Why doesn’t China traditionally have cheese?

It’s a common question — why dairy never really took hold in much of East Asia. And so if you satiate your curiosity with a quick Google search, it’s a good bet the internet will deliver you up a clear, unambiguous answer: lactose intolerance.

According to the above map, China sits at 92% lactose intolerant.

So… case closed, right? If you’ve got a population of people that simply can’t digest dairy products, obviously they’re not exactly going to develop a cheese industry. It’s why China’s always been the land of tofu, after all. No milk, no yoghurt, no ice cream. Simple question, simple answer.

Of course, it’s always a bit unfortunate when an elegant explanation bumps into…

The Reality of Milk in China

If you’ve spent any amount of time in the real world in China (or elsewhere in Asia), you can clearly see the absurdity of the above explanation:

Like, Pizza is ubiquitous — especially for children. Stretchy cheese is practically the definition of meme food. And it almost goes without saying that milk tea is a modern national pastime.

And it’s not just China — throughout Asia we see similar patterns. A juice box of milk is one of the most classic accompaniments to Japanese curry. Korea has its corn cheese. Both should theoretically be 98% lactose intolerant give or take, if I’m reading the above map right.

I mean… Deep fried milk. Seafood Doria. Boba milk tea. Cream stew. Yunnan cheese. The list goes on and on. And that’s not even counting (both Inner and Outer) Mongolia or Tibet, where milk has been a traditional part of their diet for millennia. In mean shit, there’s even dairy in the Qimin Yaoshu…

If you read some western writers, they seem to hand wave away dairy consumption in modern Asia under the banner of ‘imperialism’: well, it was all from the Brits, you see…

And maybe there’s a certain element of truth to that, but it’s ignoring a hell of a lot of contradictory evidence — not to mention agency. Mixue — the ice cream slinging behemoth — isn’t one of the largest companies in China because of some kind of western conspiracy. I’d hazard it might just be because people in China like ice cream.

But what about Lactose Intolerance?

But then, this was the bit that confused both me and Steph.

Because the science behind the genetics of lactose intolerance really seems pretty robust. Sometime around the development of animal husbandry, certain populations of humans developed a mutation to the LCT gene, allowing them to digest lactose into adulthood. This describes roughly 30% of the world. The rest are ‘lactose intolerant’.

When I was growing up, I had a close friend that was lactose intolerant. If he ate any dairy, he’d get incredibly bad stomach aches, maybe even vomit it back out. So when he was around, we’d order cheese-less pizza and skip the ice cream for the Italian ice.

This clearly does not describe people in Asia.

I could try my best to parse some studies on the topic, but frankly I think the world is a little sick of us pseudo-intellectual YouTubers cherry picking academia. So instead of rationalizing our pre-existing beliefs, we decided to reach out to a proper expert: Dr. Jennifer Dubois, a professor of biochemistry at Montana State University. There, she runs the Dubois lab, which specializes in the microbiome.

(she’s also lactose intolerant herself)

A cut version of this interview is available in the above Youtube video, if you just want to zero in on the answer (it starts at 2:57). This is the complete conversation, edited for clarity.

Steph: So, let’s talk about lactose intolerance. I did a gene test, and it actually says I’m genetically lactose intolerant, but I drink milk all the time. What does it mean to be lactose intolerant?

Jennifer: Lactose intolerance is actually a really interesting genetic condition. A lot of people who have a metabolic disorder have a non-functional gene, but lactose intolerance is not that. There are only about 40 people on the entire planet who have a gene that’s non-functional for the degradation of lactose.

What Lactose is is two simple sugars linked together, and there’s a single enzyme called ‘lactase’ that pops them apart. If you lack the enzyme capable of doing that, you can’t digest lactose any further. But the genetic reason behind a lactose deficiency is that you just simply aren’t making the functional lactase product anymore. And that’s because lactose, the major sugar in milk, is baby food. If you’re an adult, you don’t have any real need for lactose itself — or I suppose at least as a, let’s say, pre-industrial mammal.

Steph: I see. People always say that if you’re lactose intolerant, it’ll cause some kind of discomfort. I suppose that could maybe be true for me if you squint? I get full pretty fast from drinking milk straight… or sometimes cheese, if I eat a lot of cheese. Is there any common diagnosis for lactose intolerance?

Jennifer: So lactose intolerance is sort of a spectrum. People can experience a little bit of discomfort, or they can experience a lot of it.

If you experience really significant lactose intolerance — enough to take you to a doctor — they’ll ask you to breathe into a tube. If you’re exhaling hydrogen gas (like the Hindenburg), that’s the easiest diagnostic for lactose intolerance.

The reason why someone who’s lactose intolerant would exhale hydrogen is that they’re not actually the ones digesting their lactose. Their microbiome is digesting their lactose — by fermentation. If you are one of those 30% of the people on the planet who can actually make functional lactase well into adulthood, you would not be exhaling hydrogen gas. But if you’re relying on your microbiome to do it for you, then you would probably be exhaling a lot of it, and that’s part of the reason for your discomfort.

Now, if you are a regular drinker of milk, despite being lactose intolerant, you probably have a very well-trained microbiome. Your microbiome is probably chock-full of microbes that are fermenting your lactose to make hydrogen gas. These are called lactobacilli. If you, like me, are a lactose-intolerant person who likes yogurt and you look at the cultures, you’ll see they say something like “L. acidophilus, L. casei, L. rhamnosus”. The L. is for the genus name Lactobacilli. These are lactose-consuming microbes that live in your GI tract, and they’re enjoying all that lactose that is causing you a problem.

Steph: So, that means our gut is making yogurt for us?

Jennifer: Your gut is making it for you. And that can cause a little bit of discomfort, or it can cause a lot of it.

