atlasunshrugged

Shameless plug but you might also be interested in Estonia's story if you want to hear about how a formerly Communist country also became quite developed in a single generation (and churned out startups like Pipedrive, Veriff, Bolt, Wise and partially Skype). I wrote a book about it which of course I hope you check out, but I also went pretty in depth in this interview: https://www.statecraft.pub/p/how-to-digitize-the-government

This is basically the idea of enshittification popularized by Cory Doctorow right?

Indeed, a few years ago I spent a couple hundred bucks to travel from DC to LA (in a seat, not a cabin). It took 3 days and was only a little cheaper than a flight that would have taken five hours, but it was something I always wanted to do. But if it were competing on price and/or convenience, long range train travel in the US almost always loses to flights except for in the Northeast corridor (and even then its at best a tossup)

Here's my usual playlist (tilted towards policy stuff):

The Realignment AI Summer w/Dean Ball (he has a good substack too) Dwarkesh Podcast American Diplomat Marginal Revolution (also has a good blog) Statecraft with Santi Ruiz The Dynamist Derisky Business from Center for a New American Security School of War The Sunday Show by Tech Policy Press (also has a newsletter) Econtalk Natsec Tech by SCSP Politico Tech (also a range of newsletters) ChinaTalk CQ Rollcall Goodfellows by the Hoover Institution Hudson Institute Events Podcast Conversations With Tyler .think atlantic Building for the Future by CSIS Into Africa by CSIS War on the Rocks Rational Security The Vergecast A16z podcast

Despite being clearly self-serving to further promote their ad/product, I found this to be really interesting and detailed in enumerating the cost-benefit analysis they went through

Does this also impact US metrics for capital raised? My understanding is that the Delaware C-Corp is still the startup standard for founders from anywhere in the world to raise global capital, which I imagine skews where the capital actually ends up flowing if they are actually building a company in a foreign location and just using the Delaware entity as a holding co.

Mine is mainly for my book about how Estonia modernized post re-independence and became a startup and e-government hub but I also have a fun 3-day visitors guide for Tallinn, Estonia. https://www.rebootinganation.com/

In the case I encountered it was an AI safety org that many in industry were against but indeed, I would guess your example to be the standard case

In a former job I worked on a tech co's policy response to a major piece of California AI legislation a couple of years ago and was stunned to learn that nonprofits (at least, I'd be shocked if this didn't also include companies) basically sponsor bills and just find lawmakers to introduce and champion them.

I don't work there but I just wanted to share that the federal government is doing a big push for bringing in technical talent. https://techforce.gov/

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/15/trump-ai-tech-force-amazon-a...

Oh that's a great flag, I've just gone into their system and done that, appreciate the tip!

Sent you a message on LN

Ha its super old now but I think I had read the Ayn Rand book and was frustrated that it felt a little simplistic (tbh I do have some libertarian tendencies but the world is a messy and complicated place) so this was my way of acknowledging the idea but disagreeing with the premise, especially because the libertarian philosophy felt so prevalent in the tech world at the time

I appreciate that!

It depends what you're looking for! I moved there when I was in my mid 20's on a one year contract to run a team for the government's e-Residency program and ended up staying a bit longer (and have gone back every year since). Parts I enjoyed -- once you find a community it's a pretty strong one (but it took about 6 months for me to make any Estonian friends), there's a good early stage tech scene, the old town in Tallinn is beautiful and city living very approachable. I probably wouldn't move back now unless there was a very good reasons or to raise kids (it seems like a great place for that, very safe, great education system, etc.) just because it's relatively small (total pop ~1.3M) and so doesn't have as much opportunity as other places, plus my parents live in the US and I like being closer to them.

Yeah, it was pretty robust in the end! I think I cut down the final manuscript to just under 80k words plus the references (there was actually something in my contract about a max word count). I definitely think having the structure helped, both for the publisher and for me to have a sort of blueprint to follow.

It's not always a dealbreaker, I didn't have any social media following or anything -- the way I pitched it was by figuring out a bunch of conferences, niche podcasts, etc. and highlighting that there was an audience there I could activate (and marketing is a big part of the book process I've learned).

My bio has my email now!

