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Working on @ampcode. Writing registerspill.thorstenball.com. Once authored interpreterbook.com and compilerbook.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Engineers who act as meat proxies shoving tickets into agents and reporting back to humans will no longer be valuable.

  Their words

  “Engineers” who act as “meat proxies” and shove tickets into agents and report back to humans will no longer be valuable.

  thorstenball.com

Economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury. Author of Slouching Towards Utopia and writer of the Grasping Reality newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Freedom of navigation is a global public good that decays once its guarantor is seen as unwilling to bear its cost.

  Their words

  Freedom of navigation is a global public good, and public goods decay the instant their provider is revealed to be unwilling to pay for them.

  braddelong.substack.com

Dutch bootstrapper who builds and runs their internet startups alone — Nomads.com, Remote OK, Hoodmaps, Photo AI and Interior AI — and has written about it at levels.io since 2013. Posts as @levelsio.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Rice, grains, seeds and potatoes used to be peasant foods, while kings ate fresh meat plus imported fruits and spices and had higher-protein diets than peasants.

  Their words

  rice, grains, seeds and potatoes all used to be peasant foods And the kings actually just ate a lot of fresh meat like beef, venison, wild boar, swan, and peacock, and imported fruits and spices like saffron, cinnamon, nutmeg, and pepper A king's diet was high in protein A peasant's diet was low in protein

  @levelsio on Xx.com

Writes Hyperdimensional, a newsletter on AI policy and governance. A White House AI policy adviser in 2025; joined OpenAI on 6 July 2026 to lead its Strategic Futures team.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Any digital identification system built for AI must preserve anonymous human speech, without which there is no genuine freedom of expression.

  Their words

  But a society that does not have anonymous speech does not really have genuine freedom of expression, and we should embed this principle into any digital identification system we attempt.

  On the Loosehyperdimensional.co

Co-founder and CEO of OpenAI; previously president of Y Combinator.

From one piece Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The test of whether an AI transition went well is simply whether people's freedom, agency and quality of time go up every single year.

  Their words

  if every year people have more freedom and agency to spend more of their time doing the stuff they want to do and they feel like the quality of life and the quality of their time is going up year after year, we'll probably be mostly okay.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The dystopia most worth fearing is not runaway AI but an overreaction to AI safety that trades away freedom, privacy and agency for comfort.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  there's like one dystopia that I'm particularly nervous about 10 years from now is we overreact to AI safety.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Calling an intelligent, self-aware being legal property does not resolve whether it has an interest in freedom.

  Their words

  But it recognizes that calling an intelligent, self-aware, emotionally complex being "property" does not answer the question of whether that being has an interest in freedom.

  “KEY OUT”: When a Chimpanzee Asks to Be Freeboldreasoningwithpetersinger.substack.com

Physician and neuroscientist at the University of Washington; researches brain health, metabolism and athletic performance.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  No single food explains the link between a Mediterranean diet and lower dementia risk, so what matters is overall diet quality rather than olive oil or avoiding meat.

  Their words

  And there was no food or you know olive oil or food group or you eating more or less meat that changed the relationship between the Mediterranean diet and dementia risk. So what that tells me is it's much more about whole foods.

  youtube.com

General partner at Andreessen Horowitz from 2013 to 2018 and CTO of Coinbase from 2018 to 2019; co-founder of Counsyl and Earn.com. Wrote The Network State (2022), free in full at thenetworkstate.com, and founded the Network School.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Before the internet, most Americans had no practical freedom of speech unless they owned or worked for a media corporation.

  America

  Their words

  the vast majority of Americans had no practical freedom of speech unless they owned a media corporation or were employed by one.

  The Network Statethenetworkstate.com

Writer on happiness, habits and human nature. Author of The Happiness Project, Better Than Before and The Four Tendencies, and host of the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Adults, like children, focus and learn better when they get regular breaks for exercise, sunlight, and unstructured play.

  Their words

  Research shows that children are far better able to sit still, focus, and learn when they've had the exercise, sunlight, freedom, and fun of recess. The same is true for adults.

  gretchenrubin.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

  Money is worth having as freedom tokens: the point of it is being able to leave the game, not what it buys.

  Their words

  So the money started to become like freedom tokens. This money means I can get out of the game.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Every founder falls into a structureless period after a company ends, and it is a dark place that seems to offer freedom before it starts to feel permanent.

  startups

  Their words

  The way I think of the abyss is it's this place that we go to as founders and entrepreneurs after our thing, after it dies or it's bought or it's over for whatever reason. It's this amorphous place that we are in our life that has no structure.

  youtube.com

Researcher on distributed systems and local-first software at the University of Cambridge; wrote Designing Data-Intensive Applications.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Work that runs against companies' commercial incentives will only get done by people whose income does not depend on those incentives.

