#1: More Human than Human

Alright, here we go. Thanks for signing up in time for installment #1. I stole a trick from Will Leitch's newsletter and used a thematically-appropriate '90s alternative rock song title for the subject line.

I'm starting this newsletter for the same reason I started a blog: I've read enough good ones that I finally need to create my own. Email is also just an appealing platform. Twitter, which I'll always love, is becoming a firehose of nightmare news. Facebook is a high-security marketing dystopia. Email, free of algorithmic interference, is how I'd actually talk to friends.

Last Saturday night I was in a van coming back to NYC from Pennsylvania. Looking out the window as we passed Newark, I noticed a massive, foreboding tower right off the highway, backed by the seaport's blinding wall of even taller illuminated cranes in the distance, and I immediately thought about how much the scene felt like Blade Runner, which reminded me how much of everyday life feels like dark sci-fi but passes for ordinary because we adjust so quickly.

Since we actually went ahead and built ourselves a Blade Runner world, with all of the associated problems, we might as well squeeze some entertainment out of it, or at least keep ourselves sensitized to how strange that world is. The past year and especially the past month have felt like a movie, and not in a good way, but at least I haven't needed to watch as many movies. So maybe that weird tension is what this newsletter will turn out to be about, but I'd be dishonest if I promised that I knew.

Reads:

• More airport fascination: Geoff Manaugh on LAX anti-terrorism and the "geopolitical clout" of big infrastructure

• Sonya Mann sends an enjoyable cyberpunk newsletter called Exolymph. Getting a cyberpunk email every day will make you a more cyberpunk person, which is probably good preparation for whatever is coming at us.