Top Articles I’ve Read in 2023
2023 was a hectic year, juggling responsibilities with two children under the age of two.
Despite this, I somehow read a number of noteworthy articles and papers (the publication dates of these articles vary and in some cases they are not from 2023). Most of these articles have self-explanatory titles, and for some, I might share particularly insightful excerpts.
Below is a list of my top picks.
Parenting
It is insane that there’s not some required training for new-parents-to-be
If I want to drive a car, I have to take driver’s ed first. If I want to provide medical advice, I have to go to med school first. But after we had the baby, the hospital was like “don’t shake it k bye.”
2. Why Millennials Dread Parenthood
The fact is, we can’t address the struggles of moms without tackling the outmoded but still powerful beliefs that men and women should not share in parenting equally, that women are better suited to raising children.
3. Boys to Men
Every segment of society, except the wealthiest, can point to setbacks. One group’s slide is particularly steep, and its decline presents a threat to the commonwealth and our prosperity: Our young men are failing, and we are failing them.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from talking to my fellow Zoomers, it’s that we almost unanimously recognize the damage our smartphones have done. I’ve never heard someone say, “I still hate my mom for not letting me get a phone until I was 13.”
My suggestion: delay. Wait until high school to give them a phone. (As Jon recommends, you can give them a flip phone before that.) Wait even longer to let them have an Instagram or TikTok account. The resentment is temporary. They’ll thank you later.
5. Fatherly Advice from Famous Dads
6. The Ordered Liberty of Montessori Education — Marsha Familiaro Enrigh
…the Montessori classroom is complex and well-thought-out, physically, intellectually, and socially. Its fundamental principle is freedom in a structured environment. This parallels the structure of a free society, encouraging peaceful interactions while allowing members as much freedom as possible.”
The feminization of the teaching profession — three out of four K–12 teachers are now women — is not ideal for boys. Neither is the rigid rhythm of the school day, with gym class and recess squeezed out. And the focus on narrow academics rather than vocational learning puts many boys at a disadvantage as well. All true, and all worth addressing.
But I believe the biggest reason for boys’ classroom struggles is simply that male brains develop more slowly than female brains — or at least those parts of the brain that enable success in the classroom. The gaps in brain development are clearly visible around the age of 5, and they persist through elementary and middle school.
8. Childhoods of exceptional people, by HENRIK KARLSSON
Let’s start with one of those insights that are as obvious as they are easy to forget: if you want to master something, you should study the highest achievements of your field. If you want to learn writing, read great writers, etc.
But this is not what parents usually do when they think about how to educate their kids. The default for a parent is rather to imitate their peers and outsource the big decisions to bureaucracies. But what would we learn if we studied the highest achievements?
9. The Kids Are Not Okay by ZVI MOWSHOWITZ
Great summary of the whole debate.
10. Playful Parenting — by Lawrence Cohen | Derek Sivers notes
Playful Parenting is a way to enter a child’s world, on the child’s terms, in order to foster closeness, confidence, and connection.
Play is children’s main way of communicating.
All the children’s games that are about connection: Chase, tag, follow the leader, and hide-and-seek are obvious examples.
If something makes the child giggle, then you do it again. And again, and again, and again. All kinds of laughs are wonderful, but there is something that we often forget: the importance of laughter.
11. The Secret of Here, an illustrated story by Iain S. Thomas,
13. Proper approach about teaching to not bully others
Good discussion & great advices.
14. (How) Can we read? Strategies for raising readers by SARAH MILLER
It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up in the world of thought — that is to be educated.”
Life, Love — Friendship, Art
Shortly after his dear friend Patrick’s death, Andrew Sullivan — one of the deepest thinkers and most enchanting writers of our time — was gripped with grief so all-consuming that it led him to examine the nature of friendship itself, a bond so special that its forceful breakage could induce pain of such unbearable proportions. In the altogether fantastic 1998 volume Love Undetectable: Notes on Friendship, Sex, and Survival (public library), he considers the inner workings of friendship and argues that its gift is far greater than that of romantic love, despite our cultural bias for the latter.
2. Celebrating What’s Right With Aging: Inside the Minds of Super Agers
A physically and intellectually active lifestyle.
The willingness or ability to constantly challenge oneself.
An active social life and a wide social network.
Moderation in all indulgences,
3. We’ve Survived Another Year! Make It Count.
It’s hard to understand why Christmas came to be a big deal even for people who have never stepped foot inside a church without understanding the context. And the context — which does predate Christianity by thousands of years — is that December kicks off winter in the Northern Hemisphere. And for most of human history, winter meant a bunch of us were going to freaking die.
4. 50 ways to be ridiculously generous — and feel ridiculously good
Without color, life would be a mistake. I mean this both existentially and evolutionarily: Color is not only our primary sensorium of beauty — that aesthetic rapture without which life would be a desert of the soul — but color is how we came to exist in the first place. Our perception of color, like our entire perceptual experience, is part of our creaturely inheritance and bounded by it — experience that differs wildly from that of other species, and even varies vastly within our own species. In that limitation lies a glorious invitation to fathom the fundaments of our humanity and step beyond ourselves into other sensoria more dazzling than our consciousness is even equipped to imagine.
