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Economics writer; author of the Noahpinion newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  English people are becoming smarter due to the cognitive demands of navigating Heathrow Airport.

  Their words

  English people are becoming smarter because of the cognitive workouts they're forced to complete by navigating Heathrow Airport

  @Noahpinion on Xx.com

Climate journalist; founded HEATED in 2019 after reporting on climate at The New Republic and ThinkProgress.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A company that is a genuine climate champion should not need to be forced into climate action.

  Google

  Their words

  But if Microsoft, Amazon and Google are truly the climate champions they claim to be, they shouldn't need to be forced.

  heated.world

Writer and consultant on formal methods and software correctness; author of Practical TLA+ and Logic for Programmers.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Engineers are sceptical of formal methods because they were burned by CASE and UML, sold as miracle solutions and imposed on them regardless of fit.

  Their words

  I think a lot of the reason people are skeptical of these is because they've been burned by things like case and UML and all these other miracle solutions that were forced on them by people who wanted them to use it no matter what.

  Formal methods with Hillel Wayneyoutube.com

Freelance climate and energy analyst in Oslo, writing on Europe, the US and Australia; worked in the Australian renewables industry before that.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Generative AI's climate harm comes mainly from wasteful system design and forced-on features, not from the computational cost of individual queries.

  Google

  Their words

  What is happening is that GenAI's climate harm comes from the system design, such as Google's AI overview triggering constantly whether users want it or not, in addition to significantly worse digital bloat tools dominating overconsumption.

  ketanjoshi.co

American historian of Central and Eastern Europe and the Holocaust; author of Bloodlands, On Tyranny and On Freedom, and writer of the newsletter 'Thinking about...'.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  In resisting Russia the Ukrainians are defending the most basic thing in decent political life: that people get to be who they choose to be.

  Russia

  Their words

  By resisting Russia, Ukrainians are defending what is perhaps most basic about decent political life: the idea that people should be who they choose to be, not whom they are forced to become.

  Sky Defense: Bringing it Homesnyder.substack.com

General partner at Benchmark Capital for over two decades; was the lead analyst on Amazon's IPO before moving into venture capital. Writes Above the Crowd on tech and marketplace economics.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The IPO process is unfair to companies because bankers pick both the price and the shareholders, where an anonymous auction would do the job.

  Their words

  I think it is insanely unfair to the companies the way they're forced to go through this process where the bankers pick the price and pick the shareholders. There's just no need to do that. If you took a freshman computer science student and a freshman finance student and said, you know, imagine how a company should go public. They would match supply and demand anonymously like you would in any auction.

  youtube.com

Engineer and teacher; wrote Kubernetes the Hard Way, was a distinguished engineer at Google Cloud, and retired from full-time work in 2023.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Ban the word AI from a pitch and the founder is forced to show you the actual problem — the word is an umbrella people hide the details under.

  Their words

  do not say AI because what we don't want to do is use a big umbrella to describe what you're doing. Let's get concrete details. These are computers. These are computer programs.

  youtube.com

Writer and illustrator, author of Am I There Yet? and Out of the Blue; writes the newsletter Out of the Blue on grief, joy and everyday attention.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Difficulties parents and disabled people face navigating public infrastructure stem from structural failures, not individual behavior.

  Their words

  I no longer think the problem is individual behavior so much as structural failure: a world with so little margin, tenderness, or infrastructural mercy that people are forced into constant friction.

  Surprises of Motherhoodmariandrew.substack.com

Writer and academic, author of The Cult of Smart and How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement; writes a daily newsletter on politics, education and culture.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The educational crisis narrative is downstream of the labour market: we destroyed the jobs that did not need a degree and then ordered schools to make everybody degree-ready.

  AI and jobs

  Their words

  Everybody thinks our schools are in crisis all the time because they’re being forced to do something they were never meant to do, which is to make everyone college-ready, and they’re being forced to do that because we have seen jobs that provide a living wage without a college diploma evaporate.

  freddiedeboer.substack.com

American game designer and director, for nineteen years at Blizzard as a World of Warcraft quest designer and then game director of Overwatch; now runs the independent studio Kintsugiyama.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  No creative work should ever be used by AI without its maker's permission; doing it is no different from stealing.

  Their words

  I think there’s a lot of moral concerns around AI when it comes to creative pursuits as well, like no one’s creative work should ever be used by AI without their permission.

  youtube.com

Writer and academic, author of The Cult of Smart and How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement; writes a daily newsletter on politics, education and culture.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Amour

  Their words

  If I was put on the spot to name the greatest movie of the 21st century, I would probably say Michael Hanneke's Amour, an achingly moving, relentlessly unpleasant portrait of an elderly couple sinking into illness and senescence, forced into making the grimmest decisions possible.

  freddiedeboer.substack.com

Indonesian fullstack engineer, speaker and instructor; writes about JavaScript, SvelteKit and Linux tooling at kalwabed.com.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Lily58

  Their words

  Lily58: split keyboard, I forced myself to get used to this kind of keyboard model. So far I'm very happy, I just need time to get used to it.

  kalwabed.com

Co-founder of Rockstar Games, lead writer of the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption series, and founder of Absurd Ventures since leaving in 2020.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  New intellectual property needs single-player games, because launching a multiplayer game on a world nobody knows yet is extremely hard.

  Their words

  Luckily, if you want to do what we’re forced to do and also what I want to do, which is make new IP, you need single-player games. You can launch a multiplayer game with new IP. It’s just extremely hard.

  youtube.com

Founder of Telegram, and before it of VK.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  When politicians or executives offer a choice between two bad options, refuse the frame: reframe the question instead of accepting responsibility for either.

  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.

  youtube.com

Historian of the Second World War; wrote Normandy '44 and Brothers in Arms, and co-hosts the We Have Ways of Making You Talk podcast.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Hitler was always going to invade the Soviet Union unless the Soviet Union struck first; no Allied decision forced that war on him.

  Their words

  Well, no, because Hitler was always going to invade the Soviet Union unless the Soviet Union invaded Germany first. So that was always going to happen.

  youtube.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.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Forced labour in Chinese clean-energy supply chains is real, and it is not why the goods are cheap.

  energyChina

  Their words

  But my point is that this is still not the reason (or is only a very small reason) why these goods from China are cheaper than elsewhere. The main driver of lower labour costs has been automation; not having a human worker at all.

  sustainabilitybynumbers.com

American open-source program lead working on WordPress; a WordPress core contributor and release lead who writes at jeffpaul.com.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Pocket Casts

  Their words

  Pocket Casts — primary podcast app though occasionally forced to use Spotify for exclusives there, sigh.

  jeffpaul.com

Machine-learning researcher on open language models; writes the Interconnects newsletter and the RLHF Book, after leading post-training at Ai2.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Stealing AI code and data is hard and stealing ideas is easy, because Silicon Valley already moves ideas legally, inside the heads of the people it hires.

  Their words

  Code and data is hard, but ideas is easy. Silicon Valley operates on the way that top employees get bought out by other companies for a pay raise, and a large reason why these companies do this is to bring ideas with them.

  youtube.com