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Arthur Van Siclen

@arthurvansiclen.com
25 followers 29 following 70 posts

Rock climbing, nature, meditation 🌲

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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 12/10/2026
Think fresh. divisare.com/projects/567...
divisare.com
Opposite Office, Johanna Heim · Baumhaus Office
Opposite Office, the architecture practice founded in Munich in 2017, has opened a new office - in a tree. The decision to choose this unusual location is a direct response to local rental prices: Mun...
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Reposted by Arthur Van Siclen
Fatbobman (东坡肘子) @fatbobman.com · 22/06/2026
Endless gratitude to the extraordinary souls who so freely entrusted us with the priceless wisdom they bore: @avanderlee.com, Josh Maine, @jacobstechtavern.com, @robb.is, Kyle Ye, @arthurvansiclen.com, Andrey Sapunov and won heo
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Minimal | Notes @minimal.app · 17/06/2026
Mess vs elegance. "...to manage this complexity, we built a cohesive system that relies on an Intermediate Representation to serve as a middleman across file formats" blog.minimal.app/conversion-e...
blog.minimal.app
Architecting a Conversion Engine in Swift
Minimal now supports importing and exporting across Markdown, Rich Text, HTML, PDF, plain text, and our proprietary format MNML. The following essay describes how we accomplished this system in the Sw...
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 11/05/2026
“But, of course, the folks making any actual income, of any kind, were the ones selling courses about making passive income. It was an ouroboros. It was an ouroboros that had incorporated in Delaware and was running Facebook ads.”
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 11/05/2026
“Somewhere between 2015 and 2022, "passive income" stopped being a boring financial planning term and became, I don't know how else to put this, a salvation narrative.” Excellent essay by @joanwestenberg.com - healthy discourse for our would-be innovators. www.joanwestenberg.com/the-passive-...
joanwestenberg.com
The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs
I had coffee last year with a guy - I won't use his real name - who told me he was "building a business." I asked what it did. Dropshipping jade face rollers. I made him say it twice. Jade face roll...
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 13/03/2026
"There is no progress that cannot be stopped dead by politics atrophied by oligarchy and stupidity."
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 13/03/2026
"The world can be changed for the better through anger, rage and even loathing at injustice, but everything must begin from love."
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 13/03/2026
“Sometimes you move a sheet, just a little, but you feel the wind take it different, and that change moves through the entire boat. Everybody feels it.” Julian Sayarer quoting crew mate Bram in their piece for @noemamag.com www.noemamag.com/the-quest-fo...
noemamag.com
A Journey By Sail In Search Of Zero-Emissions Cargo | NOEMA
As global shipping emissions remain a stubborn climate problem, some sailors are embracing a return to technologies of yore.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 01/03/2026
“Fire, water, carbon, attention: these elements ask not to be maximized, but to be held in reciprocal maintenance.” By Rimma Boshernitsan for @noemamag.com A must read. The forefront. www.noemamag.com/our-emerging...
noemamag.com
Our Emerging Planetary Nervous System | NOEMA
We need a new kind of wisdom for our planetary age, one that synchronizes the signals, rhythms and boundaries of our natural world across domains.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 25/01/2026
Society has always had to deal with the problem of “low status men” who engage in reckless behavior to the detriment of the public. History can be viewed through a lens of how this problem gets solved (wars, marriage policies, gov labor programs). This solution is not a very good one.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 25/01/2026
I’ll say it again: ICE agents are the least intelligent and least competent men in America. They are too stupid to work normal jobs, and they lack the executive function required to do anything else.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 23/01/2026
My critique: the essay reads like a proposed, centralized ethical framework for developing the new LLM ecosystems, however everything good in our world EMERGES. I would love to read a follow-up or related essay by someone detailing how the “mechanisms at play” might be cultivated from the soil.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 23/01/2026
“…sustaining the shared information commons” Compelling essay by Hamilton Mann for @noemamag.com www.noemamag.com/the-ai-power...
