the first place. If Facebook keeps expanding and becomes the de-facto social network, the same thing will happen to it that happened to the Internet as a whole: users will lose the context for their identity and all the information will become untrustworthy. Imagine if LinkedIn and Twitter shut down, and if Zuckerberg got his way and eliminated privacy on the site altogether (or even mostly). Would you share party photos with your friends when you know your boss will have access to it? Would you “like” an article about Star Wars knowing that high school bullies would see it and make fun of you? In an open environment, there is no context. Lacking context, there’s no way (or motive) to establish trustworthy identity. And the cycle continues.

We’ve seen it already with the limited integration of networks that has occurred, especially between Facebook and Twitter. What’s happened? The lack of context makes the quality of cross-posted content go down, because the user has to try to straddle two different audiences. Other users become frustrated at having to wade through out-of-context content. By trying to be the solution rather than trying to solve the problem, all of these networks are approaching the war the wrong way.

Instead of competing to control it, networks should compete to give you the most options to define your online identity, contextually. Imagine a social network that gave you total control over how you define yourself to subsets of users that you define, all from one piece of well-designed software. When that network appears, it is going to be the one that wins. More on that later.
### Starting over
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/sshjkcyv/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:31.000Z
I’m starting over. From now on, this blog will simply be a place of expression for my thoughts. I will no longer work towards being something I’m not, hide behind anonymity or design, or pretend to be anything but an amateur tinkering around with ideas. As such, I have stripped down to a minimal design (I will be making modifications as I have time, and may introduce something completely new if I see fit), and will focus more on using social networking tools, mainly twitter, to disseminate my ideas. I will also make use of the Oxford Comma and exclusive quotation marks.

Speaking of which, here are the main topics I will be covering: Content vs. Data, Identity (specifically Digital Identity), Politics, Rebooting the News, Searching vs. Indexing, and the Internet. When I refer to my own blog or projects, I’ll call it Meta. Speaking of which, I will be uploading my own portfolios/projects to this site in the coming days. This site will serve the dual function of being a method of expression and my digital resume.

I hope to see you here often.
### Flash Fiction Friday: Lately
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/2c3kxxr7/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:30.000Z
Well, we’re back! Or at least, I’m back. The other FFFers have been at it for a while, but I’ve been out of town. Regardless, it is my pleasure now to present to you the eighth Flash Fiction Friday I have written so far, and also to encourage you to read the pieces of my companions in this venture, as always all of them and mine written off of the same prompt. In no particular order: [Caiti](https://web.archive.org/web/20090807082753/http://yearoftheperduewonderchicken.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/flash-fiction-friday-lunch/), [Robin](https://web.archive.org/web/20090807082753/http://www.robincamille.com/?p=737#more-737), [Crow](https://web.archive.org/web/20090807082753/http://www.crowjonah.com/archives/2009/07/31/flash-fiction-friday-a-nobody/).

### Lately

Lately, I’ve been noticing that things aren’t right. It’s not that I’ve contracted some kind of *angst* (and I shudder at using the word, even in my thoughts) that you get sometimes and can’t shake, no, it’s a different kind of unsettling fear about the future, and it’s frankly appalling that a man of my age and stature should feel it at all. After all, here I am, living my own dream, possibly the dream, surrounded by fans and actors and producers…

And it’s not that I can’t focus or can’t *do* anything, but it’s more that there’s a layer of thin fog covering everything, and it’s not disappearing or drifting off, either. And I can see my idea, my salvation, you might say, it’s sitting right there in front of me, but just beyond my reach and I can’t see it clearly enough to copy down anything because this cloud has descended upon me. And it’s getting thicker, and it makes it that much harder for me to figure out where I’m going.

Understanding that is of the utmost importance. I decided at the age of thirteen when my best friend nearly died (twice) of cancer that I wouldn’t *live for nothing*. And to a new, official teenager like me, I guess that meant I would, well, really do something with my life that would somehow add a touch of meaning to that storied and most important entity, mankind. (As a side note, it meant that I also had to be unlike my parents, who, near as I could tell, were completely content in waking up and working and living and dying.) But it’s a difficult thing, being important and making contributions to what I now know is a mere concept. I figured that I wasn’t, as they say, cut out for politics, or wired for law or well-suited to anything else. But I was creative, in some ways, even if it all came out of negativity and death, and I had read somewhere that art was truth and truth beauty, and my family had the necessary connections, so I decided to make films. Of course, it’s a hard thing, making meaningful films. Sure, you can send messages or make statements, but it’s ultimately not up to you, it’s up to the people watching. And I’ll admit that I have no idea what makes a great film and what makes a bad one. I’ve put out films that I thought were golden but that the critics and everyone else absolutely spat on, and vice versa. I guess when it comes down to it, I’ll just have to accept that there isn’t perfection in film, as there isn’t in anything else…probably less, given that there’s always going to be someone who doesn’t like what you’ve made, and that’s the only criteria you ought to judge by…but early on, I made it my mission to capture and captivate each and every one of those lost souls who just didn’t “get” it or refused to acknowledge my genius and my contributions or for whatever other reason didn’t respect my work, and so I guess you could say I decided to be discontent.

