I was bullposting about crypto since Bitcoin was at $25,500-30,000. I think I have earned the right to flip bearish now that it’s 4x higher at $120,000. Ethereum is up 3x from $1550-1700 when I shilled it, reaching a peak of $4,800 (just 1% shy of its previous ATH). Solana is up 7x from $25 to $180.

Many influencers are targeting $130,000-140,000 for Bitcoin and additional multiples for their favorite altcoins. I think that macro and the charts are bearish. After holding my Ethereum and other alts for two years, I will now disclose that I have sold most of my crypto portfolio into stables in the past several days and expect a bear market starting quite soon in both TradFi and crypto1.

There are two major macro reasons for this as well as reasons more specific to crypto.

Trump’s Tariffs

The markets panicked and the SPX lost 20% when Trump jacked up the effective tariff rate from near zero to 28%. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and ran it back turbo when Trump relented. But the actual retreat was very short-lived. Having bottomed out at 15%, with a “complacent” consensus that they would continue going down, they're now back at 19%! Meanwhile, markets keep going up and up as if we now collectively believe that the highest effective tariff rates since 1933 are a nothingburger.

Perhaps Trump discovered some magical new economic paradigm in which none of this matters any longer, and perhaps this might have even been true had the trendline towards very short AGI timelines and US victory in this Civilization game been maintained. However, with imminent AGI seemingly no longer on the cards, I expect the laws of gravity are going to reassert themselves rather soon. From this perspective, the SPX - whose total market capitalization, now at 212% of GDP, has never been higher in history - increasingly resembles Wile E. Coyote running off a cliff and not yet realizing there’s nothing but empty space below.

AI Bubble

I am not necessarily saying that AGI is definitively no longer happening; this would be an unreasonable overcorrection to the 2022-early 2025 mania. However, AI risk researchers have been extending their timelines the past few months - the authors of AI 2027 now say they wish they’d called it “AI 2028”, or better yet, avoided dates entirely - and the unimpressive performance of GPT-5 has validated talk of a slowdown. We can’t yet say the scaling hypothesis has broken down. However, after teleporting from an IQ of 90 to 120 from early 2024 to early 2025, frontier LLM performance seems to have stalled at Redditor midwit level on TrackingAI’s offline test for the past half year and counting. Novel IQ tests are definitionally the best tools we have for measuring general intelligence, and are my own preferred metric for tracking progress towards AGI. Most high quality online text is 120 IQ midwit text, so intuitively, it would not be surprising if that is precisely where next token predictors converge to regardless of how much more compute is thrown at training them.

However, this is not a post about AGI. It’s a post about AI expectations that have driven the great bulk of recent SPX gains that market participants increasingly recognize were inflated, at least in the short to medium term. There are well known systemic problems, such as the fact that all of these AI companies are operating at a loss and burning massive amounts of cash to retain users. Beyond that, I see top signal after top signal. Ilya Sutskever refusing $32B from Meta for Safe Superintelligence (which might still be just vaporware for all we know). Mark Zuckerberg offering OpenAI and Thinking Machines researchers $1B bribes to join him - and getting turned down! These are the vibes of late stage crypto manias, such as richard.eth rejecting $10M for a CryptoPunk NFT in October 2021. Speaking of crypto, it is oddly appropriate that Zuckerberg is again the main trendsetter, pivoting Facebook into the metaverse and renaming it “Meta” in late October 2021. The metaverse/GameFi pico-top, which I called to the day, happened just a month later on November 24. Is Zuckerberg going to top-tick AI as well?

I should emphasize I don’t specifically seek out top signals. This is a very bad and counterproductive thing to do! However, I can’t help but notice that they’re multiplying even at the mundane level of San Francisco life. I see people walking away with lucrative VC deals for any dog of a project with the right AI buzzwords. I went to a “vibe coding” event - hosted by Worldcoin! - fronted by a guy who wins hackathons without being able to actually code. Such strange phenomena only tend to happen and be widely accepted during manic phases. Just yesterday I saw that Anthropic was refocusing on the “model welfare” of Claude. If AGI was really within their sights I do not think they would be wasting their time on the subjective states of next token predictors.

I think we are at or very close to the pico-top of the AI narrative. “Tech” is now close to a synonym for AI, while its weight in the broader SPX has never been higher (just Nvidia by itself contributes 8%, the largest percentage accruing to a single company since records began in 1981). The popping of the AI bubble will drive down markets across the board, and the main question is when it happens. When conversations drift to this topic in San Francisco, there is now relatively widespread acceptance that we are in a bubble, but few are positioned short. The default expectation is that the party will continue for a couple more years, or at least until the end of Q4. Obviously, timing market tops is a fool’s errand, and I have no plans to buy puts. However, the combination of flashing top signals, Trump’s tariffs, and the OOM-tier gains for companies like Nvidia and Meta since late 2022 means that the r:r for staying heavily invested in these markets has become very dubious.

Crypto Copelets

What effect will AI bubble popping - if and when it happens - have on crypto? One of the lessons any crypto newbie learns during their first cycle is that crypto is downstream of TradFi markets. Stock market movements get magnified in crypto - that is, we say that crypto is “beta” to stocks. When TradFi retreats, crypto gets crushed, regardless of its own dynamcis at the time. Conversely, when TradFi goes up, the resulting wave of liquidity lifts all boats, teleporting crypto assets upwards. Towards the tail end of such bull markets, all kinds of craziness ascends to gloriously idiotic levels (the “scams pump hardest” principle). High quality assets do win out (gain “dominance”) over inherently valueless shitcoins over the long-term - long-term, almost everything has gone to zero against Bitcoin and Ethereum - but this is a slow and grinding process that happens over the course of years.

The one “bullish” aspect of an AI crash I can potentially see for crypto is that all the hot money chasing AI vaporware will instead be funneled to crypto vaporware as in 2020-21. However, these two worlds don’t intersect much at the financial layer, and besides, the direct QQQ and SPX collapse will completely dominate any hypothetical second-order effects. (SPX and Bitcoin movements normally correlate ~0.4, and explode to 0.7-0.9 during periods of high volatility). No matter how great you think your “project” is, no matter how resilient you think it is to macro shocks, you are almost certainly wrong about it and if you hold on to it during the bear, expect to become a “community member” and see your holdings go down by 90% or evaporate entirely if the team exits in search of “new opportunities”.

So for me, the main question comes down to, when we can expect to see the end of the crypto bull market? Personally, I believe there will either soon come a bear market, or in the best case scenario, a deep correction, in the event that AI and the US economy remain resilient against all the odds. Here are the warning signs I am seeing.

First, there is the banal fact that valuations are already extremely high. This does not just apply to quality (credibly decentralized) crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum - in an ever more digital world, we may reasonably expect their market caps to continue increasing as a share of total world capitalization, since they are the most rigorous framework for property rights in the digital realm - but to “fossil” assets, pseudo-scams, and memecoins that have ~zero inherent value.

• #3 is Ripple $XRP, a centralized grift beloved of by taxi drivers and finance bros, but used by nobody, is up 10x up from the bear market lows with a market cap of $177B. Hedera $HBAR at #17 fits a similar category.

• #10 is Tron $TRX, a chain with a shady ownership structure that is near exclusively used to send USDT payments and is run by a colorful individual who gets SEC investigations like actresses get paparazzi shots, is in up-only mode.

• #12 we have Hyperliquid $HYPE, the latest iteration of the classic crypto trope of a grossly overvalued de facto centralized exchange in decentralized clothing (predecessors: DYDX; Mango Markets). Meanwhile, GMX - arguably the most legitimate protocol in this category - languishes at just 1% of Hyperliquid’s market cap.

• Ethena at #15 may unironically be this cycle’s equivalent of Luna, a synthetic stablecoin that depegged to zero on account of reflexive collapse.

• Trump’s “World Liberty Financial” scam is at #45 while AI memecoin #FARTCOIN caps off this clown market at #83.

In a healthy market, I want to see valuations dominated by Ethereum and its most developed L2s, other high quality L1s such as NEAR and Solana2, bluechip DeFi protocols like Aave and Uniswap, and genuinely innovative Web3 and Proof of Humanity protocols like Worldcoin or Kleros.

Second, the “institutions are buying.” This might sound bullish but only if this is your first rodeo. Smart money such as Blackrock and the Ethereum Foundation buy at the lows while fudding the retail goyim out of their underwater bags, and then sell it back to them at the highs while screeching, “Institutions are buying!” Bitcoin at $120,000 and Ethereum at $4,500 aren’t the lows. This time round, said institutions are ETH treasuries, which are said to be accumulating Ethereum hand over fist and driving the price back up to all time highs in the process. The problem is that any price movement has a post facto narrative explanation. However, in almost all cases, the basic underlying mechanism is just money “rotating” between varying clusters of crypto assets such as Bitcoin, the “Ethereum ecosystem”, the “Solana ecosystem”, “AI”, “NFTs”, etc., before players take their profit into stablecoins during corrections and bear markets. These rotations tend to be random and very hard to predict, although there are some rules of thumb, e.g. Bitcoin tends to recover first from the bear market, while Ethereum teleporting upwards tends to mark end stage mania. (Uh-oh).

Third, people are asking, agonizing: “Where is the alts season that was promised?!” But we just had an alts season! To be sure, it was a very disappointing alts season, dominated by fossil coins as it was, with fewer memes and “innovations” like the OHM ponzis. But with $TOTAL2 (market cap of all non-BTC cryptos) matching previous November 2021 ATH, what else do you reasonably want? Money is tighter this time round. Interest rates aren’t at zero, and Trump is taking money from your pockets with his tariffs, not giving it out as COVID stimmies.

You want to inquire about the meme season. We have had a 2020-21 bull run-scale “meme season” since February 2024!! I am sorry that your particular shitcoin didn’t pump 100x. Neither did mine. I hope you practiced Risk Management 101 and kept it a small part of your portfolio. We have already had two distinct meme manias this run. The first one in the summer of 2024, which ended with the tokenized hamster races and Solana dogwifhat coin getting displayed on the Vegas dome. The January 2025 one with President Donald Trump shilling his own $TRUMP shitcoin to the MAGA faithful. Perhaps we get a third one to power the final blow-off top. Or we might not! Nobody owes it to you to give your shitcoin an exit pump. Inflation is eating at discretionary spending, people are tired of memecoins, and many have already been burned by them - either in the last bull run, or in the two meme manias of this run - and are in no rush for seconds.

Learn to appreciate the degeneracy we already have because I am not sure it will be here for much longer. Dogecoin is at $0.22 (market cap: $33B) or up 4x from the bear market lows. Perhaps you expected higher. But this is a useless, constantly inflating asset that pumped big in 2020-21 because Elon was still cool back then and actively shilling it. Today he is viewed as a sieg heiling weirdo by many. At #30 you have $PEPE, once calumniated as an Alt Right meme, at $5B. That already is a highly improbable outcome. I have mentioned $FARTCOIN and dogwifhat; both are in the Top 100, as is the last run’s second-tier dog $FLOKI. Dear mother of Christ, there is currently a coin at #163 literally called $USELESS at $300M market cap. Degens are self-consciously playing shitcoin musical chairs in a last desperate big to make it before the music stops and you are asking me where is the meme season. You are the meme, that’s who. We deserve zero just for asking about meme season!

Not Early

I am not your financial advisor, and all my commentary on these matters is for entertainment purposes only. I don’t presume to know the future. For all the above, while I am reasonably sure $124,000 was the Bitcoin top, I still think there’s a ~50/50 chance that Ethereum can surge back up, break above $5,000, and go into price discovery mode all the way to $7,000 or whatever. I still HODL some Ethereum myself.

However, I also think the r:r on this is very low. The meat of the move, such as it was, was from $1,500 to $4,500. I am not going to risk buying a return ticket in the hope of another 50% - assuming I even catch that top. I have always been open that my ultra-bullish thesis on Ethereum - seeing it going to $20,000-30,000 or higher - this cycle was in part predicated on fast AGI timelines.

However, since these timelines are now slipping away, I return to the real world in which the crypto industry for all its promise in revolutionizing finance and governance is wracked by problems such as dependence on macro (TradFi sneezes; crypto catches the flu), slow adoption, institutional hostility, and the admittedly high prevalence of scams and grifts that invite not entirely undeserved public suspicion and misunderstanding.

All I will say is that, at this point, you are not early. The tariffs are a ticking time bomb we decided to collectively ignore. AI is flashing top signals every other week. Geopolitical prospects are gloomy. Possibly futures encompass scenarios that include an intensification of the Russian-Ukrainian War (likely IMO), a Chinese invasion of Taiwan (if it happens, late 2020s are widely considered to be the peak danger years), and Trump deciding to become a dictator or join in on the annexation fun (wildly unlikely - but Trump is Trump, LOL). If you made life-changing money this run, consider locking some of it in.

Belatedly, a few words on the recent Romania elections, which saw Nicușor Dan handily defeat George Simion (the stand in for the disbarred Georgescu with his many powerful ideas about organic farming, health, and the Transylvania forests as the world’s spiritual locus) after trailing him in the polls. I think it succinctly summarizes several important points about EHC, about the nature of nationalism, and the prospects for populism broadly.

(1) Romania should be fertile ground for low IQ populism. They seem to be the least well-read country in Europe, and when I visited, what they did read was Jordan Peterson (#1 bestseller) and Suvorov (Rezun), a WW2 conspiracy theorist. However, faced with the sheer contrast between a two-time International Math Olympiad top scorer (150 IQ?) vs. a literal football hooligan (110 IQ?), even Romanians ended up opting for the former.

(2) Electoral patterns all hewed to the standard template we have come to expect in such contests: The people with higher educations voted overwhelmingly for Dan (75%), while 63% of people with just a primary educations voted Simion. Dan won across both sexes, but many more women voted for the conscientious family man over the Tate fan. (When Dan won the Tates announced they would be leaving Romania. Dan effectively remigrating immigrant groomer gangs before even coming into office).

Likewise, 62% of urbanites voted for Dan, whereas 52% of ruralites voted for Simion. The above map makes it even clearer how this was a contest of the cities (and Hungarians) against ruralites. Amusingly, Bronze Age Pervert tells us the one part of Bucharest that Simion won was District 5, which includes Ferentari. BAP is “not sure on the sociology of this.” Wat mean? Well, Ferentari is a shithole of derelict buildings and garbage.

The global diaspora vote is also highly amusing in how closely it followed the EHC/LHC pattern. The less educated Romanian emigrants in Western Europe voted for Simion. The higher IQ Romanians in the rest of the world (including even in Russia, LOL) - so, businesspeople, students, digital nomads, embassy workers, etc. - voted for Dan.

(3) In many Hungarian municipalities Dan was getting 95% (!). The region of Harghita is 86% ethnic Hungarian and voted 91% Dan. This isn’t because Hungarians are progressive! Amusingly, Romanian Hungarians monolithically (90%+) vote for Orban/Fidesz; however, they choose the EHC candidate for the place where they actually live.

This illustrates another important point. Nationalists don't like foreign nationalists ruling over them. Is it hypocritical? Yes, sure. But we can be thankful for it nonetheless. Simion has spent much of his career baiting Hungarian ethnic activists, accusing them of separatism and treason, and opposing their local autonomy, their flags, and their language rights. But then instead of campaigning amongst Romanians, Simion decided to go on an international rightoid tour just before the election, meeting up with Orban and MAGA luminaries like Bannon, Grenell, Bolsonaro, and Posobiec. (Amusingly the meeting with Orban backfired since he soon had to distance himself from Simion due to Hungarian nationalist backlash). In the end, the votes of Romania’s monolithically pro-Orban Hungarian minority proved crucial to stymying a consolidated rightoid axis across south-eastern Europe.

(4) The final point I want to make is that this perhaps as little else represents the waning of Far Right populism. Full disclose, I thought it had peaked in 2022, since the factors previously driving it such as China’s industrialization and its effect on Western blue-collar wages had largely exhausted themselves. However, timing tops is an extremely risky business, in markets as in politics. Still, I find it increasingly likely that Trump’s victory was right-wing populism’s generational all-time high with the launch of $TRUMP shitcoin representing its “blowoff top.”

After a series of victories the past couple of years, the populists are now floundering, with high IQ globalist technocrats such as Carney in Canada, in Australia, and now even in Romania coming to power. There are extensive ongoing protests against corrupt authoritarian rightoid regimes in Serbia, Slovakia, and Turkey. The people are looking at what is happening in the US under Trump - perhaps there is even some subconscious intuition that Trumpist politics would be far more ruinous for countries that are much smaller and/or don’t have its tradition of judicial independence which still keep the worst excesses of MAGA in check - and they are deserting the evil evil rightoids and flocking back to the safe and reliable stewardship of prestigious high IQ EHC spiritually queer globalist technocrats.

One of the most interesting concepts in rationalist thought relates to “Anthropic Shadow.” This is the idea that existential risks are implicitly conditioned on the existence of human observers, and are therefore biased to the downside, since any event severe enough to kill all present observers and prevent the emergence of future ones will leave no observable traces of its past existence.

If we extend these anthropic considerations into the near future, we may reach some disquieting conclusions. Worlds that “make it” remember and/or simulate their history, whereas those that die, do not. This loads on what is known as the Strong Self-Sampling Assumption (SSSA), which relates to the idea that our current observer-moment - e.g., you reading this now - was plucked out of all possible observer-moments (past, present, and future) in their reference class. The validity of the SSSA would be optimistic for some conscious observers surviving past AGI. But there is a catch. If you also believe that AGI is inherently dangerous; that AI timelines are short; and that alignment doesn’t happen by default and is inherently hard… then you must seriously entertain the possibility of a catastrophic but non-extinction level event between now and the early 2030s that rolls back AGI timelines by years or decades.

This “Rollback” seems likeliest to take one of two forms. One would be a major bioterrorism event that is linked to AI, and results in a global taboo against machine intelligence greater than the logic of capitalism and interstate geopolitical competition that drive its acceleration. The other would be a large-scale war between the US and China, likely over Taiwan, which collapses globalization and the fragile global supply chains that underpin the semiconductor industry from which the sand gods will emerge.

There are philosophical debates over the legitimacy of extrapolating the Anthropic Shadow into the future and considering what it would recursively imply for the present1. For the sake of this hypothesis, I am going to treat it as if it is valid. This essay is premised on the idea that observer-rich futures outweigh dead-end timelines in the distribution of observer-moments across all of history, and that this retroactively raises the probability that we live not in a doomed world, but in a world that makes it - because we ourselves exist as past selves, ancestors, ancestor-simulations, or memories of future beings, conscious and countless. Sadly, not all humans currently alive have to survive past the Singularity in order for this history to be “remembered.”2 Many, even most, can die with no major effect on the observer-moment distributions, for doomed souls are also commonly remembered or simulated in worlds that make it. It would be an ultimately optimistic End of History, but bittersweet, and we may have to live with its ghosts to the heat death of the universe.

Opening the Boxes of Orden

What would a world in which AI timelines are short and Anthropic Shadow is coming into play look like? We could expect increasingly weird and unlikely events, a fracturing of long-running “Pinkerian” trendlines towards a more stable and peaceful world, the rise of populist and irredentist movements, and the replacement of rationalism with conspiracism and “post-truth” politics. This would translate into a more generalized increase in geopolitical fear and anxiety, or what Hearts of Iron 4 calls “World Tension.”

Putin’s “Gift” to the Near-AGI World

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, predictions markets expected it to be a very brief affair. Against all expectations, Russia got bogged down in a war of attrition against a state with a fifth of its population and a tenth of its GDP. At that point, sentiment became skeptical about Russia’s prospects. There was no mass nationalist mobilization; if anything, the Russian suppressed grassroots expressions of such. Could an aging, postmodern state sustain losses that are already an order of magnitude more than it incurred in Afghanistan and Chechnya combined? And surely this would, if nothing else, immunize other World Powers against wading into irredentist adventures?

As it happens, the real sociological innovation of wartime Putinism was its post-2022 realization that modern states with old, jaded populations can still fight very bloody wars by just massively bribing middle-aged poors and provincials. No need for the 20C methods of mass mobilization and police control to inspire, goad, or coerce urbane only-child hipsters into the Army that many were expecting! No need for grand ideological narratives about liberating Ukraine from fascism (for Communists), the “regathering the Russian lands” (for nationalists), or the “holy war against Gay Satanic Nazism” (for the 85 IQ). What effectively happened is the wholesale “Wagnerization” of the Russian Army, in brutality more than effectiveness, with small unit “meat storms” and “nullifications” (summary executions) for minor and often arbitrary infringements that would have long since led to mutinies and civil unrest under any other non-totalitarian system. But not when the state pays the marginals and losers of society who have nothing to look forwards to in life other than debts and alcohol poisoning - Putin himself said it’s better to die at the front than from vodka - five times their annual salary as a security guard at a Pyaterochka as sign-up bonuses. This is the Squid Game social contract. Russians implicitly understand that when you just get $30,000 you effectively sign your life over to the state in a “fair” exchange and have no particular right to complain over details afterwards. Likewise, there is no need for any accountability, for the war to have any discernible goals or victory conditions, or answers to any other of the grandiloquent “39 Questions” posed by Igor Strelkov (Girkin) to the regime before his imprisonment.

There is a reason I called this a sociological innovation. There was a whole series of (half-hearted) experiments at getting volunteers into the Russian Army before Putinism stumbled on the expedient of simply paying huge wads of cash. The one thing that worked. Wildly and successfully. I think it can be argued that this a greater discovery than even the advances in drone warfare, which were at least widely anticipated by technologists. But I think very few expected 42 years median age societies to engage in World War I Electric Boogaloo. And it would be unrealistically naive to expect that this “innovation” passed other Great Powers by.

The Argentine junta was toppled after incurring 649 deaths in the Falklands War. Meanwhile, Russia is still going strong after perhaps 250,000 deaths and counting. This is Putin’s “gift” to the near-AGI world. The knowhow on how to start wars, even very big and prolonged wars, and not have to pay a political price for them. A “privilege” previously thought only available to the younger and more “thymotic” societies, like the Houthis, or perhaps India vs. Pakistan, has in fact turned out to be practical for societies that are far older and richer and much less nationalistic. Far from immunizing the world against military adventurism, Putin has normalized them, and demonstrated that they are quite feasible and sustainable if appropriately commoditized and sequestered from mundane life. Who cares if American zoomers hate God and their own country. Offer $250,000 to the denizens of the forgotten Fishtowns of America, and they’ll be signing up in droves to make Canada the 51st state.

