Favorite Articles Read in 2022

My favorite ~200 articles out of the ~2,700+ that I read in 2022. Particular favorites are marked with a star (⭐).

Book Reviews

• The Dawn Of Everything by Erik Hoel at Astral Codex Ten
• Exhaustion by “Van Occupanther” at Astral Codex Ten
• ⭐ Too Like the Lightning by @bormgans at Weighing a pig doesn’t fatten it
• Seven Surrenders by @bormgans at Weighing a pig doesn’t fatten it
• How Molecular Forces and Rotating Planets Create Life: The Emergence and Evolution of Prokaryotic Cells by @bormgans at Weighing a pig doesn’t fatten it
• The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness by @bormgans at Weighing a pig doesn’t fatten it
• ⭐ Discourses on Livy, Part I by Conrad Bastable at Conrad Bastable
• ⭐ Discourses on Livy, Part II by Conrad Bastable at Conrad Bastable
• The Name of the Wind and The Children of Húrin by Adam Roberts at Strange Horizons
• How to Read a Book by Derek Sivers at Derek Sivers

History

• ⭐ Is the United States Exceptional? by Bret Devereaux at A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
• ⭐ The Chinese celebrate Tang poetry as a pinnacle of their culture at The Economist
• Wife Economics and the Domestication of Man (Part I) by Misha Saul at Kvetch
• Welcome, ghosts by Simon Sarris at The Map is Mostly Water
• Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone by Moxie Marlinspike at Moxie Marlinspike
• ⭐ History is in the making by Stephen Davies at Works in Progress

AI and ML

• ELK And The Problem Of Truthful AI by Scott Alexander at Astral Codex Ten
• Artificial intelligence and the rise of optical computing at The Economist
• The Hall Monitors Are Winning the AI Wars, Part 1: ChatGPT by Jon Stokes at Jon Stokes
• ⭐ Generative AI: autocomplete for everything by Noah Smith and roon at Noahpinion
• frank’s image generation model, explained by nostalgebraist at trees are harlequins, words are harlequins
• “An engine for the imagination”: an interview with David Holz, CEO of AI image generator Midjourney by James Vincent at The Verge

Gaming and Game Design

• 10 years of FTL: The making of an enduring spaceship simulator by Alex Calvin at Ars Technica
• ⭐ Simulation Games Might Be What The World Needs Now by Dan Grover at Dan Grover
• Spirit Island by @bormgans at Weighing a pig doesn’t fatten it
• How to design for impact and narrative variance with Roadwarden by Aureus Morale at Game Developer

Politics, Foreign Affairs, Diplomacy, and War

• Preparing for Defeat by Francis Fukuyama at American Purpose
• ⭐ Ten Rules That Demystify Politics by Bradley Tusk at Bradley Tusk
• ⭐ The Cold War Never Ended by Stephen Kotkin at Foreign Affairs
• The Weakness of Xi Jinping by Cai Xia at Foreign Affairs
• Ukraine Holds the Future by Timothy Snyder at Foreign Affairs
• Inside Putin’s circle — the real Russian elite by Anatol Lieven at Financial Times
• The great game of global public goods provision by Steve Randy Waldoman at interfluidity
• ⭐ What’s Wrong with California? by Philo at MD&A
• The Fight for Ukraine by Lawrence Freedman at Comment is Freed
• ⭐ Absolute Power by Graeme Wood at The Atlantic
• Possible Outcomes of the Russo-Ukrainian War and China’s Choice by Hu Wei at U.S.-China Perception Monitor
• 2021 letter by Dan Wang at Dan Wang
• The Impossible Suddenly Became Possible by Anne Applebaum at The Atlantic

Web3 / Crypto

• ⭐ The Only Crypto Story You Need by Matt Levine at Bloomberg
• Web3/Crypto: Why Bother? by Albert Wenger at Continuations
• Where to use a blockchain in non-financial applications? by Vitalik Buterin at Vitalik Buterin’s website
• ⭐ My first impressions of web3 by Moxie Marlinspike at Moxie Marlinspike
• The St. Petersburg Paradox by Taylor Pearson at Taylor Pearson

