Category: Me Myself&I

“> I have 8+ hours a day screentime on my iPhone.

For a long time I thought that my constant internet use was a symptom of my disinterest in other things, but more recently I’ve come to realize that it is, in fact, the sole cause of said disinterest. The quick dopamine hits you get on the internet have subconsciously convinced your brain that the internet is what matters, and that everything else (i.e. your life) is simply a distraction.

Don’t take my word for it. You can test this hypothesis in ~2 hours. Hide and/or turn off all of your electronics, and wait. You’ll sit on the couch, you’ll eat a snack, you’ll find that your phone has magically appeared in your hand (how?!?), but just put it back down. As you try to go 2 hours without any passive entertainment, and I can almost guarantee that you’ll discover that your mind will begin to show interest in things like hobbies/reading. If you can’t get online, a book sounds pretty nice.

There’s the rub–if getting online is an option, it’s always the best option. The only way to do other stuff is to carve out time where getting online (or, for me, passive entertainment of any kind) is not an option.

Fun fact: If you can forego passive entertainment for the week, you will see all of that junk for what it really is, to your horror and eternal benefit.”

It’s funny how much we try to convince ourselves that we are not totally addicted to the quick rush of excitement from the internet. And that we can’t even see that the only solution is to simply put it away. Which is really hard to do with a phone, because we lie to ourselves that we need it in our hands or close by, “just in case”.

I’m still off Twitter. I’m scared as hell to go look at it and feel the horror this comment is talking about. I do feel the benefit though.

“My theory is that our current collective obsession with trends is a response to the massive unpredictability of technology, finance, and health over the past two years, and the fact that the world is so different from what it used to look like.”

On the year of garbage internet trends.

“Netflix, YouTube, Spotify, Facebook and many other popular sites operate on similar feedback loops that push more of whatever is being noticed,”

My theory is that the current ultra heavy centralization of computing —two platforms, five apps— and massive usage of algorithms have pushed people to see and tap on the same things more and more.

Which means that there’s less and less serendipity. Less obscure stuff popping out and floating for a while. It goes from 0 to 1 million in a couple days now. Rinse. Repeat with a new video, a new person.

And I think, it exhausts all of us. Because meaning disappears and we still need that mf.

“Listening to audiobooks at 3x speed is born out of a flawed model of learning — and it’s the same one that underpins our modern education system. The assumption is that people can acquire knowledge as if it’s a substance they can pour into their minds.”

Interesting essay on learning.

“The meaningful parts of a culture, like books, only show up when you give them time. They hide parts of their personality and only reveal themselves once you stop, slow down, and commit to them for a little while.”

You have to slow down to appreciate context and truly absorb new knowledge.

This is why you should always try food you previously didn’t like again. Take your time, and try again. Maybe the context this time will make you understand this taste.

And then you might even like it.

“Let’s start with how you don’t learn to think. A study by a team of researchers at Stanford came out a couple of months ago. The investigators wanted to figure out how today’s college students were able to multitask so much more effectively than adults. How do they manage to do it, the researchers asked? The answer, they discovered—and this is by no means what they expected—is that they don’t. The enhanced cognitive abilities the investigators expected to find, the mental faculties that enable people to multitask effectively, were simply not there. In other words, people do not multitask effectively. And here’s the really surprising finding: the more people multitask, the worse they are, not just at other mental abilities, but at multitasking itself.”

On how to think better.

Human beings born in 2000 are as stupid/intelligent as the ones born in 1942 or 1980.

The idea that in a few generations, the human brain would be SO much better at cognitive tasks, is a bit laughable if you understand evolution (hint: it takes thousands of years for things to actually change in flesh and then abilities).

Human beings don’t multitask. We serialize at high speed, giving the impression that we are multitasking. But we all know that we’re not. We’re quickly rotating tasks and the faster we do it, the worst we do said tasks.

The pervasiveness of tech and the cyberpunk “culture” always makes it like since broadband internet and apps, we are so much smarter. But we’re not. We still have the same number of synapses and same brain weight as people in the 1600s.

We just play more now.

Due to hardware failure, things being spread out across three devices and decidedly capricious operating systems, I’m stuck not making progress at all on music stuff. Very frustrating.

On the other hand I keep practicing instruments.

