Not Just Invention, But Deployment

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…progress requires both.   An interesting article from Derek Thompson, at The Atlantic: Why the Age of American Progress Ended.

Link via Katherine Boyle at Twitter,   who also links a tweet from Tobi Lutke:

The biggest cultural problem holding us back is that society holds the production of criticism at similar importance to that of building. It isn’t. But the critics inherited the airwaves from the builders.

and adds:

Arguably critics often have more power than builders. A society that praises experts over innovators is already a dying society.

The Atlantic article is long but worth reading: I think it makes a number of important points but is also wrongheaded in some instances.

Your thoughts?

Random Pic

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The Kids — They May Not be Alright

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A poster at Twitter, responding to a CDC survey showing that 45% of high school students were so persistently sad or hopeless that they were unable to engage in regular activities and that almost 1 in 5 had seriously considered suicide. His story:

One of my kids’ best friends went to a remote, outward bound style summer camp deep last summer. She came back giddy, and told her mom how amazing it was that the entire time she was there no one talked about climate change or politics or activism or genders. For 2 weeks, they were all allowed to just be kids again. Parents – liberals in particular – think they’re churning out little warriors now, but they aren’t. They’re churning out depressed, confused, terrified, angry, despondent, lost, broken young adults. As someone who has spent a lifetime fighting depression, seeing what we’re doing to our kids fucking infuriates me, and the idea that it’s perceived by so many as virtuous sends me over the edge. Kids’ lives are so wrapped up in the twin harms of the shallowness of social media and the existential dread of things far out of their control that they’re breaking apart, and parents are facilitating it.

The Twitter thread is here…also read the comments.

Quote of the Day

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“E.g it would help America/Britain far more to close 99% of ‘conservative’ think tank activity in DC/London and put the energy and money into expanding school choice and breaking the state’s grip on education by creating new institutions, given how much of politics is downstream of education and how ineffectual most conservative thinking/activity is.”

–Dominic Cummings

The Pleasures of Yew-Toob

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Last fall, when my daughter and I both fell temporarily to the covid plague, one of my respites was sitting at my computer with Wee Jamie the Wonder Grandson in my lap, watching various videos on YouTube. We were not exactly sick … just not very well; easily tired, devoid of energy and interest in anything that lasted very long. Wee Jamie had a low-grad temperature for a day or so, and sniffles, so his health was never in any particular danger. Neither was ours, once some serious drugs had knocked out the covid-induced pneumonia … but the two of us, Wee Jamie and I came away from those weeks with a decided fondness for ten or a dozen YouTube series some of the home renovation off-the-grid living, a couple of ‘build a shelter from raw materials and a few basic tools’ look, hard work fascinates me, I could watch it for hours. (Our Restoration Nation, Red Poppy Ranch, Trent & Allie, Lesnoy_Craft … respectively, various locations in the south, somewhere in the inland northwest, in Utah, and somewhere in … maybe Russia? We also liked some of the model-building shows; one an Australian, the other a German, both of whom do the most amazing dioramas and small structures. Luke Towan, and Samy-Modelblau. Oh, the things that you can make from thick cardboard, and a range of model-making supplies! And wire … and resin…

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