Finance and Economics

• Changing how Main Street businesses bank by Patrick McKenzie at Bits about Money
• Accounting for SaaS and swords by Patrick McKenzie at Bits about Money
• Plastic (and payments) in the fantasy supply chain by Patrick McKenzie at Bits about Money
• Siting bank branches by Patrick McKenzie at Bits about Money
• ⭐ Demystifying financial leverage by Patrick McKenzie at Bits about Money
• The Distributive Distraction by Bryan Caplan at Bet On It
• ⭐ American Zaibatsu: Macroeconomics for Tech Employees by Conrad Bastable at Conrad Bastable
• Reversion to the mean: the real long COVID by John Luttig at luttig’s learnings
• Reflections on the Investing Process with Michael Mauboussin at Compound Manual
• It’s Never the Subsidies by Philo at MD&A
• In a world… of venture capital by Zvi Mowshowitz at Don’t Worry About the Vase

Business, Work, and Leadership

• ⭐ Optimism Shapes Reality by Alexandr Wang at Rational in the Fullness of Time
• A career ending mistake by John Arundel at Bitfield Consulting
• Half Staffed is Unstaffed by Boz at boz
• What Qualities Best Enable Success? by Bradley Tusk at Bradley Tusk
• Stuff I Wish I Had Been Told by Bradley Tusk at Bradley Tusk
• Managing Your Manager by Brie Wolfson at Every
• ⭐ We Spoke With the Last Person Standing in the Floppy Disk Business by Niek Hilkmann and Thomas Walskaart at Eye on Design
• Reverse Interviewing Your Future Manager and Team by Gergely Orosz at The Pragmatic Engineer
• Reverse Interviewing: How to interview a company as well as they interview you by Adam Fishman at FishmanAF Newsletter
• Your Activation Experience: Onboarding successfully in your first 90 days by Adam Fishman at FishmanAF Newsletter
• ⭐ How CEOs Manage Time by Michael E. Porter and Nitin Nohria at Harvard Business Review
• How to present to executives by Will Larson at Irrational Exuberance
• Reminiscing: the retreat to comforting work by Will Larson at Irrational Exuberance
• Want to be a Disruptor? by Marc Randolph at Marc Randolph
• ⭐ Why Pebble failed by Eric Migicovsky at Eric Migicovsky
• The Data-Informed Manifesto by Julie Zhuo at The Looking Glass
• Things you’re allowed to do by Milan Cvitkovic at Milan Cvitkovic
• The Chokehold of Calendars by Mike Monteiro at Mike Monteiro
• Become a person who Actually Does Things by Neel Nanda at Neel Nanda
• The three-or-four-hours rule by Oliver Burkeman at Oliver Burkeman
• ⭐ What Happened to Yahoo by Paul Graham at Paul Graham
• ⭐ Choose Good Quests by Markie Wagner and Trae Stephens at Pirate Wires
• Addressing Uncertainty, an overview by Jerry Neumann at Reaction Wheel
• Peter Thiel’s Anti-Lean Manifesto by Sachin Rekhi at Sachin Rekhi
• Writing is Thinking by Ibrahim Bashir at Run the Business
• How to Design a Better Pitch Deck: Fundraising, Pitch Deck, YC Demo Day by Kevin Hale at Y Combinator
• The next train by Seth Godin at Seth’s Blog
• ⭐ The art of the long goodbye by Vicki Boykis at Normcore Tech
• Where Did the Long Tail Go? by Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker
• Managing..up? by Sam Schillace at Sunday Letters
• What is Company Culture & Why is Culture Important? by Taylor Pearson at Taylor Pearson
• OPP (Other People’s Problems) by Camille Fournier at Camille Fournier
• ⭐ Hybrid Anxiety and Hybrid Optimism: The Near Future of Work by Rajiv Ayyangar at Tandem

