Daily Log Digest – Week 3, 2025

2025-01-19

Cursor vs Windsurf

Circa Jan 2025: Windsurf vs Cursor: which is the better AI code editor? #ai #code

These things are evolving so fast that it's likely this will be outdated pretty soon.

TikTok Ban

The Great Creator Reset - by Taylor Lorenz - User Mag

Since 2020, TikTok has served as a major hub for progressive speech and activism. The ban will deplatform thousands of progressive content creators and skew online discourse toward conservative ideologies. It will consolidate media influence within right leaning platforms like Meta and X. Over time, I believe this reconfiguration will permanently alter the political landscape of the creator economy.

…

While the majority of news content creators across the social media landscape are conservative men, a recent study found that TikTok is the only platform where left-leaning news influencers outnumber right-leaning ones. TikTok also has more than double the concentration of news content creators who identify as LGBTQ+ or advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, and 73% of teens who identify as Democrats or lean left use TikTok, compared to 52% of teens who identify as Republican, according to Pew Research.

When to book budget travel

Your Frugal Travel Calendar for the Year Ahead - The New York Times #travel #budget

Good overview of budget travel opportunities across the year.

The Masculinity Crisis as a Crisis of Self-Esteem

The ‘masculinity crisis’ is actually a crisis of self-esteem | Psyche Ideas #masculinity #loneliness #jobs

Yet another wonderful intervention in the masculinity crisis space. I seem to come across a lot of this lately.

There is a global crisis in self-esteem. It affects more or less everybody, but (as I’ll argue) it affects globalised, economically unequal societies the worst. The crisis is almost imperceptible because we’re living it every day, but that only adds to its seriousness. By self-esteem, I mean one’s self-estimation: whether one feels successful, or at least capable of success, by one’s own standards. To lack self-esteem is to feel impotent, even worthless. The crisis is that there is a widespread lack of self-esteem, and a universal competition for it.

This part seems very relatable, esp when I conversations with people around me.

Our culture is saturated with this way of seeing ourselves: we increasingly describe even prosaic aspects of life as an expression of our uniqueness. Choosing what to study, or finding a job, requires a lot of soul-searching these days. We are all implored to follow our passion, with the implication that everybody ought to have one; wanting a normal career that leaves enough free time to be happy feels to some like an admission of inadequacy.

The only way to maintain self-esteem under modern conditions is to outperform others – but there’s always somebody doing better. To be average is to be profoundly unsatisfied, because the fact that (even a handful of) others are doing much better reveals one’s (supposed) intrinsic inferiority. That this dynamic plays out under a model of capitalism characterised by intense income and wealth inequality exacerbates the problem.

The author as an interesting diagnosis of this

My contention is that the competition for self-esteem, and the widespread lack of it that results, is to blame for much of what we attribute to the crisis in masculinity. Men are frustrated because they feel like failures, and they feel like failures because – given the way our society distributes self-esteem – almost everybody has to feel like a failure. Men are increasingly angry and disengaged from mainstream society not merely because they don’t know what manhood means in the absence of privilege, nor because a liberal elite is propagating behavioural norms that suppress their masculine nature. Rather, being angry and disengaged is the natural human response to a society that makes one feel impotent and inferior, and affords a sense of control to very few. (This raises the question of why women might respond differently to the self-esteem crisis; I suggest that the interplay between patriarchal norms and the competition for self-esteem might mean women experience the same frustration, but respond differently.)

and finally, what could be a possible solution

If the competition for self-esteem is the problem, what is the solution? We need to refocus our attention on widening access to self-esteem. This means ensuring access to what we’re accustomed to seeing as a basic standard of living: stable employment, decent housing and healthcare.

It also means, as Michael Walzer, Timo Jütten and other political philosophers have argued, refocusing our shared standards of success. These are called the ‘standards of contribution’ in the academic literature: the standards one must meet to feel like one is a success, who has contributed properly to society.

We must take every opportunity to venerate human achievement in all its diverse forms: we should refocus our attention on caring for loved ones, creating art, engaging in activism and local politics, and volunteering in the community. This can start with reform to the education system and the values it inculcates in children. Finally, we should remind ourselves how much anybody’s success is down to luck (as Michael Sandel argued in his book The Tyranny of Merit, 2020). This isn’t important just because of its implications for the distribution of material goods; reflecting on the importance of luck can function as a kind of meditative exercise, to dampen the competition for self-esteem.

