Substrate

Cory Doctorow points out that Elon Musk's personal wealth has soared to astronomical heights while everything he's actually done since 2020 has been pretty much a failure. Why? Because of memes and vibes, basically.

Today's vibe:

No more of that sittin' in a slump and uh

No more of that coulda-woulda-shoulda junk (nope)

No more of that waiting for the inspiration, innovation

Or a green light – now begin

No more of that lettin' all your time pass (uh-uh)

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As my mother graduated from a degree in Theology, I've been familiar with the apocrypha from an early age. Some of the stories are cute (Jesus making sparrows out of clay which come to life) while others are wild (St Paul baptising a lion, or a catalogue of punishments visited on sinners in hell).

This is a difficult article to quote because it's all so good. I encourage you to go and read it in its entirety.

I have always been against hierarchy and extreme forms of wealth. As this article explains, although not in the part I've quoted below, that makes me an anarchist, because I see "concentrated wealth and concentrated power [as] inseparable" and meaning that I "reject the distinction often made between economic and political authority".

Tom Watson are presenting at TechNExt this morning on TechFreedom. If that weren't exciting enough, we're also using MarkDeck 3D, meaning I'm presenting using the web for the first time pretty much since leaving Mozilla!

I applaud initiatives like this. The only concerns I have are around governance and burnout, but it often takes one person's (or a few people's) energy to get things going before a community can be self-sustaining. Bravo.

This is just a quick note to say that, now I'm in a good flow here on Substrate, I'm going to start sharing some, if not all, posts to my LinkedIn, Mastodon, and Bluesky accounts.

I lreally like this artwork, generated by Richard Nadler, which I discovered via Are.na. So I went looking formore information t and discovered it's part of a series. More here.

Yamabushi are revered as mountain priests or ascetic hermits in Japan, devoutly following the ancient traditions of Shugendō. This spiritual practice intertwines elements of Buddhism, Shintoism, and the indigenous worship of mountains. The very name "yamabushi" itself translates to "those who find solace in the mountains."

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It's good to have a word to sum up the effect that capitalism can have on us, especially through pernicious advertising.

The lamp I want is playful. Confident. Carefree yet sophisticated. Qualities I want to embody… but buying the lamp won’t give me those qualities (though I would enjoy looking at it).

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