Fear Hope Care
Fear Hope Care
Another Sunday, Another Naive Weekly - Rants From The Son of a Preacher
Another Sunday, Another Naive Weekly - Observations From The Internet Wilderness.
The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. It sounds like something you’d read on a fridge magnet or a Pinterest mood board. And probably it is, but that is not the point I want to make today.
These months I see many people promoting hope. For example, The Obama Foundation published Stories of Hope and David Byrne is back with a hopeful editorial on his positive news site, Reasons to be Cheerful.
It seems intuitive to be searching for hope in the face of uncertainty. To have a bright horizon to aim for in the midst of the darkness and turbulence of our everyday being ripped apart. Hope that can evaporate the fear of getting sick, losing our jobs, not being able to see our family, or having to say goodbye to loved ones.
But part of me can’t stop thinking about that fridge magnet wisdom about love. Just like the opposite of love is not hate, I don’t believe the opposite of fear is hope. Rather it is an abundance of generosity and care. Not in a promised future, but in the present now.
Internet Blackhole
The State of the Information Highway
One of the best journalism projects of 2019 was New York Times’ PrivacyProject. Now it turns out, that anyone who read this burning call for privacy accepted a dozen of cookies, including a 9-year persistent tracking cookie courtesy of Google. It is the same corporate b****** guidelines that cause Disney to automatically opt-in people for their corporate marketing if they use the Starwars Day hashtag on Twitter. I understand the system, but I wish there were some progressive leaders who’d stop this kinda madness.
In the early days of the coronavirus, I became a big fan of Carl T. Bergstorm, a biology professor at Washington University who did some first-class debunking on Twitter of all the misinformation being spread online about the virus. Digital minimalist, Cal Newport also seems to have relied on “Expert Twitter” for guidance in the viral information explosion, leading him to write an op-ed in Wired calling for us to Bring Back Blogs. Big liking from me. Ps. send me your favourite blogs. I’m all about RSS feeds these months.
The AI-generated music genre just got expanded with 7,131 songs released by Open AI. Each song is produced from scratch after having been provided with genre, artist, and lyrics as input. I like code-artist Kyle McDonald’s assessment “it feels like meeting an alien trying to decipher music”. A couple of machine learning experts at Google have some valid ethical questions about the project.
Roadside Flowers
Delightful Surprises From The Information Superhighway
Not the first of its type, but still an extremely well-executed scale showing you the wealth of the super rich. No single human needs or deserves this much wealth.
Ana and I had some fun this week turning selfies into anime.
Internet LOL-director, Pablo Rochat brings a smile to your face if you follow him on Twitter (and have the same bad sense of humour as me). Above is fashion.zip.
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Neal Agarwal is back with a new online creation, this one is next-level strategic foresight, showing us the future of the universe. If the life of the universe was a year, you're living in the first millisecond of January 1st. Enjoy…
I started doing visual research for a project called Wildflowers.club that I’m working on with Søren. It is the first time I use Are.na intentionally, but now I don’t understand how I could live without before. Single best research tool I have ever used. Follow us foraging visual inputs for Wildflowers.club, and get started with Are.na.
Book Club
Although Ana and I just finished the career mode of Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 (I had to mention this), I am still manage to read a bit. This week I finished Flights by Olga Tokarczuk and Abolish Silicon Valley by Wendy Liu. The latter is an easy to read story of a young developer, turned startup founder, turned capitalism critique. When Abolish Silicon Valley works best, it reads as a critical version of HBO’s Silicon Valley show.
Meanwhile, Flights was an extraordinary experience. It is a collection of 160 short stories and one impressive example of non-linear storytelling. When it is best, it is some of the best I have ever read, with a solid substance of philosophy, and reflection of life in motion.
Naive Weekly
Hi, I’m Kristoffer and you have just read Naive Weekly - Observations From The Internet Wilderness.
Ditte! Thank you so much for upgrading to a paid subscriber. You are already a master facilitator, and maybe just therefore I know you’ll like this Are.na channel on Facilitation & Conversation.
And another big thank you to everyone who Bought My Notebook. It took 11 minutes from I sent the newsletter to Mikkel had purchased the physical version. It gave this week an incredible feeling of generosity. Thank you.
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Photograph by Ana Santl.
<3
Kristoffer