Slow Like Whisky

Tag: Culture

  • Velocity Is the New Authority – Om Malik

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    robert.adlington
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    Authority used to be the organizing principle of information, and thus the media. You earned attention by being right, by being first in discovery, or by being big enough to be the default. That world is gone. The new and current organizing principle of information is velocity. What looks like cultural choice is often the echo of infrastructure. The meme has become the metastory, the layer where meaning is…

  • Donald Trump is waging war against human conscience | Osita Nwanevu | The Guardian

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    robert.adlington
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    Stephen Miller’s proleptic defense of seizing Greenland last week suggests the Trumpists themselves know this. “We live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he declared. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”…

  • MTV Rewind

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    robert.adlington
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    an interface through which you can watch music videos from the 70s to the 20s, organized by decade. There are also “channels” for 120 Minutes, MTV Unplugged, Yo! MTV Raps, Headbangers Ball, and the first full day of MTV programming. — Read on kottke.org/26/01/mtv-rewind

  • The Goon Squad, by Daniel Kolitz

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    robert.adlington
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    From these companies’ perspective, the ideal consumer would do literally nothing but goon, lose at gambling, and maybe watch other people play video games. You can try to fight this. You can read a book, pet a dog, buy a stupid box to lock away your phone. You can make a joke about the box,…

  • Thin Desires Are Eating Your Life

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    robert.adlington
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    The business model of most consumer technology is to identify some thick desire, find the part of it that produces a neurological reward, and then deliver that reward without the rest of the package. Social media gives you the feeling of social connection without the obligations of actual friendship. Pornography gives you sexual satisfaction without…

  • What ’67’ Reveals About Childhood Creativity – Atlas Obscura

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    robert.adlington
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    Language is still new to them, and they find difficulty in expressing themselves. When on their own they burst into rhyme, of no recognizable relevancy, as a cover in unexpected situations, to pass off an awkward meeting, to fill a silence, to hide a deeply felt emotion, or in a gasp of excitement.” This is…

  • Why Is Everyone Running In Rom-Coms?

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    robert.adlington
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    In the modern day, we live in a world without a cosmic moral order, a framework of meaning to which everyone automatically subscribes. We had one for a while. But round about the year 1700, give or take a century, that framework started cracking, fragmenting, losing its authority, and the burden of finding meaning shifted…

  • Who is ‘fedora man’? Dapper French teenager in viral Louvre heist photo unmasked | France | The Guardian

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    robert.adlington
    in

    “Fedora man”, as users dubbed him, was cast as an old-school detective, an inside man, a Netflix pitch – or not human at all. Many were convinced he was AI-generated. Pedro understood why. “In the photo, I’m dressed more in the 1940s, and we are in 2025,” he said. “There is a contrast.” — Read…