Related posts
Venkatesh Rao
x.com
Book review, Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes
hughes tale cities
The the words it uses that this site has seen
least often elsewhere. Posts are matched on those words alone —
nothing here is a summary of this one.
Sources
All Truth Social x.com Bluesky Site Korrents Blog Newsletter Recommends Changed their mind
Top people
Alon Levy
Pieter Levels
Brad Templeton
Samuel Hughes
Derek Sivers
Ed Barnhart
Donald Trump
Bryan Cantrill
Cal Newport
Tren Griffin
Paul Krugman
Scott Alexander
Showing Profile →
Show everything
Hiding Show them again
Show them again
Further back ↓
Hiding Show them again
20 September
President of the United States, the 45th from 2017 to 2021 and, as of 2026, the 47th; before politics a New York property developer who ran the Trump Organization, and the host of The Apprentice from 2004 to 2015.
At the strong request of the United States Military, and for National Security purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent Triumphal Arch, planned since the Civil War Era many years ago, at the Receptive Circle adjoining the Arlington Memorial Bridge, into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage. There will be no facility like this anywhere in the World. Out of the 59 top cities a… America Related
16 September
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.
Very interesting guy to follow @scottbrills #1 traveler on my site with 2,162,433 km traveled, 94 countries and 702 cities visited (!) Absolutely crazy and his timeline is full of crazy travel stories Quoting @scottbrills Looks like other people's claims that I've been one of the most traveled people they know are backed up, at least on one website. 😂 Related
14 September
Co-founder and CTO of Oxide Computer Company. Created DTrace at Sun Microsystems and was CTO of Joyent; blogs about systems software, open source and engineering culture.
Another week at @oxide.computer has given us (yet) another example of the kinds of problems that very much require human engineering. Today, the team joins @ahl.bsky.social and me to regale us with the wild tale. Join us live, 5p Pacific, tonight! discord.gg
Quoting @bcantrill.bsky.social I am surely not alone in having family over the weekend hitting me up asking "should I be worried about extinction?" As a response, I have found that my anti-Doomer talk from @monktoberfest.com 2023 (three very long years ago!) remains current and accessible: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQfJ... Related
10 September
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.
8 September
Writer of the 25iq blog, where he distils "a dozen things I've learned" from investors, founders and thinkers. Author of Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor and A Dozen Lessons for Entrepreneurs.
"Flywheels: How Cities Are Creating Their Own Futures" was written by my friend Tom Alberg. We discussed how a flywheel effect is neutral since it compounds failure just as effectively as it compounds success. Failure can breed more failure [repeat]. discovery.org
Related
7 September
Economist and Nobel laureate. Wrote a New York Times column for 25 years until December 2024 and now publishes several times a week on Substack.
4 September
Essayist; writes Astral Codex Ten, previously Slate Star Codex.
2 September
Writer living in Brooklyn and former Man Repeller features director; writes the weekly newsletter Maybe Baby on culture and consumption.
30 August
Clinical psychologist, EMDR consultant and yoga teacher in Boulder, Colorado. Author of The Complex PTSD Workbook and EMDR Therapy and Somatic Psychology; writes on trauma, attachment and the nervous system.
Savor It’s turning towards the end of summer (although the Colorado heat has not quite let up yet) and there are some tell tale signs of seasonal change. Late summer browns and golden grasses and the sun sets just a bit earlier. #JoyinNature Related
27 August
Writer and developer; runs Waxy.org, co-organises the XOXO festival, and was the first CTO of Kickstarter.
Walkable Cities — the dev made a fun postmortem on how the game was made and later went viral in Japan Related
25 August
Security researcher; founded Have I Been Pwned, and writes and speaks about data breaches.
23 August
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.
Europe government
Their words
I think most high skilled Europeans are happy to pay (even high) taxes That is, if the government does a great job like Singapore or Dubai or Korea or Japan and most things work well You pay the government for a service and you get safe cities, great public services and great healthcare back
Show the whole quote
levels.io
19 August
Writer and teacher on productivity and personal knowledge management. Author of Building a Second Brain and founder of Forte Labs, which runs the course of the same name.
11 August
General partner at Benchmark Capital for over two decades; was the lead analyst on Amazon's IPO before moving into venture capital. Writes Above the Crowd on tech and marketplace economics.
Different states, counties, and cities trying different things. Beautiful and effective competition of policies. I doubt any tax bills are going down in NY State. Quoting @SaraEisen In Loudoun Virginia home to more than 200 data centers, tax revenue from data centers has exploded. As a result, over the past 10years, they lowered the real property tax rate every year from $1.145 in tax year 2016 to $0.805 cents per $100 in assessed value for 2026. Related
9 August
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.
