What Would You Do If Your Employer Could Destroy the World?
Exit interviews with defectors from OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind.
public-policy
If You Want a Real Digital Commons, Build It Yourself
Rappler’s answer to state-sponsored lies and harassment was to stop using corporate social media as its public square.
Because we owned our own data and combined them with publicly available, vetted databases, our chatbot’s error rate was a little more than 1.6 percent—at the time, the error rate of commercial chatbots was about 16 percent.
Matrix is open-source and allows users to set up their own communication servers.
Mosquitoes are a choice - Works in Progress Magazine
What Is Brittle Prosperity? The AI Boom and the Panic of 1873
Brittle prosperity is when strong economic data rests on a few booming sectors and never reaches most households. Why the AI economy fits the pattern.
The Quest for Universal Flu Vaccines
Modern flu vaccines have an average efficacy of just 40 percent, and they must be revamped each year. How can we make vaccines that are “universal” — both broadly-protective and highly potent?
influenza evolves so quickly that a novel virus emerges each flu season
inactivate viruses with formaldehyde
In New Orleans, an empty building becomes a free store — and roller skating rink
In the Lower Ninth Ward, an old Family Dollar stands covered in graffiti. It looks abandoned. But inside, it's a treasure trove — clothing, home goods, toys and books. And everything is free.
The vacant building everyone complains about is cheaper to keep empty.
Have you talked about why?
The Permission Gap: Why Data Doesn't Fix Coordination
The permission gap is the distance between the part of a system that sees a local problem and the part allowed to fix it. More data does nothing to close it.
In the industry, waiting for a town to grow is called land banking.
That land isn’t waiting for a decision to build. It’s waiting for a decision about what kind of store to build.
China massively overbuilt high-speed rail, says leading economic geographer
Lu Dadao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences warns that oversized, underused HSR infrastructure has ignored basic economic logic, weakened public finances, and derailed regional planning.
Is Beef the Next Internal-Combustion Engine?
Bill McKibben on beef consumption in the U.S., R.F.K., Jr.,’s recent recommendations, and the environmental harms of the cattle industry.
US unlicensed 6GHz isn't changing: The mobile industry needs to move on
Note: Here's a summary of [US unlicensed 6GHz isn't changing: The mobile industry needs to move on](#rid:1854768396): Analyst Dean Bubley argues that the US cellular industry should stop trying to reverse or dilute the unlicensed status of the 6GHz band and instead focus on shaping future spectrum policy, particularly ahead of the WRC-27 conference in Shanghai. The full 1,200MHz between 5.925–7.125GHz…
Ranked: Central Bank Assets as a Share of GDP by Country
See which countries have the largest central bank assets relative to GDP, led by Hong Kong at 130%.
Note: I'll pull up the article for you. Here's a summary of **Ranked: Central Bank Assets as a Share of GDP by Country**: ### Main takeaway Central bank balance sheets grew sharply after the 2008 financial crisis as authorities responded to successive economic shocks. This piece ranks 20 major economies and financial centers by central bank assets as a share of GDP, using the latest Q1/Q2 2026 data…
How France Keeps its Small Shops
Commercial lease law, rent indexing and planning rules explain the retail mix other countries are losing
Will farm animals always suffer? - Works in Progress Magazine
Geometry Reveals the Tricks behind Gerrymandering
Some voting districts are tilted intentionally toward one party or another—a factor in the midterms. Geometry plays a critical role in gerrymandering
Mark Zuckerberg’s Social Reckoning
Benjamin Wallace-Wells on the Meta settlement, which will force meaningful changes on Facebook and Instagram, and how it reflects the degree to which public outrage is outmatched by the speed and size of Big Tech.
Why Thailand was never colonized
Diplomacy, reform, and a convenient stone
Mongkut came across a remarkable object: a four-sided, black stone monolith, about a meter high and inscribed with an unusual script. The stone would become known as the Ramkhamhaeng Stele.
The discovery of the Stele was, as it turned out, serendipitous. Over five centuries, European powers colonized virtually every other territory on Earth
Nothing Moves the Needle
Not that long ago, the press could root out corruption, topple presidents, and end wars. Now, even the biggest scoops have little impact. Here's how and why the media lost its mojo.
Cheaper nuclear new builds
British nuclear
Corruption: When norms upstage the law
People with good motives may engage in bribery and worse depending on what society expects of them. A political scientist explains.
Americans are rallying against data centers. Surprisingly few are actually getting built | CNN Business
People really don’t like AI data centers.
How ugliness helps NIMBYs
And how beauty could help get more homes built
The Myth of the Food Desert
Kelefa Sanneh reviews “Food Justice Undone: Lessons for Building a Better Movement,” by Hanna Garth.
