Clik here to view.
Bread, circuses, and the web
Tristan Harris on designing for time well spent: [W]e live in an attention economy. An attention economy means that no matter what you aim to make (an app or a website), you win by getting people to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Doing things
David Cain of Raptitude on getting yourself to do things: Procrastinators are familiar with the perverse feeling of watching oneself create trouble out of nothing, essentially volunteering for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How many fucks do you give?
Cap Watkins on giving a fuck: I’ve found myself more and more rating both my feelings and the importance of any particular decision on [a] one-to-ten scale. Is the decision non-critical and I don’t...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Email sucks but I love it
James Huff on the distraction of email: I thought that email was both the most efficient and the most polite way to contact someone. Unlike sending a letter, you had the possibility of an immediate...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A lucid dreamer
Greg Ross of Futility Closet — one of my favorite blogs — writes on a lucid dreamer: At age 13 Marie-Jean-Léon Lecoq, Marquis d’Hervey de Saint-Denys, discovered a rare talent: He could recognize a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Artificial intelligence isn't real
Public relations at Berkeley reports a “major milestone in the field of artificial intelligence”: [Researchers] have developed algorithms that enable robots to learn motor tasks through trial and error...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Marshmallows and miscreants
It is sometimes said that a child who waits for two marshmallows is superior to one that eats a single marshmallow immediately. The notion is that this signifies delayed gratification, and is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Stuff and homes
Cheri Lucas Rowlands ponders the nature of stuff and home: As I think about our accumulation of things, I also think about the spaces we inhabit not just to house ourselves, but to hold these things....
View ArticleClik here to view.
How to buy a toothbrush
On a Chipotle take-out bag, Aziz Ansari writes about the process of purchasing a toothbrush: Every toothbrush I bought on a hunch has been fine. I’ve never been disappointed in a toothbrush. Why waste...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Viva la MetaFilter
With the game of musical chairs taking place at Reddit, there has been new discussion about the many controversies involving Reddit, and the unsavory character of its community. I don’t spend much time...
View ArticleThe origin and fragility of ideas
Publikwork on the origin of ideas: No one knows. Their origins are as inscrutable as crop circles and Stonehenge. Oh, plenty of people claim to know the secret; plenty more have a sure-fire, foolproof...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On conversation
James Radcliffe on conversation: At its best the act of conversation can be many things; connection, communion, truth-finding, enlightenment, inspiration, a healing… I do not overstate when I say that...
View ArticleWronger than wrong
Isaac Asimov on wrongness: When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical...
View ArticleDangerous knowledge
Left-anarchist philosopher, Paul Goodman, reflecting1 on a group of campus hecklers in 1967: I realized that they did not believe there was a nature of things. [To them] there was no knowledge but only...
View ArticleThe accidental mob
Almost everyone sings the praises of the rapid exchange of information that the internet has catalyzed, but fewer recognize that it’s a mixed bag. Some news is so important and so timely that its...
View Article