American Dynamism 🇺🇸

My HOA has miscalculated. They don’t know how prepared I am for war.

“I think that when I have an issue I want to speak about, people will hear.” Queen bee energy. 10/10 no notes.

Best two minutes you’ll watch all weekend.

This is going to decide the election, isn’t it.

I don’t think I’ve watched a video of these fires that has captured the meaning of home so completely. Pray for these people. 💙

Headed to Home Depot right now to buy a bigger Santa.

A consequence of fewer children is less empathy for those who have them.

These kids are so hard core. No weekends. They know they’re racing against a media and political clock that won’t thank them for their service. No exaggeration this is the most inspiring effort in government of our lifetime. Long @DOGE 🇺🇸🫡

Kids are asleep. Enjoying a relaxing evening reading some mainstream opinion journalism Holy Sh…

It is impossible to overstate what happened on the shores of Texas, or what’s happened for two decades in El Segundo, the little industrial town south of Los Angeles where SpaceX was born. In its infancy, the country was reeling from horror. Only months before SpaceX’s inception in March 2002, terrorists had flown commercial jets into two crown jewels of New York City engineering, murdering thousands.  While fire and ash were still on our minds and on our screens, a quirky man on the other coast was talking about rocket tests and making humans multiplanetary—as though he wasn’t watching the news along with the rest of us, but instead focused on the future. His dreams should have died the year after, when we watched more horror as the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon reentering Earth’s atmosphere over Texas, killing seven astronauts and hastening the end of the shuttle program for good.  It also could have ended America’s long-held obsession with reaching the stars. But 22 years later, that is not our fate. Failed rocket after failed rocket, critic after critic led to bigger and more calculated risks that in turn made @SpaceX the beacon for the best engineering minds in America—and the world.

One of the greatest evils of my 90s childhood was the sedation and casual drugging of young boys for acting like boys in a school system built for little girls. And it’s only now that we’re finally allowed to ask questions. Decades too late.

I have been radicalized. All politics is local. I am announcing my candidacy for HOA board.

They’re after you. I’m just standing in the way.

Americans disagree on pretty much everything except that calling animal control on your neighbor’s social media squirrel to have the state kill it is the epitome of evil.

Worst part of America. There’s nothing there to see except 50 ft alligators. Doesn’t hold a candle to New York City or California. You should avoid the panhandle and North Florida like your life depends on it please do not go or move there.

My mother became a widow just after turning 50. From the moment she handed the do not resuscitate order to the paramedics (at my father’s instruction) she was doing things, planning things, managing. A friend came over and told her to lie down a few hours after he died, and she said “what are you talking about? There’s a funeral to prepare.” She probably made 500 calls in 48 hours, went through her entire contact list. Ordered enough food for the army of people who stopped by our house and our church. For months after, everyday, all she did was go through his things, organize everything, his pen collection, his books, meet with anyone who wanted to talk about my dad and made sure they had a small piece of him to take with them. She became the rock for everyone around her when everyone else wanted to cry and grieve. I don’t think I ever saw her cry except at the funeral. But he’s been dead for 20 years and she still wears her wedding ring. He’s still her husband. No one should ever judge a widow’s grief. Erika Kirk has to do this kind of work— the widow’s work, a difficult role you don’t understand until you’ve witnessed it—at a scale none of us can fathom. She has to tend to a nation’s grief. And she’s doing a beautiful job.

Elder millennials are going to be the most politically engaged and relevant leadership cohort for the next 40 years. It’s because this pocket of millennials (1980-1987) remembers the before times vividly. Home ownership. Landlines. Car phones. Dial up internet. But also a hegemonic nation and normal American life before everything got weird. Younger generations didn’t experience it. And older generations took it for granted. They’ll dominate the left and the right for a simple reason: they remember.

