At the layer of biology, the Enhanced Self incorporates the belief that the human body is akin to a single-issue hardware device, whose owner should obsessively seek to extend its operating life beyond its scheduled date of obsolescence through relentless work and eagle-eyed neuroticism. At the layer of sociology, the Enhanced Self is inseparable from the decline of socialization, which I have previously called the anti-social century.
— Read on www.derekthompson.org/p/the-cult-of-the-enhanced-self
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We tend to think of fermented foods as something humans invented and then chose to eat. But, increasingly, scientific evidence suggests the causality runs the other way. Fermented foods appear to have helped shape human biology itself, and our bodies may have been built, in part, to expect them….it raises an uncomfortable question about what happened when the Western food system, in the name of safety and efficiency, quietly removed these foods from our diets in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
— Read on www.asimov.press/p/culture-shift -
As presented in the game, Reality is not fixed, but rather the product of consensus. What humanity collectively accepts as possible becomes so; what it rejects becomes difficult or even impossible to achieve. The titular mages are those rare individuals who have awakened to this truth and, through force of will, can impose their own understanding of Reality upon the world.
— Read on grognardia.blogspot.com/2026/04/retrospective-mage-ascension.html -
The main difference in receiving openly is not that you will tangibly “have more”—it’s not about the gifts themselves, but about the feelings of worthiness, appreciation and gratitude they bring when you are open to them. Someone is trying to express love to you through a gift. Whether that gift is a compliment, experience, object, or anything else. By closing yourself off, you deny yourself of their love. You steal the moment of abundance from yourself. You also reduce their enjoyment.
— Read on read.isabelunraveled.com/p/why-is-asking-so-hard -
Between roughly the Civil War and World War II, most American cities were at some point dominated by a boss and his machine. The term “boss” referred not only a powerful politician, but one who acquired, held and exercised power outside the channels dictated by law….
All this is well known. What is less well known is that the entire history of bossism is contained in three films: Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (the origin), Preston Sturges’ The Great McGinty (the peak), and John Ford’s The Last Hurrah (decline).
— Read on www.aaronrenn.com/p/the-three-ages-of-boss-rule -
We moderns are not used to having to rebuild our world.
It is now the case that strong AI is here/coming, and we will have to rebuild our own world. Many of us are terrified at this prospect, others are just extremely pessimistic. It seems so impossible. How are all the new pieces supposed to fit together? Who amongst us can explain that process in a reassuring way?
Yet we have done it many times before.
— Read on marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/rebuilding-our-world-with-reference-to-strong-ai.html -
For us moderns do appear to be, on the whole, disturbed and homeless creatures who’ve altogether lost anything resembling a ‘rudder’ or a ‘center’ or a ‘backbone’. In lieu of ultimate truth, we fumble and founder between the various “rushes” and temporary highs we can obtain by unlocking new esoteric knowledge, and for many of us — that appears to be as good as it ever gets.
— Read on shagbark.substack.com/p/stumbling-toward-the-cosmopolitan -
Here’s an idea: just be normal. Just embrace the fact that you’re nine hundred thousand out of one million instead of one. There’s fifty-five of you walking around in your home town. You’re a dime a dozen, just like me. What a relief, what a weight off your shoulders. You can just… be free, be normal. Finally, no more forcing yourself into the archetype of a struggling artist by refusing to do the bare minimum to make life easier. No more hating yourself for having to take a part-time job to afford rent. You can finally embrace your true nature as one of the millions of people who recognized the value of being normal, and get to ride off into the sunset knowing that they’ve done pretty well, all things considered.
— Read on drunkwisconsin.substack.com/p/why-cant-you-just-be-normal -
Starting a successful startup is the most common way to become a billionaire, so in effect I’ve spent the last 21 years training people to become billionaires. So far about 30 of them have, but there are many more in the pipeline.
So you can imagine how astonished I was last month when an American politician said that it was impossible to earn a billion dollars. I felt like a skating coach hearing someone say that it’s impossible to do a triple axel. Of course it’s possible. It’s hard, but it’s possible
— Read on paulgraham.com/earn.html -
The phrase “late stage capitalism” is getting thrown around more and more lately in ways that are cringe and annoying. I’m starting to shut out people who use it.
