the nest.

A non-specific list of things we happen to find interesting. These are generally not endorsements, and the exceptions are tagged as such.

Charities.

I’m only putting the most efficient ones I’m familiar with here. Some charities are simply more effective than others, and if you’re donating, it’s orders of magnitude better to donate to the good ones.
Against Malaria Foundation. (tags: charity, medicine | endorsed)
Malaria Consortium. (tags: charity, medicine | endorsed)
Hellen Keller Intl. (tags: charity, medicine | endorsed)
New Incentives. (tags: charity, medicine | endorsed)
GiveWell. Not a charity, but an independent charity evaluator. There’s a couple of them. See here if you want to figure out where our claims about charity efficiency discrepancies come from. (tags: rationality | endorsed)

Nonfiction, short form.

Things that matter are boring. (tags: social, economics, rationality)
Salad theory. (tags: fun)
The honesty tax. (tags: social, US)
The security mindset. (tags: security)
A mathematician’s lament. (tags: mathematics, social)
Credit card debt collection. (tags: economics)
Things you’re allowed to do. Often, you’re not considering all of your options. We found this after we started making our own list.
Twelve recursive explanations. (tags: fun)
No one cared about my spreadsheets. (tags: social, economics)
List of common misconceptions. (tags: history, science)
Person paper on purity in language. (tags: feminism | cw)
Playing to win, Alice Maz. (tags: competition, economics, fun)
95%-ile isn’t that good. (tags: productivity, social, competition)
Action! (tags: productivity, rationality)
nohello. (tags: productivity, social)
In My Culture. (tags: social)
Silent Treatment, the troubling response to a memoir of incest. (tags: social, feminism | cw)
Arguing with myself (and losing). (tags: social)
Nobody gives a shit. (tags: law | cw)
Programming sucks. (tags: programming)
A comprehensive reboot of law reinforcement. (tags: rationality, law | US, disputed-author)
They write the right stuff. (tags: programming)
Orchietectomy, part 2. (tags: trans, medicine | cw)
How one Las Vegas ED saved hundreds of lives after the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. (tags: medicine, journalism | cw)
On being Rich-ish. (tags: social, economics)
Structured procrastination. (tags: productivity, fun)
Mythic vs folk values. (tags: social)
Things you should never do. (tags: programming, economics)
The problem with non-philosophers. (tags: philosophy)
List of atrocities committed by US authorities. (tags: communism, US)
Academic urban legends. (tags: linguistics, social, academia)
What colour are your bits? (tags: programming, law)
Who regulates the regulators? (tags: law, economics, medicine, US)
No, it’s not The Incentives—it’s you. (tags: academia)
The online business of (animal) torture. (tags: social | cw)
I put a toaster in the dishwasher. (tags: rationality, fun)
6 lessons I learned working at an art gallery (tags: productivity, economics)
The seven deadly speaks of politi-speak. (tags: social)
What’s the matter with India? (tags: law, social)
DM’s Esoteric Programming Languages. (tags: programming, fun)
500 million, but not a single one more. (tags: social, history)
Isaac Newton, his eye, and his bodkin. (tags: history, fun)
Why ~everyone should take creatine forever. (tags: medicine, rationality)
The satanic panic is incredibly weird. (tags: law, US)
Algorithms interviews: theory vs practice (tags: programming, productivity)
The Copenhagen interpretation of ethics. (tags: social, rationality, philosophy)
Why cross-examination is so damn great. (tags: social)
Morality is accidental and self-congratulatory. (tags: social, history)
NSA, NIST, and post-quantum cryptography. (tags: programming, security, US)
No silver bullet solutions to the werewolf problem. (tags: social)
Two Americas, one bank branch, and $50,000 cash. (tags: security, US)
Frequently asked questions about PEPFAR. (tags: medicine, social)
When will AGI arrive? (tags: programming)
In defense of compensated kidney donation. (tags: medicine, economics | surprising)
Confidence all the way up. (tags: rationality)
Grayed out options. (tags: rationality)
Some preliminary notes towards a real cost-benefit analysis of prisons. (tags: economics, academia)
Most of what you read on the internet is written by insane people. (tags: social)
Growth of photovoltaics. Also see solar power by country. (tags: industry | surprising)
Comphetitive transwomanhood. (tags: trans, feminism, medicine | cw)
They/them pronouns & conflicting access needs. (tags: social, trans)
The man who saved a billion lives. (tags: industry)
How to win at board games as a novice. (tags: competition, fun)
Why milk costs $9 per gallon in Hawaii. (tags: law, US)
Claude Code makes several thousand dollars in 30 minutes. (tags: programming, industry)
Kids are sick, a lot. We try not to forget just how shitty being a child is. We had somehow forgotten about this aspect of that whole situation. (tags: medicine, social)
Excerpt from “Ending Medical Reversal.” (tags: medical | surprising)
Is this my character’s fault? (tags: fun, social)
One of my favorite game design tricks. (tags: fun, competition)
Be impatient. (tags: productivity)
Some examples of people quickly accomplishing ambitious things together. (tags: industry | surprising)
Internet search tips. (tags: productivity | influential)
Firefox keyboard shortcuts. (tags: productivity)
A collection of dice problems. (tags: mathematics, fun)
Ur-Fascism. (tags: politics)

