Things I am reading
Online Magazines
My favorite magazine. They have long-read articles on almost anything you can imagine. It's one of the core outlets of the progress studies movement, which tries to understand the barriers to progress and how to overcome them. For shorter reads, I also recommend their newsletter, which offers original content distinct from the magazine articles. Articles span:
- History of innovation (e.g., polyester)
- Examples of how specific regulations came about
- How to design better science systems
- Housing policy
- Why contemporary architecture is often so ugly
Specifically, their new series on "How the System Works", with articles explaining the systems supporting our modern, luxurious living standards, and how they came about. The first two articles focus on agriculture and clean water systems.
Newsletters
Blog by Ben Reinhardt, the founder of a nonprofit industrial research lab for the public good. Topics are materials science innovation, and the institutional barriers to more and better innovation – especially the limitations of the current university system for supporting all forms of technological progress. My favorite articles include
- Unbundling the university – An extensive essay on the plethora of roles universities have accumulated over time, and how this monopoly position may not be optimal for society.
- What does it mean for a technology to scale?
- Is necessity actually the mother of invention?
- Getting materials out of the lab – published in Works in Progress magazine
Vox News – Topic Newsletters
Future Perfect – A newsletter focused on Effective Altruism–adjacent topics, including AI safety, development economics, global health, and climate change. Recently, it has featured many articles about AI risks and governance.
Your mileage may vary – An advice column addressing ethical questions, often through the lens of moral philosophy, showing how different philosophical frameworks might approach the same dilemma.
Our World in Data – Biweekly Digest
Biweekly newsletter featuring a selection of visualizations and short explainers from the team. Great for expanding your perspective into topics you may know little about – in my case, global health.
Flowing Data – Weekly Digest
Data visualization newsletter showcasing recent highlights from Nathan Yau’s blog. Sometimes you learn something completely unexpected, e.g., how the silhouettes of Met Gala dresses have evolved.
The Markup – Hello World Newsletter
Semi-regular newsletter by investigative journalists examining how powerful institutions use technology, with a focus on accountability and digital rights. Topics include the misuse of algorithms by public authorities and the proliferation of third-party tracking tools.
Books
I mostly prefer to read novels, but once in a while, a non-fiction book captures my attention. The list below includes books I’ve read recently that touched me in some way and expanded my horizons (in no particular order). If you have any book recommendations based on this list, please get in touch!
- Hannah Ritchie: Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet – An optimistic outlook on all the things we have achieved already in fighting climate change and how we can achieve even more.
- All books by Florian Illies – A German art historian with an excellent writing style; his books read like novels. I especially enjoyed 1913: The Year Before the Storm, and Love in a Time of Hate: Art and Passion in the Shadow of War.
- James Baldwin – To me, he is one of the greatest writers and observers of human nature. His prose is both direct and poetic. I especially enjoyed Another Country, and Giovanni's room.
- Gabriele Tergit's Effingers – The story of a Jewish dynasty’s rise and fall in Berlin, beginning with the rush of the Gründerzeit period and ending tragically after WWII. A compelling account of lived experiences, family dynamics across generations, and their intersection with political tides.
- Grit Lemke Kinder von Hoy – A vivid depiction of growing up in a small industrial town in GDR.
Knowledge Resources
- New Things Under The Sun – A living literature review of innovation research from across disciplines, maintained by Matt Clancy.
- Good Questions Review – A living literature review of social science research, produced by Paul Kellner.
- EconGraphs – An interactive site for exploring economic models with customizable graphs, created by Chris Makler.
- Causal Graphs – An animated introduction to causal inference tools, explained by Nick Huntington-Klein.
- Power Simulation – A practical guide to power analysis using simulation in Stata, written by Pol Campos-Mercade.
- Seeing Theory – A visually rich and interactive introduction to probability and (Bayesian) statistics, developed by Daniel Kunin.