May 25, 2025

Daily Log Digest – Week 20, 2025

2025-05-17

Tehran's Cafe Culture

Tehran adopts modern café society #tehran #iran #cafe #culture

Cafe culture is the best.

At the heart of the transformation is the rise of trendy new cafés, driven by the demands of a young, educated population that may not have significant wealth but has an undeniable passion for socialising in different spaces and feeling connected to global trends.

In Tehran and other major cities here, café culture has exploded. Although there’s still much ground to cover and quality to improve, this culinary upheaval is as much about reclaiming identity as it is about embracing the rest of the world.

“Everybody is creating cracks in the wall of fanaticism, even those linked to the political system, whether they’re aware of it or not,” said one person in the sector. “Look at how alive the city is at a very difficult time. And this is thanks to these cafés, theatres and art galleries.”

2025-05-18

The good times in tech are over | sean goedecke #tech #programming #software #jobs

In the 2010s, interest rates were zero or close to zero2. Investors could thus borrow a lot of money. Much of that money was spent on tech companies in the hope of outsized returns. Tech companies were thus incentivized to (a) hire like crazy, and (b) do a lot of low-risk high-reward things, even if that ends up wasting money. Tech companies definitely did not have to be profitable. In fact, they didn’t even need to make money - they just had to acquire users, or at least hype, to drive up the valuation of the company itself. In that environment, throwing money at their software engineers (in the form of paid trips, in-house chefs, and huge comp packages) was a sensible business decision.

In 2023, this underlying economic situation reversed: interest rates went up to around 5%3. Tech company incentives completely flipped: now it’s suddenly important to be profitable, or at least to make lots of money. That means it’s not wise for most companies to hire like crazy, or to continue throwing near-unlimited amounts of money at their software engineers.

The biggest thing to internalize is that companies now are actually trying to focus. In 2015, there was a lot of appetite to do everything at the same time: building out new product lines, transitioning from a product to a platform, making significant open-source contributions, working on a top-tier developer experience, and so on. In 2025, most of these initiatives have been abruptly defunded in order to put more resources into a handful of bets that the company executives actually care about.

During the 2010s, it was as if companies were their software engineers, and were interested in the same things as their engineers were. A lot of engineers were fooled by this into identifying strongly with their employer. But this was a mirage: in part caused by companies’ desire to attract and retain talent, and in part by there being no real pressure on companies to say no to anything. Now the mirage has vanished. Companies are their executive leadership, and their executive leadership are interested in a much smaller set of things.

If I had to choose, I’d definitely choose to return to the job market of the 2010s, so I can be paid more to work less and have more job security. I’m not an idiot. But the silver lining to actually having to ship is that you’re no longer living in a dream. If you’re realistic about how things work, the job of software engineering becomes much easier to understand:

1. Providing value to the company gets you rewarded
2. Not providing value to the company gets you punished
3. “Value to the company” means furthering the explicit plans of your company’s executives

It’s not much of a mission statement! Certainly nothing on “making the world a better place”. But it has the comforting solidity of the truth. The good thing about the music finally stopping is that you don’t have to worry about when it’s going to stop.

Liquid Content

The Dawn of Liquid Content - by Ryan Khurana

In our world, AI is obliterating the boundaries between forms altogether.

Welcome to the age of Liquid Content—where information flows seamlessly between mediums, transforming its shape while preserving its essence. What was once fixed—text, audio, video—now exists in a state of perpetual potential, ready to materialize in whatever form serves the moment. To understand where Liquid Content will take us, we need only to look at how it has already transformed how we comprehend information.

On TikTok, a video’s format – short, vertical, often overlaid with text – is key to its addictive appeal. A striking example is the prevalence of AI-enabled dynamic transcript overlays (auto-captions and text snippets that appear in sync with speech). By presenting spoken words as on-screen text, TikTok videos manage to grip viewers even with the sound off – something traditional digital media formats failed to do. The result? Higher engagement and retention. In fact, surveys have found that 80% of viewers are more likely to watch an entire video when captions are on, and 37% say captions actually encourage them to turn the sound on out of increased interest.

If TikTok and Spotify show medium shifts in action, AI-powered multimodality represents something far more radical: the complete liberation of content from form. We're not just talking about converting text to speech—we're entering an era where content exists as pure information potential, ready to materialize in whatever medium best serves the moment.

This isn't just flexible content; it's Liquid Content—a paradigm where information flows into the vessel most appropriate for context, user, and purpose.

