A history of Netflix describing how it came to be full of content “designed to be played but not watched”. I've never understood why a subscription-based service feels so similar to ad-based platforms like YouTube, seemingly optimized to make you keep scrolling. I mean I've paid already, so surely it would be best for profit if I use the service as little as possible while still renewing (saving bandwidth and compute costs) instead of annoying me with a 10 second autoplay timer that can't be turned off. I still don't quite get it. But at least partially, now.

I find this essay beautiful in a way I find difficult to describe. It’s a sort of ‘Zen and the Art of Picture Framing’, I guess. But more personal, more lyrical. I love this genre of personal essay combining memoir with vividly material reflection on the smaller or more obscure parts of life and work. Found via a 2024 year-end top 10 list by the Electric Typewriter.

On ‘biological dark matter’, ‘obelisks’, and other utter mysteries in biology at the molecular scale.

This essay was resurfaced for me by The Browser. I don't think I agree with its analysis and conclusions, but it's difficult to put my finger onto why, exactly. Which is to say: a good bit of thought-provoking writing. On a fun topic.

The theory in question is Jevon's paradox. If you've never heard this term, go read this article.

Well, duh.

A nice set of parenting ideas. Cultivating family traditions instead of defaulting to hap-hazard parenting is something I struggle with.

Sara Hendren is one of those thinkers who, for me, bring deep and surprising insight to whatever they turn their attention to. Here she summarizes a series of blog posts considering what college she would like her children to attend – and in doing so develops a compelling and refreshing vision of what it is that higher education should strive for.

It's funny 'cause it's true.

As I head back to work in a bullshit-infested university, this analysis serves as a valuable reminder and a practical inventory of everything to look out for in its statements and policies.

“It’s time to move beyond the debate between passive and active voice in favor of something more responsive to the fluid nature of contemporary political language.”

“The bureaucratic voice makes use of both active and passive constructions, but its purpose is uniform: to erase and efface any active agent on the part of the bureaucracy.”

“While the bureaucratic voice works to present governments and corporations as placid, apologetic, and unmovable, it also works to make their victims as active and vital as possible.”

“The bureaucratic state never acts of its own volition; it is always reactionary, and it always acts because the victim leaves it no choice.”

In contrast to the abuses of language that Orwell was concerned with, “the purpose of the bureaucratic voice is less to shape our thoughts or how we see the external world, but to reward incuriosity.”

I continue to be amazed by how (what appear to me as) such basic cognitive functions can apparently differ so radically between people.

This captivating personal essay manages to convincingly describe the reality and debilitating potential of autism, while at the same time describing the individual diversity behind ‘neurodiversity’ that sometimes makes me doubtful how helpful these DSM-defined labels are:

ASD is a spectrum, but there is often a presumption that the spectrum is a linear gradient from mild to severe. In fact, the disorder is not a spectrum but spectra, a solar system of sprawling constellations in 3-D that differs from one person to the next. Within autistic communities, they say, “If you’ve met one person with ASD, you’ve met one person with ASD.”

Witold Rybczynski, author of The Story of Architecture, sings the praises of ornamentation in architecture.

Witold Rybczynski argues in favor of classical/traditional architecture, and against continuously pursuing 'the next new thing'. Similar vibe to The Architectural Uprising.

Super simple qualitative assessment scheme with only four levels, based on two steps of yes/no judgements.

Susan Blum discusses the response to her seminal edited volume Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead) and points to different approaches.

An insane story of evil corporate gaslighting – of one scientist in particular at the same time as society in general. Just like with climate change, they knew perfectly well what they were doing but did everything they could to keep it secret.

If we cannot come up with ways for A.I. to reduce the concentration of wealth, then I’d say it’s hard to argue that A.I. is a neutral technology, let alone a beneficial one.

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We should all strive to be Luddites, because we should all be more concerned with economic justice than with increasing the private accumulation of capital.

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Imagine an idealized future, a hundred years from now, in which no one is forced to work at any job they dislike, and everyone can spend their time on whatever they find most personally fulfilling. Obviously it’s hard to see how we’d get there from here. But now consider two possible scenarios for the next few decades. In one, management and the forces of capital are even more powerful than they are now. In the other, labor is more powerful than it is now. Which one of these seems more likely to get us closer to that idealized future? And, as it’s currently deployed, which one is A.I. pushing us toward?

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The tendency to think of A.I. as a magical problem solver is indicative of a desire to avoid the hard work that building a better world requires. That hard work will involve things like addressing wealth inequality and taming capitalism. For technologists, the hardest work of all—the task that they most want to avoid—will be questioning the assumption that more technology is always better, and the belief that they can continue with business as usual and everything will simply work itself out. No one enjoys thinking about their complicity in the injustices of the world, but it is imperative that the people who are building world-shaking technologies engage in this kind of critical self-examination.

The majority of censorship is self-censorship, but the majority of self-censorship is intentionally cultivated by an outside power.

Great story. Tales of of dozens-of-projectors productions and a whole 35mm-slide-based media industry that just kind of went away.