Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived. My number one criteria in evaluating a piece of writing is not whether it solved my problems, but whether it opened me up to dive deeper into the mystery.

As we are fed more content, we are pushed deeper into algorithmic niches. In return, we are encouraged to engage with more extreme and polarizing identifiers because it is more labelable, more indexable by the machine — the creation of the “Island". On this island, the slang, in-jokes, and archetypes which emerge as a community develops in isolatio... See more

The modern utopian dream of the model city wants to stay open, totally. In this place there are no curfews; transport runs all night; bankers working foreign stock exchanges go to dinner after trading; comedy writers drink litres of coffee and order takeout; and live music plays through the evening.

In 2001, Tony Blair ran for PM on a platform of ke... See more

A Time We Never Knew

"Phones? No. We had each other."

Our modern lives are built from globe-spanning supply chains that require vast logistics systems and incredible communication speed to make sense. Each technology not only unlocks a new state of expanded acceleration (that will be hardcoded into our lives as the new basis for our survival), but will also be used as the basis for new technologies to

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The default assumption tends to be that it is politically important to designate everyone as beautiful, that it is a meaningful project to make sure that everyone can become, and feel, increasingly beautiful. We have hardly tried to imagine what it might look like if our culture could do the opposite—de-escalate the situation, make beauty matter le... See more

I've noticed that people no longer say the vibe has 'shifted,' instead they are saying it has, variously:

sloped

slimed

slumped

shot upwards mysteriously

slunk sideways, tho unsheepishly

sublimed

slonked (as of eggs)

slackened minutely

slumber-partied back into the future

the world is much stranger than the secular imagination thinks.

You are holding a teledildonic,” she told us, exploring the concept of phone as sex toy, where “swiping accesses desire” by sexting, sending nudes, or the tactile experience of swiping itself. “It’s pressure sensitive. It vibrates,”