Links 24 April 2026

Francisco Goya, A Way of Flying, 1815

Writing advice from Scott Siskind, starting with "Tell the truth."

Still Uploading Chapters of The Voice from the Darkness at Royal Road.

Irish Travellers, who are genetically identical to other Irish people but live like gypsies, used to have famously large families, but a recent study finds their total fertility has fallen to around 2.5. (Twitter/X)

Major Marcel Duchamp show at the Met. (NY Times, MOMA, Frieze, 35-minute video)

"Blake Whiting" and the rise of the AI academic.

Derek Thompson on the analogy between the introduction of electricity to the economy and the rise of AI (Twitter/X)

Papyrus with a fragment of the Iliad found in a Roman-period Egyptian mummy.

Perun on the strategic implications of the fall of Viktor Orban, 1-hour video.

How to become a Daoist immortal, 25-minute video. Sadly the first steps are all about giving things up (food, sex) and there's a step in the middle where you have to find a great sage and get him to teach you his secrets.

Alex Tabarrok on Jacquard looms, Luddites, and opposition to AI.

Emotional 33-minute documentary on the Hungarian election.

mRNA vaccine for pancreatic cancer: NBC news, NY Times.

Interesting new house in India by Iki Builds.

The politics of German carnival.

Alex Nowrasteh against saying that "the culture" causes anything: "When someone says 'culture explains X,' they’re gesturing at a black box the size of human civilization and calling the gesture a theory."

Using Joel Mokyr's ideas to explain why the Roman Empire did not industrialize, 11-minute video.