"There was a time in my life when it was trivial to sign up to a new social network and pick up its patterns and mores on the fly. Now, I feel exhausted by the prospect." - The New York Times
The very idea of popularity is up for debate: Is that trend really viral? Did everyone see that post, or is it just my little corner of the internet? More than before, it feels like we’re holding a fun-house mirror up to the internet and struggling to make sense of the distorted picture. - The Atlantic (MSN)
Researchers such as Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge have shown that various measures of student well-being began a sharp decline around 2012 throughout the West, just as smartphones and social media emerged as the attentional centerpiece of teenage life. Some have even suggested that smartphone use is so corrosive, it’s systematically reducing student achievement. - The Atlantic
Children start to distinguish fantasy from reality around preschool, but a belief in Santa Claus or Father Christmas usually lasts longer, to around seven or eight years old, according to research conducted in the United States in the 1980s and ’90s. - Psyche
Poets should not be threatened by the fact that every person with internet access can now create the poetic equivalent of hotel art. Although it involves technique, poetry is not a technical problem. - The Walrus
Long before generative AI became widely available, people were making “cheapfakes” or “shallowfakes.” It can be as simple as mislabeling images, videos, or audio clips to imply they’re from a different time or location, or editing a piece of media to make it look like something happened that didn’t. - Wired
In 2022 alone, 1,266 non-physics authors published the equivalent of one paper every 5 days, including weekends, compared with 387 in 2016. The accelerated growth since 2016 was surprising because an earlier analysis showed that extreme productivity was beginning to plateau in 2014. - Nature
You know what watching a movie felt like to my easily-distracted hamster brain? It felt like an accomplishment. It felt smart. It felt like a spa day for my skull. It felt like…finishing a book. - The Wall Street Journal
"If you want to know who someone truly is—what they eat, what books they read, what movies they watch, or how furious they get inside their own minds—you should probably check their Notes app." - Wired
Disney turned 100 in 2023 (as you've no doubt heard ad nauseam). Its founder's "legacy was the production of a modern shared language, a set of reference points instantly recognizable to almost everyone, and an encouragement to dream out loud about a utopian future." - The New York Times
At the Alley Theatre in Houston, "when the PPP money was announced, which was just within about a couple of weeks of laying everybody off, we realized that we could bring everybody back and pay them for their time off. And we did that." - NPR
You'd be very, very wrong. "Jeff Probst, the host of Survivor and its executive producer and showrunner, said clothing was at the foundation of the show’s premise." - The New York Times
If ChatGPT reproduces news updates, what reason is there to click on the original? How many times have you Googled for more information after reading a headline on an elevator or taxicab screen? - The Atlantic
Firms that generate nondisruptive creation lead with agency. Rather than start with the chessboard, they envision what could be and what should be, irrespective of what is. They flip the script, openly questioning and reimagining all the things that those who lead with structure accept as givens. They ask: Why not? What if? - Harvard Business Review