Now, if you rarely ever drink milk, and one fine day you decide to go to an ice cream party, then you might experience some very bad clinical symptoms. Because it turns out it takes a while to build up a microbiome that has enough lactobacilli to do this work for you.

In fact, you’re probably going to feel sort of like you just ate a sweater! Because you’ve filled your GI tract with something that you can’t digest. And your microbiome can’t digest. So what happens is a bunch of water will rush into your GI tract, really inflate your intestines, and you might end up with a bit of diarrhea. And that’s when people end up with a clinical manifestation that might actually send them to the doctor.

Steph: So in Asia, in modern times, we here tend to have a lot of milk products around. So probably a lot of us who can’t really drink milk genetically, we start building up a tolerance or capability for it when we were young?

Jennifer: That’s right. And for somebody who’s from East Asia, by the time you’re five? 90% of East Asians are not making any functional lactase by the time they’re five. But you do have time to build up a microbiome that’s well-trained to work for you. And you get that training by what you eat.

Steph: For me, growing up in an urban area, I started drinking milk when I was very young. And I continued for basically my entire childhood, because milk is thought to be very nutritious.

Jennifer: Right, so the endogenous lactase production doesn’t shut off really until you’re well into childhood — again, maybe five or six years old is when it really starts to taper off. So, you maintain the capability for a while. And so there’s also a time when you can be slowly eased into building up this capability to digest.

Of course, if you are one of those 40 or so people on Earth who is born without a functional lactase at all, then you have to be supplemented with pill-form lactase. That’s what they would do for an infant with that sort of rare metabolic condition, but similar sorts of products are also available for more run-of-the-mill lactase deficiencies.

Steph: I see. So like, if I’m going to travel in France to eat a lot of cheese, do you think I could also take those kind of pills to help me digest?

Jennifer: You actually can! If you’re a regular dairy consumer but you’re off to a place that really celebrates dairy and you’re going to eat quite a lot, then supplementation usually works for most people.

If you look at the map of people who are more prone to lactose intolerance, you’ll see that it really is most prevalent in East Asia. It’s not prevalent at all in Northern Europe, and it’s in varying degrees prevalent in other parts of the world. There are regions of Africa, for example, where lots of people are very fine with lactase persistence well into adulthood.

You might start to think, is there a correlation between the historical use of dairy in the diet and the retention of lactase well into adulthood? And the answer would be yes! Lactase persistence started to emerge in human populations at the same time that humans started to herd dairy cows. This is an acquired skill. Actually, it’s the people who can drink lactose who are the mutants.

Because I mean, Lactose is baby food, so why would an adult mammal be able to drink baby food effectively for their entire life? It’s effectively a mutation. It arose they think somewhere in Central Europe and has arisen multiple times in human history. It confers a terrific advantage because when you can digest your own lactose, that means you can get a lot of calories. That’s why you see traditional dairy herding and the emergence of this lactase persistence occurring at about 20,000 years ago in human populations, both at the same time.

Steph: That makes a lot of sense because in East Asia, if you look at areas like Inner Mongolia or Tibet — cow herders — there’s actually no shortage of milk products.

Jennifer: Right. There are definitely examples where there are populations within a larger population that happen to be lactase persistent.

But there are also cases of populations where they aren’t lactase persistent, but consume dairy nevertheless. For example, in Africa, there are these Somali herdsmen. They’re completely lactose intolerant genetically, but they consume at least a half liter of milk every day as part of their diet, because that’s how they survive. These are an example of people who have adapted their microbiomes to consume lots and lots of lactose for them. They don’t get all the same nutritional benefit as somebody who is digesting all the lactose themselves because the microbiome is sort of taking a cut for their trouble. But they’re able to get the protein and the water, which is really significant in a milk-based diet. Even though they’re completely ‘intolerant’ from a genetic point of view.

Steph: So, when you said there are subgroups within a larger population that will have maybe higher capability of digesting dairy… I’m mostly familiar with China. Where we live in Yunnan, there’s lots of milk products — goat milk, cheese, etc — but these are often concentrated among ethnic groups that live in the most mountainous regions. Would you say that the reason for that is more genetic, from their diet, or where they live?

Jennifer: There is actually is a difference with respect to terroir and microbiome! Interestingly, where you live has an effect on the composition of your microbiome just as much as your diet — it’s unintuitive, and a very hot area of current research. But maybe we can circle back to that.

But with respect to human genetics, I think the best example would be the United Kingdom. It’s part of Europe, but they have close to 100% lactase persistence in that population because they’re islands, so they’re relatively isolated. They adopted dairy farming relatively homogeneously, and milk has been a broad part of the British diet. So, in that case, while all of Europe is not necessarily lactase persistent—places like Greece and Italy may have less lactase-persistent people—that subpopulation within Europe is highly persistent. So place can have an impact on your microbiome, but it also certainly has an impact on human genetics as well.

Steph: Got it. You’ve made me curious though — what’s the relationship between terroir and your microbiome? Can you tell me a bit why place would affect your microbiome?

Jennifer: It’s a super interesting question. When microbiomes first started to be sequenced — the very dirty secret about microbiomes is the way they’re sequenced is through stool. You look at what comes through a person and then you look at the ribosomal-encoding DNA — that’s like a little address for all the microbes that live inside of you.

When people started doing this sequencing globally, they were looking for dietary signatures. For example, vegetarians. They thought whether you’re in Southeast Asia or North America or wherever, that vegetarians would have certain commonalities because that’s a very important dietary distinction. And yet, what some of those early studies — what they called enterotyping, because they’re talking about your enteric tract — found was that these enterotypes had less to do with what people were eating and more to do with where they were from.

I don’t know if we’ve fully resolved why some of these particular species compositions are observed. Although we do know that certain things like lactobacilli are almost universal. Almost every person on earth is going to have some kind of lactose-digesting organism in them. Whether you have a huge army of them or just a small little friendly band might have more to do with what you eat.

