Find a half-remembered link or follow a subject through years of Sunday notes.
7,487 posts
Sugar substitutes and brain aging. “People who consumed the greatest amounts of sweeteners experienced a 62% faster decline in overall thinking and memory abilities than those who consumed the least.” The study tracked self-reported diet questionnaires from 12,772 adults for about eight years and found the link was…
GLP-1s might move GDP. “Citi estimates that GLP-1 drugs could boost GDP by 0.5 percent to one percent in rich countries.” The piece argues these drugs look like a general-purpose health innovation, with effects that could show up as higher labor force participation and productivity. ~ learn more
Intelligence is not the bottleneck. “no matter how “intelligent” AI becomes, intelligence is often not the main bottleneck to things changing in the real world.” Ruxandra Bio argues that in medicine the grind of clinical trials, data access, and governance shape what actually gets built and approved, even…
Checkups are becoming luxury goods. “From 2018 to 2023, the number of fee-based practices grew by 83.1 percent” as more primary-care doctors leave insurance-based clinics for concierge and direct primary care. The draw is simple: patients pay a fee “for an easier time getting an appointment or a…
Jumping jacks for your eyes. “It’s like jumping jacks for your eyes and your brain,” says Dr. Joe LaPlaca, whose VR drills are now part of some NBA referees’ pregame routines. The same eye-tracking and cognition work is spreading to athletes and even brain health, where companies want…
High agency beats smart. “Being smart and making good business decisions will increasingly become a commodity.” David Cummings argues that as AI makes intelligence cheap and everywhere, the real edge shifts to people who initiate action and can build trust with other humans. ~ learn more
Don’t be a meat proxy. “Please don’t do this. I mean, I’ve done this. But I’ve been on the receiving end too many times now.” A good reminder that pasting raw LLM output into Slack or code review isn’t helpful. Read it, check it, then answer in your…
The quote that wrecks the PR. “Fuck them. The Journal is next on the list after [Ina Steiner].” Court records say this was former eBay CEO Devin Wenig reacting to unfavorable coverage, before eBay and former execs finalized a $55.7M settlement with the EcommerceBytes publishers targeted in the…
How we collected 10,000 hours of neuro-language data in our basement. Conduit, mentioned above, has this fun post. “Over the last 6 months, we collected ~10k hours of data across thousands of unique individuals.” Their setup runs 20 hours a day and the key constraint is boring ops…
It feels like magic. Naomi Bashkansky left OpenAI to join Conduit, which is building non-invasive thought-to-text models and imagining what day-to-day work might look like once your brain can talk to your tools. ~ learn more
Gwern goes public. “I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel Inc and bring GAs to life.” The pitch is that big labs “structurally cannot build agents loyal to an individual user” because incentives will eventually clash. ~ learn more
Why Brandon Johnson’s school board is going broke on purpose. “You have to create the crisis by which the boss…the government can no longer ignore you,” CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said, and the piece argues that logic is now showing up in CPS budgeting. The board passed…
Mario meets Pareto. “Between you and me, if you want to win, never allow Koopa to sit in your kart!” The article uses Mario Kart 8 to explain the Pareto frontier: filter out builds that are strictly worse on every stat, then choose based on your own trade-offs.…
Beard transplant review. “The procedure cost around $10,000, which is obviously a lot of money. But for me, it was worth every cent.” One guy explains how a beard transplant changed the way he’s viewed (or at least the way he thinks he’s viewed) at work, and how…
RecipeTables. “A prep-table notation invented by Michael Chu at Cooking for Engineers: ingredients down the left, each step a merged cell spanning exactly what it combines. The whole recipe reads in one look — no scrolling back and forth between the ingredient list and the instructions.” ~ learn…
NearbyWiki. “Wikipedia places nearby” is a map that shows you interesting places nearby listed on Wikipedia. ~ learn more
NearbyWiki. “Wikipedia places nearby” is a map that shows you interesting places nearby listed on Wikipedia. ~ learn more
Ancestor of the pickup truck. I didn’t know that this was a truck before it was a rock band. “The REO Speed Wagon (alternatively Reo Speedwagon) was a light motor truck model manufactured by REO Motor Car Company. It is an ancestor of the pickup truck.” It debuted…
Castle Map. “Castlemap is a free interactive map of 5,793 of the world’s greatest castles, fortresses and palaces across 138 countries.” Click any point for a photo and quick facts, and if your favorite fortress is missing, you can get it in by improving its Wikidata entry. ~…
The science of using drugs and not dying. “If you can, do drugs with other people, and do them in a place where you feel safe.” It’s a practical harm reduction guide: assume people will use, then focus on the small choices that keep them alive. ~ learn…
How elevators push your buttons. “It turns out these fancy kiosks are in general worse for wait times compared to the traditional good ol’ up and down buttons.” The reason is flexibility: “RSR also re-optimizes every 5 seconds,” but kiosks lock you into the assigned car even if…
How to tell the market you’re about to spend a lot of money. “Tesla is entering a much broader and more capital-intensive growth phase.” Cern Basher’s thread frames Elon’s core point as a shift from demand constraints to production constraints across cars, robotaxi, robots, chips, and electricity. ~…
Who’s afraid of Chinese models?. “What this means is that tokens are not a commodity.” Ben Thompson argues the thing that becomes fungible is the output, not the raw token count, so cost structure and token efficiency end up mattering more than headline prices. ~ learn more
Five tenets of cult brands. “First is doctrine. Having identity before features, what is the sacred text that everybody abides by?” Will H. Mayer breaks down the full checklist: doctrine, ritual, symbols and language, a charismatic leader, and an enemy. ~ learn more