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Essayist; writes Astral Codex Ten, previously Slate Star Codex.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Adam Kay's This Is Going To Hurt is a textbook case study of moral injury and post-traumatic stress in a competent doctor, narrated by the patient himself.

  Trauma

  Their words

  This Is Going To Hurt is, read with a clinical eye, a textbook case study of moral injury and post-traumatic stress in a competent doctor, narrated by the patient himself, with the diagnosis hidden in plain sight.

  Your Book Review: This Is Going To Hurtastralcodexten.com

Founder of the Free Software Movement and the GNU Project, original author of GNU Emacs and the GNU General Public License, and long-time president of the Free Software Foundation.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The US covertly intervened in Colombia's 2026 presidential election to help elect a right-wing president.

  Their words

  I am pretty sure that the US made some sort of vicious secret intervention, because the newly elected? president is a magat.

  Urgent: Raise the Wage Actstallman.org

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

  Small disadvantages relative to others hurt more than equivalent small advantages help.

  Their words

  It's unfair, not only materially, but psychologically. The bad we feel about small disadvantages is greater than the good we feel about small advantages.

  Bad Feelingsderekthompson.org

Economic historian at Columbia; writes Chartbook on economics, geopolitics and history, and wrote Crashed and The Deluge.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Support for populist right-wing parties is driven more by rejection of the status quo and anti-immigrant sentiment than by demand for economic redistribution.

  immigrationgovernment

  Their words

  Voting for the AfD in the current landscape, whatever your economic issues, in short, is not a vote to have your economic issues addressed by social democracy, or welfare or government intervention.

  adamtooze.substack.com

Builds developer tools — SST, and now OpenCode at Anomaly. Posts constantly on x.com and writes almost never; the blog stopped in 2021.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  In US-China AI competition the closed labs are beside the point; the competitor that shifts things must be American, open source and able to serve inference at scale.

  open sourceAnthropicOpenAIChina

  Their words

  in this whole USA vs China thing OpenAI and Anthropic aren't relevant because they're positioned differently them building better models doesn't hurt china at all the competitor has to be - american - open source - enough compute to do inference at scale that can shift things

  @thdxr on Xx.com

Lawyer and everyday-carry gear reviewer who publishes scored knife, flashlight and multitool reviews at Everyday Commentary.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  How a company handles defective units is itself part of its business model.

  Their words

  So how you handle bad units needs to be part of your business model.

  Cloud Defensive MCH Micro Revieweverydaycommentary.com

US science and technology adviser to the president, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; previously US chief technology officer and chief operating officer of Scale AI.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Autonomous cloud labs that run the whole loop — hypothesis, experiment, result, next hypothesis — without human intervention are within reach.

  Their words

  The idea that you can have autonomous cloud labs running experiments on a loop without human intervention, testing hypotheses, running the experiments, seeing the results, creating a new hypothesis, testing it and running it, and ultimately getting to a conclusion, that is in our sights.

  youtube.com

Writes Very Serious, a newsletter on politics, the economy and culture, and hosts the podcast of the same name.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Modern technology has made seasonal clock changes far less burdensome than they were decades ago.

  Their words

  the main relevant difference between 1974 and now is that technology handles clock changes on our behalf, so time changes are less burdensome than they used to be.

  joshbarro.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

  It is hard to name a country that is better off after a recent US military intervention.

  America

  Their words

  even the most committed American nationalist is hard pressed to name a country that’s better off after a recent US military intervention, something that wasn’t that hard to do from 1945-1991.

  The Network Statethenetworkstate.com

Physician focused on longevity; wrote Outlive and hosts The Drive.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Exercise is the most powerful broad-based longevity intervention available today, and a drug that blunts its adaptations is not worth taking for longevity.

  Their words

  we now have multiple trials confirming that metformin interferes with your ability to reap the adaptive benefits of exercise, which is the most powerful broad-based longevity intervention available to us today

  Metformin and cancer: active surveillance neededpeterattiamd.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

  Whether breaking your word destroys you depends on the shape of your power: Savonarola’s rested on never erring, so his contradictions ruined him.

  Their words

  And so his power base was fragile vis-a-vis untruth. And for him because of the specific shape of his power and then the specific way he handled his contradictions, that did hurt him.

  youtube.com

Writer and academic, author of The Cult of Smart and How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement; writes a daily newsletter on politics, education and culture.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The best teachers, unlimited resources and every evidence-based intervention still fail on a student who does not want to learn.

