Nils Gilman
@nilsgilman.bsky.social
Historian of the intelligentsia. Odi profanum vulgus et arceo. Deputy Editor @NoemaMag.com. Check out "Children of a Modest Star": https://www.sup.org/books/politics/children-modest-star. Posts my own
January 6: National Celebrate Sedition Day!
January 6, 2026 at 1:49 PM
January 6: National Celebrate Sedition Day!
A nice map of "the World Ocean" (though it is pre-anachronistic in that it treats the Arctic Ocean as closed)
January 6, 2026 at 9:19 AM
A nice map of "the World Ocean" (though it is pre-anachronistic in that it treats the Arctic Ocean as closed)
Paris in the snow is magical
January 6, 2026 at 9:10 AM
Paris in the snow is magical
Just because European empires, wars, and plantation systems undeniably imposed violent scalar environmental changes doesn't mean it is correct to see the pre-colonial era as one of ecological harmony.
January 6, 2026 at 9:09 AM
Just because European empires, wars, and plantation systems undeniably imposed violent scalar environmental changes doesn't mean it is correct to see the pre-colonial era as one of ecological harmony.
Our moment has strong late-Soviet vibes: everyone knows the current system is ideologically, morally, politically & ecologically bankrupt — and not working economically for anyone except insiders & sharp-dealing quasi-criminals. When people like this say so, well… www.instagram.com/p/DSoCN-5DLu...
Dow Janes on Instagram: "It’s time to make this year your year of action 🚀 It’s not just about earning more—it’s about learning more, doing more, thinking differently about your money, and feeling mor...
12K likes, 167 comments - dow.janes on December 23, 2025: "It’s time to make this year your year of action 🚀 It’s not just about earning more—it’s about learning more, doing more, thinking differently...
www.instagram.com
January 6, 2026 at 8:51 AM
Our moment has strong late-Soviet vibes: everyone knows the current system is ideologically, morally, politically & ecologically bankrupt — and not working economically for anyone except insiders & sharp-dealing quasi-criminals. When people like this say so, well… www.instagram.com/p/DSoCN-5DLu...
For the sake of cartographic precision, "global history should be renamed oblate spheroidic history." www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3...
Edinburgh University Press Journals - Cookie Absent
www.euppublishing.com
January 6, 2026 at 8:23 AM
For the sake of cartographic precision, "global history should be renamed oblate spheroidic history." www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3...
Yup: "The propaganda value of the US flouting international law in such a high profile way against a Global South country may be priceless, and the action fits perfectly with how the PRC talks about the US as a hegemon: imperialist & a destabilizing force in the world." sinocism.com/p/chinas-ven...
China’s Venezuela Calculations; Real Estate Market Expectations; December Politburo and Democratic Life Meetings; Museum Scandal; 2026 Propaganda Tasks
This looks to have been a massive PRC intelligence and analytical failure. PRC special envoy Qiu Xiaoqi met with Maduro in Caracas just hours before the raid, and may have still been in country when i...
https://sinocism.com/p/chinas-venezuela-calculations-real?open=false&hide_intro_popup=true#§prc-and-venezuela
January 6, 2026 at 7:27 AM
Yup: "The propaganda value of the US flouting international law in such a high profile way against a Global South country may be priceless, and the action fits perfectly with how the PRC talks about the US as a hegemon: imperialist & a destabilizing force in the world." sinocism.com/p/chinas-ven...
A general rule — which applies to technology, narcotics, financial innovation, sexual habits, etc. — is that things at large scale have emergent properties, especially second-order effects, that are nearly unanticipatable when they first emerge as niche activities.
January 6, 2026 at 6:36 AM
A general rule — which applies to technology, narcotics, financial innovation, sexual habits, etc. — is that things at large scale have emergent properties, especially second-order effects, that are nearly unanticipatable when they first emerge as niche activities.
So according to the annual pornhub trends report, in 2025 Washington DC's outlier interest was in "dildo sucking" (p. 18), which seems very on-brand given that the town is now filled with Trumpers.
www.pornhub.com/insights/202...
www.pornhub.com/insights/202...
