I’m looking for a new job, which is to say, i’m spending an awful lot of time on LinkedIn. A lot of friends suggested i cold connect with total strangers. “You should expand your network”, they say, “everybody should know you’re available”, they say, “they might be your future colleagues”, they say. “You should be an imposition on people that don’t know and don’t care about you”, i hear.
I know this is par for the course, but i can’t bring myself to consider people as mere resources. I have written far too much about our (in)attention economy to steal someone’s attention for my own selfish interests. This is a game – and i loathe that people consider it a game – that i refuse to play. Anyway, i spent the better part of the week rejigging my personal website and i’m having a lot of fun writing up case studies for some of my past projects.
Links
Here are some links for your consideration:
- “Input diet” and “Following up on input diet” by Manuel Moreale
- “A case for tolerating the uninteresting” by V.H. Belvaldi
Movies
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Simon Stone. The first fifteen minutes are a compendium of every conservative’s (and progressive’s) fantasy about journalists. Hard DNF.
Mickey 17 by Bong Joon Ho. This critique of late-stage capitalism, colonialism, gender relations, modern slavery, and American politics would land harder if it didn’t spell everything out in such painful detail. Robert Pattinson’s portrayal of meek Mickey 17 is delightful, though. This critique of late-stage capitalism, colonialism, gender relations, modern slavery, and American politics would land harder if it didn’t spell everything out in such painful detail. Robert Pattinson’s portrayal of tough Mickey 18 is delightful, though.
A House of Dynamite by Kathryn Bigelow. A House of Dynamite is part Dr. Strangelove in the age of Zoom, part The West Wing in the age of TikTok. It’s fiercely melodramatic and brutally humourless, up until the moment the president of the so-called United States takes the decision to annihilate the human race (or not) because of some shit he heard on a podcast. I guess this qualifies as peak political commentary?
Things
iPhone Pocket. There are two types of people in this world: the ones that take themselves far too seriously, and the ones that take nothing seriously. Apple falls in the first bucket. Most of Apple’s commentariat falls in the second. People should give themselves permission to appreciate something, perhaps even love it, without irony or cynicism. In other words, people should be a little bit more like Mike Hurley. It would change the(ir) world.