Bladderman keeps his briefcase on his lap. He uses it as a substrate for his Sudoku. A bag and a coat lay on the small table before him. He puzzles intently and fills in the numbers with concentration.
Every day, between stations C. and Z., he gets up. He takes his coat over his arm and takes his bag and briefcase in his hand. Packed, he walks out of the compartment and to the restroom. After a few minutes, he returns and sits back in his seat. Every day. Between stations X and Y.
Sometimes, he makes an uncomfortable chat with the Candy Crush lady.
The documentary All Things Are Photographable about Garry Winogrand is mandatory yet enjoyable homework for every (street) photographer (ignore the sometimes soggy commentary). You can view this film by Sasha Waters Freyer for free here.
Today I created another photo-video in the New Zealand for Beginners series.
You can binge and follow the playlist here. I am working on the rest of the movies. 4 more weeks of travel to cover. Then Japan is the next playlist to finish.
Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.
Postman argues that Huxley’s dystopia might be closer to reality. Amusing Ourselves to Death was published in 1985. The situation in the Western world, and especially the United States, is indeed terrifyingly even more spot on than in 1985. In today’s China, and even more so in Russia, Orwell’s reality, where Big Brother watches over the people, seems to be the state of affairs.
Funny article in Wired about Strava and an interesting battle for first place in what they call a segment. And the segment is not somewhere outside but in Denver’s airport. I agree with writer David Howard that Strava is one of the last good social apps. And it is all about analog, real-world activities.
I mentioned Strava before in an article on cheap tools. I am using (the free version) to keep track of my hikes after initially using it for my road cycling activities (I stopped after rupturing my tendon). Since my first bike ride on 27-8-2012, Strava has recorded almost 200 activities for me. (You can follow me.)
The iHeart radio podcast company creates podcast enshittification with A.J. Jacobs’s very nice podcast The Puzzler. Of the 14 minutes a podcast lasts, 5 minutes are filled with ads, that is 35%.
Yes, Tim Ferriss (‘double-r-double-s’), arguably the best podcaster out there, preambles and postambles his podcasts with 5 minutes of ads; also annoying, but at least his podcasts are between 1 and 2 hours long!
As European users, we can opt out of Instagram and Facebook using our posts for AI training. I’ve exercised this control, as I am the product of Facebook and Instagram, but I strive to limit their use of me as such.
Opting out on Instagram looks deliberately cumbersome. However, from Facebook, which is also owned by Meta, I received an email with very simple instructions.
Now, I am curious if they can prove they are not using my data for AI.
Earlier I wrote that today there are excellent search engines as an alternative to Google search. To repeat the argument against Google search use: with Google search, in addition to being an Internet user, you are also part of the commercial product a product of Google, with all the consequences for reliability of results.
Another way to consume content from the Internet is through RSS feeds. Google doesn’t like that either, because with that, they can’t show you ads either. I switched to Newsblur after using locally installed QuietRSS for a while. I was missing the shared nature of the web, so I switched back to a tool with a web interface. Newsblur is good and has a fair price, but there are excellent other alternatives out there.