Hungary tried national conservatism. The result: a lagging economy, rampant corruption, and a declining birth rate. Voters just delivered the verdict. Cato’s Johan Norberg explains what it means—and why it matters far beyond Hungary.

Cato gets this one wrong. The rich FACE the highest tax rates but don't actually pay them. The Buy/Borrow/Die strategy means marginal actual tax rates for the wealthy are actually zero. www.theatlantic.com/economy/arch...

Send JD Vance to campaign everywhere you want Dems to win.

Viktor Orban has conceded the election in Hungary!!! A reminder that authoritarianism can be defeated, even when the playing field is tilted -- because voters resent corruption and misrule. But much depends on having the right candidate to oppose the authoritarian. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/12/w...

I'll be at the MIT Sloan Climate / Sustainability summit next week. Say hi!

from which: "true force of a technology is felt not with the substitution of tasks, but the invention of new paradigms" . . . if true, this perhaps heralds a different arc of job displacement from AI. Perhaps.

The latest developments in the “forever war” over string theory: "Are Strings Still Our Best Hope for a Theory of Everything?" @nattyover.bsky.social @quantamagazine.bsky.social (Plus- Hermann Rorschach) Grappling with Godel: roughlydaily.com/2026/04/02/f...

"Nazism has nothing to do with race and nationality. It appeals to a certain type of mind."

This is how Bruce Springsteen opened his concert in Los Angeles last night. 🔥🔥 Footage from @margaret_nagle on Threads.

So Iran (the actual country) mocked Donald Trump's horrible 'deal" by posting MY video all over social media. And I have to say, I'm kinda flattered 😉 Here's the full version. (They cut off the ending and cropped out my watermark) #DonaldTrump #Iran

Wise words from Spain's Prime Minister: “The momentary relief cannot make us forget the chaos, the destruction, and the lives lost. The govt of Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket. What is needed now: diplomacy, international law and PEACE.”

There’s a reason people read the classics.

On the 58th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination, it's time to reckon with the media's troubling role in the civil rights struggle. (I pitched this to @nytimes.com who found it "fascinating..[but] the news is making deeper & certainly more historical pieces very hard." But they're the news.) A 🧵

Artemis is taking us back to the Moon—but what happens after we get there? Born in Space explores the real question: who controls space when it becomes the next frontier? #scifi #books #moon #artemis #space www.amazon.com/Born-Space-J...

This week I will again listen to a piece of music so key to my appreciation of the human condition that I keep it to just once per year, to keep it as fresh as it is moving and monumental. I refer, of course, to Bach's St. Matthew Passion. Dear Blueskyers: what version this year? #musicsky

"Everything he’s presented with is whatever is meant to prop up his view of the moment. And no one can make valid decisions living in the soup of lies." trib.al/eMvxHRJ

Went to the Sausalito #NoKings protest with brilliant constitutionial analyst / lawyer @cathygellis.bsky.social Good crowd. One nutball crank shouting the "republic not a democracy / you lose" nonsense. Good humor and persistence and nice creative signs and two short speeches.

Let us consider the Emperor Commodus, who attired himself as Hercules, claimed to be a god, attempted to rename Rome after himself and raped every girl and boy whose crossed his way. His reign was described by Gibbon as marking the onset of the moral and spiritual collapse of the Roman Empire.

All: would like your thoughts and support, friendly critique, message-spreading and more. Calx: A decision-intelligence platform for understanding and mitigating global harms. A tool for designing the future economy. www.calx.info

Sen. Ossoff: I don't know if you saw a few days ago in the Intelligence Committee...

No Kings protests are set across the Bay Area Saturday, including a major march in San Francisco. Here’s what to know about routes, street closures, transit changes and expected turnout.

Today, we're launching Bundle Passes. It's a new way for journalists to team up and give new audiences 30, 60, or 90 days of access to their paywalled content in a bundle.

Folks, we went to the Oracle of Delphi, a very beautiful woman. And she said, they told me not to say it, should I say it? She said that if we went to Persia a great empire would fall! So we’re feeling pretty good about how it’s going.

