be here, do less, have fun
sf
Joined October 2021
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reasons to write / start a blog:
- to make friends on the internet
- to articulate your cloudy thoughts
- to humble yourself upon realizing those cloudy thoughts aren't as coherent as they initially seemed
- because nobody will read it so you get to keep a digital journal documenting various stages of your life
- so some people will read it and fulfill your lifelong ambition of becoming a niche internet microinfluencer
- to regurgitate all the wisdom of the people you admire, but in your own slightly-worse-but-unique flavor and thus master the craft of "stealing like an artist"
- for more digital dopamine!
- because you went down a rabbit-hole of reading articles and essays titled "why you should start a blog right now," "why everyone should start a blog," "why you should write," etc etc etc, and they seemed convincing
- because you've been telling yourself you're going to start writing seriously for the past ~4-6 years and still haven't really published much anything of substance, and time is finite, and not to be dramatic but you're going to die so might as well give it a shot
- because you're lonely, bored, and have nothing better to do
- why not?
also:
- because you've never had an original thought, nor an original experience, but you do carry a particular constellation of thoughts and experiences that have never before been combined in that specific way and therefore your worldview is perhaps worth inhabiting for some particular individual(s) who feel similarly out-of-place in the world, and in that sense it's almost a duty to share your consciousness in case something you write resonates in just the right way with just the right person such that it's what they needed to become the exact version of themself that otherwise felt totally inaccessible or inappropriate given their life context (but not "duty" in a moralizing way in which you are Bad if you don't do it but like it would indeed be objectively Better for the world if you did... or at least put some form of art/expression out in whatever form or medium most resonates with your soul...)
haruki murakami wrote that all of his novels were written for an "imaginary reader," some mental amalgamation of the kind of person that would be interested in his ideas and stories. he mentioned it was crucial that he wrote to One Reader rather than an imaginary audience broadly
> You are not competing against the world. You're only competing against a very very small subset of the population.
Don't typically share Nick videos. Here he's stating something that's absolutely true.
Your competition is not all people.... in any domain. Most people - the overwhelming majority of people - are not real competition. They don't work, they don't consistently show up, they don't dedicate themselves to actually learning their craft, and they aren't prepared to do anything without rewards for a very long time.
You are not competing against the world. You're only competing against a very very small subset of the population. And fortunately, there are so many different interests in the world there's not that much competition in any domain.
To my indie devs looking to build the 1,000,000th ai-marketing-whatever-scheduler... It is not a dumb idea. Because you likely have 500,000,000 potential customers and there are only 100 competitors that are actually placed to get any of those. And believe me. Breaking in that 100 will earn you more money than you ever set out to make.
Be consistent. Work hard. Show up every day regardless of how you feel. LEARN! ACTUALLY COMMIT TO LEARNING.
((I should define for you what learning means.... it's not reading, listening or watching information. That's not learning. Learning is when new information CHANGES your FUTURE behaviours. **That is learning.** How many people that you know ACTUALLY learn by this definition?))
Anyways, enough of a ramble.
Everyone's shit. You should assume 99% of the people that say they're really hungry and are going to do a thing aren't really trying. There is no competition. Just go out there and win and never be put of by fear of "competition".
it's not just brands
the coolest ppl i know are walking contradictions. bodybuilders who write poetry, strippers who r neck deep into philosophy, giganerds who've done every drug you can name + more, spiritual chads who run 8fig startups. duality is attractive; u can have it all
good brands exist at the intersection of contradictions their audience feels caught between
ex:
- stripe: rigorous and romantic
- patagonia: chill and ambitious
- linear: obsessive and serene
- gohar world: surrealist and functional
- nike: rebellious and disciplined
good brands do not resolve that tension: instead, they make it feel possible to be both. that’s what make them resonate on some deep somatic level
and the cult brands go beyond relatability and into some form of new identity creation
recently heard someone mention how kanye is popular because his music is all about "me myself and i"
made me realize why i was so into hip hop in general in high school - needed something to continuously point back to my ego when it was in such a fragile state
still goated tbh
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a few weeks ago i had a dream that made me realize why i hate the therapist-coded notion that "you're not broken; stop treating yourself as something that needs to be fixed"
basically in the dream, i was driving a car whose tired were shredded and run into the ground
i felt this sense of hopelessness about fixing the car, because even the rims themselves were severely damaged
but upon waking i realized that the car itself was not fundamentally broken; i just had to do a bit more repair work on it that i had expected/knew how to do
i *know* that "you're not broken" is supposed to mean that you're not inherently broken, but when i'm suffering and unhappy and someone says that to me, it feels disempowering and invalidating-- like what do you mean there's nothing to fix? if there's nothing to fix then is life just supposed to be this shitty?
