Slow social media

https://herman.bearblog.dev/slow-social-media/

However, the underlying concept of social media is something I resonate with: Stay connected with the people you care about.

It's just that the current form of social media is bastardised, and not social at all. Instead of improving relationships and fostering connection, they're advertisement-funded content mills which are explicitly designed and continually refined to keep you engaged, lonely, and unhappy. And once TikTok figured out that short-form video with a recommendation engine is digital crack, all other social media platforms quickly sprang into action to copy their secret sauce.

Meta basically turned Instagram and Facebook from 'connecting with friends' into 'doom-scrolling random content'. Even Pinterest is starting to look like TikTok! They followed user engagement, but not the underlying preferences of their users. I posit that any for-profit social media will eventually degrade into recommendation media over time.

I don't think most people using these platforms understand that they are the product. Instagram isn't built for you. It's built for marketers. It's built for celebrities to capitalise on their audiences. It's built for politicians and their cronies to sway sentiment. It's built to be as addictive as possible, and to capitalise on your insecurity and uncomfortability. 

DC Track Maps

https://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/docs/DC_TrackMap.pdf?_t=1716910953

https://ggwash.org/images/posts/201309-091115.gif

Wheel of Emotions

https://mentallyagile.com/blog/2020/3/24/wheel-of-emotions

There are many emotion wheels out there, but they all center around six primary emotions:

• Fear

• Anger

• Sadness

• Love

• Joy

• Surprise

One might feel love, and that is a permissible answer, but one could also feel something more specific in that emotion. A conversation with a trusted friend might have someone feeling compassionate or peaceful. The point was to zero in on how we were feeling and give a true answer

Disney and the Decline of America’s Middle Class

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/opinion/disney-world-economy-middle-class-rich.html

For most of the park’s history, Disney was priced to welcome people across the income spectrum, embracing the motto “Everyone is a V.I.P.” In doing so, it created a shared American culture by providing the same experience to every guest. The family that pulled up in a new Cadillac stood in the same lines, ate the same food and rode the same rides as the family that arrived in a used Chevy. Back then, America’s large and thriving middle class was the focus of most companies’ efforts and firmly in the driver’s seat.

That middle class has so eroded in size and in purchasing power — and the wealth of our top earners has so exploded — that America’s most important market today is its affluent. As more companies tailor their offerings to the top, the experiences we once shared are increasingly differentiated by how much we have.

Data is part of what’s driving this shift. The rise of the internet, the algorithm, the smartphone and now artificial intelligence are giving corporations the tools to target the fast-growing masses of high-net-worth Americans with increasing ease. As a management consultant, I’ve worked with dozens of companies making this very transition. Many of our biggest private institutions are now focused on selling the privileged a markedly better experience, leaving everyone else to either give up — or fight to keep up.

Why Good Ideas Die Quietly and Bad Ideas Go Viral

https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/why-good-ideas-die-quietly-and-bad-ideas-go-viral

The internet—it seemed like such a good idea at the time. Under conditions of informational poverty, our ancestors had no choice but to operate on a need-to-know basis. The absence of pertinent, reliable, and commonly held facts was at first a matter of mere logistics—the stable storage and orderly transfer of knowledge was costly and troublesome, and entropy was free—but, over time, the techniques of civilization afforded us better control over the collection and transmission of data. Vast triage structures evolved to determine who got to learn what, when: medieval guilds, say, or network news reports. These systems were supposed to function in everybody’s best interests. We were finite brutes of fragile competence, and none of us could confront the abyss of unmitigated complexity alone. Beyond a certain point, however, we couldn’t help but perceive these increasingly centralized arrangements as insulting, and even conspiratorial. We were grownups, and, as such, we could be trusted to handle an unadulterated marketplace of ideas. The logic of the internet was simple: first, fire all of the managers; then, sort things out for ourselves. In the time since, one of the few unambiguously good things to have emerged from this experiment is an entire genre of attempts to explain why it mostly hasn’t worked out.

Your Review: Dating Men In The Bay Area

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-dating-men-in-the-bay

There’s a strange creed within much of polite society that insists men don’t need to be reminded of their worth, because they are privileged. In fact, some insist that reminding men of their worth might even make the privilege disparity worse.

This mentality is madness. There’s a raging epidemic of men who question their worth, and it’s leading to them spiraling into lostness and taking their own lives. It’s also causing an alarming uptick in men who despise women and polite society, believing that these people don’t believe they’re worth anything at all.

Men need to know that we care. They need to know that they’re worthy of respect, love, and kindness. The only way this can happen is if we loudly discuss the benefits and beauty that men bring to society.

No one should ever feel ashamed or unworthy because of an inherent trait. Boys should be just as proud of their gender as girls are, and we can accomplish this by celebrating the beauties of both identities.

Officer, suspect dead after shooting near Emory, CDC campus

https://www.decaturish.com/public_safety/active-shooter-reported-at-emory-campus-updates-details/article_1e631ec0-b30b-44f7-bc49-35901c2ef8ae.html

A DeKalb County Police officer died in the incident and the suspect also died. DeKalb officials have identified the officer as David Rose. CEO Lorraine Cochran-Johnson said Rose, 33, had wife and two children. They were expecting a third child, she said.

“Today is a very dark day in DeKalb County,” Cochran-Johnson said.

Rose started with DeKalb County Police in September 2024 and worked at the North Central Precinct in Tucker.

“He was committed to serving the community,” Interim Police Chief Greg Padrick said. “At this time we’re asking for the community’s prayers for his family, his friends, his loved ones and the entire DeKalb County Police Department family.”