This is your periodic reminder to preorder my book on populism coming out in July. Yes, that’s a long time to wait for a book. But preorders are really important, and they don’t even charge you until it’s shipped or you receive the digital version. For the book announcement and more details, see here. But really, just order it. You’re here reading the monthly links! That’s a level of fandom well beyond buying a book. So there’s no reason not to preorder if you are looking at these words right now.
I just finished recording the audiobook, which took four days. I forgot how much it sucks to have to go somewhere and actually do things for work. But for those who care whose voice you’ll hear when deciding whether to buy the audiobook, you now know it is me instead of some random voice actor.
Once again, reach out if you want a copy and might review it. Now is the time to start booking podcast appearances, etc.
I found the week grueling. Not just because of the recording, but because I had to talk less throughout the week to help ensure my voice didn’t give out. So this meant fewer phone calls and making less conversation with everyone around me. My voice became a scarce resource I needed to protect. But now I’m free.
In other news, the Substack is going to be a bit slow for the next several months, as there’s a project I’m involved in that is taking up my time. I feel the need to tell you so you don’t think I’ve become lazy. It’s very important work, so know that at least I’m going to be around less for a good cause. It’s not like I’m disappearing, we’re talking still two articles a week, which is below my normal pace.
Bentham was urging people to call their representatives and try to convince them not to gut state level animal welfare laws. Unfortunately, the farm bill has passed. It’s still not law though, as we have to wait for the Senate version, and that’s where the battle will have to be fought. I encourage people to do whatever they can to stop this.
I’ve been rewatching The Sopranos lately. It’s a very conventional take, but I don’t care: this was the best TV show of all time, and my appreciation for it grows as time goes on. I previously discussed the series with Rob, but it is deserving of at least one article, which you should expect before too long. At the same time, I like to pretend that The Many Saints of Newark never happened.
I have a new article in UnHerd on right-wing media’s hysteria over “missing and disappearing scientists.” If you’ve been following some of my coverage of how these narratives spread, you won’t be too shocked. But it’s good to be reminded once in a while how low right-wing media standards are so you don’t get taken in by the headlines when the next fraud comes along.
I also wrote for UnHerd on why I think AI will be bad for populism. I sum up a few studies showing that right-wingers rely on AI more, which is good because they need it.
In a new preprint, economics professor Thomas Renault and his co-authors investigate how fact-checking is used in the wild. They investigated all X posts between February 2025 and September 2025 that tagged either Grok or an AI service called Perplexity, analyzing 1,671,841 fact-checking requests. They found that Republican-leaning accounts were more likely to ask whether information was true. Not only that, but Republicans are targeted more for fact-checking, from both fellow Republican (107.5% more) and Democratic (83% more) accounts. Overall, Grok and Perplexity were more likely to say Republicans were not being truthful. Thus, we have the remarkable finding that even though Grok was designed to be anti-woke by Elon Musk, and Republicans are the ones who disproportionately use it, the tool still rates Democrats as more truth-oriented. This is consistent with what we see with community notes, which flag Republican posts more often, along with other data showing that Republicans are more likely than Democrats to share false information on social media, and less able to differentiate fact from fiction overall. None of this is surprising, given that today’s Republican base is both less educated and less likely to interact with credible sources of news.
So we have the interesting and seemingly paradoxical result that Republicans on social media are more reliant on AI, even as it tells them their favorite narratives are more often wrong than those of the other side. This should be seen as a positive sign. We’ve been asking, “What would happen if fact-checkers had infinite time and patience, considered all aspects of problems, and weren’t a bunch of smug Left-wing know-it-alls?” The answer might just be that those who have lost trust in our institutions begin to recover their sanity.
On to the links, including a deep dive update on the Venezuela situation.
