All things considered, we thought we had decent jobs with Divinity Inc. It was the first time in ages that we nudged closer to paying down debts accrued by covering the overwhelming cost of living in the free spaces. It was a matter of course that we pay the tithes as well as interest on rent in arrears, which has been going back as far as anyone can remember. It’s not even clear from where the tenures arose, but Those Above were forever entrusted by decree of Divinity Inc. as stewards of our financial affairs. But before the stipends were paid to us, something angered the highest echelons of Those Above, and like a light switch, the sun was blocked out for everyone in our section. The authorities chanted litanies over the loudspeakers, spraying terms like optimization, streamlining and consolidation like they were putting out a fire. Barely a smudge of light was left in the sky as we were sent for the phasing.

The air stank and left a sulphuric tang on our lips. Our skins leathered and our muscles withered. Our bones became brittle. Hunched over, we whispered to one another about the long-ago days, when the healers warned us that the only way to know you were in the phasing was by the symptoms. We warmed ourselves by the fire of those old words, but here we were, kids limping with rickets and cancers ravaging our bellies.

We had volunteered for all of it. If that’s the right word or not, I don’t know. But once inside, the terms of service we had agreed to were such that there was no turning back. We knew we were locked in. On the surface, it was quite impossible to distinguish the interior of the phasing site from free spaces. It looked mostly normal, but everything meaningful had changed. Any discernible difference between right and wrong was dissolved. The only approved emotion was rage. The only approved activity was consumption. Everything else was making its way to an ever expanding list called Denials. Violence was either ignored or tacitly encouraged. Our former selves were digested in the acid bath of this place. Our energy was leeched. Eventually, little more than our sodden husks were sent to the next phase, expelled like an abortion.

We rejoined those in the free spaces as a hollowed out, bewildered, frenzied mass of self-loathing wannabes, unable to control ourselves, shouting at the sky and bludgeoning our former friends. Those Above seemed pleased. Shrunk by exhaustion and disease, we were left with just enough energy to supply the next generation of meat to the progeny of Divinity Inc. and its acolytes. The sun was allowed to shine again, but the tithes were increased.

Legend has it that during a past phasing ritual, there once arose a nameless renegade, who managed to cut through a layer of skin from inside the beast. I guess it was resistance, or revolt, or whatever – but the laceration, like a narrow window, exposed a hideous cascade of machine gods, cannibalizing one another all the way down. The renegade was vaporized, and the opening made by his knife healed like a tiny scratch in a dream.

And the work continued.

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Emotional distance tax. This is the toll when the people who have touched you deeply are perpetually far away – gently blown by the myriad of forces of life on earth: employment, immigration, family obligations…

At first, the threads from one’s heart and body and mind to another’s are radiant with fresh enthusiasm. The energy seems as vast as the ocean’s horizons, and the waves of spiritual bliss run strong. This is one of the delicious beauties of life.

Months pass, as they do, while moods swing and the connective tissues invariably fray. The once impenetrable fortress of passion begins to tilt. The grip on the memories is still tight, and the pang for making it tangible again is acute. We don’t give up so easily – not when we know how few and far between these amazing bonds really are and how much suffering is commonplace. We want to fix the loose ends. It seems worth the effort. After such a beautiful connection, it’s easy to ride the momentum even if it shows signs of slowing.

The repair work for the first few cracks is modest, even easy, accomplished with dutiful pleasure. Sweet missives act like mortar supporting a tower of mutual resolve, but fractures grow. The labor of love begins to churn like a creaky windmill, every rotation more and more cumbersome than the last. Memories transform into loops of frustration, outpacing the desire for reconciliation.

You find yourself salvaging the relics of a past era in a swamp of resentments. This is life, too. Surveying the dank muck of what we’ve gotten ourselves into. In the cycle of life, this is fertilizer for the next, richer crop of experience.

Pining for a conclusion that does not come, we are, at once, the taxed and tax collector.

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We are born with amnesia, blind to the history of our species, oblivious to the origins of our religions and unfamiliar with the earth beneath our feet. One certainty from the spark of consciousness is to discover that life is bewildering. We enter the fray quite helpless. For nearly two decades, children mostly go along for the ride, following parents, relatives and other influential people into whatever is normal in their particular context. Regardless of the variance in method and quality, water flows, food is delivered and shelter is provided. A human lifetime is largely a process of acquiring and sharing knowledge and resources.

Cooperation among humans is not optional but a matter of survival. Our society is functionally a huge collaborative system: first with the immediate family, for obvious reasons of intimate care, but the interdependence quickly radiates outward to strangers. You likely don’t know who grew the tomatoes in your refrigerator (or who assembled your refrigerator, or who designed its components, or who hired the designer… this is an infinitely regressive trajectory going back to the dawn of time). The system is self-sustaining, too. When one person retires, abdicates or dies, another will fill the gap, ensuring continuity, with progressive changes along the way. Trust is implicit throughout this very complex web of societal arrangements. We all have reasonable expectations about the reliability of airplane engines and bank transfers. Anomalies and mistakes happen, but in the general picture, it works, and we have countless successes as a species to show for it. However, there is a deep, nasty, and shadowy side to our innate altruism.

Humans can largely agree on the nuts and bolts of life, rapidly self-organizing for necessities when there is will and common cause, but in our vivid imaginations, battlegrounds inevitably emerge. Ideas become the great divide as territorial and tribal instincts kick in, transforming neighbors into enemies. Life can be perceived as incompatible between groups of people with different ideas. We can show extraordinary virtue toward those we care about, and normalize astonishing levels of violence against those we disparage. Today, we have manufactured a helluva crisis for ourselves.

Our natural sharing instincts were revolutionized with the invention of the printing press over 500 years ago. In the intervening centuries, books and the knowledge stored within them became increasingly accessible and evolved as the de facto conduit for learning. It would become an inevitable challenge for the seeker of knowledge, who inevitably faced the growing volume of reading material and the finite time to read it. Learning was a slow-burn process, but the depth and breadth of what others contributed to the totality of available knowledge was unprecedented. Printing technologies served us well, if imperfectly. In the profound transformations of our present-day rush towards computerized tech, our natural sharing instincts have been hijacked by technology companies.

I consider it a shameful embarrassment that our children are inheriting a world where the first point of knowledge distribution is social media. Critical thinking will suffer. Every app and digital platform today is designed like an emotional slot-machine doling out addictive rage cycles favoring neither the user not the public at large, but the private, corporate ownership of the billionaire class and their entourage of sycophants. It ain’t a pretty picture. For an interesting read on the topic of declining literacy, I recommend this article, where I read the eye watering estimation that “...on average modern students are destined to spend 25 years of their waking lives scrolling on screens”. I don’t believe this is the world we want, but it is the one we have created.