One of the most destructive memes of the last generation was that your 20s don’t matter. Extended adolescence robbed many of their agency during their highest-energy years, encouraging therapeutic self-discovery, waiting one’s turn, experimentation with identity. Uselessness. The next generation is having none of that. The gerontocracy is dead. Go all in early.

The most remarkable thing that Team Trump has done this election season is to find a new medium— not tv, not debate, not rallies. A medium with different and fractured audiences that isn’t captured. And then systematically put two candidates on every major podcast until they worked their way up to the Super Bowl of Podcasts. Here’s a candidate everyone knows, everyone has an opinion on, but they decided to reintroduce him in a totally different medium that allows him to talk and talk and talk, flood the zone of information, in a medium that’s more smiles and shooting the sh*t than hits. Love him or hate him, there’s a reason the phrase “media genius” was used when in 2016 when he won with rallies and television audiences. No one saw this strategy coming. This is truly the podcast election.

Kudos to @JeffBezos for telling the newsroom the hard, bitter truth: there’s nothing wrong with the readers.

One day I’ll write something about how terrible this book was for a generation of travel-obsessed millennial and Gen-X women. A beautiful (and charming) celebration of blowing up your life for a story.

Incredible to see a political leader translate how a new technology can promote human flourishing with such clarity. Exceptional speech.

Young men should be angry. The long-term effect of taking Adderall and Ritalin over years is growth suppression. I don’t think many boys are told “take this pill, and the major side effect is you’ll be shorter.” Terrible.

“They’re taking the pets. They’re taking the squirrels.”

All you “never buy a house in an HOA neighborhood” people: Have some compassion! We moved here from San Francisco during Covid!! Desperation doesn’t begin to describe it.

The man could cure cancer, take us to Mars and miraculously walk on water and half this country would still hate Elon. Not surprising at all, unfortunately.

One of the more surprising parts of this interview is hearing a candidate for vice president explain that the realignment we’re living through isn’t really policy or candidate specific— it’s institutionalists or those clinging to the old top down order versus those who’ve given up on existing institutions. You hear this division online all the time, but this thinking hasn’t really hit offline, retail politics yet. You certainly don’t hear many national candidates naming this or providing meta commentary on it. JD Vance is the first truly online candidate of our lifetimes.

I’d love to see a @DOGE segment every week. More engineers showcased. More stories of what the team got done this week. The website is great but nothing beats live interviews with the team.

I can’t imagine the horrors happening inside a private home school that violated Palo Alto city code. God forbid they were learning calculus. Pray for these children.

Most people who yap for a living have no idea what IT means in this context. You cannot even begin to tackle waste, fraud and abuse if you don’t have a system of record, if there’s zero transparency in that system. If there’s 20 different systems that can’t talk to each other. If you can’t see where the money is flowing. If we’re still using a mine in Pennsylvania to house the federal government’s retirement records. “Why are they focused on IT?!?” Is an effective but extremely dumb meme. It’s a language problem because the smartest engineers on the planet are doing something different than what Gretchen Carlson assumes they’re doing. I remain convinced that this is a generational issue— that young people naturally intuit how technology works while professional yappers on CNN do not. And I’m optimistic technology will not be so foreign in a few decades and that both sides will be able to understand why it’s important.

23 percent of American 17-year-old boys have been diagnosed with ADHD. Stop. Medicalizing. Boyhood.

It’s important that the American people understand how grave the situation is, and why you have some of the most talented people in the country leaving their jobs and comfortable lives to work 20 hours a day on @DOGE. It’s the equivalent of a doctor telling you you’re on death’s door if you don’t change your diet and start exercising and make changes immediately because you’re headed for certain disaster. People wake up and make changes in their own lives everyday, and we’re finally doing this as a country. Washington has never had the incentive to tell us how bad things really are. Grateful that we finally get a shot to fix this before it’s too late, and that we’re seeing the changes in real time.

Husband just opened @X to see what’s happening.

That video is so hard to watch. Because it’s clear as a refugee, she believed something about America that Americans haven’t believed for decades and acted according to that lack of instinct. She felt safe in public transit. Horrific.

