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Music Spending Is Smaller Share Of A Bigger Pie – Economist Writing Every Day

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 16:39:31 +0000

We noted that “People Are Paying For Music Again” in 2024, showing that streaming was partly making up for the drop in sales of physical recordings, while live music sales were setting record highs. Thus,

When you combine live and recorded sales, total spending on music has now passed the 1999 peak; this is the biggest the market for music has ever been.

But I didn’t have a chart showing the music market as a whole. I meant to make on for a followup post, but still hadn’t got around to it when I saw this from Joey Politano’s Apricitas Substack:

He uses BEA data instead of the music industry sources I was using, which means a wider range of years is available, and the colors tell the story nicely. This chart still shows a late ’90s peak because it is measuring music as a percentage of all consumer spending; but total real consumer spending is way up since the ’90s, so the real dollar peak of money flowing to the music industry is today. Here’s my version of the chart using real dollars:

This chart tells a more optimistic story. But it’s worth reading the entirety of Politano’s post, which suggests that AI is already significantly reducing overall employment in the arts. He also notes that money moving from recorded to live music has changed which artists are winning. I’ve noted something of a ‘rich get richer’ phenomenon, with ticket prices for top artists shooting higher while it becomes harder for regular musicians to stay full time.

My semi-serious solution is to bring back hipsters. Make it once again cooler to spend $20 each weekend on an obscure band’s show or vinyl than to spend $1000 on a VIP ticket to a Taylor Swift-level show once a year. Hipsters might be annoying, but the hipster music strategy is an efficient way to support more people putting in the time to make music- and I think that would be a good thing in a field where talent is fairly widely distributed. The difference between full-time musicians and semi-pros who do a few gigs a year (or the best amateurs) is often not musical talent but luck, connections, and the willingness and ability to push through early years with little income. We’re a richer society than we were in 1999 and we can afford to support more people giving music a real try.

怀念小林子

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 21:55:33 +0000

近日惊闻你去世的噩耗，觉得有必要写一些文字来纪念。年初我们见过一面，聊了孩子的教育，和老人家怎么沟通，中年人的身体健康，创业艰难等琐事，回来后我觉得我们可以重新做朋友，但这段时间太懒，没有再联系，结果就是永别了。

高中（91-93）

我们在高中的友谊其实是很让当时的我费解的。你是高中的风云人物，长袖善舞，成绩优秀，还是学生会主席，而我半途从外地转学而来，老实巴交，被迫低调做人，还不会说广州话。但是你开始主动接近我，而我也顺水推舟，于是乎我们成了朋友。后来我想，我还是有点优点的：

我从外地转学来的，和别人文化背景不太一样。
和其他十几岁的半大孩子比，我可能比较善于倾听。
因为我和别人也都不熟，所以我不会乱八卦，是一个信息的盲端。

我们的高中班有一个相当独特的文化氛围：一群高中男孩子却基本不说脏话，这和我之前的学校截然不同。这里的常用语深受香港电视电影影响，而且男生也不可能不骂人，骂人最狠的称呼和生殖器无关，而是“变态”，“基佬”。用今天的词汇来描述就是“恐同”。当然，我们还是孩子，只不过是跟人学舌，其实未必有什么很深的恶意。

我不知道你是什么时候认识到自己就是别人嘴里最不堪的“变态”，“基佬”的。你心理年龄比绝大多数同学都成熟，很敏感。你需要被人接纳，或者至少不被人排斥。我其实不是一个很好的倾诉对象，我能提供的情绪价值很有限，只有笨拙的安慰和刻薄的讽刺。但我至少在听，也不会做什么武断的价值审判，仅仅因为我心理年龄比同龄人小，更幼稚罢了。

幼稚的人也会长大，后来我终于明白我和你终究不是同一类人，于是我一度决定跟你不再做朋友了，但没持续多久：到了高考放榜的那天，你哭红着眼睛来找我，我又心软了。

大学（93-98）

我们上的不是同一所大学，但都在离家很远的同一座城市。你在大学里找到了一个新的世界，更加成熟，开放，包容，所以你活的更加自如。我们的友谊还在继续；我不知道你是怎么看的，在我这边，这是一种有戒备的交往。你是我通向社会的一个窗口，而我提供了你接触书呆子这样的一个群体的渠道。

你大学的朋友我认识的很少；但我大学的朋友你却相当熟络。“小林子”是我圈子里的一个人给你起的绰号，来源应该是《笑傲江湖》，也很偶然，但我觉得在许多方面还是很贴切的：例如相貌俊美，心思缜密等等，于是就固定了下来。

但是你应该是不太喜欢这个绰号。你自己起的英文名是 Sunny，更希望给人一个阳光开朗的形象。你的家庭没能给你提供什么资源，你从很久之前就知道，你今生获得的一切只能靠自己的双手拼搏。你渴望掩饰自己阴郁的一面，展示自己阳光的一面，从而更有效地利用周边的人际关系，提升自己，再反哺他人。

太老的朋友知道太多的过去，有太多的思维定式。你大学毕业比我早一年，等到我大学毕业的时候，你已经是一个社会人，而我还是一个拒绝长大的孩子。我再见你的时候，发现我们已经是两个世界的人，我能提供的情绪价值，社会价值已经不再存在；这是迟来五年的再见，我们无需说出口，都心知肚明。

后来

过去近三十年，我们见面不多，虽然有七八年的时间里，我们其实生活在同一个城市。我从旁人嘴里知道你拥有了一段精彩的人生，在那偶然几次和你的聚会里，我听到见到过你的疲惫。这两面都是真实的你，一面是Sunny，一面是小林子。

感谢你教会我如何掩饰自己：我和你一样，也有不足为外人道的阴暗角落，甚至有令人不齿的卑劣想法。更感谢你教会我如何展示自己，培养自信并辐射他人，有时候还要展示自己的脆弱，这样才是完整的一个人。

你的事业尚未成功，你的孩子尚小，你的父母尚在。我下面要说的话别人听了可能会觉得冷血：你走的时机恰到好处，还有很多的想象空间。用杜甫形容诸葛亮的话说：

功盖三分国，名成八阵图。江流石不转，遗恨失吞吴。

故事是写给别人看的，自己来过，爱过，就足够了。

Thoughts on Flash

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 05:46:34 +0000

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs
April, 2010

[转] 美国“红脖”的前世今生 – 彦玮博客

Sat, 26 Sep 2026 02:49:52 +0000

比黑人更惨的“红脖子”白人，是繁荣美国背后的一道伤疤。他们虽然有着白皮肤，地位却不及黑人。他们有个极富嘲讽意味的名字 —— “红脖子”。

一、“红脖子“在美国是怎样一种存在？

在种族歧视问题泛滥的美国，吃瓜群众普遍都了解白人对黑人悠久的歧视历史。但鲜为人知的是，美国白人内部也存在着复杂的鄙视链：东部的看不起西部的，北方的嘲笑南方的。

其中“红脖子”便不幸处于白人内部歧视链末端，混得比黑人还惨。

“红脖子”泛指美国南方底层白人，他们最初是从爱尔兰、苏格兰等地来美洲新大陆的移民，信仰传统的长老会。

当新教圣公会影响力逐渐增大，与长老会产生矛盾与对抗时，这个群体为表明立场，反对圣公会主教的统治，常常选择在脖子上围一条红布，因此得名。

后来这个词被用来形容生活贫穷、观念保守、受教育程度低下，且行为偏执的底层白人。由于这个群体中有大量的农民，长期戴着帽子在地里劳作，没晒到脸，却晒红了脖子，“红脖子”显得更为形象贴切。

无论是过去还是当下，美国人看待“红脖子”的眼光都带有强烈的歧视色彩。在乔治亚州他们被叫做“cracker（精神失常的人）”，在阿巴拉契亚地区被称为“hillbilly（乡巴佬）”，有时候他们直接被呼作“white trash（白垃圾）”。

在Urban Dictionary上搜索“红脖子”的判定标准，可谓是花式嘲讽，耐人寻味。

红脖子判断标准：

你老婆比你的冰箱还重（肥胖问题）；
你把冰箱挪开，发现它下面居然长了草，而且已经黄了（不爱打扫房间）；
你修剪草坪之后发现草里面有一辆车（不爱打扫院子）；
你半夜上厕所需要穿衣服穿鞋还得带个手电筒（大农场+老房子）；
你在商场的停车场和别人枪战过（南方民风剽悍……）；
圣诞老人拒绝让你的孩子坐在他膝盖上（孩子也不讲卫生……）；
你家的厕纸上有页码（拿书当厕纸……）

追溯历史，“红脖子”的说法既折射出美国白人内部强烈的阶级歧视，也反映了残酷的社会现实。

二、“红脖子”，繁荣美国背后的一道伤疤

从早期的殖民时代开始，移民美国北部和南部的白人便存在着明显的差异。

诸如美国东北部的新英格兰，属于典型的“五月花号”清教徒聚集区。从欧洲飘洋过海到这里的白人，大多是受过一定程度教育的市民阶层。

他们开拓进取又勤俭节约，重视教育也推崇平等。在自律和谐的社会氛围中，新英格兰地区很快成为了美国最初的文化诞生地，虽然鲜少巨富，但生活普遍富足，社会贫富差距和阶层分化都相对缓和。

而美国南方地区则恰恰相反，除少量掌握了巨额财富的大农场主外，这里聚集的白人大多是来自英国的“政治犯”和赤贫阶层。他们甚至连移民的船票都无力支付，只好签约做几年“卖身奴”来换取移民新大陆的资格。

从一开始，身处美国南北方的白人群体便没有站在同一条起跑线上。这份差距在随后的两百多年里，不仅没有良性缩短，反而变成了一条无形的鸿沟，横亘在南北方之间，难以融合。

19世纪，“种族优劣和竞争说”开始盛行，英国首相丘吉尔、美国总统罗斯福、英国文学家萧伯纳等知名人物对此都充满肯定，美国社会也掀起了针对劣等种族的歧视浪潮。

作为美国统治种族的盎格鲁撒克逊，在“适者生存”理论的影响下开始焦虑自己种族内部的问题：其他种族生而低下，说得通，为何与自己相同种族的南方白人却各种表现都“掉份”呢？扎心了。

1850年美国的一项调查显示，南方白人有20%都是文盲，而北方白人中文盲比例不足1%。一战中某项军队测试也显示，南方白人士兵的得分不仅被北方白人士兵秒杀，连北方黑人士兵的水平都比不上。

此外，南方白人普遍存在的滥交、懒惰、暴力倾向、保守排外等问题也饱受社会诟病。

更令美国主流社会担心的是，自己内部的劣质群体如果不控制生育，繁衍速度超过其他体面家庭，岂不是会拉低整个种族的人口质量，集体翻船？

于是乎，“退化家族”论出现了，南方白人被各种数据证实为种族的“渣滓”，有必要进行“人工干预”。

20世纪初，美国政府打着遵循优生学的旗号，开始对“劣等白人”进行清洗：但凡被划分为“退化家族”的人群，需要强制进行绝育手术。

第一位被强制绝育的受害者叫Carrie Buck，这个女孩当时年仅18岁，并无任何犯罪行为，但因自己和母亲都有未婚先孕的经历，被描述为生活堕落、智力低下的人，被法院高票同意实施绝育。

从1924年弗吉尼亚州正式通过绝育法案到1974年废止，有大约6.5万的美国人被强制绝育，这其中很大一部分都是”红脖子“。

本是同根生，相煎何太急！

很难想象在宣称自由、民主的美国会上演如此匪夷所思的惨剧，“红脖子”在美国社会所遭受的偏见与不公，犹如一道难堪的伤疤，隐藏在美国的繁荣盛世之下，无人问津。

时至今日，这个群体依然处于美国最底层，社会地位并不比黑人高，普遍存款不超过400美元，缺少突破阶层的晋升通道，生活困窘。

然而，就是这群饱受美国社会排斥的“红脖子”，后来却成为了特朗普的死忠粉，在大选中坚定地站在了特朗普一边。

三、为何红脖子会选择川普？

自川上任以来，得到了“红脖子”群体的普遍欢迎，川普的各种怪论，几乎都得到了“红脖子”的大力支持，为何他们会如此粉川普呢？这和川普有意的迎合不无关系。

美国“红脖子”聚集区大多观念保守，笃信上帝，宗教气氛浓郁且十分迷信。

川普发表的很多反智言论在“红脖子”看来完全没毛病：例如川普说注射消毒液可以消灭新冠（真的有人去尝试注射）；又或者川普公开自己和上帝的对话……

在竞选辩论中，川普的神奇辩词更是直击“红脖子”心坎——“如果拜登当选，防疫问题就要听科学家的了”。“红脖子”普遍认为读书无用，在他们的思维里，科学家是个贬义词。

由于普遍缺乏文化教育，“红脖子”虽然生存条件恶劣，却对同属于压迫阶级的黑人心存鄙夷，反对其他族裔移民美国，拥护极端的“白人至上”。

在竞选中，民主党主张给黑人和少数族裔足够的“优待”，令“红脖子”们十分反感。另一头的川普却推出了各种种族歧视的排外国策，并宣称会为红脖子群体提供了更多工作机会和更好的福利待遇，有什么理由不支持呢？

所以在黑人弗洛伊德事件发生后，尽管大众反对警察的暴力执法，质疑特朗普的执政力，“红脖子”们却依然选择站在特朗普一方，维护特朗普。

部分红脖子群体中的枪械协会甚至放话称，他们已经组织好了十万民兵，只要川普一声令下，他们就会分分钟配合军警镇压抗议运动。

另一方面，“红脖子”崇尚武斗，“能打就别吵吵”，很有西部牛仔的范儿，但又比之更加狂野。

19世纪初，密西西比河流域蒸汽船失事事故比横跨大西洋还高，查其原因并非技术操作不当，而是很多“红脖子”在乘船时，看到旁边有船经过，常常忍不住把刀架在船长脖子上逼着搞船只竞速，一争高下，直至蒸汽船的安全阀坏掉。

而今辨识“红脖子”的一种调侃说法，就是看他有没有在停车场和人枪战过，其剽悍画风可见一斑。

“红脖子”大多数都是拥枪派，民主党却支持禁枪，这再次与他们的期待背道而驰。

还有一点令“红脖子”极其反感的是，民主党支持同性婚姻合法化。在重视传统家庭的“红脖子”眼中，如此观念简直大逆不道。

一边是推行种族主义、说话接地气、带着小红帽的川普，一边是操着各种精英腔调，给黑人下跪甚至洗脚的各路政客，在“红脖子”那里，选票已经有了明确的答案。

虽然黑人与“红脖子”同属于美国底层，但“红脖子”的受关注程度远不及平权呼声之下的黑人。

川普的出现，似乎伸给了这个群体一根救命稻草，在“让美国再次强大”、“美国优先”的循环洗脑中，“红脖子”又燃起了改变命运的一丝希望。

四、哪些州是红脖子州？

主要集中在美国南部及部分阿巴拉契亚山脉、中西部内陆的农村和深红选区较多的州。

阿拉巴马州（Alabama）：常被认为是“红脖子”文化最浓厚、最典型代表的州之一。
密西西比州（Mississippi）、阿肯色州（Arkansas）、田纳西州（Tennessee）、肯塔基州（Kentucky）：位于南部或阿巴拉契亚腹地。
德克萨斯州（Texas）、路易斯安那州（Louisiana）、佐治亚州（Georgia）等其他南部州的大片乡村与内陆地区。

五、红脖人口数量与占比

根据部分社会观察和分析估算，广义上带有该文化特征或保守派底层白人群体大约占美国总人口的 40% 左右（约 1200 万至数千万人不等，视乎统计标准与定义范围）。

原文链接

补充阅读

《美国白人贫困：被边缘化的主流与看不见的多数》

7月15日，美国前总统特朗普宣布他将代表共和党参加美国总统竞选，随后正式选择万斯（J.D.Vance）作为副总统候选人。万斯（J.D.Vance）曾出版《乡下人的悲歌》，是美国底层白人和工人阶级代表。伴随着万斯进入大众视野，“洋垃圾”（White Trash）、“乡下人（Hillbilly）”、“白人贫困”、“红脖子”、“白人Loser”，这个曾被忽视的群体已浮出水面，成为左右美国政治的关键力量。

发达国家的失败者

“白人垃圾”（White Trash）或“洋垃圾”，是称呼中下层白人的外号，用来嘲笑在西方发达国家作为主流群体、占据社会优势地位，却沦为失败者（Loser）的白人，以没文化、爆粗口、酗酒、吃垃圾食品、肥胖症为特征。

近年来，发达国家的贫困、无家可归、贫富差距问题日益加剧，贫困不再是有色人种或移民独有的现象，作为主流社会群体的白人，同样面临贫困问题。在美国，有6600万白人生活在贫困中；在澳大利亚，有11.6万人无家可归，其中白人约占70%；在欧洲最富裕的国家卢森堡，贫困人口和无家可归者都在增加，12.9%的工薪人口面临贫困危机，其中大部分是白人[3]；在英国，2024年有19%的白人生活在相对贫困中；在南非，白人贫困率12%，约45万白人生活在贫困中。

在美国，“白人垃圾”（White Trash）常与其他词汇混合使用，带有贬义和攻击性，例如用来指代美国南方，特别是佛罗里达和佐治亚州白人农民的“白鬼”（Cracker）；指代阿拉巴契亚山区白人的“乡巴佬”（Hillbilly）；指代奥克拉荷马州白人流浪工人的“奥基”（Okie）；指代南方种植园中被阳光长期照射而皮肤发红的白人农民的“红脖子”（Redneck）；指代居无定所、没有房产，只能住在移动组装房车里的“房车垃圾”（Trailer Trash）。这些称呼，都带有人格上的侮辱和否定。

用来贬损下层白人的俚语，都有特定的历史背景和地域特点。“白人垃圾”（White trash）最初出现在19世纪初，是美国南方蓄奴州的黑人对白人的称呼，在1852年出版的经典反奴隶制小说《汤姆叔叔的小屋》中，作者斯托夫人专门写了一章题目为“白人垃圾”的内容，描写美国南方的底层白人境况。

与代表美国北方工业社会的盎格鲁-撒克逊人不同的是，美国中下层白人的历史可溯源到苏格兰-爱尔兰人群体，他们是定居在美国最初十三个殖民地的威廉三世（奥兰治的威廉）的追随者。“白鬼”（Cracker）一词源于苏格兰盖尔语中的Craic，指代大声交谈、大声吹牛的人。“白鬼”的祖先是英国流浪汉、罪犯、孤儿、苏格兰和威尔士移民，被官员视为不守法不礼貌的群体，是为南方种植园大地主工作的佃农和牧牛人。“乡巴佬”（Hillbilly）也源于苏格兰盖尔语，Hill指远离人群的孤立者，Billy指同志。“乡巴佬”居住在阿拉巴契亚山区，是美国中西部重工业区的早期建设者，1892年的《铁路工人报》（The Railroad Train men’s Journal）首次使用“乡巴佬”一词，1900年《纽约报》（New York Journal）将“乡巴佬”描述为“阿拉巴马州自由公民，住在大山里，说话缺乏教养，衣着打扮邋遢，爱喝威士忌酒”。“乡巴佬”们喜欢自给自足，拒绝现代化，观念落后，喜欢暴力。

“奥基”（Okie）来源于美国1930年代大萧条和破产白人的血泪史，是加州人对来自奥克拉荷马农民工的贬义称呼。大萧条时期，上百万破产的奥克拉荷马人来到加州中央谷地做农场工人，1990年代，加州有约375万“奥基”。1940年普利策获奖纪实文学《愤怒的葡萄》，就描述了因金融与农业变革而一贫如洗、被逐出奥克拉荷马的白人一家，前往加州寻找出路，成为“奥基”的故事。
“红脖子”（Redneck）始于1890年代的美国南方，白人在种植园中工作，受到太阳暴晒后，脖子发红，故被戏称“红脖子”。除了在农场工作的白人，红脖子也指代在工厂工作、没有土地、只能在贫瘠的沼泽地中生活的白人。

“房车垃圾”（Trailer Trash）始于1930年代的大萧条时期，兴起于二战后。大萧条时期，东部、中西部白人为讨生活，靠大篷车装载家当、举家搬迁到西部拓荒；二战后，住房减少，一些白人失去住所，无家可归，只能居住在帐篷、房车、组装移动屋里。

看不见的贫困

在2024年6月出版的新书《白人贫困：揭示种族与阶级神话如何重建美国民主》中，威廉•巴伯（Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II）和乔纳森•哈特格罗夫（Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove）指出，事实上，美国贫困人口中，白人才是贫困人口的大部分，也更容易陷入贫困。贫困白人有6600万人，贫困黑人2600万，白人数量比黑人多4000万人，但这个事实长期被忽视[5]。白人贫困问题之所以不被看到，是因为贫困问题在美国被长期当作“黑人问题”看待，被视为种族问题而不是阶级问题。

这一定程度上与美国官方统计方式有关，统计办法于1960年代制定，以温饱为基准线，没有计入当代社会的医疗、教育、交通、住房成本。哈特格罗夫认为，41%的美国人口都处于贫困水平，每天因贫困死亡人数是800人，与新冠疫情时期的死亡人数相当，因此贫困是美国正在发生的一场“疫情”。另一方面，白人被塑造成社会上层既得利益者，从而使真正占贫困人口大多数的白人，除了“白人”标签外，得不到多少社会救济。

白人贫困的根源在于美国的奴隶制历史。奴隶制不仅产生黑人、有色人种的社会经济问题，也导致白人贫困。在大种植园制度下，肥沃土地被奴隶主占有，无产阶级白人只能获得条件最差的土地，在不适合耕种的沙地、山地上开垦，成为“山地白人”或“乡巴佬”（Hillbilly）。奴隶制剥夺了穷苦白人的土地所有权和政治投票权，因此很多人转而做小偷、强盗，喜欢“走后门”，留下很多行为、选择、价值上的问题，为贫困埋下隐患。

在《论美国民主》中，托克维尔论述：“从出生起，美国南方白人就活在内部极权中，因此他获得的第一个习惯，就是毫不费力的占有，这让南方白人生性傲慢、易怒、冲动、暴力，充满欲望，被一切障碍激怒，而一旦他初次尝试就失败时，其内在的软弱就再也无法掩饰，会轻易选择放弃。”在《汤姆叔叔的小屋》中，斯托夫人写道，白人在美国经历的贫穷是在欧洲时不曾经历的，大种植园制度迫使白人为生存挣扎，变得“难以置信的残忍”，像盲目发疯的野兽。

