The hottest Culture Substack posts right now

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Photographing an ExposĂŠ Cover Story on Varsity Cheerleading for The New York Times Magazine

In the Flash • 1638 implied HN points • 27 Oct 24
🎭️ Culture Photography Media Sports Athletics
  1. The article reveals that Varsity cheerleading, a major force in the cheer industry, has serious safety issues and has faced accusations of neglecting athletes' health.
  2. Access to photograph cheer events was very challenging, with many restrictions and a PR rep present at all times to control the situation.
  3. Despite frustrations during the photo shoots, creative solutions were found to achieve the desired shots, and everything eventually came together for the article.

The Dilbert Afterlife

Astral Codex Ten • 135037 implied HN points • 16 Jan 26
🎭️ Culture Comics Satire Media Politics Religion Biography Self-help
  1. Smart people often feel trapped in systems that reward social posturing over competence, and that frustration fuels a lot of workplace humor and bitterness.
  2. Trying to escape a narrow success by branching into business, spiritual theories, or self-help can backfire when ambition outpaces real skill, turning self-awareness into self-deception.
  3. Charisma, marketing, and repetition often beat logic in public life, creating powerful followings and sudden rises but also exposing people to sharp backlash and collapse.

The Bitter Aftertaste of Roald Dahl

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 663 implied HN points • 19 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Literature Theatre Authors Adaptation Antisemitism Cultural critique
  1. Roald Dahl is a globally famous children’s author known for books like Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and The BFG.
  2. His reputation is marred by explicit antisemitic statements he made about Jews and Israel, including accusations about collective behavior and undue financial influence.
  3. A new Broadway production about Dahl has brought his work back into the spotlight and reignited public debate over those antisemitic views, which were publicly expressed decades ago.

Why tech bros are obsessed with "taste"

Kyle Chayka Industries • 167 implied HN points • 26 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Tech Culture AI Internet Aesthetics Media Journalism
  1. People in tech are treating "taste" like a brand, using it to make AI and other tools feel stylish and personal even when those tools feel threatening or dehumanizing.
  2. Algorithmic feeds and generative AI are automating style and flattening culture, which warps our ability to know and exercise genuine personal taste.
  3. Because of that pressure, it's important to actively think about and cultivate your own taste and rebuild human cultural experiences apart from digital influence.

Nature-currency as a bear signal

Wrong Side of History • 370 implied HN points • 13 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture National Identity Iconography Historical memory
  1. Currency designs act as a window into a country’s identity, and changing who or what appears on notes signals shifts in national self-image.
  2. Using animals or natural scenes instead of historical figures is a way to avoid divisive choices and often shows a country with a fractured or cautious sense of identity.
  3. Banknotes are routinely updated for security reasons, and those redesigns become moments when nations choose which people or symbols to celebrate.
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Pourquoi l'art nul nous gĂŞne ?

L'Atelier Galita • 99 implied HN points • 01 Nov 24
🎭️ Culture Art Music Hobbies Expression Leisure
  1. People often feel uncomfortable about art that isn't amazing because they worry about what others might think. It's okay to enjoy art just for fun, just like playing sports.
  2. Not all artists want to become professionals. Many create art simply for their own enjoyment and happiness.
  3. The experience of making art, even if it's not technically good, can be one of the best parts of life. Finding something creative you love can really enrich your life.

What do "which is A.I.?" quizzes tell us?

Read Max • 3082 implied HN points • 13 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture AI Literature Journalism Media Internet Language
  1. Blind A/B quizzes don’t measure writing quality so much as the rough heuristics people use to guess whether text is human or AI.
  2. People prefer what they think is human-written, so misattribution drives apparent preferences more than any intrinsic superiority of AI text.
  3. The quizzes feed a stylistic arms race: readers change the “tells” of humanness and AI models keep optimizing to mimic or beat those signals.

