Approved Thoughts

1. Philosopher–Builder Summer Reads:

   These aren't generic "tech books." They're works that can shape how serious builders think about what they're creating and why.

   And the original essay.

2. DOGE builds AI tool to cut 50 percent of federal regulations:

   The tool, called the “DOGE AI Deregulation Decision Tool,” is supposed to analyze roughly 200,000 federal regulations to determine which can be eliminated because they are no longer required by law, according to a PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Post that is dated July 1 and outlines DOGE’s plans. Roughly 100,000 of those rules would be deemed worthy of trimming, the PowerPoint estimates — mostly through the automated tool with some staff feedback. The PowerPoint also suggests the AI tool will save the United States trillions of dollars by reducing compliance requirements, slashing the federal budget and unlocking unspecified “external investment.”

   A worthy goal for DOGE and possibly the right use of AI. If done well.

3. America's AI Action Plan Is Pretty Good:

   Otherwise, while this is far from a perfect plan or the plan I would choose, on the substance it is a good plan, a positive plan, with many unexpectedly good plans within it. There is a lot of attention to detail in ways those I’ve asked say reflect people who actually know what they are doing, which was by no means something to be taken for granted. It is hard to imagine that a much better plan could have been approved given who was doing the approving.

5. Two long & good pieces on India this week though I have yet to fully read both.

6. Jhanas and Jhourney:

   So I went down to the beach. "Kinda nice", I thought. The sky had a particularly vibrant blue color, the waves had 'the right size', their roar was pleasant. I started to walk around trying to continue meditating. I focused my awareness on an arising sensation of open heartedness and then I noticed my eyes tearing up ("Huh? I thought"). I looked again at the ocean and then I saw it. It was fucking amazing. So much color and detail: waves within waves, the fractal structure of the foamy crests as they disintegrate back into the ocean. The feeling of the sun on my skin. I felt overwhelmed. As tears ran down my face and lowkey insane grin settled on my face I found myself mumbling "It's... always been like this!!!!" "What the fuck??!" followed by "This is too much!! Too much!!!". The experience seemed to be demanding from me to feel more joy and awe than I was born to feel or something like that. In that precise moment I felt what "painfully beautiful" means for the first time in my life. I had to look away. I calmed a bit. I walked a few steps and looked back. The exact same thing happened. "It's reproducible, hihihihi", and I started laughing. Then I found a log to sit on, calm down, and look back at the ocean. Now it wasn't overwhelming, but "kinda nice" was now "fucking amazing".

   To do list.

7. Yes, Adam Sandler really is a pickup basketball god (NYT Paywall):

   Jackson was struck by the man’s attire: extra-baggy shorts and an extra-baggy yellow T-shirt. “I’m trying to figure out: Does he buy clothes? Did he buy them and then just stop buying them? His clothes really might have been from 2008.” It soon became apparent, however, that the guy could play. He was a true court general. He impressed Jackson with his basketball IQ.

8. Life in deep:

   When her three-person submersible descended more than 30,000 feet into one of the Pacific Ocean’s deepest trenches, Mengran Du wasn’t sure what they would find.

   What she saw, she recalled, was “unbelievable”: Dense clusters of tubeworms with tentacles tinged bloodred, jutting up like skyscrapers. Iridescent snails scaling the worms, like window washers. Bristly, white creatures wriggling between them like rush-hour commuters trying to get home for dinner.

10.

Some readers have commented that I am obsessed with AI. This is not correct. I wish I was. But is there anything more interesting happening in the world right now? I don't think so.

1. Musician Who Died in 2021 Resurrected as Clump of Brain Matter, Now Composing New Music:

   Art can outlast the artist — but what about their artistic impulses?

   A new art installation project in Australia, titled "Revivification," raises this question with a very literal interpretation of "impulse": using his DNA, the team behind the project have performed a quasi-resurrection of the late experimental American composer Alvin Lucier, creating a sort of brain that continuously composes music on the fly with its errant electrical signals.

   At the center of the piece is an "in-vitro brain," grown from blood that Lucier, who passed away in 2021, donated in the final years of his life. Housed in a plinth, it's grown on top of an electrode mesh that connects it to twenty large brass plates placed around the room. Visitors can listen as the brain fires off electrical pulses that trigger a transducer and a mallet behind each plate, striking them to produce sound.