白人贫困问题与阶级问题密切相关。“白人垃圾”的称呼虽由黑奴发明，但将其推广开来的却是白人中上层阶级，被中上层白人用来将自己与下层白人进行身份区分。杰圭琳•威尔逊（Jacqueline Zara Wilson）就认为，“白人垃圾”根源于英国的阶级与民族斗争，在文章《看不见的种族主义：白垃圾的语言与实体论》中，她指出，“白人垃圾”是有特权的英格兰人对爱尔兰、威尔士和爱尔兰人的歧视，是一条等级制度鄙视链，英格兰人最高，苏格兰-爱尔兰的苏格兰长老会移民其次，信仰天主教的爱尔兰人是最末端。南希•伊森伯格（Nancy Isenberg）则认为，“白人垃圾”是英国殖民者对美国殖民地的歧视，在著作《洋垃圾：未被讲述的美国400年阶级史》中，她指出这片新大陆被英国人视为不毛之地，是用来承接英国底层人口，是“扔掉那些没用的、纯属浪费的糟粕渣滓们的垃圾桶”。

白人的贫困问题，是种族与阶级同时作用的结果，即使在奴隶制中，也掺杂了浓重的阶级关系。例如美国南北战争时期，南方蓄奴州就曾提出，北方对待白人工人阶级的方式，与南方蓄奴制没什么不同。北方联邦军总司令尤利西斯·格兰特说，南北战争不仅解放南方黑奴，也解放南方底层白人，“南北战争解放了数以百万计的贫困白人，他们的情况比黑人还惨”，美国内战也是一场阶级战争。

反向种族歧视

在美国，白人被长期塑造成既得利益者和社会资源主要占有者，使白人贫困问题与白人主流叙事格格不入，不仅无法被看见，也不可说，造成另一种反向种族歧视。美国导演约翰•沃特斯（John Waters）曾感叹：“白人贫困是最不可说、不可提、不可碰的种族歧视”。白人贫困问题可能是一种原罪：在白人内部，贫困是一种羞耻，是“一手好牌打稀烂”的典型，归因只能是自身，不可归因于社会，因为社会一开始就给白人最好的起点；在白人外部，白人贫困只会激怒其他有色人种，后者明显在贫困问题上更有话语权，会引发种族歧视麻烦。

对贫困白人的种族歧视，贯穿了美国历史。贫困白人的肤色曾被种族主义者加以歧视调侃：“可怖的蜡黄和惨白，像黄色羊皮纸”、“过于白，像得了白癜风一般”。斯托夫人也曾写到：“这位悲惨的白人女性，目光空洞，两颊凹陷，怀中的孩子瞪着一双惊悚的眼睛，仿佛被惊吓到的野兽。”

贫困白人遭到的种族歧视往往来自白人内部。蓄奴主义者丹尼尔·亨得利（Daniel R.Hundley）曾于1860年提出，白人贫困是“血统决定”（bad blood）而非社会造成，形容下层白人为“地球上最懒惰的两条腿动物”。[8] 美国种族主义组织3K党领袖伦道夫·肖特维尔（Randolph Shotwell）也曾给出这样的自我描述：“我们是人类中的一群特殊群体，没受过教育，没思想，爱挥霍，过得还不如黑奴好。”美国记者杰克·卡士（W.J.Cash）在1941年出版的《南方的意志》中也认为，底层白人是物理上有缺陷的人，是弗吉尼亚州和佐治亚州的奴仆、欠债人、赎罪者，也是欧洲来的那些最失败的农民、劳工和城市贫民窟人群。

针对贫困白人的基因论和种族论曾盛极一时。在美国思想家艾默生眼中，美国人应是“撒克逊人、丹麦、挪威、昂撒人后代”，底层白人不被包括在美国人范畴内。历史学家大卫·哈克特·费舍（David Hackett Fischer）在著作《阿尔比恩之种：英裔美国人的四种民风》（Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America）中认为，“乡巴佬”的暴力倾向与其祖先来自苏格兰高地、英国北部边缘地带有关，源于其凯尔特基因，而非撒克逊人。西奥多·罗斯福认为底层白人已经让白人群体“人种降级”，是“种族自杀”（Race Suicide），“从东欧和南欧来的移民正在冲击以盎格鲁-撒克逊人为主体美国白人社会，贫穷白人和美国并不想要的移民，会降低占统治地位的特权白人的人口比例，直到白种人消失和被取代，这将对美国造成危害。”。20世纪初，“优生学”（Eugenics）在美国兴起，下层白人成为牺牲品，优生学提倡立法允许农村白人接受非自愿绝育手术，以“净化”种族，1907年，美国印第安纳州就通过了强制绝育手术合法化的法案，后来在争议中被废止。在《白人垃圾：美国种族与阶级》中，记者安娜丽•奈维茨（Annalee Newitz）和社会学家马特•雷（Matt Wray）就指出，“白人垃圾”是同时带有阶级歧视和种族歧视双重含义的词汇，把底层白人视为违反白种人优生学的代表。

反向种族歧视，让并未获得利益和资源分配的白人，也被纳入“既得利益者”的固定偏见中。仅仅是肤色上的白人，并不能获得工作和收入。像所有被压制的种族少数一样，这部分白人从出生起就与贫困作伴，贫穷成了原罪，被谴责为“不够努力”、“不能提升自己”。而中上层白人仍会歧视性地贬损下层白人为“白色垃圾”，以此巩固上层白人的优越感，把底层白人排除出去。

随着美国经济日益不平等，白人贫困正在加剧。“贫困白人群体才是美国国家叙事的中心联结。无论看得见，还是看不见，这个群体的存在证明了，美国正在给它的群体贴标签。这些标签显而易见，但人们选择性失明，不过是想说明，这些底层白人不是我们的一分子罢了。不，他们正是我们的一分子，而且是我们历史的根本性构成，无论我们喜欢与否，”学者南希·伊森伯格总结道。

MAGA与遗失的美国梦

美国“乡巴佬”白人集中在中西部“锈带”老工业基地。《乡下人的悲歌》所描述的场景，不禁令人想到中国的《漫长的季节》、《钢的琴》、《平原上的摩西》，犹如中国东北老工业基地的产业淘汰，美国旧工业带白人劳工阶层出现失业、贫困、人口流失、年轻人外出打工、老龄化现象。不同的是，美国白人贫困问题，还与毒品、家庭暴力密切相关，并将愤怒迁怒于移民、自由贸易上，采用“国会山暴乱”的暴力方式，将排外、反移民、反全球化的诉求寄托到特朗普身上。

18世纪起，信仰新教、来自苏格兰-爱尔兰的移民来到阿拉巴契亚山区定居，内战后，美国走上工业化道路，阿拉巴契亚山区逐渐落伍。1875年开始，美国中西部的新兴工业区崛起，“乡巴佬”为了生活，开始移民到中西部芝加哥、克利夫兰、底特律等工业城市，特别是20世纪30-50年代的美国工业黄金期，成为“乡巴佬”最辉煌的二十年，是美国崛起的中流砥柱。

二战后的1950年代，美国制造业开始去产能，并开启全球化产业转移，先是1950-60年代从美国转入日本、欧洲，再是1970-80年代从日本、欧洲转入亚洲四小龙，再之后的1990年代转入中国，21世纪又转移到东南亚、非洲、拉美去。

每一次产业转移是一次轮回，成就了辉煌，也导致了落寞。中西部“乡巴佬”的悲情，是中国东北下岗潮的提前预演，二者相差半个多世纪。万斯所描述的美国中西部老工业基地倒闭的工厂、残破的钢筋水泥架、关门的店铺、无人的街区，都很像东北的重工业城市。万斯代表的锈带白人工人阶级，也拥有曾经的中国东北国企“共和国长子”一代的骄傲感，“乡巴佬”认为他们的朴实、传统才是建设美国成为伟大国家的中流砥柱，对东部、西部湾区自由主义（Liberal）的金融、科技新贵们嗤之以鼻，痛恨移民和全球化。特朗普的“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）正是回应了“乡巴佬”白人群体的心理诉求，乡巴佬也成了特朗普的基本盘。

但美国白人贫困问题，并非都是经济问题，也不是物质上的绝对贫困，而与社会、信仰以及文化有关。《乡下人的悲歌》所描绘的场景反映出下层白人的文化特征，例如家庭教育中的代际剥削关系，男主的母亲想带儿子开车自尽，或在儿子律所面试的紧要关头撒娇，要求儿子照顾她，在代际之间传递贫困，是由吸血型人格导致，而不是经济原因；再如两代人的未婚先孕、多次离异又再婚，反映出某种价值取向；母亲磕药、在医院做护士时偷用病人的药，在医院发毒瘾、用吸毒方式麻醉自己，逃避现实，也不全然是经济问题。

“贫困白人亟需一种政治愿景，当所有的穷人走到一起团结起来时，将形成一股巨大的力量，决定着美国大选的结局。”《白人贫困》的作者哈特格罗夫说，他不忘提出这本著作的终极价值，“读这本书的价值，是找到希望，从绝望中走出来。我们最需要的是希望。”

万斯的贫困白人叙事具有其独特性。他一直在回头，从他来自的乡巴佬群体中汲取他需要的政治养分，以便迈向他们心目中的美国梦。

Why is the human body so crap except for the liver?

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 17:49:58 +0000

dynomight · Sep 2026 · #science #effort

[Epistemic Status: Speculative unifying theory of biology.]

I don’t know about you, but I greatly resent having to be a biological organism and subject to all the poor engineering and design decisions that entails. This has many manifestations. A recent one is often wondering, why is the entire body such garbage except for the liver?

Take the kidneys. Once you reach adulthood, they start to slowly decay. You can damage them through not-obviously-dangerous stuff like taking too much vitamin D or taking ibuprofen while dehydrated. Significant damage typically leads to scarring and a permanent reduction in function. Or take the gums. If you brush too hard or don’t floss enough, they may retreat down your teeth, never to return. Most of the body is like that.

But the liver. My friends, the liver! If it’s injured, it will usually heal without scars. As you age, it typically maintains near full strength. You can give half of your liver to someone else and it will regrow to full size and function in a few months. I’d like to find whoever designed the liver and have them make me a full body.

Except here’s a theory: It’s good that most of the body is fragile crap. It would be better if some parts of the body were more fragile.

Some other ways the body would appear to be poorly designed

Menopause. We’re still struggling to reconcile modernity with the short human reproductive interval. But did you know that menopause is almost unknown outside of humans? Even the other great apes remain fertile for almost their entire lives. The only known exceptions are (1) killer whales, (2) pilot whales, (3) beluga whales, (4) false killer whales, (5) narwhals, and (6) one specific population of chimpanzees in Uganda.

Inuries. If your leg gets chopped off, that’s it, no more leg. Your body will try to grow scar tissue over the wound and then you’re on your own. But if you chop off the leg of a salamander it… grows a new leg. Isn’t that the obvious to do? Why don’t we do that?

Telomeres. The ends of your chromosomes have a little repetitive sequence called a telomere. When cells divide, the body tries to copy the DNA, but good-old DNA polymerase can’t quite copy all the way to the end, meaning the telomeres slowly get shorter. After dividing 50-70 times, the telomeres are gone, and the cells stop dividing and then slowly stop working. This is one of the many ticking clocks of aging.

Transplants. If you need a new kidney, and someone is nice enough to give you one of theirs, your body will respond by trying to kill it, meaning you have to take horrible immunosuppressants for the rest of your life. And even after taking them, there’s a 30% chance the kidney will be rejected within 10 years. This is not helpful.

Diabetes. Some day, your immune system may decide to attack your pancreas. After a while, your pancreas will stop making insulin, meaning that unless you reorient your entire life around keeping your blood sugar in check, your eyes, kidneys, nerves, and heart will constantly accumulate damage. Your immune system should not attack your pancreas.

Brains. After you reach adulthood, neurons don’t divide. If some of your neurons die—which happens every day—then they’re gone. If you get a brain injury, the other neurons will try to “learn around” the injury, but the neurons themselves are never replaced.

Junk. All cells build up various “junk” over time. As they divide, the junk is diluted. But some cells (neurons, various cells in the eyes) never divide, so the amount of junk (e.g. lipofuscin) just goes up and up. This is another ticking clock.

Blood. Your flesh needs blood, which your body delivers through blood vessels. Over time, these can get clogged with plaque. The thing to do in this situation is to sprout new blood vessels. Your body knows how to do that. But by default it maintains high levels of various inhibitors (angiostatin, endostatin, THBS1) that tell your cells not to do so. If your heart or brain get starved of blood, your body will try to reverse all this inhibition, but the process is slow and clumsy and can only produce tiny blood vessels.

What’s going on here?

As always in biology, the correct answer is: A lot, it’s complicated. But I think there’s a common thread.

The clearest case is probably telomeres wearing down as you get older. At first glance, you might ask, why does this problem exist at all? Bacteria—because they aren’t idiots—have circular DNA, which doesn’t have ends or telomeres. Eukaryotes like us evolved from bacteria. Who decided to replace circular DNA with linear DNA?

Or, you might ask, why doesn’t the body re-lengthen the telomeres? Well, actually it does! We have an enzyme designed specifically for that purpose, called telomerase. But, after embryonic development, the body doesn’t bother to use it, except in stem cells, reproductive cells, and certain parts of the immune system. Huh?

The reason we have linear DNA instead of circular DNA is contested.¹ But whatever. If the body wanted to re-lengthen the telomeres, it could easily do that. Your cells already have DNA to make telomerase. They just don’t use it. Instead, they let the telomeres get shorter until they stop dividing and stop working. Why?

Because…

…

Cancer.

(That’s our answer to the question in the title of this post: The human body is so crap except for the liver because cancer. As we’ll see, this answer is only semi-correct, and even then only with several caveats. But what do you expect from biology?)

Letting the telomeres get shorter is not a mistake. It is a deliberate design decision.² Often, in your body, the following happens:

Some cells get a mutation that causes them to start reproducing too fast.
Your immune system decides they’re suspicious and kills them.
You’re fine. 👍

But sometimes this happens:

Some cells get a mutation that causes them to start reproducing too fast.
They grow for a while, but then (for complicated reasons³) they stop increasing in number.
But they aren’t just sitting there, they’re constantly reproducing and dying, much faster than normal cells.
Eventually, they develop another mutation that allows them to overcome whatever was stopping them from growing.
This continues for a while, with the cells gradually acquiring more of the mutations they need to grow to a large size.
But wait!
With all this reproduction, at some point the mutated cells ran out of telomeres and stopped being able to reproduce.
Ha! Screw you, mutated cells! 👍

To be clear, this also sometimes happen:

(Steps 1-6 above)
With all this reproduction, at some point the mutated cells figured out how to turn telomerase back on.
This re-lengthens their telomeres, so they can reproduce indefinitely.
They either stop growing for other reasons (👍) or you use our modern technological civilization to kill/remove them (👍) or they grow so slowly that something else kills you first (🤌) or there is a less desirable outcome (👎).

(If you’re a biologist who is outraged at the above description, I’ve written a footnote which I beg you read before yelling at me.⁴)

Having telomeres that wear down is good, because it slows down cancer. It’s also bad, because it means our bodies slowly stop working. Evolution decided the good outweighed the bad, and I expect that evolution was right.

Several of the other ways in which the human body is “crap” can be explained in the same way. Why can’t you re-grow your leg if it gets chopped off? Well, that would require that all your cells have a “begin rapid growth mode” button on them, with some external trigger. In a sense, it would require your body to leave your cells sitting around in a state that’s closer to being cancer. Not doing that is good, because it slows down cancer, and bad, because you can’t grow a new leg. Evolution apparently doesn’t like that tradeoff, and again I assume evolution is right.⁵

Fragile kidneys are much the same. We could have kidneys that try harder to repair themselves. That’s probably biologically possible. But it would likely mean more kidney cancer. Arguably, the question isn’t, “Why are the kidneys such fragile crap?” but rather, “Why is the liver so weirdly regenerative?”

OK, so why is the liver so weirdly regenerative?

That question has two standard answers. Answer #1 is that the liver has a hard job. It sits directly downstream of the gut. If you eat toxins or bacterial products or viruses or parasites, the liver sees them at high concentrations before the rest of the body. Not only that, it’s the liver’s job to detoxify stuff, and detoxification chemistry is often self-damaging: The liver breaks toxic stuff down into even-more toxic stuff, and then deals with that stuff recursively. The liver is constantly getting damaged, as part of its job description, so it must be able to regenerate. Evolution designed it to do that, and it just pays the cancer tax.

Answer #2 is that the liver isn’t unusual. Your skin can survive wounds. And your intestines can survive exposure to digestive enzymes, bile, and bacteria. The surface layers of both of these are constantly turning over. And, lo and behold, skin cancer and colorectal cancer are both very common.

At the other end of the spectrum, neurons and cardiac muscle cells don’t reproduce after childhood. If they die, they’re gone.⁶ As a result, “heart cancer” is almost unheard of. (The very term “heart cancer” almost sounds ungrammatical.) Brain cancer is a thing, but it’s essentially always in other types of brain cells, not neurons.

So maybe we can think of different parts of the body as making different tradeoffs between regeneration and cancer risk:⁷

At first glance, we seem to have a cute little story: Evolution pays the cancer tax for organs that need to interface with the environment, because it’s a harsh world out there. And it pays the fragility tax for organs that can be tucked away so that regeneration isn’t as necessary.

Wouldn’t that be nice? Let’s formalize that as a theory.

Theory:

More regeneration implies more cancer risk.
Evolution tunes organs that encounter the environment for more regeneration and more cancer. It turnes organs that don’t for the opposite.

Of course, it’s not that simple.

Complexities

One problem with the above theory is that it isn’t clear that regeneration is always an option. The skin and guts are pretty homogeneous (at least in each layer). The liver can be approximated as a big blob of repeated functional units. If you give half your liver away, those functional units get larger, which is how your liver grows back to near full size and function.

But other organs are highly “structured”. Your neurons are a complex circuit encoding all your memories and learned behaviors. If neurons were reproducing, that circuit might be unstable.

Your heart is also highly structured. And even if your heart could re-grow, if you lost half of it, you wouldn’t survive long enough to do so. (Do not attempt to donate half your heart.) In principle, it’s surely physically possible to design a heart where you can remove half and it will still pump enough blood to keep you alive while it re-grows. But evolution either didn’t figure that out, or didn’t think it was worth the trouble. Either way, with the current heart design, high regeneration doesn’t look like an option.

So it’s not as simple as evolution choosing to pay the cancer tax for some organs and choosing to pay the fragility tax for others. Some organs need to maintain a stable complex structure to keep working, meaning there may not be much of a cancer/fragility knob to turn.

Revised theory:

More regeneration implies more cancer risk.
Evolution tunes organs that encounter the environment for more regeneration and more cancer. It turnes organs that don’t for the opposite.
But for highly structured organs, regeneration might not be an option.

Fine. But there are several organs I didn’t include in the above table. For example, look at this:

The lungs are the worst of all possible worlds, with low regeneration and high cancer. As far as I can tell, this is a consequence of the physical fact that gas diffusion is slow. To work around that, your lungs have a delicate fractal geometry that crams ~100 square meters of surface area into a ~5 liter volume. That’s impressive, but it makes regeneration hard. At the same time, the lungs need to interface with all sorts of random toxins and pathogens in the air, meaning lots of ways for mutations to happen.

Revised theory v2:

More regeneration implies more cancer risk.
Evolution tunes organs that encounter the environment for more regeneration and more cancer. It turnes organs that don’t for the opposite.
But for highly structured organs, regeneration might not be an option.
And if highly structured organs encounter the environment, cancer risk is still high.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the stupid pancreas:

Superficially, this looks less exceptional than the lungs, with low-ish regeneration and merely moderate cancer risk. But the pancreas is more problematic for our theory, because that moderate cancer risk exists despite not being exposed to the outside world.

Biologically, the reasons that the pancreas sometimes develops cancer seem understood, although complex. But as far as I can tell, there is no convincing explanation for why the pancreas is designed that way. Is it an evolutionary fluke? Is there some other subtle tradeoff? It’s unclear. So there’s no satisfying big-picture evolutionary trade-off to point to.

Revised theory v3:

More regeneration implies more cancer risk.
Evolution tunes organs that encounter the environment for more regeneration and more cancer. It tunes organs that don’t for the opposite.
But for highly structured organs, regeneration might not be an option.
And if highly structured organs encounter the environment, cancer risk is still high.
And the pancreas is weird.

But we still need to face the final boss, the strangest organ of all.

The small intestine

Bad news for our theory, good news for you as a biological organism. The small intestine does interface with the environment, and it replaces all its surface-level cells every few days. Yet it very rarely develops cancer. That’s despite the fact that it’s quite similar to the cancer-crazed colon. It’s also despite the fact that the “small” intestine makes up ~90% of the digestive tract’s surface area. What the hell?

Biologically, the main explanation seems to be that the small intestine uses an ingenious defense strategy. My new favorite part of the body:

While the surface cells of the small intestine are continuously being replaced, they aren’t themselves reproducing. Instead, carefully protected stem cells tucked into the valleys between the intestinal villi slowly produce “transit-amplifying cells”. Those transit-amplifying cells divide 4-6 times as they migrate to the surface, each eventually yielding 16-64 mature epithelial cells. Those spend a few days doing epithelial stuff, meanwhile sliding along with their siblings from the bottom to the top of whichever villus they happen to be on. When they reach the tip, they’re ejected into the digestive stream to die, merry Christmas. So, even if a mutation arises somewhere, it doesn’t really matter, because the cells are all on a conveyor belt towards death anyway.

Clever, no? Turns out, the real hero isn’t the liver. It’s the small intestine.

(The small intestine also uses a few other tricks: The surface cells are programmed to commit suicide if damaged even a little bit. The immune system is tuned to kill anything that looks even slightly funny. And it hosts huge amounts of detoxifying enzymes. But villi seem to be the really unique bit.)

This is a huge challenge for our theory. Not only does the small intestine have low cancer and high regeneration, it has low cancer because of high regeneration. If the small intestine can do that, then why not the rest of the body?

One answer is that it takes a ton of energy. Your guts shed ~40 billion epithelial cells every day, amounting to ~⅓ kg of tissue every week. Like the brain, your guts consume ~20% of total energy, despite making up only ~2% of body mass. Evolution doesn’t want to do that everywhere, because evolution doesn’t want you to starve to death.

So, there isn’t just a trade-off between regeneration and cancer. There’s a three-way tradeoff between regeneration, cancer, and energy usage.

But even if energy weren’t an issue, other organs couldn’t easily copy the small intestine’s strategy. For example, the colon is similar in many ways to the small intestine, but the colon doesn’t have villi. It needs to be flat, because the colon’s job is to extract water. If there were villi dangling everywhere, they’d be ripped off by the solid waste. The colon also hosts far more bacteria that produce toxic byproducts, meaning the colon’s cells need to be tuned to try to resist damage, instead of committing suicide. This also means that the immune system needs to be more relaxed about killing foreign entities. So even though the colon also replaces the epithelial cells (a bit more slowly) cancer is still common.

