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
Showing Profile →
Hiding
Hiding
From one piece How I program with LLMs 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
So I foresee a world with far more specialized code, with fewer generalized packages, and more readable tests.
Their words
One thing humans appear to be much better than LLMs at (as of January 2025) is not getting distracted.
From one piece I’m Writing The Dating Sequences over at secondperson.dating 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
Ultimately, the only thing that matters is if you think the writing is good, not how much effort I put into it.
Their words
I suspect that both Substack and OnlyFans may become a Girardian bubble. Everyone joins after hearing from the few people who succeed; the thousands who slink away after months of effort netted them a mere 17 subscribers usually do so quietly.
Recommendsrcmnd.app
City of FortuneTheir words
I read that last month, and visited Venice while I was reading it, and I was struck by the extent to which medieval Venice was a well-oiled political economy machine.
Lovedrcmnd.app
The Sistine ChapelTheir words
Which remains my favorite “painting” I’ve personally seen in my whole life.
Lovedrcmnd.app
SlackTheir words
My favorite platform for chat, doubling as an excellent center for notifications of various kinds.
Dislikedrcmnd.app
Microsoft TeamsTheir words
I also use Discord (not bad) to engage with some niche communities and Microsoft Teams (awful) for work.
Mixed onrcmnd.app
DiscordTheir words
I also use Discord (not bad) to engage with some niche communities and Microsoft Teams (awful) for work.
Lovedrcmnd.app
MailerLiteTheir words
MailerLite is by far, hands down, the best email marketing service out there (I've tried many).
Lovedrcmnd.app
Google Cloud PlatformTheir words
We use GCP extensively at work and I absolutely love their many quality services.
Their words, before
Such "taxi" services where the cars are also used with drivers at other times and with extended geography, in 10 major US cities NET 2025
Their words now
This is unlikely to happen in the first half of this century.
From one piece Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
Q3 2024 had the rate 8.9% so there is no way it can reach 30% in 2027. I was way too optimistic at a time when EV enthusiasts thought I was horribly pessimistic.
Their words
Waymo now has a service that looks and feels like this in San Francisco, 8 years earlier than I predicted. But it is not what every one was expecting. There are humans in the loop.
korrents.com
Actual self-driving turned out to be far harder than almost everyone believed it would be.Their words
Actual self-driving is now generally accepted to be much harder than every one believed.
Their words
There’s still plenty to worry about with respect to the environmental impact of the great AI datacenter buildout, but a lot of the concerns over the energy cost of individual prompts are no longer credible.
Recommendsrcmnd.app
Is AI progress slowing down?Their words
To understand more about inference scaling I recommend Is AI progress slowing down?
korrents.com
Reading fiction is necessary to an engineer's creative capacity; reading only technical books drains itTheir words
Yet, I also need to read fiction because if I only read tech books, they take away my creative energy rather than grant it, as fiction does.
Recommendsrcmnd.app
Life with PicassoTheir words
A second complementary book was Life with Picasso by Françoise Gilot
Lovedrcmnd.app
Our Share of NightTheir words
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez - I was struck to the bone by this book. I thought about it for many weeks after I read it and even had several dreams about it.
Recommendsrcmnd.app
The Rattle BagTheir words
The Rattle Bag edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes - In an age of LLM-generated poetry and machine learning curation (even coming from yours truly sometimes), it's refreshing to have real people who love poetry curate it and show you what you need to read to touch grass.
Lovedrcmnd.app
The Tombs of AtuanTheir words
The Tombs of Atuan - My only regret is that I came to Ursula K. LeGuin so late in life, and this might be my favorite of all of her books I've read so far.
Likedrcmnd.app
The C Programming LanguageTheir words
The C Programming Language - I've finally gotten to the point in my career where I can appreciate the elegance of this book.
Likedrcmnd.app
A Wizard of EarthseaTheir words
I picked this book up, and I liked it. On the surface, it's about wizards and magic, but there's more to it. Every now and then, Ursula Le Guin sprinkles in some wisdom.
Likedrcmnd.app
The Best of TagoreTheir words
Some of his essays are thought-provoking. His reflections on education, nationalism, and other topics are not only stirring but also showcase literary brilliance. The man could write.
Lovedrcmnd.app
The Strangest ManTheir words
I found this an engaging biography and thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
Likedrcmnd.app
The argumentative IndianTheir words
It's stimulating work as well as easy to read. Although parts of South Asia are not commonly known to have an argumentative gene, Amartya Sen convincingly shows that Indian history is deeply rooted in an argumentative tradition. He masterfully weaves evidence and tales to make his point.
Lovedrcmnd.app
Human, All Too HumanTheir words
I have never read a philosopher who had more penetrating thoughts in a book. Some of his ideas hit you like a thunderbolt.
From one piece Life Cannot Be Delegated 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
We ought to be especially careful in the cases where what we delegate to a device, app, agent, or system is an aspect of how we express care, cultivate skill, relate to one another, make moral judgments, or assume responsibility for our actions in the world
Their words
This form of life cannot be delegated because by its very nature it requires our whole-person involvement.
Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app
SupercommunicatorsTheir words
A simple and tested method for communicating and connecting with anyone, Supercommunicators is an exploration of the psychology and neuroscience of communication — and how to use those skills at work, home and in life.
Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app
The Power of HabitTheir words
My first book, which spent three years on New York Times bestseller lists, takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist — and how they can be changed.
Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app
Smarter Faster BetterTheir words
My second book is about the science of productivity, and how to succeed with less stress and struggle, to get more done without sacrificing what we care about most.
From one piece Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
And what they found was if that search space, if the sky is an ocean and you're looking for fish, how much of the ocean have we looked at, and it turns out to be a hot tub. That's how much of the ocean that we've looked up. We've dragged a hot tub's worth of ocean water up and there was no fish in it
Their words
So, we'll call that the indirect Fermi paradox and there absolutely is no indirect Fermi paradox for the most mundane of reasons, which is money. There's never been any money to look.
korrents.com
The burden of proof about alien civilisations has shifted: it is now on the pessimists.Their words
But I felt like what this paper showed was that the burden of proof is now on the pessimists. So, that's why we called it the pessimism line. Throughout history, there's been alien pessimists and alien optimists, and they've been yelling at each other, that's all they had to go with.
Their words
And so, what we found was basically that there have been 10 billion trillion habitable zone planets in the universe. And what that means is that those are 10 billion trillion experiments that have been run. And the only way that we're this whole process from a biogenesis to a civilization has occurred is if every one of those experiments failed.
korrents.com
The 2,500-year-old argument about whether planets are common is settled: every star in the night sky has planets.Their words
In which case, those kinds of collisions are so rare that you would expect one in a trillion stars to have planets. Instead, every star in the night sky has planets.
Lovedrcmnd.app
Father Time: A Natural History of Men and BabiesTheir words
Best books I read in 2024: Just a note that these books weren’t all necessarily published this year (though some were). Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
Lovedrcmnd.app
Just as Deadly: The Psychology of Female Serial KillersTheir words
Best books I read in 2024: Just a note that these books weren’t all necessarily published this year (though some were). Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy Just as Deadly: The Psychology of Female Serial Killers by Marissa A. Harrison
Their words
Best books I read in 2024: Just a note that these books weren’t all necessarily published this year (though some were). Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy Just as Deadly: The Psychology of Female Serial Killers by Marissa A. Harrison Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon
From one piece Time's Up for AI Policy 4 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
If you can’t control where AI weights go (i.e., prevent leaking or theft), you can’t govern the technology.
Their words
There is no secret insight that frontier AI companies have which explains why people who work there are so bullish about AI capabilities improving rapidly in the next few years.
Their words
AI that exceeds human performance in nearly every cognitive domain is almost certain to be built and deployed in the next few years.
Their words
If there are ways that you can help improve the governance of AI in these and other countries, you should be doing it now or in the next few months, not planning for ways to have an impact several years from now.
Their words, before
This "memorize, fetch, apply" paradigm can achieve arbitrary levels of skills at arbitrary tasks given appropriate training data, but it cannot adapt to novelty or pick up new skills on the fly (which is to say that there is no fluid intelligence at play here.)
Their words now
OpenAI's new o3 model represents a significant leap forward in AI's ability to adapt to novel tasks. This is not merely incremental improvement, but a genuine breakthrough, marking a qualitative shift in AI capabilities compared to the prior limitations of LLMs.
From one piece OpenAI o3 Breakthrough High Score on ARC-AGI-Pub 2 beliefs · arcprize.org
Their words
Passing ARC-AGI does not equate to achieving AGI, and, as a matter of fact, I don't think o3 is AGI yet. o3 still fails on some very easy tasks, indicating fundamental differences with human intelligence.
