What people recommend, in their own words, with the receipt.
Dean W. Ball
Writes Hyperdimensional, a newsletter on AI policy and governance. A White House AI policy adviser in 2025; joined OpenAI on 6 July 2026 to lead its Strategic Futures team.
Astra is a remarkable piece of technology. Earlier agents often tried to dampen my ambitions—they’d push me to do “pilots” or “proofs of concept.” Then agents started meeting my ambitions. Astra is the first agent that routinely raises my ambitions. I encourage you to try it!
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The small bar beside a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The bar shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Full and green is recent. It drains, and turns amber and then grey, as the post gets older.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The bar is empty after about:
Hardware, services4 years
Software5 years
Podcasts, courses, other8 years
Books25 years
A striped bar means the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no bar.