Ceding the work of interpretation

 John Warner writes about how we’ve culturally shifted from valuing individual curation and criticism to preferring collective consensus:

One part of my theory is that across many dimensions we have been acculturated to value the aggregated over the individual, and defaulting to the average consensus has become comfortable in its familiarity… Over time, we lose touch with our sense of taste, or in extreme examples that taste matters at all.

Ruby Justice Thelot identifies “para-content makers” — people who make content about content — as key shapers of narrative:

Para-content makers may be called “creators” or “influencers” but their actual role is that of “contextualizer”, the shapers of a cultural artifact’s horizon. […] The notable shift in our era of para-content is that the audience has fully abdicated the horizon-making to the “contextualizer”.

Ezra Klein observes (archive link) our desire for cultural consensus dominating criticism:

We’ve moved away from attaching to a curator who has an individual taste and guides you through the world toward the averaging out of curators like it’s a poll, right? Like, we treat everything as a poll and not as criticism.

+

Peter Limberg notes how we put reality up to a popularity contest:

Today, we live under the myth of the meme, which suggests that if something goes viral, it must be true.

Joanna Kavenna riffs that “perhaps the most important event in 2024 was that reality became unreal.”

See also:

On conformity and control

Truthwashing: vibes and scams all the way down

+

L.M. Sacasas demonstrates how this same thought pattern plays out in the rise of LLMs to “write” for us:

When we turn to an LLM to write for us, we are also inviting it to undertake the more fundamental task of articulation…

[T]he labor of articulation itself shapes what we think and feel. Articulation is not dictation, articulation constitutes our perception of the world. To search for a word is not merely to search for a label, the search is interwoven with the very capacity to perceive and understand the thing, idea, or feeling.

See also: The siren call of LLMs

As fewer and fewer people read, and fewer and fewer people can read — American literacy rates are depressing — writing for a wide audience requires simplifying both text and content. Rob Horning writes about the anti-nuanced writing and communication that generative AI encourages:

“Generative AI seems to have been developed on the opposite principle: that cliches are more illuminating [than] less probable forms of communication… Every attempt at communication should be treated as trying to communicate one specific thing, and machinic decoders should be capable of saving us the time of working out what that one thing most likely is for any given piece of text.”

Jay argues that image generators are prompting an “Information Age Iconoclasm:”

Image generation doesn’t just alter how we make images, it alters what an image is, ontologically.

Generative outputs aren’t just more media, they represent one of the first truly computer-native mediums. And in doing so, they reframe the entire structure of originality and authorship.

They also undermine reality by making every image suspect.

Related reading:

AI Slop Is a Brute Force Attack on the Algorithms That Control Reality by Jason Koebler (404 Media)


All together, I see these pieces adding up to an avoidance of making our own decisions, exercising our own judgment, trusting our own interpretations. And, fair — we’re all overwhelmed, drowning in content.

We’re exposed to — and expected to form opinions on — a massive number of subjects and events, every day. And facts aren’t just facts anymore; we cannot even trust our eyes or our ears now that video and audio can be easily generated. This goes hand in hand with a cultural attack on elites, institutions, and education — the people and tools that could help us evaluate the quality of information. Statistics are used to lie, undermining the value of data in a world that reduces everything to data.

Mistrusting empiricism, and lacking the time and expertise to draw informed conclusions anyway, people turn to their tribes for guidance. This provides greater emotional certainty than deciphering the murky, conflicting data sources that so often describe reality. We like things to be explicable, we like them to be clear, we like them to be unambiguous, we like them to be consistent. Unfortunately, reality is usually complicated — as are people.

 

Further reading:

Mass Delusion, Inc. by Kennedy Chappell

 

See also:

Stories help us find truth, but there’s a difference between fact and fiction

Tracy Durnell

17 Apr 2025 at 18:05

The contradictions of fascist communication

 The tyranny of relatable content by Ryan Broderick

If a brand is a person, then a person has to be a brand, especially in an algorithmically-controlled attention economy that’s increasingly shifting literally everything about social media towards getting your money. And more importantly, if a government official or group has a social media presence, it has to be both a person and a brand.