But the global species composition might have a lot to do with where you are. People have speculated that it has to do with water, or maybe broader aspects of the food chain. But nutrition is a very, very difficult science to try and deconvolute what it is about what you eat and the phenotype that comes out. I think that’s why something like lactose intolerance gained a lot of attention because it’s one of the few things where people can point to a single gene that’s leading to an effect.

Steph: That actually reminds me of a traditional Chinese medicine practice here in China. Speaking of the terroir and how it affects your microbiome, if you are moving to a new place and feeling uncomfortable with the local diet, one traditional ‘solution’ is to bring a little rock from your hometown, put it in the water that you drink, and then just drink the water all the time. I’ve actually had a friend that did that. I don’t know how well that works, probably no evidence to support it. But I think it’s an interesting anecdote that links to what you were just talking about.

Jennifer: I think it reflects a beautiful idea.

An idea that I could grow broccoli in my garden or you could grow it in yours. They’re both broccoli, but the fact that mine is growing in a garden that’s fed by a certain mountain stream — I’m up here in Montana and the soil is volcanic — these things are going to make a difference in the kind of broccoli that I get out. The amount of sunlight, all kinds of different things. And so even though we might be growing the same plant, there are elements of its composition that are going to vary. And if that’s what I’m eating a lot of, that has a way of coloring the terroir, not just of the food, but of your fellow eaters that are inside of you. Because they as well start to get colored by the things that you’re eating.

But there’s a lot of research ahead of us. To deconvolute why that is and how it’s actually happening is really at the cutting edge of microbiome research.

Steph: And that happens to be your field of speciality?

Jennifer: It is a big part of what I do. So yeah, it’s very interesting for us. I think that now the scientific studies are fueling a lot of our understandings of how our body reacts to food. We used to have this very simple idea that if you’re lactose intolerant, you can’t consume dairy — and if you aren’t, you can.

But it’s not an on and off switch. It’s a spectrum. It can be a very extreme reaction or just something so very minor that you don’t even think about.

For example, I personally didn’t know that I was lactose intolerant until I had genes sequenced for a completely different reason. And then looking back, it sort of made some sense. My heritage is Central Asian — Iranian, Persian — and that’s not uncommon in that part of the world either.

Steph: I see. So, the effect for people who are genetically lactose intolerant but who can eat dairy and milk has a couple of different factors. The most important one is that they have a microbiome that can help them digest, would you say?

Jennifer: If you are lacking the ability to produce lactase, then yes, having a well-functioning microbiome that can do the work for you is very important. Part of that well-functioning microbiome, in terms of your comfort, is when you ferment the lactose, a downstream product is hydrogen gas.

And hydrogen gas is a gas! It’s going to literally bloat you up. But if you have a friend of that initial consumer who likes to eat the hydrogen, they can cooperate. This is how I imagine it might be working for those Somali herdsmen. They’re really punching above their weight, drinking almost a liter of milk a day. They probably have a very well-conditioned microbiome not only to break down the lactose but to take care of all the downstream metabolic products that come after… and they feel plenty fine.

Steph: So, in the microbiome, besides lactobacilli to help digest the dairy, they could also have something else there to help them mitigate the other consequences?

Jennifer: Correct.

Steph: So, for some people like me or a lot of other Chinese people who love milk tea but maybe feel a little full from it, we probably have a less effective microbiome to combat the consequent gas or other effects coming from dairy?

Jennifer: Yeah.

Now I should say that it’s extremely difficult to control for all the inputs that regulate your microbiome and how much of each bacteria might be present. Perhaps in the future we might be able to regulate it a bit better, but right now we don’t really know much about how to actually exert control. There’s a cottage industry out there that’s sprung up around prebiotics and probiotics, that claim to produce a microbiome composition that’s optimized for one purpose or the other.

But it’s hard. Because while you can train your microbiome, maybe you won’t get it perfect, right?

When it comes to your style of milk consumption however, if the consequence is feeling full? Maybe because you have a little bit of extra gas, or maybe a little extra water retained in your GI tract… that’s not the worst thing in the world. It would probably be clinical if you were vomiting or really showing something that took you to a doctor. Then they would probably say you should take lactase pills if you really have to have that milk tea.

Steph: So okay. I do have some friends that can’t really drink much milk. And I assume that lack of exposure when they were a kid, and now subsequently when they’re an adult, their gut is just really working in overdrive to try its best to handle all this dairy?

Jennifer: Yes, correct.

Steph: I see. So now I can introduce my friends who can’t drink milk to the lactase pills.

Jennifer: Yes. You can get them over the counter, and you can even put it in the drink itself if you don’t want to swallow it.

Steph: Oh, that’s an interesting idea. I wonder... just curious, do I just go get lactase pills, or do they come in specific forms as a treatment for people?

Jennifer: I think that you can get them over the counter. In other words, you wouldn’t necessarily have to have them prescribed. But since it’s a common enough problem, if you went to a gastroenterologist, they would certainly be able to give you lactase pills. Even if you went to a general practitioner, they’ve probably seen it often enough that they could help you out. Their first bit of counsel might be to quit drinking milk. They might say, “Lay off the milk, maybe have more yogurt.”

But I personally take Vitamin D because if you don’t drink milk — and this is something else that a lot of adults find out the hard way — we know that we don’t ‘like’ milk, so we just don’t drink it. We’re not really sure why we don’t like it… but then we discover, oh, we’re actually lactose intolerant!

So you’ve kind of avoided it for a while, maybe much of your life. Then in your adulthood, you might get early onset osteoporosis. That’s actually a big problem in areas of North America where we don’t get a lot of sun. Our major source of Vitamin D — and Vitamin D is what brings calcium into your bones — is dairy. So we’re not only not getting the calcium, we’re also not getting the Vitamin D. A lot of people are inadvertently, by rejecting milk, not getting those things.