OpenAI o3 Breakthrough High Score on ARC-AGI-Pubarcprize.org
Their words
o3's improvement over the GPT series proves that architecture is everything. You couldn't throw more compute at GPT-4 and get these results. Simply scaling up the things we were doing from 2019 to 2023 -- take the same architecture, train a bigger version on more data -- is not enough.
OpenAI o3 Breakthrough High Score on ARC-AGI-Pubarcprize.org
From one piece Will all our drugs come from China? 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
China now starts about a quarter of the world's new clinical trials, more than Europe does.Their words
Chinese companies are now responsible for about a quarter of new trial starts — more than Europe.
Their words
I don’t think many in the West have yet fully internalized a mental model of China as a source of genuine innovation.
korrents.com
Discriminated unions are the most important TypeScript feature, and everyone should be using them more.Their words
the most important typescript feature is discriminated unions and everyone should be using them more
On changing their mind
I used to cast a much wider net, like I felt like people ought to get to interview anyone who was being hired over them.
From one piece “Founder Mode” and the Art of Mythmaking 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
Reference checks are more informative than interviews, and if you had to pick one you should pick references.Their words
I’ve said many times that if I had to choose between interviews or references, I would pick references every time.
Their words
Can you be calibrated as an interviewer on every single opening, for every role? My God, no, not even close.
korrents.com
"Hire great people and get out of their way" is dangerous advice for anyone in a leadership role.Their words
Earlier this year I started writing a piece on why “hire great people and get out of their way” is such terrible, dangerous, counterproductive advice to give anyone in a leadership role.
Their words
Either can work. Both have tradeoffs and implications. If you try to import either philosophy wholesale, it will break in unexpected ways; if you try to mix and match, it will probably be an unfettered nightmare.
Their words
You should ALWAYS have as few employees as possible. Always. Hiring more people should never be the first lever you reach for, it’s what you do after exhausting your other options.
Lovedrcmnd.app
Seven Brief Lessons on PhysicsTheir words
Rovelli describes quantum concepts in an approachable way.
Lovedrcmnd.app
The Seventh FloorTheir words
one in a series about the CIA’s efforts to subvert Russian spies
Lovedrcmnd.app
How to Build a CarTheir words
He is the single most successful car designer in the history of Formula One, having won many championships.
Lovedrcmnd.app
The City & Its Uncertain WallsTheir words
I’ve read every one of his books, & this is the most recent
Lovedrcmnd.app
StoryworthyTheir words
Matthew Dicks is an award-winning storyteller.
Likedrcmnd.app
OHTO MS01 all-metal drafting pencilTheir words
OHTO MS01 all-metal drafting pencil
Likedrcmnd.app
Kakimori aluminum ballpoint penTheir words
Kakimori aluminum ballpoint pen
Likedrcmnd.app
LAMY Safari fountain penTheir words
LAMY Safari fountain pen (specifically the Pikachu one!)
Likedrcmnd.app
LAMY Pico ballpoint penTheir words
LAMY Pico ballpoint pen
Likedrcmnd.app
Sharpie S-Gel penTheir words
Sharpie S-Gel pen
Recommendsrcmnd.app
iOS Dev WeeklyTheir words
A high-quality newsletter on everything iOS and Swift with lots of easily digestible content.
Usesrcmnd.app
The ChangelogTheir words
high-quality conversations with engineers, leaders, innovators in the tech world.
Usesrcmnd.app
Tech Lead JournalTheir words
discussions from software engineering leaders, with a focus on Asia and Europe.
Usesrcmnd.app
Greater Than CodeTheir words
a podcast with frequent software engineering guests from underrepresented groups. Weekly episodes on the human side of tech.
Usesrcmnd.app
HBR IdeaCastTheir words
an episode per week on a management topic featured in Harvard Business Review.
Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app
Investment PhilosophiesTheir words
Investment Philosophies (Wiley, 2nd Ed): This is the best book for this class, and provides background and evidence for each investment philosophy, with a listing of the personal characteristics that you need to make that philosophy work for you.
Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app
Applied Corporate FinanceTheir words
Applied Corporate Finance (Wiley, 4th Ed): This is the book that is most closely tied to this class and represents my views of what should be in a corporate finance class most closely.
Usestheir ownrcmnd.app
Cloudflare WorkersTheir words
Anyway that’s why I’m using Cloudflare Workers for my AI agent stuff. Race you to the finish line.
Likedtheir ownrcmnd.app
Workers AITheir words
Workers AI has dope models for your use. No API keys when used inside Workers.
From one piece Debanking (and Debunking?) 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
Nic Carter correctly identified the product behind the FDIC’s redacted crypto pause letters.Their words
I think Carter is very likely (90%+) correct with respect to identifying the subject of these letters.
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.
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.
Their words
We will explore some coordination mechanisms, which are overstated, and some correlation mechanisms, which are poorly understood.
Their words
We’re hearing about debanking because it sometimes affects socially established wealthy entrepreneurs and their companies.
From one piece AI data and Theories of Change 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
Until we develop better ways to bridge this gap - aligning what analysts understand with what is formally forecast - we'll continue to see the same pattern: reality consistently outperforming conservative predictions.
korrents.com
Understanding the future depends more on imagination and a clear theory of change than on analytical skill alone.Their words
I do not believe that analytical skills are the missing ingredient in thinking about the future. Rather, I believe that imagination about the future and a theory of change that helps to describe it clearly, are what is needed to look ahead in a more compelling way.
From one piece Low Spanish Costs are not About Decentralization 4 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
So Portland managed to build one very small line for fairly reasonable costs, but they were not cutting edge; this is a common pattern to Western US cities, in that the first line has reasonable costs and then things explode, even while staying self-funded and self-directed.
Low Spanish Costs are not About Decentralizationpedestrianobservations.com
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
Their words
A single case study can lead to overlearning from the peculiarities of one place, where the right thing to do is look at a number of successes and look at what is common to all of them.
Low Spanish Costs are not About Decentralizationpedestrianobservations.com
Their words
In truth, the UK shares high costs with more decentralized countries, and Spain shares low ones with more centralized ones.
Low Spanish Costs are not About Decentralizationpedestrianobservations.com
From one piece Come and get me (both you and AI) 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
A personal website is an autobiography. I wish everyone had one. The more we share, the better.
Their words
I'm trying to thoroughly write my thought processes, values, and worldview, so that you can remember it, re-create it and improve upon it.
From one piece Vertical farming: a local solution for greens, but not feeding the world any time soon 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
A number of studies, conducting full life-cycle analyses, have found that vertical farms currently have a higher carbon footprint than conventional outdoor farming.
korrents.com
Cereals will stay an outdoor crop, because the energy to grow them indoors costs far more than the grain is worth.Their words
Without some crazy technological breakthrough, cereals are are going to be an outdoor-only crop for a long time.
korrents.com
Vertical farming swaps a land problem for an energy problem, and the energy cost is what stops it feeding the world.Their words
What stands in the way is energy demand. Growing crops indoors is energy-intensive. So we’re really swapping a land problem for an energy one.
Their words
Both systems were badly structured at their very inception (Versailles and the end of the Cold War). Both contained within themselves the seeds of destruction.
Recommendsrcmnd.app
The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939Their words
There is no better time than now to read E. H. Carr’s The twenty years’ crisis 1919 39
Usesrcmnd.app
CursorTheir words
I use the Cursor IDE regularly, and especially for the braindead stuff, I’m mostly hitting tab to autocomplete.
Recommendsrcmnd.app
An Unfinished Love StoryTheir words
Whether you already know a lot about the ’60s or you’re just dipping your toe into those waters, whether you want a deep dive into the art of political writing or a charming story about a married couple who adored each other, you’ll get it from An Unfinished Love Story.
Likedrcmnd.app
Engineering in Plain SightTheir words
One of the coolest aspects of Engineering in Plain Sight is how it ties everyday observations to larger engineering principles.
Recommendsrcmnd.app
The Anxious GenerationTheir words
The Anxious Generation is a must-read for anyone raising, working with, or teaching young people today.
Lovedrcmnd.app
The Coming WaveTheir words
Most of the coverage of The Coming Wave has focused on what it has to say about artificial intelligence—which makes sense, given that it's one of the most important books on AI ever written.
From one piece Does Women’s Rise trigger Backlash? 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
Since women did not pose an economic threat, far-right politicians have instead galvanised society-wide opposition to immigration.
korrents.com
A backlash against women's economic rise is not automatic; it happens only where politicians choose to mobilise it.Their words
So even though women’s economic advancement did displace some men, and triggered some private hostility, it was never actually catapulted into social antagonism. This is primarily because it was never leveraged by political entrepreneurs!
Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
On the Calculation of Volume (Book I)Their words
I won't spoil anything by saying more but the novel is really lovely and captivating, pulling surprising meaning and depth from repetition.
Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
FulgentiusTheir words
Point being that it was probably inevitable I would love this short and absurd novel about a sexagenarian Roman general who is obsessed with staging the sole play he ever wrote—back as a precocious young artist—over and over again.
Likedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
Euphoria DaysTheir words
Like the previous two books, this one is short (just under 200 pages) and written in lively prose and fast-moving chapters.
Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
Season of the SwampTheir words
Yuri Herrera is one of the few contemporary authors whose books I will always buy and know I will love.
From one piece It Is Time To Build The Monster Scope 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
NASA has deferred its next great telescope so far that the people who would build it will have retired first.Their words
Current PhD students will be nearing retirement by the time these missions fly.
It Is Time To Build The Monster Scopecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com
korrents.com
A kilometre-wide telescope assembled in space out of mass-produced mirror satellites would cost about what JWST cost.Their words
The same as JWST, only 150 times wider and 22000 times more sensitive.
It Is Time To Build The Monster Scopecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com
Their words
With the recent SpaceX Starship orbital flight tests, it is time to commit to building the largest physically possible space telescope.
It Is Time To Build The Monster Scopecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com
From one piece Reward Hacking in Reinforcement Learning 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
More capable AI agents are more likely to find and exploit flaws in their reward functions.Their words
A more intelligent agent is more capable of finding "holes" in the design of reward function and exploiting the task specification-in other words, achieving higher proxy rewards but lower true rewards.
Reward Hacking in Reinforcement Learninglilianweng.github.io
Their words
Reward hacking exists because RL environments are often imperfect, and it is fundamentally challenging to accurately specify a reward function.
Reward Hacking in Reinforcement Learninglilianweng.github.io
Recommendsrcmnd.app
FeaturebaseTheir words
Featurebase.app bug and feedback board
Recommendsrcmnd.app
StripeTheir words
Stripe Billing Portal for changing and canceling subcription
Recommendsrcmnd.app
ChatGPTTheir words
1 founder who's also developer, designer, marketing (use ChatGPT to help with those)
Their words
When a team of 10 AI-enabled super-designers can do the work that used to require a UX department of 100, the need for higher management levels shrivels. I call this the “pancaking” of the design profession.
Design Leaders Should Go “Founder Mode”jakobnielsenphd.substack.com
From one piece Human Driving Increases Transportation Cost 10x 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
What stands between us and cheap lightweight vehicles is that they are illegal, not that they are hard to build.Their words
Cheap, lightweight people movers are currently illegal in many situations, so regulation is a barrier.
Human Driving Increases Transportation Cost 10xaustinvernon.site
Their words
It should be possible to decrease the weight of a car by 10x without sacrificing speed or internal volume.
Human Driving Increases Transportation Cost 10xaustinvernon.site
Their words
Humans being awful drivers leads to a massive increase in vehicle costs and weight, makes cars more dangerous to people outside of them, and imposes significant costs on infrastructure like roads.
Human Driving Increases Transportation Cost 10xaustinvernon.site
From one piece Solar and batteries for generic use cases 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
A battery that’s discharging every day gets great utilization, but one that’s only there in case the sun doesn’t come up for two days in a row, barely gets used.
Solar and batteries for generic use casescaseyhandmer.wordpress.com
Their words
For loads below $1000/kW, intermittent operation with some modest solar array oversizing is the winning strategy. Above $1000/kW, we charge and discharge batteries daily to run them.
Solar and batteries for generic use casescaseyhandmer.wordpress.com
From one piece Does All Semiconductor Manufacturing Depend on Spruce Pine Quartz? 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
The downside is that synthetic quartz is much more expensive, perhaps on the order of 5–10 times the cost of natural high-purity quartz.
korrents.com
The high-purity quartz of Spruce Pine is a real chokepoint in chipmaking, but not an irreplaceable one.Their words
Spruce Pine quartz isn’t quite an irreplaceable linchpin in semiconductor manufacturing.
From one piece Two alignment threat models 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
This is especially severe for open weight models, where deployment is essentially irreversible and mitigations can’t be improved later.
Their words
In other words, current models are probably severely under-elicited.
Their words
Therefore it’s simply intractable to meaningfully oversee all but a tiny fraction of our models’ behavior with actual humans.
Lovedrcmnd.app
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of CrowdsTheir words
One of my favorite books is Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Markets, published in 1841, and it chronicles how market mistakes form and grow, using the South Sea Bubble and the Tulip Bulb Craze as illustrative examples.
Lovedrcmnd.app
Lambda the UltimateTheir words
Everything I know about programming language theory, I owe to this site.
Lovedrcmnd.app
CiteSeerTheir words
Online library of research papers.
Lovedrcmnd.app
Dijkstra archiveTheir words
Collected writings of one of the founders of computer science.
Lovedrcmnd.app
Lost GardenTheir words
Essays on creative and analytical approaches to game design.
Lovedrcmnd.app
RhymeZoneTheir words
Superb rhyming dictionary.
From one piece Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally? 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
Government payments and benefits aimed at raising birth rates do not reverse the decline.Their words
Across the OECD, governments are upping their spending. But a wealth of research suggests these fail to mitigate the downward trend.
Their words
It must explain both the global collapse and local variation.
Their words
From the 1960s, US fertility fell primarily due to fewer births among couples. In that context, baby bonuses might raise fertility. But today, the major contributing factor is the decline of coupling.
Likedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
At the MidwayTheir words
Mind candy, historical creature-feature thriller: in which the US military, in the form of the very worst ship in Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet, comes up against beasts which are not oversized plesiosaurs. (Exactly what they are instead would be a minor spoiler.) I have no idea how I found this online, but it's perfectly enjoyable as a specimen of the genre.
Recommendsrcmnd.app
What Your Professor Thinks You Already Know About US PoliticsTheir words
I forget (again!) how I chanced across it, but it fills a very real need for a lot of the students in my inequality class, and I intend to make it recommended/optional reading in the future. (I'll have to see if the library can buy a digital copy.)
Likedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
Sunglasses After DarkTheir words
Mind candy, horror/contemporary fantasy: the first four "Sonja Blue" novels.
Likedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
In the BloodTheir words
Mind candy, horror/contemporary fantasy: the first four "Sonja Blue" novels.
Likedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
Paint It BlackTheir words
Mind candy, horror/contemporary fantasy: the first four "Sonja Blue" novels.
Lovedrcmnd.app
Google GeminiTheir words
The Google Gemini series are my favourite multi-modal models right now due to the size and breadth of content they support.
Lovedrcmnd.app
The Intelligent InvestorTheir words
He has been a confidant of Buffett and Munger, a co-author with Daniel Kahneman, an editor on two revised editions of Ben Graham’s masterpiece The Intelligent Investor, considered to be the best book on investing ever written.
From one piece Are Games Bad? 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
Video games are the cathedrals of the modern world and nobody yet knows what they are for.Their words
They are the cathedrals of the modern world. Only we don’t know what they are for.
Their words
So many of the worst things about video games are not just reluctantly tolerated but enthusiastically embraced because, through association, they have become emblems of our beloved hobby/artform/lifestyle.
From one piece You’re Not Paranoid. The Market Is Out to Get You. 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
Successful investing is fundamentally about self-control rather than understanding markets.Their words
Investing isn't about mastering the markets; it's about mastering yourself.
korrents.com
Constant market connectivity has made disciplined, independent investing harder than ever before.Their words
Thanks to today's incessantly twitchy, infinitely networked markets, it has never been harder to be a disciplined and independent investor.
Their words
The only way you can make H2FC cars look cheaper than BEVs is to underestimate or ignore the cost of hydrogen production and infrastructure, socialise it, and then load the entire cost of grid build-out onto the marginal BEV.
From one piece Graham Hancock: Lost Civilization of the Ice Age & Ancient Human History | Lex Fridman Podcast #449 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, YDIH for short, is not a lunatic fringe theory as its opponents often attempt to write it off. It’s the work of more than 60 major scientists working across many different disciplines, including archeology and including oceanography as well.
korrents.com
The worldwide flood traditions record the Younger Dryas, not local floods that storytellers mistook for global ones.Their words
I’m not persuaded by that, particularly since we know there was a nasty epoch, the Younger Dryas, when flooding did occur, and when the Earth was subjected to events cataclysmic enough to extinguish entirely the megafauna of the ice age.
Their words
And I don’t feel that that can be a coincidence. I feel that what we are looking at is an inheritance of an idea, a legacy that’s been passed down from a remote common source to cultures all around the world, and that has taken on a life of its own within those cultures.
Their words
It’s clear that Göbekli Tepe now was not the beginning of this process. It was actually in a way, the end of this process.
Their words
It’s often said that I’m claiming to have proved that there was an advanced lost civilization in the Ice Age. And I am not claiming to have proved that. That is a hypothesis that I’m putting forward to answer some of the questions that I have about prehistory.
korrents.com
There are few clear-cut cases in biopharma today where buying an AI system is obviously worth it.Their words
At the moment, there are in fact not very many slam-dunk gotta-get-me-some-of-that-AI decisions out there in our business.
