Somewhere around 2016 I noticed the smartest people I knew started saying increasingly stupid things. The common thread: their extreme positions got them more of what they wanted. Sanity was expensive. Extremism paid dividends.

Westenberg.

How to Stay Sane in a World That Rewards Insanity

Is There Still a Return on Being Reasonable?

That thing you said wasn't political enough. And if it was, it wasn't focused on the right issue. And if it was, it wasn't worded right. And if it was, it wasn't loud enough. And if it was, it was too little too late, and you should have done it sooner, which means it's still your fault. You fucking monster.

Every generation thinks their decade had "real" culture and everything after is fake. The 90s kids say this about the 80s. The 2010s kids will say it about the 2000s. The pattern is so reliable it's boring. Culture isn't actually "worse" now. You just got older and stopped being the target demo.

There's a whole generation that learned irony before sincerity and now they're trapped. Can't be earnest without a layer of self-deprecation. Can't be enthusiastic without signaling awareness of how cringe enthusiasm is. The price of never being vulnerable is never connecting.

No one writes documentation. No one reads documentation. Everyone complains about lack of documentation. The equilibrium is mutual suffering. But sure, your startup is going to solve documentation.

Every complex system is one black swan away from revealing it was duct tape all along. Supply chains, financial systems, social trust. It works until suddenly it extremely very much doesn't.

Every crisis is "unprecedented" because we only prepare for precedented ones. Because - and bear with me - they're precedented.

One person with a laptop can now do what took a company 20 years ago. Unfortunately, that one person is launching 47 mediocre SaaS products and a crypto scam.

Why does OmniFocus feel different than every other productivity app? I asked @npub1tq8g...unz5 His answer: 30 years of craftsmanship.

Today on The Internet is Stupid: people are convinced my screenshots are fake because the date says November 5 when it's November 4 in America. Reader: it is November 5 in Australia. May I introduce you to the concept of timezones