There's A Crack In Everything, That's How The Light Gets In
What a freaking summer. Gaza, Iran, Epstein, Mamdani, Exploding debt, Imploding Dems, B2 Bombers, Active Shooters, AI Doomers… wtf!!!.
Our world feels increasingly unmoored and unhinged. Things are looking pretty bleak. Like maybe this time we really have slipped the surly bonds.
I say it a lot: your best response to this kind of insanity, madness, derangement—call it what you will—is to keep your head up and eyes open. Keep watching, keep listening, keep asking questions, and never, ever stop looking around.
People these days are either way too dialed-in or completely checked out. Balance, people. Balance.
You need to stay aware. Take account. Learn about what's going on. Talk about it. Debate it. Pretending the madness isn’t there won’t vanish it. And it sure as hell won’t make the world less mad. But the opposite extreme is just as distorting. Stare too long at a circus and you start believing the whole world is a noisy chaos parade. Heartless, treacherous, menacing, and stripped of all dimension.
The danger, beyond losing your grip inside the chaos, is believing it's the whole story. It's not. The world is also filled with beauty. Kindness. Small mercies. Sublime creativity. Moments that stop you cold. The quiet, wonderful, impossible gift of being alive. It's everywhere, hiding in plain sight. You just need to look up.
There's no debate: our world is insane. But it's also extraordinary. And staying tuned in to that, especially now, may be the sanest thing you can do. This past week, I came across two brilliant, incredible, delicious essays that reminded me why it's worth keeping your eyes open. Proof that no matter how bleak things feel, there's still beauty in the margins and wonder in the cracks.
After all, that's how the light gets in.
The first piece by the blogger Eevee, The Rise of Whatever, is brilliant, hysterical, deeply insightful. It's easily my favorite essay of 2025, so far, and the single best, most honest, hardest-hitting piece of cultural commentary I've come across on the AI slop machine.
The second piece by the science writer Amanda Gefter, Finding Peter Putnam is a little harder to classify.
Gefter tells the incredible, almost unbelievable, story of Peter Putnam, a secret multimillionaire who mopped floors, a theorist of mind who died unknown, and just maybe the man who cracked consciousness decades ahead of his time.
Gefter's extraordinary profile is part science thriller, part tragic elegy for a hidden genius. If you care about AI, philosophy, or the strange lives of overlooked visionaries, you must read this.