Substrate

This made me chuckle.

Source: Are.na block · Vibes channel

Substack is a shitty place to publish blog posts, but (for me, at least) Substack Notes has a pretty high signal/noise ratio. Because it's very much a writer-focused place, you get wonderful things like this happening:

At a 1962 conference at the Museum of Modern Art, conservative art critic Hilton Kramer denounced Pop Art as “indistinguishable from advertising art” because “Pop Art does not tell us what it feels like to be living through the present moment of civilization. Its social effect is simply to reconcile us to a world of commodities, banalities and vulgarities.” But perhaps the content of graphic design is exactly that: an evocation of “what it feels like to be living through the present moment of civilization,” with all its “commodities, banalities and vulgarities.” How else can we discuss the content of a typeface or why the typography of a surfing magazine suddenly becomes relevant? Or how a series of made-up or ‘self-initiated’ posters—already a medium of dubious functionality— can end up on the wall of a major design museum? Work must be saying something, which is different than being about something.

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I can't help but think that if we were to start again with governments we wouldn't have what we've got now. I certainly think that our response to the climate crisis would be better if we took a more anarchist approach.

One hundred thousand per-cent this:

Our culture creates traps and opportunities. There’s social and commercial pressure to engage in activities and jobs that don’t serve us very well. If horror movies give you unsettling nightmares, don’t go. No matter how many times your friends invite you, no is a complete sentence.

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Source: Mikey Burton

Tom's currently sharing photos of runs he's doing in the Austrian mountains, while I'm laid up with a self-inflicted calf tear after attempting to race my teenage daughter in our back garden.

So it's only fair that I use my time being mostly horizontal to do something productive. Hence TechFreedom Digest #5 is now available for your attention and enjoyment.

There's not many people who write long posts that are worth reading any more, but Adam Mastroianni is one of them. His latest is on the topic of "incentives" with his argument being that we as humans need to transcend our animal-like tendency to respond to incentives with something, well, more noble.

I'm back to work today so, in between client meetings, I've been working on doing the final edits to my zine Field Notes on Productive Friction.

A pocket guide to noticing the frictionless tools that remove your agency, containing eight patterns of capture, plus one self-administered audit. Making the case for reflection over convenience in a world of doomscrolling.

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