The Chekhov’s Gun of 21C Geopolitics

Following decades of downtrend, the global incidence of armed conflict has recently spiked back up to Cold War level peaks. The Ukraine War is merely the most bloody and prominent manifestation of this broader development. Israel has presided over the deaths of 3-5% of the Gazan population since October 2022 as part of a blockade and indiscriminate bombing campaign that has opened it up to charges of genocide. The Caucasus region remains a powder keg, with Azerbaijan retaining territorial pretensions against Armenia even after reclaiming and ethnically cleansing Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020. Rwanda is waging hybrid warfare through its M23 proxies to assert control over lithium mines in the Eastern DR Congo. In May 2025, Pakistan and India engaged in a four day air skirmish that came close to tipping over into outright war. Apart from many other hotspots, the past several years have also seem a remarkable normalization of irredentist rhetoric in the First World that was previously the near exclusive preserve of fringe Far Right movements.

Now a mere uptick wouldn’t really signify very much in isolation. The two World Wars were drastically more violent than anything else that century, but even they did not interrupt the millennial downtrend. However, insofar as geopolitical tension doesn’t occur in isolation, but tends to feed off itself, rising World Tension may ultimately prove extremely consequential in the event that it triggers the Chekhov’s Gun of the near-AGI age: a war between the US and China over Taiwan.

There is a large IR literature over the probability of such a war. For instance, Graham Allison in Destined for War (2017) frames the analysis in terms of the Thucydides Trap, pointing out that most historical scenarios in which a rising Power challenged an existing hegemon resulted in war. Though Allison does not give a probability estimate in his book, he has posited likelihoods of 25%-50% elsewhere. Pessimists also point to rapid Chinese military modernization, the construction of specialized equipment such as barges that would mainly be useful for very specific scenarios, and the growing intensity of Chinese aeronaval exercises around Taiwan, which might at some point organically transition into a blockade. However, optimists point out that Xi Jinping tends towards caution in geopolitics (even if he is repressive at home), that he cannot be certain of the PLA’s readiness to quickly conquer Taiwan, and that any such attempt would jeopardize China’s trade relationships with the outside world. Prediction markets are all over the place. Metaculus currently has 13% odds on a US-China war before 2035 whereas Polymarket claims a 12% chance of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan before the end of this year (!).

These considerations would circumscribe the rational bounds for US - China war risks to 2050 - probably above 10%, but below 50%. However, this describes historically “normal” processes, such as the US overtaking Britain in early 20C (which did not lead to war), or Germany attempting to do so (which did). But if we are in the near-AGI age, then these geopolitical dynamics - already intrinsically unstable in and of themselves - are going to have AI race dynamics built on top of them. Meanwhile, there is the quite extraordinary coincidence that the primary bottleneck on world manufacturing of the most advanced processor chips - the chips that power frontier AI models, and which are projected to constitute the main bottleneck on scaling inference compute by 2028 - lie on not just a tectonic, but a geopolitical, fault-line. Finally, as if all that wasn’t enough, even Leopold Aschenbrenner in Situational Awareness has remarked on AGI and Taiwan invasion timelines seeing an “eerie convergence” around 2027.

Mid 2020s to early 2030s timelines for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan make sense for various convergent reasons. First, they correlate to the timelines for PLAN attaining local naval predominance over Taiwan and the Spratlys. Second, China has already wrung out much of the direct technological transfer benefits of a close relationship with the US. It is competitive in a wide range of frontier industries such as smartphones and EVs, arguably outright leads in drones and batteries, and has recently flipped the US on the Nature Index, a metric of high-quality science production. Third, the US developed a bipartisan consensus that China is a serious threat to its technological and economic dominance, whether it was subtly expressed under Biden’s targeting of China’s supply chains for cutting-edge chips or more bluntly under the Trump’s administration overt bid to bifurcate the world economy by the imposition of extreme tariffs on China. Finally, the Chinese economy today is drastically less reliant on export-led growth than it was a decade ago, let alone two. Consequently, Chinese strategists must surely now downgrade the potential benefits of continued integration into the American world order, as opposed to concentrating on carving out of their own sphere of privileged interests.

On a relevant side note, there was nothing inevitable about Taiwan’s emergence as the world’s semiconductor production hub. East Asians have a competitive advantage in manufacturing chips - it privileges a conscientious and meticulous attitude over responsive problem-solving, and they were prepared to work for much cheaper than Americans or Europeans with comparable psychometric qualities - but the Taiwanese otherwise do not appear to have been especially better positioned than Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, or Singapore. Chris Miller in Chip War recounts that when Morris Chang, the founder of TSMC, first took his Texan Instruments partner Mark Shepherd to Taiwan in 1968, the meeting didn’t go well. The Texan raged at how they prepared his steak with soy sauce, and his first meeting with Taiwan’s Economy Minister Li Kwoh-ting ended “acrimoniously” when the latter declared intellectual property was something “imperialists used to bully less-advanced countries.” However, Li soon realized that semiconductor manufacturing would turbocharge Taiwan’s economy, as well as providing the Americans with a reason to maintain their security commitments to the island amidst growing US skepticism over foreign entanglements. (This was in the context of mass protests against the Vietnam War). Consequently, relations were hurriedly patched over, and Texas Instruments opened its first chip fab in Taiwan in 1969. Such were the inauspicious beginnings of Taiwan’s emergence as the world’s premier chip foundry. Improbable on the surface, but perhaps programmed under the Anthropic Shadow.

AGI Timelines in World War III

In the context of a de-globalizing world, China’s leaders may come to see a quick and victorious war over Taiwan as an increasingly attractive prospect even under “normal” geopolitical conditions. First, China’s economic slowdown, lagging wages, and lingering resentment over COVID lockdowns has provoked some degree of discontent. Although polling is notoriously difficult in hard authoritarian regimes, there is some telltale evidence that Xi Jinping’s and the CPC’s approval ratings are closer to 60% than official surveys claiming 90%+. Second, the chances of Taiwan drifting towards China of its own accord has long become untenable. Surveys suggest it underwent ethnogenesis in the 1990s, and the Hong Kong precedent reinforces that any promises the CPC makes on autonomy cannot be trusted. Successfully reincorporating Taiwan would solve an otherwise intractable problem (to the extent that China insists on claiming Taiwan as its inalienable territory) and boost the CPC’s legitimacy.

On top of this, we have the aforementioned dynamics of an AI race. The very existence of such a race is already bearish for AI alignment, because both individual corporations and countries will have an incentive to scrimp on safety research to the extent that it diverts resources from gaining and maintaining their lead. Furthermore, China appears to be losing this race - OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are currently all far ahead of DeepSeek. To the extent that national leaders become redpilled on ASI/ASI as an existential issue, this will incentivize laggards to resort to measures such as aggressive espionage and sabotage to remain in the game3. Leopold Aschenbrenner in Situational Awareness advocates the US embark on a “Manhattan Project” to aggressively race to ASI to ensure the permanent military ascendancy of the democratic world order. Although he suggests that the CPC be given guarantees of political non-interference and a share of the economic and non-military technological boons of ASI in return for quietly acceding to American victory in this Civilization game, I do not think it is a viable offer; even considerations of national interest aside, the promise of political non-interference is fundamentally non-credible. What makes this especially pertinent is that the Trump administration is clearly leopold-pilled and seemingly committed to uniting their “America First” nationalism with his vision of a military-industrial spurt towards ASI supremacy4.

Consequently, AI race dynamics massively elevate the already not inconsiderable “objective” risk of a major US - China war; and if on top of that Anthropic Shadow is indeed in play, then the residents of Taipei and even San Francisco might be well advised to devise bug out plans for catastrophic contingencies that may be far likelier than many credit. Any Chinese invasion of Taiwan will cut off the world’s near exclusive supplier of the most advanced processor chips, with the Taiwanese (or Americans) blowing up TSMC’s chip fabs if the island looks doomed - or China itself, if its military operation ends in failure. The next most advanced foundries are located in South Korea. Nothing that a few “North Korean” ballistic missiles can’t solve if Seoul is unwilling to summarily reorient its exports.

Critics have pointed out that World War II accelerated computer development, and suggest that this might also be true for the third. I think that is unlikely. The leading-edge chip fabs are extremely expensive - in an ironic converse of Moore’s Law, their costs double every four years - and it is questionable whether warring Powers will have the spare industrial capacity, strategic vision, and political wherewithal to bank on ASI moonshots to win the war. (Note that the US probably only made its play on the atomic bomb on account of its GDP exceeding Nazi Germany’s by a factor of three; it banally had many more workers and capital for all kinds of projects. It would have no such luxury in a war with China today, which has a similarly sized economy.) Meanwhile, demand for the products of surviving chip fabs will be eaten up by the gargantuan demand for them from military hardware, which by this point will include hundreds of millions to billion of drones. I do not envisage vast numbers of spares lying around ready for training hypothetical Skynets.

Finally, today’s industrial ecologies are far more complex and globalized than a century ago - and there are few sectors where this is truer than in the semiconductor industry. Here is how Chris Miller’s Chip War describes it:

A typical chip might be designed with blueprints from the Japanese-owned, UK-based company called Arm, by a team of engineers in California and Israel, using design software from the United States. When a design is complete, it’s sent to a facility in Taiwan, which buys ultra-pure silicon wafers and specialized gases from Japan. The design is carved into silicon using some of the world’s most precise machinery, which can etch, deposit, and measure layers of materials a few atoms thick. These tools are produced primarily by five companies, one Dutch, one Japanese, and three Californian, without which advanced chips are basically impossible to make. Then the chip is packaged and tested, often in Southeast Asia, before being sent to China for assembly into a phone or computer.

A Great Power war will unravel the global supply chains that undergird the most complex semiconductor production processes. I suspect it will require years to reconstitute them in more basic forms within the newly “bifurcated” world that will replace today’s globalized world. (Trump’s recent experiments with tariffs were a mild preview of this). I also think analogous considerations will apply to AI research. As Bryan Caplan has pointed out, the world academic/research complex is one sector of the economy where something like “Open Borders” is in play. Great Power wars always result in much reduced labor mobility, and progress will slow down as corporations are no longer able to headhunt globally for the best researchers. Furthermore, whereas military funding dominated advances in computer technology until the 1980s, they are now overwhelmingly driven by technocapital. A big war would be ruinous for the technocapital machine as GDP stalls and stock markets plummet. Even if industrial policy bureaucrats were to make accelerating AGI timelines a core priority - and I am not sure why you would expect very much from the same people who have had trouble surging shells production to meet the demands of the Ukraine war, a technology that was mature by World War I era - I think it is exceedingly unlikely that their efforts would compensate for the impoverishment of the technocapital machine.

Consequently, my intuition is that a conventional US - China war may push out AGI timelines by perhaps five years - and potentially more, if it results in the emergence of political economies more hostile to free markets and technology in general5. However, this is based on the important assumption that it happens before AI starts to recursively accelerate AI research to any substantial extent. At that point, AI will have begun to effectively reproduce its own cognitive labor force, making the war’s deleterious impact on the technocapital machine and elite researchers increasingly moot. None of the leading labs are (probably) there yet, but there can’t be much time left.

When AI becomes autonomously self-improving, there would be two main avenues through which the Anthropic Shadow would still be able to roll back timelines. The obvious one would be a nuclear war between the US and China. Interestingly, China has blown through earlier estimates of its nuclear arsenal, with the Pentagon estimating it had more than 500 warheads by 2023 and was planning to more than double its stockpile to 1,000+ by 2030. (This is leaving aside persistent theories China has quietly developed a US/Russia-tier stockpile years ago). Nuclear war was never a true existential risk, not even at the height of the Cold War, and certainly not today now that gross world megatonnage is just 5% of its 1980s peak. However, a nuclear exchange that wipes out San Francisco, Beijing, and an appreciable percentage of the US and Chinese populations, industry, and data centers would also likely kill AGI in its cradle. I would imagine that AGI timelines would be set back not by a decade or less, as in a conventional war, but by several decades.

The other avenue is a bioterror event that kills some appreciable percentage of the world population that is linked to AI. (Ironically, I don’t think the truth even matters that much - as COVID showed, normies prefer conspiracy theories to reason, hence how one could advance the biolab leak hypothesis in early 2020 and get censored as a right-wing conspiracist by liberals, and then subsequently became hated on by MAGA right-wingers for supporting vaccines and insisting that COVID was a real thing6). Amusingly, we also happen to live in a world where regulatory organs insist on years of testing and paperwork for novel drugs, while extremely dangerous gain-of-function research on lethal pathogens continues in laboratories with comically lax safety standards in both the US and China, as if COVID never even happened. In the event they decide to use AI to evolve super-ebola and it results in a pandemic multiple OOMs worse than COVID, I could see a global cultural taboo arise against AI along the lines of the Butlerian Jihad.

Obviously, I don’t consider these are ideal outcomes. Even aside from the direct death and destruction, the end result isn’t necessarily going to involve a “safer” Biosingularity in which we augment human intelligence and take strategic advantage of the delayed AGI timelines to get alignment done. Such catastrophic events are likely to usher in dark and conspiratorial politics completely uncongenial to any transhumanist visions regardless of its stance on AI. More broadly, there is a possibility that the world’s human capital stock has already peaked. If it was to now suffer a major cull on top of that, this might be enough to close off most all civilizational advancements in principle, as the world devolves into the centuries of dysgenic natalism that I termed the Age of Malthusian Industrialism. Furthermore, I suspect these will be wasted centuries; I don’t think there was anybody working on AI alignment in the Idiocracy universe.

I suppose that in the event this is how the near-AGI age ends, the survivors may console themselves with the idea that this happened for a reason, and that under the logic of Anthropic Shadow, it could not have happened in any other way.

Minefield or Artillery Barrage?

There are important caveats to Anthropic Shadow theory. For a start, it could just be false. Arguably, much of the philosophical debates over AI risk and other existential risks come down to the validity of the SSSA. But those discussions are themselves rather speculative without a scientific and rigorous understanding of consciousness. For instance, would agents in ancestor-simulations playing out in silico experience qualia? However, if the SSSA is invalid, then we could just build AGI and banally die soon afterwards, as the doomers expect. Alternately, AGI could be inherently self-aligning, rapidly solving all the coordination problems that will arise from an intelligence explosion. Or perhaps the skeptics are right and we are nowhere near AGI, and won’t be for many decades, if ever. The former dissolves the Anthropic Shadow, while the latter makes it moot.

Finally, there is also the possibility that while a fast AGI takeoff is dangerous, waiting is even more so. Is it more like crossing a minefield, where you have to tread slowly and cautiously, meticulously marking your path? Or is it like an artillery barrage, where the only choice is to throw a Hail Mary and charge the enemy trenches? The LessWrong consensus is the former - but it has its critics. Some right-wing commenters such as Robin Hanson, Michael Woodley, and Roko Mijic argue that declining fertility, dysgenics, and other maladies of modern civilization only offer us a singular and limited window for rolling the dice on a posthuman future before collapse7. From a more immediate perspective, the current world, and even the world of 2030 if AGI happens in 2027, are vastly less automated than the world of 2050 will be even if AI stalls here and now. A decade or two down the line, AIs will find it much easier to build the autonomous industrial base needed to sustain the physical infrastructure undergirding their own existence several decades down the line versus the world today, in which humans have a near monopoly on opposable digits.

Regardless, in the event that most post-AGI worlds that retain conscious observers are derived from worlds that courageously winged it through the minefield, then obviously the Anthropic Shadow is unlikely to play out in the form of geopolitical or bioterror catastrophes that roll back timelines.

Our Panglossian World

However, if one allows that the Anthropic Shadow is real, then life becomes very disconcerting.

On some level, one has to accept that one already lives in a fantasy world.

A world in which Prophecy is real.

In the Wheel of Time world, Prophecy is not just a deity’s edict, but baked into the very fabric of its metaphysics. There, time is circular, and the legends and myths of previous Ages eternally return, if in differing variations. For the Wheel to continue turning, the primary antagonist - the Dark One - must never win. Consequently, whenever it seems that his victory is at hand, the Wheel spins our increasingly improbable contingencies to foil him and preserve its own existence. It primarily does this through a class of individuals called ta’veren:

A ta’veren is a central focal point for a Web of Destiny in the Pattern. These people are spun out and used by the Wheel to correct itself when the weave begins to drift from the intended Pattern. Since the purpose of ta’veren is to influence life threads to create change, the destinies of ta’veren themselves are more strictly controlled by the Wheel of Time itself than those of an average person. These Webs of Destiny (or ta’maral’ailen in the Old Tongue) are almost always arduous for those that live through that Age but are an unfortunate necessity for the Wheel. The more change required, the more ta’veren that are born.

I submit that in so far as the Anthropic Shadow increasingly selects for worlds that make it, no matter how improbable, it will recreate similar effects in its inexorable drive to secure the existence of future conscious observers. These effects will become bigger and more noticeable as approach the Singularity. Furthermore, just from Pareto principle logic, we can expect this to be effected through a limited subset of ta’veren. Their likely identities, I leave as an exercise to the reader.

But what about the rest of us who are merely swept up in the ta’maral’ailen?

One piece of advice I can venture is to adopt a stoic stance. One of the most ancient tropes related to Prophecy is that it cannot be escaped. From Macbeth to the Witch-King of Angmar, overly active efforts to avert doom just serve to accelerate it. Warning about it, like Cassandra, makes no difference either. If something is programmed to happen, then it will happen, whether you keep it to yourself or shout about it from the rooftops.

But stoicism need not be accompanied by resignation or pessimism. It is a priori extremely likely that the pre-Singularity era will see incredible social disruptions and geopolitical flux, even aside from Anthropic Shadow speculations. You would be wise to make contingency plans for extreme but not implausible events, such as laggard Great Powers making risky late game bids to derail their competitors (much as, say, you often see a nuclear war begin a turn or three before a Space Race Victory in Civilization). Even just a conventional Great Power war will be very bad for your portfolio, nor will staying in the US for it be safe or fun, at least as a civilian normie. An extended sojourn to Latin America might look quite attractive. However, there’s no reason to go overboard on paranoia. No bunker is going to save you from misaligned ASI, but happily, Anthropic Shadow suggests that’s the part we avoid!8

Because bizarre as it seems, given the litany of horrors it might unleash, the Anthropic Shadow is ultimately an immensely hopeful and optimistic vision. I would draw a comparison to Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide, a “delusionally” optimistic philosopher loosely modeled on Wilhelm Leibniz and other Enlightenment rationalists. Pangloss dismisses his own syphilis as irrelevant next to the benefits of global trade with the Americas that brought the rest of humanity chocolate, and rationalizes every other misfortune including enslavement, mutilation, and a failed hanging subsequently inflicted on him by the tyrannical political and religious authorities of his day on the basis that they were “inevitable” or part of the “cosmic order.” But absurd as this caricature was, the funniest thing is that history has vindicated Pangloss in the long-run. Though he did himself not live to see it, the world today is closer to Pangloss’ utopia than the dystopia portrayed by his creator.

Though it does not preclude individual dooms, the Anthropic Shadow implies we do ultimately live in a Panglossian timeline in which “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

As Ingemar Patrick Linden recently pointed out, death places #51 on the list of what Americans fear most out of 90 other things. Our programmed doom evokes less terror than heights, sharks, and government snooping. In fairness, there are good reasons for us to have evolved this “death complacency”. Pursuing immortality was a fool’s errand for 90% of the ~100 billion humans who have ever lived, so psychological copes to rationalize death were adaptive. Otherwise, you’d waste your time at best, or at worst, croak from some quack therapy, such as China’s first emperor Qin Shi Huang, who reportedly died from mercury poisoning. However, such fatalism seems much less rational in the current era, now that we carve runes on sand to make it think and technology performs feats our ancestors would have considered magical on a daily basis.

Some people naturally “grok” this logic - early on in their online lives, they come across a life extension activist like Aubrey de Grey, or Mikhail Batin (in Russia), or a broader transhumanist philosopher like Ray Kurzweil (this describes me) - and don’t really need any further arguments. I suspect that most people who were ever going to be receptive to those arguments have already encountered them in some form or other, and don’t need to be convinced. However, though they might passively support radical life extension - “sure, wouldn’t it be cool to live to read every book and visit every city!” - getting them to devote a substantial percentage of their time, money, or energy proselytizing the cause or working on the science directly is another matter. Tens of millions have come across Bostrom’s Fable of the Dragon Tyrant. But parties that make radical life extension a central plank of their platform, such as the US Transhumanist Party or Germany’s Party for Rejuvenation Research, garner rounding error levels of electoral support. The field commands perhaps 2,000 serious researchers around the world and gets $5 billion in annual funding. It’s near irrelevant even so far as biotech goes, let alone the R&D sector as a whole.

To accelerate life extension I think what we need is a cult fraternal society and in this post I will suggest two ways we can incubate one.

The Snake Cult

Aligned communities that share major goals or values usually have some signals and symbols that members use to identify each other. These organizations can be ideological, religious, ethnic, linguistic, or various combinations thereof. Esperantists were a linguistic society on the surface, but probably played a greater role as humanists and internationalists. Mormonism developed a set of arcane (and slightly titillating) initiation rituals on top of the idiosyncratic theology. Freemasonry was primarily a mutual aid society, politically “normie” - patriotic, religious, supportive of the British Empire - but with “secret” handshakes and passwords, and symbols such as the Square and Compasses or the All-Seeing Eye. All three of them thrived at their peak, and Mormonism is still going strong.

Right now, my impression is that to the extent that the longevity community has an “aesthetic”, it is based on clean food and clean living - “healthy breakfasts” based on vegan or vegetarian cuisine, and cold plunges and sauna; while “vices” such as alcohol and fast food are frowned upon. Although this doubtless reflects this community’s (unsurprisingly) well above average interest in health and fitness, I don’t think it is a sufficiently distinct aesthetic to be very inspirational by itself, and in its worst expressions, actually risks undermining some of the core philosophical tenets of life extension. The dietary woo du jour - Blueprint Protocol today, paleo and “bulletproof coffee” back in the early 2010s - isn’t going to bring us immortality (perhaps 2-3 more years at best), nor is it going to channel more human and financial capital into the science. In the worst case scenario, it may even repel some talent, should public perceptions of the community become excessively colored by its more “wooish” elements.