Now in East Asia, if you live near a water source and you’re eating a lot of seafood, that might be a primary source of Vitamin D and calcium, particularly if you get any of the fishbones. So in that case, you might not become symptomatic in other ways that show basically your dietary choice is having different kinds of health consequences.

Steph: In China, there are actually areas that also have problems with Vitamin D deficiency because people don’t drink enough milk nor do they have seafood. So there is a problem. I think that’s also part of the reason why the government is trying to push more of this in people’s daily diet as a nutrition plan, so that they can get enough Vitamin D and other nutrition that comes from it.

Jennifer: It is really good for you and there are lots of benefits to drinking milk. That’s why genetic studies show that the natural selection pressure to retain that mutation that allows you to make lactase into adulthood is extremely strong. So once it came up, it really took hold in those regions because there’s a ton of benefits to being able to fully digest milk. Even though it’s baby food.

Steph: And it’s tasty!

Jennifer: And it’s tasty.

Steph: So that all makes sense. I do really appreciate your time and help today to help me — a genetically lactose intolerant Asian — learn why I can actually consume dairy. And most importantly, I learned about this pill, lactase. I’m going to bring it with me next time traveling to a dairy-heavy area so that I can eat all the things that I love.

Jennifer: Do that, they say it helps! Especially when you’re in France and all those happy cheese eaters are making fun of you.

Although I am very political person and a cranky man who will say what is on my mind, I’ve never gotten in trouble for political statements in the classroom, even though I talk about Trumpism all the time. I think there are a few reasons for this–being a man and being kind of scary in the classroom can help, but also I couch it in terms of analyzing America, not in terms of electoral politics. But there is one thing about contemporary America that I have utter and complete contempt for and routinely savage in the classroom, which is the manosphere, the biggest bunch of fucking morons to have ever existed on the planet. Oh boo hoo, you are 18 and no one wants to fuck you because you are an asshole or you just don’t know how to talk to people and it must be the fault of those bitches. Dude, fuck off. You think you are the first generation of men who isn’t having all the success dating you want? Christ……..some men need a good boxing of their ears.

Well, I was catching up on my London Review of Books issues (I am sure all of you read this religiously) and I read Emily Witt’s review of a couple of books on Andrew Tate and her summary of the sheer idiocy of the 2024 election and its rhetoric about men not only hit home but also made me think how future historians will talk about this awful, pathetic period of American men embracing fascism because women don’t want to be choked during sex and whatnot.

Last a​utumn, during a particularly enervating phase of the United States presidential election, it became clear that one of the themes of the campaign was going to be men. Never mind the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the demonisation of immigrants and the plans to put thousands of them in for-profit jails, the genocide in Gaza, climate change. The Democrats, according to the polls, had lost their appeal to men. We read about the voter gender gap. We read that the disparity was greatest between divorced women (who lean heavily Democratic) and divorced men (who tend to vote Republican). We read that Black men were no longer loyal to the Democratic Party, that they were going to vote for Trump or not at all. Men, men, men: their diminished career prospects, their loneliness crisis, their suicide rates. In the final stretch of the campaign, the Democrats made a desperate attempt to appeal to them. The film director Tyler Perry gave a speech about being a self-made billionaire; Michelle Obama gave a speech about the person bleeding out in the delivery room being your wife. Kamala Harris promised to ‘protect crypto’. It didn’t work.

Donald Trump was better at pandering to the mythology of the patriarchy. Men didn’t need to listen to a lady lawyer lecturing them about how to live their lives, nor did they need a social safety net. A real man didn’t care about the minimum hourly wage or Medicaid. He was an independent agent. His windfall was always just around the corner, with the right crypto investment, the right sports bet, the right meme stock. It was the sweepstake election, with Elon Musk handing a giant cardboard cheque for a million dollars to a real estate agent called Jason who homeschools his six children in Michigan. No, it was the podcast election. We read that the left needed more podcasts, more men offering hour after hour of meandering banter that made listeners feel as if they were hanging out with the bros. ‘Whatever happened to the strong silent type?’ a friend of mine grumbled. A few months later, we learned that Democratic Party operatives had proposed a project called ‘Speaking with American Men’ to study male ‘syntax, language and content’.

Among my friends, the sort of women J.D. Vance likes to mock as miserable losers, the male loneliness crisis became a bitter joke. We discussed possible cures: becoming a Deadhead, getting into cycling, poker nights. We made approving comments when we saw straight guys doing things together, like the time a group of dads showed up at someone’s Pilates class. There were movies and TV shows about the problems of contemporary manhood, some concerned (Adolescence), some satirical (Friendship). Mark Zuckerberg, whose male-to-male transition included bulking up, putting on an XL T-shirt and a gold chain, and becoming a fan of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, told Joe Rogan that the corporate world is ‘culturally neutered’ and needs more ‘masculine energy’. He has proposed AI friends as one solution.

On the dark edge of all this has been the manosphere, the network of male supremacist websites, influencers and YouTube channels. The manosphere is confusing, because it’s a place where one can find both benign advice about protein consumption and ideas that have led to mass shootings. Its theories of evolutionary biology, mostly concerning what women were ‘built’ to do, are reposted on social media by people such as Musk. It’s annoying to have to take it seriously, just as it’s annoying to have to take the Taliban’s gender theories seriously. But in recent years the manosphere has forced us to pay attention through acts of extreme violence, and many of its advocates and theories have been taken up by democratically elected governments.

Now, while I’m the type of guy who naturally will hate everything as I get older, largely because I always have hated most things, I was really genuinely determined to not be the old guy who hates everything the kids do because they are young. And I had good reason to think I could do that–since I have nothing but contempt for Boomers and basically think my own Gen X is somehow an even worse generation, you want to have hope in the kids. But then everything about the present turned into such an unredeemable shit show–social media, AI, endless superhero movies, the end of reading, the turning of the universities into capitalist service organizations, being told that everything I love has no value because it doesn’t lead to profit, etc. I mean, you wouldn’t think the future would be even worse than the present. But it is sure leaning that way and the manosphere makes me want to drink myself to death.

