Archive

Every dispatch, most recent first.

shelf · OCT 09 · 13 min

Investing 101, Part 2: Index Funds, What You Actually Buy

Everyone says "just buy an index fund". Nobody explains what that means, who sells it to you, or why the same fund has three different tickers. Let's fix that.

InvestingInvesting 101FinanceIndex Funds
HB

Hayk Baroyan

13 min
shelf · OCT 09 · 11 min

Investing 101, Part 1: What Investing Is and Every Tool You Can Choose From

Before you pick a broker, a stock, or a "hot tip" from a friend, you need the map. Here is every major investment tool, what it is, what it is for, and where it can hurt you.

InvestingInvesting 101Finance
HB

Hayk Baroyan

11 min
mini · SEP 19 · 1 min

Anthropic Quietly Built a Biology Lab to Test Its AI Drug Ideas in Real Life

Two weeks after warning that AI could contribute to human extinction, Anthropic quietly opened a real biology lab to put its AI to work inventing medicine.

AIBiotechHealth
HB

Hayk Baroyan

1 min
shelf · SEP 07 · 18 min

Early Retirement, Explained by Three Different Rulebooks

"Early retirement" usually means two unrelated things: a government-set pension age, and a personal savings target under the FIRE movement. This piece separates them, walks through the actual math (with real numbers for the US, France, and Armenia), and looks at what the research says leaving work early really does to your health and identity.

Early RetirementRetirement PsychologyFinancial IndependenceFIRE Movement
HB

Hayk Baroyan

18 min
mini · SEP 07 · 1 min

A Tiny Team Wants to Send a Spacecraft to Alpha Centauri It Will Arrive in 80,000 Years

A small nonprofit wants to launch a probe toward Alpha Centauri within three years, funded almost entirely by public donations. It will arrive in about 80,000 years, and the team behind it already expects a faster, later spacecraft to beat it there. They're going anyway.

Spacealpha centauriexplorationTech Culture
HB

Hayk Baroyan

1 min
mini · SEP 07 · 1 min

The Ig Nobel Prizes Left the US After 35 Years. They're Not Coming Back

This year's Ig Nobel Prizes went to real, peer-reviewed research that looks like satire: a splash-free urinal inspired by dogs, mosquito mouths turned into 3D-printer nozzles, and 1,000 pairs of underwear buried across 25 countries to test soil health.

World NewsScienceCulture
HB

Hayk Baroyan

1 min
mini · SEP 07 · 1 min

Chinese Banks and Phone Carriers Are Now Giving Away Billions of AI Tokens

In China, opening a new credit card or phone plan increasingly comes with free AI tokens thrown in a sign of just how cheap running AI has become there, whether or not customers know what a token is.

Tech CultureWorld NewsBusiness
HB

Hayk Baroyan

1 min
shelf · SEP 07 · 8 min

What AI Has Actually Done in Science, Not What People Say It Did

Forget the bubble debate. Here are six things AI has actually done in math, biology, and cosmology, all checked by real experts, none of them arguing with you about it.

ScienceMathematicsCosmologyBiologyAI
HB

Hayk Baroyan

8 min
mini · SEP 07 · 1 min

Tesla's Cybercab Has No Steering Wheel. Total Recall Predicted It in 1990.

A childhood memory of Total Recall's robot taxi driver, and the strange feeling of watching Tesla's real one show up in Austin thirty-six years later.

CultureNostalgiaTech
HB

Hayk Baroyan

1 min