Welcome back to The Weekend Press! Today, Suzy Weiss breaks down the latest Sydney Sweeney drama. Rabbi David Wolpe recommends a poem to read on Yom Kippur. And Peter Savodnik sits down with Taylor Lorenz, who seems like a radical leftist—she thinks Luigi Mangione is “high agency”—until she starts talking about technology . . .
But first: What does Mark Zuckerberg want?
There are more active Facebook users on Earth than there are Christians. The same is true of both Instagram and WhatsApp. Every presidential term, roughly speaking, their parent company, Meta, adds a zero to its valuation. All of these platforms are controlled by one man. “His products are used by one out of every 2.3 people currently breathing, more than the total number of humans that existed in 1965,” writes Jeremy Stern, in today’s lead story, a profile of Mark Zuckerberg.
To find out what drives one of the most powerful men alive, Jeremy interviewed nearly three dozen people—including his parents, his wife, and Zuckerberg himself. He watched the Meta CEO get winded by a UFC champion, and attended a family dinner party at his home near Lake Tahoe. “A lot of people probably care about public perception more than I do,” Zuckerberg told Jeremy, sitting on the couch, clearly not enjoying the interview.
But this piece is about so much more than one man. It is first and foremost an investigation of power—the mind-boggling kind that’s accrued to the men who, since the start of the millennium, have invented products that shape how we see everything; who face the “dictator’s dilemma,” whereby people stop telling them things they don’t want to hear, until they lose their grip on reality entirely; and who, if you believe this week’s headlines about artificial intelligence, could destroy us all.
Once upon a time, Zuckerberg himself hovered at the frontier of AI, and this piece tells the story of how he fell behind, and asks whether it’ll be the end of him. “Mark is the fucking Terminator. He’s actually not an asshole, which is interesting,” said a researcher who used to work at Meta’s lab. “But his source of advantage is he’s never happy. He just doesn’t fucking stop.”
Do the tech titans owe their influence to talent, or luck? Is their continued reign inevitable, or are they fighting tooth and nail to maintain it? How do they feel about the stories we tell about them? And do they have as much power as we assume they do, when we blame them for all of society’s problems? Jeremy’s piece offers answers to all these questions, as well as a remarkable portrait of Zuckerberg’s character.
“Things have been written and said about him that are so untrue from such an early age,” said Zuckerberg’s mom. “I sometimes really wonder if anyone has ever sat back and thought, This is a real person.”
If you want to understand that person, click here to read the whole piece—or to download a printable version:
Second Thought
Yet again, feminists are furious with Sydney Sweeney for profiting off her sexiness.
For her latest ad she posed nude with everything from a football to a hockey stick—she was promoting the sports betting platform Novig—and was promptly accused of “sexualizing women’s sports.”
But, as Suzy Weiss and Dan Ahdoot argue in this week’s episode of Second Thought, this ad is not about women. “It is meant for incels who are living in their parents’ basements spending all their DoorDash funds on some sports gambling,” says Dan.
Suzy and Dan also explain why an Apple TV show you’ve never heard of swept the Emmys; commiserate with the mathematicians who sobbed after AI solved their life’s work; and taste-test a loaf of rye that New Yorkers are lining up to spend $60 on. Click below to watch the video, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
This week, Amanda Knox wrote about Patrick Clancy, and what it’s like when strangers interpret everything you do as evidence that you’re a murderer; Caitlin Flanagan wrote about the feminist backlash to the Sydney Sweeney ad; and Josh Kaplan argued that canceling Macklemore has made him a martyr. . .
Knock Knock, It’s Cupid!
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How should you spend the rest of your weekend? We asked our editor Will Rahn for his recommendations . . .
🍺Drink . . . Ginger beer, which is basically just strong ginger ale with a heck of a lot more ginger. And I’ll even turn you on to the best one I’ve ever had: Reed’s Premium Ginger Beer, which is sweetened only with pineapple juice and honey. Loaded with sugar and calories? You bet. Expensive? Oh yes, at least by soda standards. But it tastes marvelous and, at least in my experience, is a great salve for stomachaches. My very pregnant wife agrees: Go get the fancy ginger ale.
📺Watch . . . The third and final season of the delightful Australian sitcom Colin from Accounts, now streaming on Paramount+. Now, Paramount just happens to be the name on my paycheck every month, but I really do love this romantic comedy following two attractive Aussies who meet after running over a stray border terrier. It’s well written, funny, and the leads are adorable. Start it Friday after work and you’ll be done by Sunday.
🏈Join . . . a fantasy football league, one of the best ways Americans have to make and keep male friendships. (I assume there are some women who play fantasy football but have no way of knowing for certain.) And who cares if it’s already week two of the NFL season? That’s not too late. I used to be a member of a league managed by an old friend who farms weed out in Colorado; I think we started playing around Thanksgiving every year. Go Giants.
That’s all, folks! Have a great weekend.
Taylor Lorenz? No thanks.
Taylor Lorenz should not get any attention from anyone. She is a horrible human being.
One minor correction to the intro to Savodnik's interview. The reason Lorenz hates Jonathan Haidt is because his books expose the weakness of progressivism. He is a liberal Democrat whose research took him where he didn't want to go.
Still, I'll probably read the article because she is speaking in favor of data centers. I didn't know that her day job was tech journalism. Maybe it's a subject she knows something about.