[…]

Trump, unfortunately, understands the delirious unreality of the person/brand hybrid better than maybe anyone else on the planet… Now, there’s no difference between a post that’s an executive order, a commercial, or someone saying whatever bullshit is on their mind. In fact, it must serve as all of the above.

+

Don’t Take the Bait — Kristi Noem and Fascism’s Sadistic Eroticization of Power by Jeff Sharlet

“There’s a way in Trump world,” [my wife, Julia Rabig] said, “in which performing a certain kind of ‘sexy’ is ‘serious.’” That is, she argued, in the gendered politics of Trumpism certain women convey their particular authority by conforming to conventional ideas of “sexy,” ultra-femme variations of styles appropriate to the situation…

Trump women, goes the thinking, are “real” precisely because they try hard to perform “woman”; liberal and Left women are not “real women” because, in this logic, feminism makes them rebel against their “natural” roles. The range of such roles has expanded from those of the 1950s even for fascist women, which is why Noem can comfortably show her power—just so long as she contains it within a still-just-as-narrow spectrum of femininity: “maternal” or “sexy.”

+

It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.

It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.

— A.R. Moxon, Dec. 21, 2022

+

State Terror: A brief guide for Americans by Timothy Snyder

The first part of controlling the language is inverting the meaning: whatever the government does is good, because by definition its victims are the “criminals” and the “terrorists.” The second part is deterring the press, or anyone else, from challenging the perversion by associating anyone who objects with crime and terror.

 

See also:

Words mean things

History and fascist speak

How fascists operate

Tracy Durnell

17 Apr 2025 at 05:21

Blogs are personal infrastructure

 
Liked Marking the Occasion :: 100425 - thejaymo by Jay Jay (thejaymo.net)
I wrote a long post last year reflecting on the 15th anniversary of this website, but let its 'Sweet Sixteen' last month pass by unremarked.

Nice reflection on blogs today from Jay:

A blog in 2025 should be a destination.

They don’t just distribute—they accumulate. They hold time, build presence and concretise thought.

Blogs hold time — love this.

It’s not just a personal publishing platform—it’s personal infrastructure.

☝️ Yes. At this point I do something on my website every day — write a post, save a link, log a read, look up a recipe, add a note to my weeknotes. It’s the best tool I have because I made it for myself 🥰

Tracy Durnell

14 Apr 2025 at 06:46

On hobbies and the difficulty of embracing slowness

 Our perception of time –the pace of now, and how long it takes to get things — shapes our expectations about the future and how long change takes:

“Americans are not used to waiting for the good outcomes, so it makes people very ineffective political agents” — Nia Òla

@shakingsheets

Take back your attention span, relearn patience and you’ll see your hope and optimism return in bounties. #fypシ #politics #leftist #blacktiktok #fypシ #philosophy #foryou

♬ original sound – Nia Òla 💗

Slow hobbies teach delayed gratification.

+

What is Millennial Hobby Energy? by Anne Helen Petersen

If you did what we called an extra-curricular, it was less because it was fun, or because you wanted to, but because “it looked good,” or communicated something “interesting” or “well-rounded” about your personality. And when you instrumentalize leisure in this way, you lose touch with your understanding of what leisure even is. Did you like basketball? Did you like playing the piano? Or did you do it because it — or something like it — was what you did?

Within this framework, there was very little room for activities that resisted narrativization in a college essay.

It makes sense that whatever hobby we find we like doing…..we struggle not to turn it into work.

 

Further reading:

Slow change can be radical change by Rebecca Solnit

A portrait of inefficiency. by Rebekah Taussig

The work of a generation by Ken Smith

 

See also:

Adult Hobbies

Hobbies are productive

Slow craft: writing with a noncapitalist mentality

Smartphones consume rest

Reframing home as a productive rather than consumptive space

Choosing my pace by shaping my thinking spaces

Tracy Durnell

14 Apr 2025 at 05:48

Media incentives

 “the platforms we use have actively made it harder for you to find written work” — Mia Sato

@webkinzarchive

re: anti intellectualism and the media literacy crisis

♬ original sound – Mia Sato – tech reporter

“platforms disincentivize linking to sources”

+

You aren’t upset enough about the war on hyperlinks by Adam Singer

By constraining the circulation of external content, large, beaurocratic monoliths exert undue influence over the information landscape, effectively curating narratives which users are exposed and the extent to which independent entities can exist.

