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The new issue of Works in Progress, arriving with subscribers this week, is our best ever and packed with must-read pieces.
Our lead essay is @RobinRivaton and @bswud on how China's cities, and the competition between them, have driven its rise to techno-industrial preeminence.
danwwang on Chinese and American second-tier cities,
- @tylercowen on the food of Brazil,
- @vpostrel on the invention of supermarkets,
- @CharlesCMann on the discovery of porcelain,
- @salonium on the myth of accidental scientific discovery,
- Stephen Kotkin on Leninism's fatal flaw,
- @owl_posting on biomedical hedge funds,
- @PMArslanagic on the formula for lovable cities,
- @pietergaricano on Ukraine as the future of war,
- @PatRubenFitz on the Bronze Age Collapse, and
- @SCP_Hughes on the social lives of hard-partying Victorian elites.
Plus: love and shame in Ancient Rome, making mosquitoes extinct, the return of 1930s dating norms, and why Pakistan is home to the world's best architect. And our new crossword, our cocktail column, classifieds, and more!
The new edition has had a massive design upgrade with beautiful, premium matte paper, a larger form factor, and bigger, clearer and more elegant typeography. It is a joy to read.
Copies arrive with subscribers this week: subscribe now or by October 16th to get yours.
worksinprogress.co/print/
Our lead essay is @RobinRivaton and @bswud on how China's cities, and the competition between them, have driven its rise to techno-industrial preeminence.
danwwang on Chinese and American second-tier cities,
- @tylercowen on the food of Brazil,
- @vpostrel on the invention of supermarkets,
- @CharlesCMann on the discovery of porcelain,
- @salonium on the myth of accidental scientific discovery,
- Stephen Kotkin on Leninism's fatal flaw,
- @owl_posting on biomedical hedge funds,
- @PMArslanagic on the formula for lovable cities,
- @pietergaricano on Ukraine as the future of war,
- @PatRubenFitz on the Bronze Age Collapse, and
- @SCP_Hughes on the social lives of hard-partying Victorian elites.
Plus: love and shame in Ancient Rome, making mosquitoes extinct, the return of 1930s dating norms, and why Pakistan is home to the world's best architect. And our new crossword, our cocktail column, classifieds, and more!
The new edition has had a massive design upgrade with beautiful, premium matte paper, a larger form factor, and bigger, clearer and more elegant typeography. It is a joy to read.
Copies arrive with subscribers this week: subscribe now or by October 16th to get yours.
worksinprogress.co/print/
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Fans of unusual places to buy food might be interested in Bêp Mę in Bermondsey, where you buy from a woman’s balcony. Good fun.
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I would say I’d just made myself the best Manhattan I’ve ever had, thanks to the use of Maker’s 46. I’ve tried significantly more “premium” bourbons and ryes but the oaky medicinal sweetness of this just works.
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Sam Bowman retweeted
I am the king of supplementation – or used to be. I've given it up, every last supplement. Here is my story why.
worksinprogress.co/issue/against-…
I wager that few people have supplemented more enthusiastically than me, or have subscribed to so many fad or esoteric diets.
I have munched thumb-sized multivitamins. I have eaten ice cream and orange juice before bed to boost my overnight metabolism. I have chowed down on offal of all kinds – nature's multivitamin – for my skin, hair, and even my sleep. I have even consumed individual amino acids, for example glycine, a slightly sweet protein component prominent in skin and bone but not muscle meat, which people online claim improves their sleep.
I have done it all. But I am here to tell you: you need not. In fact, my long-time rival @StuartJRitchie, who has always told me that supplementation is foolish, pointless, madeup, and fake, was more right than wrong when he claimed, again and again, that 'you just piss it oot'.
I have put away my heavily researched list of the ideal supplements, I have given up looking. Why? Because 90% of 'studies' are BS, and you should simply ignore them. They are so often wrong that entire bodies of research often find the opposite of truth – as proven by later evidence.
Read my first column in @WorksInProgMag: worksinprogress.co/issue/against-…
worksinprogress.co/issue/against-…
I wager that few people have supplemented more enthusiastically than me, or have subscribed to so many fad or esoteric diets.
I have munched thumb-sized multivitamins. I have eaten ice cream and orange juice before bed to boost my overnight metabolism. I have chowed down on offal of all kinds – nature's multivitamin – for my skin, hair, and even my sleep. I have even consumed individual amino acids, for example glycine, a slightly sweet protein component prominent in skin and bone but not muscle meat, which people online claim improves their sleep.
