-
1 week ago | 
joanwestenberg.com | Joan Westenberg
Two nights ago, I deleted everything. Every note in Obsidian. Every half-baked atomic thought, every Zettelkasten slip, every carefully linked concept map. I deleted every Apple Note I’d synced since 2015. Every quote I’d ever highlighted. Every to-do list from every productivity system I’d ever borrowed, broken, or bastardized. Gone. Erased in seconds. What followed: Relief. And a comforting silence where the noise used to be.
-
2 weeks ago | 
joanwestenberg.com | Joan Westenberg
A few years ago, I sat across from a friend at a late dinner. He was telling me about his new promotion, the big title, the bonus, the corner office. I remember watching his face as he described it. He looked like someone describing a story he’d once believed but no longer knew how to finish. Later that night, walking home alone, I realized I had spent the last year of my life pursuing a goal I barely remembered choosing. I had grown proficient at producing, scaling, optimizing. I had systems.
-
2 weeks ago | 
theindex.media | Joan Westenberg
In 2015, Donald Trump began an assault on political norms that would culminate in a presidency defined by cruelty, chaos, and contempt. He encouraged violence against protestors at his rallies. He led crowds in chants to imprison his political opponents. He publicly humiliated his own staff and advisors, belittling them on Twitter before firing them on live television.
-
1 month ago | 
flipboard.com | Joan Westenberg
9 hours agoFrancesca Gino, a professor at Harvard Business School, has been battling allegations of data fraud for years. Harvard University revoked the tenure of Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino after years of data fraud allegations, a university spokesperson confirmed. Gino, widely known for …
-
1 month ago | 
theindex.media | Joan Westenberg
2 min The shadow of 25 Abrams tanks will soon fall across Washington's streets. Not for national emergency. Not for external threat. For a birthday party. Donald Trump's 79th, to be precise, conveniently aligned with the Army's 250th anniversary celebration. The Pentagon estimates the Putinesque spectacle will cost American taxpayers between $25 million and $45 million—excluding the inevitable road repairs that will follow 70-ton war machines grinding across D.C. asphalt.
-
1 month ago | 
flipboard.com | Joan Westenberg
7 hours agoOn the Horizon of Knowledge: The More We Learn, The Less We UnderstandKnowledge is like an iceberg — every answer uncovered subsequently reveals even more questions submerged beneath it. In the pursuit of understanding, …1 day agoCrossroads of consciousness: whose decolonization is it in Nigeria? The call for decolonial discourse has increasingly gained global purchase, yet its growing visibility often masks an unresolved question: who …2 days agoIs Trump a Cult Leader?
-
1 month ago | 
theindex.media | Joan Westenberg
3 min They thought they could export the chaos. They thought nationalism was a currency that could be traded across borders, that autocratic rhetoric could be franchised like a fast-food chain, and that the world would follow their script. But instead of ushering in a new global rightwing order, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the far-right coalition orbiting them have triggered something else entirely: a deliberate backlash against conservatism itself. Three elections.
-
2 months ago | 
theindex.media | Joan Westenberg
A system that can't distinguish between confidence and competence isn't broken, it's doing exactly what it was designed to: reward the loudest voice, not the best idea. Promote the person who looks like a leader, not the one who thinks like one. Elect the swagger, not the skill. And once that system hits scale—when it's amplified by algorithms, saturated through media, and reinforced by social proof—the outcome was inevitable. We didn't get Trump by accident.
-
2 months ago | 
joanwestenberg.com | Joan Westenberg
— 2 min read I didn’t leave the attention economy because I hated it. I left because I understood it, because once you see the system for what it is—a parasitic loop that rewards noise over nuance, metrics over meaning, reaction over reflection—you have two choices. Keep optimizing for reach, or start optimizing for resonance. At some point, every creator hits a wall - it’s not burnout exactly. It’s misalignment.
-
2 months ago | 
joanwestenberg.com | Joan Westenberg
On the morning of June 6th, 1944, Hitler was sound asleep. The Allies were landing. Tens of thousands of soldiers were pouring onto the beaches. The tide was turning, the war accelerating toward its violent, inevitable end. And the man leading the Reich was in bed, untouched. His generals knew the crisis was unfolding. His inner circle knew. Everyone knew. But no one would wake him. Because by that point, Hitler wasn’t running a government.
