boringness

Theoretical physicist Manon Bischoff, who is an editor for our partner publication Spektrum in Germany, shows how to sort numbers for boringness and why it matters.

Though he specializes in bureaucracies and quantification, or as he puts it “modern things shrouded in cloaks of boringness,” Bouk himself has a poet’s flair for wordplay.

We were wrong about the American appetite for boringness and sincerity, and wrong too in believing that what America craved in response to the carnival barkery was unironic, diligent institutionalists.

When we comforted ourselves with the bromide that boring old institutionalists and reliably respected institutions would serve to cool the fever dreams and the fearmongering that characterized every day of the Trump administration, what we forgot was that boringness and stability are no match for the show.

The trouble with boringness is that it’s boring.