Kickoff For June 23, 2025
This week's letter is coming to you from my phone. The main reason for that is I'm moving house in about 30 hours and I don't have an internet connection outside of my phone's 4G. But I'm still getting this edition of The Monday Kickoff out to you. Ain't technology wonderful?
With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links:
Our narrative prison — Wherein Eliane Glaser explores the narrative structure many creators use as a template, why they do it, and how that has spawned work that's both repetitive and generic.
From the article:
In contrast to the spectacle of an individual saving the world, we once had idealism and the sense of a common goal: it was called ideology. But grand narratives are a relic of the past century. Khalid links the relative absence of creative experimentation with a narrowing of our ideological horizons.
Who’s Boring Now? — Wherein we learn how the concept of boredom being bad has a long history, how corporations and wily entrepreneurs have tried to monetize our fear and loathing of being bored, and how that can become a tool of control.
From the article:
It is useful for corporations. They use boredom as bait to catch consumers who will do anything to avoid it. They use boredom as a sword to keep employees in their place or kick them out. They use boredom as a veil to hide the consumer models, financial systems, and labor arrangements that maximize profits.
The world keeps running out of helium. There is now a race to prepare for the next shortage — Wherein we learn that the gas is used for much more than inflating balloons, why the supply of helium is so tight, and the effects of shortages of the gas.
From the article:
[H]elium is so light that it is also slowly leaking out of the Earth's atmosphere and heading off into space. In its superfluid state, it has a habit of finding its way out of even the tiniest cracks and holes. It can even flow up walls in this superfluid state. That makes it difficult to handle and store – it can be easily lost after use.
Does ELIZA, the first chatbot created 60 years ago, hold lessons for modern AI? — Wherein we're introduced to an almost 60-year-old program that emulated (to a degree) talking to a therapist, why it became popular in its time, and its parallels to modern AI chatbots.
From the article:
As humanity struggles to deal with what may one day become a new super-intelligence, perhaps we should keep Weizenbaum's philosophy in mind: no matter how powerful computers become, humans should never be left out of the equation.
Is Recycling a Waste of Time? — Wherein Stephanie Churn Lubow dives into the world of waste recycling and learns that the process isn't as straightforward as it seems, varies from region to region, and what people aren't doing to make recycling run more smoothly.
From the article:
There will come a day when the toll that plastic takes on the environment becomes so great that the human race is forced to figure out a new solution. But I can’t figure that out all on my own. For now, I’ll keep putting my peanut butter jars in the dishwasher and taking my recycling bin down to the curb. I just can’t give up on the idea that every little bit each of us can do makes a difference.
The West is bored to death — Wherein Stuart Whatley argues that a combination of dull, unsatisfying work and junk food-like mass entertainment are contributing at a society-wide sense of ennui, and that is a prime driver of the divisions in modern society.
From the article:
American greatness has produced a society whose members know not what to do with the freedom and abundance that earlier generations secured. We are now witnessing the squandering of this inheritance, and it is even more idiotic and vulgar a spectacle than anyone would expect.