A terrible person once said something pithy about “known knowns,” “known unknowns,” and “unknown unknowns” — and my, wouldn’t it be a better world if he had been talking about one’s first triathlon and not, say, the fabrications the Bush Administration used to justify the Iraq War. Because the
In this week's Garbage Day newsletter, Ryan Broderick argues that "content slop" is much more pervasive – the problem much more insidious – than the AI-generated memes that have garnered quite a bit of attention lately. You know, the shrimp-Jesus images that are all over Facebook. "Content
It's been a very bad week for democracy — in many ways, in many places, in many directions, the most obvious and egregious of these being the Supreme Court’s decision in the aptly named Trump v United States. A bad week for democracy means a bad week for
Consistency. Influencers and pundits from all sectors, but particularly from health and wellness, like to talk about consistency as the key to greatness. "A habit must be established before it can be improved," James Clear writes in Atomic Habits. "If you can't learn the basic
Happy Monday (and happy birthday to Kin!) and welcome to "The Extra Mile," an extra newsletter for Second Breakfast's paid subscribers. This is where I work out a bunch of ideas about health and technology that are still largely fragmentary, speculative, and – in a busy breakfast
I screwed up on Monday, sending all subscribers not just paid subscribers, an Extra Mile newsletter (which is supposed to be "bonus content" for the latter). I'm quite proud of how that Monday missive is shaping up, so I'm not mad that everyone got
A couple of weeks ago I complained – half jokingly and entirely straight-faced – about the lack of innovation in dental technology. But I confess, I neglected to mention the technological upgrade I did actually experience in the dental chair: being fitted for a mouth guard – a process that did not entail
On Tuesday, I received a push-notification from The New York Times. Breaking news, you know. Important stuff. Joey Chestnut was out of this year's hot dog eating contest at Coney Island. Chestnut, who's won the competition sixteen times, has split with the sponsor of the Fourth
The debate over which is better for muscle development — free weights or machines — is a long one, and I'll just state here at the outset of this essay, really beyond the scope of the kinds of stories I tell here at Second Breakfast. You can definitely find the