Nuclear energy. A growing number of lefties are embracing it, including Jacobin. Meanwhile, the Mark Jacobson team at Stanford maintains that we can get to net-zero emissions with 100% renewables, no nuclear required. Can we? Have nuclear power plants somewhow gotten safer as its advocates claim? Is the nuclear industry funding the Breakthrough Institute and other nuclear proponents? Lots to get to the bottom of here.
My two cents; The professional standards that have generally kept the media honest are largely irrelevant today. I'd appreciate more media criticism and good investigative journalism to uncover the real story when narrative has taken over. The topic doesn't matter. Keeping this vital profession on its toes is hugely important.
Your website says you're interested in the replication crisis in social sciences, and you recently wrote a post about how all us non-scientists kind of have to pick and choose whose word to take for things, which often leads us to just revert to our biases. I'd love to see you dive deep into this problem -- how do we know what's true, and how do we leverage expertise without falling into cults of authority?
To be honest I'm a bit worried about the idea of you moving away from culture war stuff. In "Why Do I Suck?" https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/why-do-i-suck Scott Alexander talks about why he's not really inclined to write about the latest wokeness problem any more: "first of all, Jesse Singal, Freddie de Boer, and Bari Weiss have probably already written things on it and they probably all did a better job than I would". I like de Boer and Weiss a lot but I don't trust them nearly as much as I trust you and Scott. If both of you are backing off, I don't know who to point my woke friends to.
I work in criminal defense as a mitigation film specialist. I use the documentary medium to break down for judges (in a short film) what sequence of events led to the offense in question.
It's a frustrating job because the attorneys who hire me are constantly having to pander to federal judges who can simply "opt" to not believe in certain scientific facts. For example, we just did a film for a guy who had been diagnosed in his teens as a manic depressive. We were trying to make the argument in the film that because our client came from a culture where mental illness was taboo, he was discouraged from any kind of med management/therapy. Fast forward a few years, our client gets drunk and walks into a store, gets into a little fight with another guy and pulls a gun on him. My plan was to trace everything that happened that day with the offense all the way back to the client not receiving proper mental health treatment and therefore self medicating with alcohol.
Lead counsel calls me after I submit the film and says
"Judge doesn't like psychology stuff. He doesn't really believe in it. Can we just talk about his head injury? It looks like he fell off his bike when he was 10. Judge likes head injuries more than the psychology stuff...even if there's no brain trauma. He likes that stuff more"
I can't tell you how often I have to deal with the anti-science nonsense that goes on in the criminal justice system at the sentencing phase..
It would be nice to expose these failures of the system, these judges. Everything they say is public record and they say some brutally dumb, nay, medieval things.
And defenders are kind of enabling them at times. They want good results for their clients so they "tolerate" the backwardness of backward judges.
I am going to get selfish and pitch all my favorite sensitive subjects:
- A piece contrasting the lives of (a) online sex workers, (b) illegal IRL sex workers, and (c) legal IRL sex workers. There was a wonderful book called BROTHEL many years ago about a legal brothel in Reno, and it was eye-opening because it turned a lot of the arguments about what would and wouldn't happen in a legalized sex work environment on their heads. (There are still pimps, for instance!) There doesn't seem to be a lot of neutral reporting on this subject, and I'd be interested in how the IRL sex work world has changed given the online-all-the-time boom.
- I'm also interested in Christian "ex gays," being a Christian and a gay. There was a nonjudgmental book about them called STRAIGHT TO JESUS years ago, and I think we're due for an update on this community of people who are, like, living third rails.
- Also: surrogacy! There is a huge disconnect between the talking points around surrogacy from the conservative / feminist side of the issue, and the (surprisingly careful) laws that are being developed around it. I had a conversation with an advocate recently and was surprised how underinformed nearly everybody who talks about the issue, left or right, is.
My desire would end up faIling into a culture war space, unfortunately, but I would like to see someone who isn’t a right winger dig into what truly happened between Fauci and the rest of our scientific community as Covid broke out.
There appears to be a period in which many scientists thought it was man made, then we have a phone conference and a bunch of redacted emails, followed by everyone agreeing that it wasn’t man made.
In a sane world, people would be investigating this the way that Russia got investigated. Of course, we don’t live in that world.
I'm fascinated by this weird anti-seed oil thing I see among certain nutrition aficionados. It's related to "science," so I think it would be in your wheelhouse. But I have trouble finding any solid sources of why soybean oil is so much worse than avocado or coconut oil; just it's related to a terror they have about polyunsaturated fats. I don't get it and I think it's time for a journalist to dig in and figure out a) where it comes from b) if there's any merit.