The Sewer Knows What You Ate
During the Covid-19 pandemic, wastewater testing became a virus warning system. Now, scientists are using the approach to understand how communities eat.
The Portland fire sale
Who owns downtown buildings? The answer has remarkable implications for our city's future
Who’s Afraid of Chinese Models?
Everyone is worried about Chinese models, but the frontier labs will be fine; we need to enable open U.S. alternatives.
Why Anti-Corruption Strategies May Backfire - Nautilus
How power and transparency affect efforts to stamp out bribery.
In Praise of Observational Evidence
Everyone knows RCTs are the gold standard of evidence. ….Right?
It is a rare randomized trial (studying a particular intervention with a sufficiently large and well-distributed sample population) that can detect an 0.3% difference in a binary random variable — but Laplace could, more than 200 years ago.
You can be relatively sure that a p-value in one clinical trial conveys the same information as it does in another clinical trial, at least as far as the mathematical model is concerned.
How to lie about radiation -
Drinking a beer a night for a year is a lot less harmful than drinking 365 at once. Radiation is similar.
Why American data centers can't plug in
The AI buildout is bottlenecked by energy. But America has the electricity to power its data centers; the problem is getting it to them.
That process is significantly backlogged. Though the median power plant in 2005 waited less than 20 months for interconnection, this had jumped to 55 months by 2023.
The interconnection process wasn’t created for today’s world. Grids use an inflexible first-come, first-served queue that leaves some of the most valuable projects stuck behind less important ones.
Encryption, spyware, and now Mythos: History shows why cyber export control doesn't work | TechCrunch
For the last 30 years, stopping the flow of cybersecurity-related software has proven to be ineffective. It's unclear why it would work now with Anthropic’s cybersecurity model Mythos.
Understanding the Federal Reserve Balance Sheet, Quantitative Easing, and Tightening
Manoj Singh wrote an article for Investopedia titled Understanding the Federal Reserve’s Balance Sheet (20 February 2026).
The invention of buses - Works in Progress Magazine
Jones act waiver data reveals universe blocked american trade
Why Spain has the world's greatest cities - Works in Progress Magazine
Why Spain has the world’s greatest cities
The Disappearance of the Public Bench
Benches are microcosms of an expansive debate about who belongs in urban public spaces. When they are removed or made uninviting, we lose more than just a place to rest.
Are Prediction Markets Good for Anything?
We all know they’re casinos. It’s time to look at the data behind the froth.
The vast majority of these bets are not on questions that might produce useful information. Roughly 90% of Kalshi’s trading volume (dollars exchanging hands between bettors) is from sports betting, making Kalshi effectively a sports gambling website with a small prediction market attached. I find…
I’ve found that the benefits of prediction markets fall into five different categories.
Portland's Long Fall Toward Hitting Bottom
Two years ago, my wife went on her morning walk past the school across the street, when she saw the school’s custodian—dead on the sidewalk of what we later learned was a heart attack.
Opinion | The Unlikely Recovery of America’s China-Shocked Towns
The jobs are coming back, despite President Trump’s tariffs and harsh immigration enforcement.
Choosing the Most Cost-Effective Option for Nuclear Power
Interest in nuclear power has surged recently as policymakers realize that managing electric grids dominated by intermittent renewable sources is far more technically and economically challenging than initially anticipated.
The Trouble with Transformers
And the long slouch towards cyberpunk
Painkiller Pipeline: 300 Million Tapentadol Pills Sent from India to West Africa - bellingcat
Indian companies have sent more than 320 million synthetic opioid pills to West Africa – where they have not been approved by regulators – in three years.
Escaping the Ogallala trap
There is a closing window to stop Waymos from creating omnigridlock.
Why rural hospitals close
What makes small town healthcare different
Just Put It On a Map
An underrated strategy for urbanist persuasion, powered by open source tools
Inside the Space-Age Bid To Build Millions of Homes in Factories
Operation Breakthrough, a 1970s federal moonshot to build 26 million homes using advanced manufacturing methods, has lessons for today’s abundance movement.
The ‘Godmother’ of Weed vs. Her Uncle, the DEA Agent | THE CITY — NYC News
Cannabis officials courted a rising pot star to join New York’s legal market. Then a stunning police raid upended everything and shattered her family.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FreZTE9Bc7reNnap7/life-at-the-frontlines-of-demographic-collapse
Who Is Paying for the 2025 U.S. Tariffs? - Liberty Street Economics
Over the course of 2025, the average tariff rate on U.S. imports increased from 2.6 to 13 percent. In this blog post, we ask how much of the tariffs were paid by the U.S., using import data through November 2025. We find that nearly 90 percent of the tariffs’ economic burden…