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Venkatesh Rao
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Wrote a rare old-fashioned taxonomy type post yesterday
taxonomy fashioned rare
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.
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20 September
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.
Today modern advertising, public relations and corporate values statements typically carry any equivalent constraints to the old-fashioned check on rhetoric imposed by the imminent expectation of contradiction by an opposing equally-platformed counter-advocate. Contrast 1858’s Lincoln and Douglas, “divid[ing] time and address[ing] the same audiences” in seven three-hour debates, with modern corporate values statement radiating outward to “stakeholders” forever, and you can measure what... 1/ Related
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
We have the technology - but we don't seem to be interested in using it.
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shkspr.mobi
American science fiction novelist (Old Man's War, Redshirts, The Kaiju Preservation Society); has run the blog Whatever since 1998.
18 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.
16 September
CEO of Positive Sum and founder of Colossus. Hosts Invest Like the Best, interviewing investors and business leaders; the guests do most of the talking there.
Occasionally, an interview has a very special energy to it in the room which reads as “this person is telling me the truth” in a special way. It’s rare. This was one such “true” conversation. One of my personal favorites. Video is important. Quoting @patrick_oshag My conversation with Michael Moritz, one of the great venture investors of the last 40 years. Michael joined Sequoia in 1986 and co-led the firm with Doug Leone (@dougleone) from 1995 to 2012. His investments include Google, Yahoo, PayPal, and Stripe. His new book, Ausländer, traces his parents' es… energy Related
Co-founder of Y Combinator and Viaweb; essayist at paulgraham.com.
Their words
And that's an an upper bound; these are merely "potential" noncitizens. This is a fake problem.
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@paulg on X x.com
15 September
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.
14 September
Writes The Diff, a newsletter on inflections in finance and tech read by hedge fund managers, founders and VCs. Previously worked in finance at SAC Capital/Point72.
Astra on the performance of rare-earths equities before/after Trump admin equity stakes. The admin is really good at predicting which equities’ short-term outperformance will persist. Related
Programmer; makes Handmade Hero and teaches Performance-Aware Programming, and argues loudly about how software got slow.
13 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.
𝐅𝐄𝐑𝐍 𝐒𝐏𝐈𝐊𝐄𝐒 We know there was an asteroid impact around when the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, because we see a rare metal called iridium in the strata from this time - and droplets formed by molten quartz. But we also see lots of fern spores! This is called a 'fern spike', and it's not the only one. Ferns spread rapidly using spores, and they're tougher than they look. When everything dies, these ancient, humble plants are the first to recolonize the land. They did it after the Permian-Triassic, Triassic-Jurassic and Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction events. They may d… Related
12 September
Investor and writer. Previously a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and a product leader at Twitter, Facebook, Snap and Microsoft. Writes essays and memos at sriramk.com.
I find myself disagreeing with Terence Tao (a very scary phrase to say!) and think the core question posed is whether the "misalignment" is between the mathematical community and humanity. In other words - are the Millenium Prize problems meant to incentivize advancements for humanity or foster the field of mathematics and mathematicians? As a counter example, if there was a prize for creating a drug that cured a rare strain of cancer, we would not care if it was AI that did it. We would be happy it has been solved. On the other hand, if long running agents figured out the puzzle in "Kryptos"… AI alignment Related
7 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.
While working on the revision of the Equational Theories Project (ETP) report at https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.07087 I came across an observation that we quietly made at the back of that report (see Section 14.1) but has become more relevant today. The ETP was a successful project, running over several months, to resolve over 22 million implications in universal algebra (and formalize them in Lean) through a variety of methods, both human and automated, although in our case the automation was much more in the ``good old-fashioned'' form of utilizing automated theorem provers (ATP) and simple scr… Related
3 September
Co-founder of Y Combinator and Viaweb; essayist at paulgraham.com.
2 September
Writer on the intersection of technology and finance. Author of the Bits about Money newsletter and host of the Complex Systems podcast; previously at Stripe.
Non-ironically this sort of factor is an underappreciated vector for policing reform, because cross-departmental onmbudsmen willing to intervene against a sworn officer without someone dying are very rare in the U.S. legal/political system. Quoting @willchamberlain On the latest Counterweight, Rahul Sidhu (@rahul), Flock’s chief strategy officer, explains that police database abuse is not a new problem. Bad cops have been running plates for friends for decades. What's new is that Flock created auditing software that is catching them. America Related
26 August
Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals, and creator of Omarchy.
From one piece
DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501
3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
I love this quote. I think it's Lenin. There are decades where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen. And we have seen decades of progress happen in the last nine months.
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youtube.com
Their words
So the irony here is that when you look at that field, it seems like we've reached levels of intelligence that virtually no human can match because many of these security holes are about stringing combo moves together. You find one little vulnerability here that by itself might not be the worst thing in the world, but then you combine it with four others, and suddenly you have RCE, remote command execution. Humans who are able to do that are very rare.
