July 6, 2023

May-June 2023 updates

Happy July!

New essays

• I wanted to write more in order to explore ideas I don't get to think about much during the days, like art, economics, history, etc. Naturally, my only essay recently is on AI. Here it is. Let us pray I have more self restraint this month.

Links and recommendations

• I'm currently reading Infinite Jest, so naturally I've been consuming interviews of David Foster Wallace. This one is a particularly delightful combination of serious and adorable. (I recommend IJ, but it’s a lot of work. If you read it passively you’ll waste your time and not get anything much out of it. I recommend doing it as a part of a book club. On that note, read Cam Peter’s How to Book Club.)
• Relatedly, The End of the Tour with Jason Segel playing DFW (yes, really) is now among my favorite movies.
• The game of Eschaton in IJ is portrayed by the Decemberists in this music video.
• This 2004 article by Michael Nielsen is among the best explanations of the Church-During-Deutsch principle I've ever read. It has inspired me to write my own, which will probably be significantly longer and less clear. But hey, I write for me, not for thee.
• Coleman Hughes wrote a nice essay on affirmative action.
• I'm generally an optimist but I find post-secondary education trends troubling in so many ways it's hard to count. Here's an interesting Freddie DeBoer essay on how the Reagan administration began pushing the idea that everyone had to go college.
• Fin Moorhouse on why you should stop reading the news.

Have an excellent summer!