Words for our Present Reality - Strange Matters
We need a new kind of thinking. It would involve a break from the absolutism with which we dress up our systems of thought. It would demand that we bring different communities of thinkers together – especially those who have been left on the margins – and get them talking to each other so that we can inch closer to a shared language and a usable history.
Pluralistic: American education has all the downsides of standardization, none of the upsides (16 Jan 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
We moved to America in 2015, in time for my kid to start third grade. Now she's a year away from graduating high school (!) and I've had a front-row seat for the US K-12 system in a district rated as one of the best in the country. There were ups and downs, but high school has been a monster.
12 Things Everyone Should Understand About Tech - Anil Dash
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
The Anti-Social Century
Americans are now spending more time alone than ever. It’s changing our personalities, our politics, and even our relationship to reality.
What Is To Be Done?
I don’t want to criticize people who seem to like the situation… Instead I’ll focus on people who are trying to do something other than be a number, even as they are subsumed by the new reality of number supremacy.
A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird
Once you learn what the "uni-context" is, you won't stop seeing it everywhere
Pluralistic: More Everything Forever (22 Apr 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Astrophysicist Adam Becker knows a few things about science and technology – enough to show, in a new book called More Everything Forever that the claims that tech bros make about near-future space colonies, brain uploading, and other skiffy subjects are all nonsense dressed up as prediction:
Category Theory: The Beginner’s Introduction
The Daily Planet #122: More on Deep Time - The Daily Planet
Pluralistic: Comrade Trump (20 Apr 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
There aren't a lot of things I agree with Mark Carney about, but there's one area where he and I are in total accord: the old, US-dominated, "rules-based international order" was total bullshit:
The Daily Planet #121: Timefulness - The Daily Planet
Annick de Witt on Worldview Theory in a Time Between Worlds
Join us for the Life Itself Research Community Call#33. Annick de Witt discusses how her research on worldviews helps us respond to our current period of global societal transition.
How physics at the roots of reality point to a grand unified theory | Aeon Essays
Physics displays an uncanny alignment at its very deepest levels. Is a grand theory of everything finally within reach?
A fact-based worldview for all | Gapminder
We live in a globalized world, not only in terms of trade and migration. More people than ever care about global development. But most people have severe misconceptions about contemporary global development. We know, because we have tested people’s knowledge. One of the main reasons for this is that students don’t learn to understand the world based on statistics and facts. Instead, we have a dramatic worldview formed by outdated school books and sensationalist news-stories. People intuitively believe that most things are getting worse. The dramatic worldview leads to irrational decisions by individuals, nonprofits, governments and business. For the first time in human history reliable statistics exist. There’s data for almost every aspect of global development. The data shows a very different picture: a world where most things improve; a world that is not divided; and a world where the fast population growth will soon be over. The world has never been less bad. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.
The Daily Planet #119: On Deep Time - The Daily Planet