This is obviously not to say I am against “wellness” per se. But we have to be clear that it though there is some overlap - just as there is with the worlds of crypto, or rationalism - these are still two quite distinct worldviews. What I propose is a more concrete, physically visible identifier for people who subscribe to radical life extension in the sense of “making death optional.” Radical life extension isn’t a politically radical or super-controversial proposal, so there doesn’t seem to be much point in secret signs and handshakes. However, I think physical objects such as lapel pins, rings, or other items of jewelry or body art that display some agreed upon community symbol could play a positive role in reinforcing community identity and fostering moments of serendipity in random cafes and airport lounges across the world.

I will be happy to see vitalists brainstorm this, though personally I already have a suggestion: The Ouroboros.

1. The snake as a skin-shedding organism represents the concept of change while preserving its essence. Some of the earliest cults were snake cults. In the Biblical mythos, the snake imparted the gift of knowledge to Eve, who then passed it on to Adam. There is an obscure but fascinating theory that this was actually a metaphor for the appearance of self-reflective consciousness, which may have occurred in women before men1. Interestingly, cobra venom has a compound similar to psilocybe, the psychedelic compound in mushrooms. One natural anti-venom is rutin. Where is it found? Apples! (This psychedelic envenomation was accompanied by ritual slaying of the snake, which is possibly where the Dragon-slaying myths originated).

2. The Rod of Asclepius - a serpent entwined around a staff - represents medicine and healthcare. In this interpretation, the ouroboros - a snake that entwines back onto itself - may be taken to represent a form of medicine that has become self-sustaining and self-renewing; the rod, a harsh and angular object that promises pain like needles and scalpels, has become redundant.

3. The snake eating its own tail is an ancient symbol of Eternal Life in alchemy, Gnosticism, and even SFF literature.

You have all these new tech startups naming themselves after various entities in Tolkien’s legendarium. But let’s read another book. In Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, the Aes Sedai - an all-female magical society - wear a ring in the form of a Great Serpent. “Aes Sedai” means “Servant of All” in the Old Tongue, which actually seems rather appropriate for life extension proselytizers2. The Aes Sedai were themselves likely somewhat inspired by the Bene Gesserit of Frank Herbert’s Dune. Speculatively, their name might be a far future linguistic mutation of Latin that roughly means “bearer of good [works]” - also quite apt. The Reverend Mothers of the Bene Gesserit gain their clairvoyant powers by ingesting the spice melange, a toxic byproduct of drowned sandworms. The sandworms themselves represent the “spice” of life and are themselves immortal.

4. From more practical considerations, the ouroboros is distinctive and its circular form makes it highly functional. In particular, it can be elegantly integrated with wearables. (Perhaps the Oura Ring can do a special edition for vitalists?). Another potential canvass is the body itself in the form of tattoos or other body art. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but quite popular with “Grinders” and the artistic countercultures that revolve around core transhumanism.

Again, it’s important to keep in mind the logic behind this strategy. There are many people who somewhat support life extension (e.g. 38% in a 2013 PEW poll). It’s not really the marginal or super-controversial position that some vitalists believe it to be3. But it’s also not something that’s at the top of most people’s minds due to death complacency. It does tend to become more of a concern when you get Stage 4 cancer, but by then it’s too late to do much, and you have other priorities such as medical treatment and writing wills anyway. Only a very small percentage of the world’s population is ready to make substantial let alone drastic changes to their lives to accelerate radical life extension timelines.

Having visible symbols and identifiers out there will imprint itself on social perceptions and perhaps move the fear of death from #51 on people’s list of concerns to, say, #21; certainly not that cardinal a change in absolute terms, but that’s still thousands more researchers and activists entering this sector on the margins. Since the sector is still very small, that would be a huge impact. By easing member identification, it will also increase the numbers of chance meetings with productive outcomes between vitalists (serendipity). Even amongst the hardcore - say, researchers, activists, and founders who directly work in this sector, or regulars at conferences such as Vitalist Bay or RAADFest - there are wildly differing levels of commitment. So even there, more interactions in different settings at more consistent intervals means more opportunities for these people to find a niche in this sector. Perhaps a new Vitalist podcast needs a community manager, or a rejuvenation startup is on the lookout for an AI specialist, or Jellyfish DAO wants to fund a fantasy movie in which the immortality-seekers are the good guys for a change. The greater the incidence of such horizontal connections within any given network - be it a corporation, a country, a cult, or a clandestine society - the more efficient it is at generating results and making an impact on the world.

If this is something that you believe then why not wear it proudly on your sleeves?

Biosingularity Museum

One other thing successful cults (therefore are not considered to be cults) do is build hubs for interfacing with the general public in ways that maximize their status and prestige. These are often museums. The Grand Lodge of Freemasonry in London hosts the Museum of Freemasonry. It is free to visit, and paints a very attractive image of the society, emphasizing its patriotism and early ethnic and religious tolerance. This is also done by high agency ethnic and religious groups. The Ismailis, a progressive Muslim sect, maintain very nice cultural centers around the world that organize open days to explain their traditions. Jewish organizations have funded lavish museums of Jewish culture and history in many of the world’s major cities from Berlin to Washington D.C. At the highest level, the world’s major countries run language learning centers and cultural embassies such as the Confucius Institute (China), the Goethe Institute (Germany), or the British Council (UK) in order to promote their “soft power.”

The world obviously has no shortage of technical museums documenting science and engineering. But awe-inspiring as many of them are, they tend to be monuments to past glories - not the inspiring and tastefully deranged visions of the future that we really need. There are, to be sure, some that bill themselves as “futurist” museums. One example that comes to mind is the Futurium Museum in Berlin. Sadly, its name is a lie, since its primary role is to pay homage to the German state’s degrowth and bioconservative ideology than anything else. The exhibit on human genetic enhancement gives pride of place to a hectoring bioethicist who goes off against He Jiankui for working outside institutions. That says it all.

Now in fairness there are a number of house-museums about transhumanist individuals. In central Russia, with which I am familiar, there is the Library Museum of Nikolay Fyodorov in Moscow, which doubles as a small research center, and the museum-apartment of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in Borovsk. In the Bay Area, Zoltan Istvan organized the Immortality Bus tour as part of his 2016 Presidential campaign in an interesting fusion of political activism and performance art. There are meetup groups and even somewhat aligned semi-permanent social hubs - Lighthaven in Berkeley, which is run by the same people who maintain LessWrong, comes to mind. And there are of course many temporary art exhibitions, pop-up villages, and conferences on transhumanist themes.

However, I am unaware of any specifically transhumanist museums. At any rate, not in the SF Bay Area. Which is perhaps surprising, since it’s undoubtedly the global epicenter of this ideology. Nor is it exactly a poor community; there are no end of Silicon Valley multi-millionaires in this demographic.

So here’s the pitch: A museum in the SF Bay Area, preliminary name: The Biosingularity Museum, featuring:

1. Permanent collection about the history of transhumanism from Russian cosmism through 1920s Futurism, Extropianism, the appearance of modern transhumanism as we know it from the 1980s, and contemporary branches such as bio/acc and Vitalism. We want it to be bio-focused for several reasons. First, space technology is already very much documented and “explored”; you don’t have to convince normies that space is cool. Likewise, there are many major computer museums from Bletchley Park to Mountain View. Not many low-hanging fruit there. AI in particular is hot and might well create utopia or kill us all within the next decade. Which if anything is another reason to promote a bio-centric agenda, insofar as it nudges probabilities, however marginal, towards outcomes that are good for the biosphere.

Consequently, I envisage this museum having a special focus on human enhancement and radical life extension. Artifacts might include original editions of works by Nikolay Fyodorov, J.B.S. Haldane, and Robert C.W. Ettinger; original Alcor cryopods and Neuralink prototype models; brochures from historically notable transhumanist events and conferences, with a special focus on the SF Bay Area; and interactive exhibits from existing companies developing products in the space (complete with the usual partnerships and discount codes). Perhaps Long Now might donate one of their clocks, and I gather Zoltan Istvan is still looking to find a permanent home for his coffin-shaped Immortality Bus. The collections will be interactive where feasible, and tastefully integrated with NFTs.

3. Resources permitting, it may be worth associating the museum with a thematic aesthetic style. Perhaps Swiss artist H.R. Giger’s intriguing if disturbing “biomechanical” visions made famous by the Aliens franchise. (This also inspired the indie video game Scorn). Not 100% sure if this is a good idea or not - it could either be too edgy (xenomorphs aren’t exactly utopia-coded), or alternatively might come off as gaudy if not done exactly right. A safer bet might be the Cyber-Baroque/Neo-Renaissance interior decor of the Deus Ex video games. Or it could play it really safe and go with standard vines-on-concrete biopunk.

4. The best museums aren’t depositories gathering dust. They double as social hubs, spaces for art exhibitions and guest lectures, and research units in their own right. The Biosingularity Museum will have a bookshop selling physical books from The Singularity is Near to The Network State. It may also be worthwhile to double it as a library for members. Bookshops these days make most of their money from coffee shops and public events, so it will be important to include them as well. It can incorporate the latest “wellness” trends/fads - nutty pudding today, perhaps “bulletproof coffee” for the oldtimers - but the social core should be the “coffee salon” that has served as the social fulcrum for eccentric and future-oriented communities since 17C.

5. Finally, though perhaps overly ambitious, the most elite museums double as original research units in their own right. In my view one such “perfect” museum is the lavishly funded Jewish Museum in Moscow. It starts off with an inspirational 4D film relaying the Jewish story from the Covenant to the Exodus. It is a simple narrative, easily accessible to the normiest of 00 IQ normies, but at the same time also plays a central role in setting the thematic and ideological tone for the rest of the exhibit. (I think the “normie” narrative for transhumanism might look something like Sarif’s transhumanist ending in Deus Ex: Human Revolution). The permanent exhibit contains the standard museum fare - in this case, artifacts related to Jewish history and culture in Russia - targeted at the 115 IQ college-educated demographic that frequents such museums. The third and final part is a research center centered around the Schneerson Library for the most committed scholars who represent the 130 IQ element. They uncover new data about the Jewish experience, contextualize it within existing narratives of Jewish history, and feed their work back into the museum’s other constituent parts to further optimize and refine them. Connecting these elements is a cafe, which serves as the social hub, and an exhibition and lecture space called the Center of Tolerance (which propounds a humanistic ideology). Aesthetically, as with many Jewish museums, it hews to a brutalist style that I take to be reflective of the relatively traumatic nature of the Jewish story.

This may serve as a rough template for how the Biosingularity Museum might be set up and organized.

As regards the integrated research unit… Well, this is the main reason I went on this whole museum tangent in the first place.

This summer will see the inauguration of Frontier Tower in the heart of San Francisco. This is a 16 storey skyscraper whose various floors will host office spaces devoted to biotech, crypto/Web3, AI, neuroscience, robotics, and other “frontier” tech. Other floors will host general community spaces, a gym, and a “human flourishing” center. There is even a basement that can host raves. As in a classical university, or a “pop-up village” like Zuzalu or Edge Esmeralda, the main idea is that all of these spaces should cross-pollinate each other, e.g. use AI to map brain connectomes, or set up crypto-based DeSci/Bio DAOs. The Tower’s social fulcrum will be the coffee lounge on the 16th floor. It’s like something from a cyberpunk video game and I am incredibly excited to see what they make of it.

Frontier Tower will also have a public-facing space. What can they do with it? Having a space for public events, conferences, and guest lectures goes without speaking. Another part of the space can offer wellness services. Then again, this is San Francisco. The richest major urban cluster in the world. It’s not like it’s hard to find “ “healthy breakfasts” or anything from rock climbing gyms to cryo spas here. But a museum that’s integrated into a cross-disciplinary frontier research hub - now that might be something that’s quite unique. Just throwing that out there.

India will win against Pakistan almost by default whether it’s a short, limited war (like all the four previous ones) or a long, total war. At this point, there’s just no comparison on any relevant industrial metric. India has a 6x population advantage (1.45B to 250M), GDP advantage ($4T v. $350B), or manufacturing output ($450B v. $45B). These are Russia v. Ukraine ratios c.2022 and that war Russia would have won there and then if not for Western aid regardless of how incompetent Putin and his generals were.

India now spends 10x more on its military than Pakistan - $84B to $8B in 2024 according to SIPRI - up from the 5x differential when its four previous short wars happened. For that matter, as we know, India won all of them even then, despite Pakistan having qualitative superiority in 1965. Nowadays India has better kit, though Pakistan has acquired 20 J-10s as well as HQ-9 and HQ-16 air defense systems from China.

Pakistan used to be richer than India. However, Pakistan is mired in semi-feudalism and patriarchy, its military controls large sectors of the economy, and it insists on pursuing Great Power pretensions that its economy cannot cash. India overtook it in the 2000s and never looked back. Even Bangladesh, an unassuming country that quietly focuses on light manufacturing, overtook Pakistan about a decade ago. So it has slipped in relative terms despite the higher population growth borne of its own persisting backwardness.

So there’s little point in commenting further if not for one big outside factor: The possibility of Chinese intervention. India’s MIC crushes Pakistan’s one on one, but 10% of China’s MIC working for Pakistan evens out the disbalance. China has a 5x bigger GDP than India, a 10x bigger manufacturing sector, and spends 4x as much on the military. The chart above shows how big the shifts in the balance of power are when just 5% of China’s GDP, manufacturing, military spending, and Nature Index score (proxy for science prowess) are added to the Pakistani side. If China made its industry preferentially available to Pakistan, that would even out the disbalance and conceivably degrade such a war into a long one of attrition.

This would be functionally similar to NATO devoting ~0.2% of its GDP to Ukraine and putting American space-based ISR capabilities at its disposal. This contribution, modest in absolute terms relative to what was spent on COVID stimulus and green energy, was sufficient to keep Ukraine in the game. China is at the same scale in orders of magnitude. Similar GDP to the US ($20T to $30T; already higher in PPP terms); 2x the manufacturing output; similar number of ISR satellites (both ~250) or 20-30x higher than both Russia’s and India’s ~dozen. Even more relevantly, China dominates the civilian drone market; both Ukraine’s and Russia’s drone industries are largely downstream of it. About 70% of Russian casualties in Ukraine now accrue to drones and this upwards trend will never stop. Drones also massively privilege the defense. Consequently, in a prolonged war in which China supports Pakistan, India’s armored and air superiority will become progressively less relevant.

Manpower will not be a limiting factor for either country for the indefinite future. It hasn’t been even in aged and post-nationalist Eastern Europe - Ukraine mans its armies with press gangs, and Russia with massive bribery. But here you have much younger societies with 10x the population and much higher levels of nationalism (nationalism peaking at the lower middle-income levels after universal schooling does its job but before higher wealth makes society smart/cynical and individualistic). In a prolonged war, Pakistan will get an inflow of jihadists from Afghanistan and the wider Muslim world. They won’t be of much use, but the main job of a soldier is to be drone fodder anyway, so that’s not all that relevant. Conversely, what India will enjoy in a longer war are the services of its moneyed and technically talented diaspora. They are strongly nationalistic, and I would expect them to play a central role in US tech transfers to what will in 2-3 years become the world’s second largest drone industry after China. This will prevent Pakistan from developing an overawning technological lead in drones through Chinese imports.

One disadvantage Pakistan has relative to Ukraine is that it is a relatively narrow strip and this makes it vulnerable to Indian air strikes and multi-pronged offensives. This is true with respect to stand off strikes, though this would mainly be relevant until prewar missile stocks are expended and before both sides learn to disperse. The Ukraine War suggests that will take just a few months. India’s air superiority wouldn’t be game-breaking in the way it would have been in the past; as we see in Ukraine, even last generation air defenses that are sufficiently thick outcompete air power these days, with the Russian Air Force relegated to dropping FABs on Ukrainian positions from within their own territory; and on the first days, we see Indian Rafales being shut down within their own territory, having been detected by Pakistani AWACS deep behind their border. The FABs are still ruinous for Ukraine, because it doesn’t have much manpower; but that notion would be laughable for Pakistan.

As regards land offensives, Pakistani vulnerability is something of an optical illusion. The southernmost border is sealed by saltwater marshes called the Rann of Kutch, which are near totally impenetrable to vehicles. The middle portion is defined by the Thar Desert, which doesn’t offer cover and is also logistically challenging to cross. Kashmir itself is mountainous and heavily fortified on both sides, and offensive actions in this environment are famously near unfeasible. So the epicenter of serious fighting, as in most of the previous wars, will be the narrow 250 km plain between the desert and the Himalayan foothills with their many population centers and dense road and rail networks. Already 200,000 Indian soldiers face off against 150,000 Pakistani ones there. I would expect this area to become the locus of the fighting, with India advancing on account of its manpower superiority, but at a snail’s pace and with heavy casualties as with Russia’s crawl through the western Donbass.

Will China support Pakistan? That’s obviously the million dollar question and one I don’t care to bet on. Supporting Pakistan would make sense. On the other hand, for all the talk about “wolf warrior” diplomacy, China’s actual conduct has often been surprisingly passive. It is internally repressive, but quite cautious and some (such as Chinese nationalists) might even say cowardly on the international arena. Most notably, it has aided Russia much less than I expected it to, instead preferring to focus on exploiting Russia’s lack of options to lock in favorable deals on natural resources. (This seems to be a pattern; African geopolitics is far more obscure, but China even failed to speak out in defense of Congo, with which it had mineral deals, against Rwandan aggression; the result may have been that the US has taken over as Congo’s main sponsor while France champions Rwanda). No Chinese support - Pakistan loses. But if China does support Pakistan with munitions, drones, and ISR, then I don’t see why this couldn’t become a long attritional conflict. Logistics will be harder than in Ukraine. China wouldn’t be able to supply Pakistan by sea, since the Indian Navy is much stronger and will blockade Pakistan; and even overland transport through the Karakoram highway will be difficult because of its extreme isolation, tortuous winding routes through the mountains, and vulnerability to blockages. However, China does have dozens of Y-20 military cargo planes it can fly directly to Pakistan, or (safer) staging areas in Afghanistan. China’s relations with the Taliban are as warm as they possibly can be between Islamic fundamentalists and atheists who otherwise send them to reeducation camps. And though the Taliban currently have frosty relations with Pakistan due to ongoing border disputes, I can’t see that continuing in the event of a “holy war” against India. I don’t think the Taliban will join the war directly, but they will likely allow China to set up logistics hubs and for mujahideen of whom there will be many tens of thousands to leave for the front.

To be sure India will also likely get support from the US, and to a lesser extent from the EU (it is more focused on Russia), as well as from Israel (technologically relevant). Although JD Vance has said that war between India and Pakistan is “none of our business”, this is unlikely to last in the event of Chinese intervention. Pakistan is extremely unpopular - it is an unprestigious country even within the Muslim world - so it can’t expect much organic sympathy. Russia will maintain studied neutrality; it is preoccupied with its own problems, and although friendly with India - reflecting ties that go back to Soviet days - it will not want step on China’s toes. Iran has good relations with India and will remain neutral; so will Bangladesh, which fought an independence war against Pakistan. However, by and large, it is only the US response that is relevant; and regardless of its precise extent, it will not cardinally change the big picture of a war defined by the struggle of Indian manpower and matériel against Pakistani manpower and Chinese matériel.

How do nukes factor into this? A 2007 study projected 12 million fatalities in India and 7 million in Pakistan - or 1% and 3% of their populations, respectively - in a countervalue exchange of 50 15-kt nuclear weapons. This is about the most catastrophic outcome. Though both sides have ~150 nukes in total, India needs to keep some in reserve to deter China, while many of Pakistan’s are tactical nukes intended to blunt Indian armored breakthroughs (i.e., have become a much less relevant consideration in the drone age). The idea of “nuclear winter” is more of an environmentalist myth and post-apocalyptic trope than anything scientifically concrete, and certainly wouldn’t apply here. I don’t expect either India, nor even Pakistan - again, contingent on Chinese support - to collapse on account of this. However, what I would expect to happen if nukes are used in anger is for the war to become truly total. In particular, I wouldn’t expect Pakistan to survive as a state in the event of its defeat. As I noted, Indians are very nationalist to an extent that liberal Western commenters are constitutionally incapable of comprehending. If things get that far, I expect currently minority (but not marginal) rhetoric about reconversion and expulsions to become practical policy.

Here’s some of the things I talk about:

• My upcoming longread on life in the near-AGI age. I have stated since early 2023 that my timelines are short and chance of some prolonged asymptote has since collapsed.

• Some observations on coming back to San Francisco (last here in 2016).

• How Trumpism: Can’t Get Fooled Again has been vindicated (both Hanania and Cofnas throwing in the towel), including some comments on how this has collapsed rightoid prospects abroad (e.g. Canada, Germany). Although I note that politics/culture war interests me very little these days that is where you get the clicks so I’ll write a longread about that as well this month.

• I am fascinated by Rwanda vs. Congo.

• FWIW I remain bullish on crypto. But I did not foresee that Trump would choose to wreck the world economy with tariffs. In this environment making long-term forecasts is a fool’s errand. He might order an SMO into Ottawa tomorrow for all we know.

Additionally, there’s some other administrative changes to this blog going forward.

I decided to start making the chapters of my upcoming book Nooceleration arguing the case for human intelligence enhancement progressively available here (excerpts for free subscribers; the full thing for paying ones). I am unhappy with the progress I have been making, so this doubles as an incentive for me to write regular updates as opposed to whenever I like it. The perfect being the enemy of the good applies is an even greater truism in the near-AGI age.

I continue taking AMAs with questions from paying subscribers being privileged.

I also decided to roll up Cryptograd. Running a crypto/network states-specific newsletter also feels like too much of a chore. I will obviously still comment on the decentralization movement and network states and the like, but I will do so within the context of the Open Threads.

The longread on RationalWiki. Discuss it, ignore it, whatever. I am glad to be finally done with it and don’t intend to comment further.

There is a backup copy of this article at akarlin.com/ods/ along with Supplementary Material (password: Crusader14).

