In this essay, I’ll describe the aspects and dynamics of coolness, with the goal of transforming dweebs into cool people. We’ll discuss the difference between Dweebs and Nerds, the difficulty of talking about coolness, the two types of coolness, and the status gains from respecting the 7 Rules of Coolness. The Dynamics: comparative, rivalrous, & relative. …

Since Tuesday, the media has been excited about Nuclear Fusion. That’s because a recent breakthrough experiment produced 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy compared with 2.05 megajoules of energy used to trigger the reaction, resulting in a “net energy gain.” So why will it take decades to commercialize this? …

In January, I bought a 2019 GTI Autobahn DSG with 5k miles in Washington DC, where I lived at the time. I enjoyed the car’s practicality and thought it had the potential to be a razor-sharp daily driver with a few changes. A stock Volkswagen GTI — on stock tires…

This piece is made possible by the brilliant work of Annie Duke. She’s a Professional poker player with a Masters in Cognitive Psychology. Her specialty is “decision strategy.” Her book, Thinking in Bets, is all about using bets to make decisions with partial information. As we have to make 99%…

This piece is made possible by the brilliant work of James Clear. He’s a writer and expert focused on habits and decision-making, and the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits. Don’t let its mass popularity fool you — this is a razor-sharp insightful read and a…

When Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, it immediately caught the attention of the EU, but also the US, Saudi Arabia, and China. That’s a clue — this war has a lot to do with energy. Specifically, with reshuffling the European energy deck.

This piece is made possible by the brilliant work of Nate Hagens. He interviews physicists, mining engineers, geologists, and other experts to explain how energy and materials run our world, and what their decline means for the future. Simply put, economic growth requires growth in energy and material production, and…

In this essay, I’ll explain the relationship between Free Will and Determinism. Briefly put, will isn’t “free,” as it has clear limits we’ll explore. Rather, our will expands and contracts in scope, nested within a sea of determinism. What’s “Free Will”? Free will is “the power of acting without the constraint of necessity…

In this essay I examine the life and philosophy of Ted Kaczynski — the Unabomber. By dissecting his manifesto, I hope to lay out his core beliefs and inconsistencies, to shed some light on an enigmatic figure of our time. Who is the Unabomber? Theodore John Kaczynski was born in 1942 in Chicago to…