Rather, as I’ve come to see it now, helpless. And I remember inserting some of this same struggle into one of my early films, where the protagonist, (and I always give them tragic names) Anthony, laments that he is insignificant. “This world,” he says in a bit of a soliloquy, although it is visually quite interesting, not static like you see a lot of in lesser works, “is God’s punishment for Eve’s pride. Individually, we are all beautiful and unique, but together we form a crowd so large that the tallest man could not be seen from the front. I am short; why should I yearn to have any part in that?” He was murdered at the end of that film, randomly, by petty criminals, in the dead of night, and the critics called it melodramatic. I’m not sure if I even cared about the reviews, because all I could do once committing myself to the decision to be famous and worthwhile was step back and watch myself go towards something, towards anything that I thought would influence people or *get my name out there* or, I don’t know, make me feel like some kind of progress was being made towards a substantial end of any kind whatsoever.

Except, and I realize this only now, that destination has never been entirely clear, if at all. Life is not one of my films, although it tends to be just as depressing sometimes. There is no end to any of this except *the* end, no credits to follow the last picture, and I know it’s irrational, but I can’t help but feel that if I don’t find one, I’ll be a miserable failure, even if they judge me to be a success by my cars and jewels and, I suppose I should mention, artistry. And there’s only one solution to that problem, and I’m already doing it as much and as well as I can, so it’s hard for me to understand why I still can’t feel as if things are right and well in this world.

Never before have I had such an insatiable thirst to escape reality, even though it’s what I’ve always sought to do, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s because mankind alone among the stars had the unlucky stroke of being endowed with the courage to imagine things *greater than ourselves*. Yet, what can I do but keep letting myself think freely? It is, after all, what I am paid for.
### Why I haven’t posted in a while
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/68ahxq2f/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:30.000Z
I recently added some grammar blogs to my RSS feeds, and now I’m terrified of making a mistake and ending up on one of them. So, sorry, but it might be a little while. I am still working on some cool (but long) posts, such as parts 2 and 3 of the newspaper website series and an article about Denver’s new zoning plan, the light rail, and how it compares to plans to re-make Paris, which has lost much of its charm to suburban sprawl.

So stay tuned-ish, but please don’t submit my writings to any language-focused blogs, k? Unless you think they’re amazing or something, in which case feel free to submit away.
### Re-imagining the Newspaper Website (Part 1 of 3)
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/ccu40bsn/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:30.000Z
**Part one of three: Bring it home**

*Newspaper websites have a major problem: they’re mostly awful. Online news presentation has barely changed in 10 years, and worse, editors and publishers across the industry think the solution is shoe-horning “web 2.0″ ideas into the existing model, rather than re-thinking what a newspaper website should be.*

Nothing demonstrates this problem more than the state of newspaper home page design. [This graphic](https://web.archive.org/web/20090706090744/http://7.media.tumblr.com/NQ5OSg0Xbp0wtfs3LJ7YfHVAo1%5F500.jpg) (via [The Denver Egotist](https://web.archive.org/web/20090706090744/http://thedenveregotist.com/)) illustrates the problem extremely clearly: newspaper home pages are still by and large static extensions of a newspaper front page, instead of dynamic websites. If you don’t believe me, take a look at a few current newspaper home pages, and tell me if any of these look like functioning websites instead of digital stand-ins for their printed cousins:

These sites are all jam-packed with text and photos, all laid out in sections just like a printed front page. If you don’t see a problem with that, you don’t understand the web. This is an age when people use Google as a search engine, spell checker, dictionary, translator, and calculator. They don’t do it because they don’t have other options for all of these things, they do it because they’re lazy, and interacting with a single line of text in a single search bar is easier than pulling out an individual tool for each function.

For instance, [searching the word ‘Sanford’](https://web.archive.org/web/20090706090744/http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=sanford&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8) in the top right of my Safari browser instantly turned up the three most popular articles on the embattled South Carolina Governor at the top of the main Google search results page. No scanning was needed. Likewise, searching “[200,000 x 150](https://web.archive.org/web/20090706090744/http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=200,000+x+150&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)“, “[translate journal from french to english](https://web.archive.org/web/20090706090744/http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=translate+journal+from+french+to+english&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)“, and “[define: newspaper](https://web.archive.org/web/20090706090744/http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=define:+newspaper&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)” all return a specific result that I asked for, right at the top of the page. Granted, some memorization is needed to produce each result, but it takes no more time to learn these basic commands than it does to scan through a newspaper webpage to find an article you’re interested in.

