All Rabbit Holes
Every essay, link, and observation collected here. Search or browse by year.
The future of global trade
This is just sad Both economists agree that growth is still possible, but the age of “hyperglobalisation” – with its extraordinary convergence of open…
Oral traditions in India
From It would be wrong to apply Western theories of folk literature to India’s oral traditions, Kumar cautions readers. Local beliefs and worldviews s…
Ah, but is not this a glorious time for your deep inward fires?
From _Autumn: From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau:__Thoreau) _Nov_. 13, 1851. To Fair Haven Hill. A cold and dark afternoon, the sun being behind clo…
Take big shots
I'm fascinated with "advice" and what counts as good or bad advice. Alex Imas said something interesting and I think I agree This thread by Simon is s…
How many jobs can AI kill
A I'm confident that AI is not going to wipe out anywhere close to 25M jobs on net over the next decade. If technological shocks caused net, long-run …
AGI will be business as usual?
What if this version of "business as usual" reality comes true. Seems like a good frame to have in your mental toolbox when thinking about the future …
What to expect when expecting
This is the most intellectually honest opinion to have about AI. Philippe Lemoine I think that if progress in generative AI continues, which I'm prett…
Did we get evolution wrong?
Was watching this video and wanted to understand more so I asked Claude and Gemini https://youtu.be/nrJ6jDZRESQ?si=gkW3Lj0E_wCkF3X8 Denis Noble and Ri…
Evil by Arthur Rimbauld
Ufff. What a poem. Each verse feels saturated with the bloody, neglected horrors of our own time — horrors I’m no doubt forcing into it, but can’t hel…
Reading as escalation
A few thoughts on reading.…
Leviathan by George Oppen
I came across George Oppen in this article, and a random Google led me to this poem, and the only word that can succinctly capture my reaction is "day…
AI as a research partner
Timothy Gowers on using AI 🧵 Full thread: https://x.com/wtgowers/status/1984340182351634571 I crossed an interesting threshold yesterday — one I susp…
Human nature will never change
Amen! Markets change. Businesses change. Technologies change. Human nature is a CONSTANT. Read Shakespeare to grok people... — Josh Wolfe Reminds me o…
The guy who financed Johannes Gutenberg
Today in learning Johann Fust financed Gutenberg Johann Fust (c. 1400–1466) was a pioneering 15th-century German printer, merchant, and financier who …
AI blind spot
This is an interesting take by Daniel Rock I don't happen to believe AI is going to take away all of the jobs. But it is possibly a blindspot-generati…
Dhwani: A directory for Indian public domain works
Built a small site to collect links to Indian literary and historical works in the public domain. While looking for books, I realized the sheer extent…
Invention of modernity
Nice reflection on history Some months later, I joined a book club. Run by Venkatesh Rao, this year’s edition focuses on a simple idea that goes a lon…
Post-cognitive world
Interesting take by Like Burgis. This is stuck in my mental craw for some reason I would also now add a surprising element to my 2024 essay: as the co…
Can AI eliminate information advantages
Interesting article in the _Economist_ on how AI can help customers being ripped off The extent to which AI truly eliminates rip-off markets depends o…
Economic impact of AI
I'm still reading through this brilliant and thoughtful post by Tom Cunningham, but it's so thoughtfully written. There is no standard definition of m…
Institutional impact of AI
Interesting take on the institutional impact of AI by Will Rinehart A lot of people are likening the advent of AI to moveable type. The printing press…
Don't want to die? Drink coffee
Coffee is a miracle drug But these are not the only risks associated with drinking coffee. Many lace their cup with additives like milk, sugar, cream …
The value of asking right questions
Aaron Orendorff When the cost of getting answers drops to zero, the value of asking the right questions compounds exponentially. Hat tip to Sam Tomlin…
AI-powered invoice fraud
This is hilarious and tragic. All of humanity's knowledge is at people's fingertips, and people are using it to fake invoices to scame their employers…
The value of education in the shadows of AI
Thoughtful essay on the role of colleges in the age of AI The Question We Can No Longer Dodge If AI can already produce an A– college essay in 30 seco…
Brian Eno on being pretentious
Hat tip to Celine Nguyen. Brian Eno on being pretentious Pretension is the dismissive name given to people’s attempts to be something other than what …
On having a philosophy of money
A few thoughts on people doing dumb shit with money.…
AI is kicking your butt; just accept it
If LLMs aren't making you feel like shit, you're not thinking hard enough During the Q and A after his talk, Cowen said that LLMs are already “kicking…
Fun is a skill
Thinking about this passage Everyone agrees that fun is good. Yet I’m sure we can all agree that most people do not seem to be having fun the majority…
Here come the robots
