Charles Dickens in 1843: "what if I wrote a story where a man learns not to be a dick" Humanity: "holy shit" Humanity: makes 400 adaptations Humanity: continues being dicks Humanity: "we should adapt this again"
My conscious brain: 'We should learn linear algebra to better understand neural networks.' My revealed preferences: 'We are going to scroll specifically the parts of Wikipedia that list defunct 19th-century breakfast cereals.'
SaaS is dead. Punk is dead again, for approximately the four hundredth time since Sid Vicious actually died in 1979. Rock is dead. The novel is dead. Cinema is dead. Blogging is dead. Privacy is dead. Expertise is dead. Irony is dead. We have collectively decided that the most interesting thing you can say about anything // everything is that it no longer exists.
Westenberg.
Everything is Dead and We Killed It.
SaaS is dead. Punk is dead again, for approximately the four hundredth time since Sid Vicious actually died in 1979. Rock is dead. The novel is dea...
People keep asking me what my goal is as a writer. The answer should be obvious. I want to develop enough of a niche that I can somehow become an eccentric consulting detective for either the FBI or the NYPD.
Would you accept "Oopsie!" from your accountant? Your doctor? Why do we accept it from companies holding our data and our money?
Westenberg.
Uh Oh! The Infantilization of Failure
When apps fail, when software breaks, you'll likely encounter a message constructed from a specific vocabulary: "Oops!" "Uh oh!" "Whoops!" Sometim...
I fail to see the necessity of announcing one's departure from a social media platform. If you wish to leave, leave. We shall endeavor to survive the loss of your opinions.
We’ve achieved peak skepticism (trust in institutions at all-time lows, fact-check everything) and peak gullibility (MLM schemes, crypto scams, wellness grifts at all-time highs) in the same generation. This shouldn’t be possible but here we are.
The person who checks their notifications is, afterward, exactly the same person who wanted to check their notifications five minutes ago. The thin desire reproduces itself without remainder. The thick desire transforms its host.
Westenberg.
Thin Desires Are Eating YourΒ Life
The defining experience of our age seems to be hunger.Β  We're hungry for more, but we have more than we need.Β  We're hungry for less, while mor...
The worship of "more" is the path of least resistance for a civilization that has forgotten how to sit still.
Westenberg.
Growth is a Poor Man's God
We've built an entire civilization around a single metric: growth.Β  GDP must grow. Startups must grow. Your follower count, your revenue, your pe...
Conservative: "Companies say 'Happy Holidays' because they hate Jesus." Economics 101: "Companies say 'Happy Holidays' because they want to sell cheap plastic garbage to 100% of the population instead of 65%." The 'War on Christmas' is just the Free Market you claim to worship working exactly as intended. You are fighting the Invisible Hand. And losing.