What public figures publish and believe, in their own words.
About this feed
Highlights: posts that did unusually well for the person who wrote them, everything they published at length, each release and new project, and every belief — at most two a day from anyone. Day by day, newest day first; within a day, the people with the most beliefs on this site come first. Nothing else orders it. Show everything instead.
The quoted blocks are what people actually said; a beneath one is the belief those words support, in korrents' wording. Nobody here wrote their own page.
Top people are the people in this feed with the most beliefs on this site, then the most here. Choose an area and the row leads with the people whose beliefs are about it; tap a face for their feed.
Top people in America
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15 February
12 February
From one piece Speed Can Reindustrialize America 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
The US excels at high-volume manufacturing, but not low-volume manufacturing.
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Their words
Industrial policy almost inevitably consumes more skilled labor and reduces what we can produce.
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Their words
Long lead times and soft costs, fueled by the world-leading US wages for "white collar" work, are the root cause of poor performance in low-volume production because there are few units to spread the soft costs over.
+ 2 more
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Their words
Second, technologies and market structure are contextual, where the US can't simply emulate China's manufacturing.
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korrents.com
Tariffs on imported components and machinery hurt the American manufacturers they are supposed to help.Their words
These end manufacturers (new and old) are vulnerable to tariffs on their inputs and they are the buyers that the "speed strategy" is relevant for.
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korrents.com
Silicon Valley talking only to itself has produced a dismissal of ordinary human experience everywhere else.Their words
there’s also within that excitement, and within everybody talking just to each other, there’s a dismissal of the basic human experience across the United States and the Midwest, across the world.
11 February
9 February
From one piece JL Goes International, and to ETFs…… Oh my! 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
The United States' share of global GDP and equity markets will keep shrinking, and that decline is accelerating.Their words
For these reasons, I see that declining trend of the US share of the world economy described above accelerating.
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Their words
Tariffs, and especially the erratic implementation of them, are teaching our allies and enemies alike that the US is no longer a reliable trading partner.
7 February
5 February
29 January
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Dislikedrcmnd.app
No Country for Old MenTheir words
The Coens are typically considered to be at their best when they're cruel diagnosticians of American life - see their portentous, overstuffed, painfully self-impressed No Country for Old Men
14 January
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Recommendsaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett GiamattiTheir words
That's the opening of "The Green Fields of the Mind," collected in this slim, wonderful volume. Recommended if you like thinking about America, baseball, and The Odyssey.
28 December 2025
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Lovedrcmnd.app
BreakneckTheir words
Breakneck by Dan Wang takes you on a fascinating journey through China's engineering state, juxtaposing it against America's lawyerly society in an effort to reveal what each country should learn from the other. I've been a keen reader of Dan's personal blog for many years and am delighted to report that this book, his first, features everything I love most about his writing: his unbounded curiosity, thoughtful analysis, compelling storytelling, self-awareness, offbeat sense of humor, and insights born of lived experience.
25 December 2025
From one piece Chinese Labor Isn't Just Cheaper; It’s Better. We Need to Fix That. 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
Between 2015 and 2025 US manufacturing wages rose 40%, while the cost of purchasing a home rose 93%.
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korrents.com
Rebuilding American manufacturing is a decades-long educational and cultural project, not something tariffs can do.Their words
America needs an educational and cultural transformation to compete with China and reverse the decline in living standards that Americans have suffered over decades.
19 December 2025
16 December 2025
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Likedrcmnd.app
Cahokia JazzTheir words
A hard-boiled mystery set in an alternative 1920s America, by turns familiar and strange.
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Likedrcmnd.app
Specimen DaysTheir words
Tying them all together is Whitman's love for the American landscape and people, and his unique voice, so fresh he still seems like a contemporary.
12 December 2025
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Their words
But I do believe that the story in Mesopotamia owes its inception to a disastrous flood, but nothing global. Nothing that touched America or China or Birmingham.
11 December 2025
From one piece Stagnant Construction Productivity Is a Worldwide Problem 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
Overall, my take when looking at this data is that stagnant construction productivity is an extremely widespread problem.
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Their words
The US has a lot to learn from other countries for how to catch up to the efficient frontier, especially for certain types of construction (ie: transit) and in certain places in the country (ie: expensive coastal metros).
