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Political scientist writing Drezner's World on international relations, American politics and the marketplace of ideas; author of The Ideas Industry.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The Trump administration is replacing professional bureaucracy with a corrupt, personalist system that extracts rents through force.

  Their words

  In practice, Hochman's hire is another nauseating sign that the Trump administration is destroying the bureaucracy in favor of some corrupt, neo-royalist husk of an apparatus that mostly posts memes and occasionally deploys the 82nd Airborne to extract rents.

  The Devolution of the Policy Planning Staffdanieldrezner.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

  Entrepreneurship is one of the most challenging pursuits, comparable to professional sports in how few people actually succeed.

  Their words

  There's an illusion here though that anyone will make it, which I've never portrayed to be true, entrepreneurship is one of the most challenging endeavours, kinda like pro sports

  levels.io

CEO of Vercel; creator of Next.js and Socket.IO. Writes at rauchg.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  More personal and professional computing will come from agents orchestrating work in cloud sandboxes, and those sandboxes will be Linux.

  Linuxthe cloud

  Their words

  More and more of our personal and professional computing experiences will come from agents that orchestrate work in the cloud, using sandboxes. Those sandboxes will be Linux.

  @rauchg on Xx.com

Criminal defence lawyer in New York; writes Simple Justice, mostly about how criminal law works in practice rather than in theory.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The right to a fair trial belongs to the defendant alone; there is no public right to be weighed against it.

  Their words

  There is a Fifth Amendment right to a fair trial, but that right belongs to the defendant, not the public.

  Retrial Isn’t Double Jeopardy (But It Should Be)blog.simplejustice.us

British front-end web developer based in Japan; writes about HTML, CSS, web performance and browser tooling at christianoliff.com.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Beyond Compare 4 Professional

  Their words

  Beyond Compare 4 Professional for uploading static site content to Amazon S3

  christianoliff.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A formal code of conduct is not worth adopting, because those became struggle-session processes; courtesy without one is what actually wins.

  Omarchy

  Their words

  Omarchy is not going to adopt a formal Code of Conduct because those turned out to be struggle-session processes in the last turning. But we are going to play nice. We're going to be courteous, professional, and composed in our direct interactions with users, competitors, and even haters. Because that's what's going to pave the path to the win.

  @dhh on Xx.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Omarchy is a system for professional computer lovers: it optimises usability over learnability, and a couple of days learning the keyboard is a fair price.

  Omarchyenergy

  Their words

  This is a computer system made for pros, and I mean that in the sense of professional computer lovers. People who are willing to invest time and energy into learning how their system works, and reap the benefits that come from that investment.

  youtube.com

Neurologist at Oxford; studies apathy, motivation and attention after brain injury, and edits the journal Brain.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Alzheimer's disease and dementia are not the same thing: a fifth to a third of people whose brains carry the pathology never became demented.

  Their words

  Alzheimer's disease does not necessarily equal dementia. people can have Alzheimer's disease and not get dementia. So, we found this out from post-mortem studies. People have been followed as they age. Uh they've donated their brains and it turns out that perhaps 20 to 30% of these individuals who never had dementia have Alzheimer pathology.

  youtube.com

Economics professor at George Mason University and author of The Myth of the Rational Voter, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, The Case Against Education and Open Borders. Writes Bet On It.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Modern Times

  Their words

  I’ve loved it since I was a teenager, but professional historians typically rolled their eyes in disdain when I mentioned it.

  betonit.ai

Writer and podcaster; co-author of Abundance with Ezra Klein, a staff writer at The Atlantic from 2008 to 2025, and host of the Plain English podcast.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Major professional sports leagues function as cartels that block competitive entry

  Their words

  Major sports leagues are de facto cartels with the power to block entry and competition.

  The American Sports Plutocracy Is Bullshitderekthompson.org

Professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS and co-author, with Abraham Newman, of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Success in cultural and professional fields is driven more by chance and path dependence than by talent.

