Aaron Mayer – Medium

Feb 13

In Praise of Pleasure

Smashing the “Upper Limit” in the pursuit of happiness — [Also posted on Substack — follow for more] Some people talk about pleasure as if they’re embarrassed by it. I’ve written about pleasure before, and I still notice that for whatever reason (repressive parents, a history of trauma, a religious upbringing that treated pleasure as sinful, etc.), so many of…

Pleasure

4 min read

Pleasure

4 min read

Jan 25

Homecoming in a New Land

Returning to a home where I’ve never been — [Cross-posted on Substack — follow for more] Today, I landed in SFO airport and took a taxi to my new community house in San Francisco. Even though I’ve never visited SF for more than a few weeks at time, I felt as if I were returning home. It was so…

California

3 min read

California

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Jan 9

Made with ChatGPT

Must we inform our readers when we use powerful new writing tools? — [Cross-posted on Substack — follow along for more] It’s 2023. A 5th grader sends an essay to his teacher for a school assignment. An employee at a non-profit submits a grant proposal to the NIH. A travel blogger posts an article about a surfing spot in Maui. They all have…

Writing

5 min read

Writing

5 min read

Jan 2

Donation Day Came Late This Year

Thoughts on end-of-year giving for 2022 — [Cross-posted on my Substack — follow me there] It’s January 2nd, 2023 and I just donated 10% of last year’s income to GiveWell’s Top Charities Fund. I’ve been donating 10% of my income every year for the past 5 years since taking the Giving What We Can pledge in 2017…

Philanthropy

5 min read

Philanthropy

5 min read

Dec 31, 2022

Utopia for Pastry Chefs

or “What Will We All Do Once the Robots Take Over?” — [Also posted on Substack — subscribe for more] It’s become a semi-annual ritual at this point. OpenAI or DeepMind comes out with a new ML breakthrough like AlphaFold or ChatGPT and everyone across the internet starts freaking out about either how the robots are coming to take our jobs or…

3 min read

3 min read

Published in Impact Labs

·Oct 21, 2022

Announcing the Winners of the Impact Summit Learning Engineering Prize

We are so delighted to share the winner of this past summer’s Impact Summit Learning Engineering Prize: Pupil! Pupil matches disadvantaged high schoolers with college students and alumni mentors from partnered universities and organizations via an algorithm that determines shared commonalities! Founded by Dario Anaya, Pupil aims to facilitate a…

Social Impact

2 min read

Announcing the Winners of the Impact Summit Learning Engineering Prize

Social Impact

2 min read

Mar 22, 2022

Taking the Further Pledge

Why I’m donating everything I earn beyond $70,000 for the rest of my life — In June of 2017, I publicly pledged to donate 10% of my income to charity. I made this pledge through Giving What We Can, an organization that educates people about the massive inequalities of wealth around the globe while also encouraging them to donate a percentage of their incomes to…

Philanthropy

3 min read

Philanthropy

3 min read

Oct 7, 2021

The Fundamental Ailment

On Lawrence Lessig and unrepresentativeness — [Originally posted on Substack — subscribe for more] The only trouble with the world is all the people who start sentences with “the only trouble with the world is…” Sometimes, though, those people are correct. In They Don’t Represent Us, Lawrence Lessig, a political theorist at Harvard and candidate for…

Philosophy

3 min read

Philosophy

3 min read

Oct 7, 2021

Stop Treating Yo’ Self

Modern greed and what to do about it — [Originally posted on Substack — consider subscribing if you want, but don’t if you don’t] I grew up in NYC, so I’m accustomed to waiting in lines for everything. In a city of 8 million people with everyone in a hurry, I’d wait on line for bagels, elevators, concerts, you…

Personal Development

3 min read

Personal Development

3 min read

Oct 6, 2021

Pleasure Activism

Pursuing pleasure as a political cause [Originally posted on Substack — subscribe for more] I just finished listening to Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, by Adrienne Maree Brown. The central message of Pleasure Activism is to make pleasure an integral part of our political dialogue — we should…

Pleasure

4 min read

Pleasure

4 min read