I got myself stuck in downtown city gridlock today. Abs boy am I glad I rarely have to navigate the kind of bumper to bumper traffic of an overbuilt city without a grid. It is no picnic.
There is a category of city that has little in the way of urban planning. They may have legacy of a time with much fewer cars when only a small portion of the citizens could afford to drive.
As cosmopolitan creative classes become wealthier they too want to be able to drive in their city. The money pours in to invest in newer developments and more modern amenities get built. But they never really solve the lack of a grid or roads built for driving.
A lack of proper investment in public transportation only compounds the issue.
Attempting to criss-cross a mess of cars, motorbikes, scooters, and couriers all competing against each other with few clear routes is a slog. I hope I don’t have to repeat it again but I fear this is a permanent feature of some cities.
I was whisked into some immediate local concerns getting a home base set back up in a city. I speed ran the basics. I feel as if I’ll be coming back online shortly.
This morning, despite a slight cold, I enjoyed the six hour head start I had on the markers today.
After being extremely offline for a week and change, it felt fun to submerge myself in earning season discourse, inflation data, and other concerns of industry.
I’m excited for the problems in front of me, I like my placement on the board, and I trust I will play the hands when the time is right.
I’ve been straining my capacity to absorb new experiences. The privilege of relative material security lets me do the work of actively seeking out more variance and novelty.
But the type we mostly mean when saying neuro plasticity (or learning new things) is from “synaptic cells plasticity” forming new neural connections.
Without that adaptability we couldn’t change in response to new environmental conditions or in response to injury or disease or other stresses.
I’m am inside a few new high variance experiences right now which I hope will yield new neural connections. I find it to be a bit stressful as it’s a lot of novel inputs in a short period of time.
Some experiences translate as shared reality which has the same rules anywhere there are humans. But adjusting to new social mores is always jarring.
I’ll only briefly mention it, but this is the first time I’ve been somewhere that the call to prayer is a normal prominent feature of daily life. It’s rewriting synaptic ritual time for me. I like it more than I would have imagined.
I had some practical acquisitions that needed to be purchased. They were most easily purchased via an in person retail environment for reasons I won’t get into. I much prefer ecommerce but not everywhere has Amazon if you can believe it.
I wanted to get this done quickly. While it’s true I like to putter around many types of stores. I’m quite fond of browsing in grocery stores for instances. But I prefer to be ruthlessly pragmatic when it comes to necessities. Browsing can be your enemy when you know exactly what you want.
Much of shopping can be a hostile and adversarial environment. Merchandising, pricing, sales associates all work on your focus and attention.
I have a few tricks I use on my own psychology if I would prefer my limited cognitive energy be used on more important decisions than what I’m about to purchase. Deciding between a bunch options for a non important decision weighs on your capacity. I don’t know if science has replicated decision fatigue but it sure feels like it’s real to me.
I wore a pair of high heels to go shopping in this case. It’s just enough discomfort to provide a bit of focus. I wouldn’t want to stay on my feet overly long in heels so I’ll encourage myself to make decisions quickly and not linger over it.
I was able to easily and without agonizing make quick decisions on a number of purchases. Once something fell within 80% of the parameters I’d set out for the item I know I wished to buy I said yes and moved on. It really can be that easy. I’d rather use my focus on important things.
My corner of Montana is in the cozy quiet grip of rural winter. I’ve left that quiet behind for a trip.
I’m in a city center and I have a symphonic mix of civilizational noises. The hum of idling trucks, the roar of a motorcycle zooming past, and shrieking giggling teenagers walking past all remind me that density gives vibrancy.
I have become accustomed to quiet noises of country life. Winter in Montana has a wonderful muffled quality after a snow fall. Once a storm has passed and the winds have blown out, you enjoy such peaceful stillness under the snow.
The ambient noises of life drag on my attention. Even as the city outside goes on with its day the Airbnb has its own new noises. The odd efficiency apartment half sized fridge buzzes at a volume I don’t think my refrigerator at home could manage. My fridge runs so quiet an alarm goes off if it’s left open.
Adjusting to new environmental sounds is always a nervous system challenge. The ambient noises of life get categorized by your mind eventually but the adjustment is tiring. I hope these new noises become routine soon. I’d rather it be a thrum in the background filter of my brain instead of this awful foreground of novel noises.
I am considering doing a pullback from social media for a few weeks. I must hone my instruments. Don’t worry, I’ll still write daily and you can message me on Twitter or send me an email.
I don’t like where my attention is being pulled and I need some time to reorient myself so I can more effectively pursue wider goals for the year.
Much of the current attention economy demands that you turn your focus to this or that crucial “thing” even as engagement with others has few agreed upon social boundaries.
Even the nature of replying has changed, as Mariah Kreutter writes, “The Reply is ambiguous. It can indicate any level of intimacy, any level of investment, any level of care.”
So much is being demanded of our focus with so little being given in return. And yet we have to make such critical decisions about our own lives and future. I must go within myself to look out for
The lifespan of a media brand is an odd thing. Commanding attention and influencing the opinion of large audiences is hard work. Distribution of information has changed a lot in my lifetime which has shaken the business of media.
