There must be a word, probably German or Yiddish, for the feeling of your curiosity spooling up…
I feel an adventure on the horizon.
Frontline: From Jesus to Christ
I’ve long been interested in beginnings of things, be it a river, a time period, or a belief system. The Middle East has all three in spades. I’m drawn to that region not as a believer, but as someone compelled to understand the beginnings of a moral framework of my culture.
Why did Judaism and Christianity spring from this part of the world? What was/is so compelling about these stories?
Once we understand the source, it becomes infinitely more compelling to look at the current manifestations of these beliefs in my own time, culture, and country. Having lived in the Middle East, it becomes apparent that American Christianity is a bastardization — a cheap facsimile — of the religion as it was. Yet here I am, living in a culture full of people that believe in the watered-down version of those stories. How on earth Christians can be such rabid capitalists, I’ll never understand, but watching people twist their beliefs into knots to justify their actions and desires — a behavior not exclusive to Christians…or the religious — is a favorite pastime.
Lest I sound judgmental (because I am, to be clear), I’m guilty of these moral contortions, too. It’s human nature to do so, but the least we could do is own up to our moral hypocrisies. But that is not a hallmark of religion.
Human nature is endlessly fascinating, at least from a distance. Get too close and you risk your life, as evidenced by this documentary.
When after the brutal Hamas attacks, many organizations on North American campuses either refused to condemn Hamas, or minimized or justified the attacks—to say that I was “triggered” is a gross understatement.
Awful as it sounds, before I knew it, I started dividing people into “those I can trust” and “those I can’t.” I’ve become my parents. Some friends from abroad have reached out, on email and social media, expressing concerns or sympathy. Those, I know, are people I can trust.
The ones who didn’t? I don’t know. In my reasonable mind, I know that people are busy, or simply so (understandably) tired of the media’s obsession with the Israel-Palestine conflict that perhaps they can’t appreciate the significance of what happened. But I’m not in my reasonable mind anymore. I’m in an animallike self-preservation mode, and this is my visceral reaction.
A Mac event is the perfect time for Apple to show off its peripheral vision
On the functional side, Apple either needs to improve or replace its Bluetooth support. My Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad frequently disconnect from my Mac mini, which is all of about eighteen inches away, and the keyboard in particular is egregious in terms of the amount of time it takes for typed characters to show up on screen. This certainly seems like a place that Apple could use its vaunted engineering prowess to offer something that’s a little extra in much the same way that it does with AirPods. Not only would a custom wireless chip potentially allow for more robust and reliable connections, but it could also simplify switching peripherals between devices, a process that Bluetooth makes fairly painful.
My wish is for a backlit TouchID keyboard. 🤞🏻
Marina Abramovic Thinks the Pain of Love Is Hell on Earth
…it feels strange to be happy? Yes! We are living in the strangest period of human history. We are ending this year with two wars: in Ukraine and Israel. Then there are natural disasters. Things are not getting better. We have to understand that the only reality we have is living every day as if it’s the last. Which is also the philosophy of performance: to be in the moment. How important are we? We are dust. I was also thinking how interesting it is that in war, when everybody was making art that reflected what happened, Henri Matisse was painting flowers. I finally understand that. The way to fight is not to reflect horror and put your spirit down. It’s to create something with beauty that gives you hope.
You don’t think any good art comes from happiness? Louis Armstrong or Stevie Wonder — Ah! Music is a whole different issue because singing, in general, you have to sing from your heart and open your heart. I’m talking about visual art. I’m talking about literature. Especially writers. You think Beckett is happy? You think Kafka is happy? Do you think Dostoyevsky is happy? Is Proust happy?
“Especially writers.”
Marina, more than any other artist aside from Prince or Daniel Quinn, has been a central, singular inspiration. Her work has changed my life. The Artist is Present found me at just the right time, and it’s not an understatement to say that her work helped me persist at a time when I felt lost and alone, not far from suicide.
Her sentiments on writing echo something you hear often, especially in the halls of a creative writing MFA, from which I’m currently on a, well, let’s call it a ‘sabbatical.’ Pointedly, pain is art.
I’ve long suspected this to be true, and it once filled me with insecurity. I’m no stranger to pain, sure, but in our current moment, when trauma is traded as cultural currency, I have no interest in doing so.
What a funny thing to have been insecure about, eh? Not having enough trauma? It must be as obnoxious to read that sentence as it feels to write it.
I can’t say I’m still insecure about this, but I’ve largely given up on any dream of writing in hopes of getting paid to do so. Or in hopes of getting much validation at all.
