Lyman Stone on where modern parents are wasting their efforts. Peer effects are very strong and you have decent control over your children’s peers (and your own peers too).
Uri Bram: The gods hate hoarders, said my excellent one-time poetry teacher, and grant creativity only to those who trust them to grant more, and so I ultimately think my previous policy was sacrilegious.
I’m facing the realization there is unlikely to be a 52 things I learned in 2026 this year. I’ve been spending more time building with AI and less time reading / writing and it shows.
60% of all Pokemon cards were printed in the past 5 years. Crémieux.
The U.S. Mint estimates that there are 300 billion pennies in circulation, about 3 times more than the number stars in the Milky Way Galaxy — The Atlantic
Coca Cola didn’t became cocaine free until 1929 — the Associated Press via Stan Veuger. No wonder the market crashed!
There are more people under the age of 25 today in Africa than there are in all of Europe — Stephen Kotkin
Monarch butterflies produce a super generation that live 8 times as long as the other generations and allow them to complete their migratory cycle — Country Living. Could you imagine if once every four generations, you had a set of humans that lived more than 500 years??
Brand Mascots can measurably influence the eating behavior of children — Obesity Review
The more males and females of a bird species look alike (e.g. cranes), the more likely they are to mate for life. The more males and females of a bird species look dissimilar (e.g. mallards), the more likely they are to be promiscuous — my friend Oriana
Non-linear ethnic niches: 90% of grocery stores in Detroit are owned by Chaldeans; 95% of Dunkin Donuts stores in the Midwest are owned by Indians; 90% of the liquor stores in Baltimore are owned by Koreans; 60% of Dunkin’ Donuts stores in New England and New York are operated by Portuguese immigrants — Aporia Magazine. I guess you file this under the importance of networks, tacit knowledge, and the availability bias?
The only right protected in the main body of the US Constitution is the right to intellectual property — ChinaTalk. Bonus: The first patent examiner for the United States was Thomas Jefferson.
Peacock is the name of the males only; the female are peahens. The species is called peafowl— The Animal Book
We call them piggy banks because of the type of clay (pygg) that was used to make jars for holding coins. Shaping them like pigs was a visual pun (probably) — BBC
The air that the dinosaurs breathed had substantially more oxygen in it than the air we breathe. Jurassic Park couldn’t happen because the dinosaurs would asphyxiate — John Cramer
Saturn’s rings are younger than the dinosaurs — Rohit
Squirrels in Berkeley and Oakland are becoming carnivorous — Smithsonian Magazine
In Switzerland, you are never more than 16km from a lake — About Switzerland
The English Monarchy asserted a claim to the French Monarchy until 1801, only releasing it after Napoleon had become dictator — The Rest Is History. Some would say it’s been all downhill for France since then 🤣.
12.3M hectares of US cropland was abandoned between 1986 and 2018 — Environmental Research Letters. Note that this figure does not include cropland taken out of use via urbanization or development.
More than 98% of new vehicle sales in Norway this September were EVs — Elective via Anton
More Romans were killed at Cannae than Americans in the entire Vietnam War — The Rest is History
The distance elasticity of trade (the rate at which trade between two cities drops off as they get farther away from each other) seems to be the same today as it was in ancient Assyria — Maximum Progress
The oldest bond in the world dates from December 10, 1624; pays €13.61 of interest a year — the Financial Times via The Browser
Pine needle tea has more vitamin C in it than orange juice — Nautilus
All of the world’s gold is estimated to fit in one 20 meter cube — BBC
Eyes have evolved more than 50 times — Salon via Rohit
The largest newspaper in California by subscribers is the New York Times —Ezra Klein
Walmart takes 25% of all SNAP dollars — Kyla Scanlon
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Most of my professional energy right now is spent on how AI changes creative work and the electric tech stack. If either of these is of interest to you or if you just think we’d have a good conversation, drop me a note (hello @ jdilla.xyz) or put time on my calendar).
I got to join Marc and Ben from the Supra podcast to talk about how AI is changing how software teams operate.
Three things I took away from this conversation.
First, is that there are some things that AI doesn’t change. At the end of the day, you’ve still got to define the problem, define the approach, define the details. AI changes the tools, the artifacts, and the process, but it doesn’t change the basic facts of problem solving.
