Enjoying the summer? It’s been going great so far. I’m still hunting for good IMAX seats for the Odyssey and watching YouTube in the meantime.

Great Moments in Unintended Consequences

One of my favorite concepts (and a YouTube series). Any time someone (usually a politician) comes up with a certain feel-good policy it ends up hitting back through a weird corner many people probably expected in advance.

Here’s an example from Yosemite. Popular park; too many people go there, and some fall because of it. They start issuing tickets and limit crowds to 25%.

Now, people worry so much about the chance to go there they dispatch right away after getting a permit. So the number of accidents and injuries somehow stayed flat.

Religion as Software Business

I linked to Tomas Pueyo’s blog several times and here’s one of his strongest series on the history of religion.

He looks at religion as operating systems for human groups: onboarding rituals, retention mechanics, viral loops, network effects, forks, version control, anti-heresy patches.

Through this, he explains how monotheism won over the previous beliefs and how Christianity and Islam competed afterward.

Inside Ukraine’s Kill Zone

The “kill zone” in Ukraine is a 20km battlefield ruled by cheap but deadly drones. Traditional troop or equipment movement is suicidal. Soldiers hide for months in tiny dispersed foxholes, move in pairs or on motorbikes, and rely on drone pilots using video-game controllers from dugouts or rear positions.

Lazy Fucking Interns

I see more and more people in the workplace outsourcing their thinking to ChatGPT and Claude.

AI can produce a nice-looking memo or a deck, so they believe those are good materials. Sometimes they are but more often they’re not. Especially, if you’re a professional in that space.

In my experience, AI can be a great editor and good designer, but the key ideas should still be handled by professionals.

Odyssey - A Map of Myth and Legend

This map of the Odyssey’s travels just looks so neat I’m thinking of buying the print.