Missives
One a month, to the Armchair Collective.
Keep track of what's happened since you were last here with the newsletters and the changelog.
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.
April 13, 2020
Changelog
Facebook relaunched. Still almost 2000 followers after a year or more of neglect. My apologies.
First newsletter sent in over a year. Mailchimp forced me to delete all subscribers and invite them to subscribe to a new list. I’m glad so many of you resubscribed.
In the newsletter I point out a new article and a couple of old updated ones, but really quite a few have been updated in the process of relaunching the site. All the old articles can be found in the archive for The Dirt Psychology.
April 2, 2020
Changelog
Website relaunched. Seven years on and The Dirt Psychology has become something more.
Turns out that brain science isn’t always really psychology, and often both are philosophy. When the goal is to turn scholarship into wisdom, we need to cast the net a little wider.
Several old articles were also updated as part of the upgrade for the launch article On Attraction and Love in an effort toward more project focused research.
Using a static site generator (tightenco/jigsaw) since accessibility was a problem for readers with slower internet.