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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

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

From one piece We Actually Know A Lot About Fertility Decline 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  A model fitted only to trends in its own outcome cannot forecast anything, because it contains no variable anyone could change.

  Their words

  The demand for explanations of low fertility is entirely a demand for variables which will reduce these technical trends to near zero.

  We Actually Know A Lot About Fertility Declinelymanstone.substack.com

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  Ruling out every measurable cause because none explains all the variation, and putting an unmeasured one in their place, is not an explanation.

  Their words

  He ruled out all the actual, measurable variables because they were an imperfect explanation, and instead offers a vague, diffuse variable, for which he has no measure, and which is not actually included in his model.

  We Actually Know A Lot About Fertility Declinelymanstone.substack.com

Co-founder and CEO of Shopify; long-time Linux user and Omarchy contributor.

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  Customising an operating system by asking an agent replaces esoteric config syntax as the way customisation actually works.

  Their words

  Now you can have a quake style console in your operating system. Except with an infinitely patient agent to help you customize it instead of esoteric variable names and slash commands like in the 90s

  @tobi on Xx.com

Physician focused on longevity; wrote Outlive and hosts The Drive.

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  Raising HDL cholesterol is not a treatment target, because every drug that raised it failed to reduce cardiovascular events.

  Their words

  These failures are a strong signal that HDL-C is not the variable we should be trying to manipulate.

  The trouble with “good cholesterol”peterattiamd.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.

From one piece Mental Models That Change How You Think | Bill Gurley 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Complex systems are multivariable and nonlinear, so they can behave one way for years and then switch when a single variable changes.

  Their words

  I would describe complex systems as multivariable nonlinear systems. And multivariable nonlinear systems are very hard to predict. They can behave one way for a long time and then one variable can switch and they can behave another way.

  youtube.com

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  Optimising a single metric is a trap, because the second-order consequences of the change only surface much later.

  Their words

  you got to be really conscious of the consequence and not get too deterministic about a single metric or a single variable and know what's important and what's on top.

  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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  What has actually been under selection is probably not intelligence but a general trait more like executive function or the propensity to defer gratification.

  Their words

  There seems to be some kind of general trait that maybe you could think of as executive function or maybe propensity to defer gratification or something or I'm just just waving my hands that is under selection and it pushes all these traits in the same direction one way or the other

  youtube.com

Co-founder and CEO of Anthropic; previously VP of research at OpenAI.

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  Anthropic now uses mechanistic interpretability techniques to audit new models for deception and scheming before releasing them.

  Anthropic

  Their words

  Even more recently, we’ve begun to use mechanistic interpretability techniques to improve our safeguards and to conduct “audits” of new models before we release them, looking for evidence of deception, scheming, power-seeking, or a propensity to behave differently when being evaluated.

  The Adolescence of Technology (January 2026)darioamodei.com

Astrophysicist and coffee researcher; author of The Physics of Filter Coffee and The Physics of Espresso, and writer of the Coffee ad Astra blog on brewing science and equipment.

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  Coffee bed depth, unlike bed width, significantly affects flavor in a way other brew variables cannot easily compensate for.

  Their words

  the depth of a coffee bed, contrary to the width of the coffee bed, is a variable that impacts the flavor of the coffee being brewed significantly, and in a way that you cannot easily compensate for by changing other brew variables.

  The Importance of Bed Depthcoffeeadastra.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.

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  Who is in a school predicts its results better than anything about its teaching, its teachers or its methods.

  Their words

  Once again, the composition of the student body is always more powerful a predictor than any identifiable pedagogical, school, or teacher variable.

  There Are No Miracles in Educationfreddiedeboer.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

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

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.

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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

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

  fabricatedknowledge.com

Programmer known online as technomancy; author of Leiningen, the Clojure build tool, and a maintainer of the Fennel programming language.

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  Lua functions have no true names, since only the variable or field holding them does, making every Lua function effectively anonymous.

  Their words

  In a subtle but very real sense, every Lua function is an anonymous function.

  in which an escape route is discoveredtechnomancy.us

Political scientist at the University of Chicago and the leading exponent of offensive realism; wrote The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

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  Economic interdependence does not prevent war, because survival always trumps prosperity.

  Their words

  The point is that economic interdependence at its root has prosperity as the core variable. In the realest story, the core variable is survival, and survival always trumps prosperity.

  youtube.com

Economist; former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

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  A persistently low safe interest rate signals that capital is not very productive at the margin, an underlying economic problem rather than a policy variable.

  interest rates

  Their words

  A low r is actually a signal that something is wrong with the economy: In effect, if we think of the safe rate as the risk-adjusted rate of return on capital, the low safe rate is sending the signal that, risk adjusted, the return on capital is low.

  Fiscal Policy under Low Interest Ratesdirect.mit.edu