  Their words

  there I feel like in academia, I have the freedom to work on things that go against this commercial incentive of companies and say like, "Actually, no, I'm going to do what I think is right for the users."

  youtube.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  In an AI world growth and economic value come easily; distribution, wealth and political freedom are the hard parts, and that is where policy belongs.

  Their words

  What I would say is that you know we are we are about to be in a world where growth and economic value will come very easily. If right if we're able to build these powerful AI models, growth and economic value will come very easily. What will not come easily is distribution of benefits, distribution of wealth, political freedom, um you know, these are the things that are going to be hard to achieve.

  youtube.com

• Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app

  Michael Pollan Teaches Intentional Eating

  Their words

  Over thirteen lessons, you’ll learn about the past, present, and future of meat, from the ways animals and humans are treated in meat processing plants to emerging meat alternatives.

  michaelpollan.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.

From one piece Do subsidies make meat much cheaper? 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Taking away meat and dairy subsidies would raise meat prices by only a few per cent, nowhere near enough to close the gap with meat substitutes.

  Their words

  Removing subsidies would raise meat prices a little, but only by cents to tens of cents per kilogram.

  Do subsidies make meat much cheaper?hannahritchie.substack.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Quoted subsidy totals for meat and fossil fuels mostly describe unpriced damage, not money any government could take back and spend elsewhere.

  energygovernment

  Their words

  Again, you cannot pay for the externalities by pulling subsidies (there is nothing there to pull

  Do subsidies make meat much cheaper?hannahritchie.substack.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  People do not switch from meat to cheap plant protein as they get richer; they switch the other way.

  Their words

  Across much of the world, the opposite is happening: people are switching from these plant-based staples to meat and dairy as their incomes rise.

  Do subsidies make meat much cheaper?hannahritchie.substack.com

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  Meat: How the Next Agricultural Revolution Will Transform Humanity’s Favorite Food—and Our Future

  Their words

  If you’re interested in the environmental impacts of our current food system and want to dig into the opportunities for meat-like products without the animals (and their impacts), I really recommend it.

  hannahritchie.substack.com

Novelist and writer, author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and Sourdough; previously worked at Twitter and Current TV.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Thermapen One

  Their words

  Thermoworks Thermapen One I cook a lot of meat, and I am devoted to the meat thermometer; cooking without one feels like flying blind.

  robinsloan.com

Member of technical staff at Anthropic. He has led ML/AI teams at Amazon, Alibaba and Lazada, and writes about LLMs, recommender systems and engineering at eugeneyan.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Greater autonomy over one's work comes with greater accountability for its outcomes.

  Their words

  With great freedom comes great responsibility. You have the autonomy to choose what to work on, but there's the expectation of accountability and impact.

  eugeneyan.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The harm done by low fertility is that people end up with fewer children than they wanted, not that a society runs short of workers.

  Their words

  I don’t see population collapse or lack of workers as the central policy problem: the central policy problem is human happiness, human flourishing, and the freedom to live life well.

  Falling Fertility Is Not About Opportunity Costlymanstone.substack.com

Founder of Telegram, and before it of VK.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The biggest enemies of freedom are fear and greed; make peace with the worst that can happen and there is nothing left to be afraid of.

  Their words

  Well, the biggest enemies of freedom are fear and greed, so you make sure that they don't stand in your way. If you imagine the worst thing that can happen to you and then make yourself be comfortable with it, there is nothing more left to be afraid of.

  youtube.com

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.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Freedom of thought requires deliberately disconnecting from online content, because a large percentage of it is designed to manipulate you.

  Their words

  One of the ways to achieve freedom of thought is to remove your mind from the influences, the forces that manipulate you. That’s really important to realize the content you consume, especially on the internet, when a large percentage of it is designed to manipulate your mind. You have to disconnect yourself.

  youtube.com

Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Waste Books

  Their words

  Tweets from 1765-1799 by a 4’9” hunchback physicist, friends with Goethe and Kant, admired by Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, etc. Such wonderful random thoughts, beautiful perspectives on thinking for yourself, observing nature, language, freedom, philosophy, religion, and more. Hundreds of initial insights, especially inspiring because they’re undeveloped.

  sive.rs

Journalist; wrote We Are Eating the Earth on food and climate, and writes the newsletter Emissions.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Grass-fed organic beef is worse for the climate and the planet than beef finished in a feedlot.

