Read Max

Join writer and historian John Ganz, known for his Unpopular Front newsletter, as he delves into the internet's evolving landscape. He and the host tackle the contrasting views on digital impact from notable essays. Their conversation spans topics like the eerie dynamics of modern communication and the nostalgic yearning for tangible work. From the absurdities of online culture to the chilling rise of personality-driven tech, Ganz’s insights illuminate the complexities of our digital age and how it shapes societal values.

This week, Sam Biddle, Chief Technology Reporter for The Intercept, dishes on the absurdity of powerful figures casually discussing military strategies in group chats. He humorously likens personalities in these chats to fictional characters, blending serious issues with levity. The duo also critiques the 'Abundance Agenda' from a new book, questioning its techno-optimism and exploring the ethical implications of military operations conducted without oversight. Plus, nostalgic tales about SimCity 2000 arcologies add a fun twist to the discourse.

In a captivating discussion, tech reporter Sam Biddle dives into the murky waters of A.I. and surveillance. He shares thoughts on the confusing landscape of artificial general intelligence, critiquing the hype post-ChatGPT. The pair explore AI's impact on jobs and ethics, raising essential questions about accountability. They also touch on Facebook’s bizarre backlash to a new book, alongside some cheeky insights into tech leaders' extravagant lifestyles. Biddle's sharp wit makes for an engaging and thought-provoking conversation.

Henry Farrell, a Johns Hopkins professor and Bloomberg writer, discusses the tech industry's influential literary canon. He critiques the discrepancies in how Silicon Valley leaders interpret narratives from their curated reading lists, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The conversation dives into the complexities of power and governance in tech, the dangers of micro-targeting in public discourse, and the need for a cohesive community amidst digital fragmentation. Farrell also highlights the importance of nuanced discussions around emerging technologies.

Greetings from Read Max HQ! A bonus newsletter this week containing a podcast with John Ganz of Unpopular Front and Quinn Slobodian, Professor of International History at Boston University and author of the forthcoming Hayek’s B******s: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right. Among the topics discussed: Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg, cryptocurrency, Las Vegas, and Jensen Huang’s leather jacket. A reminder: Read Max is funded almost wholly by paying subscribers. I’m able to spend reading, thinking, researching, and yapping with John and Quinn thanks to the generosity of people who find this newsletter and its intermittent podcast component compelling enough to cough up $5/month or $50/year. If you find Read Max at all enlightening or entertaining--if you borrow some of these riffs and opinions to impress potential employers or romantic/sexual partners, say--please consider supporting my work for the price of about one beer a month.Links* Quinn’s piece on Musk can be found here.* His book Hayek’s B******s: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right can be preordered here.* I also recommend his previous books, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, and Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy.* John’s newsletter Unpopular Front.* John’s book When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s, recently nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award, can be found here.* Ryan S. Jeffery’s piece on Jensen Huang and leather, discussed in the podcast, is at Do Not Research.**Note that if you buy or pre-order any books through the Bookshop links found on this page I will receive a small payment. Get full access to Read Max at maxread.substack.com/subscribe

Greetings from Read Max HQ! Today, to round out December before our annual year-end post, a podcast with John Ganz on the ascension of Elon Musk to shadow-president-via-shitposting.On this episode we talk about the following books:* Rated Agency: Investee Politics in a Speculative Age by Michael Feher (this is the one whose title we couldn’t remember)* Speculative Communities: Living with Uncertainty in a Financialized World by Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou* Immediacy: Or, the Style of Too Late Capitalism by Anna Kornbluh Get full access to Read Max at maxread.substack.com/subscribe

