Neglect.

Here are 10 antidotes to it (photographed on very, very, very dry and flammable grass):

1
You are on an information island.
What ads and content (on every screen and billboard according to zip-code and time of day) you are shown and the ads and content everyone else is shown are bafflingly disparate. Common ground is an oxymoron. You are angry about things I am unaware of and baffled by, and vice versa.

2
You are in a context bubble.
We’re being fed inside jokes we cannot tell anyone. Books? Shows? Celebrities? Who I know (of) is probably a stranger to you.

3
You are witnessing a really stupid simulation.
I hate having to state that Jesus is NOT making tator-tot hot-dishes on Facebook to raise money to treat Slender Man’s bone cancer. My 13 year-old called the concept of Jimothy “millennial slop.” We doubt the reality of things foreign to us. Birds aren’t real.

4
You are in an isolating echo-chamber.
Of course you feel weird and misunderstood. Groups composed of a singular person and their most profoundly personal desires and vibe-based convictions are now standard-issue entities designed for maximizing advertising exposure. This is great for democracy.

5
You and your thoughts are perpetually out of context.
Sarcasm is a skill issue. The micro-niching of ideas means that explaining ourselves requires explanatory set-ups and convoluted back-storying nobody wants to sit through. Every transaction is self-checkout now.

6
You are not keeping up and you will never be able to catch up.
Anything older than this year is subject to context-warp and connotational-collapse. Homer? He likes Duff beer. You Oddessy DEEZ NUTS. What’s a persona non grata? Somebody who doesn’t get cheese on the never-ending salad at the Olive Garden.

7
You are going along with it because you have no alternative.
I just made up the terms context-warp and connotational-collapse but you don’t care because that sounded like something somebody put in your feed already and it makes enough sense, I guess. Let’s keep circling back. Ask your doctor if Charybdis is right for you.

8
You are an unreliable narrator by design.
The Ouroboros of content distillation is making data hallucination a meat-space hobby. The Mandala effect is now a personal problem. I swear there used to be a Denny’s on that corner, or maybe I just saw a soft-focus mock-up of it once. The gaslights are out again.

9
You know the worth of nothing, including yourself.
Currency comes in units of time. Time is money. Money has a gravitational pull. The nineties were an hour ago. This is just physics. Fix your face or die in a ditch. There’s an app for that, and a bunch of equations you won’t be taught that map the routes. The scroll always leads down.

10
You are going with the flow, circling that drain.
The biggest deal today will be forgotten by tomorrow. The blockbuster that came out this morning is streaming already. Keep your data private, the internet is forever, it will remember your data but nobody else will. They took your canon. You have no bigger guns.

2. The Vibes are disempowered.

3. The Vibes are humbling.

4. The Vibes are opting out of everything.

5. The Vibes are under observation.

6. The Vibes are in denial.

7. The Vibes are grifty.

8. The Vibes are on their last legs.

9. The Vibes are craving zines.

10. The Vibes are untranslatable.

Fuck that. Refuse to fall for the dehumanizing storytelling. Be the magical creature you’re destined to be in spite of the depressing propaganda.

1: Self-respect is doing what must be done instead of what is merely expected.
It feels right to try to be more than you were yesterday.

2: Self-respect means being more truly good than you are falsely arrogant. It feels right to be dangerously generous.

3: Self-respect means being more helpful to the whole world than being useful in a small role.
It feels right to be the curious helper nobody saw coming.

4: Self-respect means living well via the most valuable and immeasurable currencies.
It feels right put on your own oxygen mask first.

5: Self-respect is asking for the help you should have been offered years ago, and offering it freely to others without being asked.
It feels right to admit you’re not capable of everything all at once and forever.

6: Self-respect is belligerently living as more human than drone.
It feels right to refuse to be shoved in a tiny box of minimally-assumed potential.

7: Self-respect is taking fierce care of your body no matter what it looks like.
It feels right to make honest peace with both physical limitations and abilities.

8: Self-respect is putting your humanity above your productivity.
It feels right do what needs done before doing what needs approval.

9: Self-respect is living as more than a title, forever.
It feels right to be a citizen of the greater world.

10: Self-respect working with, and not against, people (including yourself).
It feels so right to find ways for us all to win together.

