Tag: Culture Wars

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Internet Culture Media

Day 937 and Conspiracy’s Greatest Hits

The rising volume on complaints about the mainstream media has struck me as a little bit silly as I’ve been entrenched in skepticism of institutional authority my whole life. Thinking the news had a bias isn’t new and conspiracy is practically an American art form. So be careful out there.

When I was a kid in the late nineties we still had the national broadcast evening news as the center of discourse. I was considered a bit odd for being interested in news at a young age but my hippie parent had a healthy skepticism for institutional authority so they encouraged it.

I remember before the mass adoption of social media and self publishing, if you wanted an alternative perspective you had to turn to AM radio. If you were lucky you lived in a college town and had access to library cooperatives and computer labs. If you were very lucky like me, your parents had invested in personal computers and internet access early on so you could mix formal libraries with early choose your own adventure newsgroups online.

Thanks to the confluence of the above factors I read Adbusters, went to the local anarchist book cooperative and listened to Art Bell late at night. I was practically stewed in every early conspiracy and counter culture narrative that had any amount of reach. If a zine cared or an indie publisher could cobble together a story I read it. This lead to a general fascination with media and how Americans decided on what was credible and what viewpoints were discouraged.

I was a curious child. My family welcomed skeptics and mystics. This is perhaps what happens when you take children on meditation retreats. I got inoculated to a lot of crazies, cults and whackadoodles because America has always been where utopians gather. Our evangelical cultures have led to uniquely American interpretations of our Gods. And I loved nothing more than watching these subcultures flourish.

My family bought a cable news package and I watched CNN and Fox News battle it out. I read Naomi Klein and Marshal McLuhan. I convinced my mother to get me a subscription to the Economist when I was fifteen. Embarrassingly I used their motto in a year book quote. I talked my way into a job famed talk radio juggernaut 77WABC when still technically in high school.

If there is one thing I learned from this lifelong obsession with who controls what we think, it’s that we rely on the same simple narratives over and over again. The conspiracies of yesterday are the facts of today. We change our minds. We recycle the same prophecy. If you start seeing a lot of chatter about aliens remember we’ve had this news cycle before.

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Culture Media Politics

Day 932 and Schisms

Most of my social circle is caught up in various internecine dramas. This is really saying something as I have a lot of people in a lot of different demographics across every continent except Antarctica. Which is a pity as I’d love a friend down there.

I am convinced that everyone is losing their fucking minds because we are in the middle of what I believe will end up being recognized as an information war. Maybe one day we persecute memetic crimes against humanity at The Hague.

I realize this sounds modestly hysterical but really you probably don’t appreciate how much your opinions are being courted to different interests groups. It’s not even particularly menacing. We want others to see our humanity and we leverage every tool we have from Twitter to the New York Times.

And it’s important that we fight these wars. You are probably right about a lot of things and I am wrong about them. It’s important that you and I provide participation and consensus to the rest of society so we can come to some form of agreement. If you think something should change own up to it.

I genuinely think it’s a mistake for anyone to pull away from these obligations to society and by extension political and social opinion. I have watched Silicon Valley pull back from participation in its own self advocacy in the wake of the American media coming down so hard on it. I think this is a mistake.

I believe that the technology industry and startups in particular owe it to ourselves and to the rest of the world to remain engaged. I promise it’s not that hard to speak to the media or the general public. If you are a founder or someone participating in this community and need help just send me a DM on Twitter. Consider me a diplomat to the fourth estate.

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Media

Day 929 and Right Speak

My day has been a little off as I’m nursing my husband through some surgery. Through frankly he’s recovering so well it’s mostly just keeping him company while I do my regular workday. But I have consumed some good content in the process of keeping him company and making sure ice packs are rotated & medicine is taken.

I watched John Mulaney standup special Baby J which was surprisingly good. My main takeaway was “being liked is a cage” but also you’ve got to watch out for how selfish everyone is in the process of managing their own traumas and addictions.

Mulaney is a fascinating example of someone going from beloved to fuck up as soon as it was clear he was a human and capable of sinning and hurting himself and others.

He got a good dose of being condemned while being shitheel as an addict. Who he really hurt other than himself I can’t say. But he was problematic says many inches of gossip writing and critical reviews. Wrong speak and shame and condemnation is so interesting as a social engagement issue for culture. It’s never really about them. We can all be assholes and unlikable in the process of being hurt and healing our hurts.

I suppose this is why I believe it’s better to never take anything personally and be sure you take care of yourself if you find yourself reacting strongly to a person’s frailty. The ones who love you will forgive you if you need to reorient yourself into doing what’s right for you so long as you don’t hurt anyone in the process. And oftentimes even if you do.