  Their words

  You can staff a school with the best teachers on earth, give them unlimited resources, and wrap the place in every evidence-based intervention imaginable, and it still won’t work if students are resistant, disengaged, or actively hostile to the enterprise.

  freddiedeboer.substack.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Tariffs on imported components and machinery hurt the American manufacturers they are supposed to help.

  America

  Their words

  These end manufacturers (new and old) are vulnerable to tariffs on their inputs and they are the buyers that the "speed strategy" is relevant for.

  Speed Can Reindustrialize Americaaustinvernon.site

Founder of the International Center for Clinical Excellence and originator of Feedback-Informed Treatment. Writes about what actually makes a therapist effective, usually against the field's own assumptions about training and experience.

• Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app

  Outcome Rating Scale (ORS)

  Their words

  The ORS is a brief, 4-item measure designed to assess areas of life functioning known to change as a result of therapeutic intervention. It takes less than one minute to complete and score.

  scottdmiller.com

Founder and CEO of SaaStr, the B2B software community and events business, and a SaaS investor who previously co-founded EchoSign and sold it to Adobe.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI will not give every salesperson superpowers; it will give the best ones superpowers and make the mediocre ones more mediocre.

  Their words

  a lot of old school GTM leaders are like, you know, AI isn't going to hurt sales reps. It's just going to make them give them superpowers. The best ones, yes, the mediocre are just going to be like more mediocre, right?

  youtube.com

Psychiatrist and clinical assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University. Writes Psychiatry at the Margins on the philosophical and scientific arguments inside psychiatry and the psy-sciences.

From one piece The Rumpelstiltskin effect: therapeutic repercussions of clinical diagnosis (with 1 co-authors) 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Self-diagnosis is an attempt to secure the therapeutic effect of a medical intervention patients cannot officially access.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  Likewise, self-diagnosis should be understood as an attempt to secure the therapeutic effect of a medical intervention to which patients do not have official access.

  doi.org

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Clinical diagnosis can have a therapeutic effect independent of any other intervention.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  Their experiences highlight a striking, neglected and unchristened medical phenomenon: The therapeutic effect of a clinical diagnosis, independent of any other intervention, where clinical diagnosis refers to situating the person's experiences into a clinical category by a clinician or the patient.

  doi.org

Anthropologist; wrote Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World and The Secret History of the Mongol Queens.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Genghis Khan reached his laws through the practical experience of being hurt, never through ideology or the study of moral right.

  Their words

  I don't say that he did this because of some ideological reason. Just like he didn't outlaw the kidnapping of women for ideological reasons. He didn't come to it through studying ideas of moral right. He came to it through practical experience of life.

  youtube.com

Software architect and futurist; founded ClariNet, chaired the EFF, and has written about robocars for two decades.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Tesla's robotaxi intervention rate is far better than its consumer self-driving software and far worse than a human driver or Waymo.

  self-driving cars

  Their words

  That's much better than current FSD, but much worse than humans or Waymo.

  ideas.4brad.com

Founder of the toy manufacturer Viahart; writes about manufacturing, importing and why bringing production back to America is harder than it sounds.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Tariffs on imported components and machinery hurt the American manufacturers they are supposed to help.

  America

  Their words

  They applied the same tax to the components that you need to make things in America that they did to finished goods that were made outside of America.

  molsonhart.com

Programmer and streamer; was an engineer at Netflix, now teaches and argues about editors, Vim and how people learn to program.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The next attack on open source is denial of attention: LLM-generated fake bug reports that exhaust and demoralise maintainers.

  LLMsopen source

  Their words

  I think there's this whole idea, I call it a denial of attention. I think there's an entire attack vector that's going to be happening. We're using LLMs to generate fake bug reports, fake all these things to just actually effectively to demotivate and hurt open source maintainers.

  youtube.com

Founder and editor of Techdirt; coined the Streisand effect, and writes on platform liability, speech law and copyright.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Telegram reports no child sexual abuse material at all to the clearing house that handles it, and that is indefensible even if no law compels a non-US company to.

