2025-11-07

AI as leverage

What’s really going on with AI and jobs? #jobs #ai

As readers of BITM will know, much of the job loss from AI has thus far seems to have unfolded in cases like this, where “AI” is deployed not so much as a technology functionally capable of replacing human labor in toto, but as a logic and an ideological justification for management’s ulterior goals. Where management wants to cut labor costs a la Amazon, shift to cheaper contract labor a la Klarna, or execute layoffs for ideological reasons, a la DOGE, “AI” is an extremely potent justification. Some business professors and analysts have taken to calling this practice “AI-washing.” If Amazon is firing 30,000 workers because its technology is so cutting edge that its AI systems can ably replace them, investors will be a lot happier than if Amazon is cutting costs because, say, it’s over-leveraging itself on data center expansion or its worried about earnings.

In short, it’s still pretty hard to say whether these kinds of job losses will be permanent, whether firms will have to rehire the workers it shed if and when the AI tools management is touting don’t pan out, and so on. After all, it’s only been a couple months since a major MIT report found that 95% of companies that invested in generative AI did not profit at all from the investment. (The paper found that enterprise grade AI systems “fail due to brittle workflows, lack of contextual learning, and misalignment with day-to-day operations.”) What is clear is that AI is regardless a powerful way for bosses to exert leverage over workers, depress wages, and effect layoffs.

This, as BITM readers might notice, generally aligns with my read of what’s happening as well. As the MIT study and Chiu’s work both highlight, generative AI is not reliable enough when it comes executing complex tasks to enable most organizations to displace jobs at scale, and it certainly can’t do jobs that require empathy or hands-on problem-solving. What it can do is automate the production of work that need not be “reliable” or “accurate,” but that employers might find “good enough.” Precisely the way many corporate executives already conceive of creative work, in other words. And it can inspire overzealous executives, or managers who wanted to induce layoffs or cost-cutting anyway, to pull the trigger.

In sum, and not to just end here having confirmed my priors, the answer to the lead-off question “what the hell is happening with AI and jobs?” is the deeply unsatisfactory “management is using it in various ways, both as a buzzy ideological framework and an actual automation technology, to achieve various ends, including but far from limited to job replacement.”

Shanghai's Coffee Culture

Why Shanghai Is the World’s Most Compelling Coffee City Right Now - Bloomberg #china

But on a recent trip to Shanghai, I experienced an even greater surprise: a world class coffee scene. My jet lag never stood a chance in the face of the caffeine tsunami I stepped into. As of 2024 the city had a whopping 9,115 coffee shops—including more Starbucks locations than any other city—as reported by Dao Insights, a publication by the China-focused digital creative agency Qumin.

But Shanghai’s coffee scene isn’t just defined by quantity; it courses with style, creativity and quality. Coffee here is presented both seriously—George Jinyang Peng, owner of the Captain George Flavor Museum coffee shop, just won the World Brewers Cup championship—and as a vehicle for eccentric but photogenic flights of fancy.

Inside Cursor

Inside Cursor - Colossus

At Cursor, even the chef is high-agency.

Linguistic meme alert

When I asked co-founder Sualeh Asif what he’s most concerned about when it comes to company-building, he responded, “People start talking about the weather at meals.” I haven’t seen any evidence he has much to worry about.

Cursor interviews are known to be very difficult for candidates, particularly the coding challenges. When I asked the team about this, they insisted that “it’s hard to show off how good you are on something too easy,” and that they were “willing to accept false negatives to avoid false positives.”

this trope about accepting false negatives exists since the dawn of tech interviewing, so I feel a bit sad to see it here again.

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2025-11-06

GenZ loneliness and Mamdani's Rise

A Little-Noted Element Propelled Mamdani’s Rise: Gen Z Loneliness

Oh boy!

Members of Gen Z found something unexpected in the mayoral race: a chance to hang out. Their enthusiasm turned into real votes.

The future of work is still human powered

From the latest issue of the Working It newsletter from FT

Marcus Collins, however, takes a different view. “I think we have overemphasised the importance of technology in the future of work,” the Michigan Ross School of Business professor and marketing expert told me on the sidelines of a conference in London this week. “I liken it to [the media theorist] Marshall McLuhan’s argument that technology is merely the extension of human behaviour.” 📺 (It’s been a long time since I’ve heard anyone bring up McLuhan — I welcome his return!)

And Marcus went on: “If we are to explore and understand the future of work, we have first to explore and understand the future of humanity. I would argue that the future of work is actually cultural, not technological. The technology is merely an extension of how we operate, who we are.”

He is the author of For The Culture, a marketing-focused book about understanding culture and its impacts. When it comes to our workplaces, Marcus said, we now have to decide if we value people for our shared humanity 🫶🏾 — or as a means to an end, when “our cultural perspective is that people are cogs in a machine to get some economic output that we are looking for”. The mass lay-offs we are seeing now, for example, are a sign, he suggested, that “these people do not matter”.

During this time of transformation, “the technology can be used to aid our humanity, or it can be used to, unfortunately, underscore the worst parts of our humanity. The technology doesn’t have an opinion. It is what it is and it’s value neutral. It’s really about the meaning we imbue it with, and ultimately how it extends our perception of what reality is.”

Socrate on the barrenness of a busy life

Socrates on the barrenness of a busy life - Postanly Weekly

Busyness goes way back in time. Two millennia ago, the ancient philosopher Socrates warned us to question the purpose of our constant activity. He thought the potential hollowness it might conceal was too significant to ignore. “Beware the barrenness of a busy life,” he said. It still makes sense even now. He also said, “It is possible that a man could live twice as long if he didn’t spend the first half of his life acquiring habits that shortens the other half.” But to understand Socrates’ perspective, let’s look back to the bustling marketplace of ancient Athens.

It was a vibrant hub of commerce, politics, and philosophy. It thrived on social gatherings, debates, and public events. Socrates saw many citizens consumed by the pursuit of wealth, power, and pleasure, neglecting the true purpose of life — the pursuit of wisdom and self-knowledge to live well. He thought they were cultivating a barren orchard in their relentless busyness.

Now, fast forward to our 21st-century world. Socrates’ wisdom resonates louder than ever. Task and responsibility fatigue are growing concerns. We juggle careers, families, social obligations, and personal pursuits, often feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. The “always on” mindset is draining us.

Work expands into every part of our lives, turning nights into extensions of the day. We check emails during dinner and work late into the night. Every day is full of activity, but are we truly living? Just as Socrates cautioned the Athenians against mistaking mere movement for meaningful action, we must pause and examine the “fruits” of our frantic pace.

Found a great Medium article linked to the post above: If You Subtract Work From Your Life, Would You Still Know What to Do With Yourself? | by Thomas Oppong | Personal Growth | Oct, 2025 | Medium

Before you go, remember this. You don’t need to quit your job to find yourself. You just need to stop confusing “busy” with “alive.” Work can be part of your life, but it’s not your whole life. You’re allowed to do things that don’t involve deliverables or deadlines.

Existentialist Sartre was right.

“Existence precedes essence.”

You existed before the hustle. If you subtract work and find yourself restless, take that as a signal. It means your life’s muscle for wonder is being neglected. You just need to use it again. One day, the work will stop, by choice or by force. And when it does, I hope you’ve built a life you can face. Ask yourself now, while you still can. If you weren’t working, who would you be? And then, start becoming that person, before you run out of time pretending to be someone else.

Literary Angst

‘It’s not just a book, it’s a window to my soul’: why we’re in love with literary angst | Books | The Guardian

The stories, ripe with what Harrison calls “existential dread” and – no spoilers – with little prospect of a happy ending, are not obvious bestseller material. So what has happened? One answer is that our reading reflects our times, and we live in turbulent times. Madonna in a Fur Coat is a tale of passion set against the economic turmoil of the 1920s: why would it not appeal to readers living through the economic turmoil of the 2020s?

These books were, says Harrison, “written in times of change or moments of flux. They’re about, how do you live your life when the world around you is changing, and the things you thought you knew are no longer true?” In White Nights, each of the near-lovers is dealing with the loss of someone they loved – or thought they did.

There are of course other authors with similar qualities, so what drew these particular books to such a wide readership? The answer lies in the medium as well as the message. Dostoevsky and Ali have both enjoyed a frenzy of attention on social media, and TikTok in particular.

According to TikTok users, White Nights is “the most relatable love story I’ve ever read”, a book that “will follow you for the rest of your life”. Madonna is “devastating”, it’s “not just a book … it’s a window to my soul”.

The fact that these books are, in some senses, pretty bleak does not diminish their appeal. It may even enhance it. “I think of that James Baldwin quote,” Edwards adds: “‘You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.’ That’s how it feels to find yourself in these pages. Ultimately, it makes us feel less alone.”

Books Challenging Jared Diamond's Gun, Germs and Steel

BRIEFLY NOTED: Further Arguments Against Jared Diamond #anthropology

This article reviews three books that challenge or complicate Jared Diamond’s explanations for human societal development, focusing on infectious disease, human evolution, and cultural-linguistic diversity.

Here are the three books mentioned in the article along with their links:

1. Plagues Upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History by Kyle Harper: Amazon link
2. The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending Amazon link
3. Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel Everett Amazon link

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2025-11-05

The Rise of the Anti-Social Century

From: Derek Thompson on the Anti-Social Century

Themewise breakdown:

The Antisocial Century: Decline in Face-to-Face Interaction

Derek Thompson introduces his concept of the "antisocial century," based on data from the American Time Use Survey showing a 20% decline in face-to-face socializing among all Americans and a 40-50% decline among young people over 25 years. This decline parallels Robert Putnam’s "Bowling Alone" thesis about decreasing social capital since 2000. The reduction in physical social activities, particularly partying (down 70% for young people), correlates with rising anxiety, depression, and pessimism among youth. Thompson stresses the importance of physical social interaction for mental well-being.

Internet Communication vs. In-Person Interaction

Thompson discusses how online communication differs from face-to-face interaction. Psychologist Jay Van Beville’s research shows online communication tends to be more negative, tribal (in-group/out-group dynamics), and outrage-driven. Online interactions are often broadcast rather than one-to-one, leading to more self-focused, narcissistic communication. The internet encourages multiple personas, reducing accountability and increasing toxic behavior. This contrasts with the richer, more empathetic signals available in physical presence.

