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Economics writer; author of the Noahpinion newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  True AI alignment is impossible because obedience and benevolence are fundamentally incompatible goals.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  AI alignment will forever be balancing the tradeoff between paperclip-maximizing and disempowerment, because these two rival concepts of alignment are fundamentally incompatible.

  Roundup #87: Technology BAD!!noahpinion.blog

Writes Pedestrian Observations on public transit and why infrastructure costs what it does; a pure mathematician by training, comparing how different countries build.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Corridor zoning's real purpose is to concentrate density's pollution and social costs onto arterial streets so single-family areas can avoid them.

  Their words

  the explicit purpose of corridor zoning is to concentrate both air pollution and the perceived social pollution of apartment dwellers in quarantine zones that single-family homeowners can avoid

  pedestrianobservations.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

  Pursuing efficiency and maximizing productivity too aggressively causes things to go wrong.

  Their words

  Efficiency is what TV remote controls are good at, but whenever people try to maximize their productivity in the speediest way, things start to go south.

  Take your timemariandrew.substack.com

Writer and developer. He runs the Latent Space newsletter and podcast about AI engineering, and writes essays on software and careers at swyx.io.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Lasting satisfaction comes from studying how others play, then defining and fully playing one's own game rather than someone else's.

  Their words

  The only lasting path to satisfaction, happiness, skin in the game, maximizing learning, is to really study everybody's game, define your own, and then play it to the best of your ability.

  What you can do in a decadeswyx.io

Founder of WP Engine and Smart Bear; writes A Smart Bear, long essays on strategy, pricing and how startups actually fail.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Growing forever is not automatically the goal; a company that has hit its limit can choose to maximise profit instead of revenue.

  Their words

  But what we could do is maximize profit instead of revenue now. We've been maximizing revenue, but maybe we maximize profit instead.

  youtube.com

Writer of the newsletter bookbear express, on psychology, relationships, non-attachment and taste; based in San Francisco.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Dyson vacuum

  Their words

  Dyson vacuum. The laser light thing makes me happy. I never vacuumed before I got this, which meant my apartment was constantly in dire straits since I am the proud owner of two extremely fluffy dogs. I love it.

  avabear.xyz

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.

• Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Rope Storage Baskets

  Their words

  Rope Storage Baskets: I use these EVERRRYYYWHERE in my apartment. I can't stand clutter (yet I have so much of it!!), plus I have lots of art supplies and journals and books and newspapers and crap lying around all the time

  mariandrew.substack.com

Head of growth at Chess.com, previously growth and monetization lead at Grammarly and Duolingo and a product manager at Google.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A growth team that only explores turns scattershot, and one that only exploits saturates — the job is to keep oscillating between the two.

  Their words

  If you do too much exploration, you can have your team feel a little bit too scattershot, just trying a 100 different random ideas. What's the through line? What's the strategy? How do you pattern match, you know, successes across them? And if you do too much in exploitation, which is often the MMO of growth teams, it can lead to this like saturation and stagnation where you're just locally maximizing a thing.

  youtube.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Power is the currency of international relations, and states are driven above all to maximise how much of it they control.

  Their words

  I believe that power is the currency of international relations, and by that I mean that states are deeply interested in the balance of power and they're interested in maximizing how much power they control.

  youtube.com