flâneur

Megan Luong

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on the atlas — 38

highlights — 389

  • By the LTV here I mean the theory that the exchange value of a commodity — any good or service — is determined by the amount of average labour time that goes into making it and making any inputs into its production (for example, extracting the raw materials that it is made from, or building the tools and machinery used in making it). Call this its “labour content”.
    Medium
  • While women do like high status men they strongly prefer prestige (e.g. a man being recognized by his peers as a great artist) vs. dominance (a guy who gets in and wins bar fights).
    Progressives Don't Understand Masculinity - LastBlueDog
  • And yes, they do want men who don’t suppress their emotions, but that doesn’t mean they want weepy boys. They actually want conscientious men who can regulate their own emotions. You’ll notice neither of those traits, which are especially desirable in long term partners, are in conflict with the masculinity checklist I gave earlier.
    Progressives Don't Understand Masculinity - LastBlueDog
  • There is nothing more important to a young man than the respect of his peers and mentors. That respect is not only emotionally gratifying, it’s also connected to very concrete opportunities like being on the starting five, getting a recommendation that helps you get into Yale, or getting invited to a the party where you meet your future spouse. And how do men get respect? As detailed, they display excellence in the masculine virtues. They demonstrate skill, physical and emotional strength and courage, drive and ambition, the willingness to suffer in dogged pursuit of a goal, trustworthiness, l…
    Progressives Don't Understand Masculinity - LastBlueDog
  • Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha or The Natural Power of Kings from 1680. Filmer says that human society is not a collection of equal individuals bound by a social contract, but a divinely ordained, rigid hierarchy where some are born to rule and others are born to serve
    Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives & It's Why They Can't Fight Back
  • Liberals and their ideology are descended from the Declaration of Independence which lays out an egalitarian universalist vision for the country while also aiming to kill preexisting hierarchies. Its core rests on three revolutionary principles: human equality, unalienable rights, and the consent of the governed.
    Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives & It's Why They Can't Fight Back
  • Frank Wilhoit wrote that the backbone of conservatism is that “there must be in-groups the law protects but does not bind, and out-groups the law binds but does not protect”. Why must there be in-groups and out-groups in the conservative view though? Conservatism at its core is about believing in a strict hierarchical society.
    Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives & It's Why They Can't Fight Back
  • Not because they lack money, but because they lack sovereignty. They invent castes to excuse their failures, retreat into victimhood, and call it virtue. They rob themselves—and everyone around them—of dignity by refusing responsibility. They are side characters in their own stories. The poor I grew up around were not chained by oppression, but by habits, addictions, and the refusal to sacrifice. To live that way is to be tossed overboard at the smallest ripple in life’s winding river.
    Why I hate the poor - Follynomics
  • Extreme Ownership, as the navy seal Jocko Willink put it. I began cooking, cleaning, exercising, working more, taking school seriously, and reading. Above all, taking responsibility.
    Why I hate the poor - Follynomics
  • How could my “oppressive” grandparents pay tens of thousands of dollars for my sister’s Rotary Club trip through Europe, while my mother spent the money they sent us for summer soccer clubs on cigarettes and a new car? How could the supposedly “unkind” be the ones sacrificing and saving to pass something down, while the “good-hearted” burned through every dime the moment it arrived, and never had anything to show for it?
    Why I hate the poor - Follynomics
  • Two controversial implications follow from this philosophy of history. The first one is forward-looking. If we can discover this logic of history, we can basically predict the future of humanity.
    Progress (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  • In Hegel’s own words, “History is the process whereby the Spirit discovers itself and its own concept”
    Progress (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  • Hegel offers the most developed—and the most criticized—teleological account of historical progress
    Progress (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  • Despotic government is bad for genius, while republics nurture it. Condorcet also remarks that free institutions are the native environment of scientific discovery (1795, 129). In turn, the growth of scientific knowledge will advance political freedom
    Progress (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  • Variation in scientific achievement is to be explained not by the concentration of genius but by the institutions that either suppress or encourage it (Turgot 1751, 88).