I have done it all. But I am here to tell you: you need not. In fact, my long-time rival @StuartJRitchie, who has always told me that supplementation is foolish, pointless, madeup, and fake, was more right than wrong when he claimed, again and again, that 'you just piss it oot'.
I have put away my heavily researched list of the ideal supplements, I have given up looking. Why? Because 90% of 'studies' are BS, and you should simply ignore them. They are so often wrong that entire bodies of research often find the opposite of truth – as proven by later evidence.
Read my first column in @WorksInProgMag: worksinprogress.co/issue/against-…
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A friend of mine had to do a 15 minute interview about his job, income, previous rental history, etc, in order to *view* a flat. Luckily for him, he has a well-paid job, has lived in England all his life, and an impeccable rental history. I feel bad for people who don't.
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Sam Bowman retweeted
This year I stopped my @TheEconomist subscription after 20 years
@WorksInProgMag is replacing it for my in terms of reading time
The format of a weekly newspaper is tough to pull off in a world where news moves so quickly — a world of Substack, notifications pinging and daily updates
It wouldn’t surprise me if The Economist eventually moves to more long form reports and content and less news over time
@WorksInProgMag is replacing it for my in terms of reading time
The format of a weekly newspaper is tough to pull off in a world where news moves so quickly — a world of Substack, notifications pinging and daily updates
It wouldn’t surprise me if The Economist eventually moves to more long form reports and content and less news over time
Mike joining Works in Progress is a huge moment for us and marks the start of the next phase in our project.
He is one of the most insightful, interesting and enjoyable to read writers anywhere, and his book, The Land Trap, is fantastic and one of the most "Works in Progress" non-fiction books written in years. He is the perfect person to help us produce model-based analysis of business, economics and finance, and great original reporting on everything from robotics and drones to the state of America's cities.
Most of all I am excited about working with (another!) one of my best friends. I first met Mike when he was a student and declared afterwards that he was so impressive that I would buy stock in him if I could. It's taken 14 years, but this is one step better. Works in Progress has become harder work as it has grown, but it's amazingly fun and rewarding as well, not least because I get to do it with some of my favourite people in the world.
As Mike says, we've seen incredible growth in our first year in print and we have extremely high hopes for 2027. Above all we have to make everything we do as excellent as it possibly can be. We're looking for journalists and other writers who are doing truly excellent work to join our team, so if that's you, watch this space.
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Intriguing ideas here about using AI in education. I have a suspicion that parents who do these things at home will be giving their kids an enormous advantage over their peers in schools that do not adopt these methods pretty soon.
Wrote a quick essay for this; feedback/comments/questions welcome: angadh.com/ai-and-educati…
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Sam Bowman retweeted
Ben has for many years been the best analyst in tech. I’m very much looking forward to this new @stratechery + @stripe partnership.
stratechery.com/2026/presented…
stratechery.com/2026/presented…
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Agree with this by @dsquareddigest. Trying to reduce the "supply" of barriers to growth without addressing the "demand" for them will not work. People want these regulations because they have reasonable fears about what will happen without them!
backofmind.substack.com/p/the-mirage-o…
backofmind.substack.com/p/the-mirage-o…
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How can someone make a 921% return in 13 years while the market overall has delivered 117%? This book is an amazing insight into the mind and decisions of someone who did it.
And now you can preorder the NOMAD LETTERS (out December 1!): press.stripe.com/nomad-letters
For years these letters have circulated (at first, unofficially) among investors, acquiring a devoted readership. We wanted to give them a permanent home in print.
Nick and his partner Qais raordinary. The letters are the account of how they got there, featuring everything from studying Amazon and Costco (Nomad’s defining investments)—to visiting cement plants in Zimbabwe, and beyond.
They’re candid about their mistakes and curious about the forces that shape investors’ behavior: incentives, psychology, and the wisdom (or foolishness!) of the crowd.
Since closing the fund, they’ve devoted their time to philanthropy, a journey Nick recounts in the lovely foreword he wrote for this edition.
I’m thrilled to continue adding to the investing corner of our catalogue, and I can’t think of a better work to follow Poor Charlie’s Almanack. ❣️
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Mike joining Works in Progress is a huge moment for us and marks the start of the next phase in our project.
He is one of the most insightful, interesting and enjoyable to read writers anywhere, and his book, The Land Trap, is fantastic and one of the most "Works in Progress" non-fiction books written in years. He is the perfect person to help us produce model-based analysis of business, economics and finance, and great original reporting on everything from robotics and drones to the state of America's cities.