  Their words

  much cultural success is stochastic (the experimental evidence suggests that talent only moderately predicts success in culture markets), and that path dependence shapes chances of success

  No-One Makes You Shop at Amazonprogrammablemutter.com

Professor at Stanford working on robot learning and meta-learning; co-founded Physical Intelligence.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  It is the diversity of a robot data set, not its size, that produces generalization: dropping the most diverse slice hurts far more than dropping a random fifth.

  Their words

  we find that the performance on held out tasks decreases dramatically. Whereas if we um just take out a random 20% of the data that's less diverse than the most diverse subset, the performance um only decreases a little bit. And so this suggests that actually having really diverse data plays an important role in enabling it to generalize to new tasks.

  youtube.com

Founded PSPDFKit in 2011 and ran it for a decade. Came back from a break to work on AI agents — the OpenClaw project, and OpenAI, joined in February 2026. Writes at steipete.me.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A correction never travels as far as the scare it corrects: the press said a fifth of the project's skills were malicious, and the measured figure was 0.3 percent.

  Their words

  We did the the numbers and the numbers are more like 0.3%. We scanned all 67,000. We shipped the we shipped the paper. But you know a correction never travels as far as a scare.

  Peter Steinberger: "Fun Is Velocity"youtube.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Within ten years software development will survive but become ordinary white-collar work, with no more two-hundred-thousand-dollar salaries or unlimited vacation.

  AI and jobs

  Their words

  I predict that in the next 10 years software development will survive, but it will become like any other white-collar professional work. No more $200,000 salaries, unlimited vacation, or incredible employee bargaining power.

  Formal methods with Hillel Wayneyoutube.com

Programmer and writer known for detailed source code reviews of classic game engines, and author of the Game Engine Black Book series on Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Smaller teams are better

  Their words

  We can accomplish more with smaller teams. We may not be far from the '90s model, when a team of four could produce professional software.

  Don't you mean extinct?fabiensanglard.net

Programmer; wrote Extreme Programming Explained and Test-Driven Development, signed the Agile Manifesto, and writes Tidy First?.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  TDD fell out of fashion partly because its advocates turned it into a moral test of professionalism, when people write very good software with a wide variety of workflows.

  Their words

  And then there were people who used it as a moral cudgel. Like you should be if you're not using TDD, you're not professional. And that's just such People can write very good software with a wide variety of workflows.

  youtube.com

Statistician at Carnegie Mellon; writes on complex systems, machine learning and inference, and has kept a books-read notebook since 2000 that is now thousands of entries long.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Resenting the Hero

  Their words

  Comparing this to The Fifth Season, it is striking how different two fantasy novels about worlds over-supplied with natural disasters, and the people with the psychic gifts to stop those disasters with their minds, can be in tone and execution. This is immensely fluffier, but it has no pretensions to be anything except candy, and succeeds as such.

  bactra.org

Economist at Oxford's Global Priorities Institute; works on what advanced AI would do to growth, saving and the long-run economy.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The worry that AI's returns are locked away in private companies is overstated: well under a fifth of American market capitalisation is private.

  America

  Their words

  it's already not that hard to index. So it's not There's been a bit of an increase in the privatization of returns but it's still like you know well under 20% of the total market cap of um non-non-tiny companies in in the US is is a private.

  youtube.com

Author of The Lean Startup and Incorruptible, and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, who advises companies on corporate governance and mission protection.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Only a fifth of venture-backed founders are still CEO three years after going public, and the standard documents their lawyers gave them are why.

  startups

  Their words

  According to Harvard Law School, among venturebacked companies that have the standard best practices set up that you got from your lawyer, okay, only 20% of founders are still the CEO 3 years after going public.

  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

  The modern economy pressures nearly every kind of creative or professional worker to also become a small media company, a skill unrelated to their original craft.

