What I've been consuming

Media from the year thus far

Hi there! I want to share my cabinet of curiosities with you.

Books, music, graphs, and movies below. Also some o3 chats :)

Maybe you’ll find something that piques your interest! Lmk if so.

-Rhys

---

Books

Histories of the 19th and 20th century:

I’m overindexed on the universe’s first 14 billion years and underindexed on the last 200 years. So I’ve been reading more about the world from 1800-2000.

• Slouching Towards Utopia by Brad DeLong. Good deep dive into the role of monetary policy and inflation in the 20th century.
  

• The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848 by Eric Hobsbawm. Just finished! It’s ok. It’s helpful as a reference of pointers to things I should understand better like Chartism, Corn Laws, etc.
  

• The Age of Capital, 1848–1875, The Age of Empire, 1875–1914, The Age of Extremes, 1914-1991. Hobsbawm again. The man can’t be stopped. I guess it’s the job of a historian to write history, and our job to read it :)

Education:

• The Teacher Wars by Dana Goldstein. Good overview of the teaching profession in the US. Cool political economy analysis of how teaching became a feminized profession, the rise of teachers’ unions, race relations after the Civil Rights Act, and data after NCLB.
  

• The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch. A bit polemic but an excellent overview of the accountability and school choice movement, plus why Ravitch eventually rejected it. Recapitulated with DOGE & ED today of course. Ravitch is rolling in her grave bed. (She’s still alive.)
  

• The Smartest Kids in the World by Amanda Ripley. Interesting that Ripley wrote this a decade before her excellent systems book, High Conflict. Smartest Kids is a fine ethnography of high schoolers around the world. Nacirema energy. US schools are weird. Lots of sports, no freedom, and built to sustain class divides.
  

• The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan. Excellent analysis of the applause lights and expenditure cascades that lead to too much education.
  

• The Emotional Lives of Teenagers by Lisa Damour. Amazing book by the expert who helped Pixar with teen emotions for Inside Out 2. Read it if you are a teen, teach teens, have a teen, or were a teen ;)
  

AI:

Not reading many books on AI. Mostly just consuming real-time content like Daniel Selsam talking about compression :)

• Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick. Honestly didn’t love it. It’s mostly business studies on how AI is changing jobs. Stick to Ethan’s Substack, Dwarkesh, or Karpathy.
  

• Why Machines Learn by Anil Ananthaswamy. DNF. Interesting build-up from linear algebra but I found myself mathed out by the halfway point. Will likely pick up again.
  

How Everything Evolves:

• The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama. Ridiculously good synthesis of political evolution before the French Revolution. Probably my favorite political historian.
  

• Darwin's Conjecture by Geoffrey M. Hodgson. Good formalization of the evolutionary dynamics in social and economic systems.
  

• Darwin Turing Dawkins by Leonard M. Adleman. Very strange book by the A in RSA. Adleman knows there’s a there there (universal Darwinism applies to computers!) but unfortunately there’s no there here (in this book).
  

• Everything Evolves by Mark Vellend. Coming Aug 19, 2025. Likely to be an ecological biologist’s view of Universal Darwinism. I love ecologists. They’re “natural” systems thinkers ;)
  

• The Evolution of Everything by Brian Villmoare. I’m such a sucker for titles like this. Haven’t read yet, but salivating.
  

Other:

• Poor Charlie's Almanack by Charlie Munger. I have a love-hate relationship with this book. I love Charlie’s mindset on worldly wisdom and incentives. He’s a systems thinker through and through. But he’s built in the 20th century not the 21st. For example, he doesn’t see how selling Coca-Cola as a set of conditioned reflexes would lead to a global obesity epidemic. For someone so worldly wise, Munger is also prey to incentive-caused bias, just like the rest of us. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  

• Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (中国特色社会主义) by Roland Boer. Criminally underrated book to understand the ideology behind modern China. Many Western commentators just understand China by its symptoms: economy, military, politics. But they don’t look at ideology. It’s like trying to understand the West without understanding liberalism. Boer’s book is a good exploration of 求是, 社会主义市场经济, 四项基本原则, 共同富裕, and 四个现代化.