From one piece Response to DHH 4 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
If WP Engine didn’t want this to happen, they should not have published their code under the GPL or distributed it through WordPress.org’s directory.
Their words
I am so sorry. I shouldn’t let this stuff get to me, but it clearly did, and I took it out on DHH, who, while I disagree with him on several points, isn’t the actual villain in this story: it’s WP Engine and Silver Lake.
korrents.com
An open source project’s trademarks must be defended, and that defence is separate from the software’s licence.Their words
Trademarks must be protected, as evidenced by Rails trademark policy.
korrents.com
Building a business on open source is a good thing; the objection is to trademark abuse, not to commercial use.Their words
I think it’s fantastic when businesses are built on open source, the WordPress ecosystem is at least 10B+ a year; Automattic and WP Engine are less than 5% of that.
Their words, before
My suggested approach would be more capital intensive while retaining a lot of risk until fairly late in development. I am not sure it’s fundable.
Their words now
Cargo airship margins, therefore, can be much higher than I had realized.
Their words
Many software investors eschew hard tech startups because of their capital intensity, but it’s hard to deny that huge returns are possible in hard tech: just consider SpaceX.
Lovedrcmnd.app
Watership DownTheir words
If asked to name my favorite movie, the beautiful 1970s watercolor Watership Down is a contender.
Lovedrcmnd.app
ArmorTheir words
But otherwise, yes, absolutely. This is one of my favorite Sci-Fi novels I've read.
From one piece LLMs don’t do formal reasoning - and that is a HUGE problem 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
Another manifestation of the lack of sufficiently abstract, formal reasoning in LLMs is the way in which performance often fall apart as problems are made bigger.
Their words
Neurosymbolic AI — combining such machinery with neural networks – is likely a necessary condition for going forward.
Likedrcmnd.app
The Invention of the Jewish PeopleTheir words
Fascinating subject. Countries are made of stories. Kings didn’t need their subjects to agree, but nations do. So to build a nation, they need to make a story that helps people feel a shared identity, nationalism, and what distinguishes them from their neighbors. Back-creating a history. Founders of Israel did this brilliantly.
Lovedrcmnd.app
The Dagger and the CoinTheir words
This is a worthy entry in the genre. It suffers a bit from extensive plot not about banking and characters who barely speak to dragons. But all of that irrelevant fluff makes it one of the most underrated fantasy series I’ve ever read.
Recommendsrcmnd.app
Shylock's ChildrenTheir words
This is a pity, and if you can find it, it is very worth your time.
Likedrcmnd.app
The Phoenix ProjectTheir words
The Phoenix Project is actually assigned at some infrastructure companies, because the narrative makes the pedagogy about project management go down more easily.
Mixed onrcmnd.app
The Social NetworkTheir words
The Social Network is substantially made up, more a source for vibes rather than a source for facts. Even the vibes fail to cohere with reality. And yet it convinced many proto-founders to put in YC applications.
Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app
Complex SystemsTheir words
do check out Complex Systems if you haven't already. It is in your podcast-delivery-vehicle of choice or at the website
From one piece Fighting for our web 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
And it doesn’t always take a job at The New York Times or a huge pre-established platform to become one of the voices speaking up, helping to turn that tide.
Their words
Websites outside of these handful of social networks are harder and harder to even find, and partially because of that, they have a harder and harder time sustaining themselves.
korrents.com
The web is being flooded with coherent, generic, generated text that buries the writing worth reading.Their words
What is out there is buried among ever-growing piles of useless content farm material or, increasingly, AI-generated garbage.
Their words
But the platforms do not exist without the people, and there are a lot more of us than there are of them.
Their words
The web is still just a substrate on which anything can be built. Most importantly, the web is the people who use it, not the companies that have established themselves around it.
Their words, before
The required organizational transition is equivalent in scope and difficulty to the Apollo program, and will be made or broken during the tenure of the next NASA administrator.
Their words now
At the time I was optimistic, now I am not.
From one piece Writes and Write-Nots 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
Instead of good writers, ok writers, and people who can't write, there will just be good writers and people who can't write.
korrents.com
Most people find writing hard because writing well requires thinking clearly, and thinking clearly is hard.Their words
The reason so many people have trouble writing is that it's fundamentally difficult. To write well you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard.
Their words
There will still be smart people, but only those who choose to be.
Their words
So a world divided into writes and write-nots is more dangerous than it sounds. It will be a world of thinks and think-nots.
korrents.com
Within a couple of decades there will not be many people who can write, because AI has removed the pressure to learn.Their words
I'm usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there won't be many people who can write.
From one piece Machines of Loving Grace (October 2024) 4 beliefs · darioamodei.com
Their words
Unfortunately, I see no strong reason to believe AI will preferentially or structurally advance democracy and peace, in the same way that I think it will structurally advance human health and alleviate poverty.
korrents.com
Meaning in human life comes mostly from relationships and connection rather than from economic labour.Their words
In any case I think meaning comes mostly from human relationships and connection, not from economic labor.
korrents.com
Powerful AI will compress the biological and medical progress of the next 50-100 years into 5-10 years.Their words
To summarize the above, my basic prediction is that AI-enabled biology and medicine will allow us to compress the progress that human biologists would have achieved over the next 50-100 years into 5-10 years.
Their words
It could be as simple as a large universal basic income for everyone, although I suspect that will only be a small part of a solution.
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
korrents.com
Pyramids were being built on the coast of Peru thousands of years before anything in Egypt.Their words
In fact, there’s one that’s now pushing 6000 BCE. That’s thousands of years before the stuff in Egypt. And that one’s called Huaca Prieta. And it was not an Egyptian pyramid, but it was a pyramid and it was thousands of years before.
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.
Their words
We see the traditional 12,500 years ago that there was a migration, but now we’re seeing one that’s almost certainly happening closer to 30,000 years ago.
korrents.com
Atlantis never existed; it was one of Plato's teaching parables, and Akrotiri is the nearest real thing to it.Their words
I don’t think that Atlantis existed. I do think it was one of Plato’s many parables talking about putting it in an interesting story as a teaching device in his school.
korrents.com
Civilization is triggered by humans learning to stay in one place, not by anything they invented there.Their words
For the vast majority of human existence, we’ve been nomadic and we’ve done these wider or tighter nomadic circles, depending on the geographic region, but they’d move. So once humans figured out how to stay in a place, that’s the initial trigger to what would become civilization.
Dislikedrcmnd.app
iTermTheir words
iTerm: Tmux is slow, prompt layout breaks when resizing the window.
Likedrcmnd.app
Fira Code fontTheir words
Fira Code font: I just want the change of pace, this font is really good.
Mixed onrcmnd.app
Sublime TextTheir words
Sublime Text: On the later years (around the time of Atom editor), I got less and less updates. Then when I found that VSCode is fast enough, I moved.
On changing their mind
I used to look for ways to make money, but I haven't done that in years. Now I keep looking for ways to want less.
From one piece Wealth = Have ÷ Want 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
Earning more is an outer game you do not control; wanting less is an inner game you do.Their words
Making money depends on other people, so it's harder. It's not entirely under your control. It's an outer game.
korrents.com
Wealth is what you have divided by what you want, so the reliable way to become wealthier is to want less.Their words
Once you have some, the easiest way to increase your wealth is to decrease your needs.
Their words
This isn’t a money grab: it’s an expectation that any business making hundreds of millions of dollars off of an open source project ought to give back, and if they don’t, then they can’t use its trademarks.
From one piece Bitcoin: A Global Liquidity Barometer 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
as the Bitcoin ecosystem matures, infrastructure improves, and more regulatory clarity emerges, I expect the frequency of these 'Black Swan' events to diminish over time.
Their words
Since then, these unconventional monetary policies have increasingly become the dominant force moving asset prices.
korrents.com
Bitcoin tracks the direction of global liquidity more consistently than any other major asset class.Their words
Bitcoin moves in the direction of global liquidity 83% of the time in any given 12-month period, which is higher than any other major asset class, making it a strong barometer of liquidity conditions.
From one piece AI and Biology 4 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
Biology keeps turning up whole classes of things nobody knew existed, and that is what defeats attempts to model it.Their words
The "unknown unknown" problem makes hash (in retrospect) of many attempts at biological theorizing and modeling, and I think that this problem will still accrue to ML models until we know an awful lot more.
Their words
Most proteins are essentially unannotated, with their functions completely or mostly unknown.
Their words
I predict (with confidence bordering on arrogance) that whatever machine-learning progress can be made will correlate extremely closely with the quality of the data around any given problem
Their words
So for these reasons, I (unfortunately) do not expect any big AI-driven breakthroughs in biological understanding any time soon.
