#post

  1. Designing Beautiful Websites with AI

    I want to build websites with real aesthetic identity — not just competent, but beautiful.

  2. Getting ready for El Niño

    Two things landed on top of each other this July.

  3. The New Institute Closes its Doors
  4. Is Enlightenment Possible
  5. Frank Chimero Beyond the Machine

    From Frank Chimero's beautiful essay about AI https://frankchimero.com/blog/2025/beyond-the-machine/

  6. How Much is Enough

    Chapter headings:

  7. Open-mindedness and Non-attachment to Views

    Consider that one of the greatest obstacles to our well-being is our attachment to views — that we are right and others are wrong.

  8. AI-guided daily planning — the progressive-narrowing experiment

    A standing problem: I want to know what to work on next without burning twenty minutes digging through projects, notes and vague…

  9. Werner Erhard's Enlightenment

    From p.166 of Bartley Biography of Erhard (1978)

  10. A Prayer for Wisdom in a Time of Unravelling

    I have a dream—a dream that we can become wiser, that we can cultivate the wisdom to hold ourselves, each other, and our world with care.

  11. On value misalignment, ecological crisis and the need for wisdom (Wisdom, Value and Choice Part I)

    Our current economic and political systems misalign value creation with compensation and prioritize individualism over collective goods…

  12. Truth is a mountain with no top

    Ken Wilber. Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution (1995). (emphasis added).

  13. So you want to create social infrastructure to rebuild the better future world when this one breaks down ...

    So you want to build social infrastructure to rebuild the better future world when this one breaks down ...

  14. Why Enlightenment Alone Won’t Save Us (and that's ok)

    So I just read, quickly, Daniel Thorson’s beautiful piece about needlessness and love.

  15. An introduction to a Politics of Being

    Politics today often feels like a hollow shell, stripped of vision and hope.

  16. Trump, Neo-fascism and the Crisis of Modernity

    In this episode, we delve into the concept of neo-fascism, its historical roots, and its relevance to the U.S. election and global…

  17. Some nice data tracing the rise of woke-ness and postmodern values

    From two nice articles by David Rozado

  18. What Lightcone Infrastructure's financial crunch tells us about the effective altruism community's ecosystem and funding

    I’m fascinated by EA (effective altruism) and associated rationalist community, particularly from the sociological perspective of “how…

  19. Isn't it all going to be fine? A flowchart to map the different ways people respond to major social problems / crises

    This is a rough map of how we react to a significant social issue or problem.

  20. The Empty Mirror by Janwillem van de Wetering

    The excerpt comes from the very last page of The Empty Mirror by Janwillem Van De Wetering.

  21. The Climate vs Louis Vuitton

    This extraordinary juxtaposition appeared in my twitter feed back in 2023.

  22. Yogins of Ladakh

    Amazing book. Fascinating material. Powerful travelogue and strong insight into the path.

  23. Wisdom: a practical capacity to choose a good path

    Wisdom is a practical capacity to choose a good path — and then act on that choice to realize it.

  24. The New Culturology and Why It's a Big Deal

    A synthetic summary of Henrich (2017) The Secret of Our Success and Henrich (2020) Weirdest People in the World and why this new work…

  25. Darzi report on NHS: Notes and Commentary

    My rough and ready notes on recently issued Darzi report on the NHS (full report PDF).

  26. Darzi report on the NHS flags mental health epidemic

    Look at the indicators for depression. It’s sky-rocketed since the early 2010s.

  27. Things are a bit f'd personally and collectively. Let's do something about that.

    Back in February someone asked me for a succinct description of Life Itself and what we believe.

  28. Seeing the difference between paradigms: using the built environment

    Talk of ‘paradigm shifts’ can sound abstract.

  29. Making peace with the 60s

    Just go. Just burn. If you're going to burn, burn brightly.

  30. Concrete advice to my younger self about how to live (rough draft)

    What would I want to say to myself 20y ago when I was in my early twenties …

  31. Hard thing about hard things re building a wiser world

    It’s easy to listen to Gould play Bach and say to someone (or yourself as I did age 14): “Play like that”.

  32. What does adequate collective sensemaking require?

    Sensemaking is hard, and collective sensemaking is even harder.

  33. What is valueception? And how does it contrast with what we normally mean by value?

    This is a fairly raw transcript from a Q&A I had with someone answering the question: “What is valueception?”

  34. 3P's of of purpose, presence and practice are key to second renaissance and addressing metacrisis

    Here’s the trinity of purpose, presence and practice.

  35. Awakening Society

    See https://lifeitself.org/awakening-society

  36. The Google Tax

    Today I did a search for a building materials shop called “Bricomarche”.

  37. What job(s) have you done done in your life that most nourished your aspiration and joy?

    Here’s a prompt question that we recently shared in the Life Itself community jobs board:

  38. Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta

    Beautifully written at several levels: prose itself, the weaving of different elements from social critique to sacred stories, the…

  39. Tyson Yunkaporta's yarn about Prussian education & the "descent of the west"

    This is from Chapter 7 of Tyson Yunkaporta’s brilliant Sand Talk.

  40. If politicians, civil service and media are going downhill why is that?

    Someone pointed me to this old 2013 piece by Dominic Cummings today.

  41. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

    Thoughts and commentary on Marcus Aurelius' Meditations in the Hays translation.

  42. End Times

    Notes and commentary on Peter Turchin's End times: elites, counter-elites, and the path of political disintegration (2023).

  43. A New Tool to Map Major Worldviews

    By Annick de Witt

  44. Pockets of a Second Renaissance: a Spectrum

    A group of … t hree plus people (preferably five plus+) who are regularly interacting — daily or at least weekly.

  45. Awareness is the greatest agent for change?

    Came across this Eckhart Tolle quote from A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose .

  46. Joe Brewer 3 part series on why he stopped working on applied cultural evolution

    Reading Joe Brewer’s republished 3 part series from 2018 when he was director of the center for applied cultural evolution.

  47. The Greening of America by Charles Reich

    Just came across the Greening of America, 1970 cultural landmark written by Charles Reich, then professor of Law at Yale, and his 1970.

  48. Primacy of Being

    What do we mean by the primacy of being?

  49. Public Goods Problems with Web3 and ReFi

    The main issue in public goods provision (aka commons management etc) is how to raise funds (or, more generally, coordinate contribution).

  50. Worker Coops Strengths and Weaknesses

    We should begin by defining what we mean by a "coop[erative]".

  51. Mindfulness Primer