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Works in Progress✓

@WorksInProgMag

Works in Progress is a magazine of new and underrated ideas to improve the world. Subscribe to our new print edition now. We are proud to be part of @Stripe.

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  1. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    Issue 26 is out now. Become a subscriber at
    Sam Bowman @s8mb
    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. It also includes: - @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.
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  2. Sam Bowman✓@s8mb
    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. It also includes: - @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.
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  3. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    We’re delighted to announce that @danwwang is making his debut as a contributor, with a column for this issue of @WorksInProgress. Few people understand the China–US contrast as well as Dan Wang, and fewer still write about it with so much talent. His book Breackneck has introduced the now famous meme of China as a “country of engineers” and United States as a “country of lawyers,” to explain the differences in building capacity and physical world stagnation we are seeing between the two polities. In his new column for us, he takes up one specific thread in the long-running debate over how China and the US compare and argues that both owe part of their power to being polycentric. One observation is that both the American and US capitals are not their biggest cities. Vienna, London, Seoul and Paris dwarf their countries’ second cities, by four to seven times. By contrast, Beijing isn’t China’s largest city, and DC isn’t even in the top five in the US. Does this make US and China lame, for having smol capitals? No! On the contrary, Dan thinks that this friction between political and economic centers is important and at least partially explains why both countries can combine dynamism with strong states. But the two countries are polycentric in very different ways. China’s regions are culturally distinct and are shaped heavily by geography. While coastal provinces tend to look outward, mountain areas like Sichuan and Chongqing are characterized by evading the center’s edicts. Dan also points out some misconceptions: yes, China has central control, but it is weaker than it look. Local officials often ignore or quietly subvert senseless directives from Beijing, with enforcement thinning out quickly beyond the big cities. The characteristic feature of American polycentrism is how well it sorts people into domains and “sends” them to specific cities: this is reminiscent of the point @patio11 has made around “The Sort.” In America, the smartest and most driven tend to cluster in a handful of cities, above all New York and San Francisco, with Washington and Boston are slightly behind them. More than this: each field has an obvious center: AI has its capital in SF, for policy and politics you have DC, for finance New York and for biotech Boston and more recently, SF. Different cities in America also prize different things: Miami values looking good, Boston being intelligent and bookish, LA how famous you are and New York how rich you are. There is so much variety in terms of who you can choose to become in America. And the city you decide to live in might end up shaping who you are, moreso than in any other country!
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  4. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    Works in Progress has deep British roots. We think our origins explain much about our character and the specific ways in which we care about ideas. A less British WiP would not be WiP. A unique culture and intellectual environment that it gan gift to the world is just one of the reasons why we want the British civilization to prosper. But civilizations need multiple elements to preserve themselves, and one of those elements is material prosperity and economic growth: these are the basis of everything else. Without them, it's hard to achieve higher-order human flourishing. We are excited to organize this event with @LSEnews, on how Britain can maximally take advantage of the AI revolution. It's late, but hopefully not too late!
    Sam Bowman @s8mb
    Join Works in Progress at Building Abundance: How Britain can flourish in the age of AI, a day of ideas for rebuilding Britain’s economy and state so it can adapt to and embrace artificial intelligence and other opportunities for growth. Sessions include: - @Dominic2306 and Morgan McSweeney in conversation on the decline and fall of British state capacity, - @JohnFingleton1 on the Nuclear Taskforce and its implementation by the government, one year on from its pledge to implement it in full. - @bswud, @SCP_Hughes and me on why nearly every attempt to get Britain building has failed; - @rachelwolf on what the public really thinks about economic growth and AI; - @lugaricano on messy jobs and Britain’s labour market; - @jujulemons on why Britain needs gigawatt-scale compute, and how to get it built here; - @salonium on why fixing clinical trials is the best industrial policy Britain could have; - @MichaelDnes1 on building the first new tunnel under the Pennines since 1954; - @RobertBoswall on how to finance and power the data centre buildout; and - @daisychristo on why VAR matters for state capacity. ​It will be held on Thursday 3rd December at the LSE, from 1pm to 7:30pm (doors open 1pm for a 1:20pm start). We're hosting it in association with the LSE Law School and School of Public Policy. Tickets are free. See you there!