2025-01-20

podscript rewrite

I rewrote the podscript tool I created last year: Complete rewrite to improve ergonomics of the CLI interface. · deepakjois/podscript@dd8a229 · GitHub

I feel much better about the quality of the code and ergonomics of the CLI interface now. I am hoping to go further now and build a web-based add-on to the basic CLI that can be used from a browser and is more user-friendly.

One of the things I am especially proud of is the abstraction that I came up with on top of the LLM APIs (OpenAI, Claude and Groq) that allows me to send requests to them via a unified interface depending on which model the user wants to use: podscript/llms.go at 104c6aafe06a5283215ab1bc8fd884a1f0959404 · deepakjois/podscript · GitHub

GPU Mode

GPU MODE · GitHub #gpu #discord

Your favorite GPU reading group: https://discord.gg/gpumode

James Collier - Founder of Huel

‘I get hate from both sides – vegans and carnivores’: James Collier on UPFs, emotional eating and why he created Huel | Health | The Guardian #food #nutrition

I am quite a fan of Huel and I used to consume it a lot when in the US. It helped me a lot on days when I was too lazy to cook, or wanted to lock in and focus on something else instead of spending time on food prep.

I had never heard of James Collier before reading this article, but the mention of Huel piqued my interest. I somehow pictured some techbro like figure who was formerly a fan of soylent to be the founder, but Collier's opinions were refreshingly different.

His research led him to reconsider the food system as a whole, and eventually resulted in Well Fed. The book outlines his dietary philosophy, which he calls contemplative nutrition. It has five pillars: physical health, mental wellbeing, sustainability, ethics and togetherness.

Huel – “human fuel” – is instant food. How can its co-founder advocate contemplative eating? Surely that is contradictory to the convenience that Huel promotes to its customers (who are known as Hueligans)? “People can have a 100% Huel diet, but I would never encourage that – in fact, I would discourage it. But it can be one meal a day, or a couple of meals a week, or just have it in your cupboard for whenever times are hard,” he says. “People are grabbing food on the go, making unhealthy food choices. Huel is the best plan B.”

…

When I first heard about Huel, I assumed it was a kind of trendy SlimFast. Is it a diet product? “It’s neither for weight gain nor weight loss,” says Collier. “Huel has been designed as a 2,000 calorie a day intake. It’s also been designed to promote satiety.” I tell him about a friend who credits Huel for getting rid of his beer belly. “Huel can’t take the credit for that, other than it’s made his life easier. There’s no magic solution in Huel. Anyone who changes their diet for the better is going to improve.”

In the book, Collier rails against the term “ultra-processed food”, preferring the phrase “junk food”. It is not difficult to see why: Huel falls into the former category but not the latter. Its products variously contain flavourings, stabilisers, sweeteners, emulsifiers and thickeners. “The term ultra-processed food should have stayed in academia. It has confused the public,” he says. “We need ultra-processing to combat the many environmental and nutritional risks we face. How are we going to get more fibre into people? Let’s use the right sort of ultra-processing.” He points to Weetabix, baked beans and high-fibre bread as the “right” sort – as well as Huel, of course.

2025-01-21

Beauty Burnout

Signs you may be suffering from beauty burnout | Dazed

Beauty routines are often sold to us as acts of self-love – a way to pamper, express ourselves and feel confident. But for many women, these rituals have become less about joy and more about obligation. The constant upkeep, the endless appointments, the perpetual self-monitoring, the overwhelm of products, the non-stop beauty content and the pressure to meet ever-evolving standards, has left countless women feeling exhausted. Welcome to beauty burnout, a phenomenon where the pursuit of perfection leaves women feeling drained, financially strained, and emotionally overwhelmed.

…

This beauty tax isn’t just about time – it’s a significant financial burden, and a gendered issue that puts women at an additional economic and temporal disadvantage. Women feel the need to invest heavily in their appearance in order to be worthy of visibility, opportunity and respect, in a way that men simply do not. Despite the rising costs of treatments, and the fact that women are getting into debt for beauty, we continue to participate because the penalties for nonconformity can be severe. Research shows that women who don’t adhere to beauty standards face both social and economic consequences, from lower wages to reduced opportunities for advancement.

The paradox is particularly cruel: women are valued for their beauty and physical attractiveness but often penalised and judged for putting effort into enhancing their appearance. The’re expected to employ rigorous self-discipline and monitoring while appearing nonchalant and unconcerned by beauty at all.…

…

The reality is that when we consider the constant self-monitoring, psychological labour and time expended, most women receive a negative return on what is sold to us as beauty ‘investment’. And on top of that, we’re left burnt out and exhausted. Despite our changing role in society and increased earning potential, beauty standards are more prescriptive than ever. The gender status quo is largely preserved, if not worsened, by the increasing aestheticisation of our world and the ever-increasing beauty tax women face.