The follow up movie we watched was also about wrong think. But instead of it being about the addiction and selfishness of a celebrity it was about the selfishness of trying to decide what’s right for an entire nation. We watched the Tetris movie.

Which is quite a dramatization of how totalizing even the most glorious of ambitions can be in the hands of hands of normal frail humans. Yes I think wrong think comedians and communists are related and I swear I still think Bari Weiss is kind of an asshole. Most of the comedians asking for forgiveness for wrong think aren’t actually that funny to begin with. Back to Tetris

I found myself inspired by the frustrations that come from human nature & self dealing while glorifying ambitious end goals for social good. The collective good can often be patently false if someone ambitious enough gets perverted. Maybe I’m just being that asshole capitalist but I think nepotism and corruption come in many forms. And it’s easier to spot it in British billionaires and communists bureaucracies. But we’ve got plenty of right speak and “for your own good” pleas right here in America.

It’s inspired me to look harder into how we are perversely seeking control and benefits for large corporations and political parties in our current race to regulate new technologies like crypto and artificial intelligence. If you want a hint as to where I’m worried look no further than Gary Gensler and reinforcement learning for artificial intelligence alignment. And yes I’m making bets to that effect.

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Internet Culture

Day 925 and Spartan Cherry Crush

Our Silicon Valley “men in the arena” are suggesting we should become Greek hopalites and our egirls have become fully realized emoji triggered TikTok forex currency farmer NPCs.

Today being July 14th 2023 is quite a Bastille Day for whatever revolutionary fervor we’ve become caught in as the ancient régime struggles. If you haven’t read the War of Farts in Page Six yet have a look.

Meanwhile in the real world we’ve got a massive heat wave about to bake America, our various heads of state have decided to strengthen a military alliance, and yes all of this is connected.

In other news, I’ve had a bit of a hard week and I’m shutting down a lot of access points so don’t take it personally. The churn is here.

Maybe we’ve just reached the point where the warring info-hazards that are our closed garden social media feeds have decided to make us all literally go insane. I can’t entirely tell as I’m loathe to give up algorithmic level control on any of my feeds and do not use social media that doesn’t offer me a chronological feed of my own choosing.

I watched Idiocracy when it came out and I did not want to believe that it’s always been true we’ve allowed our world to be overrun by our unregulated appetites but PinkyDoll is just a hardworking Québécois hottie who has no time for your bullshit. Yum yum yum! yes yes! Gang gang!

And to tie together my title on all this, while I like Cherry Crush’s work I can’t back the white elf who says no spicy. It’s just too weird. Stay safe out there people and don’t let the brain worms get you.

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Politics

Day 922 and Inconveniencing Americans

I’m enjoying a tiny moment of schadenfreude as I hear more stories of Americans being inconvenienced by our systemically fucked federal bureaucracies.

Every time a reasonable person encounters a petty injustice in the renewal of their passport I see hope. Because our immigration, visa, State department sundry consular services are so fucked. Like if you haven’t experienced the cruelty with which Uncle Sam treats it’s least favored citizens consider your luck. Well you must have a lot going for you.

And I’m grateful for your faith in American systems. We need to aspire to treat everyone as well as we have treated our most favored citizens. Our most privileged are an aspiration for us all. The American dream is working towards allowing a fragile peace of mutual freedom.

But you’ve got to remember that in big enough groups everyone is fighting to preserve their status. And that always comes at a cost. And until that cost occurs to more people with power we tend to let it slide. So I hope we inconvenience more Americans soon so we can get back to the business if welcoming the world to our aspirational ideals.

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Biohacking Community Emotional Work

Day 918 and My Attention Budget

I wrote about the realignment of attention budgets as social media experiences a walled garden fear response to artificial intelligence’s looming tsunami of low cost content.

I myself am going through an exercise of ruthless prioritization of my own focus and find. As in any portfolio, write downs are inevitable. It’s easier to write something down when it’s money. Investments of time, energy, social capital and presence are much harder to let go. A sunk cost never boils? A watched pot never catalyzes? Sometimes a group or a movement chooses to remain outside their power.

I have so much less capacity to be present than I’d like. Others may prefer to be distant and still shower up but I find I’m happier with boundaries that are firm and great remove. That means when I do show up you have my full and intimate attention. It’s only right.

You have to prune in order to blossom. One commitment I’m excited to see blossom is the exceptional work of Jonny Miller. He and I will be hosting a Cultivating Calm Workshop for founders and venture capitalists interested in how to apply nervous system regulation techniques to their startup journey.

August 10th at 11am MTN join myself & Jonny Miller for cultivating calm.

As more of us rise up the acceleration curve of artificial intelligence and must maintain our capacity to sense-make, this will help your mind and body function in a chaotic world.

