commit 5b7686aa7444f9afd0fa555643171be703938412
parent c967596f8769c1f66b311ffa7df02e6ddb9d7ed8
Author: David Eisinger <[email protected]>
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 2026 12:25:44 -0400
Add links
Diffstat:
9 files changed, 3347 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
diff --git a/content/journal/dispatch-43-september-2026/index.md b/content/journal/dispatch-43-september-2026/index.md
@@ -4,6 +4,39 @@ date: 2026-08-28T10:25:28-04:00
draft: false
tags:
- dispatch
+references:
+- title: "The joy of making stuff with a 3D printer | Note to Self"
+ url: https://notetoself.studio/post/the-joy-of-3d-printing/
+ date: 2026-09-06T16:20:03Z
+ file: notetoself-studio-e7higb.txt
+- title: "Gina Trapani: The joy of making stuff with a 3D printer. I’v..."
+ url: https://kottke.org/26/09/0049548-the-joy-of-making-stuff-w
+ date: 2026-09-06T16:20:06Z
+ file: kottke-org-axmrn4.txt
+- title: "Tiny E-Reader Is the Best Piece of Technology in Years - The Atlantic"
+ url: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/09/xteink-e-reader-best-technology-years/688539/
+ date: 2026-09-06T16:20:27Z
+ file: www-theatlantic-com-xdprpu.txt
+- title: "Changes to SourceHut's terms of service regarding LLMs"
+ url: https://sourcehut.org/blog/2026-08-27-tos-changes-and-llms/
+ date: 2026-09-06T16:20:36Z
+ file: sourcehut-org-83c9jr.txt
+- title: "ArtLung: Chuck Tingle and the Internet ~ 23 Aug 2026"
+ url: https://artlung.com/blog/2026/08/23/chuck-tingle-and-the-internet/
+ date: 2026-09-06T16:20:45Z
+ file: artlung-com-uejw3z.txt
+- title: "What I read online today: Aug. 24, 2026 – Tracy Durnell's Mind Garden"
+ url: https://tracydurnell.com/2026/08/24/what-i-read-online-today-aug-24-2026/
+ date: 2026-09-06T16:20:48Z
+ file: tracydurnell-com-xu4yl2.txt
+- title: "A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird"
+ url: https://www.derekthompson.org/p/a-philosophers-one-word-theory-to
+ date: 2026-09-06T16:20:58Z
+ file: www-derekthompson-org-bwnzgl.txt
+- title: "I’ve felt this for years (blogs have global context): “The u..."
+ url: https://kottke.org/26/08/0049474-the-uni-context-is-a-scen
+ date: 2026-09-06T16:21:00Z
+ file: kottke-org-oi76by.txt
---
- SF trip
@@ -51,10 +84,36 @@ tags:
### Links
-* [Title][4]
-* [Title][5]
-* [Title][6]
+* [The joy of making stuff with a 3D printer | Note to Self][4] ([via][5])
-[4]: https://example.com/
-[5]: https://example.com/
-[6]: https://example.com/
+ > Once I discovered Gridfinity, I went to town. When life feels out of control, there are few things more soothing than organizing small objects in little boxes.
+
+* [Tiny E-Reader Is the Best Piece of Technology in Years - The Atlantic][6]
+
+ > 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.
+
+* [Spring clean, fall prune – amanda untangled][7]
+
+ > Since it's the first of September and I can literally feel autumn in my bones, I wanted to spend some time today talking about a routine that my family and I came up with over the last several years. It's a rhythm that we've really come to enjoy at the turn of the season, every spring and fall equinox.
+
+* [Changes to SourceHut's terms of service regarding LLMs][8]
+
+ > The use of LLMs or other generative AI tools to produce or assist with the production of source code, assets, tickets, emails, and so on, will no longer be permitted on SourceHut once these terms take effect.
+
+* [ArtLung: Chuck Tingle and the Internet ~ 23 Aug 2026][9] ([via][10])
+
+ > The promise of the internet was that it was beautiful. “Charlie bit my finger” is such a fascinating thing. (The internet) was great but then the hand of capitalism evolved it against what it started as–human fostering human connection–and capitalism works to crushes connection. But the inertia of the universe is love, and sincerity is good. I think we can cycle back to that beautiful fostering of human connection.
+
+* [A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird][11] ([via][12])
+
+ > In general, goodness is more context-dependent than badness. There isn’t really anything that’s good all the time for everyone independent of context ... But there are reliable ways to make people unhappy. There’s a set of evils that are close to universal: death, pain, illness, violence.
+
+[4]: https://notetoself.studio/post/the-joy-of-3d-printing/
+[5]: https://kottke.org/26/09/0049548-the-joy-of-making-stuff-w
+[6]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/09/xteink-e-reader-best-technology-years/688539/
+[7]: https://untangled.bearblog.dev/spring-clean-fall-prune/
+[8]: https://sourcehut.org/blog/2026-08-27-tos-changes-and-llms/
+[9]: https://artlung.com/blog/2026/08/23/chuck-tingle-and-the-internet/
+[10]: https://tracydurnell.com/2026/08/24/what-i-read-online-today-aug-24-2026/
+[11]: https://www.derekthompson.org/p/a-philosophers-one-word-theory-to
+[12]: https://kottke.org/26/08/0049474-the-uni-context-is-a-scen
diff --git a/static/archive/artlung-com-uejw3z.txt b/static/archive/artlung-com-uejw3z.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,212 @@
+artlung
+
+san diego, california, usa
+
+Personal website of Joe Crawford
+
+July 2026
+
+ • [1]ArtLung
+ • [2]blog
+ • [3]2026
+ • [4]08
+ • [5]23
+ • [6]Here
+
+[7] Chuck Tingle and the Internet
+
+[IMG_5953-scaled]
+Beth Accomando
+interviewing Chuck Tingle
+
+Kelly got us tickets to see [8]Chuck Tingle speak at [9]KPBS San Diego Book
+Festival. It was a hot day and it was great to peruse the booths and the energy
+of the folks walking the USD campus was terrific.
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+Aside: I got to tell Kelly (again) that my parents, when they were first
+dating, used to go to Mass at the [10]Immaculata. It never made sense to me
+that they went to church, since for most of my life Mass was not something my
+Dad was interested in attending. It is a pretty church. Back in the 1960s you
+could drive through and park right in front.
+
+[IMG_5947-scaled]
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+But really the reason for this post is because of the nice surprise I got
+hearing Chuck Tingle speak (in his pink mask reading “LOVE IS REAL”). [11]Beth
+Accomando interviewed him.
+
+He was disarming, charming, funny, and thoughtful. I don’t know that it was
+recorded, but I wanted to write down my own notes from the chat as best I
+could, because it feels salient and inspirational.
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+Chuck Tingle on genres which are thought of as non-intelligent:
+
+ “romance, erotica, horror, comedy are all genres of the body, not the mind;
+ romance is meant to elicit arousal, horror a scream, comedy a laugh”
+
+On the key to writing erotica:
+
+ “Think of a problem, solve it by having sex”
+
+A “Tingler” is a book Chuck writes in 24-hours, publishing it immediately
+thereafter. An example Tingler might be “Pounded by the Pound.”, a satire about
+Brexit. Here’s [12]Vox’s take. Chuck mentioned a Tumblr account which has
+reviewed all 400 or so “Tinglers.” I didn’t find that (yet) but I did see that
+Chuck appears to have a proper Tumblr account: [13]drchucktingle.tumblr.com.
+Here’s [14]his post from yesterday.
+
+Chuck related the story of writing his first book, asking on Twitter whether
+any major publisher wanted to publish it, and getting an email 20 minutes later
+from [15]Macmillan. He said that while it’s a great story, it’s not a story
+that can work for others, unless prior to posting on social media you amassed a
+huge online following and wrote 300 books.
+
+On getting contacted by a “real” publisher/movie production company/ record
+company: We’re all told that the ultimate goal of a creative person is to get
+that book deal, or to sell that movie script, or get that record deal is a
+lottery ticket and we ought to do ANYTHING to take that deal. That’s not the
+situation at all. Chuck’s advice to creatives is to view a meeting with a
+company like that as:
+
+ …like a meeting between Godzilla and King Kong, not like a meeting between
+ Godzilla and a guy in a taxicab about to be stomped. It ought to be a
+ meeting of EQUALS.
+
+Chuck related the story of how he started going to San Diego Comic Con. Troma
+started inviting him just to come along and just hang out. He attended as a
+lark, and as time has passed each year he’s done more: signings, panels, etc.
+He related the story of someone telling him “amazing Chuck Tingle cosplay!” to
+which he replied “I am Chuck Tingle!” and the person didn’t really believe it,
+but later posted online.
+
+The final question of the interview was about the internet. As a person who has
+used the internet to invent a career, Chuck spoke well on it:
+
+ The promise of the internet was that it was beautiful. “Charlie bit my
+ finger” is such a fascinating thing. (The internet) was great but then the
+ hand of capitalism evolved it against what it started as–human fostering
+ human connection–and capitalism works to crushes connection. But the
+ inertia of the universe is love, and sincerity is good. I think we can
+ cycle back to that beautiful fostering of human connection.
+
+[16]August [17]23 [18]2026 [19]chuck tingle [20]internet [21]san-diego [22]
+writing The Date [23] One comment [24]
+[25] artlung Joe Crawford
+
+Beth Accomando interviewing Chuck Tingle Kelly got us tickets to see Chuck
+Tingle speak at KPBS San Diego Book Festival. It was a hot day and it was great
+to peruse the booths and the energy of the folks walking the USD campus was
+terrific. Aside: I got to tell Kelly (again) that my parents,…
+
+one comment...
+
+[70c71f] [26]Tracy Durnell says: @ [27]tracydurnell.com
+[28]2026-Aug-24 at 11:59 pm
+
+Every once in a while, I keep track of everything I read for a day or two,
+mostly out of curiosity about what I’m actually…
+
+[29]Reply
+
+Leave a Comment [30]Cancel reply
+
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+This post accepts webmentions. If you link to and write about this on your
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+
+URL/Permalink of your article [45][ ]
+
+[46][Ping me!]
+
+[49][230D0F0D-A347-4A18-BD1A] A fine foggy morning. Two surfers argued in the
+surf. Dumb. But like toddlers they wore themselves out eventually.
+[50]Sunday Chill [IMG_5958-200x200]
+
+[51]artlung Comics Drawing | Coder | Indieweb | Toy robot collector |
+Bodysurfer | Respiratory Therapist | San Diego | Peace, love, resistance | he/
+him [52] Joe Crawford is a web developer who lives in San Diego, California,
+USA.
+
+©1996-2026 Joe Crawford
+
+
+References:
+
+[1] https://artlung.com/
+[2] https://artlung.com/blog/
+[3] https://artlung.com/blog/2026/
+[4] https://artlung.com/blog/2026/08/
+[5] https://artlung.com/blog/2026/08/23/
+[6] https://artlung.com/blog/2026/08/23/chuck-tingle-and-the-internet/
+[7] https://artlung.com/blog/2026/08/23/chuck-tingle-and-the-internet/
+[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Tingle
+[9] https://www.kpbs.org/sdbookfestival
+[10] https://www.theimmaculata.org/
+[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beth_Accomando
+[12] https://www.vox.com/2016/6/27/12039778/chuck-tingle-brexit-porn-parody
+[13] https://drchucktingle.tumblr.com/
+[14] https://drchucktingle.tumblr.com/post/825746967457153024/heck-yeah-san-diego-book-festival-was-such-a
+[15] https://us.macmillan.com/
+[16] https://artlung.com/blog/2026/08/
+[17] https://artlung.com/blog/2026/08/23/
+[18] https://artlung.com/blog/2026/
+[19] https://artlung.com/blog/tag/chuck-tingle/
+[20] https://artlung.com/blog/tag/internet/
+[21] https://artlung.com/blog/tag/san-diego/
+[22] https://artlung.com/blog/tag/writing/
+[23] https://artlung.com/blog/2026/08/23/chuck-tingle-and-the-internet/
+[24] https://artlung.com/blog/2026/08/23/chuck-tingle-and-the-internet/
+[25] https://artlung.com/about/
+[26] https://tracydurnell.com/
+[27] https://tracydurnell.com/2026/08/24/what-i-read-online-today-aug-24-2026/
+[28] https://tracydurnell.com/2026/08/24/what-i-read-online-today-aug-24-2026/
+[29] https://artlung.com/blog/2026/08/23/chuck-tingle-and-the-internet/?replytocom=1242177#respond
+[30] https://artlung.com/blog/2026/08/23/chuck-tingle-and-the-internet/#respond
+[37] https://artlung.com/comment-subscriptions/?srp=132616&srk=4f7f52d9458126b45f3995ae0f2be3ff&sra=s&srsrc=f
+[44] https://akismet.com/privacy/
+[49] https://artlung.com/blog/2026/08/22/fine-foggy-argued-wore/
+[50] https://artlung.com/blog/2026/08/23/sunday-chill/
+[51] https://artlung.com/
+[52] https://artlung.com/
diff --git a/static/archive/kottke-org-axmrn4.txt b/static/archive/kottke-org-axmrn4.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,276 @@
+[1]go to homepage [2] KOTTKE DOT ORG
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+[26]🍔 [27]💀 [28]📸 [29]😭 [30]🕳️ [31]🤠 [32]🎬 [33]🥔
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+× close
+posted 5d ago by [34]Jason Kottke · gift link
+
+Gina Trapani: [35]The joy of making stuff with a 3D printer. I’ve always been a
+little 3D printer-curious and this looks like a good resource to start with.