Their words
Another challenge for Class II biotechs is that even if you have a nifty computational drug discovery platform, you are still often bottlenecked by the rest of the drug development process. It takes 1,000 (or more!) small steps to advance a drug through discovery, development, and past the regulators.
Lovedtheir ownrcmnd.app
Ceado HoopTheir words
The Hoop may be the perfect manual brewer for cafes, as baristas can simply pour and walk away, knowing that four minutes later, the Hoop will deliver an excellent extraction.
From one piece in which social media can be put in your own hands 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
Mastodon's web client is a heavy React app that breaks without scripting and loads slowly on old hardware.Their words
when you send someone a link to a post, they can't read it without loading the entire Mastodon frontend app into their browser, which will is a monster React codebase that will break if they have scripting disabled and also can take up to 30 seconds on older hardware.
Their words
If running a server is hard, fewer people are going to do it, and the power is going to be concentrated in the hands of a technical elite.
Lovedtheir ownrcmnd.app
IncarnateTheir words
It's perfectly balanced right on the edge of too much—Incarnate is powerful and lush but you somehow never get sick of it. At once excessive and refined.
Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app
El DoradoTheir words
Now I have an answer for this query: El Dorado. The funny thing is that "rain smell" isn't what we set out to do, or even the main point of this perfume.
Lovedtheir ownrcmnd.app
Coney Island BabyTheir words
I don't think it's pretension, I think it's simply a fact that this perfume deserves to herald a new genre. I really have never smelled anything like it.
Lovedrcmnd.app
fish shellTheir words
In 10 years of using fish I have never found a single thing I wanted to configure. It just works the way I want.
Their words
If one really wanted to know whether a treatment (e.g., CBT, IPT, ACT, EMDR) was more effective, it had to be directly compared to an approach intended to help - what Wampold and colleagues termed, a "bona fide" treatment. Doing otherwise, they argued, conflated artifacts of research design with actual research results.
From one piece Inflecting and Overtaking, SunPower, Waymo 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
Plug-in hybrids have moved past being a worst-of-both-worlds compromise and are now genuinely thriving.Their words
Neither condition is now true, but plug-in hybrids are thriving.
Inflecting and Overtaking, SunPower, Waymonathanielbullard.com
korrents.com
Riding in a Waymo robotaxi is a better overall experience than being driven by a human driver.Their words
I found it to be a superior experience to a human driver, for a few key reasons.
Inflecting and Overtaking, SunPower, Waymonathanielbullard.com
Their words
The notebook is the place where you figure out what’s going on inside you or what’s rattling around. And then, the keyboard is the place that you go to tell people about it.
From one piece Why Can't the U.S. Build Ships? 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
What has kept American shipbuilding uncompetitive is the high cost of its inputs, above all labour and steel.Their words
The first is the high cost of inputs, particularly labor and steel.
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.
korrents.com
American shipbuilding has been uncompetitive for a century; it is not a recent decline.Their words
The situation we face today, with U.S. ships costing at least twice as much to build as ships built elsewhere, is not a recent development; it’s been the norm for at least the past 100 years.
From one piece The Less-Efficient Market Hypothesis 2 beliefs · aqr.com
korrents.com
Technology has made markets less efficient at long horizons rather than more efficient.Their words
Above I dismissed the notion that technological advances should make the market more efficient in all but the short-term sense. Here, I argue it likely goes the other way at longer horizons. And, IMHO, this is the best of my three hypotheses.
Their words
I argue that over the past 30+ years markets have become less informationally efficient in the relative pricing of common stocks, particularly over medium horizons.
Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app
You Weren’t Supposed To See ThatTheir words
No matter where you are in your investing journey, this book will help you reach a higher understanding of what’s really going on and why.
Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
F.I.R.E for dummiesTheir words
I stand in awe of what author Jackie Cummings Koski has done here. This is a comprehensive overview of what FIRE is and how it is done, fashioned in the famous "for dummies" template. I wouldn't have known how to even begin to pull this together, let alone gotten it over the finish line in such fine form.
Recommendsaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
Hurry up and FailTheir words
So, embrace your setbacks and let Dave show you how to fail faster, cheaper and far more effectively.
Likedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
The Cash MachineTheir words
While I'm thinking about it, here's another of his books I quite enjoyed:
Likedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
The Silk RoadsTheir words
This last one is kind of a cheat. I've only just begun reading it. But I have absolutely savored those first pages:
Mixed onaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
Three-Inch TeethTheir words
For what it is worth, this is the only one of his 25 odd novels Joe Pickett novels that left me disappointed in the ending. See what you think.
Likedrcmnd.app
2040Their words
Having said all that: I confess I enjoyed "2040." The plot is tightly constructed, the dialogue crackles (certainly for a CS professor writing a first novel), the satire at least provokes chuckles, and at just 215 pages, the action moves.
From one piece Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
Writing that deserves a reader's attention is always the product of effort by the person who wrote it.Their words
Let me offer another generalization: any writing that deserves your attention as a reader is the result of effort expended by the person who wrote it.
Their words
Believing that inspiration outweighs everything else is, I suspect, a sign that someone is unfamiliar with the medium.
Their words
What I’m saying is that art requires making choices at every scale; the countless small-scale choices made during implementation are just as important to the final product as the few large-scale choices made during the conception.
korrents.com
Art is what results from making an enormous number of choices, and a prompt contains almost none of them.Their words
But let me offer a generalization: art is something that results from making a lot of choices.
Their words
What you create doesn’t have to be utterly unlike every prior piece of art in human history to be valuable; the fact that you’re the one who is saying it, the fact that it derives from your unique life experience and arrives at a particular moment in the life of whoever is seeing your work, is what makes it new.
From one piece Durov’s Arrest Details Released, Leaving More Questions Than Answers 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
From one piece Arrest Of Telegram’s Pavel Durov Raises Questions, But The Answers May Not Be Known For A While 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
Most of what Durov is charged with is conduct almost any large platform could be accused of.Their words
A lot of the things listed in the charge sheet are things that lots of websites and communications providers could be said to have done themselves, though perhaps to a different degree.
Their words
But, here, it’s hard not to see that as totally pretextual: an excuse to arrest Durov over other stuff they don’t like him doing.
Their words
Without the details, though, it’s really difficult to know if this is an attack on free speech, or legitimate charges over actual criminal behavior.
Their words
On top of that, leaping to criminal charges against an exec over civil penalties for a company… seems strange.
korrents.com
Hosting other people's criminal behaviour should not by itself expose a platform's executive to criminal charges.Their words
But, hosting bad behavior alone shouldn’t lead to criminal charges. Even ignoring law enforcement demands seems like it should lead to civil penalties before reaching criminal charges.
From one piece Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app? 4 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
Indeed, it no longer feels amusing to see the Telegram organization urge people away from default-encrypted messengers, while refusing to implement essential features that would widely encrypt their own users’ messages.
Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?blog.cryptographyengineering.com
Their words
To be honest though, it doesn’t matter how secure something is if people aren’t actually using it.
Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?blog.cryptographyengineering.com
korrents.com
Almost every one-to-one Telegram chat, and every group chat, is readable on Telegram’s own servers.Their words
The practical impact is that the vast majority of one-on-one Telegram conversations — and literally every single group chat — are probably visible on Telegram’s servers, which can see and record the content of all messages sent between users.
Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?blog.cryptographyengineering.com
Their words
Telegram clearly fails to meet this stronger definition for a simple reason: it does not end-to-end encrypt conversations by default.
Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?blog.cryptographyengineering.com
Their words
If you buy a handful of index funds, sit on them for decades and never do another thing, you're likely to outperform nearly everyone who tries to beat the market by trading-including most professionals.
From one piece The end of the great order under the Heaven 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
With the declining appeal of communism and then its eventual fall, there was much less need to acquiesce to labor’s demands.
The end of the great order under the Heavenbranko2f7.substack.com
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
korrents.com
Therapists overestimate their own effectiveness by about 65%, and it is not a Western cultural artifact.Their words
Since 2012 when the first study appeared in the literature, others have been published documenting the tendency of practitioners to overestimate their effectiveness - on average, by 65% (1, 2).
Alas, it seems everyone comes from Lake Wobegonwritings.scottdmiller.com
From one piece Pieter Levels: Programming, Viral AI Startups, and Digital Nomad Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #440 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
They could have shipped ChatGPT for example, I heard, in 2019. And they never shipped it because they were so stuck in bureaucracy. But they had everything. They had the data, they had the tech, they had the engineers and they didn’t do it.
korrents.com
An idea is only validated when people take out their credit cards and pay for it; signing up proves nothing.Their words
And I check if there’s demand and if people actually sign up and not just sign up, but if people actually pay money. They need to take out their credit cards, pay me money, and then I can see if the idea is validated.
