How Not to Be a Victim of Success
Maria Popova explores how success can ossify our personal narrative, using Rockwell Kent's encounter with a statue from his past as a metaphor for resisting the trap of becoming our own myth.
The Marginalian
Archive
20 pieces rescued from the dumpster fire
2025
China Is Single-handedly Forestalling Climate Change
Noah Smith argues that China's fossil fuel demand has plateaued while their massive solar exports are single-handedly forestalling global climate change, backed by compelling data from Ember Energy.
Twitter/X
Easy Advice, Tough to Follow
Legendary trader Vic Niederhoffer shares 11 pieces of life advice, from 'be humble' and 'follow drift upward in stocks' to 'wear a hat' and 'eat fish in high proportion to meat.'
Twitter/X
A Horrific Experiment Called 'Neoliberalism'
Adam Butler argues we haven't practiced capitalism for 40 years, but rather a 'horrific experiment called neoliberalism' that treats citizens as feedstock for corporate profits instead of serving customer needs.
Twitter/X
UBI Is the Answer?
Cullen Roche's thread on UBI and automation paints a picture of the 'Keynesian Leisure economy'—where we become temporally and monetarily wealthier but socially poorer, with massive disparities in relative leisure.
Twitter/X
It would be inconvenient if something bad happened, so it can't happen
Scott Alexander's review of 'If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies' reveals how our brains malfunction when faced with scary but uncertain threats that would require life changes. We suddenly become strict scientists demanding proof, applying standards we ignore elsewhere—what he calls 'insane moon epistemology.' This cognitive bias explains why we sleepwalk into obvious disasters while nitpicking warnings about inconvenient possibilities.
Astral Codex Ten
The Global Decline of Religion
Religion doesn't vanish overnight. It fades in sequence: Participation drops first, then Importance, finally Belonging. A study of 111 countries reveals this pattern holds across cultures.
Nature / Pew Research Center
2024
AI's Impossible Math
Harris Kupperman runs the numbers on AI capital expenditure and finds a terrifying gap: the industry needs $480 billion in revenue just to cover 2025 investments, but there simply aren't enough paying customers to make it work.
Practical Capital's Blog
The Death of Writing
As AI makes writing effortless, we face an uncomfortable question: if we stop wrestling with words ourselves, do we lose the ability to think deeply? Michael Dean argues that writing isn't just communication—it's how we earn back our cognitive agency.
Cosmos Institute Blog
We Need More Bubbles
Colin Lewis argues that AI overspending isn't a bug but a feature—bubbles are civilization's way of coordinating massive resources around transformative technologies, turning irrational exuberance into innovation breakthroughs.
One Percent Rule Substack
What We Think We Want vs. What We Actually Need
Three brilliant writers circle the same truth from different angles: Henrik Karlsson on sacrifice, Sherry Ning on values as a filter for spending, and Ian Leslie on buying happiness. Together, they reveal why what we think we want rarely matches what we actually need.
Original
No AI Job Apocalypse Yet?
David Deming, Harvard's new Dean, pushes back against AI job apocalypse fears, arguing that CEOs use AI as a convenient scapegoat and that technological disruption historically creates opportunities for the educated elite.
Fork Lightning Substack
A Bullshit Jobs Apocalypse?
Alex connects David Graeber's bullshit jobs theory with AI disruption, arguing that while meaningless corporate work persists, it's increasingly becoming just a paycheck to fund real entrepreneurial work—and AI is removing the entry-level rungs that once led to corporate careers.
The Still Wandering Substack
Scrolling Toward Oblivion
James O'Sullivan argues that social media has transformed from a discovery tool into a distraction machine, where billions of users scroll through AI-generated slop not for information but for 'ambient dissociation.'
Noema Magazine
Whither AGI?
Stanford's Fei-Fei Li argues that AGI is impossible with text-only LLMs, making the case that spatial intelligence—understanding and reasoning about the 3D world—is fundamental to true AI. Her evolutionary perspective on why vision predates and underlies intelligence offers a compelling counter-narrative to the current text-obsessed AI landscape.
Stanford HAI
The Pipedream of Classical Democracy
Branko Milanović's sobering reflection from a Columbia panel on democracy asks the uncomfortable question: what if people are using democracy to elect undemocratic leaders, and what if that's not a bug but a feature?
Branko Milanović's Substack
Death of Western Marxism
Joseph Heath explains how the brightest Marxist philosophers of the 1980s quietly became liberals—not because capitalism won, but because they stripped away Marx's theoretical baggage and found John Rawls had already built better tools for critiquing inequality.
Joseph Heath's Substack
Say It, Don't Show It
Neal Stephenson challenges the sacred writing rule 'show don't tell,' arguing that skilled exposition can move plot faster and engage broader audiences than pure dramatization.
Neal Stephenson's Substack
Crop Yields Fail to Rise in Smallholder Farming Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa
A comprehensive study of over 55,000 smallholder farms across six African countries reveals that crop productivity declined by 3.5% annually from 2008-2019, despite massive international development efforts.
PNAS
1999
Cryptonomicon
Neal Stephenson's sprawling 1999 novel weaves together World War II codebreaking, modern cryptography, and tech startup culture into an epic that predicted our digital future with startling accuracy.
Wikipedia