+
+[36]
+[thumb-prev]
+[37]
+The joy of making stuff with a 3D printer | Note to Self · notetoself.studio
+I’ve always been curious about 3D printers, so last fall when there was a Black
+Friday deal on a great model, I picked one up. I wondered if it would be...
+[38] Fave · 6
+[39][ ] Share
+[40]Open post [41]Copy link [42]Translate
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+[43]Bluesky [44]Mastodon [45]Reddit [46]Threads
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+[47]Email [48]Text/SMS [49]WhatsApp
+
+Comments 5
+[50]thread [51]latest [52]popular
+
+Sort by: thread — [53]thread . [54]latest . [55]faves
+
+M
+Michael Goard 5d ago
+
+One tip for overcoming the activation barrier: as someone who likes 3D printing
+original designs but is too impatient to deal with the CAD program learning
+curve, I've found LLMs are surprisingly good at turning graph paper drawings
+into STL files.
+
+One tip for overcoming the activation barrier: as someone who likes 3D printing
+original designs but is too impatient to deal with the CAD program learning
+curve, I've found LLMs are surprisingly good at turning graph paper drawings
+into STL files.
+
+[56]Fave · 2 [57]Reply [58]Share
+Z
+Zarko 4d ago
+
+Fun! I have a very similar experience. Also bought a P1S with AMS last year,
+and use the 3D printer as a problem solver for a bunch of things I never even
+thought of. Makerworld is full of great designs done by a lot of smart and nice
+people.
+
+Fun! I have a very similar experience. Also bought a P1S with AMS last year,
+and use the 3D printer as a problem solver for a bunch of things I never even
+thought of. Makerworld is full of great designs done by a lot of smart and nice
+people.
+
+[59]Fave · 1 [60]Reply [61]Share
+E
+Evan J 4d ago
+
+Custom drawer organizers! This may just do it for me. The other day I was
+trying to find a simple mounting bracket for a motorcycle handlebar. I couldn't
+find what I needed until I stumbled on a website with downloadable plans for 3D
+printers. Brackets aplenty! This one-off stuff is just perfect for a 3D
+printer, and the fact that plans can be shared for use is awesome.
+
+Custom drawer organizers! This may just do it for me. The other day I was
+trying to find a simple mounting bracket for a motorcycle handlebar. I couldn't
+find what I needed until I stumbled on a website with downloadable plans for 3D
+printers. Brackets aplenty! This one-off stuff is just perfect for a 3D
+printer, and the fact that plans can be shared for use is awesome.
+
+[62]Fave · 2 [63]Reply [64]Share
+G
+Gez Danby 3d ago
+
+Really enjoyed following the myriad of links related to this website and
+associated "rabbit holes" of creativity.
+
+Really enjoyed following the myriad of links related to this website and
+associated "rabbit holes" of creativity.
+
+[65]Fave · 0 [66]Reply [67]Share
+S
+schmod 1d ago
+
+I will say that the current generation of "good" consumer 3D printers have
+graduated to being boring appliances, rather than a contraption that becomes a
+hobby in and of itself.
+
+In some cases, I totally empathize that this is a bit of a loss. Working on
+earlier 3d printers probably kindled something akin to the excitement of
+working on an old car, and hearing it roar to life!
+
+I'm glad people are still building their own weird printers, but... I haven't
+been bitten by that particular bug.
+
+In my case, I'm pretty glad I waited until entering the world of 3D printing
+until I did (6 months ago). It's unlocked a lot of DIY and hobby stuff without
+becoming a major distraction in and of itself. (Okay, so... the CAD part is an
+unavoidable distraction, but the printer itself basically "Just Works," and I
+like that about it)
+
+I will say that the current generation of "good" consumer 3D printers have
+graduated to being boring appliances, rather than a contraption that becomes a
+hobby in and of itself.
+
+In some cases, I totally empathize that this is a bit of a loss. Working on
+earlier 3d printers probably kindled something akin to the excitement of
+working on an old car, and hearing it roar to life!
+
+I'm glad people are still building their own weird printers, but... I haven't
+been bitten by that particular bug.
+
+In my case, I'm pretty glad I waited until entering the world of 3D printing
+until I did (6 months ago). It's unlocked a lot of DIY and hobby stuff without
+becoming a major distraction in and of itself. (Okay, so... the CAD part is an
+unavoidable distraction, but the printer itself basically "Just Works," and I
+like that about it)
+
+[68]Fave · 0 [69]Reply [70]Share
+×
+
+If you feel like this comment goes against the grain of the [71]community
+guidelines or is otherwise inappropriate, [72]please let me know and I will
+take a look at it.
+
+In order to comment or fave, you need to be a kottke.org member. [73]Check out
+your membership options.
+
+Note: If you are a member and tried to log in, it didn't work, and now you're
+stuck in a neverending login loop of death, try disabling any ad blockers or
+extensions. Or try [74]logging out and then [75]back in. Still having trouble?
+[76]Email me!
+
+×
+
+In order to comment or fave, you need to be a kottke.org member. [77]Check out
+your membership options.
+
+Note: If you are a member and tried to log in, it didn't work, and now you're
+stuck in a neverending login loop of death, try disabling any ad blockers or
+extensions. Or try [78]logging out and then [79]back in. Still having trouble?
+[80]Email me!
+
+×
+
+In order to comment or fave, you need to be a current kottke.org member. [81]
+Check out your options for renewal.
+
+×
+
+You cannot comment or reply to this thread.
+
+
+References:
+
+[1] https://kottke.org/
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diff --git a/static/archive/kottke-org-oi76by.txt b/static/archive/kottke-org-oi76by.txt
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+posted 26d ago by [34]Jason Kottke · gift link
+
+I’ve felt this for years (blogs have global context): “[35]The uni-context is a
+scenario in which the ways you should act become the same across all different
+contexts. There’s just one set of norms you should follow all times,
+irrespective of context.”
+
+[36]
+[thumb-4947]
+[37]
+A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird ·
+derekthompson.org
+Once you learn what the "uni-context" is, you won't stop seeing it everywhere
+[38] Fave · 7
+[39][ ] Share
+[40]Open post [41]Copy link [42]Translate
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+Comments 5
+[50]thread [51]latest [52]popular
+
+Sort by: thread — [53]thread . [54]latest . [55]faves
+
+R
+Rex Sorgatz 26d ago [56]Edited
+
+Many years ago, in the early days of YouTube, I created a web show that
+involved three young women in NYC sitting around a table and talking about
+their week — working, dating, partying, struggling, thriving. I cut it into
+5-minute clips and released it as a daily series. It did really well, and I
+like to think, presaged several formats that would later appear when social
+media arrived.
+
+One day, Metafilter found it. They tore apart the girls for their attitudes,
+their vocal fry, their style, their posture — everything. I remember staring at
+the screen and thinking, "You know, this wasn't made FOR YOU, right?"
+
+That feeling is now alien. Everything is FOR YOU.
+
+I still think about this massive unnoticed change all the time. For those of us
+old enough to remember pre-internet (or even pre-social internet), there was a
+time that you recognized something was "for you" and "not for you." The
+internet flattened everything, made every event something YOU should form an
+opinion about.
+
+The uni-context is now reality. There is no context outside the uni-context.
+
+Many years ago, in the early days of YouTube, I created a web show that
+involved three young women in NYC sitting around a table and talking about
+their week — working, dating, partying, struggling, thriving. I cut it into
+5-minute clips and released it as a daily series. It did really well, and I
+like to think, presaged several formats that would later appear when social
+media arrived.
+
+One day, Metafilter found it. They tore apart the girls for their attitudes,
+their vocal fry, their style, their posture — everything. I remember staring at
+the screen and thinking, "You know, this wasn't made FOR YOU, right?"
+
+That feeling is now alien. Everything is FOR YOU.
+
+I still think about this massive unnoticed change all the time. For those of us
+old enough to remember pre-internet (or even pre-social internet), there was a
+time that you recognized something was "for you" and "not for you." The
+internet flattened everything, made every event something YOU should form an
+opinion about.
+
+The uni-context is now reality. There is no context outside the uni-context.
+
+Original comment
+
+Many years ago, in the early days of YouTube, I created a web show that
+involved three young women in NYC sitting around a table and talking about
+their week — working, dating, partying, struggling, thriving. I cut it into
+5-minute clips and released it as a daily series. It did really well, and I
+like to think, presaged several formats that would later appear when social
+media arrived.
+
+One day, Metafilter found it. They tore apart the girls for their attitudes,
+their vocal fry, their style, their posture — everything. I remember staring at
+the screen and thinking, "You know, this wasn't made FOR YOU, right?"
+
+I still think about this massive unnoticed change all the time. For those of us
+old enough to remember pre-internet, there was a time that you recognized
+something was "for you" and "not for you." The internet flattened everything,
+made every event something YOU should form an opinion about.
+
+The uni-context is now reality. There is no context outside the uni-context.
+
+[57]Fave · 11 [58]Reply [59]Share
+J
+Jeremiads 23d ago
+
+Very compelling. Could have mind-blowing implications. I like that Callard
+doesn’t rush to place value judgements on the uni-context. Its implications,
+and our seeming preference for it, could be so profound as to defy value
+judgements, or even void them altogether. Our preference for it might be like
+our preference for not being killed, or not being cheated: almost self-evident,
+ and usually not treated as a relevant object for value judgement.
+
+So much to chew on with this, but a few details stood out immediately:
+
+Do our shared sources of fear and anger really overpower our shared sources of
+happiness and contentment? Some part of me resists that, although I can’t say
+it’s untrue.
+
+I guess one upside is that, if it’s true, it provides a relatively humane
+explanation for our apparent obsession with baity negativity. It suggests that
+if troubling shit proliferates in our feeds, that’s not because we all just
+love thumbing through nastiness, but because nastiness commands bigger
+audiences, due to the breadth of our sources of happiness. Happiness is just
+harder to communicate and takes more time to contextualise. If true, this would
+be a big relief.
+
+Also, the description of attention management in the 19th century doesn’t ring
+true to me, even though the underlying point might be strong. For example,
+19th-century humans wrote novels, by hand, inhabiting and constructing
+fictional contexts for extended periods, with many associated time-demands...
+meaning they (or at least some of them) would have had to learn to concentrate.
+But this slightly flawed comparison actually strengthens the point being made
+about the uni-context, in my view. It opens up the possibility that
+uni-contextuality could have emerged even earlier than described. It may have
+started with the printing press, for example, or even before that, with the
+told tale. Perhaps it came about through language itself, or maybe earlier
+still, with the basic attention-sequestering capabilities that underlie all
+communication. Does our need for the uni-context explain our love of
+independence and freedom, qualities that allow us to range beyond our immediate
+contexts? We have a rough idea that the more cognitively capable among our
+fellow animals, when kept captive, are also more likely to try and escape (eg,
+octopi)... is that a manifestation of their own yearning for a uni-context?
+
+What I feel I need now are tips for navigating the uni-context. If it really is
+an inevitability arising from human nature, and if it’s now boiling over
+because we’re having to learn how to govern ourselves as a planetary
+population, then I could definitely use some ideas for how to cope. I wouldn’t
+be surprised if Callard is already thinking along these lines. I’ll definitely
+be following her work as it develops.
+
+Very compelling. Could have mind-blowing implications. I like that Callard
+doesn’t rush to place value judgements on the uni-context. Its implications,
+and our seeming preference for it, could be so profound as to defy value
+judgements, or even void them altogether. Our preference for it might be like
+our preference for not being killed, or not being cheated: almost self-evident,
+ and usually not treated as a relevant object for value judgement.
+
+So much to chew on with this, but a few details stood out immediately:
+
+Do our shared sources of fear and anger really overpower our shared sources of
+happiness and contentment? Some part of me resists that, although I can’t say
+it’s untrue.
+
+I guess one upside is that, if it’s true, it provides a relatively humane
+explanation for our apparent obsession with baity negativity. It suggests that
+if troubling shit proliferates in our feeds, that’s not because we all just
+love thumbing through nastiness, but because nastiness commands bigger
+audiences, due to the breadth of our sources of happiness. Happiness is just
+harder to communicate and takes more time to contextualise. If true, this would
+be a big relief.
+
+Also, the description of attention management in the 19th century doesn’t ring
+true to me, even though the underlying point might be strong. For example,
+19th-century humans wrote novels, by hand, inhabiting and constructing
+fictional contexts for extended periods, with many associated time-demands...
+meaning they (or at least some of them) would have had to learn to concentrate.
+But this slightly flawed comparison actually strengthens the point being made
+about the uni-context, in my view. It opens up the possibility that
+uni-contextuality could have emerged even earlier than described. It may have
+started with the printing press, for example, or even before that, with the
+told tale. Perhaps it came about through language itself, or maybe earlier
+still, with the basic attention-sequestering capabilities that underlie all
+communication. Does our need for the uni-context explain our love of
+independence and freedom, qualities that allow us to range beyond our immediate
+contexts? We have a rough idea that the more cognitively capable among our
+fellow animals, when kept captive, are also more likely to try and escape (eg,
+octopi)... is that a manifestation of their own yearning for a uni-context?