The world to come Amazon’s U.S. work force has more than tripled since 2018 to almost 1.2 million. But Amazon’s automation team expects the company ca…
Rousseau on reflection and reason
This is funny A century later Jean-Jacques Rousseau urged a different approach, one of trust in feelings and intuition, and of looking to the inner se…
The prerequisites for scientific progress
Interesting thoughts by Jesús Fernández-Villaverde Mokyr has long argued that Europe’s Republic of Letters encouraged broad scientific and technologic…
China is playing long games
The scale at which China is operating and the foresight they have is amazing Beijing also is building a national innovation system — linking academia,…
Naked without values
I read this thought-provoking essay by Kaushik Basu, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It puts its finger on many of the causes that …
On ritual
From this post that's overflowing with potential rabbit holes. Also pay attention to the beautiful framing of things-brilliant writing Han Byung-Chul …
You never know when the carousel stops spinning
This is good financial advice from Ross Barkan One complication of the n+1 listing is not so much the salary itself but the sheer number of responsibi…
For A Cynic by Countee Cullen
What a poem. Birth is a crime All men commit; Life gives them time To atone for it; Death ends the rhyme As the price for it. About Countee Cullen.…
On hope and despair
Wonderful article by Jared Henderson There are many reasons to be a Doomer, to be blackpilled, to decide that nothing matters or, even worse, that thi…
On billionaires and the ultra-wealthy
Interesting polemic on billionaires and the ultra-wealthy The Hollow King, wired for insatiability, cannot pause. Acceleration itself has become a dru…
Odds and ends
Banger. The 'Instagram Generation' now experiences the present as an anticipated memory. - Daniel Kahneman This wonderful article touches on several t…
Tools for thinking
The Sagan Standard "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" (sometimes shortened to ECREE), also known as the Sagan standard, is an aphor…
Where death is cheaper than life itself
Brutal but true. Dying from adulterated or fake drugs is quite common in India. Only when you have a high number of cases from a single cluster does i…
Rilke's advice to a young poet
From Letters to a Young poet by Rainer Maria Rilke There is only one way: Go within. Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. Put i…
A few good rabbit holes
A few good rabbit holes The illusion of knowledge AI capex boom China and weaponized interdependence…
A beautiful line from Camus
What a beautiful line from Albert Camus In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. This line is from hi…
Meditation by Charles Baudelaire
Beautiful. Take it easy, Sadness. Settle down. You asked for evening. Now, it’s come. It’s here. A choking fog has blanketed the town, infecting some …
odds and ends
I've been unable to think about this line by Tolstoy There can be only one permanent revolution—a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man. <p sty…
Henry Oliver on how to have good taste
Henry Oliver on how to have good taste When we prioritise our own reaction to art, we assume that those reactions are about the art. But if you are mi…
How Terence Tao uses AI
Here's how the great Terrence Tao uses AI. Lot's of takeaways here for us lesser mortals. I was able to use an extended conversation with an AI https:…
C.S. Lewis on reading old books
Beautiful perspective. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read onl…
On nostalgia
I was reading this beautiful post by Mark Clavier and this passage reminded of a quote that Steven Pinker often says Nostalgia has long been progressi…
On pursuing things
By Venkatesh Rao You’re more likely to get what you vaguely and subconsciously want than things you try to pursue with explicit targeting and pumped-u…
The cost of extreme weather
From Insurance Catastrophe Resilience Report 2023-24 The cost of extreme weather in Australia is rising. Three new graphs show just how much the cost …
AI links
As always, another thoughtful article by Ethan Mollick on what AI can and cannot do Agents are here. They can do real work, and while that work is sti…
Everything everywhere all at once
A few links for your consideration.…
The day is gone by John Keats
Beautiful poem. The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, Warm breath, light whisper, tende…
The infinite pleasures of diving down rabbit holes
I believe going down rabbit holes is essential to living well. When something catches my attention—a "ripple"—I follow it wherever it leads, even if i…
Zero Sum thinking is ruining the world
This tweet thread by Jake resonated deeply with me. We all seem to be becoming increasingly adversarial in how we think about the world, and that's no…
I got some links for you
The human brain isn't built to process numbers about China Today China’s share of global export containers is over 36%, though the country represents …
Kafka on reading
Amen. Amen a 100 times! “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a bl…
Twilight of the humans?