What are you reading?!?

---

Music

Best of 2025 Thus Far

• Who Let The Dogs Out by Lambrini Girls. All-women English punk rock. 9/10.

• EUSEXUA by FKA twigs. FKA combines her original left-field R&B with more hyperpop influences. 8/10.

• Foxes in the Snow by Jason Isbell. Good emotional songwriting. 8/10.

World

• Slowly making my way through Songlines’ top world music from the last 25 years.

• Tyler (Cowen ofc) recently had Joe Boyd talk about his new world music book And the Roots of Rhythm Remain. Here’s the accompanying playlist.

Classical

Been on a classical music kick recently, inspired by my brother.

• Bach’s cantatas (and Bach in general)

• Mozart’s operas

• I’m still before 1800. Have only made it through baroque (Bach, Handel) and classical (Mozart, Haydn, CPE Bach, early Schubert). Listening to the Romantic period now (Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner et al).

• Great find from my local classical station: Scottish Fantasy by Max Bruch

• Ben Nobuto is my favorite new classical artist.

Other

• Liminal Ambient: Gen Z's Answer to LoFi is a great video on GenZ ambient music. Sent me down the path of Minecraft C418 + slowed and reverbed. And the reverse—sped up.

• Anthony Fantano recently posted a good overview of Outsider Music. I’d already listened to the excellent Songs in the Key of Z. Fantano’s overview helped me further understand the (sad) cultural backstory of groups like The Shaggs. Plus it gave me new outsider music bangers like Pot of Macaroni.

• Elizabeth Mitchell’s children’s songs are great. Her Spanish collab with Suni Paz is especially good.

• Still hunting for AI music. Recent favorites are 10 Drunk Cigarettes and Daydreamin’. Don’t judge me :)

What are you listening to?!?

---

o3 & 4o

Some of my consumption comes through o3 & 4o now. I use o3 to guesstimate causal weights and quantify history. I use 4o as a tutor.

Trying to Think More™ not less, but it is hard :)

• Energetic prime movers from 0 - 1900 CE (o3). So much human muscle.

• Causes and solutions to demographic collapse (o3). Financial incentives don’t work.

• Golden Age of Islam vs. Political Fragmentation (4o). 750-1250 was a weird time for Islam.

• Understanding iodine’s role in steroids (4o). Iodine is the heaviest element used in biology.

• % energy Yersinia Pestis gained from its hosts (4o). A three-level hyperparasite. Human-rat-flea.

• Quantifying the GOAT across all sports and games (o3). Serena top. Flash second.

• Worst California propositions (o3). Prop 103 is bad but Prop 13 takes the cake.

• Debating the most important elements (4o). My final opinion are these 36.

• Center of population from 70,000 BCE to 2000 CE (o3). Map. Inspired by center of GDP map.

What are you using AI for?!?

---

Graphs & Images

1. Energetic prime movers over history. From Smil’s Energy & Civilization. Impressive shift from people to engines during 1800-1950.

2. Reminder to anchor AGI predictions. ~2034 is the current consensus. From Metaculus:

3. How university students use Claude. The rest of the report is excellent too. Somewhat interestingly, I use ChatGPT daily but think the analysis team behind Claude is world-class. See CLIO, Model Welfare, Economic Index, etc.

4. Genetic distance from Early European Farmers to modern day. Red is close, blue is far. Looks like the Yamnaya never made it to Sardinia, nor past Italian Alps.

5. Orion Nebula is the closest stellar nursery. Orion is the best.

6. mRNA is ~10x bigger than the protein it creates! From Niko’s McCarty’s excellent Biology is a Burrito.

7. We’re living through the Carbon Pulse but barely recognize it. Yes, we are in Peak Oil. From Nate Hagens’ excellent talk on Energy and The Superorganism:

What images have stuck with you recently?!?