7 August
Partner at Collaborative Fund and author of The Psychology of Money, Same As Ever and The Art of Spending Money. Writes essays on investor behavior and posts frequently on X.
The Psychology of Money Podcast: A Tale as Old As Time: Getting Rich vs. Staying Rich Related
30 July
Writes Pedestrian Observations on public transit and why infrastructure costs what it does; a pure mathematician by training, comparing how different countries build.
27 July
Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals, and creator of Omarchy.
23 July
Software architect and futurist; founded ClariNet, chaired the EFF, and has written about robocars for two decades.
17 July
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.
25 June
Swedish essayist who writes Escaping Flatland, a newsletter of essays on relationships, thinking, writing and homeschooling.
18 June
British open-standards and open-source technologist, formerly of the UK Government Digital Service and the W3C Advisory Committee. Blogs at shkspr.mobi, where he posts a book review most weeks.
Their words
It is an epic tale full of rogues and reprobates. The story is excellent even though the plot follows a fairly basic structure. Although set up to be a series, it is a satisfying stand-alone tale.
Show the whole quote
shkspr.mobi
16 June
Editor at Works in Progress writing on architecture, urbanism and housing policy, and a fellow of the Centre for Policy Studies and Create Streets. Has worked in think tanks, academia and government in Britain.
From one piece
Europe's housing shortages are even worse than America's
2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
Without densification restrictions, housing shortages will only ever be serious in cities where land is really intensely scarce, as in Hong Kong.
Show the whole quote
worksinprogress.news
Europe
Their words
In fact, zoning was invented in Europe, in Germany and Austria-Hungary, in the late nineteenth century.
Show the whole quote
worksinprogress.news
Historian of the Renaissance at the University of Chicago and a science-fiction novelist; wrote Terra Ignota and Inventing the Renaissance.
Their words
And everyone says, "Why are they liking this man? He is a cruel murdering tyrant." And the answer is for the first time in generations, they have had something close to fair justice.
Show the whole quote
youtube.com
4 June
Writes Pedestrian Observations on public transit and why infrastructure costs what it does; a pure mathematician by training, comparing how different countries build.
Secondary Stops in Cities on Intercity Rail Intercity trains usually only call at the main cities, and only at their main stations. However, in some cases, they make more than one stop in the same city. Examples include the Northeast Corridor with its two Boston…
Related
30 May
Writes Pedestrian Observations on public transit and why infrastructure costs what it does; a pure mathematician by training, comparing how different countries build.
15 May
Demographer; writes on fertility, marriage and population, and directs the Pro-Family Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies.
14 May
Hosts the Lex Fridman Podcast — long, unhurried conversations with scientists, engineers and public figures. Several of the interviews quoted elsewhere on this site are episodes of it.
I'm traveling the world for a bit, starting with China but then hopping around the globe, anywhere. Open to any adventure. No plans, only a backpack. Hoping to meet & get to know humans from all walks of life. The pic is from a long hike on the Great Wall. For me, as a fan of history, this was an epic experience. In China, first I'm visiting a few big cities & talking to engineers at the heart of China's AI revolution. After that, if feeling crazy enough, I'm hitchhiking (first time) across rural China for a few weeks. Hitchhiking because I think it's the best way to meet rural folks who I wo… China Related
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.
Bluesky My favorite LLM prompt: “List the top cities in {COUNTRY}, and anthropomorphize each one, listing the good-natured stereotypes and jokes that other people in {COUNTRY} say about people in this city.” LLMs Related
x.com My favorite LLM prompt: “List the top cities in {COUNTRY}, and anthropomorphize each one, listing the good-natured stereotypes and jokes that other people in {COUNTRY} say about people in this city.” LLMs Related
14 April
Software architect and futurist; founded ClariNet, chaired the EFF, and has written about robocars for two decades.
self-driving cars
Their words
Self-driving cars seem to be just more cars, and people who dislike cars don't love that. But the electric robotaxi offers much more potential
Show the whole quote
ideas.4brad.com
10 April
Social scientist at King's College London; writes The Great Gender Divergence on why societies differ in how they treat women.
10 March
Writes Pedestrian Observations on public transit and why infrastructure costs what it does; a pure mathematician by training, comparing how different countries build.
4 January
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.
21 December 2025
Director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. Writes the A Wealth of Common Sense blog and co-hosts the Animal Spirits podcast with Michael Batnick.
Their words
I liked the book a lot more than the show but watching the show helped me appreciate the book more.
Show the whole quote
awealthofcommonsense.com
18 November 2025
Novelist and critic, author of The Body Scout and Metallic Realms; writes the newsletter Counter Craft on fiction craft and the publishing industry.