9 December 2025
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Lovedrcmnd.app
Capital Evolution: The New American EconomyTheir words
Seth and his co-author, Elizabeth MacBride, do an outstanding job of defining capitalism clearly and explaining how it evolved into today’s approach.
1 December 2025
From one piece get good 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
Americans tend to be aggressive yet thin-skinned, sure of their own rightness while doubting everyone else.Their words
Americans are mean, but fragile. Bullies, but babies. They are right, always, but also skeptical of every one else.
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korrents.com
Coaches who depend on clients paying them repeatedly avoid the corrections that might drive those clients away.Their words
American tennis coaches do not want to get fired. They want you to continue to pay them.
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korrents.com
The share of American teenagers who say that life often feels meaningless surged as Gen Z entered adolescence.Their words
But as soon as Gen Z entered the dataset, around 2013, meaninglessness surged.
28 November 2025
26 November 2025
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Likedrcmnd.app
Leaving AmericaTheir words
Leaving America. This is a 12-part podcast on the logistics, benefits, and challenges of leaving the United States. Oh, no reason. (B+)
25 November 2025
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Remarkably Bright CreaturesTheir words
I think anyone who enjoys fiction would enjoy this book, but it’s a must-read for people who grew up in Western Washington like I did.
21 November 2025
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
GoldTheir words
Gold by Rumi and Haleh Liza Gafori. Poetry, 112 pages. A vibrant selection of poems by the great Persian mystic with groundbreaking new translations by Haleh Liza Gafori, an American poet of Persian descent. Read 1–2 poems before bed each night and thank me later.
20 November 2025
From one piece Was the United States Once a Global Leader in Educational Metrics? Have We Fallen From Those Lofty Heights? No and No 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
We have never, ever done well in international educational comparisons.
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Their words
Learning loss is a global phenomenon, exacerbated by a catastrophic event, not a structural flaw unique to the American education system.
12 November 2025
From one piece Satya Nadella – How Microsoft thinks about AGI 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
that 50% happens because quite frankly the trust the world has in the United States whether it's its capital markets or whether it's its technology and and its stewardship of what matters at any given time in terms of leading uh sector. So if that is broken uh then that's not a good day for the United States.
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korrents.com
Trust in American technology, not model capability, may be the thing that wins the world.Their words
you just made the point of why I think trust in American tech is probably the most important feature. It's not even the model capability. Maybe it is like can I trust you the company? Can I trust you? Your country and its institutions to be a long-term supplier may be the thing that wins the world.
31 October 2025
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korrents.com
A Chinese crewed landing on the Moon before America returns would be a defeat for the free world.Their words
I am far from certain that NASA can regain anything like the vigor necessary to respond decisively to the Chinese threat, but I am determined that the free people of Earth not live under a Red Moon
NASA’s Orion Space Capsule Is Flaming Garbagecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com
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Their words
I think for a full GTA game, we always decided it was that there was so much Americana inherent in the IP, it would be really hard to make it work in London or anywhere else.
26 October 2025
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Their words
But politics aside, what’s notable about that 2001 report, put together by men who regarded themselves as hard-headed realists, is that it envisaged an energy future reliant almost entirely on fossil fuels plus a bit of nuclear energy.
21 October 2025
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Lovedrcmnd.app
Fever BeachTheir words
It's screamingly funny, devilishly inventive, and deeply, profoundly satisfying. With Fever Beach, Hiaasen makes a compelling case for Florida as the perfect microcosm of the terrifying state of America, and an even more compelling case for his position as its supreme storyteller.
11 October 2025
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Their words
So AI consumes approximately 0.04% of America’s freshwater if you include onsite and offsite use, and only 0.008% if you include just the water in data centers.
10 October 2025
From one piece Data centers & electricity - part 1: as of 2025 they haven't raised national prices 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
The American states with the fastest electricity load growth saw prices fall rather than rise.Their words
A Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study found that state-level load growth from 2019 to 2024 — including growth driven by data centers, manufacturing, and electrification — was associated with lower average retail electricity prices, not higher ones.
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inflationdata centersenergyAmerica
Their words
This is the first conclusion of my deep dive: Data centers have (so far) not affected national average household electricity bills.
