Finding flow, memes in control, and lost legitimacy

Happy Sunday!

We published some some seriously great stuff this week (if we do say so ourselves.) So here's a roundup of all our articles—just in case you missed them.

How Flow Saved a Chef

For renowned chef Frank Prisinzano, flow dictates not only his restaurant business, but his life: "I love the feeling of being in the zone and just knowing that I’m doing what I’m supposed to do—in cooking and in my life, that’s flow. Flow for me is a kind of meditative state—it’s a plateau of balance and creativity." Prisinzano teaches flow and shares cooking methods (not recipes) via his Instagram, helping his followers tune in to the feeling that changed his own life.

Read.

How Memes Control Everything

Memes are not just internet jokes, they're units of cultural transmission. Popular songs, business strategies, GIFs, TikTok dances, slang, clothing fashion: all are memes, and all demonstrate how the mind works. In this week's Divinations piece, Nathan argues that "all behavior, everything we do beyond our most basic biological necessities, is governed by memes." It's a big claim, but a compelling one, and well worth your time.

Read.

Legitimacy Lost

There's a legitimacy crisis going on in the creator economy. Over the last decade, platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok have built gigantic, autocratic fiefdoms where they hand the rules down to creators and regular users from on high. But as we spend more and more of our time online, and our livelihoods are more tied to those platforms that model is no longer working. Learn how we got here, and how decentralization and Web3 might fix the situation in this week's essay from Li and Katie.

Read.

Who is Making Money in Space?

Evan Armstrong & Ryan Duffy / Napkin Math

Space might be the final frontier for exploration, but it's also the next frontier for capitalism. A recent boom of space SPACs means that the financials of some of the companies that are monetizing space are public for the first time. In this week's Napkin Math's Evan and guest writer Ryan Duffy explore who is competing in space, and who is winning.

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Leaving the party: Award-winning author Julia Turshen on what comes after success

Sherrell Dorsey & Annaliese Griffin / Free Radicals

Julia Turshen is a best-selling food author and a podcaster who hosts the hugely popular Keep Calm and Cook On, but she's also taking a break to honor a desire to "be quieter in [her] work." In this week's Free Radicals, Sherrell and Annaliese talk to her about the intersection of food and politics, why she doesn't consider herself an activist, and how she's reconfiguring her life as her ideas about the "good life" change.

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Stop Getting Rejected For Dumb Stuff

Rachel Jepsen / The Long Conversation

If you've ever submitted writing to a publication and never heard back—Rachel's got some tips for you. In this week's TLC she breaks down the most common mistakes that writers make when trying to get published, and shows you how to avoid them.

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