following the signs toward an imminent hopeful cybernetic future.
following the signs toward an imminent hopeful cybernetic future.
agency over platform
in it, but not of it
[An unconference gathering structure with chairs in the middle of the audience where anyone can sit to speak but it requires another person in the center to leave; one chair left empty invites new people to join anytime.]
Hospice Mode: The stage your when your phone / fitness tracker / laptop is in its final months and you’re just prolonging its death through a series of coping techniques. Carrying around extra battery packs. Patiently giving it 10 minutes to restart. Resetting the system at regular intervals.
Manel: Panel made up entirely of men. Usually honouring work done entirely by other men.
Pinkering: Named for Steven Pinker - a common phenomenon among do-gooder elites who cite the long arc of human history in order to downplay and minimise any immediate suffering.
Privacy Veganism: Unnecessarily shaming people who aren’t willing to delete their Facebook account when it’s a functional necessity in their social context
If it’s obvious to you, it’s for someone else.
[You can avoid keeping up with news directly by listening to podcasts that might give a sense of important issues indirectly.]
A lazy person’s guide to delicious meal prep
This is the power of Combinatorial Cooking. From a seemingly limited set of base ingredients, there is a whole universe of food options you can prepare quickly and easily.
The wok lets you boil, saute, stir-fry, and simmer. The spaghetti spoon lets you stir, mix, scrape, and mash. They’re both incredibly versatile and easy to clean. It’s all you need to make any Combinatorial Cooking recipe. Plus, using a wok makes you look and feel like a real chef, that’s just science.
[Friendly explainer and guide to getting started with RSS feeds.]
Thinking tools and frameworks to help you solve problems, make decisions and understand systems.
Open Source is a restaurant. At a restaurant, you eat your meal first, and then you are expected to pay for it. Yes, we could dine and dash. But we don’t. When presented with a tab for a meal we have just eaten, we pay the tab.
Asymmetry might be a synonym for power.
Listing your options sensitizes you to notice them.
The internet didn’t kill counterculture—you just won’t find it on Instagram
Actual power is controlling the means by which lesser power can be displayed—i.e., congrats on the 500K likes on your polling numbers, @jack still owns all your tweets. Actual power keeps a low profile; actual power doesn’t need a social media presence, it owns social media.
Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed
Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work.
We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have, We buy so much because it always seems like something, is still missing,
For the economy to be “healthy”, America has to remain unhealthy. Healthy, happy people don’t feel like they need much they don’t already have, and that means they don’t buy a lot of junk, don’t need to be entertained as much, and they don’t end up watching a lot of commercials.
I enjoy being around people with big hearts.
[When people try to console your loss but make you cringe, there might be an unspoken (and perhaps unintended) “so please stop feeling bad”]
[Life is more about integrating than improvement.]
most things offered as “support” in our culture are really designed to solve problems or to get you out of pain. If it feels wrong to you, it is.
[The doctor who came up with the popular ‘five stages of grief’ regrets writing them in that way because it’s not linear and universal: there is no standard process.]
[The griever and those who care about them may want a road map to guarantee success, but grief isn’t predictable or structured.]
[Culture emphasizing happy endings, solutioneering, recovery, overcoming, redemption confuses us into seeing bad things as happening ‘for growth’]
Disadvantaged people who suffer so that the more privileged can live easier are labelled ‘heroes’ to keep them working.
More useful than agreeing is to hear why we come to our conclusions.
Reducing psychological burden via ‘“they shouldn’t need to consider that” versus ‘bringing them along your process’.
Changing state policy is like repurposing parts of a warship to build a sewing machine.