Astral Codex Ten

Publications: V

52 min read

Publications: V

Substacks, magazines, zines, journals, and publications referenced in the archive. This section collects the V slice of the category index.

Reference Index

Use the title to open the reference entry. Use the caret to expand a compact inline dossier with source context, issue trail, related pages, and outbound links.

Vox31 mentions across 31 issues

Vox is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 31 times across 31 issues between February 09, 2021 and June 18, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Klein did later follow up with a Vox article"; "Twitter socialists criticize 'Vox liberals'"; "I linked to a related Vox article on vetocracy". It most often appears alongside China, US, COVID.

Article page
Vox
Mention count
31
Issue count
31
First seen
February 09, 2021
Last seen
June 18, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Book Review: Why We're Polarized
February 09, 2021 · Original source
...er side's position on the issues, but still hope to get around to it one day." I can only aspire to this level of centrism. The book itself doesn’t go international, but Klein did later follow up with a Vox article , whose highlight is this graph: So although polarization is definitely rising in the US, it’s stable in other countries, and falling in still others. There is no consis...
Book Review: The Cult Of Smart
February 18, 2021 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Ezra Klein On Vetocracy
February 20, 2021 · Original source
In my review last week of Ezra Klein's Why We're Polarized , I linked to a related Vox article on vetocracy : In a viral essay, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen makes a simple exhortation: It’s time to build. Behind the coronavirus crisis, he writes, lies “our widespread ina...
Mantic Monday: Mantic Matt Y
March 15, 2021 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Mantic Monday: Grading My Trump Predictions
April 19, 2021 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Carbon Costs Quantified
August 25, 2021 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Highlights From The Comments On Missing School
August 26, 2021 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
The FDA Has Punted Decisions About Luvox Prescription To The Deepest Recesses Of The Human Soul
December 22, 2021 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Addendum To Luvox Post
December 22, 2021 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Against That Poverty And Infant EEGs Study
January 26, 2022 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Predictions For 2022
February 01, 2022 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Who Gets Self-Determination?
March 30, 2022 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Links For April
April 14, 2022 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Open Thread 224
May 14, 2022 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
What Caused The 2020 Homicide Spike?
June 29, 2022 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Highlights From The Comments On Subcultures
August 19, 2022 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Book Review: What We Owe The Future
August 23, 2022 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Open Thread 255
December 19, 2022 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Links For December 2022
December 28, 2022 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Contra Kavanagh On Fideism
February 14, 2023 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Book Review: The Geography Of Madness
February 22, 2023 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Links For August 2023
August 09, 2023 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
My Left Kidney
October 27, 2023 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Highlights From The Comments On Kidney Donation
November 07, 2023 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
24
January 30, 2024 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
24
February 20, 2024 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Highlights From The Comments On The Lab Leak Debate
April 09, 2024 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Links for May 2024
May 29, 2024 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Links For February 2025
February 27, 2025 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
The Other COVID Reckoning
May 21, 2025 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates
June 18, 2025 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
Vice4 mentions across 4 issues

Vice is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between January 21, 2021 and September 11, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "She granted an interview to a Vice reporter under the condition that he not reveal some sensitive details"; "And Vice (why is it always Vice?) is somehow even more melodramatic"; "Whenever British tabloids, Vice, and the FDA all hate a thing". It most often appears alongside Balaji Srinivasan, Congress, Eliezer Yudkowsky.