The post The Misogynist Idiocy of 2024 appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

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This week’s question comes to us from Mike Jacobsen:

I love Radiohead. My wife, on the other hand, really hates them. We have come to an understanding that their music won’t be played in her presence. So my question is how do you convince your spouse of the virtues of Radiohead?

You don’t.

I’d encourage you to respect the understanding you claim to have reached with your wife, both in letter and in spirit. Cause right now you’re looking for a way to break that understanding. You’re using a ceasefire as an opportunity to find more ammunition, and I don’t want to help with that.

I will of course help you, but not in the way you were hoping to. Which is kinda the lingua franca of this newsletter. (Look at me, getting fancy!)

The bigger issue here is that you believe your spouse is wrong. That the virtues of Radiohead would just reveal themselves to her if she were to open her mind, or listen more carefully, or adjust her taste levels, or fix herself in some way as to make the undeniable virtues of their music obvious to her. Which is bullshit. She’s not wrong in not liking a band that you like, and you’re not wrong in liking a band that she doesn’t. You like different stuff, and not only is that okay, it’s necessary in a relationship. Part of being together is having things that you enjoy doing by yourself.

I get that you’re trying to share something you enjoy. That’s a nice thing to do. You love a thing. It’s brought you good feelings. And you want to share those good feelings with someone you care about. You want them to enjoy something as much as you do. That’s commendable. I’d encourage you to keep doing that. Everyone is looking for more things to enjoy, and we certainly need them. And I bet you’ve probably recommended a bunch of stuff to your spouse, and to your friends, and to your neighbors, that hit the mark and brought them joy. You should hold on to those victories, and use them as data to build that little recommendation engine in your heart. And I’d also encourage you to remember your original intent—wanting to bring joy to someone you care about. Because that’s the key.

Once your spouse says “yeah, Radiohead isn’t for me” that door is closed. You went in with good intention, which is commendable, but it didn’t work out. It happens. And because your original intent was to bring this person joy, you take the loss and move on. Doubling down and insisting that they’re wrong to not enjoy something is going to make someone feel bad. Which was the opposite of your original intent, yes? Yes.

Also, you’re making music a chore, which is a sin.

Let’s discuss one of the most violent phrases in the English language: “Did you read that book I gave you?” For the sake of transparency, I’ll admit to once having been one of these people. You come across a book, you decide someone would enjoy it, you give them a copy for their birthday, or Christmas, or just ‘cause. Then every time we see them we ask them if they’ve read it. What we’re really looking for is an award for having recommended the right book, or the right band, or the right TV show to someone. You’ve turned joy into a point accumulation exercise for yourself.

I was lucky enough that someone eventually told me that every time I asked them if they’d read the book I gave them it made them feel guilty for not having read it yet. I’d turned a gift into a chore and chores making horrible gifts.

I love recommending things to people. Music. Books. TV Shows. Movies. Restaurants. If I’m experiencing joy in something I want to spread it around and tell other people about it. And all those recommendations are made with good intention. I’ve also learned that once you make the original recommendation you need to back off. Either people will try something or they won’t. (Their lives might not be aligned with trying a new thing at the moment for a variety of reasons.) If they try it they might come back to you and tell you they enjoyed it, and that feels great. They might also enjoy it and not feel the need to report back, which is fine. Your joy should come from sharing a joyful thing, not from the validation that you were correct. But checking back in will always turn your recommendation into a chore, which no one wants.

Speaking of which, let me talk about male friendship for a second here. Because male loneliness epidemic, blah blah. Sure, maybe. But in the past few years I’ve been in situations where I make friends with someone, we get to the point where we exchange numbers and within twenty minutes of shaking hands, talking about getting together for a drink later, or whatever, they’ve sent me a link to a 45 minute YouTube video from anything to making your own beer (I don’t drink) to smelting your own knife (are knives smelted?) to the truth about vaccination (I’m deleting and blocking your number.) Then exactly 45 minutes later they’ll text “What did you think of the video I sent?” My dudes, do not do this. I have watched exactly two videos over three minutes on YouTube, and both of them were sent to me by friends I have known forever. (One was a Bobby Fingers video, one was a 6,7 explainer.) The male loneliness epidemic could be cured if men agreed not to share videos with one another for the first six months of a relationship.

Back to Radiohead. I’m going to do you a solid here, Mike. Because you asked a question about Radiohead and I usually listen to music while I write these newsletters, there was no way to really listen to anything except Radiohead while I wrote. I’m going to tell you something that might be crushing at first, but if you just sit with it for a little while you’ll realize what an incredibly lucky guy you are. Ready?

Your spouse is correct.

I started by listening to Kid A, which is ok. It’s passable. There are admittedly a few good songs on it. Then I dove into the deep end and put on A Moon-Shaped Pool, which is… not good, Mike. Honestly, it’s the kind of music you listen to if you’re sending other dudes 45-minute IPA explainer videos, or shit about the Roman Empire. I lasted maybe four songs. Then I retreated to Amnesiac, which I remember liking when it first came out. It’s better than A Moon-Shaped Pool, but I can’t stress this enough—almost everything is.

So if I were you, I would be very happy that your spouse knows what they like, what they don’t like, and is willing to communicate that to you clearly. I’d stop bugging her about this, because she is correct.

