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17 September
Writes Slow Boring, a near-daily newsletter on American politics and public policy; co-founded Vox in 2014 and left it in 2020.
16 September
Psychologist and writer. Author of the memoir Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, and of a newsletter on human nature, psychology, social class and what he calls luxury beliefs.
"we may think that in the contemporary world we have moved beyond...the need for religious belief and worship has largely been superseded; but we have merely transferred these primal needs to celebrities and charismatic politicians and political leaders" Related
15 September
Writer and climate campaigner; wrote The End of Nature in 1989, founded 350.org and Third Act, and writes The Crucial Years.
11 September
Co-founder and chief investment officer of Cambria Investment Management. He has written several books on quantitative asset allocation, blogs at Meb Faber Research and hosts The Meb Faber Show.
Aligning with a party prevents you from ever having this (obviously correct) opinion. Trump's grifting (meme coin, selling early access to tweets, $5k bribes) is gross, unnecessary, and destroys confidence in markets and politicians. The Trump accounts are a fantastic achievement and could change millions upon millions of Americans' lives. Quoting @MebFaber The single worst trade I can think of: Sacrificing your mental independence and emotional health to align with a political party. Zero upside and massive downside. Try subbing out "ideas" for "party" in my favorite @AdamMGrant quote America Related
Economist; former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.
It takes at least 10 years after high school to get to the frontier of economic research, or to the frontier of medical research. Except for a few kooks, most people, smartly, do not try to engage and question medical researchers. Unfortunately, this is not true for economics. Many too many self-appointed experts, including among politicians. Quoting @mbompard Il est grave que le gouverneur de la banque de France diffuse ainsi de fausses informations. 1) Rien dans les traités européens ne dit ce que la BCE doit faire des titres de dettes des États dont elle dispose. Les mêmes arguments d’illégalité étaient utilisés contre le rachat des titres par la BCE… Related
10 September
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.
9 September
Computer science professor who works on fast data processing; co-author of the simdjson parser and a weekly blogger about software performance since 2004.
Politicians, and people, are often deeply irrational. But it is often easier not to talk about it. In fact, it is considered impolite to talk about it. Case in point. In August 1914, British Columbia premier Sir Richard McBride spent $1.15 million of provincial money on two American submarines. That was about twice the yearly budget of the Royal Canadian Navy. Canadian provinces have no military. The man had no business buying weapons, let alone submarines. Let alone incredibly expensive submarines. A German attack on the West Coast was never likely. Germany did have cruisers in the Pacific f… Quoting @TristinHopper I regularly visit the grave of the B.C. premier who panicked at the outset of the First World War and used taxpayer money to buy a pair of random South American submarines. America Related
5 September
Researcher of social media, privacy and youth culture; founder of Data & Society and author of It’s Complicated.
Many politicians are obsessed with the idea that non-citizens vote. The reality is often more complicated. Did you know that American Samoans have a US passport and yet cannot vote or run for office? Quoting @taniel.bsky.social Meaningful news earlier today. Many of you read and reacted to this story earlier this year on this Samoan woman in Alaska who was being prosecuted for voting alongside many in her family. A judge tossed her case today—a huge win, if just a first step in her story. America Related
4 September
American-Polish journalist and historian, staff writer at The Atlantic; author of Gulag, Iron Curtain, Twilight of Democracy and Autocracy, Inc.
3 September
Programmer, teacher and speaker; long-time Microsoft developer-community figure, host of the Hanselminutes podcast and author of the hanselman.com blog.
The first time Dave Barry wrote about tech, Miami Herald, 1985: "To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess that you call your life." Forty years later he doesn't think computers made us dumber. Related
1 September
Epidemiologist; founded Your Local Epidemiologist in March 2020 to translate public-health science, and consults for organisations including the CDC.
Technical staff at METR, where she works on threat modelling and risk assessment for loss-of-control risks from advanced AI.
open source
Their words
I'm not sure I like agree exactly with the oversight benefit you named of like you know open source systems keeping frontier systems in check feels more unrealistic to me because they're going to be so much dumber than the frontier systems.
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youtube.com
17 August
Writer on the intersection of technology and finance. Author of the Bits about Money newsletter and host of the Complex Systems podcast; previously at Stripe.
How many people do you have to convince in a city to get the difference between 20k car break-ins and 5k break-ins? I think it’s probably something like 10-20. Plus politicians/cops/etc but they have much less direct control of the metric than the decisionmakers do. Quoting @JonathanHillis Now that’s the kind of user feedback you like to see for San Francisco’s public safety initiatives Related
4 August
Writer and former Substack product manager; publishes essays and interviews on technology, culture and China at jasmi.news.
