I non-ironically believe this graph is responsible for a lot of Phone Discourse, despite 2008 not being a perceptible bend in the trend.
CULTURE
-
Manufacturing Culture and Mine Worker Representation in Media
By
–
(Instead we get our “As a child I yearned for the mines” meme and a visual gag about an Appalachian miner which somehow got past the sensitivity committee. On the nose, but, if “making things is Good” is your message, maybe whatever mine produces is at least as useful as songs.)
-
Coming-of-age narrative struggles with mundane workforce reality
By
–
“Nice phase of your life doing art/sports; that prepares you for your *real* life in the email mines” would not be an arc any writer’s room would feel forced into, and yet you could practically feel them struggling with it in the epilogue.
-
Creativity and mastery need not abandon childish pursuits
By
–
Oh, final thought: “One day you’ll grow up and put childish things aside” is not a direction one is *forced* to take when discussing creativity, mastery, non-economic pursuits, etc.
-
Family Choices: Math Programs and Economic Priorities
By
–
The talented young mathematicians program was $500, a trip for the family to X was $500, the dinner table discussion happened, and we stayed home that summer.
-
Prioritizing Child Education Over Commercial Media Consumption
By
–
“You’re giving a popcorn movie for children designed to sell Minecraft merch too many brain cycles.” Bringing up the next generation properly should consume more of my cycles at most margins, etc etc.
-
Minecraft creativity export messaging oversimplifies real-world constraints
By
–
Also a shame that the explicit message shoehorned in at the end is “Minecraft unleashes creativity you can export to the real world, which actually matters” but RW creativity is shown as having same production function as Minecraft despite one line about “constraints.”
-
Duolingo CEO Shares AI Strategy in All-Hands Email
By
–
All-hands email from Duolingo co-founder and CEO.
-
Gemini 2.5 Pro tops leaderboard but faces trust and ‘woke’ issues
By
–
People are either sleeping on Gemini – or they just don't trust Google. Google's Gemini-2.5 Pro still tops the Chatbot Arena Leaderboard being the highest quality LLM available as of this morning – and yet no one talks about it. Is that because Google's 'woke' image generator
-
Consultancies Don’t Teach: Form Factor vs Actual Substance
By
–
Have to add “consultancies don’t teach nothing” and also “many people will confuse something which has this form factor as also having the same idea density and/or level of connection to reality.”