By the same token, successful informative websites don’t present the most information, or even the most organized information; they present the most *accessible* and *useful* information. When you take the time to read a printed newspaper, it’s because you enjoy the process of scanning headlines and turning pages to find stories that interest you. But when you visit a website, you don’t want to have to go through that. You want the things you like at the top, easily accessible. No newspaper website today provides that information. Instead, they provide a scattered jumble of everything, and I mean everything.

When my father worked at a newspaper, one of the things he often talked about was how editors struggled with how to build an online “community.” Instead of trying to cultivate an active readership by reworking the online product, their ideas frequently boiled down to adding “a comments engine” and “social tools” on top of the existing structure. The problem with this is approach is that newspaper’s online offerings frequently become a weird, useless product that falls somewhere in between a search engine and social bookmarking site.

This middling approach doesn’t serve any reader well. The thing we know from the success of [Google](https://web.archive.org/web/20090706090744/http://google.com/) is that people often know what they want, but need a reliable tool to help them find it. The thing we know from the success of blogs and social bookmarking sites like [Digg](https://web.archive.org/web/20090706090744/http://digg.com/) and [Reddit](https://web.archive.org/web/20090706090744/http://reddit.com/) is that when people don’t know what they want, they turn to others to show them. Newspaper websites don’t do either.

They typically scatter every single bit of their content on the front page, forcing users who know what they want to scan for the articles that interest them. Search features on newspaper websites are often clunky and ineffectual, and more often than not hidden in sidebars or rendered tiny and almost impossible the find among globs of text. In other words, they’re afterthoughts, which, in an age of the instant global desktop search, is inexcusable. I propose a novel solution: every newspaper should put a large search box at the top of the page, above the banner (or, in the ancien lingo, “masthead”), and have a search guru on staff who can either utilize Google custom search to its fullest or design an algorithm specifically for the newspaper that sorts articles by recent relevance and popularity, not solely chronologically.

Moreover, this idea of article popularity should become a central feature of the newspaper site. The reason for this: when people don’t know what they want, or are just browsing, newspaper websites are still largely useless in the internet age. Yes, headlines are categorized into sections and most newspapers have big bold “Breaking News” or “Important Stories” at the top, but these stories are all either organized chronologically or chosen by one web editor who sits at a computer posting what he or she thinks will be big or important.

It’s funny, because editors and reporters often talk about stories “going viral,” but they don’t realize that things “go viral” not because of how they’re promoted, but because when content is accessible and interesting enough, users find and disseminate the content themselves. Instead of actively trying to tease their stories into getting more hits, newspapers should do away with web editors altogether and let users choose the content with Digg/Reddit-style front pages. Seriously.

The newspaper already has a perfect, built-in engine to constantly refresh the top stories, much like Digg’s “Upcoming” and Reddit’s “New” pages: breaking news. Every newspaper front page could essentially be whittled down to two columns, with a simple list of the top twenty or so stories (as voted by registered users) taking up the main column and the latest (or “breaking”) stories in the side column along with the usual assortment of ads, links to the most popular columns, weather, etc.

This would serve many functions. It would dramatically un-clutter the page, simplifying it into one list of top stories from all sections as chosen by the readers of the newspaper, while relegating less-popular sectional headlines to sub-pages that a focused reader can browse to on his or her own. Moreover, all of these sub-pages can be laid out similarly to the main page, keeping the entire site consistent and easy to use.

More importantly, it would actually build a community by encouraging readers to register so they can vote and stay active by giving them a stake in the content. The reason sites like Digg and Reddit are so popular and sustain such a vibrant community is that they give users the feeling that they’re constantly contributing to the content by deciding what gets promoted to the top and what gets relegated to the bottom. In a newspaper setting, this becomes more valuable, because newspapers have unique identities, and the demographics of readers for large dailies are more compact than for global internet sites. Readers of a local newspaper are more likely to be interested in the same topics, especially when there are two or more newspapers in a community whose editorial boards skew to either the right or the left.

This means that given the chance to vote content up or down, users will automatically select the most relevant and appealing stories for the majority of fellow readers. When users enter the main page of the site, instead of scanning through hundreds of headlines that may or may not be appealing, the most interesting stories will always be at the top; and if a user disagrees, they can do so actively by voting a story down.

Moreover, because the content would be dynamic, with breaking news constantly entering the fray and top stories changing ten or more times an hour as users vote, any dissatisfied user would know that he or she can return in a few minutes and probably see something new. Alternatively, a reader could browse to his or her favorite section, where a new dynamic list of the most popular stories inside each section would displayed, or browse through less popular stories on any list to find a more eclectic one that fits his or her taste.