   Is this art? Is this science? Is this composing?

2. Gross(ery) Confusion:

   Teachout’s idea that suppliers “make up the difference” by charging smaller stores more is also economically incoherent. Profit-maximizing firms already charge what the market will bear. If Costco’s volume justifies a discount, that doesn’t mean suppliers can or should charge higher prices to other buyers. Yes, there are models where costs change with volume but costs could go down with volume and, in any case, those models don’t rely on the folk theory of “making up the difference.”

3. AIs and Spontaneous Order:

   This isn’t to say AI won’t help improve economic policy—it might, if we listen. But the future economy won’t look like a centrally planned machine. It will look like an economy of von Neumanns—autonomous agents buying, selling, and strategizing in complex interaction.

4. I Analysed 25,000 Hotel Names and Found Four Surprising Truths:

   And yes, the cat’s out of the bag: there are over 200 Hotels Bristol worldwide, and the reason goes all the way back to an 18th-century English aristocrat whose hotel preferences turned into a naming tradition.

5. I Drank Every Cocktail:

   The International Bartenders Association, or IBA, maintains a list of official cocktails, ones they deem to be “the most requested recipes” at bars all around the world. It’s the closest thing the bartending industry has to a canonical list of cocktails, akin to the American Kennel Club’s registry of dog breeds or a jazz musician’s Real Book of standards. As of 2025, there are 102 IBA official cocktails, and as of July 12, 2025, I’ve had every one of them.

   Legend.

6. How the System Works

   An essay series on the hidden mechanisms that support modern life — and what happens if we don’t maintain them

   This should be amazing. So far, Agriculture, Water and Electricity.

1. The Diaspora Paradox Second in a series from Samir Varma

   But here's the paradox that has haunted me for decades: Why do so many Indians who escape India's constraints become more Indian abroad? Why does the uncle who couldn't be bothered to visit temples in Mumbai suddenly become a founding member of the Hindu temple in New Jersey? Why does the software engineer who rebelled against arranged marriage in Bangalore now insist their American-born daughter marry within the community?

2. The First in 30 Years: Scientists Discover New Class of Antibiotics:

   Led by scientist Gerry Wright, the team has discovered a powerful new molecule called lariocidin. This promising candidate shows the ability to fight some of the toughest, most drug-resistant bacteria known to science. Their groundbreaking findings were published in the journal Nature.

3. Why We’re Surrounding Our Kids with AI:

   We also don’t plan on perpetuating modern Western parents’ egregiously hands-off nature with regard to their kids’ dating and marriage prospects. We already have a going list of agentic, thoughtful, high-achieving families whose kids are close to our kids in age; as our kids get older, we’ll start organizing gatherings for families in this network where our kids can hang out and get to know each other (trips, summer camps, discord servers, study groups, etc.). As our kids reach their late teens and early 20s, we’ll begin organizing modern versions of the London Season—a series of events and gatherings at which our single kids ready for marriage can meet, mix, and get to know each other.

   Did not see this coming.

4. Babies made using three people's DNA are born free of hereditary disease:

   Eight babies have been born in the UK using genetic material from three people to prevent devastating and often fatal conditions, doctors say.

   The method, pioneered by UK scientists, combines the egg and sperm from a mum and dad with a second egg from a donor woman.

5. The Sputnik vs. Deep Seek Moment: The Answers

   I pointed out that the US response to Sputnik was fierce competition. Following Sputnik, we increased funding for education, especially math, science and foreign languages, organizations like ARPA were spun up, federal funding for R&D was increased, immigration rules were loosened, foreign talent was attracted and tariff barriers continued to fall. In contrast, the response to what I called the “DeepSeek” moment has been nearly the opposite. Why did Sputnik spark investment while DeepSeek sparks retrenchment? I examine four explanations from the comments and argue that the rise of zero-sum thinking best fits the data.

6. Reflections on OpenAI:

   I left OpenAI three weeks ago. I had joined the company back in May 2024.