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. First Encounters: “A Demented and Unusually Dedicated Stalker”

3. Citogenesis: How to Become a “Poster Boy” for Richard Spencer

   • SM: Canceled by RT

4. Ghosts of the Past Don’t Rest

   • SM: Nazi Dino Lives Matter

   1. ODS 14/88 and …

Read more

Quick update: I will be moving returning to the San Francisco Bay Area for at least April-July 2025, perhaps longer.

Vitalist Bay

I am looking forward to Vitalist Bay, the biggest life extension and bio/acc event in the world to date. It will be in Berkeley and will run from Apr 4-May 29.

The first conference is Unlimited Health (Apr 5-7). If you are a paying subscriber, plan to be in the SF Bay Area, and would likely to see some of the talks - names include Irina Conboy (UCB Bioengineering), Parmita Mishra (Precigenetics), Kian Sadeghi (CEO of Nucleus) - I will be happy to give away 2 guest codes.

Relevant note: See Aging.FYI, which I helped write along with some other people, and wrote a separate guide to life extension at my website.

AMAs

Introducing a new feature: Ask Me Anything (AMAs).

Post your questions in the comments and I will come back to you with an answer in a couple weeks’ time. Paying subscribers are guaranteed an answer.

This month I got the opportunity to tick off Spain. I never seriously studied it - it had a brief moment of glory pumped by South American gold, but then fell off hard, so I never saw it as super important - nor does touristing for a few days give one any special insight into a country, so treat this as the modest collection of photos and off-hand observations that it is.

(1) The two places I visited were Granada (business, then the Alhambra) and Málaga (just tourism). This region of Andalusia is extremely scenic, combining Moorish and Christian architecture in a lush Mediterranean setting. However, it is also the poorest and lowest human capital region of Spain alongside Extremadura. Spain is known as degrowth central alongside Germany and the UK, and Andalusia in particular is a pronouncedly leftist region (though from what I understand leftism in Spain has more to do with regionalist resentments against Castilian dominance than overtly ideological stuff, bringing together rich atheist Catalans and rich liberal Basques with poor leftist-conservative Andalusians). I didn’t see extensive signs of politicization - not that I was looking for it - though I was amused to see a prominent poster in Granada agitating contra el turismo masivo. Not sure what their game plan is in the event they get their wish…

The flag test: Couple of rainbow flags, couple of Palestinian flags, no Israel or Ukraine flags (despite hosting many Ukrainian immigrants).

(2) Southern Spain is cheap - I’d say pretty much East European tier. (Just looked it up on Numbeo’s Cost of Living index: Málaga = Warsaw (and Moscow), so accurate). Train from Málaga to Granada is 24 Euros. Restaurants are cheap if you avoid the obvious tourist traps. I found one place (100 Montaditos at the Málaga train station) where a jamon and cheese sandwich was 2 Euros and a pint of beer was 1.5 Euros. That kind of price for beer I found impressive when I encountered it in Portugal in 2018 - to see it today in a First World country after seven years of inflation was astounding. Another place I paid 22 Euros for a 300 g entrecote steak.

Taxis and Ubers are the main things that are more expensive than in Eastern Europe. But rare exceptions like these aside, your cash goes a surprisingly long way here - far more so than I would have expected of a basically decent, walkable, and aesthetic locale with a prime Mediterranean climate. In retrospect, I’m guessing Andalusia’s peak may have been in the era before Brexit and the 2014 oil price collapse and the Ukraine War that rolled back globalization within Europe, back when British pensioners and upper-middle class Russians would buy up housing on the Spanish Mediterranean coast.

(3) There’s not much violent crime - not unless you’re a Russian traitor, I suppose - but petty crime is a well-known problem. The 16C villa our group initially stayed in was tended to by a Ukrainian groundskeeper. He explicitly warned us to close the gate at night because a car had been stolen from its premises a few years earlier.

Pickpocketing is said to be rife. I saw petty scammers collecting an “entrance fee” to a church that had no entry fee, and was accosted by Gypsy rosemary sellers and various hustlers offering to take a photo. Such low level hustles can be annoying, though obviously fall far short of the far more impressive grifterdom you see in Arab souks.

There’s certainly more litter on the streets and parks than in Northern Europe, if less so than in the Balkans, and much less so than in say Morocco. Pretty much analogous with Portugal’s Algarve (though I think there’s a bit less graffiti). All of this stuff including cleanliness and mundane grift is described by a gradient that goes from north and west to south and east with adjustments for local immigrant populations.

The other thing to bear in mind is that Spain is known for being a country that is very friendly to squatters. I assume that this - together with the lower level of function, modest local incomes, petty crime, and the fact that (I assume) most of the ambitious locals leave Andalusia for Madrid, Barcelona, or abroad - must explain the low local prices.

(4) Infrastructure is well developed. The roads are good, the trains are fast, the airport is sleek and glassy. Public transport in the cities seems comprehensive (that said you’re not going to have a good time long-term without a car). I’m assuming this is mostly thanks to EU gibs. That said, people overestimate the importance of infrastructure. One thing I noticed from my travels the past few years is that infrastructure is a solved problem in all but the most benighted places these days, even Morocco has a nice and functional railway system. The marginal benefits of going from good infrastructure to excellent infrastructure are meager and will not make you rich. For that you need to have, retain, or attract Elite Human Capital.

(5) The museums are open late by North European standards - until 7 pm, 8 pm, sometimes even 9 pm. The restaurants are typically open until 11 pm - 2 am. As a late sleeper and late riser, I appreciate this.

(6) Some random intersections between Spain and Eastern Europe (this is of course a well-established genre since at least 19C):

• Murals of girls on buildings is one of the most amusing intersections between Slavic and Hispanic culture.

• Ensalada rusa (unlike the Russian olivier - though the Spanish include a lot of seafood).

• I saw a few Black human billboards outside pubs/restaurants LMAO. I had previously assumed it was just a quaint and somewhat boorish East European (or Russian) thing but it seems the Andalusians are still at something that would shock mainstream US Republicans. It goes to show that leftist/rightist binaries are often very fluid and contingent things.

• Lazy bureaucrats (offices close at 2 pm) and extensive bureaucracy (e.g. need passports to enter some museums).

(7) Two days is enough to more or less comprehensively see Málaga (one for the Alcazaba; the other for the museums) and Granada (one for the Alhambra; one for the museums) individually. I would have loved to stay longer and for the sake of completionism also tick off Seville, Córdoba, Cádiz, and Gibraltar, but that was not an option this time round so will have to wait for some other time.

Granada

Granada was the capital of the Emirate of Granada from 1250, often paying tribute as a vassal state to the Castille until Ferdinand II and Isabella I finally put it out of its misery in 1492.

It was the most Islamicized part of the Iberian peninsula. Moorish architecture with its riot of arches and arabesques visually dominates the city, albeit leavened with classical Christian Mediterranean motifs such as niches housing statuettes of saints and azulejo street signs.

Some mosques were christianized through conversion to churches, such as the Iglesia Parroquial de Nuestro Salvador. This makes for a curious contrast from the usual pattern of Christian buildings having been Islamicized, such as the Hagia Sophia in Turkey.

The Alhambra

The Alhambra was far more impressive than anything I saw in Turkey or Morocco. I am not talking so much of the riyads (Islamic gardens) with their complex hydroponics, and the intricacy of constructions like the 14C Dome of the Two Sisters which holds the world record for the number of muqarnas, the stalactite-like ornamental vaultings decorating the Alhambra’s many domes - though they are impressive enough. But something that’s related and I suspect strongly intercorrelated with this complexity are the experiments with stained glass and pictorial representations of humans in ceiling murals painted sometime between 1395-1424), which represent an unusual openness to Christian borrowings and in the case of the latter even a certain degree of independence from Islamic orthodoxy that was most certainly extremely unusual by the standards of medieval Islamic polities.

Andalusia was undoubtedly the most Elite Human Capital-loaded medieval Muslim polity. It had Europe’s biggest early medieval cities, with Córdoba at one point even flipping Constantinople; it had early science, and an unusual degree of religious toleration). OTOH, it got conquered, so was being more EHC even worth it? Then again, its modern descendants live far better than than any Muslim region without oil, so one can say it worked out in the long run.

I have tried to move away from including too many photos in my Travel reports after jumping the shark on Romania (~300). But allow me to indulge myself here.

The Hall of the Ambassadors is above, where Isabella I and Ferdinand II received Columbus in 1492 prior to his voyage to the New World.

Would this make it the single most consequential location of the past millennium?

The main palace complex is the Nasrid Palace, which is protected by the Alcazaba fortress. The Generalife is a summer retreat constructed in the last century of the Emirate to serve as a summer retreat for the Nasrid rulers.

The belltower at the Torre de la Vela, the Tower of the Candle and highest point of the complex, was traditionally wrung by unwed maidens once a year on January 2, the anniversary of Granada’s conquest. It was said to guarantee she found a marriage partner within the year.

Below are some more views from this tower:

The Gate of Justice at the exit features an engraving of a hand (khamsa) at the outer arch, representing protection against evil, and an engraving of a key within the inner arch, representing authority and sovereignty. There was a prophecy that the day the hand reaches down and grasps the key, the fortress will fall. I suppose that is one prophecy that failed - the Alhambra fell, but the hand and key are still separated. Perhaps this can serve as inspiration for some fantasy writer.

Granada Cathedral

This is a Renaissance-style cathedral built at the site of Granada’s main mosque (destroyed). Construction began in 1523, and was completed in 1704.

Typical Catholic cathedral with gold, statues, various expensive trinkets such as an 18C English clock with Chinese motifs.

There is a memorial plaque listing local priests executed under the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. Many of these were set up following the Francoist victory.

There’s an amusingly politically incorrect sculpture of Philip III trampling a Moorish soldier with his warhorse. It commemorates the final expulsion of the Moriscos - Muslims who had converted to Christianity - from Spain in 1609, ordered by Philip III.

The adjoining Chapel holds the tombs of Ferdinand II and Isabella I. It also has some historical artifacts and is otherwise unremarkable.

The Iglesia del Sagrario is part of the complex and is basically just a converted Moorish mosque.

Granada Archaeology Museum

The Granada Archaeology Museum is a state run museum with two main interesting objects:

• Hominid molar from 1,400,000 BC, making it amongst the oldest human fossils in Europe.

• Astrolabe of Ibn Zawal, constructed in 1481, is one of only 40 astrolabes that still remain in the world. Of these, 24 are in Spain and 9 are Muslim instruments. This astrolabe was the only one built specifically for Granada’s latitude.

Cuevas del Sacromonte

In the hills above Granada there are cave formations that have been interminably used across the centuries as bandit hideouts, refuges from state persecution (Black slaves; Gypsies), and more recently, cheap living quarters for the flood of rural laborers that flooded into the overcrowded cities when local urbanization took off in the 1950s.

This small, picturesque museum illustrates the folkways of these cave denizens across the centuries.

The living quarters had a Singer machine. Because of course - where can you NOT find Singer machines? That ultimate symbol of the first industrial globalization. Someone should write a book on them.

There’s an amusing story/legend about how this region came to be bknown as Blackmen’s Gully:

The legend says that after Granada was conquered by the Catholic King and Queen, many Arab noblemen fled to Africa. In their hearts they hoped that one day they would return to the city where they had lived, were their grandparents and parents had grown up and their children had been born.

Afraid of being attacked and robbed of their riches by “renegades of the Christian troops” on their way to the ports of Almería or Almuñécar, they hid their fortunes in holes under the olive trees which once covered these hills.

When they fled, they left behind their slaves, many of which were Black Africans, because it was slower and more expensive to travel with a crowd. These slaves knew of their masters’ concerns about their money and had noticed their comings and goings to and from Valparaiso (“valley of Paradise”, as Sacromonte was then called). So they made a plan: now that they were free, but without home nor income, they would go to Valparaiso and dig and dig until they found their former masters’ treasures.

So they dug and dug into the hillsides of this gully, but without success (as far as we know). Exhausted by the efforts and not having any other shelter, they stayed in the holes they had dug looking for the treasures. As time went on they made their home in these caves. And that is how this area got its name, Blackmen’s Gully.

The legend goes on to say that some generations later, when the black inhabitants of this gully had already mixed with the Gypsies, magic charms were used to find out where the treasures could be. It was said that an old sorceress could tell where they were hidden by talking with water and fire and looking and blinking onto a surface of water. We don’t know if the lost treasures were found and secretly kept by someone advised by the sorceress, or if they are still hidden somewhere in this area, maybe very near to where you are now standing.

Palace of the Forgotten

The Palace of the Forgotten contains a flamenco theater and some expositions on the Inquisition and its torture instruments. Such museums are usually more about sensationalism than authenticity, and this was true here as well; the chastity belt was on display as one of the Inquisition’s supposed instruments, but we know that it was pretty much entirely the invention of Victorian erotic fantasists.

But very amusing nonetheless to see Spaniards reverse colonize themselves with the Black Legend.

Monasterio de San Jerónimo

Quaint, placid Catholic monastery built in 16C with a big courtyard orchard with orange trees. It now serves as a nunnery.

It hosts the burial place of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, the “Great Captain”, noted military innovator and conqueror of Granada.

Málaga

Málaga has a metropolitan population of about a million and is Andalusia’s biggest coastal resort-city. Founded by the Phoenicians, it has been an economic hub for millennia, in particular serving as a center of garum production during the Roman era. This industrial theme continues through to today, with the industrial seaport being something of an eyesore amidst the beaches and 19C architecture.

Unsurprisingly, it is popular with tourists. That said, people coming for longer stays - pensioners and remote workers camping over the winter months are a prominent demographic - would probably be best advised to move to some cheaper and more scenic locale, such as La Herradura or Almeria.

Here are some street scenes from Málaga:

The Alcazaba

The Alcazaba is the palatial fort of Málaga. Originating as a Phoenician fort, its current core form took shape in 11C. Later Nasrid rulers added the palace quarters and a higher fort, the Gibralfaro, in 14C.

The interiors are modest, much less grandiose than the Alhambra; its main value is the astounding 360 degree views over the city. This includes an arena which sometimes hosts bull fights, Málaga’s Cathedral and many churches, and the ugly tankers and cruise ships that crowd up its harbor.

There’s a tapas bar just by the entrance to the Alcazaba called Cister Catorce which has a rating of 1.1/5 on both Google and TripAdvisor. Always respect the grift! 🤣

Málaga Cathedral

Construction began in 1528 on the site of a former mosque, and formally stopped in 1782. It was never finished - it was originally meant to have two towers, hence its nickname, La Manquita (“the one-armed lady”).

Spain strikes me as a Civilization that expended all its “production points” on the military during the Middle Ages. Consequently, it only turned to cathedral construction from 16C in a kind of completionist bid to complete the artifacts of the prior epoch; I suppose its heavy Religious focus also spurred this on. This was possible when it was flush with Latin American gold, but that became less realistic when that dried up and it starting falling into repeated defaults and destitution, its reactionary institutions unable to foster industrial growth and its existing resources constantly drained by putting down Dutch revolts and fighting France. Constructing its cathedrals “out of time” and under such conditions might explain why seemingly so many of them are incomplete. Both Málaga and Granada were originally meant to have two towers, but ended up with one, and most infamously, Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will only reach completion in 2026, some 144 years after construction began.

Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga

Málaga is the birthplace of Pablo Picasso, and hosts one of the largest museums dedicated to his work. However, since the queue to get in was very long, and since I’m not a particularly big fan of Picasso, I decided to instead visit the Carmen Thyssen Museum instead. It is primarily dedicated to 19C Romantics and naturalists with their depictions of bulls and bandits, matadors and hidalgos, and similar traditional or stereotypical elements of Iberian life. (On a more general note, I think this is a good approach to take everywhere. Avoid the most popular “cosmopolitan” museums, especially if they are swarming with other tourists; focus on the ones more specific to the area and culture you’re immersed in. E.g., why I would prioritize visiting the Russian Museum over the Hermitage if you’re ever in Saint-Petersburg; the most famous paintings of the latter you can see online anyway, whereas the former is an exploration of specifically Russian visual arts.)

Some of the paintings I enjoyed:

• Beach at Estepona with a View of the Rock of Gibraltar 1855 (Fritz Bamberger)

• The Port of Malaga 1847 (Manuel Barrón y Carrillo)

• The Brawl 1850 and Drunk at an Inn 1850 (Manuel Cabral Aguado Bejarano) - “the idiocy of rural life” theme.

• Una Bolera 1842 (Antonio Cabral Bejarano)

• A Confraternity in Procession along Calle Génova, Seville 1851 (Alfred Dehodencq)

• Returning to the Monastery 1868 (Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala) - amusing painting of a monk trying and failing to control his stubborn donkey in what I assume is another dig against organized religion.

• Model Making Mischief 1885 (Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta)

• Shipwreck Warning 1894 (José Navarro Llorens)

• La Puerta del Sol, Madrid 1902 (Enrique Martínez Cubbels)

• Bullfight in Eibar 1899 (Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta)

• The Fortune-telling 1920 (Julio Romero de Torres) - known for his portrayals of Andalusian melancholic waifs.

• Chorus Girls 1927 (José Gutiérrez Solana) - an example of his stark but non-judgmental studies of Spain’s marginal elements (España Negra).

The general impression I got of 19C Spain was of this dark and somber place, laboring under ignorance, superstition, and religious obscurantism. At least, this seems to have been the consensus view of the progressive intelligentsia/Elite Human Capital. Perhaps the single best illustration of this trope was The Dawn Procession c.1860 by Eugenio Lucas Velázquez.

These “rosemary processions” dedicated to the Virgin Mary were a common feature of devotional life in 19C Spain. In one dumb and amusing episode, two such processions bumped into each other on a narrow street, and instead of agreeing on one or the other giving the other right of way, they engaged in melee combat instead. Though this specific event may not have actually happened, it came to be widely known as a metaphor for the fanaticism and pseudo-Christianity of this uncultured peasant society. (Dark alluring girls and rural brutishness, the analogies with the opposite side of Europe keep piling up).

There is also a small room dedicated to earlier, religiously-themed Old Masters, especially Zurbarán on female saints. 17-18C Spain had a quaint tradition in which well-off young daughters would pose for the painter in the manner of the saint they were named after (retratos a lo divino).

Museum of Málaga

This expansive museum resulted from the fusion of an archaeological museum and a fine arts museum. The archaeology section was started by a philanthropic couple, Jorge Oyarzábal and Amalia Livermore; they were both half Anglo-American, because of course. This section traces the history of Málaga through the prehistoric age and the appearance of the first big settlements in mid-2 millennium BC; the arrival of the Phoenicians and the founding of Malaka; the Roman conquest of Malaca, and the establishment of its garum industry; the decline of the Roman Empire, and the collapse of civic urban investment in favor of fortified manors (i.e. long-winded way of saying “Dark Ages”); and finally the Islamic conquest. The texts are long and dry, so I can’t rate this very highly.

The visual arts section, again mostly dedicated to 19C Spain, was far more interesting. Some hits I liked:

• The Valkyries 1915 (Antonio Muñoz Degrain) - a painter who drew heavily on North European legends.

• Slave Girl for Sale c.1895 (José Jiménez Aranda)

• A Mother and Her Children 1885 (Federico Jiménez Fernández) - the mother and children are a hen and her chicks, very whimsical.

• The Judgement of Paris 1904 and Anatomy of the Heart 1890 (Enrique Simonet Lombardo) - notably risqué painter.

• The Poet's Tomb (Pedro Saenz)

The museum has an open storeroom where many of the museum’s exponents that are not officially displayed can be viewed. The photo above shows a model of the Alcazaba. One painting that I liked there shows the liberation of the slaves of Málaga after the Christian reconquest in 1487.

Flamenco Dance

This being Andalusia, I had to visit a flamenco dance. I didn’t really understand much or anything of what they sang about, and I can’t describe it as super aesthetic relative to classic ballroom or Latin dances - and that’s fine, it’s not like folkloric dances can compete with dances purposefully refined for aesthetics over centuries - but the clickety-click dancing of the flamenco clearly demands a great deal of both skill and physical vigor, so I found that reasonably impressive.

Catamaran Cruise

It was OK. :|

Andalusian Cuisine

I wasn’t a big fan of Portuguese food, so I didn’t come to Andalusia with high expectations. Reality didn’t exceed them. Andalusian food is very pork heavy, which I don’t much like for a range of reasons - primarily ethical, but also health and degustatory (just not a fan of bacon-like textures) - though I do make exceptions for social occasions and cultural explorations. So I probably wasn’t going to ever be a huge fan of it. Incidentally, the reason that Andalusian food is so pork-heavy is actually related to the Islamic occupation, or rather the aftermath of the Reconquista. Both Muslims and Jews avoid pork, so consuming pork was encouraged and sometimes coerced in order to make Moriscos (crypto-Muslims) and Marranos (crypto-Jews) stand out more. Over time what began as essentially a repressive measure - perhaps it would be called “cultural genocide” today - became embedded into and a proud and “intrinsic” part of a local culture that had peaked at 80-90% Muslim in 15C. Ironic.

Before getting to specific dishes, one more thing I’d like to add is that I really approve of the Spanish tapas tradition. There are times when you want to have a bite to eat, such as after walking 10,000 steps exploring a city, but don’t want to sit down for a full meal that will occupy an hour and cost 3-5x as much. So get a small snack for like 3 Euros and glass of beer or tinto de verano, and be on your way soon after. Very convenient. Very practical. Not what you’d naively expect of a Mediterranean culture.

Anyhow, here’s some of the dishes I tried and some brief comments on them:

• Berenjenas - Eggplants, which are often fried with chips (con fritas). I tried them in the form of an empanada street snack in Granada. Can’t complain. 6/10

• Bocadillos - just their version of basic sandwiches, often with jamon and/or cheese. A sandwich is a sandwich. :| 5/10

• Boquerones en vinagre - Tapa dish, anchovies in vinegar. Didn’t try. Don’t expect to be a huge fan but who knows.

• Croquetas - Didn’t try, deep fried bready stuff isn’t a priority for me and it’s originally French anyway.

• Ensalada rusa - I like Olivier salad, but I am very used to it in the Russian format (pickles, peas, and Doktorskaya sausage are crucial). I would assume swapping out the sausage for prawns might be an improvement but it’s just not the same without the sourness and acidity of the pickles and the texture of the peas, at least so far as I’m concerned. 6/10

• Espeto - Wood-roasted sardines (the Portuguese grill it). Not a priority, didn’t try.

