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Founding executive editor of Wired and author of What Technology Wants and The Inevitable. Writes at kk.org and runs its long-running recommendation projects, True Films and Cool Tools.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Copyright law's purpose is to incentivize creation for public benefit, not to guarantee revenue streams.

  Their words

  The constitutional rationale for US copyright is incentivizing creation for public benefit, not necessarily securing revenue streams.

  Arguments in Favor of AI Fair Usekk.org

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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  The binding constraint on AI is not chips but the physical plant around them — power, transformers, cooling and networking.

  Their words

  Consensus estimate is that ~15GW of AI compute produced in 2027 cannot be turned on in 2027. This is harder than just finding power, as you also need to build out all the transformers, wiring, liquid-cooling, (massive) chillers & complex networking.

  @elonmusk on Xx.com

Founded Bridgewater Associates in 1975 and led it until stepping back from control in 2022. Author of Principles, The Changing World Order and How Countries Go Broke; publishes economic analysis at economicprinciples.org.

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  The late stage of the Big Debt Cycle shows itself as long rates leading rates up, the currency falling against gold, and the treasury shortening maturities.

  interest ratesgovernment

  Their words

  Early in the final stage of the Big Debt Cycle, the market action reflects this dynamic via interest rates rising led by long-term rates, the currency declining especially relative to gold, and the central government’s treasury department shortening the maturities of its debt offerings because of a shortage of the demand for long-term debt.

  raydalio.substack.com

Data scientist at Our World in Data and author of Not the End of the World. Writes By the Numbers, working through energy and climate questions with the numbers in front of them, and revising in public when they say something unexpected.

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  Privatisation of the water industry created a disincentive for building new reservoirs

  Their words

  There is also a clear rationale for why privatisation would lead to a drought in reservoir-building.

  The UK needs to build more reservoirshannahritchie.substack.com

Emeritus professor of war studies at King's College London; wrote Strategy: A History and Command, and writes about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza as they happen.

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  The fog of war has changed form: a shortage of reliable information has been replaced by information that is plentiful but contradictory, dated and manipulated.

  Their words

  In Clausewitz’s time, the problem was a scarcity of reliable information; now the information is plentiful, but it can be contradictory, dated, manipulated, and excessive.

  AI and the New Fog of Warsamf.substack.com

Senior space editor at Ars Technica; wrote Liftoff and Reentry on SpaceX, and reports on launch and rocket programmes.

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  The shortage of launch capacity will get worse over the next few years, not better.

  Their words

  And if things are bad now, there are reasons to believe they may get even worse over the next two to four years.

  arstechnica.com

Chief executive of Intel since 2025, founder of the venture firm Walden International and chief executive of Cadence Design Systems for thirteen years.

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  The binding constraints on AI's growth are power, helium and memory — and almost nobody has noticed the helium one.

  Their words

  One is of course everybody knows power constraint. Some country the power they just don't have that. They get impacted. And then secondly, a lot of people didn't realize the helium impact can be also very significant for semiconductor. And then the thirdly, is everybody know right now memory is a bigger shortage.

  youtube.com

Geneticist at Harvard; reads ancient DNA to work out how populations moved and mixed, and wrote Who We Are and How We Got Here.

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  The weak selection signal on behavioural traits is a shortage of statistical power, not evidence that behaviour was unselected.

  Their words

  It may still be the case, and I guess it is, that immune traits are the most selected category, but is not at all the case, and in fact, we can prove it's not the case that behavioral traits are not selected.

  youtube.com

Founder and chief analyst of SemiAnalysis; reports on semiconductor supply chains, AI datacentre economics and what the chip export controls actually do.

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  Anthropic saw the coming shortage of chips before Google did, and bought Google's own TPUs out from under it.

  AnthropicGoogle

  Their words

  Because Enthropic saw it before Google. And then Google had Nano Banano and Gemini 3 which caused their user metrics to skyrocket and leadership at Google was like oh and then they started making the statement of we have to double compute every is it 6 months or I don't remember the exact number that they said.

  youtube.com

Demographer; writes on fertility, marriage and population, and directs the Pro-Family Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies.