Monthly Roundup #40: March 2026

Don't Worry About the Vase • 2553 implied HN points • 16 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Politics Technology Economy Gaming Media Law Sports
  1. Political violence and ‘decapitation’ strategies must be rejected because normalizing threats or assassinations would be dangerous, and the coming ubiquity of lethal AI drones makes this risk much worse.
  2. Age‑verification and online safety rules as currently proposed are deeply flawed: they invade privacy, are easy for determined users to bypass, leak sensitive data, and encourage kids to use VPNs and dodgy sites.
  3. Technology is reshaping markets and attention — AI is producing huge consumer surplus and weird subscription dynamics, gaming and media now compete with highly optimized attention-hijacking platforms, and manufacturing concentration (e.g., Shenzhen) is accelerating global product iteration.

The Hard Road to Responsibility

Glenn Loury • 317 implied HN points • 31 Oct 24
🎭️ Culture Society Responsibility Comedy Podcasting
  1. It’s tough to ask people from struggling communities to take responsibility when they face so many challenges. We need to find a way for them to improve their situations without excusing harmful behavior.
  2. Having discussions about individual responsibility can be complicated, especially when many feel stuck in difficult circumstances. We should aim for a society that encourages better choices.
  3. While there are jokes about selling out for money, staying true to one's beliefs and values is important. It's better to hold onto integrity than to compromise for financial gain.

Scream's Hidden Message: Victimhood is Deadly

The Take (by Jon Miltimore) • 178 implied HN points • 31 Oct 24
🎭️ Culture Film analysis Mental health Victimhood Philosophy
  1. The Scream movies show that people need to take responsibility for their actions. Blaming others doesn't help anyone grow or heal.
  2. Characters who see themselves as victims often end up causing harm to others, while those who empower themselves can overcome their struggles.
  3. The main character, Sidney, learns to control her life and refuses to be defined by her past traumas, showing that self-reliance leads to true strength.

Bad Therapists Make Good TV. But at What Cost?

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 213 implied HN points • 20 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Television Mental health Therapy Media Ethics Entertainment
  1. When therapists cross professional boundaries they can exploit and control patients and cause long-lasting harm.
  2. Boundary violations typically benefit the therapist and can damage the patient even if the therapist believes their motives are benign.
  3. Dramatic stories of bad therapists make compelling TV but they also spotlight real ethical problems and the serious harm those violations do to vulnerable people.

The Over-Therapized Lives of Mormon Wives

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 231 implied HN points • 20 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Television Religion Social media Celebrity Mental health Family Parenting
  1. The women aren’t really living secret lives or fitting the image of traditional Mormon wives; fame and follower counts have become their main identity.
  2. Their lives are saturated with therapists, specialists, and healing retreats, but the heavy use of therapy often looks like a performance rather than real recovery.
  3. The show spotlights messy relationships, breakups, and personal struggles while turning private life into entertainment, making micro-celebrity status more important than stability.

Malicious Streetlight Effects Vs. "Directional Correctness" - A Semi-Non-Apology

Astral Codex Ten • 19959 implied HN points • 24 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Journalism Misinformation Public Discourse Data Analysis Political Movements
  1. There are two deceptive moves to watch for: using related-but-different facts to dismiss real complaints (the malicious streetlight effect) and overstating results to be “directionally correct” when the evidence doesn’t support it.
  2. Accurate counting matters — major crime has generally fallen, and explanations like reporting bias or better medical care don’t fully negate that trend, so it’s important to correct false claims about crime rates.
  3. Fixing misleading crime claims can feel like dismissing people’s everyday experiences of disorder, so it’s best to treat major crime statistics and local disorder (e.g., open-air drug markets, tent encampments) as separate issues and address each directly.

Open Thread 425

Astral Codex Ten • 3510 implied HN points • 16 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Science Technology Politics Law Art Community
  1. A forecasting-contest winner revealed themself as a Bayesian-focused statistics PhD who is looking for an academic job and is asking people to participate in prediction markets about an upcoming Italian referendum.
  2. Readers uncovered that a proposed constitutional amendment contained a typo that reversed its meaning, and someone found evidence an extra state may have ratified another amendment in 1790, creating a legal puzzle about whether and how such an amendment could be considered in force.
  3. A company called Nectome is offering nanoscale, room-temperature-stable whole-body preservation and is running a $100,000-per-body pre-sale promising future revival possibilities.

