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# ‘AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global, Healthy Boredom Is Unclaimed Bandwidth, Tolkien's Guide to Living Through Dark
- URL: https://adjacent.media/weekend/2026-08-02-long-read/
- Published: 2026-08-02T11:03:29.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-02T11:03:30.000Z
- Description: This week: an economist’s dissection of how AI hype is corrupting Fortune 500 boardroom decisions, a philosophical case for boredom as the body’s unused capacity, and a meditation on Tolkien’s fiction as survival literature for anxious times.
- Author: Jonathan Greene
- Tags: #long-read, #weekend

This week: an economist's dissection of how AI hype is corrupting Fortune 500 boardroom decisions, a philosophical case for boredom as the body's unused capacity, and a meditation on Tolkien's fiction as survival literature for anxious times.

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#### [‘AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making’](https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ai-mania-is-eviscerating-global-decision-making/?ref=adjacent.media)

Nikhil Suresh's essay, built around a firsthand account of a meeting with a Fortune 500 executive, is the rare AI-skeptic piece that traces the actual mechanism by which hype degrades judgment inside large organizations rather than settling for outrage. Executives are making capital allocation decisions based on competitor panic and vibes rather than evidence — and that failure mode compounds as it moves down the org chart. What earns the full read is the specificity: real anecdotes, real stakes, and a willingness to sit with the uncomfortable possibility that the smartest people in the room are the most susceptible to this particular delusion. It lands somewhere more useful than both the breathless boosters and the reflexive dismissers.

*Daring Fireball (via Nikhil Suresh) · 25 minutes*

> On a trip overseas, I had the privilege of a meeting with one of the Fortune 500 executives...

#### [Healthy Boredom Is Unclaimed Bandwidth](https://open.substack.com/pub/humanosmanual/p/healthy-boredom-is-unclaimed-bandwidth)

A patient, well-argued essay on why the modern instinct to eliminate every idle moment may be self-defeating — treating boredom as spare capacity the nervous system needs to process, consolidate, and recover. Oscar Trelles writes with the calm authority of someone who has spent real time in the physiology of behavior and recovery, and he resists the easy self-help version of this argument in favor of a systems explanation: constant stimulation degrades the very performance people are chasing when they eliminate boredom. It rewards a slow read because it never rushes to the conclusion — the case builds.

*The Human OS Manual · 18 minutes*

#### [Tolkien's Guide to Living Through Dark Times](https://open.substack.com/pub/culturist/p/tolkiens-guide-to-living-through)

An unhurried close reading of Tolkien's life and fiction as a manual for enduring — not escaping — genuinely dark historical moments, written by someone who clearly knows the letters and the legendarium as well as the novels. The piece rejects the "Tolkien as pure escapism" reading, arguing instead that *The Lord of the Rings* was written by a man who survived the Somme and buried friends, and that its hope is earned rather than naive. What distinguishes this from the standard Tolkien fan-essay is its attention to the specific mechanics of how hope operates in the text — as the discipline of continuing to act well when victory is not assured, a definition the author carefully separates from triumphalism. Worth the time for anyone who has wondered why this particular fiction keeps getting reached for during periods of real anxiety.

*The Culturist · 22 minutes*