This newsletter goes out to more than 1,300 ambitious frontier people.
Please share it with a friend who would like it.
Welcome to all the folks who joined this in the past week! š
Hey team! Links post this week.
FUN LINKS
TikTok
The Onion
Encouraging Reports Confirm Explosions Near Afghan School Kill Zero Ukrainians
Man Shopping For Cheap Sunglasses Troubled By Reviews Calling Sunglasses Cheap
Babylon Bee
TOTALLY UNFUN, SERIOUS LINKS
1. What Iām reading: Working Backwards, High Growth Handbook, The Book, Myths to Live By
2. The first r/place in 2017 was one of my favorite internet events.
Itās back baby. Reddit ran it again for April Foolsā this year.
r/place is a delightful lens on internet culture and networked coordination. Here are the top 30 communities.
22/30 are country subreddits
2 games: Eldenring and OSU
2 fictional universes: Starwars and OnePiece
3 other: LGBTQ+, Superstonk, r/FuckCars
And finally: Nothingness (coordinating around the color black)
Heatmap of which pixels were changed the most. Bottom left is Spanish vs. French subreddits. The biggest difference between 2017 and 2022 is how much Twitch streamers played a role.
Finally, hereās an r/place Atlas explaining all of the different pieces.
3. MIT brings back the SAT and ACT. Mostly yay! Tests register inequality, they donāt create it. Donāt shoot the messenger. As MIT notes:
Standardized tests also help us identify academically prepared, socioeconomically disadvantaged students who could not otherwise demonstrate readinessā because:
they do not attend schools that offer advanced coursework
cannot afford expensive enrichment opportunities
cannot expect lengthy letters of recommendation from their overburdened teachers
or are otherwise hampered by educational inequalities.
4. NatGeo Picture of the Year.
Black images are shadows of zebras. Look for the zebras.
5. Effective Altruism is and will be more influential than you think.
6. Linear Method. Clear, simple practices for building great software.
7. Stripeās Yearly Update, public for the first time. Amazing focus on Users First and their mission, to increase the GDP of the internet.
8. Introducing the Optimism Collective. Good to see more web3 protocols use a bicameral government: coin-voting and one-person-one-vote.
9. Whether or not Elon had purchased Twitter, the inevitable result is for #DeSo (Decentralized Social media) become a web3 hyperstructure.
Stratechery concludes this too.
Twitter will break up into the protocol layer and UX layer.
10. Atoms, Institutions, Blockchains. This brilliant piece from Josh Stark on the concept of āhardnessā:
A replicator has "hardness" if it takes the form of:
A. Physical Infrastructure. Atoms.
B. Narrative Infrastructure. Institutions.
and now
C. Shared Computer Infrastructure. Blockchains.
11. OurWorldInData on longtermism. Excellent data viz below:
12. Dril responds to Elon buying Twitter
Do you think Twitter is worth what it sold for ($44 billion)?
$44 billion is a bargain. imagine every post that has been made, and every post that will be made,Ā is worth $1, and it doesn't take a math whiz to see the value. Wow
š
13. Kony 2012 as the paradoxical rise of both slacktivism and defeatism.
14. Nice visualization of the right-leaning economics blogosphere. ACX in blue, Marginal Revolution in red, Greg Mankiw in green, Instapundit in yellow.
15. Earth Reviews. Amazing site that pretends earth is a video game and then crowdsources reviews for specific features. Example:
16. Neurotechnology Numbers Worth Knowing
17. New blogs:
Blog Prize Digest. On longtermism.
Modern Power. On effective government.
JOBS AND OPPORTUNITIES
Roote is hiring! Weāre looking for a Head of Talent, Growth Designer, a CEO for Web3 & Society, and more.
System.com is hiring product, design, and data science roles.
New_ Public is hiring a Head of Product and COO. Build digital public spaces!
Work on Election Stability with USDR
Aspen Policy hub is hiring Disinfo researchers
Work at Qualia Research Institute to formalize a computational understanding of consciousness
CHAI is looking for a Python engineer to code an experimental algorithm to optimize recommendations for a non-engagement outcome.
Effective Institutions Project is hiring operations and research roles.
Ongoing Job Boards:
Programs for ambitious young folks: Primer, Patch, Pioneer, Emergent Ventures, Rise, Roote
Jobs at tech & society centers
Jobs at Metascience orgs
EVENTS
Permissionless. May 17-19. Palm Beach, FL. Web3.
Graph Day. June 2, SF. Iāll be there and speaking š
Consensus. June 9-12, Austin. Iāll be there and speaking š
Upcoming ETH events
Upcoming Effective Altruism events
MUSIC
A front runner for Album of the Year dropped last month: Motomami by RosalĆa.
Itās quite good. Hyperpop continues to this decadeās leading genre for birthing interesting music.
Two songs from the album that I loved:
1. CUUUUuuuuuute
Good to see hyperpop use more drumlines a la Hatshepsut by Jlin (2017).
Cool to see back and forth between fast and slow parts (or Spanish and electronic parts) a la Concrete by Poppy (2019).
2. The song Chicken Teriyaki is great too.
Japanese syllable patterns (always consonant followed by a vowel, like TeRiYaKi) are a great fit for hyperpop.
Enjoy the continued expansion of hyperpop into pop music, just like we had with dubstep from 2005-2015!
Hope you have a great week!
Warmth, Rhys
ā¤ļø Thanks to my generousĀ patrons belowĀ ā¤ļø
If youād like to become a patron to help spread ideas for a solarpunk future, please do so here. Thanks!
Tom Higley, Christian Ryther, Laurel Petterson, Eric Tang, Chris Densmore, Maciej Olpinski, Jonathan Washburn, Audra Jacobi, Sam Jonas, Patrick Walker, David Hanna, Benjamin Bratton, Michael Groeneman, Haseeb Qureshi, Jim Rutt, Zoe Harris, David Ernst, Brian Crain, Matt Lindmark, Colin Wielga, Malcolm Ocean, John Lindmark, Collin Brown, Ref Lindmark, James Waugh, Mark Moore, Peter Rogers, Darrell Duane, Denise Beighley, Scott Levi, Harry Lindmark, Simon de la Rouviere, and Katie Powell.