The point of all of this is to focus the newspaper website more on keeping readers engaged in the content and less on simply providing the content in some new, fast, or exciting way. The editorial quality can still be maintained, with professional reporters writing everything and editors verifying every fact; it’s only the presentation that becomes user-controlled, which is exactly the sort of interactivity that the internet can provide and that readers buy into, because it feels like they have a stake in making the website great.

This is important for many reasons…which will be discussed in parts two and three of this, er, essay?

**In part two: More on building community with comments, columnists and, gasp, blogs.**
### Flash Fiction Friday: To Old Friends
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/81i9kys0/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:30.000Z
So. This is a Friday. And I am posting Flash Fiction. Unfortunately, this is actually last Friday’s Flash fiction. It’s horrible, I know, but I did write something, and wanted to put it up. I’m going to try to have another one up today, so, you know, treat it as a double-header. Two-for-one, or what have you.

So, for this (last Friday’s) piece, [Crow](https://web.archive.org/web/20090706090744/http://www.crowjonah.com/archives/2009/05/16/flash-fiction-friday-yesterdays-meal/) chose the rule (and I shamelessly stole his graphic), and [Robin](https://web.archive.org/web/20090706090744/http://www.robincamille.com/?p=642) and [Caiti](https://web.archive.org/web/20090706090744/http://yearoftheperduewonderchicken.blogspot.com/) followed suit as always. Make sure to read their pieces when you can and try to guess at the common rule that runs throughout them.

### To Old Friends

So, how are the ladies? I say, cracking a mischievous smile. He looks away. It’s the first thing I want to know with him, every time we come back home. He tells me there aren’t any, and I shrug it off. Only I’m thinking about how little has changed. His problem has always been that he’s just a little too annoying, talks to much. Talking right now about something. He desperately needs a girl who can stand him, who makes him settle down. Had one once, but let her go. I wonder why?

He stops to take a bite of his sandwich. I cut in, You read that story about COIN in Pakistan? His eyes light up. Yes, he tells me, and goes on to explain why he doesn’t think it’s going to work. The US is still having problems with it, how would a subpar military only loosely commanded by an evaporating government do any better? I’m not sure I disagree, but I’m not sure he knows what he’s talking about, either. He says he studied it in South Asian Policy class. Okay.

Next up, it’s sports. Baseball team bad, basketball team good. What are they doing to the Broncos? I laugh, and ask if he can still be a fan. He says yes, but he won’t enjoy it until all the remnants of JMD are gone.

There’s silence for a while. Food’s almost done. Do I want to finish it? he asks. No, I’ll take it home and eat it later. It’s time to go already, doubly understood. Ball-game tomorrow? I pause. I’ve to about 30 games with him over the years. Most of them have been fun. Okay, I say. It’s good to be back, we both agree. Nice to see you. You too. And we leave.
### Flash Fiction Friday: Outfits and Rituals
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/o7n2nrj3/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:30.000Z
Well, I’m late again…see if you can guess what I was up to this weekend from the story. But more importantly, see if you can guess the rule that connects all four stories this week from myself, [Crow](https://web.archive.org/web/20090706090744/http://www.crowjonah.com/archives/2009/05/09/flash-fiction-friday-something-to-work-on/) (rulemaker and creator of this weeks’ awesome FFF graphic I’m featuring), [Caiti](https://web.archive.org/web/20090706090744/http://yearoftheperduewonderchicken.wordpress.com/), and [Robin](https://web.archive.org/web/20090706090744/http://www.robincamille.com/?p=630). Enjoy. Or don’t. Whatever suits you.

### Outfits and Rituals

As far as rituals go, unpacking after college is about as un-stately as they come. It’s just the transfer of your wardrobe and a few select items from a box to a drawer, and if you do it right, you don’t even have to refold. Not much pomp and circumstance, physically speaking.

But in a way, unpacking is a bit like sorting through old memories. Not that the outfit defines the moment or the person, but it’s hard to unpack and not remember things you’ve done and said while wearing your favorite pieces, and your least favorite.

Because clothing does influence, in a small way, how people characterize you from the outside, and you have to wonder if things would have gone differently had you, for instance, been wearing your nice black shoes instead of the dirty sneakers you rocked at the last party of the year. Unfortunately, you had already packed most of your nice things, and were making due with the tennis shoes, a practical red corduroy, and what your friends describe as “the middle school jeans.”

Of course, looking back on it, what really would have changed? Maybe you were just a little more self-conscious than usual, and maybe you were just a little less open than usual. Maybe it showed a tiny bit in conversations and interactions, but nothing would have been noticeable except on a subconscious level.

Still, it’s that subconscious level that drives you to dress better. You realize how important even the smallest choices can be, and that attention to detail means you already have plenty of insecurities about yourself as it is. Knowing you look good is just one less concern weighing on your mind that could derail a conversation, and possibly a whole evening.