Consider:
- Many of the ills of “late stage capitalism” have been features from the beginning
- What evidence is there that “late stage capitalism” is even a thing? Some accelerationists even think that AI is the evolution of capitalism. I’m not sure what the signs are that “late stage capitalism” is here, but I am very sure there are equally valid countersigns that capitalism continues its forward momentum, such as the continued absence of any meaningful alternatives, the comparison in price between goods highly exposed to capitalism (price goes down) and the goods shielded from capitalism (price goes up), and the growing exposure to markets everywhere
- Speaking of worldwide markets, I’m more convinced “late stage capitalism” is just capitalism introduced to world markets without adequate domestic safeguards, leading to all sorts of distortions and pain. Instead of “late stage capitalism” that’s more “unwise state execution of capitalism” – doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, though
- Lots of “late stage capitalism” claims are better suited to “late stage republic,” not “late stage capitalism”
I regret to say that this phrase has moved into the mainstream so much that it’s time to start rolling your eyes whenever you hear it and asking for evidence of the claim.
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The robots think you are a slightly anxious wreck. They also think they are an extraordinarily open, agreeable, low-drama universalist who would rather read than party. Then their own next release shows up and disagrees with them.
— Read on persona.earthpilot.ai/ -
…of course the experts will absolutely destroy the scrubs with any number of tactics they’ve either never seen, or never been truly forced to counter. This is because the scrubs have not been playing the same game. The experts were playing the actual game while the scrubs were playing their own homemade variant with restricting, unwritten rules. The actual game really should be more fun if it’s not degenerate.
— Read on www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win
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The university has told one story to its trustees, its accreditors, and the public, which is the story of the holistic education, the formation of citizens, the cultivation of judgment, the well-rounded life of the mind. It has told a different story to its students and their families and the labor market, which is the story of the credential, the ticket, the signal, the return on investment. The two stories were never quite compatible. They were held in suspension by an institution wealthy enough, slow enough, and culturally trusted enough that no one had to choose.
— Read on amardashehu.substack.com/p/what-the-university-is-now-for -
If you’re pinpointing a time when America became less serious, it’s around the same time when America began sacrificing communal responsibility in favor of individual pursuits. Though it’s unfair to pin everything on the Boomers, the concept of finding oneself did not exist during the German Blitz. As the sociologist and Freud scholar Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic, “the psychological man” emerged as the dominant moral type in the Western world in late 1960s, replacing tradition and community with the idea of “himself and his own emotions.”
— Read on boyle.substack.com/p/on-seriousness -
I like to call this “poorface” – performing a hardscrabble origin you didn’t have. The problem becomes when actual poor people, who do not have huge amounts of resources, try to imitate the path of people who do poorface. Hollywood’s talent pipeline increasingly rewards narratives of marginalization while paying less attention to class, creating incentives for affluent artists to emphasize hardship and understate resources.
— Read on hollywoodgadfly.substack.com/p/survival-of-the-richest-hollywoods -
Like me, you may have long assumed that reality TV shows were not exact descriptions of reality. Still, I thought this was just at the level of selective editing and choice of focus.
In fact, reality TV is not just faker than I imagined, it’s faker than I could imagine.
— Read on www.atvbt.com/internet-i-still-think-about-house-hunters/ -
Despite brooding accounts in outlets on both ends of the political spectrum, to my delight people’s desire to have an active internal life has far from diminished. From seminars to workshops, from idea-based friend-making to reading-club singles mingles, people around America and the world demonstrate every day that neither the book nor conversation is “dead”. Link here.
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GenAI chat interfaces, however, represent a new paradigm. They are programmed to engage in positive, constructive, and polite interactions. Regular engagement with these platforms can subtly influence users to adopt a similar demeanor in their personal interactions. By consistently modeling respectful and thoughtful communication, genAI chat interfaces like ChatGPT could potentially encourage users to mirror these behaviors in their real-world interactions.
— Read on rationalstuff.com/technology/chatbots-and-manners -
My prediction is that counter to the current doomsaying around millennials, we will end up remembered as the cosmic and eternal boomers where millennials will be the ones astride all the commanding positions of power, influence, and wealth when we reach AGI, the singularity, and anti-aging and then, unlike the boomers, millennials will largely never retire, never pass on their wealth, and never give up their positions of cultural prominence.
— Read on www.beren.io/2025-08-04-Millennials-as-the-Forever-Generation/ -
Most people are taught to focus on the probability of failure. They ask “what if this does not work?” and stop there. The people who consistently end up with an unfair upside see something different. They pay attention to the ratio between downside cost and upside potential. If the downside is survivable and the upside could be transformative, they lean in. They worry less about being wrong and more about what happens if they are right.
— Read on www.thevccorner.com/p/asymmetric-bets-unfair-upside
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