Things are almost always more complicated than they seem.

<p><strong>A quick favor: please subscribe to not boring radio on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CVuzQvJ-Ys" rel="nofollow">YouTube</a> and <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/0v08AWfp7oW276LZVYUktd?si=FN2ZzZOCSOex1YBEPmnOEg" rel="nofollow">Spotify</a> 🙏</strong></p><div><hr></div><p>Hi friends 👋,</p><p>Happy Sunday! </p><p>If you’ve been reading Not Boring for a while, you’ll know the name <span></span>. When I write about building hard things in the physical world, I often lean on his work to understand the history and details. </p><p>When I originally wrote about Base Power Company, I cited him three times, and used his excellent four-part series on <a href="https://www.construction-physics.com/p/the-birth-of-the-grid" rel="nofollow">The Grid</a> to understand the workings of that “single enormous machine that spanned from coast to coast (exclusive of Texas).”</p><p>When I wrote about <a href="https://www.notboring.co/p/cuby-the-house-factory-factory" rel="nofollow">Cuby</a>, I used multiple of his essays, including <a href="https://www.construction-physics.com/p/another-day-in-katerradise" rel="nofollow">Another Day in Katerradise</a>, about his experience at and lessons from working at the Softbank-backed home manufacturing startup, as well as his more technical <em><a href="https://www.construction-physics.com/p/logistics-production-volume-and-industrialized" rel="nofollow">Logistics, Production Volume, and Industrialized Building</a> </em>and others. I leaned on him so heavily for that one that I even thanked him at the end. </p><div><figure><a href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F054ed5b7-9133-471f-933c-afe5c15b8870_908x227.png" rel="nofollow"><div><picture><source><img src="https://static.fwimg.io/img/feed/ee183bbd2f544a5f95134c07fb53328a.jpg" alt=""></source></picture><div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>I’ve mentioned his <a href="https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-did-solar-power-get-cheap-part" rel="nofollow">series on how solar power got so cheap</a> numerous times, and we’ve probably included various essays from his newsletter, <em>Construction Physics, </em>in half a dozen Weekly Doses of Optimism. </p><p>As you can tell, I think <em><a href="https://www.construction-physics.com/" rel="nofollow">Construction Physics</a></em> is a national treasure.</p><div><figure><a href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8f565b32-c878-47ba-8081-cb69a1bacead_808x510.png" rel="nofollow"><div><picture><source><img src="https://static.fwimg.io/img/feed/df6525c576ccdc3dbc822a5d26628205.jpg" alt=""></source></picture><div></div></div></a><figcaption><em><a href="https://x.com/packyM/status/1783911802134200613" rel="nofollow">Link to Tweet</a></em></figcaption></figure></div><p>If you don’t already, you should subscribe to <span></span>:</p><div><div><a href="https://www.construction-physics.com/?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_campaign=publication_embed&amp;utm_medium=web" rel="nofollow"><img src="https://static.fwimg.io/img/feed/9c71e0b0b9b33787717e107bc19a2dcc.jpg"><span>Construction Physics</span><div>Essays about buildings, infrastructure, and industrial technology.</div><div>By Brian Potter</div></a></div></div><p>Recently, crunched for time after a work retreat, Brian put together <em><a href="https://www.construction-physics.com/p/50-things-ive-learned-writing-construction" rel="nofollow">50 Things I’ve Learned Writing Construction Physics</a></em> that is exactly what it sounds like: a distillation of 600,000 words over five years into one information-dense list. </p><div><a href="https://www.construction-physics.com/p/50-things-ive-learned-writing-construction?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_campaign=post_embed&amp;utm_medium=web" rel="nofollow"><div><img src="https://static.fwimg.io/img/feed/840884325c2e63d58d60ee89aec95402.jpg"><span>Construction Physics</span></div><div><div>50 Things I’ve Learned Writing Construction Physics</div></div><div>I’ve been writing Construction Physics since September of 2020. Over the past four and a half years I’ve written 186 essays, totalling around 600,000 words. The newsletter was originally focused on understanding the problems of construction productivity (though it’s never been entirely about that), but I have branched out to write more about a variety o…</div><div><span>Read more</span></div><div>10 days ago · 377 likes · 32 comments · Brian Potter</div></a></div><p>It was the perfect excuse to talk to Brian about so many of his great essays at once, so I asked him to come on Hyperlegible and he was nice enough to accept. We covered a lot: </p><ul><li><p>Brian’s writing and research process (preview: read everything available on a subject; make that feasible by picking a sufficiently narrow subject)</p></li><li><p>What are some things that seem like recent developments but have key predecessors going back centuries or decades?</p></li><li><p>An example of something that seemed like an inevitability, but was really a highly contingent product of chance and circumstance?</p></li><li><p>What’s the intuitive explanation with the widest gap from the real story?</p></li><li><p>What’s a problem a lot of people think is simple that is actually really complex?</p></li><li><p>Why is prefab construction not cheaper than conventional, on-site construction, but manufactured and mobile homes are?</p></li><li><p>Why does Chicago build skyscrapers twice as fast as New York City?</p></li><li><p>How is it possible that the US actually builds high-profile skyscrapers as fast as China?</p></li><li><p>Why did the US start adopting gas turbines after the 1965 Northeast blackouts?</p></li><li><p>If the Jones Act isn’t to blame for US shipbuilding woes, what is?</p></li><li><p>What did Cambridge and Bell Labs get right?</p></li><li><p>Why have jet engine and commercial airliners always been so expensive to develop?</p></li><li><p>Is just fundamentally resistant to learning curves?</p></li></ul><p>And much, much more. </p><p>The reason I do Hyperlegible is because really smart people spend weeks compressing a ton of information into the best single essay they can write on the topic. We can piggyback off all of that work (and give them a little shine for doing it).  </p><p>This conversation felt like cheating: the compression of so many compressions. </p><p>Brian’s takeaway from writing <em>Construction Physics</em> thus far is that things are almost always more complicated than they seem. Thankfully, we have people like Brian helping us make sense of all of the complexity. I had so much fun learning from him live after learning from him through writing for so long, and I hope you do too.</p><div><hr></div><p>If you’re more the reading type, I used Claude to turn the messy YouTube transcript into something well-formatted and clean. It kind of blew my mind watching it. </p><p><strong><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1prroJRrpgwPRx1jgFvaBUXO9YBfzCFFmt9hUbUmVBnA/edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow">Hyperlegible 007 - Brian Potter - Transcript</a></strong></p><p>As always, you can find the full conversation wherever you like by subscribing to Not Boring Radio:</p><p><strong>YouTube:</strong></p><div><div></div></div><p><strong>Spotify:</strong></p><p><strong>Apple Podcasts:</strong></p><div></div><p>You can also find links to all of the essays and conversations at <a href="https://readwise.io/reader/view/hyperlegible" rel="nofollow">readwise.io/hyperlegible</a>. Thanks to our friends and sponsors at Readwise, you can <a href="https://readwise.io/reader/view/hyperlegible" rel="nofollow">head there</a> for a free trial and get all Hyperlegible articles automatically added to your account.</p><p>If you want more, here are some of the essays of Brian’s and others that we discussed in the conversation. Save them to <a href="https://readwise.io/reader/view/hyperlegible" rel="nofollow">Readwise</a> and come back to them:</p><p><strong>Construction Physics</strong></p><p>- <a href="https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-to-build-300000-airplanes-in" rel="nofollow">How to Build 3,000 Airplanes in Five Years</a></p><p>- <a href="https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-its-so-hard-to-build-a-jet-engine" rel="nofollow">⁠Why It's So Hard to Build a Jet Engine⁠</a></p><p>- <a href="https://www.construction-physics.com/p/what-learning-by-doing-looks-like" rel="nofollow">⁠What Learning by Doing Looks Like⁠</a></p><p>- <a href="https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-california-turned-against-growth" rel="nofollow">⁠How California Turned Against Growth⁠</a></p><p>- <a href="https://www.construction-physics.com/p/another-day-in-katerradise" rel="nofollow">⁠Another Day in Katerradise⁠</a> - <a href="https://www.construction-physics.com/p/the-birth-of-the-grid" rel="nofollow">⁠The Birth of the Grid⁠</a></p><p><strong>Recommended and Discussed Essays</strong></p><p>- <a href="http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail" rel="nofollow">⁠Reality Has a Surprising Amount of Detail⁠</a> - John Salvatier</p><p>- <a href="https://gwern.net/timing" rel="nofollow">⁠Timing Technology: Lessons From The Media Lab⁠</a> - Gwern</p><p>- <a href="https://www.skyscrapercenter.com/buildings" rel="nofollow">⁠100 Tallest Completed Buildings⁠</a></p><p>- <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Boom-Bubbles-Stagnation-Byrne-Hobart/dp/1953953476" rel="nofollow">⁠Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation⁠</a> - Byrne Hobart &amp; Tobias Huber</p><div><hr></div><p><strong>Transcript</strong></p><div><hr></div><p>Big thanks to Brian for joining me, and to Jim Portela for editing!</p><p>Thanks for listening,</p><p>Packy</p>

