Category: Notes
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Read: Is Wokeness One Big Power Grab?
Indeed, one of the primary reasons such anti-woke reactions feel so unsatisfactory is that wokeness, not always but consistently, stems from the basic recognition of large-scale problems that really do exist. Occupy Wall Street addressed the staggering rise of inequality in 21st-century American life; Black Lives Matter emerged in response to a spate of reprehensible…
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Read: Manufactured Anxiety: How Self-Improvement Became a Self Destruct Sequence
Who profits from our constant state of dissatisfaction? The answer, of course, is painfully obvious. Every industry that sells a solution to a problem you didn’t even know you had. Every influencer who monetizes your insecurities. Every corporation that convinces you your worth is tied to your productivity. They thrive while we spiral. And the…
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Read: The Technology the Trump Administration Could Use to Hack Your Phone | the New Yorker
Trump has threatened his political enemies, reposting comments calling for a military tribunal for Liz Cheney and observing that General Mark Milley’s behavior would have once been punishable by “DEATH!” He has also demonized the free press, suggesting, for example, that he wouldn’t mind if people were to “shoot through the fake news” and that…
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Made so much progress with learning #homeassistant this weekend. Got Home Kit Bridge working after learning way too much about mdns, built some iOS notifications w/ automation options and resuscitating some forgot NFC tags. Got #solar power forecasting working, excited to start playing with “now’s a good time to run the washer” type notifications. Also…
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It is apparently way too much to ask #apple #HomeKit to only run my Roborock vacuum at 10AM each morning *if* no one is home. Seems like such a trivial condition to #homeautomation but now I’m deep in the weeds of home assistant trying to Rube Goldberg my way to a solution. We were promised…
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Watched Ronan Farrow’s Surveilled last night on HBO, uncanny how well it pairs with Schaake’s The Tech Coup which I’m just finishing. If you enjoyed the documentary on spyware, definitely give Schaake’s Tech Coup a read: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691241173/the-tech-coup Also on:
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I’ve been playing in bands for 30 years and can’t imagine trying to make a living at it. Now I’ve got a kid who is an amazing songwriter/musician. It’s heartbreaking to think how undervalued his skill is in this world. Good read: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/28/band-people-franz-nicolay-book-review #songwriting Also on:
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Read: Why Not Bluesky
The real problem, in my mind, isn’t in the nature of this particular Venture-Capital operation. Because the whole raison-d’etre of Venture Capital is to make money for the “Limited Partners” who provide the capital. Since VC investments are high-risk, most are expected to fail, and the ones that succeed have to exhibit exceptional revenue growth…
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I like this take from 404 media and agree w/ much of this post on Bluesky, Mastodon and threads: “..But I have been impressed with the tools that the open source development community is building to bridge the gap between the AT protocol and ActivityPub, and I’m hopeful that some mixture of Bluesky and Mastodon…
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Read: The Imperfectionist: How Not to Freak Out, Part Two
The antidote to all of this, in the broadest terms, is *more reality*, more immersion in the finite here and now: more writing on paper; more gathering in person and in public; more looking strangers in the eye; more scruffy hospitality; more queueing for the supermarket checkout that’s staffed by a human, if there even…