Humans do. It’s how we operate; a fundamental part of what makes us. We shape the world around us. We observe. We try to be interesting. We act. Every action is a protest against what was there before. Every creation is a moment of optimism. Doing is how we are built. Sometimes we do with our bodies. Remember covid lockdowns? Remember when a new and potentially deadly disease stalked the planet, when nobody was even […]
Startup world has plenty of hustle guys: people who admit that Silicon Valley’s appeal to them is essentially get rich quick. It also has a lot of true believers—people who are deeply attached to a vision or a feeling or driven by sheer possibility—even if only a handful actually turn out to be able to deliver what they believe. What it also has in abundance is people present as the second group but are, in […]
A man in Florida pleaded to guilty to selling $16 million of fake HIV drugs to pharmacies. A German museum worker was convicted of swapping expensive artworks for forgeries and then selling the originals to fund his lavish lifestyle. And it was revealed that some United Airlines had discovered counterfeit parts in some of their aircraft engines. Barely a day goes past without news of counterfeits, forgeries, pirate material, copycats, plagiarists and imposters. We can’t […]
Lots of little gems in John Seabrook’s 1994 New Yorker profile of Bill Gates, but this note stuck with me particularly. The story itself is an interesting case in how you write about something new. The article still stands up, more or less, but so many of the ideas that are revelatory to Seabrook at this specific moment in history—email, the internet, even computers and software—became so normal so soon after. How can you capture […]
There are many ways to become invisible. If you’re a person you can try to go underground, take yourself off the grid. If you are a new US military bomber, you can use the laws of physics and materials science to stay off the radar. And if you are a glass frog, you can simply turn your blood transparent. We’re transfixed by invisibility, the art of disappearance. It’s magical. Sometimes that absence is a problem: […]
•“The poetics of history from below” • Undark on how nudge theory—which was very exciting to the political classes over the last decade—fared during the pandemic • The Office of Collecting and Design • I love Michael Hobbes. Here’s his recent video on cancel culture (re: the last post) • Why the Center on Privacy & Technology is no longer using the term “artificial intelligence”
The heart of a new kind of information ambience is a lop-sided shift in power.
There are so many ways we can make mistakes, but also to make things that merely have the appearance of a mistake.
• I was rapt by the way this Katie Baker piece on Eric Schneiderman’s attempt at a #MeToo redemption tiptoed through such difficult territory. • Hype as a scale. • Scratching that Murakami-esque, middle aged vinyl dad itch: Listening Room on Instagram • When she was worried about the state of the world in the 1960s, Pauline Oliveros started singing and playing long, extended drones on her accordion. She spent nearly a year on a […]
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