🎓 On the Harem Origin Story of Turkish Coffee Reading
How women use "fortunes" in their cups as a safe mechanism for gossip, venting, and discussion of taboo subjects without ending up socially ruined.
Manuscriptions
Insightful lessons from history, science, & real life... aimed at autodidacts, productivity nerds, efficient thinkers & tech junkies.
Live Last read · last published · next check
Latest posts
🎓 On Mammals With the Social Structure of Ants
Reflections on seeing naked mole rats on my last trip to the National Zoo.
🌲 How to Take Notes on Physical Library Books
Sometimes you have to read a physical book you can't write in. What then? Bullet Journal Pocket Editions to the rescue!
🎓 Why Successful Empires Preserve Divisions Instead of Erasing Them
How empires from Assyria to the Soviets maintained local differences as a tool of control, and what happens when they stop.
📗 Harpers Ferry during the Civil War
A deep dive on Harpers Ferry during the Civil War, from Brown's raid to the poor bastard stuck untangling the property ownership messes after the war.
📚 Neat Stuff I Read in April 2026
On "doing your own research" in the AI age, messy economics in fiction, & what funerals do to African households. Also: the airline wars, vending-machine money laundering, & breakthrus in health sci.
🥘 The Konik Method for Making Delicious Food
Five recipes I cook pretty regularly, that don’t stress me out, that are reasonably healthy and maximally efficient. Also, tasty!
🎓 How Organisms Rewrite Bodies Without Changing Genes
On phenotype plasticity, facultative neoteny, RNA editing, and metamorphosis, focused on locusts, maize, octopuses, dogs and holly trees respond to environments without "evolving" per se.
💰 Some stuff I'm surprisingly happy I bought in 2025
Every year at tax time I go over the pervious year's purchases for things I can expense. This year, I'm sharing a list of the stuff I don't regret buying.
📗 On Building a Vocabulary for Discussing Network Effects
A Review of The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen