Tag: Extremely Online

Categories
Aesthetics Internet Culture

Day 1116 and Ask Me How I Know

I’ve developed a little social tic. If I am saying something a bit provocative I throw in a little joke.

“Ask me how I know”

I’ve come to use when I’ve learned a lesson the hard way. It will usually be revealing about my own shit and the lessons I’ve learned by making mistakes.

Taking action reduces uncertainty. To resolve uncertainty we must constantly be taking actions. But we make mistakes all the time in doing so. Owning up to our faults, foibles, and blind spots is the hallmark of responsibility.

So if I quip on some bit of social commentary and jokingly say “ask me how I know” it’s a bit of a peekaboo.

Categories
Media

Day 1115 and Jangling

Trying to make a buck on the internet usually means knowing your audience. And knowing when your audience will pay.

I keep hitting paywalls on blogposts and I think folks really over estimate the value they deliver to readers. You want to sway my viewpoint to your side but instead you jingle your penny jar for a captured audience of seals. The audience capture that has to happen to make someone really take off requires some pandering. People like their echo chambers.

Because I myself am serious about persuading people to shared ideals it offends me when otherwise useful pro-social content that would drive forward the adoption of better information is needlessly cut off for a “below the fold” $60 a year subscription that is thrice what I pay for Vogue.

If you are selling useful actionable services that make other people better in some measurable way it’s not too hard to close a fair deal on the internet. There are lots of businesses with lots of valid marketing funnels.

But if you are trying to persuade people to an ideal or some truth that you believe must be shared I beseech you to share it widely. We humans operate such fragile nodes of coordination. We must actively work to align people to causes. Propaganda and self interests can only win out over aligned incentives if we give our attention the loudest bidder. Don’t contribute to an information environment like that.

Categories
Aesthetics Internet Culture Media

Day 1114 and Aging Without History

I don’t use TikTok at all. I have an Instagram account I’ve failed to reboot which I only open if a Groupchat sends me a link.

I deliberately insulate from algorithmic visual content. It makes you miserable for one. But more importantly, it deadens your aesthetic palette from overexposure.

If you want to develop and sustain personal taste and style, do yourself a favor and do it deliberately without the subtle nudging enforcement of refinement culture.

I do however avidly follow the propagation of different fashions as a personal interest. I like to see where a runaway trend goes as virality and social contagion set in. The New York Post’s entire culture section is dedicated to moral panics but it occasionally hits on real sources of social anxiety.

Gen-Z is allegedly having an anti-aging culture panic over turning 30. Their source on this is a Reddit post about skincare obsessives on social media.

“I feel like aging to Gen Z is what ‘being fat’ was to millennials. Remember how ruthless the media [and] everyone was about that?,” another noted.

Gen Z’s Fear of Aging NYPost

I still have anxiety about weight from living through the TMZ era of body shaming. So I’m sympathetic to what it must feel like to younger women facing the relentless scrutiny of living online. They rightly perceive appearances to be a part of how value is calculated in wider society and are afraid of losing it.

I’m convinced some portion of the extremely online Gen Z are living entirely out of the slipstream of historical culture. They consume artifacts from other people’s youth culture but live in a what amounts to a “long now” in which the future seems unstable. We rebooted 2003 as a micro trend but the apocalypse is almost here.

The nostalgia machine gives Gen Z an ever present history but very little present to hold onto for grounding in physical reality. Their ahistorical vibes approach seems to overweight the need for youth.

Sean Monahan of K-Hole normcore fame posted a mapping of the aesthetics of the decade that I thought spoke well to the strange relationship digital aesthetics have to time. I’m posting a diagram here from his post here.

8Ball “Stuck in The Past vs Inspired By The Past” trends breakdowns

If Gen Z is aging like milk it’s probably not because they are actually aging quickly. Though I’m sure the stress isn’t doing them any favors. I think dit’s what Ryan Broderick of Garbage Day points out here. The glamified hyper-media full face contour is an ageless one. It’s inspired by the past and stuck in the past. It’s got nothing to do with their actual age.

