Brian Klaas

"ants became farmers roughly 66 million years earlier than we did."

"Good Heavens what insect can suck it?" The stranger-than-fiction miracles of coevolution in nature and human society. (Or: what connects avocados, ants who farm fungus, karma, and our relationship with dogs?)

I wrote about the stranger-than-fiction miracles of coevolution in nature and human society—and a smarter framework to understand ourselves. (Or: what connects avocados, ants who farm fungus, karma, and our relationship with dogs?)

Man Wouldn't Have Worn Costume To Work If He'd Known He Was Getting Laid Off

Man Wouldn't Have Worn Costume To Work If He'd Known He Was Getting Laid Off

Heartwarming attitudes and actions that should spread worldwide

"Our enduring inability to separate out homelessness from blame and those who “deserve” support ends up blinding us to what is ultimately an empirical question over what works and what doesn’t."

This is a long read but it's
about the most positive thing I've seen in a while.
Ostensibly (and constructively) about homelessness and
poverty but relatable to broader politics and governance

Excellent article:
"Greater Change’s results are impressive. According to their own checks, 85 percent of their clients have achieved 'permanent housing or sustained stable housing' in 2024-25. And 39 percent of their clients got a job in the aftermath of the intervention from Greater Change...."

The same is true of the Black Death, Mount Tambora’s eruption and the Mongol Invasions.

This is actually incredibly interesting

A GREAT read. Please have a look…

“Most government policies remain based on hunches, what lawmakers say will work, rather than by testing various options to verify what works best. No experiments done, no evidence required.”

Should we just give cash to the homeless? A new charity is tackling homelessness with a simple approach. Does it work?

Should we just give cash to homeless people? I wrote about what the evidence shows--and a London-based charity called Greater Change that has a simple, innovative way of making a difference:

YouTube video by StudiocanalUK I SWEAR - Official Trailer | STUDIOCANAL

The film “I Swear” is one of the best movies I’ve seen in the last several years. Funny, but above all, *extremely* moving. The world would be a better place if more people saw it. (And Robert Aramayo deserves an Oscar.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeWq...

Is social media just...boring now? Social media is destroying democracy and accelerating idiocracy. But it's also just...really, really boring.

Brian Klaas on fine form: "You only live around 30,000 days; today is one of them, and the world is far too fascinating a place to waste any more of them on something so destructively boring." And yes, I see the irony.

DOUGLAS ADAMS by Arvind Ethan David Read by Arvind Ethan David Douglas Adams Sam Barnett Stephen Fry | Audiobook Review | AudioFile Magazine AudioFile Audiobook Review: Multiple narrators come together to create an audio portrait that is part biography, part celebration, and part theatrical tribute to author Douglas A

Lovely review in @audiofilemagazine.bsky.social of our #DouglasAdams audiobook #BookSky - featuring @brianklaas.bsky.social @stephenfry.bsky.social @realbaddiel.bsky.social @sanjeevbhaskar.bsky.social @lucycooke.bsky.social and many others.

www.audiofilemagazine.com/reviews/read...

Pain at The Post As morale sinks and top talent exits, staffers at The Washington Post are bracing for more pain ahead of the holidays—raising questions about Will Lewis’ leadership, nearly two years into his tenure a...

Some news: The Washington Post is preparing to cut newsroom staff even after several high profile exits. Bezos’ new opinion editor has privately told people The Post is in “severe financial distress.” Details in @status.news www.status.news/p/washington...

Well no, this isn't a school trip photo, as you claimed. It's clearly not. There are several adults and there are like 11 people. But yes...images represent ideas (that's what art is, too) and they speak to people differently. This image, to me, is about lost human connection and not being present.

I also don't think these are kids in the photo on a school trip...they're families visiting the Louvre

I didn't see this as a photo critical of these specific children so much as an image representing a broader idea: how phone use can destroy in-person human connection and appreciation of being in the moment (just as people now take photos of artwork rather than taking time and looking at it).

One of the better photographs depicting modernity, I'd say:

There are a lot of things happening under Trump that are illegal. The question that determines whether America remains a democracy or a competitive authoritarian regime is whether that matters.

The CrowdStrike Debacle is a Warning We have engineered social systems that are hyper-optimized, super efficient, but incredibly fragile. It's a mistake—and unless we fix it, we will careen toward much worse, utterly avoidable disasters.

Last year, it was CrowdStrike. This week, AWS. We are engineering critical social systems that are completely contingent on single points of failure. It’s designed fragility and it produces catastrophic risk—all because it’s marginally more efficient. We are foolishly careening toward disaster:

Thanks for choosing Fluke for the book club -- I hope your members enjoyed it and that it sparks some interesting ideas and reflections. (I'd ask to join the Zoom to say hello but alas the time zones are not in our favor as I'm in the UK.) But have a great discussion!

Demolishing American history for a grotesque, gilded vanity ballroom, paid for by opaque donors bribing the president.

I'm super grateful to now be a UK citizen, but I did end up spending £17,000 in visa fees over 12 years to get there. Changing visa types brings you back to zero; in-person appointments are extortionate (thousands of pounds) for little more than scanning documents (often done by other immigrants).

(And yes, I know, it's perhaps a misnomer to call the US a developed democracy now but it was through 2024, and that's what the data show in the chart.)

Japan finally has a woman as prime minister: Sanae Takaichi. But Japan's proportion of women in parliament (16%) is still extremely low relative to other developed democracies.

Can you imagine if Keir Starmer got private companies that he had direct power over and rich donors who wanted deregulation to pay £250 million in donations to knock down part of Big Ben to make his own little special tower? Because that's what Trump is doing to the White House literally right now.

They were too busy trying to figure out if the president had actually flown an airplane over protesters and dropped shit on them or if it was just "*what appeared* to be an AI generated video" that showed an "unknown brown substance"

How Many Comedians Does It Take to Change a Country? What it’s like to watch Louis C.K. do stand-up in Saudi Arabia

"Sometimes you have to ask yourself: How did I get here—sitting in Saudi Arabia, listening to Louis C.K. do jokes about Barely Legal magazine?"

I went to Riyadh to see the transformation of a country with the world's biggest cultural chequebook. Gift link:

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

It's this photo if you missed it, savaging the East Wing to make a vanity ballroom.

This is far from the most important thing happening in terms of governance -- it's not even close. But campaign politics requires messaging that cuts through to people with symbolism and this one is a gift. And to defeat authoritarianism before it's too late, you have to win elections.