Missives
Keep track of what's happened since you were last here with the newsletters and the changelog.
August 27, 2020
Changelog
New article on repressed memories. Follow up on therapeutic perspectives toward detailing traumas in response to reader questions. New article on the false narrative of teenage brain development.
Site is even thinner again. No more cover images anywhere. Vastly different styling on home and articles pages to eliminate clutter.
August 19, 2020
Changelog
New project article: successful prophets. A couple other new standalone articles too. All links in newsletter. Newsletter will now print articles in full, in response to feedback.
Moving to a lighter version of the site, which means getting rid of cover images. So much time spent finding images for articles just to adhere to convention. Why not try to be visually interesting in a less conventional way? So far, I like it. See what you think.
August 8, 2020
Changelog
Some major changes to the site composition. It’s difficult to produce little self-contained articles when the more interesting ideas are so sprawling, and they also aren’t the most popular content. Long form articles are preferred.
Articles now have a status, indicating how complete they might be. Some will be more iterative, reflecting my thinking on a particular topic to date. These might get broken out into smaller articles over time.
The newest of these iterative articles is On Emotion and isn’t finished, but is coherent. Whereas, On Attraction and Love has been updated to satisfaction and I think that’s going to remain fairly stable for a while. You can sometimes find a list of all the articles tagged for inclusion in more sprawling pieces at the bottom of the artice.
This will allow a more focused and project-oriented approach to ideas. To help draw attention to the interesting changes on the site, I’m now publishing my changelog here.
All previous newsletters since the new site launch can now be found here.
There have been minor updates to quite a few articles, and a major update to one. You can find those in the newsletter.
Many of the changes are inspired by gwern.net. Worth a look if you’re into rabbitholes.
Also, some site speed updates, including image compression.
July 27, 2020
Changelog
Big effort on Chompsky. Detailing his media model with Herman, and then applying it to current trends. Helps to identify the means of finding more sensible sources of news. A number of old articles updated also for an upcoming piece on emotion.
Some behind the scenes work on the site also, to speed both the site and the publishing process up.
June 18, 2020
Changelog
A bunch of articles updated. Three of note. Two new articles. All of which, you can find in the newsletter. Reporting on the coronavirus pandemic and the US election is highlighting the tensions inherent to media reporting. Worth revisiting Chompsky, I think.
May 14, 2020
Changelog
Plato excursion has led us down a little democracy rabbithole. Our democracy is most certainly not like his.
April 23, 2020
Changelog
A big dig into Plato the last couple of weeks, and by extension Socrates. Some preliminary notes here. His Republic will have to wait for another time.