+
+What I feel I need now are tips for navigating the uni-context. If it really is
+an inevitability arising from human nature, and if it’s now boiling over
+because we’re having to learn how to govern ourselves as a planetary
+population, then I could definitely use some ideas for how to cope. I wouldn’t
+be surprised if Callard is already thinking along these lines. I’ll definitely
+be following her work as it develops.
+
+[60]Fave · 2 [61]Reply [62]Share
+S
+Steven Crozier 23d ago
+
+There is something fishy about this concept, and for me it has something to do
+with Callard's assertion about the inevitability of it. The one that
+particularly stuck in my craw is the claimed inevitability of negative bias
+because of its global universality. To me, this completely ignores the equally
+global truth of the universality of certain forms of good: respect, civility,
+kindness, compassion. To claim that negative bias abounds because it alone is
+universally recognizable holds little water for me in the face of the truth
+that everyone on the planet (except maybe for sociopaths) responds positively
+to being treated well. The truth for me is that negative bias abounds
+internationally because it is *easier* to (1) behave in a negative fashion and
+not immediatley suffer or not recognize the negative consequences and (2) blame
+the negative circumstances around me for the unfortunate contexts (locally and
+globally) that we find ourselves in. It is hard -- hard, hard, hard -- to live
+a virtuous life and the evidence abounds that fewer and fewer people are
+choosing to make the effort. That does not make it inevitable, any more than
+the "uni-context" as conceived by Callard is pre-ordained. It is simply the
+sum of the accumulated weight of a global population that finds it less arduous
+to live passively or negatively than make the effort required to behave in a
+more positive manner.
+
+There is something fishy about this concept, and for me it has something to do
+with Callard's assertion about the inevitability of it. The one that
+particularly stuck in my craw is the claimed inevitability of negative bias
+because of its global universality. To me, this completely ignores the equally
+global truth of the universality of certain forms of good: respect, civility,
+kindness, compassion. To claim that negative bias abounds because it alone is
+universally recognizable holds little water for me in the face of the truth
+that everyone on the planet (except maybe for sociopaths) responds positively
+to being treated well. The truth for me is that negative bias abounds
+internationally because it is *easier* to (1) behave in a negative fashion and
+not immediatley suffer or not recognize the negative consequences and (2) blame
+the negative circumstances around me for the unfortunate contexts (locally and
+globally) that we find ourselves in. It is hard -- hard, hard, hard -- to live
+a virtuous life and the evidence abounds that fewer and fewer people are
+choosing to make the effort. That does not make it inevitable, any more than
+the "uni-context" as conceived by Callard is pre-ordained. It is simply the
+sum of the accumulated weight of a global population that finds it less arduous
+to live passively or negatively than make the effort required to behave in a
+more positive manner.
+
+[63]Fave · 0 [64]Reply [65]Share
+[f2f7e15bc4]
+Jason KottkeMOD 23d ago
+
+Yeah, I thought the idea of the uni-context was interesting, but some of her
+and her interlocutor's conclusions were of the confirmation of priors variety.
+
+Yeah, I thought the idea of the uni-context was interesting, but some of her
+and her interlocutor's conclusions were of the confirmation of priors variety.
+
+[66]Fave · 0 [67]Share
+J
+Jeremiads 20d ago
+
+I don't think she's actually saying that negative bias is inevitable, she's
+saying that it survives cross-contextual communication more easily than
+positive bias (specifically because communicating a positive bias requires a
+more detailed understanding of its specific context). I don't necessarily agree
+with the conceptualisation, but I don't think she's arguing that negativity is
+inevitable, just that it's easier for it to cross contexts (a much less
+ambitious claim).
+
+Also, I don't think she's necessarily addressing close interpersonal
+relationships in which we treat one another with varying levels of goodness,
+because these relationships are likely to occur within diverse contexts.
+Instead, I suspect she's addressing relationships that occur within massive,
+merged contexts (ie more like social media comments, less like neighbourly
+banter). While I'm still unsure whether her conceptualisation holds, I can
+definitely see glimmers of evidence. For example, not just in the prevalence of
+negativity in uni-contexts, but also in the shallowness and homogeneity of much
+of the positive content that does spread widely through uni-contexts (eg,
+baby-focused content seems to thrive, regardless of the species of baby).
+
+Also, I'd challenge this, and caution against using it as a basic ethical
+principle:
+
+ It is hard -- hard, hard, hard -- to live a virtuous life
+
+Certainly, it can be hard to live a virtuous life. Difficulty can even be said
+to enhance virtue (ie, the same virtuous act can be deemed more virtuous if
+it's harder to carry out). Often, virtue will necessitate sacrificing one's own
+wants and needs to favour others. Sometimes it will even necessitate that one
+suffers. But is it a precondition, that virtue be difficult? I highly doubt
+that. Once a species has the capability to manage its resource consumption to
+the degree that we can, it's absolutely worth asking how we structure that
+resource management. What do we expect it to incentivise? What do we expect it
+to make easy? We're unlikely to be able to make living virtuously fully easy
+but can't we make it easier? Can we structure our economies and governance to
+reward more virtue, at least, than they do now?
+
+In my view, we absolutely can. But, to get better at being virtuous as a
+species, it's very important that we don't fall for this idea that virtue must
+always be hard (or even -- hard, hard, hard). This is a sneaky Christian
+pseudo-virtue that's gradually wormed its way deep down into many societies'
+basic moral calculi, by convincing people that they can't expect a life of
+virtue to be easy or rewarding. Christians love tying virtue to suffering, it's
+baked into their theology (the greatest act a god could ever carry out being
+sending his offspring to experience the nobility of human suffering). This
+impulse has embedded itself so deeply in Christian societies that you can still
+find it at work long after Christ himself has faded from popularity; for
+example, the way many British people approach discussions about social welfare
+carries this assumption that there's inherent virtue in strife.
+
+I like Callard's theory because it offers a behavioural rather than a moral
+explanation for many of our current woes. It tries to examine how a species
+with particularly high cognitive and social capabilities, a creature extremely
+skilled at creating contexts (but also one that craves widening those
+contexts), will react when forced to apply its cognitive capabilities across
+larger and more complicated contexts of its own creation. Ie, we're animals,
+and like any other animal we sometimes adapt our behaviour in ways that
+unwittingly harm us. If people are becoming less virtuous, and if this is
+happening because we've adapted our behaviour to disincentivise virtue, then we
+ought to examine and react to this without making blanket condemnations and
+simply commanding everyone to do better. If the systems that govern our
+behaviour are failing us, the best approach would be to address the systems
+where we can, and where we can't, to learn how to deal with their unintended
+consequences in virtuous ways.
+
+As for confirmations of priors, I detected some of that in Thompson's
+questioning but not in Callard's answers. She tended to set him straight. But I
+might have missed something, because this stuff is very abstract and ties my
+brain in knots. I'd appreciate it if someone could point out any
+question-begging that I've missed.
+
+I don't think she's actually saying that negative bias is inevitable, she's
+saying that it survives cross-contextual communication more easily than
+positive bias (specifically because communicating a positive bias requires a
+more detailed understanding of its specific context). I don't necessarily agree
+with the conceptualisation, but I don't think she's arguing that negativity is
+inevitable, just that it's easier for it to cross contexts (a much less
+ambitious claim).
+
+Also, I don't think she's necessarily addressing close interpersonal
+relationships in which we treat one another with varying levels of goodness,
+because these relationships are likely to occur within diverse contexts.
+Instead, I suspect she's addressing relationships that occur within massive,
+merged contexts (ie more like social media comments, less like neighbourly
+banter). While I'm still unsure whether her conceptualisation holds, I can
+definitely see glimmers of evidence. For example, not just in the prevalence of
+negativity in uni-contexts, but also in the shallowness and homogeneity of much
+of the positive content that does spread widely through uni-contexts (eg,
+baby-focused content seems to thrive, regardless of the species of baby).
+
+Also, I'd challenge this, and caution against using it as a basic ethical
+principle:
+
+ It is hard -- hard, hard, hard -- to live a virtuous life
+
+Certainly, it can be hard to live a virtuous life. Difficulty can even be said
+to enhance virtue (ie, the same virtuous act can be deemed more virtuous if
+it's harder to carry out). Often, virtue will necessitate sacrificing one's own
+wants and needs to favour others. Sometimes it will even necessitate that one
+suffers. But is it a precondition, that virtue be difficult? I highly doubt
+that. Once a species has the capability to manage its resource consumption to
+the degree that we can, it's absolutely worth asking how we structure that
+resource management. What do we expect it to incentivise? What do we expect it
+to make easy? We're unlikely to be able to make living virtuously fully easy
+but can't we make it easier? Can we structure our economies and governance to
+reward more virtue, at least, than they do now?
+
+In my view, we absolutely can. But, to get better at being virtuous as a
+species, it's very important that we don't fall for this idea that virtue must
+always be hard (or even -- hard, hard, hard). This is a sneaky Christian
+pseudo-virtue that's gradually wormed its way deep down into many societies'
+basic moral calculi, by convincing people that they can't expect a life of
+virtue to be easy or rewarding. Christians love tying virtue to suffering, it's
+baked into their theology (the greatest act a god could ever carry out being
+sending his offspring to experience the nobility of human suffering). This
+impulse has embedded itself so deeply in Christian societies that you can still
+find it at work long after Christ himself has faded from popularity; for
+example, the way many British people approach discussions about social welfare
+carries this assumption that there's inherent virtue in strife.
+
+I like Callard's theory because it offers a behavioural rather than a moral
+explanation for many of our current woes. It tries to examine how a species
+with particularly high cognitive and social capabilities, a creature extremely
+skilled at creating contexts (but also one that craves widening those
+contexts), will react when forced to apply its cognitive capabilities across
+larger and more complicated contexts of its own creation. Ie, we're animals,
+and like any other animal we sometimes adapt our behaviour in ways that
+unwittingly harm us. If people are becoming less virtuous, and if this is
+happening because we've adapted our behaviour to disincentivise virtue, then we
+ought to examine and react to this without making blanket condemnations and
+simply commanding everyone to do better. If the systems that govern our
+behaviour are failing us, the best approach would be to address the systems
+where we can, and where we can't, to learn how to deal with their unintended
+consequences in virtuous ways.
+
+As for confirmations of priors, I detected some of that in Thompson's
+questioning but not in Callard's answers. She tended to set him straight. But I
+might have missed something, because this stuff is very abstract and ties my
+brain in knots. I'd appreciate it if someone could point out any
+question-begging that I've missed.
+
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+[36] https://www.derekthompson.org/p/a-philosophers-one-word-theory-to
+[37] https://www.derekthompson.org/p/a-philosophers-one-word-theory-to
+[38] https://kottke.org/26/08/0049474-the-uni-context-is-a-scen#
+[40] https://kottke.org/26/08/0049474-the-uni-context-is-a-scen
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diff --git a/static/archive/notetoself-studio-e7higb.txt b/static/archive/notetoself-studio-e7higb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,279 @@
+[1]Note to Self
+by Gina Trapani
+[2]About
+[3]Newsletter
+[4]Projects
+[5](Search)
+
+[6]The joy of making stuff with a 3D printer
+
+Aug 31, 2026
+
+[7] The joy of making stuff with a 3D printer
+[8]Gina Trapani
+
+I’ve always been curious about 3D printers, so last fall when there was a Black
+Friday deal on a great model, I picked one up. I wondered if it would be one of
+these gadgets my family would play with for a couple months then forget about,
+but it turns out: we haven’t stopped printing since.
+
+Whenever I tell anyone about it, the first question is, “What do you do with
+it?” At first it was making lots of silly fidget toys and figurines for my kid.
+Then it became about a lot more than toys.
+
+A month or so in, during a dark and depressing winter, the printer gave me
+unexpected purpose. I joined a [9]community of people 3D printing community ICE
+alert whistles. Over the course of a few months I personally printed and
+shipped several thousand whistles across the country. I was just one tiny node
+in a giant decentralized network of likeminded people trying to protect our
+communities, but it made me feel so connected and hopeful.
+
+When I wasn’t printing whistles and fidgets, the thing I came to love printing
+the most is household stuff—all the gadgets and containers and tools and
+doodads that make our lives easier, nicer, and more organized.
+
+I started small with stuff like planters, closet door hooks, a remote control
+holder, chopstick holders, travel containers, and a 2-in-1 iPhone and AirPods
+charging stand. I got more ambitious making jewelry boxes, a travel version of
+Tetris, soap dishes, a toilet paper stand, a desk organizer, and even a
+shelving unit.
+
+[10] A collage of 3D printed household objects, including a remote control
+holder, a planter, a desktop organizer, a dental pick holder, a travel Tetris
+game, and a unicorn-shaped kids jewelry box.
+A few things I’ve printed. From top left: A remote control holder, a planter, a
+desktop organizer, a dental pick holder, a travel Tetris game, and a
+unicorn-shaped kids jewelry box.
+
+I even designed my own very simple first model and published it here: a [11]
+minimal electrical outlet cover.
+
+The household projects that brought my little heart the greatest satisfaction
+were thanks to an open, extensible organization system called [12]Gridfinity.
