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Patrick McKenzie
x.com
How many people do you have to convince in a city to get the difference between 20k car break-ins and 5k break-ins? I think it’s probably something like 10-20. Plus politicians/cops/etc but they have much less direct control of the metric than the decisionmakers do.
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19 September
Machine-learning researcher on open language models; writes the Interconnects newsletter and the RLHF Book, after leading post-training at Ai2.
Where I stand on RSI: A moderate's view on the recent events and trajectory of AI. I was underestimating how much we are likely to scale inference-time compute in the near future, but have not seen much to convince me that an intelligence explosion is near. interconnects.ai
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Founder of Farnam Street (fs.blog) and host of The Knowledge Project podcast. Writes and curates on decision-making, mental models and rational thinking.
"I don't believe in 50 friends. I believe in a smaller number. Nor do I care about society events. It's the most senseless use of time. When I do go out, from time to time, it's just to convince myself again that I'm not missing a lot." - Dietrich Mateschitz, founder of Red Bull Related
18 September
Writes Slow Boring, a near-daily newsletter on American politics and public policy; co-founded Vox in 2014 and left it in 2020.
17 September
Writes Slow Boring, a near-daily newsletter on American politics and public policy; co-founded Vox in 2014 and left it in 2020.
16 September
Psychologist and writer. Author of the memoir Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, and of a newsletter on human nature, psychology, social class and what he calls luxury beliefs.
"we may think that in the contemporary world we have moved beyond...the need for religious belief and worship has largely been superseded; but we have merely transferred these primal needs to celebrities and charismatic politicians and political leaders" Related
15 September
Writer and climate campaigner; wrote The End of Nature in 1989, founded 350.org and Third Act, and writes The Crucial Years.
12 September
Writer and programmer; co-founder of the software studio Postlight and author of the Bloomberg Businessweek essay What Is Code?
I feel like I am constantly inventing new ways to convince my kids to do the laundry, eat lunch, or leave the house, endless variations on the same things like some sort of stochastic parent. Related
11 September
Co-founder and chief investment officer of Cambria Investment Management. He has written several books on quantitative asset allocation, blogs at Meb Faber Research and hosts The Meb Faber Show.
Aligning with a party prevents you from ever having this (obviously correct) opinion. Trump's grifting (meme coin, selling early access to tweets, $5k bribes) is gross, unnecessary, and destroys confidence in markets and politicians. The Trump accounts are a fantastic achievement and could change millions upon millions of Americans' lives. Quoting @MebFaber The single worst trade I can think of: Sacrificing your mental independence and emotional health to align with a political party. Zero upside and massive downside. Try subbing out "ideas" for "party" in my favorite @AdamMGrant quote America Related
Economist; former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.
It takes at least 10 years after high school to get to the frontier of economic research, or to the frontier of medical research. Except for a few kooks, most people, smartly, do not try to engage and question medical researchers. Unfortunately, this is not true for economics. Many too many self-appointed experts, including among politicians. Quoting @mbompard Il est grave que le gouverneur de la banque de France diffuse ainsi de fausses informations. 1) Rien dans les traités européens ne dit ce que la BCE doit faire des titres de dettes des États dont elle dispose. Les mêmes arguments d’illégalité étaient utilisés contre le rachat des titres par la BCE… Related
10 September
Economist and journalist; Financial Times columnist as The Undercover Economist, author of How to Make the World Add Up, and presenter of the Cautionary Tales podcast.
9 September
Computer science professor who works on fast data processing; co-author of the simdjson parser and a weekly blogger about software performance since 2004.
Politicians, and people, are often deeply irrational. But it is often easier not to talk about it. In fact, it is considered impolite to talk about it. Case in point. In August 1914, British Columbia premier Sir Richard McBride spent $1.15 million of provincial money on two American submarines. That was about twice the yearly budget of the Royal Canadian Navy. Canadian provinces have no military. The man had no business buying weapons, let alone submarines. Let alone incredibly expensive submarines. A German attack on the West Coast was never likely. Germany did have cruisers in the Pacific f… Quoting @TristinHopper I regularly visit the grave of the B.C. premier who panicked at the outset of the First World War and used taxpayer money to buy a pair of random South American submarines. America Related
5 September
Researcher of social media, privacy and youth culture; founder of Data & Society and author of It’s Complicated.
