“Laura Loomer is a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans. A DNC plant couldn’t do a better job than she is doing to hurt President Trump’s chances of winning re-election.”
I used to think of Twitter as a coral reef, but its role as a world wide notification system is fading, and we haven't replaced it with anything. I wrote this in 2007 when the utility of Twitter was just becoming apparent.
Getting accommodations at work shouldn’t be so hard by @tracydurnell
“I shouldn’t have to feel lucky that I could afford to give myself what I needed to recover; my workplace shouldn’t have put me in a position where my health took such a blow. Workers deserve working conditions that don’t harm them.”
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Attention 🎯 | Permanently Moved 🔊
You can, you know, just make any creative work you want, and post it on the Internet.
Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2024/09/15/2423-make-something-to-your-taste/
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- Subscriber Zine! https://startselectreset.com/
Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo
Subscribe to the Podcast: https://permanentlymoved.online/
Or wherever you get your podcasts
You can,
You know,
Just make any creative work you want,
And post it on the Internet.
It doesn’t have to fit into any particular niche,
Just make the thing that you enjoy.
Make the thing you had in mind 8 years ago,
It’s not too late.
Don’t ever hold back.
Make a thing that is precisely to your taste.
My Girlfriend says that my taste
For abrasive repetitive tones
Is enough to give her a white hot headache.
That is to my taste.
When you said you wanted to score the show
At the beginning of this year,
Is this what you had in mind?
Do you do the thing to find out?
Or find out because I’ve done the thing?
This is,
I suppose,
A little experiment,
A little glimpse at the future.
We all knew it would end up here one day.
There’s only 25 episodes left.
It’s not a pivot,
Not ‘out of band’,
Or out of niche.
It’s a personal podcast
301 seconds in length.
There’s been a lack of experimentation around here.
If it’s not for you, turn it off.
Why does it always have to be an essay?
Why does it even have to make sense?
Unpolished,
Unapologetic,
A true reflection of where you think you are right now.
Make a little chaotic corner on the web.
If it only resonates with you?
Well, at least it was honest.
Because, in the end, you made it for me,
And that’s what really matters.
Make Something to Your Taste
Start Select Reset Zine (SSRZ) is a physical newsletter posted via snail mail four times a year to paid subscribers of thejaymo.net.
Subscribing supports my work and podcast and brings you the small pleasure of receiving something in the mail 🤗
The post Make Something to Your Taste | 2423 appeared first on thejaymo.
Something has changed in the twitterverse, it's grown new centers. You'll never see an article in the NYT saying how wrong polls have been in every presidential election because then they'd have to fire half their political reporters.
If you want a better idea of how it's going, look at where the ad dollars are going, and where the candidates are campaigning.
And make sure all your friends know that you're voting and who you're voting for. I think that makes a difference.
I'm voting straight Democratic party line.
"Well, as I said, you’re going to hear a bunch of lies. And that’s not actually a surprising fact." Exactly right. That's why Trump lying is not news in 2024.
The cycling season is not over yet.
On Friday evening, I took part in the 11th Kassel Bike Night, organized by the ADFC, of which I have been a member for a few months. Accompanied by the police, we cycled about 22 kilometers around Kassel, with a special focus on the new bike streets. It was definitely a cool experience and an important event to raise awareness for better cycling infrastructure. Our green mayor also said a few nice words at the beginning.
Today I went for another longer ride on my sporty bike. It’s not always easy to find routes here in the region that only have a few meters of elevation gain. Kassel lies in a valley between several low mountain ranges, and the only flat terrain is along the rivers. On today’s tour, I didn’t use my lowrider bags, but my new 6-liter frame bag from deuter. It certainly helps with agility and is perfectly adequate for carrying an air pump, tools, first aid kit and food.
I’ve had them for a couple of years so it does not come as a surprise. As I’ve established, I’m hard on shoes. And it’s not exactly like modern sneakers by major brands are made to last these days. One should know going in, as with many such things in the clothing world, that if you’re paying $90 for a pair of sneakers you should consider them essentially disposable out of the box.
And yet, I find myself faced with an interesting test of my intentions in this area. Here’s some of the places my thoughts are going…
One can purchase, very high quality, hand made, resoleable sneakers. They are out there and have a cost that corresponds to that quality. Like other quality boot and shoe makers, the cost is offset by the idea that these may be the last sneakers one will need to purchase. That one can get them repaired and resoled when time and tear takes its inevitable toll. But, I don’t know if I’d be ready to pull that trigger yet.