+This modular system helps you organize drawers of stuff—think junk drawers,
+kitchen utensils, office supplies, tools—into customized, perfectly fitted
+containers that snap into a grid. (Its creator Zack Freedman also made [13]one
+of the greatest project announcement YouTube videos ever.) Freedman released
+Gridfinity under an open license, which means the 3D printing community has
+made and published endless Gridfinity-compatible models, which make it so easy
+to pick and choose what you need off the shelf.
+
+Once I discovered Gridfinity, I went to town. When life feels out of control,
+there are few things more soothing than organizing small objects in little
+boxes.
+
+I started with a messy drawer of office supplies I used to rummage through,
+inevitably poking myself with a thumbtack in the process.
+
+Here’s the Gridfinity baseplate, and a couple of the containers I printed to
+organize this mess. The bottoms are designed to snap into the grid. I added a
+little yellow top edge for clearer visuals.
+
+[14] Gridfinity baseplate with three simple plain white containers with yellow
+edges.
+Gridfinity baseplate with three plain containers of different sizes.
+
+I also printed custom, green containers for various battery sizes, which have
+spots to glue in little magnets if you want extra stickiness.
+
+[15] Gridfinity containers customized to hold AAA and D batteries.
+Gridfinity containers customized to hold AAA and D batteries.
+
+Here’s the final, organized version of the drawer. It’s never been easier to
+grab a battery or a thumbtack now without hurting myself.
+
+[16] The satisfying end result.
+The satisfying end result. — Gina Trapani
+
+I’ve also Gridfinitied my kitchen utensil drawer. Take that, Rubbermaid.
+
+[17] [gridfinity]
+Compared to our old tray (right), the Gridfinity version fits exactly to the
+utensils and uses every bit of space.
+
+All in all, I’ve derived so much more joy from a hard-to-justify 3D printer
+purchase than I expected. Yes, the printer with all the filament spools and
+related tools take up a lot of space; it occasionally jams and needs
+maintenance; more complicated prints require babysitting multiple plates over
+the course of hours; I worry about landfills and wasted filament. But having
+our own little personal factory to make things we need, learning and teaching
+my kid about 3D modeling and making a digital drawing real through tools we
+have at home, and appreciating others’ amazing creativity and generosity in the
+community has been far worth it.
+
+[18]Frequently Asked Questions
+
+Reading about how others got into 3D printing helped me take the leap myself,
+so here are some questions curious friends and fellow nerds have asked me.
+
+[19]What printer did you get and why?
+
+I bought the [20]Bambu P1S. I got it with an [21]AMS so I could print with
+multiple colors. (This was my first pre-purchase lesson: The printer alone only
+handles one roll of filament and therefore one color at a time. The AMS lets
+the printer change colors automatically during a print.) I picked this model
+because the 3D printing YouTubers I watch plus a couple trusted friends all
+said it was a great printer for the price, which at the time was just under
+$600. Now as of writing the P1S by itself is $399.
+
+I didn’t have any prior printer to compare the P1S to, but as a complete
+beginner I was able to assemble it, plug it in, and start making stuff very
+quickly. I’ve come to appreciate that it is a beautiful machine designed to be
+taken apart, serviced by the user, and easily reassembled: refreshing in a
+world of sealed electronics. [22]Bambu’s thorough documentation includes videos
+on how to address common problems—things like jams and stuck filament spools.
+Even after just a few months of printing, I feel like I have a decent mental
+model of how the machine works and have even developed an intuition for what’s
+going right or wrong with a print when I hear it make certain sounds.
+
+Mainly you control the printer through the [23]Bambu Handy software, which does
+a lot more than I expected. It lets you modify and customize the model before
+you print it, livestreams a video of your print in progress to your app, and
+records timelapse videos, which are always fun to watch. There are some rough
+edges to the app, but there are regular updates to it and over the last 9
+months of releases it’s gotten better and easier to use. The mobile apps are
+not as fully-featured as the desktop app and I hope to see them catch up, but
+it does feel like magic to start and watch a print on my phone.
+
+[24]Where do you find these objects?
+
+[25]Makerworld is a community site of 3D models that you can download and print
+for free. Similar to shared public code on GitHub, users take models they like,
+make modifications, and re-upload to the original maker, or upload a whole new
+design to the site. A decent system of ratings and boosts incentivize 3D
+designers to share their work, and deep discussions and photos of prints in the
+comments give you lots of information about how things will go if you commit
+your printer time and filament to the model. There are several other sites like
+Makerworld including [26]Printables, but because it’s in the Bambu ecosystem
+I’ve mostly stuck to Makerworld.
+
+[27]What have you made?
+
+Way too many things to list, but a handful of my favorite prints so far include
+these things.
+
+For kids:
+
+ • [28]Flexi Pangolin
+ • [29]Hedgehog Fidget Clicker
+ • [30]Squishy Loopz Spiral Donut
+ • [31]Pencil Slide-on Name (especially good for kids with less common names)
+ • [32]Unicorn Jewelry Box
+ • [33]Flexi Spider
+ • [34]Chopstick Helper
+
+And a few things for grown-ups:
+
+ • [35]MagDock V2: iPhone and Apple Watch MagSafe Phone Holder
+ • [36]Drift and [37]Polygon Planters
+ • [38]Ultimate Gridfinity Kitchen Drawer Organizer v2
+ • [39]Parametric Stackable Boxes
+ • [40]Zen Japanese Tea House
+ • [41]Modern Box for Jewelry / Watches / Tea / Firstaid
+ • [42]Q-Tip Travel Container
+ • [43]Small Two-Tone Whistle
+ • [44]Soap Dish Sponge Holder Collection
+ • [45]Tray box
+
+What are your favorite 3D models? [46]Send me all the links.
+
+[47] Aug 31, 2026 [48]#3d-printing [49]#hardware
+
+More posts
+
+ • [50]A 2026 detour Aug 14, 2026
+ • [51]Net fulfillment over net worth Jan 23, 2026
+ • [52]Intentions over resolutions, habits over goals Jan 15, 2026
+ • [53]New year, new notebook Jan 6, 2026
+ • [54]Best things I watched, listened to, and read in 2025 Dec 22, 2025
+ • [55]Weekend computer build Dec 3, 2025
+ • [56]Stuff I built just for me in 2025 Nov 25, 2025
+ • [57]Maintenance versus making Nov 6, 2025
+ • [58]Measured AI Oct 20, 2025
+ • [59]Halftime Oct 8, 2025
+
+Get the monthly [60]newsletter:
+[61][ ] [62][Subscribe]
+[63]Note to Self is a blog about [64]creativity over productivity by [65]Gina
+Trapani.
+
+Read more [66]about Note to Self, subscribe to the [67]newsletter or [68]feed,
+or dive into the archives: [69]posts, [70]links, and [71]quotes.
+
+Want to reprint something? [72]Just ask.
+
+[73](Toggle theme)☾
+[74][ ]
+
+
+References:
+
+[1] https://notetoself.studio/
+[2] https://notetoself.studio/about/
+[3] https://notetoself.studio/about/#newsletter
+[4] https://notetoself.studio/projects/
+[6] https://notetoself.studio/post/the-joy-of-3d-printing/
+[7] https://notetoself.studio/post/the-joy-of-3d-printing/
+[8] https://ginatrapani.org/
+[9] https://notetoself.studio/link/3d-printed-whistles/
+[10] https://notetoself.studio/post/the-joy-of-3d-printing/3d-printed-collage.png
+[11] https://makerworld.com/en/models/2380914-minimal-outlet-cover-plug-in-us-standard#profileId-2607230
+[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridfinity
+[13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra_9zU-mnl8
+[14] https://notetoself.studio/post/the-joy-of-3d-printing/gridfinity-grid.jpeg
+[15] https://notetoself.studio/post/the-joy-of-3d-printing/gridfinity-batteries.jpeg
+[16] https://notetoself.studio/post/the-joy-of-3d-printing/gridfinitied-drawer.jpeg
+[17] https://notetoself.studio/post/the-joy-of-3d-printing/gridfinity-kitchen-drawer.jpeg
+[18] https://notetoself.studio/post/the-joy-of-3d-printing/#frequently-asked-questions
+[19] https://notetoself.studio/post/the-joy-of-3d-printing/#what-printer-did-you-get-and-why
+[20] https://us.store.bambulab.com/products/p1s
+[21] https://us.store.bambulab.com/products/ams-multicolor-printing
+[22] https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/p1
+[23] https://bambulab.com/en/download/app
+[24] https://notetoself.studio/post/the-joy-of-3d-printing/#where-do-you-find-these-objects
+[25] https://makerworld.com/en
+[26] https://www.printables.com/
+[27] https://notetoself.studio/post/the-joy-of-3d-printing/#what-have-you-made
+[28] https://makerworld.com/en/models/1090887-flexi-pangolin
+[29] https://makerworld.com/en/models/1891920-hedgehog-fidget-clicker
+[30] https://makerworld.com/en/models/2885863-squishy-loopz-spiral-donut
+[31] https://makerworld.com/en/models/2374615-customizable-parametric-pencil-slide-on-name
+[32] https://makerworld.com/en/models/1668867-unicorn-jewelry-box-ams-not-a-must
+[33] https://makerworld.com/en/models/631666-flexi-spider-articulated
+[34] https://makerworld.com/en/models/153577-chopstick-helper
+[35] https://makerworld.com/en/models/1538338-magdock-v2-iphone-and-apple-watch-magsafe-phone-ho
+[36] https://makerworld.com/en/models/855454-drift-planter
+[37] https://makerworld.com/en/models/474831-polygon-planter-wrap-around-plate
+[38] https://makerworld.com/en/models/3033870-ultimate-gridfinity-kitchen-drawer-organizer-v2
+[39] https://makerworld.com/en/models/392542-parametric-stackable-box#profileId-293647
+[40] https://makerworld.com/en/models/2343138-zen-japanese-tea-house
+[41] https://makerworld.com/en/models/1303021-modern-box-for-jewelry-watches-tea-firstaid
+[42] https://makerworld.com/en/models/1879304-q-tip-travel-container
+[43] https://makerworld.com/en/models/1181642-small-two-tone-whistle
+[44] https://makerworld.com/en/models/1870601-soap-dish-sponge-holder-collection-2
+[45] https://makerworld.com/en/models/1062326-tray-box#profileId-1050767
+[46] https://notetoself.studio/about/#contact-me
+[47] https://notetoself.studio/post/the-joy-of-3d-printing/
+[48] https://notetoself.studio/tags/3d-printing
+[49] https://notetoself.studio/tags/hardware
+[50] https://notetoself.studio/post/that-2026-detour/
+[51] https://notetoself.studio/post/net-fulfillment-over-net-worth/
+[52] https://notetoself.studio/post/intentions-over-resolutions-habits-over-goals/
+[53] https://notetoself.studio/post/new-year-new-notebook/
+[54] https://notetoself.studio/post/best-things-i-watched-listened-to-and-read-in-2025/
+[55] https://notetoself.studio/post/weekend-computer-build/
+[56] https://notetoself.studio/post/stuff-i-built-just-for-me-in-2025/
+[57] https://notetoself.studio/post/maintenance-versus-making/
+[58] https://notetoself.studio/post/measured-ai/
+[59] https://notetoself.studio/post/halftime/
+[60] https://notetoself.studio/about/#newsletter
+[63] https://notetoself.studio/
+[64] https://notetoself.studio/post/creativity-over-productivity/
+[65] https://ginatrapani.org/
+[66] https://notetoself.studio/about/
+[67] https://notetoself.studio/about/#newsletter
+[68] https://notetoself.studio/index.xml
+[69] https://notetoself.studio/post/
+[70] https://notetoself.studio/link/
+[71] https://notetoself.studio/quote/
+[72] https://notetoself.studio/about/#contact-me
diff --git a/static/archive/sourcehut-org-83c9jr.txt b/static/archive/sourcehut-org-83c9jr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,327 @@
+[1] sourcehut [2]blog [3]pricing [4]community [5]merchandise [6] Go to sr.ht
+August 27, 2026 by Drew DeVault
+
+Changes to SourceHut's terms of service regarding LLMs
+
+In late July, [7]Codeberg announced that they would limit the use of LLMs on
+their platform, something that SourceHut has also been considering for some
+time.
+
+Last week, [8]we discussed with the SourceHut community the possibility of
+limiting or prohibiting the use of LLMs (large language models) and other
+generative AI technologies on SourceHut. Thank you to everyone who
+participated, shared a variety of views, and ensured we had a productive and
+civil conversation on the subject. Following this conversation and more
+discussions internally, we have elected to move forward with the necessary
+changes to our terms of service.
+
+I encourage you to read through this thread to see the varied and thoughtful
+opinions of the SourceHut community on this subject, both for and against the
+change. In summary, the SourceHut community broadly has strong support for
+restrictions on the use of AI on this platform. However, ultimately this
+decision was made by staff, so we’ll focus on our own rationale for it, give
+examples of how the new policies will be interpreted and enforced, the expected
+timeline for the change, and options for people affected by the change and how
+they can move their projects forward afterwards.
