Slow Boring

Slow Boring is a blog and newsletter created by Matthew Yglesias that focuses on American politics and public policy. The title is inspired by Max Weber’s essay “Politics as a Vocation,” in which he describes politics as a process that involves “slowly and steadily boring into tough issues,” requiring both enthusiasm and insight.

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Wednesday thread

2 days ago | slowboring.com | Ben Krauss

The Collapse of the Professional LeftFour years ago, when I had many fewer readers, I wrote an essay about the fading of the liberal left in New York City. I always felt ambivalent about what I had written because, in the years since, I wasn’t sure how true it would turn out to be. It certainly…
NBA officiating needs more bias

5 days ago | slowboring.com | Matthew Yglesias

The NBA playoffs are incredible (even when the Knicks get eliminated), but the regular season? It’s a bit of a snooze fest. This has always been an issue for the league. The regular season slog is essentially downstream of the fact that scoring is so common in professional basketball, which means less randomness in the outcomes. In soccer or hockey, even an inferior team is often just one lucky shot or weird clang off the crossbar from tying rather than losing.
Who are the groups?

1 week ago | slowboring.com | Matthew Yglesias

I missed this last week, but apparently, Elon Musk has been telling people that he’s going to do “a lot less” political spending in the future. Part of Slow Boring’s official case for donating money to Susan Crawford’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race was that the race was not only important for the merits for abortion rights and gerrymandering, but Musk was following up his 2024 spending with a big intervention in the race.
Thursday thread

1 week ago | slowboring.com | Ben Krauss

Seems like a dub, will be interesting to see how this plays out. Article here.
give to Harvard

1 week ago | slowboring.com | Matthew Yglesias

Last week, I did something that I’d never done before. Something that I thought I would never do and had, in fact, promised never to do. I gave money to my alma mater. It’s pretty normal American behavior. Our country’s colleges and universities count on alumni donations. I’m not rich enough to make the sort of donations that would get things named after me, but I make a good living and it’s important to me to support charities and causes I care about.
Politicians need to take AI progress seriously

1 week ago | slowboring.com | Matthew Yglesias

It’s hard to predict the future, but I think it’s possible that, by 2028, many of the issues that are crucial today will be swamped by concern about AI and its impacts on the world. This means we should be looking for political leaders who come across as smart and thoughtful on this topic. It also means that on substance, policy entrepreneurs should be putting more emphasis on helping politicians think through the implications, both positive and negative.
Tuesday thread

1 week ago | slowboring.com | Ben Krauss

Interesting paper here. Touches on the groups, moderates, leftists… all stuff that is of interest to regular readers here!
What we don't learn in "Original Sin"

1 week ago | slowboring.com | Matthew Yglesias

Like everyone in Washington, I’ve read the new Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson book, “Original Sin.” At this point, it’s been so widely discussed that I don’t think the world needs my takes on its main points. What I want to talk about instead is what I didn’t learn reading the book. And I say this not in the spirit of criticism — the book is a monumental piece of reporting and also short and readable, and I think the authors understandably wanted to get it out into the world.
Noah Smith on China, industrial policy and more

1 week ago | slowboring.com | Matthew Yglesias |Noah Smith

Noah Smith is probably the number one source of articles that hit my feed where I think “damn, I wish I’d written that.” So it was great to grab a chance to sit down and chat with him for almost 90 minutes today. We started out talking about the rising importance of batteries and electric motors, the Biden administration’s efforts to keep America in the game with China on this, and how Trump is squandering it.
Democrats should care less about demographics

1 week ago | slowboring.com | Matthew Yglesias

Every election night, politics fans start fretting over exit polls, and I always caution against taking the demographic analysis offered in those polls seriously, mostly for boring methodological reasons. Figuring out how different sub-groups of the population voted is an annoying process that takes some time to complete in a rigorous way. Even once it’s done, a fair amount of uncertainty remains.