  Their words

  I know from the report that Stanford put out earlier this year that Telegram does not report CSAM to NCMEC at all. That is very stupid. I would imagine Telegram would argue that as a non-US company it doesn’t have to abide by such laws.

  techdirt.com

American author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and Everything Is F*cked. Writes essays and book reviews at markmanson.net.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Most people are fundamentally good, which makes the risk of trusting them worth taking.

  Their words

  Most people are good. And while you might get hurt or embarrassed sometimes, the alternative is just way worse.

  markmanson.net

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.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  One company doing one ill-advised thing damages an entire emerging industry, which is why safety is a shared problem rather than a competitive one.

  Their words

  The Cruise debacle of the last few months proved (once again; remember Uber ATG?) that it only takes one company doing one ill-advised thing to hurt the entire industry.

  My Automated Vehicle Safety Prediction for 2024safeautonomy.blogspot.com

Deep-learning researcher and Turing Award laureate; founder of the Mila institute.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Without sufficient caution, advanced autonomous AI could cause irreversible loss of human control and culminate in large-scale loss of life or human extinction.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  Without sufficient caution, we may irreversibly lose control of autonomous AI systems, rendering human intervention ineffective. Large-scale cybercrime, social manipulation, and other harms could escalate rapidly. This unchecked AI advancement could culminate in a large-scale loss of life and the biosphere, and the marginalization or extinction of humanity.

  arxiv.org

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Closing off interoperability is how a platform locks people in, and that lock-in is what lets the service be made worse without losing them.

  Their words

  The temptation to enshittify is magnified by the blocks on interoperability: when Twitter bans interoperable clients, nerfs its APIs, and periodically terrorizes its users by suspending them for including their Mastodon handles in their bios, it makes it harder to leave Twitter, and thus increases the amount of enshittification users can be force-fed without risking their departure.

  Tiktok's enshittificationpluralistic.net

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

  Closing off the ways people can hurt each other in a shared space also closes off the ways they can befriend each other.

  Their words

  By eliminating the bad aspects of humans interacting, you often also remove many of the good parts.

  lostgarden.com

Experimental psychologist and author of the blog Experimental History, on psychology, science reform and creativity.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Sixty years of peer review produced no evidence that it made science better, and the literature it produced is in a bad state.

  Their words

  All we can say from these big trends is that we have no idea whether peer review helped, it might have hurt, it cost a ton, and the current state of the scientific literature is pretty abysmal.

  The rise and fall of peer reviewexperimental-history.com

Pseudonymous essayist. Writes at gwern.net on AI scaling, statistics, genetics and long-running internet research, with heavy citation and a habit of revising old essays in place rather than leaving them wrong.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  The Black Company

  Their words

  I enjoyed the first book a great deal: it’s in a fairly stock medieval setting, but it handles the dark fantasy well

  gwern.net

Economist; former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Central bank purchases of government bonds are not bailouts and do not automatically cause inflation, since they only change the composition of the consolidated government's liabilities, not their total.

  inflationinterest ratesgovernment

  Their words

  Governments have not been bailed out by their central banks. As I discussed earlier, central bank intervention does not reduce the overall liabilities of the consolidated government, just their composition. And it does not automatically lead to more inflation: It increases the size of the balance sheet of the central bank, but it does not increase the size of the non-interest-paying money stock.

  Fiscal Policy under Low Interest Ratesdirect.mit.edu

Computer science professor at Georgetown University and author of Deep Work, Digital Minimalism and Slow Productivity; writes about focus, technology and work at calnewport.com and hosts the Deep Questions podcast.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Living with a SEAL

  Their words

  The book was light and fun, but it makes a lot more sense if, like me, you first read Goggin's mega-bestselling memoir, Can't Hurt Me.

  calnewport.com

Full-stack developer, creator of Tailwind CSS; writes at adamwathan.me and makes courses and screencasts for web developers.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Bench

  Their words

  Bench handles all of the bookkeeping for my business.

  adamwathan.me

Physician and author on addiction, stress and childhood development. Wrote In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and The Myth of Normal, and developed the Compassionate Inquiry approach taught to therapists.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Childhood trauma is the template for every addiction, including the socially rewarded ones.

  TraumaAddiction

  Their words

  Childhood trauma is the template for addiction-any addiction. All addictions are attempts to escape the deep pain of the hurt child, attempts temporarily soothing but ultimately futile.

  drgabormate.com