We have "growth hackers" but no "stability hackers." "Disruptors" but no "preservers." Our entire vocabulary is oriented toward the new. We have no language for the equally difficult work of keeping existing things from falling apart.
Westenberg.
The Rime of the Ancient Maintainer
Every culture produces heroes that reflect its deepest anxieties. The Greeks, terrified of both mortality and immortality, gave us Achilles. The Vi...
GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME MILD DISCOMFORT AND A PLACE TO POST ABOUT IT.
The Greek Stoics wanted you to accept death. The LinkedIn Stoics want you to accept your open-plan office.
Bari Weiss built her brand on being “cancelled” from the NYT. She now runs a media company, appears on every major podcast, and speaks at sold-out events. If this is cancellation, I would like to be cancelled. Please cancel me. I am once again asking to be cancelled.
When exactly were the “certain times” of which these are the un
The Four Horsemen of the Information Apocalypse: 1. Selection Bias 2. Audience Capture 3. The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect 4. Thinking you’re immune to the first three…
The most successful grift of the modern era was convincing the smartest people in the world that 'changing the world' means optimizing the click-through rate on ads for mattresses that ship in a box
Our collective intellectual culture seems to have calcified around a cohort of thinkers who achieved prominence roughly ten+ years ago and have been coasting ever since…
Westenberg.
Comfort Food for the Thinking Class: The Great Intellectual Stagnation
Wander into any bookstore (I dare you.)  The non-fiction table will be all but dominated by the usual suspects: Malcolm Gladwell's latest explora...
Grounded intellectual work, when it happens, if it ever happens again, is uncomfortable. It tells you things you don't want to hear, makes arguments that threaten positions you hold, points out problems you'd rather not see. The public intellectuals of the past, at their best, did this. Our current crop // slop does the opposite.
Westenberg.
Comfort Food for the Thinking Class: The Great Intellectual Stagnation
Wander into any bookstore (I dare you.)  The non-fiction table will be all but dominated by the usual suspects: Malcolm Gladwell's latest explora...
Charles Dickens in 1843: "what if I wrote a story where a man learns not to be a dick" Humanity: "holy shit" Humanity: makes 400 adaptations Humanity: continues being dicks Humanity: "we should adapt this again"