6. Want to live a happy life? Focus on your relationships
Nurture your relationships today (and across your lifetime)
Kevin: So then, what are the different types of relationships that we want to cultivate?
Waldinger: All types of relationships convey benefits to us, not just intimate partners. You don’t have to have an intimate partner to get these benefits. They come from friendships, family relationships, work relationships, and even casual relationships.
…When I was in my 20s, I thought, “I have these friends from elementary school, high school, and college. They’re going to be my friends all the time.” But what we see as we track people’s lives is that perfectly good relationships can wither away — not because there was anything wrong. Just from neglect.
If we get so overcome by the demands of life that we don’t connect with the people that we care about, we’ll stop knowing about their lives. They’ll stop knowing about our lives. We’ll stop feeling as close.
7. Whatever happened to middle age? The mysterious case of the disappearing life stage
Midlife used to mean settling down, going grey and buying a lawnmower. But with relaxation no longer an option, has the concept lost all meaning?
8. The Tail End — Wait But Why
I’ve been thinking about something else.
Instead of measuring your life in units of time, you can measure it in activities or events.
9. Alain de Botton on How to Think More About Sex
This is not to say that we cannot take steps to grow wiser about sex. We should simply realize that we will never entirely surmount the difficulties it throws our way. Our best hope should be a respectful accommodation with an anarchic and reckless power.
10. Henry James on Losing a Mother
Let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
12. A Minimalist, Maximally Imaginative Geometric Allegory for the Essence of Friendship and Creativity
15. Opinion | How Do You Serve a Friend in Despair?
16. The days are long but the decades are short
Sam Altman 30 advices on life.
17. 50 Points Of Advice From An 80-Year-Old Man ~ Patrick Wanis
18. Art is not supposed to be pleasant by KATHLEEN SYKES
If we always expect a happy ending, we deprive the humanities of humanity.
19. Alain de Botton on Existential Maturity and What Emotional Intelligence Really Means
Yet what is distinctive is just how selective we are about the topics we deem it possible to educate ourselves in. Our energies are overwhelmingly directed toward material, scientific, and technical subjects and away from psychological and emotional ones. Much anxiety surrounds the question of how good the next generation will be at math; very little around their abilities at marriage or kindness. We devote inordinate hours to learning about tectonic plates and cloud formations, and relatively few fathoming shame and rage.
Business / productivity
1.My 8 Best Techniques for Evaluating Character, by Ted Gioia
Forget what they say — instead look at who they marry.
2. Looking to Becoming a Great Manager? Try These Six Microhabits
Some good general advices here:
What happens when managers are surrounded by people who constantly criticize, crush ideas, and object to new ways of doing things?
Their cynicism makes it hard to get anything done.
Decisions take longer.
Discussions go on forever.
The status quo is preserved.
New ideas are rejected.
Under their influence, managers also become critical and disapproving of others. Negativity can be contagious. Not being careful around such people can turn even a highly optimist person into a defeatist, a motivator into a complainer and a supporter into a cynic
3. It Is Your Responsibility to Follow Up
Keep emailing until they say no.
4. Men, Women, and Our Limiting Mythology of Success
And at the turn of the twenty-first century, I am increasingly convinced that advancing women means breaking free of a new set of stereotypes and assumptions, not only for women, but also for men. It means challenging a much wider range of conventional wisdom about what we value and why, about measures of success, about the wellsprings of human nature and what equality really means. It means rethinking everything from workplace design to life stages to leadership styles.
5. Why the myth of the “alpha leader” should be debunked
Among animal societies, alpha leadership by both males and females emerges from sympathy and support — not just from strength and aggression.
6. How to… have better meetings, by ETHAN MOLLICK
7. It’s Not a Career Ladder, It’s a Career Playground
The peak of a career is not always at the top.
Great story for one of the most successful banker in finance.
9. TSMC: Semiconductors and Borders of Light |
The world’s largest semiconductor foundry is expanding beyond Taiwan, investing $40 billion in a U.S. factory. It’s a move with immense political and commercial ramifications.
10. Beware a Culture of Busyness by Adam Waytz
Organizations must stop conflating activity with achievement.
Politics
1.In Defence of Israel: Some difficult truths
Either side can easily be portrayed as the victim, because victimhood is limited only by imagination. So we must consider the question not in terms of who is most oppressed, but who is most reasonable? Who is most willing to compromise, and whose goals will, overall, benefit Israelis and Palestinians most?
Israel has its extremes — its bombs sometimes hit civilians, its settlement-building is out of control, and its Supreme Court is under attack by its own government.
But Israel’s excesses are Hamas’ norms.
