In 1985, Neil Postman observed an America imprisoned by its own need for amusement. He was, it turns out, extremely prescient.
Amusing Ourselves to Death
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) is a book by sociologist and mass media scholar Neil Postman. It has been translated into 16 languages and sold some 200,000 copies worldwide. In 2005, Postman's son Andrew reissued the book in a 20th anniversary edition.
In Favor of Enjoying Things on Purpose
The human being is an enjoyment-seeking creature. There’s a reason people are always trying to restrain themselves from excessive eating, drinking, scrolling, and shoppin...
#760: Gambling the future into existence
Plus: Cosmo for conservatives, AI;DR and being "agentic"
The Art of Taking Smart Risks
Good risk can bring joy to life, but Americans are up against forces that profit from the reckless kind.
Brainrot: Deskilling and Addiction are Overlooked AI Risks | Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
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#773: Regressing to the mean
Plus: slop wildlife, the post-American internet and AI for emotional labor
The hidden ‘rules of the game’ that dictate how we navigate the world | Psyche Videos
How free are we really, if human behaviour embodies the complex, intertwined webs of society and history?
Chris Hayes on the attention economy
A conversation about how attention was commodified, why it's so easy to steal, where industry is looking for new supplies, and whether democracy can survive this.
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.
The Cognitive Debt of Digging Through Preprints
Your Brain on MIT Media Lab
Pigeonholed: Creative Freedom as an Act of Resistance
Creative Freedom as an Act of Resistance
Dec 2020 -- Jelle Bruineberg -- Embodied cognition and the attention crisis
Situational awareness
I consider this article to be a form of American propaganda. There are a number of things in here I agree with, or believe may happen, but don't necessarily ...
A Jewish Case for AI work exemptions
or: why should CHICAGO POPE have all the fun
Ted’s Thoughts
Ted Han’s thoughts about journalism, technology, civilization, art and a bunch of other things.
My Objections to "We’re All Gonna Die with Eliezer Yudkowsky" — LessWrong
Introduction I recently watched Eliezer Yudkowsky's appearance on the Bankless podcast, where he argued that AI was nigh-certain to end humanity. Sin…