25 September 2025
6 September 2025
30 August 2025
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korrents.com
American data centres consume about 66 million gallons of water a day, a small fraction of what they withdraw.Their words, before
Taking this into account, actual water consumed by data centers is around 66 million gallons per day.
Their words now
So to wrap up, I misread the Berkeley Report and significantly underestimated US data center water consumption.
22 August 2025
18 August 2025
15 August 2025
From one piece China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmer 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
In terms of things that are causing us to lose to China, tariffs are neither here nor there because, as we've discussed, we're not sensitive to cost on power. But the environmental regulations that are actively preventing us from deploying renewable energy in the United States, like this is the reason Texas is winning. Texas is out deploying California 10 to1.
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Their words
It absolutely asymmetrically helps China. We're not currently working with China. They don't plan to, but like the physics is very obvious, you know, and synthetic fuels have been around for 100 years.
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Their words
And I think the United States could probably do that in 2 years or less if you started today. Like it's currently 11:00, so like we're going to start cutting checks by noon.
13 August 2025
From one piece Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
And remember that DeepSeek happened in times of crisis, urgency, not in times of comfort. A lot of these technological breakthroughs and leapfrogging happens in times of crisis. This is called crisis innovation. And you got to thank the US for that. When the Chinese were comfortably importing chips from the US, the whole industry stalled for 20 years.
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Their words
In the US, capital controls politics, one could argue. In China, it has to be the other way around. Capital must be reigned in by politics. As part of the capitalist class, do not have the ambition to exceed the powers of the political class, is really at the core of it, I’d say, is the biggest difference between US and China.
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Their words
The trade deficits have widened since Trump, right? They haven’t closed the imbalance with China and with the rest of the world because ultimately the US saves less than it invests. And that’s a macrophenomenon. It’s not a trade phenomenon
+ 2 more
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Their words
The US will lead for some time on breakthroughs on disruptive technologies, the zero to one technologies that ultimately change the world. But innovation is a process. It goes from invention to production and commercialization and diffusion, diffusing technology throughout all parts of the economy. And on those two stages, I think that China has a unique advantage, even if it still can’t do the zero to one breakthroughs, because in the end, how much this technology is adopted by the countries and by the various parts of the economy is fundamentally crucial to how much productivity will be unleashed.
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Their words
Do you want technological supremacy and radical breakthroughs? Well, yes. If you do, then you have to tolerate that there are going to be some people who are just going to be uncomfortably rich, like in the United States. You can’t say that you detest the financial system for its greed, but then not accept the fact that it is what fuels innovation, right?
7 August 2025
31 July 2025
From one piece Jack Weatherford: Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire | Lex Fridman Podcast #476 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
We dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those were not military targets. We were not doing anything strategic against the country other than terrorizing the country by killing women and children.
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Their words
The Mongol strategy is first you take the countryside. They're country people. They think in terms of countryside. You take the countryside, you occupy the countryside, and you cut off the city. It cannot live without the countryside. And that's how they did it every time.
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Their words
Mind candy: A fun travelogue which does what it says in the title. It pretty much satisfies any impulses I might have to actually see any of the artworks in question. No familiarity with art-critical jargon required, though long passages are (more or less explicitly) art criticism.
28 May 2025
From one piece Why we stopped building subways cheaply 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
Cities began to prefer subways to elevateds, despite the fact that they were two to four times as expensive to build as elevated trains.
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korrents.com
The binding constraint on building anything in America is permitting and litigation, not money.Their words
Political costs and civic opposition will often make a technology unviable regardless of how the dollars and cents add up.
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Their words
Drug offenders never accounted for a particularly large fraction of the U.S. prison population, peaking at about 22 percent of state prisoners in 1990.
What Was The War on Drugs? Part Vthecausalfallacy.substack.com
24 May 2025
From one piece James Holland: World War II, Hitler, Churchill, Stalin & Biggest Battles | Lex Fridman Podcast #470 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
And I think radios are really, really key to the whole story because there is no denser radio network anywhere in the world, including the United States, than Germany in 1939.
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Their words
And so, one of the reasons why you have this narrative that Britain was a bit rubbish and hanging on the shirttails of the Americans and all the blood was spilt in eastern front and Germany had the best army in the world and was only defeated because Hitler was mad and blah, blah, blah, that kind of traditional narrative, that narrative emerges through the prism of what was going on in the 1970s and what was going on in the 1980s and the changing world, rather than looking at it through the prism of the late 1930s or early 1940s.