1: The “Sure, I Can Survive This" loop:

2: The “This Too Shall Pass” loop of perpetual adaptation:

3: The “Practice Hygiene or Rot” loop of personal responsibility:

4: The “Learn More or work For Those Who Do” educational loop:

5: The “Mountaintop of Whatever,” loop of collecting prizes:

6: The “Ever-Diminishing Returns of Shock Value” loop:

7: The “How to Feel Even Deader Inside” loop:

8: The “They Surely Didn’t Mean It” loop of denial:

9: The “Hedonic Treadmill That’s Also a Scam” loop of capitalistic enthusiasm:

10: The loop of “Maybe I Should get Bangs”:

1: Leave the spoon where it is.

2: Stop hoping it’s a just a fluke or an oversight.

3: Accept that the old man is being mean on purpose.

4: Put that glowing necklace back on the dusty corpse.

5: Stay on the visitor’s side of the enclosure.

6: Don’t think she isn’t talking about you the ways she talks about everyone else.

7: Heed the fine print on the power-tool manual.

8: Boundaries and consent keep teeth in heads.

9: Don’t become a local legend with a limp.

10: Avoid the homemade fireworks sold by the moonshiner with no thumbs.

Stay unwounded out there. <3

It requires the acceptance of chronological frailty:

It requires a frequent removal of what’s trashy:

It requires constant re-fueling:

It requires looking unapologetically weird sometimes.

It requires so much filtration of so much material.

It requires the avoidance of certain forms of starlight.

It requires intense scrutiny of every face you’ll ever see (mainly your own).

It requires gentleness in order to avoid scarring.

It requires Sisyphean dedication to hygiene.

And most of all, it requires many, many dreams.

The state of nature, maybe it could be nicer?

Lizard brains help us breathe without needing to think about it.

It’s hard to cross borders with an entire identity intact, and some of those borders are just local zip codes.

Personal history needs studied just like political history, unless we want to arrest all sorts of development.

A love of power ignores the power of love.

For example, what does coming out mean now?

Time changes language, because language changes when people do. <3

(and yes, there are 11 points instead of 10 today—I wanted the symmetry of having a shrug at the apex of inscrutability) :)

And then I fiddled with what some unusual reasons a person might want to send a card, by crossing the categories greeting cards get sorted into and thinking of the portmanteau, “congradudolences.”

1. FINALLY

2. OUCH

3. AGEISM

4. INCOMPATIBILITY

5. MANIPULATION

6. TOO SOON

7. MONEY INSIDE

8: RESONSIBILITY

9. PSYCHO

10. CUBICLES

“I should go for a run,” never means simply that. It always means more.

1: It might mean, “I really need to get out of here.”

2: It might mean, “I am low on dopamine so I’m gonna go pick some up.”

3: It might mean, “I am slowly molting into an intimidatingly sleek form.”

4: It might mean, “I wanna go faster or farther than ever before.”

5: It might mean, “I need to break in these slick-ass shoes to justify what I spent on them.”

6: It might mean, “I would like to generate some self-respect now.”

7: It might mean, “I am reclaiming my time.”

8: It might mean, “My therapy involves no couches.”

9: It might mean, “I’m really into this addictive and Sisyphean game that involves my cardiovascular system and a fancy watch, and I must constantly generate more data in order to keep playing.”

10: It might mean, “I guess this is my life now.”

Have fun out there, and try not to get any new blisters.

Anything interesting will be copied over and over and over until it becomes mundane (e.g.: art in all forms).

SO:
When we encounter something lovely, we ask ourselves:

Should I tell other people about this?
Yes! The world needs to be inspired, and I want to share this good thing.

Do I want people to copy this?
Yes! We need more of this in the world. This is a catalyst for the best kinds of activity.

Will sharing this inspire others to do more beautiful things?
Hopefully! And that’s a form of good progress, isn’t it?

Should there be more of this in the world?
Of course! We should encourage more of this—even if some people argue that it’s wrong in some way.

Is this something I want to become part of who I am?
Yes! I’d be quite proud to be associated with this.

But consider the shadow of the desire-to-evangelize phenomenon.

Horrible ideas are also contagious.
Anything horrible will be copied over and over and over until it becomes mundane (e.g.: crime in all forms).

