Related posts

Writes Slow Boring, a near-daily newsletter on American politics and public policy; co-founded Vox in 2014 and left it in 2020.

From one piece Destroying women’s sports in order to save it 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Promoting women's sports has always been a progressive cause, not one the right actually champions.

  Their words

  Promoting women's sports is and always has been a progressive cause.

  Destroying women’s sports in order to save itslowboring.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Large national investments in girls' athletic opportunities translate into better international sports results.

  America

  Their words

  America has made unusually large investments in athletic opportunities for girls and it pays off.

  Destroying women’s sports in order to save itslowboring.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  In the Title IX debate, conservatives are the side seeking to shrink funding and opportunities for girls' sports.

  Their words

  And the broader Title IX fight is a classic left/right political battle, where conservatives just want to shrink opportunities and funding for girls' sports.

  Destroying women’s sports in order to save itslowboring.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.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A sports model that shows profound, systematic differences from Vegas is probably doing something wrong.

  Their words

  But if your model shows profound, systematic differences from Vegas, it’s probably doing something wrong.

  Inside ELWAY’s 2026 NFL forecastnatesilver.net

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Facing AI-driven disruption, indie hackers are shifting from building products toward building audience and content as a competitive moat.

  Their words

  So indie hackers are pivoting toward content, audience and distribution to find some moat, essentially becoming influencers

  @levelsio on Xx.com

Writes The Pragmatic Engineer, the software-engineering newsletter, and wrote The Software Engineer's Guidebook. Formerly an engineering manager at Uber, and at Microsoft/Skype and Skyscanner before that.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI-written prose is an inferior read because a model emits a statistical average -- code's audience is a machine, writing's audience is people.

  Their words

  The reason for this hardline stance is that we believe in the value of human thought and experience, as told by people with first-hand knowledge. It’s also about the audience: The “audience” for AI-written code is usually a machine, whereas the writing in Pragmatic Engineer is for humans, by humans. AI produces a statistical average in its output which creates uniform, dull text that’s an inferior reading experience to human writing – at least today it is.

  blog.pragmaticengineer.com

Founder of Trilogy Software and principal of Alpha School, the private school network built around two hours a day of AI-delivered mastery learning.

From one piece How to Accelerate Learning & Improve Education | Joe Liemandt 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Children develop by struggling and failing on the road to success while a caring adult supports them, and school should be running that loop all day instead of leaving it to after-school sports.

  Their words

  The key to developing a child is that they struggle and fail on their road to success supported by a caring adult. And you just want to run that loop.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Applying the ethos America already applies to school sports to academics instead would fix every academic problem in the country.

  America

  Their words

  We have sort of how you treat academics and how you treat sports. And if we took the sports ethos and the athletic ethos in America and we applied it to academics, we would fix every academic problem in this country.

  youtube.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Returning fire to a troll costs you your reputation and costs the troll nothing, because the audience judges you and not them.

  Their words

  But if you return fire with fire, the only thing that'll burn is our reputation. The troll who triggered you into flashing your teeth won't face any consequences, but every spectator who saw it will judge you.

  @dhh on Xx.com

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.

From one piece The American Sports Plutocracy Is Bullshit 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  American sports laws function as a conspiracy that enriches billionaire team owners

  America

  Their words

  American sports laws amount to a kind of out-in-the-open conspiracy to help a lucky few billionaires get much, much richer

  The American Sports Plutocracy Is Bullshitderekthompson.org

• 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

Co-founder of Superlogical, started in 2026 to build server-side terminal infrastructure; creator of Ghostty. Co-founded HashiCorp and created Vagrant and Terraform before that.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A low-effort AI-designed landing page costs a product its audience before the product itself is ever judged.

  Their words

  I'm so incredibly tired of seeing low-effort AI-designed web pages. I basically bounce off any new product immediately when I see it (never get a chance to judge the product itself). Lots of thin lines, glowy styles, inconsistent fonts, lots of monospace.

