“We all got fooled by the 1990s . . . We got fooled into thinking that liberal democracy is easy and natural. It’s not — it’s hard and it’s unnatural. And so we need to start taking it seriously.”

This interview with Haidt is outstanding. Must get the new book once it’s out.

“There can be found, inside every American, a miniature Puritan yearning to grow large and seize control.”

Martin Gurri tells it like it is.

“So, Barack Obama has taken up fighting disinformation. NYT notes how his administration didn’t regulate tech. When I started writing about it, a decade ago, the pushback I got from the Obama universe was intense, and is hinted at the below profile of me.”

So starts a Twitter thread from Zeynep Tufekci on groupthink of an administration. Maybe he should have jumped straight to narrating Netflix docu-series.

“Whatever its flaws, the NBA is one of the more functional institutions in American society.”

Yes! And Jokić is the MVP.

“We live in Applicatia, a world where people must spend their days improving their resumes in the hope of improving their lives…”

This is from Experimental History, my new favorite newsletter.

“This is the question that haunts me: How much genius are we losing to the compulsive need to scroll just a little bit more?”

Cal Newport has a point.

Inside the Virus-Hunting Nonprofit at the Center of the Lab-Leak Controversy This gun isn’t smoking, it’s on fire 📰

Putin’s useful German idiots 📰

This is not limited to Putin. Germany has a rich history of enabling petty autocrats world wide, including the Balkans.

Invasion of the Fact-Checkers 📰

An uneducated populace with little capacity for critical thought does need a Ministry of Truth to tell them what to think. But that’s just Orwell’s 1984. Couldn’t possibly happen in the here and now.

“We are still talking about the original Wuhan strain coronavirus vaccine. Sad!” Attempted Trumpism aside, VP makes a good point. The short time it took from sequencing to mRNA vaccines made headlines. FDA then made provisions for quick review of sequence changes. What happened? 📰