noemamag.com
The AI-Powered Web Is Eating Itself | NOEMA
Without a framework of “Artificial Integrity,” AI search platforms risk collapsing the information commons that made the web possible.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 12/01/2026
archive.is/Jg8L1
archive.is
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 12/01/2026
"In mathematical terms, the relationship is not linear — the first few minutes of patience bring the most gains, as they introduce enough slack in the system to match compatible routes and orders." By Carlo Ratti for @financialtimes.com www.ft.com/content/62fa...
ft.com
How to unclog our cities
Instant deliveries take their toll on urban centres but rewarding a few minutes’ delay can help
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 11/01/2026
“So, how far down the scale of complexity does cognition actually go?” By Conor Feehly in @noemamag.com www.noemamag.com/the-surprisi...
noemamag.com
The Surprisingly Lifelike Behavior Of Mindless Material | NOEMA
New ways of studying the origin of life are leading to a better understanding of consciousness and the mind.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 08/01/2026
ICE agents are too unintelligent to hold normal jobs, so they take up this one. Seriously, these are people with IQ’s around 70 or 80. They are too stupid to even know what they are doing. No employer in good standing wants them around and this is where they end up.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 08/01/2026
"Eventually, I stopped making resolutions altogether... The desire to work on myself never went away. It simply lost its appetite for spectacle. And so, in place of resolutions, I turned toward ritual." Excellent short essay by Suleika Jaouad. open.substack.com/pub/post/p/a...
open.substack.com
Against resolutions
Suleika Jaouad on ritual, repetition, and the fantasy of starting over
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 06/12/2025
I favor living in the world designed and built by those with creative agency.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 06/12/2025
And capitalists often view the same abstractions as inevitable in a competitive winner-take-all landscape, quipping that if growth is suppressed (laws, unions) the growth will take place elsewhere. In this view, the only styles of design are invention and capital allocation.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 06/12/2025
My own take… Our social world is structured by abstractions that 1) provide real utility (eg trust, insurance, fungibility) 2) have real environmental impact (eg production, deforestation). Bioregionalists view these abstractions as non-inevitable and potentially subject to a design process...
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 06/12/2025
“A growing ecological movement sees the solution in bioregionalism: the idea of reorganizing social and economic life around the natural boundaries of the ecosystems that host and sustain us.” By @dougbierend.bsky.social for @noemamag.com www.noemamag.com/inside-the-p...
noemamag.com
Inside Bioregionalism’s Tech-Driven Revival | NOEMA
As the climate crisis deepens, an old green dream is returning — with new tools and technologies.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 04/12/2025
Autumn 2025. Village-to-village walks, lake views, risotto, vino, boulders.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 18/11/2025
We are always at square zero.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 18/11/2025
“But letting go and—crucially—reengaging with new goals, was found to restore purpose and well-being.” Hugh Riddell, in a story by Molly Glick for @nautil.us nautil.us/the-surprisi...
nautil.us
The Surprising Benefits of Giving Up
The Surprising Benefits of Giving Up: Ditching or adjusting goals in the face of adversity might often be the best thing for us.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 17/11/2025
"The sun delivers more energy to Earth every five days than all known fossil fuel reserves combined. As we shift from using fossilised sunlight to real-time solar power, the challenge is no longer energy capture, but energy storage." ember-energy.org/latest-insig...
ember-energy.org
Silos for Sunshine: we've mastered harvesting the sun, but storage is the gamechanger | Ember
The shift to renewables represents an agricultural revolution for energy, moving from searching and extracting scarce fuels to harvesting abundant sunlight in place.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 15/11/2025
That was an excellent read. “Sober,” you might call it, in its insistence on reasoned consideration of a complex problem.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 15/11/2025
Personal note: I’m into this new theme of essay: “humanist engineering” – in contrast to the “capitalist engineering” and “industrial engineering” that we are so familiar with. Herzberg asks, “How does this system work?” “What are our effective levers?” “What has worked before?”