Funny — in my MFA, a person who enjoys writing for the sake of writing is…rare. You probably wouldn’t be shocked at how often someone utters “I’m going to start a Substack,” then proceeds to spill five thousand words on the why of it. It’s all a bit much, a little through-the-looking-glass.
This is why, it seems, that I feel most at home here. I’ve received precious little feedback about my website. After deciding to no longer write anonymously (about six months ago), I’ve sent this page to at least a hundred people. You know how often someone I know has made a comment about something I’ve written?
Twice.
I may as well be screaming into the void. I can’t be accused of selling out or writing for attention. After all, I can’t monetize here (at least not as far as I’m aware).
And it’s precisely for this reason that I’m more excited about writing than I have been in years.
Feist and Hundreds of Choir Members Sing ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ in Tribute to Sinéad O’Connor
Feist. Prince. Sinéad. Three of my favorite artists.
In death, I hope Sinéad found peace, and in that way, it doesn’t hurt.
But the loss of Prince still moves me to tears, almost eight years later.
Eight years.
2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory
We are now in an uncharted territory. For several decades, scientists have consistently warned of a future marked by extreme climatic conditions because of escalating global temperatures caused by ongoing human activities that release harmful greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, time is up. We are seeing the manifestation of those predictions as an alarming and unprecedented succession of climate records are broken, causing profoundly distressing scenes of suffering to unfold. We are entering an unfamiliar domain regarding our climate crisis, a situation no one has ever witnessed firsthand in the history of humanity.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Is it any wonder so many younger people are overwhelmed by anxiety? We have to live with this.
On a good day, my anxiety about the climate (and the apathy of humans to the impending changes) is a low hum.
On a bad day, it makes my ears ring. I can barely get out of bed. I’m paralyzed by it, unsure of where to direct my anger. Often, my ire turns (unfairly or not) to people who just won’t stop having kids, followed by people that never make any efforts to want less — the only antidote to consumer capitalism. No amount of innovation will innovate our way out of the disaster that comes of always wanting ever more stuff.
Want less.
Unfortunately, most people I know can’t seem to find a way to want less. Family. Friends. Strangers. It’s everyone. The whole world feels as through its gone fucking mad, and the only way I remain a half-decent person is to spend much of my time far away from other people.
So we’re fucked.
This is not news.
Geolocating Hamas-Led Attacks on Israeli Civilians
Since the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 that killed hundreds of civilians, Telegram has been a key platform for the distribution of footage of the events. Many videos that emerged can provide insight into the massacres.
Bellingcat analysed footage from the sites of two attacks at kibbutzim — one at Kerem Shalom and one at Sufa — filmed by militants to verify the footage and details of the attack.
In my little corner of investigative journalism, Bellingcat is the best-of-the-best of digital forensic analysis. I’ve learned much of what I know from them.
The Aftermath of a Massacre Is Always the Time to Push for Gun Legislation
This “now is not the time” argument gets trotted out by Republicans after each and every gun massacre. Right after their tweets offering “thoughts and prayers”. Bullshit. The aftermath of a massacre is the time to demand sane gun control measures. That’s when the issue is clarified. Would Republicans argue that October 8 was “not the right time” for Israel to discuss Hamas terrorism? Was September 12, 2001 “not the right time” to discuss Al-Qaeda? Should FDR have delivered an address to the nation on December 8, 1941, advising that we relax, let cooler heads prevail, because the aftermath of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor “was not the time” to consider retaliating?
A friend recently asked about my media diet. What are the ten-ish sources of news that I go to consistently (and obsessively)?
I’ll share them here.
- Daring Fireball & The Talk Show
- My various Substacks
- The Verge
- Dithering
- Hacker News
- The Dishcast
- Places Journal
- Tablet Magazine
- The Gray Lady, as is probably obvious
- New York Post
- New York Magazine, completing the trifecta
- Social Science Research Network
- High Country News
At the time of his suicide I would have thought that, though he once attained a level of literary celebrity that was rare then and hard to imagine now, he would in short order slip gracefully into the realm of respected but little-remembered dead writers. Ah, but he has his champions: people who want everyone to know they hate him.
Matter 1.2 brings robot vacuums, fridges, smoke alarms, and more
The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), the organization behind Matter, released the Matter 1.2 specification this week, a year after launching Matter 1.0, following through on its promise to release two updates a year. Now, appliance manufacturers can add support for Matter to their devices, and ecosystems such as Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings can start supporting the new device types.