Today, however, you have to remind yourself that it’s impossible to trace exactly what caused you to be off your game at the party, and equally impossible to live that way. That was three thousand miles and a weekend ago. You’re home now, just unpacking.
### Style vs. Grammar
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/koymkabl/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:30.000Z
A hilarious comment from an Anonymous poster at [The Sartorialist](https://web.archive.org/web/20090706090744/http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/2009/04/on-streetthe-tailor-of-chapel-street.html). Note the completely random lack of capitalization (one I, one i), the one-word sentence (containing a coordinating conjunction, no less), the misused semicolon, and the awkward phrasing that makes it seem like everyone walks around naked these days (I know I do). It may very well be from a non-native speaker, but I think this is still the most unintentionally funny comment I’ve ever seen on a reputable blog.

> the fabric is a bit different from my taste. however! I am i am in great appreciation of the details like; the the sleeve length and complementing shirt cuff. The well pressed pants and pinky ring are all romantic hallmarks of a time when people got “dressed” when leaving the house. it’s very nice to see. very handsome.
### A New, Real Post!
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/57rdle2k/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:30.000Z
April Fools.

No really, I’m working on some though.

April Fools again.

Actually though, I’ve got time to work on some though now that my week from hell is over.

No seriously, April Fools again. You are so gullible. Gahd.
### The @gabestein Twitter Weekly Digest for 2009-03-30
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/mdf9kxq5/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:30.000Z
- Just updated typography on my new site. Going with just two: Tahoma/Verdana for content, Georgia for everything else. Results are…mixed. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1376405543)
- My prof says to eliminate all pause words in dialogue, but I’m much more of a naturalist. Is perfect dialogue too slick for most characters? [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1377685443)
- @[crowjonah](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/crowjonah) If that’s true, given my last stat check, I think I need more sleep. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1377962679)
- I’ve got to write these damn essays, or study French, or do something productive, but I’m worn out and a tad sick. So, tea and TV anyone? [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1378923668)
- Chose darjeeling: light and aromatic. Read somewhere that tea’s caffeine is more focusing than coffee’s (another vice). Wonder if it’s true? [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1379109761)
- How much do you worry about repeating sentence structure in academic essays? I think I’ve already killed ‘Although Eisenhower X, he meant Y’ [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1381465235)
- My TF has a great collection of student essay-related terms, among them: “defensive grading” and “assertive insecurity” [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1383656643)
- Do your photos always seem less vivid than friends’? I think it’s that we’ve lived our own, but have to fill in others’ with imagination. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1391513268)
- I’m also a pretty lousy photographer, which could have something to do with it. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1391514505)
- Finished essay 1 on the Cold War, now transitioning to screenplay based on Desafinado. After that, moving to essay 2, Kant vs. Utilitarians. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1392808432)
- Finished screenplay based on Desafinado (Not to spoil the ending, but love is like a never ending melody). Bed, then only one essay left! [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1393186105)
- The words ‘dear God, I love my fucking brain’ just popped into my head… Trying to tell me something, subconscious? (Sob, I’m so arrogant!) [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1393195471)
- is thinking about accents in literature, how much he hates phonetic spellings by some authors (Brian Jacques!), but likes them from others. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1398124143)
- It’s amazing how much impact 30 extra minutes of sleep can have. Churchill was on to something with that micro-napping thing he did. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1400886085)
- is thinking that that was just about the worst response he could have gotten to his new script. My procrastination finally caught up to me. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1402425812)
- Just woke up from a dream that I will not repeat. But, it was a very fitting awakening to an alarm of “Fun, Fun, Fun! In the Sun, Sun, Sun!” [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1403640259)
- Is it appropriate to say “bye” to someone if you merely saw them in a public place and said “hello,” 30 minutes passed, and then you left? [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1408437308)
- Hearing the voices of people you know through $70 noise-canceling headphones makes a huge difference. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1409583130)
- Easy weeks are fun, but tough weeks are more life-affirming, in that they remind you that there’s plenty of room for improvement. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1410056696)
### Flash Fiction Friday: Red-Red-Yellow
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/f46ew5u3/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:30.000Z
So this week I am pleased and honored to be included in a tradition that started a few weeks ago over at my friend [Crow](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://crowjonah.com/) and his friend [Robin’s](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://robincamille.com/) blogs. They’ve since added [Caiti](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://yearoftheperduewonderchicken.wordpress.com/) into the mix, and this week they’ve been nice enough to invite me as well.

The idea is pretty straightforward: each week, someone picks a rule, which can be anything at all, and everyone writes a short story based on that rule. Rather than telling you what it is, the idea is for you, the loyal reader, to read all four stories and then use the comments to guess at and/or smugly reveal that you have deduced the rule. So after you’re done with my story, head over and read everyone else’s (here are the links again: [Crow](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://crowjonah.com/). [Robin](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://www.robincamille.com/?p=546). [Caiti](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://yearoftheperduewonderchicken.wordpress.com/).).