One complicating factor is that so much of the stuff that shouldn't be a matter of politics at all, kind of is at this point. Very few things that interest me currently lie outside the (American) culture war, and that is not because I'm necessarily drawn to the culture war itself, but because it sucks things in like a vortex. Especially findings that are interesting, because what is interesting is often controversial.
What I would be interested in, and this also goes well with your psychology research, is looking at the ways in which knowing more about what makes the human mind tick might make us kinder to each other, while also helping us avoid the pitfalls of being human. To take a couple of examples:
1) It seems to be the case that just like our brains are calibrated for hearing and producing the sounds of our native language, our face-recognition faculties are also calibrated for recognizing the faces we are exposed to most often. This means that people who have grown up in ethnically homogenous environments really do become worse at distinguishing the "out-group" faces of other ethnic groups. As we all know, this can have disastrous consequences such as in the cases where the wrong black man gets convicted of a crime based on the eye-witness testimony of a white person. Knowing more about why people might make such mistakes (while not necessarily being racist in any meaningful way) can help the justice system and society generally be smarter about stuff like this, which is better for everyone.
2) There's supposedly a decades-old study (I did look this up after hearing about it, but I can't remember what I found) that tricked research subjects into believing they had a visible mark on their face, and were asked to report back on how this affected their encounters with others. Allegedly, this had a big impact on how these subjects perceived other people's treatment of them, even when they objectively weren't treated any worse than they normally were. While this study may be overblown, or has failed to be replicated, this (alleged) finding would suggest why people who are outwardly similar (same racial background etc) report such different experiences of racism for instance. What we read into other people's actions is not only about the other person, but also about our own expectations. The micro-aggression can literally be in the mind of the aggressed, to a great extent, even though this obviously isn't always the case.
Trends in academia: Declining male enrollment, the shrinking number of tenured faculty, grad student labor issues, student loan debt. What are students like today vs. 15 years ago? How are the pressures and incentives changing for faculty? I’m sure Troy has loads of insights that would be interesting to discuss.
Dating, marriage, kids. I'm primarily thinking about data, trends, and discourse. I’m married but fascinated by Gen Z dating patterns and data. Plus, how different apps have changed the experience.
Psychology (especially with Troy on board): Trends in the population, new research. Problems with old research. Best practices for anxiety and depression vs. useless fads.
Publishing trends and economics: You’ve covered the changing landscape and shifting incentives for journalism, but every type of publishing is getting less profitable for most creators (books, music etc). Kindle Unlimited and self-publishing have become huge, with good and bad consequences.
Fun internet shitstorms: Any topics you don’t use for B&R for whatever reason. I loved Trace’s piece on the r/antiwork drama.
Personal: I enjoyed your Callin episode about New Year’s Resolutions (sleep, food). Obviously you have zero obligation to talk about your personal life if you don’t want to, and considering the amount of hate you get on social media, I understand if you’d rather not.
This may sound trite, but I want you to write about whatever you WANT to write about. I think writers do better work when, independent of any concerns about what other people will think of it, they write about things that are really of interest to them at the moment. If you were to keep writing about the culture wars just because you think it's what your audience wants, you'd get stale.
If I were to tell you what I want to read, I'd really be giving you a list of things that I ought to write about.
Steroids! How safe are they (and other PEDs) to use for general fitness?
You've already had to dive into the weeds of testosterone et al anyway, and juicing over the years has gone from a very niche thing that only pro athletes/bodybuilders did to being surprisingly common. Joe Rogan casually talks about being on roids because they make him feel youthful.
How far have we come from the days of risking bitch-tits (as they were called in Fight Club) - are roids something that normies can safely dabble in, or should they still be treated like meth and given the "not even once" treatment?
Here is a culture war adjacent topic that you can write at least 15 articles about.
Dark Patterns in the Technology industry.
Basically all the ways Tech Platforms and products make it REALLY hard to get off the platform, end subscriptions, stop tracking your data, or ignore your feedback.
Basically what are all the ways tech companies manipulate you into staying on their platform or keep you registered against your will, and how can you protect yourself against that.
Everyone on the internet is impacted by these on a daily basis, and it could even lead to some positive change if enough people are aware of how they are being manipulated silently.
Hi everyone!! I'm so excited to write for 💖Jesse Singal💖
Nuclear energy. A growing number of lefties are embracing it, including Jacobin. Meanwhile, the Mark Jacobson team at Stanford maintains that we can get to net-zero emissions with 100% renewables, no nuclear required. Can we? Have nuclear power plants somewhow gotten safer as its advocates claim? Is the nuclear industry funding the Breakthrough Institute and other nuclear proponents? Lots to get to the bottom of here.
