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Internet Culture

Day 1464 and Which Information Island?

It would be helpful for most media readers to understand the history of the news business and its relationship to war and finance.

For all the standards and ethics and best practices we expect from professional newsrooms (and they do have conduct standards), the history of media isn’t a clean narrative America went to war thanks to Yellow Journalism in the Spanish American War. If you think the Pulitzer is a badge of merit wait till you learn its history and financing.

You have probably lived through multiple media scandals. Millennials remember the neoconservative “weapons of mass destruction” story thanks to notably terrible editorial decision at the New York Times.

When someone says you are in a media bubble or on an information island, recall that these systems made up of people with varied interests, ambitions and aims.

News

American Surgeon General Calls for Cancer Warning on Alcohol

TechCrunch grudgingly says the AI Bloomers beat the delusional AI Doomers

Essays

An Nvidia researcher Jim Fan tweeted about blog post from the late Felix Hill on 200B weights of responsibility inside the work of building AI. The stress of knowing the billions of weights and bias that make up artificial intelligence that will bend our lives for both good and ill is no small thing. The thread has many beautiful comments.

Vinay the founder of Loom is in the thick of figuring life out after success and it’s brave of him to share.

Applications and Services

AskNews has an interesting set of display options for news types and bias and sentiment I’m considering purchasing and testing.

Categories
Emotional Work Internet Culture

Day 1460 and Review Process

I began my review of my “round up” for the year post today. I was going post by post dredging memories and taking notes by hand. I’m embarrassed to say it took me almost 7 weeks of post scrolling to realize I was going through 2023 and not 2024.

Now you might argue that I’m tired as it’s been a long year, but just how crazy do things got to be when time is so punctuated with “happenings” that it’s genuinely hard to remember even the most shocking of events?

How is it that wars, elections, and major technological breakthroughs are just the daily happenings? Can it be that this much travel is required to do business? How long have we been living through this acceleration in politics and technology?

I want the narrative through lines of life to be more comprehensible. It is however clear that we are in a roiling period of chaos and even as I may remain ahead of some aspects I’ll always experience a trend multiple times.

Things that were huge this year were trends last year and were mere subcultures the year before that. Such is how information propagates in a networked world. I’m not even fully saturated on my own thesis.

Categories
Community Politics

Day 1458 and Ingroup Preference

“one day you’re in, the next you’re out”

Heidi Klum – Project Runway

Twitter is in the middle of a multi-day long information war ostensibly over foreign worker visas in America. It’s about visas in the same way that Gamergate was about “ethics in journalism” if you catch my drift.

The similarities are interesting. It’s a fight over who’s interests are included and prioritized in a lucrative space. If gaming makes money and had that much vitriol involved imagine how much worse it is at the scale of a nation. All power struggles become culture war online.

American, being the aging but dominant geopolitical entity on the planet, is a popular place to be. So naturally the fight for who benefits from America is gnarly as fuck and has a lot of racism.

Who has rights and who benefits from them sounds much grander than video games or fashion but who decides what is “in-group” is existential.

As we experience the Great Reshuffle over the next decade or two, the question of who is protected in a nation state couldn’t be more potent. And human nature means we are viewing it with as much sense as a gaggle of fashion editors. Being part of the in group in America is as ugly a business as any.

Categories
Culture Politics

Day 1457 and Cultural Values

I really tried to stay out of discourse on Twitter over Christmas break, alas being only human I stupidly decided to wade into discussions about American talent and our disgracefully broken immigration and visa system. It was a mistake.

A debate over type of work visa called the H-1B kicked off days of horrific anti-Indian racism which then created a bizarre backlash insinuating white Americans of having a culture of under-achievement. All over a broken program that brings in 65,000 workers in a country of 300m.

Naturally people are pissed. The whole thing feels like it was designed to manufacture a schism between factions of the Republican Party as it touched some very raw nerves.

The “precariat” of lower middle class professional Americans took sucker punches from anonymous account and also Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy for having bad cultural values which has affected our willingness to compete for excellence.

Maybe someone else will remember this but I recall an incident during my childhood when Bill Cosby got canceled (no not for that) over statements suggesting that some portions of poor black American cultural values were not promoting success and achievement.

If we had a similar cultural figure in white American that said something equivalent we’d probably get the same backlash as no one likes to hear told that they need to work on themselves. And in general people definitely don’t want to hear their flaws from someone who acts like their betters.

I think the bigger question is how is it that we found our values of hard work and achievement degraded. What has happened in our schools and in our workplaces that we are not aspiring to better ourselves. That’s where the heart of the issue is most tender and for good reason.

Categories
Aesthetics Culture

Day 1451 and Kiki Boot Bust

One of my resolutions for 2025 is to use LinkedIn. I know it’s a little weird, but a whole swathe of professionals simply don’t Tweet, shit post or blog.

