The Silicon Valley canon and malformed publics

02/27/25 • 54 min

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Greetings from Read Max HQ! This week’s newsletter is a podcast episode with John Ganz of Unpopular Front and Henry Farrell of Programmable Mutter. We talk about Henry’s recent Bloomberg article about “the tech industry’s reading list” and whether or not my four-year-old will ever encounter a Tootsie Roll pop advertisement, or indeed any advertising campaign at all.

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Get full access to Read Max at maxread.substack.com/subscribe

Previous Episode

What the hell is going on with Elon Musk?

Greetings from Read Max HQ! A bonus newsletter this week containing a podcast with John Ganz of Unpopular Front and Quinn Slobodian, Professor of International History at Boston University and author of the forthcoming Hayek’s B******s: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right. Among the topics discussed: Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg, cryptocurrency, Las Vegas, and Jensen Huang’s leather jacket.

A reminder: Read Max is funded almost wholly by paying subscribers. I’m able to spend reading, thinking, researching, and yapping with John and Quinn thanks to the generosity of people who find this newsletter and its intermittent podcast component compelling enough to cough up $5/month or $50/year. If you find Read Max at all enlightening or entertaining--if you borrow some of these riffs and opinions to impress potential employers or romantic/sexual partners, say--please consider supporting my work for the price of about one beer a month.

Links

Quinn’s piece on Musk can be found here.

His book Hayek’s B******s: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right can be preordered here.

I also recommend his previous books, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, and Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy.

John’s newsletter Unpopular Front.

John’s book When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s, recently nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award, can be found here.

Ryan S. Jeffery’s piece on Jensen Huang and leather, discussed in the podcast, is at Do Not Research.

**Note that if you buy or pre-order any books through the Bookshop links found on this page I will receive a small payment.

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Next Episode

What if "A.I." is just more surveillance?

Greetings from Read Max HQ! Today, the first in what I hope will be a regular series with my old friend Sam Biddle, senior technology reporter at the Intercept and a former writer for Gawker and Valleywag, in which we discuss tech-industry news and b******t that otherwise wouldn’t make it into the newsletter. In this episode we’re talking:

A.G.I., A.I., and why we hate the term;

Sarah Wynn-Williams’ new book on Facebook and Facebook’s bizarre reaction to it; and

our favorite files from the J.F.K. release

(Longtime subscribers will remember Sam as the author of the guest post “True Life: For reasons I don't fully understand I bought hundreds of Cold War-era military slides on eBay” and the source of the legendary post “Why is this cyber-education nonprofit selling a $13,000 occult artifact on eBay?”)

Links to some of what we discuss in this podcast:

“The Government Knows A.G.I. Is Coming,” by Ezra Klein

“Powerful A.I. Is Coming. We’re Not Ready,” by Kevin Roose

“Should A.G.I. preppers embrace D.O.G.E.?” by Henry Farrell

“People Are Using AI to Create Influencers With Down Syndrome Who Sell Nudes,” by Emanuel Maiberg

The Cut’s “Book Gossip” newsletter on Careless People

“CIA, Walter Elder ‘Family Jewels’ memorandum for William E. Colby, ‘Special Activities,’ Secret/Sensitive/Eyes Only, June 1, 1973, 7 pp.”

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