Tom White

That is one reason the command to make something of oneself has always struck me as incomplete. The harder command is to leave something of oneself that is not trash. This is not easy. It asks that one return to the same thought after the mood has passed and test whether it still deserves paper.

Peace and concentration are the same thing.

You don’t recover from an addiction when you’re deprived of that thing, you recover when you don’t want it anymore, even when it’s placed right in front of you. A true change in being is a change in appetite. True conversion is a change in heart.

“Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigor... If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?”

—Jane Eyre

A 2024 neuroscience study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that heavy short-form video use is associated with reduced executive control and weaker attention performance —measured not just behaviorally, but neurologically using EEG brain scans.

Let that sink in.

The study does not just focus on “feeling distracted” but more... See more

Pharma companies spend billions developing a molecule, then enjoy 20 years of patent protection to recoup R&D costs before generics flood the market. AI follows the same pattern - massive R&D costs upfront, then commoditization. But the timeline is compressed.

In pharma, the generic window opens after two decades. In AI, it opens in weeks. DeepSeek... See more

For most of human history, losing a resource could mean death. So your brain evolved to feel losing something about twice as intensely as getting that same thing in the first place. Anyone who's played Monopoly knows this instinctively - no one likes to trade, even for a deal that clearly favours them.

Brain imaging shows why. Contemplating giving... See more

Relatedly psychologist Robert Zajonc’s work on social facilitation showed that the mere presence of other people improves our performance. This effect of “being on the hook” arouses us physiologically, and that arousal sharpens our focus and our effort [Zajonc, Science , 1965].​​