Musk's misinformation campaign helps block Congress' spending deal.
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Echolocation
I can’t recall where I first intersected with Alex Tomlinson’s work, but I’m utterly enchanted with Hear to There, a website of his that uses community-sourced sound bites to plot paths around the globe in sound. The recordings are generally ambient, rather than the narrated Rambles I record with vague regularity, but they evoke such a sense of place it still feels like you’re in dialogue with a character.
There are so many exquisite tiny projects like this that enjoy fireworks of activity when they launch and then end up drifting through the web in quieter ways. (I’m thinking of Meatspace, among others.) Part of me feels sad that the hype machine burns out so quickly, other parts are happy that these small-scale experiments go to ground—just waiting for the next unwary traveler to stumble into their midst.
(I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Alex is also a designer of bird-themed items. His illustration stuff is absolutely gorgeous, and I was lucky enough to receive one of his Vexillowlogy patches in the mail this year. He’s got a shop, if you’re a bird nerd like me and flush with Christmas cash.)
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Investing – Essays – Yield Giving
I love words, and this year this one has been on my mind a lot. It’s another one that seems to have undergone a kind of semantic shriveling.
On the list of its big, beautiful, original definitions? To devote resources for a useful purpose. To endow with rights. To clothe.
Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott is an inspiration. What she’s doing with her billions, and how she’s doing it, is a fascinating model that others who desire to give their billions away should consider following.
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$44 billion to buy Twitter looks like the biggest bargain ever. From that seat he controls the spending of Congress. The budget deal he just killed would have spent hundreds of billions.
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The period of left-wing illiberalism that began about a decade ago seems to have drawn to a close. The final cause of death was the reelection of Donald Trump.
Looking again
Liked Finisher (Robin Sloan)
Yes: and everything has always been a cult.
Yes: and everything has always been a cult.
I like to read a lot of different writers because there’s so much cOnTeNt out there it’s easy to miss the good stuff; if multiple people are pointing to a piece it’s probably worth reading.
And sometimes, writers will recontextualize something I did read: “look again.” Ah, you’re right, I didn’t catch that on the first pass.
Robin Sloan hones in on the cultishness of culture:
The error is assuming cult membership must be exclusive. All of us, preoccupied by media in all its forms, we are members of many cults — dozens, hundreds — with densely overlapping memberships.
I’d read the One Thing newsletter referenced, and kind of wasn’t sure if it was satire or criticism or cynicism or what and brushed it out of my mind. So, it’s fun to see what it sparked for someone else. (I also initially passed on the Max Read essay, thinking it was my type of brain bait, but it sounds worth reading.)