The recent assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk became a dog whistle in this storm of political and sectarian manipulations. I heard the gamut of responses, from barks to litanies – including the thinly veiled glee of virtue signalers, to proclamations of martyrdom, to the petulant snark about the irony of Kirk’s stance on gun violence, and even claims that the entire event was staged. Needless to say, this event took up a lot of oxygen. The attention bonanza was also seized upon by world leaders, notably the Trumpanyahu administration, further entrenching the great divides of our time. All this over one person who, a week before, relatively few people had heard of – I certainly had no idea who he was. On the same day the Kirk debauchery unfolded and the fallout rapidly weaponized, hundreds of civilians were killed by Israel in Gaza and Yemen, and more than two dozen people were killed in Ukraine by Russian attacks. All those deaths were considered unworthy of a modicum of attention by our formidable media institutions.

As the snuff-bait gurgled into my news feed, it landed simultaneously as heartbreaking and infuriating. I felt viscerally hustled by the profiteers of tragedy, from the top of the heap: CEOs, Prime Ministers and Presidents. The appalling corruption, complicity and moral collapse of high-level leadership of every major Western country, as well as absence of any real accountability in the arenas of power – all this is a real wake up call. As the nihilistic narcissists take the reins and shred our common, human values while leading us into forever-wars, brutal occupations and environmental disasters, they are bulldozing our civilization towards a brink no reasonable person ever wished to go. I don’t know what the precise answer is, but things really need to change.

I think many of us are exhausted by the cannibalistic mission creep of invasive tech and the toxicity fomented among us. I deleted a bunch of time-sucking, life-wasting, death-cult apps from my phone, including the three biggest offenders in my orbit: Instagram, Facebook, and Spotify. I never had X or TikTok, but they would have gotten the axe. Plus, I’ll work on detaching myself from other Meta and Google products over time. These are small, but progressive gestures to reclaim headspace, ensure privacy and to use technology with intention.

I advocate for humanity.

I don’t like paywalls, and you probably don’t either. If you enjoy the posts and have the means, consider supporting my work at the following link:

❤️ Buy me a coffee :) ❤️

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It is my distinct pleasure to present this film called Dominique. I recommend watching it in full-screen mode. Below is the poster and a synopsis for the 8 minute film:

This short, observational documentary follows Dominique, a motorcycle taxi driver navigating the bustling streets of Kigali, Rwanda. Through immersive visuals and candid conversations, the film weaves a non-linear exploration of work, family obligations, and private hopes.

I have no intentions to paywall this newsletter. If you enjoy the posts and have the means, consider supporting my work at the following link:

Buy me a coffee :)

As always, I welcome your feedback or questions about the film or creative process.

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Hello!

This post includes a smattering of updates.

I have a new short documentary, produced in Africa earlier this year, that is now ready to go. The only thing needed is for it to be projected into your eyeballs. First, the pictures, which are essentially photons of energy, will fly towards you at the rate of 25 frames per second. The light-energy will land in your retinas and be rapidly converted into biochemical cascades of signals relayed up the optic nerve into your thalamus. Within a very short amount of time, we’re talking 100–200 milliseconds, all these signals end up in the visual cortex of your occipital lobe, where your brain begins assembling your conscious perceptions. This amazing series of events will continue like a collaboration between you and me, with humanistic messages wiggling through your brain stem, down your spine and finally nesting into the cockles of your heart.

Or, at least I hope it works that way.

You, my comrade, who tunes into this newsletter, and for which I am grateful, will get the very first public access of this short film. Stay tuned for next Tuesday, as the film called Dominique will be sent out via this very same channel and watchable right within the post. It’s for free, too.

In the meantime, below you’ll find the poster for the film and a time-lapse video from Budapest. The accompanying photographs are from a recent trip to Lisbon, Portugal. I hope you enjoy something from this modest buffet.

NB: This post, because of the number of photos, may be too long for some email services. Check out the web or app version if it appears truncated. 🙏🏻

Join me for a long walk, compressed into: 2 Minutes in Budapest:

Now, for Lisbon.

Much struck me about this beautiful city. My time there was very short, so this is like a fist-impressions, tip of the iceberg walkabout.

That’s it for today. As always, reach out anytime :)

Juozas

Most of what I’ve written on Substack began as private journal entries. My journaling, a daily practice, has only one rule: write at least one sentence. Some days, that’s all I manage. Other times, the first few words will unlock a torrent of thoughts. The habit is a form of meditation, tuning into my own wavelength to uncover insights often buried under life’s multitude of distractions. Once in a while, honing in on an idea-seed sprouts into what I hope is worthy for a more public channel.

When I have dug sufficiently deep that I excavate some nugget – maybe a gemstone, if I’m lucky, I’ll haul it from the depths, and polish it up for a public appearance. That’s when I start thinking about you - my dear reader. When I write, it feels like I’m asking if we’re still friends. I know we may not have spoken in a while, but please have a gander at this new thing I made. Perhaps I have revealed some unsavory detail of my character, a personal weakness, or challenged our compatibility. Are we still cool with one another?

Every time I send something for your attention, I step to the edge of a frontier –risking rejection, humiliation, and the abyss of inadequacy. But if it’s genuinely me, and not just a bunch of peacocking or some hollow pretense, even failing is worth it.

You know, I have no qualifications for anything I do except for the fact that I care. I may risk losing you, but isn’t it better if we are on this ride together?

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A sickness passes through generations, flaring up in the bones of children who never felt the original wound. It moves through the city and the countryside like a phantom, passing unabated through wood, stone, and flesh, until it nests in human consciousness. It is unseen but felt in the way doors close a little too quickly and greetings are swallowed before they are spoken. Some days, long-buried frustrations erupt into torrents of rage. Words radiate like shrapnel, wounding those in close proximity, usually loved ones. It happens amongst nations, too, with collective anger materializing as murder and genocide but masquerading as moral righteousness.

In the end, no one remembers who first lit the fire, but the ashes settle over the very souls of survivors and perpetrators alike, so that in a generation or two, the roles will be reversed and the pain will run even deeper. Every experience is tainted by the echoes of old screams. The irony is that for those who, in the current round, are the victors, sweetness becomes bland in the mouth, excitement devolves into tedium, while joy falls into a dull stupor. The hubris and gloating over the plundered resources and the spoils of war develop cataracts of fear and insecurity making fertile ground for mercenaries and profiteers. Love itself is weakened to a yawning indifference when concrete is poured over fresh graves as foundations for new shopping malls.