2025 Year in Review - Pornhub Insights
www.pornhub.com
January 5, 2026 at 2:44 PM
So according to the annual pornhub trends report, in 2025 Washington DC's outlier interest was in "dildo sucking" (p. 18), which seems very on-brand given that the town is now filled with Trumpers.
www.pornhub.com/insights/202...
www.pornhub.com/insights/202...
Stated vs revealed preferences www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
The College Backlash Is a Mirage
Americans are more pessimistic than ever about the value of a degree—but enrollment keeps going up.
www.theatlantic.com
January 5, 2026 at 1:45 PM
Stated vs revealed preferences www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Lem: "Simultaneously I noticed the violet-flushed furrows of the ocean, which betrayed a faint motion; the clouds suddenly rose high up, their edges marked with dazzling crimson, the sky between them grew distant and flat, dull orange in color, and everything became blurred: I’d entered a spin."
January 5, 2026 at 12:19 PM
Lem: "Simultaneously I noticed the violet-flushed furrows of the ocean, which betrayed a faint motion; the clouds suddenly rose high up, their edges marked with dazzling crimson, the sky between them grew distant and flat, dull orange in color, and everything became blurred: I’d entered a spin."
There should be a high speed coastal train running from Abidjan-Takoradi-Accra-Lome-Lagos. That's 1000km of near-continuous urbanization which currently takes 20-25 hours to drive but could be cut to 4 hours.
January 5, 2026 at 10:14 AM
There should be a high speed coastal train running from Abidjan-Takoradi-Accra-Lome-Lagos. That's 1000km of near-continuous urbanization which currently takes 20-25 hours to drive but could be cut to 4 hours.
Forecast: Sovereignty in 2050 Africa will be local and functional, with legal and Westphalian sovereignty being a barely polite fiction.
January 5, 2026 at 9:03 AM
Forecast: Sovereignty in 2050 Africa will be local and functional, with legal and Westphalian sovereignty being a barely polite fiction.
The irony of Zeynep’s Law is that, even though it was inspired by the pandemic, the pandemic itself is the greatest refutation of the Law: because surely the second order (e.g. social & political) effects of the pandemic have been far more dramatic & lasting than the first-order biomedical impacts
January 5, 2026 at 3:28 AM
The irony of Zeynep’s Law is that, even though it was inspired by the pandemic, the pandemic itself is the greatest refutation of the Law: because surely the second order (e.g. social & political) effects of the pandemic have been far more dramatic & lasting than the first-order biomedical impacts
The paper that justified $1,000,000,000,000/year expenditure
arxiv.org/abs/2001.08361
arxiv.org/abs/2001.08361
Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models
We study empirical scaling laws for language model performance on the cross-entropy loss. The loss scales as a power-law with model size, dataset size, and the amount of compute used for training, wit...
arxiv.org
January 5, 2026 at 2:27 AM
The paper that justified $1,000,000,000,000/year expenditure
arxiv.org/abs/2001.08361
arxiv.org/abs/2001.08361
January 5, 2026 at 1:53 AM
Reposted by Nils Gilman
Another galling example of this: It's been said that Trump's hatred of the "deep state" is rooted in hatred of its "warmongering." But Trump hates the deep state because it tried to hold him accountable for his crimes and because a professional civil service is a barrier to authoritarian corruption!
January 4, 2026 at 3:46 PM
Another galling example of this: It's been said that Trump's hatred of the "deep state" is rooted in hatred of its "warmongering." But Trump hates the deep state because it tried to hold him accountable for his crimes and because a professional civil service is a barrier to authoritarian corruption!
This is what happens when vice no longer feels obligated to pay tribute to virtue.
Broke: America is a violent, expansionist empire but we tell ourselves we're not
Woke: Damn straight we're a violent, expansionist empire and we're not not going to hide it anymore
Woke: Damn straight we're a violent, expansionist empire and we're not not going to hide it anymore
January 5, 2026 at 1:50 AM
This is what happens when vice no longer feels obligated to pay tribute to virtue.
All societies/communities have prohibitions.
All. 100%.
Almost none of these prohibitions are “universal.”
Yes, this means most prohibitions are “arbitrary”!
But no, this does not mean that prohibitions are unnecessary!!
Read some Durkheim, bitches!!!
All. 100%.
Almost none of these prohibitions are “universal.”
Yes, this means most prohibitions are “arbitrary”!