Today, a CEO was assassinated in the streets, leaving behind a wife and children. If you’re a journalist publishing the faces and names of women CEOs after posting “and people wonder why we want these executives dead” I read that as a threat on mothers and children. If you’re a publication that hires a journalist who publishes the name and face of a woman executive today, you are enabling this evil. We are all watching. 👀

Excellent.

I went to Disney with my oldest and my mother just after Covid. The Disney hotel we stayed at when I was a kid had replaced the beautiful fountain and pianist in the lobby with a massive bar area that was already packed at 3pm. We haven’t gone back, mainly because it’s sad. A lot of the comments on this piece rightly say the new Disney is unfair to big families and children, but it’s not just about growing wealth inequality and monetizing the ultra wealthy. A child doesn’t care about Michelin-starred restaurants and private clubs. No kid wants a seated lunch at the Magic Kingdom. This what happens when a country decides that adults are more important than children— and starts catering to (and monetizing) their every whim and demand. The children are always the afterthought, even at their own theme parks.

We are now viewing an unfettered internet, probably the most free I can remember in my adult life. Where anyone scrolling here will see the public slaying of an innocent woman, a seven-minute video of her bleeding out on the train. The evil. The indifference. The rare few who tried to help. We weren’t supposed to see any of it, and almost didn’t. Don’t forget it.

Added to the letter.

“How big can you make this?”

A lot of people without kids have heard of Cocomelon but most haven’t heard about Blippi, a guy who dresses up in orange suspenders and sort of acts like a big kid while explaining how grocery stores and soccer and fire trucks work. There’s an episode where Blippi goes on a plane and it takes place on a private jet. Anyway, I realized about halfway through that it’s his private jet.

Some of you want updates. Headed to Homegoods right now for a Christmas haul. If any of you have high level contacts inside of @tjmaxx, please ask them if they’d like to endorse me for HOA president. I will fight for all Christmas moms.

Come for the queen, you best not miss.

Believe in something. Anything. You are not enough.

American Dynamism.

This isn’t a cold email. This is a guy who doesn’t speak very good English traveling to an event, getting in line, braving all of the embarrassment that comes with public rejection or laughter on the Internet, taking himself seriously, and asking for the chance to prove himself to an audience that respects the hustle. It’s not just shooting your shot. It’s knowing that sometimes you can make your own luck by making it impossible to say no to a good story. Good storytellers are everywhere.

The hardest shift that happens when you have children is you no longer control your time. Your children own your time now. Children become expensive when you want to buy back time for yourself. The more time you need for you, the more expensive they become.

We’re entering an era of the martyr. Martyrs for Christ. Martyrs for country. Martyrs for the truth. Little children slaughtered while praying in Mass. A young father assassinated while debating on a college campus. I keep coming back to what Chesterton said about courage: courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a willingness to die. Those are the stakes now. These monsters think they’re quieting the good but they’re doing the opposite. They are creating warriors. And they will reap the whirlwind. Rest in peace, Charlie Kirk

One of my more controversial beliefs on raising children is that you probably want to raise theater kids. Theater, debate, speech, song, something that requires performance in front of a room full of people, alone with a spotlight, where if you fail you fail alone. Learning the embarrassment of forgetting a line or your notes as a kid— and moving on from it —is a valuable skill that’s harder to learn and gets more painful with age. Sports won’t teach a kid this.

This is the only right response.

Watching the founders finally come forward publicly, and the number of well-educated people saying “I never knew this— this is insane” tells me we need many more information cascades to correct for years of government overreach.

If you grow up conservative, religious or squarely on the right in America, and maintain those values through school, college and career, you’ve learned to thrive in a dominant culture that finds your beliefs and aesthetics not just foreign but often repugnant. It’s a super power to thrive in these rooms, because not only will you be fluent in the language of those who have no theory of mind for you, but you will likely become very good at ignoring advice, following your own compass and building conviction in your own ideas. And those ideas can become extremely valuable. There’s asymmetric advantage to being weird on these dimensions— and that advantage has only grown over the last 25 years.