   I wanted to share my reflections because there's a lot of smoke and noise around what OpenAI is doing, but not a lot of first-hand accounts of what the culture of working there actually feels like.

7. ChatGPT Agent and Gold-medal level performance in International Math Olympiad (IMO). More on the IMO.

8. Psychological techniques to persuade AI.

9. Spud-tacular: How India became a french fry superpower:

   Gujarat has become India's capital of french fry production, home to huge factories churning out chips, including facilities belonging to Canadian giant McCain Foods and India's biggest maker of French Fries, HyFun Foods.

10. Bill Ackman changed Tennis forever.

1. Terrified Girls, Helicopters and a Harrowing Scene: A Rescuer’s Account at Camp Mystic (NYT):

   Scott Ruskan, a Coast Guard swimmer, is credited with saving 165 people at the all-girls’ camp from deadly floods in Central Texas.

   Mr. Ruskan realized that staying on scene would free up two extra spots on his helicopter for the evacuees, he said, so he told his unit, “I’d love to stay, I could do a lot more good on the ground.”

   He became the main person on scene to both triage and provide emotional support to the survivors.

   Hero.

2. Death of partying in the USA:

3. The forests are coming back: 36 countries, including India and China, gained more tress than they lost, between 2000-2020.

4. @levelsio speaks to John Collison

5. For a few days this summer, your days will be just a smidge shorter (WaPo)

   During the summer, the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, which minimizes the difference in temperature between the equator and Earth’s poles. This smaller temperature variation slows down the jet stream — a narrow band of strong winds around 30,000 feet above us — and moves it northward.

1. John Oliver on AI Slop:

John Oliver is always funny and often insightful.

2. Defeating a Virus That Killed Half a Billion People - The Plea. Timely and important. Trigger warning: Images of diseased people.

3. Operation Midnight Hammer: What a story.

4. Helicopter Money. Literally. Talk about going out in style.

5. Does CPS Investigate One Third of All Children in the US? Yes. But...

   The scale of CPS investigations in the US is staggering. Like all things, this trend began in the late 60s and early 70s as mandatory reporter laws expanded and caused massive growth in child maltreatment reports. Since the 90s, the number of reports has stayed pretty stable and the number of substantiated investigations and interventions has been falling.

   The CPS could probably scale back it’s interventions for cases of maltreatment that only involve neglect, especially those that only involve lack of supervision rather than physical neglect. Other tradeoffs between false positive and false negative investigations and interventions are more difficult to have a strong opinion on given the terrible outcomes on both sides of the trolley track.

   There are probably some available pareto improving moves. The most straightforward in my view would be increasing staffing and state capacity in family courts so that cases can be reviewed more accurately and without requiring months or years of effort and tens of thousands of dollars on the part of the parents.

6. Tech C.E.O. Pays $400,000 to Conduct the Toronto Symphony (NYT):

   After the performance, Cheung and the orchestra received a standing ovation. He said he was grateful for the opportunity.

7. Will AI Drive 20%+ Annual GDP Growth?:

   Steam, electricity, computers delivered enormous benefits while their economic importance shrank through success. AI will transform society profoundly. But 20% GDP growth? History says no.

8. Medical Superintelligence from Microsoft?:

   Microsoft's LLM is not only designed for multiple-choice questions, but also for real medical diagnoses in realistic scenarios – and outperforms even top models such as o3.

   In a large-scale study with over 300 case studies from the New England Journal of Medicine, the system achieved a diagnostic accuracy of over 80%. This is not only four times higher than the participating doctors, but also marks a qualitative leap: the AI was not only more accurate, but also made more economical decisions – with around 20% lower costs because it avoided unnecessary tests.

9. A Doctor Responds

   Microsoft claims their new AI framework diagnoses 4x better than doctors.

   I'm a medical doctor and I actually read the paper. Here's my perspective on why this is both impressive AND misleading ...

   ...

   Final thought: We don't need AI that can diagnose every rare disease. We need AI that knows when to diagnose and when to reassure. That's the real art of medicine.

10. Gymnastics Bot using LEGO SPIKE Prime. My weekend project.

A jumbo edition this week after a two-week break that was really not necessary.