Strategy and Product Management

• The Product/Market Interest Chasm by Ben Mathes at Adventure Capital
• Let’s DO Have Hindsight! by Albert Cory at Albert Cory
• How To Select A Target Market by April Dunford at April Dunford
• What’s your favorite interview question? by Gibson Biddle at “Ask Gib”
• ⭐ What specifics in a daily routine separate a good Product Manager from a great Product Manager? by Gibson Biddle at “Ask Gib”
• Curves by Boz at boz
• CEOs and Product Leaders by Ken Norton at Bring the Donuts
• Sequencing Business Models: So You Want To Be A Platform? by Casey Winters at Casey Accidental
• What Type of Job is This: My First Year as Chief Product Officer by Casey Winters at Casey Accidental
• Plan on a Page Checklist by John Cutler at The Beautiful Mess
• ⭐ Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System by Donella Meadows at The Donella Meadows Project
• PRDs are the worst way to drive product progress by Adam Fishman at FishmanAF Newsletter
• ⭐ Products Are Functions by Ryan Singer at Ryan Singer
• A review of Shreyas Doshi’s Managing your PM Career Seminar by Tim Woods at Tim Woods
• Embodied Strategy by Dimitri Glazkov at Dimitri Glazkov
• ⭐ Being Strategic by Dimitri Glazkov at Dimitri Glazkov
• Use PEARL instead of STAR to shine in your PM interviews by Jackie Bavaro at Cracking the PM Newsletter
• ⭐ The 3 Stages of a Product Manager’s Career by Jackie Bavaro at Cracking the PM Newsletter
• The Charcuterie Framework for Roadmap Planning by Jackie Bavaro at Cracking the PM Newsletter
• Google has a company strategy, not a product strategy by Jackie Bavaro at Cracking the PM Newsletter
• ⭐ What is Product Strategy? by Jackie Bavaro at Cracking the PM Newsletter
• ⭐ Product Management at a Startup 101 Talk Notes by Leigh Marie Braswell at Leigh Marie Braswell
• Not all product visions need to be similar to that of building a ‘metaverse’. by Vivek Kumar at Growth & product management of infrequent consumer products
• Un-BELT your consumer problems to create a successful infrequent product by Vivek Kumar at Growth & product management of infrequent consumer products
• ⭐ The Doorbell in the Jungle by Alex Komoroske at Alex Komoroske
• The self-sustaining flame by Alex Komoroske at Alex Komoroske
• Surfing through trade-offs by Alex Komoroske at Alex Komoroske
• The Art of Product Management by Ken Norton at Bring the Donuts
• Product Discovery Lessons: Going from Zero to One by Ravi Mehta at Ravi Mehta
• How Product Managers Lose the Trust of Engineers by Shimon Rura at Shimon Rura
• How (and why) to document the assumptions underlying your product by Shimon Rura at Shimon Rura
• The Supermarket of Software by Martina Lauchengco at Silicon Valley Product Group
• Transformation Defined by Jon Moore and Marty Cagan at Silicon Valley Product Group
• The Product Scorecard by Marty Cagan at Silicon Valley Product Group
• Fifth-Generation Management by Venkatesh Rao at ribbonfarm

Writing and Blogging

• ⭐ A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox by Henrik Karlsson at Escaping Flatland
• ⭐ Why and how to write things on the Internet by Ben Kuhn at benkuhn.net
• Other Story Ingredients beyond World, Characters, and Plot by Ada Palmer at Tor/Forge Blog

Privacy, Security, Content Moderation, and Advertising

• Principled Privacy by Robin Berjon at Robin Berjon
• A Taxonomy of Access Control by Bruce Schneier at Schneier on Security
• Micropayments for content by Seth Godin at Seth’s Blog
• Moderation Is Different From Censorship by Scott Alexander at Astral Codex Ten
• Hey Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run The Content Moderation Learning Curve by Mike Masnick at Techdirt

Culture and Society

• Intentionally Making Close Friends by Neel Nanda at Neel Nanda
• Stanford’s War on Social Life by Ginevra Davis at Palladium
• Heresy by Paul Graham at Paul Graham
• What is Good Within Social Networks by Simon Sarris at The Map is Mostly Water
• The Smartest Book About Our Digital Age Was Published in 1929 by Ted Gioia at The Daily Beast

