Tagged “culture”

Now not going to therapy is a red flag. Seeking support from friends and family is exploiting their “emotional labour”. And men are shamed for preferring to chat to their mates about their problems than pay a stranger

At some point the backyard became [Australia's] largest unit of measurement

good line

Decoding scrolls from Pompeii

we can't compete with AI boyfriends either. Or AI friends:

Soon, these "fake people" won't just be indistinguishable from real people, they’ll be better than real people - because they’ll be whatever you want them to be.

The agreeableness thing I have seen come up a few times recently. We probably prefer it, so I assume training will be biased toward it. There are times you don't want the computer to argue with you, but hyper-agreeable friends does not bode well for echo chambers.

clever if true

from an abandoned 1950s musical which later became the basis for Monty Norman's James Bond Theme

a place to go that isn't home or work

Or as Grandi puts it, “Their ‘tradition’ was trying not to starve.”

Everyone wants to date someone impressive, but focusing on impressiveness in dating is perfectly useless

Subtitle "How American Toymakers Sold You Your Childhood".

but you don't actually get to fuck broad social approval. you get to fuck some particular person they alone want to fuck you for some specific special reason

incredible project, that has inspired me to try unbinding a book

Nice writing. Interesting little random snippet on commercials over the decades

People seem to have been worse at interviewing in the fifties, but maybe they just had different sensibilities.> Or rather, they must have had different sensibilities, but did these just involve lower standards, or would a fifties viewer be reading things from the exchange and appreciating things about it that I am blind to? This kind of mystery seems like a thing to keep in mind in general.
It also seems quite hard to answer these questions.

Wild on-device makeup/face-shape filters on TikTok

False shrines reduce littering

Good things to emulate in there.

Be willing to be bad at things, ask lots of questions (even if they seem obvious), trying hard at things (can mean failing lots).

When choice is unlimited, taste is everything.

too many sexless smooth superhero movies

what a time to be alive

Can we reduce resource use and emissions more rapidly than increases caused by growing affluence? History does not think so.

from thread on Mr Beast

the downsides of places optimising for tourism and photography, rather than for being lived in. The problem of everyone wanting a particular special experience.

Not everything needs to be part of your 2-party political melodrama

The continuing value of the little solar system model.

Little planets are easier to comprehend than a probalistic cloud of electrons

Great movie. The music, the androids, the city, the aesthetic.

On length and style and cycles and narrative.
If you need to know anything about a piece before hearing he (he thinks not).
On the high/low division people make about pop music being silly.
Example of Vespertine by Björk, music that can exist in many different contexts and not seem out of place.

Had kinda sensed this trend, though some wild stats in there. There was also the turn to comfort music early in the pandemic.

old songs now represent 70% of the US music market.

The new music market is actually shrinking. All the growth in the market is coming from old songs.

the 200 most popular tracks now account for less than 5% of total streams. It was twice that rate just three years ago

Never before in history have new tracks attained hit status while generating so little cultural impact.

Have often wondered what the endpoint of this is. Or how much in impacted/unfluenced by sampling.

Some discussions and interviews on justice by twitter-mob.

By contrast, the modern online public sphere, a place of rapid conclusions, rigid ideological prisms, and arguments of 280 characters, favors neither nuance nor ambiguity. Yet the values of that online sphere have come to dominate many American cultural institutions: universities, newspapers, foundations, museums. Heeding public demands for rapid retribution, they sometimes impose the equivalent of lifetime scarlet letters on people who have not been accused of anything remotely resembling a crime. Instead of courts, they use secretive bureaucracies. Instead of hearing evidence and witnesses, they make judgments behind closed doors.

Added to watchlist

Always interesting, and very clever. Talks about upcoming technology (real and expected), cultural and institutional changes, government as buyer to incentivise development, a bunch on companies and employees.

From Vox explainer of Ready Player One

A look at the music industry. You can't make money from album sales, or from touring. Either have to do it as a hobby or get into the merchandice game.