---

Videos & Movies

• The Internet is a Machine That Devours Trust by Hank Green. Must-watch to understand the information ecosystem of the modern internet.

• The Deadliest Infectious Disease of All Time — Tuberculosis by John Green. Reminder to look at this OWID death chart once a month. I’m such a vlogbrothers stan.

• Why Cambodia & Laos Are Absurdly Empty by RealLifeLore. The US carpet bombed Laos & Cambodia, which led to the Khmer Rouge. I used to fully blame Pol Pot for the genocide. But now assign more causality to the US & Kissinger. o3 agrees.

• South Korea Is Over by Kurzgesagt and Japan's population is shrinking by 60 Minutes. Few kindergarteners in South Korea. 10M empty homes in rural Japan. Future demographic collapse is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.

• No Other Land won this year’s Oscar for Best Documentary. Really good. Really sad. Not about Gaza but West Bank settlements.

• Will & Harper wasn’t nominated for Best Documentary but should’ve been. Good pluralist take on gender transitions. Sad to see the right-wing reaction by folks like Brett Cooper.

What have you been watching?!?

---

Other

• How to improve education outcomes most efficiently? (main graph)

• RenPhil’s annual report

• Why I think AI take-off is relatively slow by Tyler Cowen

• Trying out veganism so I’ve been eating this superseed mix of chia, hemp, and flex seeds.

…Everything gets Ankied of course :)

I’m curious what you’ve consumed this year that has resonated with you!

---

This work is possible through our generous donors Shingai Thornton, Yaniv Tal, Philip Stehlik, Protocol Labs, The Graph, and the dozens of Patreon members below. Thank you!

Doug Petkanics, Matt Lindmark, Daniel Friedman, Maciej Olpinski, Ref Lindmark, Jonathan Washburn, Patrick Walker, David Hanna, Michael Groeneman, Haseeb Qureshi, Jim Rutt, Brian Crain, Colin Wielga, John Lindmark, Peter Rogers, Denise Beighley, Scott Levi, Harry Lindmark, Jonny Dubowsky, Katie Powell, and Simon de la Rouviere.

Incentive Infrastructure

A new idea machine

Humanity needs to incentivize better incentives. We need incentive infrastructure to beat Moloch.

We still live in a society with poor outcomes. We spend time, money, and energy on nostrums—ideas that promise to solve problems but have no real impact.

Why? Because we fix surface-level problems without fixing their underlying incentives.

As Charlie Munger, the patron saint of incentives once said, "show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome."

Or as Donella Meadows, the other patron saint of incentives, said: "The least obvious part of the system, its purpose, is the most crucial determinant of its behavior."

Look at the problems of the last few decades. They're all incentive problems. The Great Financial Crisis was caused by bad incentives for bankers to underwrite risky mortgages. No skin in the game. A moral hazard. Meanwhile, the Climate Crisis was caused by companies that were incentivized to ignore the externalities of fossil fuels. No carbon tax. Just pollute.

Many of the problems of so-called late-stage capitalism and neoliberalism are problems of incentives. We live in an addiction economy. Where TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube are incentivized to addict us to screens. Where CPG companies are incentivized to addict us to food and cigarettes. More than 50% of deaths every year are commerciogenic, like obesity, smoking, and many cardiovascular diseases.

Sure, companies are known to be rife with incentive problems. But it's not like nonprofits or government are free of them. The nonprofit industrial complex is rife with corrupt, rent-seeking behavior—signaling impact while lining their pockets. Plus, many nonprofits form dependency relationships. In housing, rent control just subsidizes demand while restricting supply. In substance use, harm reduction often encourages local minima for users and their communities.

