Wherein the congressman for Silicon Valley visits the podcast of a woman, who’s openly-but-not-openly called for the murder of Republicans, in order to bash Elon Musk, who fled the state of California because of communism. Cheers.

I spent the past few months scurrying across America with one question in mind: is reindustrialization real? Through the lens of @MicronTech, I think I've found an answer. What kind of America do you want your kids to grow up in? One where they can point to things in their everyday lives and be proud that we built them? Or one where they can’t buy a car if another country decides they aren’t happy with us? Reindustrialize or die.

Enough people have asked me about the Peter Thiel-Dialog story that I think it's worth saying what it is, or at least what I saw it to be. So: –Dialog is a conference. I went once in 2018 and once in 2022. No one ever asked me to keep it or my presence a secret. –My understanding was Thiel was one of its founders but no longer involved by the time I went. I never saw or talked to him in connection with Dialog. –Nor did I see the other names I’ve heard mentioned, like Ted Cruz or Elon Musk or Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Jared Kushner. Dialog was not sold to me as a bunch of big names, which is part of why I went. I don’t need to go to a conference to hear what Ted Cruz thinks. –You could be a Dialog member, but I wasn’t. I don’t think joining got you much except guaranteed invitations to future Dialogs. There were occasional dinners and webinars, but I never went to one. I would not have described it as a secret or a society. –The panels were largely self-organized, so people would propose panels and hold them. I went to one on being a working parent and another on whether crypto had any real use cases and another on how to accelerate scientific breakthroughs. You’d usually have 8 or 10 people in a room. It was all very TED-talk adjacent. –In 2018, I found it very optimistic, with an idealistic hacker-ish vibe. In 2022, I found the conversations and vibe more curdled and resentful. I didn’t enjoy it, and I didn’t go back. (That did prove a pretty good signal of where tech’s politics were going though, maybe I should’ve paid more attention.) –That said, Dialog was a pretty ideologically diverse crowd. I met some people there who were *extremely* far left and far right. I met some real eccentrics and weirdos. I appreciated that about it. – I’m a journalist, I go to lots of things in the hopes of getting to know people, hearing new ideas, finding podcast guests, etc. –Being at something does not mean I endorse it, or everyone at it, or everyone who organized or founded it. I try to go to things where I don’t share the politics and perspectives of the crowd, for obvious reasons. –I am surprised how credulous some people have been on this story. You have to believe some weird things about the world to believe Julián Castro and Peter Thiel are somehow engaged in a common project. Secret societies, I imagine, need a lot of trust to function, but the people being named here do not trust each other and do not have aligned agendas. So that’s what I saw at Dialog. I’ll just end by saying it’s a weird experience to have a conference you haven’t thought about for years become the center of a new conspiracy theory. wired.com/story/leak-exposes…

MAFIA EP 003

Meta HQ right now.

This is quite the paragraph lol

It’s a great day to shut up about EBITDA

Just gonna buy a few shares of SpaceX on the stock market today like a fucking weenie

It’s unclear why we’re not arming the redwoods

new story from me @PirateWires: piratewires.com/p/can-60-min…

The pain inside the CBS newsroom is being pinned on the wrong thing (pressures from the billionaire-Trump sphere). What's actually going on, given broadcast journalism is a "melting ice cube," is attempts to regain trust and reach a younger audience, which involves... at a time when the (fun) creator economy is eating media... whether or not America would want to drink a beer with 60 Minutes correspondents. I'm sorry it just does.

2016: Gwyneth Paltrow takes you down on the ski slope 2026: Gwyneth Paltrow takes you out with a surface-to-air missile

you do not have to analyze why mafia was a hit. no one is going to hurt you if just enjoy the show.

This is actually so stressful

MAFIA EP 001

heh

“This spring… 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.” As in, Opinion Journalist Bari Weiss has overseen an unprecedented jump in viewership?

semafor, a new new media company, founded by an old new media guy, operating, in the model of most "new" media things, in an old way (owning distribution, breaking news), is... doing well. an underdiscussed story! I sat down with ben smith and talked about it: