It took me a while, but I finally got it: The Road Not Taken is not about individualism and thinking different(ly), but rather about the narrative fallacy, hindsight bias, and contemplation of the counterfactuals. Brilliant.
Pre-weekend reading: How to nurture a personal library. Just lovely.
Orange tabby cat wearing a crown: Stable Diffusion running on a meager M1 versus Midjourney running on who knows what. Either way, the visual arts will never be the same.
Thanks to a weekend trip to the DC zoo I now know about bear-cats, who are neither bears nor cats. Binturongs are cute as a button, smell like butter popcorn, and prey on backyard rodents. What’s not to love?
Junkspace
Rem Koolhaas: Junkspace is what remains after modernization has run its course, or, more precisely, what coagulates while modernization is in progress, its fallout. Modernization had a rational program: to share the blessings of science, universally. Junkspace is its apotheosis, or meltdown… This article will be 20 years old next month, and I am only hearing about it now. Hard to think of a better descriptor for the post-WW2 detritus we inhabit.
This FT lunch interview with Piers Morgan was written for someone more clued in to British media than I am, but he seems to be an insufferable oaf, and proud of it! Even if just a facade — though one that pays off handsomely — is that how you want people to see you?
Charlie Warzel puts out a brilliant newsletter every week, and today’s is no different. “Business dude lorem ipsum” indeed.
📚From The Complacent Class by Tyler Cowen, February 2017.
Miško (Mouser) the cat, living up to his name.
Word of the day: blankface
An old one but good one from Scott Aaronson: A blankface is anyone who enjoys wielding the power entrusted in them to make others miserable by acting like a cog in a broken machine, rather than like a human being with courage, judgment, and responsibility for their actions. Dealing with some government bureaucracy today and boy does this word fit for some — not all! — of the people involved.