We are now saying the quiet part out loud: For adults under 50, the primary argument against having children isn’t an economic one. It’s cultural. “I just don’t want to.” If you believe that children are essential to building a good, dynamic society, you’re about to learn that a growing number of young people disagree with you. The question we have to ask is why.

Substack just published the boldest defense of free speech we’ve seen from a tech company in recent memory. Not really that interested in the opinions of those who didn’t stand for it when they had the chance.

Two moments stick out to me in the story of The Free Press. The first is me opening my phone to see @bariweiss’s resignation letter in 2020. It felt shocking. Not her leaving the New York Times, but what she wrote, how she said it and when, during a summer of hysteria when very few people were speaking the truth. I had never met Bari though I enjoyed her writing. It felt like an event, a major moment in America’s cultural revolution that would lead to something big. I texted Chris Best at Substack and said “I think you saw the news.” He had. Everyone in media had. Common Sense was born and I was hooked, not because of what @TheFP would become, but because of her uncommon courage in a moment when few people in positions of power were displaying any courage at all. The second moment won’t get as many nods today. It was late 2021. I was putting my son down for a nap and opened the Honestly podcast to hear a 25-minute speech from @AbigailShrier. I listened to the speech again last night and still can’t believe Bari had the guts to publish it: a canceled mother, whose book Irreversible Damage had been banned from Target for noting that teen girls were transitioning at much higher rates than boys. She asked the obvious question parents weren’t allowed to ask then: why? At the time, the ACLU was pushing to get the book banned from libraries across America, but here was Abigail on Honestly reading a speech about what it’s like to be cancelled for telling the truth; what it’s liked to be hated and finding freedom in that hate. Bari was one of the few people who gave Abigail a real platform. In 2021, when Big Tech was issuing listener warnings if podcasters criticized Covid vaccine mandates, questioning elective mastectomies for teens was unthinkable in the mainstream press. The Free Press published Abigail. It’s very easy to forget what courage looks like. In hindsight, none of these things seem that groundbreaking. The Overton window has shifted so far that these acts of resistance look quaint now. But they set the stage for where we are today: a golden age of new media and free speech in America. Bari is an important part of this shift, as she was among the first of her cohort to leave and build something new, what investors like to call early and right. She was among the first to call out censorship in mainstream institutions, not as an outsider critic but as a true insider with everything to lose. She called it out from the vaunted New York Times editorial page and it took time before others in her world followed. But she wasn’t just courageous for quitting. Most importantly, she didn’t give up on building. She didn’t blackpill. She wanted to build a new media institution and she did. The Free Press has been growing the newsroom from day one with the ambition to build an institution that outlasts them. Very few people in media today aspire to this vision. Media has become a collection of personalities, albeit a needed one. But The Free Press is different. I’ve watched the team recruit writers, thinkers and unknown voices that openly disagree with one another in an effort to build an enduring institution that remakes the news for the better. The disagreement is encouraged. The newsroom chose not to endorse a presidential candidate in 2024 because it was so evenly split among itself. No other newsroom can claim this kind of political diversity. The ability to hold conflicting views in one institution is unique. It’s what makes Bari a capable newswoman, a worthy editor-in-chief and a builder who can shepherd The Free Press to new heights, while also shepherding a legacy newsroom in dire need of voices that don’t rebuke half the country for their beliefs. The best predictor of future success is past success. And the best predictor of future courage is past courage. I look forward to watching this newsroom shine at their new home at CBS News. Congratulations to The Free Press. What a timeline we’re living in.