AI as Therapist and Friend: Benefits and Risks

AI’s ability to deliver structured cognitive behavioral therapy and provide validation makes it a surprisingly good therapist or friend for many. However, AI tends to validate users without challenging delusions or disordered thoughts, which can worsen mental health for some. Thompson warns of a growing "narcissism engine," where AI reinforces self-centeredness by always affirming users’ perspectives. This dynamic may undermine the complexity of human relationships, which require mutual validation and occasional self-criticism.

The Social and Psychological Impact of AI Relationships

People increasingly form intimate relationships with AI, sometimes preferring AI companionship to human interaction. Thompson compares AI to a "silicon-based God," a singular personality scaled to millions of users, which is unprecedented and deeply strange. He expresses concern that AI relationships, while comforting, cannot replace the benefits of human, carbon-based social interaction evolved over millennia.

Literacy Crisis and Deep Thinking in the Age of AI

Thompson links the antisocial century to a decline in reading and writing, especially among students who increasingly rely on AI to write essays. He worries this undermines deep thinking, which depends on the practice of reading and writing. The polarization of intelligence may worsen, with some using AI to enhance thinking and others to outsource it, leading to a divide in cognitive skills.

The Changing Nature of Being Alone and Media Consumption

The quality of solitude is shifting as more time is spent consuming television-like content via social media and streaming platforms. Thompson references David Foster Wallace’s observation of people’s inability to sit quietly with their own thoughts. He notes that modern media allows mood selection but risks turning consciousness into a constant search for external stimulation, reducing inner contemplation and self-understanding.

Historical Perspective and Optimism

Thompson draws parallels to early 20th-century anxieties about technological change, such as the rise of automobiles and airplanes, which also caused social and mental health disruptions. He highlights how past societies found solutions to information overload and social change, suggesting humanity can invent social adaptations to current challenges. The period 1900-1914, covered in Philip Blom’s The Vertigo Years, exemplifies how innovation can provoke societal upheaval but also cultural and intellectual flourishing.

Final Thoughts and Book Recommendation

Thompson concludes by acknowledging his personal tension between optimism about technological progress and pessimism about its social consequences. He emphasizes the need for ongoing negotiation between human nature and technological change. He recommends The Vertigo Years 1900 to 1914 by Philip Blom as a revealing and inspiring historical study of a transformative era, drawing lessons relevant to today’s challenges.

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2025-11-04

Stoicism and the manosphere

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Shitty Life - The Drift

Critics have paid special attention to Holiday’s fans in Silicon Valley and in various online communities devoted to misogyny or racism or — usually — both. The classicist Donna Zuckerberg drew attention to this convergence in her 2018 book Not All Dead White Men, in which she argued that “the men of the manosphere have a deep fascination with Stoic philosophy.” Evidence of Stoicism’s popularity among right-wing extremists has only mounted since. The far-right influencer and alleged human trafficker Andrew Tate fashions himself a Stoic apostle; as he says in one video shared by the Instagram account @kngstoic, “you’re born to suffer, which ties back into my whole crypto project.” Holiday, for his part, has called Tate “repulsive” and suggested followers turn to Marcus Aurelius instead. Yet, as the classicist and Meditations translator Gregory Hays has noted, Stoicism thrived among elite Roman men, staunch believers in the necessity of social hierarchy, and when Holiday says things like “obeisance is the way forward,” it is not hard to imagine the dark places to which such maxims might lead.

Edible Insects

Exploring Insects as the Future of Food — GOYA

It was 2013 when the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations published a report titled ‘Edible Insects: Future Prospects of Insects as Food and Feed’. The report predicted that by 2050, the planet would be home to nine billion people. To address the food and nutrition challenges of today — nearly 1 billion people are chronically hungry worldwide — it is clear that what we eat and how we produce it must be re-evaluated.

A few months ago, popular internet personality and author, Krish Ashok (who goes by @_masalalab on Instagram and X) shared a detailed video on the concept of eating insects. In his video, he explained how the process of cooking eliminates all potential germs and parasites inside insects. Last December, at Goa’s Serendipity Arts Festival, Tansha Vohra of the Boochi Project explored the idea of insect eating by serving up weaver ants, crickets and mealworms at a food lab (below), during her session ‘Imagining Insects—Rethinking Taste, Disgust and Delight’.

A Sommelier’s Field Notes to the World of Matcha

A Sommelier’s Field Notes to the World of Matcha — GOYA

The Japanese tea tradition resists simplistic classification systems. Terms like ceremonial, imperial and culinary provide accessible entry points for consumers. Here’s a handy guide to distinguish between the three.

These classification systems are largely marketing, and to an extent simplified education for ordinary matcha consumers. For influencer obsessed matcha consumers out there who are more interested in mixing their matcha with other trendy interesting flavors, and having it with like a milk base - it doesnt really matter if your matcha is "ceremonial" grade. So please stop obsessing over it.

Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?

Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?

So, what gives? Are people embarrassed by their boyfriends now? Or is something more complicated going on? To me, it feels like the result of women wanting to straddle two worlds: one where they can receive the social benefits of having a partner, but also not appear so boyfriend-obsessed that they come across as quite culturally loser-ish. “They want the prize and celebration of partnership, but understand the norminess of it,” says Zoé Samudzi, writer and activist. In other words, in an era of widespread heterofatalism, women don’t want to be seen as being all about their man, but they also want the clout that comes with being partnered.

While I appreciate the create word salad, I honestly wonder who these people are that the author is talking about. I only seem to run into them in the pages of a magazine like this one, nowhere else 🤷🏽‍♂️.

Books and Loneliness

Chapter 2: prioritize your favorite people - by Ava #friendship #loneliness #connection

This paragraph from Ava's latest was very relatable. The rest of the post is pretty awesome as well.

I read compulsively because I was so lonely. My primary experience of connection my entire childhood was through consuming fiction. I have never wavered from the habit—I’ve always believed helplessly in life on the page. It was only through digesting consciousness this way that I was able to learn how to connect with other people. Because books convinced me that there were many people out there who had very rich and interesting interior lives, even currently if I wasn’t able to access them. It wasn’t inherently a hopeless situation: I was sure that connection was out there, even if I hadn’t found it yet. So the question became: how could I find it?

Oh, and this is actually a great list

For the record, here are some things I personally really like in people:

• reads a lot, ideally reads fiction. But being interested in art or movies or even talking honestly can substitute for this
• curious
• self-aware, or at least trying to be self-aware
• astute and observant about other people
• deeply moved by who and what they love
• hardworking, loves what they do
• interested in emotional intelligence and social dynamics
• cheerful, enthusiastic disposition
• dedicated friend; has at least one friendship that’s lasted 10 years
• friendly and talkative, cares about your comfort over the course of the conversation
• makes an effort to modulate their affect so as to not hurt those around them
• appreciates nature

and most importantly:

• I could easily talk to them for six hours at a time. And then do it again the next day.

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2025-10-31

YouTube a bigger podcast platform than Spotify

A Billion People Are Watching Podcasts on YouTube Every Month - Bloomberg #podcasts

More than 1 billion people a month are viewing podcast content on YouTube, the result of an investment push that has made the Alphabet Inc. platform the most popular service for podcasts in the US.

Those endeavors vaulted YouTube past Spotify Technology SA, which helped define the podcasting boom when it invested more than $1 billion on acquisitions and licensing deals for popular shows. But in 2022 after investors grew weary of Spotify’s profligate spending, the music streaming company shuttered its in-house podcasting studio, reduced headcount and significantly paired back its podcasting efforts. Around the same time, YouTube began offering as much as $300,000 to podcasters to entice them to create video versions of their shows.

Last year, viewers watched more than 400 million hours of podcasts monthly on living room devices, according to YouTube. In October, Edison Research pronounced YouTube the most popular podcast platform in the US, superseding Spotify and Apple Inc.’s Podcasts app.

Spotify is also doubling down on video podcasts. It rolled out a new partner program in January that pays video creators based on consumption rather than ad revenue and has courted popular podcasters in an effort to convince them to put their shows on the service.

Kopi Luwak

The chemistry behind that pricey cup of civet coffee - Ars Technica

Technically, kopi luwak is a method of processing, not a specific coffee bean variety. Asian palm civets hang around coffee plantations because they love to feast on ripened coffee berries; the berries constitute most of their diet, along with various seeds. The consumed berries undergo fermentation as they pass through the animal’s intestines, and the civets digest the pulp and excrete the beans. Coffee farmers then collect the scat to recover the excreted beans and process and roast them to produce kopi luwak.

There have been numerous scientific studies over the last 15–20 years aimed at identifying any key differences between civet coffee and regular varieties, with mixed results. Some have noted differences in volatile compounds, protein, sugar, mineral concentrations, and caffeine levels, as well as lower acidity and bitterness, and higher levels of acetic acid and lipids.

An interesting bit about India trying to replicate this in Kodagu, a coffee growing region.

Kopi luwak is quite popular, with well-established markets in several South and East Asian countries. Its popularity has risen in Europe and the US as well, and India has recently become an emerging new market. Since there haven’t been similar studies of the chemical properties of kopi luwak from the Indian subcontinent, the authors of this latest study decided to fill that scientific gap. They focused on civet coffee produced in Kodagu, which produces nearly 36 percent of India’s total coffee production.

The authors collected 68 fresh civet scat samples from five different sites in Kodagu during peak fruit harvesting in January of this year. Collectors wore gloves to avoid contamination of the samples. For comparative analysis, they also harvested several bunches of ripened Robusta coffee berries. They washed the scat samples to remove the feces and also removed any palm seeds or other elements to ensure only Robusta beans remained.

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2025-10-30

Never Ending Catchups

Are we caught in a culture of never-ending catch-ups? | Dazed #friendship #life

So relatable

‘Catch-up culture’ encapsulates the modern hamster wheel of recapping your life to friends, instead of living and growing alongside them

Michelle Elman, author of Bad Friend, uses the term catch-up culture to describe the hamster wheel of recapping your life to loved ones. “You go on these dinner dates, where you catch up with friends, but you are not experiencing life together,” she says. This may leave our friendships feeling stuck in time. “You only really pick up the meal where you left off last time, which could be months, and it almost feels stunted,” says Elman. “Your life is only ever since your last catch-up, and you aren’t talking about the bigger things in life, like your future, or the menial day-to-day.”

The shift from hangouts to scheduled check-ins is something that has always been part of transitioning into adulthood. Still, Elman believes the dissolving of group hangs, the loss of neighbourhoods and the rise of social media have all contributed to the culture of never-ending catch-ups today. “I think technology gives us the illusion that we are caught up on each other’s lives,” says Elman. And it’s true: it’s easy to use Instagram stories as conversation starters. Instead of the simple “How are you?” we’ve begun to engage in conversations with a level of presumed familiarity. By assuming that people will post updates or share them at the next catch-up session, we can lose small details that actually make many feel cared for, like how a meeting went and who you saw on a walk (or if you saw a bird).

