Victor Loux — bookmarks tagged “culture”

Internet Artifacts

What Was the TED Talk?

thedriftmag.com/what-was-the-ted-talk/

“TED’s archive is a graveyard of ideas. It is a seemingly endless index of stories about the future – the future of science, the future of the environment, the future of work, the future of love and sex, the future of what it means to be human – that never materialized. ... If the research wasn’t entertaining or moving, it was seen as somehow less valuable. TED’s influence on intellectual culture was ‘taking something with value and substance and coring it out so that it can be swallowed without chewing’, Bratton said. ‘This is not the solution to our most frightening problems – rather, this is one of our most frightening problems.’”

Cruising in the Trenches

the-fence.com/cruising-in-the-trenches/

Fucking under curfew.

Column: Why a medieval peasant got more vacation time than you | Reuters

reuters.com/article/us-column-great-debate/column-why-a-medieval-peasant-got-more-vacation-time-than-you-idUKBRE97S0KU20130829

Life for the medieval peasant was certainly no picnic. His life was shadowed by fear of famine, disease and bursts of warfare. His diet and personal hygiene left much to be desired. But despite his reputation as a miserable wretch, you might envy him one thing: his vacations...

Blue Marriage and The Terror of Divorce

annehelen.substack.com/p/blue-marriage-and-the-terror-of-divorce

This is the midweek edition of Culture Study — the newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing. If you read any of the hundreds of advice columns that have found renewed life on the internet, you’ll recognize a certain genre of question. It comes from a woman, almost always married, who’s describing a partner’s shitty behavior. They often narrativize the behavior in a way that simultaneously asks the reader to understand that something is wrong (

Amia Srinivasan · Cancelled: Can I speak freely? · LRB 29 June 2023

lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n13/amia-srinivasan/cancelled

Most of us would find it horrible to be told that we aren’t worth engaging with, that our views are socially...

Will A.I. Become the New McKinsey? | The New Yorker

newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/will-ai-become-the-new-mckinsey

As it’s currently imagined, the technology promises to concentrate wealth and disempower workers. Is an alternative possible?

There Is No A.I.

newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/there-is-no-ai

There are ways of controlling the new technology—but first we have to stop mythologizing it.

Laziness Is Fine

gawker.com/culture/laziness-is-fine

Mostly.

What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?

theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/10/people-who-prioritize-friendship-over-romance/616779/

“Our boyfriends, our significant others, and our husbands are supposed to be No. 1. Our worlds are backward.”

40 Useful Concepts You Should Know - by Gurwinder

gurwinder.substack.com/p/40-useful-concepts-you-should-know

Ideas to help you make sense of the world

Work Is Work | codahale.com

codahale.com//work-is-work/

In which returns diminish.

An app can be a home-cooked meal

robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/

People don’t only learn to cook so they can become chefs. Some do! But many more people learn to cook so they can eat better, or more affordably. Because they want to carry on a tradition. Sometimes they learn because they’re bored! Or even because — get this — they love spending time with the person who’s teaching them.

The term ‘quiet quitting’ is worse than nonsense | Financial Times

ft.com/content/a09a2ade-4d14-47c2-9cca-599b3c25a33f

If your staff turn up every day, do exactly what you ask of them, but don’t go above and beyond, they are still working

Quality Is Systemic - Jacob Kaplan-Moss

jacobian.org/2022/sep/9/quality-is-systemic/

If your team is producing defective code, consider that it may not be because they all suck at their jobs. It’s probably because the environment isn’t allowing them to produce quality software.

Why public chats are better than direct messages - Teamplify blog

teamplify.com/blog/why-public-chats-are-better-than-direct-messages/

As a result, when you send a direct message, you distract your colleague, but when you post a message in a group chat, you don't distract them (unless you mention someone explicitly via @). From our experience, the vast majority of work questions are not so urgent that they require an immediate response. Most topics can be discussed asynchronously – you post a question when you have time, and your teammates will respond when they have time. It greatly helps to minimize distractions,...