Categories
Internet Culture Media

Day 1112 and Signals and Noise

I want to be as available as possible on the Internet as that’s been the best possible path to being available to other weirdos for the longest period of time. I shift through a lot of chaff but the wheat has always been there. I’m not for everyone and everyone is not for me.

But the open human Internet is struggling under the weight of non-human actors. Machines create more and more of the content and so many interests groups, philosophies, nation states and general chaos agents are acting within the group mind and/or network state that we call the Internet.

You can complain about bots sure, and crypto folks are in the thick of it, but some of what’s going on is just the noise of people who are under the influence of algorithms. Humans are happy to be NPCs in the great game of life. And it’s much easier to play out a fantasy the Internet while you struggle to find meaning in your daily real life.

I like to intake as much information as I can but even I have my limits as to how much noise I can tolerate in the search for signal. Consider sending me an email. Maybe we go back to private corners of blog comments and email correspondence. Get a little more signal as a treat.

Categories
Aesthetics Media

Day 1111 and Angel Numbers

I like a little “woo” in my life. Anytime I hit a particularly interesting number in my daily writing I tend to do a bit of collective consciousness spelunking across the shared spaces of the internet.

Unsurprisingly, 1111 sparks quite a bit of interest across pop culture numerology depictions. The first search results were women’s interest magazines.

Women’s Health with the uplifting new beginnings represented by 1 before associating 11 as a doubling of 1’s energy as a “master number” with spiritual insight, enlightenment, and intuitive understanding.” Sure, I want an intuitive understanding of my life’s new beginnings. Good job magazine editors. Groundbreaking.

Cosmopolitan, that sexy staple of American feminine mysteries, went a bit further and called 1111 an Angel Number and curated an ecommerce shop of 1111 products including oud manifestations candles, bracelets and Etsy prints.

Cosmopolitan used the power of artificial intelligence to curate a shop for even the most random of number generators.

Because what good is hidden knowledge of divine intentions without an affiliate marketing link program with it? I’d love to know if search engine optimization on numerology combined with attractively curated e-commerce affiliate content hits the Cosmopolitan P&L in any meaningful way.

Crunchier new age websites were equally amusing. MindBodyGreen kept at the message of intuition and messages from your divine power. Synchronicity showed up on every internet tidbit from Wikipedia to good old WikiHow.

Glamor Magazine at least gently reminded readers that apophenia is an error of perception. Who knew Condé Nast was the publishing house for skeptics? Perhaps they need to be a trusted brand or nail salons won’t subscribe in bulk across the nation to their magazines.

But if you really want lean into your pattern recognition and the subtle schizophrenia of Internet apophenia, my original source Women’s Health helpfully leans into “service journalism” by sharing that Kabbalists 1111 is a sign from God or divinity itself.

This is because the ancient Hebrew name for God, Yahweh or YHWH, when written resembles four ones.

Women’s Health Numerologist’s Interpret 1111

I will caution readers that I don’t know if any of this is true. Obviously my goofy posting shouldn’t be seen as having the same rigor as a LessWrong epistemic status post. While I like a post-rationalist, I don’t know if any of the consumer friendly versions of ancient wisdom is true. I wouldn’t be taking my reading of the Talmud from magazines typically dedicated to recipes and workouts myself.

Women browsing random bits of pattern recognition at the grocery store or on their phone really is the stuff of fluff and the stuff of fear. Who knows what bits of knowledge might lead us astray.

Best case scenario you end up with a nice Oud candle that helped keep Cosmopolitan quiz writers paid. Worst case scenario, you might summon a malevolent algorithmic rabbit hole determined to fill your feeds with angels and demons.

Categories
Media Reading

Day 1106 and Happy Birthday Matt

I love to write. I love to read. I read, and then I write, and then I do all over again. That simple cycle repeating itself powers my life. It’s how I learn. It’s how a lot of people learn.

Being literate allows me to reach beyond the bounds of circumstances to anyone else who can also read and write. The word has been the protocol that connects us.

