Hello, how are you, welcome to the end times. As I’m running around Hereticon, playing host in a tux and Deadpool mask, my Pirate Wires crew has teamed up with a few young assassins from the Stanford Review (Julia Steinberg, Ahbi Desai, and Elsa Johnson). They’re floating around the conference, taking in the doom and heresy, and recapping what they learn in this here daily roundup. We’ve got a bunch of great, longer-form content on a handful of highlight talks and topics coming your way (probably next week after a round of edits). But, until then, here’s the bird’s eye view.

Enjoy, and hit us up on X to tell us what you think.

— Solana

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GMO Frogs

Hereticon attendees genetically modified frogs, and that’s not clickbait. This frog embryo workstation by Los Angeles Project took participants into a future where any living organism could be biologically changed in a multitude of ways. Users designed their pet frog by controlling seven variables, including “glow in the dark,” “increase size twofold,” and “extra toes” (see a video of this in action here). With each genetic tweak, questions loomed: where does science end, and nature begin? Are we the bad guys now? Will the TSA confiscate my frog embryo on my flight home? The organizers told us we’ll see unicorns and dragons over the next decades, so watch this space. — Abhi

The Invention of Native America // Claire Lehmann and Elizabeth Weiss

This blurb is brought to you by a ridiculous stunning and brave initiative from the Biden Administration that requires all federal research and decision-making to include some component of “indigenous knowledge.” What exactly is indigenous knowledge? Well it’s… hard to say. Quillette founder Claire Lehmann and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at SJSU Elizabeth Weiss illustrated just how much murkiness exists in indigenous history: school children are presented a rosy picture of life in Native America, for example, while darker elements of these societies — including possible child sacrifice and ritual killings — go under-discussed today. But, the real issue according to these speakers? The “Pretendian” (new Liz Warren nickname?) activists who repatriate artifacts and cloud the field with questionable Native American history, making it impossible for anthropologists to do actual research. In other words — you can just make shit up, and the Biden admin will still use your BS for official government research. Reassuring! — Julia

A Girl’s Guide to the Perfect, Data-Driven Orgy // Aella

Aella, aka the shower-averse, sultry-meets-smart sex nymph of X, with an IQ almost as high as her body count, walked into Hereticon with spreadsheets and bad news: your orgies suck. After surveying 800,000 people about their kinks, her talk demolished every assumption about female sexuality, including which type of group gets after it the most (libertarian women, it turns out) and how much fun people are really having at sex parties (most average fewer than one hookup per person). So why are most orgies actually such boner-kills? Because, Aella argued, they’re optimizing for the wrong metrics — turns out “safe spaces” and three-hour consent circles aren’t exactly arousing (shocker). With power dynamics data and charts on the bimodal distribution of kink preferences, Aella had founders in the room wondering if they should pivot from AI to sex party optimization (something they absolutely should not do — let the professional sex workers handle the orgies, autists). — Elsa

Manifest Destiny: Greenland, Cuba, and the New American Colony // Nick Solheim, Dr. Sumantra, Mike Gibson

Nick Solheim, Dr. Sumantra, and Mike Gibson came to tell us why America needs Greenland, and honestly? The math does pencil. Currently it’s a chunk of land three times bigger than Texas, housing fewer people than a mid-sized concert venue, costing Denmark $500 million yearly just to keep the lights on. Between its rare earth minerals and Arctic shipping routes that dodge the usual maritime traffic jams, it’s basically the world’s biggest foreclosure opportunity. The plan? Copy-paste the Homestead Act, send 100,000 American frontiersmen up there, and boom: the New New England. Sure, the Danes said no last time, but winners never quit, right? — Elsa

It’s Okay to Spank Your Kids // Simone Colins, Diana Fleischman, Liz Wolfe

Modern parenting is basically just hostage negotiations with toddlers — three-hour heart-to-hearts about why we don’t eat cat litter, and diplomatic negotiations to get your kid to stop sucking their thumb. On Wednesday, Diana Fleischman, Liz Wolfe, and Simone Collins suggested that maybe we’ve gone soft. Pre-verbal kids might not understand your dissertation on emotional regulation, but they get cause and effect pretty quickly. Between Fleischman explaining evolutionary psychology and Collins sharing stories of CPS workers who’ve seen it all, they confirmed what parents whisper at playgrounds: 80% of toddlers get “physical correction,” they’re just too ‘enlightened’ to admit it anymore. — Elsa