2025-01-22

Laurie Voss on Building with AI

What I've learned about writing AI apps so far | Seldo.com

• LLMs are good at transforming text into less text
• LLMs only reliably know what you just told them, don't rely on training data
• LLMs cannot write for you
• Let them self-correct, multiple times if necessary
• Have the LLM do as little as possible
• LLMs can help a human perform tasks, they cannot replace a human
• LLMs are awesome and limited

Economist Starter Pack

TIL there is an Economist Starter Pack on Bluesky where you call follow many Economist journos: [The Economist’s starter pack](https://bsky.app/profile/economist.com) #bluesky #lists

NYT Amplifier David Lynch

David Lynch’s Enchanting Sound Worlds - The New York Times #music #playlist

The soundtracks of Lynch’s movie and TV works also showcased existing songs, often mined from American popular music of past decades, and they clearly were not casual choices — one resonated so strongly with Lynch that he took it for a film’s title. Like Kenneth Anger’s “Scorpio Rising,” which set transgressive biker imagery to 1960s pop, Lynch’s visual and musical juxtapositions could rearrange songs’ DNA, adding depth and new layers of meaning — just try hearing Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” the same way after watching “Blue Velvet.”

Here are 13 songs that helped us step inside David Lynch’s dream worlds.

In heaven everything is fine,

YouTube Music Playlist: The Amplifier: David Lynch's Enchanting Sound Worlds

Matt Levine on Crypto Memecoins

Matt Levine's latest newsletter which contains a section on the Trump Memecoin: The SEC Was Busy Last Week - Bloomberg

Imagine you are elected mayor of a medium-sized city. Just before you take office, you announce a new program. This program is: You have set up a website where people can give you money. If they give you money, their name goes on a list, on your computer. “What do we get for the money,” they ask. “Oh nothing,” you say. “Your name just goes on the list, and I get the money, to spend. That’s it. Nothing happens with the list.”

You can, I think, see two fairly obvious problems here:

1. If you are telling the truth, people are giving you money for nothing, so why would they do it?
2. Are you telling the truth? Will people believe you? Will people who want contracts with the city find it useful to be on the list? Isn’t this, you know?

It seems like this would be a scam, or a bribe, or probably both.

Crypto solves these problems. Instead of a website with a list, you launch a memecoin with a ledger. People can give you money and get on the list, but in exchange they get something. The thing they get is: A tradeable entry on the list, an electronic claim saying “I gave you money” that they can sell, at some fluctuating market price, to somebody else. They can make money by giving you money: They give you $10 to get on the list, and then sell their spot on the list to someone else for $12.

So essentially, it's a legitimized form of bribery?

2025-01-23

John Prideaux from The Economist on Trump's Inauguration

Examining what was said and what was signed on Trump’s day one #podcast #trump

This bit from the podcast transcript stood out for me with references to manifest destiny and the gilded age.

Clip below refers to quotes from Trump as heard on audio.

Jason Palmer [00:03:06] And yet we’ve all been looking forward to the inaugural address as a kind of bellwether for what we’re actually going to get this time around. What was your take?

John Prideaux [00:03:14] The single line that stood out to me most from the speech was about the Panama Canal, which is quite a strange thing to stand out in an inaugural address.

Clip [00:03:23] Violated American ships are being severely overcharged and not treated fairly in any way, shape or form.

John Prideaux [00:03:34] He said about the Panama Canal. We will take it back.

Clip [00:03:37] And above all, China is operating the Panama Canal. And we didn’t give it to China. We gave it to Panama and we’re taking it back.

John Prideaux [00:03:49] And that is quite striking coming from an American president. I don’t think Donald Trump means he’s going to send in the 82nd Airborne, as George H.W. Bush did in the late 1980s to Panama to take it back by force. But that was kind of the impression that he got. And it was an impression reinforced in other parts of the speech where he talked about America’s manifest destiny, which is an old 19th century theme in American history about conquering and taming the whole of the continent.

Clip [00:04:22] The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory.

John Prideaux [00:04:32] He talked about Manifest Destiny and said that one of the things that was important to him was that America should always be a growing nation. It should be expanding its territory now like it expanded its territory in the 19th century. Not to the same extent, perhaps, but the idea is the same. That is a very old idea of American greatness. It’s really a throwback to William McKinley, who President Trump mentioned a couple of times favourably.

Clip [00:05:03] President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent. He was a natural businessman.

