"But this is pride, according to Niebuhr: the inability to interrogate our own moral stances because we’re too committed to ideology. Pride has everything to do with power, because the ideologies we commit ourselves to belong to the tribes that we count on to protect, defend, and advance us. Perhaps the most radical thing Jesus … Continue reading Ideology & Pride
Category: articles
Who the Fuck is SWIM?
"SWIM has done it all, from the most obscure pharmaceuticals to the hardest street drugs, at every dosage, in every combination. SWIM has shot black tar heroin in Thailand, drunk ayahuasca in Peru, binged on Quaaludes in Beverly Hills. SWIM has been to hell and back, cheated death, seen God. SWIM has survived hospital stays, … Continue reading Who the Fuck is SWIM?
Trying is Lying
"'I wish someone had told me when I was much younger that I didn’t have to have an airtight legal case for a breakup — all I had to have was a desire to no longer be in that relationship,' she writes. 'I would have saved myself a lot of time.'" —Kelli María Korducki. "Leaving … Continue reading Trying is Lying
If You Say Something Is “Likely,” How Likely Do People Think It Is?
Suggestions for improving forecasting and communication about it: Use probabilities instead of words to avoid misinterpretation Use structured approaches to set probabilities Seek feedback to improve your forecasting —Andrew Mauboussin and Michael J. Mauboussin. "If You Say Something Is “Likely,” How Likely Do People Think It Is?" Harvard Business Review. July 3, 2018. Sites like … Continue reading If You Say Something Is “Likely,” How Likely Do People Think It Is?
Really Reading Means Being Open to Change
To really read any discursive text, whether a philosophical tract or a legal contract, is a disturbing and cognitively disorienting experience, because it means allowing another person’s thoughts to intrude into your own and rearrange your beliefs and assumptions — often not in ways to which you would consent if warned in advance. Even when … Continue reading Really Reading Means Being Open to Change
The Great Filter: Civilization’s Lifetime
"Several of the scientists I spoke with proposed global warming as the solution to Fermi’s famous paradox, which asks, If the universe is so big, then why haven’t we encountered any other intelligent life in it? The answer, they suggested, is that the natural life span of a civilization may be only several thousand years, … Continue reading The Great Filter: Civilization’s Lifetime
The Island Test
"Imagine you were going to spend the weekend at a friend's house on a little island off the coast of Maine. There are no shops on the island and you won't be able to leave while you're there. Also, you've never been to this house before, so you can't assume it will have more than … Continue reading The Island Test
Emotional Regimes
"In September 2017, a screenshot of a simple conversation went viral on the Russian-speaking segment of the internet. It showed the same phrase addressed to two conversational agents: the English-speaking Google Assistant, and the Russian-speaking Alisa, developed by the popular Russian search engine Yandex. The phrase was straightforward: ‘I feel sad.’ The responses to it, … Continue reading Emotional Regimes
Cesium & Plutonium Make The Best Nightmare Fuel
"Two security experts from the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory drove to San Antonio, Texas, in March 2017 with a sensitive mission: to retrieve dangerous nuclear materials from a nonprofit research lab there.Their task, according to documents and interviews, was to ensure that the radioactive materials did not fall into the wrong hands on … Continue reading Cesium & Plutonium Make The Best Nightmare Fuel
Documenting [The Egyptian] Revolution on 858.ma
Made fully public in January 2018, the site “858.ma” was created by the Mosireen Collective, a nonprofit media collective, as an “initiative to make public all the footage shot and collected since 2011” regarding the Egyptian Revolution. The site, upon launch, had 858 hours of footage — hence the name — and, according to its … Continue reading Documenting [The Egyptian] Revolution on 858.ma
Cultural Good Ol’ Days
"I know people don’t read books like they used to, and they don’t think like they used to, but I struggle to care. Most of this talk is pure nostalgia, a kind of mostly knee-jerk, mostly uncritical (although not thoughtless) response to entirely rational fears about technological opacity and complexity (this nostalgia, of course, was … Continue reading Cultural Good Ol’ Days
History Rhymes
"Sometime this November, he estimates, half the world’s population—close to 4 billion people—will be connected online, sharing everything from résumés to political views to DNA information. As billions more come online, they will feed trillions of additional bits of information into the Web, making it more powerful, more valuable, and potentially more dangerous than ever.... … Continue reading History Rhymes
You Can’t Tell People Anything
"We all spend a lot of our time talking to bosses or investors or marketing people or press or friends or other developers. I’m totally convinced that a new idea or a new plan or a new technique is never really understood when you just explain it. People will often think they understand, and they’ll … Continue reading You Can’t Tell People Anything
Janes, v. 20.18
The subtitle of the article really says it all: "A secret network of women is working outside the law and the medical establishment to provide safe, cheap home abortions." —Lizzie Presser. "Whatever’s your darkest question, you can ask me." California Sunday. March 28, 2018. The prevalence of, for lack of a better term, Jane Networks, … Continue reading Janes, v. 20.18
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