1. At Secret Math Meeting, Researchers Struggle to Outsmart AI:

   On a weekend in mid-May, a clandestine mathematical conclave convened. Thirty of the world’s most renowned mathematicians traveled to Berkeley, Calif., with some coming from as far away as the U.K. The group’s members faced off in a showdown with a “reasoning” chatbot that was tasked with solving problems they had devised to test its mathematical mettle. After throwing professor-level questions at the bot for two days, the researchers were stunned to discover it was capable of answering some of the world’s hardest solvable problems. “I have colleagues who literally said these models are approaching mathematical genius,” says Ken Ono, a mathematician at the University of Virginia and a leader and judge at the meeting.

2. Hajj on Horseback (NYT):

   More than 1.5 million people traveled to Saudi Arabia this year for the hajj. Only three of them rode on horseback all the way from Spain, recreating the pilgrimage of Andalusian Muslims centuries ago and sharing their travels in the most modern way with big followings on social media.

3. Festivo, All Festivals, Everywhere (in Asia, for now): A calendar of all festivals.

4. Did She or Didn’t She? She Did, and She’ll Tell You Exactly How. (NYT): I am surprised it took so long to get here and not at all surprised who made it happen. Smartest family?

5. New York City’s Best Chefs Pick Their Favorite Restaurants (NYT)

6. Is it any surprise he won? (The Pope):

   As a bishop in Peru, Robert Prevost was often on the lookout for used cars that he could buy cheap and fix up himself for use in parishes around his diocese. With cars that were really broken down, he'd watch YouTube videos to learn how to fix them.

7. I used to be a high-performing robot and Maybe you’re not Actually Trying. "Agency" is having a moment online as seen in all the "You can just do things" memes. Interesting.

8. LLMs in Kitchen?: I made Tofu with peanut sauce today based on a receipe created by Claude. Honestly, the proportions were off but it wasn't half bad.

   are LLMs 10X-ing anyone else in the kitchen? I am so much more confident cooking when I can ask infinite dumb questions and brainstorm ideas, backup plans, substitutes, etc.

   in the last couple weeks I’ve made jerk chicken with coconut rice and mango salsa, chipotle turkey tacos, honey-lime sriracha chicken & sesame snap peas, skillet-blistered tomato and ravioli, and a fancy dessert. some of these things were just me looking in the fridge and saying “uhh this is what I have, help me turn it into something good” and so far they’ve all been great.

   I’m the stereotypical guy that knows how to make ~3 variations on a protein bowl and maybe ~2 nicer dishes for impressing girls when I was single and that’s about it.

   it’s fun feeling my agency expand and confidence quickly increase in this very practical domain. AI is great.

9. Andrej Karpathy's Keynote at YC. Self recommending as some say.

10. Kitty Olympics: AI Video is getting better.

11. Texan guy recites his electric bill like he’s a character in a William Faulkner novel. Hilarious.

12. AI is transforming Indian call centers.:

    For three years, Kartikeya Kumar hesitated before picking up the phone, anticipating another difficult conversation with another frustrated customer.

    The call center agent, now 29, had tried everything to eliminate what a colleague called the “Indian-ism” in his accent. He mimicked the dialogue from Marvel movies and belted out songs by Metallica and Pink Floyd. Relief finally arrived in the form of artificial intelligence.

13. Using AI Right Now: A Quick Guide by Ethan Mollick:

    Every few months I put together a guide on which AI system to use. Since I last wrote my guide, however, there has been a subtle but important shift in how the major AI products work. Increasingly, it isn't about the best model, it is about the best overall system for most people. The good news is that picking an AI is easier than ever and you have three excellent choices. The challenge is that these systems are getting really complex to understand. I am going to try and help a bit with both.

14. How cultures heal:

    Every digital platform is flooding the market with short videos, but the audience is now spending more time with longform video—and by a huge margin.

15. Flying on Frying Oil:

    The noodle hawkers in Kuala Lumpur are getting a nice little bump in profit but who is going stall to stall to check that the oil is in fact used? And what counts as used? One fry or two? Clever entrepreneurs have cut out the middleman. Virgin palm oil can be substituted for used cooking oil and voila! Sustainable aviation fuel is contributing to deforestation in Malaysia. Malaysia exports far more “used” cooking oil than oil that it uses. No surprise.

