Of course, with mass production comes surplus and, then, refuse. We containerize actual trash because otherwise debris gets on everything else and makes everything less good. AI is, arguably, doing the same on the internet. It’s clear we think of a lot of AI as trash, though we’re not doing much to clean it up. - Fast Company
Whether we like it or not, chatbots are here to stay. It’s not necessarily a problem, but it risks becoming one if people use chatbots in harmful ways. I’m going to help you avoid that. - Psyche
People with higher levels of dopamine are more likely to choose a harder task with a higher reward than an easier, low-reward task. Low dopamine doesn’t reduce focus, but it’s believed it provokes giving more weight to the perceived cost of an activity instead of the potential reward. - 3 Quarks Daily
As people embrace these transformative tools, they risk eroding capacities and experiences that embody values other than seamlessness and efficiency. - The Atlantic
The Internet didn’t destroy monoculture. It exposed the fact that monoculture was always a bottleneck, popped the cork, and let the contents fizz out. - ARTnews
Or at least … that’s an idea? “Using the 17th-century nun Sor Juana as inspiration, lay out five steps to writing an assertive, non-people-pleasing email.” - NPR
The design team “gathered in a studio with a blacked-out stage, a giant glass version of the Apple TV logo, and a bevy of colorful studio lights.” - Fast Company (Archive Today)
OK, cool, especially if you’re a Roman Empire kind of person: “Users can digitally explore nearly 300,000 kilometers of roads laid across the vast Roman Empire at its height in the mid-second century.” - Open Culture
“If you have enough money to get somebody, anybody, to produce a white paper for you, which you can then put on some think-tank stationery? Then, my friend, you are ready to enter into the rushing current of elite reportage ... no matter how unhinged the position you’ve take.” - LitHub
In 2016, the group made its recommendation that the Anthropocene should be considered as the new epoch. This recommendation was later forwarded to higher ICS organs for consideration and voting. A series of votes was expected, but the proposal was rejected early on in the process in March 2024. - Aeon
As a wide range of social scientists, pollsters, and trendspotters have observed, a sense of fatalism has increasingly suffused the attitudes of many millennials and zoomers. - Drift Magazine
Roughly speaking, globalization flattens space and pares away cultural particularity; neoliberalism flattens value, reducing everything to its going rate on the market; the internet, and especially social media, flatten transactions and relationships into their barest, most instrumentalized form. - Commonweal
The central insight that these disparate thinkers took from Kant is that the world isn’t simply a thing, or a collection of things, given to us to perceive. Rather, our minds help create the reality we experience. - The New Yorker
Although many have outward-facing aspects, a hobby is ultimately a form of self-cultivation, pursued for reasons of personal satisfaction. Our society values publicity and productivity: perhaps that’s one reason that hobbies seem like they’re in decline. - The New Yorker