## Red-Red-Yellow

The night of the telling, frost covered stiff grass along the streets outside. Inside, a fire cackled and a song punched through the dust: “red-red-yellow, the heavens bellow.” The sober cringed at James’ voice, raspy and weighted by the stench of yellow teeth and too many cigarettes. The rest were in no condition to listen.

“I been in a bad place, see,” James explained. “Drifting. Lulled to sleep by waves.”

“So that’s how you blue boys get to sleep, queers.” It was Aaron, sneering from the end of the counter. James cleared his throat.

“It’s a metaphor.”

“Whatever floats your boat.” Aaron’s round belly jiggled, and James stared down into the depths of his half-empty highball glass.

–

Drifting. A dull clanging cut through the salty ocean mist. Blood soaked the rope, wind tore through his hair, but James kept to his task unfazed, staring at the horizon. Colors rose above the setting sun.

–

The night of the telling, James left the bar a real mess, surrounded by a crowd well-wishers bidding him a safe journey home. They watched as he stumbled across the curb and down Coral Road mumbling that wretched song. A few lean punks in an ally across the street followed James, waiting for his inevitable collapse. He should never have made it home.

The bartender, William Jr., looked for James in the surrounding streets the next day; he was nowhere to be found.

–

Drifting. A midshipman tore off his white shoulder and handed the cloth to James. “Red-red-yellow,” he croaked, and then turned away, leaving fresh blood on uneven planks of wood. In the little dinghy, James watched as three nimbus clouds gathered to a point, a crimson stain on the horizon.

–

The night of the telling, James described it as a “peculiar red dot.”

”Do you get it?” he asked. Aaron finished off a pint in response, leaving a layer of white foam above glistening lips.

”Haven’t been listening since you said ‘metaphor.’”

–

Drifting. On the second day, the dot appeared to the Northeast. James pointed the boat’s nose and sang to keep himself awake. His voice bounced away on the chop.

–

The night of the telling, the punks followed quietly in James’ wake as he tripped down forty-eight blocks of Coral Road before turning left onto Cherry Street. They shivered as James crooned into the night, but looked on, their blue eyes growing wider with each unfailing step.

“He’s making it,” said the small one.

“Not a chance,” said the bigger of the two. “Even a small breath going to knock him right over.”

–

Drifting. On the third day, the sky was clear and still. James watched as the sun sank like a stone into the water, finding neither sign nor inspiration in its descent. For the first time in half a week, he took the white cloth from his pocket and unraveled it on his palm, seeing only buttonhole and creases.

“Red-red-yellow,” he said again.

–

The night of the telling, James spoke to a growing number of listeners about the dilemma of being stuck out at sea. If he was lost, he said, he desired not to live on in false hope of rescue.

”So what?” said William Jr. “You were going to off yourself? Pish tosh!”

”Is that so hard to believe?” James choked down the final dregs of another ale. “Hell, I’d off myself here and now to prove it if I wasn’t enjoying this attention so much.”

The listeners laughed heartily at this, and James jumped when one of them slapped a coin down on the counter to pay for the storyteller’s next drink.

–

Drifting. The golden sun peaked just above the cloudless horizon. James stared directly at the semicircle, not noticing the sting in his eyes. A cold wind began to bite at his neck, and as he went to gather his uniform about him, the breeze whipped the white cloth out his hands. It hung for a moment on the horizon before dipping into the cold blue ocean.

–

The night of the telling, James paused right at the climax for dramatic effect. His audience grumbled, which he responded to with a widening grin. He greedily kept his secret for just a little bit too long.

“It turned yellow,” came a knowing coo from the end of the bar. Aaron must have been piss drunk by then. “Yellow in the sun.”

James smiled. “Almost.”

–

Drifting. For less than a second, the cloth separated James’ eyes from the sun. Pure yellow light streamed through the buttonhole.

–

The night of the telling, James made it another twenty-six blocks along Cherry Street before finally collapsing among a collection of burlap bags set out on a stoop. He lifted his head to the sky and belted into the night.

“Red-red-yellow, the heavens bellow!”

The punks were still discussing how James had come so far when his song snapped them into action. As they swiftly descended on the defeated drunk, a flickering, unsure light came on in the building that towered over James.

“Shut up, you drunk bastard!” came the tired yell from above.

James looked up, and saw pure yellow streaming through the window. He rose unsteadily to his feet, and tried his key in the building’s heavy oak door. When it closed behind him, the punks stood frozen in disbelief on frost-covered grass. The smallest of them looked up at the other.

“Red-red-yellow?”

