link.dump.7.26.2026
magic mushrooms, fish transport, gene therapy
I read a lot of random stuff. Link Dumps are the things I think are worth remembering. Every Sunday (if I remember) I will send out my weeks worth of links. You can always check out my Link Dump Tag if you’re looking for even more to read and please forward these if someone might find them interesting.
The Dispatch has a good piece on how Trump’s election fairy tales were actually not supported by the documents he released during his speech about his fairy tales. Ah, that’s a paraphrase of the title…
Can the government require ID before you use artificial intelligence? An ongoing question I think we should all be thinking about at least somewhat…
A neuroscientist took some magic mushrooms and then watched his brain fall apart. This whole frontier is really interesting to me, the idea that psilocybin “desynchronizes” the brain is wild and I cannot help but wonder if this is one of the things that will let us continue to unlock what makes our brains so amazing.
Continued interesting thoughts on the Millennial midlife crisis. I think I might need to write my own thoughts on this eventually
I’d never heard of the book Impro before I got this piece but I read pretty much anything Goedecke publishes and this was an interesting one for learning more about startups and how “cult-like” they can operate. Impro is a handbook for running a cult
AM I A REAL ADULT IF I STILL FINANCIALLY DEPEND ON MY FAMILY? is a very interesting piece and a question parents and children both have to think about. Especially with all the questions about college looming in a couple years for Squirt…
7,000 years ago humans were already transporting fish to other lakes for food. Neat!
The UK is a cautionary tale for the US. Some interesting insights here.
Movement helps thinking. I would add driving to this list as well as well as puzzles - anything with working with one’s hands or walking or talking all help.
Trump teleprompter aide made $100,000 betting on what Trump would say, reports say. Almost like betting with insider information is a bit of an easy button.
I like what Linus Torvalds has to say about AI — essentially get over it and start using it or get out of the way. I think as time goes on “it’s just a tool” will be where everyone lands. It’s not the boogie man, it’s also not a panacea.
I didn’t know Neal Stephenson was a fountain pen nerd or that he wrote all his books by hand. Kinda neat.
Noah Smith asks who the worst monster was of the 20th century. It’s a grim but interesting analysis. It’s also fucking fascinating to compare that to Americans leading the world in thinking politics is unsafe.
Wait But Why on the Fermi Paradox is still maybe my favorite longform write-up on the topic.
Hannah Ritchie digs into Thailand’s population having already peaked.
Prescribed burns makes a big difference for Sequoia forest. This is something Squirt and I have discussed a bit - that forest fires used to be a thing, then humans stopped them which created worse forest fires so now we are figuring out how to properly solve a problem we though we were solving back in the day by preventing fires.
This conversation between Terence Tao and ChatGPT is wild. I don’t understand it at all, it’s like like a completely different AI is on the other end of the phone — which is exactly what Sean Goedecke said in his piece about how LLMs reward expertise. I would echo what Sean says here for sure in my own usage of the LLM.
A couple years old article about gene therapy eye drops that gave a boy his sight back. I was as interested in the delivery mechanism as the fact that the gene therapy can do this.
So Playstation decided to stop doing discs and gamers are pissed because, let’s face it, gamers are always pissed. But from a business decision standpoint it seems to be…pretty obvious?
Fantastic reading on an opinionated guide of how to us AI. It gave me a bunch of ideas…which is scary now I think.
Great write-up on how AI changing open source code. Lots to mull overhere.