Apr '25
Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being somebody, to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his over-animation. One can either see or be seen.
— John Updike
Notice the difference between when you’re creating in light mode and heavy mode. Notice how the internet favors light mode. You feel like an imposter when you only make light things. The modern makers’ machine does not want you to create heavy things. It runs on the internet — powered by social media, fueled by mass appeal, and addicted to speed. It thrives on spikes, scrolls, and screenshots. It resists weight and avoids friction. It does not care for patience, deliberation, or anything but production. It doesn’t care what you create, only that you keep creating. Make more. Make faster. Make lighter. Make slop if you have too. Make something that can be consumed in a breath and discarded just as quickly.
Heavy things take time. And here, time is a tax. And so, we oblige — everyone does. We create more than ever, but it weighs nothing.
— Anu Atluru
A weariness, a soft sadness that I couldn’t be the full person I wanted to be.
— Anne Helen Petersen
Jasper Gilley sez...
Until this February, I had gainful employment doing machine learning engineering. However, taking a medium-term look at the market dynamics surrounding my employment prompted me to quit a few weeks ago. I'm now convinced that my former job there will be obsolete by the end of the year.
All in all, I think the evidence points to a scenario where by the end of this year or next, engineering and other pure knowledge work jobs can be mostly done by AI agents, with some fraction of the people who formerly held those jobs acting as de facto product managers cum infrastructure janitors for agent swarms.
On one hand, this is great! We'll have essentially infinite working software at a price of ≈$0/line of code. The actual job of being an AI agent product manager cum infrastructure janitor, however, sounds awfully boring to me personally. That's why I quit my FAANG job a few weeks ago.
If you have a knowledge work job and are not interested in being an AI agent wrangler, where you go from here is obviously closely tied to your personal attributes and skills. Specifically, I'd brainstorm jobs such that even if they could be done very well by AI systems, people wouldn't want to use AI systems to do them.
Vincent Sanchez-Gomez sez...
Perceived scarcity makes us believe that we have to choose between the wellness of our inner circle of loved ones and societal-level well-being (a false binary).
Many people think that it is a selfless act to grind away at a high-paying job because it allows them to provide for their families. From this mindset, a low-paid activist is selfish because they don’t make enough to be so generous. But what does it mean to be generous? Some of what you need to provide for your family and loved ones is essential, like healthcare, food, and clothing. Some of it is only “essential” once you’ve achieved a certain level of financial comfort, which is when the concept of scarcity starts working overtime to make you think there's a reason to keep accumulating wealth.
Do your kids absolutely need to go to an elite private school as a prerequisite for a good life? Do they benefit from rooms full of toys, closets full of clothes they will outgrow, expensive cars? How much, by contrast, would your kids benefit from the example you’re setting as an adult who participates actively in their community and works to change unjust systems? Or from a world that is more equitable than the one they were born into?
When there is no ceiling to how much you can consume, it’s tough to know when to stop. Once you’ve considered what’s deeply important to you, you can find a real baseline for the amount of money it would take to prioritize those things. How many hours do you actually need to work to reach that baseline? If you determine that you can get by on less than you currently make, what career options open up that you hadn’t considered before? If more time opens up, what can you do with the rest of that time to address your other priorities?
Establishing a notion of enough based on your priorities can help you see whether some of what you consider deeply important is actually being hindered by your pursuit of more money.\
Move through the world
knowing that everyone around you
is doing the best they can,
that humanity is capable
of the Moonlight Sonata
and the concentration camp,
that you are a piece
of the same puzzle.
— Maria Popova
In a world older and more complete than ours, other animals move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.
— Henry Beston
Minutes or hours spent exploring something random, savoring fully the deep end of time, munching on the raw texture of attention.
— Anita Shah