Many politicians are obsessed with the idea that non-citizens vote. The reality is often more complicated. Did you know that American Samoans have a US passport and yet cannot vote or run for office? Quoting @taniel.bsky.social Meaningful news earlier today. Many of you read and reacted to this story earlier this year on this Samoan woman in Alaska who was being prosecuted for voting alongside many in her family. A judge tossed her case today—a huge win, if just a first step in her story. America Related
4 September
American-Polish journalist and historian, staff writer at The Atlantic; author of Gulag, Iron Curtain, Twilight of Democracy and Autocracy, Inc.
1 September
Epidemiologist; founded Your Local Epidemiologist in March 2020 to translate public-health science, and consults for organisations including the CDC.
31 August
Mathematical physicist at UC Riverside. Wrote This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics and now the Azimuth blog on mathematics, physics and environmental science.
Don Zagier wrote: “There are two facts about the distribution of prime numbers of which I hope to convince you so overwhelmingly that they will be permanently engraved in your hearts. The first is that they are the most arbitrary and ornery objects studied by mathematicians: they grow like weeds among the natural numbers, seeming to obey no other law than that of chance, and nobody can predict where the next one will sprout. The second fact is even more astonishing, for it states just the opposite: that the prime numbers exhibit stunning regularity, that there are laws governing their behavio… people.mpim-bonn.mpg.de
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17 August
Mac developer and writer at brettterpstra.com; makes the apps Marked and nvALT and writes extensively about Markdown and automation.
The cops have a suspect in the theft of ALL of Winona's Flock cameras. Donate to his legal fund here gofund.me
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11 August
Physicist and science communicator. Writes Backreaction and makes videos explaining new physics and astronomy results, frequently to argue that the headline about them overstates the case.
Dunning Kruger Effect Wrong, Scientists Claim The dumber you are, the more certain you are that you aren't. That's the Dunning-Kruger effect, and it's been used to explain everything from bad politicians to the state of social media. Now psychologists have gone bac…
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4 August
Writer and former Substack product manager; publishes essays and interviews on technology, culture and China at jasmi.news.
This piece is out! 4 sites, 10 days, and 6000 words on the politics of data centers in the Midwest: https://t.co/uOL7vmf3wC I talked to union leaders and real estate brokers, activists and local officials, politicians from Kathy Hochul to Abdul El-Sayed. A few takeaways: - Activists are as pissed at their local officials as at AI companies - The bigger the dollar signs, the more skeptical people are - Past corporate failures (Foxconn, GM, DTE) prime community distrust - Even data center proponents regret the NDAs - Media narratives turn local grievances into national movements - Residents fea… Quoting @jasminewsun I’m spending the next week driving around Wisconsin and Michigan to get a firsthand view of the data center buildout and backlash am visiting sites, talking to tons of people — tradespeople, activists, planners, residents — then writing up a story lmk what questions I should dig into! data centers Related
1 August
Brazilian software engineer, creator and maintainer of GoReleaser; works on Copilot CLI at GitHub. Writes about tooling and his setup at carlosbecker.com.
looking forward to this being implemented everywhere so we can live in a world where all politicians are unemployed 🙏🏻 Quoting @adamemedia1 Every country on earth needs to do this. Related
29 July
Programmer and technology writer known for his long Mac OS X reviews at Ars Technica; co-hosts the Accidental Tech Podcast and Hypercritical.
RE: https://mastodon.social/@marioguzman/117005289701832778 Bring this image back in time a decade or two and try to convince people it’s real. Related
21 July
Writer of the personal-finance blog Of Dollars And Data and author of Just Keep Buying and The Wealth Ladder. Chief Operating Officer at Ritholtz Wealth Management.
Spend enough money and you can convince people you're a wine expert, a German heiress, or a NY Times bestselling author. My latest on the price of status: ofdollarsanddata.com
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Climate journalist; founded HEATED in 2019 after reporting on climate at The New Republic and ThinkProgress.
Their words
The fossil fuel industry's great political achievement is not that it has persuaded every Republican that climate change is a hoax. It is that it has made the truth unspeakable among Republican politicians-even when their constituents are choking on it.
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heated.world
17 July
Writes Very Serious, a newsletter on politics, the economy and culture, and hosts the podcast of the same name.
From one piece
Permanent Daylight Saving Time Is the Perfect Stupid Idea for Our Stupid Time
2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
politicians acting based on what they think polls well, rather than based on what will actually produce results that make voters happy
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joshbarro.com
Their words
the increasing unreasonableness of an electorate that wants all its groceries in one bag and also doesn't want the bag to be heavy is a primary driver behind permanently low approval of politicians in both parties
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joshbarro.com
16 July
Co-founder of Netscape and of the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz. Argues at length for building things, mostly in short form.