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Their words
And while it is still seen as a predominantly American show, all three service commanders are British. Two-thirds of the aircraft are British. Two-thirds of the men landed are British and Dominion.
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Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app
Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World EconomyTheir words
Nor do I do many promotional emails (this is the first in nearly a year), but if you want to provide some indirect support, and get what I sincerely think to be a very good book while you’re at it
5 May 2025
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Their words
Absolutely. The world flocked here. And that won’t be the case if we no longer have intellectual freedom.
30 April 2025
23 April 2025
17 April 2025
14 April 2025
From one piece Tariffs, saving, and investment 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
The binding constraint on building anything in America is permitting and litigation, not money.Their words
Endless lawsuits, cost-exploding contracting requirements, decades to get permits, and more bedevil any attempt to invest here.
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korrents.com
The American trade deficit is foreigners choosing to invest in America, not America being cheated.Their words
this story tells us how an increase in foreign demand to save in the US rather than at home will push up the dollar, and cause the trade deficit, which is in effect how foreigners send us factories which they would rather build here than in their own countries.
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korrents.com
America borrowed cheaply from the world and spent it on consumption rather than investment, exactly as Greece did.Their words
In sum, spurred on by the federal government (in many ways), the US borrowed a huge amount from foreigners at very low rates, and went on a consumption binge. Sooner or later we have to pay it back, or we go though the wrenching adjustment of a debt crisis.
7 April 2025
From one piece The Strategy Behind the Stupidity 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
Efforts to rebuild American industry will fail until global trade and financial imbalances rebalanceTheir words
Until the global economy rebalances, efforts to rebuild American industry are fighting economic gravity.
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Their words
Persistent U.S. trade deficits are an epiphenomenal mirror to our persistent capital account surpluses, which are in turn downstream of the beggar-thy-neighbor industrial policies of countries like China and Germany.
6 April 2025
From one piece America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufacturing Back 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
That’s because America has an amazing consumer supply chain, one of the best, if not the best in the world, but this is totally different from having an industrial supply chain.
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Their words
Automation will not save us.
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Their words
Since the year 2000, US electricity generation per person has been flat.
27 March 2025
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korrents.com
The old Canada-US relationship, built on ever-deeper economic integration and tight security cooperation, is over.Their words
The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over.
21 March 2025
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate AmericaTheir words
A unique lens on work in the late 90s that still resonated when I read it in 2018. It's a soulful exploration of how to maintain your humanity, creativity and inner fire in environments that often prioritize conformity and efficiency.
1 March 2025
12 February 2025
From one piece A World Without Aid? 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
The longevity of that consensus is itself remarkable: in 79 years of data, Republican presidents spent an average of $34 billion a year on aid, while Democrats spent $40 billion.
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Their words
American aid obligations in Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, have never exceeded $15 per person
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korrents.com
American aid spending has been flat in real terms since 1945 even as the American economy grew tenfold.Their words
Even as GDP has grown tenfold, US aid budgets have remained basically flat in real terms—the result (one might guess) of a delicate balancing act between bipartisan consensus among elites and a wariness of attracting too much negative attention.
3 February 2025
From one piece DeepSeek, China, OpenAI, NVIDIA, xAI, TSMC, Stargate, and AI Megaclusters | Lex Fridman Podcast #459 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
Interesting thing is certain regions of the US transmitting power cost more than actually generating it because the grid is so slow to build. And the demand for power, and the ability to build power, and re-ramping on a natural gas plant or even a coal plant is easy enough to do, but transmitting the power's really hard.
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Their words
One is ByteDance, arguably is the largest smuggler of GPUs for China. China's not supposed to have GPUs. ByteDance has over 500,000 GPUs. Why? Because they're all rented from companies around the world.
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Their words
And so going back, can the US build it here? Yes, but it's going to take a ton of money. I truly think to revolutionize and completely in-source semiconductors would take a decade and a trillion dollars.
+ 2 more
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Their words
FLOP is the vector that the government has cared about historically, but the other two vectors are arguably just as important. And especially when we come to this new paradigm, which the world is only just learning about over the last six months: reasoning.