Big news in my little world.
Detroit synagogue president Samantha Woll found fatally stabbed outside home
and
6-Year-Old Boy Dead in Anti-Muslim Attack Near Chicago, Police Say
This is unacceptable. What the fuck is wrong with people.
Nerd alert.
‘Reddit can survive without search’: company reportedly threatens to block Google
…if Reddit can’t get AI to play ball, the company may block Google and Bing’s search crawlers, which means Reddit posts wouldn’t show up in search results.
“Reddit can survive without search,” said the Post’s anonymous source.
Wow. What a gutsy move.
I’ve written about my complicated relationship with Reddit before. In late May, when Reddit was changing the API pricing structure and making it very difficult for apps like Apollo to survive, I threatened to leave the service altogether.
I did not.
u/Spez made the gutsy call in guessing that the service has become too indispensable to its users, and he was correct.
Here, he’s making another correct (at least for me) assumption: that Reddit doesn’t need to be reliant on search.
I don’t use Google, but when I go to my search engine looking for help with something — troubleshooting a smart home issue, a coding problem I can’t solve, local news — the first useful result listed is almost always a Reddit thread.
If Reddit search was more refined, I would go to Reddit directly. As of now, it’s not. I go to my search engine, then Reddit.
Reddit has a real opportunity to own both the content its users have created and the way they arrive at it. Will they rise to the occasion? Improve search and their rather clunky mobile app? Time will tell.
On Elite Campuses, a New Protest Demand: Unwavering Support
Young people now arrive at elite colleges with the assumption that not only will they be seen, heard and meticulously cared for, but also that their own politics will broadly align with those of the institutions they have chosen to attend. They have been given little reason to think otherwise.
With universities run as for-profit business, why are we surprised that students are now insisting “the customer is always right?”
To be clear: the customer is not always right.
Yet we’ve let this attitude persist in the larger economy for at least as long as I’ve been alive. Let’s not act surprised when this attitude follows capitalism everywhere it insists on going. Academia is no exception.
The naivety of some grown adults — in this case, college administrators hell-bent on making ever-more money off their students — is astonishing. If you use people, expect them to use you in return.
How Israeli Civilians Are Using A.I. to Help Identify Victims
Incredible.
I was tempted to use the cliché “AI is an incredible tool,” but then I remembered that while yes, perhaps in its current iteration AI is a tool, it’s also something else.
Intelligence is such a nebulous thing — I rarely hear it called a “tool.” Aspects of intelligence, like critical thinking? Sure, that can be a tool. A piece of the puzzle. A component of the whole.
But AI, or perhaps AGI (artificial general intelligence, loosely defined as when machines are able to think on their own without human intervention), is meant to be a component and a whole. A tool we use…but also a tool that will one day think critically for itself. Without humans.
Remember, while the AI of today is easily explainable with metaphor, the AI of tomorrow is not.
Goliath, Who Aspires To Be David
The fact remains, though - and it is a fact, an objective fact, an empirical fact, no matter how mad it makes people - that Hamas has always been empowered by Israel’s violence and oppression. Forgive the cliché, but each side’s extremists are a gift to each other. I’m sorry if this is hard to accept, but Palestine is a Chinese finger trap; the more forcefully Israel acts, the more tightly the conflict will grip the country. The only way out is through de-escalation and the only permanent de-escalation is through formal legal recognition of Palestinians in the territories as full citizens in a democratic system. This might come from the establishment of a Palestinian state, or it might come with the absorption of the territories into a secular state of Israel-Palestine that extends perfectly equal legal and political rights to all people within it, as liberal values require. Permanent statelessness and dispossession for the Palestinians will ensure violence for generations. Only freedom for Palestinians can bring peace, and that’s the most hardheaded, ruthlessly pragmatic point anyone can make about this horrid crisis. And if Israel’s defenders feel put upon, othered, alone, it’s because Israel and Israel alone has the power to make Palestinians free. I’m sorry, but it’s not a moral principle that says that Israel must bear responsibility for achieving peace and freedom. It’s a purely pragmatic statement of the reality of Israel’s overwhelming power in the region. Choosing sides has nothing do with it.
Or, I suppose, they could go through with the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, as a disturbing number of people are calling for. I doubt the world would stop them; that’s the upside of being Goliath. But such an act would destroy whatever hope there is left for Israel as a democratic state, a symbol of human rights, however tarnished that symbol stands now. And I think that if you love Israel, the idea of Israel, you should fight like hell to stop that from happening. Because afterwards you’ll never be the same again.
