Brian Sholis

"I function like a more curated but less efficient version of GPT. My sentences are not generated by A.I., but they are largely the synthesis of my favorite authors."

I enjoy reading human writing because I like getting mad at people. Perhaps the personal quality in writing is a happy accident, and a lot of journalism could be replaced with an

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A profile of David Mills, an engineer who coded the Network Time Protocol that runs much of the internet. His methods, his code, are slowly be replaced by other ways of measuring and coordinating time, and this story does a good job of framing the personalities of those involved, the trade-offs, etc.

* “The geographic circle of life has expanded, so friendship strategies that depend on constant proximity are no longer effective.”

- “One major aspect of the mystery of time is the fact that it doesn’t play the same role in quantum mechanics as other quantities, like position or momentum; physicists say there are no “time observables” — no exact, intrinsic time stamps on quantum particles that can be read off by measurements. Instead, time is a smoothly varying parameter in... See more

- “… we never know as much about our own desires as we think we do. One of the great gifts and challenges of desire is that it illuminates who we are in unexpected ways.”

* “What would it mean for the workplace to be, not a family, but ground for making kin? Where and to whom would that kinship’s lines connect and disconnect, and so what? Oddkin doesn’t abide a hierarchy, it doesn’t heed the chain of command. A kinship of oddkin must be rooted in equity and care, in sustainability, in mutual aid. In solidarity.”

* “Instead of growing your Rolodex, double down on your best friendships, and find your 10 Club.”

- “It seems like the quantified self movement is about our relationship with time, about the fact that we don’t know how much we exercised or what we ate, we can’t really perceive ourselves mechanically and in a world where there are so many units of time all at once, where there are so many timeframes. It’s really easy to lose track of when you... See more