Most of all I am excited about working with (another!) one of my best friends. I first met Mike when he was a student and declared afterwards that he was so impressive that I would buy stock in him if I could. It's taken 14 years, but this is one step better. Works in Progress has become harder work as it has grown, but it's amazingly fun and rewarding as well, not least because I get to do it with some of my favourite people in the world.
As Mike says, we've seen incredible growth in our first year in print and we have extremely high hopes for 2027. Above all we have to make everything we do as excellent as it possibly can be. We're looking for journalists and other writers who are doing truly excellent work to join our team, so if that's you, watch this space.
He is one of the most insightful, interesting and enjoyable to read writers anywhere, and his book, The Land Trap, is fantastic and one of the most "Works in Progress" non-fiction books written in years. He is the perfect person to help us produce model-based analysis of business, economics and finance, and great original reporting on everything from robotics and drones to the state of America's cities.
Most of all I am excited about working with (another!) one of my best friends. I first met Mike when he was a student and declared afterwards that he was so impressive that I would buy stock in him if I could. It's taken 14 years, but this is one step better. Works in Progress has become harder work as it has grown, but it's amazingly fun and rewarding as well, not least because I get to do it with some of my favourite people in the world.
As Mike says, we've seen incredible growth in our first year in print and we have extremely high hopes for 2027. Above all we have to make everything we do as excellent as it possibly can be. We're looking for journalists and other writers who are doing truly excellent work to join our team, so if that's you, watch this space.
Some big personal news: I'm moving to join Works in Progress as executive editor, starting next month. I have been hoping for an opportunity to work with @bswud and @s8mb for more than a decade, and I'm incredibly excited to finally have one.
WIP is expanding on every front right now. We'll soon begin coverage of business and finance, as well as putting out more reported features. To that end, we'll be hiring more writers and reporters in the year to come. I'm planning to remain based in the US to help build out our presence here.
The print edition of WIP has existed for less than 12 months, but sometime in the next week or so we will reach our 10,000th paying print subscriber. It's a group that now includes people who've been at the highest echelons of government and who run the world's biggest public companies. We’re already on track to 3x that number next year. We'll be in store at Barnes & Noble, Hudson News and independent newsagents next week too.
I think WIP is providing something that people are craving from physical media right now: fewer, extremely well-crafted pieces in a beautifully designed form. Issues now feature an amazing group of columnists, including Tyler Cowen, Dan Wang and Stephen Kotkin. Each edition is better than the last.
You'll see us in more and more places next year too. In January, our new weekly documentary films will launch on YouTube. We're expanding into the events space, with a new series in North America. The sky is the limit from here on out.
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Beers of this strength are almost invariably revolting – they usually taste bad and make drinking a much higher stakes business than it ought to be. 4%, the moderate's choice, is just very hard to beat.
The ‘craft beer for alcoholics’ trend is now totally out of control. Basically every tall boy from a ‘craft brewer’ is approaching 10% ABV. Even Bell’s - once a connoisseur’s quaff - is getting in on it. When folks drinks less, I guess you gotta focus harder on your tier-1s
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I'm grateful to Jonathan for writing this and very pleased to publish it in Works in Progress – he does great work, and I like him and respect his views immensely. I have two thoughts in response.
One is that I am not hugely compelled by people telling others what they should focus on. As long as you're not doing active harm to the world, it's fine to work on a less high-priority area than you could. Comparative advantage is not always easy to judge from outside and part of living a satisfying life is doing what you find most intrinsically interesting and rewarding.
And entrepreneurship is *inherently* about working on things that other people underrate! There wouldn't be any opportunities for discovery if it was clear exactly what everyone should focus their time on.
(I don't have much time for people who complain that a handful of EAs are worried about shrimp welfare either, unless they are actually hurting the shrimp.)
Two: even if you concede Jonathan's argument that encouraging nice buildings and places does not instrumentally advance the cause of YIMBYism – we can agree to disagree – I think that it is a mistake to dismiss aesthetics as being trivial.
People want beauty and pleasure in their lives, not just boxes to sleep and work in. Cities should be amazing places to be, and the way they look and feel is a big part of that. The greatest cities I have been to are Paris, London, Tokyo, and New York, all of which are breathtakingly beautiful cities in their own way, even though some of them create that beautiful whole from various ugly parts arranged well. I think this is often true of parts of London, where individually ugly buildings nonetheless combine to make a beautiful skyline or street. The best places, like inner Paris and lower Manhattan, combine beautiful streetscapes with individually-beautiful buildings.
