Come see me in LA next week or NYC next month!

Despite running on computers with just 64 kilobytes of memory, Habitat became the first massively multiplayer virtual world in 1982.

Good advice for your inbox in general even if you love my Substack!

I spent a couple of days at Anthropic. Here’s some of what I learned. Plus a podcast with Brink Lindsey and a hilarious video about going from sheep to sweater.

Recognizing past progress isn’t a prescription for contentment. It’s an argument against taking the status quo for granted.

Plus an artist fights fires in Amsterdam, music industry anxiety, and more

The hidden histories behind everyday activities and the technologies you didn't even know were technologies.

Benjamin Spock told mothers in the mid-twentieth century to buy six dozen cloth diapers and a covered pail. Within a decade, both were obsolete.

Or, entropy and the meanings—yes, plural—of life. Plus, TV and disposable diapers in Works in Progress, good news, and nerdy fun.

Early AI adopters are using it to scam authors.

Plus recommended reading

You can try embedding ideology into a style but if people like the look, the meaning will get diluted over time.

Jason Crawford asked me a tough question. Could this chart hold an answer?

The great economic historian Joel Mokyr has won the Nobel Prize. Here I reprint a column on his book The Gifts of Athena.

Progress is more than space adventures.

Varieties of abundance, reading Middlemarch, too many mosquitoes

Computers can win at chess and Go, but how about a rap battle?

What looks “civic” depends on experience, not architectural theory. In Los Angeles, where I live, traditional civic buildings are not classical.

Reading good books and an occasional lousy one. Plus lots of podcasts.

Or at least for manly men who don't have their acts together.

With hopes for progress and abundance after Trump.

With hopes for progress and abundance after Trump.

We'll fool around with AI on Monday.

An equine analysis and a laborious quotation search

Still not a replacement for what I do but a potential time saver and getting better fast.

And mysterious Google algorithms don't help.

And one of them is FIRE. Updates and a guest post from Reason Foundation president and SoCal native David Nott

I'm safe in Orange County, waiting to see what happens in the next couple of days.

Why we have those fires and how to think about preventing them. And, yes, I'm safe.

Cleaning up your in box is a good New Year's activity.

Jonah Goldberg talks to me on his podcast. Plus features for paid subscribers.

A Christmas mediation from a Jew by choice