I guess I’m dealing in climate porn too. Things are so enormous they probably do provoke a fight or flight reaction in most people though.
A retired senior energy expert from the National Iranian Oil Co. says no more business as usual, peak oil is here now but politicians ignore bad news and the media ignore it for reasons of income.
My thoughts exactly on the Belgian press vs Google: Belgian Court Hankers For Stone Age.
Mainstream media continues down the clickbait-laden path of laziness.
Nearly every media story concerning the current heatwave and climate breakdown is illustrated by photos of people playing in fountains or on beaches like it's some kind of fun holiday. Pictures of dead crops, forest fires or old people suffering would be closer to reality and might help give a few more readers a nice big kick in the ass about our future. It's irresponsible.
Fantastic article by Craig Mod on the implicit contracts we enter into when giving our attention to digital media. He refers to this as a lack of edges which is the best description I've seen of the issue to date. Read it.
A long read, but worth it, on how technology reviews have pretty much turned into design fetishism rather than proper evaluation of functionality. It's true that bad reviews have become exceedingly rare.
This report argues that consumer technology reviewers have failed their basic nominal purpose of critiquing tools. Instead, inspired by values introduced by Apple in the late 1990s, the tech review industry prioritizes aesthetic lust as the primary critical factor for evaluating objects. The reification of these values in their scoring system is transmitted to consumers and manufacturers alike. Like other prurient things, the objects designed within this paradigm are optimized not for usefulness but for photogenic and telegenic properties, a framework that finds its fullest realization in YouTube reviews and unboxing videos.
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.
