Danica Swanson pfp

Danica Swanson

@danicaswanson

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3670 Followers


Danica Swanson pfp
I wrote about why I think system conditions matter more than individual performance in producing quality writing, and why CLPs (conversational liquidity providers) on FC are underserved. Inspired by "Quality is Systemic," a great blog post by Jacob Kaplan-Moss, and by the members of the Return On Attention group chat. Notes: - This post was published a few months ago, but I'm re-casting it because the old @paragraph preview panel image is no longer available on the original cast. The new panel looks so much better. Especially for a cast pinned to my profile. - The journal writings for my project "Deep Worth: Notes on Creativity, Labor, and Value" are no longer available on Notion, but they will soon be re-published via Obsidian. https://paragraph.com/@danicaswanson/quality-writing-is-systemic
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"...we need to stop dancing around the subject and talk about it. [...] "If you think your engagement has gone down a lot over the past few weeks, you aren’t imagining it. Usually, if 2-3% of your followers interact with your casts, you are doing great. But what if most of the people who follow you never even see your casts in the latest version of the algorithm? Spoiler alert: they don’t." "Meanwhile, those who have not had this type of algorithmic boost feel invisible and demoralized, even if they’ve consistently added value to the community." Mad respect to @pichi for speaking out about these worrisome patterns, backing them up with data, and connecting the dots so the rest of us can get a better view. She's clearly speaking out of love and care. Hope the Merkle team takes these concerns seriously.
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"Good thinking is about pushing past your current understanding and reaching the thought behind the thought. It often requires breaking old ideas. This is easier to do when the ideas are as rigid as they get on the page. [...] "As I type, I’m often in a fluid mode—writing at the speed of thought. I feel confident about what I’m saying. But as soon as I stop, the thoughts solidify, rigid on the page, and, as I read what I’ve written, I see cracks spreading through my ideas. What seemed right in my head fell to pieces on the page." "Seeing your ideas crumble can be a frustrating experience, but it is the point if you are writing to think. You want it to break. It is in the cracks the light shines in." ~ Henrik Karlsson from "How To Think in Writing" https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/writing-to-think
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Slowcore Quote of the Day "The slower, self-managed approach to culture is . . . more sustainable and more respectful of culture, treating it as something important rather than ephemeral, merely fodder for brief attention spans." [...] "In his 1983 book The Gift, Lewis Hyde defines artwork as something freely given by the artist through her creative act, no matter where it ends up: “A work of art contains the spirit of the artist’s gift.” But in a way, taste can be a gift, too. It costs nothing to introduce someone to a new piece of culture that you think they might like, and the act might benefit all parties involved. Culture, after all, is not a one-to-many broadcast system but a peer-to-peer network, where we collectively determine what means the most to us by intentionally sharing it. As Hyde wrote, “The spirit of a gift is kept alive by its constant donation.” [...] "What we gain with algorithmic feeds in terms of availability—having instant access to a broad range of material to be scanned at will—we lose in connoisseurship, which requires depth and intention. It’s ultimately a form of deep appreciation, for what the artist has done as well as the capacities of our own tastes." ~ Kyle Chayka https://behavioralscientist.org/how-to-cultivate-taste-in-the-age-of-algorithms/
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"Farcaster is less aggressive thought leadership and influencer reels, more let’s wander through a really big house with lots of natural light pouring into all these neat rooms and sub-rooms. Let’s drift in and out of conversations, actually read what people write... and find our people." "On Farcaster, I've also made $88 in two months just for being myself. Not because I'm an influencer (god no), not because I'm gaming engagement metrics, but because the platform is built to reward actual participation... [...] "Farcaster is a real one, and real recognizes real so… "Just speak like the complex, contradictory, gorgeously imperfect human you are. Tell your story or stream of consciousness or jokes in your own voice, not in the voice you think everyone wants to hear. The right people will find you..." Good read from @winberry on why the purple app is worth her time (and why LinkedIn is not).
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"...the site attracts a lot of futurists, dreamers, and builders who are excited to tinker with ideas together. giving them the tools they need to idea garden together would be so powerful and interesting." Idea gardeners in need of the proper tools. Yes. That framing brings to mind the concept of a "memex" (portmanteau of memory + index) and the related theory of conceptual labor by Ním Daghlian (see comments for sources). Daghlian describes a memex as "an extension of an individual’s memory and curiosity that was designed not just to store information, but to help them recall and link things they stored in a meaningful way." and "...a sort of mental storehouse, made as digitally sustainable as possible – built on open source standards and software, simple enough that I can just get it out the door and use it, but... resistant to being remotely shut off by a billionaire." So a memex is like a digital garden, but oriented more toward concept stewardship. Daghlian defines conceptual labor as "the experience of doing work that redefines itself as you do it." I've been quietly working on building my own memex (in Obsidian) with a focus on layers of nascent ideas and related concepts. I've definitely been wishing for better tools to connect the fruits of that labor with others on the purple app who are working on similar or overlapping ideas.
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