“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” - Sir Isaac Newton

There are so many great thinkers and writers on the Internet, it is overwhelming.

Here are some of my favorite pieces.

#Awesome #Bestof

If you don’t know Waitbutwhy check it out immediately.

Tim Urban is one of the clearest writers around, tackling hugely complex topics from (moral philosophy to the technical aspects of terraforming Mars).

Art, Creativity, and Design

• How to Develop Good Taste (Derek Guy) - History lesson about the development of modern taste. (podcast interview on MFM pod)
• Inside the Mirrortocracy (Carlos Bueno) - The problem with Silicon Valley's Cultural gauntlet.

Business

• What is Amazon? (Zack Kanter) – Brilliant analysis comparison of Walmart vs. Amazon and what made them successful.
• Amazon's New Customer (Ben Thompson / Stratechery) - Analysis of the Whole Foods acquisition and how it follows Amazon's playbook of becoming the first customer of it's own products.
• How Twitter Got It's Groove Back (Packy McCormick / Not Boring)
• Stripe: Thinking Like a Civilization (Mario Gabriele)
• The Dark Forest of R&D and Capital Deployment in AI (Michael Dempsey)

Newsletters:

• Not Boring - Hands down my favorite newsletter on the web.

Computer Science

The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence (Tim Urban on Waitbutwhy) – Get yourself a cup of tea and brace yourself. Hands down the best introductory piece on Artificial Intelligence.

The Great A.I. Awakening (Gideon Lewis-Kraus for NY Times Magazine) – A long-form exploration of how different streams of academic research and technological development led to a significant leap in machine learning. This article follows Jeff Dean‘s team at Google Brain in their pursuit to improve Google Translate.

Value Chain of the Open Metaverse (Packy McCormick for Not Boring) - Welcome to the intersection of Sci-Fi and business.

Creator & Passion Economy

The Passion Economy and the Future of Work (Jin Li for a16z) - Seminal work on the Passion Economy.

Power to the Person (Packy McCormick for Not Boring) - Confluence of three big ideas: [1] Creator Econ [2] Unbundling of Orgs as Bundles of Productivity [3] NFTs as monetization avenue for solopreneurs.

The Great Online Game (Packy McCormick for Not Boring) - "Sometimes it's weird to remember that we're all effectively competing to hit the right keys on our keyboards in the right order, and that if we do it for long enough we can buy a house."

Crime, Hacking, and Fringes

The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 1 (Joshuah Bearman for Wired Magazine) – Rise and fall of Ross Ulbricht – told in two parts. My favorite long-form article of all time.

The Untold Story of Notpetya, the Most Devastating Cyberattack in History (Andy Greenberg for Wired Magazine) – Cyber warfare at its best. How a bit of malware brought the Ukrainian energy sector to a halt and almost destroyed a global freighting giant along the way.

Medicine/etc.

Neuralink and the Brain’s Magical Future (Tim Urban on Waitbutwhy) – Brain computer interfaces, here we go!

Why Cryonics Makes Sense (Tim Urban on Waitbutwhy) – Tim explores why it might make sense to get one’s head cut off after being clinically dead. Very wild read!

Longevity FAQ: A beginner’s guide to longevity research (Laura Deming) – Interesting and concise collection of the current state of longevity research.

Short Stories

The Egg (Andy Weir) - Your 5-minute meeting with God.

Nine Billion Names of God (Arthur C. Clarke) - The O.G. sci-fi short story.

What's expected of us (Ted Chiang) - A note from a deterministic future.

Society

Story of Us (Tim Urban for WaitButWhy) - This is a PhD curriculum in sociology.

Conjuring Scenius (Packy McCormick for Not Boring) - How does collective genius emerge.

The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office” (Venkatesh Rao) - On sociopaths, clueless, and losers.

The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class (Alex Danco) - On different ladders of social mobility.

The Stromberg Mindset: On Germany's Geopolitical Delusion (Art Lapinsch) - On delusional narratives.

Space & Rockets

How (and Why) SpaceX Will Colonize Mars (Tim Urban on Waitbutwhy) – Fairly detailed introduction into space travel (technology; logistics; business) and how SpaceX is building for Mars colonization. Fascinating!

The Orbital Index (Andrew Cantino & Ben Lachman) – ‘Space: weekly, technical, curated.”

The Fermi Paradox (Tim Urban on Waitbutwhy) – Math tells us that there are 1 billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy alone, yet no one has ever called us. Where is everybody?

Productivity & Work

GTD in 15 minutes – A Pragmatic Guide to Getting Things Done (Erlend Hamberg) – Best introduction into the GTD methodology.

Don’t drown in email! How to use Gmail more efficiently (Andreas Klinger) – Quick guide to setting up your gmail inbox so it serves as a GTD inbox.

Remote

Managing Remote Teams – A Crash Course (Andreas Klinger) – Great content on applicable processes and tactics for remote team management. Particularly great insights for eng teams. [Plus Up: Andi’s Conference Talk on the same topic]

Building a Remote Company: Lessons Learned from Idea to Exit (yours truly on this blog) – Exactly what the title says.

We're Never Going Back (Packy McCormick) - Sweet write up about second and third order effects of Covid19 on Remote Work.

Thinking & Writing

The Day You Became A Better Writer (Scott Adams on Dilbert Blog) – It’s exactly what you think it is. Learn better writing in a 2 minute read.

Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions (109 Models Explained) (Shane Parish on Farnam Street) – Mental models as practical thinking tools.

The Ultimate Guide to Writing Online (David Perell) - Everything you need to know as an online writer.

A Guide to Better Writing (in 5 Steps) (yours truly on this blog) – Read it.

World Building (Alex Danco) - “Everyone’s job is world-building, even if they don’t realize it.”