Nathan Maxwell

Current thinking 12

What I'm thinking about right now. Click any idea for the thesis — what the idea is, how it's structured, and where it sits in the network.

• clipping2026-07-20
  most of us spend upwards of 8 hours a day on our phones, not communicating (the supposed function of the telephone) but scrolling an endless reel of nothing; consuming video after video that we would have had no interest in searching for of someone dressing up or a couple doing something or somebody’s guinea pig eating lettuce behind a microphone.↗
  The Crime of Doing Nothing (The Tragedy of Doomscrolling)↗
• clipping2026-07-20
  For many, identity by association has replaced identity by practice.↗
  The Crime of Doing Nothing (The Tragedy of Doomscrolling)↗
• clipping2026-07-20
  A few years ago, I analyzed a bunch of data and found that [all popular forms of art had become “oligopolies”](https://www.experimental-history.com/p/pop-culture-has-become-an-oligopoly): fewer and fewer of the artists and franchises own more and more of the market. Before 2000, for instance, only about 25% of top-grossing movies were prequels, sequels, spinoffs, etc. Now it’s 75%.↗
  The Decline of Deviance↗
• clipping2026-07-20
  You see less variance even when you look only at the new stuff. According to analyses by The Pudding, popular music today is now [more homogenous](https://pudding.cool/2018/05/similarity/) and has [more repetitive lyrics](https://pudding.cool/2017/05/song-repetition/) than ever.↗
  The Decline of Deviance↗
• clipping2026-07-20
  Even accounting for [Sturgeon’s Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law) (“90% of everything is crap”)
  The Decline of Deviance
• clipping2026-07-20
  People usually assume that we don’t make interesting, ornate buildings anymore because it got too expensive to pay a bunch of artisans to carve designs into stone and wood.[^6] But the researcher Samuel Hughes [argues](https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-beauty-of-concrete/) that the supply-side story doesn’t hold up: many of the architectural flourishes that look like they have to be done by hand can, in fact, be done cheaply by machine, often with technology that we’ve had for a while. We’re still capable of making interesting buildings—we just choose not to.↗
  The Decline of Deviance↗
• clipping2026-07-20
  We are now almost a quarter of the way through what looks likely to go down in history as the least innovative, least transformative, least pioneering century for culture since the invention of the printing press.↗
  The Decline of Deviance↗
• clipping2026-07-20
  In olden days, a glimpse of stocking
  The Decline of Deviance
• clipping2026-07-20
  Was looked on as something shocking
  The Decline of Deviance
• clipping2026-07-20
  But now, God knows
  The Decline of Deviance
• clipping2026-07-20
  Anything goes
  The Decline of Deviance
• clipping2026-07-20
  \-Cole Porter, [1934](https://genius.com/Cole-porter-anything-goes-lyrics)
  The Decline of Deviance

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