Article page
Vice
Mention count
4
Issue count
4
First seen
January 21, 2021
Last seen
September 11, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Still Alive
January 21, 2021 · Original source
513,000 people read my blog post complaining about the New York Times' attempt to dox me (for comparison, there are 366,000 people in Iceland). So many people cancelled their subscription that the Times' exasperated customer service agents started pre-empting callers with "Is this about that blog thing?" A friend of a friend reports her grandmother in Slovakia heard a story about me on Slovak-language radio.
I got an email from a former member of the GamerGate movement, offering advice on managing PR. It was very thorough and they had obviously put a lot of effort into it, but it was all premised on this idea that GamerGate was some kind of shining PR success, even though as I remember it they managed to take a complaint about a video game review and mishandle it so badly that they literally got condemned by the UN General Assembly. But it's the thought that counts, and I am humbled by their support.
As for the Times' mistakes: I think they just didn't expect me to care about anonymity as much as I did. In fact, most of my supporters, and most of the savvy people giving me advice, didn't expect me to care as much as I did. Maybe I should explain more of my history here: back in the early 2010s I blogged under my real name. When I interviewed for my dream job in psychiatry, the interviewer had Googled my name, found my blog, and asked me some really pointed questions about whether having a blog meant I was irresponsible and unprofessional. There wasn't even anything controversial on the blog - this was back in the early 2010s, before they invented controversy. They were just old-school pre-social-media-era people who thought having a blog was fundamentally incompatible with the dignity of being a psychiatrist. I didn't get that job, nor several others I thought I was a shoo-in for. I actually failed my entire first year of ACGME match and was pretty close to having to give up on a medical career. At the time I felt like that would mean my life was over.
Shilling For Big Mitochondria
March 02, 2021 · Original source
The British tabloids had a field day with this. The Daily Mail talks about being BOILED ALIVE BY INTERNET SLIMMING PILLS! And Vice (why is it always Vice?) is somehow even more melodramatic:
Inline links: talks about, even more melodramatic
Whenever British tabloids, Vice, and the FDA all hate a thing, I’m inclined to feel at least a little fondness towards it. So is there a case for 2,4-dinitrophenol? I think the case would look like: sure, it has a very low therapeutic index. Sure, if you take just a few times the recommended dose, you could die. But if you very carefully take exactly the recommended dose, you probably won’t. You could give it out like methadone, in a way that makes it impossible to overdose. Patients might still get cataracts. But cataracts are treatable, or at least more treatable than some of the complications of obesity.
Prospectus On Próspera
April 14, 2021 · Original source
What’s to stop this from getting really weird? Can I have my house be in Próspera while my neighbor’s house is in regular Honduras? My kitchen in Próspera but my dining room in regular Honduras? I asked Trey, who said HPI has to guarantee provision of services to everywhere within Próspera; they wouldn’t expect providing services to somebody’s dining room to be worth it, and so they would turn down those kinds of frivolous applicants. Their plan is for a network of hubs, each city-sized and relatively convenient to provide for. They’ve already selected an area near the city of La Ceiba as their first satellite, and eventually want to expand across Honduras’ north coast.
Oliver Porter is the architect of the Sandy Springs model, named after the city of Sandy Springs, Georgia. This is an interesting rabbit hole in itself - Sandy Springs incorporated in a hurry, didn’t have time to create its own city services, hired private corporations to do everything, then liked it so much that they advertised themselves as a libertarian paradise and a model for everyone else to follow (though see here for another perspective).
Inline links: a model for everyone else to follow, here
They’re especially focusing on Honduran professionals and remote workers - the more remote, the easier a time they’ll have moving to a new city on an island. But they’re also interested in poorer Hondurans looking for construction and service jobs, and expats after a slice of paradise on a tropical beach.
Book Review: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies
September 11, 2025 · Original source
Is this convergent evolution? IABIED has three sections. The first explains the basic case for why AI is dangerous. The second tells a specific sci-fi story about how disaster might happen, with appropriate caveats about how it’s just an example and nobody can know for sure. The third discusses where to go from here. II. Does the world really need another ‘The Case For Why AI Could Be Dangerous’ essay? On the one hand, definitely yes. If you’re an “infovore”, you have no idea how information-starved the general public is (did you know 66% of Americans have never used ChatGPT, and 20% of Americans have never even heard of it?). Probably a large majority of people don’t know anything about this. Even people who think they know the case have probably just heard a few stray sentences here or there, the same way “everyone knows” about the Odyssey but only a few percent of people have so much as read one line of its text. So yes, exposing tens of thousands of people to a several-chapter-length presentation of the key arguments is certainly valuable. Even many of you readers are probably in this category, and if I were a better person I would review it all here in depth. Still, I find I can’t bring myself to do this, on the grounds that it feels boring and pointless. Why? The basic case for AI danger is simple. We don’t really understand how to give AI specific goals yet; so far we’ve just been sort of adding superficial tendencies towards compliance as we go along, trusting that it is too dumb for mistakes to really matter. But AI is getting smarter quickly. At some point maybe it will be smarter than humans. Since our intelligence advantage let us replace chimps and other dumber animals, maybe AI will eventually replace us. There’s a reasonable answer to this case. It objects to chaining many assumptions, each of which has a certain probability of failure, or at least of taking a very long time. If there’s an X% chance that getting smarter-than-human AI takes N years, and a Y% chance that it takes P years for the smart AI to diffuse across the economy, and a Z% chance that it takes Q years before the AI overcomes humans’ legacy advantage and becomes more powerful than us - then maybe you can find good odds that the danger point is a century plus away. And in a century, maybe we’ll have better alignment tech, or at least a clearer view of the problem. Why worry about vague things that might or might not happen a century from now? The problem with this is that it’s hard to make the probabilities work out in a way that doesn’t leave at least a 5-10% chance on the full nightmare scenario happening in the next decade. You’d have to be a weird combination of really good at probability (to know how to deploy enough epicycles to defuse the argument) and really bad at probability (to want to do this). There aren’t that many people who are in this exact sweet spot of probabilistic (in)competence. So everyone else just deploys insane moon epistemology. Some people give an example of a past prediction failing, as if this were proof that all predictions must always fail, and get flabbergasted and confused if you remind them that other past predictions have succeeded. Some people say “This one complicated mathematical result I know of says that true intelligence is impossible,” then have no explanation for why the complicated mathematical result doesn’t rule out the existence of humans. Some people say “You’re not allowed to propose that a catastrophe might destroy the human race, because this has never happened before, and nothing can ever happen for the first time”. Then these people turn around and panic about global warming or the fertility decline or whatever. Some people say “The real danger isn’t superintelligent AI, it’s X!” even though the danger could easily be both superintelligent AI and X. X could be anything from near-term AI, to humans misusing AI, to tech oligarchs getting rich and powerful off AI, to totally unrelated things like climate change or racism. Drunk on the excitement of using a cheap rhetorical device, they become convinced that providing enough evidence that X is dangerous frees them of the need to establish that superintelligent AI isn’t. Some people say “You’re not allowed to propose that something bad might happen unless you have a precise mathematical model that says exactly when and why”. Then these people turn around and say they’re concerned about AI entrenching biases or eroding social trust or doing something else they don’t have a precise mathematical model for. There are only a few good arguments against any given thesis. But there are an infinite number of insane moon arguments. “Calvin Coolidge was the Pope, therefore your position is invalid” - how do you pre-emptively defend against this? You can’t. Since you can never predict which insane moon argument a given person will make, and listing/countering every possible insane moon argument makes you sound like an insane moon person yourself, you just sort of give up - or, in Eliezer’s case, take a several year break to teach people epistemology 101. Why do these discussions go so badly? I am usually against psychoanalyzing my opponents, but I will ask forgiveness of the rationalist saints and present a theory. I think it’s because, if it’s true, it changes everything. But it’s not obviously true, and it would be inconvenient for it to change everything. Therefore, it must not be true. And since most people refuse to use this snappy and elegant formulation, they search for the closest thing in reasoning-space that feels like it gets at this justification, and end up with things like “well you need to prove all of your statements mathematically”. Lest I sound too dismissive, I notice myself reasoning this way all the time. The easiest examples I can think of right now: Some people claim that human sperm count is declining, and in ~20 years it will be so low that people cannot conceive naturally. If this were true it would change everything and we should stop what we’re doing and deal with it right now (see here for more). But this would be inconvenient. So we assume it’s probably false, or at least that we can deal with it later.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Mf3D!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1905faaf-ea4f-4e84-9fb0-25a48170f7ff_534x153.png, take a several year break to teach people epistemology 101, usually against psychoanalyzing my opponents, rationalist saints, see here for more
Eliezer Yudkowsky, at his best, has leaps of genius nobody else can match. Fifteen years ago, he decided that the best way to something something AI safety was to write a Harry Potter fanfiction. Many people at the time (including me) gingerly suggested that maybe this was not optimal time management for someone who was approximately the only person working full-time on humanity’s most pressing problem. He totally demolished us and proved us wronger than anyone has ever been wrong before. Hundreds of thousands of people read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, it got lavish positive reviews in Syfy, Vice, and The Atlantic, and it basically one-shotted a substantial percent of the world’s smartest STEM undergrads. Fifteen years later, I still meet bright young MIT students who tell me they’re working on AI safety, and when I ask them why in public they say something about their advisor, and then later in private they admit it was the fanfic. Valuing the time of the average AI genius at the rate set by Sam Altman (let alone Mark Zuckerberg), HPMOR probably bought Eliezer a few billion dollars in free labor. Just a totally inconceivable level of victory.
Vox Future Perfect3 mentions across 3 issues