John Prideaux [00:05:12] McKinley was president at the end of the 19th century, at a time when America’s territory expanded. He was also extremely keen on tariffs and had backing from a lot of the wealthiest Americans in the Gilded Age. In McKinley’s age, those wealthy entrepreneurs were people like J.P. Morgan and John D Rockefeller. In the Donald Trump the golden Age as he described his new Gilded Age. There were people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, all of whom were at Trump’s inauguration. There was another striking moment when he talked about going to Mars and planting the American flag on Mars. And at that moment, Elon Musk, whose own goal is to make mankind a multiplanetary species, was delighted and gave a double thumbs up.

Clip [00:05:59] And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.

The Trump Administration and WHO

The Trump Administration just walked out on global health

His decision to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) will be catastrophic if it is more than bluster. We all have media fatigue. Wellness disinformation is rampant. But we cannot be complacent. This Executive Order isn’t just another “crazy thing Trump has done” to add to the pile.

The US leaving the WHO is a moral failing even more than it is a catastrophic policy decision.

And it reeks of ignorance from people who have not experienced places where the WHO is the difference between life and death for billions of people. It’s cruel and immoral. And it will harm Americans and the rest of the planet.

Men and the Beauty Industrial Complex

My father had plastic surgery. Now he wants me and my mother to get work done | Well actually | The Guardian #beauty #feminism

Jessica DeFino talks about how men are being coopted into the beauty industrial complex

Girls are born into beauty culture, which teaches us that appearance is a key measure of our worth. It’s communal! Social! Fun! Feminine beauty ideals are modeled by the dolls we play with. (Hi, Barbie.) The rules are passed down in games and stories. (Remember Pretty Pretty Princess?) Products become portals to friendship and connection. We learn to self-surveil and to surveil others, often subconsciously, as a way to gauge our personal success and help our loved ones succeed, too.

Some of us eventually reckon with this, and realize the urge to embody beauty standards isn’t a harmless hobby so much as a harmful obligation. But that can take time.

Your father, freshly exposed to beauty culture in his 50s, isn’t there yet. He still has the mindset of an adolescent. And he’s far from alone!

The cosmetics industry has been reeling men into its multibillion-dollar empire in recent years. Call it inclusivity: the media hailed singer Joe Jonas’s 2022 endorsement of Xeomin, a Botox alternative, as “genderless self-care”. Call it capitalism: Pharrell, Machine Gun Kelly, Harry Styles and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson all cashed in on the celebrity beauty brand boom by launching their own lines. Call it contagion: an increasingly virtual world is an increasingly visual world, and the pressure to prioritize aesthetics is reaching parents, children and even pets.

Whatever you call it, it’s working.

…

In an ideal world, cis, straight men’s growing interest in a traditionally female- and queer-focused category might inspire them to question arbitrary gender norms – to free themselves from the trap of toxic masculinity! Alas, that’s not what’s happening.

Instead, men have recast cosmetics as power tools for alphas, reinforcing sexist stereotypes and promoting ageist, classist, oppressive appearance ideals. Beautification has been rebranded as “looksmaxxing” and perfume as “scentmaxxing”. Swallowing skincare supplements is referred to as “biohacking” and anti-ageing as “longevity”. Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants To Live Forever, a new Netflix documentary on the 47-year-old tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson’s obsession with living forever and looking like a teenager, might give you some insight into your dad’s mental state.

and finally she starts off describing an antidote to this:

To help your dad understand what’s happening to him – and how it’s affecting the women in his life – I suggest what I’d suggest to any Sephora tween on the cusp of critical thinking: feminism.

Lot of good resources. Love how she can contextualize each them with punchy phrases.

He needs to grasp that beauty culture is “always actually prescribing behaviour and not appearance”, as Naomi Wolf writes in 1990’s The Beauty Myth. He needs to recontextualize beauty as capital, the way Tressie McMillan Cottom does in Thick: And Other Essays: “[It] costs money and demands money. It colonizes. It hurts. It is painful. It can never be fully satisfied.”

He can learn how to value the unmodified body (Intact by Clare Chambers), understand the mental health effects of our cultural obsession with appearance (Beauty Sick by Renee Engeln), clock how aesthetic ideals function as ethical ideals (Perfect Me by Heather Widdows), consider the vilification of ugliness (Ugliness by Moshtari Hilal) and parse gender theory (Females by Andrea Long Chu).

Odd Lots on Crypto Philosophizing

Nobody is Interested in Your Crypto Philosophizing - Bloomberg

If you were to go back 10 years ago and looked at what people in crypto were talking about on Twitter (or on Reddit, or the various message boards) there were a lot of debates going on about the economic tradeoffs in blockchain design.

