the useful uselessness

Speculations, ideas and absurdities about the stupidity of "normality" 🌉 bridged from https://useful-uselessness.com/ on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/

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Longform Stories

too much power

Agency. Impact. Take control. Grab the reins. The vocabulary insists we don't have enough power. What if the problem is the opposite — that we have too much, real or imagined, and the harder work is t…

5d ago·4 min read·782 words

interlude: the good life, briefly

Fifteen thinkers on what makes a good life in a more-than-human world. A soaked bathroom floor, the next morning, with another answer.

May 16·2 min read·279 words

The burden of writing

The easy part of writing a book is writing it. A confession about humility, envy, and the time that no productivity strategy can reclaim.

Apr 25·7 min read·1263 words

writer-editor-writer

I fear I’m becoming an editor of my own ideas rather than their author. A reflection on what we cede when we let machines carry the weight of articulation — and whether the distance they offer brings …

Apr 4·6 min read·1044 words

interlude: the comedian and the consultant

The comedy of public intellectuals and corporate facilitators.

Mar 28·6 min read·1051 words

dreams are madness waiting for a sane explanation

Every night we surrender consciousness and enter a state dangerously close to the one we fear most. Dreams might be what keeps our search for meaning alive when we're in no condition to pursue it. An …

Mar 8·26 min read·5055 words

relational greenwashing

A follow-up to “relational sustainability”

Feb 14·9 min read·1719 words

the art of living with coherence: a conversation with mark mccartney

When a conversation about coherence becomes an exercise in it.

Feb 7·3 min read·418 words

interlude: asymmetric doubt

We've built an entire vocabulary for approaching certainty. But doubt gets no such courtesy.

Jan 17·2 min read·381 words

interlude: before understanding

Structure enables attention, but can become its prison. When does a scaffold become a cage? When does understanding arrive too early? An interlude on the suspended moment before interpretation foreclo…

Dec 20·6 min read·1063 words