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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • It takes a truly bureaucratic mind—someone with a sensibility for relentless, daily tedium—to dismantle bureaucracy.

    Democracy, by contrast, is far easier to unravel than state bureaucracy. Bureaucratic systems often outlast governments, as seen with the colonial administrations in Africa and South Asia. Bureaucracy is designed to be “portable” across different regimes and transfers of power.

    Elon is likely facing a long and tiresome road ahead—one he’ll almost certainly abandon in some spectacularly embarrassing fashion within two months. Bureaucracy endures because it’s so deeply embedded in the everyday, utterly quotidian and entwined with, like, everything.






  • Gen Z’s financial ambitions, and the dissonance between their dreams and reality, honestly highlight a troubling cultural shift that I’m sure, if we’re honest, we all recognize. This poll, while maybe not bulletproof in methodology, lines up with other findings from Credit Karma, other Morning Consult surveys, and academic sources like PLOS and Collabra: Psychology. The term “money dysphoria,” used by financial therapists, gets to the heart of the issue, which is a mismatch between the paychecks, fame, and wealth many envision and the actual economic terrain we’re navigating. The fact that more than half of Gen Z reportedly wants to be influencers points to a broader trend where social media distorts not only career goals but also broader ideas about value and success.

    Researchers see Gen Z as unique—sometimes in ways worth celebrating, but more often in ways that are troubling. Every generation wrestles with the pressures of its time, but Gen Z is the only generation that spent critical childhood-development years under a spotlight powered by social algorithms, constantly fed by curated images and endless comparisons. It seems obvious this environment is going to shape approaches to work, wealth, and purpose, often in ways that are kind of adrift from reality. What stands out here isn’t just misplaced optimism; it’s the fallout of growing up in an ecosystem designed to blur the lines between aspiration and delusion.

    This isn’t to pin dysfunction entirely on Z; after all, no one chooses the world they inherit. But the extent to which our formative years were shaped by this digital distortion makes the challenges uniquely sharp. Gen Z was effectively raised in a hall of mirrors. That’s going to have an effect. And honestly, when I’m talking with from Gen Z about it, we tend to either completely agree and are pretty worried about it, or some people absolutely deny it and get pretty angry about it.

    I think if you’re honest with yourself and are in college, you can kind of look around your classrooms and see who is going to feel which way.



  • Latines now make up 20% of the U.S. population, making them the largest minority group. Among the under-18 demographic, that number climbs to nearly 30%. If current population trends hold, Latines are poised to become the largest ethnic group in the country within about 25 years—that’s just three presidential terms away.

    While Latines are a minority ethnicity, they are the largest one and the second-fastest growing, trailing only Asians. Asians, despite having one of the lowest birth rates, experience the highest proportional rate of immigration. Notably, Trump gained 12% of the Asian vote in the most recent election, a trend across these growing demographics that, if sustained, could spell significant gains for Republicans in the future.

    However, let’s not overlook the broader electoral picture. Black, Asian, and Latine men and women combined make up about 29% of the voting public in presidential elections, while white women alone account for a staggering 37-38%. For context, Latino men represent just 5-6% of voters. White women are, by far, the largest voting demographic.

    Interestingly, Trump increased his share of all women by 7% compared to when he ran against Biden and has increased his support from women each time he’s ran. The devastating thing, I think, is that Trump won 13% more of the 18-29-year-olds, 5% more of 30-44-year-olds, and continues to capture “Boomer Lite,” aka Gen X, a majority of whom he has won each time he’s ran, but he increased his share by 9% this time.

    Edit: corrected an earlier data error.


  • It’s theoretically possible but extremely unlikely for a number of reasons. There’s a difference between bending constitutional intent by flouting democratic norms on the one hand, and outright ignoring what most people consider to be an explicit and core constitutional principle on the other. And, again, I’m not someone that believes Trump is ultimately heading for a lich-king transformation, so basic biology makes it even more unlikely.