I’ve been going to estate sales and second-hand stores for 25 years. They’ve gotten noticeably better over that time— you can find incredible pieces for pennies on the dollar without having to look too hard. The reason for this always makes me a little sad. An older person dies, someone who took a lot of pride in their taste and their collections, and their kids choose to sell the whole house off as quickly as possible so they don’t have to deal with it. The furniture. The art. The china. The weird things that made a house a home. None of it speaks to modern tastes, so it gets tossed aside pretty quickly. You have to arrive pretty early at these places to get the incredible stuff before the antique shop owners pick it over, but you can find real treasures. All because some middle-aged kid doesn’t have time to sort through their parent’s lives.

It’s almost like every part of the culture for the last 30 years was designed to destroy the birthrate.

She didn’t have to speak last night. It’s almost unbelievable that she did. But it’s now clear why she did. If a widow can speak up in her darkest hour, why can’t you?

Extraordinary Day that will long be remembered as one of the most incredible diplomatic achievements of the 21st Century. 🕊️

There’s a subset of women who tend to be exceptional judges of people: it’s like they can smell character, with special attention paid to danger, lying, fear, neuroticism. It’s not universal or even common, and society tries to beat this sense out of women early in all sorts of ways. But in many fields you see that women are often the ones who can spot the traitor, the liar or the dark forces early. There’s of course an evolutionary reason for this sense, and you’d think it would be talked about more openly. Women who have it should protect and cultivate it. It’s a valuable gift from nature.

Yes we’re having an America Fair. 🇺🇸🚀💪

I lot of us woke up today with a new mission.

Silent. Male. Vote. If I’m in a newsroom, that’s the story I’m starting to write right about now. 👀

Go @NorthwoodSpace 🚀🇺🇸💪

The people who are good at posting have an extremely rich inner monologue. Most people don’t and that’s okay. But if you don’t have one and you see how much some people post, you think people are spending a ton of time thinking of things to say when really, it’s just a fleeting moment in their mind.

American Seriousness

“Don’t believe your lying eyes” doesn’t work like it used to. “Mostly peaceful” was sinister because a lot of people believed it five years ago. No one falls for it anymore. We’re a different people now.

Sometimes I can’t believe we put up with 2012-2024. 12 years of absolute nonsense.

My son came home with a Pre-K report card; I read it and was thrilled. My husband read it and was baffled. I read it and anchored on the lines that really matter: “He excels quickly in all his math assignments and has mastered the math and reading concepts presented.” My husband focused on the extra full page on “social emotional growth” commentary and looked confused the whole time. “What does any of this mean?” “Nothing,” I said. “Ignore it.” And then that evening we explained to our son the lesson that is going to get him through his life: “People will put up with many things if you are excellent at math. You’re so good at math. We’re proud of you.” And that was that. There are many important posts going viral today about the tragedy of young men. Combatting the systems that seek to destroy their nature begins in the home, and it begins young. I don’t care about the “social emotional growth” of my sons because I know what values we’re instilling in them. Telling them what really matters begins with dad and mom. The family can be a reprieve from all the nonsense. It requires constant vigilance, but it’s the first step in preparing them for the madness outside.

Things will never go back to normal, but those who fought for sanity will be vindicated quietly, without much fanfare, and then a lost decade will be memory holed and the country will move on to the next cultural battle. But never forget how easily it all can melt away.

Big day for Baby Blaise.