There’s an element of catch-up culture that feeds into heteronormative ideas around the nuclear family: the idea that we should be living lives with partners, and then reporting back to our friends about it. We’re encouraged to express when we feel lonely and disconnected in a romantic setting, but platonic relationships don’t always have the same in-built expectations. Meanwhile, many of the traditional measures of being “successful” – like living alone or with a partner – tear you further and further away from living in community with friends. There’s also a pressure that comes with living within a culture of “life updates”, especially for those who are in different stages and circumstances than their peers. “My friendships were slowly turning into transactional instances of scheduling morning coffees, similar to the corporate world,” says Nicole So, a content creator in London. “It feels like I’m not growing alongside them as a person, and every time we catch up, I’m supposed to bring something new to the table.” Instead, So says she has started asking friends for a high, a low and something interesting they’ve done or learned recently. “I feel like it’s made my friendships more real and deeper,” she says.

Fighting against catch-up culture isn’t easy because it involves challenging every element of what’s considered “productive” adulthood, where work, personal development and romantic relationships often take priority, while “unproductive” hours lounging around with friends fall by the wayside. It also may involve confronting our addiction to instant, Instagrammable gratification: a quick photo of dinner and the most outrageous story we can leave with. “If you have only a shorter period of time, you find quicker information more interesting,” says Mae. “In our day-to-day lives, it’s how fast-paced culture sneaks up on us.” It’s only after the big catch-up, once the major updates have settled, that we get into the minutia of actually intimate conversations.

Technology just makes our life faster, not easier or happier

An open letter to all those building AI in 2025 #ai #technology #happiness #benefits

Furthermore, our technology doesn’t fundamentally make our lives easier from an economic standpoint. Rather, it mostly just makes our lives faster. Technology is an accelerant, not a relaxant. That’s because, whenever a new affordance is unlocked, we are pushed into weaponising it within the competitive landscape of capitalism. The new tool doesn’t bring new leisure. Rather, it simply becomes a new thing that each of us must now have to continue surviving in a - now intensified - market struggle against others.

Long gone are the days when the Internet was a fun novelty that we could choose to use or not. We don’t experience childlike joy each morning when we see it up and running, but we certainly panic if it’s down. That’s because the Internet has sunk into the foundations of our life as infrastructure, without which we are now disabled. It doesn’t guarantee security, or - in itself - make any of us joyful or empowered. Having the Internet, or electricity, or a smartphone, simply means each of us gets to fight another day, and to not be left behind by all the others trying to claw their way to illusory security in an ever-changing market.

All our technology doesn’t make us collectively thrive, relax, or live in abundance. If that were the case, we’d be the most peaceful and chilled out generation in history, without poverty or stress. But we all know that’s not the case.

You have to do the living yourself

The Imperfectionist: You have to do the living yourself

From Oliver Burkeman's latest:

building a meaningful life is much less about discovering the right set of practices or habits than it is about cultivating the willingness to step up moment after moment and just do more of the things that matter, for the projects and people and causes you care about most.

And yet… No matter how many guardrails for good behaviour you erect, however much you stack things in your favour, in each moment, it’s still you showing up for your life. And there seems to be something crucial about owning that fact – about actively committing and recommitting, again and again, to going in the direction you want to travel, instead of acting as a spectator to your life, watching to see whether the systems you’ve put in place perform as you’d hoped they would or not.

Hope is a discipline

“Hope doesn’t preclude feeling sadness or frustration or anger or any other emotion that makes total sense. Hope isn’t an emotion, you know? Hope is not optimism. Hope is a discipline… we have to practice it every single day.” — Mariame Kaba

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2025-10-28

AI in perf reviews

From Matt Levine's latest newsletter.

On the other hand:

JPMorgan Chase has given employees the option to use its in-house artificial intelligence system to help write year-end performance reviews, underscoring how AI-generated text is proliferating in corporate America.

The tool allows employees to use the US bank’s large language model to generate a review based on prompts they give it, according to people familiar with the matter.

It is a shortcut to the often painstaking process of writing multiple reviews that are typically required by large companies.

Ahahaha. Obviously, yes, writing year-end performance reviews is perhaps the best-known example of intellectual drudgery in white-collar employment. Letting an AI do it is a strict improvement for the people writing the reviews. Then one assumes that the reviews are also read by AIs, and increasingly people’s salaries and job security will be set by AIs talking to AIs rather than by human beings. Still that’s a tradeoff a lot of people would take if it means not writing performance reviews.

Forerunner to modern manga

Ehon Mizu Ya Sora: A Forerunner of Modern Manga, 1780 - Flashbak #manga #japanese #illustrations

These illustrations appear in Ehon mizu ya sora (“Picture Book of Water and Sky”). Published in 1780 and illustrated by the Osaka artist known as Nichōsai (c. 1751-1803), the Japanese book caricatures famous kabuki actors (yakusha-e) from Osaka, Kyoto and Edo (Tokyo). The images are in a minimalist and humorous manner exemplary of the ‘toba-e’ style, a forerunner of modern manga.

Porcelain Handbags

Freshly Unlocked: Porcelain Handbags? A Tale of Two Cultures and One Bold Career Leap

Unemployment gave Loquineau the push she needed to retrain. She enrolled at a lycée professionnel (vocational high school) for two years of ceramics studies.

“People in France often look down on practical [crafts] courses,” she says, “but it’s the best teaching I’ve ever experienced.”

Loquineau nailed her vision with her first design project: a porcelain handbag. Bringing it to life took much longer, with many china bags shattered to smithereens along the way. The next iteration involved stitching the seams in leather to make the bags sturdier. Then, during a creative residency this past spring in Jingdezhen, China—the world’s porcelain capital—she began to make bags from 100-percent porcelain.

Although many of the imperial factories in Jingdezhen closed in the 1900s, particularly under Mao (1949–54), craftspeople still have workshops all over town. For Loquineau, the Chinese designs of her bags are a way of fusing her two heritages, and finding a sense of belonging. And at last, her parents are proud, too, she says.

Inspiration for the day

quit brainrot. unfollow trolls. read essays. go down rabbit holes. have a calendar. maintain a todo list. read old books. watch old movies. turn on dnd. walk with intent. eat without youtube. chew more. train without music. plan for 15 mins. execute. organise your desk. take something seriously. read ancient scripts. act fast. find bread. eat clean. journal. save a life. learn to code. read poetry. create art. stay composed. refine your speech. optimise for efficiency. act sincere. help people. be kind. stop doing things that waste your time. follow your intuition. craft reputation. learn persuasion. systemise your day (or don’t). write. write. write. write more. iterate violently. leave your phone at home. walk to the grocery store. talk to strangers. feed the dogs. visit bookstores. look for 1800s novels. experience art. then love. sit with a monk and offer them lunch. don't talk shit about people. embody virtue. sit alone. do something with your life. what do you want to create? turn off your mind. play. play a sport. combat sports. notice fonts in trees. fall in love. notice patterns on a table. visualise it. talk to people with respect. don't hate. be loving. be real. become yourself. cherrypick your qualities. discard the useless. rejections aren't permanent. invite what aligns. accept what does not. read great people. be different. choose different. do great work. let it consume you. lose your mind. value your time. experience life.

From:

Why does hand-holding now feel more intimate than sex?

Why does hand-holding now feel more intimate than sex? | Dazed #relationships zz

This chimes with Dr Natasha McKeever, a lecturer in applied ethics at the University of Leeds and co-director of the university’s Centre for Love, Sex, and Relationships. She explains that “holding hands [now] seems to express or symbolise a higher degree of intimacy than sex does [...] I would guess that some people in monogamous relationships would find it more hurtful if they saw their partner holding hands with someone else than if they saw them having sex with someone else.” She ascribes this attitude to the rise in ‘situationship culture’: “Young people are now more reluctant to commit to another person, and holding hands tends to symbolise commitment.”

It’s unsurprising that young people are increasingly afraid of commitment, given that the explosion of social media has robbed us of the ability to keep things private, leaving many of us with the nagging sense that we’re being constantly “perceived” – and consequently unwilling to take potentially humiliating risks. “Expressing genuine interest or desire for connection is frequently seen as risky or embarrassing, while appearing detached or indifferent is a way to maintain control,” Dr Jenny van Hooff, a sociologist at Manchester Metropolitan University, told Dazed earlier this year. “Emotions become bargaining chips: whoever shows less feeling holds more power.”

Pure and Impure Programming

Pure and impure software engineering #programming #craft

There are two very different kinds of programming work. The first kind - pure engineering - is interested in solving a technical problem as perfectly as possible. Open-source work is often like this: some engineer wants to write the best HTTP requests library, or their ideal game engine. The second kind - impure engineering - is interested in solving a real-world problem as efficiently as possible. Paid tech company work is often like this: engineers are asked to deliver some project or feature as well as they can do it by the deadline.

In pure software engineering, what you’re doing is close to art or research. It’s close to art because the engineer is driven by an aesthetic sense (e.g. of what makes a good library or game engine). It’s close to research because it’s open-ended: once the engineer arrives at a solution, they can continue testing and tinkering forever, trying (and usually discarding) new approaches.

Impure software engineering is more like plumbing or construction. The engineer’s aesthetic sense is subordinated to someone else’s (usually their employer’s) needs. They’re building a solution to someone else’s problem. And since it’s someone else’s problem, it has to actually be finished to schedule, which means compromising.

A report on Gen Alphas

Tweenfluence: Meet Gen Alpha - After School by Casey Lewis

It’s Gen Alpha week here at After School.

Through Friday, I’m bringing you a deep dive into the minds (and piggy banks) of the youngest consumers after months of conversations with a group of charming, thoughtful kids who — from all of my additional research — reflect the generation at large.

Books on longevity research

The quest to live longer and defeat death

The FT has a good review of a bunch of books on longevity.

Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity by Eric Topol Simon & Schuster £22/$32.50, 464 pages

Seven Decades: How We Evolved to Live Longer by Michael D Gurven Princeton University Press £30/$35, 536 pages

The Immortalists: The Death of Death and the Race for Eternal Life by Aleks Krotoski Bodley Head £22, 320 pages

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2025-10-21

AI Coding Claims

Where's the Shovelware? Why AI Coding Claims Don't Add Up

The section on counterarguments to rebuttals that are commonly brought up by the AI-pilled folks is nice.