Government is no better. Around the world, we have voting systems that incentivize and give power to charismatic megalomaniacs. Social media, gerrymandering, and two-party systems all incentivize polarization. Meanwhile, politicians themselves are incentivized for Twitter likes, not policy. But even the best policy rarely gets done. Bureaucrats are incentivized to follow procedures, not drive outcomes. We're left with a multi-trillion dollar monolithic government that mostly just sits around until it brinksmanships its way to the next debt ceiling.

All of the institutions feed off each other. Companies lobby corrupt politicians for private gains. Nonprofits feed off government grant programs too. Meanwhile, governments decrease corporate taxes in a global race to the bottom. This causes brain drain and a loss of state capacity, which further decreases the trust in government and desire to fund it. The systems degrade.

Many of our biggest industries are plagued by incentive problems. Healthcare charges for treatment not prevention. Doctors are paid for expensive medicines not cheap ones. Education is incentivized for graduation rates not actual learning. Universities form cartels to price fix and restrict supply.

We often talk about Baumol's cost disease for healthcare and education. But it jacks up prices in law and finance too. Lawyers work on an hourly cost-plus basis, colluding against their clients to run up prices and force a society where everyone is lawyered up. Finance acts like a leech on the economy, pulling an ever higher percentage of GDP and corporate profits each year.

Unions can be one of the worst cases of incentive rot. Blue-collar workers strike against productive automation. Rubber rooms hold NYC teachers who can't be fired. During the pandemic, teachers unions held out on in-person teaching for nearly twenty-four months, causing at least two years of learning loss. Unions can be a good response to greedy owners or capricious politicians. But they can decay.

Science degrades when we incentivize proxies like the h-index, which causes endless grant cycles and only incrementally legible research. Meanwhile, our national debt is ballooning, caused by politicians buying votes now at the expense of our future children. In addition, oil companies find the cheapest way to greenwash their way into ESG funds, all while continuing to manufacture doubt about the harm from fossil fuels.

We need better incentive infrastructure.

---

In addition, we can view many of the problems of other idea machines as problems of incentives.

Effective altruism is focused on helping animal welfare, people in extreme poverty, and future generations. Why are these fields neglected? Because those people have no voice, no buying power. There's no incentive to help them. You can arbitrage impact by helping those without a voice. In addition to neglectedness, effective altruism is also focused on cost-effectiveness. Why? Because information asymmetries in donor-funder relationships optimize for cheap emotional signals of impact rather than quantifiable outcomes. Again, an opportunity for impact arbitrage.

The abundance agenda is focused on increasing the supply of public goods, rejecting state capture, and developing state capacity. The reason why we're mired in incapable states that just cater to niche interests is simple—they're incentivized to do so. Institutional economists have been studying this for years. There's the iron law of oligarchy (Michels), the dictatorship of the small minority (Taleb), indifferent majorities (Olson), and winning coalitions (Bueno de Mesquita). These works all tell us that in order to beat vetocracy, we need to construct political institutions which are incentivized for the provision of public goods.

Finally, incentive problems are at the heart of progress studies. Why don't we have progress? Because the NIH only funds entrenched boomers. Because solar buildout is stifled by NEPA permitting. Because nuclear is blocked by the NRC. Because people are incentivized to be conformist around a pessimistic view of the future. Because we're incentivized to anchor from a slightly better present, instead of dreaming about an abundant, ambitious future.

---

This isn't to say that incentives only cause problems. In fact, they're behind all good things too.

For thousands of years, humans were mired in a neverending conflict. Empires would pillage their neighbors until their neighbors got strong enough to fight back. War was normal. Peace was the exception. Humans remained in the Malthusian trap. We were stuck in a cultural fabric of conformism and precarity where new ideas and new children died early and often.

But we eventually escaped this trap with the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. Why? The incentives changed. The printing press made ideas cheap. Cheap ideas meant more ideas. Meanwhile, the incentives behind those ideas changed. Exploration and doubt were encouraged. This had far-reaching implications across all of European life.

New religious ideas like Protestantism spread. Protestant states had new parliamentary structures where political legitimacy came from the economic growth of the merchant class rather than Catholic decree.

