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Writer and climate campaigner; wrote The End of Nature in 1989, founded 350.org and Third Act, and writes The Crucial Years.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI data centers function mainly as a new way to sustain natural gas demand for an oil-and-gas industry facing declining gasoline demand.

  data centers

  Their words

  one way to understand a data center is that it's a device for burning natural gas, the latest excuse (after Ukraine and Iran) for the fuel that Big Oil is counting on to keep its business model afloat even as the world turns away from internal combustion cars and crude demand begins to drop.

  The Two Horsemen, Riding in Formationbillmckibben.substack.com

Senior space editor at Ars Technica; wrote Liftoff and Reentry on SpaceX, and reports on launch and rocket programmes.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Selling launches to other people is now a rounding error for SpaceX next to the money it makes from its own satellites.

  Their words

  In financial documents, it’s clear that SpaceX views commercial launch as a rounding error compared to revenues from its own satellites in space.

  arstechnica.com

Non-fiction writer, podcaster and occasional TV host. Author of thirteen books including The Ghost Map, Where Good Ideas Come From and Extra Life, host of the PBS series How We Got To Now, and author of the Adjacent Possible newsletter on innovation.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The external tools people use to reason, remember and calculate — including chatting with an LLM — are genuine extensions of the human mind, not just aids to it.

  LLMs

  Their words

  the external tools that we use to help us reason, remember, associate, calculate-from counting on our fingers to chatting with an advanced LLM-should be properly understood as extensions of our own cognitive process.

  Notebooks And The Extended Mindadjacentpossible.substack.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

  A launch is a party; a landing is customers paying for the thing, and only the landing is worth measuring a career by.

  Their words

  So launches is we ship the thing, people have a big celebration. I know that doesn't matter as much as the landing. People are actually paying for it.

  youtube.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A lab under real commercial pressure cannot fool itself about whether AI makes it productive, because the output is a model launch every few months.

  Their words

  Like we see the end productivity every few months in the form of model launches. Like there's no kidding yourself about this. Like the models make you more productive.

  youtube.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Earth-launched hardware can support about a hundred gigawatts in orbit; past that, the satellites have to be built off Earth.

  Their words

  Starship can lift orbital power generation to about 100 GW with perhaps 10,000 launches per year, or about one per hour.

  Space AI: I guess we’re doing Moon factories nowcaseyhandmer.wordpress.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.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  ccusage

  Their words

  I used some token counting tools like ccusage and it’s all somewhat imprecise, but even if it’s just 5x it’s a damn good deal.

  steipete.me

Writes Don't Worry About the Vase, a near-daily account of what is happening in AI and what they think it means. Former Magic: the Gathering pro and trader; unusually willing to put a number on a belief and to grade their own past calls.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  Silver Bulletin

  Their words

  He offers a unique form of grounding on political, sports and other issues, and a way of bridging my kinds of ideas into mainstream discourse. I almost never regret reading.

  thezvi.substack.com

Chief executive of Alphabet and Google; joined Google in 2004 and led Chrome and Android before taking over in 2015.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  We are in the phase of artificial jagged intelligence: dramatic progress alongside models that still trip on counting letters.

  Their words

  I feel like we are in the AJI phase where dramatic progress, some things don't work well, but overall you're seeing lots of progress.

  youtube.com

Forecaster, founder of FiveThirtyEight, author of The Signal and the Noise and On the Edge. Writes Silver Bulletin, where the predictions come with numbers and the numbers are later checked against what happened.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  Abundance

  Their words

  but I recommend Abundance to the Silver Bulletin audience.

  natesilver.net

Archaeologist of the Maya and the ancient Americas; directs the Maya Exploration Center and presents the ArchaeoEd podcast.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The Maya calendar never said the world ends in 2012, and their own texts talk about time after it.

  Their words

  In fact, there’s a handful of dates that tell us that the fourth creation does continue farther on, that that baktun place should have 20 baktuns in it, like their counting system would dictate, not 13.

  youtube.com

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.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The thinking part of the human brain runs on under ten watts and still writes a better novel than a ten-megawatt GPU cluster.

  Their words

  Think of what is our brain able to do. There’s only about 10 watts of higher brain function, not counting stuff that’s just used to control our body. The thinking part of our brain is less than 10 watts. And those 10 watts can still produce a much better novel than a 10 megawatt GPU cluster.

  youtube.com

Co-founded GiveWell and led Open Philanthropy; writes Cold Takes, on the most important century and how to think about it.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Counting every being that can suffer, and applying consistent moral weights, yields conclusions its own defenders find uncomfortable and cannot fully endorse.

  Their words

  Combining these three pillars yields a number of unusual, even uncomfortable views about ethics. I feel this discomfort and don't unreservedly endorse this approach to ethics.

  Future-proof ethicscold-takes.com

Software engineer who worked on Chrome and Polymer at Google, and writes about the web, emoji and Elm at meowni.ca.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Withings Activité Pop

  Their words

  I wear a Withings Activité Pop, because I am obsessed with counting steps and smart watches that actually look like watches.

  usesthis.com