Many professionals brand themselves with polished post on more poised platforms. Their branding is less about authenticity or raw insights and more about composure.

As I’ve been popping in to my old “work” networks and encountering long lost colleagues from my past life in the lifestyle trenches of fashion, beauty and luxury I’ve noticed a grim trend amongst the composed and polished.

These professionals were concerned that in the wider style industry, quality has all but disappeared while costs are way up.

Katharine K. Zarrella an editor with long standing has a scathing opinion piece in the New York Times about the state of the business. Obscene Prices, Declining Quality: Luxury is in a Death Spiral.

Like my sad Kiki boots, much of old-school luxury — the kind that was so glamorous, lush and exquisite that everyone understood it, many craved it and few could have it — is beyond repair. Once-revered establishments that prided themselves on craftsmanship, service and cultivating a discerning and loyal customer base have become mass-marketing machines that are about as elegant and exclusive as the Times Square M&M’s store.

Everyone has their own style and preferences naturally. When everyone from the tried and true heritage heads to the nouveau grunge appreciators complain that everything is crap and there is far too much of it then a we’ve got a problem.

Ms Zarrella’s Marc Jacob platform boots may be more Doc Martin Hot Topic than my own preference but I doubt I could replace my beloved kitten heel knee high Gucci boots either. We are both stuck with expensive choices that won’t last.

I’ve simply stopped shopping anywhere but a few select unbranded stores like Italic. Repairs are the only option if you have existing pieces you love. There are no replacements available. Even if you are willing to pay the new prices the quality is terrible.

Freshly repaired by LeatherSpa after seventeen years of service on the mean streets of New York
Categories
Internet Culture Politics

Day 1447 and LARPing To Death

Do you know what LARP means? If so, do you remember when you first heard the term? Think back and recall the context of your first exposure to the term. I’ll give you a couple hints for history.

Maybe LARP was used to describe playing a tabletop game like Dungeons and Dragons. Perhaps you went to a Renaissance Fair and encountered the melees put on by Society for Creative Anachronism. If you remember Dagohir you are a real OG & also old.

LARP stands for live action role-playing. It originally involved fancy dress, maintaining character and strict but fantastical rule sets. Its not much different from what children call “make believe” except it’s done by adults who presumably understand the difference between fantasy and reality.

It’s likely if you are younger and extremely online, your first encounter with LARPing was less “gamers dressed up with swords” and more “anon pretending to be some type of identity” on a social media platform. Like based and woke, LARP is a term that has had a lot of semantic drift.

Increasingly it feels as if some of us aren’t sure what is shared consensus reality and what is fantasy anymore. We used to call that “crazy” but it’s so prevalent one has to wonder if whole categories of otherwise sane people have gone nuts. People become convinced of fantasy they have made in their identities and are acting out on them.

Even the FBI is concerned about the blurred lines between fantasy and reality in LARPing. In 2023 they discussed the potential threat of violent extremism emerging from LARPing

Violent extremists will extensively engage in confirmation bias prior to the implementation of their plan. However, in this context, it becomes confirmation violence, or the use of targeted violence to impose social and political beliefs onto others and, therefore, change their behavior — in a grandiose sense, perhaps even the course of history

I personally can’t think of a more chilling term than confirmation violence in the wake of the public reaction to the assassination of United Health Care insurance CEO Brian Thompson. We are now LARPing ourselves to death. A bit too “if you die in the Matrix you die in real life” vibes if you ask me.

Think about how we went from digital mobs to physical riots to the dangerous new trend of assassination as cancellation. Vaguely defined members of today’s outgroup are no longer merely targets of online criticism but actually targets of stochastic terrorism. This is leaderless, decentralized violence. No one person held up a hand to start it, and no one person can easily stop it.

Balaji on Decentralized Violence

As centralized authorities are going through significant challenges to their authority we are probably in for a lot more LARPing to death. I’d be prepared to see a lot more violence emerging from LARPers convinced of their own story’s moral superiority.

And I’d be careful about buying into anyone’s story as we adjust. If all the world is a stage but the characters have real weapon’s we are in for a world of hurt.

Categories
Culture Internet Culture

Day 1444 and Intrasexual Competition

Dating discourse seems to have taken over all forms of social media. Maybe it seems louder than usual because it’s cuffing season and with Netflix becoming a Christmas romance movie juggernaut the urge to find a partner is higher in December.

But you have to be wary of the stories and advice that litter Reddit and Twitter. Not everyone doling out advice actually wants you to succeed. Some of them look like they are actively undermining their peers.

The manosphere seems determined to turn young men into fearful controlling oafs while the radfem/femcel/tradwife axis of influencers is a mess of undermining advice stoking the neuroses of young women.

