Astral Codex Ten

Brin

5 min read

Brin

Article

Brin is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between April 28, 2023 and October 22, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Brin is nowhere near the most competent character in these books - she’s a teenage girl who doesn’t know much about the world”; “titans like Brin ($150 billion)“. It most often appears alongside 10th century, 19th Century, A16Z.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: April 28, 2023
  • Last seen: October 22, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

The Psychology Of Fantasy
April 28, 2023 · Original source
But also: the way to become John Wick is to practice shooting, every day, again and again, more obsessively than anyone else. Not only is this boring to watch (the movies don’t show it, and if they did it would be a short training montage) but it makes him too different from us, brings it back to the James Bond or Tyler Durden fantasy - we know, deep down, that we’re not the kind of person who would do this. You can sort of get magic this way - that’s what your average Level 20 Dungeons and Dragons wizard has done - but most fantasy protagonists are more interesting than that.
The most perfect fantasy series, in the sense of hitting the exact center of every trope, might be Terry Brooks’ Shannara. In the third book, Wishsong of Shannara, a wise wizard tells Brin Ohmsford that because her ancestors used powerful magics, she has had those magics rub off in her blood in the form of the Wishsong, some sort of incomprehensible ability to get anything she wants as long as she can master herself and her emotions enough to use it correctly. She is charged with fighting the Dark Lord, and has various adventures which she can’t really solve with her Wishsong because she’s not able to master her emotions well enough to control it. Finally she confronts the Dark Lord, who tries to corrupt her, but her brother shows up at the last moment, reminds her how much she loves her family, and she realizes this is who she truly is, masters her Wishsong, and destroys the Dark Lord.
This seems to me the most perfect fantasy plot, or the most perfect explanation of the role of magic in fantasy. Brin is nowhere near the most competent character in these books - she’s a teenage girl who doesn’t know much about the world - but she has been born infinitely special. But she doesn’t face the humiliation of knowing that she only defeated the Dark Lord through the birth lottery (and we don’t face the humiliation of reading a ten page book where the wise wizard tells her to defeat the Dark Lord and she says “okay” and immediately uses her magic to zap him from afar). Rather, she has to find herself to use her magic. It’s earned, but in a way that makes it feel more mystical, rather than less. We don’t want to practice shooting obsessively every day for years, but going on a quest and finding ourselves seems both achievable and kind of fun.
My Antichrist Lecture
October 22, 2025 · Original source
Bear = Google, founded by Sergey Brin (Russian)
Christopher Olah is the fourth co-founder. Christopher is Greek for “bringer of Christ”. Olah (עֹלָה) in Hebrew means “burnt offering”; the Greek translation is ὁλοκαυτεῖν, meaning “total destruction”, because the olah was an especially thorough sacrifice in which the entire animal was reduced to ash. So “Christopher Olah” means “bringer of Christ to total destruction”. This is also a name of blasphemy.
Inline links: is Greek for, means, is
In what sense is Marc Andreessen a “little horn”? In traditional commentary on Daniel, this refers to the Antichrist starting as a seemingly-insignificant king, much weaker than those he ultimately defeats. This matches Andreessen, who, with a fortune of only $2 billion, seems an unlikely candidate to stand up to titans like Brin ($150 billion) or Musk ($400 billion).