+
+=> [9]Click this to skip the background and read about the changes
+
+There are material incentives for us to curtail “vibe coded” projects on
+SourceHut. They tend to, as a class, be outliers in terms of resource usage, as
+the practice tends to invent complex CI configurations that waste build
+minutes, produce larger codebases, and push commits often, all of which causes
+excessive resource usage and can lead to outages. Often these codebases are
+abandoned after burning through all of these resources for naught. And, of
+course, the scourge of LLM crawlers scouring the internet causes more outages
+and headaches for our sysadmins, and AI is causing skyrocketing costs for the
+hardware we need to run the platform and the hardware you need to use it. But,
+in truth, the rationale is more about politics and ethics than anything else.
+
+Deciding which “hills to die on” is tricky. We are an organization which is
+transparent about politics, both the fact that we, like all others, have
+politics, and also about what our politics are. But, although the world is a
+turbulent place, and this calls all of us to action, there are many issues we
+believe firmly in but which need not necessarily steer SourceHut policy. If we
+were to shape our policies in terms of our values on, for example, Palestine,
+it would serve to stoke controversy and increase our workload without
+meaningfully contributing anything to the problem. We lack the cultural and
+intellectual context to know what to do about that situation, and we have
+access to few resources knowledgeable enough to steer our policies with wisdom
+and care.
+
+In the case of AI, though it touches on complex social, economic, and political
+factors, many of which are beyond the realm of our our expertise, it overlaps
+considerably with matters on which we are experts – software development, open
+source, and open culture, for example. As experts, we can more easily see that
+we have an obligation to evaluate their impact and to weigh in and make
+decisions accordingly.
+
+If we focus narrowly on how LLMs affect our community, we can consult our
+mission statement for guidance:
+
+ We are here to make free software better. We will be honest, transparent,
+ and empathetic. We care for our users, and we will not exploit them, and we
+ hope that they will reward our care and diligence with success.
+
+It’s not easy to argue that LLMs make free software better. The means by which
+they operate involves taking, [10]by force and without regard for the wishes of
+the software authors, [11]the obligations of software licenses, or the
+platforms on which our work relies, vast swaths of open source software,
+disregarding the licensing requirements, and charging rent to produce code
+which is a plausible reinterpretation of its training data applied to new
+problems. The models which are produced in this process are proprietary, owned
+and controlled by private corporations, and give little back to the open source
+community. Therefore, the relationship between LLMs and open source seems to
+exploit the users we are responsible for caring for.
+
+We have also seen some other troubling incidents, for example the use of LLMs
+to rewrite open source software to circumvent copyleft obligations, such as in
+the case of the [12]chardet library, a practice which seems to
+straightforwardly work against the interests of open source software authors.
+
+However, LLMs have shown some utility. They find real bugs, [13]including
+security bugs, and open source software has become more robust as a
+consequence. Some programmers [14]find them useful for code reviews and other
+creative applications, and indeed many programmers report good results in using
+them to write or assist in writing code.
+
+The more we zoom out, though, the more alarming it gets.
+
+The biggest concern is the impact on the climate. Cars fueled by fossil fuels
+are also useful, but most people support efficiency improvements and ultimately
+a complete replacement with electric vehicles to mitigate their effects. The
+transformation of society to address the climate emergency must be
+comprehensive, and each of us, in our respective industries and expertise, have
+a moral obligation to work to reduce our environmental footprint, particularly
+in systemic and institutional ways. The roll-out of AI is a massive trend in
+the wrong direction. LLMs and similar tools are an [15]extremely
+energy-inefficient way of solving the problems they address, such as authoring
+software, and are [16]fundamentally at odds with mitigating the climate
+disaster.
+
+Planned developments in AI infrastructure are expected to generate an
+electricity demand [17]comparable to the entire country of India, a country
+which is experiencing [18]tens of thousands of deaths due to heatwaves
+exacerbated by climate change. This build-out consumes a large portion of the
+green energy coming onto the grid, [19]delaying de-carbonization of other
+sectors, or else [20]AI drives demand for new fossil fuel infrastructure
+outright. In either case [21]the average energy consumer often pays the bill.
+
+It’s often unclear how to respond to the climate crisis at an individual level.
+Taking shorter showers or using your air conditioner less might help – and the
+wealthy tend to highlight these “solutions” to diffuse responsibility for their
+own impact – but this isn’t comparable to the meaningful institutional change
+that needs to take place.
+
+Individuals do make a difference when they have their hands on the levers of
+those institutions. As software engineers we have front-row seats for the
+deployment of one of the world’s [22]fastest growing energy consumers: AI. Our
+conscience calls us to resist the deployment of technologies which will
+exacerbate death and suffering for millions. AI might deliver benefits to
+society, but the cost is so high that we need to make careful decisions about
+how it’s deployed and if the benefits to society outweigh those costs. On the
+whole, vibe coding does not deliver benefits which, in the view of SourceHut
+and our community, outweigh the costs. Cheap, green electricity, preservation
+of freshwater resources, husbanding our planet and its wildlife: these are all
+much more important than AI-assisted coding.
+
+The broader social and economic consequences add to the alarm. These tools are
+disrupting labor and increasing the already unprecedented gap between the haves
+and the have-nots. These companies pay [23]minimum wage in inhumane conditions
+in impoverished countries for the labor they exploit to train models that can
+be applied to taking the bottom out of the labor market in wealthy countries.
+Moreover, the accumulated wealth of the AI owners, and the depleted resources
+of the AI proletariat, is further exploited to consolidate power, enable the
+rise of fascism, and destroy the social order alongside the environmental
+order. AI is being used to [24]deport immigrants without due process, [25]
+surveil and police poor and [26]racialized communities, manipulate elections
+and political discourse, [27]facilitate crimes against humanity at scale, and
+amplify injustices in our institutions.
+
+Finally, AI simply seems to be bad for the people who use it. Many open source
+maintainers complain of [28]being exhausted by a deluge of low-quality AI
+generated contributions. AI has been linked to “[29]deskilling”, making its
+users worse at problem solving and other cognitive tasks. And the number of
+people who have been [30]talked into psychosis or [31]suicide by their chatbots
+continues to rise.
+
+These concerns are myriad, credible, and demand action. Our small contribution
+to the problem is to clearly state our position on the matter and adjust our
+policies to provide a safe platform for people who are concious of these issues
+to work and find community.
+
+The upcoming changes
+
+The new terms of service, which will go into effect for new projects after the
+usual two week notice period (i.e. September 10th), will now include the
+following under the list of prohibited content:
+
+ • original content written with or which facilitates the use of LLMs (large
+ language models) or other generative AI technologies
+
+The use of LLMs or other generative AI tools to produce or assist with the
+production of source code, assets, tickets, emails, and so on, will no longer
+be permitted on SourceHut once these terms take effect.
+
+As with our other policy changes, the intention is to roll this out slowly and
+thoughtfully. Each possible violation will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis
+and we are open to making exceptions.
+
+A matter of interpretation
+
+This policy is worded carefully to allow some room for reasonable
+interpretation. For instance, the choice to target “original” content in the
+policy is intended to allow you to host mirrors of major codebases that may
+have more lenient LLM policies, such as the Linux kernel. An individual who
+contributes to a project like Linux can host their personal tree and stage
+patches on SourceHut, and a Linux kernel subsystem which has an internal policy
+on LLM use which aligns with SourceHut is welcome to host their tree, mailing
+lists, and so on, on our platform, without worrying about the impact of
+AI-assisted code in the rest of Linux. However, SourceHut would not be suitable
+as the upstream platform for the broader Linux project as a consequence of
+their liberal LLM policy.
+
+Moreover, the use of AI for purposes other than co-authoring code, tickets,
+emails, and so on, is discouraged but not prohibited. If you use LLMs privately
+to review your work, to ask questions of, to perform security analysis, and so
+on, and then write original code to push to SourceHut, your use-case is aligned
+with our policy.
+
+Software which contains generative AI features or directly enables the use of
+generative AI is not welcome on SourceHut once this policy comes into effect.
+
+Enforcement
+
+We intend to use a light touch with enforcement. Honesty and transparency is
+among our core values, and we have extended it to our users and expected it in
+return. We rely on the honor system when awarding financial aid on the basis of
+need almost every day, when we refrain from asking users to provide evidence of
+their financial situation to receive free service. All users pay according to
+their means, choosing the price point that they can afford, and have never been
+expected to justify their choice.
+
+So, in terms of enforcement, first and foremost we have made our position clear
+and shown that AI-assisted projects are not welcome on SourceHut. We will not
+be deploying any automated tools for detecting AI use or going out of our way
+to identify covert AI use in projects.
+
+One can lie or mislead us about their use of AI, but we want to signal to them
+that, if this behavior is discovered, they will lose the assumption of good
+faith and their account will be suspended. Therefore, it is not a wise choice
+to invest in SourceHut as the platform upon which this kind of software can be
+built, and we hope that reasonable users will make their choices accordingly.
+
+Existing projects on SourceHut which have made use of AI assistance in their
+work may remain on SourceHut provided that they adopt policies which are
+consistent with our terms of service for their future development. If you have
+used AI tools in your software before, and want to remain on SourceHut, there
+will be no retroactive enforcement, and we will take action against users who
+shame or harass those who have used AI in their work. Nonetheless we invite you
+to consider the arguments presented here and adjust the way you work in the
+future before you consider migrating away.
+
+If your project is affected
+
+Projects which utilize and intend to continue utilizing AI assistance after the
+policy change takes effect will be treated the same as most cases of ToS
+violation: with patience and understanding. If you or your project are affected
+by these changes and wish to continue making use of generative AI tools, you
+are required to migrate away from SourceHut at your earliest convenience. There
+is no deadline per-se, but you should have a viable migration plan in place as
+soon as possible.
+
+SourceHut is free and open-source software. You are welcome to follow the [32]
+installation instructions to self-host it, or to find a community that operates
+their own instance and would welcome you there. We can also recommend [33]
+Forgejo as an easier to deploy forge that may be suitable for your needs, and a
+[34]list of public instances is available. If you prefer to retain the mailing
+list workflow, deploying a solution like GNU mailman may be suitable for your
+needs. Proprietary solutions like GitHub may also be viewed favorably by
+projects which support AI use, and provide many features to support AI users.
+
+Much of your account and project data can be exported from SourceHut and
+imported with minimal loss into other forges. You can transfer your data to
+another SourceHut instance with high fidelity, and other platforms should be
+able to import a subset of the data (e.g. git repos to Forgejo or mailing list
+archives to GNU mailman). Please consult the [35]hut tool for this purpose.
+
+If you require assistance in figuring out your migration plan, or want to make
+sure you have enough time to implement the changes while minimizing the
+disruption for your project, please [36]don’t hesitate to ask us for help.
+
+[37]« What's cooking on SourceHut? Q2 2026
+
+Welcome to sourcehut! This suite of open source tools is the software
+development platform you've been waiting for.
+
+ • Git and Mercurial hosting, mailing lists, bug tracking, continuous
+ integration, and more
+ • Absolutely no tracking or advertising
+ • All features work without JavaScript
+ • No AI features whatsoever
+ • [38] 100% free and open source software
+
+[39] Register for sr.ht or [40] learn more
+© 2026 sourcehut [41]Privacy Policy [42]Terms of Use [43]Logo & Media resources
+[44]Source Code (AGPL, BSD et al)
+
+ We are here to make free software better. We will be honest, transparent,
+ and empathetic. We care for our users, and we will not exploit them, and we
+ hope that they will reward our care and diligence with success.
+
+ SourceHut
+ Postbus 3068
+ 1620GB Hoorn
+ Netherlands
+ KVK-nummer: 84165251
+ BTW-nummer: NL003921490B16
+ [45]sr.ht-support
+
+
+References:
+
+[1] https://sourcehut.org/
+[2] https://sourcehut.org/blog
+[3] https://sourcehut.org/pricing
+[4] https://sourcehut.org/community
+[5] https://www.hellotux.com/sourcehut
+[6] https://sr.ht/
+[7] https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html
+[8] https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-discuss/%[email protected]%3E
+[9] https://sourcehut.org/blog/2026-08-27-tos-changes-and-llms/#changes
+[10] https://codeberg.org/forgejo/discussions/issues/320
+[11] https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-code-generation-ownership
+[12] https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/327
+[13] https://lwn.net/Articles/1070698/
+[14] https://lwn.net/Articles/1063292/
+[15] https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117
+[16] https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-choose-ai-climate-goals-data-center-chief-warns/
+[17] https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/opinion-ai-is-destroying-our-planet-we-must-act
+[18] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/environmental-health/articles/10.3389/fenvh.2026.1789071/full
+[19] https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/how-ai-cloud-computing-may-delay-transition-clean-energy-2024-11-21/
+[20] https://www.entergy.com/news/entergy-louisiana-announces-a-new-agreement-with-meta-that-will-deliver-an-additional-2b-in-customer-savings
+[21] https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/extracting-profits-from-the-public-how-utility-ratepayers-are-paying-for-big-techs-power/
+[22] https://energy.ec.europa.eu/news/focus-data-centres-energy-hungry-challenge-2025-11-17_en
+[23] https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/
+[24] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/palantir-deportation-roundup
+[25] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/machine-surveillance-is-being-super-charged-by-large-ai-models
+[26] https://www.oxjournal.org/predictive-policing-or-predictive-prejudice/
+[27] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/04/gaza-un-experts-deplore-use-purported-ai-commit-domicide-gaza-call
+[28] https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/01/overrun-with-ai-slop-curl-scraps-bug-bounties-to-ensure-intact-mental-health/
+[29] https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872
+[30] https://thehumanlineproject.org/research-stanford/
+[31] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_linked_to_chatbots#Suicides
+[32] https://man.sr.ht/installation.md
+[33] https://forgejo.org/
+[34] https://codeberg.org/forgejo-contrib/delightful-forgejo#user-content-public-instances
+[35] https://sr.ht/~xenrox/hut/
+[36] mailto:~sircmpwn/[email protected]
+[37] https://sourcehut.org/blog/2026-05-28-whats-cooking-q2-2026/
+[38] https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sourcehut
+[39] https://meta.sr.ht/register
+[40] https://sourcehut.org/
+[41] https://man.sr.ht/privacy.md
+[42] https://man.sr.ht/terms.md
+[43] https://sourcehut.org/logo
+[44] https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sourcehut/
+[45] mailto:~sircmpwn/[email protected]
diff --git a/static/archive/tracydurnell-com-xu4yl2.txt b/static/archive/tracydurnell-com-xu4yl2.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,526 @@
+[1]Skip to the content
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+ • [148]Books[149]Show sub menu
+ □ [150]Read in 2026
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+ • [155]Tunes[156]Show sub menu
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+What I read online today: Aug. 24, 2026
+
+ • Post author By [179]Tracy Durnell
+ • Post date [180]August 24, 2026
+ • [181]1 Comment on What I read online today: Aug. 24, 2026
+ • ❤️
+
+Every once in a while, I keep track of everything I read for a day or two,
+mostly out of curiosity about what I’m actually reading and how much I read
+online on a given day. It’s been [182]a couple years! More at the bottom of
+[183]this page.