Factories were built back when politicians still wanted their constituents to have jobs. Quoting @MTSlive Zane Hengsperger on the surprising reason NIMBY protests never come for factories the way they come for data centers: "I would argue NIMBYism does not matter for factories. It obviously for data centers is a major problem." "Look at any city mayor who brings a manufacturing company to their city. T… Related
30 May
Writer and former Substack product manager; publishes essays and interviews on technology, culture and China at jasmi.news.
I think "being real with yourself" is the most underrated cognitive skill for the AI age — AI makes it too easy to lie to yourself: to self-congratulate for the illusion of thinking, productivity, etc. But you gotta actually know: Am I being more productive, or just tokenmaxxing? Am I upskilling myself with AI, or letting it do the hard part for me? Does my essay/business/product idea make sense, or did I let an LLM convince me it does? Then you won't need hard rules like “always/never use AI for X.” If you pay attention and avoid self-deception, you'll be able to *feel* when you are doing re… LLMs Related
9 May
Writes Very Serious, a newsletter on politics, the economy and culture, and hosts the podcast of the same name.
23 April
Software developer and entrepreneur; co-founder of Heroku, author of The Twelve-Factor App, and a researcher at Ink & Switch.
It's astonishing how much time in my day I spend typing in two-factor codes, picking the right Google account, and otherwise trying to convince the computer that I am who I say I am. I believe we can do better. Would love to see a talk submission if you're working on this. Quoting @localfirstconf "It's been a kind of a good deal to say like, look, I'll just let Google manage my identity and then I can click the login with Google button everywhere. But it's a little bit of a deal with the devil. " @_adamwiggins_ Google Related
9 April
Founder of the Silicon Valley Product Group; wrote Inspired, Empowered and Transformed on how product organisations work.
19 March
Co-creator of Django and creator of Datasette; writes daily at simonwillison.net.
Their words
projects are flooded with junk contributions at the moment to the point that people are trying to convince GitHub to disable pull requests, which is something GitHub have never done.
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youtube.com
1 March
Researcher of social media, privacy and youth culture; founder of Data & Society and author of It’s Complicated.
Current household debate: Who bullshits more - GenAI or politicians? Related
16 February
Investigative journalist on policing, forensics and criminal justice; wrote Rise of the Warrior Cop and writes The Watch.
18 January
Organizational psychologist and professor at the Wharton School. Author of Give and Take, Originals, Think Again and Hidden Potential, host of the Re:Thinking podcast, and writer of the GRANTED newsletter.
Their words
Politics Without Politicians by political scientist Hélène Landemore (February)
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adamgrant.substack.com
26 December 2025
Software engineer at PlanetScale and creator of the vim-go plugin. Writes at arslan.io about Go, tooling, industrial design and books.
Their words
I'm mixed on this book. It doesn't really offer actionable exercises, and the Self 1 and Self 2 framing didn't fully convince me.
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arslan.io
19 October 2025
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.
Their words
Being right is less than half the battle. You also have to convince others that you're right, and more importantly, convince them to care enough to act on it.
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eugeneyan.com
12 October 2025
China economy researcher based in Beijing who writes on his personal blog about Chinese political economy, history, books and music.
First explorations in Indian classical music Two things happened this year to convince me to do some more intentional listening to Indian classical music, which I had long been aware of but had never really “got.” The first was the untimely death of Zakir Hussain,…
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30 September 2025
Founder of Telegram, and before it of VK.
Their words
I believe this is the right answer. We're often being manipulated by politicians, by corporate leaders to make a choice from two suboptimal options. And then when we are forced to make this choice and we make this choice, it's almost as if it's something that we have to assume responsibility for. I don't think we should be buying into that.
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youtube.com
1 December 2024
Social scientist at King's College London; writes The Great Gender Divergence on why societies differ in how they treat women.
From one piece
Does Women’s Rise trigger Backlash?
2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
13 October 2024
Pen name of the Canadian-American writer behind mrmoneymustache.com, a blog on frugality, early retirement and index-fund investing that has run since 2011.
20 June 2023
Professor of economics at George Mason University and Bartley J. Madden Chair at the Mercatus Center. Co-writes the blog Marginal Revolution and co-authors the textbook Modern Principles of Economics with Tyler Cowen.
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