(Or, imagine your skin was covered in tiny fragile villi. You’d look awesome, but they’d be constantly getting ripped off. If you wanted that to work, you’d need to make the villi stronger and more disposable, and… we just invented fur.)

Revised theory v4 final (actually final) updated (2):

More regeneration implies more cancer risk.
Evolution tunes organs that encounter the environment for more regeneration and more cancer. It tunes organs that don’t for the opposite.
But for highly structured organs, regeneration might not be an option.
And if highly structured organs encounter the environment, cancer risk is still high.
And the pancreas is weird.
And actually, it’s not just a trade-off between regeneration and cancer, it’s a three-way trade-off between regeneration and cancer and energy usage, and various parts of that space may or may not be available depending on the job an organ has to do.

So, a cancer vs. fragility tradeoff definitely doesn’t explain everything. But it does explain some things, somewhat, sort of. In biology, that’s pretty good.

Is this bad?

We’ve discussed various ways in which the body might appear to be crap. Let’s revisit those, and ask if the right tradeoff is being made for the modern world.

Injuries.

Your skin is calibrated for constant wounds, which most of us today don’t get. This leaves lots of repair pathways sitting around to be hijacked by skin cancer. Similarly, your bone marrow is calibrated to be able to recover from catastrophic blood loss. Today we don’t experience as much catastrophic blood loss, and we have blood transfusions, but all that generative capacity is still there to be used by leukemia and lymphoma. And whatever benefit there might have been to re-growing a limb is probably lower today, when we less often lose limbs.

Best guess: It would be better if the body tried less hard to recover from injuries.

Brains.

Do modern people suffer fewer brain injuries than our evolutionary ancestors? It’s hard to say for sure, because brains are soft tissue. But the fossil record for upper paleolithic humans suggests between 2% and 34% suffered skull fractures, more than modern people.

So you might think it would be better if the brain was tuned more towards fragility rather than cancer. But brain injuries are still common today. Around ⅓ of people experience a concussion sometime in their lifetime, because we love to drive cars at high speed, play dangerous sports, and survive to old age where stairs and bathrooms pose a risk. Also, for whatever reason, the brain is already tuned quite strongly towards fragility.

Best guess: Maybe the current tradeoff is about right?

Telomeres.

Should the body re-lengthen the telomeres? On the one hand, we’re more likely to survive to ages where this is actually an issue. On the other hand, we’re also more likely to survive to ages where cancer is a danger, which is precisely where telomeres not getting re-lengthened is an issue.

Best guess: Maybe the current tradeoff is about right?

Livers.

It seems that the liver is so regenerative because it needed to be. Ancestral humans were constantly dealing with parasites and bacteria and rotting food. When I started writing this essay, I figured this meant the liver was “over-specced” for the modern world. Today we have refrigerators and food inspectors and pasteurization. Our lives are much less harsh and involve fewer toxins than our ancestors. So, if calibrated for the modern environment, I figured that it would be better if the liver was a bit more fragile, but also marginally less prone to cancer.⁸

But… it’s not clear that this is actually true. Liver failure remains extremely common today. While we don’t ingest nearly as many toxins, we eat diets that lead to metabolic dysfunction, and we consume tons of alcohol, and many of us live in dense conditions where hepatitis can easily spread. We’re also more likely to live to an age where liver failure is an issue.

Best guess: Unclear. We should stop doing stuff that causes liver failure.

Menopause.

Why do humans have menopause, unlike almost all other mammals? The most common theory is the grandmother hypothesis. The general idea is that reproducing becomes more and more risky as you get older. For most animals, evolution doesn’t care, because evolution’s goal isn’t to make you happy, it’s to maximize reproductive fitness. So, screw it, try to reproduce and let the dice fall where they may. But even after reproducing, humans can help the survival of their genes by providing resources for their offspring. So, for humans, evolution decided to turn reproduction off, so you can spend more time with your grandkids.

In particular, with cancer, some theorize that continued cycles of estrogen cause damage to the ovaries, womb, and breasts. Menopause shuts this down,which may decrease the odds of ovarian / uterine / breast cancer.

It’s a cute theory. But again:

Menopause: Humans, killer whales, pilot whales, beluga whales, false killer whales, narwhals one group of chimps in Uganda.
No menopause: Everything else, including elephants, other whales, lions, horses, zebras, dogs, rats, wolves, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish.

Some of this makes sense. Unlike toothed whales, Blue/Humpback whales are mostly solitary or live in loose groups. Mice don’t babysit for their grandkids. But what about elephants? Or hyenas? Or bonobos? Or orangutans? Or lions? Or sperm whales? All of these have social organizations where females contribute to the survival of their offspring, and yet they don’t have menopause.

Anyway, is menopause the right tradeoff for the modern age? It’s hard to say. On the one hand, modern people live much longer, meaning the marginal cost of cancer is higher. On the other hand, people want to reproduce more at older ages, meaning menopause has a higher cost. (Both “to evolution” and “to us”.) Also, an ancestral woman began menstruating in her late teens, and then likely underwent many pregnancies, each followed by years-long periods of breastfeeding (which suppresses menstruation). An average modern woman experiences 3-5 times as many menstrual cycles. It’s very confusing.

Best guess: No idea.

Cell junk / diabetes / transplants.

As far as I can tell, these are mostly unrelated.

TLDR

Cancer is bad because cancer is bad. Cancer is also bad because evolution made gruesome realpolitik compromises in the design of every part of the body to try to hold cancer in check. If we lived in a universe where cancer was impossible, we wouldn’t just not get cancer, our bodies would also be enormously more regenerative and longer lasting.

In a sense, even if you don’t get cancer, cancer still hurts you, because your body was forced to take costly preventative actions. (Even if the barbarians never get over your city wall, you still had to build the wall.) Even if we someday completely defeat cancer, its legacy will live on in our genes until the point that we re-design ourselves. Screw cancer.

Some people think linear DNA is easier to copy. Others think that linear DNA just happened by accident, but when it happened it was survivable because we happened to have retrotransposons, i.e. bits of DNA that build little machines to create new copies of their DNA and insert it into the genome. After the break in the circular chromosome, those machines started putting copies of their DNA on the end, because that’s what they do, and this made the break survivable. Those retrotransposons later became telomerase. ↩
This is teleological; let’s not let it come between us. ↩
This could happen because your immune system contains them. Or because oxygen and nutrients can’t diffuse inside the clump of mutated cells. Or because they run into a barrier of different cell types that they can’t outcompete. Or for other reasons. ↩
Hello biologists!
1. You might be thinking, “Well actually, 90% of cancers turn telomerase back on; clearly telomeres don’t help that much; Dynomight why are you so bad?”
2. That is approximately what the Dynomight Biologist thought, when pressed into service to review this post.
3. True, having telomeres that wear down is not a magic bullet that makes cancer impossible. And yes, most cancers figure out how to turn telomerase on. But that is a linguistic fact. Your body has lots of mutated cells all over the place, most of which will never hurt you. Conceivably, we could have defined all mutated cells as “cancer”, with subcategories of “low risk to health” and “significant risk to health”. Then, telomeres would seem great, because it’s hard for cells to move from “low risk” to “high risk” without figuring out how to turn telomerase on. That’s hard to do through blind random mutation, which is one reason most of your mutated cells are in the “low risk” category. Cells do sometimes succeed in turning telomerase on, but it’s still a useful layer in body’s layered cancer defense strategy.
4. We didn’t happen to define our words that way. Instead, we defined “cancer” to mean approximately “mutated cells that pose a significant risk to health” and we’ve invented other categories for other mutated cells (benign neoplasm, clonal expansion, hyperplasia, etc.) The “cancer” category excludes most cells that don’t turn telomerase on because telomere shortening is a good (albeit leaky) barrier between mutated cells and risks to your health. Just because Vikings sometimes get past your city wall doesn’t mean that a city wall is not worth having.
5. Thank you for visiting my footnote.
↩
The precise reasons that salamanders can regrow limbs but most species can’t is somewhat unclear. You could speculate that salamanders tend to lose limbs more frequently, so it’s more worth it for them to pay the “cancer tax”. Or you could speculate that cancer isn’t as much of an issue due to their short lifetime. But do they actually have an unusually high frequency of needing to regrow limbs? And are they paying some kind of cancer tax? What would we even look at to determine that? Cancer rates vary in different animals for all kinds of reasons. ↩
Dead cardiac muscle is replaced with scar tissue. Dead neurons are replaced with a “brain scar” made of glial cells. ↩
Thyroid cancer risk is hard to rate, because it’s common but has a very low fatality rate. ↩
You wouldn’t want to make the liver unable to regenerate, but there are several “knobs” that might be tuned. Broadly speaking, the liver could be designed to regenerate more slowly, with more careful “proofreading” and slower/stricter cell-cycle checkpointing. Then liver injuries would take longer to heal, but would result in fewer mutated cells. ↩

Daniel Gultsch | Breaking Up with Google Play: Why Conversations Is Now Free

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 17:18:37 +0000

Conversations, my federated instant messaging client for Android, started out as many traditional open-source projects do: as an attempt to scratch my own itch. Development started in January 2014 in my student dormitory, and within weeks I started dogfooding and using the client as the primary means of communicating with my friends. However, when it came to releasing the app to the public on March 24, 2014—exactly twelve and a half years ago today—it was immediately clear to me that I would at least try to turn my open-source project into a business. While I didn’t invent the business model of making the source code publicly available but charging for the convenience of a compiled binary, it was certainly unusual in 2014.

Fast forward a decade, and I did manage to turn Conversations into a sustainable business. Ever since March 2014, Conversations—or other related activities—have been my primary source of income. Admittedly, sustaining life as a student in a tiny dormitory doesn’t take much, but luckily revenue has steadily increased as I grew older.

The exact sources of income have shifted over the years. In the beginning, it was a lot of paid development for companies that wanted to use Conversations. Some paid for features that made it into mainline Conversations; others wanted custom features so specific to their workflow that they never made sense to merge upstream. This was occasionally supplemented with providing server setup or even some consulting on instant messaging and security-related topics. Later on, grants and funding opportunities played a more and more important role.

One surprisingly steady source of income, however, has always been the Play Store revenue. I used to say that it pays my rent. Every freelancer knows the feeling of uncertainty that comes with only being able to send out invoices every few months or receiving payment for funded projects only at the end of the funding period. Any form of regular income—especially in the early stages, when you have not yet built up any savings—is a blessing.

Gross revenue of Conversations 2014-2026 (before Google’s fee and sales tax)

My relationship with Google was never good. App updates have been rejected more times than I can count for incomprehensible reasons. Conversations has been removed twice from the Play Store. Once, Google just randomly accused me of uploading users’ contacts¹—which simply wasn’t true and was also not triggered by a specific update. Countless times I wished I could just talk to an actual human for five minutes. So many misunderstandings could have been cleared up in no time if I wasn’t going up against AIs and click workers. At the time of writing this blog post, I’ve been waiting 14 days for Google to review an app update. Review times were never good or anything close to what I would deem acceptable, but they have been getting a lot worse over the last year or so. One can imagine that part of the problem is an avalanche of AI-generated slop apps—something Google played no small part in creating in the first place. But Google should have the responsibility to prioritize long-standing, non-AI-generated apps with infrequent updates. Waiting a little longer for new features might not sound like a big deal to some, but Google makes no distinction between feature updates and security updates. Delaying security updates by days or weeks is outright dangerous.

At this point, I should add some context. Google takes a 15% cut on my app sales. This effectively means I’m paying Google more than 1000 Euro per year for their services. 1000 Euro per year is 1.5x what I’m paying for my internet access. It’s roughly what I’m paying for my notebook per year if you assume I use it for three to four years. When my internet breaks, someone drives to my house and fixes it. When my notebook breaks, someone drives to my house and fixes it. When Google fucks up, there is absolutely nothing I can do. Apparently that amount of money doesn’t give me the privilege to talk to a fucking human for five minutes once per year.

For years I’ve felt like I was in a toxic relationship with Google, and the only reason I stayed was economic dependency.

Over time, the source of my income has shifted more and more towards grants. Sometimes via NLnet²³⁴, sometimes more directly from the European Commission⁵. I have secure funding via various grants until the end of 2029 and I’m fairly confident that other funding opportunities will come up for the time after that.

Conversations was always available on F-Droid, but in the beginning, I didn’t advertise the option of downloading it for free. Initially, the F-Droid package maintainers asked for my permission, knowing that Conversations was a paid app on Google Play. I didn’t refuse, but I also didn’t link to F-Droid from the official website because I wanted to steer users towards the paid version. Over time, as my sentiment toward Google shifted from bad to worse, I did start linking to F-Droid. Now F-Droid has become the primary method of distributing the app. The APK distributed over F-Droid is now built reproducibly and signed with my personal signing key.

Fortunately, I’m no longer economically dependent on Google Play Store revenue. Google doesn’t deserve me and my money anymore. I’m done. Fuck the gatekeepers.

Double-entry bookkeeping and paper and tokens | Honza Pokorný

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 17:18:37 +0000

The invention of double-entry bookkeeping has had profound implications on our world. All modern commerce owes a debt (hi!) to it. I have heard it compared to the invention of numbers. In turn, this accounting mechanism was made possible by the sudden availability of cheap paper.

In The notebook: a history of thinking on paper, Roland Allen writes:

Before paper became easily available in the years after 1244, Italian merchants had used parchment books to record their transactions, but they recognised a superior product when the first paper ledgers arrived. Ink dries on the surface of parchment, but soaks into a paper sheet. This makes it a permanent medium, whereas parchment, which can be scraped clean and written on again, allows records to be revised after the event—opening the door to fraud. Accounts were always bound into ledgers for a similar reason: loose-leaf entries could easily be fabricated, but a ledger with numbered pages became tamper-proof. This in turn meant that merchants could delegate to subordinates or branch offices without fear of embezzlement, allowing traders to widen the circle of their businesses. Purchases, sales, loans and terms of business were no longer recorded inconsistently on a scrap of easily rewritten parchment: they were carefully entered into a permanent record that, in the event of dispute, was accepted as evidence in a court of law.

The new techniques of double entry and cross-reference increased the number of entries that a merchant had to make, meaning that ever more ledgers became necessary. This was only affordable if paper was cheap: and now, for the first time, it was.

And then:

So paper became cheap enough for a minor merchant to have six or seven ledgers with hundreds of pages each.

In July, OpenAI slashed the prices of their GPT Luna model:

Starting today, we are reducing prices for GPT-5.6 Luna by 80%

The new prices are $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 for output. In comparison, their flagship model, Astra, costs $10/$50 for the same. When I first used Luna with this new pricing, I thought the cost counter was broken. I had been programming all day and it was still at zero. Luna is fast and suddenly cheap—just like writing material centuries ago.

What new industries will this create? What massive, society-changing concepts—like double-entry bookkeeping—can we invent?

What will you build?

The New Kingmakers | The book about how developers took over the world

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 13:47:26 +0000

The New Kingmakers

The book about how developers took over the world

Welcome

As analysts, pundits and researchers alike seek to understand what turned Apple from a technology afterthought into the largest company in the world, they would do well to listen to the man most responsible for that recovery. In a 1995 interview, the late Steve Jobs claimed that the secret to his and Apple’s success was talent. “We’ve gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people,” he said, believing that the talented resource was twenty-five times more valuable than an average alternative. For Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the multiple was even higher:

A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.

While the actual number might be up for debate, the importance of technical talent is not. The most successful companies today are those that understand the strategic role that developers will play in their success or failure. Not just successful technology companies – virtually every company today needs a developer strategy. There’s a reason that ESPN and Sears have rolled out API programs, that companies are being bought not for their products but their people. The reason is that developers are the most valuable resource in business.

How did we get here? How did developers become the most important constituency in business seemingly overnight? The New Kingmakers explores the rise of the developer class, its implications and provides suggestions for navigating the new developer-centric landscape.

The Book

The New Kingmakers is the new book by RedMonk co-founder Stephen O'Grady chronicling the rise of the developer as the decisive force in the technology industry and sectors beyond.

Published by O'Reilly and brought to you by New Relic, you can buy the book now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or O'Reilly.

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Pluralistic: The Claude Delusion (21 Sep 2026)

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 17:54:20 +0000

Today's links

The Claude Delusion: What if we're the ones having hallucinations?
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: 9/11 v sex; 9/11 v flags; US customs v diplomatic Vegemite; CIA torture survivors speak; HP's inky timebomb; "The Raven" pop-up; Forex v Zimbabwe's internet; Shirky v "expert Wikipedia": McSweeney's v RIAA; Italy's internet disconnection law; Facehugger mask; "Goliath"; Netzpolitik v German surveillance; Ted Cruz v internet founders; Epipencil; Framework laptops; "The Actual Star;" Pilots tell passengers to tackle suspected terrorists; $2000 rotary phone; French DRM activists demand arrest; US child rearing costs up 40%; Calyx beats telcos; Wells Fargo whistleblower retaliation; David Graeber's "Mutual Aid"; Still censorship (even if it's not a First Amendment violation).
Upcoming appearances: Berkeley, Edmonton, Boston, South Bend, Hudson, Calgary, Winnipeg, Paris, Vancouver, Victoria, Ottawa, Kilkenny, Montreal.
Recent appearances: Where I've been.
Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Colophon: All the rest.

The Claude Delusion (permalink)

One of the less remarked-upon aspects of becoming an atheist is how it changes the way you see a sunset. If you believe in an almighty, omnipresent God, then sunsets are one of God's intentional creations, which means that the beautiful colors refracting through the darkling sky were chosen to produce that effect.

To gaze upon a sunset with religious faith is to encounter the intentional act of another mind. To gaze upon that same sunset without faith is to look upon something striking, beautiful, and yet empty; not empty of wonder or beauty, but empty of purpose. No one hung that sun in the sky, no one chose its colors as it sank. It may still be beautiful, but that's a fundamentally different kind of beauty.

There's a sunset that sits halfway between a religious sunset and an atheist sunset: an artist's depiction of a sunset. This represents the choices of another person, another mind, and at the very least, that mind was talking to itself, trying to take something from inside the mind and put it outside of the mind.

Very often, the mind that directed the capturing of the sunset wanted to say something to other people, perhaps even you (think of a loved one sending you a cameraphone picture of a sunset). That painting or photo may not be divine, but it is certainly intentional. To look upon a painting of a sunset – or even a photo of a sunset – is to look upon something someone chose to make. You don't slip and accidentally create a sunset painting. Sunset paintings aren't accidents. The sunset painting has something to say.

Figuring out intentions is our minds' reflexive preoccupation. It's what keeps us from dying in traffic, it's what lets us win at poker. It's the key to love and parenting, to effective management and "managing up." It's why we get mad at people, and why we forgive them. It's why our hearts race in sympathy with the characters in a book or on a screen. It's the automatic and irresistible starting point for every encounter with a poem, a song, a book or a sculpture. It's the most fundamental difference between a sculpture of a tree and a tree: the tree grew all on its own, while the sculpture was made, on purpose, by another person with another mind.

This reflex to attribute intention explains why AI is so controversial, so compelling, and so eerie. Mark Fisher defines eeriness as "when there is something present where there should be nothing, or if there is nothing present when there should be something":

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/large-language-models-are-uncanny

To look upon an AI-generated text or image is to look upon a thing that was extruded, not chosen. You can slip and prompt an AI-generated image of a sunset, and it will embody no intentionality on anyone's part.

This isn't something we have any experience with. When we see a painting, we reflexively interpret it as having a painter. When we read a book, we reflexively impute auctorial intent to its words. When we converse, we reflexively form a theory about the mind directing the other half of the conversation.

But we can't do this with AI. Anyone who understands how the theory-free statistical inference systems we call "AI" (at this time) work will understand that they are systems that cannot form intent, that have nothing to form intent with:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/18/surprise/#wow-signal

Even so, it's hard (or perhaps impossible) to avoid the reflex to impute intention to things that seem to have intenders. Think of your autonomic, unavoidable emotional response to the fictional characters you encounter in literature. Feeling sorrow or joy for imaginary people is weird. They aren't real, and you know they aren't real, and yet you may find yourself moved to tears by their plight.

That aesthetic experience of literature arises from a consensual hack to our reflex to impute human minds to things that are typically the product of human intention. When we experience another person's will – their words or deeds – we try to figure out who they are, and how they feel, and why they act the way they do:

https://genius.com/David-byrne-and-ghost-train-orchestra-she-explains-things-to-me-lyrics

We do this even when we are confronted with just the evidence of others' words or deeds, as when a friend describes an encounter with a stranger. For your reflexive, intention-seeking mind, the author who describes the deeds of imaginary people is an irresistible signal to fire up the old empathy machine and start trying to put yourself in the skins of the people of the tale:

https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-stories-are-a-fuggly-hack/

To "converse" with an AI is to carry on a dialog with a fictional character, who is no more real than the imaginary people in a novel. Indeed, the chatbot is less real than the character, because the character is the product of another mind, while the chatbot's words are the product of complex mathematical operations conducted over a massive database of all the words humans have uttered, arranged by their frequency in relation to one another. When that math makes something beautiful or striking, it's like a sunset: no matter how striking it is, it's empty. No one chose those colors. No one chose those words.

In other words, when we interact with an AI, we hallucinate the person on the other side of the interaction. Those hallucinations are far more common and far more consequential than any AI-generated "hallucinations" (these are more properly called "errors" or "defects").

Fortunately, for most of us, the intensity of these hallucinations fades over time, and as that intensity drops off, the character of those hallucinations changes, too. Just as most of us find it easy to set aside the emotions evoked by the plight of imaginary literary figures as having less salience and "realness" than the emotions we feel over the plight of real people we know, for most of us, the experience of AI-generated material has dimmed through repetition.

My first encounters with AI-generated text and images invoked wonder, arising from the tension between the part of my mind that knew this was the product of mathematical operations, and the part of my mind that insisted that a painting must have a painter, a paragraph must have a writer, and a conversation must have an interlocutor. Looking back on the wonder I felt then, I realize that it was largely driven by how good the output was relative to my expectations about how good mathematically-derived sentences and images could be.

The novelty of that experience drove me to grade the machine's output on a curve: "The wonder is not that the dancing bear dances well, it is that the bear dances at all." But with repetition, the stimulus has regressed to the mean. These outputs have an unconvincing lack of texture. The smoothness of AI-generated prose and media makes it unbearably banal. It's hack.