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 15/11/2025
Pragmatic essay by drug historian David Herzberg for @nytimes.com (gift link below) “Prohibition has actively made drugs more dangerous. This was not a grand drama of good and evil, but a predictable result of bad policy.” www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | I Am a Drug Historian. Trump Is Wrong About Fentanyl in Almost Every Way.
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Reposted by Arthur Van Siclen
Minimal | Notes @minimal.app · 15/11/2025
Minimal's upcoming release prominently features Apple Intelligence's Writing Tools. Preview the powerful new feature on our TestFlight and watch for Minimal 1.22 on the Mac App Store and iOS App Store 🖤 blog.minimal.app/ai-writing-t...
blog.minimal.app
Writing Tools + Apple Intelligence
At Minimal we deliberately took our time to decide how we would integrate with Generative AI. There is a lot of hype, and we wanted to let the dust settle before building Large Language Models (LLMs) ...
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 14/11/2025
Absolute lunacy. The premise of any successful society is inclusion of the skillful. Almost nothing else matters in comparison to that one attribute.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 14/11/2025
“The social function of criticism is too valuable to lose… the three-way relationship between artists, critics, and audiences must be carefully restored, if we want the 21st century to produce meaningful artistic innovations.” Celine Nguyen, @asteriskmag.bsky.social asteriskmag.com/issues/12-bo...
asteriskmag.com
Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?—Asterisk
The decline of criticism might explain the sense that our culture is stagnating. How can we bring it back?
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 13/11/2025
Are any economists stepping up and implementing the new analytical method for our changing world? I’d love to tune in. This essay is a great first step, and as the author notes, “A new approach is needed.” By @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social for @noemamag.com www.noemamag.com/the-critical...
noemamag.com
The Urgent Need For Revolutionizing Economic Statistics | NOEMA
Donald Trump’s abandonment of honest economic statistics highlights what’s been true for a while: The way we measure economic activity has long been inadequate for modern political challenges.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 08/11/2025
“We have reached the apotheosis of the colonial age, a time when extractive institutions and administrative reach have been so perfected that they now span the globe.“ Impeccable read by @henrywismayer.bsky.social featuring @lukekemp.bsky.social for @noemamag.com www.noemamag.com/humanitys-en...
noemamag.com
Humanity’s Endgame | NOEMA
A new history of societal collapse by an expert in existential risk argues that our globalized society is edging toward the precipice.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 03/11/2025
Do you suggest that the left is more comfortable with economic power being overturned, like a compost pile, producing yet more economic power?
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 03/11/2025
Bullshit. The left literally invented marketplaces, impersonal trust (eg, signing contracts with strangers), accounting and financial mathematics, and modern legal system.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 01/11/2025
One room, one book. Marioka Shoten is a bookstore in Tokyo. www.takram.com/projects/a-s...
takram.com
Morioka Shoten | Takram
Morioka Shoten is a tiny bookstore of “a Single Room with a Single Book” in Tokyo. It sells only one book; more precisely, multiple copies of one title that changes weekly, with a small book-inspired ...
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 31/10/2025
“There is likely to be one pileup of civilizations that don’t last very long — those that were “too dumb” — and a second pileup of civilizations that somehow figured it out, so to speak.”
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 31/10/2025
“The same principles that allow us to hunt for alien Earths also allow us to comprehend the biosphere as a planetary phenomenon.” An essay of epic proportions by @miquai.bsky.social for @noemamag.com www.noemamag.com/what-searchi...
noemamag.com
What Searching For Aliens Reveals About Ourselves | NOEMA
Looking for life beyond Earth changes the way we perceive life right here at home.