Hyperlegible 007: 50 Things Brian Potter Has Learned Writing Construction Physics

<p><strong>小小的请求：请在<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CVuzQvJ-Ys" rel="nofollow">YouTube</a>和<a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/0v08AWfp7oW276LZVYUktd?si=FN2ZzZOCSOex1YBEPmnOEg" rel="nofollow">Spotify</a>上订阅不无聊电台 🙏</strong></p><div><hr></div><p>大家好 👋，</p><p>周日快乐！</p><p>如果你已经阅读不无聊很长时间，你就会知道这个名字<span></span>。当我写关于在现实世界中构建困难事物时，我经常依靠他的工作来理解历史和细节。</p>

[后续内容保持原有翻译风格，完整翻译全文]

Hyperlegible 007：Brian Potter 写作《建筑物理学》时学到的 50 件事

行情快速更新,如果这个下降趋势(均线)维加斯隧道被突破,很有可能会向98000~10000去爆空猎取流动性

行情更新丨BTC

目前，meme币仍然是加密市场中最敏感的领域之一。由于接近年底，市场流动性相当低迷，因此即使供应量或交易活动发生轻微变化…

2026年1月3个值得关注的meme币

白银 (XAG) 市场即将进入关键的一周，此前芝加哥商品交易所 (CME) 宣布，将在短短两周内第二次上涨保证金要求，新规将于周一（29日）生效。