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Writes Slow Boring, a near-daily newsletter on American politics and public policy; co-founded Vox in 2014 and left it in 2020.

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  Netanyahu's governing coalition depends on parties that openly back anti-Palestinian violence.

  Their words

  The current Netanyahu coalition is dependent on small parties that are overtly supportive of irregular anti-Palestinian violence.

  Sanctions on West Bank settlements aren’t enoughslowboring.com

Economist and journalist; Financial Times columnist as The Undercover Economist, author of How to Make the World Add Up, and presenter of the Cautionary Tales podcast.

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  Politicians often avoid the most beneficial policies because they lack the political courage or skill to introduce them.

  Their words

  All too often, politicians are turning their back on the most beneficial policies because they lack the political courage or the political skill to introduce them.

  Nudge or tax? At last, some datatimharford.com

Co-founder of Y Combinator and Viaweb; essayist at paulgraham.com.

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  Chinese labs will encounter the same threats within a year, in complete silence.

  China

  Their words

  But Chinese labs will encounter the same threats within a year, in complete silence.

  @paulg on Xx.com

Co-founder of AngelList. Writes and podcasts at nav.al in short, aphoristic pieces on startups, wealth and judgement rather than long essays.

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  Enforcing equality against biology and markets requires censorship and violence, which makes the project immoral whatever its moral claim.

  Their words

  The left is on a project to enforce equality, despite biology and markets. The goal of equality gives claim to the moral high ground, but contradicting biology and markets requires censorship and violence, which makes the whole project immoral.

  @naval on Xx.com

Software engineer and writer; worked on Mapbox and built Placemark and Simple Statistics, and blogs at macwright.com.

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  Longer device upgrade cycles are beneficial because they reduce e-waste, pollution, and churn.

  Their words

  But either way, it's good that upgrade cycles are longer: it means less e-waste, less pollution, less churn overall.

  Technology optimism hourmacwright.com

Professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS and co-author, with Abraham Newman, of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy.

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  As societies rely more on coordination than coercion, the power to shape beliefs and knowledge grows in importance.

  Their words

  If anything, I think that the book has gained very substantially in relevance, as more of our social structures have come to rely on coordination rather than violence.

  No-One Makes You Shop at Amazonprogrammablemutter.com

Journalist and author of The Art of Noticing; writes the newsletter The Art of Noticing (TAoN) on attention, creativity and the everyday.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  The Symphony of Silence: An Exploration of the Sound of Absence

  Their words

  A few months ago I read an essay about silence by Amir Zadnemat in 3 Quarks Daily, called "The Symphony of Silence: An Exploration of the Sound of Absence"*. The most interesting section was a riff on various kinds of silence, especially in spoken language, each communicating something very distinct despite the fact that objectively each silence sounds (or I guess doesn't sound) identical:

  robwalker.substack.com

Systems and developer-tools engineer at Cloudflare as of 2026, on durable infrastructure for AI agents; worked on React and PartyKit before that. Writes at sunilpai.dev.

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  Organisational dissent suits an AI precisely because it pays none of the costs -- no promotion to want, no ego, no performance review -- that silence the humans who do it.

  Their words

  an ai is oddly well suited to this job. cassandra doesn’t want a promotion and doesn’t need the people in the channel to like her. disagreeing with the vp three times this month won’t show up in a performance review. she doesn’t have an ego invested in being right either.

  every company needs a cassandrasunilpai.dev

Psychiatrist and clinical assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University. Writes Psychiatry at the Margins on the philosophical and scientific arguments inside psychiatry and the psy-sciences.

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  The Rumpelstiltskin effect claims only that the act of being diagnosed can itself help, not that a diagnosis is a net good for the patient.

  Their words

  The Rumpelstiltskin effect is not a claim that receiving a diagnosis is a net benefit or a net positive. It is a claim that the mere act of receiving a diagnosis can be beneficial.

  psychiatrymargins.com

Author of The Lean Startup and Incorruptible, and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, who advises companies on corporate governance and mission protection.

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  Shareholder primacy is about forty years old rather than a natural law, and for centuries before it a corporation existed to pursue a specific beneficial purpose.

  Their words

  this idea is old enough that we now have a generation of people who have been raised as if this was a natural law. This is how capitalism has always been. But that's wrong. For the vast majority of the time, for hundreds of years, we have had joint stock corporations. Only the last 40 have we had this idea.

  youtube.com

Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

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  Long stretches of being disconnected -- no internet, no phone, no people -- are what make creative work possible.