  @mitchellh on Xx.com

Chief product officer at the live-shopping marketplace Whatnot, previously chief product officer at Twitch and a product lead on growth at Twitter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Live commerce works at audience sizes that would be uneconomic for live entertainment, because commerce does not run on CPMs.

  Their words

  commerce has totally different economics to entertainment and CPMs aren't the thing that you have to worry about.

  youtube.com

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  Now that everyone can build apps with AI, distribution is the thing that separates who wins.

  Their words, before

  I think the challenge is that everyone can now build apps But 1) almost nobody has distribution (like an audience), or 2) the money to pay for distribution (ads or UGC), or 3) the creative genius to get distribution for free (classically called guerilla marketing)

  Their words now

  I thought it'd be distribution but who knows, obviously creativity and ideas, but if you can copy a successful app in an hour, then how does that differentiating work?

Head of Instagram since 2018, previously head of Facebook's News Feed.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Power is shifting from institutions to individuals across every industry: players are now more relevant than the teams they play for.

  Their words

  power shifting from institutions to individuals across industries, the easiest example is sports where players are more relevant than teams now.

  youtube.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The adulation and the abuse a well-known figure receives are both about the audience's need for a hero or a villain, and have nothing to do with the person.

  Their words

  And what I had to learn was the reason that people come to me with those out of proportion responses is because that's what they need. They need a hero or they need a villain. and their need for a hero or a villain has nothing to do with me. If it wasn't me, they'd be contacting you. They'd be contacting somebody else. It really doesn't have anything to to do about me.

  youtube.com

Historian of the Renaissance at the University of Chicago and a science-fiction novelist; wrote Terra Ignota and Inventing the Renaissance.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Corrupting the church was a prisoner's dilemma: a duke who declined to bribe the pope while his enemies bribed him was simply beaten.

  Their words

  It even becomes a kind of a prisoner's dilemma system because if you're the duke and you don't manipulate the papacy, if you don't bribe the pope, if you don't work hard to get your brother to be bishop, and your enemies do, you're screwed.

  youtube.com

Staff writer at The New Yorker, where he writes the Infinite Scroll column, and author of Filterworld and The Longing for Less.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Social media no longer works for writers to reach an audience; newsletters are a better channel.

  Their words

  As discussed, social media doesn't work for writers anymore. Newsletters are way better.

  Everything on the internet is a "show"kylechayka.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

  Every talk you give is a job interview, because an audience is reading what you are as much as what you are saying.

  Their words

  And what I learned from the puppet days, every presentation is an interview. I don't think a lot of people think about it that way cuz people are looking at you on stage and they get to see what you're about.

  youtube.com

Writer of the blog Putanumonit and the newsletter Second Person, on rationality, dating and probability; based in New York.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Most people who would be a good audience for an essay will never notice it or bother to engage with it.

  Their words

  99% of people who you'd want to read your essay probably don't know you exist, or don't give a fuck, or wouldn't be bothered to engage even if they read it.

  By Chains or by Promisesputanumonit.com

Co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc., the company behind Snapchat, which he started in 2011 while studying product design at Stanford.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Range, not a distinctive style, is what separates a designer from an artist, so a portfolio where everything looks alike is a bad sign.

  Their words

  Design is really about, you know, empathizing with your customer, empathizing with your audience, your viewer, whoever it is, and then building something that will really resonates with them. And And that means you need to have a an extraordinary amount of range.

  youtube.com

Executive coach for product leaders. Previously a partner at GV (Google Ventures) and a product manager at Google. Writes at Bring the Donuts, including a standing essential-reading list for product managers.

• Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  The Innovator's Dilemma

  Their words

  The most important business and product management book of the past fifty years. If you’re a technology PM and you haven’t read Christensen, do so right now.

  bringthedonuts.com

• Recommendsaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Competing Against Luck

  Their words

  Christensen explores one of his approaches to combating the Innovator’s Dilemma:

  bringthedonuts.com

• Recommendsaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better

  Their words

  One of the most common requests I receive is for resources to become a better storyteller. In this book, award-winning novelist Will Storr looks at how the brain responds to stories, and how to captivate your audience and connect with their emotions.

  bringthedonuts.com

+ 1 more

• Recommendsaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  The Captain Class: The Hidden Force That Creates the World's Greatest Teams

  Their words

  sports section looks at the leadership qualities of the most successful sports leaders in history. And they’re not what you think.

  bringthedonuts.com

Economist; Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at Harvard, nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, and Chairman of the US Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2017.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  Our Dollar, Your Problem

  Their words

  This book manages to pull all of that together in a way that's genuinely readable and engaging, helped along by anecdotes from his own policymaking experience that both clarify the arguments and make them feel concrete and accessible to a much broader audience.

  fivebooks.com

• Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  The Inner Game of Tennis

  Their words

  The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey I love books like this with a simple message using sports as an analogy for other aspects of life.

  awealthofcommonsense.com

• Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  The Breaks of the Game

  Their words

  I’ve heard numerous sportswriters call Halberstam’s chronicle of the Portland Trailblazers’ 1979-80 season the best sports books ever written.

  awealthofcommonsense.com

American author of Liar's Poker, Moneyball, The Big Short and The Undoing Project, and host of the podcast Against the Rules.

From one piece 10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis) 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  An audience disengages the moment it knows nothing can go wrong, which is why a speech read off the page is dead on arrival.

  Their words

  The audience is waiting for you to get through this thing because they know nothing's going to happen. Like whatever's on that page, that's what's going to happen.

  10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis)youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A writer's audience does not carry from one book to the next: every book is another startup you have to make happen from scratch.

  startups

  Their words

  I see no evidence that I'm dragging people along with me. I feel like each each book feels like another startup and that I've got to go out and make it happen almost as if I've not written one.

  10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis)youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  An audience is not buying the subject you cover; it is buying your interest in the subject.

  Their words

  They learn to trust you that if you're interested, they'll be interested. That what in fact what they're buying into is not the subject, but your interest in the subject.

  10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis)youtube.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

  Promoting a cause builds audience loyalty.

  Their words

  When you have a Cause you promote - whether relevant to your listeners' lives or work or sense of self, you have loyalty.

  How To Podcastswyx.io

Writer and novelist. Publishes essays and book notes at nateliason.com; author of the novel Husk and of Crypto Confidential.

From one piece Frozen's Lie: How a Tiny Detail Can Ruin a Story 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The effectiveness of a plot twist depends on how carefully a story's point of view relates to its audience.

  Their words

  Point of view is essential for effective twists. Contrast Frozen with Fight Club, where the narrator's unreliability works because the entire story flows through his perspective and he maintains a direct relationship with the audience through fourth-wall breaks.

  Frozen's Lie: How a Tiny Detail Can Ruin a Storynateliason.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A twist works best when it is discoverable on rewatch rather than achieved by directly misleading the audience.

  Their words

  Instead, the filmmakers directly misled the audience rather than crafting a clever deception discoverable on rewatch.

  Frozen's Lie: How a Tiny Detail Can Ruin a Storynateliason.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Online audiences now hold real power over how songs are made to sound.

  Their words

  The band told me about the pressure of creating content in order to promote their music and the ways in which the audience now has power over how songs sound.

  How to survive a TikTok hit songkylechayka.substack.com

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

Founder and CEO of Epic Games, creator of the Unreal Engine and of Fortnite.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The metaverse does not require VR: VR is hardware that may or may not improve the experience, and it has a much smaller audience than social gaming already does.

  Their words

  VR has a much smaller audience. I don't think you need VR to have anything like this. VR is hardware that may or may not enhance the experience for some usage cases.

  youtube.com

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  Abundance

  Their words

  but I recommend Abundance to the Silver Bulletin audience.

  natesilver.net

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Subscription platforms like Substack and OnlyFans tend to become a Girardian bubble, where a few visible successes obscure the many who quietly give up after failing to build an audience.

