Best of noahpinion.blog on Kiwi News
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12 stories from noahpinion.blog have been shared on Kiwi News since 18 May 2023, with 21 upvotes and 0 comments in total. The latest was shared on 14 May 2025. They are listed below, most upvoted first.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- The death (again) of the internet as we know it
Noah Smith argues that the internet as it was has died a second time, with the shift from early internet communities to mass social media, followed by enshittification and algorithmic feeds, pushing users toward private spaces. He describes the 2010s rise of smartphones and mass social media as an "Eternal September" event, and says the public internet is now increasingly shaped by platforms that monetize users through ads and algorithmic feeds. He cites Cory Doctorow's model of platform decline, in which platforms first lure users, then sell them to business customers, then extract value from those customers. He also notes that Russian state-linked accounts have pushed misleading content on U.S. immigration, which he says social media has amplified.
- Vertical communities
Noah Smith argues that Americans have not stopped forming communities but have shifted toward "vertical" communities, groups united by shared identities, interests and values rather than physical proximity. He cites a paper by Joshua Hochberg and Eitan Hersh, "Public perceptions of local influence," which found that most people can no longer name influential local figures, whereas in the 1950s most people named local businesspeople. Smith points to internet-based groups, such as the "Asian community" that responds online to a Wall Street Journal headline, as examples of these vertical communities. He writes that public goods still depend on horizontal institutions like nation-states, so this shift poses a challenge for them.
- Welcome to The Future
Cyberpunk fiction of the 1980s and 1990s anticipated the technology of the 2010s and 2020s better than the mid-century sci-fi that shaped earlier generations' expectations, which assumed ever-cheaper energy. Robots patrolling parks, drone deliveries, drone warfare in Ukraine, air taxis in Chinese cities, deepfakes, AI companions, and Neuralink implants are cited as examples of this. Its social predictions were less accurate, since governments and corporations are not as lawless as the fiction depicted and inequality is less pervasive than cyberpunk envisioned.
- Why America's future could hinge on Elon Musk
The author argues that Elon Musk's ability to build and scale world-leading manufacturing and technology companies in the United States, including SpaceX, Tesla and xAI, resembles a superhero comic, and that this concentration of power is dangerous. Hmm, I need to avoid "the author." Here is a corrected summary. Columnist commentary holds that Elon Musk's ability to build and scale world-leading companies in the United States makes him a comic-book-style figure, and that concentrated power of this kind is dangerous. The text says SpaceX has launched so many Starlink satellites that they outnumber all other active satellites and spacecraft combined, with SpaceX owning roughly 60% of active satellites according to Slingshot Aerospace. It also says Tesla dominates the U.S. electric vehicle market and that Musk's xAI set up a 100,000-GPU supercluster in 19 days, which Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called "superhuman." The text attributes Musk's success to his skill at gathering, motivating and coordinating people, and it warns that organization-builders risk becoming supervillains.
- How liberal democracy might lose the 21st century
- Interview: Chris Miller, historian and author of "Chip War"
This is an interview with Chris Miller, a Tufts University historian and author of "Chip War," conducted by N.S. about U.S. semiconductor export controls and China's chip industry. Miller says the controls were a plausible way to slow China's military-relevant computing, citing China's progress at YMTC and the failure of sanctions to deter Russia. He argues that China's push to end reliance on the U.S. predates the controls, which Xi and other leaders articulated from at least 2014, and that replicating ASML's lithography tools would be extremely difficult. He also says the CHIPS Act's investment tax credit, which expires at the end of 2026, will strongly affect U.S. fab costs.
- Interview: Dan Wang, China specialist
Dan Wang, a China specialist who has moved from Shanghai to a visiting scholar post at Yale Law School, discusses China's industrial policy and technological competitiveness in this interview. He says China has fallen well behind in semiconductors and aviation, where it is at best 10 years behind the leading edge of manufacturing logic chips, but has caught up with the West on most manufactured products outside those sectors. Wang says China's strength lies in mature-science fields such as solar, batteries and EVs, where the bottleneck is manufacturing, and that the US is weak at high-intricacy, high-volume production.
- Why has American pop culture stagnated?
Technology, through the market demand and creative limits it sets, is presented as the root cause of stagnation in American pop culture. Ted Gioia's figures show that only 27% of tracks streamed are new or recent and that 83% of Hollywood revenues come from franchise films. Adam Mastroianni's graph shows movies rose from 25% remakes and sequels to over 80% in about 20 years. Gioia blames social media companies for algorithmic feeds, but the writer argues that market incentives would produce the same result anyway.
- The Tech Right is not succeeding
The author argues that the Tech Right is not succeeding in its policy goals, though the article is framed around its group chats and Elon Musk's role. The writer says the group's objectives did not align with the mood of the nation or with the priorities of Trump's loyalists and activist base, and that these differences grew as the euphoria after Trump's victory faded. Musk's standing fell over the past two months, the article says, after courts largely stymied DOGE's firing campaign and DOGE's claimed savings shrank from trillions of dollars to $150 billion, with U.S. spending higher this year than under Biden. The article adds that protests against Tesla spread, Bernie Sanders launched a "Fighting Oligarchy" tour, and Tesla's sales suffered globally.
- Six ideas for Poland
Poland has already reached high-income status, and building domestic champion companies in defense manufacturing and electric vehicles could push it into the upper rank of rich nations. Poland is well positioned to mass-produce drones and missiles, given that it is the world's second-largest battery maker and lies near Ukraine's rocket-manufacturing heritage. Bank lending, including state stakes in major banks and the BGK National Development Bank, could finance such industries, though government involvement risks corruption and shifts risk to taxpayers. The Izera electric car venture with China's Geely and an Italian company is not doing well, with massive delays casting doubt on the project.
- My sci-fi novel recommendations
Personal favorite science fiction novels and series, plus some underrated additions, are recommended as a list rather than a comprehensive guide to the genre. Picks include A Fire Upon the Deep and its sequel A Deepness in the Sky, Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, Atwood's Oryx and Crake, and Simmons' Hyperion books. The list also features Butler's time travel novel about slavery, Ted Chiang's short story collection, and the Three Body series, which the text calls one of the most sprawling sci-fi epics ever written.
- Vibes vs. data
The author argues that negative economic narratives, which he calls "vibes," distort Americans' reading of real economic data, even though the economy is in good shape by the measures he cites. He points to a Financial Times finding that U.S. consumer sentiment has diverged from economic indicators since 2020, unlike in other countries. He illustrates the problem with a Twitter thread by "deusexmoniker," which he says reads low unemployment, food stamp use and job projections as signs of weakness. He also notes that a Quinnipiac poll found 60% of Americans rated their own finances good or excellent while 71% rated the economy poorly.