Max Read

2 weeks ago | unpopularfront.news | John Ganz |Max Read

Three months ago, speaking to Quinn Slobodian and , I proposed that the market might be the only remaining form of rationality and therefore the only thing that we might be relying on to temper Trumpian madness. Now, as a person whose scattered thoughts on economics are shaped by the traditions of Keynes and Marx, this is not a particularly hopeful idea. I don’t happen to think the rationality of the market is very rational at all.

4 weeks ago | bloodinthemachine.com | Brian Merchant |Max Read

Two genres of image loom large over the news feeds of the Trump 2.0 era so far: photos of shackled men and women, rounded up for detention and deportation, and pictures of various modes of Tesla protest; vandalized Model 3s and assailed dealerships. They are not unrelated, of course, the latter capturing the spasms of resistance to the cruel authoritarian state documented by the former.

1 month ago | maxread.substack.com | Max Read

Greetings from Read Max HQ! In this week’s newsletter, a rundown of a particular flavor of I.Q. discourse on Twitter. A reminder: This newsletter, which comes out at least twice a week and almost always has at least one (1) good joke, is written an edited by one guy (me).

1 month ago | maxread.substack.com | Max Read

Greetings from Read Max HQ! An A.I.-heavy newsletter this week, discussing the new short story generated by a secret OpenAI model (“it got the vibe of metafiction so right,” says Sam Altman) and the continuing use of “A.G.I.” by tech journalists. First, a reminder: This newsletter is the product of a lot of reading, thinking, listening, interviewing, staring at the ceiling, writing, deleting, writing again, etc.

1 month ago | mattruby.substack.com | Matt Ruby |Tom Kuegler |Ethan Sherwood Strauss |Max Read

ā€œTell me about the future of digital media!ā€ you say. OKā€¦šŸ“£ Negative attention is better than no attention. National politics ainā€™t about cash anymore. Ezra Klein:Democrats still believe that the type of attention you get is the most important thing. If your choice is between a lot of negative attention and no attention, go for no attention. And at least the Trump side of the Republican Party believes that the volume, the sum total of attention, is the most important thing.