+
+Via RSS
+
+[184]Small things like these by Robin Rendle (08.23.2026) — immediately
+requested this book on Libby and it already came up for me 😂 doesn’t sound like
+my usual fare but I’m game to try it
+
+[185]Chuck Tingle and the Internet by Joe Crawford (2026 08 23)
+
+[186]Athens Greeknotes 24 Aug by Felix
+
+[187]August 24, 2026 by Heather Cox Richardson (Aug 24, 2026)
+
+Via Bluesky
+
+[188]In candid interviews, National Guard members speak out about D.C.
+deployment by Kat Lonsdorf (NPR – August 24, 2026)
+
+[189]How AI is hijacking art history by Sonja Drimmer (The Conversation,
+November 1, 2021)
+
+Via email
+
+[190]Right-wingers want every woman to be a mom and also hate moms now by Ryan
+Broderick (Garbage Day, Aug 24, 2026)
+
+–> [191]Brother of Natalie Harp, Trump’s “Human Printer,” Lives “At Peace”
+Under Ortega-Murillo Dictatorship by Wilfredo Miranda Aburto (Divergentes, 21
+de agosto 2026) — read this because I watched a [192]TikTok of him talking
+about this yesterday
+
+ • Tags [193]intake, [194]reading
+
+[70c71f48c24aa2fcf7]
+
+By Tracy Durnell
+
+Writer and designer in the Seattle area. Reach me at [email protected] or
+@[email protected]. She/her.
+
+[195] View Archive →
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+[196] ← My book TBR system [197] → What I read online today: Aug. 25, 2026
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+One reply on “What I read online today: Aug. 24, 2026”
+
+[avatar] [198]Michael Harley says: @ [199]michaelharley.net
+[200]August 25, 2026 at 8:57 am
+
+[201]Michael Harley
+
+liked [202]What I read online today: Aug. 24, 2026
+
+[203]Reply
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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+response? Update or delete your post and re-enter your post's URL again. ([216]
+Find out more about Webmentions.)
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+[221]All Posts | [222]Featured | [223]Categories | [224]Random
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+ • [225]Weeknotes: Aug. 28 – Sept. 4, 2026 September 4, 2026
+ • [226]Distinguishing human readers from bot traffic with server-side stats
+ September 3, 2026
+ • [227]The betrayal of perceived allies September 2, 2026
+ • [228]Formatting as courtesy to the reader August 31, 2026
+ • [229]My emergency food supply is extra normal food August 30, 2026
+
+About Tracy
+
+[230][70c71f48c24aa2]
+
+Tracy Durnell
+
+ • [231]microblog
+ • [232]mastodon
+
+Writer and designer in the Seattle area. Reach me at [email protected] or
+@[email protected]. She/her.
+
+Search for: [233][ ] [234][Search]
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+References:
+
+[1] https://tracydurnell.com/2026/08/24/what-i-read-online-today-aug-24-2026/#site-content
+[3] https://tracydurnell.com/
+[5] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/
+[6] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/
+[7] https://tracydurnell.com/category/featured/
+[8] https://tracydurnell.com/series/
+[9] https://tracydurnell.com/kind/article/
+[10] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/index/
+[11] https://notes.tracydurnell.com/
+[12] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/links-to-blog-about/
+[13] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/
+[14] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/thinking-better/
+[15] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/culture/
+[16] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/authenticity/
+[17] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/aesthetics/
+[18] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/placemaking/
+[19] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/home/
+[20] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/transforming-capitalism/
+[21] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/resisting-fascism/
+[22] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/feminism/
+[23] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/
+[24] https://tracydurnell.com/about/
+[25] https://tracydurnell.com/about/
+[26] https://tracydurnell.com/start-here/
+[27] https://tracydurnell.com/now/
+[28] https://tracydurnell.com/category/weeknotes/
+[29] https://tracydurnell.com/pages/
+[30] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/
+[31] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/read-in-2026/
+[32] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/read-in-2025/
+[33] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/
+[34] https://tracydurnell.com/kind/read/
+[35] https://tracydurnell.com/booklists/
+[36] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/
+[37] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/listened-in-2026/
+[38] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/listened-in-2025/
+[39] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/birthday-playlists/
+[40] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/best-of-year-playlists/
+[41] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/favorite-albums/
+[42] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/
+[43] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/
+[44] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/recipes-to-try/
+[45] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/
+[46] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/
+[47] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/cool-artists/
+[48] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/neat-websites/
+[49] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/handy-tools/
+[50] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/reference/
+[51] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/shopping/
+[52] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/graphic-design-resources/
+[53] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/local/
+[54] https://tracydurnell.com/places/seattle-activity-ideas/
+[55] https://tracydurnell.com/places/seattle-travel-ideas/
+[62] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/
+[64] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/
+[65] https://tracydurnell.com/category/featured/
+[66] https://tracydurnell.com/series/
+[67] https://tracydurnell.com/kind/article/
+[68] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/index/
+[69] https://notes.tracydurnell.com/
+[70] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/links-to-blog-about/
+[71] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/
+[73] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/thinking-better/
+[74] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/culture/
+[75] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/authenticity/
+[76] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/aesthetics/
+[77] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/placemaking/
+[78] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/home/
+[79] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/transforming-capitalism/
+[80] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/resisting-fascism/
+[81] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/feminism/
+[82] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/
+[83] https://tracydurnell.com/about/
+[85] https://tracydurnell.com/about/
+[86] https://tracydurnell.com/start-here/
+[87] https://tracydurnell.com/now/
+[88] https://tracydurnell.com/category/weeknotes/
+[89] https://tracydurnell.com/pages/
+[90] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/
+[92] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/read-in-2026/
+[93] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/read-in-2025/
+[94] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/
+[95] https://tracydurnell.com/kind/read/
+[96] https://tracydurnell.com/booklists/
+[97] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/
+[99] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/listened-in-2026/
+[100] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/listened-in-2025/
+[101] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/birthday-playlists/
+[102] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/best-of-year-playlists/
+[103] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/favorite-albums/
+[104] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/
+[106] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/
+[107] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/recipes-to-try/
+[108] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/
+[110] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/
+[111] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/cool-artists/
+[112] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/neat-websites/
+[113] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/handy-tools/
+[114] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/reference/
+[115] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/shopping/
+[116] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/graphic-design-resources/
+[117] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/local/
+[118] https://tracydurnell.com/places/seattle-activity-ideas/
+[119] https://tracydurnell.com/places/seattle-travel-ideas/
+[120] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/
+[122] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/
+[123] https://tracydurnell.com/category/featured/
+[124] https://tracydurnell.com/series/
+[125] https://tracydurnell.com/kind/article/
+[126] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/index/
+[127] https://notes.tracydurnell.com/
+[128] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/links-to-blog-about/
+[129] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/
+[131] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/thinking-better/
+[132] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/culture/
+[133] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/authenticity/
+[134] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/aesthetics/
+[135] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/placemaking/
+[136] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/home/
+[137] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/transforming-capitalism/
+[138] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/resisting-fascism/
+[139] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/feminism/
+[140] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/
+[141] https://tracydurnell.com/about/
+[143] https://tracydurnell.com/about/
+[144] https://tracydurnell.com/start-here/
+[145] https://tracydurnell.com/now/
+[146] https://tracydurnell.com/category/weeknotes/
+[147] https://tracydurnell.com/pages/
+[148] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/
+[150] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/read-in-2026/
+[151] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/read-in-2025/
+[152] https://tracydurnell.com/reading/
+[153] https://tracydurnell.com/kind/read/
+[154] https://tracydurnell.com/booklists/
+[155] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/
+[157] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/listened-in-2026/
+[158] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/listened-in-2025/
+[159] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/birthday-playlists/
+[160] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/best-of-year-playlists/
+[161] https://tracydurnell.com/listening/favorite-albums/
+[162] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/
+[164] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/
+[165] https://tracydurnell.com/recipes/recipes-to-try/
+[166] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/
+[168] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/
+[169] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/cool-artists/
+[170] https://tracydurnell.com/blogroll/neat-websites/
+[171] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/handy-tools/
+[172] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/reference/
+[173] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/shopping/
+[174] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/graphic-design-resources/
+[175] https://tracydurnell.com/resources/local/
+[176] https://tracydurnell.com/places/seattle-activity-ideas/
+[177] https://tracydurnell.com/places/seattle-travel-ideas/
+[178] https://tracydurnell.com/category/meta/
+[179] https://tracydurnell.com/author/tracyadmin/
+[180] https://tracydurnell.com/2026/08/24/what-i-read-online-today-aug-24-2026/
+[181] https://tracydurnell.com/2026/08/24/what-i-read-online-today-aug-24-2026/#comments
+[182] https://tracydurnell.com/2024/05/19/articles-i-read-today-may-17-18-2024/
+[183] https://tracydurnell.com/questions/information-diet/
+[184] https://robinrendle.com/notes/small-things-like-these/
+[185] https://artlung.com/blog/2026/08/23/chuck-tingle-and-the-internet/
+[186] https://felix.gripe/blog/athens-greeknotes-2026-08-24/
+[187] https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-24-2026
+[188] https://www.npr.org/2026/08/24/nx-s1-5939973/national-guard-members-washington-dc-deployment
+[189] https://theconversation.com/how-ai-is-hijacking-art-history-170691
+[190] https://www.garbageday.email/p/right-wingers-want-every-woman-to-be-a-mom-and-also-hate-moms-now
+[191] https://www.divergentes.com/brother-natalie-harp-trumps-human-printer-peace-dictatorship/
+[192] https://www.tiktok.com/@therecount/video/7675841764342746398
+[193] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/intake/
+[194] https://tracydurnell.com/tag/reading/
+[195] https://tracydurnell.com/author/tracyadmin/
+[196] https://tracydurnell.com/2026/08/23/my-book-tbr-system/
+[197] https://tracydurnell.com/2026/08/25/what-i-read-online-today-aug-25-2026/
+[198] https://michaelharley.net/
+[199] https://michaelharley.net/likes/2026/08/25/what-i-read-online-today-aug-24-2026/
+[200] https://michaelharley.net/likes/2026/08/25/what-i-read-online-today-aug-24-2026/
+[201] https://michaelharley.net/
+[202] https://tracydurnell.com/2026/08/24/what-i-read-online-today-aug-24-2026/
+[203] https://tracydurnell.com/2026/08/24/what-i-read-online-today-aug-24-2026/?replytocom=15945#respond
+[204] https://tracydurnell.com/2026/08/24/what-i-read-online-today-aug-24-2026/#respond
+[216] https://indieweb.org/webmention
+[221] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/
+[222] https://tracydurnell.com/category/featured/
+[223] https://tracydurnell.com/mind-garden/index#categories
+[224] https://tracydurnell.com/random
+[225] https://tracydurnell.com/2026/09/04/weeknotes-aug-28-sept-4-2026/
+[226] https://tracydurnell.com/2026/09/03/distinguishing-human-readers-from-bot-traffic-with-server-side-stats/
+[227] https://tracydurnell.com/2026/09/02/when-rationality-clashes-with-emotions/
+[228] https://tracydurnell.com/2026/08/31/formatting-as-courtesy-to-the-reader/
+[229] https://tracydurnell.com/2026/08/30/my-emergency-food-supply/
+[230] https://tracydurnell.com/
+[231] https://micro.blog/tracydurnell
+[232] https://micro.blog/tracydurnell?remote_follow=1
+[235] https://tracydurnell.com/feed/
+[236] https://tracydurnell.com/kind/read/feed
+[237] https://tracydurnell.com/comments/feed/
+[238] https://tracydurnell.com/privacy-policy/
+[239] https://tracydurnell.com/
+[240] https://tracydurnell.com/privacy-policy/
+[241] https://wordpress.org/
+[242] https://tracydurnell.com/2026/08/24/what-i-read-online-today-aug-24-2026/#site-header
diff --git a/static/archive/www-derekthompson-org-bwnzgl.txt b/static/archive/www-derekthompson-org-bwnzgl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,723 @@
+[1]
+Derek Thompson
+
+[2]Derek Thompson
+
+[3](Search)[4](Share Publication)
+[5]Subscribe[6]Sign in
+[7](close)
+User's avatar
+Discover more from Derek Thompson
+A newsletter about abundance and building a better world.