Scientifically, the incentives were changed too. With the scientific method, the ideas that survived were those that withstood repeated doubt. We began a new process of cumulative knowledge creation.

Over time, theoretical knowledge became physical technologies. Fossil fuels powered machines. Living conditions rose. Economic slack created more scientists, more craftsmen, more abundance. Incentives for knowledge and growth.

Over time, these new capitalist incentives gave us the modern world. Competitive markets gave us divisions of labor, free trade, and abundant consumer goods. Life became much, much better. Meanwhile, the ideals of liberalism were applied not just to markets, but to people. Free people. Freedom of speech. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The greatest good for the greatest number. These ideals were implemented in a new form of politics—democracy—which gave us the modern welfare state, education for all, and consumer protection. In an idealized form, liberal capitalist democracy contains the institutional incentives for collective flourishing. Whig history is at least partially true.

But the power of positive incentives doesn't just lie in our past. It surrounds us in our digital technology today. Wikipedia incentivizes a global free encyclopedia. The incentives of Page Rank and Vickrey auctions give us free Google searches and the accompanying advertising business model. Online marketplaces like Uber, AirBnB, and Amazon have incentivized markets of cheap, useful goods. Bitcoin's proof-of-work incentives create a distributed database for a permissionless store of value, while Ethereum's proof-of-stake has incentivized a permissionless smart contract platform with 99% less energy use. Meanwhile, prediction markets incentivize traders to tell us what might happen and when.

Finally, at the risk of sounding Pollyannaish, our cultural fabric has improved too. The arc of liberalism has led to more rights for marginalized groups and generally more acceptance of the other. Gay marriage is legal in much of the West, mental health is less stigmatized, and more people care about the environment than ever before.

Although it was a rocky path, the positive incentives of the last 500 years have given us freedom, prosperity, and peace like never before. It's time to continue this for the next 100 years.

Our incentives are better than they ever have been. And still we need better incentives.

---

Taking a step back, the incentives framing is so powerful because it is based on evolution and theories of universal Darwinism. Incentives are ubiquitous because evolution is.

Evolution is the selection of inherited variation. Fundamentally, selection is an incentive for survival. Over the last four billion years we can look at any pattern and ask: What incentivized this? What was being selected for?

The incentive framing has different terms in different fields.

In biology we call it selection. Selection for fitness. For energy consumption. For competition. Selection for bacteria and viruses and plants and animals and monkeys. For brain size and tool use. For co-domestication. As we begin to take more control over Earth's biosphere, we need to be mindful about what we're selecting for. If we don't incentivize biodiversity, carbon mitigation, and natural capital, we will lose these things. If incentivize our microbial world into an arms race, we will get more antimicrobial resistance. If we have incentives for low-cost DNA synthesis and drug design, we will get both the COVID vaccine but also bioengineered pathogens.

In the social sciences and in culture, we have many terms for incentives. Psychology is the study of behavior. What causes it? Incentives under another name. Biases. Motives. Our fast System 1 vs. slow System 2. Meanwhile, economics is explicitly the study of incentives. Microeconomics looks the incentives of individuals. This started with rational actors but eventually complexified into behavioral economics. Macroeconomics looks at the incentives of groups. Rent-seeking behavior. Tragedy of the commons. Adverse selection. Principal-agent problems. Ricardo's comparative advantage. It's incentives all the way down.

Finally, computation and AI can be viewed through the lens of digital evolution and incentives. Stochastic gradient descent selects for low loss functions. Backpropagation is a great way to find them. These systems are incentivized to succeed at whatever minimizes their loss function. Indeed, this is the worry of AI alignment. Can we iterative construct robust incentives that dodge instrumental convergence while maximizing corrigibility? I'm not sure. But it's incentives again.

Fundamentally, incentives and evolutionary selection answer "why" questions. Why does an organism survive? Why do humans act this way? Why do AIs produce these outputs? By focusing on the why, incentives get to the causal underpinnings and root causes of reality. It's a powerful frame.

