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CuratorSubmissions
John Myers, Ben Southwood, and Sam Bowman argue that the housing shortage is at the root of nearly every major policy problem - from declining birth rates to low productivity to inequality.
“The single most important policy article of the last decade. Once you see housing as the bottleneck for everything else - wages, fertility, mobility, inequality - you can't unsee it. This is Works in Progress's masterpiece.”
Bartosz Ciechanowski's interactive visual essay explaining how a mechanical watch works - from the mainspring to the escapement. One of the best pieces of technical communication ever made.
“This is what the internet was made for. The interactive diagrams make something I never understood click instantly. Every technical writer should study how Bartosz structures explanation.”
Patrick Collison's collection of examples of people and organizations that did ambitious things quickly - from the Empire State Building (410 days) to the SR-71 Blackbird.
“Every time someone says 'that's impossible in that timeline,' I send them this page. The lesson isn't that speed is always possible - it's that our default expectations for how long things take are wildly miscalibrated.”
Pieter Garicano on how Europe's rigid labor markets make firing 4x more expensive than in the US - systematically pushing companies away from innovation toward safe, unchanging industries.
“Finally someone quantified the innovation tax of European labor law. It's not that Europeans lack ambition - it's that the institutional structure punishes the kind of risk-taking that creates Teslas and SpaceXs.”
Venkatesh Rao's legendary analysis of organizational dynamics through the lens of The Office - Sociopaths, Clueless, and Losers as a model for how companies actually work.
“The most uncomfortable management essay ever written. Once you see organizations through this lens, you can't unsee it. I've never shared this with someone who didn't have a strong reaction.”
Alex Chalmers on how France built 40 nuclear reactors in a decade - the fastest nuclear buildout in history. Key: decisions sat in executive agencies indifferent to lobbying or public opinion.
“Everyone asks 'why can't we build nuclear fast anymore?' France already answered that question in the 1970s. The institutional design mattered more than the technology. This is a blueprint.”
Richard Hamming's legendary talk on what separates great scientists from good ones - courage, working on important problems, and the art of 'planting acorns.'
“The most important career talk ever given. 'If what you are doing is not important, and if you don't think it is going to lead to something important, why are you working on it?' That question haunts me productively.”
Joel Spolsky's classic argument against rewriting software from scratch - and why Netscape's decision to do exactly that was the worst strategic mistake in internet history.
“Written in 2000 and still the definitive take. Every time a team wants to rewrite, I make them read this first. The 'old code looks bad because it has bug fixes in it' insight is permanently tattooed on my brain.”
Gwern's comprehensive analysis of the evidence for and against the idea that scaling compute and data is all you need for AGI. Written before GPT-4 proved many of its predictions correct.
“This was written when most AI researchers dismissed scaling as brute force. Gwern saw it clearly before almost anyone. Reading it now is like reading someone who correctly predicted the future with receipts.”
Sam Altman's 13 principles for achieving outsized success - compound growth, high conviction, bold risk-taking, and the importance of working on things that matter.
“I come back to #5 ('be willful') and #12 ('build a network') constantly. Most success advice is generic. This reads like someone writing down what they actually observed, not what sounds good.”
Pieter Garicano's Silicon Continent newsletter on the structural reasons European startups struggle to grow beyond Series B - fragmented markets, talent migration, and capital gaps.
“Pieter is the WiP editor who wrote the Tesla piece. His newsletter goes deeper on European tech policy. This is the companion piece - the Tesla article explains why big companies don't innovate in Europe, this explains why startups can't scale.”
Tanner Greer on what separates civilizations that survive crises from those that collapse - drawing on Rome, China, and modern America.
“One of the best history essays I've ever read. The argument that institutional capacity is a muscle that atrophies without use explains so much about why some societies can't respond to crises.”
A rare long-form Thiel interview covering technology stagnation, AI, competition vs. monopoly, and why he thinks most people are wrong about the future.
“Agree or disagree with Thiel, he thinks in ways most people don't. The section on 'definite optimism vs. indefinite optimism' maps directly to how I think about building companies.”
A global intelligence synthesis — February 28, 2026
Good software knows what problem it solves and what needs to be tackled by another tool
Questioning the frame of inevitability in use of AI
“To stop the machines from lying, they have to cite their sources properly. And spoiler, so do the AI companies.”