Duncan

Politics, IT sometimes, not too much shouting even though there’s a lot to be angry about.

[AJ+ @ajplus]

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump saw this untouched wilderness in Albania and decided to build an enormous luxury resort there.

Albanians are fighting to shut them down.

[Duncan @duncan99]

@karlstefanovic What a wanker

[Anna Baxter 🇺🇸✌🏻 @MsAnnaBaxter]

@AdamKinzinger @AndBrianne127 Whoever compiled this fact sheet during 1.0 should be commended. We haven’t forgotten how Trump botched foreign relations. This helps contribute to his 30,500 tabulated lies.

[Duncan @duncan99]

@taipan168 It’s really not, just rich wankers whinging

[Duncan @duncan99]

@SenatorWong You’re pathetic. Zero real consequences- again

[Harrison Berger @BergerPosts]

Israel has relaunched https://t.co/zFhmJ8OTHr, the troll farming campaign originally designed by Israeli intelligence officials at the Ministry of Strategic Affairs to harass and intimidate American critics of Israel.

The Israeli-government designed program is now called “RiseApp” and is operated by Reichman University.

The announcement on Reichman’s website indicates that Rise App will use https://t.co/zFhmJ8OTHr’s “global active online user-base” of over 40k Pro-Israel operatives

[Jesús Fernández-Villaverde @JesusFerna7026]

Smartphones are not the explanation for the recent decline in fertility. Instead, they are an accelerator of deeper forces already at work.

Let’s start with the facts. Fertility is falling almost everywhere: in rich, middle-income, and poor countries; in secular and religious countries; and in countries with high and low levels of gender equality.

The decline accelerated around 2014. So, no country-specific explanation will work unless you are willing to believe that 200 distinct country-specific explanations arrived at roughly the same time.

Smartphones look like the obvious candidate: the first iPhone was released in 2007, and global adoption has been astonishingly fast.

Economists understand the first major decline in fertility in advanced economies, from 6 or 7 children per woman throughout most of human history to about 1.8, that occurred between the early 1800s and roughly 1970, well before smartphones. The main drivers were a sharp fall in child mortality (effective fertility was rarely above 3 and often close to 2) and the shift from a low-skill, rural agrarian economy to a high-skill, urban industrial one. We have quantitative models that fit these facts well.

Country-specific factors mattered too, of course. Proximity to low-fertility neighbors accelerated Hungary’s decline, while fragmented landowning structures accelerated France’s. But these were second-order mechanisms.

This is also why most economists long considered Paul Ehrlich’s doom scenarios implausible. We forecast that fertility in middle- and low-income economies would follow the same path as in the rich, probably faster, because reductions in child mortality reached India or Africa at lower income levels (medical technology is nearly universal, and most gains come from handwashing and cheap antibiotics, not Mayo Clinic-level care). Much of what we see in Africa or parts of Latin America today is still that old story.

But in the 1980s, a new pattern appeared. Japan and Italy fell below 1.8, the level we had thought was the new floor. By 1990, Japan was at 1.54 and Italy at 1.36.

This second fertility decline began in Japan and Italy earlier than elsewhere, driven by country-specific factors, but the underlying dynamics were widespread: secularization, an education arms race, expensive housing, the dissolution of old social networks, and the shift to a service economy in which women’s bargaining power within the household is higher. The U.S. lagged because secularization came later, suburban housing remained relatively cheap, and African American fertility was still high. U.S. demographic patterns are exceptional and skew how academics (most of whom are in the U.S.) and the New York Times see the world.

My best guess is that, without smartphones, Italy’s 2025 fertility rate would be about 1.24 rather than 1.14. I doubt anyone will document an effect larger than 0.1-0.2. Italy was at 1.19 in 1995, not far from today’s 1.14. The TFR is cyclical due to tempo effects, so I do not read too much into the rise between 1995 and 2007 or the decline from 1.27 in 2019 to 1.14 today. The direct effect of smartphones is not zero, but it is not, by itself, that large.

Where social media, in general, and smartphones, in particular, matter is in the diffusion of social norms. What would have taken 25 years now happens in 10. Social media are not the cause of fertility decline; modernity is. But they are a very fast accelerator.

That is why social media are a major part of the story behind Guatemala (yes, Guatemala) going from 3.8 children per woman in 2005 to 1.9 in 2025. Without them, Guatemala would also have reached 1.9, just 20 years later.

Modernity, in its current form, is incompatible with replacement-level fertility. By modernity, I do not mean capitalism: fertility fell earlier and faster in socialist economies than in market economies. Socialist Hungary fell below replacement in 1960, and socialist Czechoslovakia in 1966 (both experienced small, short-lived baby booms in the mid-1970s). By modernity, I mean a society organized around rational, large-scale systems and formalized knowledge.

Countries will not converge to the same fertility rate. East Asia is likely stuck near 1, possibly below, given its unbalanced gender norms and toxic education systems. Latin America faces the same gender problem plus weak growth prospects, so I expect something around 1.2. Northern Europe has more egalitarian family structures and might hold near 1.5. The very religious societies are probably the only ones that will sustain 1.8.

All of this could change with AI or changes in population composition. We will see. But on the current evidence, deep sub-replacement fertility is the “new new normal.” Unless we reorganize our societies, better learn to handle it as best we can.

[SightBringer @_The_Prophet__]

⚡️The deeper signal is youth risk did not disappear.

