Originally a comment by Steven on Nicotine frees your mind!!

There is this thing that happens as stars age.

A star can sit there for millions or billions of years slowly fusing hydrogen into helium. When it runs out of hydrogen, the star contracts, gets hotter and brighter, and starts fusing helium into carbon. When it runs out of helium, it again contracts, gets hotter and brighter, and starts fusing carbon into neon.

The star continues in this way, fusing lighter elements into heavier ones. Each stage in the process produces less energy than the last, and goes by faster. The last stage fuses elements to produce iron, and takes about a day.

Iron is the endpoint. After iron, there is no more energy to be gotten from nuclear fusion. After that the star collapses and goes super-nova (i.e. it explodes).

The right-wing media machine reminds me of this. They are caught in a cycle where they have to tell more and more extreme–outlandish–stories in order to hold onto their audience. As the stories get more extreme, they get less actual return for them, so they have to spin the cycle faster and faster.

I don’t know what happens when they hit iron. Maybe Tucker Carlson’s head explodes.