dkthomp.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

“Donald Trump and Elon Musk never believed in anyone’s free speech except their own,” @dgraham.bsky.social writes: theatln.tc/wj4RSMYy

submitted 2 days ago • 27 comments

The DOJ has just opened an investigation in wasteful billing practices, including diagnostic upcoding, at UnitedHealth's Medicare Advantage program. What's upcoding? When does makes a medical billing practice fraudulent? All answered on this week's ep —> open.spotify.com/episode/1lTP...

submitted 2 days ago • 4 comments

Important piece. Young people are hard to poll, but this fits the general thrust of my essays and pods over the last year. Young ppl, esp men, have moved right in the last few years; and in many cases young men are even more right-leaning than older men (OTOH: Watch that dip...)

submitted 2 days ago • 32 comments

This is a good story about micro impacts of tariffs that could have macro effects The U.S. is trying to build out power capacity to meet rising demand from AI and data center demand Transformers used in power grids are especially vulnerable to tariff disruptions www.wsj.com/economy/trad...

submitted 2 days ago • 10 comments

New PLAIN HISTORY ep: James K. Polk might be the most underrated—or, at least, under-considered—president in US history. In four years, he doubled the size of the US, made America a two-ocean empire, lied his way into major war, & exacerbated the slavery crisis. open.spotify.com/episode/0X9U...

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

Whatever one's thinks about the failures of bureaucratic kludge, or "procedural fetish", or sclerotic progressive governance, Fuck Around and Find Out is a terrible replacement. Unfortunately, it seems to be the current (illegal) operating philosophy of the executive branch.

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

There is, in some corners, an intellectual effort to dress up Trump's personal style of politics as a deep ideology—e.g., he's an old-school Jacksonian; he's for returning the world to 19th c spheres of influence; etc—but fundamentally, the guy just cannot stand having mean things said about him

submitted 4 days ago • 9 comments

Straightforward from here 1. DOGE cuts $50 million in govt spending 2. Falsely calls it $50 billion 3. Sends every taxpayer a share of that $50 billion as a savings "dividend" 4. Republicans add $5 trillion in tax cuts 5. GOP complains about deficit under next Democratic administration

submitted 4 days ago • 11 comments

Something strange and important is happening to youth politics across the developed world: young voters are shifting hard to the right I wrote about Generation C: conservative, conspiratorial, and—in ways both obvious and non-obvious—profoundly affected by COVID www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

submitted 5 days ago • 15 comments

New ep: The Trump-Musk doctrine of "fuck around and find out" has already demolished global aid programs, collapsed essential govt data collection services, and nearly caused a nuclear security crisis via accidental firings. This is no way to run a government. open.spotify.com/episode/1lTP...

submitted 5 days ago • 9 comments

It was a real treat to sit down with @dkthomp.bsky.social (for the second time) to talk energy and climate. He’s such an adept interviewer. Please give it a listen!

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

New ep: The state of energy in 2025, with @nathanielbullard.com Feat. 1. Why solar is historic 2. How BYD is taking over the global auto industry 3. The ESG bubble has popped—but does it matter? 4. The AI build-out in context: Uh, holy shit ... open.spotify.com/episode/21z6...

submitted 16 days ago • 7 comments

Starred review of ABUNDANCE is in. Thanks, Kirkus! PRE-ORDER! www.amazon.com/Abundance-Pr...

submitted 18 days ago • 3 comments

New: The largest medical A.I. randomized controlled trial yet performed, enrolling >100,000 women undergoing mammography screening The use of AI led to 29% higher detection of cancer, no increase of false positives, and reduced workload compared with radiologists w/o AI thelancet.com/journals/lan...

submitted 19 days ago • 40 comments

Some context here: In the U.S. the tariffs are like one of 5 major political stories this weekend. In Canada they are everything. Wall to wall coverage. The clicks on our tariff copy are setting records - never seen a reaction like this to a single-day news event.

