better doing

Good explanations are hard to vary

This short Naval Ravikant post posits that good explanations, “should make risky and narrow predictions.” Part of his point is that tons of things are falsifiable in fact without leading to progress. Example: “If you eat 1kg of grass, it […]

fun facts

Fake insider trading is illegal, too

I skipped over a headline last week about a SpaceX engineer who was insider trading. The story became much more interesting once I learned he wasn’t really selling insider info. Rather, he was selling fundamental research falsely advertised as insider […]

fun facts

Filling my boots

I learned a new idiom this week. To fill one’s boots is to, “take or obtain as much of something as one can. Primarily heard in UK.” | learn more

big ideas

Not all early human societies were small-scale egalitarian bands

“A grand research project created our origin myth that early human societies were all egalitarian, mobile and small-scale…” In fact, “Sedentary and hierarchical hunter-gatherers are not unusual. If anything, it’s the profusion of mobile, egalitarian bands that might be the […]

big ideas

If aliens exist, here’s how we’ll find them

“Two esteemed astrophysicists peer into the future of space exploration.” This article gets wild somewhere in the middle. The more I encounter the frameworks that space theorists use, like the Kardashev scale, the more they start to seem normal. | learn more

big ideas

Peter Thiel: you are not a lottery ticket

Thiel lays out his 2×2 matrix: pessimist vs optimist, determinate vs indeterminate. It starts out a little obscure, but once he fills in examples it really drives his point home. I found his description of the circular investment flows in […]

under the microscope

Intermittent and periodic fasting, longevity and disease

This is an excellent and detailed review of the literature regarding intermittent and periodic fasting. “Here, we describe the different fasting methods and their effect on longevity in organisms ranging from yeast to humans, linking them to the major nutrient-sensing signaling […]