Author: Andrew

  • Modernity Amplified

    I thought this was an incredible example of how the world of signs and simulacra is impossible to separate from reality. They are on in the same, working on, and overlapping on, one another always. This has always happened in news and media of course, but the ad reads on podcasts are so “authentic” –…

  • Running/Trying Hard/Pursuing Excellence

    My focus has become excellence and trying hard through running. I’m focused on the marathon and working on it as a project for the next few years. I’m 33 and I figure that if I’m going to go for it, now is the time for the marathon. I think that after a few years I…

  • HyperNormalisation:Adam Curtis

    His documentaries are getting me. Resonating with themes of Baudrillard and mass media and other quite fascinating and unfortunate themes. This one is all the same.

  • Important experiences/identities getting relegated

    Perhaps only in anticipation, or in retrospect, is this a useful way of thinking, but here it goes: Very important periods of time in one’s life will end and be thought of as not so important; not unimportant, but just that one will think, “how interesting that I thought that would be the most important…

  • Happy Independence Day!

    Read this piece in Compact Magazine from James Vaughn, a historian, at the University of Chicago and find myself quite amazed by the unique historical event that is the 250th anniversary of The United States. The Persian and Roman empires have been in the cultural psyche recently, because America has warred with both Iran and…

  • Shepherd goes to camp!

    We dropped Shepherd off at Rockmont last Sunday, and for all we know he’s having a great time! This was such a big part of my early adulthood and start to life; where I made great friends, great strides in my life’s formation, and where I met and fell in love with Sadie. So, to…

  • Neighbors helping me fix a water main leak

    “A writer – and, I believe, generally all persons – must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given…

  • The Attention Merchants

    Referenced by Michael when he was visiting us back in May and I picked it up. It happened to fit well with things I’ve already been thinking about such as The Algorithm and whether culture precedes from it or it precedes from culture. Basically, does the algorithm show us what we create or is it…

  • Patriotism in Sport

    This tweet says it. I feel infinitely more patriotic than one would reasonable expect to when we have just, sort of, embarrassed ourselves instigated, and seemingly loosing, a war.

  • You Are Not Late

    A good day to re-read this Kevin Kelly essay from 2014. I think I believe he’s right. The internal disagreement (cope, perhaps) I felt reading it is that the big things we’re inventing right now, the things exciting everyone and causing $1 trillion IPOs, are created by a few big companies with a ton of…