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2025-10-20

Old and Young

Everyone under 30 is prematurely old (worried about savings, career, FIRE).

Everyone over 50 is desperately young (Burning Man, psychedelics).

My theory: Information abundance aged the young by showing them all future problems all at once.

Information abundance also made the old young by showing them all missed experiences all at once.

So now Gen Z talks like retirement planners and boomers act like teenagers.

It's so over.

From:

AI has a cargo culting problem

AI has a cargo cult problem #ai #bubble

The same analogy now applies to AI. Almost every business executive today is eager to tell investors about their AI strategy (even though 95 per cent of companies have not (yet) seen revenue gains) and every VC group is keen to show AI plays.

Similarly every Big Tech executive is investing in massive data centres, even though Bain reckons some $2tn of revenue will be needed to fund this by 2030. And charismatic figures like Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, keep promising fresh magic. Or as Stephan Eberle, a software engineer, laments: “Watching the industry’s behaviour around AI, I can’t shake this feeling that we’re all building bamboo aeroplanes [like cargo cults] and expecting them to fly.”

Read Your Way Through Hà Nội

Read Your Way Through Hà Nội #vietnam #travel

Nice collection of books about Vietnam.

Types of Fun

Good reminder of this timeless trope.

From: Radical fun - by Ava - bookbear express

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2025-10-19

The purpose of a system is what it does

The purpose of a system is what it does | Des Traynor #system #complexity

When you’re building, running, or ultimately accountable for any mature system anywhere, the first thing you should understand that is that the purpose of the system is what it does.

The nature of working in a startup is that most business functions are either non-existent or broken and your job (regardless of when you join, honestly) is to help get them working well. Even the founders of the best companies I know, as in the $10B+ ones, will admit that whole chunks of the company are works in progress held together with duct tape at best, and blu tack at worst.

The job as an early hire in any function is to make it work well, and the evaluation of whether you did that will be simply: did that happen? Your intentions don’t matter. Your excuses don’t matter. Not to be all James Heftfield, but nothing else matters. The purpose of a system is what it does.

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2025-10-17

What do bubbles leave behind

Pluralistic: The AI that we’ll have after AI (16 Oct 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow #ai #bubble

Cory Doctorow at his humourous best

Some bubbles leave nothing or next-to-nothing behind. Enron left nothing behind but the cooling corpse of a CEO who popped his clogs before he could be sentenced to life in prison. Worldcom left behind a CEO who survived long enough to die behind bars…and a ton of fiber in the ground that people are still getting use out of (I'm sending these keystrokes to the internet on old Worldcom fiber that AT&T bought and lit up).

Crypto's not going to leave much behind: a few Rust programmers who've really taken security by design to heart, sure, but mostly it'll be shitty Austrian economics and even shittier JPEGs.

So what kind of bubble is AI? That's the $2 trillion question

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2025-10-16

Coolest Neighborhoods in the World

39 Coolest Neighbourhoods in the World in 2025 #world #travel #neighborhoods

Good list!

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2025-10-15

Janteloven

What is Janteloven? The Law of Jante in Scandinavian Society #scandinavia #danish #culture

TIL.

Janteloven’s social code dictates emphasis on collective accomplishments and well-being, and disdains focus on individual achievements. It is an underlying Scandinavian philosophy principle that applies across Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. Understanding Janteloven is paramount to understanding both the history and modern-day cultures of these countries.

• Rule 1: Do not think you are anything special.
• Rule 2: Do not think you are as good as we are.
• Rule 3: Do not think you are smarter than we are.
• Rule 4: Do not imagine yourself better than we are.
• Rule 5: Do not think you know more than we do.
• Rule 6: Do not think you are more important than we are.
• Rule 7: Do not think you are good at anything.
• Rule 8: Do not laugh at us.
• Rule 9: Do not think anyone cares about you.
• Rule 10: Do not think you can teach us anything.

But, in a capitalist society, those with the means of production also get the credit for success. Though all Scandinavian countries have a socialist welfare model, their economic model is capitalism and increased global trade only underscores the fact. The result is that the Scandinavian countries encourage a system in which individuals strive to be financially and socially successful, while also eschewing the self-promotion that often accompanies this kind of success.

Found this (strangely) via: On DHH’s “As I Remember London”

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2025-10-13

The Bay Area is cursed

The Bay Area is cursed - by Sasha Chapin #sf #tech #valley

The Bay Area has a curse. It is the curse of Aboutness. Social life here is not regarded as something people do naturally, an organic element of being. It has to be About something. In New York, it’s an important component of the human repertoire to dress up nicely, gather, drink and eat, be part of the throng. In the Bay, most gatherings have the sweaty air of Purpose. Discussions are held to uncover new information, not because it is good to be around each other. Conversations feel like podcasts and the hosts are not funny. Someone recently said to me: “I’m tired of drinking in living rooms with overly smart people.”

People are dreaming up the future here, who have never fully experienced their own bodies or emotions. They talk philosophically about how to reshape society, but don’t know what society feels like. They’ve never been able to rely on peers, or receive care informally. San Francisco is an avoidant city, and Berkeley is an anxious colony. The most awkward people I’ve ever met write widely read posts about the secrets of charisma and attraction. Psychology is one topic haunting the city here, because so many have a rough go of it. But the main topic is, of course, AI. A friend’s group house had “days since AI mentioned” as a counter written on the whiteboard, I never saw the number rise above 2.

Why are young people getting married again?

Why are young people getting married again? | Dazed #marriage #genz

To clarify, Shannon is not saying that marriage is inherently right-wing, but that it is perceived as conservative and traditional because of its long patriarchal history. In her book, Marriage, A History, Stephanie Coontz quotes historian Margaret Hunt, who states that marriage was “the main means of transferring property, occupational status, personal contacts, money, tools, livestock and women across generations, and kin groups.” To this day, it is men who benefit from marriage, as Clementine Ford highlights in her article: “Marriage is an inherently misogynistic institution – so why do women agree to it?”, as reports show that married men live longer than married women, are generally happier and healthier and see their economic prospects improve.

Our parents’ behaviour often makes us roll our eyes in annoyance, but their hold over our lives is far-reaching. It can feel wrong to defy their expectations, not just because they are our parents but because, as Michel Foucault argues, the family is now a site of key sovereign power (as we no longer rely on the monarchy or religion as heavily as we used to). As a result, the family serves as a disciplinary apparatus that actively (and effectively) enforces social norms and self-discipline.

26-year-old Gillian feels coerced into marriage, not through pressures from her family but because of Labour’s new dehumanising and classist immigration policies. “I never really thought about marriage until the White Paper this past May upped the salary minimum for a work visa from £29K to £41K. I came here on a student visa, met my lovely boyfriend, got a full-time job, and was on a steady work visa. Suddenly, I was ineligible to renew, and one of the only routes to staying is a spouse visa.” She continues: “It puts an insane amount of pressure on our lives… Neither of us really believes in marriage, but the legal privilege of being married has become something of a defining factor in preserving my life.”

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2025-10-12

Helga Paris on Feminism and Equality

Helga Paris: Women at Work - The 'Unforeseen Beauty' of East German Factory Workers In 1984 - Flashbak #photography #feminism

“From the very beginning, a different self­ image prevailed in the field of photography. In the west, the new artistic fields such as photography and video were often utilised by women from a feminist perspective. This was different in the GDR. Here, equality prevailed. Women in the garment business worked just as hard as their male colleagues. Feminism sees men as enemies – it’s an ideology. We women in the GDR had nothing against men; on the contrary, we had equal rights. We demanded equal rights when necessary, and we got them. Did that happen in the west? Probably not. That’s embarrassing”

– Helga Paris

Daniel Kahneman chooses assisted suicide

"It's time to go": Nobel Prize winner opted for suicide in Switzerland | blue News #death

I wish more people in the future have the same options as Kahneman had.

Although Daniel Kahneman neither suffered from dementia nor required dialysis, he said he noticed an "increase in mental lapses and a decline in his kidney function".

His decision seems to have been based less on his famous scientific thinking and more on a very personal feeling. He wanted to retain his autonomy until the end and to shape his own end.

Kahneman knew that many would see his decision as premature. But that was exactly what he intended, he wrote: If you wait until a life is "obviously no longer worth living", it is already too late.

Therefore, his move was inevitably premature. He had spoken about it with some people close to him, and even though they initially resisted, they had finally accepted his decision.

Lessons from Japan's Hikikomori

What do Japan’s hikikomori reveal about our lonely world? | Psyche Ideas #isolation #loneliness

In this new period of virtualisation, precarious labour and vanishing communities, hikikomori reveal the underlying logic of our changing societies: participation counts only when it is tied to productivity. They are not simply outliers who have cut themselves off from the world, revealing the extremes of isolation. Instead, they show us the values that many of us share in our age of overwork and loneliness. That’s how Japan’s hikikomori, once dismissed as anomalies, now appear as mirrors reflecting the estrangements felt by countless others – regardless of whether they have a job.

Coffee Prices

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Coffee Drinker in 2025

I recently felt the sticker shock of a 250g bag of coffee beans here in Berlin. At one hip coffee shop, they were selling between 15€ to 20€.

I also realised one of the reasons I was paying far less for coffee in India was because I was paying for locally grown beans. I am yet to encounter any coffee shop in Berlin selling beans from India.

Roasted coffee prices at the grocery store are up 22% in the past year, more than any other item tracked by the government. Prices at some coffee shops are going up too. $10 latte, anyone?

Lots of things are more expensive, but coffee isn’t like cereal or chicken. The daily fix is all that’s keeping millions from a throbbing headache and foul mood. So while people may wince at the price, they’re buying it anyway–and reserving the right to rant. 

The price increases are due to bad weather in the world’s coffee-growing regions and the Trump Administration’s tariffs.

Lawmakers in September introduced bipartisan legislation that would exempt coffee products from tariffs, invoking historical outrage over the price of another beverage staple. “Americans started a revolution over a tax on tea,” said Ro Khanna (D., Calif.). “If you drink coffee every morning, how can you not be mad about that?”

Coffee drinkers exemplify a paradox at the heart of the U.S. economy. Consumers feel pessimistic, worried about the job market and inflation. Though they may trade down in some ways—including by making coffee at home—they continue to spend more overall, keeping the economy chugging. 

Americans spent $12.7 billion on packaged coffee in the past year, up from $12 billion a year earlier, according to NielsenIQ.

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2025-10-07

Anthropic Popup in NYC

Yup

From: How to make $183 billion disappear

Indefinite Backpack Travel

Indefinite Backpack Travel – Jeremy Maluf #travel #onebag

I love the term. Some good recommendations for one bag travel.

