We are each so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms – up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested – probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name… So we are all reincarnations – though short-lived ones. When we die our atoms will disassemble and move off to find new uses elsewhere
— Read on kupajo.com/everything-is-undergoing-constant-reassembly-evolution/
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For decades, marketing leaders guided buyers through a neat sequence from awareness to purchase. Today, that linear funnel model is breaking down. Buyers now chart their own course — jumping between channels, self-educating via digital content and often engaging sales late, if at all.
As buyers became harder to corral into a predictable path, marketers tried to compensate. In response, companies are frantically multiplying touchpoints….
This explosion of activity reflects an omnichannel reality: the customer’s path to purchase is no longer a straight line but a complex web of on-demand interactions across digital and physical channels. But the surge in activity hasn’t solved the problem. In many cases, it highlights how poorly the funnel aligns with today’s buyer behavior.
— Read on martech.org/why-todays-buyer-journey-no-longer-fits-the-funnel/ -
whenever i hear a young person confidently assert that humanity is cooked, my first instinct is to ask for their screen time report. because, yes, if you spend more time scrolling than you do participating in real life, it’s actually quite reasonable to conclude that we’re hanging on by a thread
— Read on stephstiner.substack.com/p/a-gen-z-guide-to-fixing-your-doom -
You could put higher consumption taxes on items the wealthy purchase to a disproportionate degree. Paintings and yachts, and so on. Tom Holden argues: “In a world in which capital is essentially the only input to production, taxing capital reduces the growth rate of the economy. Whereas at present capital taxes have only level effects. So if anything, capital taxes will become less desirable as the labour share falls.”
— Read on marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/01/taxation-in-a-strong-ai-world.html -
those of us who do venture deeply into his work quickly discover something far more imposing. [Clark Ashton] Smith’s imagination is vast, luxuriant, and final, as though one had strayed into a world already immeasurably old, already in decline, and wholly indifferent to human ambition or consolation.
— Read on grognardia.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-ensorcellment-of-january.html -
After a string of disturbing mental health incidents involving AI chatbots, a group of state attorneys general have sent a letter to the AI industry’s top companies, with a warning to fix “delusional outputs” or risk being in breach of state law.
— Read on techcrunch.com/2025/12/10/state-attorneys-general-warn-microsoft-openai-google-and-other-ai-giants-to-fix-delusional-outputs/ -
One of the goals of politicians is to get you to focus on taxing income. The psyop has worked for decades now and hopefully people are waking up to this sham.
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I wrote my own version of Stranger Things 5. I wrote it as a safeguard, in case they screwed up the final season, so I would have a conclusion to the saga that at least satisfied me. I also wrote it as a fun fan-fiction experiment, to see how different our stories would be, and where our visions might intersect
— Read on rossonl.wordpress.com/2026/01/02/an-alternate-version-of-stranger-things-5/ -
“[It] was hardly a nursery for intellectuals, it was a hotbed of false values, it harbored an unattractive percentage of small-time crooks and con artists, and the chances of being successful there were minimal,” he writes. “But it was fascinating, and if you were lucky, it was fun.”
— Read on www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/05/david-niven-memoir-scandals-old-hollywood -
Stranger Things was a show people loved because of the vibe. Now, Stranger Things is a show people watch because they remember loving that season one vibe, and they figure they might as well finish the rest of it.
— Read on www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/scifi/stranger-things-vibe.html -
Africa will produce new variants of Christianity and Islam. Furthermore, many African regions have not been Christian or Muslim for very long, not by historical standards. That might boost the chances of innovation, since to them it is not a very fixed doctrine.
— Read on marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/07/three-scenarios-for-the-emergence-of-new-religious-doctrine.html -
While the past midlife crisis model focused on breaking down confining bonds, chipping away at that adult façade to return to the fountain of youth, Xers are still in full construction mode. “I’ve made a list – it’s the ‘do-better’ list,” Leslie Mann’s character tells her husband in Judd Apatow’s flawed but occasionally insightful “This Is 40.” Her list, of course, is exhausting: A far cry from Peter Sellers’ laced-up, nearly calcified lawyer, chronically encased in his business suit, fighting to break out of convention, Debbie seems like a woman without a past, chronically intent on self-reinvention. She’s not looking back at what she lost – she’s barely gotten started.
More at the link.
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“People want a fair deal from someone they like.”
When questioned about his actions to get people to like him, he simply says, “I tell them that I like them.”
— Read on fs.blog/joe-girard/ -
You have to identify with this past of yours, and you have to find some way to make it make you stronger. If college was a quicksand pit of despair then you have to accept that and find some way to be empowered by it.
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the U.S. is in the middle of a great shift — in the 19th and 20th centuries, high class in America was defined as “anything French”, while in the 21st century it’s defined as “anything Japanese”.
Apparently the Japanese don’t realize it yet? More here.
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NASA’s been clear that it doesn’t intend to replace the space station.
Instead, the agency wants to shift from landlord to tenant, purchasing space station services from private players rather than running a facility of its own. It’s betting the private space industry can help drive down costs and accelerate innovation.
— Read on singularityhub.com/2025/12/26/the-era-of-private-space-stations-launches-in-2026/ -
the way we think about the world—made of separate, clearly labeled “things” that you can depend on to “be themselves”—is an illusion. The universe is governed by physical laws that are all about movement, forces, warping, and never about peacefully existing in a room
— Read on planktonvalhalla.com/20251204-purpose-from-first-principles/
Basement Whatever 