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  5. Sam Bowman✓@s8mb
    Join Works in Progress at Building Abundance: How Britain can flourish in the age of AI, a day of ideas for rebuilding Britain’s economy and state so it can adapt to and embrace artificial intelligence and other opportunities for growth. Sessions include: - @Dominic2306 and Morgan McSweeney in conversation on the decline and fall of British state capacity, - @JohnFingleton1 on the Nuclear Taskforce and its implementation by the government, one year on from its pledge to implement it in full. - @bswud, @SCP_Hughes and me on why nearly every attempt to get Britain building has failed; - @rachelwolf on what the public really thinks about economic growth and AI; - @lugaricano on messy jobs and Britain’s labour market; - @jujulemons on why Britain needs gigawatt-scale compute, and how to get it built here; - @salonium on why fixing clinical trials is the best industrial policy Britain could have; - @MichaelDnes1 on building the first new tunnel under the Pennines since 1954; - @RobertBoswall on how to finance and power the data centre buildout; and - @daisychristo on why VAR matters for state capacity. ​It will be held on Thursday 3rd December at the LSE, from 1pm to 7:30pm (doors open 1pm for a 1:20pm start). We're hosting it in association with the LSE Law School and School of Public Policy. Tickets are free. See you there!
    Download
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  6. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    We think issue 26 is our best and most beautiful one yet. Tomorrow, a very special writer is making his debut for us in a column for this issue. Of course, if you are a print subscriber (which you should be, see link below), you might guess who that is. Stay tuned!
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  8. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    We’re a magazine that believes in craft. Real humans obsess over every detail of what you read and see, from the right word in an article to the exact shade of red in an illustration. We see the slop versus craft dimension as being defining for the coming decade and we are proud to declare where our loyalty lies through every inch of our magazine.
    Alex Imas @alexolegimas
    It is a joy to see people making beautiful things.
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  9. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    Posts @WorksInProgMag
    You can subscribe here to our print edition:
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  11. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    They say that AI is going to reduce the rewards to being intelligent. This is not true... yet. At WiP at least, we want intelligent, well-informed and original people to write for us. The reward? What was once the purview of Kings: exquisite illustration of your thoughts. You basically get our Design Team, led by the marvellous @AtalantaArdenM to do a pesonalized illustration of the deepest corners of your brain, immortalised for posterity.
    Scott Wessman @scottew
    Imagine how good it would feel to get published in WIP
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  12. Scott Wessman✓@scottew
    Imagine how good it would feel to get published in WIP
    Works in Progress @WorksInProgMag
    At Works In Progress we are always looking for new writers with smart, fresh takes the world needs to hear. Could you be one of them? We publish longreads on tech, policy, economics, architecture, culture, and all sorts of things. If you write for us your work will be printed in our beautiful magazine, read by many of the world's most interesting people. We also pay well. Here are some examples of the sort of articles we would love to commission: - Why isn't there more semiconductor manufacturing in Silicon Valley? - Fifteen years ago, CRISPR was an incredibly promising new medical technology. What has happened to all the CRISPR drugs? - Japan was once the stock example of a low-fertility country, but it has staved off further decline as other East Asian countries have plummeted past it. How? - Poland has had exceptional post-communism economic growth, and is on track to overtake Britain in wealth per capita in 2030. What caused the Polish economic miracle? If you have an idea for something you think is the sort of thing we would publish - or the sort of thing we *should* be publishing - please get in touch, or send a pitch to pitches@worksinprogress.co.
