Documenting Life

“To be clear, Zuckerberg started dressing differently in May, yet he’s still getting headlines about it in October. This has been a successful — and loathsome — PR campaign, one where the media has fallen for it hook, line and sinker, all while ignoring the environmental damage of Meta’s pursuit of generative AI and the fact that the company fucking sucks.

This is a problem of focus and accountability, and illustrative of a continual failure to catch a conman in the act”

https://www.wheresyoured.at/rockstars/

“Obviously, the meaning of symbols can change over time, maybe the best example being the swastika, which once was a symbol of “good fortune” and “friendship” but now … not so much. Certainly now the shaka seems to have only positive connotations. Even if there is a good chance it was invented by a bunch of kids making fun of an amputee. Just try not to think about that part”

https://www.loweringthebar.net/2024/10/hawaii-makes-shaka-its-official-gesture.html

“This trajectory, from simulating future capability on public roads to creating a fantasy world for fantasy cars to show off fantasy capabilities, should worry Tesla’s supporters. We can already see Musk retreating into a misinformation-fueled fantasy world every day on Twitter, and the jarring divisiveness of the Cybertruck suggests that his runaway ego is already making Tesla’s products less palatable. If Musk’s retreat into a self-soothing fantasy bubble is also making his hype game less effective, and the 8% drop in Tesla’s stock price suggests that it is, his most important skill set is on the line”

https://niedermeyer.io/2024/10/11/the-retreat-to-muskworld/

“So then what of the next few months? Activity combats anxiety. Those four movie ideas I’ve been excited about? Pick one and write it, then another, and another. The TV show I was thinking of pitching? Sit down and write the pilot (we’re told no one buys TV specs any more, this, like all the “rules” of Hollywood, is nonsense). 

Keep talking to people. The execs are at their desks with their heads in their hands. Maybe they can’t buy right now, but they can still talk. Be the light, be the energy, be the person who isn’t opining the state of the industry but instead seems to have a ton of ideas and enthusiasm. That person is their first call when the money tap gets turned back on”

https://developmenthell.substack.com/p/where-im-at-october-2024

“None of this is to fault Skinner, who consistently namechecked his roots whilst booking artists like Kano, Donae’o and Tinchy Stryder for features and remixes instead of the big white house names his label preferred. (Skinner has also remained heavily involved in the production, management and release of non-white British hip hop artists throughout his career.) But what it does underline is that who did and who did not get to go overground during the early 00s was sharply political”

https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/the-streets-a-grand-dont-come-for-free-review/

“The past decade has ushered in cataclysmic shifts that have upended the fashion industry and changed the way we shop. E-commerce made designer fashion globally accessible, while fast fashion grew into a billion-dollar business, much of which is built on designer dupes at a fraction of the price. Social media disrupted traditional advertising’s influence and reach. Fashion influencers speak directly to consumers and suck up the robust advertising budgets that once funded the pages of Vogue or GQ. This paradigm shift leaves mass market brands like Roots in a tricky spot. If they go too fashion, they risk alienating loyal customers. If they play it too safe, they risk irrelevance”

https://thewalrus.ca/roots-sexy/

“Klein’s research concentrated quite a lot on fire chiefs and the decisions that they made on when to bring a crew out of a building. This is an unusual case – it’s a high-stakes decision that needs to be made under time pressure, by a single individual. It turned out that one of the most important inputs to that decision was whether the floor of the building was reported by experienced firefighters to be “spongy”

https://backofmind.substack.com/p/spongy-floors

“The two games were a disappointment to EA, the studios that made them were closed, and Pick was shunted to another internal studio instead. A new studio EA had bought to embrace the zeitgeist of the time: Facebook games. Specifically, The Sims Social Facebook game. Pick didn’t care for it at all. “I hated every minute of it,” he says. All day long he’d stare at huge leaderboards showing which in-game pieces of furniture were making the most money. “I felt sick to my stomach working there,” he says. So he left.

This, really, is where the trail on Simon Pick starts to go cold, because it’s the point he turns away from the games industry”

https://www.eurogamer.net/from-daredevil-dennis-to-die-hard-trilogy-simon-pick-has-a-hell-of-a-tale-to-tell

“But frankly, none of it has ever remotely interested me, and not out of an indifference to science or sporting morality but because to reduce Pogacar to a soup of numbers and chemicals is really the narrowest and most boring way of appreciating him; the most boring way of appreciating sport”

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/oct/01/tadej-pogacar-has-delivered-an-alternative-reality-for-the-true-believers

“That’s another dimension of the problem. Some proportion of people who a decade or two ago might have written a substantial book are now instead dabbling in podcasts, newsletters, or YouTube channels. Some of them find the work as satisfying as writing—the feedback is instantaneous—although it’s equally unremunerative. The new platforms are as susceptible to blockbuster economics as the publishing world. They, too, lack a middle class”

https://shush.substack.com/p/the-us-has-a-nonfiction-crisis