Breathwork

I was sceptical about breathwork so I did my own research | Psyche Ideas #health #wellness

It all started when I heard about a landmark scientific paper that involved the ‘Ice Man’ Wim Hof training a group of volunteers in a specific breathing technique, and comparing their outcomes with a control group. Earlier, all the volunteers had been injected with a bacterial endotoxin; the results of the breathwork experiment suggested that the Hof group had been able to use controlled breathing to influence their autonomic nervous system, and subsequently their immune response to the toxin.

breathwork techniques

Breathwork is both ancient and contemporary. ‘Breath’ translates as spirit in Latin: spiritus. Derived from practices such as yogic pranayama (prana = life-giving force; ayama = extension or expansion) and Tibetan tummo (‘inner fire’) meditation, it encompasses diverse techniques that regulate breathing patterns to influence physical, mental and emotional states. Techniques range from slow, meditative-like breathing (such as coherent breathing, and nadi shodhana, which is alternate nostril breathing) to faster, high-ventilation styles (such as Hof’s hyperventilation with breath holds, and Stanislav Grof’s holotropic breathwork, which involves engaging in very deep breathing for up to three hours at a time).

Other notable techniques include ujjayi breathing and kapalabhati. Ujjayi or ‘ocean breath’ is a soft, whispering breath that can enhance and complement both focus and steadiness, especially while practising movement/yoga. It involves breathing with a slight constriction in your throat, creating a sound like gentle ocean waves. Kapalabhati or ‘skull shining breath’ is a cleansing, high-ventilation practice that involves pumping the navel to produce forceful exhales, with passive inhales due to recoil of the lungs. It may improve mental clarity.

Unlike many wellness trends that come and go, breathwork – similar to meditation and yoga – is grounded in millennia of human experience. However, breathwork’s claims often outpace rigorous scientific validation, so I completely understand the scepticism. Early in my journey, I too questioned whether controlled breathing could truly influence wellbeing. In fact, it’s part of what motivated me to begin my doctoral research, titled Does Breathwork Work? An Empirical Evaluation of the Hype (2008).

Living without a higher purpose

We can live well, even though we don’t have a higher purpose | Psyche Ideas #purpose #life #self-improvement

In her fiction and theory, Le Guin rejects both nihilism and optimism on the grounds that both defer to a ‘higher purpose’. For her, living without a higher purpose means assuming a few things:

• There is no deity or force in the Universe with a specific plan for our life.
• How society is currently organised is not inevitable; the hierarchies we are born into can be changed.
• We have no specific biological nature that has preprogrammed what it is to be human.
• The people who raised us and the things we’ve been subjected to do not dictate our life’s path.

The Anti-Tech Canon - Books

The Anti-Tech Canon: 30 Books - by Ted Gioia #books #humanities

Back in 2024, I felt an urgent need to challenge the new doctrine of techno-optimism. This ideology told people to shut up and keep scrolling.

Silicon Valley would build utopia for us. We just needed to stare into those tiny screens 24/7, download all the apps, and upload all our private information.

They would do all the rest.

Around that time, some tech leaders started sharing reading lists. These were mostly filled with garbage books—banal pop psychology, sycophantic tech bro bios, and padded ‘big idea’ screeds churned out by Gladwell-ish gladhanders.

I found this alarming. I don’t tell these people what to code. Why were they telling me what to read?

Let me be blunt: You won’t learn about those better books from tech CEOs. Many of them are very smart—I spent 25 years in Silicon Valley and know that from firsthand experience. But right now the tech world needs an infusion of humanistic thinking and a larger cultural perspective.

And that’s not something that Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or Tim Cook can deliver.

You need to go outside the tech echo chamber to find this larger wisdom. I’m talking about the real thing—holistic and healing and with the deepest of roots.

There is no app for this.

I have now updated and expanded that reading list. And I’ve also removed it from behind the paywall where it has been hidden from view.

• Shakespeare's final play: A celebration of imagination, harmony, and reconciliation.
• Dr. Frankenstein: The responsibilities of the technocrat and the price of innovation.
• Ruskin's The Nature of Gothic: A critique of organizations from a human standpoint.
• Ruskin's Unto This Last: An ethical perspective on economics.
• Dickens' Hard Times: Compassionate reform in the face of industrialization.
• Thoreau's Walden: A contemplative life in nature.
• Mann's The Magic Mountain: The limitations of the technocrat worldview.
• Ortega's The Dehumanization of Art: The relevance of human elements in art.
• Huxley's Brave New World: The dangers of addiction and distraction.
• Huizinga's Homo Ludens: The importance of playfulness in human life.
• Orwell's 1984: A critique of surveillance and authoritarianism.
• Weil's The Need for Roots: The implications of uprootedness in society.
• Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology: A philosophical critique of technology.
• Arendt's The Human Condition: A playbook for a creative, purposeful life.
• Leavis and Snow's debate: The value of tech versus humanities.
• Herbert's Dune: Themes of power and ecological exploitation.
• Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: Dystopian views on human and machine boundaries.
• Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Insights on technology and society.
• Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: Flourishing in nature without digital interfaces.
• Foucault's Discipline and Punish: The evolution of power and surveillance.
• Gaddis' JR: A postmodernist view on reality and business.
• Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation: The critique of hyperreality.
• Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: The dangers of screen-driven culture.
• Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go: Nurturing empathy in a tech-driven world.
• McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary: The risks of a left-brain dominated worldview.
• Feyerabend's Against Method: A plea for a pluralistic approach to science.
• Han's The Burnout Society: The impact of multitasking on mental health.
• Wulf's The Invention of Nature: The Romantic movement's influence on culture.
• Taylor's Philosopher of the Arts: The importance of arts in realizing a fulfilling life.