16. The search for MH370 has resumed. (NYT). What a mystery.

17. Rick Perry: I’m dedicating my life to fighting for a psychedelic drug. (NYT): Yes, Rick Perry.

    Marcus had lived with my wife, Anita, and me at the governor’s mansion after coming home from war. He was in constant pain from his injuries and dependent on opioids just to get through the day. He also drank heavily and used nicotine to cope with stress. Worse, he was carrying the burdens that come with war: grief, trauma and survivor’s guilt. For years, we tried to find him help. And for years, nothing worked. But after undergoing ibogaine treatment at a clinic in Mexico, Marcus came back changed. He no longer needed opioids. He hasn’t touched alcohol in years. He even quit chewing Copenhagen, a longtime habit.

18. When your father is a swimming coach

19. Alpha School:

    I first heard about Alpha in May 2024, and in the absence of randomized‑controlled clarity, I did what any moderately obsessive parent with three elementary-aged kids and an itch for data would do: I moved the family across the country to Austin for a year and ran the experiment myself (unfortunately, despite trying my best we never managed to have identical twins, so I stopped short of running a proper control group. My wife was less disappointed than I was).

20. Your semi-regular reminder to subscribe to Don't Worry About the Vase.

1. More kids are beating cancer. Improving the rest of their lives is next. (WaPo)

   When oncologists gave my 5-year-old daughter the all-clear from high-risk neuroblastoma in 2010, I breathed a sigh of relief.

   But her health needs were just beginning.

   Fifteen years later, the intense and often toxic treatments that saved Emily’s life have left her with a host of lifelong health challenges — hearing loss, stunted height, endocrine and kidney dysfunction, and permanent hair-thinning — issues no one talked about during her 18 months of cancer treatment.

   A good problem to have from one perspective but no less hard to deal with.

2. Questions about AI 2025:

   My working hypothesis is that human cognition improves markedly once pen is put to paper, and in some cases can continue to improve with extended writing (but note many prominent failures).

   This is correct and yet I do this less than I should. Time to commit to writing non-link posts weekly?

3. Exact Instructions Challenge (YouTube): Fun.

4. A ‘Mission: Impossible’ Fan Favorite Returns 3 Decades Later. Even He’s Surprised. (NYT)

   But according to the “Final Reckoning” director Christopher McQuarrie, Donloe made a big impact. In fact, he said in an interview, fans frequently asked him when he was going to bring the character back. For a long time, he didn’t understand why Donloe engendered such love, until he heard the question framed in a different way: “When is the team going to do right by what they did to Donloe?”

   “And I realized why William Donloe resonated,” McQuarrie said. “There was a perceived injustice, whether anybody could put their finger on it or not.”

5. The Rise of the Japanese Toilet (NYT):

   In 1982, a peculiar commercial aired on televisions across Japan.

   An actress in a pink floral dress and an updo drops paint on her hand and futilely attempts to wipe it off with toilet paper. She looks into the camera and asks: “Everyone, if your hands get dirty, you wash them, right?”

   “It’s the same for your bottom,” she continues. “Bottoms deserve to be washed, too.”

   Civilization on the march.

6. Zarna Garg Went From Stay-at-Home Mom to Stand-Up Comedian (NYT):

   After 16 years focusing on her husband, Shalabh, and her three children — Zoya, Brij and Veer — Ms. Garg re-entered the work force in 2019, but not to return to her erstwhile career as a personal injury lawyer. Instead, encouraged by her children, she started working the New York open-mic circuit and performing at Westside Comedy Club before headlining at Caroline’s on Broadway by 2020.

   In 2023, she talked her way into opening for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler on their Restless Leg Tour, and Prime Video aired her special “One in a Billion.” This spring, she made her film debut in the critically acclaimed rom-com “A Nice Indian Boy.” Her second special, “Practical People Win,” will air on Hulu in July, and she is developing a sitcom called “Zarna” with Mindy Kaling and Kevin Hart.