I am lucky enough that I live with someone who brings different musical tastes into the relationship. Our venn diagram is music we both like is fairly small, but it’s solid. Erika absolutely hates what she calls “sad white guy music,” which I enjoy. (Enjoy probably isn’t the right word. It’s more like I gravitate towards it sometimes because of a Catholic upbringing.) And while we haven’t come to a stated understanding that it won’t be played in her presence, if she’s close by and I’m putting on music I’ll try to put on something that I know we both enjoy because my goal is to create a shared space where we’re both comfortable. We have enough music that we both enjoy that I don’t feel like I’m being robbed of my “sad white guy music,” which I can put on when she’s off doing something else. And I’m sure she pulls out music I’m not crazy about when I’m not around.

We got here by a lot of trial and error. I’ll put something on, she’ll either like it or not, and we go from there. Sometimes she’ll put something on, and I’ll do the same. (Somehow, she likes the Mountain Goats more than I do, which I cannot explain.) Sometimes she’ll get me to like something I was originally closed off to, and we end up at a Lady Gaga concert having a blast. Which is something I wouldn’t have pictured if she hadn’t tried, and maybe twisted my arm a little bit. I’m ok with that.

So what I’m saying is go ahead and try. The gift is in the trying. But the gift is also in the letting go. Know when to let go. For every Radiohead you strike out with, there’s gonna be something you introduce each other to that hits the mark. And the sooner you move on from the misses, the sooner you get to the hits.

But the best gift of all is that I can now stop listening to Radiohead.

🙋 Got a question for me? Ask it! Unless it’s another question about Radiohead. I think we’re done there.

📣 The last Presenting w/Confidence workshop of 2025 is scheduled for December 11 & 12. Get your ticket, and treat yourself to two sessions of hanging out with amazing people like yourself.

🎅 Remember those cheap mesh stockings you got as a kid that were filled with candy and cheap toys? I made one filled with zines and stickers and other crap! Get yourself one!

💀 Don’t forget your Fuck AI sweater. When the bubble bursts you’re gonna make sure yours already looks a lit worn.

🦃 Thanksgiving reminder: you don’t owe your time to people who want your friends dead.

💰 Enjoying the newsletter? You can support my bullshit for $2/mo.

🍉 The ceasefire is a lie. Please donate to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.

🏳️‍⚧️ Today is Trans Day of Remembrance. Please donate what you can to Trans Lifeline. They do the work.

worldheritagepostorganization:

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

sharp-tender-shock-deactivated2:

This is a comment someone appended to a photo of two men apparently having sex in a very fancy room, but it’s also kind of an amazing two-line poem? “His Wife has filled his house with chintz” is a really elegant and beautiful counterbalancing of h, f, and s sounds, and “chintz” is a perfect word choice here—sonically pleasing and good at evoking nouveau riche tackiness. And then “to keep it real I fuck him on the floor” collapses that whole mood with short percussive sounds—but it’s still a perfect iambic pentameter line, robust and a lovely obscene contrast with the chintz in the first line. Well done, tumblr user jjbang8

I hate that my aesthetic sense agrees with this but everything you just said was correct

I went back to dig up this post because I was thinking about poetry.

This is one of those non-poem things that are among my favorite poems.

As the OP stated, the use of alliterative consonants is aesthetically just great, especially the placement of the strongest use at the end: “fuck him on the floor.” The use of “chintz” is indeed great word choice.

Because I’m insane, decided to scan the poem:

Not only is the second sentence, indeed, perfect iambic pentameter, the entire poem is perfectly metered, though the first sentence has four iambs rather than five.

There are further things I love about this poem, though: I like the casual connotations of “keep it real” juxtaposed with “chintz.” It causes me to interpret the “chintz” more strongly as meaning something fake, a facade. There is also of course the coarseness of “fuck,” which is a contrast with “chintz” but a different kind of contrast, gutsy and carnal where “chintz” is flimsy and inanimate.

And then there is the storytelling: there is SO MUCH storytelling in just these two lines. To break it down: The speaker is having sex with a married man, in the house he shares with his wife, which is “filled with chintz”—something that here connotes fakeness, in contrast with “keep it real.”

The illicit encounter in the poem takes place within a house filled with facade, the flimsy construction of the wife’s marriage and domestic sphere, but the encounter itself is a taste of something “real.” That’s a story, and it’s just two lines.

This is EIGHTEEN SYLLABLES, y’all. The amount of meaning condensed into these eighteen syllables is stunning, and it is so elegantly done.

From a technical standpoint (and ive taken 300- and 400-level poetry classes so I can say this) this is damn near flawless as a poem.

World Heritage Post

Today's links

• Zohran Mamdani's world-class photocopier-kicker: Lina Khan has plans for New York City.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Pirate code in Sony rootkit; Tim Wu on "New Monopolists"; Supersonic chirps in ads; Fordite; Sony's rootkit uninstaller leaves computers insecure; Anne Frank Foundation's copyfraud.
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

Zohran Mamdani's world-class photocopier-kicker (permalink)

The most exciting thing about Biden's antitrust enforcers was how good they were at their jobs. They were dead-on chapter-and-verse on every authority and statute available to the administrative branch, and they set about in earnest figuring out how to use those powers to help the American people:

https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

It was a remarkable contrast from the default Democratic Party line, which is to insist that being elected gives you no power at all, because of filibusters or Republicans or pollsters or decorum or billionaire donors or Mercury in retrograde. It's also a remarkable contrast from Republicans, whose approach to politics is "fuck you, we said so, and our billionaires have showered the Supreme Court in enough money to make that stick."

But under Biden, the trustbusters that had been chosen and fought for by the Warren-Sanders wing of the party proved themselves to be both a) incredibly principled; and b) incredibly skilled. They memorized the rulebook(s) and then figured out what they needed to do to mobilize those rules to makes Americans' lives better by shielding them from swindlers, predators and billionaires (often the same person, obvs).

They epitomized the joke about the photocopier repair tech, who comes into the office, delivers a swift kick to the xerox machine, and hands you a bill for $75.