For those who wished to bomb their way to peace, victory can run hollow. They end up harboring unexpected, unwanted, and bitterly persistent envy of the vanquished. It bubbles up in secret, of course, for the moral integrity of the enemy remains anathema to the purveyors of propaganda and writers of victory speeches, but the truth of the matter outlives the heartbeats of the dead. Down deep, the aggressors know true love was wrecked, but not destroyed. And so the ghosts multiply, haunting cities, rivers, and fields until they are locked back into the imagination, renewing their torments.

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If you were gone – game over gone – how would I know?

Would someone call me, email me, or send a message? Or would it go unnoticed for months until I stumbled across a thread of condolences on social media? I could easily miss the news for a good while, especially on Facebook, where I rarely visit these days. Many of us have grown weary of that platform’s delirious journey—from Friendbook to Partybook, morphing into Marriagebook, then Babybook, before slipping into Divorcebook and, inevitably, landing at its spiritual antipode as Deathbook.

However I’d learn about it, you, to me, would no longer be like a gemstone that I assumed stayed vivid even when out of sight. Your life, once vibrant like a fresh leaf, would be swallowed by a gurgling tide, with all defining edges slowly eroded by the surf of existential entropy. The yin of life having given way to the yang of death. You’d be one less person I know, and one more I knew.

You may not have realized it before you died, but you were nearly helpless in deciding which details of your life came to the foreground and which were destined for oblivion. It’s all in the minds of others, after all. Memories of you, becoming increasingly desaturated and grainy like old photos, would appear like fleeting montages. Truth be told, by the mention of your name, some of us would also think of the time you were a shithead. We might also have an unpleasant reminder of when we may have behaved like assholes to you. Cue the pangs of regret. If we took the moral high road in retrospect, which we are often loath to do, our disagreements might seem so petty in the light of an entire lifetime of complex, interwoven narratives that we’d see you with a fresh and flattering perspective. Perhaps we’d prefer to nurse our nagging frustrations and incompetencies, letting old wounds cloud the view of your positive attributes.

If you’re lucky, the reasonable adults around will tell their children good things about you. Some may genuinely miss you and wish they still had your good listening ear for their daily grievances, or pine for your opinion on one matter or another about this thing called life. Others may wonder if they ever really knew you at all, while the vast majority of earth’s 8 billion humans know precisely nothing of you.

But I do know you, or knew you, whenever that day comes. So when the freshness of the news gives way to the distractions of the present, and the memories begin to loop, the unsettling truth comes to light: one chapter has been eclipsed by another.

The last time was the last time, but so long as you remain in the consciousness of the living, you’ll be immortal.

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October 31. No star hotel, 7am. Auto-pilot routines. Cheap coffee percolating, ablutions in a dank bathroom. I reached into my travel kit, as I’d done countless times, but this morning, my fingers found the upturned razor instead of the toothbrush. The blades sliced into my fingertips. Wincing and recoiling from the sting, I saw four neat cut lines. It had to be the soft part, the most sensitive part of the finger. Jesus. Looking closely, there were ridges of skin opened by the blades, resembling a series of miniature crags, between which lay valleys whose walls precisely corresponded to the razor’s angle of entry. Within moments of the tender depths being exposed, blood swelled up from their trenches in rich ruby droplets before cascading down my fingers. Not a great way to start my morning. I scolded myself for being so absent minded as I searched for a bandage with my weaker hand. I didn’t know at that moment, but my day was about to get a lot worse.

I looked into the mirror and saw a dark spot under the skin of my cheek. You know that little bony ridge under your eye? It’s called the Zygomatic bone, the outer ridge of your eye socket. That area. Could that be a varicose vein? On my face? It wasn’t there yesterday. I took a mental note to look that up later. When I nudged the spot it shifted, almost deliberately. This instantly generated a profound WTF from deep within me, from that place some might classify as the soul. I barely felt capable of fathoming the situation. After a few seconds, I relaxed the muscles of my face and peered more closely. Rationalizing some composure, I realized I hadn’t had my coffee yet. Plus, my eyes aren’t what they used to be – then again, they aren’t that bad, either.

Was I imagining things? I’d recently read that neuroscientists discovered that signals from the brain to the eyes outnumber those from the eyes to the brain by four to one. Heavily influencing our perceptions, our minds are incredibly inventive, capable of conjuring almost anything we think we're seeing. Rarely, if ever, is the objective truth what we see. But can you invent bugs in your head? 

More subcutaneous shadows appeared. A deep, gut churning panic welled up inside me, and my heart pounded like an earthquake. I forced myself to stay still, survival instinct overriding sheer terror. I leaned in close to the mirror, searching for any recognizable movement or pattern. Then, one shadow crawled, or swam, or shimmied or somehow propelled itself, but it moved from my cheek up into my eye – the white part, which is called the sclera, not that the official names of things were helping me in the moment. The critter was navigating with disturbing ease, unencumbered, like getting around in my face was the easiest thing going. It was so close to the surface that I saw its legs, six or eight, unmistakably insect-like. 

My invaders, my parasites, my unwelcome guests, were well out of reach of flicks, swats or squishes, lest I gravely injure myself. I wondered if I could somehow push the outer edges of my face and corral the little fuckers to a certain area and squeeze them out, like a nightmarish pimple. But there was no such luck – they moved too quickly, and with the full expanse of my skull to roam, sank back into the depths of my head. Holy shitcakes, what was happening to me?

Strangely, there was no pain. Just a faint irritation or light tickle, but nothing substantial. Except of course, for the mental anguish – knowing there is a growing swarm inside me. The thought of their life cycle – eggs, larvae, pupae, some crawling stage, feeding off me from within – was nauseating, and I felt utterly helpless.

Grasping for answers, I wondered if this invasion started with last night’s spinach daal at the Indian restaurant. Had I ingested insect eggs nestled among the lentils, finding me the ideal host for a feast and free-for-all breeding ground? 

The owner of the restaurant, an Indian woman, off the boat, looked so impossibly peaceful, like the Buddha of tikka masalas. Nah, the bugs can’t be from there. Her calm disposition and impeccable tidiness had impressed me, contrasting my own propensity to anxiety. I recalled reading some other stuff about how your emotions affect your immune system. It made sense, as the author explained it, that when you’re chronically stressed, too much cortisol can negatively affect your immune system, opening you up to all kinds of problems. I’d bet my last penny that the restaurant owner didn’t have chronic anxiety. This current infestation, however, was beyond anything I could have fathomed.

