Thanks for subscribing to the Folded Space newsletter. This “weekly” email contains entertaining stories, links, and videos about a variety of nerdy topics. (I say “weekly” because time has proven that I rarely manage to send a newsletter each week haha.)
This welcome page contains a huge sample of the types of things I like to share. A typical newsletter would only contain 3-5 links and maybe one video, plus my random ramblings. But this page contains a few dozen of my favorite things I’ve found over the past few years. I think you’ll like them too.
In praise of idleness. [Bertrand Russell in Harper’s from 1932] — “A great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by the belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.” A classic article that has formed the foundation of my way of life.
How to read: Lots of inputs and a strong filter. [Morgan Housel at Collab Fund] — “It’s better to have a low bar in what books you’re willing to try, and even the faintest tickle of interest should be enough to make the cut. Kindle samples are free, so excuses are minimal. Once you’ve flooded your desk with inputs, you have to bring out the filter. It should be ruthless, taking no prisoners and offering no mercy…A book you’re not into after 10 minutes of attention has little chance of a happy ending. Slam it shut and move on.”
Electric bike, stupid love of my life. [Craig Mod] — “My electric bike sings, emits a nearly imperceptible hum from its tiny motor. I love its song. A song of peace and magic. Has money ever bought as much delight as the delight of an electric bike?”
The animals are talking. What does it mean? [The New York Times Magazine gift article] — “With each discovery, the cognitive and moral divide between humanity and the rest of the animal world has eroded. For centuries, the linguistic utterances of Homo sapiens have been positioned as unique in nature, justifying our dominion over other species and shrouding the evolution of language in mystery. Now, experts in linguistics, biology and cognitive science suspect that components of language might be shared across species, illuminating the inner lives of animals in ways that could help stitch language into their evolutionary history — and our own.”
The illusion of moral decline. [Experimental History on Substack] — “It’s fine to have strong opinions about things that you know nothing about — that’s kind of what the internet is for. But it’s not fine when those strong opinions lead to demands for actual changes in the world. If you think that morality is declining, then you must think that some switch has been flipped in society, causing it to produce worse humans.”
The perils of audience capture. [The Prism on Substack] — “We often talk of captive audiences’, regarding the performer as hypnotizing their viewers. But just as often, it’s the viewers hypnotizing the performer. This disease, of which Perry is but one victim of many, is known as audience capture, and it’s essential to understanding influencers in particular and the online ecosystem in general.” This article had a profound impact on my life and how I choose to interact with the online world. It’s directly responsible for me leaving Get Rich Slowly.
My delirious trip to the heart of Swiftiedom. [The New York Times gift link] — “What I’m really saying is that once you go deep-state on Taylor — on the theories, on the codes, on the meanings — once you allow yourself to start thinking of your life in terms of eras, you can’t help but find yourself in your very own Taylor Swift song.” One of the best articles about Taylor Swift ever written. (Warning: I’m a huge Swiftie, and Folded Space contains plenty of Swiftness.)
Non-coercive marketing: A primer. [The Forest] — “For the last year, I’ve been weaving together a new philosophy of marketing, designed to radically reshape the emotional landscape of the internet. Like all marketing, it aims at finding and creating new customers, specifically for solo and creator-style businesses. But beneath the surface, non-coercive marketing is a trojan horse, designed to regenerate trust, connection, and empowerment in a world where all three are increasingly scarce.”
The best feel-good movies to boost your mood. [Vanity Fair] — “Hollywood has been making comedies and heart-tugging sagas for over a century, but the best feel-good movies have a little something special: the game-winning goal, the romantic kiss, the musical number that takes you totally by surprise. Ahead we’ve gathered 31 titles that are good movies to watch when you need a pick-me-up and a guaranteed happy ending.”
The people making millions off Listerine royalties. [The Hustle] — “In 1959, Warner-Lambert sued to terminate the royalty contract that J.J Lawrence had negotiated. Because the Listerine formula was no longer secret, the company argued, it should not need to pay out royalties to the descendants of the inventor. But in a landmark case that’s still taught in law schools today, a New York court sided with the royalty owners.”