I myself have taken Jonny’s Bootcamp, intend to be in the next cohort (my code JULIE gets you a discount), and I’ll be sponsoring a founder to attend the September cohort so consider this a chance to see if these tools are right for you. My revealed preferences tell you what you need to know.

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Internet Culture

Day 917 and Attention Budget

We act like our attention is a static thing. You have reading habits and social media patterns and your attention is allocated to what makes the most sense for whatever demographic you have settled into for your life choices. But it can always be changed. And maybe your attention choices don’t serve you.

We have fantasies about our independent mindedness, especially in America. But we are all a product of other people’s attentional priorities. What you are focused on is quite often molded especially for you.

It’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry, when in fact, you’re wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room… from a pile of “stuff.”

Take the principle of this iconic scene from The Devil Wears Prada and apply it to every single area of your life where you made a choice as a consumer, worker, hobbiest, parent or any other identity with a collective meaning.

I’m taking this problem very seriously at the moment as we may be in for a significant attention economy realignment. Big chunks of the social internet appear to be up for grabs as legacy networks like Twitter, Reddit and Stackoverflow go through significant identity alignments issues as competitive pressures from artificial intelligence and increased attention allocation automation. The algorithms are fighting for you.

None of this is bad or good necessarily. Some of it is us fighting to make make some areas more competitive and perhaps other areas will be shown to be unsustainable. And sometimes it’s just management. Don’tk make the mistake of dickriding for someone that is as human as you or I. Stay smart out there and think critically for yourself.

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Culture Politics

Day 914 and Unsucked Dick

If you have spent time on this blog, you likely have some familiarity with my usage of crude language to get across a wider point. Sometimes being rude or lewd is simply the most effective manner of communicating a difficult truth.

While I have an overused forced metaphor tag given for my tendency to write in overwrought imagery, I’ve only just realized that I have written a trilogy of crude metaphors in service of explaining power as simply as possible. Those crude metaphors include shitposting, dickriding and now unsucked dick.

Without attention-grabbing taboo cursing, these topics can otherwise might seem too complex or academic. If you have read critical theory texts you know what I mean.

Overly formal language is alienating and tends to entrench us in our priors. With that context out of the way, I shall now get into today’s crude metaphor.

An unsucked dick is someone who is willfully giving up their own power to victimhood through refusing to act for what they want. And everyone wants their dick sucked. Metaphorically, at least a little. Those that don’t want power are usually loathe to admit it.

This turn of phrase is NOT intended to be gendered. Unlicked cunt doesn’t work as well for a host of sociopolitical reasons on sexual status and power. Don’t get too worked up about it. See the bigger truth.

You will find unsucked dick when the hard work of getting what someone wants is either is too much effort on their own, or otherwise requiring collective action & leadership on behalf of a group that is in disfavor from those currently in power.

Let me illustrate with a shitpost. Perhaps you too have had to organize a group of activists who would rather squabble and in-fight than win power.

My ambitions are bigger than running the internal politics of dozens of tiny activist groups that can’t see beyond their own unsucked dicks but this isn’t very polite to say.

A dick that is unsucked is the inversion of the dick that is ridden. You may recall that dickriding occurs when a group surrounds it’s most powerful member with praise and flattery. The leader has the sucked dick.

The one whose dick is ridden sucks up (pun intended) a lot of the energy of collective often at the detriment of their followers. The example I used in my previous post is Elon Musk.

You can use tactics like shitposting to attract some of a groups’ energy away from the ridden dick. Shitposting is deliberate act of soliciting a response online. It’s traditionally used as a lower energy way to shape engagement and conversation away from the traditional or current power holders, particularly when you know no other method will break through the noise and narrative.

The collective action problem in the many disenfranchised groups in modern society can often be boiled down to unsucked dicks desperately shitposting as dickriders. They want power but either cannot or will not find ways to gain it.

I don’t strive to organize unsucked dick into powerful constituencies and I’d bet you don’t either. It’s exhausting to control others. Politicians and celebrities have their simps but it’s often a complicated and unstable relationship. Audience capture by your simps tends to turn you into the New York Times or Andrew Tate.

Everyone needs to be responsible for their own dicks (gender neutral I swear) and get on with achieving their bigger goals. If you are not actively getting beyond purity politics and activist in-group fighting you are not serious about winning the thing you claim to want.

If having is evidence of wanting a lot of you simply do not want power. And that’s OK, if that’s actually what you want. Just be damn sure your actions are true to want you want. And if you want something go fucking get it. I’m happy to help.

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Culture

Day 911 And Social Geography

One of my friends at university was the sort of autistic who had total recall. He could tell you what neighborhood you lived in just from the zip code. It was an amazing party trick.

