Most emerging markets have not found an engine of durable growth comparable to manufacturing. Thus most “developing” countries are in a worse structural position than they were a few decades ago: less economically complex and more socially unstable. americanaffairsjournal.org/2022/11/the-lo…

A traveling monk from northern Italy describes the very orderly feeding of thousands of apes and monkeys at a temple in Yuan-era Hangzhou around AD 1330:

The contemporary obsession with suffixes (-core, -pilled, -maxing, -mode, -adjacent) signifies a breakdown in descriptive language, a CRISIS of adjectives.

Space program in Renaissance-era Ferrara (Midjourney)

The 19th century was incomprehensible. You had country lawyers publishing multivolume works on Shakespeare, writing in places like the "Omaha Democrat-Gazetteer" that remains unchallenged by any MFA, boys who grew up scratching the earth for food covering a continent in steel

For American Affairs, I reviewed the "zoomer studies" literature and discourse. Focus on technological addiction has obscured the deeper problem: a social order which is failing in its most basic functions of education, health, and personal development. americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/05/the-zo…

It is often said that today’s 18-year-olds behave like the 15-year-olds of the 1990s, but this is altogether too generous: one would be hard-pressed to find a grown adult today with the organizational competence of the midcentury Glaswegian second-grader. americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/05/the-zo…

Isaac is extremely clear-sighted on the Zoomer question. a must read

"The Zoomer Question"

Tour de force essay on zoomers from Isaac Wilks that, among many other topics, sort of synthesizes two themes I keep coming back to: a desire for young people to socialize in a pre-Bowling Alone fashion, and the spiritual emptiness of modern ‘social clubs’. (h/t Hunter 🌆, duh)

Delighted to share my first piece in American Affairs: a history of postwar Vietnam’s industrial transformation. americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/08/a-brie…

At IFP, we’re launching a newsletter! It’s called Statecraft, and it’s an interview series about how policymakers actually get things done. statecraft.pub/p/introducing-…