1: Skiff acquired by Notion, will shut down. See Links from January 2024, whoops.
2: A few thoughts on intensity | Tyler Hogge. Am I living intensely? When have I lived intensely? Do I want that?
3: Caral–Supe civilization - Wikipedia. TIL, a civilization in Peru pre-dating the Olmecs by 2,000 years. History is a ratchet. What else was I taught in school that is out of date with the latest research?
4: Related, Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the scrolls! — there is so much more to learn!!
5: Sora — AI and PR.
6: Alexei Navalny reportedly dead in prison
In Navalny’s closing statement during his 2021 trial — which was replete with pop culture references, as was his style — the opposition leader also spoke about his faith.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” “I’ve always thought that this particular commandment is more or less an instruction to activity,” Navalny continued.
“And so, while certainly not really enjoying the place where I am, I have no regrets about coming back, or about what I’m doing. It’s fine, because I did the right thing. On the contrary, I feel a real kind of satisfaction. Because at some difficult moment I did as required by the instructions, and did not betray the commandment.”
7: How Mothers and Fathers Spend Their Time. Contrary to what seems to me to be popular belief, “Parents’ time with their children continues to go up.” What were they doing in the 60s with all that free time? Also, 63% of all adults say they “feel like they have enough free time to do the things they want to do.” (2012 though)
8: 37signals — Group Chat: The Best Way to Totally Stress Out Your Team. I’ve posted this in a couple slack channels (sometimes at odd hours)
9: RUNALYZE - Data analysis for athletes — Some thoughts on marathon training, and related:
10: King’s Day in Amsterdam. “In recent years, King’s Day has become more and more of an open air party, particularly in Amsterdam, which attracts anywhere from 500,000 to 2 million visitors.” I passed on a trip to Amsterdam because I’d have left on Koningsdag.
11: Fresh ideas to increase housing supply - Federation of American Scientists to which I contributed a piece on Unblock Mass Timber by Incentivizing Up-to-date Building Codes, a better written version of How USDA can help make more housing with mass timber.
12: National Zoning Atlas — an important project. I wonder what will happen when someone replicates Hsieh and Moretti (2019) with more granular data? H&M used the Wharton Residential Land Use Regulatory Index for land use restrictions and Saiz (2010) for housing supply elasticities. WRLURI2006 is based in part on snail-mailed survey of city planners and, I think, aggregated at the MSA level. NZA should allow much more detailed analysis, potentially of smaller subsections of MSAs and based on the actual zoning code.
13: Streamlit • A faster way to build and share data apps — Excited to tinker with this one. “Streamlit turns data scripts into shareable web apps in minutes. All in pure Python. No front‑end experience required.”
14: The Knowledge Economy Is Over. Welcome to the Allocation Economy. Posted in January but this is one I keep thinking about.
15: Real data from Stripe. It’s hard to believe all of these are fraud. How many Americans have a side hustle?
Update: Stripe @Atlas incorporations last month were up another +60% Y/Y. Incorporations in January 2024 were >5x those of January 2019.
— Patrick Collison (@patrickc) February 6, 2024
Interesting paper from a few months ago on the US’s apparent entrepreneurship boom: https://t.co/YT7rIm3ITC. https://t.co/xuTwkIhxwk
16: Brassica oleracea - Wikipedia. Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, collards, and kale are the same species??
17: Linus’ reading list. “Covers interpretability + model visualization, inference thinking, stories/fiction.” Is curation a skill of the future?
18: superwhisper app — There are so many new AI-enabled productivity tools; I think it helps to just keep tinkering and be willing to change up workflows often. This is easiest when using tools that consider File over app (Steph Ango).
19: Who said it best?
Disclaimer: Something something sharing a link is a recommendation but not necessarily an endorsement or a sign of agreement something something.