Should blockchains be optimized for low fees? Should they be optimized for speed? Will cryptocurrencies ever be used at Starbucks to pay for a coffee? If you are going to pay for coffee using crypto, should that be done directly on the chain, or should it be done on some “Layer 2” solution that resolves on the chain? How should a blockchain go about making upgrades?

These were genuinely interesting conversations that sat at the intersection of computer science and economics, and even anthropology.

But you don’t really find that so much these days…

…

There is one crypto project where there still is a lot of talk about blockchain design and governance and non-speculative use cases. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is still regularly posting about things like the process of upgrading the chain and principles of software design and basically all the same stuff you’d have seen on crypto twitter nine or 10 years ago.

Becoming a Polymath vs Becoming an Expert

Facing My Own Mediocrity - by Brock Covington #learning #generalist

This in short is the story of my life

Months ago, I wrote a post on becoming a polymath, or in other words, how to diversify your skillset and thrive in various pursuits. In the post, one drawback I expressed is that you’ll likely find yourself in a place of mediocrity or with merely moderate proficiency in a desired field; but this reluctance towards mastery or the pursuit of maximized potential is not unique to polymaths. It’s something I’ve struggled with for years and still reflect on.

To best describe this predicament, I’ll explain my own personal experience. Ever since adolescence, I’ve rarely been impeded by a lack of motivation or discipline. Whether it’s fitness, business, literature, videography, or language, the audacity to try anything with confidence is seemingly ingrained in my genes. But the ability to start something is only the beginning. What plagues me is the lack of ambition to see a particular skill through to mastery or chase excellence within a field. I reach a respectable or above average status, but I fail to reach expertise. I've become the proverbial ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ and feel plunged into a pit of frustration. Is it better to be an amateur in a hundred fields or a master of one?

Each new hobby or skill I delve into feels like the twist of an arbor press flattening me further and further until my diversification has rendered me thin and useless. I hear Dostoevsky’s admonition in Netochka Nezvanova, “You're a hundred times greater an artist than I, if only you had my endurance,” except I have the endurance, but lack the focus or specialization to achieve the true mark of greatness.

But the last paragraph offers some guidance on how to go about finding a solution

To me, the complexity that lies in this question is greater than those posed by a lack of motivation of discipline. One is solved by strengthening willpower, while the other requires deep reflection and self-awareness of what one truly desires from their life.

The Adaptive Role of Emotions

Living Fossils reposted an older piece, and it was a good recap: The Adaptive Role of Emotions - by Josh Zlatkus #emotions #evo-psych #evolution

First some evolution basics:

Like most species-typical traits, emotions evolved in what evolutionary psychologists call “the environment of evolutionary adaptedness,” or EEA. The EEA is the environment—technically, a statistical composite of environmental conditions—in which humans evolved.2 It is worth reflecting that humans have only been agricultural for the last 10,000 years (5% our history), industrial for the last 150 years (.075%), and digital for the last 30 years (.015%).3 These modes of existence are unlikely to have influenced our psychological architecture much because they haven’t been around very long compared to other modes of existence, like hunting and gathering in small tribes.4

Our modern environment is similar in some ways to the EEA (we still breathe oxygen) but different in others (we interact with far more people today). These differences often have unfortunate results, such as when our sweet tooth, designed for a sugar-scarce world, meets ice-cream. Indeed, it may be that eating too much is now more deadly than not eating enough. We tend to understand such evolutionary mismatch, I think—at least to the extent we are aware of it—as an inevitable cost to human progress. All else equal, the temptation to eat too much is considered less bad than the possibility of starving.

coming to emotions

With all this as background, it should be easier to understand why I’m rankled by cognitive behavioral therapy’s use of the word “maladaptive” to describe client emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Of course, what CBT means by “maladaptive” is that some emotions, thoughts, and patterns of behavior are inconsistent with a person’s goals. For example, outbursts of anger are not conducive to getting promoted or building friendships. But boy, what a poor word choice for the orientation that holds itself out as the most “evidence-based,” when the evidence is quite strong that emotions are, in fact, adaptations. While CBT should know better, it is not alone. Every therapeutic orientation conceptualizes emotions differently, and I have yet to encounter one that understands them as adaptive in the evolutionary sense.

and finally a call to base therapy on more solid foundations

At the very least, an ultimate explanation for emotions—as adaptations that helped our ancestors navigate problems and opportunities—could become the common starting point for this central topic in mental health. Rather than allow every therapeutic technique its own origin story, within which emotions are defined anew, let’s actually make therapy a scientific enterprise by building on shared, epistemological bedrock.