On Being Butthurt

The Elif Life • 3249 implied HN points • 21 Oct 24
🎭️ Culture Writing Privilege Identity Education Humor
  1. Keeping a notebook can help capture funny or interesting moments in life. It’s a way to notice the lighter side of things, even when life feels heavy.
  2. Feeling butthurt often comes from comparing ourselves to others and their privileges. This can lead to unnecessary resentment instead of recognizing our own journey.
  3. Writing can be a way to overcome feelings of butthurt. It allows us to connect with our past selves and remember our growth over time.

The Problem Isn't Polyamory. It's Lindy West.

Default Wisdom • 847 implied HN points • 17 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Books Memoir Feminism Relationships Internet Generations Criticism
  1. Constant self-deprecation and jokes about being a mess can undercut real observations, leaving sharp insights feeling abandoned instead of fully developed.
  2. Believing you are unworthy can make you accept relationships you don’t actually want, because you assume no one else would choose you.
  3. A strain of millennial "choice" feminism turned personal pain and messy behavior into a performative aesthetic, treating self-destructive acts as authenticity or marketable confession rather than things to be healed.

It's "Mental Illness Doesn't Do That" Season Once Again

Freddie deBoer • 51763 implied HN points • 26 Jan 26
🎭️ Culture Mental health Disability Celebrity Social media Public Discourse Ethics
  1. Mental illness can and does cause extreme, harmful, and self-destructive behaviors in real life, so the blanket claim “mental illness doesn’t do that” is simply false.
  2. People often practice moral convenience by demanding sympathy for trendy or mild self-diagnoses while denying nuance or compassion to those with serious, visible illness, and that hypocrisy harms genuinely sick people.
  3. When judging harmful behavior we should be willing to consider mental illness as a factor and tolerate uncertainty; this doesn’t require forgiveness but does require a more honest, complicated moral approach.

My Cousin Ron

Life Since the Baby Boom • 2536 implied HN points • 11 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Family Memoir Obituary Local Politics Community Music Small Town
  1. He was a warm, reliable family man who was loved and trusted by relatives and neighbors.
  2. He built a successful accounting practice in Wickenburg and became deeply involved in civic life and local organizations.
  3. As mayor he pushed practical, sometimes controversial solutions to fund town services, worked across party lines to get help, and faced strong political opposition.

Spring Meetups Everywhere 2026 - Call For Organizers

Astral Codex Ten • 4886 implied HN points • 13 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Community Events Meetups Volunteering Networking
  1. Sign up by March 26 using the organizer form if you want to run your city’s ACX meetup; the list of meetups will be posted on the blog around March 27 so people can find your event.
  2. Organizing is simple: pick a date/time/place (any day April 1–May 31; mid-April or early May is best), show up with a sign, and you don’t need to run structured activities unless you want to.
  3. Turnout varies from zero to over a hundred, so plan accordingly; small expenses like nametags, food, and drinks can be reimbursed, and you’re not committing to run meetups forever — you can recruit or hand off the role.

Paul Ehrlich Was Wrong—but He Still Changed the World

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 746 implied HN points • 17 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Biography Environmentalism Population Science Public Policy Ideas
  1. Paul Ehrlich predicted mass starvation and collapsing life expectancy that never happened; instead global population and life expectancy rose.
  2. He promoted extreme measures like forced sterilization to curb population growth and remained convinced of his views until his death.
  3. Despite being wrong about the outcomes, his alarmist arguments helped spark and shape the modern environmental movement and public policy, leaving a lasting impact.

