Tom Beck

@tombeck.eth

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459 Followers

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Thank you so much, Danica! I appreciate the generous tips! You're right—I don't seem to get notified for tip casts. I suppose it's nice to keep the feed from feeling cluttered with tip responses, but I do want to see when someone tips me lol.

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Gonna start reading it tonight!

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Do it! We could have a little book club.

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Yes, I could upload a PDF or an image, but the ability to just type directly into Zora is so tantalizing. As always, the devil is in the details.

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Thank you kindly! I agree, word art has a ton of under-explored promise.

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I could. I could also easily mint it as an image using something like Canva. But there was something so alluring about Zora's ability to just type something and mint it. It's a little disappointing to see it almost work, but not quite.

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That combined with technology which allows anyone to publish anything at any time, and the result is obvious: a relentless firehose of content. I think the answer is probably a balance: the creator-critic, centered around groups or scenes. They both contribute to the scene and decide what is and isn't "in."

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What seems to have disappeared in the writing space is the role of the critic. Someone who decides what's worth reading and what isn't. But there were good reasons to dismantle that apparatus. Postmodern critique rightfully questioned "the canon" as exclusionary and complicit in upholding power structures.

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In the mean time, algorithms eliminated the human curatorial element. Everyone wants to eliminate the gatekeeper. Web3 doubles down on this and calls it "permissionless." But gatekeeper is the wrong framing. It turns out you need tastemakers for good discovery.

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The big problem is the same as it is in Web2: discovery. Web2 "solved" this via algorithmic content delivery, which resulted in all the problems you list in part II. Creators learned how to influence the algorithm, but were influenced in turn. And the platforms benefitted the most.

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Ana María Caballero

page one of my new book /poetry

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Does anyone know how to set the frame when sharing a Zora mint on Warpcast? I created a text NFT, but the frame is all wonky when I try and share it. From what I can tell, the frame pulls a thumbnail image, but how do you set that for a text-based NFT? Any thoughts?

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That sounds good to me.

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I think you've convinced me to go right.

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Which book should I read next?

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Gloom is our natural state. We were not made to be happy. We were made to survive.

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My Sunday was warm and sunny. A true nightmare. 😂

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I really enjoyed the Dark Forest Anthology. @yancey @vgr There was a subtle pleasure in reading internet essays about the internet … but in print.

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You can’t study one period and get much insight. What’s insightful is seeing what is consistent or unique across different periods. That said, WW2 and the decade after is a good start. Myths of that period color so much of our current moment.

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It probably scares you because it's a natural urge to resist something even more terrifying: a world where everything (including ourselves) is transient. Sam Kriss wrote (brilliantly) about this just the other day. Screenshot comes from his essay: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/how-to-live-without-your-phone

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