But no, this does not mean that prohibitions are unnecessary!!
Read some Durkheim, bitches!!!
January 5, 2026 at 1:47 AM
All societies/communities have prohibitions.
All. 100%.
Almost none of these prohibitions are “universal.”
Yes, this means most prohibitions are “arbitrary”!
But no, this does not mean that prohibitions are unnecessary!!
Read some Durkheim, bitches!!!
All. 100%.
Almost none of these prohibitions are “universal.”
Yes, this means most prohibitions are “arbitrary”!
But no, this does not mean that prohibitions are unnecessary!!
Read some Durkheim, bitches!!!
Reposted by Nils Gilman
An especially appealing move when the US dollar is faltering, as it is currently.
Remember when Jonah Goldberg, cheering for the Iraq War in 2002, wrote that, "every ten years or so, the U.S. needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business”?
web.archive.org/web/20120104...
web.archive.org/web/20120104...
Baghdad Delenda Est, Part Two
Jonah Goldberg writes on NRO: For part one, click here. During the Cold War, few people said, “We have to solve the problem of Latvia, before we can even begin to address the problem of the Soviet Un...
web.archive.org
January 4, 2026 at 4:18 PM
An especially appealing move when the US dollar is faltering, as it is currently.
Remember when Jonah Goldberg, cheering for the Iraq War in 2002, wrote that, "every ten years or so, the U.S. needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business”?
web.archive.org/web/20120104...
web.archive.org/web/20120104...
Baghdad Delenda Est, Part Two
Jonah Goldberg writes on NRO: For part one, click here. During the Cold War, few people said, “We have to solve the problem of Latvia, before we can even begin to address the problem of the Soviet Un...
web.archive.org
January 4, 2026 at 4:15 PM
Remember when Jonah Goldberg, cheering for the Iraq War in 2002, wrote that, "every ten years or so, the U.S. needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business”?
web.archive.org/web/20120104...
web.archive.org/web/20120104...
My favorite test of whether a person is an intellectually serious and honest person is to ask them what they once believed that they have now realized is deeply wrong.
Anyone over the age of, say, 25, who doesn’t have a long list is either a maniac, a liar, or an idiot.
Anyone over the age of, say, 25, who doesn’t have a long list is either a maniac, a liar, or an idiot.
January 4, 2026 at 12:15 PM
My favorite test of whether a person is an intellectually serious and honest person is to ask them what they once believed that they have now realized is deeply wrong.
Anyone over the age of, say, 25, who doesn’t have a long list is either a maniac, a liar, or an idiot.
Anyone over the age of, say, 25, who doesn’t have a long list is either a maniac, a liar, or an idiot.
Given what a vulgarian he is, it's not surprising that he's into the Venezuelan kind of crude: heavy and sour!
January 4, 2026 at 11:18 AM
Given what a vulgarian he is, it's not surprising that he's into the Venezuelan kind of crude: heavy and sour!
The US Interstate Highway System was not just a domestic infrastructure project but also an instrument of Cold War diplomacy, and as such had a profound influence on the development of highways across Europe and Asia. jshsr.org/index.php/pu...
Highway Infrastructure Politics: Cold War Power, Culture, and the US Interstate Highway Abroad
| International Journal of Social and Humanities Sciences Research (JSHSR)
jshsr.org
January 4, 2026 at 10:36 AM
The US Interstate Highway System was not just a domestic infrastructure project but also an instrument of Cold War diplomacy, and as such had a profound influence on the development of highways across Europe and Asia. jshsr.org/index.php/pu...
"Maduro’s was never the kind of personalist system that depends on a single leader. It was always more of a team effort.... In other words, the kind of regime that could very well survive decapitation. And if it does, Venezuelans will get the worst of it." www.persuasion.community/p/maduro-is-...
Maduro Is Gone—Venezuela’s Dictatorship Is Not
Bloodied and humiliated, the regime could turn even nastier.
www.persuasion.community
January 4, 2026 at 8:10 AM
"Maduro’s was never the kind of personalist system that depends on a single leader. It was always more of a team effort.... In other words, the kind of regime that could very well survive decapitation. And if it does, Venezuelans will get the worst of it." www.persuasion.community/p/maduro-is-...