Ancient rivers of money. [Ribbonfarm] — “Buyers and sellers alike see markets as an illegible and turbulent churn of transaction opportunities. But really, they are landscapes carved out by great, ancient rivers of money and their tributaries. These rivers change course rarely. Cash flows are also among the most basic financial ideas. Only businesses make profits, but governments and non-profits form around cash flows too. These ancient rivers carve out both a spatial and temporal landscape.”
Bring back personal blogging. [The Verge] — “In the beginning, there were blogs, and they were the original social web. We built community. We found our people. We wrote personally. We wrote frequently. We self-policed, and we linked to each other so that newbies could discover new and good blogs. I want to go back there.” I want to go back there too. That’s why Folded Space continues to exist.
“Dune” (the movie), annotated. [Read Max on Substack] — “Behold: Dune, annotated…There is an enormous amount of debate among Dune fans about what counts as ‘canon’ in the universe1. This post is not really that serious and mostly just draws from the books Frank Herbert wrote, except where noted. This is a post about a movie closely based on a book that’s 55 years old. It will ‘spoil’ the plot for you!”
The legacy of Star Trek: The Animated Series, 50 years on. [BBC] — “The Animated Series sits firmly within Star Trek‘s guiding ethos: Gene Roddenberry’s vision for a utopian future where humans coexist peacefully with aliens as part of a Federation, and there’s no poverty or war. In Star Trek, the exploration of space is driven by scientific and humanitarian concerns — and this long-overlooked show is a welcome reminder of that.”
Bell Labs: The real offices of Apple’s “Severance”. [Curbed in New York magazine] — “Lumon is imaginary, but the building is not. It’s in Holmdel, New Jersey, and it was the home of Bell Laboratories, the research operations of AT&T. Designed by Eero Saarinen and opened in 1962, it was a showpiece for the monopolistic, cash-rich corporation that dominated American communications for the telephone’s first century.” Eero Saarinen is my favorite architect. I own won of his womb chairs.
Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin, and a crime-fiction legend. [CrimeReads] — “In 33 novels and 39 novellas between 1934 and 1975, Stout did something unique: he married the British Golden Age, puzzle-solving school of mystery fiction with the street-smart, hardboiled, thoroughly American detective novels of Chandler and Hammett to come up with a seamless blend of thought and action, narrated in a prose that was unfailingly literate, witty, and engaging.” I discovered Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe in March 2023. I’ve become a die-hard fan.
Reflecting on 18 years at Google. [Hixie’s Natural Log] — “The deterioration of Google’s culture will eventually become irreversible, because the kinds of people whom you need to act as moral compass are the same kinds of people who don’t join an organisation without a moral compass.” I’ve been grousing about the decay of Google for years now, and have been actively removing myself from their ecosystem.
DAK and the golden age of gadget catalogs. [Cabel Sasser] — “Get ready for this: I’ve been working on this post for over 10 years. How can that be? It’s simple. For a decade, I’ve been snapping up copies of a certain gadget catalog, one by one, when they’re up for auction. Collecting and waiting.”
The essential skills for being human. [THe New York Times] — “Some people are much better at seeing people than others are. In any collection of humans, there are diminishers and there are illuminators. Diminishers are so into themselves, they make others feel insignificant. They stereotype and label. If they learn one thing about you, they proceed to make a series of assumptions about who you must be. Illuminators, on the other hand, have a persistent curiosity about other people.”
Premature evaluation: Taylor Swift’s 1989. [Stereogum] — “It’s not easy to put together a resonant, sweeping, universe-conquering pop song, but Swift makes it look easy. Every one of her albums sounds like a lesser artist’s greatest-hits album; 1989 makes her five for five. Swift’s albums aren’t singles-plus-filler; they’re singles-plus-potential-singles, and the songs that never dominated the radio are just the ones she never got around to releasing as singles.”
As you can see, my interests are many and varied. And I’m constantly expanding the things I’m learning about. If you have an interesting site or video that you think I ought to see, drop me a line. And thanks for subscribing.