Vox Future Perfect is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between December 27, 2021 and January 24, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "a lot of their “public figures” right now are Vox Future Perfect journalists"; "35: Vox Future Perfect is looking for more EA journalists"; "Matt Yglesias and Vox Future Perfect didn’t officially enter the competition, but we adapted some of their questions". It most often appears alongside Amazon, California, Eric.

Article page
Vox Future Perfect
Mention count
3
Issue count
3
First seen
December 27, 2021
Last seen
January 24, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Mantic Monday: Dogs In Wizard Hats
December 27, 2021 · Original source
Unfortunately, a lot of their “public figures” right now are Vox Future Perfect journalists, the only famous people who consistently make hard-and-fast predictions and give clear probability estimates.
Links For September 2022
September 06, 2022 · Original source
35: This month in effective altruism: Vox Future Perfect is looking for more EA journalists. Charlie RS has a guide to How To Pursue A Career In Technical AI Alignment, and 80,000 Hours has updated their own page on same. I also liked Julian Hazell’s Why I View Effective Giving As Complementary To Direct Work.
Inline links: looking for more EA journalists, How To Pursue A Career In Technical AI Alignment, their own page, Why I View Effective Giving As Complementary To Direct Work
Who Predicted 2022?
January 24, 2023 · Original source
Matt Yglesias and Vox Future Perfect didn’t officially enter the competition, but we adapted some of their questions (Matt, VFP). For the subset of questions they answered (quick calculation, haven’t double-checked, take with a grain of salt), Matt scored in the 46th percentile, and Future Perfect scored in the 17th. Thanks to both Matt and Vox for (nonconsensually) participating!
Inline links: Matt, VFP
Matt Yglesias scored his question “Will Nancy Pelosi announce plans to retire?” as TRUE, but technically she only announced that she would retire as Democratic leader, not as a Congresswoman, so the question is false as written. Vox Future Perfect scored their question “Will the Biden administration set a social cost of carbon at > $100” as PARTIALLY RIGHT, because they announced plans to maybe do this, but they have not done it yet and the question is false as written. We originally resolved “Will a Biden administration Cabinet-level official resign?” as FALSE, but Eric Lander, a science advisor who resigned, was technically Cabinet-level and the question as written is true. These changes didn’t affect headline results much, but they shifted some people up or down a few places, and shifted a few people with very high confidence on these questions up or down a few dozen places.
Inline links: who resigned
Vlad’s Notebook2 mentions across 2 issues

