Hi I wrote a book!
It's called Working in Public, and it's the story of modern open source and its implications for online communities and the creator economy.
Now available for pre-order on Amazon:
Nadia Asparouhova’s Tweets
I wrote about why some social movements have antinatalist outcomes, and the role of personal agency:
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ay! just published a big report otherinter.net/research/crypt
It's about crypto philanthropy. Just as much as the research was born out of the desire to objectively document an emerging scene, it was also spawned by the need to personally reckon with why I spend time around crypto
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It's the closest thing writers have to functions or variables. Sometimes you need to build abstractions.
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Had an excellent conversation with Nadia Asparouhova do listen/read 👇🏽
Future of philanthropy, science funding, family stories and being (ex)veggie.
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Notes on Effective Altruism (EA): michaelnotebook.com/eanotes/
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If academics want their research taken seriously they shouldn't hide it in a journal, they should publish their write-up and code somewhere that's subject to serious peer review, like a blog.
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this is the right way to think about algorithms. always surprised by how ppl are oddly defeatist about technology
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The TikTok algorithm is so good you can intentionally train it like it’s your pet.
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Really enjoyed this account of Ukraine written by my friend Matt, who's neither a journalist nor a soldier, just a curious person who likes to learn firsthand. Part travel journal, part ethnography.
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I wrote about idea machines: decentralized networks of funders, thinkers, and operators that turn ideas into action, using effective altruism as a blueprint.
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i've got a new last name!
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the clouds were
inescapable and
omnipresent
back then
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Enjoyed recording this TiB episode with the excellent on how tech wealth thinks about philanthropy. There’s a big shift happening with important implications for science, culture, politics and more:
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Jon von Neumann on why poker is a game of strategy and chess isn’t
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I think this could be one of the most important books of our generation, for reasons I'll write about at some point, but briefly...
Hegemony is migrating from British empire -> America -> digital state, and we've barely started to understand what that next phase will look like.
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I've been writing a book on how to start a new country.
It's finally coming out.
You can preorder it now.
It arrives on July 4.
amazon.com/dp/B09VPKZR3G
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Philanthropy is often misunderstood as charity, but historically = risk capital for public goods (just as venture capital is to private goods)
Tech + crypto are learning to wield this influence, and I want to write about it from a macro, ethnographic lens. More to come!
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A bit more on what I've been up to: researching how tech and crypto wealth will shape our new cultural institutions nayafia.substack.com/p/out-of-the-v
(thx to Emergent Ventures for the grant!)
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I wrote a case study about how science funding has changed in tech over the last ten years, and why there are suddenly so many new science initiatives:
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Google has not founded a new university. But AFAICT Google's research division (+ Brain and DeepMind) has more PhD-level researchers than Princeton (=1000), a decent amount of research freedom, and good job security (but not tenure).
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A major cultural divide bw web 2.0 vs. today: the idea that we can fund content by creating scarcity on production, not consumption side.
- Consumption = public good (freely available)
- Production = club good (limited access)
Paywalls, subs are focused on limiting consumption
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a lot of people seem to miss that the entire point of NFTs is to make content FREE while making ownership scarce.
nobody is forcing you to pay for an NFT, you can still enjoy it FOR FREE alongside everybody else.
you like my music? you can have it for free.
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TIL we got married on the blockchain
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I like this distinction on Arc Institute's website between two behaviors, both of which have their place at different times:
* Curiosity-driven work (“to understand X”)
* Goal-oriented work (“to solve X”)
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I've long been interested in new ways to organize science and enable curiosity-driven discovery. Today, in partnership with @Stanford, @UCBerkeley, and @UCSF, we're excited to announce Arc Institute, a new undertaking in this vein: arcinstitute.org.
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I also really love Molly's framework:
moths = illegible, fluttering around the edges, play games of their own making (agency)
butterflies = highly visible, thrive in established games (ambition)
both need each other to succeed!
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I am so excited for 's new grants platform.
Tech's biggest opp in next 5-10 years is building cultural institutions in its name. A lot of this work will fall outside of tech's core competency w/ startups. We're in the "pickaxes" stage of building for the future.
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today's my bday and i'm starting a company!
@mothminds is a platform that makes it extremely easy for anyone to start their own grants program — allowing you to directly invest in individuals doing work you believe in.
why does this matter? here's why: mothminds.com
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We talk a lot about how programming languages become immortal past a certain threshold of usage. Unfortunately this applies to video games too, which ensures that people will be posting in the wrong Rust subreddit until the end of time
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I'm retweeting this again because I think it's important.
In my view, "creation" or "being a creator," in and of itself, has no moral valence. What matters is the specific artifacts you make or stories you tell. Some outputs, it should go without saying are of greater worth
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I struggle to find meaning in the creator economy. Rough thoughts here: nadiaeghbal.com/creator-economy
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I struggle to find meaning in the creator economy. Rough thoughts here: nadiaeghbal.com/creator-economy
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NYT: dark patterns are the techniques that companies use online to get consumers to keep subscriptions they might otherwise cancel
Also NYT: if you want to cancel your NYT subscription, you have to call this phone number during our business hours & let us talk you out of it
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Scott Alexander is awarding $250K+ in grants for "good research and good projects." I'm so excited to see more money flow towards people with unconventional ideas that fall outside of startups.
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Replying to
agreed!
I'm so conflicted about startups as a container for action
having a template* unlocks more people to do awesome things, but at the same time it constrains the imaginations of ambitious people to do things they don't fit inside that box
*in this case, a YC-style C corp
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Side note: I have a personal rule about not criticizing crazy-seeming experiments. I'd rather too many ppl try ambitious things vs. not enough.
I might disagree with team or ideas. But *doing* something already puts them above anyone who's ever critiqued academia (incl myself!)
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Unpopular opinion (?): I think the University of Austin is a cool idea.
Say what you will about who's behind it, but starting a new university is an incredibly ambitious project. We need more ppl building new institutions that aren't just startups. Excited to see what happens!
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"Learning happens when you understand something that someone else already understands.
Research happens when you understand something that nobody else understands yet."
This is so good, gonna share it when ppl ask what I do for a living
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In the past year, I’ve talked to many bright, curious, ambitious people who believed they couldn’t do research. That was me, not long ago.
Here I share my improved understanding in hopes of offering a more empowering model of what research entails:
kanjun.me/writing/resear
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because whenever I get an idea, it feels like getting your sleeve tugged on by something that wants to be in our universe, but needs help. and I failed that thing
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corollary to "your favorite music is whatever you listened to in high school"
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some people can be dated accurately by their resentments, you can say, for example "2017, that's when you were frozen in motion. you'll be fighting that fight for the rest of your life."
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Love to hate-read a book and argue with the author in the margins
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