Greetings from Read Max HQ! Ongoing request alert: I’m still looking for stories and examples of A.I. slop, wherever you encounter it: On platforms! In your workplace! On the subway! In the library! In the background of movies! I will take any and all anecdotes and samples of weird, shoddy, uncanny, annoying A.I. crap in your day to day life. If you have any good leads or stories, email me: maxread@gmail.com. I have gotten a bunch of good images and stories already and am eager for more! (And if you’ve sent something in I haven’t responded to your email to thank you--sorry!)This week’s newsletter has two parts: First, a new collaborative episode of the Read Max Experimental Audio Product: a “crossover event” with (literal!) bestselling author John Ganz of Unpopular Front. Like me, Ganz is fascinated and repelled by the “tech right,” and has written some excellent pieces about its fascoid tendencies, and like me, Ganz has been engrossed by Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as his running mate. We talked on Thursday afternoon about, among other things, “the vibe shift,” the different fractions of capital in the Valley, the presence-in-absence of Peter Thiel, and what’s going on with David Sacks and Marc Andreessen. You can listen above, or on any of the fine platforms where you find your podcasts.Second, below you can read a short few paragraphs following up (triumphantly) on last week’s newsletter about Tyler Cowen’s “vibe shift” anti-cope. A reminder: Read Max is almost fully funded by paying subscribers, who recognize and fairly compensate the mechanical and psychic labor it involves to read so many things about repellent people like J.D. Vance. If you like Read Max, which produces eight newsletters and between 15,000 and 20,000 words a month, about the same as you like “one cold beer at your local bar,” please consider becoming a paying subscriber, for the low, beer-like price of $5/month or $50/year.The vibe shifted, againLast week I wrote about the economist-blogger Tyler Cowen’s analysis of what at the time--in the wake of the assassination attempt on former president Trump and in the midst of the Republican National Convention at which Ohio Senator J.D. Vance was nominated as Trump’s running mate--appeared to be a major “vibe shift” in favor of Trump and an ascendant Silicon Valley right. Cowen elaborated 19 more-or-less structural reasons or causes for this vibe shift, among them “10. The Woke gambit has proven deeply unpopular.” and “6. The ongoing feminization of society has driven more and more men, including black and Latino men, into the Republican camp. The Democratic Party became too much the party of unmarried women.”As I wrote at the time, Cowen’s list seemed too dependent on a reading of Twitter sentiment, rather than on a broader and more diverse survey of American public opinion(s), and as a consequence it sounded likea kind of “anti-cope”--an attempt to rationalize and explain good news that might have been arbitrarily delivered and ultimately transient. Where “cope” is how you convince yourself it’s not actually so over, anti-cope is how you convince yourself that we’re so back for good this time, that we’re not just suffering another vibes volatility cycle, that there’s something more going on to success than “old guy + higher prices.” (Another word for cope and anti-cope is: Ideology.)I wish a bit I’d held back and saved the topic for this week, since “the vibes” have unquestionably shifted yet again, happily proving my point, in the aftermath of President Biden’s resignation announcement and Vice President Kamala Harris’ assumption of the Democratic nomination: Democrats immediately raised a record-breaking amount of money, polls showed her in a dead heat with Trump, and Republicans began to anonymously complain about Vance. Now, I could come up with a long, Cowen-like list explaining how and why the Twitter vibes have suddenly shifted (“1. Americans deeply dislike juiceless Silicon Valley podcast reactionaries of the kind that keep appearing at the RNC”). But this would just be making the same mistake: backfilling Twitter sentiment volatility with whatever structural or statistical (or simply “sounds-right”) rationalization I can lay my hands on. Have the vibes changed because “The Woke gambit” has now proven deeply popular, suddenly? Or were the vibes not really related to these broader structural shifts in ideology the first place and connected more superficially to candidate perception? Or were the vibes just doing what “vibes on Twitter” do, which is change, constantly? Like I wrote last week: “It is the most volatile social network more or less by design and function”; all the optimism Democrats are feeling right now will be replaced by a sensation of doom and chaos at least once, and probably several times, between now and election day. (Just wait till Harris announces Josh Shapiro as her running mate!) You will not catch me attempting to account for those vibe shifts with anything but the most superficial analysis. Get full access to Read Max at maxread.substack.com/subscribe

Greetings from Read Max HQ! Today’s Read Max Experimental Audio Product is a reading of this week’s newsletter, covering:* Who is “Leopold Aschenbrenner,” and why is he suddenly a top A.I. influencer?; and* A short history of the anti-woke finance grift, starring Bill Ackman and Vivek Ramaswamy.A reminder: The Read Max Experimental Audio Product is supported entirely by paying readers. I’m able to spend time recording this podcast (and eventually moving it out of the “experimental” designation) because of the generosity of paying subscribers. If you enjoy having the newsletter read aloud every week, and you would price your enjoyment at $5 a month (one draft beer or Big Mac, roughly) or more, please consider signing up as a paid subscriber. Get full access to Read Max at maxread.substack.com/subscribe

Greetings from Read Max HQ! In today’s experimental audio product:* The Google “AI Overview” fiasco, why it was so funny/depressing, and what it tells us about Google* A theory about the “All Eyes on Rafah” A.I.-generated Instagram image and why it (and not others) went viral* My pick for “most dangerous app”A reminder! We are still in the midst of a WEEK-LONG SALES EVENT, THE READ MAX PAY FOR MY SON’S SUMMER CAMP SPECIAL, during which Read Max subscriptions are a whopping 20 percent off. This event ends on SUNDAY, which leaves you only a precious few hours to simultaneously save money and also help me obtain childcare for my son for July so I can continue shitposting as a career. Get full access to Read Max at maxread.substack.com/subscribe

Greetings from Read Max HQ! In today’s Read Max Experimental Audio Product, I’ll be reading from this week’s newsletter on two items:* A critical exploration of this week’s announcements from OpenAI and Google, and why I think the new Google search stuff sucks.* Looking at The New Yorker’s Lucy Letby story as a story about media in the U.S. and the U.K.In addition to the embed above, the podcast can be found on Apple Podcasts here, as well as many other popular podcast platforms. It can also technically be found on Spotify but I recommend you do not find it there.If you enjoy the Read Max Experimental Audio Product, please consider subscribing to Read Max, a broadly beloved twice-weekly newsletter guide to the future. Read Max’s independent reporting and criticism is funded almost entirely by paying subscribers, whose generosity is matched only by their mental illness. Get full access to Read Max at maxread.substack.com/subscribe