Social media companies even fully dominate physical world space, taking up ‘owned’ marketing real-estate everywhere. But even for these companies, their content and links will be shown to almost no one on these platforms. It’s an incredibly 1-sided trade.

+

Content Soup: everything is starting to look and sound the same by Nick Hilton

Part of the confusion over what’s a stream, what’s a YouTube video and what’s a podcast stems from the fact that all of these things are moving closer to one another.

There will be executives at all sorts of channels who look at the soup and see it as a panacea. Content with existing audiences at a fraction of the normal prize? Tick, tick, tick… When everything starts to look and sound the same, people either switch off or they look for alternatives.

But the genius (an inadvertent one, in some ways) of YouTube’s model has been their ability to attract hundreds (literally) of $100m creators without so much as a contract on the table.

+

The Plagiarism Machine by Audrey Watters

It’s worth noting, I think, that intellectual property rights have been the bane of the technology industry for a long time now, and the industry has thrived, in no small part, by arguing it does not need to pay users – “creators” or otherwise – for the content that’s hosted on or distributed by its platforms.

 

See also:

Long live hypertext!

The open web as gift economy

Mega tech companies are cheaters

Disrupting my reading habits to read more of what *I* want

Read Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free

Tracy Durnell

12 Apr 2025 at 22:04

Letter to Senators re: illegal deportations

 Note: I don’t know precisely what Congress can actually *do* in this situation since it’s in the courts, but hope that constituents showing political support for resistance is valuable should this tumble into constitutional crisis, which is unfortunately possible.

Again, while I’m pro-immigration / open-border-curious and want dramatic reform of the carceral system, I’m trying to keep my asks targeted to the specific situation with an eye towards preventing this from happening again. I held back from commenting on the farcical use of the Alien Enemies Act because I don’t understand precisely what this week’s SCOTUS ruling meant.

I’m writing in hopes you can help with the illegal deportations of innocent people. It is of utmost urgency that Kilmar Abrego García be returned to the United States and provided with restitution. It is extremely troubling that the administration is stalling despite a SCOTUS ruling, and claiming that they cannot bring him back, especially when the United States is paying for his imprisonment. Should the DOJ continue to refuse to follow a Supreme Court ruling, I urge you to use any and all tools at your disposal to ensure Abrego García and the American public see justice.

Further, I am deeply concerned that it is somehow permissible to 1) put people applying for asylum in prison for the rest of their lives despite following the rules set by the previous administration, 2) put immigrants in jail indefinitely instead of deporting them to their home country, 3) put immigrants in jail in a third nation which is neither the US nor their home country and then claim the US has zero power over their fates once in this third nation, and 4) imprison people in a facility that doesn’t meet American standards of treatment. If this is legal, it should not be. If it is not legal, I call for an investigation and impeachment of officials who made the decision to illegally deport immigrants to a foreign jail without due process. That the president is now threatening to do the same to citizen dissidents is further alarming and chilling.

 

Background:

Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s Wrongful Deportation and Imprisonment Reveals the Horrors of Trump’s Authoritarianism by Robert Tracinski

U.S. sent 238 migrants to Salvadoran mega-prison; documents indicate most have no apparent criminal records by Cecilia Vega (CBS 60 Minutes)

‘He is not a gang member’: outrage as US deports makeup artist to El Salvador prison for crown tattoos by Tom Phillips and Clavel Rangel (The Guardian)

Thread by Anna Bower summarizing 4/11 hearing:

HAPPENING NOW: Following the Supreme Court's decision requiring the government to "facilitate" the release of Abrego Garcia, a hearing before Judge Paula Xinis is about to begin. I'm in Greenbelt, Maryland for @lawfare.bsky.social Follow along for updates