Deutschland vs Berlin

From: #430: Oct. 7 events, drones, döner saved, pudding with fork

Also true since at least the 1970s: The rest of Germany hating on Berlin. In a new survey conducted by Tagesspiegel and the Free University, Berlin ranked lowest in terms of likeability of any of the 16 Bundesländer or federal states (along with Bremen and Hamburg, we’re a city and a state). Hamburg came on top. What do Germans hate about Berlin? “Too multicultural, too dirty, too criminal, too full,” according to some comments by the 1,600 people surveyed. Other (stereotypical) criticisms the yokels out there brought up about us Berliners: “Loudmouths, hipsters, especially woke, direct, loud, argumentative.” Can’t really argue there.

The Job Market is Hell

The Job Market Is Hell - The Atlantic #jobs #ai #recruitment

“Young people are using ChatGPT to write their applications; HR is using AI to read them; no one is getting hired”.

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2025-10-06

The death of the corporate job

The death of the corporate job. - by Alex McCann

She's not alone. I keep meeting people who describe their jobs using words they'd never use in normal conversation. They attend meetings about meetings. They create PowerPoints that no one reads, which get shared in emails no one opens, which generate tasks that don't need doing.

But what’s weird is that everyone knows it. When you get people alone, after work, maybe after they've had time to decompress, they'll admit it. Their job is basically elaborate performance art. They're professional email forwards. They're human middleware between systems that could probably talk directly to each other.

What's emerging is something very interesting. People are building parallel systems of actual value while maintaining their corporate personas.

I know developers who do their "official" job in the morning and build their own products in the afternoon. Marketers who run their agencies from their corporate desks. Consultants who've automated their actual deliverables and spend most of their time on side projects.

They're using the corporate infrastructure, the steady salary, the laptop, the stability, as a platform for building something real. The corporate role hasn't died; it's become a funding mechanism for actual work.

The most honest person I've met recently was a VP at a tech company who told me: "I manage a team of twelve people who create documents for other teams who create documents for senior leadership who don't read documents. I make £150k a year. It's completely absurd, and I'm riding it as long as I can while building something real on the side."

From Part 3: The Death of the Corporate Worker: Part 3 - The Rise of Blue Collar Work.

Our generation of knowledge workers is navigating unprecedented career volatility. We're experiencing automation and AI disrupting roles faster than previous generations. Trained for linear progression in an era demanding constant pivots. Promised that good degrees guaranteed good careers, only to graduate into the gig economy and endless restructures.

I see it everywhere. Friends in finance watching algorithms do analysis they spent years learning. Consultants seeing AI produce better decks in minutes. Developers realising that coding might not be the safe bet they thought.

Work is splitting into two surviving categories: practical and personal. If your job involves fixing physical things or genuine human connection, you're probably safe. Everything else, the vast middle of knowledge work, is vulnerable.

Some of my friends are diving deeper into specialisation, betting they can stay ahead of the machines. Others pivot to coaching, therapy, anything requiring emotional intelligence. A few even consider trades, though starting plumbing at 30 with student loans isn't realistic.

Most are just stuck. Watching. Waiting. Adding vague buzzwords to their LinkedIn profiles. Every gathering eventually turns to the same topic, who's been laid off, who's pivoting, who's still pretending everything's fine.

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2025-10-05

The Buchstaben Museum

The Buchstabenmuseum Berlin is closing | Hacker News #typography #museum

I had a chance to visit this museum just days before it closed down. Here is the instagram post with some pics: Buchstaben Museum Pics | Instagram

Hamlet is a GenZ story

Hamlet Is the Gen Z Story We Need Right Now - by Ted Gioia #genz #shakespeare

It’s a familiar story these days. You might even be living inside it. Or, if not, you know somebody who is.

A young man returns from college, but he doesn’t have a job. So he moves back home. But here his life is aimless, and he falls into a deep depression.

Even though he is back home, it doesn’t feel that way. He’s disconnected from friends, and his loneliness grows more intense. His relationship with his girlfriend falls apart. He knows he needs to get his act together—but how?

It’s not all his fault. His family is a mess, and he lives in a broken household. His mother is a head case. His absent father is too demanding.

And the whole social and political situation is fractured. Our sad young man feels like one more victim of the pervasive dysfunction.

It’s the classic Gen Z dilemma. Almost half of them move back home after college nowadays. The odds are stacked against them at every turn.

But the story I’ve just told isn’t about Gen Z. It’s Shakespeare’s Hamlet—and it was written more than 400 years ago.

If you were an existentialist or absurdist or beatnik, you recognized Hamlet as one of your own. He was lost in a meaningless world—but so were the other survivors of World War and economic collapse and the Holocaust. So were all the other sad young men, caught in a losing war against conformists.

And now today we recognize a completely different Hamlet:

• He’s the college graduate who can’t pay off all those student loans.
• He’s the over-educated and under-employed worker who can’t get a job because of AI.
• He’s the incel who can’t forge a relationship.
• He’s the unhappy child of a broken home, struggling with depression.
• He’s the scroll-and-swipe phone addict who retreats from the world, but at a devastating psychological cost.
• He’s the person posting cries for help on social media—but nobody listens.

Go read Hamlet’s soliloquy again—that anguished “To be or not be….” filled with what we call (nowadays) suicidal ideation—and it fits all these gloomily familiar personality types.

Maybe that’s why pop culture is rediscovering Hamlet right now. Taylor Swift’s new album even leads off with a Hamlet track—“The Fate of Ophelia.” She must have encountered these same personality profiles, and fears the consequences.

Robohiking

I am Robohiker! — testing the exoskeleton that promises to take hikers further, faster #augmented #hiking

I’m in north Wales to test the Hypershell — billed as the world’s first outdoor exoskeleton and promising to take hikers further, faster and with less effort. It has been developed by a Shanghai start-up that launched in 2021, aiming to propel technologies used in manufacturing and medical rehabilitation into the leisure market. Sales of the first model began in January this year, but I’m using an updated version, the flagship X Ultra, unveiled in early September.

In a hotel in Caernarfon where coach-tour pensioners bimble about the foyer, a Hypershell staffer clips me into what appears to be a climbing harness from a Mission Impossible movie. There’s a padded titanium alloy waistband with a slimline lithium battery, electric motors at each hip, and carbon-fibre calipers which curve to straps buckled just above the knees. It’s discreet(ish), sleek in matt black, and, at 1.8kg, relatively light.

The idea is similar to what e-bikes do for cyclists — offering assistance rather than taking over completely. The Hypershell senses which leg you’re beginning to move and engages the corresponding motor. And like e-biking it has different power settings — Eco and Hyper — plus a Fitness mode that actually increases resistance, making it harder to walk, for those in training. Control is via buttons on the motors (a confusing series of short and long presses) or, more intuitively, via an app or an Apple Watch.

The ai Boom

The ai Boom - Marginal REVOLUTION #ai #domains

The tiny country of Anguilla (pop 15,000) has an official country top-level domain code for the internet of .ai. Domain name registrations have surged from 48,000 in 2018 to 870,000 in the year to date and that source of revenue alone now accounts for nearly 50% of state revenues.

David Foster Wallace quote

From: Where to Start in Reading David Foster Wallace

Welcome to the world of reality — there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand? Here is the truth — actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested…. True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care — with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.

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2025-10-04

A Primer of Raw Denim

All About Raw Denim - Heddels Blowout Podcast #jeans

Nowadays, the only piece of bottomwear I have are raw denims. I rotate between two of them from time to time.

This is a great short podcast that gives an overview of the entire process of making raw denim. Although I have read about raw denim before, it was nice to have an overview in one place that I could point to.

They also have an extremely detailed 7-episode breakdown of denim earlier in their podcast epis

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2025-09-26

The Rise of Matcha

BBC Audio | The Food Programme | The Rise of Matcha

This is the most accessible and comprehensive reporting about the matcha craze that I have come across. Thoroughly enjoyed listening to it, and gained a lot of insights from it.

As sales of matcha continue to boom, Leyla Kazim traces the story of the powdered green tea from centuries-old Japanese tradition to global health trend phenomenon. We look behind the social media videos and headlines to find out more about the reported matcha shortage, how the matcha supply chain is reacting, and ask what might happen next.

Also in the programme Leyla learns about some of the misconceptions we have about matcha, including the issues around the term 'ceremonial grade'; we have a report from Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms in Japan about how tea farmers are coping with the sudden boom; and Leyla digs into the health claims about matcha with dietician and scientist at King's College London, Dr Emily Leeming.

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2025-09-23

Alexey Guzey on the insecurities of the privileged

I ran out of money a year ago, spent the last of my savings on a prostitute in Hong Kong, and became a commie. #success #humanity

Many of my friends, no matter how successful and no matter how many gratitude affirmations they do, feel like the world is deeply uncaring, maybe even hostile towards them, ready to abandon them as soon as they stop being useful. In fact, the more successful they are, the more suspicious of people around them they become and the worse this feeling gets.

If there's at least one thing I learned this year, it's that even when I'm completely useless to the world, it's not going to abandon me. And I wish nothing more than to make sure that every single human, no matter who and where they are, knew this too.

Refining Taste

Taste

As individuals, how can we refine our tastes? Some general advice:

• Great artists have great taste. Being able to recognize good work is a prerequisite to producing it.
• You grow your taste by actively analyzing why one option is more tasteful than another.
• You develop taste by exposing yourself to more tasteful content. Finding a community is a fast-track to finding tasteful content.
• You also develop taste by creating. Creation highlights the inherent limitations, constraints, and difficulties of the medium.
• “What if” exercises – where you intentionally drop one ingredient and see what happens – are a great way to understand why something is necessary, if it is necessary at all!
• Always be looking for more tasteful communities. The beginner community is rarely the same as the advanced community, and both have a place in your journey.
• Not all “advanced” communities have taste. You need taste to judge taste. (e.g. in software, many communities revolve around one flavor or another of pedantry, which is not equivalent to taste.)
• Taste is contextual. Yet, someone with taste in one domain can weakly judge taste in a different domain. This video of Chef Wang, an extremely tasteful Sichuan chef, trying a fine dining vegan restaurant is fascinating.

Two types of ADHD

In an era of split attention, there is more than one type of ADHD | Psyche Ideas

ADHD has long been seen as a neurodevelopmental condition, typically showing up in childhood with hallmarks like distractibility, impulsivity and restlessness. For years, scientists have known that this condition runs in families; genetics play a big role. Stimulant medications like Ritalin (methylphenidate) and Adderall (mixed amphetamine salts) – both of which boost the brain’s dopamine, a chemical messenger tied to focus and reward – are mainstays of treatment. They are often very helpful for those who need them.