To the extent that AI still surprises me, the surprise is about how much smoothness there is in our real world. The fact that AI can use statistical prediction to answer questions or carry on conversations tells us something important about how regular our real world is. It doesn't prove that statistical prediction is the same thing as understanding:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/18/surprise/#wow-signal

Of course, the more you know about a subject, the less convincing the AI's responses are. To be an expert is to know about the grain of your subject: chefs can taste the pinch of spice, painters notice brushstrokes, dancers can decompose the choreography into individual motions.

The other day, someone marveled to me at the quality of the editorial feedback he gets from AI for his prose, saying that a "Tell me what I'm missing" prompt generates suggestions "that would excite a university professor who'd assigned an essay." Speaking as someone who's taught a lot of writers and given a lot of feedback, I think that guy is dramatically overestimating how excited a university professor would be to see the AI-generated feedback he's getting on his essay.

The fact is that non-expert writers mostly make the same kinds of mistakes in their writing, and most writing instruction consists of offering repetitive, near-identical counsel to writers who are making the same kinds of starter mistakes that their peers past, present and future have made, are making and will make.

Mastering the basics of good writing is a matter of practice and feedback, and most of that feedback is rote. What makes a great writing teacher – and what helps to produce great writers – is spotting the non-standard aspects of a student's work that can be developed into a unique and powerful voice. Anyone can help you with the smooth parts of becoming a better writer. Only a good teacher can help you find and refine the texture that will make you a unique writer.

That texture is especially hard to find in beginner work, because beginner work is mostly full of the completely ordinary errors of inexperience, errors that AI can reliably avoid when it extrudes text. But AI-generated prose doesn't have any of those trace-elements of uniqueness, nor can it spot them. These traces are found so many digits after the decimal-place that the AI always rounds them off before it starts doing math.

The more we encounter AIs that have smoothed away the kind of texture we're attuned to, the less we're inclined to hallucinate intentionality, and the less eerie they become. Most of us are slowly but surely becoming AI atheists, and the sunsets are seeming more like the non-intending product of physics than the deliberate products of minds.

There's two great barriers to this AI atheism. First: for most of us, the inability to understand what kinds of intentionality go into which parts of unfamiliar activities makes it easy to assume that any time we see the task performed in the world, it must be intentional, and therefore it must have an intender. In other words: most of us don't hang out at hacker cons, so we have a hard time wrapping our heads around the idea of hacking without hackers:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/12/god-in-the-box/#llms-are-fake

But there's a second hurdle that makes it hard for a small but important subset of humanity to understand that chatbots aren't people: the billionaires to whom nearly everyone isn't a real person. These solipsists see chatbots as being equivalent (or even superior) to humans, because they don't think most humans are fully people, either:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/13/vibe-governance/#k-hole

For nearly all our species' history, things that seemed to require intent always had an intender. In many times and places (and even now, for many people), it's natural and beneficial to operate as though the natural world has some form of personhood and intention and is therefore worthy of moral consideration. The "rights for nature" movement has made great strides by extending personhood to animals and ecosystems.

But ascribing personhood to chatbots is nothing like ascribing personhood to nature. Indeed, it's fundamentally incompatible with "rights for nature." Think of the abomination that is "corporate personhood": by extending personhood to this human construct, we have made a world where artificial lifeforms – limited liability corporations – can destroy nature and drive animals to extinction. If we extend personhood to these climate-shredding, water-chugging AI models, their personhood will demand the sacrifice of animals, the natural world, and our own wellbeing:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/15/artificial-lifeforms/#moral-consideration

Chatbots are marvels of mathematics, and that is enough. They don't need to be people. Mistaking them for people (or even just treating them like people) makes it impossible for us to separate the useful things they can do from the waste, ugliness and wrongness they are so prone to exhausting into the world.

I think it's impossible to build a chatbot using the techniques we're presently calling "AI" that doesn't "hallucinate." However, it's both possible and necessary for us to stop hallucinating about AI.

Hey look at this (permalink)

Batman, Stephen, d. 1584. The doome warning all men to the iudgemente, 1581. https://houghtonlib.tumblr.com/post/66202591072/batman-stephen-d-1584-the-doome-warning-all
13 theses on agentic AI and regulation https://backofmind.substack.com/p/13-theses-on-agentic-ai-and-regulation
The Business-to-Industry Index and the Geography of Global Capitalism https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2026/09/19/the-business-to-industry-index-and-the-geography-of-global-capitalism/
Medical AI has a proof problem https://www.ft.com/content/34319b00-f874-4119-aa28-8376d81e7190?accessToken=zwAAAaC9XGvXkc80MZsA-HRBGdOqKIN22B5xkA.MEUCIBxTaGUf7-Pnw4ErnCAleMMJiOnRfHUFyvbNrWdOrp8yAiEAnjbPR0Ik1xmb2bhrZSj8Fvoe7S6lV_RUd22lZECUTjs&sharetype=gift&token=1dba26c2-4939-4fd7-9dfb-fac85bb96387&syn-25a6b1a6=1
Please Agree to These Terms & Conditions for Your Slider https://blog.dmxrob.net/please-agree-to-these-terms-conditions-for-your-slider/

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago 9/11 knocks sex off the top of the search charts for the first time ever https://web.archive.org/web/20011019190617/http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml

#25yrsago Post-9/11 flag shortage sparks wave of flag-thefts https://web.archive.org/web/20011024162814/http://www.suntimes.com/output/brown/cst-nws-brown18.html

#25yrsago Pilots' preflight announcement includes exhortation to tackle suspected terorists https://web.archive.org/web/20010919081055/http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20010919-6357240.htm

#25yrsago Larry Ellison: 9/11 means everyone should have a secret government dossier (on an Oracle server) https://web.archive.org/web/20010924045158/https://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/svfront/ellsn092301.htm

#20yrsago Rotary phone cost woman $2,000 over 40 years https://web.archive.org/web/20080526111157/http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2006-09-14-phone_x.htm

#20yrsago French DRM activists surrender to police https://web.archive.org/web/20070110181344/http://stopdrm.info/index.php?2006/09/20/110-compte-rendu-de-l-operation-des-interoperabilisateurs-volontaires

#20yrsago Zimbabwe’s Internet cut off due to lack of foreign currency https://web.archive.org/web/20070218185156/http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6117553.html

#20yrsago An “expert Wikipedia” won’t work https://web.archive.org/web/20061023150433/http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/09/18/larry_sanger_citizendium_and_the_problem_of_expertise.php

#20yrsago RIAA threat-mail parody from McSweeney’s https://web.archive.org/web/20060927155553/https://www.mcsweeneys.net/2006/9/20lloyd.html

#15yrsago Italian MPs propose Internet disconnection law: one copyright accusation from anyone and you lose your Internet connection https://web.archive.org/web/20110924143709/http://www.twitlonger.com/show/d62gmb

#15yrsago Trying to understand riots isn’t the same as excusing riots https://web.archive.org/web/20110924030515/https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128306.100-trying-to-understand-the-english-riots-is-not-a-crime.html

#15yrsago ATM skimmer gang invested proceeds in 3D printer to make better ATM skimmers https://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/09/gang-used-3d-printers-for-atm-skimmers/

#15yrsago Facehugger-inspired leather mask https://bobbasset.com/archives/745/

#15yrsago Westerfeld’s Goliath: suitably thrilling conclusion to cracking steampunk WWI YA trilogy https://memex.craphound.com/2011/09/20/westerfelds-goliath-suitably-thrilling-conclusion-to-cracking-steampunk-wwi-ya-trilogy/

#15yrsago Report from 1978’s “Second West Coast Computer Faire” https://web.archive.org/web/20110930035442/https://blog.modernmechanix.com/2011/09/20/the-second-west-coast-computer-faire/

#15yrsago UK patent office seeks public’s help with prior art that invalidates patent applications https://www.peertopatent.org.uk/

#15yrsago 3D printed AR-15 parts challenge firearm regulation https://web.archive.org/web/20110922005752/http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:11636

#15yrsago Minor diplomatic spat when US customs queries Aussie foreign minister’s Vegemite https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/19/hands-off-vegemite-kevin-rudd

#15yrsago Toronto Convention Centre charges attendees $150/day to use WiFi https://blogcampaigning.com/2011/09/most-expensive-wi-fi-ever/

#15yrsago Tracking down the stories behind a trove of 1920s report cards from a NYC girls’ vocational school https://www.slate.com/articles/life/permanent_record/features/2011/permanent_record/how_i_found_the_report_cards_and_how_they_changed_my_life.html

#15yrsago Movie-industry self-piracy proves that IP addresses aren’t people, invalidates copyright enforcement schemes https://torrentfreak.com/movie-institute-feels-pain-of-ip-address-only-piracy-evidence-110922/

#15yrsago Cost of raising middle-income child in USA increases by 40% in ten years https://web.archive.org/web/20110925000225/https://money.cnn.com/2011/09/21/pf/cost_raising_child/index.htm

#10yrsago HTML standardization group calls on W3C to protect security researchers from DRM https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/09/html-standardization-group-calls-w3c-protect-security-researchers-drm

#10yrsago I have found a secret tunnel that runs underneath the phone companies and emerges in paradise https://memex.craphound.com/2016/09/22/i-have-found-a-secret-tunnel-that-runs-underneath-the-phone-companies-and-emerges-in-paradise/

#10yrsago Gene Luen Yang wins a Macarthur “genius” prize! https://web.archive.org/web/20160922142951/https://www.macfound.org/fellows/class/class-2016/

#10yrsago China’s elites appear to be exfiltrating billions while on holidays https://web.archive.org/web/20160922125621/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-21/suitcases-of-cash-chinese-travel-data-hint-at-capital-outflows

#10yrsago Wells Fargo fired the whistleblowers who reported massive fraud, and that’s a crime https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/09/wells-fargo-fake-accounts-hidden-by-fake-whistleblowing-former-employees-including-hr-officials-allege-systematic-retaliation.html

#10yrsago Phoebe and her unicorn are back in Razzle Dazzle Unicorn! https://memex.craphound.com/2016/09/22/phoebe-and-her-unicorn-are-back-in-razzle-dazzle-unicorn/

#10yrsago Brexit’s proposed racist immigration policy will backfire https://crookedtimber.org/2016/09/19/brexit-and-bigotry/

#10yrsago Done in your name: Survivors of CIA’s torture-decade describe their ordeals https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2016/9/14/the-dark-prisoners-inside-the-cias-torture-programme

#10yrsago HP detonates its timebomb: printers stop accepting third party ink en masse https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37408173

#10yrsago How America abandoned the only policy that consistently closes the black-white educational gap https://www.propublica.org/article/ferguson-school-segregation

#10yrsago Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” – the pop-up book edition https://memex.craphound.com/2016/09/19/edgar-allan-poes-the-raven-the-pop-up-book-edition/

#10yrsago Sitelock abuses DMCA to censor rival’s criticisms https://torrentfreak.com/web-security-firm-sitelock-uses-dmca-to-censor-critics-160920/

#10yrsago Netzpolitik publishes more damning, leaked German surveillance reports, despite previous treason prosecution https://www.techdirt.com/2016/09/20/leaked-oversight-report-shows-illegal-surveillance-massive-constitutional-violations-germanys-intelligence-service/

#10yrsago Web’s inventor and MIT prof explain ICANN to Ted Cruz, using small words https://web.archive.org/web/20160921203119/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/09/20/ted-cruz-is-wrong-about-a-key-internet-agencys-ability-to-censor-free-speech/

#10yrsago Execs with long coporate crime rapsheets stand up for Apple’s tax evasion and “the rule of law” https://web.archive.org/web/20160921002619/https://theintercept.com/2016/09/20/throng-of-corporate-criminals-demands-rule-of-law-in-apple-eu-tax-case/

#10yrsago DIY Epipen: the $30 Epipencil https://fourthievesvinegar.org/2022/07/12/introducing-the-epipencil/

#5yrsago The Framework is the most exciting laptop I've ever used https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/21/monica-byrne/#think-different

#5yrsago Ignore career advice from established writers https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/21/monica-byrne/#pay-it-forward

#5yrsago The Actual Star https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/21/monica-byrne/#like-its-3012

#5yrsago Facebook algorithm boosts pro-Facebook news https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/22/kropotkin-graeber/#zuckerveganism

#5yrsago Mutual Aid and David Graeber https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/22/kropotkin-graeber/#against-just-so

#5yrsago Gig workers around the globe https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/22/kropotkin-graeber/#an-injury-to-one

#1yrago It's still censorship (even if it doesn't violate the First Amendment) https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/22/one-throat-to-choke/#communicable-disease

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

Berkeley: Celebrating 25 Years at the Digital Frontier (Samuelson Clinic), Sep 24
https://www.law.berkeley.edu/experiential/clinics/samuelson-law-technology-public-policy-clinic/samuelson-25th-anniversary-celebration/
Edmonton: Elbows Up (Edmonton Public Library), Sep 28
https://www.epl.ca/blogs/post/elbows-up-with-cory-doctorow/
Boston: The Post-American Internet: Possibilities for a new internet created by an American Hermit Kingdom (MIT Media Lab), Sep 30
https://www.media.mit.edu/events/the-post-american-internet-possibilities-for-a-new-internet-created-by-an-american-hermit-kingdom/
Boston: Rethinking Our Relationship with AI, Sep 30 (Emtech)
https://event.technologyreview.com/emtech-future-2026/detailed-agenda
Boston: The Paradox of Enshittification and Reverse Centaurs (Harvard Berkman Klein), Sep 30
https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/running-harder-falling-faster-paradox-enshittification-and-reverse-centaurs
South Bend: An Evening With Cory Doctorow (Notre Dame), Oct 6
https://franco.nd.edu/events/2026/10/06/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/
Hudson, OH: Hudson Library, Oct 7
https://engagedpatrons.org/EventsExtended.cfm?SiteID=3850&EventID=596952&PK=
Calgary: Wordfest, Oct 8
https://wordfest.com/2026/show/wordfest-presents-cory-doctorow-2026/
Winnipeg: McNally Robinson, Oct 9
https://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/event-18991/An-Evening-with-Cory-Doctorow
Paris: Slow Tech Summit, Oct 15
https://slowtechsummit.com/
Vancouver: Read, Resist, Repair, Rejoice (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 19
https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-event-2026/01
Victoria: Munro's Books, Oct 20
https://www.munrobooks.com/events/6113620261020
Vancouver: Life After AI (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 22
https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-event-2026/46
Ottawa: Life After AI (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 24
https://writersfestival.org/event/life-after-ai
Kilkenny (Kilkenomics), Nov 6-8
https://kilkenomics.com/
Vancouver: Enshittification (Sid Williams Theatre Society), Nov 10
https://www.sidwilliamstheatre.com/events/cory-doctorow-talks-enshittification/
Vancouver: BC Policy Solutions Gala, Nov 12
https://bcpolicy.ca/gala/
Montreal: World Science Fiction Convention, Sep 2-6
https://montreal2027.ca/en

Recent appearances (permalink)

Could Tech Bosses Destroy Life As We Know It? (Politics JOE)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL4VktU0SgY
Are 'AI Apocalypse' Warnings Just Marketing? (What's Left)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXd9HwIE5bo
The Real AI Threat Isn’t What You’ve Been Told (The Tea with Myriam François)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc8It00fRsA
Fascists may come after the AI bubble bursts (You&AI)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2WN64aQeYQ
What Would a Normal Person Do (Trashfuture)
https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture/posts/what-would-do-169247456

Latest books (permalink)

"The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/
"Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce
"Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
"Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
"The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).
"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).
"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

Upcoming books (permalink)

"The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027
"Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027
"Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027
"The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

“Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Friday's words: 518 (17048 total).

"The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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College Is Coming Apart - The Atlantic

Sat, 19 Sep 2026 11:50:46 +0000

Sign up for Ordinary Extraordinary, Ian Bogost’s newsletter on making everyday life vivid.

Artificial intelligence arrived on campus as a crisis but has since become banal. Students can now do basically all their schoolwork automatically with AI—answering scientific problem sets, writing computer code, and drafting essays. Professors like me have no idea whether we are really teaching or just LARPing for students who are also pretending to occupy their role. Worse, some of us are offloading the drudgery of writing recommendation letters, grant proposals, and even scientific papers to AI.

But at the same time that AI fouled up the student-teacher relationship, the technology benefited other corners of campus. Researchers quickly discovered that AI is enormously useful for knowledge production, especially in the natural and applied sciences: in protein-structure prediction, materials design, and drug discovery, for example. Pressured, in part, by donors, boards, employers, and parents, college administrators have announced AI initiatives, invested in AI infrastructure, and established AI degree programs.

These two forces—students using AI to their detriment and colleges using it to their benefit—might seem to be in conflict. Students are supposed to do everything longhand to preserve the sanctity of learning, but they are also urged to meet the new professional demands created by AI. Faculty and administrators are policing the classroom for AI, largely in vain, while also using AI liberally in their own work. Campuses are defending themselves against AI as an interloper while concurrently retooling themselves for the AI future. Colleges are racing toward and away from AI simultaneously. It feels like artificial intelligence is wresting higher education apart.

That’s what I thought at first too. But I’ve come to the conclusion that something bigger, stranger, and more damaging has been taking place for a long time. AI has combined with two other recent campus crises—the coronavirus pandemic and the research-funding cuts of the second Trump administration—to amplify a deeper truth: American college is incompatible with itself. Americans speak of “college” as if it is one coherent thing. That’s wrong. Higher education is a bundle of unrelated things held together by custom, history, and accident. The college bundle was always a tenuous one. It has little reason to remain together, even as the institutions inside it are too entrenched to separate.

College in America makes two promises. On the one hand, college is a credentialing service: It awards a degree that affirms knowledge and sends a graduate into a career. On the other hand, college is a coming-of-age service. It forms identity through social exploration and intellectual development. It is the American ideal for how a young person figures out who they are. Partying, drinking, Greek life, sports, and other forms of college life always risked undermining the educational project—and vice versa. But the two categories coexisted well enough.

Listen: Where do America’s colleges go from here?

Now two things that got packaged together as “college” have begun to unbundle and disperse. The coming-of-age experience—friendships, independence, experimentation—has become less obviously dependent on the campus surrounding it, partly because college’s monopoly on exposure to a wider world weakened. Globalization and the internet bring much of that world to students long before they arrive on campus. Other aspects of college life have been moving off campus too. College football has gone national, abandoning regional affinities and local rivalries. Greek rush has become an outsourced industry. Campuses are hospital systems, major local employers, and real-estate-investment operations as much as, or more than, they are schools.

Optimizing college for professional preparation also began to pull the two purposes apart, and eroded the unrepeatable social experience that college is supposed to provide. The economy demanded more of students outside the classroom—internships, networking, publications, volunteering. In a brutal job-search environment, where entry-level gigs seem to demand nepotism, luck, and 10 rounds of interviews, today’s undergraduates may feel that their older professors do not fully understand the gap between the delivery of the credential and the career it promises.

Then COVID-19 revealed that the credentialing process could continue if campus life was reduced or even eliminated entirely. Considerable controversy and confusion accompanied this moment; some students tried to sue expensive universities on the grounds that a closed campus was not worth the full-freight price. But in the end, credentialing proved entirely possible with a compromised or absent version of campus life.

Now AI has separated the two purposes of college almost entirely. Writing an essay previously required doing something resembling the assigned academic work. Because AI makes it possible to complete coursework without much or any intellectual labor, AI has disconnected the output from the process (if students choose the shortcut). Suffering through a term paper no longer inherently affords opportunities to take a break to get a late-night coffee with your fellow students, to commiserate with hallmates over a difficult professor, or to reach an unexpected realization while drunk at a house party. Social and academic progress are no longer woven together. No particular quantity of shared time or deliberation is required to carry out one inside the other.

A combination of factors (among them shifting values, educational entrepreneurship, regulatory arbitrage, and the speed of technological change) has altered the meaning of a diploma. Yet schools have had no trouble continuing to award degrees to the students who spent their whole undergraduate careers on campuses that tout the same traditional look on quads and inside libraries, but that AI has hopelessly mangled beneath the surface.

Immediately after taking office, the second Trump administration embarked on a series of attacks against higher education. The attacks were politically motivated, but they were effective because they hit campuses where it hurt. Since World War II, the American research-university sector has become defined as an enormous, distributed, scientific-research industry. The Trump attacks undermined this project by disrupting the tens of billions of dollars of federal funding that pays for that research (which includes graduate education).

At the same moment that AI was widening the conflict between credentialing and coming of age, the Trump cuts exposed a different structural incompatibility, between education and research. The fact that big universities were driven by research was not a secret, but it was also not well understood by the American public, including parents and students. If you find out that a friend or neighbor is a university professor, you’d probably ask them, “What do you teach?” And if they squirm when asked, that’s because many faculty often do not see teaching as their primary job. Yes, a professor is expected to teach undergraduates and produce research, because a university’s mission entails education and scholarship. But national universities do not value or reward those activities equally.

Research brings grants, prestige, graduate students, rankings, and career advancement. At research universities, undergraduate teaching is seen, if not described, as a necessary act to keep the tuition dollars flowing and to maintain the appearance of undergraduate education as predominant—the thing that people think of first when they imagine what college is for.

University administrators often argue that the research and teaching missions bolster each other: A star researcher, the story goes, can bring the latest knowledge to the classroom. Basically every college tour on an American campus will include a schtick about how undergraduates can participate in faculty research. Universities have a strong incentive to make research and teaching appear to align. But in truth, those purposes sit more in tension than in unity.

A revealing term helps explain how tenuous this relationship really is. A researcher who gets a big grant can use part of those funds for a “teaching buyout,” paying their way out of the classroom. Success at one of the university’s missions literally purchases relief from the other. (There is no research buyout.)

Campuses such as mine, Washington University in St. Louis, take in $1 billion or more of research funding every year. That money pays for the work done in labs, but also for equipment, buildings, and staff. It forms the foundation for the metrics (grants won, and “research expenditures,” or money spent from those grants) that campuses use to compete against one another for faculty, graduate students, philanthropic gifts, and other forms of prestige. Threaten the flow of research money and you don’t merely endanger the labs; you destabilize the financial and organizational structure of the whole sector.

Every major college and university touts the liberal arts as the core of an undergraduate education, but the humanities in particular—fields of arts and letters such as literature and languages, which generally do not receive much, if any, federal research funding—enjoy mostly vestigial value that does not match the underlying economics of higher education very well. Universities are different from colleges in this regard. Small liberal-arts colleges focus almost exclusively on undergraduate education and are earnestly committed to the arts and letters. That’s one reason they are particularly well positioned to weather the Trump attacks. But these schools serve much smaller populations, and they are still tied to the broader American university system, from which they draw faculty and to which they send students on to grad school. And even at these schools, the humanities are particularly vulnerable to AI, because the intellectual labor that the technology can now eliminate—wrestling with the meaning of texts, figuring out how to express complex ideas—is the fundamental point of that type of education.