If you think too much about "units of housing" and not enough about which places people most want to live in and visit, you will miss a lot of what actually matters to people about the places they live and visit. It is a constant error to think that the "function" of buildings and cities does not include "being pleasant and looking nice".
This is all obviously subjective, but so are lots of other important things that still benefit from some form of collective decision making – pollution, noise, public order, the provision of public goods. The interesting meta-question to me is what institutions allow for the best ways to make these decisions and resolve conflicts between people.
One is that I am not hugely compelled by people telling others what they should focus on. As long as you're not doing active harm to the world, it's fine to work on a less high-priority area than you could. Comparative advantage is not always easy to judge from outside and part of living a satisfying life is doing what you find most intrinsically interesting and rewarding.
And entrepreneurship is *inherently* about working on things that other people underrate! There wouldn't be any opportunities for discovery if it was clear exactly what everyone should focus their time on.
(I don't have much time for people who complain that a handful of EAs are worried about shrimp welfare either, unless they are actually hurting the shrimp.)
Two: even if you concede Jonathan's argument that encouraging nice buildings and places does not instrumentally advance the cause of YIMBYism – we can agree to disagree – I think that it is a mistake to dismiss aesthetics as being trivial.
People want beauty and pleasure in their lives, not just boxes to sleep and work in. Cities should be amazing places to be, and the way they look and feel is a big part of that. The greatest cities I have been to are Paris, London, Tokyo, and New York, all of which are breathtakingly beautiful cities in their own way, even though some of them create that beautiful whole from various ugly parts arranged well. I think this is often true of parts of London, where individually ugly buildings nonetheless combine to make a beautiful skyline or street. The best places, like inner Paris and lower Manhattan, combine beautiful streetscapes with individually-beautiful buildings.
If you think too much about "units of housing" and not enough about which places people most want to live in and visit, you will miss a lot of what actually matters to people about the places they live and visit. It is a constant error to think that the "function" of buildings and cities does not include "being pleasant and looking nice".
This is all obviously subjective, but so are lots of other important things that still benefit from some form of collective decision making – pollution, noise, public order, the provision of public goods. The interesting meta-question to me is what institutions allow for the best ways to make these decisions and resolve conflicts between people.
I'm in @WorksInProgMag's letters section this week, arguing that British YIMBYism's preoccupation with beauty is a massive waste of time and resources.
Beauty is marginal. There are bigger problems to solve in British housing—they're just all a bit less sexy.
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PS: It's kind of funny that this is Jonathan's header picture, from what looks like a very interesting event YIMBY Melbourne held on the *barriers* to beautiful building. I think if aesthetics really were as marginal as Jonathan says here, he wouldn't have organised this event packed out lecture theatre attending it!
youtube.com/watch?v=yLqJww…
youtube.com/watch?v=yLqJww…
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I initially had the same reaction as these writers – the idea of a book being banned because the author has expressed support for a terrorist group is outrageous, as is the punishment of people for saying they support Palestine Action (or any other terrorist group).
What I Rooney has promised to donate her royalties to Palestine Action. It seems a lot less clear that you should be allowed to conduct business activity with the express purpose of raising money for a terrorist group. The books should be allowed to be sold, but the royalties should be withheld. I would not allow people to fundraise for violent Neo-Nazi or Islamist groups either.
You could argue that Palestine Action should not be proscribed, but that is not the argument being made in this letter.
What I Rooney has promised to donate her royalties to Palestine Action. It seems a lot less clear that you should be allowed to conduct business activity with the express purpose of raising money for a terrorist group. The books should be allowed to be sold, but the royalties should be withheld. I would not allow people to fundraise for violent Neo-Nazi or Islamist groups either.
You could argue that Palestine Action should not be proscribed, but that is not the argument being made in this letter.
The specific case of Sally Rooney isn't an act of censorship.
I am a free speech absolutist. If she wanted to write book called "Why I support Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the IRA" then I'd support her right to do so. Britain should have a First Amendment approach to speech.
However, if she wants to give the proceeds of that book to those organisations, then it is right for her publisher to prevent her (and it would probably be criminally liable too.)
The open letter is cowardly. They should have the courage to state clearly their view: it should be legal to directly fund organisations that unapologetically break into military base.
BTW, I note that none of the signatories of this letter signed the Harper's letter in favour of free speech. Some however attacked it.
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The Romans were a lot less sexually permissive than I used to think. Free men were permitted to rape slaves, including children, but extramarital sex between free men was punished, as was female infidelity.
worksinprogress.co/issue/were-the…
worksinprogress.co/issue/were-the…
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