Manuscriptions

📗 REVIEW: Coal by Barbara Freese

The black rock that bootstrapped modern civilization, from Roman jewelry to corrupt psuedo-govenments stamping out angry miners' 'terrorist' cells.

Feb 11 • Eleanor Konik

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📚 Neat Stuff I Read in January 2026

Tips for improving your AI-monitoring intuitions, intellectual endurance, and grasp of power-brokering institutions. Also: neat parasitic worms, a…

Feb 4 • Eleanor Konik

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January 2026

💎 Claude + Obsidian Got a Level Up

How to get the most out of Claude + Obsidian as somebody who is not a programmer or entrepreneur and is just trying to make life easier

Jan 22 • Eleanor Konik

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🎓 How Locusts Cause Famines and Shaped the Middle East

When there are too many grasshoppers, people starve. A look at Palestinian, Nebraskan, and East African locust swarms.

Jan 21 • Eleanor Konik

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📗 REVIEW: The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester

A history of precision enginering spanning the first machine-bored cannons to the reason ultra-flat planes are vital for space telescopes and jet…

Jan 14 • Eleanor Konik

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📚 Neat Stuff I Read Before January 2026

The plan for Manuscriptions in 2026, plus a bunch of neat articles about science, history, technology, and literature. Deep dives on pen cap…

Jan 7

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December 2025

📗 Toy Problems Make Economics Easier To Grasp

I use fiction to understand the edges of real-world problems that confuse me -- like how libertarian free market theory accounts for the need for group…

Dec 31, 2025 • Eleanor Konik

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🎓 Discussion Qs on Wealth, Marriage, Education, & Inventors

The relationship between success and money, with side quests into Assyrian marriage contracts and Imperial boarding schools.

Dec 23, 2025 • Eleanor Konik

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📚 Neat Stuff I Read in December 2025

Famine-fighting wheat, hippopotamus schemes, pagan witchcraft historiography, Boox e-reader hacks, and mythbusting deep dives on asthma, colds, …

Dec 20, 2025 • Eleanor Konik

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🎓 When Canals and Bridges Fail Us

Sandstorms, droughts, and big big ships have implications for the carrying capacity of the world. Which is to say: how many people can be alive at once.

Dec 10, 2025 • RobRoy and Eleanor Konik

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🎂 It's My Birthday, Please Comment!

An Open Thread in the tradition of Ask A Manager, Astral Codex Ten, Naval Gazing, & Many More

Dec 3, 2025 • Eleanor Konik

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November 2025

🌪️ Do Crises Really "Reveal" Character?

Advice columnists — and fiction novelists — often claim that pressure exposes “who we really are,” but I'm not sure how relevant those crises really are…

Nov 26, 2025 • Eleanor Konik

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