• Flamenquin - Basically a roulade with jamon serrano wrapped in pork loin and coated in breadcrumb batter, and deep fried. Not a fan of deep fried stuff, not a fan of this in particular. German beef rouladen with vegetables and gravy are far better so far as this class of food goes. 3/10

• Paella - This is primarily a Valencian dish. Not a huge fan of paella, and if I’m going to sample it, I assume it would be best to do it at the source.

• Pescado frito - Didn’t try. But do I have to? Basically the ancestor of Fish & Chips, which a Portuguese Jew brought to London in mid-19C. (Yes, a ton of our foodways and “ancient cultural traditions” are far more recent and artificial than normies imagine. For instance, the standardized “Full English Breakfast” was basically an early 20C commercial creation).

• Pionono - Small savory pastry. Nothing special. 5/10

• Pistachio cake - This is more Middle Eastern cuisine it, esp. with ice cream. 9/10

• Rabo de toro (oxtail stew) - I like beef stews, you generally can’t go wrong with beef in gravy and sauces. The Andalusian version is really simple. Can’t really complain but even going with just cheap oxtail meat I’d opt for an English oxtail pudding, which also includes a sprinkling of vegetables and herbs. 6/10

• Salmorejo - sort of like a gazpacho (soup of tomato infused with garlic), but usually heavier, and with jamon and eggs on top. Not a huge fan of most cold soups and this was no exception. 4/10

• Tinto de verano - Very popular wine cocktail made of wine, a dash of rum, and sparkling water/soft drinks. Not classy - but it’s cheap, it’s juicy, it’s boozy. My favorite such Iberian drink in this category firmly remains Portuguese green wine (vinho verde), but I can’t complain about this at all; competitive with sangria. 8/10

Fanciest thing I got - which is obviously not specifically Andalusian or even Spanish - was this “warm cod” on a bed of beetroot infused paella with bits of seafood. This is from the Carmen de Aben Humeya restaurant at a spectacular mirador that overlooks the Alhambra in Granada. Only including it here because it looks nice, especially the foam.

In the first half, and I debated the case for insulated icebergs in the context of a prospective scenario in which network states encroach on traditional nation-state prerogatives. These icesteads - or “iceburgs” - could exploit the 70% of the Earth’s surface that is covered by oceans at a 10x lower cost than traditional seasteading, not to even mention space colonization. We discussed the internal layout of these iceburgs and addressed some of the technical objections to iceberg colonization, such as structural integrity and the practicality of navigation. We then argued about whether they should be permanently anchored to specific locations, or whether they should be free to ply the high seas like the Raft Cities of Philip Reeve’s science fiction.

In the second half, we focused on the political and geopolitical implications of network societies such as Infinita or Viva City opting for iceberg colonization. Potentially, we could see a nexus of autonomous polities like these spread out across the world, offering exit to builders and innovators who feel held back by the ossified bureaucracies of the legacy states. We discussed the demographics of icestead pioneers (“what is stopping you from moving to an iceburg?”) and their competitiveness against alternatives such as charter cities and digital nomadism, and speculated about iceburg timelines.

At the end, we discussed the future of AI and crypto. In particular, I queried Roko about why he has become much more sanguine about AI risks since early 2023. We then rounded it off with a discussion of the crypto markets and why Roko leans bearish on Ethereum.

Further Reading

You can follow Roko at and on X.

Roko’s posts on icesteading:

• Ice: The Penultimate Frontier (Jul 13, 2024)

• Icesteading: Executive Summary (Sep 11, 2024)

• Lecture Notes (PDF): Real Seasteading Has Never Been Tried

• The Icesteading Living Whitepaper (WIP)

Subscribe to this blog for more interviews with transhumanists, network statists, and sundry oddballs.

I also intend to duplicate episodes at my YouTube channel.

One of my long-term minor side projects is a long-term worldbuilding endeavor and sci-fi trilogy called Frozen Embers. In a universe in which the Katechon Hypothesis is true, it tells the story of a planet Earth that is hurled out of the Sun’s orbit by a passing black hole, with the remnants of industrial civilization surviving beneath the ice - ruled over by oligarchic states and shadowy cabals, and beset from all sides by the elements and more Eldritch entities.

I don’t expect to finish Frozen Embers before AI makes human creative efforts redundant. Consequently, I decided to open source the worldbuilding (forthcoming) and just publish news extracts and short stories from this world for my own amusement within its own dedicated section that you can Subscribe to separately from the main blog.

This post contains three news stories from Cornucopia - the world’s largest megasilo, a cyberpunk corporatocracy located in oldworld!Baja California - about 5 years before the beginning of the main trilogy story. Here is a link to the world map to help you make sense of the locations.

***

Editorial: Cornucopia Economic Outlook for 1030

Eliezer Meyer-Karlin for The Cornucopian Economist

1030.01.05

CORNUCOPIA - The economy showed resilience in Q4 2029, with the Cornucopian Central Bank (CCB) holding rates steady at 2.25% to balance inflationary pressures against economic growth. The electronics industry in particular has displayed blistering growth of 10.3%, with Avogadro Inc. carving out a massive, state of the art new battery production facility in the Western Manufactrium. “We are setting new standards in energy density and portability in the industry. Our next-generation batteries will power everything from Mask Industries’ new Pelagia lithium-ion class passenger subs to the military borers of our proud Silo Defense Forces,” commented Oligarch Kurt Park, Magyster of Avogadro Inc. This promises to break Shenzhou’s global near-monopoly on this industry carried by DragonVolt EG and Jinlong Power Systems. However, as a primarily hi-tech company wading into the nitty-gritty of manufacturing, it remains to be seen whether Avogadro can compete against the Shanxue-based giants’ access to cheaper local labor and centuries’ worth of embedded process expertise.

Market analysts are cautiously optimistic about the next quarter, but there are fears of tremors ahead. The Domination has intensified its incursions against Cornucopia’s vassal silos in Railway Junction. Conscripted from the recently conquered Alamos territories, serious military experts such as Shashank Kofman do not believe the troops utilized in these “meat wave” assaults represent a serious military threat, advising citizens to disregard the “histrionic” chatter on Luntan. Rumors of Reich advisors remain unverified. However, they have succeeded in raising insurance premiums for railway cargo, forcing a greater share of Cornucopian trade onto much pricier submarines.

Compounding these problems, there are reports of a rapidly spreading rice blight in the Hacienda Silos of South Nexus that may reduce agricultural production by up to 15% this year. Food prices are already surging upwards in anticipation, especially rice (24%) and carp (35%). This is expected to result in significant inflationary pressures. Yggdrasil Labs personnel have been dispatched to study and contain the blight at the source. Nonetheless, in the short-term, we can expect a negative impact on the welfare of Cornucopia’s poorer citizens, especially the residents of the Lower Hive and the Warrens. This comes hard on the heels of the Koryos Affair and the reams on online conspiracy theorizing it unleashed since October. Berkeley Institute of Technology sociologists are raising the specter of social unrest. The Council of Magysters is reportedly preparing edicts on increasing subsidies on basic essentials, and has recently concluded a blizzard of new contracts with Gladius Entertainment.

The construction of the Pelagia class is expected to lower the time of Trans-Pacific voyages by 10% and cut costs by up to 40%. The flagship vessel Aurelia will set new standards in luxury service, and Oligarch Edgar J. Mosk, Magyster of Mosk Industries, recently revealed that she is scheduled to have her maiden voyage to Xiajing in Quintal 2030. She will be followed by at least four other vessels catering to business and casual travelers. They are expected to enter exploitation at a rate of one per every subsequent year. Xiajing is Tellurium’s second biggest and richest silo after Cornucopia. Consequently, quicker and cheaper Trans-Pacific connections will redound to the general benefit of Cornucopia, Shenzhou, and the other silos of the Pacific Ring Network. In the short-term, this will mostly fuel the tourism sector, but over time should have spillover effects on industry, trade, and innovation. There are tentative plans to introduce the Pelagia class to the Atlantic routes from Cornucopia’s outpost silo at Crocevia to Thule and Porto in the second half of this decade. Its greater range should just about allow for direct connections that obviate the need for recharging at the Atlantis Redoubt in the Mid-Atlantic.

***

Chimera Fighting Ring Busted in Cornucopia Warrens

Pranav Sanchez for The Cornucopian Chronicles (popular blog)

1029.07.16

So it appears that some “enterprising” mavericks set up a Chimera breeding ground right below our feet. It was raided in a combined operation of the Silo Defense Forces, Purist militia, and Sarefi Enterprises security forces on the Tenebris of September 15. In a brief but fierce gunfight, 7 gangers of the Koryos Klan in Derelict Row of the Warrens were killed, and a further 32 were subsequently remanded into custody. The scale of their gruesome operation was as shocking as it was unprecedented: Dozens of Chimerae were bred and harvested for their eggs, which would go on to our elite private dining establishments frequented by esteemed “businessmen” and “authorities” alike, while the surplus Chimerae were starved and made to fight each other when they were not used to dispose of the gang’s enemies. The battles were livestreamed on the Dark Tome, with unscrupulous netizens betting gweis on their outcome. The Chimerae have all been culled.

Although the most dauntless (or idiotic) adventurers are free to brave the Abyss that was Old Arcadia in search of Chimera eggs and other oddities, the breeding of Chimerae is strictly illegal not just in Cornucopia, but throughout the Anthropostrome, in light of the existential threat they pose to human life. We learned this brutal lesson during the Second Doom, and the Persians relearned it when they sought to weaponize Chimerae against their Gießerei and Sarkean rivals, several centuries ago. Throughout Tellurium, this is qualified as sabotage and heresy, the proscription for which is likewise universal: Death.

Following what is widely expected to be a speedy trial, the miscreants may expect a one way ticket to Tartarus Outpost, to be slowly lowered in a metallic cage to the lake where the fire is never quenched, or in the case of underlings, to assume new if mostly brief careers as Gladius celebrities. However, many questions are likely to remain unanswered. How did this operation survive so long - for two years? Which Lesser Houses were giving them a roof? Were Shadowsworn involved? How wide does the rot spread? Was this really the result of an investigation, or a banal failure to kick back profits to some influential party? The Koryos Klan is a small ganger outfit, and has now been extinguished, but they were previously believed to have patrons amongst the Saakartvelian faction of the criminal underworld, and we all know their links to… the arboreal-themed Magyster. As is usual regarding tidings from the Thieves World, there are more questions than answers.

***

Female Influencer Dies Trying to Take Execution Selfie at Tartarus Outpost

Alexandra Xueqing for The Cornucopian Chronicles

1029.08.21

The execution on October 20 of the nine Koryos Klan ringleaders for unauthorized Chimera breeding and what is now believed to be at least fourteen murders took a turn for the tragic and unexpected when a young woman amongst the spectators fell to her death into the lava below. 23-year-old influencer, lifestyle blogger, and Lesser House scion Chiara Nikolau had scaled the security fence around the observation deck and leaned back towards the chasm, angling for the perfect selfie with her Handy as the cages holding the condemned were slowly lowered into the fiery pit below. She lost her grip pulling herself back in and plummeted to her doom.

Chiara has been described by her father Charon Delphine as a “smart and cheerful prodigy” who “set goals and made them happen.” She was very active on social media, regularly posting photos of her meals and travels interspersed with the occasional bikini shot, most recently at the hot springs of the newly opened Marriott Oriental five star hotel in Xiajing, Shenzhou. Her Tomebook’s popularity had recently exploded, with viewership even exceeding that of explorer and inventor Jiri Sokolov, netting her an estimated $270,000 over the past year. This would have been sufficient to rescue her House from what is believed to have been quiet destitution, as the Delphines’ latifundia in the Caligo Sea is rumored to have been raided and cleansed out by the Black Corsairs several years ago. But these joys would have since turned to ashes in the mouths of House Delphine, which has no other known heirs. She also leaves behind her thousands of bereaved fans, at least one of whom has already tried to follow in his late idol’s missteps.

However, not all the online commentary was glowing with praise. “Hope she did a flip when she fell,” wrote /i/IvernianMisanthrope, garnering the most upvotes on the main Luntan thread. “Respect for her utter dedication to her craft, she selflessly sacrificed herself to give my Koryos bois one last moment of mirth,” said /i/Cynic1509. “One less useless thot… at least she saved the Domination some work when they come to dominate this dump,” commented /i/RedlerSimp88, garnering a host of approving replies before it was deleted.

Trolls aside, there is widespread consternation about the increasing obsession with selfies, especially in inappropriate or dangerous situations, by the new generation of influencers. “We are looking into reviewing security procedures during executions at Tartarus Outpost. It is unacceptable that anyone should have been able to breach the security barriers in such a fashion,” commented Astor Mavrodi, Deputy Chief of the CPD. “That said, all citizens must exercise responsibility for their own actions. Señorita Delphine played with fire and got burned. Tragic as this is for her family and friends, I do hope it serves as an object lesson for the yahoos who disregard risk to life and limb in search of the perfect selfie. It’s better to miss a second of your life than to lose your life in a second.”

Just recently I stumbled across a Coen Brothers production that effortlessly muscles into my Top 10. It comes in the form of a Western anthology that covers the gamut of the human experience. It is a story about what defines America: Capitalism, violence, and their exchange rate.

Warning: has spoilers.

1. The eponymous Ballad of Buster Scruggs recounts the tale of a lone wanderer who goes about singing and slinging guns across the Wasteland Wild West until he meets his match on the day he gets dealt the dead man’s hand. In dynamic systems defined by capitalism and violence, you can’t remain “top dog” forever.

2. Near Algodones is about a criminal who is hanged for a crime he did not commit, and is the origin of the “First Time?” meme. This illustrates the metaphorical inevitability of jail, a theme I have dwelt on a lot over the past few years.

3. Meal Ticket is the the slowest paced vignette, but also by far the most depressive. An impresario and his artist, an orator with no arms or legs, journey from town to town, recounting classics such as Ozymandias (“two vast and trunkless legs of stone”) and the fratricidal story of Cain and Abel. This isn’t canon, but I got strong vibes that the impresario and the artist are father and son. Interest in the performance falls, as the crowds are instead drawn to a chicken that can apparently do math. The impresario runs down the last of their savings to buy the chicken, and is then strongly implied to have disposed of his artist. Capitalism has no use for depreciated assets, which are brusquely shunted aside as soon as soon as they stop providing a “meal ticket”; taken sufficiently far, in starker and more resource-constrained times, that extends to human capital as well. Adding to the irony of the situation, the chicken can only provide the impresario with one meal - the impresario didn’t buy the special box that gave the chicken its mathematical “prowess”. It is, in fact, just a chicken. He exchanged his orator for a scam. Winner, winner - chicken dinner!

4. All Gold Canyon is the only (mostly) wholesome story. A grizzled prospector is searching for gold in a mountain valley. After a hard day’s work, he spots an owl’s nest. Climbing up the tree, he initially takes all four eggs, but then puts three of them back under her reproachful eyes (better than standard practice, which I believe was to take half). This karmic boon allows him to survive a less scrupulous individual who wanted to shortcut his way to the gold lode through hyper-violence, and make off with the hard-earned fruit of his labor.

5. Alice is a young, smart, but very self-effacing woman - for such was the expectation of women in that time - who is accompanying her brother Gilbert and their dog President Pierce in a settler wagon headed west. Gilbert, an inept businessman, dies from cholera en route. She is then pressured to have President Pierce put down because his barking is annoying the other passengers, to which she sadly but passively accedes. Facing financial uncertainty, she then agrees to a marriage proposal from Billy Knapp, one of the two wagon train leaders.

It then turns out that President Pierce had survived, and Alice rushes to collect him a few hills over. However, she is ambushed by an Indian raid. Mr. Arthur, the other wagon train leader, gives her a pistol with two bullets and tells her to shoot herself if he is killed. He survives - just about. But The Gal Who Got Rattled does not. The boy and his dog live - but not the girl.

This is a sad commentary on the lack of women’s autonomy under the low exchange rates between capitalism and violence that defined most of history. Alice was enslaved to the whims of her feckless brother, couldn’t save Pierce because another man said so, and at last quit life on a man’s authority - she could at least have trying using one of the two bullets to kill the last Indian.

6. Five passengers on a stagecoach ride through the darkening and ever more ethereal West discuss the meaning of life in Mortal Remains. One is a trapper, who represents the naturalistic view on death, simple, Malthusian-minded, in tune with the seasons. One is a bon vivant French hedon, who displays an agnostic, non-judgmental curiosity towards all aspects of life, and is perhaps the least concerned about death; it is ultimately just another interesting experience, even if the last one. The upright Christian lady has unrealistic views about her long absent husband’s fidelity, at least in the opinion of the Frenchman, and represents the theological view on death - outwardly graceful, inwardly tormented. They may also represent the three ages of the West - the primordial trapper with his Indian wife, the happy go lucky adventurer, the late civilizing feminine.

They are accompanied by two bounty hunters. They sing of the unfortunate lad. Company policy is that the stagecoach doesn’t stop for any reason. They are transporting a corpse on the stagecoach roof. (Is it Buster Scruggs?). Either way, it suddenly dawns on the passengers that this is it, the nether realm, purgatory, gray and washed out, the end of the lie that terminates in a hotel and a lighted staircase that takes them wherever it is that souls go to after death. The Frenchman is first to step out. The trapper follows cautiously. The lady, last, and reluctantly.

I do think that this is what America is fundamentally about. In its self-image, it is a green and verdant Commonwealth, defined by the Constitution and peopled by Albion’s seed. But it is in the desert of the West that it was stripped bare of its frills and excesses, where its true character was revealed, and where I believe its true ethnogenesis occurred and has subsequently served as backdrop for the definitional products of American culture such as Blood Meridian and Fallout. The primordial state of raw capitalism and hyper-violence in which it began, and perhaps may yet return to before this age of the world ends.

Elon Musk threw a Nazi salute. I don’t particularly (or at all) care because I am not a moralfag and it is exclusively moralfags who were “triggered” by this on both the Left (to condemn) and the Right (to cope that it was actually a “Roman” salute or that he’s an autist who’s unaware of what a Sieg Heil is). But I will not engage in this absurd pantomime and pretend that Elon did not know what he was doing. He is smart, very online, and well acquainted with the Alt Right. Can any serious, self-respecting person genuinely think that a guy who is deep into 4chan culture, calls himself Kekius Maximus, constantly props individuals like “Peter Sweden” and “MartyrMade” with very specific views on aspects of 20C history, would make that particular gesture three times by accident in the space of a three minute speech (once per minute on average). No, Elon knew exactly what he was doing.

Personally, my interpretation from the start was that it was a Nazi salute in order to troll libs into saying it was a Nazi salute, with the aim of subsequently “owning” them for being hysterical. As it happens, this was entirely successful. The ADL, which otherwise sees anti-Semitism behind every shadow, rushed to cover for him, ascribing it to a “moment of enthusiasm” (or heated gamer moment?). Netanyahu, same guy who argued the Arabs put Hitler up to the Holocaust, also denied any connection. Russian TV censored it, LOL. Normies from Left and Right seethed at me, unable to grok how someone could acknowledge Elon's based Sieg Heil, while attaching no particular moralistic judgment to it. Is he a Nazi? Is he “anti-anti-Woke”? It was a “Roman” salute wah! Dude!?

No, you dumb seething retards. My only “agenda” is that I dislike and resent getting gaslighted. Sieg Heil Denial is the Right’s version of dindu nuffin, evoking the same repulsion as Wokes with their “mostly peaceful protests” (h/t Soledad). Obviously throwing a Sieg Heil is incomparably less bad than looting and burning under any sane moral compass, but again, that’s beside the point. It was a classical Hitler salute and I did not and will not disbelieve my lying eyes, and I would note at this point that Elon’s subsequent demonstrative trolling later got some people who were initially skeptical of my position to acknowledge that I was correct. Just a week later, a GOP politician was forced to resign after “copying Musk’s Nazi-ish gesture”. This conclusively demonstratives that you can Sieg Heil to your heart’s content if you’re sufficiently rich and prestigious like Elon, and even the ADL will go to bat for you, but if you’re just some chud normie loser then you will be canceled by your fellow GOP rightoids. So again, denying the Nazi salute is cringe, it is dishonest, and it is ultimately an insult to Elon Musk and his genuine mastery of trolling (unlike his fake gaming accomplishments).

But why would Elon do it? Honestly, as a consummate troll myself, I think I have better insight into this than most. First, to people with a certain disposition, trolling - fishing for a reaction, any reaction - is a joy, even an addiction. Like poking an antheap or beehive with a stick, it’s not so much that you expect the outcome will be good but it will be interesting. Second, there’s the sheer thrill of it, like having sex in a semi-public location it is the thrill of what happens if you are found out that magnifies the experience. Third, this kind of standard is replete in Alt Right-adjacent and “politically incorrect” cultures. The transgressive element makes it exciting and a kind of bonding experience. Violating a social taboo in front of an audience of 100Ms makes it extra thrilling. Would I be able to get away with it?? 🎲

Like I can fully imagine that on Elon was in some “based” group chat and amidst the jokes about rounding up the libs and upcoming Reichstag fires someone suggested, “Hey Elon you talk a big game but bet you’re too chicken to Sieg Heil up on that podium” and Elon replied “kys fagt” and Sieg Heiled three times just to own his interlocutor and have a swell time in the group chat afterward.

Is it childish? Puerile? Counter-productive? Perhaps it is, and one may make the argument that perhaps the extra backlash Elon has provoked amongst the shitlibs and Europoors who buy his Teslas and Starlinks might not be worth acting out an exhibitionistic stunt that would be most amusing amongst schoolkids. However, that is normie thinking, and Elon did not get to where he is by thinking and acting like a normie. I for one just sit back and quietly enjoy and appreciate a Lv. 80 troll at work and that should be your approach as well.

More interesting/relevant question: How based is Elon?

At least amongst my readers, there is a consensus that he is HBD/IQ-pilled, and 21% and 13% believe there is a substantial (>30%) chance that he opposes female suffrage and has doubts about the official version of the Holocaust, respectively. FWIW, my own assessment is about 95% for HBD/IQ realism (actually ~100% but that’s going off private sources), 50% on opposing 19A/women’s suffrage, and 10-20% on Holocaust revisionism. I am only based on HBD/IQ and eugenics so probably Musk is more, and perhaps a great deal more, based than me.