Almost in a trance,  I drifted into thoughts about life itself. Not in any high-brow way, but in a pragmatic sense, like biological shrewdness. There's an inherent drive, like a tightly wound spring unleashed at conception, across all forms of life—from bacteria and fungi to fish and elephants. Onions and butterflies or grizzly bears and moss. Every living organism pursues existence from the earliest opportunity. Microscopes reveal no lounging amoebas; life is perpetually active. Birds don’t abandon their nests, and life is a chaotic rush to thrive before time runs out. Even video games echo this urgency: You pay good money not to sit idle while in player mode. 

One of the constants over billions of years on this spinning planet and its countless extinctions – 99% or all species are gone, subsumed into other lifeforms – is that life just keeps going, reinventing itself. I may have to appreciate life in all its spectral wonder, but if this is also true for the bugs that have invaded my body, I just want them dead.

In spite of my parasitic inundation, I was able to move freely. My sight was unimpaired. But I was far from home, and as much as I knew I needed help, there was no nearby hospital. So I proceeded to do a trick I learned in Africa - when there’s no doctor, go see the pharmacist. In a pinch, it’s better than nothing, and there was one across the street. But how was I gonna explain my condition, my affliction, my plague, my menace? 

There was no queue when I arrived, and I approached the counter. “Good morning,” I said, continuing as if talking about the weather, “By chance, can you see anything on my face?”

“Morning,” the pharmacist responded. I quickly wondered where she studied. She looked like a kid, but then again, more and more people were starting to look like kids since I turned 40. She looked at me with caring yet probingly analytical eyes.

“No,” she said flatly. “There’s nothing there.”

“But I saw something in my eye this morning,” I insisted. She looked at me with a sly reckoning that I had come to see her for an issue that likely landed outside her domain, and she was not about to step beyond her expertise.

“What’s with that nasty bandage on your hand?” she asked. I revealed my wounded fingers.

“Okay,” she said. “Let me get you some Neosporin.”

On my way out, she said with a wink “Happy Halloween, sir.” 

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I went to the place where good stories come from. It’s a hike, mostly uphill, I tell ya. Lots of folks get their asses whipped along the way. I’m not completely unscathed either, frankly speaking. People have found themselves bitten by vipers, haunted by deranged ghosts and beset with debilitating diseases. Many were relieved of their worldly possessions by cunning scoundrels. It can be brutal. Most end up turning back, going home empty handed, disgruntled by the revelations. Once returned, they find excuses to dodge the subjects of their earlier ambitious boasts and the shame of their acquiescence to the status quo. You hardly ever hear of anyone from this gang of dispirited hopefuls, much less their music, poetry or prose. Life just fades out for this silent majority – the passionate ones who never found their passion.

When I got to the land of inspiration, however, it was different than anything anyone ever said, and much more than I could have expected. The place was incredibly lush, a kind of Garden of Eden of ideas and astonishing potential. I reached out and picked some stories as easily as if they were ripe grapes dangling from a vine. Oh, the bounty! I enthusiastically filled my knapsack, every available pocket, and even stuffed some into my socks. You don’t get to places like this too often, so I took advantage. Full up to bulging, I headed back on the long walk to town. I was maneuvering gingerly. Giddy like a school kid, if you will, achingly keen to reveal my prizes at the earliest possible opportunity. But Christ on a cross, life had more lessons up its sleeve.

It turns out carrying a bag full of stories is a lot trickier than you might first believe. First of all, they don’t come with any proper handling instructions. There are no polystyrene separators, no cushioned inserts for the safest way to transport brilliant narratives and complex, nuanced characters. I simply crammed too many incompatible things in one place, like traveling with peaches, turpentine and power tools. Blinded by zeal, I really had no idea the damage I was causing. Everything below got squished by the weight from above. Kittens were maimed, hearts broken, bombs exploded, rivers polluted, children orphaned, and so many paragraphs twisted into complete and utter gibberish. What was at first a plethora of ripe, juicy narratives, now lay mangled in a sad, confusing heap. My bounty had become a fermenting, acrid pool, soaking through the fibers of my knapsack and dripping onto the ground like the bitterest, most wretched tears.  

I looked deeper into the bag and saw what might be a few salvageable paragraphs and plots floating amongst the swamp of chattels. What a fucking mess. With such a miserable quarry, I had to wonder if it was all a wash, a pathetic write off. If I saved a few items, would anyone know what these little rescues represent? Could the remaining bits and bobs stand like a lone Roman pillar while tourists try to imagine the empire around it? Not bloody likely. 

What if I hadn’t been so greedy? What if I had been more careful when harvesting inspirations in the Shangri-La of stories? Hell, even if I put something out there for the public, straight from the undamaged heart of hearts, there’s no telling that there'd be anything left to talk about 5 minutes later. In a vast, dubious world of overconsumption and culture of excess, how can my paltry contribution be anything other than a few olives at a giant banquet for gluttons?

Now my attitude is thoroughly furrowed, my wine has turned to vinegar. I see droves of people gather at the channels of empty-calorie abundance: social media, streaming services, deep fakes, shopping networks, fast food, every mindless twat gorging him/herself obese. People have become little more than vessels of their own emptiness. Where integrity and principles once stood, now lives a gaping, delirious void. This void is thriving, perpetually hungry, and we will all die feeding it. 

Reel it in, I say to the mirror, it’s not so bad. Get to the optimistic part before someone jumps off a fucking bridge. 

Roger. Copy that. 

Ok. If one had a duty as a human on this planet, which of course you don’t, but if you did, let it be to find the value of the light of consciousness and compassion in a vast, dark world of indifference. On this wild journey of life, may we be as truth seeking as possible. Perhaps, out of all the variant truths, the best truth is the one that aligns with the deepest part of yourself. Chances are, if you discover this inner miracle, that it will somehow also mirror some part of the outer world. With that, you can connect with all living things, and that’s when strangers transform into comrades.

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How long have you not been drinking? 

2 years.

That’s a fair stretch. Do you miss it? 

Sometimes. On one hand, there’s the beauty of vineyards and the meticulous tending of endless rows of vines in astonishing landscapes. I’ve been to Stellenbosch, and my jaw hurt from dropping so frequently at the sheer magnificence of the Western Cape. Then there’s the cultural side – everything from the thoughtful pairing of the perfect wine with certain foods, to the sound of the cork popping, the collective joy, and all the social connectivity. I even like the look of oak barrels and the beautifully designed labels. Oh, and the smell. God, I love the complex aroma of wine, especially red. Tannin-laced rubies delivering esophageal warming magic. It may all be a sham, however.