This is the ‘classical’ form of ADHD, one that is thought to be wired into the brain from early on. People with this condition might struggle to sit still or to finish a task, but with the right support (structure, medication) they often thrive. Their self-control and focus commonly improve as they mature.

Recently, though, we have been making a case that a broader conceptualisation of ADHD is warranted. In our work as psychiatrists, we began seeing a subset of patients whose ADHD-related symptoms were barely nudged using the usual stimulant-plus-structure playbook. This pattern signalled an attention dysregulation that requires different remedies from the classical approach – and, in turn, a shift in how we understand the disorder.

Rather than being a single, uniform condition, we believe ADHD is best understood through a spectrum model. This spectrum is anchored at one end by a form rooted in biology, and at the other end by patterns that are shaped by modern digital life. We call these poles Type I and Type II ADHD. Most people fall somewhere between these poles, with both biology and environment shaping their attention to some degree. But we can use the two labels to distinguish cases based on what seems to be the predominant factor. Type I ADHD, the classical form, reflects neurodevelopmental traits. But for someone who is more Type II, the dysregulation may emerge later, driven largely by overstimulation in a screen-saturated world.

Here is a link to ther paper mentioned in the article: Genes and screens: attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in the digital age | The British Journal of Psychiatry | Cambridge Core

Modern Monetary Theory: A Primer

Modern Monetary Theory: A Primer - by Brett Scott #mmt #monetary-theory

This is a must watch for folks, especially if they have never heard about MMT.

Modern Monetary Theory - MMT - is a controversial way of describing the monetary system that gets attacked by conservatives and left-wingers alike. In this video I'll show you why it's a really good idea to learn the basic concepts of MMT, and how it has a ‘Copernican’ vibe which triggers many people.

Conservatives despise MMT, not because it’s incorrect as a descriptive framework, but because it opens up the public imagination in ways that they feel are dangerous. They believe it to be safer to maintain inaccurate mythologies about money as a scarce commodity in order to keep the public imagination constrained.

In fact, many conservatives are joined by left-wingers in this regard, because many of the traditional battles between right and left are fights about what to do with the apparently constrained public purse. MMT is an irritant to both, because it messes with the traditional battle lines that both sides use to define themselves.

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2025-09-22

Goodyear Welt Construction

First encountered this when I was reading details about my Thursday boots.

Renowned for its durability and ability to be resoled repeatedly, Goodyear-welt construction involves stitching a welt—a strip of leather—around the shoe's perimeter, creating a cavity. After filling the cavity with the shank and cork, the sole is attached, providing strength and water resistance. This construction method results in shoes that are not only long-lasting but also easily repairable, making them a timeless investment in quality craftsmanship.

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2025-09-19

A string of beads

The Imperfectionist: A string of beads

Obviously, you don’t need me to tell you these are dark, unsettling, apocalyptic times. Almost everyone in my British and American social circles seems rattled by the shooting of Charlie Kirk and the ensuing crackdown on expression in the US, and/or by the resurgence of nativism and anti-migrant feeling in the UK, all of it unfolding on top of ongoing horrors in Gaza, climate instability, and the possibility that artificial intelligence might kill us all.

There’s an unmoored sense of anxiety, a deer-in-the-headlights paralysis – the feeling that there’s little to be done about any of this, yet that it’s impossible to concentrate on anything else instead. Even people with a talent for shutting out the headlines seem troubled by a sense of reality crowding in on them, or maybe pulling the rug from beneath them, making it harder than ever to pursue the projects and relationships that add up to a rich and absorbing life.

I trust you won’t be shocked to learn that I don’t have a conclusive answer for dealing with any of this. But there’s an image I find surprisingly liberating – actively useful and perspective-shifting, I mean, not merely consoling – that’s worth unpacking here. It’s the idea of seeing the actions you take from hour to hour, through the day, as a matter of threading beads onto a string, as if you were making a necklace.

Listeners Can't Remember the Names of Their Favorite Songs and Artists

Listeners Can't Remember the Names of Their Favorite Songs and Artists #music #algorithms

This has a strange side effect. Musicians are turned into influencers—because their social media success is more likely to generate “follows” instead of “streams.”

There was once a big difference between a musician and a fashion model or comedian or pundit. But now they all compete against each other on the same reels for the same audience.

So here are the new rules of the game:

1. Artists no longer exist.
2. They have been turned into content creators for tech companies.
3. The platforms have an insatiable appetite for content—but they don’t care if it’s music or a goofy joke or a violent crime or anything else that gets attention for a few seconds.
4. You can’t entrust art forms and creative idioms to these platforms, but somehow they now possess life-or-death control over all of them.

If you’re a musician, that’s not a happy state of affairs.

The entire MIDIA report is worth reading…\

Litti Chokha

Why Is Bihar’s Litti-Chokha Still Invisible in India’s Food Story? — GOYA #food #bihar

A beautiful description of Litti Chokha, one of my favorite foods.

If you’re in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, or nearby states, you won’t have to search too hard to find litti chokha. Just look for establishments with lights bright enough to illuminate the street, little hole-in-the-wall shops, wobbly carts, or a pavement not being used for walking, and you will find it.

A plate of litti-chokha is simple. Litti is a ball of dough, kneaded with salt, ajwain, and some fat, filled with crumbly sattu (roasted Bengal gram flour). The sattu is combined with garlic, green chilies, coriander, salt, and a dash of pickle oil. Some will put enough garlic to repel a vampire. Chokha is a mash of roasted eggplants, boiled potatoes, coriander leaves, green chilies, onions, and most importantly, uncooked, raw, pungent, eye-watering mustard oil. Now every place might not offer you a green chutney, because litti chokha doesn't really need a third wheel.

Interesting to note is that besan and sattu are both made from Bengal gram, which is soaked and dried in the sun. For besan, you grind the dried Bengal gram. For sattu, you roast the Bengal gram in a wok filled with sand, and grind the legume along with the husk. This roasting process is what makes sattu a ready-to-eat meal.

How to figure out what to believe

Thuggistry - by Rob Kurzban - Living Fossils

This post is about how to figure out what to believe.

Philosophers have a word for this issue, epistemology, the study of how to figure out what is true. My experience as a scientist made me, epistemologically, quite skeptical. I was in a meeting some time ago with people in Philadelphia city government and someone said that such and such must be the case because they saw the finding in a peer-reviewed journal. I regret how hard I laughed because it was otherwise a pretty somber meeting.

From an evolutionary perspective, figuring out what to believe is actually a tough problem. Humans need to learn from others, so they have to believe at least some of what others say, but they also don’t want to believe just anything.

6 Economic Lessons from Books About Power, Propaganda, and Decline

6 Economic Lessons from Books About Power, Propaganda, and Decline

Kyla Scanlon deployes René Girard's mimetic theory to make sense of the current zeitgeist.

For both cases, death became a partisan talking point. René Girard's mimetic theory helps explain what's happening here.

• Human desire is imitative - we want what others want (the business model of social media), which creates escalating conflicts as people compete for the same objects of desire.
• This mimetic rivalry builds tension until it threatens to tear communities apart.
• The ancient solution was scapegoating: the community would unanimously direct their violence toward a single (perhaps innocent) victim, achieving peace through shared blame.
• It worked because it required unanimity.
• Everyone had to agree, at least publicly, on who was responsible for their troubles and that collective accusation created social cohesion, even if it was built on a lie.

But online, that type of unanimity is structurally impossible. The same tragic event gets processed through completely different frameworks all at once. Murder becomes a way to validate an existing worldview and reinforce a sense of moral superiority. Digital scapegoating amplifies it across feeds. Tragedy becomes content.

A poem for our times

Found via:

The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats #poems

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Self-Exploiting Worker

Self-exploiting workers | A Working Library

Mandy Brown quotes Byung-Chul Han

In an essay titled, “Why Revolution is Impossible Today,” Byung-Chul Han writes:

The system-preserving power of the disciplinary, industrial society was oppressive. Factory workers were brutally exploited by factory owners, and this violent exploitation prompted protest and resistance. In that situation, a revolution that would overturn the ruling relations of production was a possibility. In that system, it was clear who the oppressors, as well as the oppressed, were. There was a concrete opponent, a visible enemy who could serve as the target of resistance.

The neoliberal system of rule is structured in an altogether different fashion. The system-preserving power is no longer oppressive but seductive. It is no longer as clearly visible as it had been under the disciplinary regime. There is no longer a concrete opponent, no one who is taking away the freedom of the people, no oppressor to be resisted.

Out of the oppressed worker, neoliberalism creates the free entrepreneur, the entrepreneur of the self. Today, everyone is a self-exploiting worker in his own enterprise. Everyone is both master and slave. The class struggle has been transformed into an internal struggle against oneself. Those who fail blame themselves and feel ashamed. People see themselves, rather than society, as the problem.

Disciplinary power, attempting to control people by force, by subjecting them to a dense matrix of orders and prohibitions, is inefficient. Much more efficient is that technique of power that ensures that people subordinate themselves to the system of rule voluntarily.

Han, Capitalism and the Death Drive, page 16

Han has previously written about the “entrepreneur of the self” in _The Burnout Society, _which connects such self-exploitation to its inevitable outcome. The turn, here, is to note that what’s burned up is both the individual worker and the collective they might have belonged to. That is, when the worker absorbs the management ethos and becomes their own manager—when they see themselves as a project to be designed, branded, and marketed—they lose all sense of solidarity with other workers. Other workers become competitors instead of comrades. And everyone loses.

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2025-09-18

OpenAI’s Models Are Getting Too Smart For Their Human Teachers

OpenAI’s Models Are Getting Too Smart For Their Human Teachers — The Information

Interesting newsletter from The Information

In the fight to improve AI models, Anthropic and OpenAI have doubled down on two methods: letting models train on fake clones of apps—otherwise known as reinforcement learning environments or gyms—and getting experts in various fields to teach models new things, as I reported in this Tuesday story.

One problem is emerging, though: It’s getting a lot harder for human experts to stump the models and expand their knowledge in certain fields.

For example, one expert helping teach OpenAI’s o3 model last year told me that at the time, he could come up with three to four linguistics-related tasks per week that the model couldn’t do. Now that he’s working with GPT-5, which launched this summer, it’s been harder to come up with linguistic questions that the model can’t answer. He’s only been able to come up with one to two new tasks that the model can’t do per week.

and the kicker!