whereas the truth is closer to this dream-image of the damaged car. yes, there are things that need fixing. and yet the core of who you are remains undamaged. AND... the car ain't going anywhere until you fix it.
my favorite variation of this (stumbled upon accidentally) has been charging my phone with a 3-inch cable.
makes it a lot harder to use while charging, and since i have an iphone 13 mini i have to charge once or twice/day
then i just end up doing other stuff
if i learned anything from The Social Reckoning it’s that modern social media algorithms bias shares *at least* an OOM higher than any other engagement metric
super easy to bot / bandwagon comments but the best performing content is always the most shared
i think @thelastpsych blog struck such a chord with people (and continues to) because it speaks to the disowned shadow in a direct way that nobody else dared (or yet dares) to with ruthless honesty
one thing i find fascinating upon rewatching YCSE is that it's entirely plausible that Holmes doesn't explicitly *lie* about a single thing in the film.
in the beach patio scene, when Nathan grills her on whether she's ever lied, she defines lying as "intentionally saying something that is untrue."
paired with the linguistic sleight of hand she stands by wrt the "this device CAN...", her (ostensible) confusion around the "Who's on first" bit, and her (alleged) ignorance of the Billy/A24 deal... it's not out of the realm of possibility to say that she's carefully constructed her reality (and/or memory; assuming she has lingering trauma) to only include True information that supports her narrative/case
the rest is up to Billy and whoever the fuck else wants to pick up the pieces, and you can see her lean on Billy to (messily) defend her, continually keeping her hands clean. she slips through the interrogations like sand
something i'm thinking a lot about wrt this film is Malcom Gladwell's book "Talking To Strangers"
the book is basically about how nobody is any good at reading other people. in fact we're actively bad at it; monkeys and coin tosses are more accurate lie detectors than humans...
another thing i can't help but think about is the breakdown of the dualities of manipulator/manipulated, victim/perpetrator -- i'm highly dubious of anyone who left the film with a clear conclusion on "what happened," who's in the right or wrong, and characters' intentions/motivations/etc
sure we can put people on a scale from most to least evil but i think that's the least interesting part of the film
BOTH of my theories about you can see everything I feel confident in saying I was right about and I desperately need to talk about them
SPOILERTOWN COMMENTS BELOW DON'T READ WITHOUT SEEING IT
***
ethics in journalism is a huge thing here obviously but I think the fact that they showed that it happened is important. the other thing is that they included the bit at the end when Amanda asked Nathan *that* question. if they hadn't included it and we were left thinking "hey they should have addressed that somehow" I think it would have looked really bad. and I think it's really bad A24 agreed what they agreed to. but the fact that they showed what they agreed to made it transparent, so ???? idk I think that was the right thing to do with the decision they made. I don't like the concept of this kind of thing but if they had tried to keep that hushed, it would have been so scummy. visibly including it was the right move.
my two theories were: this doc is going to portray her as innocent somehow, which I think they sortof achieved, or at least tried to introduce a large doubt about her guilt. personally I think this was all clearly strategized from her and her husband's end. yes the man is highly controlling and manipulative, but not for one second do I believe she didn't know all the workings about finances, and not for one second do I buy "oh her brain just works differently." my other theory is that nathan falls in love with her or at least develops feelings for her. I don't know if he'd say that himself, but by the end of it it was clear that he did indeed care about her in a way that I suspect yes, he was trying to protect her just a little bit somehow.
wild wild doc. wish I could watch all three hours of it for the first time over right now. unbelievable shit. I'd let this man hold a loaded gun to my head and trust him not to pull the trigger
another detail that's just hitting me after rewatching:
the words "see" & "everything" are cut off in the movie poster. they (the bottoms of the words "see" & "everything") are also cut off in the title frame of the film. obv way more to unpack but love the attention to detail
what surprised me most about this scene was that Billy jumped in and made himself look extra bad even though the laser chemist guy (Joe?) seemed like he was defending the intention of Theranos' vision
using Elon to exemplify hyperstition and the actual rapid development of EV...
