http://ranprieur.com/#9a417fe513f58988c3b5b1e84cfc57397194a79b 2023-06-13T13:50:04Z Ran Prieur http://ranprieur.com/ ranprieur@gmail.com http://ranprieur.com/#9247d0500216e84bb02eab06a766c5bc2e4f6429 2023-06-13T13:50:04Z June 13. So much for taking a week off from blogging. This morning I woke up early, full of words about the death of Reddit. Actually, when this all blows over, Reddit will go on to make a lot of money for people who already have a lot of money, while being an increasingly unsatisfying platform for its users.

Orin comments: "I'm unaware of a 'solution' to this sort of trend where online communities get eaten by... capitalism?"

I think capitalism is the right word. Reddit is preparing itself to go public, to go on the stock market, and everyone knows that stocks do better when the business model is indifferent to the user experience, safely top-down, and in the case of tech stocks, set up to maximize data harvesting. For financial reasons, Reddit has to force users onto its own clunky app, even if that means half the users quit, because the half who stay will do their jobs to keep the system working properly. We're taking longer to get there, but the result is the same as Soviet communism: citizens trudging cynically through their duties.

I don't think this is some kind of natural cycle, like the aging of organisms or the change of the seasons. Google and Amazon and Reddit aren't doomed to become evil -- they become evil without being doomed, through completely optional tragedies of human error. The main error is optimizing systems for the leveraging of power into more power, rather than for human well-being.

Taking a step back, what is it that makes people who already have enough, want more? Personally, if I had the choice of getting half a million dollars, or a billion dollars, I'd take half a million, because I don't want the responsibility, the lifestyle, or the power over others that comes with a billion dollars.

Some people say they're trying to fill the emptiness inside. I don't know what they're talking about. I have exactly the opposite problem: trying to empty the fullness outside -- seeking shelter from the outside world's exhausting barrage of demands on my attention. Now I'm going to go take a nap.

]]> http://ranprieur.com/#564074352fdd33da4f3a3c415ffa3d67ab1f9ea6 2023-06-11T23:30:50Z June 11. I was already planning to take a week off from blogging. Conveniently, this coincides with the Reddit blackout. That's the explanation on the ELI5 subreddit, and here's the explanation on my favorite subreddit recently, Ask Old People.

I use Reddit through Firefox on my laptop, but a lot of people use it through phone apps, including independent apps that work better in many ways than the official Reddit app. From ELI5: "Third Party Apps or TPAs have been on reddit for a decade. Reddit gave them 30 days notice of the introduction of a pricing structure set so high no one can afford it."

In protest, many subreddits are either going private or preventing new posts, as of tomorrow. This page, Reddark, is keeping track of them. If the mods of r/ranprieur choose to participate, I support that. And if Reddit doesn't back off from this policy, I might stop using it. This reminds me of the Digg debacle, when they made sweeping interface changes that killed Digg and sent everyone to Reddit. But this time, there's nowhere for people to go, except off the internet, which is probably a good idea.

]]> http://ranprieur.com/#27d8497718a1aa44c198da19ca1a4546ed771b9f 2023-06-09T21:10:52Z June 9. For the weekend, drugs and music. This psychedelic cryptography contest challenged people to make videos with a message that can only be seen if you're tripping. All three winners work by using tracers, the visual phenomenon where you keep seeing something for a moment after it's gone.

The Subjective Effect Index "is a set of articles designed to serve as a comprehensive catalogue and reference for the range of subjective effects that may occur under the influence of psychoactive substances and other psychonautic techniques."

And a cool Reddit thread, What can you do better when you're high?

I knew if I kept saying that there has not been one great song on the Billboard hot 100 in this century, one would turn up. Peaking at number 39 (and number 1 in UK singles), an absolute banger from 2008, The Ting Tings - That's Not My Name.

I continue to tweak my Spotify playlists, and I've added two similar songs to my already too long 2010s playlist, Stealing Sheep - Shut Eye and one that's not on Spotify, Cat's Eyes - Face in the Crowd.

]]> http://ranprieur.com/#5fc42a32ddcced3b94b707fa03b9cac3fd3a7425 2023-06-07T19:50:39Z June 7. A few psychology links. Helplessness Is Not Learned. There have been a lot of experiments that seem to show learned helplessness, but neuroscience has discovered that helplessness is actually the default. Whatever it is, your brain starts with the assumption that you can't do anything about it, and then learns the sense that you can do something about it.

The top comment in the Hacker News thread is about learning that you can control the clutter in your home. But I'm thinking about the opposite: things that stress us out because we feel like we should do something about them, when we have basically zero influence. This includes everything ever covered on TV news.

Artists must be allowed to make bad work, a short blog post arguing that social media is harmful for creative work, because everything people do is in the public eye, and they're afraid to take risks.

The Proteus effect "describes a phenomenon in which the behavior of an individual, within virtual worlds, is changed by the characteristics of their avatar." The obvious direction to go with this, is that our behavior in the physical world is also heavily influenced by what we look like, and what behavior other people expect from someone who looks like that. So, if someone changes their look, it's probably because they want to act like that kind of person would act, and it's easier if they look like that.

]]> http://ranprieur.com/#dc0989e05bc69209f96837c74bb996a4a24c2845 2023-06-05T17:30:37Z June 5. Good news links. Emissions are no longer following the worst case scenario

A paywalled article about Mississippi schools. Through a set of reforms, they've gone from worst in the nation to above average.

Two PubMed science articles. Ariadne is a non-hallucinogenic analog in the phenylalkylamine chemical class of psychedelics, so it has the therapeutic effects of a good psychedelic, but you don't trip. Personally, I'd rather get the therapeutic effects and also trip.

A Simple Exercise to Eliminate Gastroesophageal Reflux: practice swallowing upside down.

And a thread from Ask Old People, What's a food that was common when you were growing up but you see rarely if ever nowadays? Some of these are good, but most of them are terrible: chicken ala king, jello with marshmallows, chop suey, salisbury steak tv dinners. So this is one way the world is getting better.

]]> http://ranprieur.com/#a9654d1379be5f88c70b13b379df42429e944e4d 2023-06-01T13:50:18Z June 1. Stray links, starting with doom. Microplastics are falling from the sky. "The predicted downpour will range between 40 and 48 kilograms (88 and 106 pounds) of free-floating plastic bits blanketing greater Paris every 24 hours." Inevitably something will evolve to eat this, but it may take a million years without our help. The sci-fi scenario is that we bioengineer something to eat microplastics and it also eats plastics that we like.

'Farming good, factory bad', a belief that George Monbiot disagrees with, arguing that "storybook farming" cannot feed the world without terrible ecological destruction. Permaculturists would surely argue that super-intensive farming would still work, but Monbiot's solution might be more realistic: "a shift from farming multicellular organisms (plants and animals) to farming unicellular creatures (microbes)."

Good news on urban design, Federal Zoning Bill Would Preempt Local Parking Mandates, and another article on the same subject, This little-known rule shapes parking in America. The rule is that new construction has to have a certain amount of parking. Killing that rule is something both the right and left can get behind, the right because then property owners can do whatever they want, and the left because what they usually want is less parking, which leads to denser and more walkable neighborhoods.

Something fun for the weekend, The Most Underrated Sci-Fi Movies of the 1970s, where underrated means not Star Wars. I've seen more than half of these movies, and this article is right on about how interesting they are, despite their flaws or because of their flaws.

And a ridiculous goal by my favorite footballer, Morgan Weaver. The bigger the moment, the better she performs, and she'll eventually be a key player on the national team.

]]>