Yes. Elon should DEFINITELY make the Texas Institute of Technology and Science real. Here’s an idea of what it could look it. — The Texas Institute of Technology and Science is a private STEM university that will be the most competitive engineering school in the world. Like Kettering University (formerly General Motors Institute of Technology, built to train students in GM-specific manufacturing and engineering practices) students participate in traditional coursework and co-op coursework; they also receive paid work experience at a sponsoring company and graduate with an accredited four-year degree that they complete in three years. The students use AP tests prior to admission to complete humanities requirements for four-year bachelors degree. Texas Institute of Technology and Science is free. The students work for a consortium of companies throughout their time there and pay off “debt” by joining their sponsor company following graduation. Modeled after US military academies, students receive free education for required years of work following their degree. Texas Institute of Technology and Science Model: -1000 students per class. students are ranked on series of tests and simulations throughout program. -co-op based 3-year program. Like Kettering/GMI, students must find a company or business unit to sponsor them based on their high school performance. -Students do not need to be high school graduates to gain entry but must pass the Texas Institute of Technology and Science test. Admissions Test-based Blind admissions. Top 1000 students gain entry. Students with sponsorship from company that do not pass the entrance exam will not be admitted. Curriculum -Three-year program; 1 year core, second year tracked to four programs: AI, Automotive, Energy and Aerospace engineering. Additional tracks will follow. Co-op model with company starts in second year. No summer breaks as co-op work is spread throughout year. Students must work with sponsor institution, though based on performance they can work for another company in the consortium after graduation. -Based on class rank (1 through 1000) students pick company and role at one of a consortium of companies that have agreed to hire Texas Institute of Technology and Science graduates. -Students can change company sponsor based on performance. (Like Military Academies top performing students get the best roles). Debt to sponsoring company repaid /subsidized through years of service at the sponsor company. Students will receive equity in chosen company after graduation. - The Texas Institute of Technology and Science Fund is an option for students who want to build companies immediately after graduation . Texas Institute of Technology and Science to take 8 percent stake for seed capital and accelerator; ownership is given to endowment. To Do: -Acquire Texas-based private school for accreditation/regulatory purposes. -Rename school to Texas Institute of Technology and Science. -revamp curriculum/professors for 2025/2026 school year. -Develop Texas Institute of Technology and Science Entrance Test -Co-op model to begin with 25 sponsor partners, all companies or USG that can commit to sponsor students. Companies develop co op curriculum but must meet a set of requirements developed by professors and administration to ensure rigorous work environment. -Texas Institute of Technology and Science board of directors formed. Board must pass the entrance test. -Texas Institute of Technology and Science president selected by Board. President must also pass entrance test and publish his/her results.

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then they haul you before Congress for tech support.

Corporate America boards and executive recruiters really do not understand red and blue America and how far apart they are. The Cracker Barrel CEO spent 12 formative years at Starbucks. In recruiter land, this is who you want to do a turnaround. In normal America land, this person has zero understanding of Cracker Barrel customers and her two decades in Seattle and California will make her tastes and instincts completely irrelevant. Recruiters and boards are mostly clueless about this divide. They look at experience and assume if you’ve learned a playbook at a reputable brand it’s relevant in “retail” or “food and beverage.” It’s not. You either have red instincts or blue instincts. Coastal or middle America. That boards still don’t understand this is shocking.

People will forget that a few years ago a founder wouldn’t dare say this publicly. It’s because of people like Palmer that you now can. Thank you @PalmerLuckey

Thank you to @elonmusk for having the foresight to make likes private!

What’s most remarkable about this is that @PalmerLuckey was saying the same things back in 2017, when very few people in tech saw it coming. Early and right. 🇺🇸

The Texas Institute of Technology and Science should become like one of our great military leadership academies: 1000 of our best and brightest American engineers, selected based on test scores, PSAT, and raw technical ability, with a fast track into the greatest manufacturing and engineering companies in the country on the other side of graduation. We know how to do this. The Texas Institute of Technology and Science test should be taught in high schools around the country, with an aim to get our top tech minds into companies as quickly as possible. 🇺🇸💪🚀 The time to build this is now. It’s time for TITS.

What is seriousness? Watch his face. Look at his eyes. Pace of speech. Density of information. Look at the confidence and the depth of knowledge on something that comes from deep obsession, practice, repetition. You can find this level of obsession in all fields —and frankly, in all stages of career. You don’t have to be Tom Brady to exhibit this level of depth, obsession and seriousness.

The most destructive memes of the 2000s: 1) college at all costs 2) study what you’re passionate about 3) treat your 20s as delayed adolescence A generation set up for failure and discontentment.

