“Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward.”
Steve Jobs |
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| 1 | | Iran says seven oil tankers were hit overnight in the Strait of Hormuz
Iranian state TV, citing the Revolutionary Guard navy, said four were targeted while transferring oil and three hit mines. AP notes the claim is unverified; if confirmed, it is the most vessels damaged in one day since the war began on Feb. 28.
WHY The US is blockading Iranian ports while tankers slip through a US-protected lane near Oman; the Guard threatens US bases if Washington keeps enabling transits. Next: UN chief António Guterres visits Egypt, a mediator, today.
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| 2 | | Russia hits Kyiv with missiles hours after Putin meets Trump’s envoy
The strikes came after Putin met US envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg; Zelenskyy said three missiles carried cluster warheads.
WHY The Kremlin says it agreed to revive three-way talks with the US and Ukraine; Kyiv wants negotiators to meet by early November and seeks an energy ceasefire. Next: a date and venue, with Abu Dhabi under consideration.
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| 3 | | Personalised mRNA vaccine cuts melanoma recurrence risk by 42% in major trial
In 1,137 patients after melanoma surgery, adding Moderna and MSD’s intismeran to Keytruda cut the risk of recurrence or death by 42% at two years.
WHY Each vaccine is built from the patient’s own tumour mutations, training the immune system to spot returning cancer. Next: full data at the ESMO congress in Madrid; survival data is not yet mature.
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| 4 | | UNICEF and Gavi cut the price of the first malaria vaccine by about 40%
RTS,S will cost €5.50 a dose from early 2027, saving about US$50 million between 2027 and 2029.
WHY Production is moving to India’s Bharat Biotech, and an advance payment via IFFIm enabled the deal; UNICEF says savings could fully vaccinate up to one million more children. Next: WHO prequalification of the new factory.
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| Doubts that AI spending will pay off hit tech: the Philadelphia chip index lost 6.72% after Meta raised its spending outlook, while money moved into staples, utilities and Treasuries, pulling the 10-year yield sharply lower. Brent rose on the reported Gulf tanker attacks. |
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| Three writers on how much of a life should be steered. Sasha Chapin lost the felt sense of choosing and became more effective. Visakan Veerasamy sees his grand projects failing for lack of a small loop beneath them. Ben Kuhn says agency and taste separate equally skilled people. Together they sharpen your note on surrender: dropping a rigid plan is not dropping direction. |
Today’s question
Can you let go of a plan without letting go of your direction? |
ESSAY Sasha’s Newsletter · Sasha Chapin
Chapin argues that “no-self” literally describes what happened to him: two years ago the background tension he called his self dissolved, and he still functions fine. The strange part: he no longer feels he chooses anything, yet acts with more agency than before. It extends your note that you are not your thoughts: maybe you are not the chooser either. |
ESSAY visakanv · Visakan Veerasamy
Visakan concludes he keeps losing by starting projects too grand for his time; the fix is smaller work where winning means enjoying the sentences. His model is SimCity: as a kid he spent his budget on roads around the map’s edge and got fired, never having learned the core loop of zone, power, settle, tax, reinvest. It reframes your building note: the idea bottleneck may be a loop problem, not an inspiration problem. |
ESSAY benkuhn.net · Ben Kuhn
Kuhn, who left the startup Wave for Anthropic, argues that among equally skilled people the difference is finding high-leverage work, which takes agency (initiative plus persistence) and taste (a feel for what will work). His tactics: work backwards from the root goal, announce intentions instead of asking permission, treat ambitious projects as bets. Good taste, he says, feels less like being smart than like everyone else being oddly bad at something. A counterweight to your note on surrender over rigid plans. |
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WORKFLOW harper.blog
Harper Reed lets a model interview him for 30 minutes, one easy question at a time, then has it compress the answers into a taste profile of 250 words or fewer. He adds standing instructions (search in the local language, prefer first-party sources, check whether places are open) and puts it all in a project so every chat inherits it. Vibe comparisons beat category searches. The reusable lesson is the pattern: interview, compress, reuse. |
A notes-to-questions engine
Harper’s pattern applied to your notes, so the model returns sharper questions, not finished ideas. | 1 | Copy your notes’ markdown files into one folder. |
| 2 | Have Claude interview you, then compress the answers into a 250-word profile. |
| 3 | Script it: profile plus newest notes in, three questions per note that would push it toward a video essay out. |
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PREDICTION MARKETS CBS News
Pete Hegseth signed a memo on Oct. 20 barring personnel from using nonpublic information to bet on US military operations, naming Polymarket and Kalshi; his reasoning is that adversaries watch these markets, so a trade is itself a signal. The tension: the inside knowledge that makes a market accurate is what makes it dangerous. |
AI AGENTS simonwillison.net
Anthropic is handing its Agent Skills standard, the instruction folders agents load on demand, to the Linux Foundation’s Agentic AI Foundation, where it already put MCP. Skills look set to become shared plumbing rather than one vendor’s feature; the open question is who else adopts them. |
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Tool
Simon Willison’s command-line tool for piping text into almost any model; the quickest base for small personal automations. | | Blog
A short case for writing publicly with nothing original to say: writing exposes the gaps in your thinking. |
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Until tomorrow.
Fri 23 Oct · 09:36 ET |
