12 articles rescued
India's three-decade ascent relied on a fundamental assumption: the world needed more cognitive labor than humans could supply. That premise is dissolving as artificial intelligence automates the exact services India exports, relocating work to data centers rather than talent pools.
Adam Butler argues we haven't practiced capitalism for 40 years, but rather a 'horrific experiment called neoliberalism' that treats citizens as feedstock for corporate profits instead of serving customer needs.
Cullen Roche's thread on UBI and automation paints a picture of the 'Keynesian Leisure economy'—where we become temporally and monetarily wealthier but socially poorer, with massive disparities in relative leisure.
Harris Kupperman runs the numbers on AI capital expenditure and finds a terrifying gap: the industry needs $480 billion in revenue just to cover 2025 investments, but there simply aren't enough paying customers to make it work.
As AI makes writing effortless, we face an uncomfortable question: if we stop wrestling with words ourselves, do we lose the ability to think deeply? Michael Dean argues that writing isn't just communication—it's how we earn back our cognitive agency.
Colin Lewis argues that AI overspending isn't a bug but a feature—bubbles are civilization's way of coordinating massive resources around transformative technologies, turning irrational exuberance into innovation breakthroughs.
David Deming, Harvard's new Dean, pushes back against AI job apocalypse fears, arguing that CEOs use AI as a convenient scapegoat and that technological disruption historically creates opportunities for the educated elite.
Alex connects David Graeber's bullshit jobs theory with AI disruption, arguing that while meaningless corporate work persists, it's increasingly becoming just a paycheck to fund real entrepreneurial work—and AI is removing the entry-level rungs that once led to corporate careers.
James O'Sullivan argues that social media has transformed from a discovery tool into a distraction machine, where billions of users scroll through AI-generated slop not for information but for 'ambient dissociation.'
China's energy transition is accelerating the global peak of fossil fuel use. With $625 billion invested in clean energy in 2024, China is not just transforming domestically—it's rewriting the economics of the global energy system.
Holly explores how tools mediate our relationship with the world and shape us through use. What happens when AI becomes a cognitive tool that risks doing not just what we do, but the very things that give us meaning?
Neal Stephenson's sprawling 1999 novel weaves together World War II codebreaking, modern cryptography, and tech startup culture into an epic that predicted our digital future with startling accuracy.