Basement Whatever

But Brutus is an honorable man

February 21, 2026

One way to reduce phone addiction is to keep a poem handy in a notes file. Every time you’re tempted to open your phone, start with that poem. It turns out that memorizing long poems focuses your thoughts in a very noticeable way. Select well, and you’re memorizing the best writing on earth – like Marc Antony reacting to Caesar’s murder.

After starting with Macbeth’s Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow (raw cynicism), I moved to Marcus Antony’s speech at the death of Caesar, which I’m still working on. Words are code and these words are POWERFUL. Antony seethes with malice, making it abundantly clear he’s going to deliver payback in full – without ever saying it outright.

Speaking of which, you can watch one of the greatest film actors to ever live (Marlon Brando) acting these lines, written by one of the greatest writers to ever live (Shakespeare) and you can do it from your couch. What a time to be alive.
Using Generative AI to determine the best candidates in a primary (Project Success)

February 21, 2026

We have a competitive Illinois primary coming up in March, so I wanted to see if generative AI could help quickly get to a rough estimate of the best candidates to vote for. It certainly can – especially when you use it to filter out the most insane candidates with a goal of keeping them away from power.
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Best rant of the year candidate — on Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”

February 19, 2026

It is one thing to take a beloved, multilayered book and make a movie that sets it in a new direction. It is quite another to make an adaptation that seems determined to reverse the meaning of the entire story. This film takes a thoughtful, political, radical work of art by a woman and makes it shallow and individualist, with a message that seems to justify the obscene system we live in.
— Read on heatherparry.substack.com/p/this-is-not-an-essay-about-emerald

“Rant” diminishes it; this is legitimate criticism from someone who knows the source material, understands it, and is brave enough to criticize a multimillion dollar version of it. Highly recommended. It is always good to see people who care deeply, willing to engage deeply.
What are some positive ways the world could rebuild around AI technologies? (Prompt)

February 19, 2026

AI could be used as a lever to rebuild institutions, markets, and daily life in ways that are more productive, fair, and humane than today, but only if we design for that explicitly rather than just “optimize engagement” or “cut headcount.”
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Rebuilding our world, with reference to strong AI

February 19, 2026

After WWII, Western Europe had the chance to rebuild its own world, and did a great job.

We moderns are not used to having to rebuild our world.

It is now the case that strong AI is here/coming, and we will have to rebuild our own world. Many of us are terrified at this prospect, others are just extremely pessimistic. It seems so impossible. How are all the new pieces supposed to fit together? Who amongst us can explain that process in a reassuring way?

Yet we have done it many times before.
— Read on marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/rebuilding-our-world-with-reference-to-strong-ai.html
The WhatsApp moment for money is here

February 18, 2026

Just as chat apps like WhatsApp collapsed the cost of international messaging from, say, 30 cents per text to zero, stablecoins are doing the same in financial transactions. The numbers bear this out: stablecoins moved over $12tn in value last year, after filtering out bots and other inorganic activity — volumes that are rising towards Visa’s $17tn of transactions last year but made at a fraction of the cost.
— Read on a16zcrypto.substack.com/p/the-whatsapp-moment-for-money-is
Send Appreciation Notes To Companies

February 18, 2026

customer service people get tons of complaints, it’s probably genuinely meaningful for them to occasionally have someone email their manager to compliment them instead of complain about them
— Read on www.atvbt.com/send-appreciation-notes-to-companies/

I worked in a call center during college, and can confirm how exceedingly rare this is, and how wonderful it is to get positive feedback. Since then, I do it all the time. This article gives great advice. I can also confirm that positive notes are shared and do help shape the culture. Next time, why not “ask to see a manager” to share how helpful an employee is? We get what we praise.
Cringeworthy in the Future

February 18, 2026

The New York Times asked me (and others) to suggest some things our descendents might be embarrassed about in the future. Things we do now, that might make future generations cringe. Good question! My reply is this short list
— Read on kevinkelly.substack.com/p/cringeworthy-in-the-future
Henry Cavill: All in on Warhammer