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Their words
Arizona is a paperweight. If Hsinchu disappeared off the face of the planet, within a year, couple years, Arizona would stop producing too.
From one piece DeepSeek, China, OpenAI, NVIDIA, xAI, TSMC, Stargate, and AI Megaclusters | Lex Fridman Podcast #459 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
We know that a lot of the American companies are very invested in safety, and that is the central culture of a place like Anthropic. And I think Anthropic sounds like a wonderful place to work, but if safety is your number one goal, it takes way longer to get artifacts out.
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Their words
until there are feedback loops of open source AI, it seems like mostly an ideological mission. People like Mark Zuckerberg, which is like America needs this and I agree with him, but in the time where the motivation ideologically is high, we need to capitalize and build this ecosystem around, what benefits do you get from seeing the language model data?
2 February 2025
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Their words
AI competition needs to be tempered with a recognition that China isn’t going away as a player in AI, and that coexistence must also be a part of America’s strategy.
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
The Significance of the Frontier in American HistoryTheir words
Communistic Societies of the United States, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, The Network State
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Communistic Societies of the United StatesTheir words
Communistic Societies of the United States, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, The Network State
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Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app
The Network StateTheir words
Communistic Societies of the United States, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, The Network State
29 January 2025
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Their words
The American cities with the highest housing prices have the worst homelessness problems.
20 January 2025
From one piece The Inaugural Address 3 beliefs · whitehouse.gov
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korrents.com
Federal efforts to restrict free expression in recent years were illegal and unconstitutional.Their words
After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I also will sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.
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Their words
President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent — he was a natural businessman
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Their words
America will be a manufacturing nation once again, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have — the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on earth — and we are going to use it.
19 January 2025
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Their words
I think it's always going to be hard to pull off because I think Americans and their elected representatives don't want to provide a universal benefit. They want to provide a targeted benefit because they believe there's a moral component here.
13 January 2025
8 January 2025
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korrents.com
The United States is not at risk of a financial crisis caused by the size of its government debt.Their words
Stabilizing factors such as the global demand for U.S. dollars and debt denominated in its own currency suggest an era of fiscal dominance in the U.S. that's less dramatic than alarmists predict but more persistent and intractable than optimists hope.
5 January 2025
9 December 2024
From one piece Debanking (and Debunking?) 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
Americans are not, as a routine matter, cut off from the financial system for their politics.Their words
This does not happen as a matter of routine in the United States.
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korrents.com
A US deposit account is a credit product, and cannot be made otherwise without breaking it.Their words
For one thing, typical deposit accounts in the U.S. are actually credit products. It's baked in and can't be baked out without making them unfit for purpose.
7 December 2024
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korrents.com
There is nothing to learn from any American transit project within living memory except what not to do.Their words
The truth is that there’s nothing that can be learned from American projects within living memory except what not to do.
Low Spanish Costs are not About Decentralizationpedestrianobservations.com
6 November 2024
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Lovedrcmnd.app
A People's History of the United StatesTheir words
The winners write the history books.
2 October 2024
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korrents.com
Without SpaceX, neither the United States nor Europe would have adequate access to space of its own.Their words
But for SpaceX, both the US and Europe would lack adequate strategic access to space.
30 September 2024
From one piece Ed Barnhart: Maya, Aztec, Inca, and Lost Civilizations of South America | Lex Fridman Podcast #446 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
I think religion in South America began in the Amazon. I think there were people there, very old. Actually, the earliest pottery in all of the Americas, all these places that we have civilizations that grew up, you know where the oldest pottery is? The middle of the Amazon.
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korrents.com
Spain and Portugal are unfairly maligned by the Black Legend: it was the diseases that killed the Americas.Their words
I think that the Spanish and the Portuguese get unfairly maligned in what’s been called the Black Legend, that they just marched into America and murdered everyone. That’s not the fact. It was the diseases that murdered everyone.
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Their words
In fact, strangely, the majority of plants that are actually psychotropic, not just mood altering, are from here in the Americas. There are very few drugs that will make you hallucinate outside of the Americas.
