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Venkatesh Rao
x.com
Writing for the week: two on the blog, one in the newsletter. Themes: Dark forests, mediocrity, hot take on the week’s developments in AI
forests mediocrity developments
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14 September
Mathematical physicist at UC Riverside. Wrote This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics and now the Azimuth blog on mathematics, physics and environmental science.
I'm fascinated by the laurel forests of La Gomera, one the Canary Islands. They're full of different species of trees with shiny, waxy leaves. Mosses and lichens grow on the branches, and the ground is covered with a green mantle of dripping ferns and liverworts thriving in the permanent damp. The place has a mysterious, prehistoric air. The lower altitudes of this island are deserts, but the upper parts catch fog, known locally as "horizontal rain" (lluvia horizontal). Near-constant northeasterly trade winds carry moist Atlantic air that condenses into a persistent low cloud layer. This "sea… Related
10 September
Co-founder of AngelList. Writes and podcasts at nav.al in short, aphoristic pieces on startups, wealth and judgement rather than long essays.
Their words
Yesterday's AIs ate the Internet and became a patchwork mediocrity.
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@naval on X x.com
9 September
Mathematician at UCLA, working mainly in harmonic analysis and partial differential equations. Writes What's new, a long-running blog on their research, open problems and expository notes.
Javier Gomez-Serrano will give a special lecture at Harvard this Friday on recent developments in fluid mechanics: cmsa.fas.harvard.edu
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Statistician at Columbia; writes Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science, and wrote Bayesian Data Analysis.
7 September
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.
Their words
Especially in technology - one of the fastest changing industries - anyone keeping up with developments WILL change their minds when those developments happen!!
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@GergelyOrosz on X x.com
4 September
Programmer, teacher and speaker; long-time Microsoft developer-community figure, host of the Hanselminutes podcast and author of the hanselman.com blog.
Ever notice AI websites all look the same? Blend every fruit together and you get gray. It is the statistical average website. Your job is to push it away from mediocrity. With Shree Manickaraja on Compile After Class. Related
22 August
Author of Recoding America; founded Code for America and was US deputy chief technology officer from 2013 to 2014. Writes Eating Policy on why governments cannot do what they decide to do.
America
Their words
We now know that fires are necessary for healthy forests, that a century of fire suppression in the West has been disastrous.
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eatingpolicy.com
21 July
Climate journalist; founded HEATED in 2019 after reporting on climate at The New Republic and ThinkProgress.
Their words
It is uncontroversial in the scientific community to say that climate change is intensifying these explosive wildfires, particularly in the Canadian boreal forests.
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heated.world
17 July
Climate scientist and energy systems analyst; writes The Climate Brink with Andrew Dessler and leads climate research at Stripe.
Their words
You cannot have a fuel-buildup from forest mismanagement in a forest you were never managing.
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theclimatebrink.com
8 July
Mathematician at UCLA, working mainly in harmonic analysis and partial differential equations. Writes What's new, a long-running blog on their research, open problems and expository notes.
Their words
These developments inform our position that AI systems are now capable of meaningful contributions to formal mathematics, not merely informal problem-solving.
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arxiv.org
30 May
Indian value investor who taught Behavioural Finance and Business Valuation as an adjunct professor at MDI Gurgaon. He writes the Fundoo Professor blog about investing, moats and mental models.
A cheap stock without a catalyst is a value trap plus a prayer for a bull market. (That is chasing beta) https://t.co/0XrAuqYqhz The most common catalysts are earnings growth when combined with very low P/E multiples plus a high dividend yield. Doesn’t happen very often but a setup like this must result in stock price appreciation otherwise the yields start exceeding bond yields which by themselves are catalysts for re-rating. There are many other catalysts based on developments inside the company (corporate actions) or developments in markets (eg increase in free float, inclusion in an index… Related
28 May
Prime Minister of Canada since March 2025; formerly governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.
America
Their words
Canada recognised these developments earlier than most, and our response reflects the core lesson we have taken from these tectonic shifts: We have to take care of ourselves and be true to ourselves.
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pm.gc.ca
16 May
AI research engineer working on large language models. He writes the Ahead of AI newsletter and is the author of Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch).
10 May
Author of The Lean Startup and Incorruptible, and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, who advises companies on corporate governance and mission protection.
startups
Their words
I call it the force that no one controls but everyone obeys that tends to drag organizations down into mediocrity to the point that we lose control of them. Now, sometimes we lose control of them because we get fired.
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youtube.com
27 April
Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.
For the last three years, my boy and I have had a pet mouse. We got her from a pet store, and he’s carried her in his hand through so many adventures in forests, beaches, and playgrounds. Drawings and stories for and about her. You’ve never seen a mouse so loved.... Related
26 April
Co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc., the company behind Snapchat, which he started in 2011 while studying product design at Stanford.
Their words
humanity is far more important, uh you know, than than the technological developments largely because humanity dictates how technology is adopted
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youtube.com
7 April
Founded Bridgewater Associates in 1975 and led it until stepping back from control in 2022. Author of Principles, The Changing World Order and How Countries Go Broke; publishes economic analysis at economicprinciples.org.
Their words
Many of the indicators I use to track unfolding events are explained in Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order. I especially recommend Chapter 6, “The Big Cycle of External Order and Disorder,” and, if you are interested in the unimaginable-in-peacetime investment-related developments that typically happen during wars, I recommend Chapter 7, “Investing in Light of the Big Cycle.”
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raydalio.substack.com
27 January
Co-founder of Microsoft and of the Gates Foundation. Writes Gates Notes on global health, energy and climate, and on whatever they have been reading.
I’m deeply sad to learn of the passing of Dr. Bill Foege. Bill was a towering figure in global health—a man who saved the lives of literally hundreds of millions of people. He was also a friend and mentor who gave me a deep grounding in the history of global health and inspired me with his conviction that the world could do more to alleviate suffering. Bill and I often talked together about the future of global health. The legacy of his career is that many of the remarkable developments to come will have his imprint all over them. gatesnot.es
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13 November 2025
Cryptographer; teaches cryptography at Johns Hopkins and writes A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering.
One of the most interesting recent privacy developments is the deployment of big two-hop IP blinding VPNs by companies like Apple and Google. These systems are designed to ensure that even those companies can’t link web requests to IP addresses. Google Related
11 November 2025
Programmer; wrote Redis and hping, and blogs about C, systems programming and working alone.
Scaling HNSWs I’m taking a few weeks of pause on my HNSWs developments (now working on some other data structure, news soon). At this point, the new type I added to Redis is stable and complete enough, it’s the perfect moment to reas…
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30 June 2025
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.
Their words
There is something highly refreshing about the way Kling offers his own consistent old school economic libertarian perspective, takes his time responding to anything, and generally tries to understand everything including developments in AI from that perspective.
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thezvi.substack.com
14 April 2025
Roboticist; co-founded iRobot and Rethink Robotics, directed the MIT AI Lab, and publishes a scorecard grading his own dated predictions about AI, robots and self-driving.
25 March 2025
Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product design at Facebook; author of The Making of a Manager; writes The Looking Glass.
19 January 2025
Growth advisor and operator who has led growth at Miro, Amplitude, Dropbox and SurveyMonkey.
Their words
because copying competition is like the fastest way to mediocrity because you'll never be a leader if you copied somebody else.
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youtube.com
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A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one
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