I could simply buy a new pair of a major brand now, likely even the same model (I do like them, style wise) knowing what I’m getting in return (see above: knowing I’ll be back here again in two years).
But, here’s the other part of my thinking, I live in Minnesota. I’ll likely only be wearing sneakers for another six weeks or so. The snow will start to fall and I’ll be wearing boots until next spring. Therefore, if I can keep these current shoes going for a while, I can push off any decision until then.
So, last night, I ordered up some Shoe Goo and will use it to repair the ones I have and, hopefully, have them hold together for a few more weeks. I have other casual shoes I can wear if it doesn’t work out (some Merrell Moab hikers). And, I can avoid having to purchase in desperation and take some time to consider how best to move forward.
“Our job was to make him look legitimate, to make him look like there was something behind it, even though we pretty much all knew that there wasn’t,” one producer said.
🤘 You're subscribed to DanQ.me using the RSS feed. You rock! 🎸
My partner and I were both born in the early 1980s which is quite fortunate for our relationship because we can talk about some shared experiences we have had while growing up.
I consider being born in the 1980s a special time – though I am sure everybody considers their generation special – we got to live through the analog era until we are of age, yet we were young enough to grasp the opportunities of the digital age. It makes me occasionally look at the tech in my hands in wonder because I remember the old days when friends were uncontactable even if they were running late, people going overseas means an actual separation, and books were more interesting than tv. Once in a while I still feel amazed when I text my friends living thousands of miles away and they respond instantly. What a crazy thing to be able to have a real-time conversation with so much physical distance between us.
Last week I was lamenting to my partner how easily bored I get these days. I complained that Singapore – being a country 50km wide – is so small that we are deprived of road trips and micro-culture experiences, and we keep browsing the same 2-3 stationery stores. But in the next moment an interesting memory came up: as a kid I spent hours at the same stationery store every day after dinner. How did I do that, I wondered aloud to my partner. Then it hit me. We had no mobile phones back then. There wasn’t the internet to entertain me, so looking at rows of stationery was what gave me my dopamine hits.
My partner prefers audio books to reading, and unlike me she wasn’t into books as a kid. She finds browsing physical books at a store frustrating and limiting, like how can we just merely go by the spine and covers? I told her back then that was what we did. Since we didn’t have the internet we had no idea which were the well-reviewed books, so we relied heavily on the spines. I remember going to the library staring at shelves and shelves of book spines, sorted alphabetically by author’s surname. When an author was good we devoured all the books by them, because picking an unknown author was such a gamble. Looking at spines at the library still gives me a thrill now, like being at a candy store.
I also used to anticipate the release of CDs by my favourite artistes. I remember carefully unwrapping the plastic wrapper, slowly sliding out the sleeve notes and flipping them tenderly — the flip of each page felt like a surprise. I examined the credits in detail, taking note of the producer and musicians of the album. My partner was surprised when I shared this with her, because I don’t seem like I would care about such details, and words like “slow” and “careful” are not words that I would use to describe myself.
I realised the wonders of technology and progress have compressed our experiences. Now we listen to a single track available instantly on a music streaming platform. It doesn’t come with a sleeve, there is no context to the track in relation to the album — if there is even an album in the first place — I have no idea who are the producers, writers, musicians while listening because I can’t slowly touch and marvel at the sleeve as I listen, there is no sleeve that would show signs of age and tatter where some pages would show more signs of weather because I spent hours trying to memorise the lyrics. Did the album have a narrative the artiste had carefully sculpted, was there a photoshoot that was deliberately styled in accordance to the theme of the album? There is no fancy packaging, no graphic design that would stop me in my tracks, no experience that was carefully designed to delight and enchant you the moment you set your eyes on the cd at the shop.
Now everything appears in an instant, we don’t even have the anticipation and satisfaction of a large, slow download on our 14.4kbps modem anymore. There is no longer a cherishing that comes with the agony of a wait. It is a flattening and compression of a formerly multi-dimensional experience: no more smell of paper, no tactile feel of textures, no wonderment of entering a physical store, no excited conversations with the shopowner who had seen me for the thousandth time — they have seen me more than my parents and know my music/book preferences intimately. Back then we encountered the things we love with a full body experience, and now it is just a pair of eyes narrowly focused on rapidly changing pixels.