Yeah, I have to admit because this was my first work I maybe overdid it in providing references because I wanted to default to having real historical data and not just writing a lot of personal opinions with no backing (it was a nightmare writing up that reference section but I'm glad I did it in the end) and if I'm being honest, because I'm not in academia and didn't have credentials as an "Estonia expert" I wanted to play it safe.

Edit: Added some context and I'd also mention that one thing that was quite helpful is that at the start of the writing process I created a massive spreadsheet where I'd add in quotes, writing, and anything interesting I thought I might pull from (some of it manually written, like when watching documentaries). This was hugely helpful when I was going back but also during the writing process so I had a single source of truth I could keyword search. I've just checked it and its got 4787 rows, with most entries being about a paragraph long

That's awesome, can I ask what the topic is? What I did for "selling" the book was to create a proposal -- about 45 pages that has a skeleton outline of each chapter (it changed significantly during the end writing process but gave the publisher a feel for the topic), a sample chapter, and some more sales/marketing details like what are comparable books (and how well they sold if you have that data), who your audience is and how you plan to reach them (OP was in a great place having a following), why you're the right person to write the book, etc.

Yep, thats it, sorry for the slow replies, I'm out with family for the holidays!

Ha, I didn't, I wish Goodreads would get a major update!

I appreciate you sharing this! I just published my first book (nothing about programming, its about how the nation of Estonia modernized post re-independence and became a tech/e-gov hub in a single generation) and I can sympathize with a lot of this. My experience was a bit different -- I also knew the advance was going to be nothing and had a day job so I said I didn't need one (which was a relief for them as I was with a smaller publisher) and instead asked for more books to give away and some other contract terms. It took many months of negotiating to finalize the agreement and then they wanted the manuscript in ~7 months from contract signing. I guess they also assumed that I'd miss at least one deadline but instead I took a bunch of time off to get it done. I think the most important lesson for me is that book publishing, unless you're focused on trying to be the top 1% (maybe even .1%) in a popular category, is not going to be very lucrative, especially with a publisher that takes a major cut. It's easier than ever to go direct, in my case because I had a niche book and I wasn't doing it for money, I valued the prestige (or perceived prestige anyways) of having a book with a name brand publisher as I thought it'd be more helpful for my career in other ways, and candidly was mostly a passion project that I didn't feel strongly about monetizing!

If any folks want to talk about nonfiction publishing, I'm always happy to chat as many people were incredibly generous with their time for me and I'd like to try to pay it forward.

I finally read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and it was phenomenal, I'm sure an excellent re-read

It's a pretty old book, but I think my favorite this year was The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer which was great fun for an avid Simpsons fan (of the first 10 seasons at least).

Of course, I'd also be remiss not to mention that I published a book called Rebooting a Nation about how the nation of Estonia modernized post re-independence and became a hub for startups and e-government in a single generation. Foreign Affairs was kind enough to just do a review: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/rebooting-nation-incr...

Its not clear to me whether this will impact all foreign made drones or just those from China. I get that DJI is the core target, but does this mean that a competitor from Europe (ex. Ukraine which I imagine will have a burgeoning drone market, esp for commercial/defense applications) will need a natsec signoff in order to sell a drone in the US?

Edit to add: From additional reporting on the issue, it seems that the answer is yes, it will affect all countries

Probably most surprising here was how many mentions Twilight got! Not the book I expected to see mentioned often on this forum

I thought this was interesting: Almost all the enacted bills encouraging data centers to locate in a state were passed by Republican legislatures, and more bills addressing data centers’ environmental risks were proposed in Democratic legislatures than Republican legislatures. Concern about the impacts of data centers on power prices was bipartisan.

Link to company blog post: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/mozillas-next...

https://sam.gov/opp/7332ade93217443ba8c9abb916904e03/view#ge... (for details on the program from NSF and to learn more)

I thought this was one of the most interesting stats: Among Core Republicans, 80% oppose political violence. Among New Entrants, by contrast, 54% say political violence can be justified. Support for political violence is also high among those who believe many conspiracy theories and among those who tolerate openly racist or antisemitic individuals. Age is one of the strongest predictors: just 13% of those over 50 in the Current GOP justify political violence, compared with 57% of those under 50.