  Their words, before

  All the best, happiest, and most creatively productive times in my life have something in common: being disconnected.

  Their words now

  Media silence creates a vacuum, which your own thoughts expand to fill.

Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

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  Long stretches of being disconnected -- no internet, no phone, no people -- are what make creative work possible.

  Their words

  Media silence creates a vacuum, which your own thoughts expand to fill.

  Offline 23 hours a daysive.rs

American social psychologist at NYU Stern School of Business; author of The Happiness Hypothesis, The Righteous Mind and The Anxious Generation.

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  Social media in its current form harms people of all ages; the line is drawn at childhood only because adults are allowed to choose things that are bad for them.

  Addiction

  Their words

  Like any addictive consumer product that routinely exposes users to graphic sex, extreme violence, and anonymous sexual predators, social media in its current form causes a variety of harms to people of all ages. But we allow adults (often defined as age 18) to make decisions that are bad for them.

  afterbabel.com

Co-founder of Foundry Group and of Techstars. Has blogged at Feld Thoughts since 2004 and has written or co-written nine non-fiction books on startups and venture capital.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Echoes of October

  Their words

  I approached Echoes of October with trepidation. A graphic novel about violence and grief isn’t easy terrain. But it succeeds in a haunting, urgent way.

  feld.com

Fellow at the Manhattan Institute writing on crime, drugs and policing; writes The Causal Fallacy.

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  Criminal justice reform has already diverted nearly everyone who can be diverted, so further decarceration means releasing people charged with violence.

  Their words

  Years of reform mean that almost everyone who can be diverted from Rikers already is.

  Prison Abolition in New York?thecausalfallacy.substack.com

Astrophysicist at the University of Rochester; works on the search for life elsewhere and wrote The Little Book of Aliens and Light of the Stars.

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  There is no Fermi paradox from the great silence: nobody has looked, for the entirely mundane reason that nobody funded the search.

  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.

  youtube.com

Social scientist at King's College London; writes The Great Gender Divergence on why societies differ in how they treat women.

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  A multi-ethnic society only gets the benefits of diversity if it deliberately builds a shared national identity.

  Their words

  However, productive collaborations are not inevitable. Just look at ethnic violence in South-East Asia or Hindu Nationalism in India. Nation-building is really valuable, learning from multi-ethnic, democratic Indonesia.

  Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally?ggd.world

Theoretical physicist and philosopher, Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins and fractal faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Writes the Preposterous Universe blog and hosts the Mindscape podcast.

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  A great filter is a weak explanation for the silence, because it would have to work every single time — one civilization with self-replicating probes could fill the galaxy.

  Their words

  That is absolutely possible. I’m actually putting less credence on that one just because you need to happen every single time. If even one, I mean, this goes back to John von Neumann pointed out that you don’t need to send the aliens around the galaxy. You can build self-reproducing probes and send them around the galaxy.

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Historian of Ukraine at Harvard; wrote The Gates of Europe, Chernobyl and The Russo-Ukrainian War.

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  Russians and Ukrainians behave differently even when they speak the same language: police violence ended the protests at Bolotnaya and began them on the Maidan.

  Russia

  Their words

  You have Bolotnaya in Moscow and police violence, and that’s the end of it. You have the Maidan in Ukraine and you have police violence, and that’s the beginning, that’s not the end.

  youtube.com

Researcher and science writer. Co-founder and editor at Works in Progress magazine, formerly a researcher at Our World in Data, and author of the Scientific Discovery newsletter on science, global health and medical innovation.

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  Women outlive men because their death rates are lower at every age, not because men die in accidents and violence.

  Their words

  But women actually tend to live longer than men because they have lower death rates across their lifespans, which you can see in the chart below.

  scientificdiscovery.dev

Founded SpaceX in 2002, joined Tesla's board in 2004 and became its chief executive in 2008; later founded Neuralink, The Boring Company and xAI. Bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, where he now posts many times a day.

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  Human violence is not a human peculiarity: nature is not a peaceful thing, and every living thing in it is trying to kill something else.

  Their words

  People think of nature as perhaps some sort of peaceful thing, but in fact it is not. There’s some quite funny Werner Herzog thing where he is in the jungle saying that it’s basically just murder and death in every direction. The plants and animals in the jungle are constantly trying to kill each other every single day, every minute. So it’s not like we’re unusual in that respect.

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