Best of Twitter, August 2023

The Origins of Woke preview, Republican debate recap, Prigozhin's final days, and more

This week I published an analysis of the results of the Salem Center/CSPI forecasting tournament. Check it out, as there’s a lot of interesting stuff there, in addition to data people can play around with.

I’ve finished The Imjin War. See here for the entire book review thread. I’ve now started The Rise and Fall of American Growth, which from what I can tell is one of the canonical works of the progress studies community. Follow along on Twitter.

I’m still the opposite of cancelled, as The Origins of Woke is doing extremely well.

While this is excellent news, there is no time to get complacent! Preorders are no guarantee of success. I’m not just saying this because it’s in my self-interest, although of course it is, but a lot hinges on this book’s success, now more than ever. So preorder at this very moment, either the hardcover, Kindle, or Audible. Or maybe all of them? Amazon has a cool thing where you can listen to an audiobook and pick up at the same spot in your Kindle, or vice versa.

Click through and you can now get a free preview, which includes the blurbs, the table of contents, the introduction, and some of Chapter 1. If you’re ever going to read the book, you might as well preorder, as that will help put it on the map by creating buzz, getting me on podcasts, etc. And if you’re reading this newsletter, I don’t know why you wouldn’t read the book, because it’s the best version of many of the essays and arguments I produce here. So, again, this time through the use of impeccable logic, I’m telling you that if you’re reading this you need to preorder the book now.

If you have a blog, popular Substack, or some other platform where you might cover the book, reach out and I can get you a review copy. Twitter DMs are probably the easiest way.

In other news, I’ve been in discussions to have a debate with Curtis Yarvin in LA. I hope to explain to our mutual fans why democracy is better than dictatorship, and everyone should watch MSNBC and believe what they say. Let me know if you have ideas about who should host or what kind of format it should be in, as this whole thing is at a preliminary stage.

Here are the top subscriber Tweets for August, in approximately reverse chronological order. If you’re new around here, I do this every month. Clicking through will take you to the tweets themselves, but they won’t be accessible unless you subscribe to the Twitter account.