SpaceX is the company of return. The return of boosters. Spacecraft. Ambition. Greatness. And the days of when rocket scientists and janitors alike believe they are helping to put men on Mars, awakening the next American Century. The Fall of the Century, only in @TheFP

God Bless Palmer Luckey. 🇺🇸🚀💪

Some in journalism will be shocked by this move but the owners of publications historically set the editorial direction for a paper. It’s only in recent times that newsrooms ceded all editorial authority to the loudest 25-year-old Columbia grads on staff.

“What might this pandemic and its aftermath have looked like if there had been a more open debate about the origins of Covid, about lockdowns, about the true risks of Covid in kids, and much more?” Of all the mistakes Twitter made, this had the greatest effect on your family.

I agree with so much of this piece, but there’s also a quiet part that no one wants to link to this discussion: how the fertility and familial crisis is directly linked to the boy crisis, and women play an important role in this. Women build empathy for boys and men by becoming mothers of boys and wives of men. Fewer marriages mean there’s less empathy for men. Fewer children mean there is less empathy for boys in general. The closest women become to understanding the needs of boys and men is through witnessing the struggles of their sons and their husbands. In the early 1900s, the marriage and fertility crisis was not an issue. I’d argue it’s at the core of the issue now.

The casual tyranny of security theater illustrated in one tweet.

I rarely enter the dating discourse because I’m old and I do believe something has changed in the last ten years to make my experience somewhat irrelevant, but to put the discourse in finance terms that have stayed true for generations: too many women are looking for growth stocks when they should be focused on value. Men peak much later than women and attention in dating markets concentrates on high-growth, when there’s so much value just laying there for the taking, especially in your 20s and 30s. Men get better with marriage and family, not worse, and that value compounds over decades. Part of the problem is the internet makes everything a power law. Dating apps concentrate attention. Everyone is looking for the Mag 7 when there’s an entire market to survey! Get off the apps and go full value.

Alternative headline, feel free to borrow: Never bet against Elon.

Gah, if we can’t all stand up for a sweet kid with brain cancer what are we doing here.

Something is happening at the New York Times op-ed page.

And yet mothers will tell you this is a very real and common experience for us.

Disagreeableness is an under-appreciated trait in work and life, and it’s concerning that disagreeable people are less likely to succeed in tracked professions like medicine or academia. Disagreeableness is essential for good leadership and decision-making. We need more of it.

Some people issue statements and call themselves leaders. Others build.

They’re just messing with us now. We, the Internet people. Jokes on us.

We’re living in a golden age of independent journalism and independent thought. Proud to start writing again at @TheFP.

A lot of people think when they become successful they’ll finally receive the respect they deserve. They’ll finally be lauded for their achievements and talents. But the opposite is almost always true. The more successful you become— if you build and make your own success—the more likely you are to be vilified, hated, mocked or dismissed as an idiot or any other choice insult. If you do anything of consequence, you will likely lose friends and the esteem of your peers. Understanding this as the universal heroic arc will make the journey less surprising and painful.

In the 90s, there was a moral panic concerning teen pregnancy and major public pressure put on doctors to eliminate it. So 13 and 14 year-old girls with irregular periods or bad acne were put on hormonal birth control, the standard of care for pretty much any issue affecting teenage girls going through puberty. The whole of society effort to lower teen pregnancy rates meant that a normal, healthy sexually-inactive girl with acne was following guidelines built for a sexually-actively girl she has nothing in common with. The guidance, studies and medical infrastructure were tailored specifically for the at-risk teen, not for a teen struggling with acne. Women go through the medical system and learn this fact very quickly. HepB on Day 1 of life isn’t for the mother who takes prenatal vitamins. The forms at every prenatal checkup asking whether you’re being held against your will or threatened in your home are not designed for you. This doctor just said the quiet part out loud. None of these public health guidelines are designed for you. They never were.

Thank you @SpaceX 🚀🇺🇸💪