    Progress (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  • Today, the label “the Enlightenment conception of progress” is often used to refer to the view of historical progress that is teleological, linear, global, and rationalistic. This view is commonly attributed to Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, and Karl Marx.
    Progress (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  • Much of the new literature on progress is dedicated to rescuing an idea of progress from the contingent view of human development and carve out a meaningful, albeit limited, role for reason, human agency, and institutional design to enable progress.
    Progress (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  • If these patterns are not just random shifts in states of affairs but instead are seen as constituting either genuine moral improvements that need to be secured and expanded or examples of moral decline that should be scrutinized and halted, then in order to describe and evaluate these trends, it would seem that we need a concept of progress after all.
    Progress (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  • Much like its rise and fall, the ongoing resurgence of the discourse of progress is prompted largely by the political currents of its time. The 21st century is widely felt to be another epoch of social change.
    Progress (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  • The climate of optimism that shaped much of the Enlightenment thought was replaced by a climate of despair. The belief that progress is possible, let alone inevitable, came to seem naïve and false in the face of world wars, colonial conquests, and environmental degradation
    Progress (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  • The political landscape above the city-level will certainly influence specifically what that can/will look like in the years to come. But the ability and work to create places that make the lives of our neighbors better never stops.
    Don't Quit on America's Cities - by Michael Natelli
  • Cities are very different than nations. Nations all come and go. Government structures and types cycle through the ages. But cities stand the test of time: Modern Italy is less than 200 years old, but Rome has existed for almost 3,000 years. The modern Greek state was established in 1974, but Athens has existed for 5,000 years. Modern Syria is only about 80 years old, but Damascus has existed for at least 9,000 years.
    Don't Quit on America's Cities - by Michael Natelli
  • One of many problems for [the] American Right: Quality of life, on the whole, is still far better in coastal blue metros than anywhere else. Are these expensive? Yes. But they’re expensive for a reason. Traditional conservative policies for the most part don’t actually make life better for most people. Life in Texas is cheaper than California but it’s basically worse by every other metric, etc. American hinterland completely burned out and borderline unlivable pretty much everywhere with the exception of maybe a few tourist towns. If you’re single, you’re better off in a major blue metro; if y…
    The Coastal Elites Are Right, Actually - by A.M. Hickman
  • June Huh trained as a poet. Maryam Mirzakhani (who tragically died far too young) was a painter. Keith Devlin trained as a musician. The most important people in the field of mathematics consider themselves to be an artist first, and a problem solver later. This is a radical departure from the “I’m left/ right brained” nonsense we tell ourselves.
    How To Become a Mathematical Genius - by Sinéad O’Sullivan
  • I’ve ever read of another human being is that of famed Fields Medal mathematician June Huh, interviewed by my favorite math magazine Quanta, here. Please, please, please, read it. Here are some parts of the interview that made me radically re-think the entire idea of structural cognitive limits: He tried his best to avoid math whenever possible. His father once tried to teach him out of a workbook, but rather than try to solve the problems, Huh would copy the solutions from the back. and The work showed that “you don’t need space to do geometry,” Huh said. “That made me really fundamentally re…
    How To Become a Mathematical Genius - by Sinéad O’Sullivan
  • it seemed very unfair to me that all around me were people who had some sort of intuition that I lacked when it came to understanding such things. I couldn’t tell if they were actually more stupid than me because they were not questioning the existential nature of why things seemed to just go this way, or if they were lightyears ahead of me, because they didn’t need to question it; they simply understood it
    How To Become a Mathematical Genius - by Sinéad O’Sullivan
  • unfortunately, this is because we learn math procedures before we learn about its underlying purpose. These procedures, if you get good at doing them, allow you to be rewarded for correctness, speed, and rule-following! I.e., you get to become “good” at something, even if you’re not entirely sure what that something is!