  Their words

  the economy now asks every creative person to essentially become a small media company, which is a very specific skill set that has nothing to do with why most of us started making things in the first place

  On Monetizationmariandrew.substack.com

Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, co-director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science, and author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  For IIT to fit with current successful theories in fundamental physics, a reformulation in terms of continuous fields would be needed.

  Their words

  Fifth, for IIT to fit with current successful theories in fundamental physics, a reformulation in terms of continuous fields would be needed.

  arxiv.org

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

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  Basecamp was the best business idea he will ever have: lightning is not caught twice, and a founder's second idea is rarely as good as the first.

  Their words, before

  I know this from experience because I've been trying to build a lot of other businesses since. And some of them have been moderate successes, even good successes, none of them have been Basecamp. It's really difficult to do that twice.

  Their words now

  And I have no shame in saying that Base Camp was the best idea objectively in terms of a business that we've ever had.

Uber's first Chief Technology Officer, from 2013 to 2020; later CTO of Coupang and of Faire.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Standing still is now falling behind: as the world speeds up, complacency is the one professional habit that is fatal.

  Their words

  Complacency is death. I mean like every the world will move faster and faster and the moment we stand still we are falling behind.

  Scaling Uber with Thuan Pham (Uber's first CTO)youtube.com

Indian software engineer working on Android and React; writes about his setup and side projects at ishubhamsingh.dev.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Maccy

  Their words

  Makes me professional Copy-Paster

  ishubhamsingh.dev

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  About a fifth of the US grid could be freed for data centres just by covering the yearly peak with batteries or peaker plants.

  data centers

  Their words

  Then all of a sudden, you've unlocked 20% of the US grid for data centers because most of the times that capacity is sitting idle and it's really only there for that peak, right? Which is a day or two, right?

  youtube.com

Software entrepreneur who bootstrapped and sold FeedbackPanda and now builds Podscan; writes The Bootstrapped Founder.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Every hobby community has profitable auxiliary niches serving needs its members can't fill themselves.

  Their words

  You'll find this in most non-professional activities-there's always something auxiliary but still in high demand because people can't do it themselves.

  Follow Your Passion (But Not Like That)thebootstrappedfounder.com

Writer living in Brooklyn and former Man Repeller features director; writes the weekly newsletter Maybe Baby on culture and consumption.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  The Broken Earth Trilogy

  Their words

  The Broken Earth Trilogy by NK Jemison (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, The Stone Sky): Triple-Hugo winner. Stunning world-building. Really fun to escape into a series—haven't done that in years.

  haleynahman.substack.com

Investing columnist for The Wall Street Journal and editor of the revised edition of Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The best time to invest is when professional money managers are too fearful to act and the public is gripped by fear and anger.

  Their words

  With so many professional money managers afraid to act, with most of the public in the grip of fear and anger, you should put your cash and your courage to work.

  Summon Your Courage and Buy Stocksjasonzweig.com

Vice chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Group, the advertising agency; author of Alchemy (2019) and the Wiki Man columnist at The Spectator.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Companies would often be better off moving a tenth to a fifth of their marketing budget into paying call centre staff properly.

  Their words

  probably 50% of the time, I would advise to a client, take 10 to 20% of your marketing budget and spend it on upgrading the call center. Pay the people too much. Get the best practitioners.

  youtube.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.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Tablets will not replace desktop computers for complex, resource-intensive professional work.

  Their words

  So while iPadOS has obviously gotten more capable, I don't see it displacing the Mac desktop as the place where the heavy lifting gets done.

  One Size Does Not Fit Allfurbo.org

Growth advisor and operator who has led growth at Miro, Amplitude, Dropbox and SurveyMonkey.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A growth team should spend a fifth to a quarter of its year, measured annually rather than by sprint, introducing a new growth loop.

  Their words

  I try to focus 20% 20 to 25% of growth team's time annually, not every given sprint, not every given quarter, but annually, to introduce a new growth loop.

  youtube.com

Venture capitalist and founder of Theory Ventures, previously a partner at Redpoint. Writes a near-daily blog on startups, SaaS metrics, data and AI.