2. Why Antisemitism Sprouted So Quickly on Campus
I have shown a direct connection between the oppressor/victim mindset and the willingness of many in the current generation of students to espouse overtly antisemitic beliefs (even if it is not truly a majority of them).
3. Invisible Hand Increases Trust, Cooperation, and Universal Moral Action
Some basic facts about free-market.
Ex.: Commerce makes people traders and by and large traders must be benevolent, agreeable and willing to bargain and compromise with people of different sects, religions and beliefs. Contrary to what one naively might expect, people with more exposure to markets behave more cooperatively and in less nakedly self-interested ways. Similarly, in a letter-return experiment in Italy, Baldassarri finds that market integration increases pro-social behavior towards in and outgroups
4. The Case Against Dictatorship by Adam Gurri
No non-democracy is ever going to solve the problem of succession and peaceful transfer of power as thoroughly as liberal democracy does.
5. Europe is not ready to be a “third superpower” by Noah Smith
For that, it would need to act as a unified entity, defend itself against Russia, and embrace new technology.
6. Why Men Love War by By William Broyles And Jr.
Classic. The story originally ran in the November 1984 issue of Esquire.
7. Scrap AML/KYC Laws — Marginal REVOLUTION
the AML/KYC laws costs about $300 billion a year and recover perhaps $3 billion a year in illicit funds (a tiny, tiny fraction of the amount of illicit revenues). Indeed, AML/KYC laws have probably increased crime because they require so many companies to store personal information which is then vulnerable to hackers. More importantly, it’s absurd that the government forces you to show ID to buy a stock.
Men are trapped in a negative feedback loop, reluctant to take their paternal rights for fear of public disapproval. Spain’s feminist activism and government legislation nurtured an environment where fathers felt comfortable to spend time with their newborns. Those children then became radically more likely to endorse gender equality and share housework.
Local stuff (on Macedonian language)
На почетокот малку бев разочаран, ама си викав, ај има време, ќе биде подобро. Кога се случи скандалот со Специјалното обвинителство и пропаѓањето на тие судски случаи бев гневен. Сега сум веќе огорчен и згаден.
Ама, од некаде мора да се црпи оптимизам. Не се живее во апатија…
И доста веќе плачеме за Шарената револуција. Џабе била. Не е вистина. Шарената револуција си ја заврши работата. Се случи промена. Падна режимот…Но, вистинските шарени останаа да бидат критични кон новата власт често и на своја штета. И на вистинските шарени можеби им е жал дека власта не ги послуша да владее почесно и подобро, ама тоа не значи дека ќе ѝ простат.
Ова е наша држава, не е на политичарите. И треба да си ја вратиме. Другата опција е да се иселиме или да чмаеме. Е па, не сакам ни да се иселам, ама ни да чмаам.
2. Најубавото македонско интервју некогаш направено (помеѓу Славко Јаневски и Спасе Куновски, Уметничка галерија, Скопје (20 мај — 5 јуни 1971)
На денешен ден, 1978 година во Скопје почина Спасе Куновски (25.09.1929–01.08.1978), еден од доајените на македонската современа ликовна уметност.
…несекојдневно и навистина фантастично интервју помеѓу Славко Јаневски и Спасе Куновски, кое е предговор за каталогот за Уметничка галерија.
ЈАНЕВСКИ: Надреалист си. Сè уште мислам дека во овие загадочни амбиси на творење те влече убавината на ужасот.
КУНОВСКИ: Не ѝ се тргам на таа убавина. Напуштените куќи се черупки на осаменици. Од тие краишта сум. Тоа ме привлекува, ме растажува, ме доведува до очај. Осаменоста е убавина, но и ужас. Моите личности се осамени, начнати, изгубени.
3. Еурофобија.мк, од Петар Арсовски:
Заробени помеѓу нужноста и притисокот за приклучок кон геополитичките текови, и длабокото незадоволство од сопствената судбина, ние станавме вљубени во сопствениот „патос“, длабоко вгнездени во самододелената улога на жртва, а всушност класично пасивно агресивно општество кое ризикува самото себеси да си стане најголем непријател.
4. Важноста на тоа да се биде исплашен (Марија Попова):
Андерсен сериозно ги сфаќаше децата. Тој им зборува не само за радосните авантури во животот, туку и за неговите неволји, неговите мизерии, неговите често незаслужени порази. Неговите бајки, населени со фантастични суштества, се пореалистични од тони денешни приказни за деца, кои се грижат за веродостојноста и избегнуваат чуда како чумата. Андерсен ја имал храброста да пишува приказни со несреќни краеви. Тој не верувал дека треба да се трудите да бидете добри затоа што тоа се исплати (како што упорно рекламираат денешните морални приказни, иако тоа не излегува секогаш така во реалниот живот) туку затоа што злото произлегува од интелектуалната и емоционалната закржлавеност, и е единствениот облик на сиромаштија што треба да се избегнува.