+ 2 more
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korrents.com
Calling North America's earthworks mounds is a western bias; what those people built were pyramids.Their words
but what they built were pyramids. They look like mounds now, and they didn’t build them out of stone. That’s kind of our just inherent western bias. Something that’s built out of stone is sophisticated, and something that’s built out of dirt is rudimentary.
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korrents.com
The oldest people in the Americas are in South America, because the first wave went furthest and got isolated there.Their words
One of the fascinating things that DNA is showing us, which actually blood types were showing us way before that, is that the oldest people in the Americas are in South America, the ones that got separated early and didn’t mix their DNA, like the people in the Amazon.
5 September 2024
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Their words
Shipbuilding is labor intensive, and we see a repeated pattern of it moving to countries with low-cost labor: from Britain to Japan, then to Korea, then to China.
22 August 2024
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korrents.com
The neoliberal order did not simply spread around the world: the United States made it global.Their words
In fact, the US was a key actor in making the neoliberal order go global.
The end of the great order under the Heavenbranko2f7.substack.com
25 July 2024
1 July 2024
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
The Wages of DestructionTheir words
Some audiobook recommendations: The Story of Civilization by Durant Iliad (Penguin Edition) The Road to Serfdom by Hayek American Caesar by Manchester Masters of Doom by Kushner The Wages of Destruction by Tooze The Storm of Steel by Junger The Guns of August by Tuchman
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
The IliadTheir words
Some audiobook recommendations: The Story of Civilization by Durant Iliad (Penguin Edition) The Road to Serfdom by Hayek American Caesar by Manchester Masters of Doom by Kushner The Wages of Destruction by Tooze The Storm of Steel by Junger The Guns of August by Tuchman
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
The Guns of AugustTheir words
Some audiobook recommendations: The Story of Civilization by Durant Iliad (Penguin Edition) The Road to Serfdom by Hayek American Caesar by Manchester Masters of Doom by Kushner The Wages of Destruction by Tooze The Storm of Steel by Junger The Guns of August by Tuchman
+ 2 more
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Storm of SteelTheir words
Some audiobook recommendations: The Story of Civilization by Durant Iliad (Penguin Edition) The Road to Serfdom by Hayek American Caesar by Manchester Masters of Doom by Kushner The Wages of Destruction by Tooze The Storm of Steel by Junger The Guns of August by Tuchman
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
American CaesarTheir words
Some audiobook recommendations: The Story of Civilization by Durant Iliad (Penguin Edition) The Road to Serfdom by Hayek American Caesar by Manchester Masters of Doom by Kushner The Wages of Destruction by Tooze The Storm of Steel by Junger The Guns of August by Tuchman
30 June 2024
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Likedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
The Dark Lord's DaughterTheir words
Mind candy fantasy for younger readers, in which Mr. and Mrs. Middle America's beloved adoptive daughter turns out to be from Somewhere Else, which comes calling. It's very fluffy, which I was in the mood for, and Wrede is always reliably enjoyable.
3 June 2024
29 May 2024
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American FoundingTheir words
Buy it! Read it!
29 April 2024
25 April 2024
25 March 2024
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Their words
Based on public commercial data that tells a lot about the military potential of these dual-use robotic spacecraft, we have shown that China can manufacture and deploy 200 such spacecraft as early as 2026, enough to cripple critical US satellites in geosynchronous, highly elliptical, and other orbits, and thus severely degrading space support to wartime operations.
22 March 2024
From one piece Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy | Lex Fridman Podcast #420 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
So you don’t have wise decision makers. Long gone are the days where we had presidents who had advisors on both sides of the aisle. That’s really important, because you want to have differing opinions. But as things become more viperous, both here in the United States and in nuclear armed nations, all bets are off at whether your advisors are going to give you good advice.
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Their words
I’m coming back at you with a very dark answer and a very big number. And that number is 5 billion people.
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Their words
there is an absolutely existential flaw in the system, which Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta confirmed with me, which is that our ICBMs do not have enough range. If we launch a counterattack against, say, North Korea, our ICBMs must fly over Russia. They must fly over Russia.
+ 2 more
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Their words
So, in addition to the Launch on Warning concept, there’s this other insane concept called Sole Presidential Authority. And you might think, in a democracy that’s impossible, right? You can’t just start a war. Well, you can just start a nuclear war if you are the commander in chief, the President of the United States. In fact, you’re the only one who can do that.