The Plot for Islamic Europe // Sarah Haider and Ayaan Hirsi Ali

In addition to a stagnant economy and nanny-state bureaucrats, another specter is currently haunting Europe: it goes by the name of the Muslim Brotherhood. Founded soon after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates seek to restore a Muslim empire in Europe, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali — a Muslim-born critic of Islam — spoke with ex-Muslim activist Sarah Haider about the Brotherhood’s recruiting guides for African Americans, Latinos, and even Jews (lmao, bold strategy). The group evidently uses a three-pronged approach: 1) population growth, 2) labeling all critiques of Islam as “Islamophobic,” and 3) conversion, with the goal of eventually conquering all of Europe. Reminder to all Western nations (even the incompetent European ones): you can literally just deport people. — Julia

The Monarchist Case for Kamala // Curtis Yarvin and L0mez

America should have a Sun King, but since our “democracy” is really an oligarchy of Ivy League dorks, Yarvin — interviewed by L0mez — dropped a surprise take (after borrowing Trump’s “weave” technique for most of his allotted time): Kamala should be President. Why? The empty pantsuit following four years of mushy-brained babbling will finally reveal to the American public what’s really going on: the president has no real power, the entrenched bureaucracy controls everything, and as for Trump? America doesn’t deserve him. I guess what we deserve instead is BLM stamped bombs, cackling wine-mom energy, and like David Axlerod said, “trips to word salad city,” while the machine grinds behind the scenes. Business as usual. — Julia

Frozen in Time: Exploring Hibernation // [redacted name] & Sinisa Hrvatin

Is the longevity movement actually just about figuring out human hibernation? On Wednesday, young scientist [redacted name] and researcher Sinisa Hrvatin explained that while preserving organs and tissues is within reach, scaling up to whole-body preservation (i.e. hibernation) is a huge challenge, not least because brain cryopreservation is essentially considered heretical in the field. This gave me an idea: a society-wide effort to shift the Overton window on human hibernation called Project 3025. Basically, we preserve Elon after he’s gotten us to Mars, and wake him up when the mass-scale terraforming machines begin to go brr on the Red Planet. — Abhi

Baby It’s Not You, It’s the Germs: Are Endemic Pathogens Driving You Crazy and Killing You? // Riva Tez

Riva Tez fell down an internet rabbit hole and emerged with terrifying news: your cat isn’t giving you toxoplasmosis, but that medium-rare steak might be. Turns out toxo, everyone’s favorite brain parasite, is present in most of us, thanks to viruses such as Epstein-Barr. Worse, these organisms won’t just make you quirky — they’re linked to issues such as schizophrenia and suicide. Yet no one is talking about this. The takeaway: instead of going to therapy for your failing relationship, check whether it’s the parasites. (Read up on her theory here.) — Elsa

Charles Manson and The History Of Government Mind Control // Tom O’Neill and Jesse Michels

Turns out Charles Manson was probably tripping balls when he and his crew murdered Sharon Tate and her friends in her Hollywood home. Tom O’Neill, author of CHAOS, walked through his extensive reporting on the CIA’s mind-control operations like MKUltra, where they plucked vulnerable, crime-prone young men, pumped them full of chemicals that sent them to the stratosphere, and planted politically-motivated murderous rage in their minds. Just like that, the peace-loving hippies became violent freaks to normie Americans, and the Summer of Love was relegated to Deadhead nostalgic fever dreams. Fear not though, the next time your dreadlocked homie offers you a tab, you can rest assured the CIA is basically inept now. — Julia

Magick for Non-Believers // Mitch Horowitz

Sex magick wasn’t on my 2024 bingo card, but here we are with Mitch Horowitz teaching us how to manifest through orgasms. His “magic for nonbelievers” pitch is simple: redirect sexual energy into your goals, or create sigils — magical symbols charged with, uh, personal energy. The room went from skeptical to hopeful when he explained how ancient traditions, from Neanderthal fertility statues to Aleister Crowley, all point to sexuality as the key to manifestation. No crystals or robes required — just your own private practice. Even the atheists were reconsidering their stance on magical thinking. — Elsa

Spiritual Technology // Reggie James

According to Founder/ CEO of Eternal Reggie James, Silicon Valley’s latest disruption target is God himself. While techies obsess over building AI God from the bottom up, they’re missing the whole spiritual tech stack we already had. Think about it: a rosary is just ancient user experience design (repetitive action that induces calm, no subscription required). Instead, we’re stuck with Uber, Spotify, and Netflix: a rent-based culture where you own nothing, not even meaning. Check any museum — tourists recreating medieval prayer poses, except they’re holding phones instead of crucifixes. Beautiful churches got replaced by doomscrolling, and your sports betting app is a poor replacement for religious ingroup cohesion. Time to debug this spiritual crisis before we’re all just useless NPCs. — Elsa