Vlad’s Notebook is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between January 27, 2022 and April 20, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "And Vlad , who writes Vlad’s Notebook :"; "author of the blog Vlad’s Notebook". It most often appears alongside Scott, Vlad, A.E. Waite.

Article page
Vlad’s Notebook
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
January 27, 2022
Last seen
April 20, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Highlights From The Comments On Health Care Systems
January 27, 2022 · Original source
And Vlad, who writes Vlad’s Notebook:
Inline links: Vlad, Vlad’s Notebook
Highlights From The Comments On "Sadly, Porn"
April 20, 2022 · Original source
— Vlad (author of the blog Vlad’s Notebook) writes:
Inline links: Vlad, Vlad’s Notebook
Volume One (A-R)2 mentions across 2 issues

Volume One (A-R) is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between April 19, 2021 and April 25, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "You can see it here: Volume One (A-R)". It most often appears alongside Volume Two (S-W), ACX, Altria.

Article page
Volume One (A-R)
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
April 19, 2021
Last seen
April 25, 2021
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Open Thread 168
April 19, 2021 · Original source
4: OKAY WE’RE FINALLY MAKING THIS HAPPEN. Thanks to a reader, I have a list of all 80-something non-finalists in the Book Review Contest. You can see it here: Volume One (A-R), Volume Two (S-W) (we exceeded Google Docs’ puny character limit, so it’s split in half). Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read some number of them (even one is okay!) and then vote using this form. Please choose a random one to read each time, or select the one that looks most interesting to you, but don’t start from the beginning - if we have 5000 votes for the ones beginning with “A” and none for the ones beginning with “W”, that breaks the whole point. Choose a random one and vote on it with the form. If you read 50, you can either save them all up for one form, or send 50 forms, either way is okay (note that the form asks for your email so I can investigate potential voting irregularities; I won’t share this with anyone else). At the end, I’ll average all the ratings I have for each book, and declare the top-rated runners-up to be new finalists (in addition to the finalists I’ve already chosen). If you have questions about any of this, or you can’t access any of the relevant pages, please comment below.
Inline links: Volume One (A-R), Volume Two (S-W), this form
Open Thread 169
April 25, 2021 · Original source
3: Reminder for those of you who didn't see this last week: I have a list of all 80-something non-finalists in the Book Review Contest. You can see it here: Volume One (A-R), Volume Two (S-W) (we exceeded Google Docs’ puny character limit, so it’s split in half). Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read some number of them (even one is okay!) and then vote using this form. Please choose a random one to read each time, or select the one that looks most interesting to you, but don’t start from the beginning - if we have 5000 votes for the ones beginning with “A” and none for the ones beginning with “W”, that breaks the whole point. Choose a random one and vote on it with the form. If you read 50, you can either save them all up for one form, or send 50 forms, either way is okay (note that the form asks for your email so I can investigate potential voting irregularities; I won’t share this with anyone else). At the end, I’ll average all the ratings I have for each book, and declare the top-rated runners-up to be new finalists (in addition to the finalists I’ve already chosen). If you have questions about any of this, or you can’t access any of the relevant pages, please comment below. If you can’t get the Google Docs file to load, here’s PDFs of Volume 1 and Volume 2.
Inline links: Volume One (A-R), Volume Two (S-W), this form, Volume 1, Volume 2
Volume Two (S-W)2 mentions across 2 issues

Volume Two (S-W) is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between April 19, 2021 and April 25, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Volume Two (S-W)". It most often appears alongside Volume One (A-R), ACX, Altria.

