palimpsest

The question is no longer whether we can write such books; they can be written endlessly, for us. The question is, do we want to read them?

I define “creative risk” as the wild ideas in our mind’s eye that we would love to pursue, but don’t because the cost (time, money, reputation...) is too much to bear. As a result, we play it safe in the form of making sequels in Hollywood, emulating successful campaigns in advertising, and “staying in our lane” or what we’re comfortable with in... See more

We live in the era of the symbolic executive, when "being good at stuff" matters far less than the appearance of doing stuff, where "what's useful" is dictated not by outputs or metrics that one can measure but rather the vibes passed between managers and executives that have worked their entire careers to escape the world of work.

Our lives are too sacred to be spent pretending that meaningless work is meaningful.

That for me is the poetics of encryption. Artists are already using generative AI as a tool to reimagine our relation to the perennial big ideas. Like: What is identity? What is spirituality? What is cultural heritage? How can the human resist the fast-moving disruption to our lives and to our long-standing imaginaries? These are the questions that... See more

You can no longer make students do the reading or the writing. So what’s left? Only this: give them work they want to do. And help them want to do it. What, again, is education? The non-coercive rearranging of desire.

Within five years, it will make little sense for scholars of history to keep producing monographs in the traditional mold—nobody will... See more

“Would you trade your own messy, dynamic human attention for something more stable and neutral, or do you think the ‘messiness’ is part of what makes it meaningful?”

1. I didn’t pick a niche . I have often admired and envied people who have their one thing —whether it’s literature, urban planning, art history, sociology, mathematics, architecture, software—because I have never been able to commit like that. The usual advice is to “niche down” if you want to build an audience for your newsletter, but trying to

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