I lived at 80304 for a time. He would say ok well that’s obviously Colorado and this bit indicated Boulder and this bit suggests it’s actually the northern edge of it and I think you are in the neighborhood with the Ideal Market above Kalmia and oh I think it is “Old North Boulder.”

Now while he’s doing this bit with you he would obviously nudge your reactions for details. There are other neighborhoods in the zip code but he knew what to ask to guide you in because he saw the whole map.

You didn’t necessarily notice he was doing it because you couldn’t see it. But he saw the entire geography of it and could rotate it in. He just had that kind of mind.

I think a lot about it now as I start to notice more of how my mind works. I think I do a similar kind of social geography hat trick as my friend did. If you give me a few details about you, your background and your opinions I can telescope in very quickly on very specific social details you may not even clock about your own life unless you are very self aware.

I almost hesitate to discuss it as a super power as it can sound manipulative. The reality is more like a social courtesy to help you see the whole board of what you know about yourself and how you react to me in what you reveal. It’s a beautiful social dance and I enjoy making people feel comfortable expressing a story in a context that makes it easiest for them.

If I’m very good at my job I can then reverse this process. I can learn about who you are and what you really value and I can turn it to another angle so someone else who can’t do the social geography telegraphing in and out can see who you are. You might know the term code switching.

Imagine that but for some of the finer grades of social signaling. It is hard to do so because doing so usually has to do with coming to terms with the many ways in which you “pass” to fit into a life someone else told you to live. It’s rarely reflective of the whole picture. But sometimes because the world imposes systems, like my friends zip codes, which don’t always reflect the full reality. The map is not the terrain. The system is just a map.

Categories
Politics

Day 907 and Unaccountable Bureaucrats

We’ve reached a point in America where the consular visa services (for tourism, business & academic visits) as well as the wider immigration services (for people intending to work here, become permanent residents or citizens) have made finding a clear legal path for any type of visa non-viable. The Cato Institute describes it as nearly impossible.

I haven’t been able to get so much as a tourist visa granted in 2 years despite guarantees that I’d be financially and legally liable for the actions of my people. Even when we agree on bringing people in via our refuge system has become an opaque unaccountable path.

Just today the Wall Street Journal reported that we are headed multiple crisis points in health care because there is no way to get into the country legally for nurses. We want nurses.

Our systems feels petty and vindictive to anyone that encounters it including American citizens like me. We treat people who aspire to American life’s like shit. And it appears as if the only paths that work are a system of bribes, fixers, scams, and favors as our immigration systems are opaque and deliberately obscured.

An unaccountable bureaucracy is breeding a system in which only the criminals are rewarded because the only way in is to go around the system.

We have two immigration systems that operate under the same “legal regime” but have totally different administrative regimes and authorities which further confuses the issue.

I can’t believe that I’m the one saying this loudly but a good start to a policy position is simple clear rules based immigration and visa policies that operate with consistently reviewed inputs and yield consistent outputs so both American businesses and its workforce is capable of planning for growth instead.

The doctrine of consular nonreviewability needs to be replaced with a standard of reviews that is clear, legible, and subject to open review so visa applicants and their stakeholders (families, employers, & lawyers) can understand and take action on consistently enforced norms.

Clear judicial review is the basis of any free market economy. This doctrine leaves our economy & families at the mercy of an unquestionable black box capable of life altering irreparable decisions which no one is obligated to explain or even disclose. And it’s not the fault of the consular officers. We are putting folks with little training into situations with unimaginable power (while being tied to confusing criteria which only leads them to cover their ass and reject more people. We can’t have a system of immigration where an unaccountable low level bureaucrat is able to reject an application based on vibes with no recourse.

– A visa for entrepreneurs. Currently we have imperfect workarounds that encourage people to go elsewhere (as it’s now clear the costs are enormous & the timeframes extend into multiple decades) meaning if you want to start a business, even one with funding, there is no clear reviewable path to getting the entrepreneur legal status to run the company in America.

The idea that our economy can’t handle more immigrants. tourists, business or academic travelers from non ESTA countries is simply not based in any reality. We have record low employment and shortages in crucial industries like healthcare which is fueling inflation.

Canada and Australia are letting in 2.5-3x the number of immigrants per capita per year as America. We could easily be smarter and more generous about how we recruit talent instead of encouraging a black market of border crossings for the desperate and ruined.

And we should absolutely be allowing in more visitors for the benefit of our tourism industry as well as our educational and business institutions.

I’ve had people denied entry for family reunions and conference keynotes. Startups now hosts all hands company meet ups in Mexico as they cannot guarantee that their employees can safely get in and out of America. That neither political party wants to address this in a meaningful way is appalling. We are pissing away our lead for partisanship and we can do better.