The Best Words I Found Last Month
optimized for "novel and interesting"
Ratings reminder (points for novel and interesting):
1-3: filtered out, bottom 90%. 4 and above was worth saving
4: read if intriguing, but you’re not missing too much
5: skippable if busy, but missing out if this is your thing
6: uncommon quality, worth a read if at all interested
7: pretty much everyone should read this
Disclaimers reminder:
summaries are haphazard and ratings are intentionally subjective
not necessarily an endorsement, just made me think
(Full explanation and complete history available 👉 here 👈)
4/7 - The Misery Bomb — happiness has dropped among Western young people, but we're not sure why
4/7 - How to Spend a Trillion Dollars — collection of interesting ideas for government programs
5/7 - Why K-Scale Wins — how to think about the humanoid robotics industry: software >> hardware
4/7 - Study: Returns to Angel Investors in Groups — 50% of startups return >1x, 10% >10x (with disclaimers)
4/7 - Trump Should Finish What He Started — Destination-Based Cash Flow Tax (DBCFT) has some nice properties
5/7 - Venture Deals (book) — useful reference for startups; how to think about equity, raising money, term sheets, acquisitions, and IPOs
4/7 - Where inflation comes from — interesting but not dense history and current status of inflation measures
4/7 - Book Review: The Rise Of Christianity — super long but mildly interesting; it is crazy that this religion went from 1k to 6M followers in 300 years
5/7 - Want Growth? Kill Small Businesses — bigger firms are higher productivity; helping them get big is a great economic intervention
4/7 - The Wrong Kind of City? — differences between cities that grow and cities that don't
6/7 - Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know — excellent review which actually was quite dense and told me exactly the amount I wanted to know. conclusion: police are more cost effective than prisons anyway
5/7 - It’s the Corruption, Stupid — good perspective from Rahm Emanuel, accomplished Democratic strategist
4/7 - ARM & SoftBank — Arm is a pretty interesting company, they're everywhere
5/7 - Desalination: a Future of Infinite Water — desalination is cheaper than the current cost of water in many large cities, by a meaningful factor
4/7 - Do US states have different recoveries from economic shocks? — yes; varies because of industry composition; but that has been homogenizing and variance decreasing
4/7 - Escape to the country — England tried to make a bunch of New Towns, but only the ones close to big cities did well
4/7 - Cloudflare 2024 Year in Review — mildly interesting internet traffic stats
4/7 - How to activate your investor network — ask questions, targeted ones, and do it well
Bonus throwbacks:
6/7 - Amp It Up! — eloquent and forceful emphasis on performance culture
7/7 - Why and How Capitalism Needs to Be Reformed — best articulation of this I've heard; very important
Ideas worth spreading?
(this post will be deleted next week — the full archive has all this and more)