• Japan’s Sanae Takaichi finds perfect playlist for Donald Trump, and a profile: Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s iron lady is set to surprise
• Sequoia COO quit over Shaun Maguire’s comments about Mamdani. I think many of Mamdani’s proposals are idiotic, but with enemies like this combined with the media harangue against him — including from the nominally liberal NYT — I can’t help but root for the guy. Which, I realize, is the position many republicans took with the current President.
• Europe and the curse of geography. “When Trump has his much-anticipated meeting with Xi Jinping this week, Europe will resemble a child looking up at two parents squabbling over its head. Successive generations of European leaders deserve all the criticism in the world for letting the continent become the cringing vassal that it is today. The military neglect, the preference for a “social market” over growth at all costs: these were life-and-death errors, smugly made.” From Janan Ganesh.
• The relentless rise of China’s biotechs, which I will quote more extensively:

While US groups have poured resources into gene therapy, many have been held back by soaring costs and regulatory hurdles in their home market. In China, by contrast, regulators have supported the field by allowing earlier human trials and more flexibility in how they are designed. […] But while Chinese regulators have nurtured innovation, low domestic drug prices have forced companies to look abroad to recoup investment. “One huge disappointment has been that the commercial sales for China’s drug sector have never bloomed,” said Loncar.

So let me see if I got this right: Americans are paying for health care out of their noses to finance the world’s medical innovation which nowadays mostly comes from China, the citizens of which have among the lowest medical costs in the world. Someone here is being played.

• BBC: Huntington’s disease successfully treated for first time. Big if true, but still at the press release stage. Caveat lector.
• CNN: A surgical team was about to harvest this man’s organs — until his doctor intervened. Concerning. Yes, it is extremely unlikely but the number of these occurrences should be exactly 0 and the system that allows them needs to be rethought.
• NYT: She Held Her Baby for an Hour. Then the State Took Her Away. Harrowing.
• NYT: An Age of Extinction Is Coming. Here’s How to Survive. A few months old but a good one from Ross Douthat. “In this environment, survival will depend on intentionality and intensity. Any aspect of human culture that people assume gets transmitted automatically, without too much conscious deliberation, is what online slang calls NGMI — not going to make it.” We are doing our small part by introducing our kids to the pre-1980s movies and some very old books.
• FT: The young against the young. From Janan Ganesh, with whom I am — predictably — in complete agreement: “Yes, a house in E8 will cost you now, but if you think that outweighs the invention of the hepatitis B vaccine, you might investigate the option of growing up a bit.”

Gift links for the last 3 — enjoy.

• Nassim Taleb: The World in Which We Live Now. This is the essay version of his talk at the Ron Paul Institute, and much easier to follow.
• Miloš Vojnović: The 2020s: The Age of What?. My suggestion: despair.
• Leo Tolstoy: A Confession. Serialized by Cluny Journal, two of 6 parts out as of this morning.
• Tanner Greer: Bullets and Ballots: The Legacy of Charlie Kirk. A viewpoint about a person of whose existence I wasn’t even peripherally aware until last week: “I do not think liberals, progressives, or even older conservatives understood the amount of slime thrown at Kirk by those to his right. His eagerness to work with the new establishment inside established political forms, his program for the right’s spiritual renewal, and his generally pro-Israel line made him a constant target of Nick Fuentes and the “Fuentards” who follow him. His commitment to populist coalition-building made him an enemy of people like Laura Loomer, who described Kirk as “a political charlatan, claiming to be pro-Trump one day while he stabs Trump in the back the next” just a few weeks ago.” If you are known by your enemies…
• Ernie Smith: Saying Exactly What You Mean. Another viewpoint, but more so about Jesse Welles whose song [“Charlie”][5a] is very good.
• Claude Taylor on X: This is still the best reading of all this I’ve seen. I have no idea who this is-but (I think) he’s got it. I agree! The commentator’s name is Aidan Walker and he has a blog about memes to which I am now subscribed.

