A vehicle struck a pedestrian, who died at the scene.
In other words, a car killed someone.
She was crossing in the crosswalk of a sprawling intersection late at night.
The car’s driver was not wearing a helmet.
No skid marks on the pavement.
And he was texting.
These facts may indicate vehicular manslaughter.
Continue reading Crosswalks in KrakówToday we’re going to talk about abundance, agency, the victim narrative, family and some other takeaways from a great conversation between Eric Weinstein and Ryan Holiday on The Portal podcast.
It’s a smart, friendly and wide-ranging interview, and I highly recommend listening to the whole thing, which you can find here: The Portal Episode 31: Ryan Holiday – Conspiracy, Manipulation & other Pastimes
Note: Weinstein gives context around the discussion — which was recorded earlier this year before the quarantine mandates rolled out — at the 12-minute mark, and the uninterrupted interview with Holiday starts at 17:10.
In this post I highlight a handful of particularly profound excerpts from the interview, which I edited lightly for clarity. I also connect the dots to show how they’re especially relevant to our current COVID-19 climate.
Continue reading Bringing it all back homeLast year, in AF Media Diet 2019, I compared media to food, and argued that:
Therefore, it’s crucial for our health to strategize and develop healthy media consumption habits as we would design a nutritious diet.
Now, in the face of a catastrophic pandemic, as we struggle to filter vital signals from harmful noise, it’s more important than ever to spend time and energy thinking about the content we consume.
As such, I’m going to revisit the media diet principles I sketched out last year to see how they hold up in the COVID-19 media landscape — where the stakes are higher, the noise is louder, and the right signal can save lives — and where we’re even more dependent on (and flooded by) digital social networks and distributed publishers.
Despite the fire hose of clamoring content, it’s times like these I value and appreciate free speech — despite the mess — more than ever. There’s more crap to swat away, but we know the truth is out there too. And it’s up to us — each one of us — to find the truth, follow it, question it, amplify it, and live it.
Continue reading Media Diet 2020Think of your day as a big party, and you’re the host.
All the food, drinks, music, people and conversations at the party represent your daily life — they’re essentially the various elements of your daily consumption.
Everyone is laughing, dancing, and generally having a nice time catching up, getting to know each other and chatting about sports, books, TV, movies, work, politics and gossip.
That is, almost everyone.
Continue reading A day without an advertisementI had been ordering my groceries online and having them dropped off on my front porch well before the virus hit.
The delivery service made grocery shopping safer and more convenient than the traditional method of driving out and back to the store every week.
What used to take me over an hour now only cost about five minutes and a $10 tip.
Aside from the occasional cracked egg or overripe avocado, they usually fulfilled my order accurately and met my expectations.
Back then food delivery was a valuable service offering I was happy to pay for. But after the virus erupted into a pandemic the authorities took over.
Continue reading The elephant in the egg carton