Mat Lakeman

A good lot of them seem to be from Matt Lakeman, whose writing I highly recommend. He goes into detail about history, politics, and tries to understand why things are the way they are in the places he travels. The list is missing Lakeman's recent travels in Afghanistan: https://mattlakeman.org/2026/01/05/notes-on-afghanistan/

If this was your first contact with Lakeman's writing, you're in for a treat because there's a lot there. This one on the Incas was too good not to share, but his essay on the Aztecs[1] is equally as good, and my personal favorite is probably the deep dive you never knew you needed[2] on whaling. Agree on style, his travel blogs are like this too and it's really refreshing that he starts out by saying "these are my sources, I'm doing my best to either summarize on interpret them," so I have the opportunity to read them myself if I feel the need. [1] https://mattlakeman.org/2020/06/25/polygamy-human-sacrifices-and-steel… [2] https://mattlakeman.org/2021/06/01/everything-you-might-want-to-know-a…

https://mattlakeman.org is alright for long tourism stories intermixed with descriptions of history and politics of the place.

For those who may want to spent an hour or so of their Sunday really learning about what has been happening in El Salvador, I recommend the wonderful Notes on El Salvador by Matt Lakeman [1]. The type of long form content that we all need more of; subjects like these have too many angles to learn from HN comments. [1] https://mattlakeman.org/2024/03/30/notes-on-el-salvador/

This will probably greatly interest you: https://mattlakeman.org/2024/03/30/notes-on-el-salvador/

I've read most of Matt's "Notes on [X]" In general they are well written and interesting. In some cases though it's too simplified and at times insensitive. In particular, I've talked to people who are from Nigeria/Ghana or have visited there and they pointed out issues with his narrative. But most people who read Matt's blog have never been to these places, so they take everything as 100% accurate. That being said, if you treat it as literally just his experiences, then they're fantastic reads. P.S. His notes on Mauritania [https://mattlakeman.org/2023/08/16/notes-on-mauritania/] is really interesting for the train story. I had never heard of such a thing before.

Matt Lakeman's recent "Notes on Afghanistan" actually covers this as he first-hand experienced a similar situation in Afghanistan where the Taliban had shut off the internet: "The internet was out. Everywhere. Across the entire country. No cell data, no wifi, no phone service, and as far as I could tell, there are no landlines in Afghanistan [...] But now the blackout was total. Our waiter was complaining to my guide that he couldn’t contact his mother in a western province. I saw other people in the crowded restaurant fiddling with their phones and looking annoyed. I asked my guide what he thought was going on. He shrugged." "Without internet and phones, people can’t talk to loved ones, businesses can’t function, trade can’t function, and even government offices can’t function. Only the Taliban with their well-established network of short-wave radios can function. But still, if the internet remains off long enough in Afghanistan, the country’s economy and society may very well collapse. Afghans couldn’t get money from banks. Soon enough, would food stop being delivered to cities?" https://mattlakeman.org/2026/01/05/notes-on-afghanistan/#

Read [0] and wonder no longer — with the very important caveat that I too have not read Infinite Jest, so I cannot vouch for its accuracy. (I plan on reading it someday, and this has made me more interested in doing so.) [0] https://mattlakeman.org/2026/03/26/infinite-jest-extraction/

The Dominican Republic one is really detailed and surprisingly accurate, down to the pig on the moto! Come visit again soon :) https://mattlakeman.org/2021/11/08/notes-on-the-dominican-republic/

Also interesting is his Notes On The Gambia, which for some reason is the premier destination for female sex tourism: https://mattlakeman.org/2023/07/10/notes-on-the-gambia/

I've found Matt Lakemans essay really interesting, goes quite deeply into the processing (just how disgusting it is). https://mattlakeman.org/2021/06/01/everything-you-might-want-to-know-a…

Isn’t that awesome? > The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs was terrible. It was a prolonged period of pestilence, famine, torture, rape, plunder, destruction, conquest, cultural eradication, and general misery, with a short term death toll of something like 600,000 (including military and civilian casualties), and a long term death toll in the millions. > And yet part of me thinks it was totally awesome. https://mattlakeman.org/2020/06/25/polygamy-human-sacrifices-and-steel…

Quite a few actually: https://mattlakeman.org/category/miscellaneous/

This article is a much better analysis than anything I'd seen before about the rise and fall of Enron. An attempt to really dig into how and why it appeared to be and felt like an unstoppable rocketship of brilliance at the time that damn near everyone bought into, not just a hurr durr it's a bunch of fraud take. https://mattlakeman.org/2020/04/27/explaining-blaming-and-being-very-s…

What kinds of things would go wrong? Robbery? What kind of chances are you thinking? 5%? 20%? A commonly posted traveler, Matt Lakeman, just visited Dushanbe and didn't get that vibe. https://mattlakeman.org/2024/06/20/notes-on-tajikistan/

Folks will probably enjoy Matt Lakeman's series on whaling https://mattlakeman.org/2021/06/01/everything-you-might-want-to-know-a…

This reminds me of Matt Lakeman's "An Attempt at Explaining, Blaming, and Being Very Slightly Sympathetic Toward Enron" https://mattlakeman.org/2020/04/27/explaining-blaming-and-being-very-s… He makes the point that although Enron was clearly doing shady things, it's possible for a legitimate business to do many of the same stuff ("mark-to-market" accounting, tricky SPEs, and so on). Try to categorically eliminate Enron-style fraud and you might take down the next Google in the crossfire.

You might be interested in the similar story of Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, as told here by Matt Lakeman: https://mattlakeman.org/2023/10/09/notes-on-ghana/ His recent "Notes on [...]" series describing different countries in West Africa is full of interesting stuff. The latest entry, on Ivory Coast (officially Cotê d'Ivoire), was posted here a few days ago and I've been enjoying working back from there.

There's similar material on how much time is spent 'doing nothing' in https://mattlakeman.org/2021/07/27/shadow-of-the-sun/ and _The Discovery of France_.

You seem to be implying that the El Salvador project of brutal mass incarceration without spending too much effort checking that the incarcerated really are guilty could solve this problem too. Firstly, it probably wouldn't because that program only began a long time after the majority of the improvement had already happened: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,f… Bukele only began the mass incarceration after El Salvador had roughly the same number of homicides per person as the USA. Secondly even if it really had been that program that produced the improvements, the gangs in El Salvador were very different to the gangs in Mexico. I found https://mattlakeman.org/2024/03/30/notes-on-el-salvador/ interesting for background on the gangs.

Is this because doing nothing is "popular", or because non-industrial societies don't produce enough calories to do more? There's an interesting blogpost[0] about extreme poverty in 20th-century Africa: > He describes the narrow alleys of his neighborhood being packed with bayayes who just sit and stand around all day. Like, for the entire day. They have no jobs, no money, no goals, and they eat so little that they have no energy for leisure activities. The closest thing to an objective they have is keeping out of the sun, so they slowly move around the alleys to stay in the shade. Their highlight in a day might be some sort of public commotion, like a thief being caught, which will cause an enormous crowd to swell and watch the proceedings. [...] > Kapuscinski constantly describes much of Africa’s baseline climate as so hot, humid/dry, bug-filled, and generally insufferable that even passive existence is too taxing to be productive. Ie. the people of Abdallah Wallo can’t work hard because it is literally dangerous to do so. Doing nothing is the most common activity, but not exactly by choice. [0]https://mattlakeman.org/2021/07/27/shadow-of-the-sun/