How Will Markets Trade the Fed?
It’s hard to sound hawkish in the press conference when you haven’t actually hiked
Ten shelves · 50 essays
The Reading Room
I.
Tech
GPT-6.1 Terra
GPT-6.1 Terra It's always interesting to note which aspects of a new model are emphasized in the release announcement. I…
Quoting Jason Koebler
webframe: evaluated as a scraper and a sandbox
Full 3-D scan and live body metrics for Neal’s about page
II.
Culture
“What does it feel like to commune with AI spirits? It is a shot of caffeine. It is a dizzy spell. It is a download from the universe.”
“What does it feel like to commune with AI spirits? It is a shot of caffeine. It is a dizzy spell. It is a download from…
What happened to Scientific American? The political pendulum has swung back and forth, leaving a once hallowed magazine in shambles
What made Cormac McCarthy a great writer? The sound of his prose, in its full excess and strangeness
Historians have often created heroes, but few have themselves become one. Marc Bloch is the rare exception
We’re in the midst of an attention crisis. All is disruption and distraction. John Berger saw it coming – and foresaw its consequences
III.
Life
Walt Whitman’s Advice on Living a Vibrant and Rewarding Life
“Love the earth and sun and the animals… re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss w…
Bob Dylan on the Unconscious Mind and the Ideal Conditions for Creative Work
20 Favorite Children’s Books from 20 Years of The Marginalian
The Dark Wood of the Golden Birds: Margaret Wise Brown’s Lost Masterpiece about Mortality and the Meaning of Life, Newly Illustrated
20 Favorite Books from 20 Years of The Marginalian
IV.
Design
Planning with Agents: Divided Worlds, Boundary Objects, and Thicker Interfaces
Why we need richer, thicker interfaces and better boundary objects for collaborative planning with agents
August 2026
In Memoriam, Encountering World War I, and Thinkable Horrors
One Developer, Two Dozen Agents, Zero Alignment
Gas Town’s Agent Patterns, Design Bottlenecks, and Vibecoding at Scale
V.
Economics
Some simple principles for taxation and spending
This appeared in the Hoover Freedom Frequency, and Commons Dispatch, but for any of you who don’t read that, here it is,…
The Ancient Courts & The Infinite Scroll: MONDAY MAMLMS
Monday assorted links
The Oligarchs Lose a Big One
How Valuable is a Fake Poll?
VI.
Finance
Monday links: a wave of vulnerabilities
Adviser links: asking for referrals
Why Does Disagreement Sometimes Predict Higher Returns—And Sometimes Lower? Mispricing Is the Missing Piece
Talk Your Book: Beyond Bonds in Retirement
Nice earnings forecasts you have. Shame if something happened to them
VII.
History
The future of Britain in 7 maps
How geography could shape the country’s future
Brotherist Without Being a Brother
The history of Britain in 7 maps
Intifada Everywhere All at Once
Ye Have Troubled Me
VIII.
Philosophy
Unpopular Effective Altruist Views Are Simply Correct
EAs think some non-standard things. But the general public thinks--or acts like it thinks--some much less plausible thin…
Impactful Places to Donate
Suggested Readings
Trump Derangement Syndrome Has Been Vindicated
Gaius Blossius, the revolutionary Stoic
IX.
Psychology
Pseudobeliefs
If there’s a master key to everything I’ve written on this blog, it’s the prefix “pseudo.”
Poor People Lie Upward, Rich People Lie Downward
A Guilty Person’s Idea of How an Innocent Person Would Behave
On cyber-security and cyber-stupidity
The greater of two (or more) evils
X.
Science
Off-grid data centers have 60-80% higher emissions
A rush to power is leading data centers to install the least efficient and leakiest types of fossil gas generators rathe…
Scott Aaronson: “I Heard That a Robot Solved the Math Problem You Worked On”
Scott Aaronson: “I Heard That a Robot Solved the Math Problem You Worked On”
What is a Differentiable Manifold?
How not to detect warming acceleration
Culture · Feature
Russian and East European Posters
Princeton houses a large digital collection of posters from Russia and Eastern Europe, almost 5000 total item spanning 101 years (1904-2004). This album on Flickr contains nearly 1500 Russian & Soviet posters from 1917-1991 — not sure how much overlap there is between the two. Tags: art · design · p...
From the Stacks
Browse the full archive → Five rediscoveries from the back issues, rotated by the day
Read slowly. There is no hurry.