    How To Become a Mathematical Genius - by Sinéad O’Sullivan
  • what you can actually say (even if people find it offensive) is that Person A has tested much more rigorously the limits of their brain’s computational limits than Person B; and while we cannot know for sure who is smarter, isn’t it a general trait of people with high brain capacity to pursue the testing of such limits?
    How To Become a Mathematical Genius - by Sinéad O’Sullivan
  • At that time, it’s safe to say that I believed two things: That there is in fact a hierarchy of what is “cognitively challenging” (I still believe this) That there are cognitive limits to who can pursue the topics within the most challenging domains (I no longer believe this)
    How To Become a Mathematical Genius - by Sinéad O’Sullivan
  • Riley: "Writing must be hard. I heard this quote that said, 'The only time you're happy as a writer is when you're finished.'" Aadil: "So true. I feel like everything I write is bad all the way through until it's finally published. But I guess everything is like that. You probably feel the same way for all your projects too." R: "Hmm. Not really. I'm pretty happy all the way through." A: "Huh? How's that possible?" R: "I'm not sure how it could be anything else. I only work on things I think are fun."
    Training the Idea Muscle | Alexandria
  • Riley's biggest inspiration is this guy who makes $200k/year writing music that you've probably never heard of: Matt Farley. Matt's been making about 50 songs a day for the past 12 years, but most of those songs barely get any streams. He's written a book, produced short films, all of which have been seen by maybe a few hundred people total. But when you add up the impressions of his entire 20,000-song body of work, it starts to make sense why he makes that much money. When asked about how he makes so much stuff, he said: "If you reject your own ideas, then the part of the brain that comes up …
    Training the Idea Muscle | Alexandria
  • “Increasingly, they don’t go to a Catholic Church because their parents want them to, but because they really want to,” said Ryan Burge, a Washington University political scientist who specializes in religion. Though still a small share of the population, Catholic converts tend to be more enthusiastic than those born into the faith. “You convert because you really do believe,” said Mr. Burge.
    Campus Catholicism Is Having a Moment
  • I discovered a community through which love shone,” she said. “Catholics interacted with other people in a way that was beautiful, humane, and personalistic.
    Campus Catholicism Is Having a Moment
  • Some wonder if this moment represents a true religious revival or a countercultural phase. Mr. Burge found in his research that the ages of 18-29 are a crucial period when people either leave or join a church. “If people are coming to church for the first time in their late teens or 20s, that sets them on a life course,” he said.
    Campus Catholicism Is Having a Moment
  • Friends and I call it the “sparkle”. They reliably shine in every context. It’s a joie de vivre mixed in with a dedication to craft, lightly encased in wit. Chances are, they’ll become the best in their field (and have fun doing it). You just want to be around them. They have a good vibe.
    sparkly people and how to find them - by Anson Yu
  • I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
    The 26 Most Important Ideas For 2026 - Derek Thompson
  • any young people, blocked from ownership, are funneling their spare cash toward meme stocks, meme coins, and gambling. In fact, a 2025 paper by researchers at Northwestern and the University of Chicago found that crypto investing is most common among middle- and lower-middle-class renters. On its own, this fact is sort of bizarre: For most asset classes, investments rise with income. But these renters, who are on the verge of homeownership, seem to be “gambling for redemption”—that is, taking bigger risks on speculative bets to get that final windfall that will make homeownership possible
    The 26 Most Important Ideas For 2026 - Derek Thompson
  • It’s best to see the problems with the US housing industry as three stories: a 50-year story, a 20-year story, and a 5-year story. The 50-year story is that anti-growth rules have accumulated in America’s most desired metros, making it harder for supply to meet demand in the places where demand is highest. The 20-year story is that the Great Recession decimated the construction industry, which made the 2010s a uniquely awful decade for nationwide housing additions. The 5-year story is that the pandemic created a berserk housing market that set new weird records every year.