1. Bentham’s Bulldog no longer believes in the Fatima miracle. I was disappointed when he started going down this path, and he seemed to get Scott Alexander thinking there was something there, but reason is winning out in this corner of Substack. Scott also recently moved in the direction of doubting the miracle. This is a situation where my “lived experience” really helped, ironically in the service of rationalism. Coming from a third world culture, my prior was “Of course poor peasants say things that aren’t true all the time out of social pressure, conformity, and religiosity. Doesn’t everyone know this?”
2. New Yorker journalist attends some alpha male bootcamps and reports on them. In one of them, RISE, they spend a lot of time crying and talking about their feelings.
The beatdown started with a low crawl up King’s steep gravel driveway. Relieved of their blindfolds, the men now wore heavy rucksacks filled with colored rocks representing their anger (red), guilt and shame (black), and sadness (blue). “Listen up,” King said, as they panted at the halfway point. “What are you learning?”
“Not to quit,” someone said.
“Teamwork,” another offered.
“What about you?” King asked James, who had been grumbling.
“It’s very easy to just quit—give up, say ‘Fuck it,’ ” James replied after a moment.
“What else in your life have you been close to quitting on?” King asked.
“Myself.”
“O.K., that’s pretty generic. Give me a thing. A specific thing.”
“I’m drawing a blank,” James said.
King looked around. “Who’s not fucking his wife? Is that you?”
“That’s me,” James finally said. “I’ve made excuses. I’ve allowed myself to—”
“Don’t get overly complicated again. What’s the reason? Is she ugly?”
“No.”
“Does she stink?”
“No. It’s me.”
“Is your dick not big enough?”
James paused. “Honestly, it doesn’t work,” he said. “I suffer from E.D.”
“O.K.,” King said, softening his tone. “Here we go.”
James started sobbing. “There’s nothing worse.”
“There was a time when I was younger when I couldn’t get it up,” King offered. “And it fucking embarrassed the fuck out of me.”
“I’ve been there,” another man said. Others nodded.
“I gotta take a fucking needle to my dick,” James went on. “There is no intimacy, no romance.” He stammered. “I can’t give her the things that she needs. And it’s demoralizing. I don’t feel like a man. So why would I be capable at anything else I do in life?”
“That’s why we’re here, brother,” King said. He addressed the group: “The gift that he’s getting right now is just knowing that other men are sitting here listening to him and saying, ‘Hey, we love you, bro. We get it.’ ” He said, “See your brother in his pain.”
I realized here that my definition of masculinity is not only values based, but has an empirical component, which is that therapy culture relies on false assumptions. It would be hard to have a traditional definition of masculinity if it were true, and everyone had deep psychological issues they needed to work through by talking about them. Humans are not that weak! You become that weak if you believe you are – a self-fulfilling prophecy. The victory of therapy culture has been so complete that the guys who think they’re challenging a feminized culture have accepted its language and understanding of human psychology.
3. The poor have been fatter than the rich since about the mid-twentieth century in wealthy countries, but not before. Also, in the US, poorer people being fatter is driven by women. High-income and low-income men are equally likely to be obese! Weight matters much more for women, so it’s unsurprising that being intelligent and responsible would predict being in better shape for them. It’s hard to believe the male result, but maybe because I live in California and don’t see the middle of the country, where all guys who earn a lot of money are fat.
4. I’ve previously said that Texas has had the best recent zoning changes in the country. Perhaps I slept on Montana, which is covered in City Journal here.
The package overhauled local land-use planning rules to streamline development approvals, required cities to allow duplexes wherever single-family homes are permitted, mandated that municipalities allow accessory dwelling units (ADUs) by right on any lot containing a single-family home, opened commercial zones to multifamily and mixed-use development, prohibited local governments from adopting excessively restrictive building codes, and banned rent control.
I put in my article on Texas zoning changes along with this article on Montana into ChatGPT and Claude and asked which is likely to have a larger impact. The AIs got clever on me, and said Texas will have a bigger impact because the population is much larger. Then I clarified and said of course I know that, smart ass, I mean which has done more given the size of each state. Here there was a split, with ChatGPT favoring Texas and Claude favoring Montana.
