Alex Burns

It’s a little bit like the famous liar’s paradox, which we studied in DeLong’s class. Here’s one version of it: “The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence is false.” As soon as you accept the first sentence, you validate the second sentence, which invalidates the first sentence, which invalidates the second, which validates the first,... See more

Websites are the most expressive medium I know, but they’re used today in such a tiny narrow way.

The thing is, they could be like digital paper: back-of-napkin notes, moodboards, journaling, letters, toy apps, lists, sprawling canvases.

In early interviews with Whaley, he often talked about the internet being the magic ingredient to MSCHF: “Life is too short and the internet is too big to not make what you want.”

Betches is exploring a variety of strategies to grow, from sports and events to a splashy podcast deal with the TikTok news star V Spehar of Under the Desk News. It’s in talks for a partnership with the comedian Ilana Glazer (a gushy fan who described Betches as “if ‘Broad City’” — her cult hit TV show — “were a media company”).

Forty hour work weeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes—train and sprint, then rest and reassess.

It would make sense to say that, despite appearances, third-order vanity ratchets up the neuroticism, rather than quiets it down. But what I find most interesting about third-order vanity is that often its most prolific purveyors seem so lost in their role that they’re almost unaware they’re performing at all.