Some generational powers like Vogue have managed to hang on even as the internet democratized access to changing fashions. Newspapers, which have consolidated fiercely, are no longer local city standard bearers. The most financial success went in national directions like The New York Times.
Everything is fighting a losing war against the Internet. Weeklies that were concerned with recapping the goings on in the world have all but disappeared. The Economist almost made the transition to the the digital era but lost its way.
For me it was when John Micklethwait left The Economist for Bloomberg. I loved the publication as a teen & twenty something. I miss it still, but once its paywall was up and the editors I trusted were gone, it ceased to exist as an influence in my world. Influence can wane quickly. I read Bloomberg now.
Other media outlets have gone to battle in the Hobbesian war of all against all and seem to be competing with rage headlines and audience capture niches. These are the ones that concern me the most.
Wired Magazine was beloved by the first wave of Internet and technology enthusiasts. Its essays defined the era. Now it seems to have turned on the promise of technology entirely with panicked headlines about the dangers inherent in a new form of corporate structure.
A Dangerous Home for Online Extremism: DAOs
For me, seeing Wired doing this sort of thing is akin to the moment in a zombie movie when a friend or family member is bitten. As they are reanimated from the dead, you are in grief and shock, but also must quickly accept your friend is gone and what is in its place is able to harm you.
A Financial Times journalist published a lengthy thread on Twitter to promote his excellent reporting on significant global phenomena that seems to deserve all our attention. Young men are becoming more conservative than young women who are themselves becoming swiftly more liberal.
In countries on every continent, an ideological gap has opened up between young men and women. Tens of millions of people who occupy the same cities, workplaces, classrooms and even homes no longer see eye-to-eye
In the US, Gallup data shows that after decades where the sexes were each spread roughly equally across liberal and conservative world views, women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male contemporaries. That gap took just six years to open up.
There are a million ways to look at this problem, its causes & potential solutions, and the Twitter thread gets into all of them.
But I want to focus on the “screeching ghoul” aspect of the entire mess. The internet is now the public space of society. And men and women are on totally different feeds.
Young people between 18-30 find themselves in gender segregated algorithmically distinct content networks.
Men are cussing with their friends playing first person shooter games, ranting on Reddit, and generally going their own way.
Women are on Instagram and TikTok and are interacting with other women where dating and culture topics dominate.
They are all driven by algorithm towards refinement of their positions, biases and slogans. It self reinforces a viewpoint. Right up till it is all screeching ghouls. My mutual Mike pointed out what happens. No one wants to have a relationship with a screeching ghoul.
As more of us have onboarded to virtual worlds we found ourselves with more of our own people and ideologies. And instead of engaging one one one with another human who capable of empathy we find ourselves starring at algorithmically lost and damned. No wonder we can’t come together.
I trust my ability to be present now. I wish I was less present in some ways. I’ve learned to be present to the ways of the internet in particular as part of my general capacity with the signs and signals of those who communicate with words. I try not to show up in person too much anymore except for my own neighbors.
My capacity to be present waxes and wanes with the attention that I give to the margin. And I like to be present for the weirdos. I am not as detailed as some with effortful thought pieces but I pay very close attention. I diligently note and revise bigger trends here in public. It’s not my job to endlessly footnote it for everyone. That’s thankfully now in the hands of artificial intelligence.
I trust that I notice things when they need to be noticed and that I will curb my attention away from those who do not use me well. I will so rarely take it personally when someone tells me I do not serve them. The favor is usually returned when I say a hard no but I rarely have to give it. The average isn’t that persistent.
I do not wish to be become significantly more scaled than I am now in terms of presence with people. I am picky and I cultivate my taste and I believe I’ve built trust with the people who intend to build things. I will continue to be as widely available to them as possible if they do even a modicum of homework. My experience is not free but I do not horde it.
I believe I’ve shown my capacity to pick not through momentum or hype but early presence. It’s a long road and I’ve got the patience to walk it for decades more.
I don’t know where the first few weeks of the year went, but I suspect they disappeared into the maw of panic over 2024 reality. No narrative alignment holding as “current thing” means that everyone is looking to exert leverage to make their pet causes pop.
I’ve closely watched a number of important events unfold in real time with unexpected and very dramatic conclusions. To then subsequently seen the non reactions from our various institutional leaders is upsetting for most people who are paying attention, I’d say everyone else is enjoying the rollercoaster but it would clearly be a joke. No one likes it.
She thought something had gone wrong with us physically too. “Endocrine systems get fried. There’s too much cortisol, you’ve been running on adrenaline, eventually you tap out. Everyone feels nuts right now,” she said, “because what on earth are we supposed to do with the fact that we’ve had this incredible rate of change for so long. We think we’re keeping up with it, but our bodies are like, ‘Oh, actually no. We have no idea what’s going on
We are in a high variance moment for good and for bad and if you cannot handle the ride please find ways to get off of it. Take care of yourself because when you feel nuts you act nuts.