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  13. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    At Works In Progress we are always looking for new writers with smart, fresh takes the world needs to hear. Could you be one of them? We publish longreads on tech, policy, economics, architecture, culture, and all sorts of things. If you write for us your work will be printed in our beautiful magazine, read by many of the world's most interesting people. We also pay well. Here are some examples of the sort of articles we would love to commission: - Why isn't there more semiconductor manufacturing in Silicon Valley? - Fifteen years ago, CRISPR was an incredibly promising new medical technology. What has happened to all the CRISPR drugs? - Japan was once the stock example of a low-fertility country, but it has staved off further decline as other East Asian countries have plummeted past it. How? - Poland has had exceptional post-communism economic growth, and is on track to overtake Britain in wealth per capita in 2030. What caused the Polish economic miracle? If you have an idea for something you think is the sort of thing we would publish - or the sort of thing we *should* be publishing - please get in touch, or send a pitch to pitches@worksinprogress.co.
    114755635.7K
  14. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    Our editors are busy improving the world, when they are not writing articles. Today, Saloni Dattani, known as @salonium, gave a talk about the importance of making clinical trials more efficient for @wellcometrust. She also presented her bottlenecks game, showing how the clinical trials constraint can limit an entire system’s performance and why addressing this crucial bottleneck is key to improving the efficiency of medical innovation.
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  15. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    Posts @WorksInProgMag
    Saloni has recently written a big article on this topic:
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  16. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    Many are saying! "I'm a huge Works In Progress fan, of course (...) I'm sure we all know, the articles are really excellent, the authors are really excellent, the design is really excellent. Everything about Works in Progress really, I think, is great." -- Thank you @theojaffee & @MTSlive for the kind words and having our editor, @salonium on to discuss all about AI and medicine. Hard to beat these expectations, but we're a progress oriented magazine, so we will only improve.
    MTS @MTSlive
    ANTHROPIC IPO FILING | STARTUP LENDING CRUNCH | CATHEDRAL BREACHES ANTHROPIC
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  17. MTS@MTSlive
    ANTHROPIC IPO FILING | STARTUP LENDING CRUNCH | CATHEDRAL BREACHES ANTHROPIC
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  18. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    Works in Progress
    RT @TheMindScourge: The collapse of the mid-century anti-malaria crusade is one of the great public health failures of modern times, and possibly the least known There was great optimism that malaria could be eradicated. Didn’t turn out that way Maybe the 21st century will be different
    Works in Progress @WorksInProgMag
    One of our readers built an interactive companion to our mosquito eradication piece, which maps the history and geography of every major campaign. And we love to see it! What we do not love to see is how the Americas have regressed in terms of mosquito eradication between 1965 & now.
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  19. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    One of our readers built an interactive companion to our mosquito eradication piece, which maps the history and geography of every major campaign. And we love to see it! What we do not love to see is how the Americas have regressed in terms of mosquito eradication between 1965 & now.
    Download
    Tommy Long @tommy5dollar
    Havana, 1900: 310 dead of yellow fever. 1901: just 18. By 1962 more than twenty countries had wiped out the mosquito that carries it. Then they stopped. I built an interactive atlas of the whole story, a companion to the new @WorksInProgMag:
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  20. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    Posts @WorksInProgMag
    Check out the full website here:
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  21. Tommy Long✓@tommy5dollar
    Havana, 1900: 310 dead of yellow fever. 1901: just 18. By 1962 more than twenty countries had wiped out the mosquito that carries it. Then they stopped. I built an interactive atlas of the whole story, a companion to the new @WorksInProgMag:
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  22. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    Works in Progress
    RT @bswud: I am the king of supplementation – or used to be. I've given it up, every last supplement. Here is my story why. 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:
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  23. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    Delighted to welcome @Birdyword to the WIP team. Great things ahead.
