Discover_

whyisthisinteresting

The Saturday Selection, Vol. 100 (!)

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You feel it in your chest—a deep rumble, then an explosion that makes your ears ring.

noahpinion.blog

Will Americans want more housing if it looks prettier?

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While the paper by [ Broockman, Elmendorf, and Kalla (2026) ] provides pretty good evidence that ordinary people's aesthetic objections to bad, very unfit-to-context buildings affect their support for development (to the extent they care about anything development-related)…no one has shown that any specific set [of] design standards would materially improve public support for development, apart from pretty obvious stuff like "don't put up new buildings in low-density areas that are much taller than their neighbors")

longreads.com

Menace on the Streets

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There is a specific, anger-provoking anxiety that comes from being startled by something, or someone, that comes unpredictably and illogically out of nowhere, especially if they almost knock you off your feet.

TED

Is Luck Random — or Can You Cultivate It? | Christian Busch | TED

@underscoredpodcasts

Zemblanity is when something unlucky, unwanted or undesired happens by design because it's already built in. It seems unexpected and like bad luck, but in hindsight it was to be expected and avoidable.

TED

What to Do When You’re Told There’s Nothing Left to Try | David Fajgenbaum, Kiah Williams | TED

@underscoredpodcasts

Sometimes motivation follows motion. Not the other way around. And so I think sometimes literally just by putting one foot in front of the other, you don't have to have 100 percent of the answer.

TBPN

SpaceX Financials, Chimpanzee Civil War, Self-Driving Safety, Ferrari

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Investors who participate in the IPO will essentially be financing Musk's unproven AI ambitions in order to get a piece of uh high performing commercial space and telecom firm.

TBPN

SpaceX Financials, Does AI Increase Unemployment or Leisure, Chimp Civil War | Diet TBPN

@underscoredpodcasts

Elon has uh always had multiple irons in the fire, one project that's working and producing cash flow and and growing uh to finance the next uh piece of innovation.

Pivot

Rahm Emanuel: “Nobody Believes Our President” on Iran | Pivot

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I'm not going to tell you what you want to hear. I'm going to tell you what I think you need to know and we're in this together rather than trying to fight each other all the time.

It's Been a Minute

The world is awful. Is it healthier to stop caring? | It's Been A Minute

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This pose of acting like you don't care and maybe the pose becomes so real that you actually don't really care.

Book of the Day

New children’s books center intergenerational relationships in life and the afterlife

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Music is still something that they remember, and it's something that I saw reflected in my own life, and that's sort of what drew me to write it.

readtrung.com

Shohei Ohtani: The $125m Ad Man

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Last year, Ohtani made $100 million from endorsements, a threshold previously reached by only three athletes in Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Stephen Curry, who each did it one time.

3quarksdaily.com

City animals act in the same brazen ways around the world

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Studies show that animals living in urban environments around the world exhibit common sets of behaviors. At the same time, these urban animals are losing traits they would need in the wild. This process of urban animals' behavior becoming more similar is known as "behavioral homogenization," and it accompanies the loss of species diversity with urbanization.

stratechery.com

2026.15: Myth and Mythos

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However, a point I make on Sharp Tech is that Anthropic's exponential growth includes the part of the curve everyone misses: the company has been on this once-barely-visible trajectory for nearly two years now. Now the company has what is undoubtedly the most powerful model in the world, so powerful, in fact, that Anthropic says it can't release it publicly. There's reason for cynicism, given Anthropic's history, but the part of the "Boy Cries Wolf" myth everyone forgets is that the wolf did come in the end.

Radiolab

The Builders

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Few mammals have a bigger positive impact on the planet than the beaver. With its bright orange buck teeth, the creature is an expert engineer that brings life wherever it waddles and even fights fires.