Faith Hahn

14. All those nasty, rebellious songs that defy authorities are now owned by hedge funds.

The phrase represents WOXY’s core feature: its philosophy of independence. The idea that you can only be truly independent—creatively and otherwise—if you pursue that independence with and for other people

It’s tired at this point to say that the weightlessness of postmodern meaning, its confused identifications, ultimately flattens towards fascism. But still, having a viewpoint is perhaps underrated.

Even if, for a while, I feigned hatred of rock and roll, that only made sense on the presumption of its continued reign. Much the same could be said about liberal democracy. Today, American global hegemony looks like nothing more than a desperate reprisal of a role that must be ceded sooner or later; gone is the possibility of taking it for granted... See more

Lawsuits from major publishers against Suno and Udio are not, as libertarian boosters, VCs and Tech Bros would say, an attack on innovation. They are a warning shot against a business model that turns creative labor into raw machine fuel under the pretense of fair use.

The writing is getting better. The ideas are getting worse. There’s a new genre of essay that other academics reading this will instantly recognize, a clumsy collaboration between students and Silicon Valley. I call it glittering sludge .

Part of the problem with the Lean Startup mindset is that it sees life and work as an optimization problem. The point is to help people live a good life, not just an efficient life. The goal is human flourishing, not convenience. The goal is a good future, not just a technically advanced future.

Our tendency to try to escape from the universe to find a nirvana that’s sort of quiet and peaceful and apart from all this hullabaloo is undermined completely by the realization of the nature of reality. You realize that the wisdom of the nature of reality leads you into compassion for the beings who are here, and the little bit of bliss that you... See more

But this isn’t about phone numbers or navigation. It’s about how technology clearly changes our minds. And there is a risk that today’s siphoning of young brains into phones and laptops isn’t just happening with maps and digits, but with critical thinking and complex language.