---

I'm not sure the best way to create Better Incentive Infrastructure.

Many of the groups above are already doing great work on it.

But we should spend more time on it.

Perverse incentives are tricky, antimemetic beasts that hide in plain sight and are excellent at dodging our attempts at removing them. Positive incentives are hard to design but have long-lasting positive effects if done correctly.

To come back to our patron saint, Charlie Munger: "Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives."

---

This work is possible through our generous donors Shingai Thornton, Yaniv Tal, Philip Stehlik, Protocol Labs, The Graph, and the dozens of Patreon members below. Thank you!

Doug Petkanics, Matt Lindmark, Daniel Friedman, Maciej Olpinski, Ref Lindmark, Jonathan Washburn, Patrick Walker, David Hanna, Michael Groeneman, Haseeb Qureshi, Jim Rutt, Brian Crain, Colin Wielga, John Lindmark, Peter Rogers, Denise Beighley, Scott Levi, Harry Lindmark, Jonny Dubowsky, Katie Powell, and Simon de la Rouviere.

Did our universe evolve?

A video on cosmological natural selection

Subscribe to join 1500+ frontier people learning about the future.

---

Hey Rhys’ Pieces,

I’m starting to record a YouTube series on How Everything Evolved.

First, could our universe itself be the product of evolution—like some kind of cosmic organism?

Surprisingly, yes.

This 30min video takes you on a three-part journey:

• → From the fine-tuning of the laws of physics, which implies…

• → Cosmological natural selection—the theory that black holes birth universes. In each new universe, the physical constants have small mutations. Over time they maximize for fecundity—black hole-based reproduction. This implies…

• → That our universe would have lots of early black holes, which James Webb Space Telescope just found.

This might be one of the most important theories this century. We might live in a multiverse, not a universe. A Copernican Turn for the modern era.

Plus, if the universe optimizes for black hole creation, might that be the ultimate teleology of AI? idk

---

Here’s a review from Tony, a beta viewer:

The part about a lineage of intelligences making black holes was trippy af. Maximizing energy dissipation is such an interesting “reward function” for intelligent beings.

Video here.

Curious what you think!

-Rhys ❤️

---

Additional reading and watching:

• Blowtorch Theory by Julian Gough

• The Egg and the Rock by Julian Gough

• The Life of the Cosmos by Lee Smolin

• Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees

• Julian Gough on Jim O'Shaughnessy’s podcast

• JWST & Black Holes on PBS Space Time

• JWST & Black Holes on Anton Petrov

• Cosmological natural selection

• Fine-tuned universe

• UHZ1

---

This work is possible through our generous donors Shingai Thornton, Yaniv Tal, Philip Stehlik, Protocol Labs, The Graph, and the dozens of Patreon members below. Thank you!

Doug Petkanics, Matt Lindmark, Daniel Friedman, Maciej Olpinski, Ref Lindmark, Jonathan Washburn, Patrick Walker, David Hanna, Michael Groeneman, Haseeb Qureshi, Jim Rutt, Brian Crain, Colin Wielga, John Lindmark, Peter Rogers, Denise Beighley, Scott Levi, Harry Lindmark, Jonny Dubowsky, Katie Powell, and Simon de la Rouviere.

Ada & Locke Season 1

40+ comics on AI consciousness, brainpower, and more

Subscribe to join 1500+ frontier people learning about the future.

---

Hey Rhys’ Pieces!

I wrote 40+ Ada & Locke comics in March/April and wanted to share them with you below. Or just binge them starting here.

Here is what folks have said about it thus far:

• “Perfect for the XKCD / Sapiens crowd — highly online nerds interested in science.”

• “Very high ratio of hmmm per seconds of reading.”

• “Astounding ability to communicate complex & unimaginable ideas in simple terms & analogies.”

Also:

• One Google friend prints it out and shows his coworkers

• One reader replaced her daily lunch scrolling with daily comic reading. ❤️

All of the comics have links to contemporary research, sources, etc.