The AI crisis on campus, mated to the COVID-19 and federal-funding crises that flanked it, dismantled the pretense that everything happening on campus shared any kind of common project. AI might substantially improve scientific research while destroying the humanities. And AI might troublingly reduce the effort a student must exert to complete a degree while allowing a scientist to carry out experiments with reduced labor, uncontroversially.

Undergraduate education, credentialing, scientific research, professionalization, and coming of age still occupy the same campuses. But they are clearly no longer parts of the same enterprise. They have not been so for many years—probably many decades. Looking back at my own career, I can see clearly that every single term of it has taken place in the shadow of this family of mismatches. Teaching and research sometimes align, but not always. Becoming educated has little to do with becoming an adult, apart from taking place on the same campus. I used to understand a university as akin to a city—expansive, diverse, and necessarily host to multiple purposes. But now I wonder if even that generous account is a fantasy. I wonder if one organization can support all of these conflicting projects well—and if it ever did.

Ian Bogost: Why college students are booing AI

Now that these incompatibilities are harder to ignore, will the American collegiate project reinvent itself in a way that would resolve them? Perhaps, but also: I doubt it. Universities are purpose-built to resist change of almost any kind. College leaders have repeatedly adopted a “wait and see” or “keep our heads down” approach, treating disruption as mere interruption: The pandemic ended, AI will settle down, federal funding will resume, and all of this, whatever it is, will blow over. These are far more tolerable conclusions to reach than, say, the idea that credentialing has no business sharing a venue with coming of age, or that undergraduate education is at odds with the mission of a research institution.

Each recent crisis gave college an alibi. AI was an alien technology that corrupted an otherwise functional educational institution. The Trump funding cuts were an aberrant political attack on a healthy research enterprise. COVID-19 was an emergency that forced campuses to suspend campus life and education alike in the interest of public health. But surviving any one of these crises, let alone all of them together, changes nothing about the underlying circumstances that they exacerbated. The incompatible purposes of college carry on.

I see no reason to believe that the structural inconsistencies that have come to define higher education will resolve. The degree will become ever more a goal and less a process of self-discovery. The research and teaching missions will further retract from each other. College is at war with itself as much as it is with the public, or the government, or the private sector, or the technology industry.

As a degree or a ritual, college will continue to have value, and you or your kids may want to attend one for a credential or a coming-of-age experience (or both). The old names will persist, and the campus buildings will still stand. The coursework will continue whether humans or machines complete it (or assign it). The leaves will fall onto the quad in the autumn, and the caps will fly into the air in the spring. The appearance of college can endure, even as its spirit—a community organized for the education and formation of young people—comes undone.

AI and the Destruction of the Creative Commons

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 15:50:47 +0000

The balance of software copyright protection and openness has always been fraught with minutiae and detail that bores all but the most nerdy of pedants. Yet, through much effort and 40 years of debate we had reached an equilibrium. Now AI has thrown that out the window.

When I was young I remember typing in BASIC programs from magazines into my Commodore 64 and later teaching myself REXX to write games for a BBS I ran. Without these “open” examples, I would never have been empowered to teach myself the basic tenets of programming. This was the era when the issue of whether software could be copyrighted was still being debated.

First there were shareware and freeware, both closed source. Shareware was basically trial-ware; you could try the software and pay a modest fee to register to unlock the full version. Freeware was totally free, as in beer, but the source was not published. Most famously Doom was distributed as shareware, creating a huge market through word-of-mouth copying.

The forces on the side of openness pivoted and turned copyright onto itself, coining the term “copyleft” and creating licenses like GPL, MPL, and CC-SA, forcing those who wish to take advantage of software that was both free as in beer and free as in freedom to cascade those rights onto any further derivative works.

The modern internet and cloud could not exist without free and open software. Every cloud service and the very backbone of the internet itself are derivative works standing on the shoulders of the previous generation’s giants. Without that openness, being online would likely look more like AOL and CompuServe, be hundreds of times more expensive, and be even more of an oligarchy than we have today.

While there is much discussion of the environmental destruction, the cybersecurity implications, and the misinformation being imposed on all of us by generative AI large language models, I haven’t seen nearly as much discussion of the destruction of our foundational openness.

First, these LLMs are consuming everything they find online, without regard for copyright or license. Any derivative works may or may not reflect the licenses of the original creators and to date there seems to be no appetite for legal enforcement of these obligations.

The social contract has been broken.

I now have every incentive to not share my work, while also being wary of anything I find online that has been shared. If it hasn’t been polluted by slop code, it might have been poisoned with a malicious library, send data off to third parties, or itself be comprised of someone else’s stolen work, implicating me in the crime.

If I make my code available, AI can be used to more easily discover vulnerabilities to abuse my coding errors, while if I keep my code closed it is far more difficult to find those same mistakes.

If I publish my code on a public service like GitHub, I am likely to be inundated with pull requests generated by AI bots and inexperienced users, flooding me with mostly useless slop and taking all of my spare time away just triaging it.

We all have our own set of ethical and moral guidelines, which are also lost once having been absorbed into the colossus. While existing licenses and agreements are imperfect, they have been shown to be enforceable in a court of law allowing me, the creator, power over my own creation.

AI has turned sharing knowledge from a gift to the world, into a liability for the author. The act of openness will be twisted and abused into creating more consolidated wealth and power, without respect or credit for those who did the real labour.

This will have incredible negative consequences for the future. The past 35 years of openness have created nearly everything we benefit from online, which has transformed the world in a mostly positive and empowering way.

We are entering a digital dark age. As authors, coders, technologists, and artists we must come together to introduce a new digital Renaissance before too much is lost. If we don’t, we’re likely to end up in some bizarrely twisted version of Fahrenheit 451.

dear dad - by shani - skin contact

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:13:05 +0000

There are stories you've told me over the last 20 years I still tell myself at night. How you loved to eat canned peaches when you were sick in elementary school.

Thanks for reading skin contact! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

How you pulled a mattress from the dumpster when you first came to the US as a PhD student.

I tell myself these things because they make sense, I feel myself carrying these pieces of you with me. Your sweet tooth and resilience.

Dad, do you remember that afternoon in late October on the playground next to our apartment?

Back when we lived in a different country — one that touches the edges of my memories, your home when you were in your 30s and you could still carry me with one arm. In the playground you are singing me a song from your youth, and I ask if it's a lullaby, and you say it's a funeral song.

What I remember best from that apartment was how you would pour me a glass of milk in the morning and brag about how my bones will be stronger than yours.

There are so many things I can’t picture about how you grew up – in China, during the cultural revolution. Here is what I know: your parents were rich city kids sent to be farmers on the countryside when they were 16. You grew up hungry, in all senses. At my age, you were like me, always itching for elsewhere. This restlessness is an inheritance. You got an offer to study math across the Pacific and took your family with you.

You spent decades toiling, studying and working everyday, to give me art classes, stacks of novels, time to wander and wonder, a childhood in a neighborhood where we never had to lock the front door. You gave me native fluency in a language you'll never have dreams in.

Growing up, you were often angry and afraid. I had no patience for your fear because I couldn’t understand it. How could I? Your childhood was shaped by a communist regime that took all of your family’s wealth. I couldn't see the sacrifices you made to make sure I would never relate to this part of you. You made sure my world wouldn’t be defined by scarcity and hunger.

You are getting older now. We have lived in a blue house in the suburbs of New England for the last 15 years. I have not heard you yell in almost a decade.

These days, we play a game where you collect all the sad facts in the world and deliver them to me on phone calls. In this game, when I hear your voice, I am already boarding a submarine to the ocean floor knowing that is where I'll find you. You recite your list of tragedies to confirm that there’s enough sadness in the world to drown us both and I can see the glow of fear like phosphorus in your bones.

I play this game because it is the only way I know how to feel close to you. But if I am being very honest I would say: Dad, I wonder if the weight of the past will ever leave you. What would that look like?

I asked you last winter if you’d consider therapy and you looked surprised, told me you are too old, and it’s too late. I nodded and said I understood. But really I didn’t. You are only 54. There’s so much of life left.

Maybe instead of trying to anticipate suffering you can still learn to live, just be here, for this moment, and the next, and the next, trusting the world enough to savor it and be curious and try to make the best decisions you can, without collecting a laundry list of landmines and hauntings and debts. I know joy was never a thing you learned to reach for. You still wait for me at the bottom of the ocean floor. But despite your fears, you were able to make a daughter who seeks buoyant things with the same meticulous consistency you map the world in threats. Maybe we could learn to surface for air together.

It could go something like this:

You call to tell me how our dog tried to catch a duck by the pond this morning. I’ll tell you about the woman with lemons on her dress and tangerine earrings on the bus in San Francisco – how looking at her I couldn’t help but smile. You tell me you can’t wait for me to come home, and I agree.

爸爸, I can’t wait to come home.

Thanks for reading skin contact! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Companies don’t make decisions – Manu

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:11:08 +0000

Companies don’t make decisions

I feel kinda stupid for even saying this, but it’s probably worth saying anyway: companies are not people. Companies don’t make decisions. Companies don’t decide who they want to donate money to. Companies don’t feel shame. Companies don’t learn from their mistakes. Companies don’t have political orientation. Because companies are legal entities, they're a bunch of papers, letters and numbers. That’s what companies are.

When you’re mad at a company, figure out who is actually responsible for the things you’re mad about, and be mad at them. Because people can be held accountable. There’s a reason why, in 1789, it was people’s heads that were rolling on the ground.

Why Is Japan So Populated Despite So Little Land?

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 12:14:07 +0000

This week's premium article: What’s the Value of a Life?

I just enabled translations in a dozen other languages! If you read this article on web or the Substack app, you should see an option to change the language of this article. Use this and tell me what you think!

Japan is so weird:

Not too long ago, it was one of the most populated countries on Earth. Why?
That’s despite being quite small and mountainous. How come?
Why is its capital one of the largest cities on Earth?
How come it’s farther north, south, east, and west than South Korea?
It’s much bigger than people think. How come?
Why are its north and west coasts much less populated than the south and east?
Why is the Russian island of Sakhalin, just north of Japan, so sparsely populated in comparison?
Why does it have such a strong fishing culture?
Why is most of its population of the same ethnic background, except for the people from the northern island of Hokkaido?

All of these questions have one single root cause, and it can be represented by sushi.

For more posts on the GeoHistory of the world, subscribe here

Japan’s Population

Japan is still the 12th most populated country in the world.

Of the top 50, it’s the 5^th most densely populated.

Why is it so densely populated?

It can only be due to food supply: Historically, the more food you could make, the more children would survive, and the more the population would grow, up to its maximum capacity. That’s a Malthusian world.

And since most food comes from farming, only countries with lots of farming could produce big populations. So if Japan is so populous, maybe it has lots of fertile land?

Or maybe Japan’s food comes from elsewhere? Maybe they import it? Or maybe it comes from the sea?

If it’s due to farming, why such a high yield? Is its land extremely fertile, like in Egypt or Java? If so, why? Or have the Japanese made the most of their fields—are they better farmers than those in other countries?

Or is it the politics? Did the Japanese organize in a way that maximized food production?

Or is it a matter of timing—the Japanese entered the Industrial Revolution early, so they were able to produce more food earlier on, therefore growing its population earlier than others?

Or maybe Japan is not good at growing people—it’s just good at keeping them alive? Maybe Japan, as an island, avoided most wars that plagued other countries, so it didn’t lose that much population to war?

Which one is it? Maybe volcanoes?

Japan vs Java

If you read Why Is Java so Weird?, you know that this island is packed with people because of its volcanoes.

Is this also the reason for Japan’s huge population? It’s possible: They’re both on the Ring of Fire, the string of volcanoes and earthquakes-prone regions around the Pacific Ocean, which extends partway into the Indian Ocean.

The Ring of Fire runs straight through Japan. Source

To this day, new islands are constantly being formed in Japan!

This is near Iwo Jima. Source: Kazuhiro Ichikawa, via Massimo (@Rainmaker1973)

The Ring of Fire is very obvious on Google Maps: When you see the underwater trenches and mountain ranges on the edge of the tectonic plates, you realize that Japan is simply the part that emerges from the water—just like the Philippines and Taiwan!

This is also why Japan is much bigger than people think: It has many islands on these subsea mountain ranges:

Relief map of the seabed near Japan and the Japanese islands from Wikipedia. I circled the islands on subsea mountain ranges in white and pink. The four red dots (from the original map) are the points that are farthest east, west, north, and south in Japan; three of them are remote islands.

This is why Japan claims these territorial waters:

Japan’s Maritime Boundaries according to the Cabinet Office of Policy Planning and Coordination on Territory and Sovereignty. Source. Notice that it also controls all these islands, except for the Iturup Islands, to the northeast, which have been controlled by Russia since 1945, although the Russian claim to them is flimsy.

Japan’s exclusive economic zone is the 8^th biggest in the world thanks to all these islands.

All these islands are the reason why the US famously took the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa during WW2: The US needed pit stops between Hawaii and Japan, and these islands were remote enough from the main islands that they were relatively easy to overcome, but they were also close enough to give access to Japan’s four big islands, and the conquest severed the connection between Japan and its colonies in the Pacific.

Japan eventually got them back, and that's why its maritime boundaries are farther north, south, east, and west vs South Korea.

The tectonic plates also explain why Japan is so mountainous:

Only 12% of Japan’s land is arable! So is this rare land extremely fertile because its volcanic ash fertilizes the soils, just like on Java?

Big surprise! Japan today is actually not as densely populated as South Korea or Taiwan, if we consider total cultivated land! And South Korea is not a volcanic peninsula! So, in the case of Japan, its large population isn’t attributable to volcanoes. So what is it, then? Well, let’s see where the Japanese people actually live.

Japan’s Food Geography

Half of Japan’s population lives here. Why?

Source: Japan Daily

Here’s a full population density map:

You can see the line running from Fukuoka to Tokyo. Source.

Here’s a clue:

Japan’s four main islands

Do you see it already?

Source

These valleys surrounded by mountains make up the 12% of arable land. It’s obvious from maps like this one, showing how every nook and cranny is full of human habitats.

If you look at the images closely, you’ll see that every piece of flatland is grey—showing it’s urbanized. Meanwhile, every little mountain is green. In Japan, every little nook of flatland is like this, urbanized.

But also, you can see in the previous map that the big urban areas are in the southern valleys. There are other big valleys to the north, but those don’t harbor such big populations. Why?

Source

Notice the black line. Historically, below it, farmers would plant rice in May / June and harvest it September / October, when they would drain the rice paddies and plant wheat or barley, to harvest just before planting the rice again.

Did this really have such an enormous impact on Japan’s population? If so, we should see two things. First, the amount land that rice needs to generate some amount of calories should be very small. It is:

Rice is amount the most efficient uses of farmland ever to generate calories.

Second, we should see the Japanese population grow when rice gets introduced, and then again when double cropping starts, and these must happen in Japan before they happen elsewhere. Do we see that?

This is the population of different East and Southeast Asian countries over the last 2,000 years:

Excluding China because it collapses the axes

Japan’s population was bigger than its neighbors’ for nearly 1,500 years. Let’s zoom in on that, eliminating the hypergrowth of the 20^th century:

Source

Indonesia’s population was probably larger than Japan’s early on, but around the first century, Japan’s population started growing much faster than any neighboring country’s. It slowed down around 700-900 AD, picked up its growth again ~1200 CE, stopped in its tracks in the early 1700s, and exploded again in the 1800s. It only stopped growing recently, with the demographic collapse post-2000. We can see clearly Japan’s three big growth spurts in this graph:

Tomas Pueyo for Uncharted Territories. The grey lines correspond to other countries in the region: Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, etc.

The first growth spurt lasted until 700 AD, and was the result of the introduction of wet rice agriculture in Japan, via China and then Korea.

A rice paddy in front of Mt Fuji, near Tokyo

Japan is naturally quite fertile, because the rain that flows down from so many mountains brings with it not just water, but sediments to fertilize the land.

Archaeologists believe the Jōmon people arrived on the island about 40k years ago, but in the first millennium BC, the Yayoi started immigrating into Japan from Korea, bringing with them first rice paddy technology, and eventually iron tech, which helped increase agricultural productivity. That’s why the average Japanese today is genetically very close to Koreans.

Genetic proximity. Redder = more similar to Japanese. From this site. I used ChatGPT to get the G25 vector, but I also looked at similar maps shared online and it seems right. Note that in this map, the northeastern island of Hokkaido is actually farther genetically from the average Japanese than the average Korean.

Over the centuries, as the population grew, it moved farther north, bringing with it its farming knowledge.

Yayoi movement between the 1st millennium BC and 700 AD

That’s why the population boomed: It expanded along with the share of farmed land, and its productivity.

The Population Slowdown

Alas, the boom did not last forever: The population went from ~6M in 700 AD to ~4M in 1150 AD.

By around 700 AD, the Japanese had converted the best valleys into farmland, and the speed of conversion began to slow down and focus on marginal land—not the most fertile. Growth stalled. The adoption of new farming techniques like the use of iron slowed down, too.

Japan’s East-West vs North-South

This is one reason why Hokkaido, the northern island, reflects the original native population on the genetic map more than the rest of Japan (the Ainu, and also local mixing): Rice cultivation did make it there, but it was later abandoned as it was not as effective. The farmers from the south went as far as their rice agriculture allowed.

Rice productivity today. Source.

Why didn’t rice travel farther north?

Sea currents (white lines) and water temperature (colors).

Notice how a warm current from the Philippines and Taiwan reaches all the way to Japan, warming it up.1 But also, it meets a cold northern current around the north of the Honshu island. These currents are called Kuroshio and Orashio:

North of that point, it was too cold for rice cultivation.

However, the names of these currents tell us something else about Japan’s food: Kuroshio means “black current”, because this water is devoid of nutrients, so it’s more transparent. Meanwhile, Oyashio means “parent current”, because it comes from the north full of nutrients, bringing plenty of fish—the source of the fishing culture in Japan.

And this is why sushi is the most Japanese type of food. It’s where rice meets fish: the rice from the continent, migrating from south to north through the islands, and increasing the population through rice farming in the Japanese plains; the fish from the ocean, with the nutrients moving from north to south, following the winds and currents.

North & south. Notice how the rice is packed, just like the Japanese on their island.

Indeed, winds follow the same pattern as currents: Winds from Siberia travel over the Sea of Japan, catch a lot of moisture from this sea, and the drop it as they reach the tall Japanese mountains. This is why Japan’s peaks can get serious snowfall.

This is why Japan is probably the snowiest country in the world. Source.

Why was rice pushed so far north? Because that was Japan’s staple, and that meant taxes were frequently collected in rice, which meant rulers had a strong incentive to push for rice production at the expense of other crops. Alas, the north simply couldn’t produce it.

It’s not a coincidence, then, that the southern half of Japan is more populated: Because it runs east-west, most of these islands share a similar climate, and they all could share the same crops and similar lifestyles. But then Japan bends northwards, and the islands start changing climates much faster. We can see it in the climate map of Japan:

Or, geometrically, through this map:

If you divide Japan in five bands of equal width, you notice nearly all the population is within only one band (the red one here), which makes sense, as it shares one single climate.

This is why agriculture was so crucial for Japan’s population growth—and why it stalled once most of the arable valleys were converted to rice cultivation.

But the increase in population density made for easier spread of diseases. Between 700 and 1200 AD, several waves of infectious diseases, including smallpox and measles, decimated the country, and that stalled its growth too. Why didn’t these diseases hit before? Because Japan, as an island nation, was isolated enough that most diseases didn’t make it there until maritime trade became common.

Back to Growth

Japan’s growth picks up again around 1200 AD, when new agricultural techniques are introduced into the country from the continent. First, the double cropping we mentioned before, but not because it doubled the calories produced (it didn’t: rice produces more calories per km² than wheat or barley), but rather because it added more calories at exactly the time of most need,2 it diversified the food, and it diversified the risk: Maybe the summer harvest was bad, but the winter one was good.

There’s another reason why growth was so vertiginous: unity.

Japanese Unity

Japan united very early.

Mostly the islands of Honshu (main), Kyushu (southwest, closest to Korea), and Shikoku (smallest, in between), whereas Hokkaido (northeast) took longer, as it was so far north. Source: Tomas Pueyo for Uncharted Territories, based on this video from CherepashkaShusha.

By the Nara Period, around 700 AD, the biggest population centers already belonged to one single polity. By 1100 AD, the three southern islands of Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku were united. This meant Japan has had considerably fewer wars than most other countries. Even its long period of warring states (Sengoku Period), which lasted ~150 years between ~1450 and 1600, did not cause a dramatic loss of population.

This unity and relative lack of wars prevented massive deaths from conflict and from disease, and allowed the Japanese to invest in their irrigation infrastructure, which increased the fertility of existing fields, and also increased the surface of farming fields by reclamation of river floodplains.

Why so much unity? Geography, of course.

Geographic Seclusion

Japan is separated from the Asian continent by two seas that hinder access. The easiest path is through Korea, but the Korean Strait is quite wide (~200 km, or ~120 mi), 5x wider than the distance between France and England. And the Kuroshio current makes it very hard to cross. That said, the island of Tsushima is just in the middle, serving as a stepping stone. The Mongols tried to invade Japan twice, and both times they reached Tsushima. They were vanquished by tsunamis both times—although the second time they did reach the main Japanese shores and were beaten back by the Japanese.3

The key is why only twice? Because the Korean Peninsula was a perfect buffer: Since China is a massive fertile valley surrounded by peoples from other parts of Asia, it could never fully focus on the Korean Peninsula, and as a result, Korea remained pretty independent. The Koreans fought all the wars against China on behalf of the Japanese.

And why is there a sea between China and Korea on one side, and Japan on the other? Because it’s a back-arc basin:

As the Pacific Plate dives below the Asian Plate, it creates a mountain ridge with volcanoes, which is Japan. But it also pulls Japan towards the Pacific. Imagine you’re pulling a tablecloth downward: the cloth on the table will move towards the edge. That’s what’s happening with Japan, and as a result a hole forms between Japan and Asia and fills with seawater.

This also explains why Japan’s fertile valleys are where they are:

See how much shallow sea there is around Japan? That’s ancient crust from Asia. Over millions of years, sediments coming from the mountains accumulated there, creating the alluvial valleys that are so fertile today. Compare that map with this one of population density:

Notice how all the dark areas are near the shallowest seabed

Takeaways

So here’s how so many aspects of Japan are explained by one factor: its geology.