• Hyundai-LG immigration raid sparks alarm at foreign companies in the US. The US immigration system is a horror story co-written by Lovecraft and Kafka.
• Democrats rekindle Trump’s Epstein problem with birthday note. How many mosquito nets will it take to wash off the shame?
• After six years of silence and hype, is Silksong worth the wait?. About the Hollow Knight sequel. FT’s gaming coverage is quite good.
• How Novartis got ahead on ‘incredible’ cancer breakthrough. Their medicine coverage, on the other hand… I should write more about these kinds of promotional articles, this is just a reminder for me to do it.

All gift links. Enjoy.

The FT Editorial board says it’s time to stop indulging Serbia’s authoritarian president:

America seems to have left the Balkan pitch for now. But the UK and the EU have not. They should act and use their economic leverage. If they do not and Serbia heads further down the authoritarian path, it will be not just Vučić but also his gaze-averting western backers who are to blame.

“Economic leverage” sounds suspiciously like sanctions, which would be the exact wrong move to take and would only strengthen the president’s hand. Just ghost him — it would infuriate his small narcissistic mind.

Alex Tabarrok wrote a brief comment on why America always wins in the global superpower game:

Double down on immigration, entrepreneurship, innovation, building for tomorrow, free markets, free speech and individualism and America will take all new competitors as it has taken all comers in the past.

Funny how each and every of these reasons of America’s dominance is not only under threat — they always have been — but is being actively dismantled by the state itself. This time may truly be different.

Whatever you think of medicalization of moderate obesity, the GLP-1 inhibitors semaglutide and tirzeparide (aka Ozempic, Wegowy and Zepbound) are truly groundbreaking. It takes a lot for me to admit something approaches imatinib in innovation and importance, and they are there! Incredibly, the drug companies that developed them are considered losers in the upside-down world of American finance:

Since their peak last year, the decline is more pronounced. Novo Nordisk has lost $367bn in value since its peak in June 2024, a fall of more than two-thirds, while Lilly has fallen 29 per cent from a record valuation last year, wiping $250bn off its market capitalisation.

In a decision that was short-termist and reactionary to the extreme, Novo Nordisk even fired their longstanding CEO over it.

The kicker comes from a healthcare fund manager quoted near the end of the article:

“If you’re a generalist investor, why are you putting money here, versus buying an AI stock, [given] the headwinds of both tariffs and the most favoured nation policy?” he added.

What are we even doing here?

In the story of Spanish solar power, the FT finds a country with energy abundance and doesn’t like what it sees. A few choice quotes:

Pedro Sánchez calls his country a ‘global benchmark’ in the transition to greener energy, but prices — and profits — have plunged.

Spain has built so much solar capacity that at certain times of day it produces far more electricity than it needs. Prices have plunged as a result, dragging down owners’ profits with them.

Free power is gratifying for customers, but bad for generators.

Etc, etc. Good for Spain! The monetary matters will settle themselves out.

There is banger after banger in the most recent weekend edition of the FT, which is apparently Steve Bannon’s favorite newspaper:

• Sunday at the garden party for Curtis Yarvin and the new, new right, in which the FT columnist Jemima Kelley meets some interesting people.

Cave turns to me. “So what’s your skill then, spinning stuff into a story?”

“No,” I reply. “My skill is keeping a straight face when someone tells me something, and inside I’m thinking: fucking hell.”

• Don’t mourn the golden age of TV from Janan Ganesh, and I am in general agreement.
• The magic of childhood in the Netherlands from Simon Kuper, and as an uncle to a couple of mostly-Dutch children I tend to agree.
• Why England’s new towns should look to medieval France, which made me drool.

All gift links with limited activations, so enjoy while you can!

Well that was fast:

“At the FDA’s request, Dr. Vinay Prasad is resuming leadership of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research,” HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said. “Neither the White House nor HHS will allow the fake news media to distract from the critical work the FDA is carrying out under the Trump administration.”

Maybe lobbying isn’t as effective as I thought? I am sure there are stories to be told about what happened during these two weeks.