---

Now go read everyone else’s story. [Crow](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://crowjonah.com/). [Robin](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://www.robincamille.com/?p=546). [Caiti](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://yearoftheperduewonderchicken.wordpress.com/).
### Twitter Updates for 2009-03-26
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/k2y87hiu/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:30.000Z
- Finished essay 1 on the Cold War, now transitioning to screenplay based on Desafinado. After that, moving to essay 2, Kant vs. Utilitarians. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1392808432)
- Finished screenplay based on Desafinado (Not to spoil the ending, but love is like a never ending melody). Bed, then only one essay left! [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1393186105)
- The words ‘dear God, I love my fucking brain’ just popped into my head… Trying to tell me something, subconscious? (Sob, I’m so arrogant!) [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1393195471)
- is thinking about accents in literature, how much he hates phonetic spellings by some authors (Brian Jacques!), but likes them from others. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1398124143)
### Is Obama’s ‘Open for Questions’ Site Rigged?
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/ui8gaiq2/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:30.000Z
Take a look at Obama’s new [Open for Questions](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://www.whitehouse.gov/OpenForQuestions/) website. In case you’re not familiar with [the story](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/AheadoftheCurve/story?id=7167497&page=1), President Obama will be holding an online town hall tomorrow, and will take a series of questions from users on the WhiteHouse.gov website. The difference between this concept and past online-generated Q&A events is that the Open for Questions site lets users vote for their favorite questions, which are then listed by popularity à la [Reddit](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://reddit.com/) or [Digg](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://digg.com/).

During the event tomorrow, Obama will answer selected questions from among the most popular. I have no pretense that the questions won’t be screened, but even so, the top ten questions at the time of writing are all about, surprise surprise, the economy, and they already seem to have come straight from an outline of Obama’s economic stump speech, save one notable exception.

But here’s another interesting fact that many might overlook: half of the questions come from classic swing states Indiana, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Florida and Missouri. Two more are from the semi-swing states Oregon and Wisconsin. Moreover, the questions are nearly perfectly geographically distributed: there’s one from the West coast, one from the mountain West, one from the Midwest, two from so-called Appalachian states, two from the South, two from the Southeast, and one from New England. The notable missing states and regions, essentially population-rich New York and California, both heavily favored Obama in the 2008 election.

I’m not accusing the White House of anything nefarious, but it’s not like there’s [no precedent](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/AheadoftheCurve/story?id=7167497&page=1) for Obama deliberately picking swing states for high-profile online documents. Plus, near as I can tell there’s nothing on the site that mentions moderation of the questions or how the voting process works (aside from flagging), so it seems likely that Obama’s staff is free to manipulate the question lists as much as they want. Again, this is fine, but if the site is moderated, the White House might want to clarify how the site works so that people understand that it isn’t Digg or Reddit, and that more than just voting factors into how questions are ranked.

As a side observation, it’s interesting to note what types of questions come from where. The question from Pennsylvania is about manufacturing, the question from Houston is about the high tech industry, the question from Connecticut about 401Ks, etc. It all fits with areas of the economy that are suffering in those states.

The notable question I mentioned earlier is the one from Oregon, which asks why Obama hasn’t set up his promised online bill discussion site yet. I attribute this to the simple fact that internet-savvy voters are more likely visit the site and find that question interesting enough to vote it into the top ten over other more Obama friendly and economy-focused questions. Plus, if he chooses to answer the question, it will give Obama a chance to pimp the website, talk about the uniqueness of the town hall event itself, and highlight all the technology he’s worked with so far.

And on that note, one more, final observation: Google was chosen to run the Open for Questions service. Is that any surprise? The web company was among [Obama’s largest donors](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638) during the campaign.
### Twitter Updates for 2009-03-25
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/5a8lpb0v/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:30.000Z
- I’m also a pretty lousy photographer, which could have something to do with it. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1391514505)
- Do your photos always seem less vivid than friends’? I think it’s that we’ve lived our own, but have to fill in others’ with imagination. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1391513268)
### Twitter Updates for 2009-03-25
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/b6p16w2x/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:30.000Z
- My TF has a great collection of student essay-related terms, among them: “defensive grading” and “assertive insecurity” [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1383656643)
- How much do you worry about repeating sentence structure in academic essays? I think I’ve already killed ‘Although Eisenhower X, he meant Y’ [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1381465235)
### Twitter Updates for 2009-03-23
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/ozu0e6ue/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:30.000Z
- Finding just the right shade of cool minty green to match the pink background on my site is one of the most tedious things I’ve ever done. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1374186852)
- Sleep is only a fleeting respite from the weight of our commitments, yet most bliss happens there. How cursed and blessed we are to need it. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1374556282)
- Just updated typography on my new site. Going with just two: Tahoma/Verdana for content, Georgia for everything else. Results are…mixed. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1376405543)
- My prof says to eliminate all pause words in dialogue, but I’m much more of a naturalist. Is perfect dialogue too slick for most characters? [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1377685443)
- @[crowjonah](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/crowjonah) If that’s true, given my last stat check, I think I need more sleep. [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1377962679)
- I’ve got to write these damn essays, or study French, or do something productive, but I’m worn out and a tad sick. So, tea and TV anyone? [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1378923668)
- Chose darjeeling: light and aromatic. Read somewhere that tea’s caffeine is more focusing than coffee’s (another vice). Wonder if it’s true? [#](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein/statuses/1379109761)
### Wait, your ‘Top Ten’ are all true and unfunny
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/9ojcjkc2/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:30.000Z
I’ve commented on this before, but sometimes news headlines can be completely misleading. Usually, the articles that follow them are even worse, because bad headlines often reflect either a bad or distracted editorial staff that for some reason places less weight on its headlines - essentially the most important aspect of getting people to read the article - than other things, whatever they end up being.