  Their words

  I suspect that both Substack and OnlyFans may become a Girardian bubble. Everyone joins after hearing from the few people who succeed; the thousands who slink away after months of effort netted them a mere 17 subscribers usually do so quietly.

  putanumonit.com

Game designer and director of the NYU Game Center; made Universal Paperclips and writes Donkeyspace.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The video game audience has come to embrace the medium’s worst traits as emblems of the hobby rather than treat them as flaws.

  Their words

  So many of the worst things about video games are not just reluctantly tolerated but enthusiastically embraced because, through association, they have become emblems of our beloved hobby/artform/lifestyle.

  Are Games Bad?franklantz.substack.com

Writer on a lost civilisation of the Ice Age; wrote Fingerprints of the Gods and presented Ancient Apocalypse. Archaeologists reject the claims, which he disputes at length.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Archaeology's hostility to him is territorial defence of a profession, and it grew with the size of his audience rather than with anything in his evidence.

  Their words

  I think it’s partly territorial. I cannot speak of all archeologists, but some archeologists feel very territorial about their profession. They do not feel happy about outsiders entering their realm, especially if those outsiders have a large platform.

  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.

• Likedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000-Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection

  Their words

  The result is extremely engaging, and while I didn't particularly learn from it, I daresay most of the prospective audience will not, in fact, have read as widely in Ansary's sources as I happen to have done.

  bactra.org

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

From one piece Seth Godin: "Failure is Learning on Your Way to Mastery" and Other Advice for Creativity (The Knowledge Project #105, published 23 February 2021) 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  No business has everyone as its customer, so the goal is the smallest viable audience rather than the biggest possible one.

  Their words

  nobody has everyone as their customer. Nobody. Maybe the water company, but that's about it. Our goal cannot be to be for everyone. That we have to be for someone. The smallest viable audience, not the biggest possible audience.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Naming a narrow audience puts a creator on the hook, while claiming the work is for everyone is a way to hide from failure.

  Their words

  the way to be on the hook is to say, "This is only for people who are like this." Because if those people hate it, then you were wrong. Whereas if you say, "This is for everyone," you're allowed to hide behind, "Well, everyone hasn't found it yet."

  youtube.com

Historian of Ukraine at Harvard; wrote The Gates of Europe, Chernobyl and The Russo-Ukrainian War.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Denazification works as propaganda because the words fascism and Nazi make a post-Soviet audience stop analysing, not just start listening.

  Their words

  So, once you use terms “fascism,” and “Nazi,” and “denazification,” suddenly people, not just start listening, they just stop analyzing. And as a propaganda tool, this is, of course, very powerful tool.

  youtube.com

Co-founder and CTO of Linear; previously an engineer at Uber.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  To compete with limited resources, scope down who you are building for as much as possible and solve the problems of specific people.

  Their words

  To be able to do this with limited resources, you must scope down your audience (and thus your ambitions) as much as possible to make competing easier, and aim to solve the problems of specific people.

  linear.app

Music critic and historian; author of The History of Jazz and Music: A Subversive History. Writes the newsletter The Honest Broker on music and culture.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The technology platforms are not patrons of culture: their aim is addiction, because an addicted audience is the customer they want.

  Addiction

  Their words

  They don’t want to find the next Michelangelo or Mozart. They want to create a world of junkies—because they will be the dealers.

  The State of the Culture, 2024honest-broker.com

Founder of Platformer, a newsletter on tech platforms and the people they affect, and co-host of the Hard Fork podcast at the New York Times.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  The Long Game

  Their words

  Molly Knight has enviable access to the Los Angeles Dodgers, and she uses it to write deeply humane, beautifully written explorations of sports and fandom. A newsletter that belongs in the inbox of any baseball fan.

  platformer.substack.com

Founder of Amazon in 1994 and of the space company Blue Origin in 2000.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  PowerPoint is a sales tool and therefore the wrong instrument inside a company, because internally you are trying to find the truth rather than persuade anyone.

