- 🎞️ Yale Historian Timothy Snyder, famed for his excellent popular history books like On Tyranny, Bloodlands, and Black Earth, and world expert on Ukraine and its history is broadcasting his fall semester course on The Making of Modern Ukraine. Super recommended++.
- 🎞️ German science edutainer Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim pokes fun at homeopathy by attempting to bottle and sell iced-tea sweetened with homeopathic medicine (active ingredient: ritualized sugar) and discovering that bringing to market soft drinks sweetened with plain old non-ritualised sugar is easy, but homeopathic medicine is strictly regulated. No new information, but fun to watch (German speaking).
- Energy guru Vaclav Smil explains why getting completely off fossil fuels isn't going to happen.
- Meanwhile, if you do want to help with reducing carbon emissions, instead of "eating local", stop eating animals. The animals' mothers will also appreciate it.
- Bryan Caplan reminds us again (this time in the NYT) that school is a waste of time and money.
- Technology addiction is not a thing.
- Noah Smith interviews Vitalik.
- Elad Gil reviews the creative AI revolution fuelled by transformers and massive language models.
- The Legendary Pink Dots announce the departure of co-founder, sonic wizard Phil "The Silverman" Knight from the band (or at least from active touring) after more than four decades of active service. The end of an era.
- Honest advertising from Singapore.