Natalie Audelo

But what if you’re under the influence of bad systems? What if we all are? What if we take a minute to laugh at how hard we defend our right to want things when we can barely explain why we want them in the first place, beyond “I like this”? Can we deconstruct those wants in a non-judgy but curious sort of way? Or maybe delight in the absurdity of ... See more

Now, the GoFundMe and DonorsChoose thing is closely related, but it gets its own throughline. These platforms emerge to seemingly supplement gaps in the public safety net for things like education and health care. But instead, they’re in a kind of enabling feedback loop: instead of your taxes ensuring that kids have desks and cancer patients can ge... See more

My claim is that luxury goods are gradually becoming a noisier signal of one's position in society. This isn't to say that they don't still confer status — they clearly do. People still buy material items to signal their status. But because they've become a noisier signal over time, people are starting to signal their status with their beliefs and ... See more

The idea of research as leisure activity has stayed with me because it seems to describe a kind of intellectual inquiry that comes from idiosyncratic passion and interest. It’s not about the formal credentials. It’s fundamentally about play.

The Passion Job Burnout Machine is different than the burnout machines of, say, Big Law, or investment banking. With those jobs, you know who’s burning you out and why. It’s a very transparent trial by fire: a means to see if you can hack it with a very time-greedy job (that rewards you with very high pay). Passion jobs let you do the dirty work yo... See more

After seeing some 800~ events take place at The Commons i've learned 3 things:

• 1) plausible deniability: if you say we're here to make friends, friendship doesn't happen. if you say we're here to research or talk about niche topic x and y, friendships always form. same applies to dating.


• 2) communities are built from strong 1-1 relationships. as an e

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Pretty privilege is a form of self-sustaining energy, in that way—all the positive feedback that attractive people receive instills a kind of self-worth in them that they are indeed deserving of everything they desire, which makes their endeavors that much more persuasive. After all, believing in yourself is necessary for others to believe in you t... See more