Article page
Volume Two (S-W)
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
April 19, 2021
Last seen
April 25, 2021
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Open Thread 168
April 19, 2021 · Original source
4: OKAY WE’RE FINALLY MAKING THIS HAPPEN. Thanks to a reader, I have a list of all 80-something non-finalists in the Book Review Contest. You can see it here: Volume One (A-R), Volume Two (S-W) (we exceeded Google Docs’ puny character limit, so it’s split in half). Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read some number of them (even one is okay!) and then vote using this form. Please choose a random one to read each time, or select the one that looks most interesting to you, but don’t start from the beginning - if we have 5000 votes for the ones beginning with “A” and none for the ones beginning with “W”, that breaks the whole point. Choose a random one and vote on it with the form. If you read 50, you can either save them all up for one form, or send 50 forms, either way is okay (note that the form asks for your email so I can investigate potential voting irregularities; I won’t share this with anyone else). At the end, I’ll average all the ratings I have for each book, and declare the top-rated runners-up to be new finalists (in addition to the finalists I’ve already chosen). If you have questions about any of this, or you can’t access any of the relevant pages, please comment below.
Inline links: Volume One (A-R), Volume Two (S-W), this form
Open Thread 169
April 25, 2021 · Original source
3: Reminder for those of you who didn't see this last week: I have a list of all 80-something non-finalists in the Book Review Contest. You can see it here: Volume One (A-R), Volume Two (S-W) (we exceeded Google Docs’ puny character limit, so it’s split in half). Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read some number of them (even one is okay!) and then vote using this form. Please choose a random one to read each time, or select the one that looks most interesting to you, but don’t start from the beginning - if we have 5000 votes for the ones beginning with “A” and none for the ones beginning with “W”, that breaks the whole point. Choose a random one and vote on it with the form. If you read 50, you can either save them all up for one form, or send 50 forms, either way is okay (note that the form asks for your email so I can investigate potential voting irregularities; I won’t share this with anyone else). At the end, I’ll average all the ratings I have for each book, and declare the top-rated runners-up to be new finalists (in addition to the finalists I’ve already chosen). If you have questions about any of this, or you can’t access any of the relevant pages, please comment below. If you can’t get the Google Docs file to load, here’s PDFs of Volume 1 and Volume 2.
Inline links: Volume One (A-R), Volume Two (S-W), this form, Volume 1, Volume 2
Vandals in the Stacks?1 mentions across 1 issues

Vandals in the Stacks? is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 30, 2021 and April 30, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Cox argues in “ Vandals in the Stacks? ” that trashing these illustrated newspapers had been a mistake"; "only part of “ Vandals in the Stacks? ” is actually spent refuting Baker’s arguments". It most often appears alongside 1893, 1970s, 1980s.

Reference entry
Vandals in the Stacks?
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
April 30, 2021
Last seen
April 30, 2021
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: Double Fold
April 30, 2021 · Original source
As part of the uproar that followed the book’s publication, the Association of Research Libraries published an online anti-Baker FAQ, and in 2002, the book “Vandals in the Stacks?” by Richard J. Cox came out, presenting an attempted refutation of Baker’s theses. I have read both of these and discuss Cox’s arguments later on, but I must admit in advance that I was mostly convinced by Baker’s argumentation much more than by that of his opponents. Nonetheless, it is uncommon to have a polemical book receive a book-length response, and anyone interested in Baker’s thesis is advised to check out Cox as well.1
Inline links: anti-Baker FAQ, 1
Notably, Cox argues in “Vandals in the Stacks?” that trashing these illustrated newspapers had been a mistake and that librarians should have kept them around in the original. He also argues that discarding things should be a necessary part of being a librarian and that librarians are perfectly capable of judging what needs to be discarded and what doesn’t, without the interference of outsiders like Baker. He doesn’t seem to be aware of any contradiction here.
1 Unfortunately, only part of “Vandals in the Stacks?” is actually spent refuting Baker’s arguments. Instead, Cox goes off on a number of tangents, including a long refutation of an unrelated essay by Baker from 1994, several complaints about Baker not discussing archives and archivists in Double Fold (Cox is an archivist by profession), and an entire chapter of Cox’s own professional autobiography, whose relevance to the topic of the book is never explained.
Inline links: 1
Vanguard Anthology1 mentions across 1 issues

Vanguard Anthology is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 04, 2023 and September 04, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "New Substack Vanguard Anthology on the Danish anarchist 'free city' of Christiania". It most often appears alongside Africa, Beyabu, Bildod.

Reference entry
Vanguard Anthology
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
September 04, 2023
Last seen
September 04, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
23: California Dreamin'
September 04, 2023 · Original source
4: New Substack Vanguard Anthology on the Danish anarchist “free city” of Christiania. I visited when I was in Copenhagen, I mostly remember it being dirty and hard to navigate.
Inline links: the Danish anarchist “free city” of Christiania
Vanity Fair1 mentions across 1 issues

Vanity Fair is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 30, 2022 and July 30, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Vanity Fair article on the investigation into the pandemic origins". It most often appears alongside 1950s influenza strain, 1977 influenza pandemic, 1992 scientific investigation.

Reference entry
Vanity Fair
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
July 30, 2022
Last seen
July 30, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: Viral
July 30, 2022 · Original source
Vanity Fair article on the investigation into the pandemic origins, criticizing the NIH for lack of transparency.
Inline links: Vanity Fair article
Vates Rising1 mentions across 1 issues

Vates Rising is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 11, 2024 and October 11, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Vat... writes at Vates Rising"; "who writes at Vates Rising". It most often appears alongside AmandaFromBethlehem, Amedeo Rothson, analogfutures.substack.com.