We've all seen images about the decline in the global fertility rate. Some have apocalyptic pronouncements about this, trend and predict the end of hu…
Philosophy of life and Seneca’s letters
I've been messing around with AI coding tools lately, and they're so good that even someone who can't code (me) can build actual websites. While build…
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
Beautiful. You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let t…
How Americans use AI and what they think about it
Pew published a report on how Americans use and view AI, and it's quite interesting. Americans are much more concerned than excited about the increase…
How long do we have left?
Google DeepMind's Gemini and OpenAI achieved gold-medal-level performance at the 2025 International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals…
Today in learning
The Swiss central bank has massive equity holdings. The Swiss National Bank has US equity holdings amounting to $167bn, spread across more than 2,300 …
The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats
Damn. What a powerful poem. If there was ever a poem for the present moment. Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falco…
We are borrowed stardust
The ease with which Maria Popova strings together words of lyrical rhythm and immense depth is striking. I thought of Einstein, who at sixteen, lonely…
Philosophy understood as a way of life
This is a brilliant video by Gregory Sadler. I’ve always liked the thought that philosophy began as a way of learning how to live well. A few things t…
The economics of tyranny
From this article in the _Foreign Affairs__:_ Bukele has forced Salvadorans to trade civil liberties for a sense of security, a bargain that has only …
A hopeful view of large language models (LLM)
File this under hopeful naïveté, naïve idiocy, or pointlessly hopeless romanticism. I was playing around with Gemini’s new image model, NanoBanana, an…
Social media is a funhouse mirror
Is social media a net positive or negative for society? This is an interesting question, at least for me personally, and my answer keeps changing with…
The solar revolution
Glenn on Twitter said Hot take: Solar “scaling laws” will ultimately prove more impactful on humanity than the AI version I agree.  that carries information using light instead of electricity. It's like a tiny, flexible glass tube that light can travel through.…
What is artificial intelligence (AI)?
Benedict Evans is one of the most thoughtful writers on technology. Whenever I listen to him, I end up feeling embarrassed, because I keep thinking: w…
Bhuvan's law
I was listening to a conversation between Jack Clarke, co-founder of Anthropic, and Tyler Cowen. It was an interesting conversation with some interest…
Will the poor countries catch up the rich?