Climate, Energy, Cities, and Homes

• ⭐ Mapping out the tribes of climate by Nadia Asparouhova at Nadia Asparouhova
• Energy Superabundance by Austin Vernon and Eli Dourado at Center for Growth and Opportunity
• What Carmel, Indiana, can teach America about urbanism at The Economist
• ⭐ Designing a New Old Home: Beginnings by Simon Sarris at The Map is Mostly Water
• Designing a New Old Home: Curiosity by Simon Sarris at The Map is Mostly Water
• Designing a New Old Home: Research, Sketch, Collect by Simon Sarris at The Map is Mostly Water
• Patina and Intimacy by Simon Sarris at The Map is Mostly Water
• Why Some Cities Thrive by Tomas Pueyo at Uncharted Territories

Philosophy, Learning, and Thought

• The Thinking Path by Steven Johnson at Adjacent Possible
• The Gods Only Have Power Because We Believe In Them by Scott Alexander at Astral Codex Ten
• ⭐ Augmenting Long-term Memory by Michael Nielsen at Augmenting Cognition
• Searching for outliers by Ben Kuhn at benkuhn.net
• Be less scared of overconfidence by Ben Kuhn at benkuhn.net
• ⭐ Staring into the abyss as a core life skill by Ben Kuhn at benkuhn.net
• Little Rules About Big Things by Morgan Housel at Collab Fund
• ⭐ The Dangers of Treating Life as a Game by Cedric Chin at Commoncog
• Why we stopped making Einsteins by Erik Hoel at The Intrinsic Perspective
• The Small Steps of Giant Leaps at Farnum Street
• ⭐ We are made to live like firemen by Misha Saul at Kvetch
• courage by Molly Mielke at Mind Mud
• ⭐ callings by Molly Mielke at Mind Mud
• critical by Molly Mielke at Mind Mud
• Career Advice by Moxie Marlinspike at Moxie Marlinspike
• What You (Want to)* Want by Paul Graham at Paul Graham
• The Midwit Trap by Philo at MD&A
• Tangle Logic by Venkatesh Rao at ribbonfarm
• ⭐ Start With Creation by Simon Sarris at The Map is Mostly Water
• Long Distance Thinking by Simon Sarris at The Map is Mostly Water
• Working with Your Inner Resistance by Leo Babauta at zen habits
• Overwhelm: The Survival Guide by Leo Babauta at zen habits
• Destroy What You Know by Leo Babauta at zen habits
• On the Shortness of Life by Leo Babauta at zen habits
• Moving From Desire to Action by Leo Babauta at zen habits
• My 10 Rules for Public Speaking by Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker
• The Baloney Detection Kit by Maria Popova at The Marginalian
• ⭐ Designs for Learning by Stephen Stearns at Stearns Lab
• Modest Advice by Stephen Stearns at Stearns Lab
• Prediction Market FAQ by Scott Alexander at Astral Codex Ten
• Upside decay by Brian Lui at Brian Lui’s blog

Science, Technology, and Progress

• The Simple Cure by Steven Johnson at Adjacent Possible
• Horse-human cooperation is a neurobiological miracle by Janet Jones at Aeon
• ⭐ GPS by Bartosz Ciechanowski at Bartosz Ciechanowski
• ⭐ Mechanical Watch by Bartosz Ciechanowski at Bartosz Ciechanowski
• ⭐ Sound by Bartosz Ciechanowski at Bartosz Ciechanowski
• The bright side of the Covid pandemic by Eric Topol at Eric Topol
• iPhone 13 Pro: The Edge of Intelligent Photography by Sebastiaan de With at Lux
• What Impossible Meant to Feynman by Paul Steinhardt at Nautilus
• ⭐ The story of VaccinateCA by Patrick McKenzie at Works in Progress
• ⭐ The Maintenance Race by Stewart Brand at Works in Progress
• A year of new avenues by Robin Sloan at Robin Sloan
• ⭐ The end of the conservative age by Ryan Avent at The Bellows
• Record-Breaking Voyager Spacecraft Begin to Power Down by Tim Folger at Scientific American
• ⭐ (Excerpts from Alan Kay Emails) by Bret Victor at worrydream
• The Anti-Promethean Backlash by Brink Lindsey at The Permanent Problem
• The Retreat from Reality by Brink Lindsey at The Permanent Problem

Published Saturday, January 7, 2023.