I discovered ribbonfarm after being pointed to Rao's outstanding series about office politics, through the lens of the Office which is here:

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

Then I decided to read much more material from the blog, but for the most part I have been disappointed. I feel like the authors there love intellectualism to the point that they create fancy constructs even when there isn't much return. Basically I feel like it's trying too hard to be clever. I have found a few gems there, however.

Not trying to pick a fight with anyone, just wanted to share my own experience here.

It's good in general to be careful of the "this is what I think people are like" genre of blogging. Especially when it's presented with such certainty. See also: slate star codex, TLP. At least those two are working psychiatrists. Venkat Rao is just a guy with some opinions that he has retrospectively derived from his own career progress, as far as I can tell. It smacks of rationalisation.

Did TLP just completely stop after being outed or is there something still happening with a book?

In my imagination he went completely insane trying to write the porn book.

If you want a good continuation, check out Jordan Peterson, who has a much wider framework into which TLP's somewhat narrow worldview can be fitted. He is also a practicing clinical psychologist, as well as a professor. This video summarises a lot of his ideas, but they are fully explained and justified in his university courses, which are all on the channel. "Personality" is a first year course, and "Maps of Meaning" is I think taken by third or fourth year psychology students.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCOw0eJ84d8

(You're probably best off ignoring the culture war drama he's currently embroiled in. Unfortunately the youtube algorithm has now placed him firmly in the alt-right nexus because of this, so his videos might shit up your reccommendations. This is not a reflection of his ideas, far from it.)

Yes, true. But I also think Rao is incredibly self-aware of this. Interact with him. Very strong opinions, gingerly held.

His writing doesn't seem to convey that to me. On the contrary: there's a kind of pretentious of style that I find uniquely intolerable. Which is too bad, because I'd otherwise probably be pretty interested in some of what he has to say, but I'm too much of a dick to get past it.

They definitely spend a lot of time throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks, I think (not everything sticks but it's interesting to see what does)

That recommended reading list is so good I'm going to save some people the trouble of finding the link: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/now-reading/

I never would have imagined myself reading a book about teaching improvisational theater and enjoying it, much less finding it applicable to my career in engineering.

If you liked that book, take a peek at "Don't Shoot The Dog"

Agreed. ribbonfarm is terrific. I support his work by paying monthly for the kindle version of the website publications.