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Vates Rising
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1
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1
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October 11, 2024
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October 11, 2024
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Book Review Contest 2024 Winners
October 11, 2024 · Original source
The Family That Couldn’t Sleep, reviewed by Vat, a neuropsychology/genetics student who writes at Vates Rising.
Inline links: The Family That Couldn’t Sleep, Vates Rising
Venetian letters1 mentions across 1 issues

Venetian letters is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 01, 2025 and August 01, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "the Venetian letters and those other sources". It most often appears alongside Africa, Agamemnon, Age of Empires II.

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Venetian letters
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1
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1
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August 01, 2025
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August 01, 2025
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Your Review: Joan of Arc
August 01, 2025 · Original source
This means there's a giant vulnerability in our sources. What if the Trial of Rehabilitation was a show trial, but in the opposite direction? What if all that evidence was made up? In that case, most of what I've quoted would be unreliable. We'd be down to the Orleans burgher's journal and the Venetian letters and those other sources, most of which aren't eyewitnesses.
Vibecession1 mentions across 1 issues

Vibecession is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 15, 2025 and December 15, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Thanks to everyone who responded to the Vibecession post". It most often appears alongside ACX, AI Futures Project, Astralcodexten Com.

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Vibecession
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1
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1
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December 15, 2025
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December 15, 2025
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Open Thread 412
December 15, 2025 · Original source
1: Thanks to everyone who responded to the Vibecession post. I hope to do a Highlights From The Comments eventually, but I’m swamped right now and probably won’t do much of anything besides posting from drafts for the rest of the year.
Inline links: Vibecession
vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com1 mentions across 1 issues

vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 11, 2023 and May 11, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/bombshell-new-study-on-long-covid". It most often appears alongside 15th Commandment, ACX, ADHD.

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1
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1
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May 11, 2023
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May 11, 2023
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Highlights From The Comments On Long COVID And Bisexuality
May 11, 2023 · Original source
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2802893 vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/bombshell-new-study-on-long-covid
Inline links: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2802893
Viral1 mentions across 1 issues

Viral is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 30, 2022 and July 30, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Scott Aaronson’s review of Viral". It most often appears alongside 1950s influenza strain, 1977 influenza pandemic, 1992 scientific investigation.

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Viral
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1
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1
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July 30, 2022
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July 30, 2022
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Your Book Review: Viral
July 30, 2022 · Original source
Alina Chan and Matt Ridley’s Viral is a book about the investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. In case you haven’t been following, there’s been a shift in the scientific consensus on this topic. For about the first year of the pandemic, it was widely accepted that SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, had a natural origin, meaning that it first spread to humans naturally from an animal (also called a zoonotic origin). Any suggestion that it could have come from a lab was dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Then, sometime around spring 2021 something changed. Well-known, respected scientists began to voice the opinion that SARS-CoV-2 might have come from a lab, or that it’s at least a plausible hypothesis that deserves an investigation. The scientific consensus abruptly shifted from “definitely natural origin” to “both natural origin and lab origin are viable hypotheses that should be investigated.”
Inline links: Well-known, respected scientists
Viral is a deep dive into this issue from all angles, covering the basics of virology, the history and epidemiology of the COVID-19 pandemic, the response of scientific and governmental institutions, and various pieces of evidence for both hypotheses. It doesn’t contain any new, bombshell revelations, but it’s a neat, accessible summary of the scattered bits of information that have been uncovered since the start of the pandemic. In this review I’ll try to distill some of the most important information and discuss my own interpretation of it.
As a non-fiction book on current events, an unavoidable weakness of Viral is that it does not include recent developments that have come out after the book’s publication. At least one of these developments is important enough for me to mention in this review. In February 2022, three scientific pre-prints [1, 2, 3] were released, related to the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the Huanan seafood market in the early stage of the pandemic. The Huanan seafood market, located in Wuhan, is thought by natural origins proponents to have been the source of the first zoonotic spillover (or possibly, two separate spillovers) into humans. Advocates of this hypothesis have taken these pre-prints as further confirmation of a zoonotic origin in the market. However, proponents of the lab leak hypothesis have pointed out that they never denied that an early superspreader event occurred in the market – they just think the virus was brought there by an infected human, and spread to others in the crowded and enclosed space. They point to the fact that all of the market animals that were tested for COVID came up negative. Fence-sitters, like Chan, say that the pre-print findings appear to be consistent with both hypotheses.
Inline links: 1, 2, 3, or possibly, two separate spillovers
VOA News1 mentions across 1 issues

VOA News is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 19, 2021 and April 19, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "From VOA News: Once Ardent Trump Supporters, White Nationalists Splinter Ahead Of Presidential Vote". It most often appears alongside #Resistance, 1/2019 government shut down, 538.