Welcome to the first Crypto Sitrep in Project Cryptograd, in which I will be offering my outlook on the crypto markets and position updates to paid subscribers.

I will not here or in subsequent Sitreps put in the disclaimer about this not being financial advice because it is cringe and I would assume goes without saying for my smart readers. Control risks, and don’t be a retard.

Market Outlook 🐂

Weakly bullish on $BTC and moderately bullish on alts (esp. Ethereum) as Trump honeymoon period unfolds over the next 3-6 months.

Good chance of altcoin mania/Steinhoff season soon to round off this bull run.

Bitcoin dominance.

BTC dominance has been going up relentlessly throughout this entire run with none of the alt seasons being fit for anything but ants. One thought I have had during the course of this run is that perhaps the patterns established in the previous two runs in which profits from BTC rotated into majors and then smallcaps might have been broken this time round, simply because so much of BTC’s market cap (mc) has been inflated by TradFi money going into the BTC ETFs. It’s not as if you can sell BTC ETF shares to buy altcoins. This, together with continuing high interest rates, will probably preclude the sort of stimmy-fueled madness we say in 2021. Still, ETH has ETFs too, and the much looser regulatory environment we can expect under Trump opens up the the prospect of speculative runs on other majors rumored to be getting an ETF. In this respect, DOGE in particular has bright prospects.

Ethereum: Eyes on the Prize

Holding Ethereum as a major component of one’s portfolio during this run has not been a fun experience to say the least, and I speak from personal experience. Bitcoin did much better as the first crypto asset to get an ETF. But Ethereum also underperformed many alts - most notably, Solana, which has has become the de facto shitcoin casino of this run, as BNB was to the last one. One possible explanation of this which I heard on a Bankless podcast was that Ethereum was already very “big” and had also declined much less than other alts during the 2022 bear season - Solana, recall, was the FTX coin, and got absolutely cratered from $260 to less than $10 - and so the whales couldn’t be bothered pumping ETH when they could pump Solana and AI vaporware instead.

However, I do not HODL Ethereum as a speculative investment, but simply because I view it as both the most prospective and the currently most undervalued major crypto asset. It is the most credibly decentralized chain - Solana is cheaper and faster, but this comes at the host of much stronger centralization (validators having to restart the network from Anatoly Yakovenko’s Discord servers has become a meme for a reason).

At a broader level, there is something called the “Blockchain Trilemma” which describes an intrinsic tradeoff between decentralization, security, and scalability. Ethereum prioritizes decentralization and security, hence the high transaction costs on its base layer, i.e. this is why you have to spend a few dollars on “gas” whenever you swap tokens on Uniswap. Ethereum’s scalability comes from so-called Layer 2s that inherit its security while bundling multiple transactions, and only relying on the base layer for settlement. A blockchain like Solana focuses more on scalability, but that comes at the price of lower decentralization. Different chains, different use cases. However, at the end of the day, it is decentralization that constitutes blockchain’s unique selling point - something that’s secure and indefinitely scalable is called a database. You know, that thing TradFi uses. What’s the actual need for a blockchain when you have MySQL?

This is why almost all serious applications in crypto load on Ethereum. DeFi blue chips are native to Ethereum. DeSci tokens and treasuries are on Ethereum. When Coinbase created Base, its own L2 rollup, it launched it on Ethereum - not on any other chain, nor on its own chain. Paypal launched its USD stablecoin on Ethereum. Sony very recently launched its L2 on, you, guessed it, Ethereum. Basically whenever serious TradFi companies such as Blackrock, Visa, Stripe, or Microsoft want to integrate their products with crypto, they do it on Ethereum. That is because Ethereum is the biggest and most decentralized chain alongside Bitcoin, but unlike Bitcoin, it also allows for smart contracts, the self-executing programs on the blockchain that auto-execute agreements when predefined conditions are met.

As I mentioned, my core thesis is that decentralized blockchains are the most rigorous frameworks for securing value in the digital realm. Consequently, as digitization proceeds apace - a process that AGI will vastly accelerate - the value of the network that best fulfills this role will likewise teleport upwards. Bitcoin doesn’t allow for smart contracts, so while very decentralized, you are very limited in what you can build on it. Solana is sleeker, sexier, and more scalable, but is much less decentralized. You can use it for flipping shitcoins, but BlackRock is not going to entrust tens of billions of dollars to Anatoly’s Discord server. To the extent that cryptocurrency has a future beyond “digital gold” (Bitcoin) and speculation (Solana) - to the extent it has potential to reformat the world economy and society along cardinally new lines - the single best candidate for that is the Ethereum network and it isn’t even close. This is why I am HODLing Ethereum to $1 million (sic).

ETH/BTC

As regards shorter/saner timescales, I think Ethereum has the best risk-to-reward ratio of any crypto asset now:

• The very fact of its underperformance against Bitcoin and Solana to date (mean reversion principle).

• There will soon be Staked ETH ETF (this is bullish for Lido $LDO in particular).

• Trump’s “World Liberty Fi” scam is most bullish on ETH (that’s where they’re sending the proceeds from the $TRUMP scam).

• Though I definitely wouldn’t short it, things like the US President launching a shitcoin would be the exact kind of thing that classically marks tops in retrospect. $TRUMP is a Solana meme. I give it a good chance this marks this run’s SOL/ETH top, and while I certainly wouldn’t short Solana, I even allow there’s a chance it will be an absolute top at $295. Depends how much fuel there still is in the $TOTAL tank.

• I am also intrigued by the fact that Solana’s mc peaked at 35% of Ethereum’s on Jan 18, 2025 - the date when Trump launched his shitcoin. BNB’s mc peaked at 39% on April 12, 2021. What Solana and BNB have in common is that they were the shitcoin casino network of choice in the 2020-21 and the current bull run, respectively. Sure, the designated casino chain can make further dominance gains - but is this a thesis you’d want to bet big on? The 2021 meme seasons were far, far wilder than anything we’ve had to date this run.

• I don’t assign much weight to TA. But FWIW, the ETH chart is primed.

• Final reason: This week has seen something like a sentiment collapse within Ethereum centered around dissatisfaction over the Ethereum Foundation’s management and Vitalik’s alleged culpability in it. One of its long-time developers and advocates Eric Conner (eric.eth) loudly left the building. This might look bearish from the side, but in reality such scandals often mark dominance bottoms.

I am mostly invested into ETH and will only consider starting to take profit at $7,000 dependent on how “toppy” sentiment is.

Allocation details and altcoins analysis for paid subscribers below. 👇

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Otherwise, the first sitrep in this section will be on the post-Trump inauguration outlook on the crypto markets.

💎 The Crypto Markets

Why am I perhaps worthwhile listening to crypto? For a start, I called both the bottom and top of the 2020-21 bull run (including the pico-top of GameFi), and correctly remained bearish throughout 2022. I then aggressively recommended you buy crypto from $25.5-30k as soon as the Bitcoin ETF was announced, and today BTC is above $100,000. I was verifiably early to some shitcoins that did a 100x - most notably, $SAMO (the OG Solana dog), $TIME (an OHM fork) in the last run, and Milady at $1k. I was even warning you away from FTX a few months before its ignominious collapse. Of course I had to take my share of L’s as well. I got liquidated on my trading account twice, and many shitcoins I was bullish on never took off. That’s the occupational hazard with small caps - they can sit idle the entire bull run, only to then go to zero; or they explode by 3-4 orders of magnitude, generating returns impossible to find in TradFi outside the highly gated world of VC investing.

The second objection is that crypto is a scam. You are welcome to this view, and I have in fact always acknowledged that the vast majority of assets in this space are scams - it is easier to list the exceptions, which in my view are Ethereum and Bitcoin, followed by DeFi blue chips, quality DeSci, and a few select utility coins. Obviously when buying DOGE, PEPE, or any other memecoins you should bear in mind they have zero worth beyond, well, their memetic value - whatever that is. It’s gambling on popular emotions and risk management is vital. Finally, I allow that crypto is not guaranteed to survive, and there’s a chance - if in my view a small one - that it ends up as the early 21C’s equivalent of tulips. However, I reject the idea that cryptocurrency as a concept is a scam. Credibly decentralized blockchains are by far the most rigorous framework for property rights in the digital realm. My fundamental logic is that as an ever greater share of the world’s product accrues to it - a process that will be turbocharged by AI - the value of quality crypto assets should trend inexorably upward.

I will make the case for this thesis at the technological and economic history level in future public posts, but again, I do not pretend to run a church here like Saylor or Sassal do for Bitcoin and Ethereum, and you are free to take it or leave it. I will also refrain from commenting much on things that are beyond my kern, such as NFTs (too insiderish) or traditional financial markets (no particular alpha there). I do not have a fraction of the experience and knowledge base in TradFi as I do in crypto, so anything I say there will probably be useless beyond very general considerations on politics, monetary conditions, and their expected impact on the crypto markets..

🌐 Network States & DeSci

Ever since becoming disillusioned with the scam that is “national identities” in 2022, I have become woke to libertarian ideas about free association and voluntary communities. Obviously, these are far from the world’s first attempts at “exit”. The problem is that they have had a failure rate of close to 100%, and even those very rare projects that “made it”, such as Zionism, lost their raison d’être as soon as the their decided “traditional” objectives - a Jewish State - were secured. However, I believe that cryptographic technologies have opened up organizational tools and economic capabilities - on-chain property registries, reputational systems, and treasuries - that make “network states” like these practicable and sustainable as never before. They have also come at a very propitious time. Accelerating cultural globalization, greater mobility, the expansion of remote work, and the discreditation of traditional notions about “patriotism” and “obligations” to existing nation-states have all greatly increased the viability of network states.

I have walked the walk as well as talked the talk, spending a substantive fraction of my past two years at “pop-up villages” such as the original Zuzalu in Montenegro, Vitalia in Honduras, and Zelar City in Berlin. As I discussed in a recent interview (1:00-11:10), what makes these places so enjoyable is the sense of community that a common vision produces. Metropolises are “interesting”, but induce a sense of social anomie; traditional villages might have more in the way of community spirit, but Marx was writing about the “idiocy of rural life” back in the 1840s. In contrast, within an aligned network state, you can strike up a conversation with any stranger on the street or corridor, and chances are it will develop in interesting and meaningful directions, rather than remaining confined to banalities about the weather or “did you catch the game?” The pop-up villages I mostly associate with tend to revolve around radical life extension, and bio/acc and DeSci more generally. However, this is an open frontier, and although the libertarians (TPOT, Gray Tribe, etc.) were predictably the first movers, there are plenty of other factions dipping their toes in the water. There are projects of a more conservative or identitarian focus (e.g. Freeth’m in Portugal; Orania in South Africa), while on the other side of the spectrum the artist/anarchist MOOS collective in Berlin was actively exploring the idea of DAOizing when I stayed in their coliving space. This illustrates an important truth about “network states” - they are meant to be value-agnostic. Their tools are adaptable to any sufficiently coordinated faction or movement. Instead of weaponizing the traditional state to force people of disparate ideologies - liberals, Communists, libertarians, nationalists, religious fundamentalists - who otherwise hate each other, the network states toolkit provisions them with the means to construct their own larp islands and let everyone else vote with their feet on the most functional and attractive resultant polities.

Network states (at least in my interpretation) are built on cryptographic structures, and as such I expect them to expand in power and prestige in line with the crypto market cap $TOTAL as a percentage of world wealth. The nation-state is in many ways a relict of the Agricultural Age when elites had to pin down the peasantry to the land, and has become far less viable or morally defensible in the ultra-mobile and interconnected world of the Internet Age. They survive mainly on inertia. I will further develop and explore the broader ramifications of these arguments on the main blog, but what I will say from a more practical or personal perspective is that it’s probably a good thing to be early to Ground Zero of what may come to define the next global geopolitical order, and I am perhaps not the most unqualified person to talk about it.

🔓 Unlocking Cryptograd

Consequently, Cryptograd will not just contains Crypto Sitreps about the crypto markets, but also Decentralized Sitreps about upcoming network states events, DeSci news, and other experiments at decentralizing all other aspects of society.

I will also aim to cover useful products and services that cater to this community. As of today, its natural “constituency” is younger digital nomads who are not tied down to a physical location for work or raising a family. There are obviously exceptions but it takes money and effort to make it work, and these are barriers to entry that we would wish to lower in order to accelerate normalization. Examples would include projects/companies that are developing “nomad visas”, international health insurance, “worldschooling”, and cross-border qualifications recognition.

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Again, I envisage this as something that provides concrete value, so these Sitreps will almost all be for the exclusive benefit of paid subscribers.

Main blog content will remain free.

If you are only interested in my thoughts on intelligence enhancement or geopolitics or whatever, and otherwise don’t want to hear about any of this crypto claptrap, here are the instructions for Unsubscribing from specific Sections.

This image is a pretty good litmus test for politics: do you regard this map with respect, or disgust?

In the past week Trump has been fantasizing a lot about land grabs. Taking back the Panama Canal, annexing Greenland and Canada, and a “soft invasion” of Mexico are on the short list. The consensus “serious” view is that this is the usual trolling and nothing to get excited about, and that’s almost certainly accurate. If there is some logic to the madness, it’s probably to deflect away from the “betrayal” of the “base” over H1-Bs (“jail is programmed” principle), or perhaps the glorious visions of continental conquest are a diversion to normalize a much more modest scheme to bribe Greenlanders away from Denmark.

That caveat out of the way, it would nonetheless be an interesting exercise to consider how each of these scenarios could go in order of realism, and rate each of them on their costs and benefits, and no less importantly, how based or cringe they would be.

***

Greenland: Ulthuan of the Atlantic

Greenland is widely perceived to have substantial strategic value. It lies underneath the shortest ICBM flight path from Russia to the US, making it prime territory for hosting early warning radars. It also closes the GIUK gap that was central to surveilling passing Soviet submarines. Hence Trump’s comment that “we need Greenland for national security purposes.” It is also at this point a banality to mention that it contains a motherlode of strategic resources, especially Rare Earth Metals (REMs).

More speculatively, Greenland after global warming will become literally green - a veritable wonderland of lush deciduous forests, alpine mountains, and a giant freshwater lake at its heart (much like Ulthuan, the High Elven superpower of Warhammer Fantasy world). Now probably AI timelines make all these considerations quite irrelevant, but taking out cheap insurance policies is rarely a bad idea, and Greenland would be an incredibly valuable asset in a “business as usual” world defined by no AI discontinuities, tech stagnation, and severe global warming.

Map of post-glacial Greenland c.3000 AD.

The US has a long history of eyeing up Greenland. It directly managed its defenses in 1941-45 with the agreement of the Danish government in exile. US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes attempted to purchase it from Denmark in 1946, though his $100 million offer was refused. This followed on similar proposals mooted since the time of William H. Seward, who is most famous for the successful purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867. Greenlanders have enjoyed home rule from Denmark since 1979, and gained the right to secede in 2009. So why not acquire this future “Tropical Hyperborea” at a discount?

In theory, this is the most practical of Trump’s proposed land grabs - and the only one that can be plausibly voluntary. For example, each Greenlander could be offered a $100,000 along with automatic US citizenship. There are 55,000 Greenlanders, so that would only total $5.5B - pocket change even just for Elon Musk (net worth: $450B). This would probably not be a good deal for Greenlanders, since they get the equivalent of more than $10,000 in subsidies per capita from Denmark annually. Nonetheless, even increasing the payout to $1M - a total of $60B - would not cause any appreciable strain to the $30T US economy. You can praise “sovereignty” and “self-determination” as much as you want, but realistically, I suspect almost everyone would opt to become a dollar millionaire if given the choice between that and making a political statement. Though in light of Trump’s, ahem, record on honoring his deals, I would recommend Greenlanders go over the Terms & Conditions with a fine-tooth comb.

So should the US go ahead with bribing the Greenlanders? The problem is that on closer consideration almost all the “benefits” crumple into insignificance.

As regards security, the US already has the massive Pituffik Space Base in north-western Greenland (previously Thule AFB); in the event it needs another facility, it is likely that Denmark would agree to it. And even so far as Russia’s rusting navy still represents a threat, the role of the GIUK gap has massively diminished with the development of much more capable space-based surveillance. Denmark and Canada are both staunch US allies and it is hard to envisage them turning a blind eye in the event that Trump’s fantasies about Chinese and Russian ships “surrounding” Greenland somehow come true.

As regards resources, there’s nothing stopping US (or other) corporations mining in Greenland right now. The problem is not regulations per se - at least beyond the usual environmental ones that any functional First World nation has - but that there’s no particular advantage to doing this in Greenland. Its cold and inaccessibility just makes many projects unfeasible in principle, especially since “Rare Earth Metals” are a misnomer anyway - they are incredibly common across the world. Back in the early 2010s, I was somewhat interested in the Arctic region, and one of the books I read back then was The Future History of the Arctic by Charles Emmerson. One thing that struck me was how bullish his tone was on Greenland’s minerals production prospects, mentioning reams of multi-billion dollar exploration deals and leases being signed by companies like Cairn Energy (oil) and Quadra Mining (molybdenum). Looking up what happened to them since, the common thread is that all of these projects failed to reach the exploitation stage and the companies in question left Greenland at a loss. In retrospect, the reason for this must have been the end of the commodities supercycle in 2014 - most pronounced in oil, but with downstream effects throughout the extraction sector. Its most notable effect was to crater the fortunes of previously high-flying resource exporters; for instance, Russia’s GDP has barely grown in the past decade (which incidentally explains much of its failure at military modernization and why the Ukraine War ended up as it did). At Greenland’s more prosaic level, the primary effect of the commodities crunch was to scupper Greenlanders’ hopes of fiscal independence from Danish subsidies, which were high when the book was written in 2010. Fiscal independence was always a prerequisite of political independence, and so that too must have gotten postponed indefinitely.

Greenland resources map.

Predicting commodities prices is a fool’s errand and a surefire way to get wrecked by the markets. The only pattern is a strong tendency for most of them to decline versus other asset classes over historical timescales, and as technology continues to accelerate, we might expect that to remain the case, with EVs in particular exerting downwards pressure on oil prices. However, AI throws a spanner in the works. If bullish AGI timelines are validated, then that could stimulate a frenzy of demand for energy, certain minerals, and even glacial locations for supercluster cooling in allied and strategically secure regions. Greenland gets to keep 100% of any resource revenue under the terms of its constitutional arrangements with Denmark, the only reasonable condition being that Danish equalization transfers would go down to zero in the event the island becomes richer than the metropole. Greenland also has a legally guaranteed right to declare independence whensoever it wishes. These are important points to emphasize because not only do US territories not have such rights, but they are also obligated to share resource revenue with the federal government. Consequently, accepting an overly modest bribe today in return for joining the US will be short-selling Greenlanders’ future prospects and freedom of action. My own intuition would be that $250,000 per capita would be the bare minimum to consider any such offer but I would gun for $1M+ in negotiations.

Obviously, this also assumes that the US approach will be one of honest bribery. Trump seems to be under the strange notion that Greenland is Denmark’s to sell. That is not Denmark’s prerogative and would be illegal under Danish law. Trump has refused to “rule out” a military solution to Greenland. His son, touring Greenland with a MAGA posse, shared a video of a Greenlander with a MAGA cap avidly calling for Greenland to join the US. True to MAGA traditions, the guy turned out to be a violent drug dealer well-known in local criminal circles. But at least in this case, the most plausible scenario is the one in which Trump bribes Greenlanders fair and square since wrecking relations with Europe over an icebox strikes me as insane even if Trump does harbor serious imperial designs.

Benefits: Decidedly modest benefits in security and resources; very long-term, may become some of the world’s most valuable free estate. 3/10.

Costs: The bribery option is legal and voluntary. That said, it can hardly be viewed as a friendly action by Denmark or the EU. -1/10.

Net Benefits: 2/10.

Basedness: The US becomes the world’s 2nd largest country by land mass (suck it China! suck it Canada!) and improves its aesthetics on the world map.

Perhaps the Ancap faction of MAGA transforms it into a new frontier zone open to novel experiments in technology and governance, with network states like Praxis leading the way. (Use my referral link to get first dibs).

Or perhaps Dark MAGA uses it as an prison island to intern illegals and reeducate the libs. That would… not be ideal. But it will be based.

Overall, I’d estimate Greenland expansion would be 7/10 on the Based scale.

Reclaiming the Panama Canal

Trump says he wants to use military force to the Panama Canal on the basis that 38,000 Americans died building it and that “Chinese soldiers [are] lovingly, but illegally, operating” it. In reality, only a few hundred US citizens (out of 5,609 workers total) died during the American phase of its construction, and there is no evidence that China controls it or has a credible plan to do so.

Of course, even if both those claims were true it’s hard to see how they would translate into a casus belli. This brings us to the main point, which is that seizing the Panama Canal - though a minor operation in military terms - will unequivocally violate international law. It would also look particularly bad because Panama is not a dictatorship, nor does it even have a standing army. It will be viewed as overt bullying and imperialism, and that is exactly what it would be. This makes it extraordinarily less likely than bribing Greenlanders. By the same token, this is also the point at which Canada should get seriously worried.

Benefits: Military control over a strategic chokepoint that China or anyone else is not in a position to block in the first place. 1/10.

Costs: Probably Latin Americans get more serious about military integration. Central Americans will become much more hostile, but my impression is their politics are so dysfunctional it shouldn’t be that big of a deal for the US. Violation of international law. Europeans voice strong concern and distance diplomatically, but remain in NATO and don’t increase military expenditures. Many Americans traveling to Europe will start pretending to be Canadians again. -4/10.

Net Benefits: -3/10.

Basedness: Pushing around a country with no standing military on fake pretenses strikes me as unsporting and cringe. 0/10.

Operation Rake: Last Days of Canada

Trump has referred to Trudeau as “governor” of Canada and repeatedly mulled the idea of it becoming the 51st state. There are some plausible reasons for why the annexation of Canada would rebound to the benefit of Americans and Canadians alike. The population of the resultant polity will increase from 340M to 380M, and its GDP will increase from $30T to $32T. It will account for 28% of the world’s oil production, which is about the same as that of the collective OPEC. Canada hosts vast mineral reserves, freshwater that can be used to irrigate the Great Plains, and the strategic Northwest Passage. The New Colossus would become the world’s biggest country by land mass and rapidly overtake Russia to become the world’s premier military Power in the Arctic. Canadians may see faster convergence growth as its lagging GDP per capita catches up given access to America’s economies of scale and deep capital markets. They will enjoy greater freedom of speech thanks to the First Amendment, while American exposure to the Canadian healthcare system hopefully rationalizes its own healthcare debate. Finally, many American patriots view Canadian national identity as a fake one rooted in “fuck you dad” anti-Americanism and performative Wokeness. In this interpretation, Canadians may indeed be relieved to be unburdened of their irrational and psychologically taxing neuroses.