When we encounter something horrible, we ask ourselves:

Should I tell other people about this?
Yes, if only to prevent it from happening again.

Do I want people to copy this?
No. We do not need any more of this in the world.

Will sharing this inspire others to do more horrible things?
Probably. And that’s a form of real harm, isn’t it? This is a catalyst for the worst kinds of activity.

Should there be more of this in the world?
Of course not! Why don’t want to encourage this—some people will even argue that it’s right in some way.

Is this something I want to become part of who I am?
No. I do not want to be associated with this at all, ever.

TL;DR: Share what you want to see in the world.

But there’s no reason to fear; you’ve acclaimed to the radiating madness already.

You’ve seen how those slippery mouths pucker but can no longer smile:

You’ve driven past gated communities:

You’ve seen into the parasitically infested bowels of the algorithm:

You’ve seen the receipts:

You’ve been on Zoom:

You’ve heard the reality-denying opinions of ignorant experts:

You’ve consumed regurgitated slop:

You know perfectly charming people deemed unlovable by cruel ghouls:

You’ve at least heard of the British Museum:

You’ve watched the news:

All background images in this week’s newsletter are from the NASA Glenn Research Center archives.

The problem becomes central to the work you do.
Choose your level of competence:

The problem mutates and persists. It is now a primary detail of your life.
Choose your fate:

The problem continually needs addressed.
Choose how you explain yourself:

The problem is not, and never has been, yours alone to solve.
Choose your affiliation:

Your efforts (or lack thereof) continue to ripple across time and space and economies.
Choose your legacy:

The problem refuses to be contained. Are you brave enough to face it?
Choose your home:

Whoever you go, there you are.
Choose to be active or passive:

Weirdness, danger, and messiness become facts of life.
Choose how creative you’re going to get with it.

History happens around you.
Choose how much of it you learn:

And the journey continues…

1: Bad Energy feels like getting tickled by a perverted and demented ghost.

2: Bad Energy feels like getting your ankle grabbed by the moldy skeleton skittering around under your hotel bed.

3: Bad Energy feels like hearing a horrible, nasty rumor about a truly lovely person.

4: Bad Energy feels like the penetrating glare of a thousand black-eyed porcelain dolls watching you sleep.

5: Bad Energy feels like standing in the shadow of an unstable mountain of used diapers and last year’s fast fashion.

6: Bad Energy feels like the annual stoning-to-death of an unfortunate villager in order to appease the Old Gods nobody’s ever met.

7: Bad Energy feels like a last will and testament dictated out of pure spite being read slowly by expensive lawyers.

8: Bad Energy feels like biting into a sardine tinned back in the 1870s.

9: Bad Energy feels like being a child driven to school in a snowstorm by a drunk driver.

10: Bad Energy feels like the mandatory worship of something dark, expensive, and unclean.

Better fill up your tanks before the price rises again.

1: If not fair, then random?

2: If not fair, then perhaps different soon?

3: If not fair, then doomed?

4: If not always fair, still worth trying?

5: If not fair, who benefits?

6: If not fair, why are we going through these motions?

7: If not fair, why buy it?

8: If not fair, why pretend it is?

9: If not fair, why breed in captivity?

10: If not fair, just get a better lawyer I guess?

The more we do the more we change.
And we all roll around on all of these parabolas.

What feels reliable? The thing or the maintenance of it?

What feels true? The clothes or the person wearing them?

What feels special? The thing or the context you place it in?

What feels medicinal? The motion or the stasis?

What feels manipulative? The preposterous or the predictable?

What feels educational? The epiphany or the understanding?

What feels inspirational? The underdog or the fan favorite?

What feels vulnerable? Doing it alone or with a team?

What feels like home? Fitting in or standing out?

What feels like adulthood? Having nothing or everything to take care of?

So I played with tinted words this week.

1: How to lower green house gas emissions?

2: What is happening to little girls?

3: What’s new with you, Comrades?

4: What is the darkest shade of white?

5: What makes us cry?

6: What are you planning for your retirement?

7: What’s the best currency to invest in?

8: Where do red and blue meet?

9: Why are you seeing stars?

10: Where is my catalytic converter?