David Pennington

What do I mean by that? Fiction, even when it’s fantasy or sci-fi, is about life and life is not mostly about words. Consider how many things you’ve thought or seen that are impossible for you to say in words, even something simple, like someone’s facial expression. Life, even on a quiet day, happens so densely and quickly around us andmost of it... See more

Myles helped me avoid an easy error:

Putting the tool before the craft.

One of the take-home lessons of Buddhist philosophy is that feelings just are. If we accepted their arising and subsiding as part of life, rather than reacting to them as if they were deeply meaningful, we’d often be better off. Learning to do that is a big part of what mindfulness meditation is about.

It’s ok to wait, and it’s definitely ok to de-wheel from the hamsterism of today’s productivity theatre. In fact, you might need to if you really want to dream up a monster story.

Content served by algorithms is effective in part because it’s disorienting, which helps to short-circuit the defenses against impulse—discernment, self-restraint, patience—that are the hallmarks of emotional maturity, rendering most of us a little bit more childish.

If Aldous Huxley had known about endlessly scrolling short videos from a handheld device, he would have made it the preferred media interface of his Brave New World .

He wisely understood—unlike Orwell or Bradbury—that ruling elites don’t need censorship and book-burning if they can convince people to voluntarily abandon literacy.

Like everything else in modernity, people want instant results without putting in any sort of effort to earn them. And then they wonder why they’re empty inside, their life the product of an ongoing process to make everything ‘more efficient’ for the sake of efficiency. They listen to podcasts at 2x, guzzle down Soylent, abuse stimulants to... See more