Good tokens 2025-09-05

Hello! I'm James, Uri's friend and Atoms vs. Bits's biggest fan. Uri and Jehan have graciously invited me to share my weekly-ish list of things that have caught my attention. Let us know how you like it!

Worth your time

Replacing lawns with wildflowers 💐. When I’ve made it, I won’t tell anyone, but there will be signs.

Cate Hall on how to increase your surface area for luck, which is one of the biggest things I learned from Henry Oliver’s book on Second Acts. Cate is quickly rising up the list of people whose work I rush to read. Along the same lines: How to Get Ahead in DC.

“Even the context has context”. Wherein Soren blows my mind and sells me on decentralized edge intelligence.

Should I have kissed her? Some how I missed this one in August of 2022. It’s my favorite type of Uri post.

How can you not love this? A 3,700-year-old Babylonian clay tablet holds a trigonometric table more accurate than any today. Humans are amazing and beautiful.

Drones are downing helicopters.

Yucca man. I’m a sucker for “does this Bigfoot like creature actually exist” stories (see season 1 of the Wild Thing podcast), but this one also has so many great Southern California places in it. Like taking a mini vacation.

Nuclear batteries. “A 157W Voyager-based RTG that launched in 1977 will produce about 88W today.” The clean up problem seems insurmountable.

Noah Smith, Dan Wang, and James Cham talk about Dan’s new book Breakneck.

Why Swiss Kids Walk to School Alone. This is one of the things that made me fall in love with Switzerland. They do this as 5 year olds! Part of it is safety but part of it is teaching agency. The walk to school is a part of the education. This should be our aspiration for American neighborhoods.

Your idea sets the ceiling for your videos potential and other good advice from Paddy Galloway.

The sex recession continues.

Musings

Chips on shoulders put chips in pockets.

What’s the steel man case for formality?

What does our society overemphasize now in a way that will seem silly in 25 years?

The secret to engineering is embracing that getting new errors equals progress.