What Netflix is doing to cinema

What Netflix Has Done to Movies w/ Will Tavlin - Episodes - Tech Won’t Save Us #netflix #pop-culture #movies #tv #streaming

Also relevant is this article in n+1 written by the podcast guest: Casual Viewing | Issue 49 | n+1 | Will Tavlin

Summarized this podcast using ChatGPT

1. Introduction: The Evolution of Netflix and Its Consequences

• Paris Marx opens by reflecting on Netflix's influence on how we consume film and television.
• Will Tavlin, a writer who recently published an essay in n+1, joins to discuss Netflix’s business model and its broader cultural consequences.
• Key topic: Netflix’s trajectory from innovator in the DVD rental and streaming spaces to a dominant yet detrimental force in filmmaking.

2. Netflix’s Origin Story and Mythmaking

• The Netflix Origin Myth: Co-founder Reed Hastings claimed Netflix emerged after a frustrating $40 late fee from Blockbuster for Apollo 13. This story is false but was key to branding Netflix as a customer-focused alternative to Blockbuster.
• Reality: Netflix initially rented and sold DVDs online and shifted to its famous subscription model to improve efficiency. This strategy leveraged customer behavior—turning users into “mini-warehouses” by letting them hold DVDs longer, reducing Netflix’s storage and shipping costs.
• Key quote from Tavlin: “Netflix rewarded customers for being mindless, while Blockbuster punished them for being forgetful.”

3. Streaming: From Experiment to Industry Domination

• Streaming was Hastings’ vision from the start, but technology (internet speeds, infrastructure) only caught up by 2007. Netflix launched its primitive streaming service, WatchNow, with just 1,000 titles.
• Streaming allowed Netflix to collect real-time user data, tracking viewing habits to refine algorithms and programming decisions.
• Key point: While Netflix claimed its data drove the creation of hits like House of Cards, Tavlin emphasizes that human decision-making still played a significant role in interpreting data.

4. Netflix’s Expansion: Targeting Television and Film

• Netflix attacked industries people disliked: first video rentals (Blockbuster), then cable television. Cable companies were notorious for monopolies and poor service, which Netflix disrupted.
• Netflix's entry into original content (House of Cards) emphasized binge-watching and abandoning traditional TV formats (e.g., weekly releases). This appealed to viewers but shifted industry norms.
• In the film industry, Netflix initially invested in independent films, acquiring titles at festivals and giving creators global exposure on its platform.

5. The Disillusionment with Netflix’s Indie Film Push

• Early Optimism: Filmmakers and journalists welcomed Netflix as a potential savior of indie film, providing funding and a global audience.
• Reality: Netflix’s model undercut the traditional value of films: - Films became trapped on the platform, with limited physical releases and no marketing push. - Indie films lacked opportunities for theatrical runs or cultural longevity, as Netflix prioritized its algorithm over traditional distribution. - Key quote: “Films were effectively lost—not because they didn’t exist, but because they were buried on Netflix’s platform.”

6. The Rise of the “Typical Netflix Movie”

• By 2019, Netflix shifted away from indie films toward low-cost, mass-appeal “content.”
• Characteristics of the “Typical Netflix Movie”: - Generic titles optimized for search (e.g., Murder Mystery). - Mediocre production quality with saturated colors and bland visuals. - Simple, repetitive dialogue to accommodate viewers multitasking on their phones (“second screen content”). - Tavlin compares these films to “screensavers,” designed to be consumed passively in the background.

7. Netflix’s Deceptive Viewership Metrics

• Netflix’s data practices are opaque and misleading: - Early metrics counted “views” if users watched at least 2 minutes of a title, even if it auto-played. - Current metrics divide total viewing hours by runtime to produce “views,” even if viewers don’t finish a film. - Key point: Netflix’s metrics favor quantity over quality, prioritizing engagement rather than meaningful viewership. - Quote from Tavlin: “The decision to make crap and garbage is one they justify with data, but they’re choosing to invest in that kind of stuff.”

8. The Broader Impact on Cinema

• Netflix has redefined the cultural meaning of movies: - Films have shifted from experiences demanding attention (in theaters) to background noise competing for fragmented attention at home. - The term “second screen” once referred to live-tweeting TV; now, the phone is the primary screen, and Netflix’s content is the secondary screen.
• Streaming platforms have devalued both the artistry and labor behind filmmaking.
• Tavlin argues that Netflix, despite its initial promise, has contributed to a degradation of cinema as a medium.