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Their words
Because we have that policy, Launch on Warning, which is exactly like it says. It means the United States will not wait to absorb a nuclear attack. It will launch nuclear weapons in response before the bomb actually hits.
13 March 2024
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korrents.com
Making American farms more productive shrinks cropland in the rest of the world by more than it adds at home.Their words
Nelson Villoria estimates that for every 1% gain in Total Factor Productivity (inputs required per unit of output) in the US, croplands in the rest of the world shrink by 0.7%.
4 March 2024
From one piece Serhii Plokhy: History of Ukraine, Russia, Soviet Union, KGB, Nazis & War | Lex Fridman Podcast #415 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
My understanding is there are Nazis in Ukraine and there are supporters of white supremacy theories, but also my understanding is that they are extremely marginal and they are more marginal than the same sort of groups are in Central Europe, maybe in the U.S. as well.
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Their words
The United States of America didn’t want the Soviet Union to collapse and disintegrate. They didn’t want that at the start of the Cold War in 1948. We now have the strategic documents. They were concerned about that, they didn’t want to do that. And certainly they didn’t want to do that in the year 1991.
20 February 2024
From one piece Bill Ackman: Investing, Financial Battles, Harvard, DEI, X & Free Speech | Lex Fridman Podcast #413 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
The problem is the defamation law in the US is so favorable to the publisher, to the media, and so unfavorable to the victim. And the incentives are all wrong.
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korrents.com
The DEI movement on campus comes out of a Marxist socialist way of looking at the world.Their words
A friend of mine sent me Christopher Rufo's book, America's Cultural Revolution, which is sort of a sociological study of the origins of the DEI movement and critical race theory. I found it actually one of the more important books I've read and also I found it quite concerning. Ultimately, DEI comes out of a kind of Marxist socialist way to look at the world.
23 January 2024
From one piece 2023 letter 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
The West's biggest blindspot is repeatedly underestimating China's speed and capabilities.Their words
I worry however that one of America’s superpowers is to spin up yarns to reduce the urgency for action.
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Their words
China built half of the world’s ships (by gross tonnage) in 2022, while the US had 0.2 percent of capacity: in practice, this meant that while China builds hundreds of new ships a year, the US builds three to five.
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Their words
While 50 percent of China’s economy might be dysfunctional, the 5 percent that’s going spectacularly well is pretty dangerous to American interests.
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Their words
So it feels to me that the US is treating its deficiencies — an inability to build stuff or create a functional system for admitting high-skilled migrants — as mysteries to be endured rather than problems to be solved.
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korrents.com
China will not fade away, so America has to reform itself for a protracted contest with a peer competitor.Their words
It is that China will not fade away, meaning that America must reform itself for a protracted contest with a peer competitor.
12 January 2024
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Likedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old ManTheir words
The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man by David Von Drehle. It’s a short, great read.
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Recommendsaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
American RustTheir words
I also recommend Philipp’s other novel, American Rust
7 December 2023
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korrents.com
Demanding simple answers to hard questions is itself a political harm, not just an intellectual one.Their words
The stubborn thirst for simple answers to hard questions is bad for America.
Stop Demanding Dumb Answers To Hard Questionspopehat.substack.com
29 November 2023
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Their words
According to my numbers, in the United States there will be a net of 3.24 million new low-skill jobs, but there will also be 4.7 million fewer people in the labor force.
20 November 2023
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Their words
“Your criticism violates my right to free speech” is a fatuous but common American sentiment.
My Free Speech Means You Have To Shut Uppopehat.substack.com
17 November 2023
From one piece John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 | Lex Fridman Podcast #401 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
A lot of people think that to make deterrence work, you have to be able to beat the Chinese and therefore, you need a much bigger military. And I don't think over time that's possible. I think it's probably not even possible now to beat the Chinese in a war over Taiwan or in a war in the South China Sea.
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korrents.com
China's leaders think in realist terms and America's do not, which is the more dangerous half of the pairing.Their words
The Chinese are my kind of people. They're realists, right? They speak my language. It's the United States that is not very realist. American leaders have a very powerful liberal bent and tend not to see the world in realist terms.