How so?

After many years of imbibing, it started to look like fallacious pageantry, much like how smoking gets tied to rebellion. In the end, that shit is toxic, and the peddlers of such swill and smog profit from poisoning others. As I got older, I realized the hangovers were so fucking punishing – even after a modest intake the night before – and absolute murder for my productivity. Drinking became a walk on the slipperiest of slippery slopes. I thought back to nights in bars, where it was basically a way to make friends with people who wouldn’t be your friends any other way. A way to temporarily tolerate the intolerable. When I added up the costs versus consequences, none of it seemed worth the side effects. After a few dry weeks, letting it go completely wasn’t that hard. Gotta say, though, I still enjoy the fragrance.

You can still smell it. 

True. Actually I did recently. I borrowed someone’s glass of wine and just sniffed it, deeply inhaling that deep, rich aroma. That was beautiful. Three or four deep hauls. Synapses firing like pistons, each one a mini-orgasm of sensation in my head.  

I hope it was someone you know. 

Actually, no. It was a glass from some guy at the next table. 

Really? 

The commotion started even before I returned it.

The guy put up quite a fuss, calling the manager to complain, all this shit. But what really got my goat was how a simple conversation could get the police called. 

Are you shitting me?

The truth is, I only ever exhaled outside the glass. I tried to explain that the process is unidirectional: air is drawn into the nose, processed by the olfactory receptors, and then expelled through the mouth. There is no mixing of the inhaled air with exhaled air in the glass. That’s just science. But they weren’t having it. There was nothing hygienic to worry about, so why did those motherfuckers insist I pay for his fucking glass? And after politely declining their very non-magnanimous offer, they demanded that I leave the restaurant. Lousey poltroons and wastrels, each one of them. Can’t even lend a guy the simplest fucking courtesy and decency for weaning himself of one of our fiercest social vices. Dicks.

Total dicks. What did you do? 

I felt I had to keep a principled stance and maintain my integrity, so I refused to leave until I gained a morsel of satisfaction out of all this recalcitrance. I offered them, to my mind anyway, a gentlemanly compromise: I’d pay for the wine and leave the restaurant if they admit they were wrong. 

What did they do? 

Did they take the high road? Nope. Two burly cops materialized through the front door, one white, one black. Serious dudes. And I know they meant business when they put on their leather gloves in front of me, signalling a stern “let’s dance” kinda attitude. They got me in handcuffs in approximately 2 seconds. I was under arrest, blah blah blah, charged with disorderliness, mischief, resisting arrest, trespassing blah blah blah. Can’t make this shit up. They actually thought I was drunk or high or some shit. Little did they know it was the exact fucking opposite, and yet they brought me downtown, booked me. As an aside, my date from that night, she was so beautiful, actually, but it was all, perhaps, a bit much for her. Unfortunately, she hasn’t returned my calls since then. Anyhow, after being processed, I got thrown into the drunk tank with some fat hairy fuck.

Jesus. How’d you know he was hairy? 

I only found out later. The creepy motherfucker. Not sure if you wanna hear that part of the story. 

Good God, are you ok? 

Yeah, I’m fine now. I got myself checked, I don’t have HIV. I’m pretty sure this deviant bounder had some kind of arrangement with the cops. They just let this lecherous rakehell control the tank as they watched him play out their lewd fantasies. Can’t be certain of those internal dynamics, but things seemed off about the entire justice system that night, to say the least. But we didn’t do anal. Jesus, I’m glad I talked my way out of that one. 

Holy shit. 

Totes. The domineering beastly mofo, stank like a thousand rotten, belching corpses. I actually puked when he got close to me. I watched some of my dinner – from that very same restaurant where all this shit started – splash onto the floor. I could make out the tomato seeds from the salad. The hairy guy told me the bits of food and stomach acid would make for good, tangy lube. That humiliating statement, and the hopelessness of rescue swung me into vertigo and I puked some more. I nearly passed out when I felt his boner touch my leg.  

What the... Am I hearing what I think I’m hearing? 

Yeah, I think so, but it’s all behind me now. The cops finally had their bit of fun and ended it just as my underwear was being torn off.

Holy fuck. 

You know it’s odd when the cops claim rescue when they control the entire narrative. 

I’m just shocked. 

Why? 

You should have drunk the wine.

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Sometimes it was just a split second of eye contact, but that’s all he needed. A connection just long enough for a kind of read, like braille for his intuition. 

He saw a woman whose furtive gaze reminded him of a caged bird that would not fly away even when the door was left open. He went back in time to this stranger’s infancy, where he saw her mother and father hold her in their arms, full of fear and wonder about how they were gonna make it all work. These new parents looked at their daughter, seeing their own faces, and those of their own parents’ revealed in the likeness of the newborn. Inflated with a sense of stern obligation, they charted a course to rectify the chaos and the suffering from their own formative years and all that they had grown to despise. They would become intolerant of anything that resembled the unspeakable traumas of their past, and in the harsh light of their love, different agonies and disappointments sprouted. Admonishments and violent humiliations slowly choked the spontaneous and airy spirit of their daughter and she became obedient and listless. Like her impeccably polished shoes – you’d never know unless you really knew that the exterior shine masked depths of anguish. 

One by one, he’d unpack the hidden layers of the people whose paths he crossed, and the stories rang out like church bells at noon. Each iteration of life, every element of sentience vibrating like notes in a dramatic musical score. 

What he had seen in his mind’s eye, as vivid as it seemed to him, likely bore no resemblance to the lives these strangers actually lived. It’s possible that it was all just fanciful self-indulgence. Perhaps he was projecting his own stories outward, and every hapless passerby became a mirror to his personal narratives.

Whatever the reality, he believed that everyone, without exception, had fought many battles to get to this point in life, and in the moment, he loved each of them profoundly. He also recognized that many of those battles were still raging.

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May 26 just passed. I was reminded of my childhood friend, Charles. He lived down the street and we were utterly inseparable for a long time. I can recall in vivid, yet impressionistic detail, like Monet paintings, the little forests we explored, his family’s British accents, their Siamese cats, sleepovers, and so much laughter. We collaborated on every conceivable mischief that young boys could do in the suburbs of London, Ontario, in the 1980s. 

