Quote:Picture this: A loosely organized cabal of obscenely wealthy tech moguls aim to overthrow democracy and replace it with a corporatist dictatorship. It would make for a good political thriller. It’s a far grimmer read in nonfiction.

Gil Duran, a journalist and former aide to Jerry Brown, Dianne Feinstein, and Kamala Harris, has spent the last two years tracking extremist strains of authoritarianism in Silicon Valley through his newsletter, The Nerd Reich.

That premise is now the central thesis of a new book. “The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy (opens in new tab),” out Aug. 18, catalogs the rise of what Duran characterizes as an ideological movement meant to overthrow liberal democracy and replace it with a tech-led oligarchy.

Quote:People often give me credit for coming up with it, but I didn’t. After I wrote a story about Balaji Srinivasan (opens in new tab), which went super viral, he started attacking me for several days. Then a pretty well-known figure from the crypto world reached out to me over DM and said, “You know, we’ve been calling these guys the Nerd Reich for years.” And I was like, “What?” The URL was available, so I rebranded my newsletter as the Nerd Reich and announced it in dramatic fashion.

To me, the most important thing is that this is not a name I came up with. This is a name their own peers use. They are telling people what they are doing. They want people to know because they’re evangelizing to bring in more believers.

Quote:Why are women 25% less likely to use artificial intelligence tools than men? New research debunks the notion that the gender gap is primarily due to women’s lack of AI skills, interest or access. Women’s hesitancy to use AI is instead a rational response to a competency penalty that women face when using AI in the workplace.

The latest evidence of the competence penalty that women workers incur when using AI comes from a 2026 study by Zehra Chatoo, founder of Code For Good Now and former strategist at Meta. The study found that women who submit resumes created with AI assistance are evaluated as less competent and less trustworthy than men who submit identical AI-assisted resumes. To the evaluators, women’s AI use signaled inability, while men’s AI use signaled initiative.

Quote:Impatience is growing among volunteers and donors “about the cultural sclerosis” inside Democratic organizations, Yasmin Radjy, the executive director of the progressive group Swing Left, told me. “The question we hear over and over is, What are Democrats doing differently than in 2024 to make sure we win?”

Quote:A separate 2025 study by McKinsey & Co. also found that women tend to prefer stable investments and adopt a more cautious approach to their money, prioritizing long-term financial security.

“One of the biggest misconceptions about women investors is that they are emotional, and that is just not the case,” said certified financial planner Alex Roca, the host of Fidelity’s Women Talk Money, a financial education initiative.

Quote:Sheela-na-gigs are stone carvings found in churches across Western Europe, most of which exist in Ireland. They depict women exposing their genitalia, mainly dating to the 11th to 14th centuries when Christianity was the predominant religion in Western Europe. This makes Sheela-na-gigs a bit of a mystery, but the carvings have been recognized as rare examples of positive depictions of women’s sexuality in Medieval art.

Quote:The Sheela-na-gig’s origin story varies just as much as its folk etymology. There is an Irish story of Queen Medb. The Queen goes to battle, only to find she is outnumbered on the battlefield. In response, she raised her skirts to the enemy army and displayed her vulva, as a Sheela-na-gig does, and the enemies were so confused by the gesture that they turned around and went home to their mothers.

Quote:A commons mistake in liberal circles is that the most nefarious propaganda must look and feel like Fox News. In fact, extraordinary resources are put into propaganda like the post below—which uses baseless assertions and innuendo couched as reasonable progressive-feeling analysis—to push uncritical consumers of information to the right.

The goal of much of this propaganda is not to steer people to voting for the far right, but to push people to lesser degrees toward the right in the broader spectrum—and by any means necessary away from genuinely liberatory/socialist positions that are actually threatening to ruling class interests.

• Men do wars. They always have. It's the ugliest, most destructive thing. Why would I join them in that, when they can't even properly help women with one of the most important things for humanity: the creation and care for new life?
  
• Women would gain nothing from it. Men already have the perception that women are ''equal'' (not that I strive for equality per se, rather liberation, but that's another matter, just rolling with it here) or even ahead of them, so if we were to die, face the risks of rape, be heavily wounded etc, men wouldn't respect us 1% more. 
  
• Honestly why should I fight, die, risk rape, for my oppressors who fucking hate me, look up to Andrew Tate and the like to learn how to hate and abuse me/us even more, when their porn use will only increase, and they fetishize and sexualize our degradation and oppression already? And when it's over they'll need a punching bag and guess who that'll be.
  
• The argument on their side, doesn't feel honest, either. When women want to join the army they'll say that women are worthless in combat, blah blah blah, so really it's just that they want us to suffer?
  
• But a woman in the army faces abuse, rape, bullying. They don't give a crap about us and will not either in the case of war. 
  
• If we were to fight in a war, they wouldn't respect and appreciate us in the moment either. We'd constantly be held up to all kinds of standards, and they'll constantly invent reasons why we weren't/aren't as brave, effective, etc.
  

Quote:"We should not blink, we should not hesitate to tell people—not because we are so wise, not because we made the rules of the world; we didn't—we humbly submit to how God made the rules of the world, and we say, 'This is how we should order our lives together,'" Wolfe said. "And frankly, yes, we are going to impose it upon you. If you don't like it, I'm sorry, but this is good and right and just if it lines up with God's standards and I am going to enforce my morality on you inasmuch as our morality is God's morality."

Quote:Overall, younger workers are increasingly pursuing careers in the skilled trades — with good reason. A shortage of skilled tradespeople has led to more job openings and higher pay among these career-driven pathways.

But even as experienced workers age out of the field, young men are more likely to fill those spots. Some women have forged ahead anyway.

Quote:But in many ways, the world today is especially hostile to women. Manosphere influencers and politicians alike are exploiting young men’s vulnerability, stirring resentment against women. Gen Z men are less likely than their grandfathers to say they support gender equality. The constitutional right to an abortion is gone, and funding cuts have further weakened access to reproductive health care. Meika Loe, a Colgate University sociology professor, told me that many of her female students are grieving the loss of bodily autonomy. “Their generation grew up watching The Handmaid’s Tale, maybe reading it,” she said. “But now they’re living it.”

Quote:The 764 network is a loosely connected, transnational set of online groups that engage in sextortion and the glorification of violence. The network, comprising a constantly shifting landscape of splinter groups and offshoots, coerces minor victims into producing Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). They then use that CSAM as leverage to force victims to perform acts of violence, animal abuse or self-harm. 764 members also engage in extensive swatting, harassment and intimidation campaigns to silence their victims. Since 2021, at least 50 members of 764 (or members of affiliated groups) have been arrested for sextortion, possession of CSAM or violent attacks. This report seeks to provide knowledge and resources to those who may encounter victims of 764 abuse, including parents, teachers, coaches, religious leaders, Prevent Delivery Officers and others.