1.13.2022

The 33 Project

Hello friends. Happy Thursday. I just saw a shirtless man in shorts walking outside. He leaped over melting snow to cross the street. It’s 36 degrees in New York City. Thrilling.

On to this week’s recs.

1/ “We are living in a serious attention crisis — one with huge implications for how we live.“ This first person take on attention in the modern age was pretty interesting.

I came to believe we need to respond to this incessant invasion of our attention at two levels. The first is individual. There are all sorts of changes we can make at a personal level that will protect our focus. I would say that by doing most of them, I have boosted my focus by about 20%. But we have to level with people. Those changes will only take you so far. At the moment it’s as though we are all having itching powder poured over us all day, and the people pouring the powder are saying: “You might want to learn to meditate. Then you wouldn’t scratch so much.” Meditation is a useful tool — but we actually need to stop the people who are pouring itching powder on us. We need to band together to take on the forces stealing our attention and take it back.

Another argument against people with power and money. Would love to better understand how we “band together” but also just kind of want to get through today, too, ya know? Shrug.

2/ I found Matt Yglesias’s take on Don’t Look Up to be really sharp.