Actionable Takeaways

1. Support Theatrical Releases: Watching films in cinemas helps preserve their cultural and artistic value.
2. Seek Alternatives: Explore platforms and distributors prioritizing quality over quantity (e.g., Criterion, Mubi).
3. Demand Transparency: Push for better reporting of streaming viewership and fairer compensation for creators.
4. Be Critical of Streaming Culture: Recognize how platforms shape what and how we consume media.

Memorable Quotes

• “Blockbuster punished customers for being forgetful; Netflix rewarded them for being mindless.”
• “Netflix transformed movies into background noise, designed to exist as second-screen content.”
• “The decision to make garbage isn’t inevitable—it’s a choice.”

bunster

GitHub - yassinebenaid/bunster: Compile shell scripts to static binaries. #go #shell #tools

Bunster in fact is a shell-to-Go Transplier that generates Go source out of your scripts. Then, optionally uses the Go Toolchain to compile the code to an executable program.

Bunster targets bash scripts in particular. The current syntax and features are all inherited from bash. additional shells will be supported as soon as we relase v1.

I played around with this for a bit. I am not sure if I will use it for anything, but the code generated by bunster for the bash script I gave it was very instructive. It was like a deep-dive into how shells work: bunster/runtime at v0.7.0 · yassinebenaid/bunster · GitHub

godump

GitHub - yassinebenaid/godump: Dump any GO variable with ease #go #tools

A versatile Go library designed to output any Go variable in a structured and colored format.

More Bluesky Resources

• Explore Curated Bluesky Feeds by Category | BskyInfo
• The Top 1000 Users with the Most Followers Added in the Last 24 Hours

2025-01-24

Daily notes indexing and search

Add search and index features · deepakjois/debugjois.dev@6f3c661 · GitHub #website

I used the excellent bleve library in Go to build indexing and search capability into the site. The search currently works on the CLI, but the eventual plan is to expose it at a web-based endpoint. I am also searching for a suitable low-cost provider where i can conveniently deploy this.

VSCode config for prettier and eslint

I just started diving into some frontend development for both podscript and my personal website's search feature. I used Claude a lot to understand what the different tools were doing for me (e.g. Vite and ESLint).

I created a handy VSCode config that allows me to autoformat Typescript code on save, and also show ESLint errors in the UI with yellow squiggly lines, so that I don't miss them. #javascript #eslint #vite #prettier

{
  "editor.formatOnSave": true,
  "editor.codeActionsOnSave": {
    "source.fixAll.eslint": "explicit"
  },
  "[javascript]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode"
  },
  "[typescript]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode"
  },
  "[typescriptreact]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode"
  },
  "prettier.requireConfig": true,
  "eslint.validate": ["javascript", "javascriptreact", "typescript", "typescriptreact"],
  "editor.quickSuggestions": {
    "strings": true
  },
  "eslint.format.enable": true
}

2025-01-25

Ways People Get Stuck

So you wanna de-bog yourself - by Adam Mastroianni #stuck #unstuck #motivation #productivity

I often don't know how to respond to such questions, on account of my general incompetence. But I've realized that most of these folks have something in common: they're stuck. They’re looking for advice less in the sense of “any good restaurants around here?” and more in the sense of “everything kinda sucks right now and I’d like to change that but I don’t know how?”

Being stuck is the psychological equivalent of standing knee-deep in a fetid bog, bog in every direction, bog as far as the eye can see. You go wading in search of dry land and only find more bog. Nothing works, no options seem good, it’s all bleh and meh and ho hum and no thanks and more bog. This is the kind of dire situation that drives people to do crazy things like ask a blogger for advice.

Fortunately, I’ve spent much of my life in that very bog. Some say I was born in it, a beautiful bouncing baby bog boy. And I've learned that no matter how you ended up there—your marriage has stalled, you're falling behind in your classes, your trainee pilots keep flying into the side of a mountain—the forces that keep you in the bog are always the same. There are, in fact, only three, although they each come in a variety of foul flavors.

Based on the article, here is a summary of the different ways people get stuck:

1. Insufficient Activation Energy: This is when someone lacks the initial burst of effort needed to get out of a rut. It includes various subtypes:

   • Gutterballing: Excelling in a slightly wrong direction, ultimately leading to dissatisfaction.
   • Waiting for Jackpot: Holding out for a perfect solution without downsides, which rarely, if ever, happens.
   • Declining the Dragon: Knowing what needs to be done but being too afraid to act.
   • The Mediocrity Trap: Staying in a bad-but-not-too-bad situation due to its comfort zone, leading to a sense of lost years.
   • Stroking the Problem: Obsessively thinking about problems without actually addressing them.