    Mike Bird @Birdyword
    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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  24. Mike Bird✓@Birdyword
    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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  26. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    Works in Progress
    RT @s8mb: Tyler Cowen (@tylercowen) is the reason Works in Progress exists: without the Emergent Ventures grant he gave us way back in 2019, we would not have been able to get it off the ground. So I'm especially proud to have him join us as a regular contributor this month. We've always wanted Tyler to write for us, but the question has always been about what. He can and does already write (and podcast!) for the biggest publications, and Marginal Revolution and Conversations With Tyler are already gigantic platforms themselves. But there is one thing I always want to hear about from Tyler that he doesn't regularly write about for someone else: food. So we asked him to be our semi-regular food columnist, and to our delight, he agreed. Nobody has shown how much amazing food there is on one's own doorstep better than Tyler himself, but for this month's piece, Tyler writes about the home of the world's third-best Italian food: Brazil.
    Works in Progress @WorksInProgMag
    We’re delighted to announce that the one and only @tylercowen, our internet writing sensei, is joining Works in Progress as a regular contributor. His first column is about Brazilian food, and like everything Tyler writes, it’s packed with hidden gems that make it much more than a food story. Some of the nicest tidbits: on her first trip to Brazil, his daughter declared she had “never had a banana before” – this is how good Brazilian bananas are, apparently. And Tyler and a well-traveled friend from Modena (of all places) agreed that Brazil is the third-best country in the world for Italian food, behind only Italy and Japan. If an Italian says that, we’d better trust him! But as always with Tyler, he manages to draw larger lessons from apparently mundane and object-level stories. So, in a short read, we learn much more than just the fact that Brazilian food is really good. First, food can be seen as a progress story. Brazil’s agricultural yields rival, and sometimes beat, those of the US, even though Brazil is a much poorer country. Abundant fertile land, high productivity, and short supply chains make ingredients plentiful and fresh. Tyler’s regret is that the rest of Brazil’s economy hasn’t embraced technology the way its food sector has. We also learn how immigration shapes Brazilian cuisine. Brazil has roughly 2 million citizens of Japanese descent, which makes it arguably the best place outside Japan for Japanese food. Tyler had a 15-course omakase at a Michelin-starred São Paulo restaurant for $110, booked just half an hour ahead. Brazil is also home to about 30 million people of Italian descent, the largest Italian diaspora in the world, which goes a long way to explain why his Italian friend was so satisfied with the food. The whole column is a delight, so do read it in full!
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  27. Works in Progress✓@WorksInProgMag
    We’re delighted to announce that the one and only @tylercowen, our internet writing sensei, is joining Works in Progress as a regular contributor. His first column is about Brazilian food, and like everything Tyler writes, it’s packed with hidden gems that make it much more than a food story. Some of the nicest tidbits: on her first trip to Brazil, his daughter declared she had “never had a banana before” – this is how good Brazilian bananas are, apparently. And Tyler and a well-traveled friend from Modena (of all places) agreed that Brazil is the third-best country in the world for Italian food, behind only Italy and Japan. If an Italian says that, we’d better trust him! But as always with Tyler, he manages to draw larger lessons from apparently mundane and object-level stories. So, in a short read, we learn much more than just the fact that Brazilian food is really good. First, food can be seen as a progress story. Brazil’s agricultural yields rival, and sometimes beat, those of the US, even though Brazil is a much poorer country. Abundant fertile land, high productivity, and short supply chains make ingredients plentiful and fresh. Tyler’s regret is that the rest of Brazil’s economy hasn’t embraced technology the way its food sector has. We also learn how immigration shapes Brazilian cuisine. Brazil has roughly 2 million citizens of Japanese descent, which makes it arguably the best place outside Japan for Japanese food. Tyler had a 15-course omakase at a Michelin-starred São Paulo restaurant for $110, booked just half an hour ahead. Brazil is also home to about 30 million people of Italian descent, the largest Italian diaspora in the world, which goes a long way to explain why his Italian friend was so satisfied with the food. The whole column is a delight, so do read it in full!
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