Journal

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Jun 29, 2026 FIELD
The Prediction Market and the Wisdom of the Few
Between 2011 and 2021, the building at 18 rue de Paradis, in the tenth arrondissement of Paris, was the Manoir de Paris, a haunted house where a troupe of actors restaged the city's most notorious… read → 21 minLONG READ
#prediction-markets #finance #philosophy #decision-making #markets #Surowiecki #Tetlock #Hayek #Kyle
Jun 15, 2026 ESSAY
After Dignity, Habitability: The Law's Next Cardinal Value
Morizot and Neyret locate the weakness of environmental law above its rules, in what it has never named. Environmental law has more rules than almost any field, and far less force. Treaties, codes,… read → 8 min
#ecology #law #philosophy #France #habitability
Jun 10, 2026 FIELD
Babel, Jerusalem, and the Disarmed Word
The first thing I noticed was the ties. After years of tech conferences where I am reliably the only person wearing one, the Grand Auditorium of the Collège des Bernardins^bernardins-context, the… read → 32 minLONG READ
#AI #philosophy #theology #France #encyclical #Catholic social teaching

Deep Dives

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Long-form essays and multi-part series: strategy, finance, technology.
Current series
Reading Nvidia: On strategy, defensibility, and capital in the AI era Moats, tokens-per-watt, and capex—read through Nvidia and the AI build-out. · Series started Apr 2026 · 4 of 7 sections published
Part 0 · Series overview 6 min Apr 2026
Part 2 · The Moat That Cannot Be Coded 24 min LONG READ May 2026
Part 3 · Pareto Frontiers and Lock-In 25 min LONG READ May 2026
Part 4 · The Return of the Real World upcoming
Part 5 · The Job and the Task upcoming
Part 6 · A Note on China upcoming
Part 7 · Drawing the AI Stack upcoming
Series
AI × Energy: Powering the AI Revolution
Grids, GPUs, and the physics of running intelligence at planetary scale.
Watts, wires, and who controls the stack—not the headline model. · Series started Mar 2026 · 5 of 5 sections published
Part 0 · Introduction 7 min Mar 2026
Part 1 · Energy and Civilization (Smil) 17 min LONG READ Mar 2026
Part 2 · Power Density (Smil) 18 min LONG READ Apr 2026
Part 3 · The 84% Gap (Subran) 24 min LONG READ Apr 2026
Part 4 · The New Map (Yergin) 26 min LONG READ Jun 2026
Part 5 · The Synthesis upcoming
Recent standalones
AI Moats Are Different Oct 2025 Why traditional moats fail in AI, and a four-level framework for building defensible positions: technical foundation, product depth, market position, sustainability. · 16 min LONG READ
Market Sizing for Founders Oct 2025 A practical framework for sizing markets when you're building something new. · 23 min LONG READ
AI as Normal Technology Sep 2025 General-purpose technologies diffuse slowly and unevenly. AI will follow similar patterns. Value creation depends on when bottlenecks collapse, not benchmark scores. · 21 min LONG READ