Anna Bower (@annabower.bsky.social) 2025-04-11T16:59:35.191Z

I’ve also been appreciating updates on the court cases with legal explainers by Joshua J. Friedman (Bluesky) — (Fedi bridge)

Tracy Durnell

12 Apr 2025 at 20:18

Weeknotes: April 5-11, 2025

 
moody gray sky behind a sunny wetland with barren deciduous trees that might be dead snags and last year's dried rushes
the red winged blackbirds were putting on a show here

Win of the week: my walking buddy and I both needed new walking shoes, and I found a running shoe store two blocks off of our normal route, so we went shoe shopping on our walk 😂

Looking forward to: we’re hopefully going to see an internet friend who’ll be in-town-ish next month — an excuse to go out to the islands! (I need to find us somewhere to stay!)

Stuff I did:

  • 9 hours consulting
  • 3 hours writing
  • ordered a bunch of clothes in anticipation of prices rising soon — got two extra copies of my favorite shirt, which is something I’ve never actually done before but wished I had
  • restocked our household first aid kit which was running a bit sparse, and stocked up on a few household items that won’t go bad and we’ll need to buy in the next year anyway — air filters, toilet paper, toothpaste
  • bought a taller ladder and a garden cart since our wheelbarrow died — now I need to assemble it! I wanted a tripod orchard ladder for easier tree pruning but we decided a multipurpose ladder made more sense, plus orchard ladders are $$$
  • researched setting up a home music server in hopes I could pick out some hardware ASAP but I’m gonna need to read a lot more first 😅
  • an hour of weeding when we had a sunny afternoon (and I was procrastinating on writing 😉) — meant to plant some heuchera I bought back in October but got distracted when I saw the shotgrass (which is apparently native? I’m still treating it as a weed) was going to seed — oops!
  • scheduled a consultation with a window blind company I noticed in the strip mall where we get teriyaki… our blinds were cheapo to start with and they’re all starting to break 😒
  • the husband took the car to be washed and I’d swear they didn’t touch the inside of the car except that they knocked down our HOV pass 🙄 As he said when he got home, we got what we paid for… thought $70 sounded too cheap, but maybe it was expensive for what we actually got 😂 We still need to get the air filter changed so I masked up to run an errand that couldn’t wait any more
  • we’ve got a spare room that’s unfortunately become a dumping ground for storing junk, so I started pulling out boxes and sorting the stuff in them to tidy up a bit for the window blind person to get measurements… tools, stuff for house projects, random electronics and screws that I don’t know what they go to, etc — alas, my old phone remains elusive! where did I put it???
  • one virtual appointment
  • walk with my friend

Dinners:

  • broccoli pasta (this made both of us feel terrible, do not recommend)
  • smoked salmon and leek quiche with premade crust
  • black bean burgers with avocado + tater tots + chipotle aioli
  • Thai takeout — pad thai with fried tofu + sweet and sour with fried tofu + crab rangoon + rice
  • Paneer Bhurji + blackberry soda
  • lentil salad with roasted beets + carrots (based on) — so disappointing, less than the sum of its parts 🙁
  • beyond burger takeout + fries

Reading:

Words I looked up / concepts I learned:

Pretty stuff I saw:

Website changes:

  • Added a new project section to keep notes for some tech upgrades I’m looking to make this year

Nature notes:

  • I thought I heard an animal sleeping in the attic a few times, but my husband thinks it’s too loud and regular for that so maybe a bird I’m misinterpreting as being closer than it is?
  • encountered a baby bunny in the yard when I was weeding 🐇
  • bleeding heart is emerging and just starting to bloom
  • the apple trees have a ton of buds on them! my pruning has finally paid off 😱 I am determined to protect them from a deer eating them this year like they have every other year… ordered some netting and stakes but forgot to get zip ties 🤦‍♀️
two clusters of leaflets around tightly closed buds
maybe this year we’ll get apples!!!
Tracy Durnell

12 Apr 2025 at 04:53



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