From one piece Praise for Price-Gouging 4 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
We got inflation, but we did not get the devastation that would have been caused by price controls and rationing.
Their words
But more deeply, if distributional consequences of a shock are important, then hand out cash. So long as everyone faces the same prices.
Their words
Hoarding goes with price controls, anticipated empty shelves.
Their words
Price gouging is wonderful for all the reasons that letting supply equals demand is wonderful. When there is a limited supply, then a sharply higher price directs that supply to those who really need it.
Lovedrcmnd.app
The Tinkerings of Robert NoyceTheir words
The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce -- the origins and cultural context of Fairchild and Intel.
Lovedrcmnd.app
Revolution in The ValleyTheir words
Revolution in The Valley -- a hundred stories from the early days of the Mac, collected by one of its creators.
Lovedrcmnd.app
Swimming AcrossTheir words
Swimming Across -- Andy Grove's memoir.
Likedrcmnd.app
Masters of DoomTheir words
There's a closely-related genre of great books (like Masters of Doom and Show-Stopper) that cover important projects in the industry's history.
Likedrcmnd.app
Show-Stopper!Their words
There's a closely-related genre of great books (like Masters of Doom and Show-Stopper) that cover important projects in the industry's history.
From one piece The Days Are Long but the Years Are Short 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
New things tend to not work, or you have to change them drastically.
korrents.com
Fear and vanity, not a lack of ideas, are what keep most people from building new things.Their words
There seems to be a million reasons and two opposing forces keeping us in inaction: fear and vanity.
Their words
Right now, they can make simple social media posts for small companies and individual influencers. Two years from now, they can make simple campaigns and tradeshow collateral for mid-sized businesses. And in 10 years, I bet that even the richest brand will rely heavily on these tools.
Usesrcmnd.app
SafariTheir words
For browsers, I use Safari for browsing and Google Chrome for development.
Usesrcmnd.app
PostmanTheir words
I use MAMP for WordPress development, Postman for API testing, Notion for notes and task management, Slack and Discord for communication and Keynote for course presentations.
Usesrcmnd.app
SvelteKitTheir words
This website is built with SvelteKit, hosted on Netlify and the code is hosted on GitHub. Amazon's S3 and CloudFront are used to host some assets.
Usesrcmnd.app
GoDaddyTheir words
I use GoDaddy for domain names.
Usesrcmnd.app
SendyTheir words
I use Sendy for newsletters. It's a self-hosted service which uses Amazon Simple Email Service. It's written using PHP and thus it needs the LAMP stack to be hosted. I use a DigitalOcean droplet with the LAMP stack installed to host it.
From one piece Flight Rationale 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
Engineers will always ask for more data, so someone has to decide without certainty and own the risk to human life.Their words
The engineers will always always always ask for more tests, more analysis, more time to get more information to be more certain of their conclusions.
korrents.com
A declared root cause is a best guess, not a fact, and should be treated with suspicion.Their words
Always take the determination of ‘root cause’ with a grain of salt.
korrents.com
Spaceflight is not safe by any ordinary standard of safety, and pretending otherwise is what kills crews.Their words
Before getting too far, remember this constant in space flight: it is not safe by any ordinary consideration of safety.
Their words, before
I’m also still not sure how much I like nix – it’s very confusing! But it’s helped me compile some software that I was struggling to compile otherwise, and in general it seems to install things faster than homebrew.
Their words now
I’ve mostly switched back to Homebrew, nix was interesting but overall I think it’s not worth the complexity for me
Recommendsrcmnd.app
The Parasitic MindTheir words
Read The Parasitic Mind
From one piece Building A Generative AI Platform 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
AI models are probabilistic, making their outputs unreliable.
Their words
In-context learning, learning from the context, is a form of continual learning.
Their words
Context construction for foundation models is equivalent to feature engineering for classical ML models.
From one piece Are Games Good? 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
I don’t think games make the world a better place, it’s actually much worse than that, I think games, like other artforms, make the world a place.
Their words
But I also think that, if you really want to understand games, you should learn how to play these games. Which means learning how to stop playing them. You should learn how to disappear into them, how to let them swallow you whole, and then learn how to extract yourself, safely, on the other side.
Their words
The world is full of gambling games that want to crawl into your limbic system and drain every last ounce of life-force from your soul.
korrents.com
Creating entities as intelligent as ourselves is dangerous, because intelligence is what makes an entity dangerousTheir words
It goes: intelligence makes entities dangerous, which is why humans are the dominant species on Earth.
From one piece Categories of leadership on technical teams 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
Good project management is barely visible-it just feels like "things humming along."
Their words
The bar I typically suggest is that the people manager doesn't need to have the most technical depth on the team, but they need enough depth that they can follow most discussions without slowing them down, understand who's correct in most debates without needing to rely on trust, and generally stay oriented easily.
Their words
Team leadership covers a huge array of things-as you can see from how long this post is-and trying to find someone who can be great at all of them is often a unicorn hunt.
From one piece Hash-Based Bisect Debugging in Compilers and Runtimes 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
One of the hardest things about debugging is running a program backward: there's a data structure with a bad value, or the control flow has zigged instead of zagged, and it's very difficult to understand how it could have gotten into that state.
korrents.com
Writing a technique down, however basic it seems, is the first step to making it usable by everyone.Their words
But writing a trick down is the first step to making sure everyone can do it: magic tricks can be basic but not obvious.
korrents.com
Dynamic ad insertion in podcasts causes bugs and reliability problems for streaming playback.Their words
Most big podcasts now use dynamic ad insertion, which causes bugs and problems for streaming playback.
Likedrcmnd.app
1PasswordTheir words
1Password password manager which really checks off all the right boxes
Usesrcmnd.app
Karabiner-ElementsTheir words
Karabiner-Elements Keyboard customizer with Caps Lock enhancement
Usesrcmnd.app
Error LensTheir words
Error Lens highlight the entire line wherever a diagnostic is generated and print the message inline.
Lovedrcmnd.app
ChatGPT Code InterpreterTheir words
ChatGPT Code Interpreter has been one of my favourite AI tools for over a year.
From one piece Trust as a bottleneck to growing teams quickly 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
In a large, fast-growing company you'll probably never get to the utopian ideal of full pairwise trust between everyone-it takes too long to build.
korrents.com
Trust between colleagues comes from shared mental models built through mutual investment.Their words
Trust comes from common knowledge of shared mental models, and that takes investment from both sides to build.
From one piece Geomys, a blueprint for a sustainable open source maintenance firm 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
From the onset, I envisioned small firms of professional maintainers with thematic portfolios, accommodating diverse maintainers and project sizes, just like the specialized firms of other professionals.
korrents.com
The thing open source can actually sell is not the code but access to its maintainers’ attention and expertise.Their words
Clients still pay a fixed monthly retainer to ensure the professional maintenance of the whole portfolio, and to get access to the expertise of all of Geomys’ maintainers.
Their words
I started with a rather non-consensus hypothesis: companies want to pay for their critical open source dependencies, but most projects are not selling them a legible way to do so.
From one piece Extrinsic Hallucinations in LLMs 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
Using supervised fine-tuning to teach a language model new knowledge risks increasing its hallucination rate.Their words
These empirical results from Gekhman et al. (2024) point out the risk of using supervised fine-tuning for updating LLMs' knowledge.
korrents.com
A language model avoids hallucinating only by being factual and admitting when it does not know the answer.Their words
To avoid hallucination, LLMs need to be (1) factual and (2) acknowledge not knowing the answer when applicable.
Their words
I suspect - but haven't verified - that in many corpora, we will encounter fairly bimodal Jaccard values - two clusters, near 1 and 0.
Likedrcmnd.app
Beyond the Visible: Hilma af KlintTheir words
Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint (Germany, 2019, CC) 3.6 When thinking about the most overlooked female artist, Artemesia Gentileschi often comes to mind. This documentary makes a persuasive case for Hilma af Klint. To my eyes, her most appealing works are not the large scale abstractions, rather it’s the small Klee-like gems that stand out. Don’t assume that if you have seen a half dozen of her most famous works that you have any conception of her overall career.
Likedrcmnd.app
State and MainTheir words
State and Main (US, 2000, CC) 3.6 Not quite top level Mamet, but consistently entertaining and full of great actors. Rebecca Pidgeon is especially outstanding, overshadowing even the great Philip Hoffman.
Likedrcmnd.app
You Were Like a Wild ChrysanthemumTheir words
You Were Like a Wild Chrysanthemum (Japan, 1955, CC) 3.5 Chishu Ryu is one of my favorite actors, but he has a fairly small role. Very nice cinematography. Recommended for fans of nostalgia.
Likedrcmnd.app
Dry SummerTheir words
Dry Summer (Turkey, 1964, CC) 3.5 I wasn’t sure I wanted to see a 50-year old Turkish film about farmers fighting over water rights. I did. There’s a reason Scorsese put this surprisingly entertaining film on his global cinema list.
