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micro, quote, books

This past summer a 13-year-old girl shattered my optimism for the future.

In June, The Atlantic published an article discussing the use of Instagram as a source of life advice by (pre-)teens. I do not understand insta-face-tweeting, but what struck me most was 13-year-old Sophie’s justification of her behaviour:

Teens say they’d basically do anything to avoid searching for answers to their problems outside of Instagram. Unlike threads, web pages don’t follow any standardized format, and teens say that navigating the open web, especially sites with ads and pop-ups, was a frustrating waste of time.

“The format is just a lot easier to read than stuff like Google,” says Sophie. “You can read longer things in little chunks. It’s not like reading this giant paragraph at once. No one wants to do that.”

Teens say that another benefit of threads is that you don’t have to waste time searching around – the information is delivered to you based on your interests and whom you follow – and that threads feel more trustworthy than search engines.

I’m not sure what sort of dystopic future we’re in for if we manage to raise a generation of people who are intimidated by a paragraph, but I suppose we’ll find out.

micro, bicycle, gear, repair

Sometimes you need a tub of grease.

But more frequently you just need a little. A few months ago I bought myself a Dualco 700231 Grease Gun and a Dualco 10547 4.5” nozzle. I filled the gun from a tub of Phil Wood Waterproof Grease that I’ve been working through for a handful of years. This made servicing my pedals much easier and less messy than previous jobs. Purchases like this make me feel more like an adult.

Grease

micro, radio, quote

I was reminded recently of John Michael Greer's comments on distributed communications.

To wit:

What would a viable long-distance communications network in the age of peak oil look like? To begin with, it would use the airwaves rather than land lines, to minimize infrastructure, and its energy needs would be modest enough to be met by local renewable sources. It would take the form of a decentralized network of self-supporting and self-managing stations sharing common standards and operating procedures. It would use a diverse mix of communications modalities, so that operators could climb down the technological ladder as needed, from computerized data transfer all the way to equipment that could be built locally with hand tools. It would have its own subculture, of course, in which technical knowledge and practical expertise would be rewarded, encouraged, and fostered in newcomers. Finally, it would take a particular interest in emergency communications, so that operators could respond to disruptions and disasters with effective workarounds at times when having even the most basic communications net in place could save many lives.

The interesting thing, of course, is that a network that fills exactly these specifications already exists, in the form of amateur radio.

micro

Mike Hill is an industrial designer in the entertainment industry who also lectures on the importance of semiotics in multimedia storytelling.

I first learned of him via his Designing for Entertainment lecture in 2016. It was an eye-opening insight into the amount of thought that goes into the objects that, as an audience member, are often unnoticeable. His lecture on the failure of Jurassic World to provide anything of value is another highlight.

micro, audio, media

I appreciate that Nine Inch Nails is the type of band that inspires a team of rogue archivists to follow them around and record their shows.

Reflecting in the Chrome attempts to be a complete archive of live NIN performances. I’ve been using it to revisit the three different shows I attended this year.

NIN Crowd

Photo by reddit user trover47

micro, gear, review, footwear

I subscribe loosely to the idea of a daily uniform.

Loosely because I own more than one style of shirt, jacket, and pants. But I do try to keep things paired down, and standardizing on the color black means everything goes together and is largely fashion-agnostic. The approach reduces mental taxation.

I am more firm in the area of socks. Darn Tough makes the best socks, and the Tab No Show Light Cushion is the best Darn Tough sock. I bought my first pair in 2009. Over the subsequent years I have added a few additional pairs to my collection, but those original socks continue to be in regular rotation. I maintain a small number of other socks in my arsenal for specialty purposes – a couple pair of boot socks for those rare occasions when I wear tall boots, a couple pair of toe socks for augmenting huarache style sandals, and a pair of waterproof socks I bought to experiment with – but for almost all of my sock-wearing days each year I have the Tab No Show Light Cushion socks on my feet.

micro, blogroll

Typeset in the Future analyzes the typography and semiotics in great science fiction films.

New content is infrequent, but I’m always excited when a new entry pops up in my feed reader. The latest is WALL·E. My favorite is Alien.

micro

Alaska repaired damaged highways within days of the recent earthquake in Anchorage.

I find stories about resilient infrastructure projects like Alaska’s highway recovery, the underground cathedral protecting Tokyo from floods and Switzerland’s Porcupine Principle to be inspirational (though I’ve heard Switzerland has moved away from this strategy in recent years, choosing to rely instead on hopes and dreams). These sorts of projects are what government defense budgets should be spent on.