Articles
What I talk about, in writing
I record a video, and then I write the same thought down — for anyone who would rather read than watch. Each piece has the video with it.
We Left the USSR With $75 Each. For Five Months I Traded at Italian Markets
In 1989 my family left Minsk as refugees with two bags and $75 a person. We spent a month in Vienna and five months near Rome, where I sold everything we had brought and then started buying it back to sell again. One trip to Udine nearly scared me to death.
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Should You Fight for Success in America or Go Back? My Advice to a Young Truck Driver
Ilya is 30, came from the Luhansk region and drives a car hauler in the U.S. He asked me when to quit working for someone else, which business to start, whether courses are worth it and where to find a mentor. Here’s what I told him.
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New York Is Falling Behind Madrid, and I’m Looking at Apartments There
I love New York and have lived in Manhattan since 2014. After a trip to Madrid I compared the two cities honestly: noise, clean streets, restaurants, safety, and what you get for your taxes. Then I went to a real estate agency.
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Tip Screens Made Suckers of Us All. Here’s Why I Say No
A waiter stands over you with a terminal, and a café cashier asks for 25% for handing you a pastry. Here’s how tipping in America got this far, how it works in Europe, and why I now say no when a tip isn’t earned.
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I Think America’s Middle Class Will Disappear. Here’s How I Handle Money
I expect the middle class to keep shrinking until mostly the very rich and the poor are left. Here’s why, and what I’ve learned about money since I started in America at $4 an hour: lending, mortgages, saving, and why rich people still check prices.
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I Asked Roman Yampolskiy How a Superintelligence Could Kill Us All
AI safety professor Roman Yampolskiy says human-level AI could arrive by 2027 and that nobody will be able to control what comes after it. I asked him which jobs go first, how a superintelligence could kill us, and who gave anyone the right to take that risk.
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My Mother’s Last Month Showed Me How American Nursing Homes Really Work
My mother fell at a family dinner at 86 and died a month later in a rehab center attached to a nursing home. Here’s what I saw there, who actually pays for nursing homes, and what private equity changed.
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A Hospital Billed Me $18,339 for an MRI, So I Tried to Make Prices Public
A hospital charged me $18,339 for an MRI, and after insurance I still owed $5,413. Here’s why patients rarely know the price in advance, what I built to change that, and why two minutes at a dentist cost me $650.
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Bill Gates Staked His Reputation on This AI Warning. Abundance for Whom?
Gates told CNN the cuts will come fast and hit every industry at once, and he staked his reputation on saying it. Here's what he actually said, where I agree with him, and the one question he left open.
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Fauci Took the Fifth. Now the Senate Has His Phone
Senate Republicans put out the first texts from Dr. Fauci's government iPhone and Fox News read them on air. The phone holds more than 34,000 messages, and only three contacts on it are saved by name. Here's what was in the first batch, what happened at the hearing in July, and what I remember about the mandates.
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