submitted 21 days ago • 83 comments

Dating, marriage, and coupling are declining to record lows in the US—and in Europe, South America, Turkey, and Iran. I wrote about how changes to men's earnings and women's expectations are leading a global relationship (and fertility) recession. Gift link: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

submitted 20 days ago • 9 comments

Why is coupling declining in much of the world? @dkthomp.bsky.social has a superb piece, noting that online connectivity is enabling women to raise their expectations, while low-income men have less to offer. t.co/QzAUJvbxpX

submitted 20 days ago • 2 comments

submitted 21 days ago • 12 comments

New ep: Are GLP-1s the most important medical discovery of the 21st century? In the 1990s, research on Gila monster venom produced the first GLP-1 drug. Thirty years later, research shows GLP-1s reduce addiction, stroke, even Alzheimer's. How is this possible? open.spotify.com/episode/0UtT...

submitted 23 days ago • 3 comments

When Musk bought Twitter, there were offers of paid exits, code reviews, eliminating of diversity programs, cutting of rent payments, and a reliance on staffers from his companies to enact his plans. All of that is playing out now in DC. Twitter was a blueprint. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/t...

submitted 24 days ago • 64 comments

Plain English was already one of my favorite podcasts and now @dkthomp.bsky.social is doing history centric episodes too. It’s like I’m his exact target audience. The debut about James Garfield is so interesting and infuriating open.spotify.com/episode/2jFF...

submitted 23 days ago • 8 comments

"Smartphones make our alone time feel more crowded than it used to be, at the same time that our smartphones make crowds feel more lonely than they used to be." @dkthomp.bsky.social

submitted 25 days ago • 2 comments

The Gen Y > Gen Z shifts you'd want to capture for the male caricature might include: - hipster coffee shop dude w/ skinny jeans, beanie —> homebound/phone-bound dude w/ webcam, MAGA hat - 2010s: "cool" = urbane progressive enlightenment —> mid 2020s: "cool" = crypto + transgressive opinions

submitted 28 days ago • 4 comments

Can't wait to dig in on this review galley of Abundance from @dkthomp.bsky.social & @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social Pre-order now for March release 👇 bookshop.org/p/books/abun...

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

“Some people were asked to keep to themselves, while others were instructed to talk with a stranger… Despite the broad assumption that the best commute is a silent one, people instructed to talk with strangers reported feeling significantly more positive.” @dkthomp.bsky.social on solitude's costs:

submitted 30 days ago • 2 comments

Fun "new" media form: The AI chat artifact. Think out-loud with a machine and post the contents.

submitted 32 days ago • 3 comments

Critical insight from @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social: you can't have a revival of critical mineral extraction and processing without a clean energy industry to buy your product. Yet day-one EOs are fixated on tearing down EV demand, solar/wind, factories funded by IIJA/IRA. heatmap.news/politics/tru...

submitted 33 days ago • 3 comments

For folks interested in US history counter-programming account of, uh, literally everything: Today's ep is an interview with the author of "Destiny of the Republic"—my favorite history book I read last year about the life and death of President James Garfield open.spotify.com/episode/2jFF...

submitted 33 days ago • 9 comments

So, will TikTok be like digital marijuana, where technically it's illegal at the federal level but there's a deliberate and widely understood refusal to enforce the law for a while -- and in the meantime, everybody figures out a way to hollow out the legislation without actually passing a new law?

submitted 35 days ago • 7 comments

Per the latest @dkthomp.bsky.social article: Every drink of alcohol takes 5 minutes off your life But every one minute of exercise adds 5 minutes to your life This is why I diversify

submitted 37 days ago • 15 comments

New pod: The truth about alcohol, cancer, your brain, and health I got personal about my own drinking habits, the science of alcohol, the surgeon general's report on booze and cancer, and how to make peace with the interplay btw pleasure and risk in life open.spotify.com/episode/59rE...

submitted 37 days ago • 9 comments

Weird things happen when complex games get "solved." (cf. baseball, basketball) Trump's attention is perfectly solved problem at this point. Everybody knows he's a sucker for adulation and soft bribes. "What does 4 ys of policy look like in a 'solved' White House?" seems like an important Q.

submitted 38 days ago • 5 comments