Bad dogs. Watch this with the sound on.

We Are Living in the Fantasy World of 13-Year-Old Boys

Many of the tech billionaires who built our world have taken the wrong lessons from their favorite science fiction. They regard “humanness, and Earth itself … as a burden to be sloughed off.” Gal Beckerman contemplates the new book “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State” by Jill Lepore.

Like Musk, Thiel and Sam Altman, I grew up reading Heinlein, Asimov and Adams. I found the writing inspiring. But I stopped taking it literally a long time ago. https://www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/08/silicon-valley-science-fiction-jill-lepore-book-review/688467/?gift=_aFBI00lj0Z6Gzv9uVJeWOioXlRT_V3rLqTrRQ33rrk&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Milo Yiannopoulos has been arrested and detained by ICE and has been ordered removed from the US. Yiannopoulos, a British immigrant to the US, has advocated “ICE checkpoints at supermarket entrances, gas stations, strip malls, intersections and government buildings, with on the spot deportation for anyone who can’t prove they are in the US legally,” “total legal immunity” for ICE agents and “zero immigration in the next 20 years. No ifs, no buts.”

Buh-bye Milo. Don’t let the leopards eat your face on the way out. https://abcnews.com/US/milo-yiannopolous-british-commentator-detained-ice/story?id=136038107

RE: https://plush.city/@mynameistillian/117025047585496827

Yes.

@cstross Potential pocket-sized writing deck. Well, ALMOST pocket-sized. https://zerowriter.ink

Maybe pocket-sized if you're wearing cargo pants.

I also have a Clicks Power Keyboard on pre-order. I'm expecting it any day now. https://www.clicks.tech

I type on a keyboard on my Mac all day, either on a desk, table or lapdesk. Often I want to write but not like that. Sometimes I want to capture a thought while walking the dog or shopping or running errands. Alternatives:

- Thumb-typing: Slow, error-prone.
- Voice dictation. Everybody slags on Siri, but I think it's pretty good. Are there better options? If so, what are they?

Maybe I just want to get better at handwriting in a notebook and then I scan it in or retype it. But I am rubbish at organizing my notes after I've captured them and I fear a notebook would fill up with writing I never look at again.

Give me some advice, please!

@pluralistic Have you found a solution or do you just type on your laptop?

@cstross Do you have any thoughts here? Based on a thread you started a few days ago, I think you have the same struggle.

CPAC was funded by Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, which is a vassal state of Russia. Until this week, Orbán’s Hungary was the Republican model for the US — run by oligarchs and governed by right-wing extremist Christian values and massive corruption. With Orbán out in Hungary, we’ll see where that goes.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-13-2026

This is not a new thing in the US — time and again, wealthy men have decided the country would be better off if the oligarchs ran things. Oligarchs tried to take over in the 1860s — we fought the Civil War over it — 1890s, 1920s and 2000s.

“Establishment Republicans who wanted a smaller government liked Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation, but they did not like the threat of government intervention in their business decisions to force them to adhere to right-wing moral values. They are also not keen on Trump’s rejection of Europe and destruction of the rules-based international order under pressure from Putin. That order facilitates international trade.

“In an op-ed in Fox News online [Monday], Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the old leader of the establishment Republicans, tried to sideline the MAGA Republicans when he wrote: ‘Watching this from Kentucky, it is hard to understand how some on the American right thought that staking U.S. influence on the outcome of a parliamentary election in a small, central European country was putting America’s interests first. To the extent that what happens in Hungary matters to America, it is a question of whether its actions on the world stage—not its social policies—align with America’s strategic interests.’

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-13-2026

Link list: Articles and other links of interest

Trump is alienating nearly every group in the unlikely coalition that voted him into office, even white voters without college degrees. “A new CBS News/YouGov poll found Trump's approval among white voters without college degrees — the backbone of his movement — has swung from +36 early in his term to underwater at -4, a 40-point collapse.”

https://www.axios.com/2026/04/14/trump-maga-coalition-catholics-iran-war