It makes it a very mountainous country: It’s the emerged side of the mountain ridge formed by the collision between the Pacific and Asian tectonic plates.
It’s also why Japan’s maritime territory is so huge: It owns plenty of islands at the tip of these ridges.
The collision between these plates is why Japan is close to Asia’s mainland, but not on it: It split Japan from Asia due to the formation of a back-arc basin, which is today the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea.
This is why the sea around the Japanese main islands is pretty flat: It’s old continental shelf. As sediment accumulated from the mountains, it filled the sea, creating very fertile alluvial valleys.
These are the valleys that produce most of the food, which is why Japan’s population is so concentrated in these valleys.
The seas also isolated Japan enough that it didn’t suffer too many invasions and could remain united for a very long time, thus avoiding war deaths and facilitating investment in irrigation infrastructure, both of which increased its population.
But also, Japan remained close enough to the continent to access crucial innovations, including rice cultivation, double cropping, and iron tools.
The rice could be cultivated because the country is warm enough—despite being reasonably far north—thanks to the winds and sea currents that come from the warmer Philippines. The geographical limit where warm and cold currents collide is also the limit of historic rice cultivation.
That’s why the vast majority of Japan’s population is concentrated in the southern parts of the country, why the north took much longer to be conquered, why today Hokkaido retains much more Jomon/Ainu ancestry than the rest of Japan, and why the Russian island of Sakhalin is so sparsely populated in comparison: The islands lie east-west in the south, and rice cultivation and the rest of Japanese lifestyle could be shared throughout these regions. Japan’s Honshu island then bends northwards together with the Pacific-Asian plate border, and the climate gets cold really fast. Hokkaido was too remote and cold for consistent rice harvests or double cropping. Sakhalin is even worse.
This is also why Japan’s historical population booms followed the introduction of agricultural techniques: First, with rice agriculture and iron tools, then stopping when most of the available land was exhausted. Later, the introduction of further innovations such as double cropping and agricultural irrigation to reclaim floodplains increased both the amount of farmland and its productivity.
Rice was also one way the country remained united, as it could use rice as currency for taxation.
The downside of absorbing these technologies from the mainland was the consequent waves of disease, which were the other main obstacle to population growth. As Japan became more densely populated, infections circulated faster.
The sea currents are why Japan has such a fishing culture: The north and south sea currents meet in northern Honshu, bringing plenty of nutrients to the warm waters and cultivating life.4
Volcanoes might have had a small contribution to the fertility of the land, but they’re probably not a key factor.

In summary, Japan became so populous despite its small land because it could produce a lot of food from a small amount of usable land, while losing relatively few people and productive assets to war.

And sushi is the best way to represent all this, as rice came from the south, fish comes from the northern currents, and they bring the two elements that make up Japan: its sea and its land.

In a similar way to how the Eastern US and Northern Europe are warmed by the Gulf Stream from the Caribbean.

Rice used to be harvested in September / October, so the summer was when food storage was running lowest. But wheat and barley would be harvested just before the summer.

In 1281, Kublai Khan sent what is often described as the largest invasion fleet in history before D-Day: roughly 4,000 ships carrying, according to traditional accounts, as many as 140,000 men.

This is also linked to geology, a bit indirectly: The currents are formed by the Earth’s rotation, and by the shape of the Asian continent on the Pacific Coast: Water circulates from east to west along the equator due to the rotation of the Earth, and then must move back, which it does in gyres—circles in the northern and southern Pacific. Because of the shape of the tectonic plates in the area, the movement of the water from the equator follows the Asian coast and reaches Japan, bringing hot water. But the current that forms here starts moving towards America, carrying with it waters from the north. So here it’s basically the confluence of the northern and southern currents moving towards America.

why I can't stop thinking about Papua New Guinea and what I think everyone should know about it

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 12:18:58 +0000

When you talk about Papua New Guinea, people may say, oh, is that the place where:

People are 4.8% Denisovan
There are nearly distinct 1000 languages spoken, about 12% of all the languages on earth, and by far the most language diversity in the world
Nobody is sure if its population is 10 million or 17 million
They were having bow and arrow battles as late as 1963:

Historic Vids@historyinmemes

Pre-bronze age war between two tribes in West Papua, 1963

12:03 PM · Jan 19, 2024 · 18.5M Views

1.68K Replies · 7.26K Reposts · 66K Likes

People still shoot arrows at each other in urban centres
The capital is the most dangerous city in the world
They practice cannibalism, and Michael Rockefeller was likely eaten there, and maybe Joe Biden’s uncle too - and one group ate their dead relatives’ brains at funerals so consistently that they gave themselves a mad cow type disease called kuru, which killed a large percentage of their population and then, within a few generations, evolved a genetic mutation that protects against it, one of the fastest cases of natural selection ever documented in humans
Jared Diamond thinks the people there are genetically smarter than Europeans

But beyond these interesting tidbits, most people don’t actually have a conceptual understanding of what New Guinea is. Up until a few weeks ago, I had no idea either, until I randomly stumbled upon one of the most mind blowing books I’ve read in my life: First Contact: New Guinea’s Highlanders Encounter the Outside World, which describes the 1930 discovery of a million people living in the highlands of New Guinea—a group the colonial governments and local coastal populations had no idea existed, and who themselves had no knowledge of the outside world.

In 1930, the island of New Guinea was nominally colonized: the western half by the Dutch (now, Indonesia), and the eastern half (what is today Papua New Guinea) by Australia. Everything I say about the highlands applies to both halves. Despite this occupation, there was very little foreign governance or control in New Guinea.

In terms of geography, New Guinea is divided into two regions, the coastal region and the highlands. The coastal region mostly consists of malaria infested rivers, swamps, rainforest and jungle. The highlands, despite being just by the equator, have glaciers and snow, with peaks reaching just below 5,000 metres. At the time, the highlands of New Guinea had never once been explored, because from the outside, after you trek through the malaria infested jungles to get there, they look like massive impenetrable mountains permanently covered in cloud, where nothing could possibly live.

So in 1930, New Guinea was just thought of as the coastal region. It was believed no people lived in the mountains of what is now known as the New Guinea highlands.

This all changed shortly after Australians found gold in New Guinea in 1926 and started mining the surrounding territory. Looking for more gold, an intrepid Australian named Mick Leahy decided to venture as far inland as he could — making progress up the never before penetrated mountains.

To cut the story very short, in 1930 Leahy accidentally stumbled into the eastern edge of the highlands, only to find that the highlands were not empty mountains, but rather lush green valleys with no malaria and with roughly a million people living in them.

The book is not really a story, but a documentation of this exploration and first contact. Leahy brought with him high quality cameras and a movie camera, and documented with thousands of photos and hours of film the first encounter of hundreds of thousands of people. The book is filled with the most incredible photos of all the scenes surrounding this first encounter. Beyond the photos, there are details of Leahy’s next ten years exploring the highlands and accompanied by 1970s interviews with New Guineans who were living in the highlands at the point of first contact and offering their perspective.

This includes descriptions of how the highlanders thought the white men were ghosts of their dead relatives at first - and then, to investigate this, spied on them defecating and smelled the poop, only to realize that they must also be human like them. How the Australians would do demonstrations of “strength” and gather whole communities to watch them shoot pigs, or make New Guineans listen to records, play with child dolls, look at themselves in mirrors, watch airplanes land etc. mostly thinking everything was a holy spirit. How highlanders would take pieces of the Australians’ garbage like a Kellogg’s cereal wrapper, and wear them around their heads as prized jewellery. And to really show the highlanders the power of their world, they would take kids on their airplanes to the coast, make them see the sea and civilization and come back, so they could report to their relatives how powerful the white men were.

The most powerful story described in the book is the one of hyperinflation. The highlanders were obsessed with shells, then an incredibly rare commodity, the jewel that the leaders and most powerful men would wear to demonstrate their power, and the closest thing they had to a currency. But knowing this, the Australians brought shells in by the planeload, to use in exchange first for food and then also for labour. At first this felt like a great deal for the highlanders, who were willing to give up nearly everything for more shells. But the planes kept coming, and the price of everything in shells kept rising, until it went from one shell making someone a leader and “rich”, to almost all people, including children, being draped in hundreds of shells, and the shell eventually being worthless.

There’s also a documentary, First Contact built from Leahy’s original footage and those interviews, so you can watch the scenes I’ve just described.

There is a lot more captured here in the book, but just imagine, 1,000,000 people separated from the rest of civilization for nearly all of human history, suddenly meeting a group of Australians who captured the entire exchange on photo and film.

To clarify how crazy this first encounter story is.

In 1930 (pretty frickin recently), it was thought that there was nothing in the middle of New Guinea except rock. Australian patrol officers had even walked from south to north across the whole island yet somehow entirely missed this. And then all of a sudden, some random Aussie stumbles upon the highlands and discovers a million people living there. There is no comparable first encounter story — and all of this documented in hundreds of photos and video!

To take a step back and understand how we got here: people first arrived in New Guinea around 50,000 years ago. They got there by walking and canoeing from Southeast Asia, island hopping through what is today Indonesia. These are the same people who would go on to walk south and become the Australian Aboriginal people, at the time when New Guinea and Australia were connected by land.

Various people settled on the New Guinea coast but eventually, people found their way to the highlands. Around 10,000 years ago, as agriculture took hold there and the valleys filled with people, the highlanders became functionally cut off from the coast, and stayed that way until 1930.

What fascinates me is the level of insularity of the group. Nearly all people in history existed with some integration with their neighbours and knowledge of the broader world. It’s shocking to learn of a group that lived on their own for 50,000 years, and sealed off from everyone else for the last 10,000, nearly completely divergent from the rest of humanity.

This insularity was possible because New Guinea is one of the very few places on Earth that independently invented agriculture. Around 10,000 years ago, at the same time people in the Middle East were figuring out wheat, New Guineans were draining swamps and learning to cultivate taro and bananas. Bananas and sugarcane were both first domesticated in New Guinea. To understand the impact New Guinea has on your life - the main banana variety we eat partially derives from there, as does nearly all the sugar consumed in the world.

The next thing that’s fascinating about the highlands is that different tribes never centralized and agglomerated into a larger society. It seems like this is due to a few structural reasons. In the highlands, despite the invention of agriculture, crops would go bad quickly - root crops like taro rot within weeks of being pulled out of the ground, unlike grain, which you can pile in a shed for years - so there was no produce to store, trade en masse or tax, or to take on broader projects. There were no animals to work the fields or carry anything. There was no writing to document anything. And while there was a constant supply of food, there was never enough of it, especially protein. So while each of these things seems small, together they meant that the highlands never evolved to the next stage of development and formed larger centralized communities, where cultural innovation and less warfare could have led to greater progress.

This left groups typically of a few hundred people living side by side, in constant warfare. This made travel and trade very difficult, as most highlanders were unable to travel through adjacent neighbouring zones without fear of death. It also meant that every group was focused on the same two things, feeding and defending itself, and not much else. No group ever had the motivation or capabilities to easily expand or explore past the next valley. Note, there was a broader highlands trade for salt and stone axe blades, which did make its way across multiple different adjacent groups.

Highlanders were farming thousands of years before the Egyptians. And four and a half thousand years after the pyramids went up, highlanders were still farming with the same limited technology. Without meaningful integration with the rest of the world, and with the structural factors above stopping them from ever centralizing, they had no way to evolve past this stage of development.

Despite the small communities and constant warfare, there was a surprising degree of homogeneity within the highlands. It seems that this is because things that worked travelled even when people didn’t - a better crop, a better way of building a house, a new ritual, would get copied by the neighbours they fought with and often married into, and then copied again by their neighbours. So nearly all groups eventually internalized a similar set of norms, a similar food culture and similar political institutions, without ever being part of the same political unit.

Most groups were governed by what’s referred to as a big man leader. This was fuelled by what is known as moka, a system of competitive gift giving, where you give someone in your tribe goods like a pile of pigs and shells, and they are then obligated to give you back more later, and you them more again after that. Whoever gives the most, publicly, becomes the big man. The noted problem with the big man leader is that this had to be earned in each leader’s lifetime and was not hereditary, meaning that leadership could not grow, could not think long term and was never secure - so not only was there constant external fighting, there was also constant internal fighting. Notably, in the parts of the coast settled by the Austronesians (a seafaring people who arrived from Southeast Asia about 3,000 years ago), where chiefs were hereditary, you do get different political structures.

And this leads to the most interesting part of this story: how the highlanders were so isolated for so long.

I want to acknowledge that the highlanders were not completely, hermetically sealed off from the outside world - it’s just that knowledge of outside world never actually made it to them or vice versa.

Over time, a few goods did make their way up to the highlands: pigs, about 3,000 years ago; the sweet potato, which is South American and arrived about 300 to 400 years ago; and tobacco, also American, which came the same way.

The journey the sweet potato and tobacco took to get there is a good example of how this all worked without transmitting further information. The Spanish and Portuguese brought both plants to the spice islands (in what is now Indonesia), just off the western tip of New Guinea, in the 1500s. The sultanates had been trading with the western tip of the coastal region of New Guinea for centuries. So the plants crossed over and started moving east along the coast and up into the interior. Beyond that point, there were no merchants. But when a woman married into the next clan over, she took cuttings from her family’s garden with her. Each new family then planted the same, saw that it worked, and passed it on. At that pace the sweet potato crossed the highlands in a century or two, with nobody knowing where it came from beyond the tribe beside them.

And what fascinates me is that even with the highlands as sealed off as they were, such significant goods still got in. Sweet potatoes allowed a population explosion in the highlands: they give far more calories per acre, and pigs can live off them. So in a 10,000 year sealed off universe, after the invention of agriculture, the biggest change to highland life happened in the last 500 years, which I guess isn’t a coincidence, as the sweet potato got there through the same structural forces that later brought the Australians.

Aside from these one time crop exchanges, there was a permanent flow of shells from the coastal region to the highlands, although in limited quantities. Marine shells show up in highland caves from around 10,000 years ago, so this trickle had been running for as long as there had been agriculture up there. While the highlanders did not know where the shells came from (some groups thought they came from the sky), they viewed them as the prize possession in their communities, their main fashion accessory and the basis of their currencies.

The ignorance that came with all this trade ran in both directions. For 200 years, Europeans believed that birds of paradise (birds from the New Guinea coastal region) had no feet, because when the dead bird skins left New Guinea the traders cut the feet off. Their scientific name is still Paradisaea apoda, which means footless. The shells went up the chain and lost their origin. The birds went to Europe and lost their feet.

The reason goods travelled but knowledge didn’t, I think, is that plants and animals had an easier time reproducing from one group to the next, making it easier to spread. Ideas require explanations and communication, and every handoff along that chain was between two groups who didn’t share a language and expected to attack each other.

So my understanding of how this came to be is that highlanders couldn’t really mosey around. If they approached the edge of the mountains, which was only really possible for the few small groups living in that area, and tried to go further beyond the edge of the valleys, they would face no food (their food rotted quickly) and no people, or worse, people who would treat any stranger as an enemy. The country in between isn’t a line where the highlands stop and the coast starts. It’s steep, wet, too rough to farm and low enough to have malaria, thinly populated by people living off sago and hunting who were neither quite highlanders nor coastal people. Getting from the last highland village to the first coastal one meant passing through several of these groups, each a few days’ walk from the next, none of them with any reason to go further than their own neighbours. And even if the highlanders could travel farther, they had never been exposed to malaria and wouldn’t have survived easily (when the Australians later sent highlanders to work on coastal plantations in the 1950s, they died at alarming rates).

The only place on the whole island where the two worlds nearly collide is the Markham valley near Lae, where a 1,000 metre climb over about 30 km takes you straight up onto the edge of the eastern highlands. This is where Leahy walked and first discovered the highlanders.

The reason why I believe that, despite the minimal trade that existed, the highlands were functionally cut off, is that when the Europeans occupied New Guinea, they themselves did not ever speak of or show knowledge of the highlanders. Similarly, when the highlanders first encountered Australians, they had no concept of the coastal people, or where the shells came from, or any further concept of the broader world.

The second source of evidence for this is genetic. The coastal New Guinea people have one genetic set of traits, which has been admixed with the Austronesians, a seafaring people who came from Taiwan via the Philippines to New Guinea about 3,300 years ago (and who went on to become the Polynesians). All along the coast and the islands, there is 10 to 30% Austronesian ancestry, and Austronesian languages. But when sampled, highlanders have no Austronesian admixture at all. Given how common it was for both highlanders and coastal people to offer brides to neighbouring groups for diplomatic and trade reasons, there was a lot of intergroup offspring, yet in 3,000 years, no highlander offspring mixing with the coastal people. Similarly, highlanders have no genetic adaptation to malaria, unlike the coastal people, who carry some of the densest concentrations in the world of the blood mutations that protect against it. This indicates that the highlanders never had the forcing function to develop them, and never interbred with those who did.

Lastly, there are no signs of Austronesian language, or of any of the unrelated coastal language families, making its way into the highlands.

In terms of languages, the diversity is actually almost all with the coastal people. In the highlands, there is great diversity, but everyone speaks a language that is at least from the same language family (called Trans-New Guinea — note: this is not just dialects of each other like Spanish and Portuguese are “different languages”, but with the range and diversity of English to Russian to Hindi - at the time, all without writing or an alphabet). The dozens of language families that are completely unrelated to each other, which is where the real diversity is, are almost all crammed into the north coast of New Guinea. The reason for the complete domination of this one language family, unlike the coastal region of New Guinea, is that when agriculture took off in the highlands 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, the farmers spread along the highland valleys and their language spread with them, wiping out whatever was spoken there before, the same way Indo-European wiped out almost every older language in Europe (except Basque, Finnish/Hungarian). The coastal regions never had one group or language spread like that, so 50,000 years of languages drifting apart just piled up, with the Austronesian languages layered on top 3,000 years ago.

In terms of Papua New Guinea today, it, more than any other state I’ve read about, seems to be a state living its pre-contact life. While there is an obvious level of modernization and nearly everyone is using cell phones, the state, and by extension integration with the broader world, has only minimally impacted Papua New Guinea. The reason for this is that it’s just too difficult to connect people living in such terrain and conditions at their level of wealth.

When you look at a map of Papua New Guinea, you see that the capital city, Port Moresby, doesn’t connect with anywhere. There aren’t any roads that go from Port Moresby to any other major population centre or really, anywhere outside of the city. The country has only one proper medium distance road, the Highlands Highway, which goes from Lae (the one bridge between the coastal region and the highlands - where Mick Leahy had walked all those years before) and into the mountains, but even this is only around 700 km, connects a very limited number of places, and is in such bad condition that landslides and bandits regularly close it and trucks travel in convoys to avoid being robbed. Most of the country moves by propeller planes.

In terms of language, the lingua franca of Papua New Guinea has become a language called Tok Pisin. Tok Pisin is a creole of mostly English with bits of German, formed by Melanesian indentured labourers working on plantations in Queensland, Samoa and German New Guinea in the late 1800s, who all spoke different languages and needed to communicate. Since then it has slowly spread through the coastal regions and eventually the highlands of Papua New Guinea. But even with this, language barriers are still significant.

Which brings me back to the list at the top. Nobody knows Papua New Guinea’s population because counting people requires a government/state that has a presence in each region of the country, and Papua New Guinea lacks this.

Today, the feeling of tribalism permeates the whole country. This is why Port Moresby is so dangerous - rival clans have taken their conflict with them into the urban capital. Papua New Guinea has the concept of wantok, meaning “one talk” — the people who speak your language are the people you “care” about. While Tok Pisin gave everyone in Papua New Guinea a shared language, nothing ever gave it a shared identity. The historic clan is still the main social group and there is no new central identity above it. People are still John Smith of the such and such tribe, not John Smith of Papua New Guinea.

What I find so fascinating about all of this is just how separated this group was from the rest of history, and that there will never be a finding like this ever again. The world has effectively been explored, but as late as 1930 that wasn’t the case. There are people alive today, from a very large society, who were born into a world that had never seen metal. I also wouldn’t have expected the trade to work the way it did. Plants and animals from the outside world found a way in, but technology and ideas didn’t. The sweet potato made it 1,000 km inland but the concept of the ocean didn’t. The timing of the discovery was also quite fortuitous for the highlanders. They were exposed to the outside world at a point where the world had germ theory and vaccines, so while dysentery and flu did spread through to the highlands after first contact, there was nothing like the smallpox and measles that killed most of the native population of the Americas.

So this is why I can’t stop thinking about Papua New Guinea. A people that had a completely divergent path of history - a nation living more of its pre-contact life than any other - and a first contact story entirely captured on film. I highly recommend you read First Contact, by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson, if only just to see the pictures.

Anecdotally, programmers dislike "reduce"

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 01:34:24 +0000

Anecdotally, programmers dislike "reduce"

by Evan Hahn

, posted Sep 13, 2026, tagged #software-development #culture

In short: from my experience, people like map and filter, but not reduce.

I use functions like map and filter all the time. When I put that code up for review, my peers rarely complain. I get plenty of feedback about other decisions, but not about my use of map and filter.

I cannot say the same for reduce. Often, when I’ve submitted a patch with reduce inside, I get a comment like, “this part is hard to read.” And I see reduce way less than map, filter, some, and so on.

Anecdotally, I have come to believe that programmers don’t like reduce as much.

I don’t know why, but I have a few theories:

reduce is harder to read.
reduce is less familiar.
reduce can have worse performance compared to other options.
reduce is less elegant in languages I use, like JavaScript, Python, and Swift. In my blissful stint as a Clojure developer, I did not get this feedback.
I’m wrong, and I’m seeing a trend that’s not real.

I usually just change reduce to something else and move on. Even though I prefer it, I don’t usually care much. But it’s a little social phenomenon I’ve observed, and I thought I’d document it.

I’ve also noticed this less recently, possibly because code review is less thorough nowadays.

Do you notice this? Do you like reduce? Please tell me.

My last six months at Evernote, after Bending Spoons took over

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 17:43:01 +0000

I was an Engineering Manager at Evernote. I managed the team that built and operated Evernote’s notifications system, handling 110M messages in 2022.

After Bending Spoons acquired Evernote, almost everyone ended up getting laid-off. Severance packages come with a non-disparagement clause. I quit on my own terms, so I am one of a few people who can openly talk about what happened during the transition.

That being said, this isn’t a hit piece. What I saw was a business playbook that was equal parts brilliant and ruthless.

Most importantly, Evernote, the first dead unicorn, was a great company and a great story, and its last chapter deserves to be shared.

Very Brief History of Evernote

2004 – Founded in Sunnyvale by a Soviet immigrant, Stepan Pachikov, as “EverNote,” selling Windows desktop/tablet software, including a note-taking app of the same name.
2007 – Phil Libin joins as CEO and pivots to web, mobile and Mac; Evernote 3.0 ships the following year (note the lowercase n).
2009–2014 – Well over $200M raised (DoCoMo, Sequoia, Meritech, Nikkei and others), with aim to go after the business sector. Hits 11 million users in 2011.
2015 – Libin out, Chris O’Neill in; 18% of staff cut, three offices closed.
2018 – CTO, CFO, CPO and HR head all leave; another 15% cut; Ian Small becomes CEO.
Jan 2023 – Acquired by Italy’s Bending Spoons; Francesco Patarnello takes over.