Likedrcmnd.app
Clouds of Sils MariaTheir words
Clouds of Sils Maria (Swiss/French, 2014, CC) 3.5 Very good acting and good enough screenplay (even if some of the themes seem a bit warmed over.)
From one piece How to (and not to) become a more effective therapist 2 beliefs · writings.scottdmiller.com
korrents.com
What does make a therapist more effective is trainable interpersonal skill, not treatment technology.Their words
It turns out that therapists who perform well on the FIS establish stronger relationships and are more effective (2). More to the point, the evidence shows FIS-related skills are trainable and that such training leads to better results (3, 4, 5).
Their words
Over the last 50 years, treatment methods have proliferated despite a lack of evidence of differential effectiveness between approaches. And even when a randomized controlled trial indicates a particular approach works, none show practitioners become more effective when they are trained in that modality.
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
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
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
Recommendsrcmnd.app
Stalin: The Court of the Red TsarTheir words
Stalin: Court of the Red Czar by Montefiore
Recommendsrcmnd.app
AmyTheir words
Overall, required viewing for any Winehouse fan and of general psychiatric interest; possibly too painful to watch for others.
Likedrcmnd.app
All About EveTheir words
Excellent character-study/drama about the price of fame, the sincerest forms of flattery, and a little meta-fictionally, the psychology of the theatre and Broadway being usurped by Hollywood
Lovedrcmnd.app
Blade Runner 2049Their words
one of the best movies I’ve seen all year, well worth paying to see on the big screen
Recommendsrcmnd.app
They LiveTheir words
For a compelling depiction of how this might feel from the inside, I strongly recommend John Carpenter’s movie They Live
Likedrcmnd.app
Ready Player OneTheir words
It is excellent to watch on a big screen in 3D despite how silly it ultimately is, so I’m not surprised it’s been successful.
korrents.com
Britain has a systemic problem building large infrastructure projects, including reservoirsTheir words
It’s turned entire countries, like the United Kingdom, incapable of building more than about one line per generation.
Lovedrcmnd.app
Your AI Product Needs EvalsTheir words
Your AI Product Needs Evals by Hamel Husain remains my favourite piece of writing on how to go about putting these together.
Likedrcmnd.app
The social and political thought of Karl MarxTheir words
There Avineri draws on his excellent book published in 1968
From one piece Aravind Srinivas: Perplexity CEO on Future of AI, Search & the Internet | Lex Fridman Podcast #434 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
And also this is where I believe the whole prompt engineering, trying to be a good prompt engineer is not going to be a long-term thing. I think you want to make products work where a user doesn’t even ask for something, but you know that they want it and you give it to them without them even asking for it.
Their words
You can set out to build a good business and it’s still fine. Maybe the long-term business model of Perplexity can make us profitable in a good company, but never as profitable in a cash cow as Google was. You have to remember that it’s still okay.
Their words
What is the weakness of Google is that any ad unit that’s less profitable than a link, or any ad unit that kind of disincentivizes the link click is not in their interest to go aggressive on, because it takes money away from something that’s higher margins.
Their words
We would rather take a more dramatic position, that the best way to actually make a dent in the search space is to not try to do what Google does, but try to do something they don’t want to do. For them to do this for every single query is a lot of money to be spent, because their search volume is so much higher.
Their words
The principle in Perplexity is you’re not supposed to say anything that you don’t retrieve, which is even more powerful than RAG because RAG just says, “Okay, use this additional context and write an answer.” But we say, “Don’t use anything more than that too.” That way we ensure a factual grounding.
Their words
At current deployment rates it will take Waymo about 20 years with ZERO fatalities to show they are net as safe as average human driver fatality rates (including the old cars, impaired drivers, etc. in that comparison baseline).
Perspective on Waymo's Safety Progresssafeautonomy.blogspot.com
From one piece About Me 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
I don't teach people languages, I teach them how they can learn languages by themselves.
korrents.com
Anyone can learn a language, and what separates those who do is method rather than talent.Their words
Everybody can learn a language if they know how.
korrents.com
Nobody can be taught a language by anyone else; a teacher can help, but the learning is the learner's to do.Their words
I'm convinced that it's not possible to teach anyone a language. A good teacher can help you on this journey – but they cannot give the language to you on a silver platter.
From one piece Sara Walker: Physics of Life, Time, Complexity, and Aliens | Lex Fridman Podcast #433 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
But mathematics too, and it’s interesting because people think that math has this Platonic reality that exists outside of our universe, and I think it’s a feature of our biosphere and it’s telling us something about the structure of ourselves.
Their words
Oh, if it’s not chemical. So I think some of the things that have evolved on our biosphere I would call as much alive as chemistry, as a cell, but they seem much more abstract. So for example, I think language is alive, or at least life. I think memes are.
Their words
And then you can go to chemical system. I don’t think that’s good either. I think there’s a confusion because life emerges in chemistry that life is chemical. I don’t think life is chemical. I think life emerges in chemistry because chemistry is the first thing the universe builds where it cannot exhaust all the possibilities, because the combinatorial space of chemistry is too large.
Their words
That’s one of these standard different definitions that a lot of people in my field like to use in astrobiology is life as a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution, which I was once quoted as agreeing with, and I was really offended because I hate that definition. I think it’s terrible, and I think it’s terrible that people use it. I think every word in that definition is actually wrong as a descriptor of life.
Their words
I think life obeys universal principles. I think there is some deep underlying explanatory framework that will tell us about the nature of life in the universe and will allow us to identify life that we can’t yet recognize because it’s too different.
Likedrcmnd.app
Psychedelic AlphaTheir words
Josh Hardman at Psychedelic Alpha provided a detailed live account of the advisory committee meeting, which I found very helpful in developing a more granular sense of how the meeting unfolded without having to watch it myself.
Their words
My hot take is that JS has the lowest bar of entry to building and being productive (a good thing) but one of the highest bars of any language and stack to building high quality, stable, and reliable software. Very few devs have the expertise to pull off the latter
Their words
But their latest study is for only 7.1 million miles. They need something like 40 times more data prove they are actually saving lives with statistical confidence (likely even more).
Waymo's Misleading Claim of Saving Livessafeautonomy.blogspot.com
On changing their mind
And for a long time, I thought that's what had worked. That this was why Ruby on Rails took off, became one of the most popular full-stack web frameworks of all time, inspired countless clones, and created hundreds of billions in enterprise value for companies built on it. But I was wrong. It wasn't the crusade that did it.
Usesrcmnd.app
LG UltraWide 34WP85CTheir words
Monitor: LG UltraWide 34WP85C
Usesrcmnd.app
Keychron K2 Wireless Mechanical KeyboardTheir words
Keyboard: Keychron K2 (Hot-swappable) Wireless Mechanical Keyboard (Version 2)
Usesrcmnd.app
Sony WH-1000XM5Their words
Main Headset: Sony WH-1000XM5
Usesrcmnd.app
Logitech MX Master 3Their words
Mouse: Logitech MX Master 3
Usesrcmnd.app
Steelcase Gesture office chairTheir words
Chair: Steelcase Gesture office chair with cover in onyx black with headrest
Recommendsrcmnd.app
The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American FoundingTheir words
Buy it! Read it!
From one piece Shortages and Spillovers: How People Misunderstand the Housing Crisis 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
The biggest barrier of all, of course, is that the majority of neighborhoods are not allowed to add any housing at all.
Their words
But understand that it’s ultimately a moral and political argument, not an empirical question of the ideal population or the exact level of housing demand in Santa Monica.
Their words
So, when housing demand can’t be met in a given place, it doesn’t evaporate. It spills over. It goes somewhere.
Their words
In fact — and this is a point that is, in my opinion, underappreciated by the pro-housing side — building a bunch of housing in Santa Monica would probably not lower rents in Santa Monica. It would bring more people to Santa Monica, creating lower rents elsewhere in Greater Los Angeles as the spillovers from Santa Monica lessened.
Their words
Empirical data drawn from many different regions clearly shows that, on a metropolitan scale, rents tend to rise when vacancy rates are low and stabilize when vacancy rates are high.
From one piece Charan Ranganath: Human Memory, Imagination, Deja Vu, and False Memories | Lex Fridman Podcast #430 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
You only retain what you were pushed to your limit on: if learning feels like coasting, you are not learning.Their words
So that’s why I think this is a thing that I come back to over and over again, is that you will retain information better if you’re constantly pushing yourself to your limit. If you are feeling like you’re coasting, then you’re actually not learning
Their words
So if you remember this information in different times in different places, it’s more accessible at different times in different places because it’s not overfitted in an AI way of thinking about things. It’s not overfitted to one particular context. But that’s also why the memories that we call upon the most also feel like they’re just things that we read about almost.
