Brian Wiesner

Disintermediating your friends: How online dating in the United States displaces other ways of meeting

The convenience built into socialising in Spain makes it a low-effort ritual. It’s why the “living for the weekend” mindset doesn’t exist, and why the perennially semi-formal look of the average Spaniard makes it difficult to tell the day of the week by their clothes. Dressing correctly daily, they resist wardrobe categories such as weekday wear... See more

This new model takes what we have learned from the Aggregation Era and finds a way to blend it with the independence enjoyed by the “sovereign writer”—or, to be appropriately expansive, let’s call it “sovereign creator.” It is, I believe, the natural model of the internet, taking advantage of the web’s massive scale and interconnectivity and... See more

When we fully accept ourselves and do not fear to be seen, connecting with others becomes surprisingly natural. We see the human being within ourselves and in the person across from us, and bond authentically over our shared experiences.

After all, cities are where people are supposed to have serendipitous encounters—as the writer and critic Jane Jacobs said, “The metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange.” By comparison, the cliché goes, people become more atomized the farther they move from urban environments into the clinical, safe,... See more

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.

she suggests, this is because people have an internal alarm clock that goes off at big life events, like turning 30. It reminds them that time horizons are shrinking, so it is a point to pull back on exploration and concentrate on the here and now. “You tend to focus on what is most emotionally important to you,” she said, “so you’re not interested... See more

The hourglass is particularly interesting, since unlike most other methods of measuring time, it presents the present as between the past (sand collected in the bottom bulb) and the future (sand yet to flow through the neck). Compared to sundials, which calibrate a moment in time against an external reference point, this method creates a conscious... See more