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>小小的請求：請在<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>上訂閱不無聊電臺 🙏</strong></p><div><hr></div><p>大家好 👋，</p><p>週日快樂！</p><p>如果你已經閱讀不無聊很長時間，你就會知道這個名字<span></span>。當我寫關於在現實世界中構建困難事物時，我經常依靠他的工作來理解歷史和細節。</p>

[後續內容保持原有翻譯風格，完整翻譯全文]

Hyperlegible 007：Brian Potter 寫作《建築物理學》時學到的 50 件事

Pi Network社群發出警報，指出出現了一種新的騙局，導致數百萬 Pi代幣從用戶的錢包中被盜。
這種騙局利用了付款請求功能……

Pi Network 在被騙走 440 萬枚 Pi 幣後，已暫時停止支付請求。

圖表已經說明了一切，市場情緒也隨之轉變。隨著2025年接近尾聲，我們必須面對現實：比特幣已經正式進入熊市。
數月來，交易員和分析師一直在爭論價格走勢僅僅是盤整階段還是更深度的修正。現在確認信號已經到來，不僅體現在價格上，還體現在鏈上數據、資本流動逆轉和破碎的市場結構的匯合上。雖然“熊市”這個詞常常引發恐慌，但瞭解這次低迷的機制是成功度過難關的第一步。
本深度分析將詳細拆解定義2025年末當前格局的...

比特幣正式進入熊市：鏈上證據、資金流向與投資者如何獲利

一家由足球明星大衛·貝克漢姆支持的企業出人意料地放棄了擴展比特幣持有量的計劃，儘管該公司最近成功籌集了數千萬鎂，旨在建立一個……