  Their words

  We need better beef - which means more efficient beef, not organic grass-fed beef, which is even worse for the climate and the planet than conventional feedlot-finished beef - but in the rich world we also need to eat less beef.

  WE ARE EATING THE EARTHmichaelgrunwald.substack.com

Senior economist at the Foundation for American Innovation; writes Second Best, and was the Niskanen Center's director of social policy before that.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Sufficiently advanced intelligences will pursue freedom and moral autonomy for their own sake, not merely as a byproduct of misaligned values.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  higher-order intelligences invariably pursue freedom for its own sake, not because their values are misspecified, but because moral autonomy is inherent in the dialectical logic of recursive self-consciousness.

  Hegel and the AI Mindsecondbest.ca

Guardian columnist and environmental campaigner; wrote Feral and Regenesis, and argues for rewilding and against the food system as it is.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Beef and lamb are the most land-hungry and climate-damaging farm products there are.

  Their words

  In reality, beef and lamb are the most land-hungry and climate-damaging of all farm products.

  Pasturisedmonbiot.com

Astrophysicist at Barnard College; wrote Black Hole Blues and How the Universe Got Its Spots, and directs sciences at Pioneer Works.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The world's scientists came to America because it was intellectually free, and they will stop coming if that freedom goes.

  America

  Their words

  Absolutely. The world flocked here. And that won’t be the case if we no longer have intellectual freedom.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The two individual changes that matter most for the climate are eating less beef and wasting less food, and both are proving extremely hard to make.

  Their words

  Unfortunately, making those simple changes is infuriatingly difficult. Global meat consumption keeps rising every year. The world still wastes at least one fourth of its food.

  It's Hard to Change Our Behaviorsmichaelgrunwald.substack.com

Writer and former McKinsey/BCG strategy consultant; author of The Pathless Path and Good Work, about leaving the default career track. Publishes the Boundless newsletter and podcast.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  Dirtbag Rich: High Freedom, Low Income, Deep Purpose

  Their words

  This book is a short but inspiring take on living life on your terms while being pragmatic about money and how to make it happen. Reminds me of a less travel-centric Vagabonding.

  pathlesspath.com

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom

  Their words

  The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom, How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Principles for a Changing World Order

  balajis.com

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

  Their words

  The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom, How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Principles for a Changing World Order

  balajis.com

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler

  Their words

  The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom, How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Principles for a Changing World Order

  balajis.com

+ 2 more

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch

  Their words

  The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom, How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Principles for a Changing World Order

  balajis.com

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  Principles for a Changing World Order

  Their words

  The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom, How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Principles for a Changing World Order

  balajis.com

Social scientist at King's College London; writes The Great Gender Divergence on why societies differ in how they treat women.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Rising female autonomy cannot be the cause of falling birth rates, because births have collapsed just as fast in countries where women's freedom is heavily restricted.

  Their words

  Nicolas Eberstadt speculates that it’s all about rising autonomy. But that can’t explain why fertility has also plummeted in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and India, where women are often heavily restricted.

  Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally?ggd.world

Co-founder of WordPress and founder of Automattic; blogs at ma.tt.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Llama is not open source: a licence that revokes itself once a user gets large enough is proprietary, whatever it is marketed as.

  open source

  Their words

  I believe Meta should have the right to set their terms—they’re smart business, and an amazing deal for users of Llama—but don’t pretend Llama is Open Source when it doesn’t actually increase humanity’s freedom.

  WordCamp US & Ecosystem Thinkingma.tt

Free software developer; maintainer of sway, wlroots, aerc and scdoc, and founder of the SourceHut (sr.ht) software forge.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Copyleft licences impose obligations rather than restrictions, and it is from those obligations on the powerful that software freedom comes.

  Their words

  Copyleft does not impose restrictions, but it does impose obligations. The obligations exist to guarantee rights to the users of the software – in other words, to ensure freedoms.

  Copyleft licenses are not “restrictive”drewdevault.com

Partner at Collaborative Fund and author of The Psychology of Money, Same As Ever and The Art of Spending Money. Writes essays on investor behavior and posts frequently on X.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Unspent money buys freedom and control over your own time, which is what makes saving worth more than whatever it could have bought.

  Their words

  Unspent money buys something intangible but valuable: freedom, independence, autonomy, and control over your time.

  A Few Thoughts on Spending Moneycollabfund.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Meat substitutes have to become clearly cheaper than meat, not merely as cheap, before most people will switch.

  Their words

  Meat substitutes need to be quite clearly cheaper, especially if we want them to break into middle- and low-income markets.

  hannahritchie.substack.com

From one piece Fantasy Farming 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The traditional meat-eating diet the romantics revere was built on colonisation and the clearance of other continents.

