politicalfootball writes: Ross Douthat interviews Peter Thiel here. The conversation revolves around technology, politics and Christianity, and on each subject, Thiel and Douthat are every bit as stupid as you'd expect.

But toward the end, they are speculating about the Antichrist, and there is a moment where the two of them almost get it.

Thiel: ... Now, I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, but one question is -- and this was a plot hole in all these Antichrist books people wrote -- how does the Antichrist take over the world? He gives these demonic, hypnotic speeches and people just fall for it. It's this demonium, Ex-Machina --

Douthat: It's totally -- it's implausible.

Thiel: It's a very implausible plot hole. But I think we have an answer to this plot hole. The way the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon nonstop. You talk about existential risk nonstop, and this is what you need to regulate. It's the opposite of the picture of Baconian science from the 17th, 18th century, where the Antichrist is like some evil tech genius, evil scientist who invents this machine to take over the world. People are way too scared for that.

In our world, the thing that has political resonance is the opposite. The thing that has political resonance is: We need to stop science, we need to just say "stop" to this.

Perhaps some political figure could present himself in messianic terms, talking repeatedly about existential risk to individuals and their societies, and about how he is the only person that can save the world. Such a figure would propose that without dramatic -- even violent -- government intervention, we're all doomed.

Could there perhaps be someone who comes out directly against science -- a Prince of Lies who routinely promotes outlandish falsehoods and opposes factuality itself? Someone who doesn't look to the technological future, but to a past time of greatness? Someone who demands that progress simply stop?

As Thiel points out, it is implausible that someone could sell these concepts with smooth, hypnotic speeches. But is there some other kind of public speech that would have this kind of impact? Thiel correctly understands that the old vision of a scientific super-mind is outdated, and needs to be replaced by someone with a more simplistic worldview.

And this is where, in the 17th century, I can imagine a Dr. Strangelove, Edward Teller-type person taking over the world. In our world, it's far more likely to be ...

Wait for it.

... Greta Thunberg.

He's so, so close!

Heebie's take: Every accusation is always, always a confession with these shitheads.

I generally think Anne Helen Petersen is smart and interesting, but I also think that this is a perfect example of the My Frame Of Interest Is My Early 20s phenomenon which I am enjoying so much lately.

I've come to think of these years as the halcyon days of the post-recession internet, a sort of second golden digital age. It was before so many publications' fate became inextricable from social media, so even though everyone over at Gawker Media was still being badgered by the traffic leaderboard in their offices, the idea of the homepage still held power. People navigated to your site because they liked your site and knew they found good stuff on your site; then they read stuff there. Not just scrolled, but read.

In hindsight, this period probably reached its apex at some point in 2014 to 2015, when people were arguing over whether there was too much longform journalism on the internet (the actual subject of at least two longform interviews). There were entire sites -- two of them! -- dedicated to curating the best longform on the internet. And people read these long-ass pieces! And not just me, a person who also wrote these long-ass pieces! Indeed, many of you originally found me by reading one of those pieces.

I actually remember quite a bit of complaining from that era! That was a period of mourning the internet, I thought. (She does acknowledge a previous golden age, to be fair.)

Hot take: there's actually a lot of longform pieces on the internet in 2025 - like on Substack! - but we won't appreciate what we've got for another ten years.

Ok, I just double-checked AHP's age, and the timeline doesn't match up quite as nicely as I'd like it to. She needs to have been under 25 for my imprinting theory to apply. Oh well.

Mossy Character writes: So my question is, when do they take the flamingo shit out of your salt?

Heebie's take: It really looks like salmon.

On the topic of food: say you had four teenagers or almost-teens, and you wanted to cut your food budget by 10-25%. What are the gentle trade-offs you'd make? What would you maintain as your splurgier items?

Gab here.

I've never heard of James Lindsey, but he seems to be a rightwing prick.

Anyway, it seems he's more dedicated to being a prick than to being rightwing:

The most prominent accuser has been James Lindsay, an intellectual gadfly first of the left and lately of the right. He first came to prominence for the "grievance studies affair", in which he and two co-authors submitted parody articles of leftist drivel, some of which successfully passed peer review. He recently conducted a similar prank by getting the thinly disguised introduction to Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" published in a minor Christian publication (by substituting the words "Christian right" for "communism" and "liberalism" for "bourgeoisie")

That's an excerpt from an Economist article that I can't access, but for some reason that blurb is on Linked-in.

With that context, here's his own words on what he did:

So what did I do, and why did I do it? Before explaining myself, I'll explain the mechanics of this little prank.

I started by taking the preamble and then just short of six continuous pages of text from the first chapter of The Communist Manifesto. This chapter is titled "Bourgeoisie and Proletarians" and is the part of the manifesto where Marx and Engels make the case that the bourgeoisie (middle class, owners, management, and wealthy) as a class is abusive of the proletariat (workers) as a class in just about every way you could imagine. I then rather crudely swapped out references to the bourgeoisie with something to do with either liberalism, liberals, classical liberalism, or their real and mighty bugbear that they call "the post-war liberal consensus," which they believe oppresses them. Concurrently, I swapped out references to the proletariat with references to an object they call the "New Christian Right" as a way of referring to themselves. I then massaged some of the specifics for fit, flourish, and flow, cut a bunch and consolidated to fit the word count requirement, attached the document to an email from a made-to-order burner account, and hit "send." A few days later, they published it on American Reformer with minimal edits.

Here it is, if you're curious.

It's kind of a funny premise! But also, it's just an overly complicated way of saying the same thing as always: words have no meaning to Trump's Republicans. Sure, "fight anti-semitism" by defunding the NIH. Sure, give Rubio four jobs! Sure, get them to agree with a litany of grievances that in no way resembles the real world. Up is down, etc.

Mossy Character writes: Non-analogous parallels to certain other regimes left as an exercise for the reader.

Heebie's take: Archive link here.

Rubio's four official jobs titles are not just burdensome -- they are incongruent with one another.

For starters, the role of national security adviser is akin to being an air traffic controller; this person is tasked with ensuring that all national security interests and perspectives are fairly represented for presidential decision-making. It's hard to fathom how Rubio can reconcile his responsibilities at the State Department and the NSC, as leading both essentially requires him to act as player and referee at the same time.

There is also no telling what to expect from his role at USAID, where there is a desperate need for expert leadership to redress the carnage from the agency's likely unlawful destruction. And, saving the strangest for last, running the National Archives plainly has no connection whatsoever to Rubio's overwhelming foreign policy duties.

I have mixed feelings about this style of sober editorial that tries to honestly wrestle with how the monkey is smearing feces all over its cage. "Look, he's got it in his hair! HIS HAIR! And I'm starting to suspect he does not intend to clean it up."