Came across this fascinating paper looking at whether developing countries are catching up to advanced countries. It's frankly depressing, but I asked…
The heart wants what it wants
The heart wants what it wants.…
Speculation Is like water—it always finds a way
From a front-row seat in Indian markets, I trace how post-COVID tech and payments supercharged both investing and gambling. The essay makes a simple case: bans without internet, payments, platform, and cross-border enforcement just move the problem. Better to design the dam—keep play on regulated rails and cut harm.…
Vibe Physics? Not Yet
Sabine Hossenfelder tried to “vibe physics” using popular LLM models, and she was underwhelmed. So if you’re a physicist, I guess your job is safe for…
The weight of telling stories
I watched this conversation between Dave Chappelle and Mo Amer and got really thinking about what artists are supposed to do. Mo's Netflix show Mo is about Palestinian refugees, and he literally finished writing it right before October 7th happened. Hearing him talk about navigating that timing as one of the few Palestinians in Hollywood made me appreciate how hard it is to be an artist dealing with heavy, real-world stuff. I loved their discussion about how you know when a story or joke is worth telling—basically, if it makes people laugh, think, or feel something. Both of them talked about just "calling it like you see it," even when it's risky. …
Your next good read
A collection of the most insightful articles on culture, philosophy, history, science, finance, economics and much more.…
I just want to know
Sometimes, the most important discoveries come from simply wanting to know. This video by Betül Kaçar, "Why we explore, even when there’s no payoff," is a beautiful reminder of the power of pure curiosity in science.…
On luck and randomness in life
I sent a message to someone on LinkedIn saying luck and randomness played a large role in my life. Out of curiosity, I asked Google Gemini a few quest…
On Walking
Henry David Thoreau's essay Walking isn't just about nature—it's a diagnosis of modern life's deepest tragedy: we've become estranged from our wild selves. In a world dominated by left-brain thinking that treats everything as a resource to exploit, we've lost our contemplative spaces and buried our primordial desire to wander.…
On AI-assisted writing
I’m a huge fan of Venkatesh Rao’s writing and I reread this essay on his experience with AI-assisted writing. Now that pretty much everybody has acces…
On AI taking jobs
Making sense of reality as it unfolds is always hard because of the variance in outcomes. With Artificial Intelligence, that difficulty compounds mass…
All knowledge is my province
Lately, I've been reading a bit about the great Francis Bacon, and in parallel, I've been working on a site where I curate letters from the public dom…
The cost of collective apathy
That simple matter of fact is that we don't bother about so many bad things that happen in our local communities, let alone at a national level. If we keep ignoring this accumulation of evils, petty or profound, what price we are paying?…
The greatest anonymous poem
Understanding the greatest anonymous poem.…
Why read?
Reflections on Harold Bloom’s interview with Charlie Rose on why should one read. …
Is the twilight of the humans? A few AI links
LLMs show promise but can’t yet build software. AI's rise is slow, uneven, and energy-hungry—progress needs breakthroughs or massive infrastructure.…
Welcome to the age of weaponized interdependence
In 2019, two political scientists, Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, published one of the most well-timed papers in recent memory. Titled Weaponized I…
What It Means to Be Human in the Age of AI
A few thoughts what AI might do the human ability to think critically.…
The world won't end with a bang but with a shrug of indifference
The troubling decline in conscientiousness. A critical life skill is fading out — and especially fast among young adults…
The death of silence and the loss of contemplative spaces
An essay about how the loss of contemplative space is robbing us of our humanity. …
The potato love story
I didn't know that hybridization in plants and animals can lead to sterility in many cases. Well-known examples include the mule (a cross between a ho…
Universities in the age of AI
Hollis Robbins is one of the most thoughtful commentators on how artificial intelligence is reshaping education. Her latest piece is, once again, bang…
War and Peace isn’t a novel, it’s a mirror
Reflections from 500 Pages into War and Peace At the beginning of this year, I started reading War and Peace thanks to this post. This is my first pro…
Stephen Hawking on the philosophy of life
I just finished watching The Theory of Everything, a biographical drama about the life of the famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. It follows …
Good advice from Rudyard Kilpling
Rudyard Kipling, Michael Caine, and the Testicle-Punching Self-Help Industrial Complex I woke up and, like any good, sane, and sensible human being, I…
I gots Links for you: Issue #1
A few good links. --------- Kevin Munger on Anti-Mimetics I always enjoy, although frustratingly so, reading Kevin Munger, who is probably one of the …
The Protection Racket: A History of Tariffs and Who Really Pays
An essay exploring the history, economics, and politics of tariffs, prompted by the re-imposition of sweeping new trade barriers. The request called f…