@joanwestenberg.com
I write about tech + humans + philosophy
@joanwestenberg.comThe US declared measles eliminated in 2000. It's back.
One reason is simple: nobody remembers what measles does to children. When a miracle fades into the background, the machinery that produces it starts to look unnecessary.
@joanwestenberg.comI don't get involved in all the petty online arguments you mortals waste your breath on. I, an intellectual, instead write 2,500 words on Substack about why such small matters are beneath me, which is a far more sophisticated way to spend 6+ hours thinking about them
@joanwestenberg.com4 steps to a roadmap for the life you want:
- Write 100 things you WILL do.
- Map the skills needed.
- Knock out the quickest wins today.
- Swap 1 hour of doomscrolling for 1 hour of building.
Treat your life like a project.
@joanwestenberg.comOpenAI has announced GPT-6 Astra...
Initial benchmark scores:
- 99.9% on ARC-AGI-3
- 98% on FrontierMath Tier 4 (including solving open math problems)
- 100% on ExploitBench
@joanwestenberg.comA polished product used to be proof of grueling labor. Now, a perfect surface can be generated instantly.
You can’t actually tell the difference without a degree of hard-earned taste - something a tool can never hand you.
@joanwestenberg.comAI detectors don't work, false accusations are skyrocketing, and actual nuance is dying.
Why the current witch-hunt against AI writing is doomed to fail (and what we should be focusing on instead):
@joanwestenberg.comThe "Second Brain" had a fatal flaw: human maintenance fatigue.
Here’s why the Third Brain changes everything
@joanwestenberg.comThe classic Soviet bureaucratic failure applies to modern productivity: we spend more time organizing our notes than actually thinking with them.
Most people’s "Second Brain" is just a digital graveyard of untagged links, orphaned thoughts, and guilt.
@joanwestenberg.comHerbert von Karajan never composed a note, but he orchestrated masterpieces. AI gives us all a baton, but it doesn't give us an ear for music.
In the age of the orchestrator, taste and judgment are your only moats.
@joanwestenberg.comExpressing extreme panic online has become a performance metric for moral superiority. If you aren't screaming that the sky is falling, people assume you don't care.
@joanwestenberg.comThere are three ways to use history:
To blindly comfort yourself about the present.
To fuel your despair about the present.
To actually equip yourself to reason about the present.
The third is the hardest.
And the only one that matters.
@joanwestenberg.com@joanwestenberg.comI'm building the writing studio for pro bloggers... Improvements to Kerouac's dashboard: - Sync all your posts via RSS - View your word count for the entire year across all platforms - See your ongoing writing streak - Download and share your writing activity graph More coming.
@joanwestenberg.comPontius Pilate washed his hands.
Macbeth blamed the witches.
Tech CEOs blame Claude.
It’s a 2,000-year-old tradition of powerful people inventing a middleman to take the fall for their own wreckage.
@joanwestenberg.comThe Enlightenment promised a world of adults who think for themselves.
We built one where everyone has the right to an answer, and nobody has the obligation to understand it.
@joanwestenberg.comI don't know who needs to hear this, but there's finally a writing studio built for people who blog for a living 🧵 It's called Kerouac. Here's what it does.
@joanwestenberg.comMy hottest of hot takes: the only people who should run companies that make things are people who deeply give a fuck about those things. Only people who love games and love playing games should run companies that make games. Doesn’t matter if it’s cheeseburgers or software.
@joanwestenberg.comThere is no version of “I’m just asking questions about vaccines” that ends anywhere other than where it ends. You are not Socrates. Socrates is dead. Polio nearly isn’t.
@joanwestenberg.comThe person who checks their notifications is, afterward, exactly the same person who wanted to check their notifications five minutes ago.
The thin desire reproduces itself without remainder.
The thick desire transforms its host.
@joanwestenberg.comThere's a whole generation that learned irony before sincerity and now they're trapped. Can't be earnest without a layer of self-deprecation. Can't be enthusiastic without signaling awareness of how cringe enthusiasm is. The price of never being vulnerable is never connecting.