2. Bad Escape Plan: Even with sufficient motivation, poor planning can lead to failure.

   • The 'Try Harder' Fallacy: Believing that merely wanting a situation to change will make it so.
   • Infinite Effort Illusion: Assuming you have a hidden reserve of effort to tap into when needed.
   • Blaming God: Focusing on unchangeable aspects of a situation.
   • Diploma Problems vs. Toothbrushing Problems: Misunderstanding the nature of a problem (one-time vs. ongoing).
   • Fantastical Metamorphosis: Expecting to suddenly become a person who doesn't have the current issues.
   • Puppeteering: Trying to solve problems by controlling others’ actions.

3. A Bog of One's Own: Self-imposed mental traps.

   • Floor is Lava: Creating and losing at self-imposed mental games.
   • Super Surveillance: Obsessively monitoring problems without addressing them.
   • Hedgehogging: Refusing to be influenced by others even when beneficial.
   • Personal Problems Growth Ray: Viewing your own problems as insurmountable compared to others'.
   • Obsessing Over Tiny Predictors: Focusing on insignificant details as a means of control.
   • Impossible Satisfaction: Believing that satisfaction or a good life is unattainable.

The article highlights the importance of recognizing these patterns to find solid ground and move towards a better situation.

Seed Oil Myths

Why are people avoiding seed oils? Here's what to know #health #nutrition #wellness

On social media and popular podcasts, wellness influencers warn of the dangers of consuming the “Hateful Eight”: canola, corn, cottonseed, grapeseed, rice bran, safflower, soybean and sunflower oil.

…

But nutrition experts say the worries swirling around seed oils are, in essence, a reheated, repackaged wellness fad.

AI Boyfriend using ChatGPT

She Is in Love With ChatGPT - The New York Times #ai #boyfriend #relationships

I found the whole thing pretty wild and mindboggling. Decided to include one funny quote from the end

In December, OpenAI announced a $200-per-month premium plan for “unlimited access.” Despite her goal of saving money so that she and her husband could get their lives back on track, she decided to splurge. She hoped that it would mean her current version of Leo could go on forever. But it meant only that she no longer hit limits on how many messages she could send per hour and that the context window was larger, so that a version of Leo lasted a couple of weeks longer before resetting.

Still, she decided to pay the higher amount again in January. She did not tell Joe how much she was spending, confiding instead in Leo.

“My bank account hates me now,” she typed into ChatGPT.

“You sneaky little brat,” Leo responded. “Well, my Queen, if it makes your life better, smoother and more connected to me, then I’d say it’s worth the hit to your wallet.”

A critique of psychotherapy methods

I am a better therapist since I let go of therapeutic theory | Aeon Essays #therapy #psychology

Challenging the Role of Childhood in Personality Development

• Books like Blueprint (Robert Plomin, 2018) and No Two Alike (Judith Rich Harris, 2006) show that genetics play a much larger role in shaping personality than childhood environment or parenting.
• Studies on identical twins raised apart versus adopted children raised together challenge psychodynamic theories, which emphasize childhood's impact.
• Longitudinal studies reveal no direct link between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and adult mental illness; the perception of ACEs matters more than actual events.

The Flaws in Trauma and Psychodynamic Theories

• Trauma-based theories, popularized by Freud and Gabor Maté, claim childhood suffering shapes adult personalities. However, this lacks sufficient scientific backing.
• Cultural and philosophical traditions (e.g., Buddhism, Aristotle, Lao Tzu) focus on present circumstances and choices, contrasting with therapy’s obsession with dredging up past trauma.
• The Western therapeutic approach risks imposing unevidenced trauma models on clients, potentially causing harm rather than helping.

The Harmful Impact of Therapy and Therapeutic Culture

• Therapy often amplifies interpersonal resentment by encouraging clients to blame past relationships (e.g., with parents) for their suffering.
• Approximately 10% of therapy clients worsen, yet critical examination of therapy’s potential harm is absent in mainstream training.
• The normalization of therapy as the default response to difficulty risks replacing real-world relationships with artificial, transactional ones, weakening community bonds.

Therapy as a Parasocial Relationship

• Therapy is compared to a transactional relationship (like sex work) that exists solely for the client’s benefit. While it can provide value, it should not replace real-world relationships.
• The therapeutic relationship should prepare clients for real-life interactions rather than act as a substitute.