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  Something is broken in how people pair up in the West, and that shortage of couples and marriages, not money, is why there are too few children.

  Their words

  The empirical evidence strongly refutes the idea that rising opportunity costs of childbearing are driving low fertility. Declining marriage due to exogenous technology and economics shocks is tanking fertility irrespective of child direct or opportunity costs.

  Falling Fertility Is Not About Opportunity Costlymanstone.substack.com

Mac and iOS developer at the Iconfactory, where he has worked on apps including Twitterrific and Tot. He writes about development at furbo.org.

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  A major new interface redesign takes roughly a year of refinement before it looks presentable.

  Their words

  Liquid Glass is currently in a barely presentable state on iOS. It's going to be like iOS 7 and take another year to sand down the rough edges.

  One Size Does Not Fit Allfurbo.org

Semiconductor analyst; writes Fabricated Knowledge on the chip industry and the companies in it.

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  Every semiconductor shortage is followed by a glut, because capacity arrives in lumps long after the price signal that ordered it.

  Their words

  A glut follows every semiconductor shortage.

  Capital Cycles and AIfabricatedknowledge.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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  Something is broken in how people pair up in the West, and that shortage of couples and marriages, not money, is why there are too few children.

  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.

  Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally?ggd.world

Structural engineer and senior infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress; writes Construction Physics on why physical things cost what they cost.

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  Air cooling has run out of headroom for AI racks, so liquid cooling is now a requirement rather than an upgrade.

  Their words

  Conventional air cooling is likely limited to around 20 to 30 kilowatt racks, perhaps 50 kilowatts if rear heat exchangers are used.

  How to Build an AI Data Centerconstruction-physics.com

Urban planner, co-author with Charles Marohn of Escaping the Housing Trap, and policy director at the Parking Reform Network. Wrote for Strong Towns from 2015, mostly about how housing markets actually set prices.

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  Housing demand that a neighbourhood is not allowed to absorb does not disappear; it floods somewhere else, and that is what a housing shortage actually is.

  Their words

  So, when housing demand can’t be met in a given place, it doesn’t evaporate. It spills over. It goes somewhere.

  strongtowns.org

Engineer writing about the physical economy — oil and gas, manufacturing, batteries, drones and what it costs to build things.

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  Air cooling has run out of headroom for AI racks, so liquid cooling is now a requirement rather than an upgrade.

  Their words

  AI servers bring new challenges because many require liquid cooling.

  How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordableaustinvernon.site

Semiconductor analyst; writes Fabricated Knowledge on the chip industry and the companies in it.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Air cooling has run out of headroom for AI racks, so liquid cooling is now a requirement rather than an upgrade.

  Their words

  The critical change that makes this all possible is liquid cooling.

  fabricatedknowledge.com

Development economist; argues that letting people move to rich countries does more for the poor than aid, and wrote Let Their People Come.

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  Opening legal pathways for people to move to the jobs would solve rich countries’ labour shortage and lift millions out of poverty at the same time.

  Their words

  If we collectively devoted the same levels of investment and inventive power and entrepreneurship to developing more and better legal pathways for people to move across borders to needed jobs, including a variety of modalities for labor mobility, we could solve the growing challenge of labor scarcity.

  Choose Peoplelampforum.org

Structural engineer and senior infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress; writes Construction Physics on why physical things cost what they cost.

From one piece Is There a Housing Shortage or Not? 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  The United States really is short several million homes, and the shortage shows up as a historically low vacancy rate rather than as too few homes per person.

  America

  Their words

  So, historical evidence suggests that the US is short at least several million housing units.

  Is There a Housing Shortage or Not?construction-physics.com

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  You cannot infer a housing shortage from how much a country is building, because how much it needs to build changes with its demography.

  Their words

  If there’s one thing to take away from this essay, it's that you can’t infer a housing shortage by looking at housing construction rates in isolation.

  Is There a Housing Shortage or Not?construction-physics.com