It comes off as amusingly similar to Russian nationalist conceptions about Ukraine prior to the war which are even reflected in the respective opinion polls. There is the widespread view that just incorporating Alberta - a proposal championed by more realistic American expansionists such as Nemets - will create a new Republican safe state on the basis that it votes conservative in Canadian elections. However, Canadian conservatism isn’t really Republicanism, and it seems that in the context of actual US politics, it would be a swing state at best and Colorado more realistically. But the bigger roadblock is that only 19% of Albertans support joining the US, which is not much higher than 13% for Canada as a whole. This is not a base from which you can can have a democratic referendum to validate annexation or even get a grassroots revolt off the ground (this number was ~33% in Donetsk/Lugansk oblasts in early 2014).

Perhaps you can try to get that number up - but it’s hard to see how one can get it to 50% or more, at least short of exotic scenarios like AGI opening up a 10x gap in living standards between the US and Canada by 2027 or something absurd like that. Consequently, any annexation will have to be coercive - Nemets muses that a “few hundred men of will” may suffice, presumably alluding to Strelkov’s band. But the direct translation from Ukraine would imply a collapse of the Americanophile sentiment that does exist there. In that case, there would then be no point in fantasizing about Alberta bolstering the GOP; in electoral terms, I suspect it won’t even be a Colorado (only plausible if the annexation is voluntary), but a Democratic monoculture like D.C., with extreme separatist sentiments and a shelf life that ends with the next Democratic Presidency.

So overall this seems like a no starter - at least unless Trump does something really funny and “special”.

Going from trolling to implementation isn’t going to be easy. You would need to get the Republican elites on board, and keep most of the population at least quiescent. The military also has to go along. These would all be extremely challenging tasks in the context of a society much freer than Russia’s. On the other hand, at least on X and right-wing talk shows, the response to this bait has perhaps been a bit too enthusiastic for Canadians to feel entirely comfortable. And as for the military, well, Trump did say he wants to have “Hitler’s generals”. Purges there would be an early warning sign.

War Plan Red - the War Department's 1927 contingency plan for a war against the British Empire.

And then it will be TIME to dust off War Plan Red - Operation Rake - three days to Ottawa!

One thing that’s pretty obvious is that in the event this scenario does come about, the US will almost certainly no longer be a liberal democracy with meaningfully free and fair elections. Opposition from the media, from civil society, from the saner/less based elements of the national security establishment will almost certainly scupper any such majestic visions of glorious continental conquest if it were otherwise. And one way or another, Canadians would have to be disenfranchised for at least the next generation, long enough for Americanization to happen, and it's hard to see how that can happen short of the US itself going authoritarian. (Perhaps local MAGA despotisms in the Canadian states can churn out 95% votes for the GOP as per Russia’s model in occupied Ukraine, where support for annexation into Russia has collapsed from about 20% in the early 2010s to the low single digits). So I suppose it is worth mentioning that convergence to something like the military-oligarchic junta of late pre-apocalyptic America in the Fallout universe is a near prerequisite of a sustainable Canadian annexation, though if that is the goal then that’s perhaps OK.

One point in favor relative to Russia’s misadventure in Ukraine is that even if Ukraine successfully defending itself seemed highly improbable in February 2022, it can be ruled out in Canada’s case short of an act of God. The GDP differential of 10:1 is analogous to Russia/Ukraine, but that’s where the similarities end. Canada will, presumably, not have eight years to prepare. Its major cities are strung out in a thin line across the US border, instead of stretching away from it. The US military and MIC are not vaporware, as Russia’s largely turned out to be - where are the Armatas? - but the real thing. It can be blockaded, whereas Ukraine shares a border with the EU. Finally, and most importantly, Ukraine is being supplied by a NATO bloc that is 25x richer than Russia, whose members spend a meager ~0.1% of their GDP on aid to Ukraine and in so doing essentially equalize Ukrainian military spending with Russia’s. Ukraine would have lost without this aid by EOY 2022 regardless of how spirited its resistance was. But the US economy is itself the world’s richest by far. Canada will have no saviour. Frankly, the Canadians will probably realize all this quite early, and allow the Anschluss to go ahead without violent resistance. Subsequently, I do not expect serious Canadian resistance beyond occasional assassinations and firebombings - that is, what we see in the occupied Ukrainian territories, and even there most of that is organized by the SBU. Modern low fertility societies are not cut out for intensive partisan warfare.

On most “rational” benchmarks, the result will be a disaster. Regardless of how the Greenland and Panama adventures went down, this 100% guarantees the dissolution of NATO and a sundering of security ties with the EU. They will regard America’s transformation into a rogue state with extreme alarm. They will probably create a European Army and belatedly fulfill Trump’s demand to raise military spending to 5% of their GDP. The UK will hasten back to the EU. Latin America - Mexico with the most alacrity - will rush to deepen integration, and seek security guarantees from the EU and China. Indeed, the geopolitical result could be something like the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 when traditionally warring Powers, disregarding prior disputes, suddenly turned against Prussia.

At the economic level, the US will immediately increase its population and GDP by 10%. However, the cost will be a cratering of what still remains of its global alliances system and the globalized world economic order that allows it to be so rich in the first place. The skilled immigration debate will no longer ever be relevant because such an America will no longer be a magnet for global Elite Human Capital. Millions of Canadians and liberal Americans will emigrate. To the extent the AGI takeoff hasn’t become a runaway process, it is not altogether impossible that this (and not Wokeness) is what finally does in Silicon Valley as the world’s premier tech hub. It depends on how smartly the Europeans can utilize this opportunity. My expectations are low, but who knows? Necessity is the mother of invention.

The US just before the final nuclear war with China in Fallout.

Obviously, this is basically a sci-fi scenario, and improbable in the extreme. (Though perhaps less improbable than Canada or Canadian provinces just joining the US to escape tariffs; it’s not like Russia’s pre-2014 “gas wars” on Ukraine ever earned it Ukrainian goodwill). It is an amusing thought experiment more than anything else. That said, there is one important factor that could make such events of extremely low probability much more plausible than anyone could expect. I did not mention AGI as an aside. If one seriously ponders on the concept of “anthropic shadow” - the notion that current observations are influenced by the probability of many conscious observers existing in future worlds that grow out of it - then we may expect to see incredibly improbable things start to happen in the years immediately before the Singularity, assuming that AI doom risks are so high that only a small subset of possible worlds host observers that make it past the Singularity. The world’s premier chip foundries being located at the world’s most dangerous geopolitical faultline is one such piece of evidence we may already be in a rather improbable world. Events that postpone AGI takeoff - say, a US-China War that destroys TSMC and perhaps turns nuclear, or America becoming a dictatorship that kills globalization and the technocapital machine driving takeoff, or the SF Bay Area drowning in the Pacific after a Richter 10.3 scale earthquake - could be something we may reasonably expect in such a world.

Benefits: Population, GDP growth. More resources. Arctic dominance. 5/10.

Costs: End of the US-centric alliance system, collapse of globalization and the US technocapital machine. -10/10.

Net Benefits: -5/10.

Basedness: The New Colossus becomes the world’s largest country by land area (suck it Russia!).

On a more aesthetic note, I have long viewed Fallout as the cultural product that best defines America (alongside Blood Meridian), and this is what the collective Zeitgeist seems to subconsciously hanker after. I am not sure the end results will be much to anyone’s liking - jail is programmed, after all - but in the meantime, raking those leafs will be undeniably based as fuck. 10/10

Manifest Destiny: Conquest of Mexico

There are reports that Trump and friends are debating over “how much” to invade Mexico. Regardless of the justifications - suppressing the drug cartels, in this instance - it would be obviously grossly illegal, unless done with the permission of Mexico, which as a sovereign country it is very unlikely to accede to. Nonetheless, a “soft invasion” like this would probably not be much more scandalous than occupying the Panama Canal.

But if we’re going with the Operation Rake timeline, then at this point there’s little left to lose and the US might as well go the full hog and tick off Polk’s vision too.

More than half the Mexican population is concentrated in a narrow subtropical belt in the middle of the country that includes Mexico City. (This distribution has been true for more than two millennia; the north consists of desert and arid scrublands, while the south is traditionally inhospitable jungle. But the central parts are defined by a pleasant climate, rich volcanic soils, and what used to be an extensive network of lakes that eased transport in an environment with otherwise high transport costs). There are minor population concentrations in the northern cities that emerged as manufacturing hubs to utilize cheap Mexican labor to service the American market, and tend to directly abut their American “sisters” (San Diego - Tijuana, El Paso - Ciudad Juárez, etc.).

The northern cities can be occupied within a day or two, while amphibious landings can secure the Yucatán peninsula with its beaches and Mayan ruins. Baja California in particular strikes me perhaps the most egregiously underutilized chunk of real estate on the planet. Why not unite the Californias? Baja California only has 5M people, so Americanization should be easy. Desalination programs can increase carrying capacity tenfold. These land grabs can be justified as “reparations” for dealing with the cartels should some figleaf explanation still be needed (though I doubt anyone will care by this point in the timeline).

An amusing fantasy, but an extraordinarily improbable one.

Assuming the New Colossus retains MAGA’s xenophobic character, it would perhaps be ideal to limit annexations to just the aforementioned regions and maintain a smaller Mexico as a protectorate. (Prolonged occupation of the central area might be problematic because its high population density makes it more suitable for partisan warfare, though as with Canada, I don’t expect it to be a huge issue regardless). The conventional part of the conflict will probably be even easier than Canada and nary merits commentary, even though the US/Mexico population disparity is 3:1 instead of 10:1. Historically, the Mexican-American War (1846-48) was a never-ending rollover of Mexico, and past performance is a good predictor of future performance. Mexico is a middle-income country with an average IQ of 85, so we can expect its weak military to be logistically much more challenged even than Canada and display much lower combat effectiveness. (To be sure, the US Army itself will not exactly be the cream of the crop at this point, because smart conscientious people don’t tend to participate in illegal invasions, but everything is relative in life).

Perhaps there’s some extremely small chance of successful Mexican resistance if China or the EU use the interval between Operation Rake and the invasion of Mexico to spam Mexico with drones and AA and anti-ship missiles while America’s leadership goes full Monke but in all likelihood the consolidation of the North American fortress ends without a hitch.

And then it will be time for America’s final rendezvous with imperial destiny.

Benefits: California expansion and many more beaches. 3/10.

Costs: Needs to manage millions or tens of millions of sullen Mexicans (depending on how much annexation there is). -3/10.

Net Benefits: 0/10.

Basedness: Manifest Destiny achievement complete. 7/10.

These exits range the gamut from charter cities such as Próspera to individual group houses, with Zelar City being somewhere intermediate between them in scale and ambitions. Its medium to long-term plan is to acquire property in Berlin, and then in other major global cities in Europe and globally. These (perhaps NFT-gated) properties will host community centers and co-working spaces for those who share our mission, as well as serve as “embassies” of radical life extension to the world at large.

Towards the end of Zelar City, I took the opportunity to interview three of its main organizers - Laurence Ion, Victoria Forest, and Alexey Strygin. The camera work was very kindly provisioned by Elias Schlie, an up-and-coming podcaster who also participated in the discussion and co-posted this interview to YouTube (as well as doing a separate interview with yours truly).

Here are some timestamps:

0:00 - Introductions
6:02 - How to Get People into Anti-Aging?
16:28 - Where to Build Longevity Communities?
20:34 - Is it Neo-Colonialism?
21:41 - We Need Multiple Experiments
26:03 - Where to Expand Next?
27:04 - Why So Many Romanians in This Space?
29:35 - Europe: Degrowth vs. eu/acc
32:47 - People Need Need Inspirational Stories
36:47 - Bureaucrats Need Longevity Economics Institute
43:30 - Bottlenecks in Anti-Aging Research
53:05 - Role of Vita DAO in Zelar?
55:16 - Reflections and Future Projects

Links to some of the things mentioned in the podcast:

• VitaDAO, the decentralized community that wants to solve aging.

• Aging.FYI: Short summary of why aging is malleable and what you can do to help that. (See also my Immortality page).

• Strygin’s new Longevity Economics Institute think-tank.

I will also take the opportunity to shill Vitalist Bay, slated to become the biggest life extension conference to date. It’s going to take place in Berkeley in April-May 2025. Check it out if you live in the SF Bay Area!

On an administrative note, this interview also marks the formal beginning of the The Karlin Show. I envisage this podcast as a space where I will interview influential and interesting people in the worlds of transhumanism, intelligence research, libertarianism, and other topics that are as catnip to “Elite Human Capital”. The next podcast is going to be with Roko Mijic on icesteading and will be published next week. Don’t forget to subscribe!

I was recently at Zelar City, a pop-up village in Berlin that’s focused on making death option. One of the things I was happy and privileged to get to do there was to participate in a podcast with Elias Schlie, an up-and-coming YouTuber who is interviewing various people in the world of life extension and bio/acc. I think it turned out quite well, and is certainly the most comprehensive case for human intelligence enhancement that I have yet made in an audiovisual format.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Introduction: What if we are not smart enough to solve aging?
1:00 - My background: Education, digital nomadism.
3:08 - Pop up cities and why they are better than both big cities and villages; comparing Zuzalu, Vitalia, and Zelar and their prospects.
11:10 - I explain why intelligence is important (“what you need when you don’t know what to do”); why rich countries are rich and poor countries are poor; and how smarter people will help increase innovation across the board, including further accelerating intelligence and solving aging and other hard and important problems.
16:46 - Why not just work on AI? Importance of having a backup plan.
19:47 - How can we increase human intelligence? Embryo selection for IQ.
21:46 - Higher average IQ, better health, and beauty lifts all boats - but there are trade-offs when selecting for other aspects of personality. The risk of uniformity/psychological monocultures. Regulation through prediction markets? Optimize for economic success or “interestingness”?
32:38 - Embryo selection is slow. What about adults? Gene editing? Nootropics? Biomechatronics?
36:59 - Bandwidth problems.
38:54 - Why focus on embryo selection? (It’s already completely safe and feasible).
40:36 - Could it all just be education levels? Debating causality.
49.57 - What are my plans for Sophia DAO?
51:50 - Minor Errata: I inadvertently gave the impression that UK Biobank only has educational data - it does also have short cognitive function tests (13 questions in 2 minutes), but this falls well short of a proper IQ test.
54:15 - The importance of influencing media and culture: As with pro-deathist messaging, there’s a lot of pretty dumb anti-IQ enhancement propaganda (e.g. Gattaca, Brave New World). To the contrary, we need fantasy and other products with inspirational pro-Biosingularity heroes!
1:01:08 - What do we do with eternity?
1:05:22 - Current investment/manpower in AI research, biogerontology/life extension, and psychometrics/intelligence enhancement.
1:08:52 - Nootropics are to nooceleration as supplements are to life extension, and Neuralink as its equivalent of pacemakers.
1:10:32 - Possible benefits of holding the Sophia DAO token and tentative plans.
1:12:30 - Conclusion. (Note: Obviously I changed blog name from EHC Zone to the current Karlin’s Blog).
1:13:51 - More comments on Zelar’s prospects and Berlin’s surprising status as a major DeSci hub.

Please do have a listen and (if interested) subscribe to Schlie’s channel.

Apart from going into much greater detail on the philosophical connections and synergies between human intelligence enhancement and life extension, you can view it as essentially an audio version of my classic article The Biosingularity is Near.

This October-November, I spent six weeks (Oct 5 - Nov 17) at Zelar City, a pop-up village in Berlin dedicated to biotech, health, and radical life extension. I will post a podcast about Zelar City and its place within the exciting new world of DeSci biotech and network societies later. For now, though, I am returning to my more traditional rubric of travel blogging. These reports were quite popular in the old days of my blogging (see my website’s Travel section), so hopefully we can resurrect some of that.

Background: My only other trip to Germany was in the distant past in 2003 (road trip through Aachen, Cologne, Worms, and Heidelberg), and I know some very basic German (one year at school). I did not come to Germany with extremely high expectations, and to be fair, I am still skeptical that I would enjoy living there semi-permanently; though one can admire elements of Germanness, such as its high function and deadpan humor, in many respects, it still strikes me as a more authoritarian culture than Angloworld (esp. the US). Nonetheless, Berlin performed to the upside, at least relative to the major Euro metropolises like London: Cheap, less crowded, nicer climate (I hate cold/humid most), more convenient airport connections, and comparable startup/DeSci density despite a 3x lower population.

All else equal, I would probably rank Berlin (8/10) above London (8/10) or Paris (7/10), though below San Francisco (9/10) and (prewar) Moscow (10/10).

Berlin Impressions

(1) Border control took 10 seconds, not 5 minutes as in Sweden a month earlier. Solid start.

(2) Let’s start with the built environment. Nobody would accuse Berlin of being a beautiful city - WW2, and then modernism, made sure of that. It is a jungle of steel, concrete, and glass amidst black streams of asphalt; an interlocutor called the style “angular” and come to think of it, she was squarely right (e.g. see the old Luftwaffe HQ). Gas pipelines snake around overground - the city government is apparently too cheap to bury them, as in the rest of Eastern Europe. Aggressive leftist graffiti is omnipresent; this can be aesthetically endearing in the Latin states, but feels out of place in Northern Europe to me.

For all that, despite underwhelming first impressions, Berlin grew on me over my time there. I am not just talking of the nice historic areas, such as Charlottenburg. Even in the former GDR, many of the “commieblocks” have undergone very extensive and even performatively artistic uplifts. There has been some of that in Eastern Europe - extensively in Poland, and in the nicer parts of rich Russian cities - but not to the extent of redoing facades in historical or pseudo-historical styles, and affixing ornamentation like statues and pilasters on them. The older S-Bahn platforms struck me as strangely reminiscent of Chicago’s, but I suppose that makes sense, since they were built at about the same time. Even as regards the unaesthetic elements, one cannot deny there is a certain charm to seeing imposing brutalist concrete representing authority defaced by counter-culture Antifa slogans.

(3) The climate is near ideal for me without it being Mediterranean or alpine - much drier than London, much less cold than Moscow in winter.

(4) Wandering through the wide boulevards and overgrown museums of Saint-Petersburg or Vienna always invokes a melancholic feeling of lost imperial fates and squandered alternatives. There were cities seemingly destined to be the centers of 25M and 10M imperial capitals, as opposed to their real populations of 5M and 2M, respectively. There is a sense of this in Berlin as well - its population peaked at 4.5M in 1943 and never recovered, and now sits at 3.8M, though the metro area is around 5M. In a better timeline, it would be at 10M, and the co-equal of its natural peers, London and Paris. However, in this feeling is less acute in Berlin than in Vienna - it is still a very big city, and rapidly growing besides, reasserting its status as a political center and gravitational attractor after half a century of bisected stagnation.

(5) Berliners are heavily politicized. The obvious expression of this is the Antifa presence: In my area, there was a literal “Antifa cafe” - vegan, of course - along with endless graffiti championing solidarity with Palestine, exhortations to fight against homophobia, misogyny, etc., to open the borders, to go on Klimastreik, and to “FCK ISRL”. The density of rainbow flags is second only to Amsterdam. The prestigious Yuval Noah Harari is incredibly popular both in English and translation; I saw him featured in every bookshop (these things can be telling; Jordan B. Peterson played that role when I visited Romania in 2018, and now their next potential President questions the Moon landings). Berlin is obviously in the lower-left quadrant of the political compass, and votes correspondingly.

That said, to paint Berlin as a militantly Antifa city would be simplistic, the mirror version of right-wing grifter expats who wax about Orbanland as an anti-Woke trad paradise. For every two pro-Palestine messages, there was one in support of Israel (the “Free Palestine” and “Bring Them Home” slogans often competing against each other). In the Festival of Lights performance, the Brandenburg Gate was wreathed in the Israeli flag, with the Hava Nagila playing in the background. At various points I ran into a Falun Gong protest, a gathering of German “constitutional purists”, and an Iranian procession in support of “Women, Life, Freedom” from the top of Berlin Cathedral.

Nor is this to say that heavy politicization is necessarily bad. Some aspects of it might go into unproductive directions, but one thing I have come to realize these past two years is that it is better to have a high level of civic engagement in politics, as opposed to disinterest. That is how you get “stability” and 70% support for senile gerontocratic dictators.

(6) The anarchic-leftist vibes and relatively low cost of living also make Berlin into an attractive locale for all sorts of hipsters, bohemians, and aspiring artists and writers. The location where Zelar City made its temporary home was occupied by Moos, a cooperative mostly composed of that demographic. Incidentally, despite Moos’ vibes being leftist-anarchic, they were actively discussing the idea of setting up a DAO to manage their operations and finances during our time there. This was curious in light of traditional leftist hostility to crypto, but is also of course very encouraging. One of the major selling points of crypto culture - the real thing, not the scammers and grifters who are much more visible - and the network states concept that grew out of it is that it is politically agnostic; it offers the cryptographic tools to optimize governance, but the implementation details are up to its practitioners. A world in which traditional sources of political authority lose legitimacy to decentralized communities of interest freely associating with each other or NOT as the case might be will be a freer and better world. In our own case, there is no hard reason why life extension should be exclusively right-libertarian coded.

(7) Belying its schizopolitics, Berlin is a surprisingly dynamic city economically. Few know this, but it is usually joint-second with Paris as Europe’s VC funding center, though London dominates. However, possibly because America/Silicon Valley simply sucks away almost all of the “respectable” VC stuff in general, Europe has a relatively stronger position in crypto-adjacent spheres, and probably nowhere is this disparity more maxed out than in Berlin, which vies with London - a city that is 3x bigger - as the biggest DeSci hub in Europe and dominates biotech DeSci in particular (i.e. the specific sector I am personally most involved in).