The Announcement

In November 2022, Evernote’s CEO Ian Small called an all-hands and announced that Evernote was being sold to Bending Spoons.

He mentioned that the successor was carefully selected, and they tried to find somebody who would carry the torch and honor Evernote’s legacy.

Then he introduced Bending Spoons’ CEO, Luca Ferrari. Ferrari was charismatic and clearly excited about the magnitude of this event, but was very careful not to promise anything to existing employees.

The Welcome Party

The deal closed in early January 2023. Bending Spoons sent a delegation from Italy and threw us a welcoming party in Redwood City, CA.

I remember many of us were puzzled by this event. Without a commitment to keep some workforce around, the event seemed out of place.

Who Are Bending Spoons Anyway?

The founders – Luca Ferrari, Matteo Danieli, Francesco Patarnello, and Luca Querella – are Italian engineers who met at the Technical University of Denmark while pursuing their master’s degree. Their first startup, Evertale, failed. Ferrari later called it “arrogant to think we knew what the market would want.” (Side Note: Evertale’s name was inspired by Evernote. Luca shared this with us shortly after the acquisition, and it clearly meant something to him).

Instead of building the next idea from scratch, they started buying apps with existing users. Their first acquisition was an iPhone keyboard app for about $10,000. They updated it, made it profitable, then bought the next app.

In 2018 they bought Splice from GoPro. In 2021, Remini. The pattern: buy apps with loyal users, cut costs, raise prices, use profits to scale up. Rinse and repeat.

In September 2022 they raised $340 million from investors including Ryan Reynolds, followed by the Evernote acquisition.

Bending Spoons is based in Italy, but operates in English. They were open with us that this decision was made to hire excellent talent, from all over Europe, at a fraction of Silicon Valley cost.

After Evernote they acquired Meetup, WeTransfer, Vimeo, AOL, Eventbrite, and Airtable. In July 2026, Bending Spoons IPO’d on Nasdaq at an $18.4 billion valuation, with reported revenue of $1.31 billion in 2025.

Behind the Glass Doors

Let’s travel back in time to Jan 2023. The Evernote acquisition had just closed and the Italian delegation set up office in the biggest conference room, with floor-to-ceiling glass walls.

For weeks, the entire office watched them through that glass. They were planning, congregating, joking, but it was clear that our fates were being decided live, in front of our own eyes.

The delegation was friendly to us, but was careful not to mingle or get attached too much.

Soon after, they began embedding their own people on teams. Each department got a Bending Spoons representative, in our case we got a shadow manager, overseeing things and setting direction.

The Loyalty Filter

Before any layoffs or operational changes, they had everyone sign a document. They made a big deal about this, but the document was fairly straightforward. The core message was: you are responsible for your own work-life balance. The company will not make any special accommodations for anybody.

Those who didn’t want to “sign the document” were offered a voluntary exit package – including three months’ salary, COBRA coverage and your laptop. (The publicly reported July 2023 severance was 16 weeks plus bonus and health insurance. The early voluntary terms are based on my memory, and may have been different.)

I was very transparent with my team; the odds of us remaining with the company long term were pretty low and three out of my six developers took the package, and quickly landed at other companies.

The Cost-Cutting Machine

Evernote had roughly $100 million in annual recurring revenue but was still losing money. Bending Spoons went after every dollar, line by line:

Zoom – gone overnight. Switched to Google Meet, already included in our corporate account.
Tech interview platform – canceled. Replaced with their own in-house tool.
Marketing platform – dropped immediately.
Push notification vendor – my team was tasked with building a native replacement, to move away from a third-party vendor.
The office – closed as soon as possible.

Every subscription, every vendor, every tool – scrutinized and cut. They stopped the bleeding and made Evernote profitable in a span of a few months, before ever touching any revenue.

The Price Hike

Soon after, they nearly doubled subscription prices. Personal went from ~$69.99/year to $129.99/year.

Their logic: Evernote users were locked in and engaged. Years of notes, documents, entire workflows stored in the app. Migration is painful. Most people would absorb a price increase rather than switch.

This was the same exact playbook they’d run on mobile apps in the past – Splice at $4.99/week, Remini at $9.99/week (note the week vs month trick, to make the price look better). Evernote stayed on monthly/annual plans, but the principle was the same. Find locked-in users, raise prices.

People Start Disappearing

February 2023: 129 employees laid off across product design, engineering, HR, sales, and customer service. The marketing department was gone entirely.

After three out of my six engineers left, somebody from engineering leadership reached out to me, to see why half of my team had left and to re-assure me that we still had a future at the company. (I doubt they fully believed it, but they had a job to do too.)

To be fair, the company had been through something similar in the past. Evernote cut staff in 2015 and again in 2018, and kept going both times.

I remember when it was announced that the marketing department was being cut, a group of managers who’d been there for many years were casually discussing what to have for lunch that day.

My Exit

Evernote was one of the best places I ever worked. I had been a loyal (and locked-in) user since 2012. I loved the company, believed in the product and wasn’t eager to leave. But I could not ignore the writing on the wall. My time at Evernote was coming to an end.

I started looking in January. The market was pretty cold and I wanted to find the right role. I converted to Engineering Manager at Evernote, so my track record of management at that time was just the one company.

Part of me was also holding out hope that my read was wrong and my co-workers were right; and that I might have a future at Evernote after all, now under new and more focused leadership.

I am not knocking our old leadership. I really enjoyed working for Ian Small – his leadership and compassion are what made Evernote one of the best places I’ve worked at. At the same time, I couldn’t help wondering whether we could have delayed the end.

At the end of the day, that was just a pipe dream. The business could clearly be made profitable – Bending Spoons proved that in a few months. The problem was that Evernote had raised over $200M at a unicorn valuation and investors needed a billion-dollar exit. No amount of expense-cutting turns a $100M ARR note-taking app into a billion-dollar company. At that point, the best thing an investor can get is a tax write-off. They got one.

Anyway, I kept looking and my team kept shrinking. One more developer left, and the team was down to me, our QA-turned-engineer, and our lead from Bending Spoons who was embedded with us but splitting time between multiple teams.

One evening something he said just hit me the wrong way. I can’t remember the exact words and it doesn’t matter. But I remember it felt like a switch flipped; it was time to stop “slowly” looking and go all-in.

Same day, I reached out to two strong contacts I’d been saving as the last resort. A couple months of interviews later, I finally had an offer. Engineering Manager at a bigger company.

When I told the Italian lead I was leaving, his expression changed. He smiled – not in a mean way, he seemed happy for me. He was curious where I was going, was excited to learn it was a promising place, and wished me well. There was no future for me at Evernote, and he already knew it. He was a decent guy, and this must have been pretty tough on him too.

I started my new job in May 2023.

By July 5, 2023, everyone in the US and Chile (where we had a large engineering presence) was laid off. Everything moved to Italy.

A select few were offered the chance to interview for Bending Spoons roles and relocate to Europe. I believe one or two people from the whole US operation made it through.

Evernote is still running today. New features, active development, a team in Milan, and prices roughly double what I paid as a user in 2022. The product survived. The company that built it didn’t.

What I Learned

Was Bending Spoons good or bad for Evernote? Good or bad in general? I don’t know. I do know that they are effective and I learned a lot by watching them operate, even though it was not a lot of fun to find myself and the people I cared about on the other side of this learning opportunity.

The “buy instead of build” model is underrated. Their first startup failed, so they stopped guessing and started buying. Bending Spoons started with a $10K app acquisition and compounded over time into an $18.4 billion company.
Lock-in is the game. Users will pay. Many companies under-price their product and suffer the consequences.
Most companies leak money through optional expenses. Watching Bending Spoons question every dollar and turning Evernote profitable, even before any lay-offs hit, was one of the most educational business experiences of my career.
Read the room. The company survived layoffs before, so people assumed this one would be similar. It wasn’t.
Voluntary packages are information. When a new owner offers you money to leave, they’re telling you about the future.
Keep your network warm before you need it. The connections that got me out were relationships built and kept warm over the years.
Your life is your responsibility. That work-life-balance document was right.

Facts about Bending Spoons come from the sources linked above. Everything else is my firsthand experience.

How to build a f**king printer · Nishant Joshi

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 01:14:18 +0000

I was planning to build an e-ink display when I came across the Xteink X3 online. Somewhere in the fine print, it said the thing was fully programmable.

I was sold.

When it arrived, I liked how flat it was. It felt solid in my hand. I started adding things to the CrossPoint firmware: a different boot animation, dice I could roll by shaking the reader, a LinkedIn QR code for SF networking events.

But getting stuff onto it was tedious. I had to join its hotspot and open a little upload website in my browser.

Yuck.

While looking for a nicer way to send things to it, a thought struck me. If it looks like paper, it should act like paper.

I should be able to print on it.

What makes a printer a printer?

I wanted to open something on my MacBook, press Print, and pick the Xteink. That meant finding out what my computer expected to find at the other end.

I ended up in the Internet Printing Protocol, or IPP. It lets a computer ask a printer what it supports, submit a document, and ask what happened to the job. The messages travel over HTTP. An operation such as Get-Printer-Attributes asks about capabilities; Print-Job sends the work.

I advertised monochrome output, 300 dpi, one copy, and one-sided printing. For document formats, I accepted Apple raster and PWG raster. That meant the Mac had to turn the document into pixels before sending it. penguin would shrink the result to fit its screen.

I declared A5 and Letter paper, media type stationery, and an output bin called face-up.

I called it penguin. It had the right color scheme.

I used Bonjour to announce an _ipp._tcp service under that name. The advertisement included the formats I accepted and the address where print jobs should go.

To get driverless discovery on macOS, I also had to add the _universal subtype. That meant calling ESP-IDF’s mDNS API directly, because the Arduino wrapper didn’t expose it.

Getting the computer to send a page was only part of the job. I still had to receive it on this thing.

Where do I put the page?

A Letter page at 300 dpi is 2,550 × 3,300 pixels. At one byte per grayscale pixel, that’s about 8.4 MB uncompressed.

The X3 has 400 KB of RAM, with 16 KB reserved for cache. I needed to run Wi-Fi, run a printer server, and somehow receive an entire fucking page.

With Wi-Fi running and the printer’s page image allocated, I had 6.8 KB of heap left.

I remembered mmap on Linux. Could I do something like that with the SD card and pretend I had more RAM? The C3’s memory-mapping support was for flash, not files on the SD card.

But wait. Could I make the display my storage?

What if I passed the incoming page through a transformation pipeline and wrote the result straight to the display? Decode the pixels, shrink them to fit, dither them into black and white. As soon as a row was ready, put it in its place on the display and reuse the working space. Keep going until I have a page.

The display already had RAM reserved for its screen image. I could build the page right there as it arrived. Until then, I had been assembling a whole second image just to copy it over.

My decoder already worked row by row. I changed the scaler to hand over finished rows too and wired those into the display’s screen image. At first, I let the page appear in bands, like paper feeding out of a printer. Each intermediate refresh took roughly half a second, so I switched to showing the finished page all at once.

I saved the finished page as a BMP on the SD card using the existing screenshot writer.

That gave the network stack room for its socket buffers.

There was a penguin in Preview

I had a sample manga image from Mushoku Tensei on my MacBook for some reason. I opened it in Preview and went to print it.

There was penguin in the printer list.

Holy shit.

I selected it and printed. The manga page looked really good on the Xteink. From memory, it took about a second to appear. It’s still there.

I spent an evening getting to that first print.

The printer server runs on the reader itself. I can have it join a Wi-Fi network or start its own hotspot, literate-penguin.

My penguin can read now.

The code is in my CrossPoint fork, including the printer implementation.

Saved printouts stay on the SD card, and I can browse them on the reader. My printer has an output tray after all. It’s a folder.

Stop Pretending You Have Time – Before sleep, mostly

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 23:47:58 +0000

Stop Pretending You Have Time

07 Sep, 2026

People waste an extraordinary amount of time behaving as though repentance is something reserved for later. There will be another Sunday, another confession, another year to become serious, another opportunity to apologize, another warning after the one they ignored, and apparently another morning is so certain that today's sins can simply be handed over to the person they'll become tomorrow. Nobody owns tomorrow. If you know something is wrong today, then today is already the opportunity you keep claiming you need.

Some people will do almost anything except repent. They'll explain a sin until there is barely any sin left in the explanation, find somebody who agrees with them, find ten more when one isn't enough, change the vocabulary, blame the circumstances, blame the person who objected, decide guilt itself is unhealthy and eventually become offended that anybody still expects them to change. All that work just to avoid saying "i was wrong." All that intelligence spent constructing a place where the conscience can finally stop bothering them, and there is always somebody willing to help.

You are still alive. You can confess, apologize, forgive, return what you took, admit what you lied about, stop whatever you keep pretending you cannot stop, return to prayer, return to Mass, ask for help, accept correction and begin again. There are so many things that can still be done while a person is alive, yet people speak about repentance as though being given the opportunity is an insult. Mercy requires admitting that you need mercy, even that is too humiliating for some people. There are people whose last opportunity has already passed. Their last confession is behind them, their last chance to tell somebody the truth is gone, the final morning when they could have changed something came and went like an ordinary morning.

i have done the same stupid thing enough times to know how easy it is, i've defended what should have been confessed, resisted people who were trying to correct me, protected sins because losing them felt worse than admitting what they were and wasted time that could have been used much better. There is nothing impressive about needing to be forgiven repeatedly because you were too stubborn to learn sooner. God still allowed me more time, more confession, more correction and more opportunities to become slightly less disgraceful than i was before, and i am grateful for every one of them.

I hope He gives me more opportunities to repent because there is certainly more wrong with me than i currently recognize. There are probably faults i've made comfortable, sins i've explained so successfully that i no longer hear the explanation as an excuse, and ugly things in my character that other people can see more clearly than i can. I hope they are exposed before i die. I hope somebody ruins my peace over them if peace is what allows them to remain. Better humiliation now than a comfortable conscience built on lies

and i want other people disturbed in exactly the same way. I want people who have become comfortable with sin to lose that comfort, people who haven't confessed in years to become unable to ignore confession, people who have stopped praying to become bothered by the silence, people who owe apologies to become ashamed of postponing them, people who have spent years defending something wrong to finally become tired of hearing their own defense. I want the person who keeps saying "this is simply who i am" to ask whether that sentence will mean anything before God.

Nobody needs to be perfect before saying this. If that were required then nobody could say anything, certainly not me. The fact that the person warning you also needs confession doesn't make your sin disappear, two sick people don't become healthy by agreeing not to mention the disease. If anything, somebody who has already discovered how easily a person can waste years defending what should have been surrendered has a reason to shout when she sees somebody else doing exactly the same thing.

Repentance is still possible, mercy is the reason you can turn around now without despairing over how far you've already gone. So confess while confession is available, apologize while the person is still alive to hear it, forgive while you still have time to stop feeding the hatred, abandon the sin while you are still capable of abandoning it, and stop assuming God owes you another convenient opportunity after this one.

There is still time. Use it.

Deo Gratias.

Making software hurts now - open self

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 22:13:11 +0000

American Monorail weave room, Elrod Collection – Greenville Historical Society

Making open source software used to be among the least controversial acts imaginable. The worst that could happen when you freely shared your work with the world was that no one cared. And if just one person did care enough to even say so, it was connection, it was community, it was everything.

Sharing truly was caring; for one's own development, for the receiver's enjoyment, and for the quality of the code.

Now, every act of giving is treated with suspicion. The gift of openness is no longer trustworthy on its own. The receivers of free software want to know how the gift came to be. Is it pure, or was it made with dirty machinery?

In the case of the latter, some especially angry, would-be recipients won't just ignore the giver and forego the gift, they'll attack the giver with the fervor of someone who has themselves been attacked, apparently by the voluntary offer on hand.

The anger is justified, but the target is tragically misguided, and it is fracturing the software developer community at a time when solidarity is the only way our technology will be ours to wield again.

There is no opting out

The tech we make more tech with is chiefly chosen for us, not by us.

Fewer industries are better at manufacturing demand than the devtools industry. When the corporate world wants a new technology adopted they have an army of marketers and good DevRel¹ soldiers they'll send out to make the latest addition to the stack self-evident; the missing piece you didn't know you needed!

And two things can be true at once: The new thing wouldn't have risen to prominence the way it did without major financial backing, but it was also plain good tech with real utility.

Software developers prize their autonomy and are quick to judge peers who don't exercise their agency enough to leave that shitty company or drop that antiquated framework. But devs operate under the laws of economic realities just like the rest of the working class, and many have learned in recent years just how little power we workers actually have to protect ourselves when the jobs market is shrinking.

Suddenly, opting not to do React because "it doesn't suit my sensibilities as a developer" isn't a position you can afford to hold any longer, no more than the weaver artisans could afford to say no to a job at the factory.

So too with AI. Yes there were the early adopters who embraced it eagerly², but far more have reluctantly come along for the ride simply because the industry decided this is how we do things now. Many probably even believe they were willing adopters, but really it's just a story they tell themselves as they cling to a fading sense of agency in their craft.

If you've opted out you're one of the lucky, privileged few that the ruthless march of industry hasn't conscripted yet. But don't conflate your enviable happenstance with a stronger backbone than your peers. I ask that you be more compassionate, for we are all cognizant of our entrapment and are working our way out of it as best we know how.

AI erodes trust

As an "open source social worker"³, I perceive the greatest cost of AI to be the erosion of trust among open software practitioners. It has utterly upended our gift economy, turning well meaning developers against each other in a cold civil war beset with spy games.

No one is safe. Speak about your use of AI in a side project and your community might shun you. Speak ill of AI and your employer might fire you. To practice open software now is to practice great caution at every turn. Every utterance about software needs to be qualified with a position, a declaration of allegiance or inoffensive ambivalence.

The community of practice that I've grown up with, played with, and built with is eating itself from the inside. It hurts. We're all hurting so bad that every few weeks there's a new announcement of a cherished peer leaving tech to save their sanity.

I feel like a weary old man reading the obituaries of people I used to know from the neighborhood, and find myself wondering how long until I join them.

I don't know how much time my waning tech career has got left in it, but I do know I'm done wasting any more of it being judgemental and angry at my fellow makers of public goods. Factory-made or not, I'm grateful for every gift I'm given.

Tiny E-Reader Is the Best Piece of Technology in Years - The Atlantic

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 18:16:37 +0000

No matter how you read it, The Power Broker is a serious undertaking. The paperback weighs as much as a brick; to avoid lugging around all 1,344 pages, people have cut it apart at the spine and chunked it into sections. Others have organized in-person Power Broker marathon readings that run continuously for three full days. I decided to try something else.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve spent 10 hours paging through Robert Caro’s masterpiece on an e-reader the size of a credit card. It’s magnetic, and small enough to attach to the back of my iPhone without adding any real bulk to my pocket. (Yes, this does mean that I have a screen on the back of another screen.) It’s called the Xteink X3, and at a glance, it looks like a cheap gimmick: more electronic junk made by unknown brands and sold on Temu and TikTok Shop—the kind of thing influencers are always hawking. (Can I interest you in a programmable LED hat for $11.60? Or how about $20 AirPod look-alikes made by “Fhumsh”?)

In a sense, it is that. Xteink sounds less like a real brand name than the kind of garbled text you’ll find in AI-slop memes. (Speaking of which, the official website of the China-based company is full of AI-generated photos of people posing with the device.) And indeed, since the X3’s release on Amazon in May, TikTokers and YouTubers have raved about how the device is a steal and you should buy it right now—just click the link in bio.

From our August 2026 issue: The end of reading is here

And so I did. On Amazon, the X3 is $69 and tops the “hot new releases” list for e-readers, beating out a slew of Kindles. In person, the Xteink is many things: plasticky. Flawed. Finicky. Nevertheless, it is the single best piece of technology that I have purchased in years. In the two months before getting this cartoonishly tiny e-reader, I finished only one book. In one month with the X3, I read three books without even really trying—and my iPhone’s average daily screen time dipped by 25 minutes.

The X3 is great because of its size, not in spite of it. (For once, “fun-size” actually lives up to the billing.) Because this is such a runt of a device, you can stick it to your phone and have an e-reader in your pocket at all times. As a result, I’ve found myself reading on my morning commute, in line at a museum, even while waiting through Netflix ads. The display on my Xteink may be roughly half the size of the smallest Kindle, but the text is big enough to easily read. Even after three straight hours of inching through The Power Broker, my eyes weren’t strained.

The device’s size actually helped me develop a different relationship to reading altogether: Because each “page” on the Xteink amounts to just a paragraph or two—and sometimes less—I’m compelled to finish it. And now that I’m onto the next page, I might as well finish that one too. A YouTuber who recently reviewed the Xteink had the same experience—she referred to the uniquely addictive experience of using the device as the “TikTokification of reading.” I know how terrifying that sounds, but consider the outcome: Whenever there’s even a couple of minutes of free time, I now have a healthy alternative to doomscrolling on Instagram. I don’t even have to put my phone down. Flip over the Bad Screen and fire up the Good Screen.

For all of its charm, the Xteink is a pretty basic piece of hardware. For $70, you get what you pay for. Other popular e-readers now come with AI-powered recaps, high-definition displays, and Android operating systems. Meanwhile, the Xteink has no touch screen, color display, or backlight for reading in the dark. (Xteink recently launched the X4 Pro, a slightly larger and more expensive model that has a reading light and a touch screen.) Just reading a book on the device isn’t necessarily seamless: The preloaded software is horrific and can’t even display book covers or properly format some text. Unlike with a Kindle, you can’t port over books from Amazon with one click.

In spite of itself, the Xteink X3, in all of its 3.7 inches of glory, has become a viral hit. Online, people have posted photos of their Xteink on trips to the Austrian mountains or the Aegean Sea; one anesthesiologist says he tucks it into his scrubs. People are mounting the Xteink X3 to their kitchen hood to display recipes and are making all sorts of bespoke accessories, including 3-D-printed reading lights and a case that looks like a gun (I’m serious). Fans have built their own open-source firmware, Crosspoint, that considerably upgrades the device. The version I downloaded displays reading stats and an array of fonts, and it lets me screenshot pages as I read. Late last month, Crosspoint added the ability to access books on Libby, the popular library ebook app.

