internet shitstorm

My beloved reader - you would be doing me such a solid if you could share this newsletter with 1-3 friends. Just forward them this email. If they like it they can sign up using the link above. Thank you so much 🙏

- Graydon

Gotta tell ya, didn’t know what to write this week.

I’m usually a fountain of benign ramblings. 

This week the well ran dry.

Why?

Well, it all started about a month ago…

I desired a period of intense focus, so I deleted all social media from my phone.

It was a success. I got many things done.

When it came time to plug back in, I reinstalled IG & Twitter/X.

X is great because it gives me fodder for the newsletter.

I combine people's ideas with my own experience to create something new.

The key is a careful curation of who you follow to ensure the idea inflow is good.

Now, this is where the story goes amiss…

For some reason, I have a 2nd account on X and signed into that account by mistake.

This account was blank and didn’t follow anyone except Forbes.

A truly boring feed indeed...

The next logical step in this situation would be to sign out and sign into my main account.

However, I recently switched password managers. I had yet to install the new manager on my phone.

I had also forgotten my password.

Password reset? I was feeling especially lazy at the time. The task was too much to bear.

I wanted content NOW, so I took the path of least resistance and swung over to the “For you” page.

A fatal mistake.

-> Riots in the UK

-> Stock market crashes

-> Escalation in Middle East

One of the most explosive weeks on Twitter. 

It was a Pornhub of shock value and I could not stop scrollin’.

A few days passed and I found myself returning to “For you” again and again.

I soon found myself thinking of these issues when I was away from my phone.

World events that I could do nothing about became top of mind.

What to do with all this information?

Not much at all. I had no outlet or application of any kind.

This experience gave new meaning to the term: "information diet".

I had inhaled the info-equivalent of 3 double-quarter-pounders with large fries + a heavy milkshake.

The effects were immediate and pervasive.

This is why I didn’t know what to write this week.

I fed my neural net with food irrelevant to the content I normally produce.

May I also just be an overly-sensitive pussy? Yes.

Whether that is true or not, there is a lesson that stands:

-> Curate and guard your mind's diet with utmost vigilance.

Only a few days of consuming the wrong stuff knocked me off track.

I can only imagine what happens after months to years of poor consumption.

No wonder so many people are stuck.

They desire more but lack the mental ingredients to do so.

It’s like trying to bake a great cake with sawdust, dog shit, and industrial oil sludge as ingredients.

I hope this email helps a few people unplug themselves from bad information flows.

May it also be a reminder of how easily an unguarded mind can be led astray.

The internet is the most incredible thing to happen to humanity.

It is also a category 5 shit hurricane.

The great thing about being human is having the capacity to navigate it.

Happy scrolling ;)

Cool things I found during my weekly internet stroll.

Humanoid robots are advancing but still walk like they have a stick up their butt.

To my jazz lovers… In A Sentimental Mood.

Evolution up to the Space X Raptor 3 rocket engine.

A truly incredible feat of engineering and a product of Musk’s 5-step systems engineering algorithm:

Step 1: Question every requirement. "Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous because people are less likely to question them.”

Step 2: Delete any part or process you can. “If you do not end up adding back at least 10% of what you deleted, you didn't delete enough."

Step 3: Simplify and optimize. Must only be done AFTER step 2. "A common mistake is to simplify and optimize something that should not exist."

Step 4: Accelerate cycle time. Speed up the design, testing, and iteration process. Keep feedback loops as tight as possible.

Step 5: Automate. Last for good reason. Trying to automate faulty processes is a huge mistake.

Served up by Spijker & me.

Solomun B2B Four Tet | Tomorrowland 2024 (one of the best DJ sets I’ve listened to in a long time)