Author: sjwillis
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Read: Why Not Bluesky
The real problem, in my mind, isn’t in the nature of this particular Venture-Capital operation. Because the whole raison-d’etre of Venture Capital is to make money for the “Limited Partners” who provide the capital. Since VC investments are high-risk, most are expected to fail, and the ones that succeed have to exhibit exceptional revenue growth…
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Read: Meditations for Mortals
And so instead of asking how to summon the energy or motivation or self-discipline to do something that matters to you, it’s often more helpful to ask: What if this might be a lot easier than I’d been assuming? I talked about it with J, the man I live with, and he suggested three hours.…
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Read: In Praise of Inconvenience: The Hidden Costs of a Convenient World
That’s the convenience paradox: the more we optimize our lives, the less we actually live them. We’re becoming masters of arrangement rather than action, curators instead of creators. Life risks turning into a series of frictionless transactions where we’re always efficiently arriving but never really traveling. Source: In Praise of Inconvenience: The Hidden Costs of…
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Read: The Imperfectionist: How Not to Freak Out, Part Two
The antidote to all of this, in the broadest terms, is *more reality*, more immersion in the finite here and now: more writing on paper; more gathering in person and in public; more looking strangers in the eye; more scruffy hospitality; more queueing for the supermarket checkout that’s staffed by a human, if there even…
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Read: Mud Boots of Empathy in Spain
Spain’s unity at this moment is from the bottom up. Or, as Spanish professional soccer player Ferran Torres wrote on social media, “The people are the ones who save the people. … Long live Spain.” Source: Mud Boots of Empathy in Spain – the Monitor’s Editorial Board Also on: website
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Read: Recording: After the Election – Four Ways We Can Respond
“Under the worst conditions, what’s the most important thing to have?” He replied: “Friends.” Source: Recording: After the Election – Four Ways We Can Respond – Rick Hanson Also on: website
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Read: Unplugging Is Not the Solution You Want
his latest work, *Program or Be Programmed*, the 15th anniversary edition, Rushkoff proposes four methods to avoid being programmed by digital technology, and to instead become the programmers of our world. What we require is to: 1. Denaturalize power by revealing social constructions which are ideas we merely invented, and are not pre-existing laws we…
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Adventures in Self-hosting HiFi Audio Streaming.
I’ve been through a bunch of self-hosted music setups over the past 10 years or so. There are a long list of good reasons why owning and hosting your own music is better than streaming but I’ll save that for another post. Still, despite years of home streaming my audio collection, I haven’t found the…
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Read: Is Wokeness One Big Power Grab?
Indeed, one of the primary reasons such anti-woke reactions feel so unsatisfactory is that wokeness, not always but consistently, stems from the basic recognition of large-scale problems that really do exist. Occupy Wall Street addressed the staggering rise of inequality in 21st-century American life; Black Lives Matter emerged in response to a spate of reprehensible…
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Read: Manufactured Anxiety: How Self-Improvement Became a Self Destruct Sequence
Who profits from our constant state of dissatisfaction? The answer, of course, is painfully obvious. Every industry that sells a solution to a problem you didn’t even know you had. Every influencer who monetizes your insecurities. Every corporation that convinces you your worth is tied to your productivity. They thrive while we spiral. And the…