đˇ civil obedience.
on the agenda this week: civil obedience, the all-seeing eye & staying upwind.
đ reading time: 4m 29s.
fig. 1.
the launch of 58 new starlink satellites on saturday.
the launch of 58 new starlink satellites on saturday.
đ hi - happy monday. i hope you & your loved ones are safe & well.
on the agenda this week:
 civil obedience, the all-seeing eye & staying upwind.
âĄď¸ tag me on instagram or follow me on twitter if you enjoy this week's brain drain!
as always, feel free to skip any section that doesnât interest you or reply directly to this email. & a special thank you to my paid subscribers â i really appreciate the support.
đ a note on: civil obedience.
fig. 1.
obedient mask wearers, 1918.
the parallels between the current global pandemic and that of the 1918 influenza pandemic are evident. what is perhaps less apparent is how incredibly similar our response as citizens has been, more than a century later.
âa week ago i laughed at the idea of the mask. i wanted to be independent. i did not realize that the cost of such independence was the lives of others.â
- sf red cross chairman john a. britton.
fig. 2.
a clipping from the
san francisco chronicle
, 1919.
many residents of san francisco complied with the newly introduced mandatory wearing of masks and even went as far as organising mask-making events. this initial sentiment of mask wearing and obedience was quickly followed by carelessness and outright defiance of the law by some. a few hundred people who failed to comply were even sent to prison.
âjohn raggi, arrested on columbus avenue, said he did not wear a mask because he did not believe in masks or ordinances, or even jail. he now has no occasion to disbelieve in jails. he is in the city prison.â
- the san francisco chronicle.
this naturally serves as a warning for us all. even if youâre bored, this isnât over until itâs over.
đ word of the week:
âiconoclasticâ.
criticising or attacking cherished beliefs or institutions.
iconoclastic individuals are our heroes, and big, bad institutionsâmonarchies, patriarchies, churchesâare the villains.
-Â the daily beast.
𤪠mildly humorous:
outtakes from the twitter-sphere.
đ§ brain candy:
đąÂ
all-seeing eye
.
2009 - the killing of oscar grant is recorded in 240p with a flip phone.
2020 - the killing of george floyd is recorded in 1080p with an iphone 11.
joanna sternâs research shows how the smartphone has changed how police brutality is captured and shared:
in 2008, steve jobs had an assignment for a small team of engineers in cupertino: make the iphone record video. after seeing that people liked taking photos with the first iphones, he wanted to add moving pictures. a year later, apple released the iphone 3gs, the first iphone to record video.
about 10 years and 10 iphone models later, 17-year-old darnella frazier found herself standing on a sidewalk in minneapolis, swiping on her purple iphone 11 lock screen to launch the video camera as fast as possible.
she hit the red circle and for the next 10 minutes and 9 seconds she held her phone as steady as she could, capturing george floyd, a black man crying for his mother as his face was smashed into the pavement by white police officer derek chauvin.
âi opened my phone and i started recording because i knew if i didnât, no one would believe me,â ms. frazier said in a statement provided by her lawyer, seth cobin.
a day later, may 26, she opened up the facebook app, and tapped the video of mr. floyd to upload it. the world now knows his name.
đ read more via the wall street journal.
âď¸Â
stay upwind
.
paul graham â a founder of y combinator â has a writing style that captures you instantly. here he posits a replacement for the old adage, âdonât give up on your dreamsâ.
it's not so important what you work on, so long as you're not wasting your time. work on things that interest you and increase your options, and worry later about which you'll take.
suppose you're a college freshman deciding whether to major in math or economics. well, math will give you more options: you can go into almost any field from math. if you major in math it will be easy to get into grad school in economics, but if you major in economics it will be hard to get into grad school in math.
flying a glider is a good metaphor here. because a glider doesn't have an engine, you can't fly into the wind without losing a lot of altitude. if you let yourself get far downwind of good places to land, your options narrow uncomfortably. as a rule you want to stay upwind. so i propose that as a replacement for "don't give up on your dreams." stay upwind.
how do you do that, though? even if math is upwind of economics, how are you supposed to know that as a high school student?
well, you don't, and that's what you need to find out. look for smart people and hard problems. smart people tend to clump together, and if you can find such a clump, it's probably worthwhile to join it. but it's not straightforward to find these, because there is a lot of faking going on.
đ read more via paul graham.
đ earworm:Â liyv.
âyou and me
we are young for the long ride
everyone got past but we don't mind.â
stream now:
liyv makes music that sounds like bubblegum pink icicles; neat perky pop songs that drip like melting candy. these tracks are sort of like the musical equivalent of an iced gem sweet. all these similes might seem unnecessary, but liyvâs self-defined âpastel popâ really lends itself to fancy descriptions of visual imagery, conjured up by her use of vocal samples, repetition and synthed-up percussion (think glittery glockenspiel noises).
-Â drunkenwerewolf.
listen to liyv on spotify or on apple music.
𦶠footer:
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đ read one of my last 5 posts:
đ pandemic protests.
âŞď¸Â drive-by mass.
đ¨âđťÂ permanently wfh.
đĄÂ post-pandemic pilgrimage.
đ Â isolation.
or click to see them all.