TBPN

Let’s Make April 10th a National Holiday

April 13, 2026

Happy Monday.

We’re live on YouTube and 𝕏.

The current thing in tech and business is the series of attacks on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home over the weekend.

Today’s lineup

Critical Loop Co-Founder & CEO Bala Ramamurthy at 12:10 PM
SiFive Co-Founder and Chief Architect Krste Asanovic at 12:20 PM
XPrize Executive Chairman Peter Diamandis at 12:30 PM

Let’s Make April 10th a National Holiday, by John CooganImage: NASA

On Friday, as the weekend kicked off, I got to watch Artemis II splash down off the coast of Southern California. It was inspiring for a few different reasons. Although people might not have been voicing skepticism publicly, there had been lots of questions about whether or not America could pull this off. Like many government projects, there had been delays and cost overruns. The country was extremely divided and this mission required Americans from all different backgrounds and political persuasions to come together to work on a common goal. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman had been through his own back and forth with the administration before getting confirmed, and, of course, geopolitical conflict is the highest it’s been in decades. There were many ways the mission could have gone wrong. Even Apple executives refrained from quoting posts of pictures of Earth taken with iPhones in space until the astronauts had safely returned. This was high stakes, but it was also America at its best. Even the neverending culture war took a backseat to the bravery on exhibition by these astronauts.

The job’s not finished though, Artemis III, which aims to land on the moon in 2028 will be a much bigger challenge. There’s some extra context in WSJ’s “Artemis II Was a Blockbuster. Landing on the Moon Will Be a Lot Harder” about the hurdles ahead.

So here’s a wild proposal: make April 10th a national holiday celebrating Artemis II. There are currently no federal holidays in April, and it’s hard to think of anything with broader support than this mission.

Increasing the number of federal holidays was an interesting proposal I read about from Alex Tabarrok in Marginal Revolution just last week. He compares improvements in productivity that came during the Industrial Revolution to the expected improvements in productivity from the AI revolution. Looking back he points out that: “Between 1870 and today, hours of work in the United States fell by about 40% — from nearly 3,000 hours per year to about 1,800. Hours fell but unemployment did not increase.”

It’s still early to net out all the Jevon’s Paradox type effects from productivity enhancements from true labor replacement effects, but taking a leap of faith here and adding a federal holiday a bit ahead of the curve feels like the type of action that America needs to cool tempers during a time of rising unrest, as seen over the weekend in San Francisco.

As the AI race continues to heat up in America, geopolitical dynamics have consistently acted as a binding constraint, limiting the viability of proposals set forth by AI lab leaders. Mainly, even if leading AI labs agree to some sort of formal framework for rolling out advanced models, there’s no guarantee that other countries will follow suit. Sebastian Mallaby, author of The Infinity Machine, published an op-ed in The New York Times outlining one possible solution to the US vs China dynamic. Everyone is still in the early stages of working through this situation, but his reporting shows that there might be more opportunity for collaboration that many have previously thought.

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Headlines

NYT: Molotov Cocktail Is Hurled at Home of OpenAI C.E.O. Sam Altman

The San Francisco Standard: Sam Altman’s home targeted in second attack; two suspects arrested

Sam Altman responds to home attacks

The Information: OpenAI Stargate Execs to Join Meta’s New Compute Unit

Mark Gurman: Apple AI Glasses Will Rival Meta’s With Several Styles, Oval Cameras

WSJ: Meta Expected to Unseat Google as World’s Largest Digital-Ad Player

FT: Meta builds AI version of Mark Zuckerberg to interact with staff

Riley Walz releases Tax Wrapped, showing how the government spent your tax dollars

WSJ: Over 4,732 Messages, He Fell In Love With an AI Chatbot. Now He’s Dead.

NBC News: 𝕏 slashes aggregator payouts to boost original creators