Categories
Aesthetics Internet Culture Media

Day 954 and Frame Jacking

It’s a war of all against all on the internet. And I don’t recall being conscripted into any kind of war but here I am up to my neck in ontological shock and crisis of meanings as I read the news.

Language is a virus. And we are all infected. I’ll let Ben Hunt of Epsilon Theory illustrate.

It’s our autonomy of mind that is threatened by this unholy troika of smartphones, social media and linguistic weaponization, and there is no more important struggle today than to defend ourselves against that threat.

Humans have nervous systems that are easily hijacked. You give us something to imitate and within a few weeks we’ve learned a new way to get a social advantage. And so we have massive social cataclysms as the rules change. And the rules are changing fast.

This TikTok about a woman accepting an engagement proposal because the vision of the future scares her? It might actually be an anti-natalist campaign by degrowthers or maybe even Chinese propaganda? Who knows.

It’s not as if America gives a shit about maternal health or women but hey here is a podcast about a porn star who specializes in anime’s less savory fetishes. Is your teenage boy an Andrew Tate fan? It’s time to enjoy a reactionary period.

Obviously this has anyone older than forty asking if the western world under attack. Is questioning liberalism actually the psy-op? Are we fighting amongst ourselves? Do you even know what memetic agents you are infected by?

I sure don’t what brain works in carrying but I don’t think animated porn is for me. But I also got taken in by lots of questionable narratives on modern medicine, fertility and children too. Untangling yourself from the desires you were given is exhausting. Good luck unpacking who jacked your frame!

Categories
Culture Medical Politics

Day 945 and Secrets and Safetyism

Keeping secrets used to be a lot easier. Noble philosopher kings with priestly knowledge kept that shit under under lock and key so some uppity courtesan or eunuch didn’t get too clever.

Not that it was all that necessary. Nobody was accidentally misinterpreting the layers of mystical knowledge because illuminated manuscripts were expensive as fuck. And that was cheaper than the previous method which was memorizing oral histories. The expense of sharing information has acted as a control mechanism for centuries.

If you’ve got the money, you can store your sex toys and drugs in layered secret drawers behind a hidden bust of Socrates. But some asshole will post a primer online and your benzodiazepines and vibrator will be long gone.

The metaphor I’m working with on this silly desk is that humans love to horde secrets. We’ve got a lot of incentives to keep knowledge locked away. Drugs and sex in my joke mere proxies for ways we access altered states. Eve’s apple was a metaphor for forbidden knowledge so I’m not reinventing the wheel here.

So where are we today on secrets? Well, I think we are trying desperately to put the genie back in the bottle.

We think we’ve got an open internet but ten years ago Instagram stopped including the metadata tags to allow Twitter to display rich content embedded directly in a Tweet. Now Twitter and Reddit are taking the same approach as Instagram did as data ownership becomes a hot issue.

Closed gardens are meant to keep thieves out and Eve in. And depending on who you are it’s likely you will experience the fall from grace of Eve and the persecution of the thief. God clearly knew something as his conclusion was that once you’ve tasted the bitter fruit there is no point in protecting paradise.

Every time there is more access to information we have the same debate. Fundamentally you either believe people should have access to information and how they apply it to their lives (side effects included) or you don’t.

I’m happy for you to argue the nuances of it. Want a recent example that looks complex and might actually be deadly simply?

The clown meme format asks if it’s
a joke to conclude confident that “LLMs should not be used to give medical advice.”

I know it’s tempting to side with the well credentialed researcher over the convicted felon when faced with a debate over access to medical advice. But I don’t think it’s as simple as all that.

From Guttenberg to the current crop of centralized large language models, it’s just more complexity and friction on the same old story. It is dangerous to let the savages have access to the priestly secrets. I for one remain on team Reformation. Rest in power Aaron Schwartz.

To quote myself in my own investor letter last month.

Most builders remain deeply skeptical of Noble Lies, “for your own good” safetyism, regulatory capture, oligopoly control, and the centralized nation state control as the most effective methodology of innovation for a dynamic pluralistic human future. We are having cultural and financial reformations at a frightening speed. It’s beyond future shock now.

So if I have a gun to my head (and that day may come) I’d like to have it on record that I don’t think secrets have any inherent nobility. It’s just a control mechanism. Keeping people safe sounds noble. But you’d be wise to consider how you’d feel if your life depended on having access to medical data. How would you feel if the paternalism of a noble lie to keep you from it? It’s not great Bob.

Categories
Aesthetics Travel

Day 944 and InstaHo

I suppose it’s fitting that just one day after feeling glimmers of hope that our networked chaotic youth culture is rebelling towards whitepilled optimism that my mood would immediately take a darker turn. You just can’t sustain a vibe these days when you have to interact with reality. Or at least reality as intermediated through an algorithm.

I’m planning out a fall trip to Europe to go scouting and meet up with folks. It’s a challenge to get talent into America with our current visa system. So I do my best to get to get abroad to meet founders and builders. I’m considering going to some spots in the Baltics this trip and maybe I’ll do the Balkans on my next go.

