Weekly Reading List: 28/09/2025

Things I Read This Week That Made Me Think

Every week, I gather the pieces that refuse to leave me alone. The ones I find myself quoting in conversation, the ones I argue with in the shower, the ones that give me language for something I’d felt but hadn’t articulated.

This list moves from the dawn of a post-literate society to the strategic uses of sociopathy, from the death of the textbook to the rise of Palantir-as-lifestyle, from virtual cells to AI-generated martyrs. Together, they sketch the anxieties and possibilities of living in a time where knowledge, culture, and identity are being continuously remade.

The Reads

1. The Dawn of the Post-Literate Society
J. Marriott makes a provocative case: literacy as we know it is waning, not just in ability but in centrality. Screens, audio, and AI are shifting us toward a “post-literate” society where text is only one of many interfaces. The essay forces us to confront whether this is decline or simply transition, and whether culture can thrive when reading is no longer the default form of deep thinking.

2. Strategic Sociopathy
Zoë Scaman argues that sociopathic traits like detachment, ruthlessness, lack of sentimentality, can be incredibly useful in business and politics. It’s a bracing, uncomfortable idea: that qualities we label pathological may also be adaptive in systems that reward cold clarity. It made me think about the fine line between resilience and callousness.

3. The Erotics of Intelligence
Helen Higgins explores the allure of intelligence not as utility but as erotic charge. She asks: Why are we drawn to brilliance, even when it’s intimidating? Intelligence here is framed as a performance, a seduction, and a power play. In a world of AI, the question mutates. What happens when machines simulate the very qualities we find most magnetic in each other?

4. You Don’t Need an Aesthetic, You Need…
Eri Barry dismantles the tyranny of “aesthetics” as identity. Instead of curating a vibe, she argues, people need frameworks: values, principles, goals. The essay is a call to step out of the Pinterest board version of selfhood and into something less image-driven and more lived.

5. The Death of the Textbook, the Return…
Saanya Ojha looks at the decline of traditional textbooks and the rise of fragmented, dynamic learning materials. This is not a qustion of format, but of authority. Who decides what counts as canonical knowledge in an age of PDFs, forums, and AI tutors? The “death of the textbook” is really about the decentralization of trust in education.

6. Last Post Was a Movie
In an era where most content is optimized for speed (short, snackable, instantly forgettable) this essay argues that the real cultural power is moving in the opposite direction. Brands and creators are going cinematic: longer, slower, more effortful, deliberately immersive. It makes a strong case that attention, when treated with respect, can be stretched, and that the future of storytelling might not be faster, but deeper.

7. How Do You Use a Virtual Cell?
Abhishek Iyer introduces the “virtual cell”, a computational model that lets us simulate biology in ways that wet labs never could. The implications for drug discovery and health are staggering, but what struck me is the philosophical side: building digital proxies of life forces us to ask what counts as “alive” in the first place.

8. Suno AI Music Generator v5 Review
The Verge reviews Suno’s latest AI music tool. The verdict: better, sharper, eerily convincing, but also deeply destabilizing for musicians (and lovers of music). The question isn’t just whether AI can make good music, but whether audiences care if there’s a human behind the sound. It’s another crack in the link between artistry and authenticity.

9. Autism Rates and the Science of Diagnosis
The NYT opinion piece grapples with rising autism diagnoses. Is it an epidemic, better detection, or shifting definitions? The essay highlights the anxiety of parents caught between relief (for recognition) and fear (of stigma). It’s a reminder that science is not just data, but a lived negotiation between families, doctors, and culture.

10. Blippo Plus Review
A Verge review of Blippo Plus, a game trying to straddle Switch and Steam audiences. What stands out isn’t just gameplay but the larger question of platform identity: who is the game for, and how do developers navigate competing ecosystems? It’s a microcosm of how culture now gets brokered between formats.

11. Palantir Wants to Be a Lifestyle Brand
Wired examines how Palantir is trying to evolve beyond software into myth-making, positioning itself not just as a company but as an identity, and a way of seeing the world. It’s both absurd and telling: in an age where corporations act like tribes, software firms selling “lifestyle” might be less far-fetched than it sounds.

12. Mentorship and Hope Can Solve the Youth Mental Health Crisis
Aeon makes the case that mentorship, not just therapy or apps, is the most overlooked lever in addressing youth mental health. Hope, transmitted through human relationships, may be the real medicine. It’s a radical reminder that sometimes the fix isn’t innovation but tradition: showing up for each other.

13. The Extreme, Beautiful Work of Climate Science
Quanta showcases breathtaking photos of climate scientists at work: glaciers, storms, extremes. The images capture both the danger and the devotion of those who measure the planet’s most volatile edges. It’s a piece that argues visually: climate work isn’t abstract, it’s lived on the frontier of human endurance.

14. Charlie Kirk and the Making of an AI-Generated Martyr
Salon dissects how AI-generated images and narratives are being used to recast political figures as martyrs. The case study is Charlie Kirk, but the implications go wider: what happens when myth-making no longer needs reality? It’s less about one man and more about the machinery of political storytelling in an era where images don’t need truth to move people.

Closing

This week’s list feels like it circles three themes: the transformation of knowledge (post-literacy, textbooks, mentorship), the destabilization of authenticity (AI music, virtual cells, Palantir-as-lifestyle, AI martyrs), and the enduring human need for meaning (intelligence as eros, mentorship as medicine, climate science as devotion).

The throughline is clear: technology is rewriting the scripts, but the questions we ask of ourselves about trust, desire, purpose, remain stubbornly old.

If one of these pieces lingered, pass it on. And if you’ve read something lately that cracked open your sense of meaning, send it my way. The best maps are the ones we draw together.