Top all-time · #1247
Derek Thompson
Personal blog · derekthompson.orgeconomicscultureai
Derek Thompson's personal blog at derekthompson.org covers economics, culture and ai. Since 2025, 58 different Hacker News readers have linked it 117 times, most often “If GLP-1 Drugs Are Good for Everything, Should We All Be on Them?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-27, and you can follow it by feed.
A newsletter about abundance and building a better world. Click to read Derek Thompson, a Substack publication.
Most-linked posts?
- If GLP-1 Drugs Are Good for Everything, Should We All Be on Them?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-07-24
- Everything Is Television3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-10-10
- What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-07-15
- AI Could Be the Railroad of the 21st Century. Brace Yourself3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-11-11
- The US Population Could Shrink in 2025, for the first time ever3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-09-02
- Everybody’s home. No one’s coming over3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-09-29
- Whose Cup Are You Filling?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-10-19
- The death of partying in the USA3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-07-09
- How the AI Bubble Will Pop2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-10-02
- Evidence that AI is destroying jobs for young people2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-08-27
What Hacker News says?
https://www.derekthompson.org/p/the-death-of-partying-in-the...
Comment linking /p/the-death-of-partying-in-the-usaand
on “Facts about throwing good parties”Submitted Everybody’s home. No one’s coming over as a story · 840 points
HN discussionGLP-1s. https://www.derekthompson.org/p/why-does-it-seem-like-glp-1-... (Control-F "Theory 2: GLP-1 is a miraculous “moderation molecule,” and it has docking portals all throughout the body that reduce inflammation.") https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/do-gl...
Comment linking /p/why-does-it-seem-like-glp-1-drugs
on “Inflammation now predicts heart disease more strongly than cholesterol”Submitted The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong as a story · 518 points
HN discussionNah, they could just throw cheap BYOB parties with plastic cups with your name written on it, but they don't anymore: https://www.derekthompson.org/p/the-death-of-partying-in-the...
Comment linking /p/the-death-of-partying-in-the-usaand
on “We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness”Submitted The death of partying in the USA as a story · 435 points
HN discussionThis blog post by Derek Thompson answered a lot of questions for me: https://www.derekthompson.org/p/why-does-it-seem-like-glp-1-... In particular it seems Ozempic has anti-inflamatory effects which could explain a lot of these non-weight-loss-related results.
Comment linking /p/why-does-it-seem-like-glp-1-drugs
on “Ozempic shows anti-aging effects in trial”Submitted I know why the mathematicians weep as a story · 400 points
HN discussionI believe you are correct about the general decline in socializing. Came across this article about it yesterday https://www.derekthompson.org/p/the-death-of-the-american-ho... “In short, the great disinvitation is real, and we can’t wish or explain it away by arguing that Americans are just finding new ways to be with friends.”
Comment linking /p/the-death-of-the-american-host
on “California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops”Submitted 1910: The year the modern world lost its mind as a story · 361 points
HN discussionExpanded/revised version of this article: https://www.derekthompson.org/p/the-end-of-thinking ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45372507 )
Comment linking /p/the-end-of-thinking
on “The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds”Submitted Evidence that AI is destroying jobs for young people as a story · 351 points
HN discussion>the future never plays out like we think it does Consider this 1926 government report: https://www.derekthompson.org/p/america-1926-an-absurdly-dee... "The authors of Recent Social Trends were astonishingly prescient about the direction of technology." There have been many successful predictions, e.g. the internet was predicted, AI was predicted, moon landings were predicted, etc. >OpenAI is a lot closer to bankrup…
Comment linking /p/america-1926-an-absurdly-deep-dive
on “We have a year to fix security everywhere”Submitted How AI conquered the US economy: A visual FAQ as a story · 287 points
HN discussionhttps://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2025/0... Most population growth was due to immigration for a while, and immigration (for obvious reasons in 2025) is way, way down. https://www.derekthompson.org/p/the-us-population-could-shri... what's your report? >you'd have to nuke LA Let's not give this administration ideas, please.
Comment linking /p/the-us-population-could-shrink-in
on “Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?”Submitted Why Exercise Is a Miracle Drug as a story · 272 points
HN discussion> We live in extremely safe times compared to This sentence in a HN article from a day ago caught my eye [1][2]. > Second, between the mid-1930s and mid-1950s, the US maternal death rate fell by 94 percent, according to Sarygulov and Arslanagic-Wakefield. Early antibiotics in the 1930s, followed by the mass production of penicillin in the 1940s, “drove down incidences of sepsis, [which were] responsible for 40 perce…
Comment linking /p/what-caused-the-baby-boom-what-would
on “My Family and the Flood”Submitted How the AI Bubble Will Pop as a story · 214 points
HN discussionhttps://www.derekthompson.org/p/this-is-how-the-ai-bubble-wi... Goes into good detail on how the bubble has infiltrated everywhere. Like if you went into a REIT thinking it was safe from the bubble, nope a significant portion of your investment is in the data center buildout
Comment linking /p/this-is-how-the-ai-bubble-will-pop
on “The AI bubble is 17 times the size of the dot-com frenzy and four times subprime”Submitted What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another? as a story · 116 points
HN discussionI think they like socializing decreasingly less https://www.derekthompson.org/p/the-death-of-the-american-ho...
Comment linking /p/the-death-of-the-american-host
on “We won't "just hang out"”Submitted The Monks in the Casino as a story · 103 points
HN discussionThere's really overwhelming evidence that exercise itself has a causal role, and it only gets more impactful the more effective it is at raising your fitness (i.e., given the logistical constraints of your life, the more that the exercise you can do raises your strength and endurance, the greater the benefits without a clear obvious ceiling (though the benefits do get increasingly marginal)). Even if we lived in a w…
Comment linking /p/the-sunday-morning-post-why-exercise
on “The ROI of Exercise”Submitted If America's So Rich, How'd It Get So Sad? as a story · 95 points
HN discussionhttps://www.derekthompson.org/p/this-is-how-the-ai-bubble-wi...
Comment linking /p/this-is-how-the-ai-bubble-will-pop
on “The (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh”Submitted All the sad young terminally online men as a story · 74 points
HN discussionAn article making that case: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-with-texas-how-bi... A rebuttal to that article from Derek Thompson: https://www.derekthompson.org/p/the-anti-abundance-critique-...
Comment linking /p/the-anti-abundance-critique-on-housing
on “US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes”Submitted The US Population Could Shrink in 2025, for the first time ever as a story · 39 points
HN discussionSee https://www.derekthompson.org/p/what-caused-the-baby-boom-wh...
Comment linking /p/what-caused-the-baby-boom-what-would
on “The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]”Submitted We Haven't Seen the Worst of What Gambling and Prediction Markets Will Do as a story · 38 points
HN discussion
