Those ones were a bit on the nose, no?

Not sure what you mean, but I’d never heard of Sarah Paine before that. I thought she gave a very concise yet nuanced view of the modern world order in her lectures for Dwarkesh.

How so? I enjoyed them, keeping in mind that the lecturer was a professor at a US naval war college.

You are pattern matching to something that doesn't really fit, I think.

I'm assuming he's in some sort of high-end communal housing, a trend that began emerging in SF ~15 years back ... ie. where multi-millionaire startup founders and the like choose it on purpose for the synergistic benefits.