David Pennington
@dtpennington
I write stuff. I’d like to write more stuff. Currently: reclaiming my brain.
David Pennington
dtpennington.com
the internet isn’t some alien force that descended upon us.
It’s just us, but bigger.
It’s just us, but bigger.
Joan Westenberg • The Original Sin of Everything
I've coined a new theory of the Internet in 2025.
It’s the basis for my new company.
I call it the "Boutique Impact" Theory.
Five years ago, audience was king. Make content, build audience, profit. I know this firsthand. I served 7,000+ Write of Passage and Second Brain students, many of whom wanted to build an audience. Most people sharing on the... See more
It’s the basis for my new company.
I call it the "Boutique Impact" Theory.
Five years ago, audience was king. Make content, build audience, profit. I know this firsthand. I served 7,000+ Write of Passage and Second Brain students, many of whom wanted to build an audience. Most people sharing on the... See more
Will Mannon • Will Mannon on Substack
Here’s what I’m trying to do with my life and my work. I’m trying to fully integrate everything. So the transition from work to play to everyday life is all seamless. So that it’s all one thing. There’s no difference between living and making art. I’ve gotten really close. Music, comics, writing, painting, playing with Eli, doing dishes, cooking,... See more
Austin Kleon • The point of this world
The randomness of physical space and human recommendation created collisions between existing preferences and unfamiliar possibilities.
Our Horizon of Possibilities: How Algorithms Contract Our World
We are passionate defenders of allowing scientists to conduct their research with as few limits on intellectual curiosity as possible, and calling for a ban is not something that we do often or lightly. However, every rule has exceptions, and this is one of them. Unless compelling evidence emerges showing that mirror bacteria do not pose... See more
John Glass • Mirror Bacteria Research Poses Significant Risks, Dozens of Scientists Warn
We should all want to cultivate a thirty second mind that can absorb the essence of a problem and come up with insights based on deep fluency with how the world works. However, a different type of “thirty second mind” is far more common today. Nearly thirty years after the internet became mainstream, the majority of people in our society have... See more
The Rational Walk • The Thirty Second Mind
Thinking About Thinking and Mental Models
The detriment of going from a multi-disciplinary mindset to an attention vacuum.
“We do not thrive as parts of a machine. We are intended by nature to be diverse, to do diverse things, to have many skills.” John Seymour
Karen Rosenkranz • The Home as a Place of Production
Aggressively uncreative practices such as aimless wandering or birdwatching (or, as she perceptively calls it, “bird listening”) offer “an antidote to the rhetoric of growth” that surrounds us every day. There is ultimately a feminist and environmental case to be made for doing nothing: if we can shift our notion of constructive social behavior
... See more