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stratechery.com
AI on the Ballot

AI, however, is the opposite: building data centers requires permission, which is to say that people actually have a say. Again, I am not at all saying that these people are well informed about data centers, or about the economic impact on their communities, much less the economic impact of AI generally; what I am noting is that people who didn't have a say in globalization are suddenly finding they do have a say about AI, and it's not a surprise they are expressing their disapproval by blocking data centers.

— Ben Thompson
1h ago

The best single question to ask about a business is: if the owner wanted to leave for a year, could it run without them? Most businesses are just elaborate jobs in disguise.

7h ago

The great tragedy of science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

7h ago

We are more curious about the meaning of dreams than about things we see when awake. Men go to gaze at mountain heights, at the great tides of the sea, the broad sweep of rivers, the encircling ocean and the motions of the stars: and yet they leave themselves unnoticed.

7h ago
upstartsmedia.com
There’s A New App Store For AI Agents, With A Crypto Twist

It's the latest example of how crypto practitioners (see also: OpenRouter, Venice AI) are somewhat quietly helping to lead the way in pushing for privacy-first, local and decentralized access in AI, even if they don't call themselves crypto founders anymore.

13h ago
noahpinion.blog
Normal Americans punished MAGA

This was MAGA's greatest delusion — the idea that the average American sees things similarly to the rightists on X. The truth is that the average American does not see "Western civilization" as a fortress under siege. The average American does not spend all day in a state of panic that brown immigrants and their children are invaders bent on subjugating the white race.

19h ago

Nature is not a temple but a workshop, and man is the workman in it. Men judge things according to their own feelings; they forget that in time all things change their aspect.

1d ago

The cultivated man is he who has learned to interfere with good judgment — who, knowing the enchantments of habit, suspects his own opinions on all practical matters, and reserves his fire for what he has thought on most.

1d ago
lennysnewsletter.com
Lenny’s Newsletter holiday gift guide 2026

The founder left tech to study chocolate-making traditions in France, started making his own chocolate in his garage 16 years ago, and became one of the best-known small-batch chocolate makers in the U.S. Unlike most chocolate, it's made from just two ingredients: cocoa beans and organic cane sugar.

1d ago

The difference between a good business and a great one is that a great business throws up one easy decision after another. A good business makes you think hard every day about whether the economics still make sense.

1d ago

It is not by spectacular achievements that man can be transformed, but by will. Frey himself had made the great discovery that it is the moments which seem normal, almost tedious, that shape the soul — not the crises.

1d ago
whyisthisinteresting
The Common vs. Civil Law Edition

The system doesn't stop you from lying, it punishes you afterwards. One charming consequence is that in the United States, anybody can be you. Are we not an inventive people, up to and including identity theft?

1d ago
readtheprofile.com
Who Is James Talarico?

After one 25-mile walk he spent five days in intensive care and learned he had type 1 diabetes. His first 30-day supply of insulin cost $684. In 2021 he helped pass a law capping insulin copays at $25 a month for people on state-regulated health plans.

1d ago
ai-supremacy.com
How to Use Meta Muse as Your Personal AI Assistant

Muse is if anything the first major personal assistant designed to execute real-world tasks autonomously rather than simply responding in a turn-by-turn chat format with a very big budget.

1d ago

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect. The universe is wider than our views of it, and we should look not merely through a knothole, but with our whole head out of the gable.

2d ago

It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.

2d ago

The inability to delay satisfaction is the most destructive force in business. Most companies die not from a single catastrophic decision but from the accumulated cost of choosing the comfortable option over the correct one, thousands of times.

2d ago

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it. Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking. But mark this: do not say that thinking makes it so — for the brute who thinks nothing at all is happier than the man who thinks himself into despair.

2d ago
readtheprofile.com
Who Is Michael O’Leary?

"The other airlines are asking how they can put up fares. We are asking how we could get rid of them," he said in a 2001 interview.

2d ago
noahpinion.blog
Anthropic’s moat is Claude

But in a world of perfect competition, companies should keep trying to undersell each other until their profit goes to zero — or at least, until it goes to a level where companies are just able to pay for their investments. Even if one company has a huge share of the market, the simple threat that new companies might be able to enter the market and compete with them should force them to keep their prices low in order to maintain their market share.