Against Introspection

The Ruffian • 589 implied HN points • 21 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Entrepreneurship Work ethic Psychology Intellectual history American culture Self-Improvement
  1. Many high achievers deliberately avoid deep introspection because action, speed, and focusing on the next task often produce better results and help them reach a flow state.
  2. Modern, self-obsessive forms of introspection are historically and culturally shaped—rooted in European religious and intellectual movements—so intense self-scrutiny isn’t a universal human trait.
  3. There’s a difference between useful self-improvement and prolonged self-laceration: modest reflection or channeling inner life into work can help, but excessive inward dwelling often harms happiness and performance.

I Almost Didn’t Survive ‘The Population Bomb’

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 663 implied HN points • 18 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Memoir Family Parenting Demographics Environmentalism Social movements
  1. They were influenced by Paul Ehrlich’s “population bomb” ideas and worried a third child would derail the family’s upward mobility, but they never regretted having another baby.
  2. The unexpected pregnancy triggered an agonizing checklist about money and readiness — they were in their late 20s with two small kids, living in a cramped Upper West Side apartment and relying on unstable work.
  3. They were part of the late‑60s hippie scene—shaggy hair, a red Volkswagen bus, protests—and remained idealistic about making the world better even while handling family pressures.

In the New Toy Story Movie, Toys Lose Their Jobs to AI

The Honest Broker • 9741 implied HN points • 23 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Film Animation Pop culture Media Entertainment Technology Society
  1. The tech backlash has gone mainstream and is shaping public debate in 2026, with even tech companies joining the pushback.
  2. Toy Story 5 shows toys worried about being replaced by an AI device, highlighting anxieties about screen addiction and technology taking roles and relationships away from people.
  3. There’s striking irony in a studio that helped launch digital film now making an anti-tech movie, which suggests cultural attitudes toward technology are shifting.

If it wasn't for us you'd all be speaking German

Wrong Side of History • 745 implied HN points • 10 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Language Identity History Nationalism Empire Migration Religion
  1. English's global spread helped English-speaking nations gain political and cultural dominance, displacing older centres of influence.
  2. Language (and historically religion) has been the main marker of national identity, but because English is so widespread people now often fold into a shared Anglo-American culture rather than distinct national cultures.
  3. Sharing a language creates sympathy and easier cooperation, especially in military and intelligence matters, but it can also mask real differences and cause misunderstandings.

Cozy Girl Lifestyle is a Rational Response to a Winner-Take-All Culture

Freddie deBoer • 15006 implied HN points • 20 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Lifestyle Aesthetics Consumerism Digital Culture Youth culture Labor
  1. In a winner-take-all culture that only rewards a tiny number of visible successes, choosing a cozy lifestyle is a rational adaptation that favors low-risk, dependable pleasures over risky prestige-seeking gambles.
  2. Cozy culture focuses on small, affordable comforts—warm sweaters, tea, a quiet home—that make everyday life feel good without needing other people's approval.
  3. Arguments that coziness is elitist or politically useless miss that it can reduce status anxiety and let people opt out of the spotlight economy, even if parts of it become commodified.

The Casual Fridays Edition

Why is this interesting? • 1749 implied HN points • 05 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Fashion Marketing Lobbying Corporate culture Cultural History Economic History
  1. Casual Friday wasn't a natural workplace trend but a deliberate marketing campaign by Hawaii's garment industry to sell aloha shirts.
  2. The industry used soft lobbying—sending shirts to politicians and getting prominent figures to wear them—to normalize aloha attire in official and corporate spaces.
  3. That long-running effort successfully manufactured a social norm and widespread consumer demand, turning a local product push into a national workplace habit.

Ghost Routines

slow motion multitasking • 515 implied HN points • 29 Oct 24
🎭️ Culture Art Literature Folklore Tradition Spirituality
  1. Some people believe that ghosts are not actual souls but imprints of past routines or strong emotions. For example, if someone cried a lot in one spot, that might leave a haunting behind.
  2. The theory states that certain places and objects can 'record' these memories, similar to how a tape recorder works. This idea is great for understanding why old castles might feel extra spooky.
  3. Interesting ghost stories can include everything from haunted toys to the history of numbers like 13. Exploring ghost culture can be fun and spooky, especially during Halloween!

