Why We Stopped Hunting Whales: The Case for Kerosene
We’re addicted to cheap energy. We once had a global industry hunting whales, to light our houses with candles
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Why I've Been Happy Since 1990: The Bottom of Things
On his Stanford faculty page, computer scientist Donald Knuth writes, “I have been a happy man ever since January 1,
You can't bottle beauty: The Seagull Paradox
There’s an idea I’ve been toying with recently – I call it the Seagull Paradox. It’s the idea
Was Shaq Too Big, or Not Big Enough? The cost of doing too many things
The curse of being good at things is that people keep asking you to do more things. Everyone wanted a
How Winners Lose: The best time to lose
You’re most likely to take a loss after a big win. It’s a phenomenon sports analysts strategy “hangover
The rat strategy and the panda problem: Why the cute animals are useless
Most of the cute animals are useless. Pandas spend 14 hours a day eating bamboo. It’s plant nutritionally void
The Circles That Make You Bigger: How the people around you shape what’s possible
I came across this optical illusion featuring two orange circles. They’re identical in size, but appear dramatically different. One
This is How a Forest Burns: How catastrophes start from trivially small things
Ninety percent of wildfires are caused by humans. Not lightning strikes, not volcanic eruptions, just mundane, everyday, run-of-the-mill negligence. Laziness.
Why everything is the way it is: The museum of passion projects
The world around you wasn’t always this way. The streets weren’t always laid out like this. The buildings
The Secret to Confidence: What mastering one thing does for everything else
Every fortress is built stone by stone. Every empire rises from a single conquered hill. A tweet pointed me something
Is Anger Your Armour? When protection becomes a prison
In 2004, a man named Marvin Heemeyer climbed into a bulldozer he had spent 18 months modifying in secret. He
Is AI the Death of Art? Not Even Close: Creativity was always iterative
There's much ado about the future of art, and it's something I contemplate every week, if
