We spent this week thinking about information — who controls it, who translates it, and what happens when the systems meant to organize our lives start sorting us instead.
The Digital Poorhouse maps how algorithms don’t eliminate human bias, they just move it somewhere we can’t see it. Automated systems price, predict, and exclude with a precision that would make any historical gatekeeper jealous. The mechanism is new. The shape is old.
Meanwhile, The Question Mark Suit offers a different model: Matthew Lesko in his ridiculous question-mark-covered suit, translating government bureaucracy for regular people. Yoga teachers do the same thing — standing between students and a practice that’s been deliberately mystified by Sanskrit terms and lineage wars. Someone just wants to know if they should bend their knee.
That impulse to demystify showed up in Tech Support Tuesday, answering seven Reddit questions about Ashtanga without the usual gatekeeping. And in The Yoga Club Does All Eight, where real connection happens without algorithmic mediation.
Then there’s memory. Scientists can now erase memories in mice, which raises the question of whether we should erase our painful past. And in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, we looked at how Connie splits herself into versions — one for home, one for the world — thinking the division keeps her safe.
All week, the same question kept surfacing: who decides what you get to know, remember, or become?
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