A commitment to the principles of democracy, to human rights, is never easy. If we are to have them at all, they must exist for both you and the people that hate you.
This is a depressingly common, entirely predictable, completely relatable thing about human nature: we want, at all times, to feel secure, to preserve the illusion of control (and it is an illusion). Even if this security comes at the expense of others, and especially if those ‘others’ are nebulous and unseen.
This, then, plants the seeds of hatred.
…it’s a profoundly weird (if surprisingly common) rhetorical move to say “I support you for your independence, but you wrote something I disagree with, so I’m not supporting you anymore.” It should go without saying - saying stuff that you don’t agree with is an expression of my independence, and it’s strange to endorse independence in the commission of telling me that you expected me to adhere to your own views. Subscribe or cancel as you will. But are you really out to support independence of thought if you don’t support it when that independence results in an opinion you don’t like?
Israel floods social media to shape opinion around the war
Since Hamas attacked thousands of its citizens last week, the Israeli government has started a sweeping social media campaign in key Western countries to drum up support for its military response against the group. Part of its strategy: pushing dozens of ads containing brutal and emotional imagery of the deadly militant violence in Israel across platforms such as X and YouTube…
What a world we live in.
The Most Detailed Map of the Tetons Ever Made
With a source image over 100,000 pixels wide and using hundreds of gigabytes of data, we’ve created the most detailed relief map of the Teton Range ever made.
I thought to compare the text on the page to the text on my screen. Word for word, they were exactly the same. I was shocked. What happened? Why did a text that read so well in galleys read so shambolically online?
The uniquely powerful insight of the 20th-century discipline of cultural anthropology as formulated by the great French thinker Claude Levi-Straus was that culture is a closed system. A tribal mask hanging on the wall of a hut in Africa or New Guinea has meaning within the culture of the tribe that produced it, which is bound up with their social structures and cosmology. Hang the same mask next to a Picasso in a white-walled room in MOMA, and it becomes a different object, embedded within the cultural system that contains 20th-century Western art. Culturally speaking, the two masks are wildly and indeed irreconcilably different from each other—even if, physically speaking, they are the same mask.
So too with the act of reading. Like every other human activity, reading is a culturally bound activity, whose meaning is determined by its relation to the larger cultural system in which it occurs.
Working in both online and print journalism, this resonates.
The former always feels tinny and thin given its context in the sheer enormity of the internet. Text on a screen is always merely text on a screen. Ephemeral.
Print, though merely ink on a page, holds up.
Using Goatse to Stop App Theft
The mature and responsible thing to do would have been to add a content security policy to the page. I am not mature so instead what I decided to do was render the early 2000s internet shock image Goatse with a nice message superimposed over it in place of the app if Sqword detects that it is in an iFrame.
It has been one of my greatest achievements as a dev: to live-deploy a massive goatse image to at least 8 domains that aren’t mine.
I 🧡 the internet.
Israel and Palestinians Blame Each Other for Blast at Gaza Hospital That Killed Hundreds
The ambiguity of this situation is precisely why moral clarity and consistency is so valuable.
Do I think Hamas would launch a rocket to intentionally bomb a Palestinian hospital so they could blame the Israelis? I do.
Do I think if Hamas unintentionally blew up a hospital with a misfired rocket, they’d blame Israel? I do.
Do I think Israel would intentionally bomb a hospital? I do not.
Do I think Israel might blame Hamas if one of their airstrikes — which have been so aggressive and killed hundreds of civilians just this week, to say nothing of the last decade — had unintentionally hit a hospital? I do.
When you don’t know who to believe, who to trust, the world becomes a very scary place…and fast.
When we know that our time in this body and in this life is finite—when we fully embrace finitude—we don’t waste time. When the scarcity of our time comes into the forefront of our consciousness, we tend not to do the unskillful actions that cause harm. When we “greet and hold death as an advisor on our shoulder all the time,” as Carlos Castaneda said, the way we live our life changes.
We live with more freedom, peace, ease, love, and care because we know there is nothing to hang on to. We are a traveler on this earth. This body is not mine. It’s for rent. This life is for rent.
When we realize this, we live differently, we live more freely. We let go of our clinging, our sense of attachment to me, me, me, mine, mine, mine. It shifts our perspective. We can live with more freedom, generosity, kindness, and forgiveness. There is nothing to take with us. There’s nothing to hang on to. So this practice is liberating, just as the Buddha says, and it has the deathless as its fruit.