"$75 for kicking the photocopier?"

"No, it's $5 to kick the photocopier, and $70 for knowing where to kick it."

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

One of Biden's best photocopier kickers was and is Lina Khan. She embodies the incredible potential of a fully operational battle-station, which is to say that she embodies the awesome power of a skilled technocrat who is also deeply ethical and genuinely interested in helping the public. Technocrats get a bad name, because they tend to be empty suits like Pete Buttigieg, who either didn't know what powers he had, or lacked the courage (or desire) to wield them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

But another way of saying "technocrat" is "someone who is very good at their job." And that's Khan.

You'll never guess what Khan is doing now: she's co-chairing Zohran Mamdani's transition team!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/12/yes-new-york-will-soon-be-under-new-management-but-zohran-mamdani-is-just-the-start

Khan's role in the Mamdani administration will be familiar to those of us who cheered her on at the Federal Trade Commission: she is metabolizing the rules that define the actions that mayors are allowed to take, figuring out how to use those actions to improve the lives of working New Yorkers, and making a plan to combine the former with the latter to make a real difference:

https://www.semafor.com/article/11/12/2025/lina-khans-populist-plan-for-new-york-cheaper-hot-dogs-and-other-things

Front and center is the New York City Consumer Protection Law of 1969, which contains a broad prohibition on "unconscionable" commercial practices:

https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2404&context=mjlr

There are many statute books that contain a law like this. For example, Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act bans "unfair and deceptive" practices, and this rule is so useful that it was transposed, almost verbatim, into the statute that defines the Department of Transportation's powers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/16/for-petes-sake/#unfair-and-deceptive

Now, this isn't carte blanche for enforcers to simply point at anything they don't like and declare it to be "unconscionable" or "unfair" or "deceptive" and shut it down. To use these powers, enforcers must first "develop a record" by getting feedback from the public about the problem. The normal way to do this is through "notice and comment," where you collect comments from anyone who wants to weigh in on the issue. Practically speaking, though, "anyone" turns out to be "lawyers and lobbyists working for industry," who are the only people who pay attention to this kind of thing and know how to navigate it.

When Khan was running the FTC, she launched plenty of notice and comment efforts, but she went much further, doing "listening tours" in which she and her officials and staff went to the people, traveling the country convening well-attended public meetings where everyday people got to weigh in on these issues. This is an incredibly powerful approach, because enforcers can only act to address the issues in the record, and if you only hear from lawyers and lobbyists, you can only act to address their concerns.

Remember when Mamdani was on the campaign trail and he went out and talked to street vendors about why halal cart food had gotten so expensive? It turns out that halal cart vendors each have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to economic parasites who've cornered the market on food cart licenses, which they rent out at exorbitant markups to vendors, who pass those costs onto New Yorkers every lunchtime:

https://documentedny.com/2025/11/04/halal-food-trucks-back-mamdani/

That's the kind of thing Khan did when she was running the FTC, identifying serious problems, then seeking out the everyday people best suited to describing how the underlying scams hurt, and how they harmed everyday people:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/24/gouging-the-all-seeing-eye/#i-spy

Khan's already picked out some "unconscionable" practices that the mayor has "standalone authority" to address: everything from hospitals that price gouge on over-the-counter pain meds to sports stadiums that gouge fans on hot dogs and beer. She's taking aim at "algorithmic pricing" (when companies use commercial surveillance data to determine whether you're desperate and raise prices to take advantage of that fact) and junk fees (where the price you pay goes way up at checkout time to pay for a bunch of vague "services" that you can't opt out of).

This is already making all the right people lose their minds, with screaming headlines about how this will "deliver a socialist agenda":

https://web.archive.org/web/20251114230206/https://nypost.com/2025/11/14/us-news/zohran-mamdanis-transition-leader-lina-khan-seeks-more-power-for-him/

In a long-form interview with Jon Stewart, Khan goes deep on her regulatory philosophy and the way she's going to bring the same fire she brought to the most effective FTC since the Carter administration to Mamdani's historic administration of New York City, a municipality with a population and economy that's larger than many US states and foreign nations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRJWM_3OW2Y

One important aspect of Khan's work that she is always at pains to stress is deterrence. When an enforcer acts against a company that is scamming and preying upon the public, their private finances and internal communications become a matter of public record. Employees and executives have to be painstakingly instructed and monitored so that they don't say anything that will prejudice their cases. All this happens irrespective of the eventual outcome of the case.

Remember: we're at the tail end of a 40-year experiment in official tolerance and encouragements for monopolies and corporate predation. Those lost generations saw the construction of a massive edifice of bad case-law and judicial intuition. Smashing that wall won't happen overnight. There will be a lot of losses. But when the process is (part of) the punishment, the mere existence of someone like Khan in a position of power can terrify companies into being on their best behavior.

As MLK put it, "The law can't make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and that's pretty important."

The oligarchs that acquired their wealth and power by ripping off New Yorkers will never truly believe that working people deserve a fair shake – but if they're sufficiently afraid of the likes of Khan, they'll damned well act like they do.

