reading, watching & listening to

This was illuminating. My notes:

Negative power is the way people have been control for most of human history.

Negative power means being controlled by prohibition or limitation, telling people you can’t do this or that. Today, people are controlled through positive power. Positive power tells you you can be whatever you want, you’re in charge, so you have no limitations. As long as you can put your head down, focus, grind, achieve your short term goals, set new ones and achieve those.

Authenticity is an ad campaign of neo-liberalism. It's a self absorbed nightmare. People now have to define themselves through themselves without any sort of help from the outside. Everyone is their own little personal project. Everything we learn is not just learning anymore. It's an investment in ourselves. Everything is about mentally optimizing yourself working, producing more efficiently with your mind.

When I started writing a newsletter in 2019, I remember thinking there were too many newsletters. That was before Substack had made a meaningful dent on the Internet and only a handful of writers were seriously using it. The coolest things do not yet exist. You are not late.

going quite a bit faster when you’re going slowly is a really big gain. Going very fast when you’re already going fast is the action of a dickhead.

fascinating short read on status, sorting and prestige in sports (and everywhere else). The people you might expect to be the most competitive are often the most welcoming, and vice versa. 

if you want to predict the future, go to a history lecture or set your case study date filter to twenty years ago.