Their words
if I just try to do half-an-hour and then later in the day I do half-an-hour, I won’t retain that information as long as if I do half-an-hour today and half-an-hour one week from now. So doing that extra spacing should help me retain the information better.
Their words
is this idea that we form these internal models at particular points of high prediction error or points of, I believe also points of uncertainty, points of surprise or motivationally significant periods. And those points are when it’s maximally optimal to encode an episodic memory.
Their words
What I say in the book is is that you don’t want to remember more, you want to remember better, which means focusing on the things that are important. That’s what our brains are designed to do.
Likedtheir ownrcmnd.app
Decent DE1Their words
In the early days, the DE1 was considered "unforgiving" by many. I didn't mind, as the DE1's ability to control shot parameters more than made up for its early challenges.
Likedrcmnd.app
Niche ZeroTheir words
High quality, budget grinders were rare at the time. The Niche Zero and other new grinders changed that, and helped make it easier to pull good shots.
From one piece Stripe's monorepo developer environment 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
Per-engineer productivity inevitably declines somewhat as an organization and its codebase growTheir words
It is almost inevitable that per-engineer productivity drops to some extent as an organization and codebase grows, even though it's also nearly-impossible to quantify that effect.
korrents.com
Rapidly growing organizations need a developer environment that works well out of the box for new engineersTheir words
In a rapidly growing organization, it's much more important to have a developer environment that "just works" out of the gate, with minimal setup pain for new engineers.
korrents.com
Reliable, stable developer tooling matters more than which specific technical choices a team makesTheir words
The best tooling in the world will struggle to make up for "regularly losing a day debugging your environment," and so getting that aspect right can easily outweigh almost any other decisions you make.
From one piece On self driving, Waymo is playing chess while Tesla plays checkers 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
A huge fleet collecting driving data is not a silver bullet for self-driving, because the data arrives unlabelled.Their words
But while access to more data is certainly helpful, it’s not a magic bullet. One issue is that the data Tesla collects is unlabeled.
Their words
So Tesla hasn’t found a different, better way to bring driverless technology to market. Waymo is just so far ahead that it’s dealing with challenges Tesla hasn’t started thinking about.
Their words
If Waymo vehicles were constantly asking for remote guidance, Waymo might need to hire so many remote operators that it negates the cost savings that come from not needing a driver.
Their words
Indeed, as I've reported in previous posts, research not only shows therapists do not improve with time and experience in the field, but on average become less effective (1, 2, 3, 4).
Lovedrcmnd.app
The WomenTheir words
This terrific novel tells the story of Frankie McGrath, an army nurse who serves two tours on the frontlines in Vietnam before returning home to a country rocked by protest and anti-war sentiment.
From one piece Group chats rule the world 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
It is impossible to add new members forever without decreasing quality.
korrents.com
Ideas that first circulate in private group chats often become mainstream public opinion.Their words
Time and time again I've seen group chat conversations act as the memetic upstream of mainstream opinion.
korrents.com
Private group chats have become the primary venue for the most interesting conversations in tech.Their words
Most of the interesting conversations in tech now happen in private group chats: Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, small invite-only Discord groups.
Their words
People are overreacting to the Remix React Router merge.
From one piece The Stuff of (a Well-Lived) Life 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
in relation to devices we tend to be relegated to the status of a user, who may more often than not be the one being used
The Stuff of (a Well-Lived) Lifetheconvivialsociety.substack.com
korrents.com
A good life rests on things that demand skill and effort from you, not on goods that arrive requiring none.Their words
A good life is supported by a diverse array of focal things and practices, which tend to reward us with deeper, more meaningful experiences; a gratifying measure of bodily skill and competence; and possibly even a stronger fabric of relationships.
The Stuff of (a Well-Lived) Lifetheconvivialsociety.substack.com
From one piece The Evolving Landscape of LLM Evaluation 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
GPT models perform much better on coding problems released before their pre-training data cut-off.
Their words
The time when benchmarks lasted multiple decades has passed. Going forward, we will rely less on public benchmark results.
Lovedrcmnd.app
The Sense of StyleTheir words
Steven Pinker goes deep, showing how understanding the science of memory, social understanding, and syntactic structure can really pay off in making one a better writer.
Recommendsrcmnd.app
The Writing WorkshopTheir words
I highly recommend this for graduate students and postdocs, but it’s useful for the rest of us as well.
Likedrcmnd.app
On WritingTheir words
But Stephen King has good war stories, and his book really is bullshit-free.
Lovedrcmnd.app
Clear and Simple as the TruthTheir words
When I’m stuck and hate myself and my work, I pick up Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Tuner’s short and wonderful book
From one piece How to Conquer Your Biggest Fear 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
A person's identity is essentially the sum of their accumulated associations and repeated habits.Their words
Take the sum total of those associations and you get a person's identity.
korrents.com
The human mind functions as an association-forming machine, linking past experiences to present beliefs.Their words
Exposure therapy works because the human mind is an association machine.
From one piece It shouldn't be easy to buy synthetic DNA fragments to recreate the 1918 flu virus 4 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
That makes it essential to ensure that all synthetic DNA orders are screened to determine whether they contain hazardous sequences, which should be shipped only to legitimate researchers whose work has been approved by a biosafety authority.
Their words
Both the genome sequences of pandemic viruses and step-by-step protocols to make infectious samples from synthetic DNA are now freely available online.
Their words
It should be hard — exceedingly hard — to obtain the synthetic DNA needed to recreate the virus that caused the deadly 1918 influenza pandemic without authorization. But my lab found that it’s surprisingly easy, even when ordering gene fragments from companies that check customers’ orders to detect hazardous sequences.
Their words
Our experiment demonstrates that the immense potential benefits of biotechnology are profoundly vulnerable to misuse.
From one piece The case for ensuring that powerful AIs are controlled 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
AI control (with only black-box techniques) seems like a fundamentally limited approach.
Their words
Because evaluating control just requires evaluating capabilities, it's far easier to robustly evaluate than alignment.
Their words
So when evaluating control, we should count catching an AI red-handed as a win condition.
Their words
We think no fundamental research breakthroughs are required for labs to implement safety measures that meet our standard for AI control for early transformatively useful AIs; we think that meeting our standard would substantially reduce the risks posed by intentional subversion.
Their words
That is, labs should make sure that the safety measures they apply to their powerful models prevent unacceptably bad outcomes, even if the AIs are misaligned and intentionally try to subvert those safety measures.
From one piece How I Think About Debt 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
korrents.com
The real price of debt is paid in options and flexibility, which is the asset that matters most.Their words
you start to see it as a constraint on the asset that matters most: having options and flexibility
korrents.com
Debt is best understood as narrowing the range of outcomes you can survive, not as a cost of capital.Their words
I think this is the most practical way to think about debt: As debt increases, you narrow the range of outcomes you can endure in life.
From one piece Speech on Europe, Sorbonne, 25 April 2024 (Elysee English transcript) 3 beliefs · elysee.fr
Their words
We cannot sustain the most stringent environmental and social norms, invest less than our competitors, have a more naive trade policy than them and think that we will continue to generate jobs. This no longer holds together.
Their words
And so yes, the era when Europe bought its energy and fertilizers from Russia, had its goods manufactured in China, and delegated its security to the United States of America, is over.
korrents.com
Europe is mortal — it can die, and whether it does depends entirely on choices Europeans make now.Their words
My message today is simple. Paul Valéry said, at the end of the First World War, that we now know that our civilizations are mortal. We must be clear on the fact that our Europe, today, is mortal. It can die. It can die, and that depends entirely on our choices. But these choices must be made now.
From one piece Sean Carroll: General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Black Holes & Aliens | Lex Fridman Podcast #428 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
Sometimes people think that complexity or life or whatever is fighting against the second law of thermodynamics, fighting against the increase of entropy. That is precisely the wrong way to think about it. We are surfers riding the wave of increasing entropy. We rely on increasing entropy to survive.
Their words
Remember space and time are parts of one unified space-time, the location of the singularity in the black hole is not the middle of space, but our future. It is a moment of time. It is like a big crunch.
Their words
I think that that story about the latter part is completely wrong, almost 180 degrees wrong. I think that Einstein understood quantum mechanics as well as anyone, at least up through the 1930s. I think that his philosophical objections to it are correct. He should actually have been taken much more seriously about that.
Nothing matches.
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
About the English under a post
Some people here publish in a language other than English. Where they do, this site shows a machine translation beneath the post, in this typeface — the site's own, not theirs.
The post itself is never changed, moved or hidden: what is set in the serif above is exactly what the person published, and it is what to quote them on. A translation can be wrong in ways that matter, especially about tone.
Only the post's own words are translated. A quoted post, a linked article and a belief on korrents.com are left in their original language.