Letter to Ana
Happy Women’s Day.
Another Sunday, Another Naive Weekly - Observations From The Internet Wilderness.
Ana often falls into her sleep. It comes as a short, intense body shake before she is in another state, in the world of restoration and sleep. Since I have a tendency to fall quickly asleep myself, it is far from every night I get to experience this, but I cherish the evenings when I know I hugged her into sleep.
Falling in love is a bit like falling into sleep. You enter another world. But where the dream world of our sleep is built by our minds, the universe we enter when falling in love is another persons’ life. Complete with habits, values, friends, family, dreams, and fears.
Ana is a still photographer with her own scanner, hence you might not be surprised that Ana’s world runs at a different pace than thick tock. Ana sees the world in moments. The shadow of the naked tree, the dancing dust speck, and the leftover pastry crumbles. If the world is pull-to-refresh, instant notifications, and snappy videos, then Ana’s world is different.
In 2013, Ana hosted a Japanese couch-surfer called Reina. They made friends and together they visited Ana’s grandparents. Years have passed since they first met, but ever since then, they have maintained their friendship intact. Not by liking posts, extensive video calls or any other completely normal way to connect in this day and age, but through writing each other letters and sending them with the post.
This week Ana received one of Reina’s letters. Every day I receive countless emails, messages, calls, and whatnot, but only very rarely do I experience the joy that arises in Ana’s body when a new letter from Reina has arrived. It immediately turns any ordinary day into an extraordinary day.
It is convenient that we can write and call each other any time of the day, paying close to nothing. But while I am not going to argue for re-booting to society before the Internet, I do wonder what would happen if we took the time to write considered letters, poems, and songs to each other.
Internet Black Hole
Musicians Algorithmically Generate Every Possible Melody
Huge Internet points to Damien Riehl and Noah Rubin who algorithmically generated every possible MIDI melody in existence to a hard drive, copyrighted the whole thing, and then released it all to the public in an attempt to stop musicians from getting sued. I’m curious to see if it adds to more than philosophical questions of ownership and the nature of music. If you are interested in the background and shortcomings, I enjoyed this YouTube interview with the Noah and Damien.
Word From Wuhan
The silver lining in this update from Wuhan by Wang Xiuying is the reactions of the grounded kids. At first the kids could fully enjoy life outside schools, watching life under quarantine videos on TikTok. After a while, an app called DingTalk was introduced, here the kids had to join online classes and see their assigned homework. However, somehow the kids figured out that if the app would get a bad score, it would be removed from the AppStore. Overnight the rating fell from 4.9 to 1.4. Biggest Internet points to Wuhan kids.
How to Run a Business in 2020
Last week I shared the story of the MSCHF Box, therefore I find it appropriate to share this New York Times profile of the company behind. The box is far from the first Internet ready product the company has released, because chances are that you have already come across Jesus Shoes, This Foot Does Not Exist, Bull and Moon or Netflix Hangout. If not, even more reason to read the profile of MSCHF.
Silicon Valley Ruined Work Culture
If we could turn back time, would you still copy paste Silicon Valley offices? I think I am beyond ready for a new, or old, work culture. This article in Wired pretty much hits the spot.
Roadside Flower
Equal Street Names Brussels
In Brussels there are 5,248 street names. 2,144 of the street names are based on a person. Of those 138 are based on a female name. This visualization of the Brussels street names by gender is powerful. The people behind are organizing one workshop per month for the rest of 2020 to provide a list of names that reflect the diversity of Brussels and can be used for city council when picking new names.
Understory
Charmaine Li - ONEIRIC.SPACE
ONEIRIC.SPACE is a research platform dedicated to exploring our relationship to dreams and the unconscious. It is started by my friend, writer, and editor, Charmaine, who wanted to evoke the dream world and explore how other people experience their dreams in a more dynamic way. Every night we dream, but by morning 90% is forgotten. If that doesn’t intrigue you, then I can promise you one of the most beautiful, independent media sites I have ever seen if you go deeper.
Book Club
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Word For World Is Forest
I’ve never really gotten into sci-fi, but after reading Ursula’s short essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, I knew I had to explore her fiction. This is the book I started with, mainly because I immediately was attracted by the title. We follow the efforts of habitating a world 27 light years away from Earth. What’s most fascinating is the native population whose word for world is forest, and who has two times; world-time and dream time. Unlike Evelyn, I’m a fan.
TL;DR
This is for sure the subdivision with the worst street names ever. On TikTok there is a fragrance expert. Hackers tricked a self-driving Tesla using only tape. Control your Mac hands-free using only your face. And add your face to popular GIFs with Familiar.wtf.
Naive Weekly
Hi, I’m Kristoffer and you have just read Naive Weekly - Observations From The Internet Wilderness.
Big thanks to Kristoffer for including me in his latest newsletter. And a big welcome to everyone who joined because of that. Feel free to stick around as long as you like. No hard feelings if you unsubscribe.
Last week this newsletter was sent to 300 subscribers. Twelve people are crazy enough to chip in every month/year to support me making time to write this newsletter: Nikolaj, Antal, Søren, Dries, Mikkel, Tina, Aydo, Lukas, Hans, Csongor, Ida Marie & Angela!
Photograph by Ana Santl.
<3
Kristoffer