Enjoy and let me know what you think!

-Rhys

---

Patterns in Repeat

On how:

---

AI Does Homework

---

25% of all words are written by AI

---

Here are some longer comic series:

---

AI Religion

---

AI doubles Earth's brainpower

---

AI Consciousness

---

Robot Liberation — Episode 1: The Farm

This is the first of two episodes on AI welfare. In this first episode, Ada & Locke explore a factory farm to learn about animal welfare.

---

Robot Liberation — Episode 2: Monitors of Mind

Continuing in Episode 2, Ada & Locke explore a philosophical world where every mind is represented by a monitor.

…

---

I’m curious what you think! Subscribe to Ada & Locke itself for more regular updates. Will be writing Season 2 soon.

Warmth,
Rhys ❤️

---

This work is possible through our generous donors Shingai Thornton, Yaniv Tal, Philip Stehlik, Protocol Labs, The Graph, and the dozens of Patreon members below. Thank you!

Doug Petkanics, Matt Lindmark, Daniel Friedman, Maciej Olpinski, Ref Lindmark, Jonathan Washburn, Patrick Walker, David Hanna, Michael Groeneman, Haseeb Qureshi, Jim Rutt, Brian Crain, Colin Wielga, John Lindmark, Peter Rogers, Denise Beighley, Scott Levi, Harry Lindmark, Jonny Dubowsky, Katie Powell, and Simon de la Rouviere.

2025 Update

Roote Fellowship | Ada & Locke

Subscribe to join 1500+ frontier people learning about the future.

---

Hey Rhys’ Pieces! (That’s you, the readers of this newsletter.)

It’s been a while since I last posted. I’ve been heads down on the Roote Fellowship and my book. Some quick updates on each:

1. Roote Fellowship (RF)

In the fall of 2023, I ran RF7 with 40 fellows. In the fall of 2024, I ran RF8 with 80 fellows.

I’m proud of the Rooties for all they’ve done—see examples from RF7 & RF8. They make me optimistic for the future.

As part of RF, I wrote articles on building self-awareness, being smart with people, and navigating college admissions. Plus, I outlined Roote’s vision.

• If you have an ambitious young person in your life who is looking for guidance, please have them apply to RF9. I’d love to help.

• I’m organizing a Future of Education event for early 2026. Reach out if you’re interested in participating.

• I’m looking for donors to scale Roote’s impact in 2026+. Donate here or reach out if you’re curious about making a larger gift.

2. Book

As anyone who has written a book knows, it’s not easy. In fact, it’s actually quite hard :).

In 2023, I created a rough draft after extensive research and experimentation with illustration tools.

In 2024, I sent a book proposal to agents but received 11 no’s. :(

In 2025, I’m releasing daily comics. Starting today.

Ada & Locke is a daily webcomic where a robot (Ada) and a boy (Locke) explore AI's impact. It's inspired by Calvin & Hobbes.

First post is here. I’m curious what you think! It’s just beginning.

Welcome to Ada & Locke!

Subscribe at adalocke.substack.com for daily posts. I’ll plan on keeping Rhys’ Pieces to ~weekly.

As always, I’m curious to hear from my readers. How are you doing? How was your 2024?

Warmth,
-Rhys ❤️

---

This work is possible through our generous donors Shingai Thornton, Yaniv Tal, Philip Stehlik, Protocol Labs, The Graph, and the dozens of Patreon members below. Thank you!

Doug Petkanics, Matt Lindmark, Daniel Friedman, Maciej Olpinski, Ref Lindmark, Jonathan Washburn, Patrick Walker, David Hanna, Michael Groeneman, Haseeb Qureshi, Jim Rutt, Brian Crain, Colin Wielga, John Lindmark, Peter Rogers, Denise Beighley, Scott Levi, Harry Lindmark, Jonny Dubowsky, Katie Powell, and Simon de la Rouviere.