2d ago
whyisthisinteresting
The Monday Media Diet with Dan Mitchell

What interests me is the connection between design, ecology and everyday living, and how everything relates to the whole. Those ideas still feel incredibly relevant today.

2d ago

The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for an audience, even if that audience is only his future self; and the future self may prove a harsher critic than any contemporary.

3d ago

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends. One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.

3d ago

I would rather have a first-rate management team running a second-rate business than a second-rate management team running a first-rate business. The business will eventually reflect the quality of the people running it—for better or worse.

3d ago

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it — but that is a different matter entirely.

3d ago
readtheprofile.com
Who Is Andreas Almgren?

By 2024 he had run 26:52 for 10,000m, the fastest ever by a European-born runner, but he had never made a global final or won a senior European championship medal, according to LetsRun.

3d ago
themarginalian.org
Meteor of Joy: The Young People’s Chorus of New York City Sings Bird Divinations

To hear children sing the secret wisdom of the heart is to be in the presence of something truer and more transcendent than any of our poems and postulates can touch — the ultimate affirmation of our aliveness, emanating Richard Powers's beautiful and bittersweet assertion that "the use of music is to remind us how short a time we have a body."

3d ago
readtheprofile.com
The Profile: The CEO trying to save Xbox & the king of Halloween

Sharma has cut nearly 1,900 jobs, doubled down on blockbuster franchises like Halo and Minecraft, and begun overhauling Xbox's hardware and subscription strategy. But with console sales lagging far behind PlayStation and Microsoft pouring billions into AI, some insiders wonder whether Xbox is being prepared for a sale or spinoff.

3d ago

We are always getting ready to live, but never living. And the man who postpones the hour of living rightly, like the rustic who waits for the river to flow away before he crosses, waits for a river that flows on forever.

4d ago

The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. But in business, the most dangerous habits are the ones that once made you successful — they calcify into dogma precisely because they worked.

4d ago

Leverage is the only way a smart person can go broke. You do smart things, you eventually get very rich. If you do smart things and use leverage and one bad thing happens—it all goes to zero.

4d ago

The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take.

4d ago
honest-broker.com
My 10 Rules for Public Speaking

Humans are mammals and always pay closest attention when others invade their space. At that juncture you will have everyone intensely focused on your presence and totally aware of everything you say—so you only do this at the most significant moment or moments in your talk.

4d ago
whyisthisinteresting
The Saturday Selection, Vol. 127

Automakers are emphasizing streaming and regional TV over the big brand storytelling that long dominated prime time.

4d ago
stratechery.com
2026.44: At Long Last…

First, the pressure applied by AI will eventually (or imminently?) rupture the global internet that we've come to know for the past 25 years. But second, as society moves to more localized solutions and products, that may in fact be a welcome development for all of us who have come to accept degraded experiences throughout our technological lives.

4d ago

The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions. Love is a gift, not a tribute; and the man who expects it as a due has already forfeited the capacity to receive it.

5d ago
readtrung.com
Anthropic S-1, the Claude Loop and Economics of Frontier AI

It's the same company where CEO Dario Amodei has said that '50% of all white-collar entry jobs will be gone by 2030' while one of its top safety researchers recently said there's a >10% chance that AI could kill all humans within the next decade.

5d ago

The animal needing something knows how much it needs; the man does not.

5d ago
readtheprofile.com
Who Is Lip-Bu Tan?

He joined Intel's board in 2022, quit in 2024 after disagreeing with the board and then-CEO Pat Gelsinger over strategy, and came back as CEO in March 2025. Since then he has cut staff, cancelled factory projects in Europe, brought in the U.S. government and Nvidia as major shareholders, and bet Intel's future on its newest manufacturing process.

5d ago

The market does not know the cost of your mortgage, your children's tuition, or your retirement date. It will not accommodate your needs. You must accommodate it — or suffer the consequences of pretending otherwise.

5d ago

Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.

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