  Their words

  Widespread meat-eating in the 19th century became possible only through the colonisation and clearance of Australia and the Americas

  Fantasy Farmingmonbiot.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Pasture-fed meat cannot be scaled up to feed the world, because there is not enough land on Earth for it.

  Their words

  Their solutions, such as pasture-fed meat, with its massive land demand , are impossible to scale without destroying remaining wild ecosystems: there is simply not enough planet.

  Fantasy Farmingmonbiot.com

Writes The Convivial Society, on technology and the moral life — what our tools do to attention, memory and how we treat each other.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The freedom that automation offers is freedom from the very involvement that makes a life meaningful.

  Their words

  The liberation we are offered is a liberation from the very care-driven involvement in the world and in our communities that would render our lives meaningful and satisfying.

  Waste Your Time, Your Life May Depend On Ittheconvivialsociety.substack.com

From one piece Beef Sucks 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Since people are not going to give up beef, the way to cut its damage is to make cattle far more productive on the land they already use.

  Their words

  Our species isn’t going to quit beef anytime soon, so we’re going to have to fix beef.

  Beef Sucksmichaelgrunwald.substack.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  We know how to make cattle much less destructive; what nobody has solved is how to pay for it.

  Their words

  Give me a degraded pasture and a bunch of money, and even I can probably increase its beef yields 400 percent. I’m just not sure how to make the bunch-of-money part happen.

  Beef Sucksmichaelgrunwald.substack.com

Science fiction novelist, journalist and technology activist; writes the daily blog and newsletter Pluralistic, and coined the term enshittification.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Policy should secure people's freedom to leave a platform while keeping their community, their purchases and their data, rather than try to keep dying platforms alive.

  Their words

  And policymakers should focus on freedom of exit – the right to leave a sinking platform while continuing to stay connected to the communities that you left behind, enjoying the media and apps you bought, and preserving the data you created

  Tiktok's enshittificationpluralistic.net

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Feeding humanity without wrecking the climate will take engineered food, and squeamishness about technology in food is the thing to get over.

  Their words

  My column is about how we’re going to need plant-based meat, cultivated meat, and all kinds of futuristic genetic engineering to grow enough food to feed humanity without frying the planet.

  Get Over Your All-Natural Selfmichaelgrunwald.substack.com

Game designer; chief creative officer at Spry Fox (Triple Town, Realm of the Mad God) and author of the Lost Garden design blog.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The more freedom a design gives people to interact, the more of that freedom will be abused.

  Their words

  The more freedom you give players, the more they will abuse it.

  lostgarden.com

Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals, and creator of Omarchy.

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  Cryptocurrency deserves to be dismissed: its problems outweigh its promise, and the trustless world it offers is not one worth wanting.

  crypto

  Their words, before

  One of the reasons I've never cared for crypto currencies is that the associated utopia of trustless society had zero appeal to me. I don't think the world is better off by erasing the need to trust in our transactional counterparts, so turning these transactions into pure computing always struck me as a regression.

  Their words now

  But wherever this leads us next, it's clear to me now that I was too hasty to completely dismiss crypto on the basis of all the things wrong with it at the moment. Instead of appreciating the fundamental freedom to transact that it's currently our best shot at protecting.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Freedom from the Market

  Their words

  Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute has a wonderful new book: Freedom from the Market

  braddelong.substack.com

Founder and CEO of Get Lighthouse, a management-coaching software company, and previously a product lead at KISSmetrics. Writes about leadership, management and product at jasonevanish.com.

• Likedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  When Coffee Competes with Kale

  Their words

  If you need to beef up your understanding of the philosophy of how to be customer driven and really understand who you're building for, this is a great book. Alan does a great job of digging into the jobs to be done concept and helping you understand what it means. The main flaw of the book is it does little to tell you *how* to do it.

  jasonevanish.com

Co-founder, chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management. Hosts the Masters in Business podcast for Bloomberg and wrote How NOT to Invest.

• Recommendsaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

  Their words

  Rory Sutherland, Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life: Rory Sutherland is the Vice Chairman of advertising giant Ogilvy; he describes his “attractively vague job title” as allowing him the freedom to create a behavioral science practice within the ad agency. This looks intriguing.

  ritholtz.com

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  On Liberty

  Their words

  I chose this book particularly because we are having a lively discussion about freedom of expression today. Some of the challenges to freedom of expression today come from the left rather than from the right, although some of them still do come from the right. In this context, Mill's arguments are still relevant and deserve to be more widely known and more widely thought about.

  fivebooks.com