    The 26 Most Important Ideas For 2026 - Derek Thompson
  • Dostoevsky once wrote that you could give a man every earthly blessing— “drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface”—and require of him nothing but to “sleep and eat cakes.” Even then, the Russian said, something in the dark basement of human nature would rise up inside of us to destroy utopia out of sheer ingratitude. “He would even risk his cakes,” Dostoevsky wrote, “and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element.” The…
    The 26 Most Important Ideas For 2026 - Derek Thompson
  • Americans under 25 have reduced the time they spend partying by 69 percent, which is not nice. Humanity will be extremely attractive, with better weight-loss drugs, better face lifts, better plastic surgery ... and fewer friends and parties. The future will be hot, high, and lonely.
    The 26 Most Important Ideas For 2026 - Derek Thompson
  • That’s how these threads all come together: The rise of marijuana is coinciding with a weight-loss drug revolution that will significantly reduce spending on alcohol, which is coinciding with state-by-state changes that are making it easier for people to get access to cheap weed. The age of alcohol is over, and the future looks ominously like hundreds of millions of people getting high alone rather than getting tipsy together.
    The 26 Most Important Ideas For 2026 - Derek Thompson
  • But I think there’s much more to be said about the idea that every non-market value is plummeting in relevance among young people.
    The 26 Most Important Ideas For 2026 - Derek Thompson
  • Americans, and particularly young Americans, don’t really care about patriotism, or marriage, or family, the way they once did. A 2023 Wall Street Journal poll found that a shrinking share of Americans agreed that practically any of these virtues were “very important.” There was one exception: money.
    The 26 Most Important Ideas For 2026 - Derek Thompson
  • There is an idea that comes from the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard that, whereas pre-modern people were lost in finitude—that is, their choices were constrained by tradition or religion or economy—modern anxiety comes from an opposite affliction. We are lost in infinitude, the boundlessness of choices. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom,” Kierkegaard wrote. Perhaps despair is a natural side effect of some liberal ideologies, even as those ideologies are necessary to free us from the constrains of tradition.
    The 26 Most Important Ideas For 2026 - Derek Thompson
  • The share of people between 20 and 24 who are not in a job, or seeking work, or in school, or raising a child has nearly doubled in the last quarter-century in both the UK and the U.S.
    The 26 Most Important Ideas For 2026 - Derek Thompson
  • There is such a thing as too much altruism. E.g., suppose a healthy patient in the hospital wants to donate his heart, lungs, and both kidneys to other patients. We would not say, “That’s wonderful, let’s schedule the surgery!” We would conclude that he was crazy.* [ *See the episode of House, M.D., “Charity Case”. ] That’s similar to (though more extreme than) Carens’ (or the socialists’) idea of the people who just selflessly work for the good of society. That isn’t consistent with a normally functioning human motivational system.
    Confessions of a Utopophobe - by Michael Huemer
  • Norms require agents: It cannot be true that A should be done unless there is some particular agent who should do it.
    Confessions of a Utopophobe - by Michael Huemer
  • In science, people sometimes use idealizations; e.g., ignoring air resistance in computing the trajectory of a projectile. This is because the idealization is an approximation to reality (e.g., because it is known that the effect of air resistance is small). It is not done in cases where the idealization would not approximate reality.
    Confessions of a Utopophobe - by Michael Huemer
  • You can work to reduce particular injustices without knowing what a Perfect Society or Perfect Justice is like. There is no reason to think that doing this would prevent you from attaining societal perfection.
    Confessions of a Utopophobe - by Michael Huemer
  • Some say that we have to do ideal theory first, so that we know what goals we are aiming at. Once we know that, we will do some non-ideal theory to figure out how to achieve those aims. Rawls: “until the ideal is identified … nonideal theory lacks an objective, an aim, by reference to which its queries can be answered.”
    Confessions of a Utopophobe - by Michael Huemer