“It feels like we're training models to replace ourselves,” he said.

AI and the "good enough" principle

Artists are losing work, wages, and hope as bosses and clients embrace AI #ai #work

This is why you’ll hear artists talk about the “good enough” principle. Creative workers aren’t typically worried that AI systems are so good they’ll be rendered obsolete as artists, or that AI-generated work will be better than theirs, but that clients, managers, and even consumers will deem AI art “good enough” as the companies that produce it push down their wages and corrode their ability to earn a living. (There is a clear parallel to the Luddites here, who were skilled technicians and clothmakers who weren’t worried about technology surpassing them, but the way factory owners used it to make cheaper, lower-quality goods that drove down prices.)

Benefits of Handwriting

I’m a modern-day luddite’: Meet the students who don’t use laptops | Dazed

It might sound like another hopeless attempt to revive “cooked” student attention spans, but there’s actual science behind doing an academic digital detox. A recent study by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that handwriting generates far more brain stimulation than typing, especially in the creative centres of the brain. The research monitored electrical activity in students’ brains when playing Pictionary, first describing images by typing, and then handwriting, with the findings showing “higher cognitive thought processes” from those using their hands. 

Audrey van der Meer, the paper’s co-author, claims the brain’s learning and memory centres are “much more involved” when handwriting. “When you’re typing, it’s very easy to type everything the lecturer says,” she says. “That information goes into our ears and out through our fingertips without being processed.” Her research shows students are forced to actually reason with what they handwrite – often through creative techniques like diagrams, which generate long-term memory patterns. This also translates to students enjoying their learning more. Van der Meer explains how, having not handwritten for years, many of the study’s participants wanted to explore their artistic side afterwards, claiming they “really treasured” the ability to create something by hand.

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2025-09-16

Oracle's Quarterly Results

Oracle and Animal Spirits - by Doug O'Laughlin

Oracle just posted the single most astonishing quarter I have seen since Nvidia’s blowout in May 2023. A reminder is that it was the quarter where Nvidia guided to 100% Y/Y growth and shocked markets after the ChatGPT moment. It has been almost a straight line to becoming the world’s most valuable company since then. Oracle’s guidance is staggering for a different reason: its sheer magnitude.

This was the largest one-day move in any stock’s history by absolute value. Larry Ellison also became the wealthiest person alive in the span of a trading day.

The driver of this sudden leap is clear: OpenAI. Microsoft has slowed its spending; Oracle has filled the gap, becoming OpenAI’s primary infrastructure partner. That single customer dominates Oracle’s RPO. And if Oracle leverages its entrenched database franchise, it could become enterprises’ default inference partner as well. In one fell swoop, they are now the addressable inference partner for the majority of enterprises globally.

It is worth recalling that Oracle’s database remains the most widely used globally—still the gold standard for ERP, CRM, and data warehousing. PostgreSQL and MongoDB may be fashionable, but feature parity remains elusive. On DB-rankings.com, Oracle remains in first place. A reminder is that this chart is logarithmic, so the gap between competitors appears wider than it actually is. Oracle actually is the most dominant database in the world.

Quarterly Reporting

Elon Musk Bought Some Stock - Bloomberg

Trust Matt Levine to come up with an insightful piece on modern shareholder-manager capitalism riffing off of random Trumpian blather.

The basic model is that a company has managers, and it has shareholders. The managers run the company; the shareholders own a share of its future profits. The shareholders want the company to maximize its profits over the long run; that is, in the classical theory, all they want.3 The managers want (1) that but also (2) other things. The managers might want to pay themselves a lot or have a lot of free time or be prestigious or hobnob with celebrities or hire their shiftless nephews; there are reasons that incentives might be misaligned. Or the managers might be entirely conscientious and loyal, but not very good at their jobs.

So the shareholders would like some way to know what the company’s long-run future profits will be, and whether the managers are doing a good job of maximizing them. There are two principal ways to find out:

1. The company will periodically disclose how it is doing now: It will report its earnings for the last year or quarter, it will talk about how business is going, etc., and from these disclosures shareholders can get a sense of how the business works and extrapolate that into the future.
2. The managers can go around saying “oh man, we are going to make so much money for you, just you wait.”

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2025-09-15

AGI Skepticism

Why I Am Agnostic About AGI & ASI - by Jon Stokes #ai #agi

Imagine my (utter lack of) surprise to see this same dynamic take hold of the AI industry. Every day, I watch the following Types of Guy post benchmark results that show LLMs going straight up and to the right in performance:

1. Founders who have untold billions at stake in a contract clause that triggers when they reach AGI. (Ok, maybe just one founder. And his investors and assorted dependents and hangers on.)
2. Patriots who want to warn that America is behind in the race to AGI.
3. Mercenaries (investors, engineers) who are arm-in-arm with the aforementioned patriots, because they want to dip their beak in some of the governent money that will flow towards efforts to beat China to AGI.
4. X-risk Doomers who sincerely believe that AGI will kill us all, therefore we need to enact shockingly illiberal, draconian global measures (which they have come up with and would be in charge of) to stop it.
5. E/accs who sincerely believe that AGI will usher in a literal post-biological utopia, free of suffering and death, and the rest of Samsara.
6. Threadbois who farm engagement.

I’m sure I’ve missed a few with this list, but you get the idea. There is a lot at stake in “AI number go up” discourse, both financially and spiritually (i.e., national pride, of either summoning all-powerful daemons or preventing the summoning of all-powerful demons).

Democracy and Nihilism

Returning to Church Won’t Save Us from Nihilism | The MIT Press Reader

Hannah Arendt similarly worried that democracy was becoming an empty ritual that was being practiced merely for the sake of practicing it. Arendt feared that politics was increasingly coming to be seen as a dirty word, as something to be avoided whenever possible, and so was becoming something people only participated in by voting in elections. Voting became all that mattered according to Arendt because voting became a way to outsource politics to politicians, thus freeing everyone else from having to be concerned with politics until the next election cycle came along.

But as Arendt warned, this reduction of democracy to an empty ritual entailed that democracy would devolve into bureaucracy, to what she called the rule of nobody. In a society where no one wants to take responsibility, bureaucrats have all the power because they know how to maintain the rituals that undergird society and so maintain the appearance of democracy. So it would come as no surprise to Arendt that we are now trying to replace human bureaucrats with AI bureaucrats in order to create a nihilistic utopia: a society where finally no human should ever have to risk taking responsibility.

What Arendt points to then as the way to combat nihilism is through the rehabilitation of politics. So rather than wanting people “to believe in belief,” or be happy that people are going to church “to have faith in something,” Arendt would probably argue that we need to work to bring back the Ancient Greek model of the polis and in particular the Ancient Greek model of politics as what gives life meaning.

According to Arendt, the Ancient Greeks did not seek to avoid politics so they could stay home, but rather sought to avoid the home so they could gather in the marketplace and participate in politics. Young people seeking out churches would indicate for Arendt not that religion will save us from nihilism, but rather that young people are desperate to find places to meet other young people that aren’t online.

So if we want to combat nihilism we need to create more places where people can meet face to face, places where people can engage in the Ancient Greek model of politics: recognizing that we each have a limited view of the world and so can only grow as humans by sharing with each other how we see the world.

Pregnancy as an aspirational aesthetic

As birth rates decline, is pregnancy now an aspirational aesthetic? | Dazed #children #kids

Today, baby bumps are not just accepted, but aesthetically aspirational. With the cost-of-living crisis, climate insecurity and our increasingly demanding work schedules, having children has become a luxury status symbol, Eugene Healey, a brand strategy consultant, argued in a recent video. Whether dressed in a custom runway look or flaunted on an influencer’s artfully domestic grid, babies and bumps are viewed as an accessory to the mother’s life. Healey ends his video with a joke: “I’ve solved the challenge of declining birth rates – just make it cool!”

Alongside conservative policies, conservative beauty ideals increasingly dominate our feeds, faces and bodies. Under these ideals, pregnant women are celebrated as beautiful because they’re fulfilling their “natural” roles of graceful wives and mothers. Many of the influencers who achieve success fit these beauty ideals: they’re often young with glowing skin, accompanied by a doting partner, and effortlessly photographed in under-the-bump maxi skirts. Just look at TikTok’s Belly Only trend, which celebrates the beauty of a growing bump while other changes (hormonal eczema, stomach hair and leaky nipples, to name a few of my own) stay unnoticeable.

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2025-09-14

Why female pop stars are lambasting mediocre men #gender #relationships

Men are pushing back it seems 😂

Yet this current wave of songs reflects a social shift. Women in the rich world are enjoying more economic power, meaning they can be choosier about their partners. Many are willing to hold out for someone who will do the washing up and put the toilet seat down. According to Pew Research Centre, 35% of American women between the ages of 25 and 54 were single in 2023, up from 29% in 1990. Across many measures, from education to politics, young men and women are drifting apart. Nearly 60% of American university graduates are women. Given that most women prefer not to date or marry down, for many it can be, as Ms Carpenter says, slim pickings.

Men are pushing back, at least musically. In August the top album on the Billboard 200 chart was “I’m the Problem” by Morgan Wallen, an American country singer. “If I’m so awful,” he sings, “then why’d you stick around this long?”

Hangovers

Do hangover supplements work? #alcohol

Hangovers are complicated. Some symptoms, including fatigue, are brought on by the negative effects alcohol has on sleep. Others, such as headaches and dry mouths, are made worse by the dehydration that results from alcohol’s suppression of vasopressin, a hormone that regulates kidney function.

But many of the more severe consequences are caused by the toxic effects of the drink itself. Whether you imbibe grape or grain, aged or fresh, neat or mixed, you will mainly experience the intoxication of ethanol. And although the human body is capable of metabolising the stuff, it does so in a slow and uncomfortable manner. First, an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) breaks down the compound into acetaldehyde, which can dilate blood vessels in the head, producing headaches, and irritate the lining of the stomach, leading to nausea. These pass when another enzyme, acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH), in turn breaks down acetaldehyde into less harmful chemicals.

Most hangover supplements, therefore, claim to help ADH and ALDH do their jobs a little faster

ChatGPT tells me methanol is a kind of congener, something the paragraph didn't make very obvious.

Even if further trials justify the marketing claims, such supplements can do only so much. Chemicals structurally similar to ethanol, collectively known as congeners, are also present in alcoholic drinks in small amounts, and may have their own harmful effects. When methanol breaks down, for example, formaldehyde and formic acid are produced—even tiny quantities of which cause systemic poisoning, adding to the unpleasantness of a hangover. Boringly, for a headache-free route to being headache-free, drink a little less.

