The way to greater confidence is not to reassure ourselves of our own dignity; it’s to come to peace with our inevitable ridiculousness

— Alain de Botton in ‘On Confidence’

A toll gets you to somewhere you want to go to. A tax sucks you dry. Be okay with tolls in your life, they make you better. Taxes on the other hand are a part of life and of course should be paid, but you don't want to live a life with only taxes, no tolls. You want mostly tolls, some taxes.

- Greg Isenberg

The same systems that empower us also subject us

“in this version though, a lot of your story is written by others. You write your autofiction about yourself and others write their fictions about you, often anonymously, on Substacks, subreddits, messageboards like Lolcow, on Twitter and Instagram and podcasts too, and this makes things different from what has come before. The lives of these perso

I use my iPhone nearly every hour that I am conscious, every day, but the new announcements left me craving a dumbphone, since those machines, at least, cannot attempt to think for me

— Apple is bringing AI to your personal life, like it or not

https://x.com/julesterpak/status/1794558327050953133?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

A common thread on the same video — the comments section isn’t universal, but hyperpersonalised. How might that further divide us?

Are the people this place attracts the sort of people I want to spend time with and become more like? Is the system that is in place here one that pushes and cajoles and processes people to become more like the kind of person I’d like to be?

How did we get here?

From Ezra Klein:

AI might be able to churn out content faster than we can, but we still need a human mind to sift through and figure out what’s good. In other words, A.I. is going to turn more of us into editors. But editing is a peculiar skill. It’s hard to test for, or teach, or even describe. But it’s the crucial step in the creative process that

• What’s one word on your mind right now?

• What’s an idea that jumped out at you from what you just heard?

• What did this remind you of?

• Share one way you might make this better. 

• On a scale of 1 to 5, how confident/excited/clear are you on what you just heard?

• Raise your hand if you felt ____ about this. Raise your hand if you felt _____ about this. (