+[8][ ]
+[9]Subscribe
+By subscribing, you agree Substack's [10]Terms of Use, and acknowledge its [11]
+Information Collection Notice and [12]Privacy Policy.
+Already have an account? Sign in
+
+A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird
+
+Once you learn what the "uni-context" is, you won't stop seeing it everywhere
+
+[13]
+Derek Thompson's avatar
+[14]Derek Thompson
+Jul 14, 2026
+[15](Like (1,961))
+1,961
+[16](View comments (24))
+24
+[17]
+457
+[18]
+Share
+[19](Table of Contents)
+
+[20]
+Symmetrical abstract pattern of modern buildings
+[21][22]
+
+Photo by [23]Mike Hindle on [24]Unsplash
+
+Here are some questions that I consider self-evidently compelling about the
+modern world:
+
+ • Why is the news media so interested in telling you how much the world sucks
+ all the time?
+
+ • Why are so many of us obsessed with distraction and managing our attention?
+
+ • Why is it so hard to stop comparing ourselves to others?
+
+ • And why does everything in art and design seem the same these days?
+
+A week ago, I didn’t think these questions were related. I’m not sure I would
+have told you I had a good answer to most of them. And I certainly wouldn’t
+have made the audacious and borderline bonkers claim that one single theory
+could begin to explain all of them, at once.
+
+This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work,
+consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
+
+[36][ ]
+[37]Subscribe
+But then I had the pleasure of speaking to Agnes Callard, the University of
+Chicago professor, about her new theory called “the uni-context.” It’s easily
+one of them most interesting conversations I’ve had all year. And once you’ve
+heard or read it, I think you might find it hard to think about anything else.
+
+One way to prepare your mind for Callard’s theory of the uni-context is to
+think about the better-known concept of [38]“context collapse.” If you post
+something to social media, it will be simultaneously visible to your boss, your
+parents, your ex, and total strangers. So, while your offline life might be
+distinct with each of these groups—you might be differential to your boss,
+childish with your parents, and bawdy with your friends—all of those
+distinctions are flattened on the internet. That’s context collapse, and you
+can think of it as the answer to a question: How do informational norms change
+when we’re all living in the same universal room?
+
+Callard takes the idea significantly further. She asks: How do all other norms
+—our morals, our ethics, our sense of what is good for us and for others—change
+when we continually imagine ourselves to be living in a universal room with
+everybody else? The connections that Callard makes are consistently surprising,
+often quite funny, and ultimately mind-exploding.
+
+Here is our conversation, edited for clarity, brevity, and simplicity’s sake.
+
+The Uni-Context, Explained
+[39](Link)
+
+Derek Thompson: What is the uni-context?
+
+Agnes Callard: Let’s start with the word context. A context is a set of
+circumstances that tell you how you should act. For most of human history,
+contexts were local and multiple. If you wanted to know how you should act, you
+would look around. Am I in a field? Am I inside my home? Am I in the church? Am
+I in a bar? You would immediately get guidance by looking both at your physical
+environment and at the people around you and how they were acting.
+
+The uni-context is a scenario in which the ways you should act become the same
+across all different contexts. There’s just one set of norms you should follow
+all times, irrespective of context.
+
+Thompson: Is the uni-context a purely technological phenomenon?
+
+I just wrote an article about [40]what America was like in 1926, based on a
+social science survey called Recent Social Trends, published in 1933. The
+authors claim that the radio was destroying individuality, because it took
+people who used to be settled in rooms and it exploded their brains to become
+present all over the world simultaneously. Radio was demolishing the idea of a
+local individual, because suddenly we all became global citizens.
+
+So one story you could tell is that the last 150 years of telecommunications
+technology have taken “local” individuals, who occupy one room at a time, and
+made us into global beings who are simultaneously in every room, at once. Is
+the uni-context just technology or is it technology plus something else?
+
+Callard: It’s technology plus something else. What the techno-determinism angle
+misses is: Why did these technologies catch on in the first place? Why was
+radio popular? Why did we come up with new things—television, smartphones—and
+why did they catch on, too? Not every technology people have invented has
+caught on the way these forms have. They caught on in large part because of
+this impulse people have to live in a uni-context.
+
+Thompson: Does the uni-context flow out of this adventurousness in the human
+spirit to become bigger than ourselves, to be everywhere, and to know
+everything?
+
+Callard: Yeah, it absolutely does. There’s a conversational relationship
+between these technologies and a human impulse that interacts with them. They
+facilitate the expression of an impulse; if they didn’t, they would flop as
+technologies. We need to explain why they were popular; why they became the
+subject of obsessive use; and what their popularity reveals, as a humans’
+impatience with being trapped in a small world that presents itself as all of
+reality but you know it isn’t.
+
+There is a drive to be bigger than yourself. It leads people to adventure, but
+adventure just takes you to a different place. The uni-context takes you to a
+different set of norms, a much more radical change, a push to live in something
+like a fully open reality.
+
+The Uni-Context Explains … Why Everyone Talks About How Everything Sucks All
+the Time
+[41](Link)
+
+Thompson: I want to get into some implications of the uni-context. If I put on
+the goggles of the uni-context, what makes sense that previously did not? One
+of those things is the rise of negativity bias. When you go online, there’s so
+much emphasis on people posting about what is bad. Why would this theory
+explain a world in which people are more focused on bad things than good
+things?
+
+Callard: In general, goodness is more context-dependent than badness. There
+isn’t really anything that’s good all the time for everyone independent of
+context. Happiness depends on your context and who you are. There isn’t
+anything that will always make a person happy. But there are reliable ways to
+make people unhappy. There’s a set of evils that are close to universal: death,
+pain, illness, violence. Even if someone’s in very different circumstances from
+yours, if you see they’re being subjected to one of those, you can interpret it
+as suffering and understand it.
+
+So we should predict that what we see on the internet, insofar as people are
+trying to be legible to large groups, is that they focus their attention on
+things that show up to everyone. Take two strangers on the internet trying to
+talk to each other. What are they going to coordinate on as a topic they can
+both care about? It’s likely going to be something bad.
+
+Thompson: It’s almost like you’re saying the audience for the bad tends to be
+more global than the audience for the good.
+
+Take food. If I think chicken enchiladas are really delicious, that might be
+interesting to my wife or my neighbor in the context of our home. But the fact
+that I think chicken enchiladas are delicious is incredibly boring for posting
+on Twitter, a place that cuts across contexts. It’s more interesting for me to
+say white Americans who eat chicken enchiladas are racist against Mexican
+culture, because the concept of racism clicks into a global norm of badness.
+
+So when people go online, when it’s suddenly one to a million, there is an
+inclination to make those posts negative. Condemnation spreads further because
+it cuts across all these contexts. Is that a fair way of recapitulating how the
+uni-context would predict that modern communication would be more fixated on
+criticism and badness?
+
+Callard: That seems right. Let me make one corrective and add a point. You
+might say your chicken enchilada thing just isn’t that important or good. But
+let’s say something really good happened. Someone in Iran wrote an amazing
+poem. Even then, well, they wrote it in a language a lot of us don’t speak, and
+we need time to evaluate and culturally assimilate it. So even pretty
+significant goods are going to be throttled in their ability to reach a
+substantial audience. From chicken enchiladas to great works of art, we’ve got
+the same problem.
+
+Thompson: When we spoke on the phone about the uni-context, you told me a story
+about being a professor that seems like a great example of this principle. Can
+you tell that story?
+
+Callard: One way I illustrate the norms that are distinctively uni-contextual,
+and contrast them with our older multi-contextual norms, is to think about ways
+I might correct a student. Suppose they come late to class, or interrupt
+another student, or raise their hand to say something that has nothing to do
+with what the previous person just said. Those are all ways I can correct a
+student in my capacity as teacher. The other students cannot make those
+corrections.
+
+But now imagine that a student makes a sexist or racist comment. I can correct
+that too, but so can another student in the class. The other students are in a
+totally parallel position to me when it comes to the uni-contextual norms.
+Those are not role-dependent.
+
+Let me add something about the idea that the audience is global. I want to
+distinguish between a situation in which a lot of people from a lot of cultures
+are accessing the same information and one in which people are accessing it
+from a lot of different contexts. Imagine it was just New Yorkers on the
+internet. Those New Yorkers would be accessing the internet from different
+places, in different moods, at different times of day. One might be at a bar,
+while another might be talking to their kids. Is there something good for all
+New Yorkers all the time, irrespective of their age, wherever they are, and at
+whatever time of day it is? No. The same point holds. They are going to focus
+on the negative as well.
+
+[53][ ]
+[54]Subscribe
+The Uni-context Explains … Why Identity Has Become More Important Than
+Character
+[55](Link)
+
+Thompson: Another implication is the way the uni-context makes identity more
+important than character. Can you explain how, and why?
+
+Callard: First, let’s define what character is. The fact that I have to tell
+you is itself telling; that word is less familiar to us. Everyone knows what
+identity is, but we might not be sure what character is anymore. Character
+refers to a set of dispositions that shape how you navigate your emotional life
+across a variety of circumstances. A courageous person navigates their
+emotional life in relation to fear. You could be anger-prone, or generous. Your
+character is a set of dispositions that determine how you respond to a big
+variety of circumstances.
+
+The thing about character is that it shows up differently in different
+circumstances. Say I’m irascible, easily provoked to anger. Even an irascible
+person isn’t angry all the time. There might be circumstances where everybody
+gets angry, and so you can’t see my irascibility, because even though I’m
+angry, so is everybody else. Grasping character requires a lot of context. To
+understand someone’s character, you need to know them well and to have
+experienced them in a variety of contexts before you can generalize.
+
+With identity categories like woman, disabled, gay, Jewish, or American, the
+striking thing is that you are a member of those categories in every
+circumstance. There is no circumstance in which I stop being a woman. Identity
+is a hat you never take off. So identity is well suited to a uni-contextual
+world.
+
+Thompson: This reminds me of political discourse on the left and the right,
+which tends to focus on identity rather than characters. You have these debates
+about identities are good, which identities are powerful and oppressive, which
+identities are powerless and oppressed, which have protection, which have too
+much protection. It’s not that those categories aren’t important. They are. But
+I’m reflecting now on the gap between how frequently we talk about identity and
+how infrequently we talk about character in the national discourse.
+
+Callard: Yes, in two ways.
+
+What goes along with the identity logic of the uni-context is a specific form
+of ethics that dictates how we talk about identity, and it covers who’s
+powerful and who needs protecting, namely the ethics of inclusion. Our
+fundamental concern in relation to identity is that there are identities that
+might be excluded. Depending on where you are politically, you have your sights
+on different identity categories, but everybody’s worried about that. That’s a
+fundamental form of ethics of the uni-context, because the one thing the
+uni-context has to be is a space for everybody. It’s got to be inclusive in a
+way that earlier societies almost everywhere were not. That word, inclusion,
+wasn’t a thing people talked about. It comes along with the uni-context, and
+the way that ethics gets focused is through identity categories.
+
+And then, there’s virtue. Think about Aristotle, because he’s my prime example
+of a virtue ethicist. By its nature, virtue is a concept that privileges the
+good side rather than the bad. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics tells you what it
+is to be courageous and wise and just and generous. There are corresponding
+discussions of how you might go wrong. But those are predicated on first
+understanding the positive value of certain kinds of behavior. So virtue ethics
+naturally has a positivity bias that is precisely the opposite of the bias we
+have now.
+
+The Uni-Context Explains … Status Anxiety, Comparison, Moneyball, and the
+Marketization of Everything
+[56](Link)
+
+Thompson: Tell me if this is a fair recapitulation of our conversation so far.
+
+For most of human history, people judged norms based on local context. A home
+had its own rules, a cathedral its own rules, and a classroom or bar or funeral
+parlor had its own rules. But now it is almost like we are constantly living in
+universal rooms, and the universal room we occupy is assumed to have universal
+values and universal norms. That has specific implications. First, rather than
+talk about what is good, which is context-dependent, we tend to focus about
+universal truths, and it’s easier to talk about universal bads than goods, so
+people focus on negativity. Two, character is context-dependent, so we talk
+less about character and more about its universalist equivalent, which is
+identity.
+
+There’s a third implication that we should discuss. If everyone is on the same
+comparable plane, the same evaluative field, then comparison itself becomes a
+more inextricable part of life.
+
+Callard: Exactly.
+
+Thompson: Tell me how the uni-context leads to a world of more comparison and
+competition.
+
+Callard: Imagine two school districts with two high schools that do things
+slightly differently. If you’re in district A, you go to school A, and if
+you’re in district B, you go to school B. There might be a lot of information
+about what they do, but people treat it as: I’m in this district, so I go to
+this school. Then they change the rule: You can go to either school no matter
+where you live. Suddenly there is motivation to compare. You had the
+information before, but no motivation to compare, because the schools were not
+in the same space of choice, the same evaluative field.
