No Channel Channel.

Books

Today's reading: on everyday food and drink, via vol. 1 of Braudel's Civilisation and Capitalism. The text got into the consumption of staples like dairy, eggs and fats, the respective arcs of water, beer, wine and other alcohols, and the rise of tea, coffee, chocolate and tobacco.
https://www.ucpress.edu/books/civilization-and-capitalism-15th-18th-century-vol-i/paper

Braudel cited some European diarist who lamented how alcohol and tobacco had degraded first brain capacities like memory and wit. It made me think of TikTok, which increasingly feels like a first brain killer.

Braudel cited some European diarist who lamented how alcohol and tobacco had degraded first brain capacities like memory and wit. It made me think of TikTok, which increasingly feels like a first brain killer.
https://warpcast.com/msms/0x8fcb20d8

A "quake book" is a text that radically perturbs how one thinks about and acts within the world.

The shift is experienced, individually and ideally societally, as positive (as opposed to the negative shifts associated with ideological or epistemological info hazards.

A quake book may make an existing belief, value or stance especially legible to oneself, or provide irrefutable evidence for something felt at a deep level. It may catalyse a novel perspective or insight, or provoke new questions because it's wrong in a particularly interesting or sacrilegious way. No matter how it happens, a quake book terraforms one's existence upon engagement.

I first heard of them via Ryan Holiday sometime in the mid-2010s. He heard of them via Tyler Cowen.

What are your quake books?
https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/information-hazards
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/11/view-quake-read.html

Books can quake ya. Music reaches right into one’s soul. Film can do the same. I don’t know whether TikTok can do such things. Twitter pulled it off somehow and then it died.

In motion - complex systems, computing and communication (amongst other things) | msweet.net | working on /subset

Books can quake ya. Music reaches right into one’s soul. Film can do the same. I don’t know whether TikTok can do such things. Twitter pulled it off somehow and then it died.
https://warpcast.com/msms/0xd9630729
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/where-did-musicology-come-from

TikTok is the end of social media, in a way analogous to liberal democracy being the end of history?

TikTok is the end of social media, in a way analogous to liberal democracy being the end of history?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_history