David Pennington
@dtpennington
I write stuff. I’d like to write more stuff. Currently: reclaiming my brain.
David Pennington
dtpennington.com
The Cult of Done Manifesto
- There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
- Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
- There is no editing stage.
- Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
- Banish
Thomas Deneuville • The Cult of Done Manifesto
Many things in modernity are brain dead, but I can’t think of anything worse than the short form dystopias of TikTok and Instagram. They’re materially making people dumber, breeding addict behavior (particularly in the young) and ultimately ruining the lives of normies. It’s depressing to think about the countless kids who might have started garage... See more
Adam Singer • TikTok and Instagram are intellectual poison
There have to be some kind of longer-term, more drastic impact of the attention-shattering of our human experience. Too many tabs, to much switching from one stream of consciousness to another, not enough…work?
His biggest worry, though, is that we still mostly fail to acknowledge that we live in a roaring attention economy. In other words, we tend to ignore his favorite maxim, from the writer Howard Rheingold: “Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention.”
nytimes.com • Opinion | Michael Goldhaber, the Cassandra of the Internet Age - The New York Times
Michael Goldhaber is the internet prophet you’ve never heard of. Here’s a short list of things he saw coming: the complete dominance of the internet, increased shamelessness in politics, terrorists co-opting social media, the rise of reality television, personal websites, oversharing, personal essay, fandoms and online influencer culture — along with the near destruction of our ability to focus.
This isn’t the same kind of attention we give to our Instagram and TikTok feeds. It is a ritualised form of intentional presence directed to a shared sense of meaning and history.
As a result, our digital commons has become commoditised and overrun by the cult of self. When we shout ‘listen!’ on social media, we are demanding that others ‘Listen to... See more
As a result, our digital commons has become commoditised and overrun by the cult of self. When we shout ‘listen!’ on social media, we are demanding that others ‘Listen to... See more
Alexander Beiner • Myth and Metrics: How Social Media Robs Us of Ritual, and How to Revive It
My friend, digging for penis straws, says maybe it’s good to see. We have to confront this stuff. This is the cost of our collective Amazon addiction.
Seven Days At The Bin Store | Defector
But this raises an obvious question—if we lose libraries as the last public space for quiet reading and reflection, what can replace it?
Why Are Quiet Spaces Disappearing?
Which brings us back to the question of traditionalism and dynamism, and their potential interaction: if you have had a cultural revolution that cleared too much ground, razed too many bastions and led to a kind of cultural debasement and forgetting, you probably need to go backward, or least turn that way for recollection, before you can hope to... See more
Ross Douthat • The fall of the intellectual
Alas, we’re too dumb for the big ideas. Pop psychology, it is! Pass me my copy of Atomic Habits.
The “Silurian Hypothesis” is a fun thought experiment.
It posits Earth may have had advanced civilizations in the deep past that we are, today, unaware of. Why wouldn’t we know about them? Because if they existed millions of years ago and died out, their architecture would be long gone. “No ruins of ancient football stadiums, highways or housing... See more
It posits Earth may have had advanced civilizations in the deep past that we are, today, unaware of. Why wouldn’t we know about them? Because if they existed millions of years ago and died out, their architecture would be long gone. “No ruins of ancient football stadiums, highways or housing... See more