Nonfiction, long form.

Playing to win, David Sirlin. (tags: productivity, competition)
The sequences. (tags: rationality | disputed-author)
The story of VaccinateCA. (tags: medicine, industry, US | surprising, influential)

Original fiction.

Unsong. (tags: fun, US | disputed-author)
Exhalation. (tags: philosophy)
Common tech jobs described as cabals of Mesoamerican wizards. (tags: fun, programming)
MMAcevedo. (tags: philosophy | cw)
Chaser 6. (tags: philosophy, social)
Game review: Rabbit Simulator. (tags: cw)
Through The Flash. (tags: cw)

Larger repositories.

Strasbourg Observers. (tags: law)
Verfassungsblog. (tags: law)
Hacker News. (tags: programming)
Falsehoods programmers believe. Turns out, there’s a lot of them. (tags: fun, programming, social)
Archive of Our Own. Mainly fanfiction.
Royal Road. Mainly original fiction.
Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group. (tags: fun)

Fanfiction.

Pokemon: The Origin of Species. (tags: rationality)
The Metropolitan Man. (tags: rationality)
A Common Sense Guide to Doing the Most Good. (tags: rationality, altruism)
The Good War.
Changeling in Exile.

Video.

Tom7. (tags: channel | fun, programming)
DoshDoshington. (tags: channel | fun)
Moon Channel. (tags: channel | law)
HGModernism. (tags: channel | fun, rationality)
Jorbs. (tags: channel | fun, rationality)
Neurotic Goose. (tags: channel | fun)
Every Frame a Painting. (tags: channel | cinematography)
Folding Ideas. (tags: channel | cinematography, social, economy)
Everything new in Stockfish 18. (tags: programming | surprising)
A guide to consent. (tags: social)
Tactics of physical pen testers. (tags: security | influential)
Beating every possible game of Pokemon Platinum at the same time. (tags: fun, programming | surprising)
Synesthesia silliness. A decent fraction of humanity will be able to hear this gif, which is just neat. (tags: fun | surprising)

Games.

Baba is You. (tags: puzzle)
Primordialis. (tags: roguelike)
Noita. (tags: roguelike)
Celeste. (tags: platformer, trans)
catfishing.net. Fun little game about Wikipedia categories.

Interactive.

The evolution of trust. (tags: social, mathematics, fun)
neal.fun. (tags: fun)
monkeytype.com (tags: productivity)

Music.

Discipline. (tags: album)
The Wall. (tags: album)
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. (tags: album)

Poetry.