This relates to that note I wrote last week on life, novelty and addiction. It seems like there is such a thing is too much novelty. Scientifically speaking it is easily explained by neuroscience: our brains and bodies like homeostasis and don’t like too much of anything, so it downregulates our brain’s receptors to cope with it, reducing our ability to feel the same intensity with the same amount of stimuli. This is why we stop feeling the same excitement when we experience the same thing over and over again.
Everything used to be so slow and expensive — both in terms time and money — so we could only have a limited number of novel experiences in a given period. Watching movies used to be a treat, and now we are numb to the latest blockbusters. Tiktok feels way more engaging for some people rather than them sitting through a 2-hour movie. Scrolling endlessly through statuses seems more interesting than reading a 300-page book. Who wants to read long blog posts, in-depth reporting and scientific journals when we can just quickly tap through instagram stories?
Now we can have millions of novel interactions in a day. Just like that guy who busted his lifetime’s novelty budget by abusing heroin, the availability of novelty in modern times makes nothing feel novel anymore.
Strangely it took a stranger’s drug abuse story for me to truly grasp why I’m so easily bored. I have always been easily bored even as a child, but now it is much worse. Back then I could entertain myself by going to the same store, now I have to be on a plane to somewhere in order to feel something.
I am not romanticising the past in a sense that I wish that we can go back to before times. It is just thought-provoking how I am mindlessly experiencing this world through a speed and convenience that I’ve never questioned seriously. If it is easy and there, why not? It is precisely because I loved tech that I’ve only wanted to see its promise and benefits, not how it is shrinking me.
This world is still multi-dimensional but some of us only experience a very narrow part of it now. Libraries still exist for now, and we can still visit record stores and book shops. It just feels like too much work: why go to a physical location when something is just instantly available online? I forget it is not just the end-product itself I am seeking, but also the sensory pleasures and surprises that come along with acquiring it. I have also forgotten what it was like to build relationships with my neighbourhood stores. Now in my current neighbourhood, there are hardly any independent stores. Because of the inherent economics in singapore, there are only chains. If there are any remaining, they are slowly dying out.
This is not a moralistic story about how speed and tech is bad. It is about being aware of the whole spectrum of experiences we can potentially have, the richness of our environments, people and their creativity. It is okay to choose speed and convenience, as long as we know what we are giving up, and how our souls and brains are responding to it.
Having undiagnosed adhd my brain is more susceptible to feeling a deadening numbness, a numbness that sinks me into depression. To me it is a matter of fact that this is how our brains function: we need novelty to survive, and yet we can’t have too much of it in order to continue being capable of feeling it.The compression of our experiences from a full-bodied sensory experience to a flat digital download has also caused a flattening of my soul and what I am capable of appreciating.
It is a curse to be unable to appreciate things in this world. It makes my existence a dread instead of being able to experience the richness that is available around me. I am always constantly seeking what I cannot have, because I’ve lost the capacity to savour what my 10 year old self would kill to experience and have.
Could we agree that ChatGPT can ingest everything that's in Wikipedia? I particularly want the images. I'd like to ask for a picture of Chuck Berry, and get something nice and be able to put him in a scene with the Wordle Kitty. That seems pretty harmless. And the news industry could hardly object, they didn't invent Chuck Berry, or own the copyright of the picture of him in Wikipedia.#
I'm searching for some common ground between the twitter-like systems, a basis for interop, a common API even. We had that for the blogging layer of this onion, something called the MetaWeblog API. All the popular blogging software supported it. And that meant you could write once and publish to many places. And you could write the script that did that in an afternoon or two. We started out with simple systems and the best of intentions. There's no technical barrier. And we could do it in a few weeks at most if there was a will to do it#
BTW the Wikipedia page for the MetaWeblog positions it as a replacement for the Blogger API, but it's an extension of it. You could use MetaWeblog to publish to Blogger sites, but it also supported features that Blogger didn't have, that were in our blogging software, Manila.#
I love about our local onigiri 🍙 shop. Not only are they larger and cheaper (with more goodies inside), they give you a hard boiled egg and a small candy to little kids. Local business ftw.
4.1km
30.4min
25.4m climbed
147.6avg bpm
If Trump is GOP anomaly, why are the denunciations from Republican leaders so soft and mealy-mouthed?
