- College of Charleston
- Indiana University of Pennsylvania
- SUNY Fredonia
- Minnesota State University, Mankato
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Author Archives: Jasper John MacKay
Five American Universities
Quote, Unquote
Before I publish this letter, I retype the whole thing from start to finish. It means I take the draft that lives in my Notes app on the left half of my screen while I retype the whole thing into the Google Docs on the right side of my screen. It’s a final check to catch infelicities. More importantly, by simulating the experience of a reader, it’s another way to see if the whole essay stands together.
~ Dan Wang via his 2025 letter
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Interesting Read
via The New Yorker:
The Repo Man Coming for Your Ride
by Paige Williams
published on June 22, 2026
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Quote, Unquote
The first person I’m introduced to is a woman who looks like Daryl Hannah’s android in Blade Runner, beaming in on a TV screen. A bleach-haired goth, Amanda Askell is a philosophy PhD who did her dissertation at NYU on moral uncertainty. She was one of the first 10 employees, and her actual job has been to give Claude a personality. She’s Scottish and enjoys bagpipe music.
~ Joe Hagan via Vanity Fair.
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Quote, Unquote
Jane Austen and Charles Dickens were both masters of comedy, but the contrast between her ironic understatement and his histrionic exaggeration reflects profoundly different personalities and life experiences, in which class and gender played an important part.
~ Adam Kirsch via The Atlantic
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Campus Map
Malmö University
Five American Universities
to follow on LinkedIn
Interesting Read
via The Atlantic:
The College-Educated Working Class
by George Packer
published on March 16, 2026
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Quote, Unquote
In trying to construct a society that maximized talent, James Conant and his peers were governed by the common assumptions of the era: Intelligence, that highest human trait, can be measured by standardized tests and the ability to do well in school from ages 15 to 18. Universities should serve as society’s primary sorting system, segregating the smart from the not smart. Intelligence is randomly distributed across the population, so sorting by intelligence will yield a broad-based leadership class.
~ David Brooks
via How the Ivy League Broke America
published by The Atlantic
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Quote, Unquote
Generative AI is harmful enough when we understand it as a conventional technology, but if we confuse fluency at generating text with consciousness or moral agency, we’re at risk of assigning responsibility to entirely the wrong parties whenever anyone uses a chatbot.
~ Ted Chiang via The Atlantic
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