(Image: lee, CC BY-SA 4.0, modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)

• A dream denied: My 54-year quest to publish a short story in F&SF https://www.scottedelman.com/wordpress/2025/11/12/a-dream-denied/

• The algorithm failed music https://www.theverge.com/column/815744/music-recommendation-algorithms

• Why the filibuster? https://coreyrobin.com/2025/11/11/why-the-filibuster/

• Britain’s Railway Privatization Was an Abject Failure https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/53917/britains-railway-privatization-was-an-abject-failure

• The lawsuit is over! https://linkletter.org/update-33-the-lawsuit-is-over/

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Sony begins to recall some infected CDs https://web.archive.org/web/20051127235441/http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2005-11-14-sony-cds_x.htm

#20yrsago Sony’s rootkit uninstaller is really dangerous https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2005/11/14/dont-use-sonys-web-based-xcp-uninstaller/

#20yrsago Table made from ancient, giant hard-drive platter https://web.archive.org/web/20050929185244/https://grandideastudio.com/portfolio/index.php?id=1&prod=20

#20yrsago EFF to Sony: you broke it, you oughta fix it https://web.archive.org/web/20051126084944/http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/Sony-BMG/?f=open-letter-2005-11-14.html

#20yrsago Sony anti-customer technology roundup and time-line https://memex.craphound.com/2005/11/14/sony-anti-customer-technology-roundup-and-time-line/

#20yrsago Visa’s “free” laptop costs at least $60 more than retail in fees https://web.archive.org/web/20051125053825/http://debt-consolidation.strategy-blogs.com/2005/10/free-laptop-from-visa.html

#20yrsago Sony’s rootkit infringes on software copyrights https://web.archive.org/web/20061108150242/https://dewinter.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=215

#20yrsago Gizmodo flamed by crazy inventor; turns out he’s a crook https://web.archive.org/web/20051126101341/https://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable-media/iload-inventor-vents-is-out-on-bail-136934.php

#20yrsago Fox counsels viewers to share videos of shows https://memex.craphound.com/2005/11/13/fox-counsels-viewers-to-share-videos-of-shows/

#20yrsago Sony’s malware uninstaller leaves your computer vulnerable https://www.hack.fi/~muzzy/sony-drm/

#15yrsago Tim Wu on the new monopolists: a “last chapter” for The Master Switch https://web.archive.org/web/20151214010555/https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704635704575604993311538482

#15yrsago Man at San Diego airport opts out of porno scanner and grope, told he’ll be fined $10K unless he submits to fondling https://johnnyedge.blogspot.com/2010/11/these-events-took-place-roughly-between.html

#10yrsago 100 useful tips from a bygone era https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/search/index?q=gallaher++how+to+do+it#/?scroll=18

#10yrsago Copyfraud: Anne Frank Foundation claims father was “co-author,” extends copyright by decades https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/books/anne-frank-has-a-co-as-diary-gains-co-author-in-legal-move.html

#10yrsago Startup uses ultrasound chirps to covertly link and track all your devices https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-that-use-inaudible-sound-to-link-your-phone-tv-tablet-and-pc/

#10yrsago Cop who unplugged his cam before killing a 19-year-old girl is rehired https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/cop-fired-for-having-lapel-cam-turned-off-a-lot-reinstated-to-force/

#10yrsago Hospitals are patient zero for the Internet of Things infosec epidemic https://web.archive.org/web/20151113050443/https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-hospital-hack/

#10yrsago Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s FBI files https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2015/nov/13/ol-dirty-bastard-fbi-files/

#10yrsago I-Spy Surveillance Books: a child’s first Snoopers Charter https://scarfolk.blogspot.com/2015/11/i-spy-surveillance-books.html

#10yrsago China routinely tortures human rights lawyers https://www.businessinsider.com/amnesty-international-report-on-torture-2015-11

#10yrsago Fordite: a rare mineral only found in old Detroit auto-painting facilities https://miningeology.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-most-amazing-rocks.html

#10yrsago Facebook won’t remove photo of children tricked into posing for neo-fascist group https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-34797757

#5yrsago Big Car wants to pump the brakes on Right to Repair https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/13/said-no-one-ever/#r2r

#1yrago America's richest Medicare fraudsters are untouchable https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/13/last-gasp/#i-cant-breathe

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• London: Enshittification with Sarah Wynn-Williams and Chris Morris, Nov 15
  https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2025/event/cory-doctorow-with-sarah-wynn-williams

• London: Downstream IRL with Zack Polanski, Ash Sarkar, and Aaron Bastani (Novara Media), Nov 17
  https://dice.fm/partner/tickets/event/oen5rr-downstream-irl-aaron-bastani-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-17th-nov-earth-london-tickets

• London: Enshittification with Carole Cadwalladr (Frontline Club), Nov 18
  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/in-conversation-enshittification-tickets-1785553983029

• Virtual: Enshittification at the Internet Archive, Nov 21
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-talk-enshittification-tickets-1839608451399

• Virtual: Enshittification with Vass Bednar (Vancouver Public Library), Nov 21
  https://www.crowdcast.io/@bclibraries-present

• Toronto: Jailbreaking Canada (OCAD U), Nov 27
  https://www.ocadu.ca/events-and-exhibitions/jailbreaking-canada

• San Diego: Enshittification at the Mission Hills Branch Library, Dec 1
  https://libraryfoundationsd.org/events/doctorow

• Seattle: Neuroscience, AI and Society (University of Washington), Dec 4
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/neuroscience-ai-and-society-cory-doctorow-tickets-1735371255139

• Madison, CT: Enshittification at RJ Julia, Dec 8
  https://rjjulia.com/event/2025-12-08/cory-doctorow-enshittification

• Hamburg: Chaos Communications Congress, Dec 27-30
  https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/infos/index.html

Recent appearances (permalink)

• How to dis-Enshittify the world (Blood In the Machine)
  https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-to-dis-enshittify-the-world-with

• Reimagining Digital Public Infrastructure (Attention: Govern Or Be Governed)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8JuXDfDtBY

• Enshittification and How To Fight It (ILSR)
  https://www.whoshallrule.com/p/enshittification-and-how-to-fight

• Big Tech’s “Enshittification” & Bill McKibben on Solar Hope for the Planet
  https://www.writersvoice.net/2025/11/cory-doctorow-on-big-techs-enshittification-bill-mckibben-on-solar-hope-for-the-planet/

• Enshittification and the Rot Economy with Ed Zitron (Clarion West)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz71pIWbFyc

Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

Upcoming books (permalink)

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE AND SUBMITTED.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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