That we can share information amongst ourselves is a triumph of generations overcoming the desire to control the word.

I can share what I write with you because of a man named Matt Mullenweg. Maybe you know who he is and maybe you don’t. But if you are reading this post it’s because of him.

It is his 40th birthday today. I want wish him a Happy Birthday with this post. Happy Birthday Matt.

You gave our generation the tools to be heard and you have shepherded those tools well over many years. I value your efforts. I value it with my loyalty. I have for almost twenty years. And I have always felt that loyalty was respected by WordPress through the commitment to protocols we agree upon because they work.

The software that powers this blog has done so reliably for 1106 days in a row. And it’s not even my first blog. I started blogging in college using WordPress. I launched an entire career because I published my writing not in books or magazines or newspaper but on the internet.

In the intervening decades, I’ve used lots of software and many types of media. I’ve committed to many kinds of technology and adopted any number of platforms, systems and even new languages. But the home I’ve trusted most on the internet has been WordPress. Thank you.

My parents are both readers. That’s what I inherited from them. The true richness of my childhood was not in any material resources (which varied) but in its prioritizing access to information. In my lifetime that went from libraries to the internet.

Now I get to be both a reader and a writer. And that’s how I know things have improved. Thanks for being a part of building those improvements Matt. Happy Birthday. I hope I get to write you another happy birthday wish here again when you turn fifty.

Categories
Politics Reading

Day 1101 and Domestic Terrorism

I spent most of my day reading. I had a glorious backlog of essays, papers, and other sundry pdfs to enjoy on my Readwise Reader. They are my favorite new mobile app for keeping track of my library. And I enjoyed an afternoon dedicated to reading.

It is the anniversary of the January 6th capital insurrection. I remember being afraid to write about my feelings at the time and now I’m grateful I captured some of the intensity. It was early in my daily writing habit as day six.

Just by chance we had the same meal today as we did on January 6th. A wine braised short rib over risotto. An unplanned synchronicity.

I had another synchronicity. The essays I was reading was by FBI designated domestic terror group member. The human rights class I took in college was taught by the leader of the Weather Underground by the name of Bernadine Dohrn.

And now we’ve got these January 6th domestic terrorists whose goal was to stop the electoral count. The Weather Underground “group’s express political goal was to create a revolutionary party to overthrow the United States government.”

It was a day to be reminded that enemies of the state come and go.

It’s funny how the left wing domestic terrorists of the sixties went on to be tenured professors at top universities. I got introduced to Rawls and developed an interest in critical theory.

I can’t say what the January 6th insurrection folks will get up to in the future. Maybe one day someone’s daughter will hear Q Anon Shaman lecture about human rights at Harvard. I doubt it though. But you never know.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 1098 and We’re Back

I wish I hadn’t had insomnia last night as clearly ever came back to work today. It was electric in the hive minds of Twitter today. I am revisiting all kinds of priors as the timelines of different subcultures return back online.

I don’t know if anything I saw will stick but it’s clear that influencing public opinion is on everyone’s agenda. Elon Musk may have absolutely no zero intuition for how his narratives will play and maybe he doesn’t care.

I don’t think he means ill for what is still the only really unsupervised place for elite opinion influence and people are running wild with it. I’m almost sympathetic to Russian troll farms. It’s got to require enormous compute to keep on top of billions of malleable propaganda ready minds.

WhatsApp having trouble with “gm” tweets overloading the application has to be an urban legend but you can almost see it being true. Can you imagine every timeline across every cosmopolitan center pinging online and interacting with all the pieces of content that came before it? It’s a glorious perpetual process and I need to step off the wheel to rest. But I’m glad we are so back.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 1095 and 2023 Round Up

I’ve been sick for the last week and a half or so, so this round-up is coming on the last day of 2023.

As you may have gathered from my title schema, I have been writing every single day for 1095 straight days.

That means I’ve been doing this for three years which is a satisfying achievement. If you’d like see my favorite posts of 2021 here is a link to my first year round up. My round up for the second year of writing in 2022 was quite comprehensive as well.

