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Great post! I especially agree that for most independent researchers, applying to PHDs before you necessarily want one would be a helpful option to have as a backstop for if your near term career plans don't work out - and people should apply early because there's such a long lag time between application and starting.
I think it's also worth emphasising that if you have a non-standard work history (or are a bit junior), but might want to work in the United States, pursuing higher education in the US is one of the easiest ways to secure long-term work authorisation (And if someone funds your PhD, is radically cheaper than almost every alternative)
the research management frame would be more helpful.
I think btw it gets more value than scholar support because it's a proactive service we offer to all scholars on a given stream, rather than waiting for them to only come to us when there's a problem.
the role of the RM should shift from writing the reports for mentors to helping the fellows prepare their own reports for mentors.
I spend a fair amount of time on my projects helping people prep for meetings with their supervisors, yeah. I also used to have scholars edit my written reports before sending to Ethan.
First off: as one of Ethan's current Astra Fellows (and having worked with him since ~last October) I especially think his collaborators in MATS and Astra historically underweight how valuable overcommunicating with Ethan is, and routinely underbook meetings to ask for his support.
Second, I think this post is so dense with useful advice, so I made anki flashcards of Ethan's post using GPT-4 (generated via ankibrain [https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1915225457] , small manual edits.)
You can find them here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G4i7iZbILwAiQ7FtasSoLx5g7JIOWgeD/view?usp=sharing