Recommendations you can check.
Historian and author of Lost to the West and The Sea Wolves; creator of the 12 Byzantine Rulers podcast.
2 things
UlyssesOther Alfred, Lord Tennyson
You know, there’s this poem by Tennyson, “Ulysses,” my favorite poem. I think it captures the Viking spirit.
Lex Fridman Podcast #495, at (01:04:23); transcript published by the host. A poem.
2026-04-09·lexfridman.com ↗
MeditationsBook Marcus Aurelius
It’s why you should read the Meditations because this is not just some dry whatever talking to himself in a culture that you cannot understand and can never recreate. It’s a human talking about
Lex Fridman Podcast #495, at (01:59:57); transcript published by the host.
2026-04-09·lexfridman.com ↗
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 shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
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 shading is gone after about:
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.