I would only learn much later how my family was chronically bad with money, which doesn’t really matter, but because Charles’ folks had somehow managed to become somewhat affluent, they moved to a nicer neighborhood. He also changed schools, and despite a few visits, our connection dwindled, and we eventually lost contact entirely. That was 40ish years ago. If he walked in front of me at the supermarket today, I would not recognize him, but I still remember May 26th is his birthday. 

To any casual observer, I’m certain I have done countless strange things in my life. But one thing I have never done is eat my own snot. Nothing about it has ever appealed to me, so if I picked it, I flicked it. Charles, on the other hand, ate it. I saw him do it one day, repeatedly, while we watched TV. Baffled, I called him out on it, but he denied it, as if I hadn’t just seen him do it. That was packed in the figure it out later section of my brain, and life moved on.

Many, many years later, the topic resurfaced when I saw my own son do it. Where on earth does this habit come from, I wondered? 

The internet tells me people pick their noses and sometimes eat the snot due to physiological reasons, like relieving nasal irritation, and psychological factors, such as habitual behavior or coping with stress. Some theories suggest it could have a minor role in immune system development. It all seems like a bunch of malarkey to me. So, when you don’t know what to do with a thing, one option is to expand the thing.  

Your boogers, I insisted, must be very tasty if you munch them like that.

It’s not fair, by the order of the universe,  that you should be the only one to enjoy it. I’m gonna open a restaurant serving your distinctive globules at very high prices. The customers will be highfalutin types arriving on private jets from the world over. The chef will be highly trained of course, and most likely from a prominent Italian family, like a gangster clan, but looking to turn over a new leaf. We do things properly here. The main tool will be a tiny rubber spatula, let's call it a harvester, designed by German scientists to perfectly dislodge the nuggets from the vestibule of your nose. This’ll be a bona fide international collaboration. A Japanese garden to greet visitors will be cool, too. 

Anyway, the slimy morsels will be smeared directly onto the guests’ fingers. No plates needed, which is a nifty innovation I’m sure will be well noted by reviewers. I’m not sure, but the meal probably qualifies as raw, keto, gluten free, organic, definitely local and maybe even vegetarian. Patrons, admiring their fingers laden with the fruit of your proboscis, will carefully turn their wrists under the optimized lighting conditions, marveling at the contrasting moist, reflective bits and the drier, crusty chunks. 

The challenging art of dining at this establishment will be to find the perfect balance of cherishing the sight of the skeins of mucus, wrapped like tiny octopus legs and shimmering like the trails of slugs, for as long as possible, but not for too long, lest desiccation begin to compromise the experience. We’ll definitely keep the room humidity ideal, but human skin is actually quite absorptive, and snot has a high water content, so do the math. You gotta be quick, but don’t rush! Enterprising guests will really have a great time finding the precise moment to begin indulging, licking it all up and gently squishing the nibbles between the teeth. 

On special occasions, when people like Beyonce come, you know, the elite of the elite, they will get a nose hair embedded in the gluey delicacy. When Taylor Swift shares her enthusiasm on her social media, our ratings will go intergalactic. All these zillionaires will be charged accordingly, because we don’t show overt favoritism – that’s a thing zillionaires are sensitive to. We’re just cleverly tapping into the fact that money means little compared to the value of the overall experience. 

As quickly as this vision was revealed to me, so it was snuffed out when you said, “No! I don't have enough for that!”

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I remember learning, some years back, that Bruce Lee said words have energy. For me it was one of those thought meteors that landed deep in the “don’t forget this” section of my brain. Words have meaning, yes, but energy?

Words, when spoken, are noises people make. Utterances made from the wind of our lungs passing over our vocal chords, modified by the mouth and tongue, and projected outward with the expectation that it will land in someone’s ear. It’s almost comical that one noise being made means “cinnamon” and another arrangement of vibrations means “love” and so on. We learn to decode these vocalizations as stand-ins for experience and it helps us navigate life with others. It’s all very useful, of course, but if you’ve never actually tasted cinnamon, the greatest poet on earth couldn’t equate the experience properly with words. The poet, with all his or her enthusiasm, might make you want to try it, but until the taste has been directly experienced, you’ll be left outside of that richness of understanding. While we don’t all have access to cinnamon, we are born with inherent love, and our experience with it, or without it, is perpetually relevant. 

Back to the words have energy topic. If you reverse the trajectory of any spoken word, you go from the physics of sound waves, to the dictionary definition, and then finally to an intention. The intention is the core, wherein lies the energy. The energy is what people intuit, sometimes referred to as reading between the lines. Paying attention to the core intent is to distinguish signal from noise.

As much as discerning the messages constantly flying your way are crucially important (think fast food advertising, government propaganda, or your gossipy neighbor), Mr. Lee’s message also held another stark warning for humanity: be mindful against self sabotage. Since the most important story in the universe is the one you tell yourself, be careful about the messages. Rounding out his message on relaying energy, he added “Change the way you speak about yourself, and you can change your life.”1

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What's your house number again?

I can't have you over tonight.

It’s been like 100 years. 

Then you can wait a day or two more. 

Let’s meet up. Why not? 

I'm in a funk.

Let me un-funk you.

Haw haw haaaaw.

But for reals, I wanna see your goofy face.

I'm just off, it happens. I'm not good company.

I don't want good company, I want your company.

Let’s just leave it for another time.

Don't wallow. I'll ride my bike over. Easy.

It's too far and it's too cold.

It's freezing, yes, but we can keep each other warm.

You're not coming over. I mean if you were downstairs, I'd let you in. But now, no. Really.

It's so close to that shop selling luxury knock-offs. I can’t recall the exact door. What's the number?

It doesn't matter.

It matters.

Why does it matter?

I swear, it matters. World peace hangs in the balance. 

No, it doesn’t.

You know what? It doesn't. I've changed my mind. I don't even want to come over anymore. World peace or not. 

Hmm. Good then.

Seriously. Try me. Ask me to come over and you'll see how I respond. I'll be stoic against your melodramatic appeals.

What does stoic mean?

It means I’m fucking serious. 

You're full of shit.

I am not. You could dangle your twat in front of my god damned face and I’d ignore that shit.

Wouldn’t you just love that.  

Nope. Fucking try me. You could beg me. I'd say no.

You're insane.

Probably. Seriously. Try me. Ask me to come over.

I'm not.

Ask me. You'll see.

Get out. 

Do it, I will totally prove my point. 

I won’t.

You won’t what? Won’t not ask me, you mean? 

You’re funny. I won’t won’t.

That’s two won’ts. I think that adds up to a will.

Fine.

Fine what?

Will you come over?

Oh… my… God… what a lovely suggestion. Why, yes, I’d love to.

You said you were going to refuse. 

