music inspired by, and directly sampling, the magnificent sounds of the Mandinka people, recorded during a recent trip to Gambia.
music inspired by, and directly sampling, the magnificent sounds of the Mandinka people, recorded during a recent trip to Gambia.
[Answering questions about my book can mean: "short sound bites", "short anecdotes", "long considered reflections", or "long comprehensive explorations". I leave "pores" or pauses in my response to let the listener interject, hint at continuation, or change topics, and then gauge how deep to go based on that feedback.]
[Usage patterns show speakers using "uh" before shorter pauses of less than a second and "um" to indicate that a longer pause is ahead.]
[The longer you analyze stocks, the more markets have time to change. Fashion seasons also change while you shop; most] bad fashion is simply good fashion at the wrong time]
[Bryan Ferneyhough deliberately composes unperformable music to force interpreters to break out of simple reproduction and instead involve themselves as co-creators of site-specific performances (that can't be repeated).]
[Being spontaneous means keeping up with the situation, but you can't be sensitive if it changes while you're making sense of it.]
posted to Blog
Sometimes the author says it better, sometimes I can, but the focus is on what's meaningful for me.
posted to Strolling
everything makes everything possible
Dots connected looking back are also seeds for future moments that can't be predicted.
ive been "promoting" things on the internet for 15 years now! here's my top tips
- show yourself having fun
- many consistent repeated small launches is better than one big launch
- someone needs to see something like nine times before it sticks
- reward people for following along with everything. you can never go too far with in-jokes
- let people feel part of something.
- never show off. never try to be cool
- be like a monster in a horror film - never show the whole thing. make it seem like there's more to discover by clicking through
- create drama and arguments by being fearless and stupid
- make it clear you dont need anyone - you're having fun on your own. its more infectious that way
- show how you feel. feelings are more powerful than information
- its a lot like rolling the dice. to go viral once, roll a thousand dice
"Inevitable" often means "would love to do that without your consent".
[Aspiring tech overlords seek to remove people's ability to consent.]
[Destabilizing the developing world through stealing resources and destructive wars is a cause for mass displacement and migration. The spoils are used to build western tech infrastructure and mass surveillance is proposed as a solution to people's fears of scary migrants walking around.]
[The ruling class wants you to believe you shouldn't have a say in how your society's resources are used to shape the future of your society; it's necessary to convince you because it's actually not inevitable.]
[Computers may be one of the first tools to preceed their tasks: first build it, then figure out what to do with it.]
"There is no shallow end," a philosophy professor told me. Because any objection whatsoever, from any angle, can fell a theory, you can't carve out ace of philosophical territory, master it in isolation, and move on to the next.
anyone who says that "philosophy is useless" is already philosophizing, building up an intellectual argument to make a point that is important to them, and therefore defeating their own statement in the very breath of uttering it.
You question the assumptions of physics and you end up in metaphysics—a branch of philosophy. You question the assumptions of history and you end up in epistemology—a branch of philosophy. You try to take any other discipline out at the foundations and you end up in philosophy; you try to take philosophy out at the foundations and you only end up in meta-philosophy: even deeper in than when you started.
Universal basic income is not a reward for idleness; it is recognition that productivity gains belong to society, not just to capital.
A society that automates its way to prosperity while abandoning its workers has not progressed at all.
Technology advocacy without social advocacy is just greed with better tooling.
most daily choices are reversible, and because life presents an endless stream of future opportunities, spending excessive time and energy on minor decisions is inefficient and puts you at the end of the lunchtime rush of orders put into the kitchen.
In 1940, there were forty-two workers per retiree, but that number has fallen to three to one, meaning that there are not nearly enough workers to support Social Security beneficiaries.
Margaret Atwood on American Myths and Authoritarianism
[In a material world, being poor goes beyond what you have to include being undervalued and therefore treated as negligible. The more equal people are in terms of what they have, the happier they will be.]
Scott Galloway: We're Raising The Most Unhappy Generation In History! Hard Work Doesn't Build Wealth
[Information asymmetry benefits whoever has symmetry and knows the information. Bosses know how much everyone is getting paid but may discourage talking about salaries to avoid someone finding out their colleague makes 30% more for the same work.]
[Everyone you're ashamed to ask for fear of rejection will be dead. Willingness to take uncomfortable risks and endure rejection opens yourself up to outsized returns. Get out a spoon and eat shit.]
[Think of the emotions you want them to feel and practice it every day in your content storytelling.]
the key to capturing clicks is convincing people that you have the answers to their questions—that you hold the proverbial key to all the solutions. If you can over-complicate simple things loudly, people will pay attention.
The Most Valuable Commodity in the World is Friction
we have a world where friction gets automated out of experiences, aestheticized in curated lifestyles, and dumped onto underfunded infrastructure and overworked labor. The effort doesn't disappear; it just moves.
The economic signal (the diploma) still circulates as if the underlying work has occurred. But the work isn't there. We've just shifted the friction offscreen, and have outsourced it to a chatbot and let the system pretend nothing's changed. So at this moment, we are credentialing fluency with tools that do the thinking for you.
friction has become a class experience. Wealth has always helped smooth over bumps - but when the physical world is such a mess and the digital world is so easy, it's simple to curate the digital into the physical if you have money.
The American economy has been running a decades-long experiment in removing friction, both through technological advancement and through financial engineering that pushes costs into the future. The resulting prosperity has been very real, but it's been built on the proverbial kicking the can down the road.
When Mark Zuckerberg's Meta builds frictionless social interfaces, that cognitive smoothness is subsidized by somewhere, somehow, right? The same economy that produces simulated friends for the lonely American also produces understaffed air traffic control towers. The same investor class that funds "never think alone" startups also lobbies against infrastructure spending, or perhaps, housing.
Amazon's one-click ordering creates a seamless customer experience by offloading friction onto warehouse workers and delivery drivers.
There's nothing worse than being right and everyone agreeing with you. There's no way to make any cash.
Tagged: trading.
Compliance is the New American Dream
a world built on compliance might function for a while. But it will never lead. And right now, we really need people who can lead.
think, move, listen, cook, hydrate, breathe, music, people, play – every day
For the interview with Goldman I turned up in my hoodie and trainers and I told them that I definitely didn't want the job. They put me through to the second round after that.
Stocks never go down. Stocks only go up. When the economy is good stocks go up, and when the economy is shit, they print so much money stocks go up even more. Same with fucking houses. Everything goes up. The asset holders never lose.
Tagged: trading.
You are NOT right if you stand a man on his head JUST to get attention. You ARE right if you have him on his head to show how your product keeps things from falling out of his pockets.