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Reposted by Arthur Van Siclen
Minimal | Notes @minimal.app · 30/10/2025
60 – 30 – 10 – A technique for focusing and optimally allocating effort. Read now on the blog (2-min). blog.minimal.app/60-30-10/
blog.minimal.app
60 – 30 – 10
A technique for focusing and optimally allocating effort. The 60 Choose the single-most important goal in life and dedicate 60% of effort to accomplishing that goal. Once it is completed, re-examin...
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 26/10/2025
"The challenge is no longer to prove that solid-state batteries are feasible. That has long since been done in any number of labs around the world. The big challenge now is figuring out how to manufacture these devices at scale..." @knowablemag.bsky.social knowablemagazine.org/content/arti...
knowablemagazine.org
Will your next EV have a solid-state battery — and improved performance?
Superionic materials have spawned hope for a new generation of power packs for electric cars, with a promise of greater range, faster charges and more safety. But scaling up won’t be easy.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 24/10/2025
This essay exemplifies the vanguard of our environmental movement. All effective action comes in the form of Aikido moves, redirecting existing energy. No person/group can create the energy required to form a new reality; it is necessary to harness the energy that already exists in the system.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 24/10/2025
“As nature transforms from a backdrop for human affairs into an active force shaping them, greater economic value can be produced from its cultivation than from its exploitation” and “Much of nature lies outside the narrow frame of GDP” Tong Wu for @noemamag.com www.noemamag.com/investing-in...
noemamag.com
Investing In The Ecosystems That Sustain Us | NOEMA
Making the economic case for nature is an essential task for securing development in our planetary age.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 23/10/2025
“The most effective means of responding to climate change also enhances our physical and economic resilience” and “Technology centralizes power; human-scaled design disperses it“ Brian Stone for @noemamag.com www.noemamag.com/the-abundanc...
noemamag.com
The Abundance Movement’s Blind Spot | NOEMA
What if Americans care more about the cost of climate disasters than carbon-free energy?
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 20/10/2025
“Despite covering just 0.2 percent of the sea floor, seagrasses account for an estimated 10 percent of all the carbon stored by the world’s oceans.” @reasonstobecheerful.world reasonstobecheerful.world/seagrass-res...
reasonstobecheerful.world
A 'Secret Weapon' for Fighting Climate Change Comes Surging Back
Capturing carbon 35 times faster than the Amazon, seagrasses have faced centuries of decline. Now restoration projects across North America are seeing their meadows quadruple in size.
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Reposted by Arthur Van Siclen
Minimal | Notes @minimal.app · 16/10/2025
Let's have three abstraction layers: nature, middle, and human. blog.minimal.app/lets-have-th...
blog.minimal.app
Let's Have Three Abstraction Layers
Let's have three abstraction layers: nature, middle, and human. The Human layer is designed for humans to effortlessly engage. The buttons on a dishwasher, the knobs on a stove. A keyboard. Paper wit...
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 17/10/2025
Haha I understand 🤦‍♂️ 1.26 average children born to a woman over her lifetime in Canada (for example) ✅ 1.26% fertility rate in Canada ❌ just non-sensical, as you pointed out. Gratzie 🙏🏽
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 16/10/2025
What is wrong with the numbers? Or what is wrong (beyond the accompanying authoritarianism) with the presentation of the numbers? I am naive here; I had the impression that the fertility figures are roughly correct albeit incomplete and devoid of context.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 13/10/2025
…Many of those forums have withered under the pressures of mass society, mass media and now mass data, and with them, so too has the fabric of liberal democracy.” By Andrew Sorota in @noemamag.com www.noemamag.com/rescuing-dem...
noemamag.com
Rescuing Democracy From The Quiet Rule Of AI | NOEMA
Our gravest AI risk isn’t runaway superintelligence but our cultural readiness to surrender collective judgment to algorithmic systems.
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Arthur Van Siclen @arthurvansiclen.com · 13/10/2025
“Liberal democracy’s original genius was not merely the ballot box; it was the creation of multiple forums — town meetings, juries, local councils, civic associations — where citizens encountered each other as equals capable of persuasion and compromise... Cont’d…
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