It would be impolite to refuse.  

I just said it because you asked me to.

But you just asked me to come over.

I did. 

You did, indeed.

42 Logan.

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I’ve rented an apartment on the 5th floor in Kileleshwa, a relatively affluent neighborhood of Nairobi. One evening in April, around 9pm I heard a tremendous commotion coming from across the street: A horde of people shouting, massive thuds, and the shrieks of women. I thought it might be a sports event with Manchester or Arsenal gone berserk but the cacophony persisted and it was soon apparent that something else, much more disturbing was going on.  

From my apartment window, I could only get a partial view through the tree branches and where the concrete fence wasn’t obscuring the street. But I saw the unmistakable reflective vests of Boda drivers, those low-wage, high stress freelance motorcyclists usually buzzing around town delivering parcels or people to their destinations. After years in Kenya, I’ve learned that a crowd of these guys off their bikes is generally a bad sign.

There was a prostrate man in the dirt, barely moving. He was alone on the ground. The men nearby, running here and there, were scattered, unfocused. I didn’t know if they were trying to help their injured mate, or were waiting for assistance or what. A few moments later, the pack of men returned, hovering over the injured man. Their intent made crystal clear when they began delivering angry kicks to his body. 

Still more men approached, at first calmly as if in a supermarket queue, then taking their turns upping the ante with their fury. I saw a man pick up a heavy stone, hoist it above his head, and bring it down with all his force to the helpless man. Someone else, picking up a larger slab, followed suit.

I could barely believe my eyes, but there was no mistaking the madness. One thing that struck me was how casual the crowd was. Sure, there were the shouts and whoops of the deranged mob and onlookers from the balconies, but it really struck me the way the majority stood around watching like it was a form of participatory entertainment. What anger is pent up within them, I wondered. How did they end up venting their tremendous frustration on this unfortunate man?   

Before I could speculate much further, they set the man on fire. 

I was aghast. I called the police station, but no one answered. I called my building manager, who I figured would have better contacts to get this insanity stopped. I reached her, but how quickly did I realize how ignorant and naive my thoughts were about this entire situation. 

The manager, who, like me, saw all this was happening, said she’d make some calls and get back to me. A while later she called with the news that, as was told to her, there were several men who became known as thieves harassing locals at a nearby shopping center. Plain clothes police apprehended these men, and began openly beating them in the public street. Boda drivers caught on to the action, and quickly swarmed. This coincides with the commotion I first heard, and about when the plain clothes police are said to have stepped back, and let the rabble do the rest of their bidding. 

I saw the crowd murder a man, but more than one likely befell the same fate.  

Could it be that the police orchestrated this entire revolting, heinous fiasco? Was I stupid to call the police station expecting or hoping they’d quell a mob disturbance. Due process? No dice. Kill some humans for stealing mobile phones or some cash? Bingo. 

But there is more to it. 

There may not be harmony, but I guess there is balance in everything. The police seek relevancy and legitimacy beyond their usual rampant corruption. Out of desperation, they need to look like they serve the community. Like a warden recognizing the anger and hunger of his caged hyenas, he must throw them a meal. In this case, the meal is a couple of thugs no one will ever miss. The temporary fix: a great social tension is released, and impunity from the law is granted to any participant (thus the confidence of the menacing throng). If you think about it, it’s a kind of symbiotic relationship.

Life can be brutal. 

I have lived in Africa for many years and have seen the rawness of life bluntly reveal itself in many ways. It can be so visceral, so intense, that it’s a natural question whether there is something intrinsic or unique to the African setting that enables human violence more so than elsewhere. I believe the answer is a resounding no, and that violence and mob mentality are human conditions, crossing all borders and cultures. 

As appalling as the mob justice I witnessed was, it endured for only a few hours, and likely involved no more than 15-20 people before dispersing entirely. Yes, there was the death of a human as well as the fallout of traumas for those directly involved as well as those in the peripheries. However, contrast the scale of events to the groupthink happening right now in the US, Canada, and the UK, in political and financial support of Israel’s war in Gaza. While there are voices of alarm, protest and dissent, the political and military bolstering of this war has, so far, prevailed. I can only think of it as a deep hypnosis where perpetrators, and their enablers, feel morally justified and impervious to wrongdoing, casually insisting on one term or another to be met before it’s reasonable to stop the bombing, starvation and mass killings of a genocide. In this macabre, hallucinatory pageant of blame-shifting and resource grabbing, our collective humanity is dealt an egregious blow. 

In school, we are equipped with education in academic subjects, a smattering of arts, and basic moral principles important for societal coexistence. However, our curriculum lacks guidance on navigating situations of group-induced hypnosis, where frenzied crowds wielding weapons seek to annihilate perceived enemies—a reality for which we're unprepared, whether facing direct violence or the indirect support of harmful actions by elected officials.

Think it can’t happen to you? Think again. Such scenarios occur frequently, often innocuously, and can even have positive consequences at churches, sporting events, nightclubs, and concerts, highlighting this amoral, trance-like state our species can enter. However, under special conditions, things can turn nasty with riots, looting, and murder. 

Perhaps an antidote to our innate inclinations, often leading us astray in our modern, tech-driven world, is to foster greater self-awareness by confronting the darker aspects of human nature. We should instill in our children, throughout their formative years, an understanding of concepts like deindividuation, where individuals lose their sense of identity and responsibility in group settings, potentially resulting in impulsive and aggressive behavior. We also need to establish warning systems to guard against the perils of subconsciously following the directives of corrupt, self-interested leaders who profit from widespread unrest. Addressing these issues is crucial for our collective well-being. 

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The day I was leaving Budapest for Nairobi, April 19, 2024, this happened: In the shift of my carefully packed things from the apartment, to the elevator, to the lobby, to the sidewalk and finally to the car, I had a real air-head moment. I ended up driving away with my rolling case of video gear still on the sidewalk.

By the time I realized and drove back for it, it was gone. That was a very expensive loss. Easily my biggest single event material loss, ever, including the camera, lenses and peripheral gear. I re-entered the apartment, scanned the hallways and lobby, and scouted the vicinity, no dice. The time was up, I had to give up the ground search, go to the airport, and for the first time in years, board an international flight without my kit.

On the plane, I listened to an Ekhart Tolle audiobook espousing the immaterial nature of life and all kinds of sultry, spiritual mumbo jumbo. I tried to embrace it like a zen master with stoic indifference, reminding myself, here and now, that I am present, healthy and well. It’s just stuff. Fluff. I leaned back into my seat, and breathed. But then a wave of panic came over me: how would I work without my kit, and I can't afford to replace all that stuff and I think I’m royally fucked. Then I unclench my jaw to mentally repeat the mantra that everything is ok.

