Caveman work good. “Same fix. 75% less word. Brain still big.” A tiny Claude Code skill that forces terse, caveman-style answers so you burn fewer tokens without losing the technical meat. ~ learn more
New tools create new biology. “Similarly it is by means of the new tools and techniques developed in many instances by the physical sciences that the door to a biology of molecules has only recently been opened.” Weaver’s bet at […]
High risk, low reward municipal spending cuts. “Eliminating IT positions at Austin Energy or the airport does not save you a dime in the general fund and therefore does not free up any money to prevent cuts to parks, social […]
Designed for a bad experience. “Then I thought, what if objects were actually designed for a bad user experience, instead of a good one?” Greek architect Katerina Kamprani makes deliberately inconvenient everyday objects, and the interview gets at why useless […]
Penguin relationship flowchart. “The Kyoto Aquarium in Japan keeps a wall-sized flowchart tracking the romantic relationships, breakups, and drama between their penguins.” It has color codes for couples, breakups, and “it’s complicated,” plus notes like one penguin being “basically demonic.” […]
How funerals keep Africa poor. “So common is this sentiment that the Akan have a saying: abusua do funu, ‘the family loves the corpse.’” The essay argues that lavish funerals work as a costly signal of loyalty inside intense kinship […]
The online poker boom up close. Taylor Caby describes watching the online poker boom up close, then realizing the whole thing was shakier than it looked. Also lots of other great story and nuggets here. “There was no like smartphones, […]
Why I may ‘hire’ AI instead of a graduate student. “AI requires no ramp-ups, no meetings, and absolutely no emotional support.” A professor writes about the quiet temptation to hand the messy early parts of research to a machine, and […]
The worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do. “We’ll bet that certain pitches will be balls; you throw those pitches into the dirt; we’ll win the bets and give you some money.” Thompson’s point is that modern gambling […]
Be wary of workers who buy into the corporate BS. “Corporate bullshit confuses rather than clarifies. It may sound impressive, but it is semantically empty.” Cornell researchers built a Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale and found that people most impressed by […]