Dave Winer thinks newspapers need democracy and the First Amendment rights to survive. But that is only if you see e.g. The New York Times as something more than a logo and a list of paying subscribers. Правда is still running under the same banner, long after everything it stood for disappeared.
Today’s quote in the Hobonichi planner — from their CEO, no less — is a good one:
It’s not so much that people who don’t practice, or don’t practice enough, want to play hooky. They just don’t know what to practice. If they knew what to do and how much to do it — how to practice and what goals to aim for — I think the situation would be completely different.
It reminded me of Tyler Cowen’s deliberate practice routine
Of course I mean Crush, which is quickly becoming Apple’s second-most iconic add. Much like 1984, Apple’s most iconic add, it will be remembered and reference for a long time to come and for the same reason: it is an accurate, impartial representation of the effects technology has, or will have, on the world.
The only difference, and the reason why 1984 is still better, is timing: it took almost three decades for technology to break “The Man”. So 1984 was prophetic to the extreme, the second-order effects of “The Man” breaking weren’t immediately clear, and the add was well-received. Alas, we now know all to well what they are and how they came about, as described by Martin Gurri in his 2018 book “The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium” and as seen on your favorite and less favorite social networks.
But imagine that add airing in 2020, in the midst of the Covid pandemic. Here is Anthony Fauci ordering you to socially distance and mask up. A year later he drones on about vaccines. And here comes our valiant antivaxer, ready, willing and able to break the mainstream media, the deep state, the uniparty, or whichever else term is popular with that particular crowd these days. I haven’t checked, but I am quite sure there is a meme out there with 1984 cut in just such way.
What 1984 was to media, Crush is to the material world. It is not as good as it is quite late to the game: we are already seeing dematerialization in action, at least in the United States, and are closer to its second, third, nth-order effects. These range from beneficial (to the planet and natural resources) to potentially devastating (to our sense of identity, history and culture), so the anxiety is completely justified and Apple was right in deciding not to air it on TV. But it is still good, educational work which I will be showing and talking about with my kids.
Kudos to Apple for making it.
Update: As promised, Pratik wrote more about the creative destruction aspect of the add. For many people, as bridges are collapsing and the world is crumbling, destruction is destruction.
I, for one, appreciate Apple for their honesty. There is no point in sugarcoating it: the things we create with their help will be ephemeral; the things destroyed in the process through ignorance and neglect, well, whatcha gonna do?
A very DC story about a DC cat in today’s Washington Post:
She dozed on sunlit stoops, scaled fences and slept in a boxy shelter on a neighbor’s lawn. She was named Kitty Snows, after her new home on Snows Court in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of D.C., where she belonged to everyone and no one.
And then, she vanished.
What has unfolded this year around Snows Court in is an old-fashioned neighborhood melodrama — “Kittygate,” if you must — complete with wounded feelings, rampant gossip, sidewalk spies and lawsuit threats.
For what it’s worth, I side with the new owners.
(ᔥReddit)
Congratulations to Nikola Jokić on his third NBA MVP award! So, so, so well-deserved, and Rick Reilly had a good write-up of the reasons why.
“Mute notifications for 8 hours” is a godsend on WhatsApp, and the only thing that would make it better is more granularity (8 hours is the least amount of time, and the next step up is a full week). Apple’s Messages/iMessage, on the other hand, has no time-limited muting and even no way of knowing at a glance whether a pinned group chat is muted. I am no fan of Facebook/Meta, but they are eating Apple’s lunch and drinking their milkshake at the same time, and I fully expect WhatsApp to overtake Messages in the US.
🍿 The Incomparable podcast recently had a series of episodes dedicated to the Back to the Future triology so of course I had to see them all again. My favorite is still Part 1, but with time Part 3 rose up to the number 2 spot and the accompanying episode of The Incomparables has nicely outlined all of the reasons why.
The VPZD Show is back after a year-long hiatus and last week’s episode checks a lot of boxes from the Things-I’m-Interested-In list:
The last topic I listed here was what the episode starts with, and is the most poignant part. Recommended.
Many (private) assisted living facilities have started relying on 911 for lifting residents who have fallen down — a massive waste of (public) resources. WaPo asked one of the companies to comment:
Co-president Julie Simpkins declined to answer specific questions, but said in a statement that the company works “to create a collaborative approach to the over utilization of nonemergent lift assist calls” through “cross training, resource availability discussions and collaboration.”
An LLM would do a better job of deflecting than co-president Julie Simpkins, who seems to have proposed a collaborative approach through collaboration — embarrassing even by corporate-speak standards.
Of course, the problem is that firefighters don’t take money for their services, but in this particular case they may consider starting to invoice. After all, those same assisted living facilities charge their residents up to $7,000 per month for the privilege of laying on the floor until real adults come.