It migrated inward.

Teen drinking fell because the old physical world of adolescence got dismantled. Alcohol belonged to a social ecosystem: unsupervised time, cars, parties, local jobs, malls, basements, boredom, flirting, older siblings, house gatherings, and the chaotic peer world where teenagers learned who they were by colliding with other people in real space.

That ecosystem was replaced by phones, surveillance, parental tracking, algorithmic entertainment, social anxiety, online status games, and a much thinner physical commons.

So the surface looks healthier. Fewer kids drinking. Fewer kids using weed. Fewer kids doing reckless things in public.

The hidden layer looks worse. The young are less reckless because they are less socially embodied. Less initiation. Less unsupervised friction. Less courage-building. Less embarrassment and recovery. Less real dating. Less independence. Less contact with the physical world before adulthood demands it.

The old teenage world produced damage, stupidity, alcohol abuse, pregnancy risk, fights, accidents, and bad decisions. No need to romanticize it. But it also produced social reps. It forced young people through discomfort. It made them practice attraction, rejection, conflict, reputation, risk, repair, and status in the open.

The new world suppresses visible risk while increasing invisible fragility.

That is the trade.

A teenager can avoid drinking, avoid parties, avoid sex, avoid driving, avoid real confrontation, avoid rejection, avoid shame, avoid danger, and still arrive at 23 emotionally underbuilt. Cleaner behavior does not automatically mean stronger formation.

This is why the marriage chart and the teen drinking chart are the same story at different stages. People are not suddenly failing to pair in adulthood. The whole pathway into embodied adulthood has been slowing for years before marriage even becomes the question.

The real truth: society solved part of the teen vice problem by shrinking the arena where teenagers become adults.

It took away the dangerous commons and replaced it with controlled isolation.

The result is safer kids with weaker initiation into real life.

[AI Highlight @AIHighlight]

🚨 In 2016, an Uber data scientist confirmed the company knew people pay more for a ride when their phone battery is low.

It is called surveillance pricing. Your data sets your price.

Delta is rolling it out on 20% of flights this year. Here is how it works:

[Daniel Mayakovski @DaniMayakovski]

"Soy judío y estuve en Gaza como médico humanitario, lo que hacía antes Israel era un genocidio lento, ahora es total. Los israelíes son excelentes torturando, lo hacen a todas horas y han matado a médicos violándolos hasta la muerte".

Médicos humanitarios judíos denuncian el genocidio sionista en Gaza y las brutales torturas a las que someten a los médicos palestinos, como al doctor Adnan al-Bursh, jefe del departamento de ortopedia del Hospital Al Shifa, que fue violado hasta la muerte... sin embargo, esto no es ningún escándalo en Occidente.

[Dr Colin Hughes @drcwhos]

@AngusTaylorMP Over 1000 ex IDF soldiers accused of war crimes in Gaza have returned to Australia
Are they being screened by @AusFedPolice Why will no journalist ask @Tony_Burke Surely a bigger risk than 4 young women and their Australian kids? @FergusonNews

[Duncan @duncan99]

Just like our supposedly progressive @AlboMP here in Australia. More time fighting the Greens - who exist as an example of how badly he has sold out - than the right.

[Daniel Grigg @Daniel_Grigg]

Keir Starmer would genuinely prefer losing the 2029 general election to Nigel Farage than Zack Polanski wouldn't he.

[Jen Rice @jen_rice_]

This is *insane.* Even if you are too tired to follow the news you have to understand this. The Louisiana governor has *suspended an active congressional election with 42k votes already cast* — it's insane.

[Dr Sheep Person Podge @noplaceforsheep]

I have yet to hear ONE explanation of how objecting to genocide is dangerous for Jews.

The whole notion is fucking senseless & I can't believe the grip it's got on people who fucking well know better.

It's like a mass psychosis.

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

🚨MAJOR BREAKING: Rep. Pat Ryan just revealed that Pete Hegseth ordered military members to an area in Kuwait with an ACTIVE WARNING they had ZERO defense against drone attacks and he IGNORED IT.

Six were then KILLED. Survivors blame Hegseth.

This is even WORSE than Benghazi.

[Duncan @duncan99]

The moral position has always been Ukraine and Palestine. Russia and Israel are the instigators and invaders, not to mention pretty sick societies.

[Igor Sushko @igorsushko]

Many people across the world who support Ukraine have been supporting Israel, like myself.
This dynamic will likely change given the Israeli government's blatant lies about its crimes to support Russia and hurt Ukraine over a measly $10 million benefit spread across 4 years.

[Duncan @duncan99]

Disappointed to see such propaganda. Makes me question what else this account is sharing

[Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg]

Did you know Ukraine was the third largest importer of Bentleys in Europe in 2025?

Did you know that Ukraine imported 15 of the new £600,000 Rolls Royce Spectres?

Did you know Ukraine imports more supercars than Russia?

I wonder where the money comes from and who drives them?

[Mark Ogge @MarkOgge]

You may have thought you were voting for @AustralianLabor and then it turns out they’re owned by foreign owned gas corporates.

Our democracy has been hijacked by corporate lobbyists.

[Duncan @duncan99]

@LeftyWinter Um - too late I guess

[Scott Ludlam @Scottludlam]

last week richard marles announced an additional $53 billion in military spending for weapons of death and obsolete nuclear submarines.