  Their words

  But one of the problems is PowerPoint is really designed to persuade. It's kind of a sales tool. And internally, the last thing you want to do is sell. Again, you're truth seeking. You're trying to find truth. And the other problem with PowerPoint is it's easy for the author and hard for the audience.

  youtube.com

Economist at George Mason University, co-author of Marginal Revolution, host of Conversations with Tyler. Writes in short, dense claims about economics, culture and AI, and has moved position on AI in public more than once.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Modern prosperity does not refute Malthus: the Malthusian dilemma was faced, and one of Malthus’s own options was taken.

  Their words

  You thus can see that the prosperity of the modern world does not refute Malthus. We faced the Malthusian dilemma and opted for one of his options, namely vice.

  tylercowen.com

Co-founder and chief executive of Meta Platforms, the company he started as Facebook in 2004.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Computers, TVs and phones are badly designed for people because they keep us sitting still, and the human experience is a physical one.

  Their words

  But they're fundamentally like you're sitting, you're still. I mean, people are just not meant to be that way. I mean, I think you and I have this shared passion for sports and martial arts and doing stuff like that. We're just moving around. It's so much of what makes us people is like, you move around. You're not just like a brain and a tank. It's where the human experience is a physical one.

  youtube.com

Professor at Carnegie Mellon working on self-driving-car safety; writes Safe Autonomy on how autonomous vehicles are and are not shown to be safe.

From one piece AV Safety and the False Dilemma Fallacy 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Automatic emergency braking is doing far more for road safety today than autonomous driving is, and it is left out of the argument.

  self-driving cars

  Their words

  Non-autonomous technology (AEB) is making far more of a contribution right now -- but is missing from the false dilemma.

  AV Safety and the False Dilemma Fallacysafeautonomy.blogspot.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The choice presented to the public, between human drivers who kill people and immature robotaxis, is a false dilemma that leaves out everything else that improves road safety.

  self-driving cars

  Their words

  They frame the situation as a choice between continued human drivers killing people (without statistical context) vs. immature robotaxis who don't drink and drive (but make other mistakes).

  AV Safety and the False Dilemma Fallacysafeautonomy.blogspot.com

Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product design at Facebook; author of The Making of a Manager; writes The Looking Glass.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The more your target audience does not look like you, the more you should be skeptical of your design intuition.

  Their words

  The more your target audience does not look like you, the more you should be skeptical of your design intuition. Despite having seen thousands of a/b test results for minor design details, I am still regularly surprised and humbled by my intuition being wrong.

  The Looking Glass: What AI Won't Changelg.substack.com

• Likedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Futurism

  Their words

  This is older, but it's still a really good book about the Italian Futurists. Indeed I can't think of a better one for a general audience with some background knowledge of modern art. The chapters on Futurist painting and sculpture, on music and performance, on women, and on politics are especially good.

  bactra.org

• Recommendsaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Garmin Venu 2

  Their words

  As one might suspect from this lineup of four watches, the Garmin unit is the most sports-focused one of the bunch.

  dcrainmaker.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

Software engineer who writes the blog Made of Bugs about performance, debugging and understanding computer systems. Previously worked at Anthropic on interpretability, at Stripe on Sorbet, and at Ksplice.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  How Apollo flew to the Moon

  Their words

  This is far and away the best general-audience technical documentation of the Apollo missions I've read.

  blog.nelhage.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  There is a permanent trade-off in verification: an expressive language is hard to prove things about, and a language that is easy to prove things about is hard to write in.

  Their words

  Formal verifiers have a dilemma: the more expressive the language, the harder it is to prove anything in it. But the less expressive the language, the harder it is to write anything in it.

  Why Don't People Use Formal Methods?hillelwayne.com