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youtube.com
Omarchy
Their words
The revelation I've had working on Omarchy the last three months is that to get that magical 10X, 100X, in a few rare cases, 1000X productivity boost, you have to interact with the agents directly, and you cannot intermediate that bandwidth with another human because it's simply too slow.
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youtube.com
24 August
Wall Street Journal bestselling author on marketing and writing, partner at MarketingProfs, and writer of the fortnightly Total Annarchy newsletter.
20 August
Political scientist and Baptist pastor; writes Graphs about Religion, charting American religious life from survey data.
America
Their words
Said another way, for every person who is pretty sure that God doesn’t exist, there are six who are fairly certain of the existence of a Higher Power. Non-believers are statistically rare.
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graphsaboutreligion.com
18 August
Design engineer and illustrator; makes visual essays on programming, anthropology and what language models do to the way people write.
August 2026 I'm writing this from a homely Jacobean-manor-turned-hotel in the West Country, covered in layers of green vines and circled by centenarian trees, on a rare weekend away. Everything is warm: the late afternoon sun, the…
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14 August
Writer of Today in Tabs, a daily media-and-internet newsletter started in 2013; earlier founded the community site Kuro5hin.
Their words
It’s rare that a dispute this messy gets a resolution so clear.
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todayintabs.com
11 August
Engineering leader and writer; wrote An Elegant Puzzle, Staff Engineer and The Engineering Executive's Primer, and blogs at Irrational Exuberance.
3 August
Co-CEO of Waymo and a founding member of Google's self-driving car project, which he joined in 2009.
Their words
And at scale, the long tail is the problem space, is your entire problem statement. When you drive millions of miles per week, a rare event that might happen once in a million miles, that just becomes your daily reality.
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youtube.com
31 July
Software developer and entrepreneur; co-founder of Heroku, author of The Twelve-Factor App, and a researcher at Ink & Switch.
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.
I don’t usually post DMs, but this is a rare exception as I actually asked him before doing so and he consented. Danial is a local Malaysian. Several months ago he asked “Would be cool if you could repost our current portfolio of projects as well, under KD Labs 👀”. I invited him to the Network School campus, as I do many Malaysian builders. He also said he wanted to build a virtual campus for Malaysians, a similar vision to me regarding a network state. Of course, I support him in that vision! And of course it shows that the concept of the network state, like the concept of cryptocurrency, h… Quoting @masterofnone The Network School (@ns) drama is all over the Internet What's really happening? I'm Malaysian & Irish ~ born and raised in London. Recently moved back to 🇲🇾 for good. My plan? To help build Malaysia's AI Builders Hub (@KrackedDevs) ~ upskilling our people, pulling Malaysian builders together, an… Related
28 June
Writes Very Serious, a newsletter on politics, the economy and culture, and hosts the podcast of the same name.
22 June
Novelist and critic, author of The Body Scout and Metallic Realms; writes the newsletter Counter Craft on fiction craft and the publishing industry.
18 June
Founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, creator of Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha, and author of A New Kind of Science.
Mourning the loss of my friend @JoshuaBaer (1975-2026) and his passion for life and the future. Whether it was about his business, his mentoring, his family, his latest personal productivity hack---or his planned science fiction book---Josh exuded a rare and generous enthusiasm that lifted those around him. All cut short by a freak plane accident on Tuesday evening. Related
27 May
Writer on learning and skill acquisition; author of Ultralearning and Get Better at Anything, known for the MIT Challenge and the Year Without English.
Their words
To the extent that school becomes more like free play, project-building or acting like a scientist, it will probably be worse.
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scotthyoung.com
25 March
Swedish essayist who writes Escaping Flatland, a newsletter of essays on relationships, thinking, writing and homeschooling.
It is rare to meet someone who actually knows what they think and acts on it Related
24 March
Professor of finance at NYU's Stern School of Business, known for his work on valuation. He publishes his data, spreadsheets and classes free at Damodaran Online and writes the Musings on Markets blog.
Winning is rare for active investors (retail or institutional), and even with the few who win consistently, separating luck from skill is tough to do, and there are broad differences in market views and investing approaches. Related
Winning as an active investor is rare, and even with the few who win consistently, separating luck from skill is tough to do, and there are broad differences in market views and investing approaches. Related
12 March
JavaScript programmer; creator of the jQuery library, author of Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja, and long-time engineer at Khan Academy.
I have a private db of Japanese print sales and I used @claudeai to make a report analyzing this month's auctions: https://t.co/uwMCtbjQ17 identifying under-valued lots, rare prints, comparing prints across auctions. Normally VERY hard to get this guidance. Related
4 March
Canadian bootstrapper and writer on small software businesses. Co-founder of the podcast hosting company Transistor.fm and author of the book Marketing for Developers.
12 February
Engineer writing about the physical economy — oil and gas, manufacturing, batteries, drones and what it costs to build things.
29 January
Co-founder and CEO of Until, a reversible-cryopreservation company, and previously the founder of the Longevity Fund.
