If this subject interests you, and you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend the book Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

40 years old now and as relevant as ever.

IMO even better than Chomsky's Necessary Illusions (1989) or Bernay's Propaganda (1928) at giving you that backstage at Disney world feeling.

There is also a book called Infinite Jest that touches on this subject

Its a breezy novella you can finish over a lunch break

I use it to weigh down my transportable home in tornado alley. Hasn't failed yet. Density, more-so than size, is important in such an application.

parent poster must be referring to one of the footnotes in IJ, as those are only a few hours to get through.

Well the size of IJ is itself a statement: 1. there's an awful lot to unpack once you start exploring the intersection of capitalism, addiction, and entertainment; 2. can you even _manage_ to go through it all without switching to mindless consumption every 5 minutes?

Nothing wrong with being a solo founder and I doubt the two “90%” reasons you cited are true the majority of the time.

https://solofounders.com/

World is large and I only get to see and experience slice of it. Thanks for sharing the link.

At least until robotic dexterity catches up.

And this SNL sketch from a few decades ago:

https://youtu.be/NWIlScfHwOU?si=64xMCQf8MHtho44H

This one still makes me laugh!

Non-paywalled link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-american-rebellion...

Thanks for that post.

Checking MSN is a good alternative to archive.ph, or otherwise searching for the author and title?

Touch virtual grass

That was a thing already, in the 1960s and 1970s lots of pulp paperbacks had ads for cigarettes and cheap cologne between chapters, for example.

Thanks. I hate it.

I think this is the podcast you mentioned:

https://youtu.be/SRZ9E48B6aM?si=K_wwvu97agBZpFTa

I agree, many of these clichés are just verbal shortcuts to a pretty useful filter:

"This is not important for me to think about or discuss right now."

I think there's quite a meaningful difference between the suggested phrasing (which is quite honest and open, and I think should be generally acceptable) and the general character of the listed instances which serve to exemplify the concept, which dismiss the general (rather than contextual or personal, immediate) importance of the subject (e.g. "it's not that deep" rather than "I don't find it that deep" or "it's not particularly relevant right now"). I see it as a kind of refusal to take responsibility for refusal of engagement: external deflection of unimportance, rather than acceptance of non-engagement/disregard of (externally recognised) importance. I'd rather welcome people speaking as you exemplified: it's an explicit 'self-veto' from the relevance of the situation (and thus basis of involvement), rather than a dismissal of others' engagement (which ideally needn't involve the one who doesn't wish to be involved, of course).