This was the back and forth of my attitude during the flight before I passed out in exhaustion. Arriving red-eyed in Nairobi, I followed up with people from the building where I had stayed, plus everyone I could think of that might open avenues for recovery of the equipment. I made a poster to share in various Facebook groups and after a while, just had to let things take their course. I could do no more.

Two days later…I received a message that the bag was at the police station. Found it. Incredible.

From the absent-minded act of leaving the case on the street, to it being found by a guy who took it to police, the entire chain of events somehow worked out happily. The guy who found the case, who I'll call my saviour, said that he walked past the case on his way to a shop, and returned nearly an hour later where he found it, still sitting in the same spot. He took it home before bringing it to the police station. It was the police themselves who scanned the local Facebook groups, saw the notice posted on my behalf, and closed the circle.

Now for a brief thought experiment. If you could picture a person who would find a bag on the street, only to bring it to the police, what would such a person look like?

Would it look like the following?

My saviour, whose photos are above, actually has a very unusual profile for such a significant figure in this story: He's about 50 years old, extremely poor, possibly has some mental issues, and I believe he still lives with his mom. I arranged for a financial award for him, sent to his mother since he does not have his own bank account. I think it’s safe to say this man is, at core, an exceptionally good human being.

To him, everyone who assisted, as well as the Hungarian police department, I am very, very grateful.

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5:46 am

It was the strangest thing to find myself in his mansion for what could only be the exercise of my death.

No shackles, no physical constraints whatsoever. I was seated in a grand hall with marble floors, fine furnishings and posh upholstery. There was time to soak up the ambience: It had the turgid, old fashioned formality that emanated extreme wealth. Somehow, I had fallen on the wrong side of fate and was here to mete out my sentence. My offence, however grievous, was unknown to me. I sat alone, spinning in mental processes like a naughty child sent to the principal’s office – but in this case, the principal was an executioner. The sole purpose of all this waiting, I came to think, was to cause psychological agony. Being the consummate sadist, Vladimir would be pleased by such passively generated torment. 

There was a woman lying on a sofa, with her back facing me, wearing a sweater made of long hay-colored locks. Many of the tresses were tangled as if worn for too long at a wild party. What an impractical piece of clothing that is, I thought, adding that a lot of high end fashion is like that. Probably cost a fortune. On a nearby table, there was a framed portrait of another woman with a pleasant face, whose hair bore an uncanny resemblance to that of the sweater worn by the sofa lady. Oh shit, I thought, Vladimir is collecting trophies and then forcing other victims to wear them in some weird and humiliating pageant for his own, twisted entertainment. Is this what power does to people? I scanned the room for any opportunity to change my fortunes – none appeared.  

Vladimir appeared from a doorway and spoke to me frankly. He had that air of charismatic calm, like a proper psychopath impossible to get a read on. I can’t recall what we spoke about, but I definitely tried to show him I was inquisitive and empathetic towards a guy who, despite all his power, must be terribly lonely living in a gigantic castle. I was hoping he’d see me as unthreatening to his seat of influence, take pity on me, and spare my life. I believed that the only thing that mattered to guys like this was to hold power. Any remote threat to his status would be neutralized with swift efficiency, like squishing ants under a shoe. My goal was to look, as much as possible, like I don’t have or want any power, but with that icy determination, he was unswayed.

I had no idea how he was gonna make it happen, except for the fact that he was not gonna do it himself. These big bosses delegate everything except wiping their asses. I could be poisoned by a cup of tea, or pushed from a window, but more likely, a couple of impeccably dressed thugs would just pummel the shit out of me, maybe using an iron rod. It wouldn’t take long, of that I was certain. 

5:47 am

I grew restless as I drifted along the borderlands of consciousness. Nudged out of my reverie, I could feel the weight of the sheets, and the pressure of my limbs on the bed. Time to wake up, my body was saying, but I put up a quiet resistance, adjusting my pillow in an attempt to relax enough reenter the dream. It half worked. I was briefly back in that grand room, trying to lock the experience into memory, but elements were rapidly disappearing as if the act of focusing on objects caused them to vaporize. Rather quickly, it became a lost cause. Eyes open, I got up, wrote down what I could. Maybe Vladimir would come back to visit me another day. And if he did, I’d surely be ready. 

Most people want stories to have a happy ending. Many other people, like me, just want a good ending. I think none of us are satisfied with no ending. However, dreams do not cooperate with our desires, they just happen, like apples from apple trees. Perhaps it's even foolhardy to expect a tidy conclusion, since there is no clearly defined beginning, either. It’s more like a continuum of different conscious states, and upon the examination of each, we might get closer to knowing ourselves.

Dream on :) 

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Anyone remember Friendster? How about Myspace? In the early days of social media, both organizations chartered new territory for, and became competitors with, the upstart and soon to be usurper called Facebook. We all know how that story played out, but today’s social media playing field is made up of the startups that have become household titans: Google, Meta, Tiktok and Twitter/X. I remember the cozy and slightly anarchic feeling I’d get by Google’s old motto: "Don't be evil". Those warm and fuzzy days are long gone.

In any case, each of the aforementioned behemoth incumbents stake some legitimate claim on the territory they occupy, but with insatiable growth strategies, there is inevitable friction where they overlap. Meta’s attempted X-slayer called Threads continues its battle for relevancy and staying power. Since Tiktok vacuumed up so much landscape so rapidly, the tech giants seem to have called their mom, the US Government, to weigh in on whether to ban this foreign kid from the schoolyard. Meanwhile, they’ve also mostly ignored another rising star, Telegram, whose growing posse is likely to ruffle a few feathers in the not too distant future. And then there is the head-spinning disruption of AI, which will add a new dimension to all this squabbling, if not snuff it out entirely.

Indeed, the stakes are high for the money, the business models, culture, nationhood, and global power. It all comes down to the most intimate spaces, the most highly coveted, and yet finite arenas of all – our heads. It’s all becoming a bit much.

I think app fatigue is very real for content creators and consumers alike. Most creators just push out their stuff to whatever channel is out there, generally agnostic to the platform. The Huberman Lab podcast, for example, is on seven social media sites, in addition to its own website.

For the experience of the consumer, it’s really diminishing returns, like going to a new shopping mall, having been sucked in by the hype, only to discover the same stores selling the same shit as every other mall in town.

I wonder if Substack will be different. It seems a bit different.

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