15 August 2025
Founder of Terraform Industries and formerly a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; writes about energy, space and manufacturing.
energy
Their words
the meta problem here is if we don't move our industrial stack off fossil fuels in 10 or 20 years, first of all, we'll get poor the same way you UK did, right? Because they ran out of coal basically. And the second thing is we'll get poor because we'll flood our coastal cities in Florida underneath climate change.
Show the whole quote
youtube.com
13 August 2025
Economist specialising in China's economy, international macroeconomics and global trade, and author of The New China Playbook.
China
Their words
Industrial policy was heavily criticized and again, if I talk to my Harvard professors, they’ll be very, very, very skeptical about the role of the state, especially in such a major way. But if you look at the Chinese experience, the evidence for success is all there. The cities that have pushed the most on supporting that particular sector ultimately did the best in terms of production, but also in terms of innovation, measured by patents. It’s all in the data.
Show the whole quote
youtube.com
31 July 2025
Anthropologist; wrote Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World and The Secret History of the Mongol Queens.
Their words
I think that sedentary armies, sedentary civilizations, they get stuck in ways, this is how we do it. And we're going to make it a little faster, we're going to make it a little bigger, a little stronger but this is how we think. Genghis Khan had no set way to think and, when he encountered the first walled cities around 1209 after founding his nation in 1206, he went out on these raids and I really think there were raids not wars at first.
Show the whole quote
youtube.com
10 June 2025
Programmer and writer; co-wrote The Rust Programming Language and worked on Rust's documentation for years.
A tale of two Claudes It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of…
Related
28 May 2025
Structural engineer and senior infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress; writes Construction Physics on why physical things cost what they cost.
15 May 2025
Interface designer and researcher, known for the talks Inventing on Principle and Media for Thinking the Unthinkable and for essays on dynamic representations of ideas. Founder of Dynamicland, where he is building a communal computer.
Computational Public Space. A talk about a values-driven approach to integrating computation into cities. (40 min) youtube.com
Related
29 January 2025
Economist, senior research fellow and director of the Urbanity project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, working on housing and land use.
America
Their words
The American cities with the highest housing prices have the worst homelessness problems.
Show the whole quote
worksinprogress.news
1 January 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.
Their words, before
Such "taxi" services where the cars are also used with drivers at other times and with extended geography, in 10 major US cities NET 2025
Show the whole quote
Their words now
This is unlikely to happen in the first half of this century.
Show the whole quote
31 December 2024
Machine learning engineer working on recommender systems, personalization and information retrieval. Previously worked on LLMs and LLM infrastructure at Mozilla.ai and on ML and recsys at Duo, Tumblr, Automattic and Comcast; wrote the 'What are embeddings?' text and ran the Normconf conference.
Their words
The Rattle Bag edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes - In an age of LLM-generated poetry and machine learning curation (even coming from yours truly sometimes), it's refreshing to have real people who love poetry curate it and show you what you need to read to touch grass.
Show the whole quote
vickiboykis.com
7 December 2024
Writes Pedestrian Observations on public transit and why infrastructure costs what it does; a pure mathematician by training, comparing how different countries build.
30 September 2024
Archaeologist of the Maya and the ancient Americas; directs the Maya Exploration Center and presents the ArchaeoEd podcast.
From one piece
Ed Barnhart: Maya, Aztec, Inca, and Lost Civilizations of South America | Lex Fridman Podcast #446
2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
But then we have the interesting case of in the Postclassic, they shed the idea of kings. They don’t like kings anymore. That’s probably a big part of why the Classic disappearance and the abandonment of all those cities happened. People just got sick of kings.
Show the whole quote
youtube.com
Their words
I think it’s a failing of archeology to properly see what was happening. I think that most of those cities populations moved no more than 20 to 40 kilometers out and started their own farm, and they lived in perishable houses.
Show the whole quote
youtube.com
29 May 2024
Economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury. Author of Slouching Towards Utopia and writer of the Grasping Reality newsletter.
Nothing matches. Show everything
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one
sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at
korrents.com .
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said.
The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in
korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who
else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public
statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Got it
About the English under a post
Some people here publish in a language other than English. Where they
do, this site shows a machine translation beneath the post, in
this typeface — the site's own, not theirs.
The post itself is never changed, moved or hidden: what is set in the
serif above is exactly what the person published, and it is what to
quote them on. A translation can be wrong in ways that matter,
especially about tone.
Only the post's own words are translated. A quoted post, a linked
article and a belief on korrents.com
are left in their original language.
Got it