Dreaming of running a VM with audio stuff and never ever having to update it.

It’s so hard to write about blackness. To make it productive. To make it make sense, against the backdrop that is the world.

The show Insecure ended. It feels like a big L for black people, no matter what.

I wouldn’t have minded it becoming The Young and the Restless of the 2020s and beyond. 41 seasons. 12,000 episodes. Issa’s granddaughter becoming mayor of LA or some uplifting stuff like that.

(Jack Davidson photo)

The average wealth for black people is America is ten to a hundred times smaller than for white people. (source, page 5)

White people’s average wealth is not twice as big. Nor five times bigger. It is now one or two orders of magnitude bigger.

It is important to keep this in mind, whenever we compare behaviors of people from both groups.

Not important. Fundamental. Absolutely crucial.

It explains everything. In black communities: the constant pain. The hustling. The hardening. The dilettantism. The fracturing. The praise and respect for anyone making it big, no matter how the making it big happened.

And that one to two order of magnitude difference is pre-pandemic. It probably, almost a 100% sure didn’t get better. The gap is accelerating.

On the black end side of life, in that context, we can mostly hope for the best. It definitely shouldn’t be that way.

When a black citizen dies in the hand of random police unfairness, we hope that it will change policies. When a black celebrity dies of OD, I hope –as in, it would make a lot of sense- that we legalize all drugs so that overdoses are extremely rare.

But nothing happens. Black pain used to propel society into a better society. It hasn’t in the past 30 years.

How can we not legalize all drugs when some people can do them and be here –Charlie Sheen- and others –Shock G-, doing just the same, are not. I’ve never done cocaine but I want it to be legal so that I don’t lose another brother to fentanyl. It is exhausting and so disappointing to see a world of adults being completely unable to change things for the best. Acting blind. BLM not.

Police budgets after millions of people protesting the streets for weeks in 2020, and of course years of more than questionable body camera footage, have never lost their fat. Budgets basically didn’t change and stayed at phenomenal ranges.

This is why we mourn to no end when a successful black person dies early, no matter the cause of death. Nipsey, Chadwick, Virgil. And so many more. Those abruptly cut trajectories hurt so much because they would be the proof in the pudding. And just like that, they’re gone. Unnecessary Black death becomes black disappearance; it is what it is, it just happens, like the weather. At this point it is almost understood that if you are a successful black man today, you won’t live to experience grey blackness. Embedded ephemerality.

Sometimes I’m scared the stress and anxiety I have lived through my particular black life will get me before I make it completely. That damn chip on the shoulder black people in America and most of the world are born with.

This entire situation transforms black communities into dry, inflammable wood. Splintering, snapping. Acute, burning down in any way you can think of, at the first spark.

“The Dogecoin bull run in 2021 and recent airdrop of $SOS tokens by a third party to OpenSea users shows that the only scarce resource in crypto is attention”

My face reading it the first time:

My face reading it the second time:

Etc.

I hope the scamming and scalping and scheming stop soon in tech. This is waste.

Started watching it.

First 30 seconds I was already out (too many rules).

First episode I was wondering why (so much violence).

Fourth episode, I’m not getting it really. This shit is slow as hell.

Episode five. I’m watching this thinking about what funny things could happen; when they walk in the Escher-esque stairs, I imagine the spoof of getting lost while the ominous music abruptly stops. “I thought it was this way; is your gps on?”.

I imagine SNL did it, didn’t they. (after looking up, no, they didn’t)

Episode six. Hold on, this cop can Metal Gear Solid his way in and out of anywhere ala Rambo/ninja now? Isn’t it supposed to be super high tech with tracking and stuff?

I’m on seven. Mmh, ham-fisted stuff left and right. SOS, I’m bored as hell trying to make sense of this and why should I entertain myself with anxiety on camera for hours? Societal anxiety and depression triggered by blatant financial unfairness. Mmh. I wonder where I’ve seen that before because it’s really familiar..

I don’t really get the editing. More interminable than a long cat.

The end becomes ultra obvious quite rapidly in the last two episodes.

This definitely should have been a movie (as it was supposed to).

I can’t believe that it only came out in September. I would have bet my left hand that it did come out in like, May. Virality and the pandemic are blurring everything.

I need to write about ultra violence and brutality as aesthetic.