Alex Dobrenko

We're in an unofficial/official phase of product work that we're calling "Input/Output". With that in mind, allow us to introduce to you a revolutionary new concept. It's called "Download" 🌞 (Currently available for early access in the Supporter tier, available... See more

The Venetian Atlas is a recently rediscovered work of the 14th-century Genoese cartographer Petrus Vesconte, thought to have been completed towards the end of his Venetian period (c. 1330). Though the geographer has long been renowned for the accuracy of his nautical maps of the Mediterranean and Black seas, this long-lost portolan chart is... See more

In reviewing dozens of MrBeast videos from over the years, Donaldson has nearly erased himself as a person from his episodic output. If viewers don’t really see him having fun, that’s by design. Donaldson has outright said he sees “personality” as a limitation for growth, once noting in a podcast that hinging your content on who you are as a person... See more

The closest analog to a short-form, feed-based platform “creator” as a unique job in Scarry’s Busytown is a farmer. More specifically, it’s a sharecropper. TikTok splits 50% of ad revenue with creators who have at least 100,000 followers. Sharecroppers did not own the land they worked; the farmer provided the land and often housing and equipment,... See more

Tidying is the act of confronting yourself

But we can also ask the opposite question: Are there regions that are more active among bad readers and whose activity decreases as one learns to read? The answer is positive: in illiterates, the brain’s responses to faces are more intense. The better we read, the more this activity decreases in the left hemisphere, at the exact place in the cortex... See more