Library

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Recently read
The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations Daniel Yergin #energy #geopolitics #AI ★★★★★ my notes
Aliénation et accélération Hartmut Rosa #philosophy ★★★★★ my notes
Development as Freedom Amartya Sen #philosophy #economics #development ★★★★★ my notes
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson #economics #institutions #strategy ★★★★★ my notes
Steak Machine Geoffrey Le Guilcher #animals #food #journalism ★★★★ my notes
Changement de quart Bruno Colmant, Laurent Hublet & Marie Vancutsem #economics #geopolitics #AI ★★★★ my notes
Énergie et inégalités : une histoire politique Lucas Chancel #energy #economics #inequality ★★★★ my notes
Innovations : une économie pour les temps à venir Dominique Foray #economics #innovation #policy ★★★★★ my notes
Multinationales : une histoire du monde contemporain Olivier Petitjean & Ivan du Roy #economics #history #corporate-power ★★★★★ my notes
La planification écologique Mathilde Viennot #economics #ecology #France #policy ★★★★★ my notes
What Is Life?: Evolution as Computation Blaise Agüera y Arcas #AI #tech #biology #philosophy ★★★★★ my notes
Energy and Civilization: A History Vaclav Smil #energy #history ★★★★★ my notes
Technology and the Rise of Great Powers Jeffrey Ding #geopolitics #tech #strategy ★★★★★
Strategy: A History Lawrence Freedman #strategy #history ★★★★★ my notes
These Strange New Minds Christopher Summerfield #AI #philosophy ★★★★★ my notes
How To Think Like Socrates Donald Robertson #philosophy ★★★★★
Reading list
Atlas of AI Kate Crawford #AI #geopolitics
Chip War Chris Miller #tech #geopolitics #history
L'Évangile selon Pilate Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt #fiction #philosophy
L'Individu, fin de parcours ? Julien Gobin #philosophy #economics #France my notes
La mort et le printemps Mercè Rodoreda #fiction
La Peau de chagrin Honoré de Balzac #fiction #philosophy #France my notes
La Pharmacie de Platon Jacques Derrida #philosophy #France my notes
Phenomenology of Spirit G. W. F. Hegel #philosophy my notes
Selfpressionnisme : Et si l'IA nous rendait plus humains ? Marie Dollé #AI #philosophy #France #humanism my notes
Tentative d'épuisement d'un lieu parisien Georges Perec #literature #France my notes
The Investment Philosophers Erik Everett #finance #philosophy
Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization Steven Solomon #history #geopolitics
Top reads
AI Moats Are Different deep dive Why traditional moats fail in AI, and a four-level framework for building defensible positions: technical foundation, product depth, market position, sustainability. · 16 min LONG READ
The Moat That Cannot Be Coded deep dive Tacit knowledge, CUDA as institutional memory, and who captures AI value when models commoditise. · 24 min LONG READ
On Systemic Errors journal A frequent critique of GenAI is that because it is probabilistic, it will inevitably make… · 8 min
Foundation Models in Biology Hit the Noise Floor journal A new benchmark of 600+ model configurations reveals that biological foundation models do… · 12 min
Market Sizing for Founders deep dive A practical framework for sizing markets when you're building something new. · 23 min LONG READ
Food for Thoughtall →
We economists have done the maths: 'growth' is a doomed strategy – there is a better way
The Guardian · 8 min · 10-06-2026 article
Stiglitz, Piketty, Raworth, Hickel and others argue that GDP growth cannot solve poverty within planetary limits—and present an 80-measure Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth, shaped with UN agencies and civil society.
The 2026 European Deep Tech Report
Dealroom, Lakestar & Walden Catalyst · 60 min · 24-03-2026 report
Fifth annual European deep tech benchmark: $690bn enterprise value, deep tech at 32% of VC, segment-by-segment funding (AI, robotics, defence, biotech), and the late-stage capital gap.
French AI Report 2026
France Digitale · 25 min · 01-06-2026 report
Annual mapping of France's AI startup landscape—780+ companies, €13bn raised, 36k jobs—and where domestic model builders, infra, and vertical applications are scaling.
French Deep Tech Report 2026
Dealroom · 40 min · 01-06-2026 report
France-focused deep tech data from Dealroom: funding, company formation, segment maps, and how the national ecosystem compares within Europe's $690bn frontier-tech market.
The $1 to $10 rule that breaks every AI business case
AI Adopters Club · 12 min · 30-04-2026 article
Brynjolfsson’s J-curve ratio: for every dollar on the model, enterprises spend up to ten on process, data, and change—why pilots stall and budgets lie.
Deep Dive: Where Value Accrues in the AI Stack
Chamath (Substack) · 25 min · 01-05-2026 article
A six-layer map of AI (infrastructure through application), fulcrum assets per layer, and how the stack forks into software AI vs physical AI.
The Three Forms of Scientific Intelligence: A Conversation with DeepMind's Pushmeet Kohli
Decoding Bio · 35 min · 01-05-2026 interview
How DeepMind picks a handful of transformative science bets per year, scaling laws in biology, and three kinds of intelligence reshaping research.
AI Coding Works. That's the Problem
SimonDev (YouTube) · 20 min · 02-05-2026 video
A developer take on why stronger AI coding tools can worsen maintenance, debt, and the gap between what ships and what stays understandable.
Claude Code Is Not Making Your Product Better
Ethan Ding · 10 min · 21-04-2026 essay
Competitive Strategy in the Age of AI
Tomasz Tunguz · 1 min · 24-04-2026 article
A strategic lens on AI distribution: commoditize complements to reinforce the model core. The piece compares Google’s historical playbook with Anthropic’s recent product moves, and argues startups can still win through focused specialization where giants cannot sustain depth.
The "Cognitive Offloading" Paradox
Dr Phil's Newsletter · 12 min · 16-04-2026 article
A synthesis of new findings on AI-supported learning: shallow, scattered AI use can hurt outcomes, while strategic delegation of substantive tasks can free cognitive capacity for higher-order thinking. The key variable is not AI use itself, but instructional design that pairs offloading with verification, retrieval, and unassisted assessment.
The illusion of thinking
The Signal (Alex Banks) · 8 min · 17-04-2026 article
What AI's biggest weakness reveals about our own minds.
When AIs act emotional
Anthropic · 5 min · 02-04-2026 video
This showed us that the activation of these patterns could actually drive Claude's behavior. And what our experiments suggest is that this Claude character has what we're calling "functional emotions," regardless of whether they're anything like human feelings. We look inside the model's "brain", the giant neural network that powers it, and by seeing which neurons "light up" in different situations, and how they're connected, we can start to understand how models think.
The Adolescence of Technology: Confronting and Overcoming the Risks of Powerful AI
Dario Amodei · 95 min · 01-01-2026 essay
How did you evolve, how did you survive this technological adolescence without destroying yourself?” When I think about where humanity is now with AI,about what we’re on the cusp of,my mind keeps going back to that scene, because the question is so apt for our current situation, and I wish we had the aliens’ answer to guide us. There is a scene in the movie version of Carl Sagan’s book Contact where the main character, an astronomer who has detected the first radio signal from an alien civilization, is being considered for the role of humanity’s representative to meet the aliens. In my essa...
Anthropic chief Dario Amodei: 'I don't want AI turned on our own people'
Financial Times · 18 min · 17-04-2026 interview
The tech entrepreneur on Claude Mythos, repercussions from the Pentagon dispute, and his message for the super-rich