La phobie de l’engagement n’existe pas

L'Atelier Galita • 139 implied HN points • 31 Oct 24
🎭️ Culture Relationships Social norms Gender Studies Psychology Personal Development
  1. The idea of commitment phobia is often exaggerated; many people just avoid serious relationships with specific partners. It's not that they fear commitment overall, but rather with certain individuals.
  2. Men often know quickly if they want a serious relationship, but may take advantage of women's hesitation to express their desires.
  3. While a few people may genuinely have a fear of commitment, they are much less common than people think.

Crime As Proxy For Disorder

Astral Codex Ten • 18927 implied HN points • 19 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Urban life Crime Trends Homelessness Public Perception Historical Trends
  1. People often complain about “crime” when they really mean visible disorder like litter, graffiti, shoplifting, tent encampments, and loud boom boxes, and that conflation helps explain why many feel crime is getting worse even though overall crime is low.
  2. The hard data are mixed and locally varied: litter seems down, graffiti is unclear, shoplifting is modestly higher than its lows but below 1990s levels, and homelessness and encampments rose around 2020 but are hard to measure consistently.
  3. There are several reasons people might perceive a rise in disorder — a 2020 bump, comparing today to an unusually peaceful mid-20th-century low, or simply different historical kinds of squalor — so it’s more useful to focus on specific, local evidence than on blanket claims that society is collapsing.

My Friend Doherty

Bet On It • 402 implied HN points • 16 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Journalism History Music Comics Subcultures Memoir
  1. Brian Doherty was a prolific, deeply knowledgeable polymath and journalist who wrote influential books on the modern libertarian movement, Burning Man, and Ron Paul.
  2. He was a generous mentor and friend who connected people, shared deep cultural knowledge (especially about comics and music), and kept wide, eclectic social circles.
  3. His death was sudden and tragic, likely linked to prior health issues, and it left strong, fond memories and a lasting impact on those who knew him.

This Tourette's Controversy is What You Get When Disability Stops Being a Medical Reality and Becomes a Social Culture

Freddie deBoer • 9127 implied HN points • 25 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Disability Media Race Entertainment Politics Social norms
  1. Tourette's can cause involuntary and offensive vocal outbursts (coprolalia), and this is a documented medical reality even though most people with Tourette's don't experience it.
  2. Many public reactions deny or misunderstand that possibility, often out of emotional hurt or a desire to avoid appearing ableist, which can lead to ignorance and misplaced anger.
  3. Treating disability as a social spectacle or cultural prop fuels sensationalism and clashes between marginalized groups, making honest discussion and empathy harder.

SITREP - 10/27/2024

THREE SEVEN MAFIA • 619 implied HN points • 27 Oct 24
🎭️ Culture Events Personal Stories Travel Community Holidays
  1. The recent visit to the Confederate Mound was a big success with great weather and positive vibes.
  2. The writer is dealing with rheumatoid disease, which sometimes affects their ability to work, but they appreciate everyone's understanding.
  3. There are plans to share updates and content soon after returning from a trip to Portland, including a Halloween celebration.

Hollywood Franchise Reboots Are Full of Overpowering, Stultifying Reverence

Freddie deBoer • 5785 implied HN points • 02 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Film Television Nostalgia Franchises Criticism Pop culture
  1. Many modern franchise reboots treat their own past like sacred scripture, stuffing films with reverent callbacks and sentimental moments that make new entries feel self-serious and stale.
  2. This kind of reverence kills surprise and risk, so studios default to safe repetition, rigid canon, and fan-service instead of bold storytelling or real invention.
  3. Original hits often worked because they were irreverent and playful, so revivals should treat old material as clay to reshape and update, not as relics to be worshipped.

A captivating, enigmatic, period family saga; a stunning, hand-drawn, surrealist animated masterpiece; and more

Read Max • 579 implied HN points • 17 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Books Film Music Animation Essays Reviews
  1. Two book picks stand out: a mysterious, beautiful family saga set between Denmark and Russia around the Russian Revolution, and a beloved classic that turns out to be a real page-turner.
  2. A set of essays explores the A.I. economy, the shadow of Tolkien in tech culture, and stylistic tics of large language models like contrastive corrections.
  3. There’s a recommendation for a surreal, hand-drawn post‑apocalyptic animated masterpiece with influences from Jodorowsky, Tarkovsky, Moebius, and classic JRPGs, plus a short list of four music tracks worth checking out.

‘One Battle After Another’ Is Irredeemable

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 1377 implied HN points • 13 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Film Film criticism Hollywood Entertainment industry Media Criticism
  1. The movie is presented as another sign that Hollywood has fallen into moral, artistic, and creative ruin.
  2. The industry’s diversity and inclusion mandates are depicted as politicized rules that undermine artistic freedom and provoke deep resentment among filmmakers.
  3. A top auteur is imagined retaliating by staging a big prank or satirical stunt to expose and mock the petty politicking in modern Hollywood.

Watching Amazon Prime While The Iranians Burn

Caitlin’s Newsletter • 2882 implied HN points • 09 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Consumerism Media Pop culture Capitalism War Society Politics
  1. Mass entertainment and consumer comforts let people ignore and real human suffering happening elsewhere.
  2. Many respond to distant tragedies with performative politics and shallow jokes instead of real empathy or action.
  3. Global capitalism profits from and commodifies suffering, turning pain into products and leaving people morally numb.

What I Learned from Binge-Watching Cowboy Movies

The Honest Broker • 17587 implied HN points • 07 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Film Television Popular culture Media History
  1. Classic westerns offered clear moral authority and simple hero-versus-villain stories that gave audiences a comforting sense of right and wrong.
  2. Social and cultural upheavals made the genre darker and more ambiguous, spawning antihero and nihilistic westerns that eroded that moral certainty.
  3. The western still matters today as a flexible mythic space to debate authority, virtue, and the trade-offs between freedom and order, and it can swing between deconstruction and revival.

The Pain and the Glory of Nonmonogamy

Knowingless • 5186 implied HN points • 05 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Relationships Sexuality Identity Dating Intimacy Communication
  1. Nonmonogamy can be deeply fulfilling and build intense trust, because it lets you be chosen freely and learn more about who your partners really are.
  2. It is emotionally hard and culturally unsupported, often triggering strong jealousy or a "scary attention-hijack," but those reactions tend to calm with experience and honest processing.
  3. Making it work requires radical honesty, clear communication, and dating people who are truly committed to nonmonogamy rather than those who might slide back into monogamy.

Stop Trying to Make Heterosexuals into Lesbians

Richard Hanania's Newsletter • 5291 implied HN points • 09 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Gender Relationships Sexuality Dating Family Class Fertility Social norms
  1. Heterosexual attraction often depends on complementarity: men typically prioritize youth and physical attractiveness while women more often prioritize status, resources, or power.
  2. Pushing heterosexuals to adopt a lesbian-style model of romance that minimizes power differences and emphasizes compatibility only — and stigmatizing age gaps, workplace dating, or transactional aspects — can reduce pairing and harm family formation.
  3. We should be realistic and nonjudgmental about different adult relationship types, acknowledge how dating apps and changing social norms reshape mating markets, and avoid selectively condemning common transactional dynamics.

Fifty People Control the Culture

The Honest Broker • 40294 implied HN points • 11 Jan 26
🎭️ Culture Media Music Film Publishing Tech Platforms Art
  1. About fifty people—CEOs and executives at major tech and media companies—effectively control the culture today, concentrating power in movies, music, books, and online media.
  2. Most of these leaders are technocrats who care more about profits and share prices than art, which pushes out risky or meaningful creativity.
  3. Independent platforms like Substack, Patreon, and Bandcamp give creators more control and deserve support, because strengthening the indie counterculture is the only realistic way to restore diversity and innovation.