Apologies for the delay - this summer has been exceptionally busy. Here’s a multi-issue to get us back to our regular programming.
- Ilya Sukhar - An Algorithmic Solution to Insomnia
- Former YC partner Sukhar recounts decades of insomnia, worsened by cycles of anxious meta-thoughts (“I really need to sleep now…”) that compound the problem.
- He avoided long-term reliance on sleep aids, wary of side effects, and eventually sought help through CBT-i (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia).
- The therapy distilled into what he calls an “algorithm”: restrict time in bed, track sleep efficiency, and iteratively adjust until body and circadian rhythm override the restless mind.
- Key “invariants”: never lie in bed awake, don’t nap or shift routine based on poor sleep, and only enter bed when truly tired - habits that retrain the brain’s confidence in sleep.
- The counterintuitive core: sleep less before you can sleep more. By compressing sleep opportunity, you rebuild trust between body and mind, gradually expanding it again.
- An Algorithmic Solution to Insomnia – Institute for Social
- Peter Frost - The Great Cognitive Advance
- Using ancient DNA, Frost argues in this fascinating article that human cognitive and behavioural traits have continued evolving into recorded history, shaped by cultural as much as natural selection.
- He highlights the shift of economic gravity from the Mediterranean to the North Sea in the 7th century, tied to higher social trust and impersonal cooperation in Northwestern Europe.
- Rome’s decline is read not just as political collapse but as genetic-cultural regression: familialism, health deterioration, and falling cognitive ability all eroded innovation.
- By contrast, medieval and post-medieval Europe saw cognitive gains as the middle classes reproduced more successfully, gradually changing the population’s psychological profile:
In England, from the eleventh century onward, the middle class outperformed the lower classes in having children who survived to adulthood. This class therefore grew as a proportion of the population, gradually replacing the lower classes through downward mobility. Gregory Clark has argued that the medieval/post-medieval period saw English society become increasingly middle class, mentally and behaviorally. “Thrift, prudence, negotiation, and hard work were becoming values for communities that previously had been spendthrift, impulsive, violent, and leisure loving” (Clark, 2007; Clark, 2009; Clark, 2023; Frost, 2022c).
- DNA evidence suggests a sharp rise in the “smart fraction” between 1000–1850, fuelling the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution by sheer demographic weight of talent.
- The Great Cognitive Advance – Aporia Magazine
- Rasheed Griffith with Jesús Fernández-Villaverde - The Cost of Catalan Privilege
- Fernández-Villaverde insists taxation is the state: to reshape fiscal rules is to redesign Spain itself, not just to adjust budgets.
- Spain already runs one of the world’s most decentralised systems, yet Catalonia demands Basque-style sovereignty - raising 100% of its taxes and remitting a token share to Madrid.
- He calls this setup a “Confederate relic”: it would hollow out common finances, entrench asymmetry, and erode the principle of equal citizenship.
- Politics drives the push - Sánchez relies on Catalan MPs, even as many Socialists outside Catalonia warn such a deal could be their “kiss of death.”
- The wider picture: opaque funding formulas breed mutual suspicion, demographic change weakens Catalan nationalism’s linguistic base, and younger Spaniards swing right amid stagnation.
- The Cost of Catalan Privilege – CPSI Media