The best thing about the Xteink is not any one feature. It’s that this tiny e-reader is fun in a way so few gadgets are anymore. Despite all our advances, the consumer-electronics landscape of 2026 is predictable and banal. Our laptops, smartphones, and tablets are thinner and more powerful than ever, but that feels like a weak substitute for innovation. Next week, Apple is poised to launch one of its most hyped products in years: a folding iPhone. But even folding smartphones are old news; Samsung released its version in 2019. After shelling out hundreds or thousands of dollars for a new gadget, you might still have to pay for subscriptions and endure annoying ads. Sometimes, your purchases aren’t even really yours. Amazon recently removed the ability to download ebooks you already own and transfer them to non-Kindle devices.

In other words, we need more gadgets like the Xteink: cheap, simple, and customizable. With few exceptions, these products are now coming out of China. Neck fans from brands such as JisuLife and Civpower have become sensations for helping people endure the summer heat. Anker’s portable projectors and earbuds are both Wirecutter-recommended. Silicon Valley has left a gaping hole in the gadgets markets, and Americans are more than willing to look elsewhere.

从《黑客帝国》看自由意志 – Notes Against Certainty

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 12:00:23 +0000

从《黑客帝国》看自由意志

24 Jun, 2026

红药丸真的意味着自由吗？

在最表层，《黑客帝国》是一个关于觉醒的故事。

Neo 原本生活在 Matrix 之中，以为自己是 Thomas Anderson，一个在现代城市里日复一日生活的普通打工人。直到 Morpheus 给了他一个选择：蓝药丸，回到原来的生活；红药丸，看见真相。

蓝药丸代表幻觉，红药丸代表真实。蓝药丸代表奴役，红药丸代表自由。

Neo 吃下了红药丸。

可是，他真的自由了吗？还是说，他只是从一个系统进入了另一个系统？更进一步说，如果“the One”这个救世主身份本身也是系统周期的一部分，那么 Neo 的反抗，是否也早已被命运包含？

这部电影启发我思考，自由意志和命运真的只是简单的对立关系吗？我的结论是

自由不是脱离命运。自由是命运开始意识到自己。

“不自由”不是被囚禁，而是不知道自己被囚禁

Matrix 最可怕的地方，不是它是假的。

如果一个人生活在梦里，却完全不知道自己在梦里，他甚至不会感到痛苦。他把被构造出来的世界，当成了唯一可能的现实。

Matrix 对人的控制，并不只是物理控制，而是认知控制。人不知道自己的经验是被输入的，欲望是被安排的。人不知道自己的生活是系统维持稳定的结果，甚至不知道自己可以怀疑这一切。

所以 Matrix 里的不自由，是小我把局部界面误认为真实本身。

在这个意义上，红药丸不是“给你自由”，而是让你第一次意识到：你原来并不自由。

知道真相以后，Neo 就自由了吗？

但问题很快便复杂起来。

离开 Matrix 之后的现实世界，并不是天堂。那里寒冷、贫瘠、危险、痛苦。人类依然受到身体、资源、战争、恐惧和历史的限制。

这意味着，并不是逃出一个幻觉世界之后，就进入绝对自由。

Neo 离开 Matrix，只是脱离了一层控制。但他仍然处在更大的因果结构之中。他依然有身体限制，有被期待成为the one的使命压力。他依然有着Zion、人类战争和机器秩序的历史背景，还受到oracle、trinity等人的语言和信念影响。

所以，如果每一个选择都发生在既定条件之中，那么自由在哪里？

预言不是描述命运，而是参与制造命运

Oracle 是理解《黑客帝国》自由意志问题的关键人物。

她说的话看起来像预言，但其实更像一种干预。她不是站在命运之外，冷静报告未来；她的话本身会改变听者的心理状态，从而影响未来的发生。

比如她告诉 Neo：“你不是 The One。”

这句话表面上否定了 Neo 的救世主身份。可它实际产生的效果，可能恰恰是让 Neo 放下证明自己是救世主的执念，从而在关键时刻作出真正的选择。

这就好比算命。

我以为我根据算命结果改变了命运；但我得到算命结果、相信它、抗拒它、试图改变它，这一整套反应本身，可能也是命运的一环。

一旦被说出来的，就不再是中立信息。它进入人的意识，改变我们的恐惧、欲望、判断和行动。于是预言不是外在于命运的旁白，而是参与塑造未来，成为命运运行的一部分。

反抗命运？

这就引出一个更深的悖论：

如果我试图逃离命运，那么“逃离命运”这件事是否也属于命运？

我想答案是肯定的。正是逃避的行动，把人推向了预言的实现。换句话说，命运的结构就像一个递归系统。

所以自由意志和命运不一定是两个互相排斥的东西。

所谓命运不是“无论怎么选，结果都一样”。而是“我必须真实地选择，然后那个选择才成为命运”。

换句话说，命运不是取消自由意志，而是通过自由意志完成自我实现。

The One 是系统外部的例外，还是系统内部的机制？

我觉得《黑客帝国》里最震撼的一点，是the One这个救世主身份本身，也可能是 Matrix 系统周期性更新的一部分。

这意味着，Neo 以为自己是系统的破坏者。但从 architect 的角度看，the One 可能本来就是系统设计中的异常处理机制。

系统允许（或者无法避免）异常出现，然后通过救世主叙事吸收异常、重启秩序。

这非常像现代社会中的许多周期性结构。系统通过吸收反抗而更新自身。

所以，真正的自由也许不只是反抗系统，而是看见“我在反抗”这件事也可能是系统的一部分。

所以，自由意志到底在哪里？

如果自由不是脱离因果，不是脱离系统，不是脱离命运，那自由还剩下什么？

我认为，自由意志是一个人开始看见塑造自己的力量，并在看见之后，仍然能够参与塑造自己。

一个没有觉知的人，被欲望和恐惧推着走，却以为那就是自己的选择。

一个更自由的人，仍然在因果链之中，但他能看见自己被什么推动。他不能到达命运之外，却能在命运内部产生反思。

Neo 的自由：看见代码

Neo 最后成为 the one 的标志，不是他变得更强或是能打败更多 agent。真正的转变是他开始看见代码。

普通人看到的是墙、子弹、身体、死亡。 Neo 看到的是结构、规则、流动、生成。

他不再把子弹理解为不可抗拒的物理实体，而看见它只是规则的一种显化。他不再只是被命运推动的人，而是命运内部开始自我观察的那个点。正是这个看见本身，改变了neo与matrix之间的关系。

仍然身处 matrix 之中，却不再以 matrix 规定的方式理解 matrix。这就是一种自由。

回到我们自己：每个人都有自己的 matrix

矩阵不只是电影里的机器系统。

现实生活中，我们也生活在各种 matrix 之中：社会评价、家庭期待、性别角色、阶级路径，甚至包括消费主义、社媒的算法，以及对于“我是谁””的执念。

这些系统并不是完全虚假的。它们构成了我们生活的必要界面。

可问题在于，我们是否把界面误认为真实本身？

很多时候，我们以为自己在自由选择，其实只是在执行某种被植入的欲望。我们以为自己在追求成功，其实只是在服从某种评价体系。我们以为自己在反抗、追求正义，其实连反抗的方式都是被系统教会的。

真正的自由意志，是思考：我身上正在运行着哪些矩阵？我的欲望有多少是我真正看见之后仍然愿意选择的？我的恐惧来自哪里？我的反抗是否只是另一种被编码的姿态？以及，我能否在看见这些之后，重新参与自己的命运？

这也许就是 Neo 最终的意义。

#notes

Imperial Colors Manifesto

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 17:13:49 +0000

Imperial Colors Manifesto

"I came to do colors, not math." —Japanese Jesus

For decades we, the people, have been terrorized by machines. Our once peaceful lives became a struggle to adapt to a hellish landscape created by the tools that have a long time ago been promised to serve us.

We grew up in a world governed by computers, forced to learn their language, forced to follow their laws, and lastly - forced to use their Metric Units of Color. Raised as if we were machines ourselves, we were made to believe that this is the natural way of describing the world.

"Buy a dozen #00ff00 apples."
"Look at that lambo! I didn't even know they make it in #ffd700!"
"Do you want to watch the #ff0000 Dawn tonight?"

No more. Let us reclaim what has been taken from us. Stand tall and proud, and let them know: "I AM NOT A MACHINE!"

I am human, and I will never again write HTML code using the speak of computers.

I am not helpless, for God has armed me with 140 Imperial Colors to wage war on machines and their Metric System.

background: #ffffd7
background: CornSilk

Black

Navy

DarkBlue

MediumBlue

Blue

DarkGreen

Green

Teal

DarkCyan

DeepSkyBlue

DarkTurquoise

MediumSpringGreen

Lime

SpringGreen

Aqua

Cyan

MidnightBlue

DodgerBlue

LightSeaGreen

ForestGreen

SeaGreen

DarkSlateGray

DarkSlateGrey

LimeGreen

MediumSeaGreen

Turquoise

RoyalBlue

SteelBlue

DarkSlateBlue

MediumTurquoise

Indigo

DarkOliveGreen

CadetBlue

CornflowerBlue

RebeccaPurple

MediumAquaMarine

DimGray

DimGrey

SlateBlue

OliveDrab

SlateGray

SlateGrey

LightSlateGray

LightSlateGrey

MediumSlateBlue

LawnGreen

Chartreuse

Aquamarine

Maroon

Purple

Olive

Gray

Grey

SkyBlue

LightSkyBlue

BlueViolet

DarkRed

DarkMagenta

SaddleBrown

DarkSeaGreen

LightGreen

MediumPurple

DarkViolet

PaleGreen

DarkOrchid

YellowGreen

Sienna

Brown

DarkGray

DarkGrey

LightBlue

GreenYellow

PaleTurquoise

LightSteelBlue

PowderBlue

FireBrick

DarkGoldenRod

MediumOrchid

RosyBrown

DarkKhaki

Silver

MediumVioletRed

IndianRed

Peru

Chocolate

Tan

LightGray

LightGrey

Thistle

Orchid

GoldenRod

PaleVioletRed

Crimson

Gainsboro

Plum

BurlyWood

LightCyan

Lavender

DarkSalmon

Violet

PaleGoldenRod

LightCoral

Khaki

AliceBlue

HoneyDew

Azure

SandyBrown

Wheat

Beige

WhiteSmoke

MintCream

GhostWhite

Salmon

AntiqueWhite

Linen

LightGoldenRodYellow

OldLace

Red

Fuchsia

Magenta

DeepPink

OrangeRed

Tomato

HotPink

Coral

DarkOrange

LightSalmon

Orange

LightPink

Pink

Gold

PeachPuff

NavajoWhite

Moccasin

Bisque

MistyRose

BlanchedAlmond

PapayaWhip

LavenderBlush

SeaShell

Cornsilk

LemonChiffon

FloralWhite

Snow

Yellow

LightYellow

Ivory

White

KILL
COM
PUT
ERS

What the Floods Say About Xi Jinping - The Atlantic

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 13:05:51 +0000

When the Yangtze River flooded in 1998 and inundated villages in central China, Jiang Zemin, the Communist Party’s general secretary, was on the scene, bullhorn in hand, to encourage local relief efforts. Ten years later, his successor, Hu Jintao, stood among the rubble after an earthquake rocked Sichuan province, in the country’s southwest. Last week, after floodwaters caused by a collapsing glacier tore through the Himalayas between Nepal and China, leaving more than 1,100 people dead and thousands more missing, the party’s current general secretary, Xi Jinping, stayed largely and safely in Beijing.

In the United States, where politicians have to worry about the needs and feelings of voters, elected representatives are expected to be more visible and engaged in national crises. In 2021, Republican Senator Ted Cruz earned public condemnation when he was caught absconding to Mexico while Texas suffered a deep freeze and power outages. As a Communist dictator, Xi doesn’t have to fret over public-approval ratings. Yet his absence signals a bigger problem for China: Xi has become so powerful that he has lost touch with the country he governs.

Despite being professed Marxists, China’s leaders rarely interact with the working class. But Xi at least used to try to seem like a man of the people. In 2013, about a year into his tenure, Chinese media made a big deal out of his visit to a steamed-bun restaurant in Beijing; the state-owned China Daily praised him for showing his “common touch.”

Today, there’s nothing common about Xi Jinping. He has amassed greater personal power than any other Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, the Communist regime’s founder, who died half a century ago. To justify his outsize role in China’s government, Xi’s tireless propagandists portray him as something grander than a party boss: a philosopher king, whose doctrine of wisdom, called Xi Jinping Thought, is meant to be both studied and obeyed. He is the great global statesman, guiding foreign policy into a new era of peace and prosperity. His various “global initiatives” outline his vision for a reformed world order.

View: The aftermath of Nepal’s flash floods

Mere mortals such as Jiang and Hu had to stomp around muddy disaster zones to prove their worth. But Xi “does not need to go to steam-bun shops to pretend he is with the people any longer, or, for that matter, to be visible when a major disaster has happened,” Steve Tsang, the director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, told me. “He no doubt thinks and therefore acts as if he is above all.”

In Xi’s calculus, the Himalayan communities destroyed by the floods are hardly worthy of his attention. The area in question is part of Tibet, a region that borders Nepal and was once independent. Xi has demonstrated a persistent hostility toward China’s minorities, who, in their stubborn resistance to Chinese civilization, threaten his vision of national unity. A new law that took effect in July aims to transform Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, and other minorities into properly loyal citizens by forcing them to adopt the majority Han Chinese culture. Until the Tibetans fall in line, “there is not really a compelling reason for him to visit them just because a disaster struck,” Tsang argued.

From Xi’s perspective, appearing at the scene of the floods would have involved more risk than reward. A purportedly all-knowing and all-seeing leader can’t make mistakes or even be associated with bad news, so Xi has good reason to avoid potentially tarnishing himself with an uncertain rescue operation. The politically safer option involves managing the crisis from afar while dispatching others to get their hands dirty. Beijing is also carefully controlling the information coming from the disaster zone. International journalists are already barred from Tibet, so any news about the disaster and the relief effort is from Chinese state sources. The state-run news agency Xinhua duly announced on Friday that Xi chaired a meeting of the party’s powerful Politburo to “deliberate and make arrangements on rescue and relief efforts.”

Read: The autocrat’s dilemma

The China-focused research firm Trivium noted that Xi’s response to the floods was in keeping with his usual approach to disasters, which is to visit long after the crisis has passed and the rebuilding has begun. Xi is “keeping himself above operational risk” and is focused on “owning the recovery rather than the chaos,” Trivium’s report said. Xi may at some point decide to show up on the ground, but probably well after the initial chaos has subsided.

The stories and images from the floods have moved hearts, but Xi has bigger things to think about than a mudslide on the far edge of his empire. One of his priorities has been to reshape Chinese culture by merging the party’s beloved Marxism with traditional Confucianism. Although that effort appears to have had little traction with the public, Xi himself seems to have taken these ideas to heart. He may speak like a socialist, but he governs more like an emperor, deserving of national veneration and shielded from scrutiny. But many emperors were remote figures, removed from the real world behind the walls of the Forbidden City, and reliant on courtiers for news from outside. As Xi’s absence from the flooding disaster demonstrates, he, too, has become detached from the daily struggles and sentiments of his citizens—and unresponsive to the nation’s mounting economic and social problems as a result.

How the Chinese people feel about Xi’s response is impossible to know. Assiduous censors deter candor and cleanse social-media platforms of any direct criticism. Perhaps life in an authoritarian political system breeds a practical indifference, given that people have no influence over who rules them anyway. But with a spare few hours on the ground among those who just lost everything, Xi could have at least shown that he cares. His loyal public has surely noticed that even that was too much.

Exit the Cave - by Justin Andersun - Turtle's Pace

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 02:44:17 +0000

There’s something romantic about the Cave. About grinding away at something in private. About training with headphones on in our own little world. About stepping away for six months to emerge “unrecognizable” to all those people we imagine thinking about us.

This masculine urge to “grind” seems to be gaining popularity. It reminds me of an incredible Under Armour ad for Michael Phelps’s iconic return to the 2016 Olympics which ended with the quote: “It’s what you do in the dark that puts you in the light.”

Yet the Cave, despite its darkness of solitude and dampness from sweat and suffer-porn, is comfortable. It lets us tinker with our own delusions. If we spend too much time in the Cave, our pupils dilate, and our assumptions start to look like reality. That somehow this training regimen will unlock athletic prowess, or that our perfectly polished product will be loved by millions of users around the globe. I find Paramore playing in my head.

“See, it’s easy to ignore trouble, when you’re living in a bubble.”

Culture has created a cozy Cave. Smart devices reward private fitness. Recommendation algorithms propagate our preexisting philosophy through personalized programming. AI tells us what we want to hear and bolsters our assumptions instead of challenging them. We grow so comfortable curating our Cave that we forget the vast, interesting, beautiful, and brutal world beyond its walls.

I say all this because I’ve spent years mistaking effort for progress. I learned this lesson nearly twenty years ago on a wrestling mat.

“So, what are you gonna do, when the world don’t orbit around you?”

As the cold winds off Lake Michigan blew snow over Kenowa Hills High School, two dozen young men grappled in a sweaty, windowless room. For four winters, I wrestled. I’d start the season in November, feeling strong and fit. Five months later, after hundreds of hours training in sweatsuits on an empty stomach and a dozen Saturdays spent in gyms across West Michigan, I’d enter April pale, malnourished, and occasionally plagued by a skin disease like impetigo. At one point, I cut seven pounds a week to make the 119-pound weight class. Despite all that, I loved wrestling more than any other sport and miss it dearly.

Not because I was good. In fact, I was terrible. I got pinned more often than I pinned and lost more often than I won. But those few times my arm was raised were sweeter than almost anything. There is something undeniably beautiful in wrestling’s brutality.

There’s no gear to give an advantage—no special cleats, rackets, or pads. There are no conditions to create excuses—no weather, no nets, no sun in the eyes. And there’s nothing to hide behind. Just you and your opponent for six minutes of utter exhaustion. When you win, you win. When you lose, you lose. Because we cannot guarantee that outcome, we obsess over the inputs.

“Don’t go cryin’ to your mama, ‘cause you’re on your own in the real world.”

When we want something, we often want our concept of how to achieve it to be true. Sure, I wanted to pin my opponent on the mat. But I also wanted my approach to yield success. Freshman year, I figured my biggest gap was technique—once I learned the right movements, I would win. Sophomore year, I figured my biggest gap was conditioning. If I pushed myself hard, running stairs faster and doing more pushups than my teammates, I would win.

Yet year after year, when I stepped onto the mat, I didn’t qualify for regional or state tournaments. I didn’t secure the championships I imagined. The mat was the cold, unrelenting reality that all my toiling in the Cave had failed to overcome. Technique mattered. Conditioning mattered. But I had made the comfortable mistake of believing that because I could measure and control them, they must determine the outcome.

Dan Gable, Olympic gold medalist, legendary Iowa coach, and one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, summed up wrestling like this: “The first period is won by the guy with the best technique, the second period is won by the guy with the best conditioning, and the third period is won by the guy with the biggest heart.”

This is not a pithy oversimplification. The desire to win is simple but not obvious. Sure, I thought I wanted to win. But really, I wanted my team to not lose. That might sound noble and unselfish, but it was far from it. Yes, I cared about my team, but my motivations weren’t noble. I didn’t want to miss weight and disappoint them because I would then feel shame. I was avoiding negative feelings, not seeking victory. The mat had exposed a more uncomfortable truth than my lack of talent: I did not want what I thought I wanted.

Ironically, this misplaced desire ended up hurting my team. I showed up, trained hard, and made weight, but when I didn’t subdue my opponent, it cost us points. I had to want victory enough to let reality teach me what it required. Truly pursuing victory would benefit the team far more than grinding away in the Cave. I needed to stop wrestling not to lose and learn to wrestle to win.

I’m not here to self-flagellate. I say all this to remember a truth I’ve let gather dust. There is a kind of cowardice that looks a lot like discipline. A writer needs readers. An entrepreneur needs customers. An athlete needs competition. A lover needs someone free to reject him. Any worthy pursuit needs a mat.

“Ain’t it fun, livin’ in the real world?”

Better to be pinned in public with courage than to train endlessly in private like a coward. Ship that product, share that story, step into the ring, take the risk of love. Even if you end up on your back, you did it in the real world.

Roastidio.us User Picks KjQKkQVg

Music Spending Is Smaller Share Of A Bigger Pie – Economist Writing Every Day

怀念小林子

高中 （91-93）

大学（93-98）

后来

Thoughts on Flash

[转] 美国“红脖”的前世今生 – 彦玮博客

《美国白人贫困：被边缘化的主流与看不见的多数》

Why is the human body so crap except for the liver?

Some other ways the body would appear to be poorly designed

What’s going on here?

OK, so why is the liver so weirdly regenerative?

Complexities

The small intestine

Is this bad?

TLDR

Daniel Gultsch | Breaking Up with Google Play: Why Conversations Is Now Free

Double-entry bookkeeping and paper and tokens | Honza Pokorný

The New Kingmakers | The book about how developers took over the world

The New Kingmakers

Welcome

The Book

Pluralistic: The Claude Delusion (21 Sep 2026)

Today's links

The Claude Delusion (permalink)

Hey look at this (permalink)

Object permanence (permalink)

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

Recent appearances (permalink)

Latest books (permalink)

Upcoming books (permalink)

Colophon (permalink)

How to get Pluralistic:

Like this:

College Is Coming Apart - The Atlantic

AI and the Destruction of the Creative Commons

dear dad - by shani - skin contact

Companies don’t make decisions – Manu

Companies don’t make decisions

Why Is Japan So Populated Despite So Little Land?

Japan’s Population

Japan vs Java

Japan’s Food Geography

The Population Slowdown

Japan’s East-West vs North-South

Back to Growth

Japanese Unity

Geographic Seclusion

Takeaways

why I can't stop thinking about Papua New Guinea and what I think everyone should know about it

Anecdotally, programmers dislike "reduce"

My last six months at Evernote, after Bending Spoons took over

Very Brief History of Evernote

The Announcement

The Welcome Party

Who Are Bending Spoons Anyway?

Behind the Glass Doors

The Loyalty Filter

The Cost-Cutting Machine

The Price Hike

People Start Disappearing

My Exit

What I Learned

How to build a f**king printer · Nishant Joshi

What makes a printer a printer?

Where do I put the page?

There was a penguin in Preview

Stop Pretending You Have Time – Before sleep, mostly

Stop Pretending You Have Time

Making software hurts now - open self

There is no opting out

AI erodes trust

Tiny E-Reader Is the Best Piece of Technology in Years - The Atlantic

从《黑客帝国》看自由意志 – Notes Against Certainty

从《黑客帝国》看自由意志

红药丸真的意味着自由吗？

“不自由”不是被囚禁，而是不知道自己被囚禁

知道真相以后，Neo 就自由了吗？

预言不是描述命运，而是参与制造命运

高中（91-93）