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VOA News
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1
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1
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April 19, 2021
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April 19, 2021
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Mantic Monday: Grading My Trump Predictions
April 19, 2021 · Original source
Further, white supremacists generally stopped being interested in Donald Trump, and have mostly abandoned him. In 2018, Southern Poverty Law Center wrote Are White Nationalists Turning On Trump? - by now, the answer is clearly yes. From VOA News: Once Ardent Trump Supporters, White Nationalists Splinter Ahead Of Presidential Vote. Richard Spencer, who invented the term "alt-right" and whose Trump salute helped spark the panic, disavowed Trump in early 2020 and announced he was supporting Biden in the election. White supremacists are irrelevant and you should not care what they think, but if for some reason you insist on caring what they think, they are no longer particularly pro-Trump.
Inline links: Are White Nationalists Turning On Trump?, Once Ardent Trump Supporters, White Nationalists Splinter Ahead Of Presidential Vote, announced he was supporting Biden in the election
Vodou Economics1 mentions across 1 issues

Vodou Economics is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 20, 2021 and September 20, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "a Haiti econ blog (appropriately named Vodou Economics)". It most often appears alongside 4chan, A Clockwork Orange, Adrenochrome.

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Vodou Economics
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1
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1
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September 20, 2021
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September 20, 2021
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Links For September
September 20, 2021 · Original source
21: More mea culpa: last month, I linked to some articles speculating on why, even though Haiti and the Dominican Republic had the same GDP in 1960, the Dominican Republic eventually did much better. Now a Haiti econ blog (appropriately named Vodou Economics) proposes a much better explanation - the data are wrong, and the DR was always ahead of Haiti. The DR’s recent economic boom is still interesting, but we should stop insisting on finding a post-1960 explanation for Haiti’s current woes.
Inline links: Vodou Economics
Voelkischer Beobachter1 mentions across 1 issues

Voelkischer Beobachter is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 04, 2023 and August 04, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "the Voelkischer Beobachter, the Nazi daily newspaper"; "he was able to convince the Bavarian government to stop suppressing the Voelkischer Beobachter, which immediately resumed publication"; "issuing special army editions of the Voelkischer Beobachter". It most often appears alongside Academy’s School of Architecture, Adolf, Adolf Hitler.

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Voelkischer Beobachter
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1
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1
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August 04, 2023
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August 04, 2023
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Your Book Review: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
August 04, 2023 · Original source
During these early days, the Nazi Party enjoyed three advantages. First was its troop of enforcers who threw out hecklers at meetings and who broke up the meetings of other small parties. At first, these were an informal collection of Hitler’s old military contacts, but over time they were organized into the infamous brownshirted SA. The Party’s second advantage was the donations brought in by Hitler’s speeches and other fundraising efforts. Political movements run on money, and convincing wealthy families to support the Nazi cause became one of Hitler’s specialties. Third was the Voelkischer Beobachter, the Nazi daily newspaper, which spread the Nazi ideology to the masses.
Inline links: SA
After being released from prison, Hitler set out to achieve these goals. By promising to behave himself, he was able to convince the Bavarian government to stop suppressing the Voelkischer Beobachter, which immediately resumed publication. Soon after, Hitler organized a meeting of the Party where he delivered one of his customary speeches. He got carried away and ranted about how in this ideological struggle either the Nazis or their enemies would have to die.
But Hitler was not complacent. He had learned from his Vienna days that a mass movement must also have the support of existing institutions, and he had in mind for his movement the army and the corporations. The Nazis targeted propaganda specifically at the army, issuing special army editions of the Voelkischer Beobachter, and making appeals to the officers. At the same time, Hitler was having secret meetings with business leaders, where he assured them that industry and business would flourish under his leadership. He persuaded many of them, and many more, deducing from the Nazi electoral miracle that his success was inevitable, rushed to show their support while it would still be meaningful. Business interests began bankrolling the Nazi political machine.
Voice of America1 mentions across 1 issues

Voice of America is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 29, 2022 and June 29, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Read New York Times’ or Washington Post’s The Atlantic’s or Pew’s or Voice of America’s articles". It most often appears alongside Baltimore, Black Lives Matter, BLM.

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Voice of America
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1
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1
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June 29, 2022
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June 29, 2022
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What Caused The 2020 Homicide Spike?
June 29, 2022 · Original source
This is basically par for the course. Read New York Times’ or Washington Post’s The Atlantic’s or Pew’s or Voice of America’s articles on this same topic. They’re all exactly the same “It’s a complex combination of factors, we can never know for sure, but probably the pandemic is the most important thing”.
Inline links: New York Times’, Washington Post’s, The Atlantic’s, Pew’s, Voice of America’s
Vokrug Sveta1 mentions across 1 issues

Vokrug Sveta is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 04, 2023 and August 04, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Gessen got a new job editing Vokrug Sveta". It most often appears alongside Alexander Alexandrov, Berlin, City of Leningrad.

