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3 weeks ago | 
newyorker.com | Cal Newport
In “I, Robot,” three Laws of Robotics align artificially intelligent machines with humans. Could we rein in chatbots with laws of our own? Cal Newport writes.
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2 months ago | 
80000hours.org | Cal Newport
We are aiming for a place where we can decouple the scorecard from our worthiness. It’s of course the case that in trying to optimise the good, we will always be falling short. The question is how much, and in what ways are we not there yet? And if we then extrapolate that to how much and in what ways am I not enough, that’s where we run into trouble. — Hannah BoettcherWhat happens when your desire to do good starts to undermine your own wellbeing?
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Feb 25, 2025 | 
newyorker.com | Cal Newport
On Saturday afternoon, Elon Musk posted on X that “all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.” He added that noncompliance would result in termination. Within hours, an e-mail from the Office of Personnel Management, with the subject line “What did you do last week?”, appeared in the in-boxes of millions of federal employees. “Please reply to this email with approx.
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Jan 31, 2025 | 
link.newyorker.com | Justin Chang |Cal Newport
Plus: Mary Mattingly’s moonlit gardens; Dua Saleh’s spellbinding sounds; and new works of cultural archeology. View in browser | What we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week. In today’s newsletter, how a documentarian takes on power, and then: Frederick Wiseman has redefined the art of nonfiction filmmaking in a directorial career, begun in 1967, that includes forty-six documentaries to date.
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Jan 29, 2025 | 
newyorker.com | Cal Newport
For this week’s Infinite Scroll column, Cal Newport is filling in for Kyle Chayka. In 1968, a young Michael Crichton, still a student at Harvard Medical School, sent a manuscript to Robert Gottlieb, who had just taken over as editor-in-chief at Knopf.
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Jan 22, 2025 | 
newyorker.com | Cal Newport
For this week’s Infinite Scroll column, Cal Newport is filling in for Kyle Chayka. In 1881, James Bonsack patented an automated cigarette-making machine, and, in the years that followed, smoking became much more prevalent in America. Parents and reformers grew worried about kids picking up the habit. “It is not uncommon, it is said, to see a child not more than five years old smoking contentedly,” the L.A. Times warned in an article from this period.
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Jan 20, 2025 | 
onet.pl | Cal Newport
Bądź jak Jane Austen. "Powolna produktywność" jest rewolucjąPod koniec października 1811 r. w londyńskiej gazecie ukazało się ogłoszenie promujące "nową powieść pewnej damy". Nie podano nazwiska autorki, ale w kolejnej reklamie, która pojawiła się w następnym miesiącu, zidentyfikowano ją dokładniej jako "Lady A". Książka nosiła tytuł "Rozważna i romantyczna", a występującą pod pseudonimem autorką była oczywiście debiutująca Jane Austen.
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
newyorker.com | Cal Newport
For this week’s Infinite Scroll column, Cal Newport is filling in for Kyle Chayka. In 2013, I wrote a blog post titled “Why I Never Joined Facebook.” Social media had grown so ubiquitous that I felt obligated to justify my abstention; I pointed out that I didn’t need it because it didn’t solve any actual problems in my life.
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Jan 8, 2025 | 
newyorker.com | Cal Newport
For this week’s Infinite Scroll column, Cal Newport is filling in for Kyle Chayka. James Hobson began publishing videos on YouTube in 2006, when he was still a high-school student in Ontario, Canada. His early uploads were crude by today’s standards—some gymnastics tricks, some parkour, and some mildly anarchic silliness (for example, a 2009 clip of Hobson drinking raw eggs). “It was just the easiest way of sharing videos with my friends,” Hobson told me recently.
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Jan 7, 2025 | 
newyorker.com | Cal Newport
Hobson’s relationship with YouTube began to evolve in 2013, when he crafted a pair of metal claws to help him dress up as Wolverine, the Marvel superhero, for Halloween. The resulting video, which he titled “Make It Real: The Wolverine’s Claws!,” was so popular that photographers asked him to star in photo shoots; a follow-up video in which he electrified the claws earned him a writeup in a tech publication. “That’s kind of cool,’ ” Hobson remembers thinking.
