Note: This is a very high-level post so I can publish this quickly. I apologize for the screed, but want to capture how crazy this moment feels.

I. Context

It is just after midnight on Monday, January 19 2026. In the United States, it is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

The two major crises gripping the US at the moment and I felt compelled to write about how we got here.

The first is the occupation of the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro — my home — by the goons of ICE, who are determined to violate the Constitution and brutalize the population with no accountability from above.

The second is the increasing likelihood that the Trump Administration kicks off an armed conflict with our NATO allies in an attempt to invade Greenland and take it by force. About an hour ago, the following communique from The Mad King to the governments of Europe was distributed:

Dear Ambassador:   President Trump has asked that the following message, shared with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, be forwarded to your [named head of government/state] “Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”

II. Bullet Points

1. The ICE occupation of the Twin Cities metro is the latest action that shows the Administration doesn't even pretend to represent all Americans. Its agenda is simply to punish its political opponents. This is a breaking of the contract between the federal government and the states and moves us closer to soft secession and civil war.
2. We have a serious problem with elite impunity.
3. We have a serious problem with elite cowardice. However, ordinary citizens standing up to ICE are showing incredible courage and bravery.
4. The major national newspapers - particularly The New York Times and The Washington Post - are in the tank for the regime.
5. Algorithmic social media rewards and amplifies anti-social actors. For pundits, audience capture and publish or perish dynamics kill good ideas and result in terminal cases of Poster's Madness.
6. The rightward shift in Silicon Valley is downstream of Tech CEOs turning their brains into mush by being addicted to social media and doping themselves with a cocktail of testosterone, HGH, amphetamines, and other drugs under the guise of longevity maximization. Even in the best cases, what is gained by feeling in control or looking good is lost by becoming more and more self-absorbed. I believe that much of these leaders' behavior is driven by macho posturing and the feeling of being powerful, rather than carefully considering what is the right thing for their shareholders, their users, and the public. They mirror Trumpian, personalist behavior.

III. Expanded Thoughts

1. On the Administration punishing its political opponents: witness the weaponization of the Department of Justice to go after James Comey, Letitia James, Jerome Powell, Elissa Slotkin, and the latest - Tim Walz and Minneapolis governor Jacob Frey. Also witness the pulling federal funding for projects in states that vote Democratic. Also witness how ICE is being deployed to Minneapolis, Chicago, and LA, while the statistics show there are plenty of illegal immigrants in places like Houston and Miami. Needless to say, there is not even a pretense of representing the whole country.
2. On elite impunity: top of mind is Jonathan Ross not being prosecuted for the murder of Renee Good. Plus ICE's ability to routinely violate 4th Amendment rights. Trump's open corruption and abuse of the pardon power are astonishing. Elon Musk signal boosts literal Nazi propaganda and somehow is allowed to show his face in public. Signal Gate happened and for literally anyone else, it would result in years in prison, but Pete Hegseth and all his pals get to walk free.
3. On cowardice: Congress lobotomizing itself and doing nothing in the face of Trump's encroachment on its Article I powers of purse and war is the number one reason why things have slid as much as they have. Republican senators could put an end to this Mad King nonsense any time they want! And yet they don't. Senators from both parties rolled over and confirmed Trump's worst cabinet appointments, RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth. And even Democratic leadership has been completely spineless about opposing this Greenland insanity. We also have seen Big Tech CEOs beyond Musk — Cook, Zuckerberg, Bezos — line up behind Trump, as they stand to profit immensely from a personalist regime. University presidents did not cover themselves in glory when Trump tried to force his "compact" on them. Everyone wants "someone else" to pay the price and stop Trump. Our elites are too craven to sacrifice themselves for the good of the country.
4. On the media: "both-sidesing" Trump's Greenland obsession is the latest in a long line of the press legitimating his actions. What is especially striking is how there is no mention of his cognitive decline, especially after the media went nuclear after Joe Biden's debate performance. We're talking about a guy who posted an AI generated video of him wearing a crown, flying a fighter jet, and bombing Americans with human shit! Not to mention his regime engaging in flagrantly illegal airstrikes on civilian boats, his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein (how about that birthday card!), the abuses of the pardon power, the tariffs that are announced by tweet and the whole "Liberation Day" debacle, the invasion of the DOGE boys into the Social Security Administration, the shuttering of USAID and the downstream millions of people killed as a result, the aforementioned Signal Gate. In an ordinary presidency, any one of those events would have been treated as impeachable by the press and they would have stirred the pot to make the public believe so. Instead, they do their best to keep their wording as neutral as possible — and print the regime's lies as tough they are credible — to escape accusations of bias.
5. On social media being anti-social: the main point the future liberal coalition will have to understand is that there is an asymmetry between people who are broadly pro-social and people who are anti-social. That is — people who are anti-social have no one who can stand to be around them in real life, so they take to social media, where they are ripe to be radicalized by propaganda. They can spend endless amounts of time and energy attacking people who oppose them on issues like vaccines, and boost the signal of the propaganda network. Pro-social people have real lives, and also have broader social responsibilities; they can't afford to be single-issue, negatively focused activists. Remember what I said about the press above? They've been warped by social media too. Hate-clicks and terrible headlines are designed to stir engagement by making people mad. We know these tactics are happening, but we are trapped by the decision to ignore it and let it slide, or calling it out and feeding the beast. I cannot write this section without mentioning how much the brutality of ICE or the Administration's recent adventure in Venezuela is just for the social media content. Other people don't exist; they are objects to be viewed as part of a propaganda film. They forget the offline world is real.
6. Of the Tech CEOs, Bezos's physical transformation is the most stark, and Musk's mental decay the most shameful. But for the average Tech worker, the same mindset has trickled down...Read it and weep.

Twice last year, I mentioned struggling with focus, only for an acquaintance to disappear and return with loose Adderall to dump in my palm. “You have to try this,” they’d say, before launching into a heap of dosing instructions. (Stimulant prescriptions jumped roughly 20% from 2019 to 2023, largely due to telehealth providers.) I wrote the Chinese peptides story after realizing it wasn’t just a meme—multiple people I knew were on them, mostly to lose weight. (Gray-market peptide and hormone imports from China doubled to over $328 million in 2025.) The genetics stuff seems out-there for now, but I anticipate those barriers too falling with cost and UX.

This is to say nothing of nicotine, creatine, melatonin, modafinil, and psychedelic therapy; of plastic surgery, lip fillers, Botox, red light, and Korean skincare routines. Tabloids scrutinize pop stars to backwards-engineer their cosmetic enhancements; productivity-maxxing YouTubers show viewers how to replicate billionaire morning routines. We all know that rich people are buying wellness with stuff much stronger than what’s at CVS. The only question is: don’t gatekeep, how can I do it too?