So here’s an article from Warner Brother’s [Extra](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://extratv.warnerbros.com/2009/03/10%5Fthings%5Fabout%5Flettermans%5Fwed.php) covering, and I apologize for getting into celebrity gossip here, David Letterman’s marriage to longtime girlfriend Regina Lasko. I’m a huge Letterman (well, Late Show, to be more accurate) fan, so I couldn’t help being interested in the story, especially when I saw the following headline:

[10 Things about Letterman’s Wedding!](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://extratv.warnerbros.com/2009/03/10%5Fthings%5Fabout%5Flettermans%5Fwed.php)

Let’s ignore the 90s rainbow TV news-style background, the completely random appearance of (I think) Mario Lopez’s face above the logo, and the fact that a video plays automatically with the sound every time you so much as glance at the site. When I read the headline, I assumed, given the obvious reference to Letterman’s hilarious [Top Ten List](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://lateshow.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/top%5Ften/index/php/20090317.phtml) and the somewhat whimsical exclamation point at the end of the headline, that it would be a somewhat snarky list of 10 jokes about Dave’s marriage, somewhat like this 2003 (please forgive me) [People](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20148185,00.html) spread about the birth of Letterman’s son, Harry.

You’d think that would be the case, but unfortunately, the article just lists 10 completely true facts about Letterman, the marriage, and the news coverage surrounding it in a sentence or two. In fact, the only thing remotely funny about the article is that it ends most (but not all, God forbid a little consistency) of those facts with a cheeky exclamation point, as if doing so makes each useless piece of information worth putting on something other than toilet paper. For example:

8\. The wedding was so top secret that Regis Philbin didn’t know Dave was getting hitched — and they’ve known each other since 1983!

Badum-ching? I don’t get it.
### Welcome to my new site
URL: https://www.gabestein.com/68cssnan/
Last updated: 2026-03-10T16:41:38.000Z
Now serving you from two convenient locations, http://gabestein.com (main URL), http://imaginaryblogworldblog.com (surreal URL).

I hope you like the new look and content of my blog. The new retro-y design is mostly finished, but I’ll still be making some tweaks as time goes on. I hope you enjoy it for now. For those of you on IE, I’m sorry, but you don’t see my cool new minty-fresh green borders and drop shadows surrounding the posts. I’ll try to make it more compliant, but I highly recommend picking up [Firefox](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://getfirefox.com/) in the meantime…and you’ll probably use it all the time.

And now a word from our content: more personal, more interactive, probably on the whole less absurd, bizarre, and funny.

I’ll of course continue with my [website reviews](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://gabestein.com/category/website-review/), [movie critiques](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://gabestein.com/category/film), and all that, but I’ll also be adding some of my own creative work, including some scripts, short stories and possibly photos and design works. I’ll also occasionally (but not too often) link to stuff I think is important. However, I’m not about to become a link blog - I’ll always include commentary to keep it fresh and up for discussion.

And speaking of discussion - whoever you are, good reader, I want you to feel free to say anything, critique anything, discuss anything, suggest anything, even if you don’t know me personally or well, even if you think it might be awkward or socially unacceptable. A big part of my goal here is to ignite intelligent and in-depth discussion on any number of diverse subjects. I’ll do my best to make the content thought-provoking, but you’ve got to take a few risks to make that work.

I’m also going to be doing a lot more with [Twitter](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein), so go ahead and [follow me](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://twitter.com/gabestein) if you like. The Twitter feed will have both new blogposts and random observations during the day, which will be posted to a daily digest on the blog at the end of the day. You can, of course, always respond with twitter using @gabestein.

Well, it’s late, so I guess that’s about it for now. I think this is going to be a lot of fun, for all of us. I look forward to meeting whoever you are.

Sincerely,

Gabe Stein  
[gabestein.com](https://web.archive.org/web/20090402181219/http://gabestein.com/)