flâneur

2025 letter | Dan Wang

danwang.co · 14,196 words · saved by 62 readers

Corgis, compute, Cold War; Ecclesiastes; ties; Stendhal; humor; Pascal's Wager; deep infrastructure; Germanic obedience; Texas State Fair

(This piece is my year in review; I skipped a letter last year ) One way that Silicon Valley and the Communist Party resemble each other is that both are serious, self-serious, and indeed, completely humorless. If the Bay Area once had an impish side, it has gone the way of most hardware tinkerers and hippie communes. Which of the tech titans are funny? In public, they tend to speak in one of two registers. The first is the blandly corporate tone we’ve come to expect when we see them dragged before Congressional hearings or fireside chats. The second leans philosophical, as they compose their

saved by

related reading