Tariff Drama as Kayfabe

WWEconomics: Kayfabe and the Trade War - by kyla scanlon

We’re increasingly watching a simulacrum of politics, a simulation where the real consequences of a trade deal or a policy shift are overshadowed by the perceived drama. Because of this, the true effects of the trade deal, the policy changes, and the corporate maneuvers are obscured by the illusion of political engagement. The focus on tariffs keeps the spotlight on symbolic victories, while deeper, structural issues like worker retraining and investment in future industries remain sidelined.

In professional wrestling, everyone knows the outcomes are predetermined. The championship belts change hands according to storylines written in advance.

The show will continue because the incentives align: politicians get attention, corporations get deals, and algorithms get engagement, whatever. As Barthes pointed out, wrestling is about symbolic conflict - not real violence. The same could be said for the trade war. The real fight is happening behind the scenes, where the deals are made. In the end, both wrestlers leave the ring richer, the audience leaves poorer, and the kayfabe continues.

2025-05-19

What is HDR

What is HDR, anyway?

Your modern phone's camera first captures a series of photos at various brightness levels, like we showed a moment ago. From this burst of photos, the app calculates an HDR image, but unlike that commercial software from earlier, it uses complex logic and AI to make the tone mapping choices for you.

Apple and Google called this stuff "HDR" because "HDR Construction Followed By Automatic Tone Mapping" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. But just to be clear, the HDR added to the iPhone in 2010 was not HDR. The final JPEG was an SDR image that tries to replicate what you saw with your eyes. Maybe they should have called it "Fake HDR Mode."

In the age of film negatives, photography was a three step process.

1. Capture a scene on film
2. Develop the film in a lab
3. Transfer the film to paper

It's important to break down these steps because— plot twist— film is actually a high dynamic range medium. You just lose the dynamic range when you transfer your photo from a negative to paper. So in the age before Photoshop, master photographers would "dodge and burn" photos to preserve details during the transfer.

2025-05-21

Preferences on Dating Apps

‘Swipe left if you’re under 6ft’: Why are we so obsessed with height? | Dazed #dating #height

Plus, there’s often a gap between people’s self-reported preferences and their actual desires. Or, in other words, there’s a difference between what people say they want on dating apps and what really attracts them in real life. “Dating apps encourage trait-based decisions: users rely on profile details and photos, making choices based on abstract concepts. By contrast, offline attraction is holistic and dynamic, involving nonverbal cues, synchrony, and how someone makes you feel,” Dr Jackson explains.

“In real life, we’re drawn to things like how someone moves, how they listen or make us laugh, their energy, presence, and charisma,” he continues. “These are what we call ‘affective cues’ – these cues play a big role in forming real-world attraction, but they’re almost entirely absent online, where we judge people from a few photos. In person, we also tend to become more forgiving and open once we’ve formed a sense of someone’s warmth, humour, or kindness.” He adds that research shows physical appearance matters less and less over time in ongoing relationships, once deeper emotional bonds have begun to form.

This is one of the myriad issues with online dating: apps inhibit our ability to be curious and imaginative about what we might want. They expect us to possess an unrealistic level of self-knowledge about all of our desires, as if desire is fixed and immutable rather than fluid and ever-changing. But we don’t have to play by apps’ rules – disengaging from rigid ideas about physical ‘types’ and fostering open-mindedness remains our best bet when it comes to finding lasting love.

2025-05-22

The Era of the Business Idiot

The Era Of The Business Idiot #neoliberalism #manager #workers #shareholder #value

This looong 13000 piece is worth reading in full. But this quote stood out for me

We live in the era of the symbolic executive, when "being good at stuff" matters far less than the appearance of doing stuff, where "what's useful" is dictated not by outputs or metrics that one can measure but rather the vibes passed between managers and executives that have worked their entire careers to escape the world of work. Our economy is run by people that don't participate in it and our tech companies are directed by people that don't experience the problems they allege to solve for their customers, as the modern executive is no longer a person with demands or responsibilities beyond their allegiance to shareholder value.