January 2026: A Sort of Introduction
Hi friends,
Please indulge me in this small 2026 experiment.
I've been thinking about how to do this for a while. "Blogging" (look it up, kids) always felt tantamount to participating in some kind of a DDoS attack against the collective intellect. I know it's stupid, but it just feels like there are so many voices already flooding the zone.
I also didn't feel a particular compulsion to write now, either. I’ve been hearing a lot of people say tgat there will never be a better time to write than 2026, cause of LLMs, the lightcone, whatever. I, however, am of an opinion that there will never be a better time to have a subjective experience of reality and that is a sort of a thing best done in the privacy of one's domicile, quietly.
But, but!, all of this increasingly had the unfortunate byproduct that those of you whom I know well tend to spend months waiting to hear back from me and those who do not know me that well tend to stay that way.
So, hi! For 2026, at least, I thought I'd try cultivating this clique with the following once-a-month transaction. You give me five minutes and I will <_offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself_> send some general updates on what I'm working on, thinking about, and where. If you're on the distribution list for this first newsletter
we’ve met in person,
I think you may have non-zero interest in my work,
I think you're cool!
and if you're not on distribution list, it's not because I don;t think you're cool, but because I am genuinely incompetent and can't find your email. Subscribe!
Lastly, and more importantly, making my plans and ideas a bit more legible is an excellent invitation to (1) hear back from you, (2) have more in person happenings (especially as I am terrible at letting people know where I'm travelling), (3) maybe even collaborate on something?
Work, ish
I've put online (but haven't publicised) BEAR, a new database of >10M results in empirical research, including 100,000 high-quality curated sets of studies. This is for a paper with Andrew Gelman and Erik van Zwet (who also originally found nearly all of them). I will explain what it is more next month, once our paper is live, pretty happy with this one!
~Health: I'll be trying to think more on three topics
How HPV vaccine went from 3 doses to 1 dose and how a decision like this saves 100,000's of lives. But why did it take 17 years to do it? (Mini-excerpt from a long policy paper at CGD)
Basic thoughts on differences that AI will/won't make in health
Just realised that this month I will be revising four or five papers and two long bits of general writing. Once again I bit off way too much.
In my second career, moonlighting as an increasingly middle aged man, I think this is the year I may finally read Kołakowski. Is this a foolish project? Somehow I've been thinking about Bolsheviks again and last year I simultaneously enjoyed and was exasperated by Kotkin's Stalin biography (review). I would also like to read more about pre-WW1 Germany this year. Will finish vol. II of Robert Musil. And Magic Mountain?
The end product of any advanced culture is a listicle
Reading in January: Left Hand of Darkness (decent!), Werner Herzog's autobiography that Gavin recommended (decent! finding small affinities between Bavarian and my native ~Carpathian culture), now Proust again (Proust!). The least I've read in a couple of years, but perhaps it's picking up again? My favourite book of 2025 was either Kingdom or Waiting for Barbarians?
It's been years since I've last been as amazed by a movie as by 8 1/2. When I saw it the first time in my 20s, it hasn't really made an impression, but this time I watched the last 20 minutes with my mouth open. Combination of things happening in personal life and reaching a certain age?
I listen to podcasts very little, but hearing Andrej Karpathy speak about AI was interesting. When you see a STEM brain being able to use language this adroitly in service of explaining their craft (i.e. almost never), it really is like watching a delicate flower.
Saw Tom Stoppard's Arcadia at Old Vic, it was a decent production of one of my favourite plays. Arcadia is one of these things that should be very cringe, but somehow it works. Art, innit. If you're in London, go see it, unless you have a very high bar for acting or you actively dislike Stoppard.
Tweet of the month. Incredible stuff happening out there
I've been murdering new Tame Impala album on repeat. It's not great and the old stuff is better, but it's nice to grow older together with bands. In fact, writing this reminded me that I saw them live in Brisbane back in 2015 and my then-gf's driver's license fell out of her pocket at the gig. We only realised the next afternoon. At a car rental. In Wellington, New Zealand. Where we flew to go on a 10-day road trip. Turns out hitchhiking in NZ is rarely done but generally welcome by locals!
Ambulations
Spent January in the UK, apart from a few days in Lisbon where I've ran into some friendly faces (hi!). I think I am happiest and most functional on these short trips, in ways I don't quite understand: I sleep and eat like shit... and yet?
Next month: taking it three days at the time due to major unforeseen life developments, uh oh. Mostly UK, but maybe visiting friends in Sri Lanka, Senegal, or Tenerife? Badly need a few days to clear my head, ideally walking, so if you have a great idea, let me know. Most of March I'll be in the US (Chicago, NYC, DC, in random order).
I love you all. (Although I know one of you will betray me.)
-W