In the battle of the sexes, a favored tactic is sabotage. Evolutionary psychologists would probably say what we are seeing on social media is intrasexual competition run amok

Giving bad advice undermines your sexual competition. And if you sell advice or attention, keeping people coming back for more bad takes while keeping them miserable (and single) is the whole game. The hot takers build attention and clout.

Attention grifters are here to make you engage while turning you into a neurotic mess. So before taking someone’s advice on the other sex, ask “cui bono” because it’s probably not you.

Categories
Emotional Work Internet Culture

1443 and Irreducible

Being “spreadsheet brained” has become a shorthand critique for the technocratic mindset that prefers to see with abstractions rather than through immediate physical reality.

I don’t have a full history of the term but it was brought into my lexicon by Ashley Fitzgerald of Doomer Optimism.

A Wojack suffering from an inoperable tumor called spreadsheet brain.

Having spreadsheet brain can be a quality of life problem. If you are particularly numerate you can easily fixate on the negative statistics. We then use those facts to isolate themselves from the each other. It’s a classic case of seeing the price of things and not the value. It can easily become a very smart form of stupid.

I’m more of a whole to parts thinker myself so I’m amused by this meme even though as someone who works with tech startups I’m obviously susceptible to spreadsheet brain issues.

It’s reasonable to have concerns with thinking only in abstract terms. The topology of human experience is complex and yet we have many tools that take the irreducible and cook it down into something concentrated, clear, and altogether too legible. We desire to be seen but perhaps not too closely.

Categories
Emotional Work Media Medical

Day 1441 and Fever

I woke up at 4am with my racing heart. I looked at my Whoop biometrics and my resting heart rate was abnormally high. I’m talking 110bpm at the peak of my REM cycle. I obviously has a nightmare.

I figured that nothing could be that scary so I took my temperature. Sure enough I was running a light fever.

The last few days have been a particularly gruesome one the internet. Rapid change, institutional distrust, and chaos have led us to blood. And instead of sorrow it’s all cheers and memes.

I hope it passes quickly. Both my own fever and the one gripping the timelines. I feel in need of some time off from the world. It’s been an intense year. I pray for more introspection through advent.

Categories
Community Internet Culture Medical

Day 1440 and The Pain We Won’t Name

Americans are in pain. Literally and emotionally. How that happened isn’t my focus. We are in the middle of a national conversation about the failures of institutional medicine and its relationship to our government. We are treading in deep water and it’s best not to get swept away.

There are many communities that have emerged on Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, GoodReads and elsewhere dedicated to the many paths available to go about fixing the problems in your life. There millions of strong communities of interests, hobbies, courses, and network knowledge that can enable you.

One of those communities is called TPOT. What is TPOT, who is in TPOT, what are its values and what does it believe are all involved and sometimes contentious questions. Being illegible is a big thing.

We mostly agree it stands for “this particular corner of Twitter” which is a loose network of nodes of people interested in applying knowledge they learn across our networked multimedia to their real life.

The experimental “you can just do things” attitude is a big tent. You see DIY projects, tutorials, reading lists, artificial intelligence and coding discussions, fitness and biohacking experiments, nutrition and cooking, meditation and nervous system research, pain management, psychology and emotional wellness and much more. You also see more far out woo woo topics like psychedelics, evolutionary psychology, and many flavors of rationalism and epistemology.

One of the most qualified voices to speak on TPOT might be Brook Bowman of Vibe Camp. In my understanding of her interpretation, TPOT is a memetic virus and once you touch it you are in the topology of TPOT for good.

tpot is this crazy memetic virus where the term itself means so little and is so contagious that you kind of become part of it just by hearing about it

Brooke

This is protective and makes it resilient. The network is bigger than any node and this is a good thing

So TPOT is best understood as a network composed of many interoperable nodes of interests and many layers of engagement. A memetic complex that you become part of on contact. If you read my blog it’s likely have many clear lines to TPOT.

If you like fitness, coding, rationalism, nutrition, or even home improvement well congratulations you are one or two nodes away from “just do things” as a life philosophy yourself and might be a member of TPOT yourself if you talk about it on Twitter.

And this is now some very dangerous semiotic territory as we cope with the gaping wound that is American health and murder. And I am concerned the narratives are going to be heavily fought over territory.

Because it’s easy to dislike a techbro right now. It’s pretty easy to dismiss the group. I can see it now. “Are your friends into this weird sounding acronym TPOT? Have you heard someone say “you can just do things?” If so you need to alert the authorities!”

Of course this sounds funny and histrionic. It’s totally normal to take responsibility for what you can in your life and try out ways of improving your life somewhat.

Everyone is dealing with pain (chronic or otherwise). Being an adult is a set of emotional challenges to manage and most of us do so by making the shocking decision to take action and do something. That doesn’t mean this world is is dangerous. It certainly doesn’t mean murder. It means doing something in your day life like lifting some weights, shipping some code, checking your biometric data, and trying to be a friend to lessen the pain most of us are in.