culture

mostly of the internet kind

I ultimately think that the people who are histrionic about safety in San Francisco—they just hate cities! They hate the fact that they have to interact with other people, people who are visibly poorer than them and different from them, when they go out into the world. They hate the fact that homeless people exist and that they have to see them, in... See more

Celine Nguyen • In Defense of San Francisco

Literature allows us to name the world by giving us new phrases, new characters, new words. Poets like Chaucer and Shakespeare coined hundreds of new words. So many of their phrases are still used in common speech. They named all sorts of things for us. And by using those names, we expand what we can understand about the world.

Henry Oliver • Notes Towards an Applied Literature

The San Francisco Bay Area has a long history as the playground of consciousness. For decades, many of its resident technologists have been both habitually curious about — and determined to master — the inside of their brains. This sort of cerebral hedonism is hardly visible to outsiders, in the way that visitors to Miami might be dazzled by the sp... See more

Manufacturing Bliss

“Cerebral hedonism”

Here’s some extremely obvious advice for anyone living in San Francisco (or any city, really) that feels lonely: go outside, strike up conversations with strangers, and accept every invitation someone extends to you until you become BFFs and/or your social calendar is full for the next 3 months.

Celine Nguyen • In Defense of San Francisco

As a musician, listening to a song can teach you a lot, but it’s not the path to rigorous learning. Mastery comes through practice, discipline, and the often uninspiring grind of didactic instruction.

The same principle applies to gaining wisdom. Art and literature are secondary sources to wisdom, philosophy is the primary source.

Omar F. Najjarine • Why modern life feels meaningless

This is where I disagree. At least on the surface. If the implication is that you go and read the primary texts themselves, of philosophy, which is often considered “Great” philosophy, then you will be doomed. Great philosophy is not always good, helpful, useful. It is great as a result of stirring attention, thought, etc. I think most people do fine without studying philosophy itself. I do think, though, we need to think more, rather than prescribe philosophy as the sole source of wisdom. Wisdom is something learned and gained in action and reflection. Philosophy (as a field) can inspire that, but I do not think it is the only way.

Anywhere from 90 percent to 97 percent of vanilla-flavored products are made with vanillin , a substance found in small quantities in natural vanilla but made synthetically for processed commercial foods. Real vanilla contains hundreds of different components that contribute to its nuanced taste and aroma. It is as different from vanillin as sugar ... See more

Amanda Fortini • How Vanilla Became Shorthand for Bland

On the richness and complexity of real vanilla. Vanilla is not vanilla.

Tpot — sometimes used interchangeably with “postrationalism” — is a loose subculture, notorious for its love of introspection, that grew out of the tech-adjacent rationalist movement. Where rationalists emphasize the use of logic to govern their decision-making, tpot believes that “vibes” and feelings are unaccounted for by pure logic and advocate ... See more

Manufacturing Bliss

So the loss of autonomy, of self-reliance, is the primary driver of the meaning crisis. Work itself is not the problem, it’s 'wage' work: work we don’t care about, work we’re forced to do for the majority of our lives. Everything else follows from this. When we are alienated from our labor—when our best creative energies are spent on meaningless pr... See more

Omar F. Najjarine • Why modern life feels meaningless

Historically, work looked very different. In the 1700s, approximately 90% of Americans were self-employed or engaged in family-owned trades or agriculture. Even by the early to mid-1800s, around 80-85% were independent artisans or farmers, continuing the tradition of self-employment. This dynamic began to shift dramatically with industrialization, ... See more