Second is AI is changing how software is made at three levels simultaneously: individuals, teams, and organizations. Individuals are trying out tools (e.g., Claude Code) and putting them into their workflow. Then there are some teams that are starting to adopt some of these tools en masse and reorganize their processes around them. Finally, there are organizations that are trying to figure out what all of this means for the “standard” way of working and shipping software.
Tools - What are the tools that are available to us? What are their benefits and limitations?
Tactics - How do we coordinate with these tools to achieve a result? What are the artifacts that are created? What is the size and roles of people on the team?
Training - How do we build competence on these new tools and tactics? How do we give people space, opportunity, and resources to experiment?
Values - What does great work look like? What is important and celebrated?
Without all of these working together, organizations will fail to get value out of a transformative technology — and I have to be honest, now is a moment where I’d rather be at a small company experimenting with new ways of working than at a large company where I have to be concerned about how this works at scale.
This week’s episode is best paired with a hot cup of coffee and Wild Ways by Josh Ritter playing in the background. Last episode was too LLM heavy, for which I apologize. I’ve done my best to group all of that into LLM corner so as not to let it overshadow everything.
Worth your time
Uri says we should not allow 18 year olds to sign long term contracts. So, so many thoughts here.
1. I remember a conversation I had with my best friend when he was a brand new army officer out of college ROTC about all the 18 year old privates he worked with that had 19% car loans.
2. Jonathan Haidt opened my eyes to the way social media companies get teenagers to agree terms of service that they very obviously should not be able to agree to without their parents consent. I cannot believe we allow this!
3. Matt Levine’s Certificate of Dumb Investment continues to seem underrated to me.
PSA: How to fold fitted sheets, via the Browser. I sent this to my wife and she very nicely said to me something to the effect of “isn’t this the same way I taught you to do it?” 🤣
“When outsiders succeed, it’s usually through reframing problems in ‘paradigm shifts’. They benefit from not being too attached to existing theories.”From a thread on outsiders solving problems.
Our parenting hack of the year so far is having cut vegetables ready at the table when our kids get home from school. The percentage of vegetables consumed is up like 10x and compliance to the routine of coming in, washing hands, and sitting down at the table has risen as well. Recommended and thanks to Emily Oster for the suggestion.
Things I learned
German chocolate cake was invented in United States, via the Kroger App. Someone needs to figure out why the Kroger app has so many delightful facts in it. This is someone’s passion project! I'll buy you a nice bottle of wine if you find this person and introduce them to me.
80% of Swiss are satisfied with their lives. I am not sponsored by the Swiss government, but I am open to it if they are reading.
The Pangolin is the only mammal with scales. Peacock is the name of the males only; the female are peahens. The species is called peafowl. Via The Animal Book.
“She does that to her family. She does that to her friends. She does that to me,” he lamented. “She doesn’t seem to be capable of creating her own social interactions anymore.”
I worry a lot that the sycophancy of the agents have made me less flexible with people who (of course) are less likely to defer to me. I am not sure how to measure this, but I wish I could.
Sort of a musing, but I think we owe Blake Lemoine and apology.
Manhattan, 1931. A city without skyscrapers, save for a handful in the Financial District and the brand new Empire State. A city of 3-5 story buildings.
Chris Ryan on The Press Box talking about the early blogosphere. Three things I loved about this:
Chris’s natural creative energy
What it was like for Chris when he didn’t know how his career would turn out
Chris’s blog gave Free Darko its name 🤯
Things Brian Potter has learned
Number 30 was my favorite:
Whenever there’s a major bridge incident in the US we hear stories about the US’s crumbling infrastructure, but the worst bridges in the US are steadily getting fixed. Between 1992 and 2023, the number of US bridges in critical condition declined by more than 70%.
An exploration on where the value from AI will come from that also starts to articulate specific bottlenecks that (currently) AI faces in improving R&D work. Somewhat related to my reaction to Situational Awareness, I suspect that more of these bottlenecks exist than people think. Coding might be a unique application for LLMs: relatively closed loop, fast feedback, lower diversity of tasks.
Self-importance, contempt, and arrogance is rewarded online. Virtue rarely is. In this way, technology is inverting many of the incentives for developing character.
Bias hacking for progress?
“Once you put that first stake in, they’ll never make you pull it up.” — Robert Moses, from The Power Broker.
I’ve seen this same dynamic in all sorts of projects. Creating the impression that it is happening unlocks funding that is unavailable before it has begun. It occurs to me that this is a way of hacking peoples sunk cost bias to get things done.