Brian Wiesner

That piece by Patrick Brown cites a whole bunch of data that questions the assumption that urban form necessarily leads to neighborliness. He writes, for example:

Small towns, lauded by Putnam for their high rates of civic engagement, often boast the kind of low-density development and heavy automobile reliance associated with the much-maligned

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Do Yourself a Favor and Go Find a ‘Third Place’

We need physical spaces for serendipitous, productivity-free conversation.

We’re not even on the agency curve. It’s a different curve.

Look, I’m using knowledge and agency a little loosely. LLMs can do more than just regurgitate knowledge; even if you grant them reasoning, though, it still doesn’t feel like humanity emerges from LLM scaleup. They have no curiosity, and don’t ask their own questions.

You might divide everything in life into two categories: utility and beauty. These aren’t mutually exclusive, of course—nearly anything could be both: a shirt, a building, a relationship—the difference comes down to intention.

Way beneath every step you’ve ever taken and every step you will take is this thing called mycelium. Long threads of fungi that grow one cell at a time, branching and re-branching, growing in every direction. They even grow three-dimensionally.

The ones that form and spread great ideas, that build businesses, make music. Connections that let you find the back door and land opportunities you never would’ve otherwise. Connections that plant the right seeds for your future.

Genuine connections are among the few things that shape us.

Connections are like mycelium. It covers the entire earth... See more

More important than beanbags and coffee machines (though they are nice), are how employers recognise the needs for work-life balance, the importance of time for child-rearing and family life, and the ability of workers to easily move between the spaces of their lives. Employers should be asking how they fit into the ecology of everyday rhythms of... See more

In studies of peer groups, Laura L. Carstensen, a psychology professor who is the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity in California, observed that people tended to interact with fewer people as they moved toward midlife, but that they grew closer to the friends they already had.

What we forget, however, is that the story of the Starving Artist is a myth. And like all myths, it may be a powerful story, one we can orient our entire lives around.