Dries Depoorter built software to scan online public cameras and link them to geotagged instagram posts from the same location. Basically finding people from a single instagram photo and potentially tracking them across any public (or not) camera out there. Technically impressive, yet disturbing.
There was a video on the page too, but it seems to have been pulled due to a copyright claim from Earthcam who, I imagine, weren't very happy about their cameras being used for this.
Hungry. That was the word that hooked me. That’s how my brain felt to me, too. Hungry. Needy. Itchy. Once it wanted information. But then it was distraction. And then, with social media, validation. A drumbeat of: You exist. You are seen.
This really hit home: Ezra Klein, echoing Marshall McLuhan, on how the medium does shape us, not just the message.
“Obesity is not a medical epidemic – it’s a social epidemic. We have bad food, for example, and so people are getting fat.” The way we live changed dramatically – our food supply changed, and we built cities that are hard to walk or cycle around, and those changes in our environment led to changes in our bodies. We gained mass, en masse. Something similar, he said, might be happening with the changes in our attention.
Johann Hari believes we now need an attention movement to reclaim our minds and I definitely agree. I've felt this theft of my attention too.
I was completely out of the loop with TikTok and the various allegations concerning it. This substantial take from Stratechery gave me a much clearer picture.
Good. More of this, please.
I've been in worse condition from a cycling crash. I'm not sure how real this is but it's positively Ballardian.
