13 Comments

Dig the format change. Makes it easier to read in a couple of sittings.

Expand full comment

Glad you like it! As for your second comment, we almost wrote an item about SK but it didn’t quite make the cut. Declaring martial law ends up being not a very momentous event went parliament overrides it a few hours later… Though there are interesting things to say about that situation I’m sure.

Expand full comment

SK will always mean Saskatchewan to me (I froze my ass off for a decade there, once).

My (very cursory) understanding is that parliament would technically have been dissolved during martial law, so wasn't in a position to rescind anything. I once read a rejoinder to the Maoist saying that 'power comes from the barrel of a gun': power comes from the look in the eye of the person with the gun pointed at them... it's not very pithy, but there might be something to it. The woman who reached out and grabbed the barrel of that soldier's gun, while he pointed it at her, might just have a future in politics.

Expand full comment

I think something might have happened this week in South Korea too?

Expand full comment

Perhaps the next obvious step in the evolution of Nonzero would be to add to your talent roster a person or two on the philosophy, religious, or general science side, now that you have foreign policy expertise onboard. We cannot all be “galaxy brain “ polymaths like the folks covered by Decoding the Gurus. (And I mean that most respectfully). One Bob is enough. Let’s build another Bob from parts. That would be worth a donation to the foundation.

Expand full comment

I agree that the proportion of foreign policy content is at least as high as it needs to be. There are various ways to balance this--hiring (very expensive), commissioning pieces (somewhat expensive), and others. I'll definitely keep thinking about ways to expand and diversify content at the same time.

Expand full comment

Speaking of galaxy brains, it is nigh time to have a Weinstein back on the podcast

Expand full comment

Bluesky is a profit-maximizing corporation so it's algorithms will be designed to maximize returns to shareholders and investors. The only social medium that doesn't follow that rule because it's not for anyone's profit is the Fediverse. The reason why so many have gone from Twitter to Bluesky is marketing. Bluesky has been marketed very well.

Expand full comment

Social media and search rely on marketing and advertising revenue and are therefore inherently less reliable that subscription models (like this newsletter). Something that also holds for ChatGPT or Claude. A point that is made in Robert Pearl’s book “ChatGPT, MD How AI empowered patients and doctors can take back control over US medicine”

Expand full comment

I bring bad news: This week there were reports that OpenAI is considering the ad revenue option: https://mashable.com/article/openai-considering-ads-chatgpt

Expand full comment

Oh, this is not good indeed.

Expand full comment

Yes, quite a worthwhile improvement, also graphically. Thanks for your efforts.

Expand full comment

Laughing at the hunter pardon poll currently being exactly evenly split between the three options

Expand full comment