The Right Time for a Realtime Roundup!

Here are the fun topics we covered over the past two months!

The Realtime Techpocalypse Newsletter is now two months old! At this age, a human baby is just beginning to develop the ability to open and close their hands, and kick more vigorously. That’s kind of where I’m at with this newsletter, as I figure out what exactly it should be and which topics people find most useful to read about. :-)

This article has two aims: first, to provide a brief overview of some highlights from the past two months. My friend Paris Marx publishes monthly “recaps and roundups” on his excellent blog Disconnect, so I think I’ll start doing the same at the end of each month. And second, to thank readers for supporting this newsletter, which will become my primary source of income next year.

Some unintentional comedy to start us off right, from our super-genius oligarch:

Elon Musk is so S-M-R-T.

The Best Articles So Far (In My Opinion)

Here are some of the articles that I’m most excited about having published since last August:

(1) A 3-part series on what I call Silicon Valley pro-extinctionism. I think this is one of the most important topics right now that almost no one is talking about: leading figures in Silicon Valley almost unanimously embrace a digital eschatology according to which the future is digital rather than biological. This means that our species’ days are numbered; there’s an expiration date stamped on our foreheads — and that’s how they want it. I am deeply concerned about this, as the pro-extinctionists in Silicon Valley have enormous power over our collective future.

You can read these articles here, here, and here. I’ll release audio versions of them soon (I just need to find the time to record them!).

Btw, note that Daniel Faggella responded to my first post, which focused on his deeply problematic “worthy successor” proposal, but his response wasn’t good: he mostly just recapitulates his pro-extinctionist theses without addressing any of my substantive objections. I guess that means those objections were good. :-)

(2) Peter Thiel and the Antichrist (but I repeat myself). This outlines my guess about why Thiel has been obsessing over the Antichrist and Armageddon recently. Eschatological (end-times) thinking is extremely powerful, and when charlatans like Thiel weaponize it for political ends, it can be an exceptionally effective way of mobilizing the masses — as history has shown over and over again. Remember, as I like to say, you can’t say “eschatological” without saying “scatological.” You can read the article here or listen to the article below.

(3) I also published two articles about the hilarious ineptitude of AI in the aftermath of OpenAI’s shambolic release of GPT-5 — which Reid Hoffman described as “Basic Universal Superintelligence.” These have been the most popular posts I’ve published by far, despite there being very little philosophical substance to them. Still, they’re amusing. You can read them here and here. I’ll have more articles like these in the coming weeks.

(4) “Pursuing a Good Life in a Bad World” outlines a few important features of my personal philosophy. It’s precisely because the world is a shitshow, I contend, that one should feel motivated to ameliorate it better. You can read the piece here.

Other fun (??) topics that I covered include the ubiquity of neurotoxins in our environment; why humanity almost certainly won’t go extinct this century, but civilization will probably collapse; xAI firing someone because they advocated for human extinction; and how to make sense of Elon Musk’s vast wealth. In the last article, I wrote:

To make things more concrete, consider that in 2024, Elon Musk brought home a staggering $203 billion. Let’s say that the height of Mount Everest represents this amount of money. Now imagine someone who earned $50,000 in 2024. How tall would their salary stand next to Musk’s Mount Everest of earnings? You might guess “the height of a skyscraper, such as the Burj Khalifa in Dubai,” since Mount Everest is much taller than the Burj Khalifa but the Burj Khalifa is still quite tall.

But that is not even close to accurate.

So, perhaps you reduce your estimate to “the size of a large house,” but this would still be way off. In fact, $50,000 compared to $203 billion amounts to roughly 0.084 inches — about the size of a common flea. Mount Everest compared to a lowly flea. That’s the difference between what you and Musk would have made in one year alone.

Mind-boggling. Here’s a graph illustrating disparities in the US that I just saw on X:

Take note of where the “Bottom 50%” is on this graph. Mount Everest to a single lowly flea, indeed.

Upcoming topics include:

• Three lies often told about longtermism (this one will be good!!).

• A trenchant review of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s coauthored book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.

• An accessible introduction to the ethics of human extinction.

• A shocking interview with the pro-extinctionist and Turing Award-winner Richard Sutton, in which he rails against democracy as a form of government.

• How and why I left the TESCREAL movement, and the community’s response to this.

• My role in exposing the TESCREAL community (e.g., did you know that I was the one who first stumbled upon Nick Bostrom’s racist email from 1996?).

• And, of course, more AI news and bloopers!

A Career Transition in 2026

I have some very exciting news to share: I’m going to spend the first half of 2026 writing a book for the venerable Verso. I don’t yet have a title — perhaps Dystopia Now will do¹ — so I’d welcome suggestions in the comments section. (You would, of course, get credit for suggesting a title that I end up using!) The book will focus on the history of the TESCREAL ideologies, Silicon Valley pro-extinctionism, eugenics in the tech world, the ongoing race to build AGI, and related topics. I’m so very excited about this!

The advance for the book will provide about 1/3 of the income I need next year to pay all of my bills. The rest will come from this newsletter and freelance articles in outlets like Truthdig, where I’m a contributing writer. I do not require more than $20,000 in total — that’s it. Because Substack takes 10%, this means I need about 250 total paid subscribers. If you have an extra two cups of coffee to spare each month ($7), please consider becoming a paid subscriber. 🥹

Once I reach my goal of $20k, I’ll incrementally reduce the subscription fee until it bottoms out at $2 per month. Hence, if I have 11,000 paid subscribers, the monthly fee will be only $2 (taking into account Substack’s 10% charge — at some point, I’m going to migrate over to Ghost, which takes less).

If you don’t have $7 to spare each month, no problem at all, of course. I still deeply appreciate you reading this newsletter! Another way to support me, btw, is through Patreon, if you’d prefer that to Substack. Several people have opted for this instead.

I’m also excited to announce a forthcoming entry on the “TESCREAL” ideologies in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia. It’s very comprehensive — about 16,000 words! — and goes into considerable detail about the pro-extinctionist elements of the TESCREAL movement. I will, of course, share a copy once it’s published.

That’s it for today. Thanks again for your support. I hope everyone is well and, as always, I’ll see you on the other side! :-)

PS. If you like podcasts, check out Dystopia Now, which I cohost with the comedian Kate Willett. It’s basically a much funnier version of this newsletter!

1. The same name as my podcast.