Derek Thompson

@DKThomp

Substack author. Plain English podcast host. Abundance co-author. Contributing writer at The Atlantic.

Washington, D.C.

derekthompson.substack.com

Born May 18

Joined May 2009

2,132 Following

264.4K Followers

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Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
Jun 20, 2025
Some personal news. Today, I’m leaving The Atlantic after almost 17 years and moving my writing to Substack. It would be convenient, for the purposes of crafting an exciting departure announcement, to have a dramatic exit story: a fight, a grievance, a shouting match with an
326
Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
3h
there are dystopias everywhere for those with eyes to see
Press Gazette
@pressgazette
11h
EXCLUSIVE: The Quartz website is now mainly produced by one AI-assisted reporter writing 50+ stories per day
7
Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
5h
New pod: THE GOLDEN AGE OF BIO & THE DARK AGE OF BIOWEAPONS I talked to @ashishkjha about the Russian plague mystery, the age of bio miracles, the pre-AI threat of bioweapons research, the novel threat of AI to global bio-security, and what we can do about it. We begin with
Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
6h
Having 2 kids under 3 is an unspeakable joy in so many ways and also “statistically speaking, someone in the house has some kind of cold every other day” sounds just about right. Having a sniffle, sore throat, or sinus pressure goes from a condition you once called Being Sick
Simon Kuestenmacher
@simongerman600
18h
Honey, let’s have a third kid to minimize the sick days in our household by 1%.
26
Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
8h
One way to put it, maybe, is that the frontier labs are "frenemies" of the rest of the AI ecosystem. In some ways, what’s good for the frontier labs is good for the entire AI industry: better AI → more useful capabilities → more usage → more revenue and investment → even
Gavin Baker
@GavinSBaker
9h
Why open-weight models that compress margins at the model layer are net positive for AI infra demand, exhibit 1001. An open-weight token consumes *roughly* the same amount of compute as a frontier token for a similar size model.
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