Beyond anger “And Mandela rejected not only the false lure of payback, but also the poison of status-obsession. He never saw himself as above menial tasks, and he never used status to humiliate. Just before his release, in a halfway house where he was still officially a prisoner, but had one of the warders as […]

How ‘competitiveness’ became one of the great unquestioned virtues of contemporary culture “Competitiveness is an interesting concept, and an interesting principle on which to base social and economic institutions. When we view situations as ‘competitions’, we are assuming that participants have some vaguely equal opportunity at the outset. But we are also assuming that they […]

Ten Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer “I’ve tried to boil down negotiation to ten rules. The rules, in order of appearance, are: Get everything in writing Always keep the door open Information is power Always be positive Don’t be the decision maker Have alternatives Proclaim reasons for everything Understand what they value Be motivated […]

When and Why Nationalism Beats Globalism “So authoritarians are not being selfish. They are not trying to protect their wallets or even their families. They are trying to protect their group or society. Some authoritarians see their race or bloodline as the thing to be protected, and these people make up the deeply racist subset […]

Where machines could replace humans—and where they can’t (yet) “The hardest activities to automate with currently available technologies are those that involve managing and developing people (9 percent automation potential) or that apply expertise to decision making, planning, or creative work (18 percent).”

Sweden faces housing crunch despite government building plan “In January, the government sat down with the centre-right opposition, hoping to reach an agreement on how to increase building. But the centre-left – wanting more state funded rental accommodation – clashed with the centre-right, which wants more deregulatory measures to encourage private construction.”

Pynchon’s Mrs. Dalloway “I have no way of knowing whether Pynchon has ever read Virginia Woolf, but it seems clear that both chose a similar problem and found a similar solution. Each experienced, as everyone does sooner or later, the great unanswerable questions that only get asked in solitude and silence, when the fuss and […]