2025 Week 09 - Weekly Notes

Summary

It’s only mid-week, and I’m surprised by the end of the month closing in on us. Two months into 2025, and I feel exhausted. Both physically because of sleep, and mentally as I’ve been behind on my weekly updates.

Notes

A Million Little Secrets • Josh W. Comeau

Speaking of birding

• ‘The Interview’: Ed Yong Wants to Show You the Hidden Reality of the World - The New York Times

Old, but still good. PBS - John Gardner - Education And Excellence

PDF: The Impact of Generative Al on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers

Before Atomic Habits: The Case for High-Impact, Time-Bound Change

Half of the articles offers a critique, but then the other feels delusional

• Discourse | The Mercatus Center | Substack
  • A critique of Peterson Academy Where Aristotle Meets Big Bird part 1 – The OpenSource Temple
  • I’ll give them this. It’s amazing to see how bad Jordan Peterson is doing

Released this week

• Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude Code \ Anthropic

How to listen to Ulysses | Derek Sivers - wow, this one is powerful by Derek Sivers

Record (write or voice memo) all of your questions and observations. When done, ask everything to an expert or top-tier AI. Save the answers to re-read later.

• Interesting use of AI

• The Death Of The Follower - The Next Era Of Content Creation

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• Let’s talk about Brain Rot – The OpenSource Temple

Who Is in DOGE? Tracking Its Staffers and Allies in the Federal Government - The New York Times

• The people in Elon Musk’s DOGE universe | TechCrunch
• The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover | WIRED
• The engineers are mostly young men (I found one woman - Alexandra Beynon). If you’re a woman, you’re the secretary, hiring manager, communications, or other non-technical roles

The terrible berating at the white house is the butt of all jokes.

• Trump Berates Zelensky at White House Meeting: Live Updates - The New York Times

If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown

• Interesting about using Perma to save links

21 Civil Servants Resign From DOGE, Refusing to Implement Elon Musk’s Changes - The New York Times - Really the fall of US Digital Services, not DOGE, since they got folded in.

• We are the builders

Trend: Watching podcasts on YouTube

• More than 1 billion people are now watching podcasts on YouTube every month | The Verge

My 12-Month Immersive Course in Humanities—The Final Installment!

From OpenAI’s new operator, here’s Open Operator

• Open Operator, Serverless Browsers and the Future of Computer-Using Agents
  • This interview is interesting to listen to
  • Open Operator is a reference of how tool chaining could work for brower tools
  • Wherever there are agents, there’s a tool needed for that. The more we start building those tools, the more startups there are. It’s a race
  • Stagehand - The AI Web Browsing Framework
  • Interview is with BrowserBase’s Paul Klein
    • (9) Paul Klein IV | LinkedIn
    • Founders in Focus: Paul Klein IV of Browserbase | Okta
    • Browserbase: A web browser for AI agents & applications

The Liberating Effect of Uncertainty - Ness Labs

No Zero Days | How To Crush Your Goals - Unfinished Success

Recommendations

Books: Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia,from Revolution to Autocracy

Book: by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor: AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference

Obits

Actor Gene Hackman and wife Betsy Arakawa found dead as authorities investigate cause of death | CNN

Michelle Trachtenberg Dead At 39: Investigation Ongoing into Cause of Death - Newsweek