Below is a list of categories that held my attention in 2023 and the posts I wrote as I tried to make sense of my rapidly changing world.

It probably tells you a lot that the largest sections are artificial intelligence, startups and community. I think this includes almost 50 posts so it’s a testament to how busy the year was that I couldn’t narrow it further. I spent time in Prague, Puerto Vallarta, New York City, Austin, Seattle, Frankfurt, Tallinn, Helsinki, and Amsterdam which is way more travel than I expected. Much of my focus was on investing work for chaotic.capital and is reflected across almost all categories.

Artificial Intelligence

Day 1078 Why We Keep Centering Ourselves

Day 1072 and Math is Leverage.

1055 and Freedom to Compute

Day 989 and Autopoeitic Ergodicity

Day 980 and Beff Jezos

Day 897 and Cruft and Email Bankruptcy

Day 826 and Alignment

Day 780 and Copernican Crisis of Meaning

Community

Day 1070 and Allocating Social Capital

Day 1055 and Shipping, Smoothing Narratives and Making Reality or Effective Acceleration Is About Choice

Day 1053 and Neo Revivalism

1033 and Agency Explosion & The Network State

Day 1025 and Petit Aristocracy

Day 978 and The Great Twitter Unfollowing

Day 932 and Schisms

Day 847 and Erasure in Crypto

Aesthetics

Day 1040 and Being First

Day 1023 and Automatic Doors

Day 1007 and Half A Decade After Premium Mediocrity

Day 961 and Repeating 2003 Aesthetics.

Day 748 and Molly Millions (William Gibson Casting Choices)

Travel

Day 1038 and Travel, Middle Markets & American Exceptionalism

Day 1030 and Helsinki

Day 1029 and Nordic Ferries

Day 1019 and Old Town Tallinn

Day 876 and Americana in Germany

Day 863 and Abstract The Pain Away

Day 749 and Beef in Prague

Economics and Politics

Day 1019 and Tallinn’s Free Enterprise & Alcohol

Day 1010 and Exogenous Shocks

Day 907 and Unaccountable Bureaucracy

Day 904 and Wardogging on Mobile Phones

Day 817 and Mourning A Bank

Day 811 and Hierarchies

Day 807 and Hyperinflation

Day 803 and Killing Strangers

Day 799 and Black Friday in Silicon Valley

Day 740 and Immigration Failures

Emotional Work

Day 1014 and A Fragile Birthday

Day 1000 and Milestones

Day 987 and Eggs

Day 902 and The Singer Lasts A Season

Day 895 and How to Stop Being An NPC

Day 845 and Fucked Fertility

Day 791 and Bathing Suits I’ve Never Worn

Day 784 and Endocrine

Day 731 and Auld Lang Syne Motherfuckas

Startups

Day 1001 and Circumstances Change

Day 970 and I’ll Be Your Publicist

Day 962 and Milestone Based Seed Rounds

Day 939 and Culture Wins Not Culture Wars

Day 906 and Resilience Tech

Day 840 and Chaos Magic

Day 783 and The Alliance (Vanity Fair Magazine coverage of chaotic.capital which is covered in two pieces on the blog)

Homestead & Montana

Day 976 and Chores

Day 969 and Hot Chicks

Day 958 and Civic Engagement

Day 940 and Buying Dishes

Day 856 and Springing Into Action

Day 766 and Weather Station

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1086 and Body Language

When I was younger I spent a lot more of my time in my body. As I’ve aged I’ve become more cerebral and this has had a negative impact on my overall health.

I had the opportunity over the last two days to do some bodywork with very present people. It was frankly much needed. I haven’t felt entirely in my own body and was as reactive.

It helped to be with someone who was very present and attuned to body language. I spend so much time communicating in virtual spaces recently that I’ve felt further away from my body than I’d like.

If you haven’t had cause to get in better touch with your body this week might be a good time. There is something to be said for simple communication between humans that isn’t captured in our writing. Maybe artificial intelligence can work entirely without being embodied but human intelligence is still very much embodied.