7. The Lightcone Podcast on Prompting (Video Podcast): I am hungry for more such reources.

8. Chattel Childhood: Trigger warning - fairly explicit start and parts.

   I don’t approve of the Simbari childrearing, not because I think the pain and disgust of what the children are forced to do is inherently bad, but because they are forced.

   To love someone skillfully is to pour fuel on their soul. It’s to see the world through their desire, to delight in it, and go “I desire you to get what you want.” It is the amplification of their will.

   The Simbari people are destroying the will of their children. My parents destroyed my will. And I think, quite seriously, that our current culture is likewise destroying the will of its children en masse. That’s what you do to property.

   Worth thinking about although largely I don't agree with this. Her will seems to be doing just fine.

   I think humans are are social animals and whether something traumatizes us or not is often (but not always) a function of the social context surrounding the event. What happens to the Simbari children (if it in fact, does happen. I have not verified or heard of this before) doesn't traumatize them because everyone around them considers it perfectly normal.

   In my mental model, the trauma happens, when you feel something shameful or otherwise different has happened to you and everyone looks at you different.

9. Artichokes: For the photos.

10. High cost of building in US:

    Zuckerburg's worth is 226 billion. The NY Subway builds tunnels at $4 bil. per mile. SF's BART builds subways at $2 bil. per mile. It's crazy that all of Zuckerberg's wealth would build just 8% of the current NYC subway network.

    Meanwhile in Paris cost $250 mil. per mile.

11. UFO?:

    The object was precognitive in behavior. The radar data from the SPY-1B system showed that the Tic Tac descended from 28,000 feet to sea level in 0.78 seconds, a feat requiring acceleration up to 5,880 Gs. But here's what no one focuses on: that data was correlated by both radar and infrared, meaning this was not a sensor glitch or hallucination...it was a multi-spectrum-confirmed, real-world event. And what’s worse? The object decelerated to a dead stop… mid-air. Bonkers!

A long list today because this week two of my top sources were on fire - MR and NYT.

1. My Parents Expected to Be Retired. Instead, They Are Raising My Sister’s Kids. (NYT): Beautiful, heartbreaking and uplifting.

2. Still booting after all these years: The people stuck using ancient Windows computers: None of the above. Well... maybe heartbreaking. No need to click the link though, the title says it all.

3. Measles cases in Europe, the Americas skyrocket: This is infuriating for two reasons. The second reason is that you wouldn't know it from reading most news that Europe has 10x the cases of USA. NYT I can understand, but I had to scroll down 3 pages on BBC website, after searching for "measles" to find a story about something other than RFK Jr. and Texas moms.

4. Your Fingers Wrinkle in the Same Pattern Every Time After Long Exposure to Water: Heh. Also apparently they wrinkle to improve underwater grip, not because the skin expands by absorbing water, which would have been hypothesis.

5. How Miami Schools Are Leading 100,000 Students Into the A.I. Future (NYT)

6. 5 weeks ago, someone buried a 22 lb chest with $10,000 of prizes (half in gold), somewhere in San Francisco. No one has found it yet. This is the only clue. It was found within a day of this post, so clearly the only thing holding back the search was the number of eyes looking. How many other problems is this true for?

7. "One of main goals in life has been to make my parents proud". 92% in Iraq, 78% in India. I remember realizing sometime in my early 30s that my parents didn't know the hierarchy of success in my field. As far as they were concerned I was already successful after college and any "actual" success wouldn't register with them. I felt the void in my movtivation for quite some time. Having your own kids helps with the transition.

8. AI & Critical Thinking:

   An interviewer just asked me what skills AI will make more important. My response? Critical thinking skills.

   This is because in the past there was value in creating large quantities of information. That is now costless. The new currency is how to generate, assimilate, interpret, and make that large amount of information actionable.

   The next question then becomes how do we teach, and improve our own, critical thinking skills? I discuss that in a recent study where I create a critical thinking skills hierarchy.

9. The Agentic Web and Original Sin: I have been wondering about this problem for a while - who puts up the content for the LLMs to train on if everyone gets their answers from the chatbots and doesn't visit websites anymore.

   The problem, as both I and Patel noted, is that this ecosystem depends on humans seeing those webpages, not impersonal agents impervious to advertising, which destroys the economics of ad-supported content sites, which, in the long run, dries up the supply of new content for AI.