+
+Now they are, so you find ways to compare them: graduation rates, what colleges
+people get into, how many AP classes they teach. And that affects the schools.
+Suppose one gets less popular because it doesn’t teach many AP classes. They
+were offering an individualized curriculum, but now everyone’s going to the
+other school, so they say, “We’ve got to teach AP classes too.” The process
+homogenizes the two schools, so they can compete. That’s not the only possible
+result. They could specialize, with one becoming the school for freshman and
+sophomore years, the other becoming the school for junior and senior years. But
+if they don’t recreate a normative barrier, you get homogenization from
+comparison.
+
+As more things enter the same evaluative field, you make comparisons you never
+used to be able to make.
+
+Thompson: There are three pieces I’m trying to keep straight.
+
+One, the upstream phenomenon of the uni-context. Two, the downstream phenomenon
+of more fields of comparison. Three, the further downstream phenomenon of
+homogenization.
+
+This is where the theory really starts to sing for me, because I think about
+sports. As the analytics revolution came for baseball, you had all these teams
+in possession of the same statistics by which they could compare players.
+Previously, you had 30 teams using their own private scouts, so their analysis
+was more context-dependent. But when an easily calculable statistic like
+on-base percentage or WAR becomes the conventional way to evaluate whether a
+player is good, all the players become part of the same comparative set. You
+can rank them one-to-250 easily on a spreadsheet.
+
+But analytics didn’t just lead to more math, or more comparison. It led to more
+homogenization of strategy. One of the great critiques of baseball has been
+that every team essentially does the exact same thing: it’s the same strategies
+for pitchers; the same strategies for hitters; the three true outcomes; all the
+batters swinging for the fences. So you have the uni-context creating a
+comparative field, in this case analytics, which leads to homogenization.
+
+Callard: What you said reminded me that I have a theory of the inflection point
+for the uni-context. I don’t think it started five or ten years ago. The moment
+it really showed up was around 1910.
+
+One century ago, there were a bunch of people looking around at the world,
+thinking: What the hell is happening? Did culture break? A lot of those people
+were novelists, and they wrote a new kind of novel called the modernist novel,
+which is a novel about how to live in a world in which the uni-context is just
+coming into existence. Theorists of the time—such as Georg Simmel, Max Weber,
+and Martin Heidegger—they noticed something weird was going on. They tended to
+describe it in terms that sound almost like the opposite of the uni-context.
+They described it as the fragmentation of everything. All of a sudden, they
+said, everything is breaking apart. That was my first clue.
+
+The reason I thought of this is that you said everything is becoming
+homogenous, and I thought, “in a way, yes, but that’s a later effect.” The
+first thing that happens when a bunch of stuff is unified in a single
+evaluative field is that you feel overwhelmed by your choices. It feels like
+stuff is fragmented, because you don’t know how to compare these things,
+because you haven’t yet developed technologies of comparing them.
+
+So, the early feeling of the uni-context was a feeling of the world being
+fragmented. If you were a medieval peasant doing art, you were in art’s
+normative world. If you were in the church, you were in the church’s normative
+world. But in the 20th century, around World War I, you start to think: How do
+we reconcile the schoolteacher turned murderer, the soldier? How do we think
+about the relationship between art and religion? We’re suddenly trying to
+compare all these different values inside a single context, and the world feels
+dis-unified. Eventually we get technologies of commensurability. What
+fragmentation really means—and that part was invisible to these writers—is that
+suddenly everything is part of the same evaluative field. That’s why you
+experience a multiplicity where you used to experience one thing at a time.
+
+Thompson: I’m holding an essay by Georg Simmel you assigned me, [57]The
+Metropolis and Mental Life. It was published in the early 1900s. Here’s a
+quote:
+
+ Money takes the place of all the manifoldness of things and expresses all
+ qualitative distinctions between them in the distinction of how much. To
+ the extent that money can become a common denominator of all values, it
+ becomes the frightful leveler. All things rest on the same level and are
+ distinguished only by their amounts.”
+
+Simmel is putting his finger on the idea that in the modern world, local norms
+are melting, and what replaces them is the psychology of money, which I’ll
+reframe as the psychology of markets.
+
+What are markets very good at? Creating a single comparative field. That’s how
+they coordinate prices, supply and demand. It’s one thing for there to be a
+market for carrots and eggs. But in the dating world now there’s a marketplace
+of single people. In sports, a marketplace of players who can be compared by
+specific analytics that homogenize and flatten strategy.
+
+So there’s a way in which your theory of the uni-context is a way of saying the
+modern experience is the awareness that we are all participants in a global
+marketplace in which we previously were not. When I’m posting something on
+Twitter, I know a universe of people can see it, and I’m going to be voted up
+and down against other people posting in those marketplaces for attention. As
+we coexist in more marketplaces, it changes the way we think about ourselves
+and our values.
+
+Is this market language pulling away from your theory?
+
+Callard: There’s something intuitive about the way you’re putting it. But you
+have to bring in Simmel’s theory of money to understand that quote.
+
+Simmel has a book called The Philosophy of Money in which he explains what
+money really is, and the answer isn’t markets. That book defines money probably
+a hundred times, but I’ll pick one: Money is abstraction in the space of value.
+Money is abstract value. Every other value concept is somehow tied concretely
+to objects. There’s a gradual move, as Simmel understands it, toward the
+capacity to think more and more abstractly about value, that moves in the
+direction of money. But it doesn’t just move in the direction of money, it
+changes money.
+
+In ancient societies, if something is worth a lot of money, it has to be
+represented by a large object representing the money. Then you get fiat
+currency. There are all kinds of changes in money that correspond to this
+growth of the ability to abstract value.
+
+What Simmel would say is that the fundamental change is the rise of
+abstraction. We live our lives so abstractly now. If you want to say we’re in a
+marketplace, that’s fine as a metaphor for the idea that we are engaged in
+abstract value calculations that allow everything to be compared to everything
+else. We tend to use money and markets as a metaphor for that activity, but
+over the past hundred years even what money and markets are has been
+transformed by this process of abstraction. The deeper thread is that we live
+very abstractly. We manage ourselves and our experiences in very top-down ways.
+
+The Uni-context Explains … the Attention Crisis
+[58](Link)
+
+Thompson: Let’s go deeper on this idea that we manage ourselves in top-down
+ways. You think the uni-context explains our relationship to attention and
+distraction. Explain.
+
+Callard: The norm for human beings is a bottom-up management of attention. You
+pay attention to what’s salient in your environment, and the ability to be
+distracted from what you’re attending to is important in a creature that might
+at any moment face a snarling animal or a fire. So the default is that you pay
+attention to what demands your attention.
+
+What the uni-context brings is a newfound top-down management of attention,
+where we constantly feel that we have to make decisions about how to manage our
+attention. We feel constantly like we’re letting ourselves get distracted,
+which is another way of saying we are failing to manage our attention with an
+iron enough fist. We have products to help us fight against the very objects we
+purchase, like our phones. We’re in a war with ourselves. That war is the
+attempt to do top-down management on an aspect of our psychology that evolved
+to be more homeostatic, more responsive to an environment.
+
+One illustration: There are a lot of 19th-century novels in which someone is
+reading a novel, like Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina. It’s always a woman. This
+woman has a turbulent emotional life, because her lover is being problematic,
+so she gets distracted from the novel and puts it down. But a thing that never
+happens is her saying to herself, “no, I need to get through another 20 pages.”
+That kind of attention management—thinking, “I’m reading this book and I need
+to focus on it!”—is just not a thing people did in the 19th century. That shows
+you how different a creature the human of today is.
+
+Thompson: The uni-context puts us in a universal room, where we become aware of
+more ideas, more people, more things that we could be paying attention to but
+aren not. Our response to this is to develop a theory of attention that treats
+it as a resource to manage. We think, “I have to only focus on the perfect
+things!” And this makes us obsessed with, and fearful of, distraction in a way
+that is historically unique.
+
+Callard: It is a mark of the top-down management of attention. The question,
+"what should I pay attention to?” is not a function of anything about my local
+environment. I can’t use cues in my local environment to tell me what to attend
+to, because in pretty much every environment these days, there’s a screen. It’s
+there no matter what. It allows me to choose. It puts me in this giant
+evaluative field as to what I could attend to, the sufferings of people far
+away if I chose. So I stand in this choice relation to my attention.
+
+That was already starting to be true with radio and newspapers. The Austrian
+writer Robert Musil, one of the prophets of the uni-context, wrote:
+
+ The probability of learning something unusual from a newspaper … is far
+ greater than that of experiencing it; in other words, it is in the realm of
+ the abstract that the more important things happen in these times, and it
+ is the unimportant that happens in real life
+
+That’s him saying we are in some way divorced from our local context. It’s
+become irrelevant to us. We live in an abstract space that requires us to
+manage our attention.
+
+Judging a World We Made
+
+Thompson: Is the uni-context good or bad?
+
+Callard: I don’t know. I recommended that Simmel essay for a specific reason,
+the way it ends, where he says the metropolitan mindset is a different mood of
+life than anything humans have known before, but we can’t judge it, because we
+are its products. It is us. The idea that we can separate ourselves and stand
+in some relation to it and say this is good or bad is a bit of an illusion.
+That’s one way of thinking about this, that it’s not obvious we’re in a
+position to judge it. My own thought is I don’t feel ready to judge it. What
+the uni-context is, as I understand it, is an answer to the question, where are
+we? For the past bunch of years I’ve been looking around and seeing, everything
+is going crazy, where am I such that all this crazy stuff is happening? The
+uni-context is a way of answering that. It makes sense that this would be
+happening if that’s where I am. I thought I was in Chicago, sitting at my desk
+at the university. No, the whole time I was in the uni-context. The first thing
+we need to do is get our bearings before we start judging, because the
+uni-context is a super judgey place. There’s a universal moralism applicable to
+every situation, and getting pulled into that takes you away from trying to
+understand where you are.
+
+So What? (Or: The Abiding Hunger For ‘World Openness’)
+[59](Link)
+
+Thompson: I want to know what we should do about this.
+
+A simple answer might be: When you’re having dinner with your family, you can
+be present with your family, or you can be on your phone, which is a universal
+room that makes you everywhere at once. So put away the phone. But that feels
+like a cheap and predictable answer. Do you have something prescriptive that
+isn’t just “put away the phone at family dinner?”
+
+Callard: The question of whether the uni-context is good or bad is loaded,
+because the uni-context struggles to see good things. It’s better at seeing bad
+things. Pretty much everyone who hears me talk about the uni-context
+immediately responds that it’s bad. I’ve never had anyone say, “The uni-context
+sounds great!”But the thing is that this supposedly bad thing is a thing we’re
+creating. We’re choosing it over and over again. Even me talking to you from
+far away about an abstract thing [is the uni-context.]
+
+The uni-context is a space of unruliness. It’s a space in which a certain thing
+about humanity gets expressed, namely our deep aversion to “world closure.” For
+almost all of human history, we have lived in closed little worlds, and those
+worlds presented themselves as the only world. A series of contexts presented
+the person with direction—here’s what you should do. What we are moving toward
+is a “world openness” that we hunger after, where I’m not just going to do
+things a certain way because that’s how we do things or where I was born.
+
+This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work,
+consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
+
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+Joe Hicks's avatar
+[87]Joe Hicks
+[88]Jul 14
+[89](Ellipsis)
+
+This concept carries real firepower, and is like the ultimate end of the
+seemingly endless debate between the universal and the contextual. Or in these
+new terms: uni-contextual and multi-contextual. This links up with trends
+between say progress/cosmopolitanism versus conservatism/traditionalism. Yet in
+this new paradigm every belief system is in the existential fight to become THE
+uni-contextual ethic.
+
+The fact that it is something that has been happening, and increasing over time
+makes better sense than most theories. I can't help but wonder if this is what
+fuels anxiety in so many people today. An individual would learn throughout
+their life through exposure the various multi-contextual normative norms. But
+then today, if you spend too much time on the internet they can be extremely
+versed in the uni-contextual norms yet not know a thing about the
+multi-contextual norms. So one could better understand the normative rules of
+posting for mass audience, while not knowing how to act at a bar or a social
+setting.
+
+This concept is so big and it's generating lots of thoughts. Great episode
+Derek, thanks!
+
+[90]
+Like (55)
+Reply
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+Bijan Soleymani's avatar
+[92]Bijan Soleymani
+[93]Jul 14
+[94](Ellipsis)
+
+Typo: deferential not differential.
+
+[95]
+Like (33)
+Reply
+Share
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+[116]Modern trends and history lessons—across culture, politics, AI, economics,
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+[51]Technology
+
+This Tiny E-Reader Is the Single Best Piece of Technology in Years
+
+The $70 Xteink X3 puts Silicon Valley to shame.
+
+
+By [52]Saahil Desai
+
+The Xteink X3 e-reader attached to an iPhone.
+
+Illustration by Jonelle Afurong / The Atlantic. Source: Getty.
+
+September 6, 2026, 8 AM ET
+Share
+Save
+
+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.
+
+[55]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 ([56]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 [57]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.
+[58]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.
+
+About the Author
+
+
+[59][origina]
+[60]Saahil Desai
+Follow
+[62]Saahil Desai is a senior editor at The Atlantic.
+
+Explore More Topics
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