My two cents; The professional standards that have generally kept the media honest are largely irrelevant today. I'd appreciate more media criticism and good investigative journalism to uncover the real story when narrative has taken over. The topic doesn't matter. Keeping this vital profession on its toes is hugely important.
Your website says you're interested in the replication crisis in social sciences, and you recently wrote a post about how all us non-scientists kind of have to pick and choose whose word to take for things, which often leads us to just revert to our biases. I'd love to see you dive deep into this problem -- how do we know what's true, and how do we leverage expertise without falling into cults of authority?
To be honest I'm a bit worried about the idea of you moving away from culture war stuff. In "Why Do I Suck?" https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/why-do-i-suck Scott Alexander talks about why he's not really inclined to write about the latest wokeness problem any more: "first of all, Jesse Singal, Freddie de Boer, and Bari Weiss have probably already written things on it and they probably all did a better job than I would". I like de Boer and Weiss a lot but I don't trust them nearly as much as I trust you and Scott. If both of you are backing off, I don't know who to point my woke friends to.
I work in criminal defense as a mitigation film specialist. I use the documentary medium to break down for judges (in a short film) what sequence of events led to the offense in question.
It's a frustrating job because the attorneys who hire me are constantly having to pander to federal judges who can simply "opt" to not believe in certain scientific facts. For example, we just did a film for a guy who had been diagnosed in his teens as a manic depressive. We were trying to make the argument in the film that because our client came from a culture where mental illness was taboo, he was discouraged from any kind of med management/therapy. Fast forward a few years, our client gets drunk and walks into a store, gets into a little fight with another guy and pulls a gun on him. My plan was to trace everything that happened that day with the offense all the way back to the client not receiving proper mental health treatment and therefore self medicating with alcohol.
Lead counsel calls me after I submit the film and says
"Judge doesn't like psychology stuff. He doesn't really believe in it. Can we just talk about his head injury? It looks like he fell off his bike when he was 10. Judge likes head injuries more than the psychology stuff...even if there's no brain trauma. He likes that stuff more"
I can't tell you how often I have to deal with the anti-science nonsense that goes on in the criminal justice system at the sentencing phase..
It would be nice to expose these failures of the system, these judges. Everything they say is public record and they say some brutally dumb, nay, medieval things.
And defenders are kind of enabling them at times. They want good results for their clients so they "tolerate" the backwardness of backward judges.
Sad stuff. But also interesting.
I am going to get selfish and pitch all my favorite sensitive subjects:
- A piece contrasting the lives of (a) online sex workers, (b) illegal IRL sex workers, and (c) legal IRL sex workers. There was a wonderful book called BROTHEL many years ago about a legal brothel in Reno, and it was eye-opening because it turned a lot of the arguments about what would and wouldn't happen in a legalized sex work environment on their heads. (There are still pimps, for instance!) There doesn't seem to be a lot of neutral reporting on this subject, and I'd be interested in how the IRL sex work world has changed given the online-all-the-time boom.
- I'm also interested in Christian "ex gays," being a Christian and a gay. There was a nonjudgmental book about them called STRAIGHT TO JESUS years ago, and I think we're due for an update on this community of people who are, like, living third rails.
- Also: surrogacy! There is a huge disconnect between the talking points around surrogacy from the conservative / feminist side of the issue, and the (surprisingly careful) laws that are being developed around it. I had a conversation with an advocate recently and was surprised how underinformed nearly everybody who talks about the issue, left or right, is.
Antidepressants - are they effective? Is therapy effective?
My desire would end up faIling into a culture war space, unfortunately, but I would like to see someone who isn’t a right winger dig into what truly happened between Fauci and the rest of our scientific community as Covid broke out.
There appears to be a period in which many scientists thought it was man made, then we have a phone conference and a bunch of redacted emails, followed by everyone agreeing that it wasn’t man made.
In a sane world, people would be investigating this the way that Russia got investigated. Of course, we don’t live in that world.
I'm fascinated by this weird anti-seed oil thing I see among certain nutrition aficionados. It's related to "science," so I think it would be in your wheelhouse. But I have trouble finding any solid sources of why soybean oil is so much worse than avocado or coconut oil; just it's related to a terror they have about polyunsaturated fats. I don't get it and I think it's time for a journalist to dig in and figure out a) where it comes from b) if there's any merit.
