While social media is polarising, evidence suggests AI may nudge people towards the centre. This holds true of all studied models. Grok is more right-leaning than other models, but also has depolarising effects. By John Burn-Murdoch.

Western civilization is awesome, actually

Imagine trying to do this today. You can't because it would be politically and socially impossible. We've become a shell of our former selves. Neutered by bureaucracy and red tape.

“Humanity’s next great voyage”

Western civilization is the sum accomplishments of daring men.

fear tricks us into living a boring life.

Milton Friedman: "The great lesson which history teaches is that bad results seldom are produced by men of bad intentions."

Free markets are the best way to create wealth AND reduce poverty ever discovered. One of the big puzzles of history is how the same lesson has to be learned again and again. Poland, China, India, and now Argentina are the latest experiments. Argentina with Milei: - Poverty

"Capitalism created the possibility of the win win win. It used to be a zero sum game where somebody won, somebody else lost. The biggest mistake people make, intellectuals in particular, they still think we're in a zero sum world. They're obsessed with some billionaires because

Urbanists should focus less on architecture and more on urban form. Japanese residential areas look like this. It works because it's walkable, dense, mixed-use, and safe.

He Reported Every Detail of Their Marriage to the State Vera Lengsfeld was a dissident. Knud Wollenberger was her husband. He was also Stasi agent "Donald." The Stasi called it Zersetzung, the system's main psychological warfare technique. 🧵

Richard Landes Melanie Phillips The whole world being wrong, even badly and for long periods, happens all the time. It's the condition for progress after all. What's pretty much unique in this case, is how psychologically entrenched the Pattern is. Batshit-crazy, it ferociously resists facts and arguments.

Ludwig Erhard abolished price controls and stabilized the German currency in one bold stroke on June 20, 1948. Ending the Marshall Plan and kicking off the Wirtschaftswunder. Arguably, the greatest economic miracle of the 20th century. The Deutsche Mark replaced the worthless

It is consistently the case the productivity is correlated with competition. But why? Some think that it's due to bad firms being chased out, because wouldn't every firm want to maximize profit? And yet, that's not what we see. Competition simply makes companies better. 1/

Government doesn't create wealth. It redistributes it. Usually badly. Usually to friends.

Students are “arriving to campus not only skeptical of free markets, but openly embracing democratic socialist ideas. The problem isn’t that students have rejected capitalism. It’s that many have never been taught how it works or why it matters.” —Samuel Abrams