As much as mainstream culture is enveloping the force-fed overtone window of suck that is maxxing and efficiency and objectification and dehumanization, there are others. People who are not thoughtlessly embracing the destruction of our collective fabrics. People who want to think deeply, decide to turn off, go outside. People who don’t need to “touch grass” because while they may be paying attention to the world online, they are also actively rooted in the soil beneath their feet. As they pull back from the crud teeming in the slop bucket that appears to have deteriorated people’s “most basic functioning of the moral apparatus”, they are not being left behind. They are saving their minds for whatever work is ahead.
The deep work. The act of reminding ourselves what is actually important, who actually deserves our attention and doing the work it takes to stay conscious, empathetic, aware. The continual reflection on who we are and who we want to be.
image from The Death of Spotify Part II
“Consumers will always choose convenience over morality.” The Death of Spotify Part II
There are so many that do not play this weird, privileged Global North of a game. People who swore off Amazon or Meta or Google long, long ago. People who have never been on TikTok and loathe online video culture. People who think about what their choices mean for themselves, for others, for society writ large. Not elitists, just people. People who have been building the real communities nestled into the corners of the Internet that we don’t see in the mainstream. People who have been selling Fiji Water the whole time.
“I doubt anybody really wants to face this fact, but technology is in a terrible slump. The industry desperately needs something—anything—to entice that almighty line to go up. If AI can’t do it, there aren’t a whole lot of other things right now to be optimistic about. Web3 didn’t work. The Metaverse turned into a seemingly obscure multi-player game called Horizon Worlds. Did you know? I didn’t. We’ve already built all the unregulated taxi companies Lyft, Uber and illegal hotel conversions. Airbnb, Vrbo None of humanity’s actual problems appear sexy (or tractable) enough for the tech industry to concern itself with. So this is what we’ve got. AI is the one basket into which we have feverishly dumped hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our eggs.” You don’t have to if you don’t want to.
It’s unbelievable what all we can convince ourselves of as we live our lives. We can convince ourselves that if we are self reflective enough, we are also careful. Entire countries can believe war propaganda, even when their eyes, ears and information access makes the story nothing short of incredible. We can dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge simple, objective truths in favour of the fiction we’ve decided is a better representation of the person we “truly” are. Rationalisation, contingencies, complexities, hypocrisy. We convince ourselves of so, so much because being radical in our choices, being determined and unwavering is very hard indeed.
- Against Maxxing > https://biblioracle.substack.com/p/against-maxxing
- People vs Big Tech > https://peoplevsbig.tech/
- AI job predictions are just hunches dressed up like facts > https://www.not-ship.com/the-problem-wi/
Maybe I’m perceptive
I prompted AI to fix global problems
I wanted to sound smart about perception so I was going to go find some quote about how perception is influenced blah blah. I looked up Freud and Jung (both said about the same kinds of things). And then I thought, maybe someone else…erm…Einstein? Maybe he said something interesting.
Obviously, I wasn’t stretching my brain too far. Very. Famous. Men. Front of brain. No one cares anyway.
Einstein said the same kinds of things as Freud and Jung. So I looked up a woman because I was irritated. Florence Nightingale, the mother of modern nursing. You know what she said? Something completely different. While the boys of psychiatry, psychology and physics were talking about internal influences of conscious and unconscious events that shape perception, Florence Nightingale was talking about using perception to keenly observe and understand a patients needs.
Because it is the women* who do the caring. The women who see the future and take action in the present to ensure that a better future comes. What would it mean if instead of Master of the Universing around, the men in charge actually started to care about how the rest of the world feels? Instead of being so goddamn dismissive of the emotional toll of war, of the emotional toll of the last decade, of the emotional toll of our technocratic world or the deterioration of truth or the shifting ground under our feet, instead, what if they pulled their heads out of their asses and let themselves feel things?
*FWIW I don’t actually believe in the binary of gender and generalise here for literary effect. Solidarity to all my queer and trans friends, and to the people who are fighting exactly these societal norms every day, since forever and on and on. Our modern convenience masks downstream realities of climate catastrophe, worker exploitation, poverty and human rights violations. I try very hard to choose morality over convenience, and so do other people. I hope you’re all those people, however you identify.
- What should I build? > https://ai-flow-diagnostic.vercel.app/
- 2026 Poster Rethink > https://www.alowhum.com/2026-poster-rethink
- The Death of Spotify: Why Streaming is Minutes Away From Being Obsolete > https://joelgouveia.substack.com/p/the-death-of-spotify-why-streaming
Maybe I need help
If you missed my last FBT, FYI We Are Closing.
That, however, hasn’t stopped us from kicking off a new project this week. Our new client, INASP, is “an international development organization with over 30 years’ experience of working with our global network of partners in Africa, Latin America and Asia.”
We’re also wrapping up our Amnesty International pilot soon. I’ll be busy until May 1st and then I will, uh, not be? Yeesh this whole life and change and growing thing is terrifying.
Finally, here’s an important notice: The guy who invented the Super Soaker made more than 73 million on his invention >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Johnson_(inventor)
featured image from https://www.not-ship.com/the-problem-wi/