Josh Bowen

People shying away from having babies because they heard that it’s so hard are making one of those category errors that are inescapable in this rotten decade in this awful century: they think that hard is the opposite of good.

Michael Lewis on how your narrative crafts your character: If you listen to people, if you just sit around and listen, you’ll find there are patterns in the way they talk about themselves. Some people are always the victim. Some people always get unlucky. Some people are always in the middle of some impossible... See more

these days, the art of hanging out seems to be waning in cities.

Small minds discuss people Average minds discuss events Great minds discuss ideas I'm thinking about how the design of social networks pulls us towards the small/average - Instagram is centered on photos of the self, Twitter around discussing news/facts of the day. ... See more

Avoid content made after 2016 - Something happened in 2016. The internet became less weird, less creative. Whatever the cause, pre-2016 content has a distinct flavour of strangeness that has vanished. My favourite hack for this: Find a book or essay you love. Open up ChatGPT deep research. Ask for 50 similar books or essays, all created before... See more