Issue 14 · July 2026

Late in the day, early on the future.

Essays on AI, aging, and the questions nobody quite warned us about.

45 essays Podcast Fresh every week

Featured essays

The Smooth Exponential Explains the Whole AI Moment

AI Sample Efficiency Is Why Humans Still Learn Faster

Agentic Engineering: Who Holds the Quality Bar When Agents Write the Code

Physical AI Trains Robots in a Simulated World First

What Should Your Kid Learn When AI Does the Heavy Lifting?

Latest

Deep-Tech AI: Why Wrappers Lose When AGI Arrives in Year Five

Two companies start in 2026. One wraps an API around a foundation model. The other intersects AI with the world of atoms. Same starting line. Opposite finishes.

AlphaFold Did a Billion Years of Work in One. Bottleneck Moved.

A single program folded 200 million proteins in about a year. The same work, one doctoral student at a time, would have taken a billion years. The bottleneck has moved from intelligence to direction.

The AI Public Awareness Gap Is Becoming the Real Story

Inside the labs the curve holds. Outside the labs the argument holds. The gap between the two pictures is the real story of 2026.

AI

When Will AGI Arrive? The Four-Word Gap on the Way to 2030

From the podcast

ChatGPT Is Adding Ads. Can You Still Trust It?

OpenAI Just Paused Health AI to Fight Google

White House Opens Your Health Data to AI

More essays

On inheriting a name

On reading what I cannot finish

A short defense of changing your mind

What revision is for

Transparent Battlefield: The Frozen Front and the Lost Inventory

Will AI Take My Job? Three Questions That Tell You How Long

How to Read AI News: Three Layers, One Sentence Skipped

Open Weights AI: Distribution Decides Whose Values Win

See all 45 essays