Their words
Basically what that gives you is like you can apply a lot of theoretical sort of um a lot of theoretical toolkit used in physics to model parts of this question in ways that are actually useful. And it is just not true that you can use like equations from physics to think usefully about almost any other problem in biology.
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youtube.com
12 January
Writer and author of All the Wrong Moves; his newsletter covers meditation, relationships and creativity, and he co-runs a perfume line.
14 December 2025
Irish independent game developer, maker of VVVVVV, Super Hexagon and Dicey Dungeons.
27 October 2025
Writes Nintil, long researched essays on metascience, biology, economics and whatever he has decided to read the literature on.
16 October 2025
Co-founder and chief executive of Figma, the collaborative design platform he started in 2012 and took public in 2025.
Their words
I think that for those who can create and then articulate a framework around what is taste for us that is really a important skill and uh then I think people can a lot of people can basically match a framework not many people can create the framework.
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youtube.com
22 September 2025
Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, co-director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science, and author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness.
4 September 2025
Palaeontologist at Queen Mary University of London; studies dinosaur behaviour and writes about what the fossil record can and cannot tell us.
Their words
These are weird and rare outcomes. These don't usually happen. The vast majority of active predation is on stuff much, much, much smaller than you.
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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
And what’s more, you use your leverage once, and that leverage has a half-life. It becomes a lot less effective the second time around because other countries, other companies are going to try to substitute away. If China uses the rare earth leverage, which I think it is now a little bit, there will be alternatives and substitutes.
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youtube.com
23 July 2025
Co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, and a 2024 Nobel laureate in Chemistry for the protein-structure work behind AlphaFold.
Their words
Including things like universal basic provision or something like that where a lot of the increased productivity gets shared out and distributed to society and maybe in the form of services and other things where if you want more than that, you still go and get some incredibly rare skills and things like that and make yourself unique. But there's a basic provision that is provided.
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youtube.com
19 April 2025
Software engineer and writer; former CTO of Wave, now at Anthropic. Blogs at benkuhn.net on attention, engineering management and doing hard things well.
From one piece
Impact, agency, and taste
2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
Their words
People who can be trusted to make something inevitable are really rare, and are typically the bottleneck for how many different things a team or company can do at once.
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Impact, agency, and taste benkuhn.net
Their words
it's quite rare for different people's "zone of best taste" to overlap very much.
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Impact, agency, and taste benkuhn.net
15 April 2025
Economics professor at George Mason University and author of The Myth of the Rational Voter, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, The Case Against Education and Open Borders. Writes Bet On It.
22 December 2024
Astrophysicist at the University of Rochester; works on the search for life elsewhere and wrote The Little Book of Aliens and Light of the Stars.
Their words
In which case, those kinds of collisions are so rare that you would expect one in a trillion stars to have planets. Instead, every star in the night sky has planets.
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youtube.com
4 December 2024
FreeBSD developer and former FreeBSD Security Officer; founder of the Tarsnap online backup service and author of the scrypt key derivation function.
9 November 2024
Founder of Terraform Industries and formerly a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; writes about energy, space and manufacturing.
2 September 2024
Author of The Simple Path to Wealth and of the jlcollinsnh.com stock series on index-fund investing.
Their words
I stand in awe of what author Jackie Cummings Koski has done here. This is a comprehensive overview of what FIRE is and how it is done, fashioned in the famous "for dummies" template. I wouldn't have known how to even begin to pull this together, let alone gotten it over the finish line in such fine form.
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jlcollinsnh.com
21 July 2024
Software engineer and writer; former CTO of Wave, now at Anthropic. Blogs at benkuhn.net on attention, engineering management and doing hard things well.
1 July 2024
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.
23 May 2024
Coffee consultant and author of books on espresso, roasting and brewing, including The Professional Barista's Handbook and The Coffee Roaster's Companion; writes about brewing gear and roast control at scottrao.com.
Their words
High quality, budget grinders were rare at the time. The Niche Zero and other new grinders changed that, and helped make it easier to pull good shots.
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scottrao.com
25 March 2024
Writer and engineer behind the blog Melting Asphalt, and co-author with Robin Hanson of The Elephant in the Brain.
mind-expanding short story by @etirabys about a "sapient mitotic species" this is a rare piece of fiction that's well grounded in evolutionary biology and psychology i read it about 6 months ago and have re-read it twice since 👇 link in next tweet Related
16 March 2024
Researcher and science writer. Co-founder and editor at Works in Progress magazine, formerly a researcher at Our World in Data, and author of the Scientific Discovery newsletter on science, global health and medical innovation.
Many great things you missed this year This week: Birth seasonality, causes of death across the lifespan, progress against HIV/AIDS & cystic fibrosis, very rare infectious form of Alzheimer’s, improvements in cholesterol, and more.
Related
16 January 2024
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.
Their words
Eric Newcomer is the rare Substack journalist who thrives on breaking news. His dispatches from Silicon Valley and beyond have the knowing voice of a veteran observer, but with the open-mindedness that defines a great reporter. The accompanying podcast is also well worth a listen.
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platformer.substack.com
26 December 2023
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.
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