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  Every Hand Revealed

  Their words

  A hand-by-hand narrative of Professional poker player Gus Hansen winning the 2007 Aussie Millions tournament.

  tomtunguz.com

Co-founder of Y Combinator and Viaweb; essayist at paulgraham.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  In practice "hire good people and give them room to do their jobs" often means hiring professional fakers and letting them drive the company into the ground.

  Their words

  Except in practice, judging from the report of founder after founder, what this often turns out to mean is: hire professional fakers and let them drive the company into the ground.

  Founder Modepaulgraham.com

Cryptography engineer; maintains Go's cryptography libraries as a full-time open-source maintainer, funded directly by companies that use them.

From one piece Geomys, a blueprint for a sustainable open source maintenance firm 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The thing open source can actually sell is not the code but access to its maintainers’ attention and expertise.

  open source

  Their words

  Clients still pay a fixed monthly retainer to ensure the professional maintenance of the whole portfolio, and to get access to the expertise of all of Geomys’ maintainers.

  words.filippo.io

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Open source maintenance can be a mature profession organised into small specialist firms, the way law and medicine already are.

  open source

  Their words

  From the onset, I envisioned small firms of professional maintainers with thematic portfolios, accommodating diverse maintainers and project sizes, just like the specialized firms of other professionals.

  words.filippo.io

Marketing author and daily blogger; founder of the altMBA and the Akimbo workshops, and author of books including Purple Cow and This Is Marketing.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A professional keeps a promise whether or not they feel like it, and that obligation is what separates professional work from amateur work.

  Their words

  A professional makes a promise and then keeps the promise whether or not they feel like it. Amateurs get to be authentic, whatever that means. And amateurs show up when they want to and make what they want to make.

  youtube.com

Founder and chief executive of Pershing Square Capital Management, the activist investment firm he started in 2004.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Individual investors analysed Tesla better than the professional investors and analysts did.

  Their words

  Actually individual investors did a much better job analyzing Tesla than the so-called professional investors or analysts, the vast majority of them.

  youtube.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A modern shipyard can match a whole wartime industrial mobilisation with a fraction of the workers.

  Their words

  South Korea's yearly production often matches the total tonnage the US produced in WWII - with one-fifth of the workers!

  Revitalizing US Navy Shipbuildingaustinvernon.site

Founder of Terraform Industries and formerly a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; writes about energy, space and manufacturing.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The end state of the grid is not a fifth solar backed by spinning generation, but twice the demand in solar with days of storage behind it.

  solarenergy

  Their words

  The logical end state of this displacement is not some hybrid grid with around 20% solar backed up by spinning generation, but a much more dynamic, versatile grid with around 200% solar generation and hours to days or weeks of battery storage, fully decoupling time of generation and consumption.

  Radical Energy Abundancecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com

Designer, product manager, YouTuber and developer who has written about technology at Birchtree since 2010. He makes the Quick Reviews and Quick Notes apps and the A Better Computer YouTube channel.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Final Cut Pro

  Their words

  Professional video editing has never been more accessible than it is today, and Final Cut Pro continues to be my app of choice here.

  thesweetsetup.com

Founder of OpenStreetMap, the collaborative map of the world; later worked on mapping at Microsoft and Telenav.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The purpose of professional training is to produce people who are competent and capable of independent thought and leadership in their field.

  Their words

  The aim of any professional training in the end is to make you someone competent, capable of independent thought and leadership in a specified field.

  Azure Divesstevecoast.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.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Open: An Autobiography

  Their words

  It is rare that a sports book captures my attention, rarer still when a sports autobiography does. But “Open” delivers a compelling life story superbly told by an athlete. Desire, motivation, and competitive drive him to the the highest levels of professional tennis, but he loses his interest, and was so often unhappy, confused and unfulfilled by his achievements. As an autobiography, it is bluntly honest, sometimes painful, but most of all a fascinating compelling read.

  ritholtz.com