Social Media “Addiction”, Sex Hormones, Fertility, Starship
Reading, watching, and listening highlights: Week of Monday, 7/13/26
New and interesting
“Social Media Addiction” Is Way More Complicated Than You Think, by Sally Satel
Let’s Talk About (Octopus) Sex, by Schuyler Velasco
Male octopi sense female fertility through progesterone, the same hormone used in human female birth control pills. A stunning example of evolutionary conservation, given that vertebrates and invertebrates diverged over 700 million years ago.
Maybe Your Friends Are Why You’re Not Having Kids, by Rob Henderson
It is “empirically possible,” the authors write, “that paying Taylor Swift a billion dollars to have children might produce more children in society than spending the same money on child tax credits, if her choice sways her wide fanbase.
Why JD Vance Is Both the Realest and Fakest Politician, by Richard Hanania
Starship - Critical Path, from SpaceX:
Hot takes
Real or imagined, existential threat is a remarkably effective motivator:
David🐵@monke_ioYou can’t out grind people who literally believe they’re building a god. For Google and Meta, it’s an interesting scientific and moneymaking project. For OpenAI and Anthropic it’s a religious eschatological mission. That’s the only reason these upstarts can compete with these
baba yaga @babayagatwtI still can’t figure out why Gemini struggles to compete with Claude and GPT. - Owns Chrome - Backed by Android - Stores most search results - Holds ~95% search history - Google has the biggest user data - Even incognito data isn’t fully private So what’s the problem?12:53 AM · Jul 14, 2026 · 55.9K Views20 Replies · 34 Reposts · 921 LikesRemember that we had data centers long before AI:
Yogi@HouseofyogiThis is one of the dumbest things Democrats have done in years. A data center is not some evil AI factory. It is literally the infrastructure behind your tiktok brainrot, email, banking, cloud storage, streaming, hospitals, gov systems, websites, the kiosk that you use to tap,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOCThank you for your leadership, @GovKathyHochul. A data center moratorium gives lawmakers time to put strong protections in place and guarantee AI benefits all of us, not just a powerful few.4:01 AM · Jul 15, 2026 · 113K Views79 Replies · 277 Reposts · 2.29K LikesEverything government touches becomes less efficient:
Emma Camp@emmma_camp_You can't afford housing, education, and healthcare because of government intervention. These are straightforward examples of how regulation + subsidies makes things less affordable.
Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ @christopherrufoThis kind of rhetoric was good in the 1980s when America was going through a consumer product boom, but it’s not going to meet the current moment. The Left’s easy counter is, “Sure, you can buy a cheap fridge, but you can’t afford housing, education, and healthcare.” We’re not10:05 PM · Jul 14, 2026 · 65.7K Views32 Replies · 136 Reposts · 1.3K Likes
From the archives
The Case Against Social Media “Addiction,” by Jeffrey Singer and Adam Omary
In case you missed it
Progress Roundup 7/12/26, from HumanProgress.org