February 17, 2026

I love when someone leans into their hobbies. Fun!
UFOs are probably nothing

February 16, 2026

You might think that the track record of UFO sightings in the past means that we should think there is some enduring phenomena – something really there that we don’t understand. In my view, the only enduring phenomena here are:
Human error
Instrumental error
Hoaxes
— Read on www.mindlessalgorithm.com/ufos-are-probably-nothing/
Washington Post post-mortem … from the perspective of a media analyst

February 14, 2026

The Washington Post was killed because they changed their audience into something that didn’t have any long-term sustainability, while completely ignoring their real problem of the news itself not being worth paying for
— Read on baekdal.com/newsletter/washington-post-postmortem–from-the-perspective-of-a-media-analyst
The Western World (as I currently understand it)

February 14, 2026

Rome invents the republic model of representative democracy. Rome builds on Greek experiments with democracy and philosophy, to invent and propagate the first republic system of government. Rome successfully runs this republic model for 500 years. Julius Caesar/Augustus overthrow the republic and make Rome an imperial power.
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Do Less.

February 12, 2026

I’d been treating my brain like a hard drive: Transfer the file, and it’s there. But that’s not how it works at all, not even close. Learning is more like digestion. You don’t absorb more nutrition by eating faster. Past a certain rate, you just stop digesting, and the food you’re cramming in isn’t feeding you, it’s just passing through. The real nutritive work — the part that actually makes you stronger — happens after you stop eating, over hours, invisibly. And you can’t speed it up by eating more.
— Read on usefulfictions.substack.com/p/do-less
How to compare countries

February 12, 2026

you should always compare countries based on GDP PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) which erases…artificial distortion by adjusting for local price levels, giving you the true productive capacity of each economy and a much truer notion of domestic living standards.

Useful. More here.
The World Is a Network

February 12, 2026

right now, the electromagnetic waves containing everyone’s information are passing through your room, through your body, through your brain.

Every news article your neighbor reads on her phone, every TikTok video nearby high-schoolers watch, every private conversation between clandestine lovers, every kind of pornographic image the guy down the street downloads, they all reach and touch you in the form of photons, at any time of day and night
— Read on planktonvalhalla.com/20220829-the-world-is-a-network/
Links of the Day

February 12, 2026
Caesar Returns Triumphant: Crowds Cheer, But Critics Warn of Power Grab

February 12, 2026

“Imagine you are a historian of Rome. Please write twenty highly charged headlines about the time ranging from when Caesar crossed the Rubicon and returned to Rome until the time when Augustus took power. The headlines should be written in the style of CNN, written the way that CNN would cover politics”
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We need more tiny knowledge projects

February 11, 2026

I used to think of “knowledge projects” as involving a big mission, a big community, and a complex piece of software: the stuff of Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, or Genius….But the web is just as good for collaborations in the small. Not so long ago, I took a poem I wanted to understand better and sent it to a friend, and the two of us annotated it together online. Why don’t I do this more often?…There ought to be more of these tiny knowledge projects.

Couldn’t agree more. Read the whole thing here.
Links of the Day

February 11, 2026
1. “14 Novels I’d Save”
2. “Under communist rule, Poland was exceptionally unequal in nearly everything that mattered” (X) Interesting.
3. The Secret History Is Still the Book I Recommend to Everyone (paywall) “The Secret History is my personal Platonic ideal of what a novel should be, and since I first read it back in the heady days of junior high, I have spent my entire reading life attempting to find similar versions of it. It is the urtext of what I now consider to be my favorite genre — namely, wealthy students at elite colleges exploring sex and murder through classic literature.”
4. The Number Go Up Rule: Why America Refuses to Fix Anything
5. Average Manager vs. Great Manager
The two kinds of desire, and one of the most important things I know

February 10, 2026

Look for the repeating patterns of desire in moments when you are truly happy. Look for the arrangements of energy that compel you. Remember, you are looking for general shapes, like “the feeling of sharing confidences,” or “the knowledge that you have served your duty.”
— Read on sashachapin.substack.com/p/the-two-kinds-of-desire-and-one-of

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