This piece is out! 4 sites, 10 days, and 6000 words on the politics of data centers in the Midwest: https://t.co/uOL7vmf3wC I talked to union leaders and real estate brokers, activists and local officials, politicians from Kathy Hochul to Abdul El-Sayed. A few takeaways: - Activists are as pissed at their local officials as at AI companies - The bigger the dollar signs, the more skeptical people are - Past corporate failures (Foxconn, GM, DTE) prime community distrust - Even data center proponents regret the NDAs - Media narratives turn local grievances into national movements - Residents fea… Quoting @jasminewsun I’m spending the next week driving around Wisconsin and Michigan to get a firsthand view of the data center buildout and backlash am visiting sites, talking to tons of people — tradespeople, activists, planners, residents — then writing up a story lmk what questions I should dig into! data centers Related
1 August
Brazilian software engineer, creator and maintainer of GoReleaser; works on Copilot CLI at GitHub. Writes about tooling and his setup at carlosbecker.com.
looking forward to this being implemented everywhere so we can live in a world where all politicians are unemployed 🙏🏻 Quoting @adamemedia1 Every country on earth needs to do this. Related
21 July
Climate journalist; founded HEATED in 2019 after reporting on climate at The New Republic and ThinkProgress.
Their words
The fossil fuel industry's great political achievement is not that it has persuaded every Republican that climate change is a hoax. It is that it has made the truth unspeakable among Republican politicians-even when their constituents are choking on it.
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heated.world
17 July
Writes Very Serious, a newsletter on politics, the economy and culture, and hosts the podcast of the same name.
From one piece
Permanent Daylight Saving Time Is the Perfect Stupid Idea for Our Stupid Time
2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
politicians acting based on what they think polls well, rather than based on what will actually produce results that make voters happy
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joshbarro.com
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the increasing unreasonableness of an electorate that wants all its groceries in one bag and also doesn't want the bag to be heavy is a primary driver behind permanently low approval of politicians in both parties
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joshbarro.com
16 July
Co-founder of Netscape and of the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz. Argues at length for building things, mostly in short form.
Factories were built back when politicians still wanted their constituents to have jobs. Quoting @MTSlive Zane Hengsperger on the surprising reason NIMBY protests never come for factories the way they come for data centers: "I would argue NIMBYism does not matter for factories. It obviously for data centers is a major problem." "Look at any city mayor who brings a manufacturing company to their city. T… Related
5 July
Monetary economist known for NGDP-level targeting. Wrote TheMoneyIllusion until it closed in 2024 and now writes The Pursuit of Happiness.
9 May
Writes Very Serious, a newsletter on politics, the economy and culture, and hosts the podcast of the same name.
1 March
Researcher of social media, privacy and youth culture; founder of Data & Society and author of It’s Complicated.
Current household debate: Who bullshits more - GenAI or politicians? Related
12 February
Hosts the Lex Fridman Podcast — long, unhurried conversations with scientists, engineers and public figures. Several of the interviews quoted elsewhere on this site are episodes of it.
Their words
it’s probably most likely the case that the intelligence of the model is not degrading. It’s in fact you’re getting used to a good thing.
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youtube.com
18 January
Organizational psychologist and professor at the Wharton School. Author of Give and Take, Originals, Think Again and Hidden Potential, host of the Re:Thinking podcast, and writer of the GRANTED newsletter.
Their words
Politics Without Politicians by political scientist Hélène Landemore (February)
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adamgrant.substack.com
30 September 2025
Founder of Telegram, and before it of VK.
Their words
I believe this is the right answer. We're often being manipulated by politicians, by corporate leaders to make a choice from two suboptimal options. And then when we are forced to make this choice and we make this choice, it's almost as if it's something that we have to assume responsibility for. I don't think we should be buying into that.
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youtube.com
26 September 2025
Reinforcement-learning researcher; co-wrote the field's standard textbook, wrote The Bitter Lesson, and shared the 2024 Turing Award.
Their words
If you go to look about how psychologists think about learning, there's nothing like uh imitation. Maybe there are some extreme cases where humans might do that or appear to do that, but there's no basic animal learning process called imitation.
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youtube.com
22 May 2025
Research psychologist, instrumental in founding the field of naturalistic decision making; developed the recognition-primed decision model, the PreMortem method and the ShadowBox training method, and wrote Sources of Power and Seeing What Others Don't.
1 December 2024
Social scientist at King's College London; writes The Great Gender Divergence on why societies differ in how they treat women.
From one piece
Does Women’s Rise trigger Backlash?
2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
13 October 2024
Pen name of the Canadian-American writer behind mrmoneymustache.com, a blog on frugality, early retirement and index-fund investing that has run since 2011.
20 June 2023
Professor of economics at George Mason University and Bartley J. Madden Chair at the Mercatus Center. Co-writes the blog Marginal Revolution and co-authors the textbook Modern Principles of Economics with Tyler Cowen.
17 February 2023
Writer and illustrator behind Wait But Why, a long-form blog of stick-figure-illustrated explainers on science, technology and society, and author of the book What's Our Problem?
28 June 2022
Writer of the blog Putanumonit and the newsletter Second Person, on rationality, dating and probability; based in New York.
11 March 2015
Professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus at Yale. Author of Against Empathy, The Sweet Spot and Psych, and writer of the Small Potatoes newsletter.
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