Fodder #44
What's Trending? What's Transcendent?
Well, the bromance is over. Caput. No longer. There were early guesses that Elon and Trump would fall out by May. “Too fast!” everyone cried. But it was only a couple of days off. The gloves are clearly off.
The betting markets are having a blast with this! There’s the Elon is out bet. The will-Trump-disparage-Musk bet. Will Musk be Tesla CEO. Will Elon unfollow Trump. Will Elon make a new political party. Will Trump jail Elon. I guess there’s a non-zero chance. In the meantime, Tesla is down 17% in the last 24 hours. SpaceX is decommissioning Dragon. Astronauts are excited to get re-acquainted with Boeing. Everybody is petulant.
An illegal immigrant this week continued to globalize the Intifada in Colorado. Khamenei says Iranian uranium enrichment is none of our business. A New York mayoral candidate gets fact-checked by ChatGPT. Trump and Xi talked, and there’s anti-excitement about it. JD does a pod.
So that’s politics. But don’t worry, Lex Fridman has a plan.
Mary Meeker, the Queen of the internet, dropped a 340-slide deck on the state of AI. It is insightful, detailed, and very long. There are many takes, but why listen to them when you have a tireless virtual assistant? So here’s o3’s summary. That’s right, an AI summarizing a mostly human take on AI. My biggest takeaway: inference costs have gone down 105,000x. What a world.
Gemini brought an update, but kept the naming scheme. A high school kid builds an incredible prototype of what AI integration in Google’s Suite should look like. The Veo model comes to Bible stories. Cursor releases version 1.0. And the vibecoder cometh.
A new gene therapy cuts cholesterol by 70%. Google’s quantum computing work keeps moving. Canada decided to be more European. And the MAHA report maybe isn’t the best report ever.
In chess news, Magnus Carlsen (the actual GOAT) dropped a meme aimed at new World Champ Gukesh D — “you come at the king, you best not miss”. In their very next match, karma comes and Magnus slams the board.
Now on to the reading!
Timely
Trading With Claude - A white collar job AI hasn’t come for yet is financial planning. But someone is already using Claude to put in trades. MCPs are still very much in the developer landscape, but this is a bellwether for how we’ll interface with tools in the future.
How the Muslin Brotherhood Is Capturing Europe - What they’re teaching in France and how they’re changing the culture from the inside out.
Tyler Cowen: AI and the Idiot Advantage - This may be about Tyler Cowen but at least it isn’t by him. My fandom alone is not why this is appealing. It’s a dive into what it means to feel like an idiot and why it signifies bravery and optimism in this domain. As Tyler says, “If you are not scared of AI, you are not paying enough attention.”
Why Extravagant Weddings Are On The Rise At The Same Time Marital Rates Are In Decline - We have new ways to signal commitment besides institutions now, and they involve performatively spending exorbitant amounts of money on an Instagram-worthy party.
Timeless
How I taught my 3 year old to read like a 9 year old - It’s all the things you probably already know: Read to them, read for pleasure, phonics, spaced repetition, one-on-one tutoring. But dedication and results are still incredible.
Why are we lying to young people about work - A remarkable piece about why following your passion is bullshit. “Everything worth having lives on the other side of effort.”
How To Make Something Great - From the chief designer behind Cursor, a romantic view into the process of creativity.
Erotic Decisions - Recapturing the word erotic, in the original tradition of Eros and Sappho, is a remarkably necessary activity in 2025. This essay succeeds, reminding us, among other things, that “Eroticism is about gravity, not about gratification, the pull toward something that reorients the self.
Books
Submission by Michael Houellebecq - This is a weird but timely book about a French literature professor’s life as he navigates the Islamic takeover of France and the application of Sharia Law. It’s one of those novels where not much happens on any given page and yet somehow everything happens. By the end, the main character is ready to convert and meet the first of his many future wives. Submission indeed.
Tweets
Some good ones, so you don’t need to scroll!
The world is amazing. Cheers!