Emmy Noether was born #OTD in 1882. She made groundbreaking advances in abstract algebra, but is probably best known for her eponymous theorems articulating the deep connection between symmetries and conserved quantities in physics. 🧪 ⚛️ 👩‍🔬 Image: Public domain, photographer unknown

Imagine a newspaper publisher announcing it will no longer allow libraries to keep copies of its articles for reference. This is what's happening online with the @archive.org www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

This note on the low cost of Chinese nuclear is really important. Comparing to Lazard's estimates of the levelized costs of energy (the industry standard): Chinese nuclear at 2–3 $/W capital cost maps roughly to an LCOE of about 40–60 $/MWh under typical nuclear assumptions. / a tiny thread

THREAD: Cherise Doyley was in her 12th hour of contractions at the hospital when a tablet was brought to her bedside. On the screen was a Zoom call with a judge and several lawyers and doctors. She was in court, a nurse told her. The reason? For failing to agree to a C-section.

Something terrifying. AI fabs are eating farmland. Farmers are aging out. It costs more to farm than ever but crop prices remain low.

Onion: What do you tell people concerned about generative AI’s heavy use of natural resources? "AItman": Quit breathing my data centers’ air.

"Second only to China" And the California clean energy data exclude rooftop solar. Grid scale solar is generating 22GW as I type. Rooftops are generating perhaps another 10GW.

“let’s put a regular fox and friends call in guest and a fox and friends host in charge of waging a new war of aggression in the Middle East” is going exactly as you’d suspect

The last text message Zuck ever sent me was the night before they renamed the company to Meta, telling me to pay attention in the morning because he thought I'd be really excited by what they were going to announce. The next morning I kept waiting for the thing he thought I'd be interested in.

Mark Zuckerberg named his whole company after a product that failed miserably and you're laughing

Happy St. Patrick's Day, New York.

When American missiles landed on a girl’s school in Iran, satellite images were crucial to helping journalists understand what happened. That sort of investigation will now be far harder

Q&A: How the UK became the first G7 country to phase out coal power #CBarchive ✍️ @drsimevans.carbonbrief.org @mollylempriere.carbonbrief.org 🎨 @jjgoodman.bsky.social Read here ➡️ buff.ly/0awDP6d

Francis Fukuyama on Trump: "The world has become a very dangerous place because the most powerful country is under the control of a ten-year-old boy. That boy discovered a flamethrower in his parents’ backyard and is now enjoying the ability to burn things up with it."

Solid, quiet essay. Feminism's not dead: its victories, like those of environmental protection, are profound and will endure.

Imagine if someone in the WH had explained to Dear Leader that Strait != Straight. Straight: not woke, not gay, etc. Strait: constricted, narrow. Related to strangle.

It’s crystal clear now that Trump has lost control of this war. He badly misjudged Iran’s ability to retaliate. The region is on fire. 1/ I’m going to explain to you in this🧵what I’ve learned - in part from closed door briefings - about the four biggest current crises.

Inside the Department of War are two wolves: "We've shut down the Colleges of War because book learnings are woke, gay, and irrelevant to war fighting." "How come no one told us the Strait is important, there are different kinds of Kurds, Iran is big, and air power historically doesn't win wars?"

"The path to this reckless war was paved by the collapse of accountability in Washington"

And this is a huge issue for the whole world because this is TRUMP’S ONLY TACTIC. He can’t solve anything, can’t understand anything, can’t out-negotiate anyone. He has no capacity to end a war. He will just keep making increasingly delusional pronouncements in an attempt to manifest reality.

White American evangelicals have managed to rid Christianity of Jesus, pretty impressive honestly

I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public. I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are. 1/ Here's what I can share:

Imagine the reaction in the US if ~175 schoolgirls had been killed by a targeted Iranian missile. (Or anyone's missile.) This is an atrocity.

Was talking to some millenials, bright kids, who had NO IDEA how prevalent, and malevolent, US involvement in Iran has been. I thought I'd get it down to a size where I could put into Bsky as a gif or something, but no. So, here's a link to a G doc instead. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

My cartoon for this week’s @newscientist.com

Moving to 'green' energy is the best path to resilient, predictable, low-cost power. Here's California's supply - the 4th largest economy in the world - running on solar and wind during the daytime yesterday, and with the largest power source AT NIGHT being the batteries they charged.