(8) Berlin is about 80-85% European, 10% Turkish/MENA, smattering of Indians, Asians, and Africans. If Moscow is the world’s largest “White” city by far, then Berlin is probably the second one. I don’t care about this, but some Germans at least probably do, and this might additionally explain why it such a strong influx of migrants (and why Potsdam is growing even faster).

There is a certain type of East German visage that is very Slavic in appearance and can be identified in about 10% of the population (both male and female). I assume these are throwbacks from the original admixture between Germans and the Slavic Wends (the latter’s “pure” descendants are the Sorbians).

The mall near where I lived had a large, new, shiny immigration center for Ukrainian immigrants. I heard from a resident journalist somewhat famous in Russia watching circles that they get 2,000 Euros per month in benefits. This validates my intuition that almost none of the one million Ukrainian war refugees in Germany will return to Ukraine, and that instead they will be joined by their menfolk after the war. In addition to Ukrainians and Volga Germans, there are also newer Russian immigrants. They tend to be richer and reside in prestigious areas such as Charlottenburg. My impression is that Berlin has become competitive with London as a central hub for the Russian opposition since 2022.

(9) Costs of living are cheap by Anglo-American standards: Beer and cappuccino - 3 Euros; museums are typically 5-10 Euros or free; 42 Euros got us an eight seat taxi to the other side of town. A trip to Leipzig (150 km) cost 40 Euros, and 10 Euros for return on a Flixbus; these are amazing prices by UK standards. Obviously, there are plenty of much cheaper places elsewhere in the world, but it’s refreshing seeing this in a fully developed country. Rents have risen sharply, as everywhere else, but are vastly lower than in the prestigious US cities. This is obviously another reason for Berlin’s popularity with the bohemian/downshifting crowd.

(10) Food. The only classic German dish I had was a beef roulade with dumplings at the Mephisto Bar in Leipzig, which I liked.

German SLOP review:

• I was initially unimpressed by the local doner, but I think I just didn’t have luck with the local one; the Döner PLUS by the Jewish Museum was very good.

• Currywurst is bad and gross. Sausages and ketchup doesn't go together - Chicagoans can tell you that - adding curry powder on top makes it even worse.

• The McRib at McDonald’s: Edible, but nothing to write home about; only saved by the onions and pickles. (I don’t eat pork, but make an exception for novelties).

I also tried a Reuben sandwich and matzo soup for (IIRC) the first time at Masha's Bagels & Delicatessen (great cafe).

Drinking:

• Sparkling water is the standard water. I prefer sparkling but this annoys many foreigners.

• Mulled wine (Glühwein) is often available at cafes. Very considerate of them during the chilly months.

• Their version of Cola Zero is something called Cola Freeway, a Lidl supermarket brand, and costs 40 cents instead of 1 Euro. Almost as good as the real thing.

• You’re allowed to drink in the streets.

(11) Bad Berlin waiters are a meme (excellent YouTube channel BTW) but I can’t confirm, wasn’t frequenting any fancy places. I suspect it’s overdone. Zoomers around the world (including the US) couldn’t care less.

(12) Another meme is that German stores close really early. This isn’t really true in Berlin; the typical time is 9 pm. There are also (mostly Turkish-owned) Spätis that offer booze to the early hours.

(13) Coffee shampoo is oddly prominent. Everywhere else you have to order it off Amazon.

(14) The meme about garbage having to be sorted into the correct bins is correct.

(15) I got offered weed by an African man at Gorlitzer Park on my first day in Berlin.

(16) There is much more smoking. There are even certain cafes and train carriages where smoking is explicitly permitted.

(17) Obesity is rare. Tons of cyclists (it’s Europe). Fashion sense is non-existent; the slovenly look is chic.

(18) Anglos talk about “body positivity”; Germans practice it. The saunas, including at my local gym, were nude and mixed sex. (Usually, it’s one or the other: Covered and mixed sex in Angloworld, or naked and sex-segregated in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia). This wasn’t a surprise to me, since I was aware that this is the norm in Germany and Austria. It was an interesting experience that helped alleviate some long-standing issues I have had with my own body image, though I can see how this would make foreigners with more conservative worldviews uncomfortable.

(19) Time Travel. Being in Berlin is a lot like going back in time by a decade. Smoking (see above). Cheap and cheapish looking department stores. Slot machines are often present in bars and even doner shops (!?). Railway tickets need to be stamped to be valid, and the ticketing machines don’t always accept cards. (There are apps but they are buggy and clunky).

I was intellectually aware of this, but it was nonetheless slightly jarring to come to a place where you still need cash. Some Berlin restaurants and even gyms don’t take cards. As of 2024, even Hungary (at least Budapest) is fully digitized, while paying cash in UK and Sweden has become “weird”.

I’m not a fan of this and don’t really understand why the Germans are so backwards on digitization. I think much of this has to do with the misplaced German obsession with privacy. Look, if a modern state wants to find you for posting a racism to Facebook or whatever - Germany has no First Amendment, which is an actually meaningful protection - it will find you; your privacy “protections” like not allowing Google Street View only inconveniences people and creates problems for your already beleaguered tech industry.

(20) I’m uninterested in nightlife. The one time I went to a rave at a shabby, rundown place that is supposedly prestigious in “hip” Berlin circles, half our group got denied entrance. From what I gather the face control is based on your vibes, connections, and the whims of the club owners more than how rich and stylish you look, as would be the case in Russia. Something to bear in mind if you’re of a mind to get into the “scene”.

(21) “When you tell a German to do something, he does it; when you tell an Austrian to do something, he does it too, but then asks why,” - Karl Kraus on the difference between Viennese and Berliners. Stereotypes about Prussian authoritarianism abound. So how to explain Berlin’s current status as a slovenly Antifa city? I think it’s something fundamental that the practical-minded Anglos don’t get about Teutonic culture. It’s not about authoritarianism per se, but about being the best at whatever ideology pops into their heads next. Germans were the best fascists under the Nazis - the best Communists under the GDR - they are the best and most consummate shitlibs under the current political culture. Learn the difference, it could save your life.

Berlin Places

My favorite museums were the DDR Museum, the Deutsches Technikmuseum, and the Jewish Museum.

Major lacunae include Potsdam (it’s better to visit Sanssouci during summer) and Pergamum (closed for restoration). I also didn’t find time for ascending the iconic TV Tower on Alexanderplatz. Next time.

Berlin Cathedral

Relatively new building; beautiful. Often has live performances.

The views from the top of Berlin Cathedral are just as stunning and can be savored from the open air.

Soviet War Memorial (Treptower)

Berlin has the world’s largest Soviet war memorial outside the former USSR. Harmonic and lovely for walking - just 5 minutes from where I lived.

DDR Museum

Information and exhibits about the lost civilization that is GDR - the world’s most advanced and consummate socialist state. Some observations:

• The single strongest and most important impression I got is that the East Germans were genuinely more enthusiastic about the socialist project than the rest of Eastern Europe outside the USSR, and specifically its core Russian territories at that. It wasn’t something “unnatural” to them as it was to the Poles; I think they really drank the Kool-Aid. The GDR resisted the USSR on reform after 1985, and I suspect it would have otherwise survived and eventually undergone ethnogenesis as a separate German nation much as say Taiwan did in the 2000s.

• The percentage of irreligious people went from 8% in 1950 to 64% by 1989. In the GDR, scientific socialism won.

• The GDR crafted the illusion of democratic competition through a thicket of nominally independent parties that were subservient to the ruling SED in practice under the aegis of the SED-controlled National Front of the GDR. (Amusingly, the only time in the history of the GDR that a block party registered a dissenting vote was by the CDU against a law regulating abortion in 1972). I suspect this influenced Putin and the idea of a “systemic opposition” to United Russia that in reality are subservient to the Presidential Administration.

• Large-scale doping program centered in Leipzig. I suspect this also influenced Putin; can’t be a coincidence.

• Forest of “sports associations” for everything from miners and steel workers to writers and athletes. One of these was Domowina, an association for Sorbians - an indigenous Slavic group closely related to Poles. The East Germans took Lenin’s pronouncements on national autonomies seriously, as in the USSR, and very much unlike the petty social nationalists in all but name that otherwise predominated in most of the other East European Communist parties. Sorbian culture and literature was subsidized and flowered as never before or since in the GDR.

• The usual story with elite privileges and foreign travel as a rare boon only granted in exceptional cases. Worker pilfering was common - the enterprises were nationally owned anyway, or so the logic went. Progressive collapse in innovation and new products (there’s a display of a microchip that couldn’t be put into mass production because it was 2 years older and 100x as expensive to produce as the leading-edge Intel product).

• Heavy, increasing militarization of society, including schools, throughout the 1970-80s (as in the USSR). Analogous increase in Stasi informants, whose numbers reached 200,000 by 1975 or more than 1% of the population. “House books” in every apartment building. As I said, the most consummate and well organized socialist state.

• One difference from the USSR: The GDR had extensive naturism (nudity the only freedom East Germans could enjoy was a popular joke). It also tolerated erotic media. In the USSR, of course, there was “no sex”.

German Historical Museum

The present exhibition is called “Paths not Taken” and explores inflection points in German history where things could have gone otherwise. Some examples:

• Could the GDR have survived?

• What if the Americans had finished the atomic bomb before Germany was defeated? (TIL the first American atomic bomb to be have been dropped on Germany was to have targeted the IG Farben mega-factory in Ludwigshafen). I have an old post about this scenario.

• What if the July Plot had succeeded?

• What if the anti-war protests in July 1914 succeeded? Most histories just focus on the prewar jingoism. But apparently, the antiwar protests were far larger - e.g. 100,000 protested at Treptower alone - than I had been aware of.

• What if constitutional monarchy and democracy had succeeded in 1848?

Altes Museum

The first public museum in Berlin (1831) hosts a standard exposition on Ancient Greece, the Etruscans, and Rome. Observations:

• Has the world’s tallest (surviving) glass amphora at 60 cm.

• Etruscan women had more rights than Greek or Roman women. Interesting question what would have happened if they won.

• One room features ancient erotic art. Amusingly, it was only displayed to the public from 2010. Uncharacteristically strait-laced?

Bode Museum

Specializes in Byzantine art and numismatics (this section was closed).

The most amusing exhibit was a Roman equivalent of the slot machine called a ksilinos hippikos (above), a contraption in which people would release four colored balls and bet on which one would reach the bottom first.

Jewish Museum

Every sufficiently prestigious Euro-American city has an expansive Jewish museum (e.g. Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Center of Tolerance, Warsaw’s POLIN Museum). As can be expected from a very high IQ group, these Jewish museums are impeccably organized and furnished with objects to inform visitors about Jewish history and invoke sympathy and understanding for their values and interests. (Just to be clear I admire this approach and consider it a template for all other ethno-religious groups to follow, if they are smart enough).

The Jewish Museum in Berlin - the epicenter of Judaism’s greatest tragedy, now again a growing hub for Jewish culture - is obviously no exception. Some observations:

• TIL men and women only became segregated in European synagogues in 13C.

• One of the corridors features ribbons of quotes about Jews, positive/progressive ones from the front; negative/anti-Semitic ones looking back. Cool approach.

• The Nazi period culminating in we know what was the usual sad but predictable affair. One point I rather liked was an attempt to explore the divided loyalties that Jews felt in the 1930s when weighing on whether to play it safe and emigrate, or make a bet on eventual Nazi moderation:

  • “Even if our Fatherland disowns us, we remain in a state of readiness for Germany.” - Journal of a Loyal Following of German Jews, 1933

  • “What a hell Germany has become.” - Werner Kraft, 1933.

• The correct answer was clear in retrospect, and it was the more idealistic/patriotic Jews who got it wrong and paid for it. There’s probably a lesson there.

• The story of Julius Levy, a refugee from Nazi Germany to the US, who in 1950 got a letter from his German classmates nonchalantly inviting to attend a class reunion - and a request to send them coffee - as if nothing had happened in the intervening decade.

The museum doubles as a thematic modern art exhibition. There is an outdoor space with a glum forest of concrete pillars on uneven ground with a more optimistic forest of olive trees on top. In another part, there is a spacious dark room with just a tiny opening to the outside at the top. Visitors are meant to ponder on the Jewish experience and perhaps more general questions about the meaning of life in these places.

Deutsches Technikmuseum

The territories of the HRE have the world’s longest precision manufacturing tradition. The modern state of Germany was the world’s second manufacturing Power between about 1900 and 1944. Consequently, there’s a ton of stuff from the era when Germany produced interesting new things and technical ideas, instead of just whining about Americans doing it along with the rest of Europe.

Huge, very impressive museum - the two most extensive exhibits focus on trains and aircraft.

There is a vast collection of trains stretching from the first Prussian attempt at a steam engine on rails in 1816 - based on an English design obtained through early industrial espionage - through the heyday of German railway construction to the late Nazi era, and one modern example. The only bigger - much bigger - train arsenal I have visited is the Russian Railway Museum in Saint-Petersburg.

There is also a big and representative collection of civilian and military aircraft to the end of the Nazi era, including some rare and exotic Wunderwaffen (see above).

There is an original of the Z1, the world’s first fully programmable computer (1938) which Konrad Zuse built in his living room. There was a copy of Zuse’s Rechnender Raum (1969), which basically kicked off digital physics (leading to Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis, Tegmark’s mathematical universe, and my own speculations about the Katechon Hypothesis). I was really not aware how impressive and prolific an inventor Zuse was. Sadly for him, post-war Germany was just never going to make it in computers. In retrospect, he should have emigrated to California after the war and tried to make his career there - I suspect he’d now be a household name if he’d done so.

Sewing machines in museums: For once, they are NOT all Singer ones, as is the case in most of the world. In fact, I saw just one Singer machine. Indigenous sewing machines must be an artifact of Germany’s own expansive manufacturing in late 19C/early 20C.

Futurium Museum

Dull, insipid “futurism”-themed museum that really just pays homage to the German state’s degrowth and bioconservative ideology. The section on human genetic augmentation features a stern-faced bioethicist woman demanding more global regulations to prevent people like He Jiankui working outside institutions. Lots of stuff on diversity, recycling, Open Borders, etc. - which is fine, but I fail to see its relevance to futurism or technology.

Leipzig Impressions

During my time in Berlin I made a day trip to Leipzig, the GDR’s second city, with a companion who is considering moving there.

(1) Its railway station is the biggest in Europe - it’s absolutely gargantuan. The feeling of relative emptiness and lost opportunities is as acute here as it is in Vienna; it is a city that was “meant” to be much bigger than it actually is. A century ago, it vied with Munich for the #3 spot after Berlin and Hamburg; it is now #8, which is still much better than its 1990s trough, when it collapsed into the mid-teens.

That said, it surprised me to the upside. I was expecting GDR cities outside Berlin to be dreary and depopulated. It did feel empty for its size, but wasn't at all dreary. Certainly it was a favorable impression relative to English NW cities like Manchester. No graffiti and the locals aren’t fat, drunk, and slobby. (You apparently need to go into the smaller former GDR cities to really experience the post-socialist collapse and depopulation).

(2) Locals vote for the AfD, not Greens and Die Linke as in Berlin.

Visual expression:

In Leipzig: “Real Life: A Guide. You Should/Not: Burn your Passport, Reject Citizenship, Reject borders, Abolish Nations, etc.”

Meanwhile, back in Berlin: “NO BORDERS” from Migrantifa.

Whichever is your preferred cup of tea!

(3) Leipzig is 90-95% “White”. Zero graffiti, unlike Berlin. Suspect these are the main reasons it is seeing the influx it is, impolitic as this is to venture. It’s also a more architecturally coherent and beautiful city than Berlin. So I can see its attraction. But the problem is that Berlin is where all the other interesting people congregate and where the most interesting events and conferences happen. So if that is important to you, Berlin is really the only choice within the German world.

(4) Leipzig University is huge. There is a bust of Wilhelm Wundt, the father of experimental psychology and mentor to Charles Spearman, he of the g factor.

(5) It has beautiful malls: The one in the railway station itself, the historic Mädlerpassage, and the modernistic steel and glass Höfe am Brühl.

St. Thomas Church

Mostly unremarkable Lutheran church, other than for Johann Sebastian Bach having worked there as its choirmaster for the last 27 years of his life. It has a small museum.

Speaking of composers, the city also hosted Richard Wagner and Felix Mendelssohn.

Leipzig City History Museum

Germans are predictably good with local history museums. This is a classical example in its genre, tracing Leipzig’s journey from prehistory origins to the present day. Some observations:

• Prehistory: Whereas Berliners admixed with Wends, the local Slavs in the Leipzig (Libzi) area were Bohemians.

• There’s many exemplars of the work of Leipzig guilds. Interestingly, people whose parents had “dishonorable” professions - gravediggers, night watchmen, executioners - were barred from joining a guild. They were only abolished in favor of free trade in 1861.

• The modern exhibition was quite standard: Industrialization; the feminist movement; the Weimar era and its anti-Semitism; the Nazi horror; the GDR smog; the modern day.

“Deep Roots”: The most interesting thing I took away from it though was that there is probably a connection between Leipzig hosting Bach, Wagner, and Schiller, and its relative precocity in literacy achievements. In economic development maps before Communism - from the spread of the printing press to industrialization - Saxony is usually in the lead alongside the Rhineland and (in the former) the south. As mentioned above, Leipzig University is Germany’s second oldest. The Sachsenspiegel - the first law book and work of prose in German - was written in 1220-1235. I was particularly impressed by the registry book of the Leipzig Shooters Association; a volunteer militia was keeping detailed records about its training rules, its members, and disbursements in 1632. The Einkommende Zeitungen, the world’s first daily newspaper - published six times a week - appeared here in 1650. Subsequently, Leipzig became a major center of the German Enlightenment, and was the capital of the German publishing industry until Germany’s division.

This is based on the principle that Elite Human Capital is a magnet for Elite Human Capital. But then they fucked up.

Predictions Contest

I will be accepting election predictions in the comments until 8 am ET. Offer them in this format to 2 decimal places (placeholder example):

Trump: 47.90%
Harris: 48.54%
EC: Harris 257 - Trump 281

Rules: There will be separate winners for the popular vote and the EC results. The winner of the popular vote will be the contestant with the smallest difference from the final results for Trump and Harris added together. The winner of the EC vote will be the contestants who get the correct number of EC votes for each candidate, or are closest to it (if there’s a tie the winner will be the one with the best prediction of the popular vote).

Prizes: The two winners get a lifetime comp to EHC.zone. In the unlikely event this contest blows up despite its late hour (>50 participants), each winner will also get $50 in ETH to their wallet. You will also be acknowledged in the next Open Thread which will gain you immense prestige.

My Prediction

I decided to stick with my Kamala victory prediction from July, although it’s now obviously much lower confidence. Trump is truly Teflon.

Popular Vote: I don’t want people clustering around me so I will update with my popular results prediction closer to the deadline here and in a comment.

EC: Harris 270 - Trump 268 (X).

We will see how I do relative to my past US elections predictions (all correct except 2016 but I gave Trump much higher chances than average).

Endorsement (FWIW)

I endorse Kamala Harris in the swing states (to defeat Trump), and Chase Oliver elsewhere (most aligned).

I wrote a 7,000 word article explaining why. There’s also a short video for the audio-visual crowd (X, YouTube).

AK Trivia: My past endorsements - 2024: Kamala; 2020: Trump (unenthusiastic); 2016: Trump (MAGA chud); 2012: Obama; 2008: Obama; 2004: Kerry; 2000: Gore.

Reader Poll

Additional Comments

I will be traveling tomorrow (Leipzig) so I probably won’t be Tweeting or commenting much. So just to get in some last words:

1) I agree with the consensus that this election is going to be close.

2) By far the likeliest two scenarios are either a Trump or a Harris sweep of the swing states. My 270-268 prediction is based on vibes and feels for what a max chaos/entertainment result would be (Elon Musk: “The most entertaining outcome is the most likely.”)

If the result is 270-268 or something else very close, I expect major shenanigans as the Trump campaign scours for faithless electors. I don’t see a reason why it couldn’t work in principle, in which case it might set off a legitimacy crisis. Fanciful scenario here.

3) I stand by my call that this election will have the greatest gender gap in history due to the renewed salience of the abortion debate after Trump’s judges repealed Roe v. Wade, as well as the disturbing normalization of misogyny on the fringes of the Republican coalition (e.g. Tateism is both far more popular and far more extreme than anything I can recall from the mid-2010s Alt Right).

4) The Tech Right defection aside, the level of educational polarization is also going to be unprecedented. Smart people are not going to be voting for the party that pedestalizes fluoride truthers and demonologists except for cynical or ultra-rationalizing reasons (apart from Hanania, some great examples in this genre are Max Lott and Samuel Hammond).

5) Increasing educational polarization should have interesting electoral effects that few are paying attention to. For instance, note that the Rustbelt swing states have higher average IQs than the Sunbelt states (Pesta 2023). (The differences are less stark for tertiary educational attainment - though Pennsylvania is distinctly ahead of the rest - but I suspect the correlations are better for IQ than education anyway). Consequently, all else equal, I expect Democrat strength to increase in relative terms in the north and decrease in the south. In the event that there is no sweep, scenarios in which Kamala keeps the Blue Wall and loses the Sunbelt are far likelier than the converse. This is reinforced by continued pro-Trump gains amongst Latinos, which I expect to continue into this election (e.g. see the amusing demographics of the groyper movement… Yes, I know the groypers turned against Trump because he’s pro-Israel and not sufficiently anti-abortion, but they’re just the edgiest edge). So I would be incredibly surprised to see scenarios in which say Kamala wins Arizona and Nevada but loses Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.

Some other thoughts: Trump should do a lot better in California than in 2020. Obviously it’s still a total wipeout for him, but in between Tech Right dissatisfaction and low average IQ - it’s very much a state where the “smart fractions” pull along the rest - and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s margin collapses by 7% or even 10% points (especially since Californians can make protest statements like this without actually contributing to Trump’s chances of winning). This is obviously going to have an effect on the national popular vote share, which between this and Trump’s greater strength relative to 2020 should now be much narrower.

More speculatively, the gap in the Kamala-Trump margin between Florida and Texas will be lower than between Biden-Trump in 2020. Florida is lower IQ and is a scientific desert, and gains prestige as the home base of the Mar-a-Lago MAGA elite, whereas Texas has a much higher Nature Index performance and has even had some actual EHC influx (Austin) while also having imposed a total abortion ban that annoys EHC and women in particular.