I’d love to see you write non-culture war stuff and vote for any topic except ska.
In all seriousness, I’d love to know about the state of our knowledge on the chemical mechanisms of antidepressants.
One complicating factor is that so much of the stuff that shouldn't be a matter of politics at all, kind of is at this point. Very few things that interest me currently lie outside the (American) culture war, and that is not because I'm necessarily drawn to the culture war itself, but because it sucks things in like a vortex. Especially findings that are interesting, because what is interesting is often controversial.
What I would be interested in, and this also goes well with your psychology research, is looking at the ways in which knowing more about what makes the human mind tick might make us kinder to each other, while also helping us avoid the pitfalls of being human. To take a couple of examples:
1) It seems to be the case that just like our brains are calibrated for hearing and producing the sounds of our native language, our face-recognition faculties are also calibrated for recognizing the faces we are exposed to most often. This means that people who have grown up in ethnically homogenous environments really do become worse at distinguishing the "out-group" faces of other ethnic groups. As we all know, this can have disastrous consequences such as in the cases where the wrong black man gets convicted of a crime based on the eye-witness testimony of a white person. Knowing more about why people might make such mistakes (while not necessarily being racist in any meaningful way) can help the justice system and society generally be smarter about stuff like this, which is better for everyone.
2) There's supposedly a decades-old study (I did look this up after hearing about it, but I can't remember what I found) that tricked research subjects into believing they had a visible mark on their face, and were asked to report back on how this affected their encounters with others. Allegedly, this had a big impact on how these subjects perceived other people's treatment of them, even when they objectively weren't treated any worse than they normally were. While this study may be overblown, or has failed to be replicated, this (alleged) finding would suggest why people who are outwardly similar (same racial background etc) report such different experiences of racism for instance. What we read into other people's actions is not only about the other person, but also about our own expectations. The micro-aggression can literally be in the mind of the aggressed, to a great extent, even though this obviously isn't always the case.
Welcome Troy! Here are some story suggestions:
Trends in academia: Declining male enrollment, the shrinking number of tenured faculty, grad student labor issues, student loan debt. What are students like today vs. 15 years ago? How are the pressures and incentives changing for faculty? I’m sure Troy has loads of insights that would be interesting to discuss.
Dating, marriage, kids. I'm primarily thinking about data, trends, and discourse. I’m married but fascinated by Gen Z dating patterns and data. Plus, how different apps have changed the experience.
Psychology (especially with Troy on board): Trends in the population, new research. Problems with old research. Best practices for anxiety and depression vs. useless fads.
Publishing trends and economics: You’ve covered the changing landscape and shifting incentives for journalism, but every type of publishing is getting less profitable for most creators (books, music etc). Kindle Unlimited and self-publishing have become huge, with good and bad consequences.
Fun internet shitstorms: Any topics you don’t use for B&R for whatever reason. I loved Trace’s piece on the r/antiwork drama.
Personal: I enjoyed your Callin episode about New Year’s Resolutions (sleep, food). Obviously you have zero obligation to talk about your personal life if you don’t want to, and considering the amount of hate you get on social media, I understand if you’d rather not.
This may sound trite, but I want you to write about whatever you WANT to write about. I think writers do better work when, independent of any concerns about what other people will think of it, they write about things that are really of interest to them at the moment. If you were to keep writing about the culture wars just because you think it's what your audience wants, you'd get stale.
If I were to tell you what I want to read, I'd really be giving you a list of things that I ought to write about.
Steroids! How safe are they (and other PEDs) to use for general fitness?
You've already had to dive into the weeds of testosterone et al anyway, and juicing over the years has gone from a very niche thing that only pro athletes/bodybuilders did to being surprisingly common. Joe Rogan casually talks about being on roids because they make him feel youthful.
How far have we come from the days of risking bitch-tits (as they were called in Fight Club) - are roids something that normies can safely dabble in, or should they still be treated like meth and given the "not even once" treatment?
Here is a culture war adjacent topic that you can write at least 15 articles about.
Dark Patterns in the Technology industry.
Basically all the ways Tech Platforms and products make it REALLY hard to get off the platform, end subscriptions, stop tracking your data, or ignore your feedback.
Basically what are all the ways tech companies manipulate you into staying on their platform or keep you registered against your will, and how can you protect yourself against that.
Everyone on the internet is impacted by these on a daily basis, and it could even lead to some positive change if enough people are aware of how they are being manipulated silently.
See this website https://www.darkpatterns.org/types-of-dark-pattern for a primer on dark patterns