   A potential solution:

   First, the protocol layer should have a mechanism for payments via digital currency, i.e. stablecoins. Second, AI providers like ChatGPT should build an auction mechanism that pays out content sources based on the frequency with which they are cited in AI answers. The result would be a new universe of creators who will be incentivized to produce high quality content that is more likely to be useful to AI, competing in a marketplace a la the open web; indeed, this would be the new open web, but one that operates at even greater scale than the current web given the fact that human attention is a scarce resource, while the number of potential agents is infinite.

10. Cargo Ship Crashed Into Man’s Yard After Crewman Fell Asleep, Police Say (NYT)

11. The 22 Best Pizza Places in New York Right Now (NYT)

12. New Studies Dismiss Signs of Life on Distant Planet (NYT): Dang.

13. SEO for AI: A look at Generative Engine Optimization

14. The best bookstore in NYC, and then some

15. They’re 15. Wait Until You Read Their Newspaper. (NYT):

    “We still haven’t done hot dogs,” Teddy said. Billy agreed: Hot dogs should be an editorial priority.

    and

    “We were still very young; we had no idea what we were doing,” said Billy, a junior varsity quarterback whose hair was tousled into a cruciferous mop.

16. Know hope!

    …Use of digital technologies was associated with reduced risk of cognitive impairment (OR = 0.42, 95% CI 0.35–0.52) and reduced time-dependent rates of cognitive decline (HR = 0.74, 95% CI 0.66–0.84). Effects remained significant when accounting for demographic, socioeconomic, health and cognitive reserve proxies.

    Paper here.

17. Putting Claude 4 Opus in an open playground to chat with itself led to it diving into philosophical explorations of consciousness, self-awareness, and by 30 turns it eventually started using Sanskrit: Can't wait till nationalist politicians from my home state get their hands on this. Sanskrit!

18. Toronto burger shop called Good Fortune Burger renamed its menu items to sound like office supplies, helping remote workers potentially expense meals through work accounts. The "basic steel stapler" and "braided HDMI cord” are popular. : As a reply points out this doesn't make sense because the order is still from a place called Good Fortune Burger.

19. Who Benefits from Surge Pricing?:

    What are the welfare effects of surge pricing? Using Uber data, I develop an empirical model of spatial equilibrium composed of demand, supply, and matching. I find that surge pricing raises total welfare, benefitting riders but hurting drivers.

    Welfare effects differ substantially across sides of the market: rider surplus increases by 3.57% of gross revenue, whereas driver surplus and the platform’s current profits decrease by 0.98% and 0.50% of gross revenue, respectively.

    This doesn't make sense. If it hurts the platform or the drivers, why would they do it?

    After dropping the pearl of wisdom above, I decided to actually read the paper. In the first two pages I found this:

    Uber’s current profits decrease by 0.50% of gross revenue. This probably does not mean that Uber is hurt, but rather that it is willing to forgo current profits to increase rider surplus—the right choice if it believes that long-run shareholder value is more closely tied to rider surplus and customer retention than to current profits.

    Makes sense. After this my eyes glazed over and I dropped the paper in Claude and asked it why drivers would participate in this. Here's what it says:

    The paper acknowledges this is the more problematic finding. "My findings suggest that drivers might have good reason to complain. Their hourly earnings are not much higher than the minimum wage, so even the small effects I find might be a concern."

    However, drivers may not have full information about the counterfactual (uniform pricing), and many drivers are part-time workers using Uber for supplemental income rather than as their primary employment.

1. How to make money betting on the new Pope: Great discussion of the betting process. Still plenty of luck involved but a reminder that there is plenty of "alpha" out there if you look in the right place. Maybe I should create a hashtag for these stories. #alpha

   A few minutes later, my jaw dropped as Prevost -- the guy I had just amasssed shares in at 200-1 like 20 minutes earlier-- walked out onto the balcony as Pope.

2. On the NBA and economic theory: Solving the problem of late season tanking to get a shot at the draft lottery in the NBA. Quite simple when you think about it.

