No Mercy No Malice

Carbon emissions are believed to be the mother of all negative byproducts. But there’s something worse: Converting attention into profit. — The universe is a product of the collision of materials and gases that added value to one another. Humanity’s ascent to the world’s apex predator is also a function of our ability to add value, converting one substance into another. We learned to morph wood into fire, and walnut oil…

Affection, both emotional and physical, is what it means to be a mammal, to be human. — On Saturday I went on CNN with Michael Smerconish to talk about the challenges young men face in America. The headline: 63% of men aged 18–29 in America are single (neither married nor in a committed relationship) — up from 51% just four years ago. …

Three years ago today there were 53 known cases of Covid-19 in the United States. The first U.S. death was recorded five days later at the EvergreenHealth Medical Center in Kirkland, Washington. At that point, the only lockdown was in a city that would become the most famous on Earth…

Politicians get elected by telling us we can have our cake and eat it, too. The only thing that’s passed for bipartisanship over the past four decades is reckless spending. Democrats want more social spending, Republicans want lower taxes. OK, let’s compromise — do both and fuck over our grandkids…

I’ll do approximately 25 speaking gigs in 2023, down from 47 in 2022. The primary reason for the decline is that I live in London now. Jumping on a plane to Austin to speak at SXSW used to sound fun … now it sounds like jet lag and time away…

Capitalism aims to convert ambition to success. Its alchemy of incentives fosters a relentless pursuit of economic opportunity from things we crave: food, shelter, bigger iPhones, desirable mates. Our hunger for wealth and love drives us to work and create — capitalism’s genius is finding new avenues for that drive. …

More brains, more ideas. However, we’re in danger of running out of ideas because we’re running out of people. — Our species dates back 300,000 years. For most of that time, most humans lived to their early 30s, as a bad cut or broken bone was a death sentence. Around 1800, things changed: wealth, life expectancy, and the population all exploded. In the past two hundred years, per capita GDP…

The need to protect democracy, the antithesis of monarchy, has never been more urgent. — I moved to London six months ago. Within two weeks a fortnight the Queen died, the pound crashed, and a head of lettuce outlasted the new prime minister. Since then, I’m more struck by the similarities, vs. the differences, between New York and London. One clear distinction though: Royalty. …

Yesterday’s iconoclasts pull the ladder up behind them the moment they become today’s icons — Heraclitus, a 6th century B.C. Greek philosopher, famously said “the only constant in life is change.” He also disliked people and was depressed and irritable. He was right, on several fronts. Change is inevitable, as the cosmos has determined it’s essential. …