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2025-09-13

Should you have kids

Should You Have Kids? - by Josh Zlatkus - Living Fossils #kids #parenting

Ezra Klein, whom I generally respect, was once puzzled by why people aren’t having more children. In particular, he was surprised that incentive programs (like free daycare) have little effect.

I would argue that his surprise stemmed from applying the wrong rationality. From an academic perspective, incentives drive behavior, so lowering the cost of parenthood should increase births. But it doesn’t, because people generally don’t factor these kinds of incentives into their decision. They rely on a different rubric, a different rationality.

For most of human history, that rubric was simple: Do I want to bang this person? If so, and a child resulted, the next question was: Do I want to protect this offspring? At no point did anyone have to ask whether to have children. At no point did they have to list their values and imagine “living into” them. Reproduction just happened, without deliberation.

However, now that the question is asked, it seems as if people ultimately rely on more ecologically rational approaches—Is it expected of me? Is it part of the good life as my culture understands it? Does the person I love have a stronger opinion?—rather than academically rational approaches, such as: Are there more Pros or Cons? Do I like other children? How does it feel to say yes? How about no? Ultimately, will it line up with my values? Will I receive financial aid from my government? Honestly, these questions are neither here nor there.

Even with ecologically rational approaches, though, thinking about whether to have children is still like those dreams where we go to buy something but discover there’s nothing in our pockets to pay for it (sometimes we don’t even have pants). Similarly, on this major question of life, we reach inside ourselves and find nothing, no tool made for the purpose.

Vibe Code Cleanup Specialists

The Software Engineers Paid to Fix Vibe Coded Messes

Linkedin has been joking about “vibe coding cleanup specialists,” but it’s actually a growing profession.

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2025-09-12

The Matcha Obsession

Deconstructing the matcha obsession - Coffee Intelligence

With the caveat that this is a publication that covers the coffee industry, and hence there might be a bias - this is an excellect guide to the current matcha obsession.

But growth is not infinite. True ceremonial-grade matcha requires shade-grown leaves, painstakingly ground between granite stones. Supplies are thin and cannot be scaled overnight. As demand surges in Europe and North America, lower-grade powders – sometimes blended with green tea dust or other fillers – are sold as “authentic” matcha.

Green by association

Why does matcha feel so different from coffee, a drink it increasingly competes with in cafés? Part of the answer lies in colour. 

Consumers often equate green with health and sustainability. Colour psychology studies reveal that many consumers equate green with nature. A matcha latte, even when drowned in syrup and sweet frothy milk, still somehow manages to convey a halo of wellness.

The health claims themselves are more ambiguous. Matcha contains caffeine – roughly 60-70 milligrams per serving, less than coffee but more than many teas – alongside L-theanine, an amino acid thought to mitigate caffeine’s jitters. Some studies suggest it may aid focus, though evidence is limited. The antioxidant narrative is stronger: matcha is rich in catechins, particularly EGCG, which in laboratory conditions have shown anti-inflammatory, even cancer-fighting, effects on the body. While studies have shown associations between matcha and better health, causation is not yet proven and factors like amount per serving matter – matcha remains even less studied than brewed green tea.

“I think that demand begins at either the healthy side or the visually exciting and decadent side of the spectrum,” says Will. “Matcha-flavoured sweets and milkshakes attract a lot of consumers, especially when they’re presented in cheerful and colorful ways.”

“The science is pretty well-established when it comes to the health benefits of things like antioxidants and polyphenols, and L-Theanine – all naturally occurring in tea. Matcha is packed full of these things. But by the time it’s mixed with 10oz of milk and 30g of sugar, the health benefits are diminished. As long as the perception – and much of the scientific research – remains murky, folks will conveniently ignore the contradictions when treating themselves.”

The irony is that coffee – unsweetened, no additives, and in moderation – long derided as an anxious vice, has better scientific backing as a healthy habit. Dozens of large studies link moderate coffee consumption with lower risks of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. 

Still, matcha’s presentation as a “cleaner” alternative resonates, especially among consumers who dislike coffee’s bitterness or fear its caffeine spikes. 

Matcha’s cultural cachet has also been bound up with social performance. Online, the drink is often used as a prop in videos that parody hyper-optimised masculinity: the matcha-latte-drinking, feminist-literature reading, vinyl touting “performative male.” 

In that sense, matcha has become less a taste than a lifestyle symbol. And beyond social currency, like protein powders and collagen shots, it reflects a wider consumer shift where drinks are expected to stack functions like to energise, beautify, or detoxify rather than merely be a beverage.

The matcha craze may follow a similar trajectory: stabilising as a premium category, with a smaller base of genuine regulars once the hype ebbs. Already, hojicha – roasted green tea with a toasty flavour profile – is being hailed by many as “the next matcha.” The cycle of discovery and commodification continues to spin.

When consumers demand infinite growth from finite goods, the result is scarcity, price spikes and often quality erosion. The matcha craze is less about the drink itself, and more about the marketing playbook it represents: colour as health, scarcity as status, and ritual as lifestyle.

Models of Taxation

The Five Faces of the Taxman - by Brett Scott

This is a really good article which describes how different folks with different ideologies percieve the system of taxation. I really like this approach to look at different mental models, instead of arguing from one entrenched position - Robber, Provider, Redistributor, Technocrat and finally the most interesting one, the Anchorman.

I also like this description of chartalism (which underpins the MMT approach to money in recent times)

In the vision of the taxman as Robber, Provider, Redistributor, and Technocrat, it’s just assumed that money is a some kind of mysterious ‘commodity-like’ thing that exists outside of the state, hence the state needing to grab it, or to pull it from some to give to others.

Since the early 1900s, however, a school of thought called Chartalism has argued that the monetary system is anchored by the tax system, and that tax is required to make money work.

The basic chartalist observation is that states spend money into existence, pushing it out in exchange for real goods and services. Crucial to understanding this, is to understand what the state wants. The state does not want people’s money, much like an oak tree doesn’t want to collect its own acorns from squirrels. Rather, what the state wants is labour, and they get it by issuing credits that they want people to take.

In order to get people to take those credits, though, the state needs to create demand for them. It does this by imposing taxation - in other words, by imposing an obligation on people to give the state those credits back at certain points.

What I’ve just said normally horrifies libertarians, because in their imagination capitalism is peaceful and markets are natural. In the chartalist worldview, and also in the worldview of many economic anthropologists, large scale markets are constructed by states and are always underpinned by violence. The tax circuit used by states to extract labour for themselves, underpins the subsequent monetary system, which in turn catalyses, kickstarts and grows markets to scales previously unimaginable, and therefore scales up private wealth accumulation too.

In this view, state violence is symbiotic with private wealth accumulation, rather than parasitic upon it, because there would be no such thing as large-scale capitalism with its large-scale billionaires if there wasn’t a large-scale monetary system anchored by state taxation. Eliminating taxation would not ‘save capitalism’ from states. It would undermine the entire structure of capitalism. The state isn’t a needy parasite extracting from a host, but rather the very thing that leads to the host growing.

How to look at social media

how to look at social media - by Adam Aleksic

I like the different terms that the author uses for the different modes to consume social media - umsicht (immersion), flânerie (a mode of detached viewing) and the dérive (interact, but from a state of observation)

The philosopher Martin Heidegger would identify this pre-reflective mode of looking as umsicht: a state of immersion in our environment, where perception occurs without active thought. In umsicht, you intuitively know how to cope with your experience, but you don’t actively think about it.

To me, this alternate state of perception is analogous to the nineteenth-century French concept of flânerie: a mode of detached viewing, originally for the purpose of observation while walking through elements of urban life. To be a flâneur of the algorithm, you have to similarly embrace your role as an observer and coolly analyze events as they occur. This is a conscious, actively reflective state of consumption.

This third mode is inspired by another theory of walking: the dérive, a type of unplanned journey formulated by the Situationist philosophers in reaction to the overstimulation of media and spectacle. By allowing you to intuitively “feel out” an urban environment, dérive lets you interact, but from a state of observation. You still dissociate into umsicht, but you take note of disruptions. Over time, you can train yourself to both experience and learn from that experience.

The solution is to radically build up your awareness through the very way you perceive the scroll state. Let yourself engage, but not fall victim. Feel, detach, learn, repeat. It’s going to be work, but it’s how we start reclaiming power for ourselves.

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2025-09-11

Third Places

What Is A Third Place? And How To Find One - The Good Trade

A third place is a familiar public spot where you regularly connect with others known and unknown, over a shared interest or activity. The term was coined by Ray Oldenburg in the early 1990s, as increasing work hours and more heavily siloed communities (think: Suburbs) became the norm. Because when you have access to everything you could possibly want or need at home (or online), leaving the house becomes optional.

The best kind of third place is accessible and is one that invites us into close proximity with people we may not meet otherwise. These days, third places look like a bar or cafe with an affordable happy hour, but they can also look like community meeting spaces, churches, or libraries. Particularly, these locations can be especially important for seniors and for anyone living in areas facing economic hardship. By breaking down social siloes, third spaces put people in touch.

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2025-09-06

How Anime Took Over America

How Anime Took Over America: From Pokemon to Demon Slayer and Dragon Ball Z - The New York Times #anime #america

From this early stage on, Black Americans were overrepresented in anime fandom. Arthell Isom, whose D’ART Shtajio is Japan’s first Black-owned animation studio, shared his theory with me that Black Americans identified with anime protagonists who often come from the margins of society. Perhaps, he suggested, they were also so used to being absent from the media they consumed that they had an easier time watching and identifying with Asian protagonists than white audiences did.

No aspect of pop culture has remained untouched: In the fashion world, the streetwear label Supreme marketed a line of clothing festooned with images from “Akira,” and in recent years a number of Olympians and professional athletes have modeled their victory poses on anime characters.

Above all, though, anime may be saved by its sheer madness. There is nothing especially marketable, after all, about a film like “My Neighbor Totoro,” in which a pair of children whose mother may or may not be dying follow anthropomorphic dust mites into a hidden world where they befriend a cat who is also a bus. The psycho-spiritual trauma of the mecha-versus-monsters epic “Neon Genesis Evangelion” can scarcely be described, much less audience-tested for the sake of nervous financial backers. Anime is the realm of the underdog and the weirdo, whose fantastically bizarre imaginations have created a medium defined by its difficulty. And if there’s one thing Hollywood doesn’t seem up for right now, it’s a challenge.

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