   Optimal mechanism: get points for each loss. In game 1, a loss is worth 1 Draft Point. As season continues, loss is worth less, becoming negative late. Draft position based on Draft Points. Everyone wants to win late in season. Early season used to handicap truly bad teams.

3. Populism is not popular. Success is popular.:

   And Singapore is well run precisely because it adopts “unpopular” technocratic policies like zero tariffs, forced saving, and congestion pricing.

   And the PAP keeps getting re-elected, not despite, but because of those unpopular policies. Playing the long game, succesfully, since 1965.

4. Harvard Paid $27 for a Copy of Magna Carta. Surprise! It’s an Original.: To be fair it was $27 in 1946 dollars, but still. #alpha

   Professor Carpenter was at home in Blackheath, south east London, plowing his way through Harvard Law School’s digital images as research for a book when he opened a file named HLS MS 172 — the catalog name for Harvard Law School Manuscript 172.

   “I get down to 172 and it’s a single parchment sheet of Magna Carta,” he said. “And I think ‘Oh my god, this looks to me for all the world — because I read it — like an original.’”

   Professor Carpenter emailed Professor Vincent, who was, at the time, at work in a library in Brussels. “David sent it with a message saying, ‘What do you think that is?’” said Professor Vincent. “I wrote back within seconds, saying, ‘You and I both know what that is!’”

   I would not have answered like that.

A light week on links as it was a heavy week in life.

1. You Sent the Message. But Did You Write It?: Hilarious.

   Chatcident: When someone slips and pastes the prompt into the chat or email instead of the polished AI output – exposing the wizard behind the curtain.

2. Points for kills: How Ukraine is using video game incentives to slay more Russians:

   Ukraine's military is turning to incentive schemes used in video games to spur its soldiers to kill more Russian troops and destroy their equipment.

   The program — called Army of Drones bonus — rewards soldiers with points if they upload videos proving their drones have hit Russian targets. It will soon be integrated with a new online marketplace called Brave 1 Market, which will allow troops to convert those points into new equipment for their units.

3. How far are you from India, measured in units of India?: I really need to update the site to show Tweets inline or at least display images. Hope Claude is up to the task.

4. This Is the Moment for Mexican Indian Food to Flourish (NYT): A marriage made in heaven. Literally.

   A small, close-knit Mexican Indian American community formed outside Sacramento when a generation of Punjabi Sikh and Muslim men immigrated from India to find work as farmers and loggers beginning in the late 1800s. After the Immigration Act of 1917 made it near impossible for Indian women to immigrate, hundreds of these men married Mexican women. New kinds of cooking emerged from their idiosyncratic home kitchens and a handful of restaurants the families went on to run.

5. Lego built full-size F1 cars for the Miami GP drivers’ parade.

   “That was the most fun drivers’ parade we’ve ever had,” Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton said. “Some dirty driving from this one here (Gasly)! That was great fun.”

   “They’ll have to sweep the track, there’s quite a bit of Lego debris on the track,” Max Verstappen said. “A bit different, that’s for sure!”

6. Tim Urban on AI. In 2015.: Really need to add the Tweet feature.

7. Unparalleled Misalignments: I think I have shared this before but some things are worth sharing twice.

   This is a list of Unparalleled Misalignments, pairs of non-synonymous phrases where the words in one phrase are each synonyms of the words in the other.

   Butt dial // Booty call

   Father figure // Dad bod

   Local girl // Near miss

8. Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class

9. Pro-Prompting: A master in action. Prompt used for GeoGuessr by Kelsey Tuoc, in the last week's link on AI playing GeoGuessr.

10. Boy Accidentally Orders 70,000 Lollipops on Amazon. Panic Ensues. (NYT) :

    On Sunday morning, as Holly LaFavers was preparing to go to church, a delivery worker dropped off a 25-pound box of lollipops in front of her apartment building in Lexington, Ky.

    And another. And then another. Soon, 22 boxes of 50,600 lollipops were stacked five boxes high in two walls of Dum-Dums. That was when Ms. LaFavers heard what no parent wants to hear: Her child had unwittingly placed a massive online order.

    “Mom, my suckers are here!” said her son, Liam, who had gone outside to ride his scooter.

    “I panicked,” Ms. LaFavers, 46, said. “I was hysterical.”