Cleaned some podcast debt.
Reading
Technical
Non technical
Youtube
~10 minutes
I did plank for 30 days… here's what happened
Gabe Newell on Video Game Piracy
Longer
Podcast
Vaccines offer an extraordinary return on investment, with a $21 return for every dollar spent, rising to $54 when considering broader health benefits.
The World’s Most Effective Public Health Intervention Is Under Attack
Start with your second-best idea to hook the audience. Place your third-best idea in the middle. End with your best idea for maximum impact.
Kirsten Smith started using drugs at 16 (early 2000s), robbed banks at 23 (2006), sentenced to 47 months in federal prison (2007), became Johns Hopkins assistant professor (2024)
From bank robber to scholar: the Knoxville dropout fighting to change how we see addiction
Clean Air Act reduced US sulfur dioxide emissions 90%, eliminated acid rain concern Lead ban dropped blood levels 95% since 1970s Montreal Protocol avoided catastrophic UV exposure and additional 1°C warming
‘We’ve done it before’: how not to lose hope in the fight against ecological disaster
"You can have safe banks, stable markets, or people taking real risks—but not all three"
How the government got hedge funded
If you can’t model a complex system reliably, treat it like an optimization problem: generate variation, measure outcomes, iterate.
Political instability: Since the 2008 abolition of monarchy, three men (all 70+) have rotated as PM in short-term coalitions—in a country where median age is 25 Economic contradiction: GDP grew from $500M (1960) to $42B (2023); per capita income rose from $50 to $1,400—but largely from remittances sent by migrant workers abroad, not domestic development
He proposes “small-data, big-task”: systems that can reason toward goals with minimal input, using a more explicit cognitive architecture (planning, reasoning, learning in context), not just pattern-fitting. His critique of deep learning is also about scientific responsibility: if systems can’t explain why they respond as they do, performance incentives can drive “complacency” and brittle progress. He sees neural-network dominance as intellectually unsatisfying (“works, but why?”)
‘I have to do it’: why one of the world’s most brilliant AI scientists left the US for China
Composecure manufactures ~80% of premium metal credit cards (American Express, Chase Sapphire, Capital One Venture, Robinhood, Coinbase)
Why We Use Filler Words Filler words ("um," "like," "you know," "kind of") function as discourse markers—letting the brain catch up to the mouth They also signal you're still talking and don't want interruption Filler conveys authenticity; overly polished speech sounds like teleprompter reading Some filler is formal/status-signaling: "at the present time" instead of "now," "needless to say" (then why say it?)