Ideas
The Quiet Collapse of the American Weekend
Two days without work were a moral achievement, not a market outcome. We are letting them dissolve without noticing what they were for.
The Case Against Convenience
Every friction we engineer away was holding something up. An essay on effort as a load-bearing wall of the self.
The Senate Was Designed for a Country That No Longer Exists
A chamber built to cool the passions of thirteen coastal states now governs a continental nation it structurally cannot represent.
The Engineers Who Regret Building the Feed
They optimized for engagement and got a civilization of it. Conversations with the people who built the infinite scroll — and what they would unbuild.
The argument, essayed.
Attention
The Quiet Collapse of the American Weekend
Two days without work were a moral achievement, not a market outcome. We are letting them dissolve without noticing what they were for.
Education
What We Lost When We Stopped Memorizing Poems
Recitation was never about the poem. It was about building an interior room that no one could take from you.
Democracy
Democracy Is a Habit, Not a System
The Framers built machinery. But machinery only runs on the daily, unglamorous practice of treating your opponents as citizens.
Attention
The Case Against Convenience
Every friction we engineer away was holding something up. An essay on effort as a load-bearing wall of the self.
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