I think that what we were being taught was less a body of knowledge than a way to be in the world: orderly, organized, attentive to direction. There is nothing wrong with developing those skills—in fact, I’ve learned the hard way how useful they can be. What is wrong is their fetishization, the way they were allowed to outrank the actual body of knowledge held within algebra or English lit. The result was that “learning” felt like a kind of bait and switch. And this frustrated me because I truly did love to learn—it just so happened I learned best away from my desk, where ideas and concepts could be made tangible.
I think many of us who are teachers and professors have forgotten that the syllabus serves the student, and all around us are teachers, administrators, and columnists who seem to believe that material should be hard for the sake of it and that education itself is best when rendered not in wonder but in force.
Chasing TikTok users doesn’t build a better platform for writers. It builds a different platform entirely. The value proposition collapses when your infrastructure for thought becomes optimized for the attention economy. You can’t serve two masters. You either build a tool for writers or you build an app for dopamine hits. Once you choose the latter, you’ve already traded your audience.
Voting rights are never about who has the right to vote, they’re always about who has the right to win and who has the right to rule.
Milei's crypto faceplant is a timely reminder that these guys can be defeated. The Tech Fascist project depends heavily on crypto. Our wannabe Silicon Valley overlords need their fake digital money to build a parallel financial system that can finance parallel forms of government. But they are building their dystopian dream on a scammy, shaky foundation that's bound to collapse sooner rather than later.
When a bad man has the advantage, cruelty and outrage are the consequences. —William Marshal
I was a reluctant convert but captured by the many layers, the hints at revelation, and a sound that I did not so much enjoy as I felt compelled to understand. Every track was a disheveled history of music. And armed with an array of sonics, Chuck D came forward and revealed a new level of Knowledge.
Put simply, if you selected the correct door initially (which happens 1/3 of the time), you shouldn’t switch when you’re offered the chance. If you chose the wrong door initially (which happens 2/3 of the time), you should switch.
This basic decision tree proves two things: the probability isn’t 50–50, and you’re better off if you always switch.
Hungary’s key lesson is you don’t protect democracy by talking about democracy — you protect democracy by protecting people. Only a democracy that works for the people is sustainable.
To be abundantly clear, as it stands, OpenAI currently spends $2.35 to make $1.