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Vokrug Sveta
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1
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1
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August 04, 2023
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August 04, 2023
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More Memorable Passages From "The Man Without A Face"
August 04, 2023 · Original source
Too long for me to quote in full, but there is a postscript for this second edition with the story of the one time Masha Gessen met Vladimir Putin. Putin shut down the pro-democracy paper Gessen was working at, so Gessen got a new job editing Vokrug Sveta - if you’re American, think National Geographic: a nice, apolitical magazine with pretty pictures of wildlife. One of Putin’s lieutenants, Dmitry Peskov, thought it would be nice for the regime to patronize it and make it the official geographical magazine of the Russian government.
Suddenly I seemed to be able to walk through walls: as a representative of RGS-affiliated Vokrug Sveta I was invited to state television and radio, where I had been blacklisted for years. I never went, but one of our editors used a live state-radio broadcast to speak up for Pussy Riot - and no one said a word to me. Did anyone even know? I put out feelers and soon found out that Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, who was working on the RGS/Volkov Sveta project most closely, had not known I was the magazine’s editor at the time the partnership was announced - by Putin himself. Peskov found out from a mutual acquaintance of ours several weeks later.
Volume III1 mentions across 1 issues

Volume III is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 01, 2025 and October 01, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "The most important is Volume III, which contains some otherwise unobtainable testimonies". It most often appears alongside 1910s Portugal, 1999 British eclipse, 2017 US eclipse.

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Volume III
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1
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1
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October 01, 2025
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October 01, 2025
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The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
October 01, 2025 · Original source
Our best source for witness testimonies is the Documentacao Critica de Fatima, collected by the organization that runs the Fatima shrine in Portugal. This is entirely in Portuguese. A 633 page overview is available for free download (and so machine translation) and was my main source in this post. The rest is available only as physical books, $15 + shipping each. Somebody should buy the books, scan them, machine translate the testimonies, and put the translations online. The most important is Volume III, which contains some otherwise unobtainable testimonies. I think that there are ways to do this that don’t violate copyright law (the testimonies themselves were recorded in 1917 - 1930, so copyright should have expired); I also think (hope) that the shrine is most interested in spreading information about the miracle and isn’t going to try to file an international lawsuit over edge cases.
Inline links: A 633 page overview, physical books
Vote Pattern Analysis1 mentions across 1 issues

Vote Pattern Analysis is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 29, 2022 and December 29, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Vote Pattern Analysis makes many, many more arguments". It most often appears alongside Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, Adobe Illustrator, Ahmed Chalabi.

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Vote Pattern Analysis
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1
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1
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December 29, 2022
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December 29, 2022
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Sorry, I Still Think I Am Right About The Media Very Rarely Lying
December 29, 2022 · Original source
In any case, it definitely doesn’t look like anyone is making anything up or outright lying. Fox is honestly reporting what Rand Paul said. Rand Paul is honestly reporting what the Vote Pattern Analysis blog said. Vote Pattern Analysis discovered a suspicious-looking true fact, and leapt from there to “fraud!” without considering innocent explanations. If you look at other media claiming the 2020 election was stolen, you’ll find very similar stories.
But also: Rand Paul based his accusations on a post by the Vote Pattern Analysis blog. VPA does some statistics and concludes that:
Inline links: Vote Pattern Analysis
You notice a sudden and suspicious spike in Biden votes around 11-04 04; Vote Pattern Analysis suggests this demonstrates fraud.
vox.com1 mentions across 1 issues

vox.com is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 25, 2021 and August 25, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "vox.com/2019/6/18/18642645/bitcoin-energy-price-renewable-china". It most often appears alongside AP News, Associated Press, Bitcoin.

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vox.com
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1
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1
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August 25, 2021
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August 25, 2021
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Carbon Costs Quantified
August 25, 2021 · Original source
8. https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoins-are-there/, https://www.vox.com/2019/6/18/18642645/bitcoin-energy-price-renewable-china . Like everything else that uses electricity, this is much worse in areas that use fossil fuels and much better in areas that use renewables.
20. https://www.vox.com/2014/7/2/5865109/study-going-vegetarian-could-cut-your-food-carbon-footprint-in-half. I rounded up quite a bit to adjust for Americans eating more meat than British people.
Voxsplainer1 mentions across 1 issues

Voxsplainer is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 20, 2021 and September 20, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "A Voxsplainer about the potential promise of geothermal energy". It most often appears alongside 4chan, A Clockwork Orange, Adrenochrome.

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Voxsplainer
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1
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1
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September 20, 2021
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September 20, 2021
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Links For September
September 20, 2021 · Original source
30: A Voxsplainer about the potential promise of geothermal energy.
Inline links: the potential promise of geothermal energy
31: A Voxsplainer in spirit (actually on Works In Progress) by Stephan Guyenet on new weight loss drug semaglutide. Although it is excellent, I find it raises more questions than it answers. The drug was originally designed to increase insulin secretion, but apparently its weight-loss-related effects are completely separate from that and involve some action in the hypothalamus? And it decreases alcoholism and generally improves impulse control? I’m really curious what lever it’s pressing here and I hope that - despite already being one of the biggest science stories of the decade - it eventually leads to even more mental health applications.
Inline links: semaglutide