So I’m browsing through Airbnb trying to see what could be a home base for me. I’m always looking for spaces that are livable. Function is more important than form.

I focus on kitchens, bathrooms and living areas that are built for comfort. Alas, this is actually a fair amount of labor as much of Airbnb is optimized for what can most kindly be referred to as an InstaHo aesthetic.

Soft pink modernist couch, illustrator triptychs, and geometric rug prints are InstaHo aesthetic

Now I’m not saying that this Apartment Therapy circa 2015 look isn’t easy on the eyes. It’s pleasant and bright. I’m sure if I had colorful outfits I photographed daily and sold some personal brand based how cute I am this would be my first choice for an Airbnb. Alas I’m a professional not an influencer.

I’m sure the algorithms reward being as aesthetically pleasing to as wide a range of people as possible. I was once an Airbnb super host myself so I’ve taken my fair share of over saturated photos. But can’t we just get a couch that is comfortable to sit on while you work?

Does no one else but me require a little spinal support? Is being cozy just too hard to photograph well? Why is everyone stuck with some hideous globalization chic when it’s not even that comfortable or functional?

If anyone has an apartment in Tallin or Prague do please let me know. I am actively looking for a spot.

Categories
Culture Politics Preparedness

Day 943 and Glimmers

I find myself filled with optimism today, even as I’m quite sure we are ramping quickly into the era of chaos I’ve been prattling on about for nearly a thousand days. Everything feels a bit “hold on to your hats” as we collectively experience the fear and joy of an illegible moment without any dominant narratives.

And yet today inside this chaos without clarity, the internet is filled with enthusiasm as a small niche of enthusiasts try to replicate the results of a chemistry paper that claims to have made a superconducting at room temperature material LK-99 produced with common materials like lead and red phosphorus.

Add that on top of fervor over Congressional investigations “aliens” program whistleblowers while we all collectively wonder at the potential for artificial general intelligence to be accelerated and the zeitgeist is a fever pitch of vibe shifts from doom to foom.

All of these glimmers of joyful uncertainty and hopeful chaos are emerging from a youth culture that is quite sure it has been abandoned by its own past as it is bombarded by a dystopian future by its own geriatric elite. Is it any wonder it feels like the social contract is hanging on by a thread?

Historian Peter Turchin is taking a victory lap with the accuracy of his theory of cliodynamics

When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. As income inequality surges and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people suffer, and society-wide efforts to become an elite grow ever more frenzied. He calls this process the wealth pump; it’s a world of the damned and the saved.

Peter Turchin “End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration

The broader popular rediscovery of historians Neil Howe and William Strauss is no coincidence. They wrote the The Forth Turning twenty five years ago.

Looking back at the last 500 years, they’d uncovered a distinct pattern: modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting roughly eighty to one hundred years, the length of a long human life, with each cycle composed of four eras—or “turnings”—that always arrive in the same order and each last about twenty years. The last of these eras—the fourth turning—was always the most perilous.

The Fourth Turning Is Here

Clever Simon and Schuster realized it was an opportune moment to point out that the fourth turning had arrived with a new book from Howe.

So perhaps these glimmers are here to show us that the churn is here, the fourth turning is now, and Turchin’s race to become an elite to outrun the effects of dislocation may already have its winners.

Amidst all of that there are those of us seeking to believe that we might find a way forward. I’d rather be looking for the glimmers of hope. I’ve already done what I can to warn about the need to prepare for hard times. If you haven’t yet come to terms with the doom then I certainly won’t convince you of the need for optimism either.

Categories
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.

Categories
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.

Categories
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.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 925 and Spartan Cherry Crush

Our Silicon Valley “men in the arenaare 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.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 923 and Spicy

Lots of reasons to be optimistic in America that our wheezing economy has been goaded into forgetting that money shouldn’t be free. Again. We imploded the banks and a number of international allied economies but we achieved a soft landing for some Americans. I don’t even know how I feel about that sentence.

It just really feels like shit is going off the rails all over the place but you can’t quite make sense of all the things coming at you because it’s coming at you so damn fast. And everyone is being dramatic about it. As if we didn’t have all kinds of fair warning that the ride was going to be bumpy.

I recently had someone not handle a professional (but somewhat personal) transaction as anything the way I’d hoped. It wasn’t s big deal. I recalibrated something in my life in the face of grief and some personal realignments. Everyone is fine. Everyone has their own shit going on and it’s never about you.

But it does seem like a lot is going on for everyone and whatever the fuck else is exploding that hurts your life and your people. A lot of people are very reactive and it’s all being shown in real time on Twitter.

And yes it’s making me feel like yup however this next world war 3 thing it is going to go is overlaying on your personal life. It’s reminded me that I need to protect myself as I’ve got a job to do no matter how spicy the market gets.

Categories
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.