If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso. (tags: fun)
Fire and Ice.
seventh heaven.

Tools.

Paywall remover. (tags: piracy)
Anna’s Archive. (tags: piracy)
SLUM. (tags: piracy)
Tree-style tab. (tags: browser-extension)
uBlock Origin. (tags: browser-extension)
ClearURLs. (tags: browser-extension)
Contextual Wiktionary. (tags: browser-extension)
bitwarden. It’s a password manager.
Transfeminine Science, for a better understanding of DIY HRT. See also HRT Cafe and the stuff linked to there. Note: DIY HRT is very cheap, low-risk, effective, and has no permanent effects if tried short-term. (tags: trans, medicine | endorsed, influential)
Wiktionary.
Wikipedia.
AnyDice. It’s a very good way to figure out what you’re doing when rolling dice.
OEIS. (tags: mathematics)
Vencord. If you use Discord, you should also use this.

The tagging system.

Tags are descriptive, not exhaustive. The absence of a tag does not imply the absence of relevant content, just that we didn’t consider such content central.

‘endorsed’ denotes content we actively approve of.
‘interesting’ is the unused implicit tag, for content that is interesting we have no obvious significant disagremeents with. Anything that doesn’t have another epistemic status tag is this.
‘disputed’ is content we actively disapprove of in some way, but still consider to have valuable points.
‘disputed-author’ has an author we actively disapprove of in some ways, independent of the value of the content.
‘speculative’ is applied to content that doesn’t have particularly strong evidentiary backing, but we think is neat nevertheless.
‘identifying-problem’ is applied to content that identifies a problem without proposing a concrete solution. (This is still potentially very valuable.)

‘programming’ concerns anything to do with hardware, software, or the ways they’re used in the real world.
‘social’ concerns content that relates to how humans act in groups. It can also be about social interaction, and how to handle that well – content that aims to inform the audience about how to interact with other people by necessity makes specific assumptions, and this says things about the environment the writer is in.
‘economics’ talks about how value flows through large systems.
‘law’ concerns legal matters.
‘medicine’ is applied to things to do with health.
‘security’ is to do with safety of all types, physical and digital and everything else.
‘fun’ are things made for fun, and likely to induce fun in people who are similar to us.
‘mtg’ concerns specifically the game of Magic: the Gathering.
‘linguistics’ deals with language, and all the fun surrounding that.
‘rationality’ has to do with decision-making, and specifically getting better at decision-making.
‘productivity’ either aims to increase your ability to do stuff in the real world, or is very likely to do so by accident.
‘philosophy’ is effusive and nebulous. We’ll put a better description of what gets tagged this once we figure it out.
‘feminism’ deals with the philosophy of feminism.
‘communism’ concerns the project of communism.
‘trans’ applies to transgender issues.
‘history’ has to do with stuff that happened in the past, but not of the very recent kind.
‘mathematics’ pokes at mathematics.
‘cinematography’ is for thinking about movies.
‘piracy’ handles the topic of accessing content through means outside the ones explicitly proscribed by law. ‘academia’ concerns the structures of academic publishing, and everything that sprawls off from that. ‘US’ is content that is written from a US-centric perspective. ‘literature’ is about writing. ‘altruism’ is about helping people you don’t need to help.
‘journalism’ refers to stuff that was news at the time of publishing. ‘industry’ is to do with some large industry.

‘influential’ is applied to content we found unusually valuable long-term or that significantly changed how we conceptualise a given domain. ‘surprising’ is content that some or all of significantly surprised us.

‘cw’ has things we expect to be unpleasant in a non-negligible fraction of readers if seen without preparation. Doesn’t necessarily imply graphic content.
‘nsfw’ contains sexual content.

Some tags disambiguate the form a piece of content takes – e.g. ‘album,’ ‘channel.’ These are untracked here.

Potential tags: identifying-problem observation policy-proposal