The smelly baby problem • Benjamin Spock told mothers in the mid-twentieth century to buy six dozen cloth diapers and a covered pail. Within a decade, both were obsolete.

Time's Arrow and the Drive to Matter • Or, entropy and the meanings—yes, plural—of life. Plus, TV and disposable diapers in Works in Progress, good news, and nerdy fun.

A Plague of Mysterious, AI-Written Emails from "Fellow Authors" • Early AI adopters are using it to scam authors.

Recent Work and an Exciting New Project • Plus recommended reading

From the Archives: Gothic Revival Architecture Is Like Dreadlocks • You can try embedding ideology into a style but if people like the look, the meaning will get diluted over time.

Why the Anti-Promethean Backlash? • Jason Crawford asked me a tough question. Could this chart hold an answer?

From the Archives: Joel Mokyr on the Industrial Enlightenment • The great economic historian Joel Mokyr has won the Nobel Prize. Here I reprint a column on his book The Gifts of Athena.

From the Archives: How Job-Killing Technologies Liberated Women • Progress is more than space adventures.

What Brings You to DC? • Varieties of abundance, reading Middlemarch, too many mosquitoes

AI Slop and Human Play • Computers can win at chess and Go, but how about a rap battle?

From the Archives: The Faux Populism of Trumpified Architecture • What looks “civic” depends on experience, not architectural theory. In Los Angeles, where I live, traditional civic buildings are not classical.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation • Reading good books and an occasional lousy one. Plus lots of podcasts.

Wanted: Manly Jobs for Manly Men • Or at least for manly men who don't have their acts together.

Reposting: Waiting for Trump Fever to Break • With hopes for progress and abundance after Trump.

Waiting for the Fever to Break • With hopes for progress and abundance after Trump.

Next Zoom Meeting for Paid Subscribers • We'll fool around with AI on Monday.

More AI Testing • An equine analysis and a laborious quotation search

Experimenting with ChatGPT • Still not a replacement for what I do but a potential time saver and getting better fast.

Managing Generosity Takes Work • And mysterious Google algorithms don't help.

California Has Its Own Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • And one of them is FIRE. Updates and a guest post from Reason Foundation president and SoCal native David Nott

Reflections on Burning Cities • I'm safe in Orange County, waiting to see what happens in the next couple of days.

From the Archives: You Can’t Fight California Fires With Political Hot Air • Why we have those fires and how to think about preventing them. And, yes, I'm safe.

If You Aren't Reading These, It's Easy to Unsubscribe • Cleaning up your in box is a good New Year's activity.

Recommended Links and Call for Questions • Jonah Goldberg talks to me on his podcast. Plus features for paid subscribers.

America's Religious Exceptionalism • A Christmas mediation from a Jew by choice