Economics of Doom // Tyler Cowen & John Coogan

AI might destroy us, but probably not how you’re thinking. Tyler Cowen (in discussion with nicotine god John Coogan) took a sweeping look at the modern anxieties shaping our world, and concluded the most likely scenario is that we devolve into a slow “death by comfort.” Why go out and build a world-changing company when you can stay in your pod and eat the bugs (order UberEats and goon with your AI girlfriend)? Tyler praised students beating the system with ChatGPT (it’s not cheating, it’s called being resourceful), and argued we need to rethink what achievement looks like in this brave new world. Touch grass and stare into the sun, anon. You might just win. — Abhi

Antichrist // Peter Thiel and Toby Kurth

This was not your typical Sunday School discussion of the Bible. We are in the end times, Peter Thiel argued, and the antichrist may be coming. In order to prepare ourselves, Thiel made the case for reframing the term antichrist (it can be an individual, a type, or a system) and understanding that fights for “peace and safety,” rationalism, and global policing are signs that the antichrist has come. Of course, the conversation drew in everything from communist propaganda, the Holy Roman Empire, Charles Manson, Daniel 12:4, Rene Girard, Trust and Safety, Gulliver’s Travels, and everything in between. But the best part? When Peter (the patron saint of the Stanford Review), perhaps framing himself as the antichrist, came out onstage to Right Time to Thiel. Frankly, we doubt the real antichrist would be this based and self-aware. The World Economic Forum, though? Yeah, that one checks out. — Julia

The Great Flood: Secret of the Scablands // Randall Carlson

The end of the Ice Age meant six million cubic miles of ice turning into water, something that Randall Carlson — the wise Santa Claus geologist, as seen on the Joe Rogan Experience — argued accounts for most ancient civilizations experiencing floods dating from twelve thousand to fourteen thousand years ago. Today, in the northwestern United States and Canada, we can see just how much of this water turned into “extinct ripples” in the North American landscape. These ripples, Carlson explained, tell us that rather than the flood receding without a trace, its impact can still be seen on virtually every North American landmass from the Minnesota River Bed to the Great Salt Lake. While normies may see bodies of water and think nothing of them, Hereticon attendees recognize them for the remnants of historic biblical events that they are, and while I’m not saying that makes us better than you, I also didn’t not say that. — Julia

Lost World: Redaating Human Civilization // Samo Burja

The Kurdish-Turkish conflict has implications far greater than the battlefield. Turns out, our understanding of the origins of civilizations rests on conflicting views from scientists in this age-old flame war. The Turks say the neolithic archeological site Gobekli Tepe is 6,000 years older than Stonehenge, making it 11,500 years old. To build the potentially sacred ancient site, laborers would have to be fed, implying the possible existence of agriculture at the time, and throwing a wrench into consensus views on the beginning of civilization. Does the existence of crops equal a thriving culture? Maybe not, but the Gobekli Tepeans had to grub in order to build, so we could be way older than we thought. — Julia

Fight Club

In a no-holds-barred “Fight Club” of ideas, attendees watched as debaters battled over today’s most provocative questions. Should charter cities prioritize building physical land first or digital communities? Is biological sex a concrete reality, or just a construct? Is cultivated meat the future, or a sin against nature? And when it came to the question of “safety versus acceleration,” sparks flew over AI and government regulation. Each 30-minute round was a blitz of bold arguments, forcing everyone to confront the boundaries of innovation, ethics, and how far society should push the limits of progress — or pull back in caution. — Abhi

Angels & Aliens: Why Agnosticism Is Not A Viable Worldview // Diana Pasulka & Karl Nell

This one was a mind-bender. Professor of religious studies Dr. Diana Pasulka and retired U.S. Army Colonel Karl Nell suggested early religious visions may have actually been encounters with non-human intelligence, and thus some of history’s first extraterrestrial sightings. Could humans be lower on the hierarchy of consciousness than we think? On the second day of Hereticon, Pasulka and Nell asked us to consider if the “angels” and “demons” of religious visions are in fact poorly understood experiences of something far greater. — Abhi

Planned Parenthood: Saying Yes to Superbabies // Noor Sidiqui, Masha Bucher, Jan Liphardt

From lab-grown eggs to three-parent babies, Gattaca is arriving faster than anyone expected. This panel of biotech optimists laid out how genetic screening already lets parents dodge hundreds of diseases — and we’re just getting started. What once seemed like sci-fi is now happening in IVF clinics, where basic genetic selection is just the beginning. Between artificial wombs, genome synthesis, and the ability to turn skin cells into eggs, we’re entering an era where age limits on fertility might vanish entirely, and next-gen tech will let us edit genomes with fewer errors than natural reproduction. Soon, “good genes” won’t be a lottery ticket, but an option. — Elsa

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Edited by Brandon Gorrell, Riley Nork, and Kevin Chaiken.