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korrents.com
The Israel lobby is an ordinary American interest group rather than a cabal, and it happens to be extremely powerful.Their words
So our argument is that the lobby is not doing anything that's illegal, or illicit, or immoral, or unethical. It's just a good old-fashioned American interest group. And it just happens to be extremely powerful.
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korrents.com
Russia's refusal to accept NATO on its border is exactly what the United States demands for its own neighbourhood.Their words
Well, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. And if we don't like great powers coming into our neighborhood, it's hardly surprising that the Russians did not want NATO on their doorstep.
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Their words
All the evidence is that Hispanics are integrating into the American mainstream more quickly and more effectively than the European immigrant groups that came starting around 1835.
9 November 2023
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Their words
After World War II, the US could have basically taken over the world in any country, we’ve got nukes, nobody else has got nukes. We don’t even have to lose soldiers. Which country do you want? And the United States could have taken over everything and it didn’t. And the United States actually helped rebuild countries.
4 November 2023
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Family MealTheir words
Bryan Washington's novel Family Meal: Bryan is the great millennial fiction writer of food, among many other talents. His descriptions of cooking and meals are fantastically rich, as much for the food itself as for the social and emotional exchange involved.
24 September 2023
5 August 2023
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korrents.com
You cannot make America build subways ten times cheaper while only ever talking to Americans.Their words
You can’t change the United States from a country that builds subways for $2 billion/km in New York and $1 billion/km elsewhere to a country that does so for $200 million/km if all you ever do is talk to other Americans.
17 July 2023
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Unshackled: A Practical Guide For Highly-Skilled Immigrants To Thrive In The United StatesTheir words
breaks down how legal immigration works in America in a way that is friendly, accessible, and human
29 June 2023
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korrents.com
Trading the oligarchy that currently runs America for a monarchy under Elon Musk would be a trade worth making.Their words
But I mean, would I trade right now the current oligarchy which runs America for the monarchy? Yeah, I would. Sure. For the Elon monarchy, yeah.
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Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
The Great Depression: A DiaryTheir words
This fantastic work is a primary source material to one of the darkest times in American economic history.
27 June 2023
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Their words
As I’ve argued before, the so-called “objective standard” can be very difficult to administer in this big diverse messy country where we often don’t share a common sense of reality and there is no uniform “reasonable person.”
6 June 2023
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Their words
The single greatest risk of AI is that China wins global AI dominance and we – the United States and the West – do not.
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Their words
It’s not exactly news that the American government’s support for biofuels increases food prices, intensifies global hunger and wastes taxpayer dollars.
A Climate Killer Disguised as a Climate Solutionmichaelgrunwald.substack.com
12 April 2023
12 January 2023
From one piece High Costs are not About Precarity 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
Importantly, low-cost countries with more clientelism and politicization of the state tend to be more deferential to the expertise of engineers.
High Costs are not About Precaritypedestrianobservations.com
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Their words
This is not about precarity, because this is not a precarious project; this is about total ignorance and incuriosity about best practices, which emanate from a place that doesn’t natively speak English and doesn’t trade in American political references.
High Costs are not About Precaritypedestrianobservations.com
10 December 2022
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Lovedrcmnd.app
Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant SuccessTheir words
Absolutely. It is incredibly enjoyable and readable. The authors, in a way that is very rare for economists, find small stories that paint big pictures for the points they make.
8 December 2022
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Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app
The Late AmericansTheir words
Also, please preorder The Late Americans so I can write more homosexual novels—it comes out next year!
25 July 2022
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Their words
In my opinion the root cause of this bug is that when a white american developer sees a terminal they immediately interpret it as this idealized cartesian plane where they can lay out any writing they want in neatly-spaced characters that behave in "predictable" ways (in other words, behave exactly like English).
22 June 2022
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Likedrcmnd.app
Awaken the Giant WithinTheir words
This 1992 book changed everything about my life. It’s my Bible. Most of my beliefs come from it. I read it many times at a formative age, but re-read it now 30 years later, taking notes. It’s not a perfect book. It’s too verbose and full of expired American references. But its core messages are the wisest, most effective life philosophy I’ve ever encountered. You choose how you feel. Your emoti…
6 June 2022
1 March 2022
1 January 2022
17 August 2021
19 June 2021
Nothing matches.
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