MSG MFG

05/28/2026

This Saturday!

Cool collab opportunity! Stephen from Savage Village will be slinging ink; you bring a shirt or hoodie and customize with Factory Two, Local 432, or SV designs. No charge, drop in any time, free pizza at 1pm!

05/26/2026

For a decade, we've been told our screens are wrecking our sleep. The real culprit is far bigger than the glow from your phone.

05/22/2026

A.I. technology probably isn’t going anywhere. But we’re overdue for a conversation about how to use it more thoughtfully.

05/20/2026

Social media bans for preteens and children are a craze sweeping the world. Indonesia is the latest to join the wave.

05/19/2026

05/12/2026

Many Americans say they’re concerned about their diminished attention span—but it might not be their focus that they truly miss, Franklin Schneider argues. https://theatln.tc/mW0T147K

“Attention, these days, is something that many Americans seem to regard as an inherent virtue whose purity they can try to protect or allow to be despoiled,” Schneider writes. “A diminished attention span is a sign of personal weakness, or even intellectual debasement. On social media, people talk of having ‘German-shepherd attention spans’ and liken their condition to ‘brain damage.’ To reduce one’s attention span, so the logic implies, is to reduce one’s humanity.”

“But this might be an outdated way of thinking about attention—and one that blames the individual for dispensing something that, more accurately, is being extracted,” Schneider writes.

Tech companies have turned attention into a moneymaking commodity, and yet most of the scrolling masses are unable to cash in on even a fraction of the value generated by their very own eyeballs, Schneider writes. “According to one behavioral study released last year, the median American adult spends a little more than six hours a day looking at a smartphone, and many spend five hours on social-media apps alone, which essentially amounts to clocking in to a part-time job—though plenty of people are likely being paid only in amusement, envy, stoked outrage, or a sort of anesthetized daze that’s not quite boredom but not quite not-boredom either.”

“Perhaps many people feel bad about their attention span not because it’s too short, but because they sense that they’re running themselves ragged by giving away a precious commodity for far less than it’s worth,” Schneider continues at the link.

🎨: Wenjing Yang

05/05/2026

OpenAI’s new image-generation model can create highly realistic fake IDs, receipts, and prescriptions, Lila Shroff reports. She examines how the model risks perpetuating fraud:

OpenAI made the perfect tool for scammers.

04/29/2026

Taken together, these four features can create a trancelike state that can keep us stuck on social media apps or video games for hours. Children are particularly vulnerable.