your june field notes 🌱🎧📍
east of eden, music as a fashion accessory, and i am a corner app stan!!
during the writing of this field notes, these were the topics that I was hyper-fixated on:
1) finally trying to understand the discourse around AI and taste. It has been beaten around for a while, which in internet times means half a year. If you think about it though, that’s not enough time to really come to terms to what this means as our use of AI is still premature. The impact is still to be seen. For now, plenty of techbros are tastewashing their product and brands to present themselves as cool, and cultured.
2) our obsession with archiving. How important it is in this day and age. On the one hand, collecting physical items that become an extension of our personality. But on the other hand, digitally collecting things and saving them for our personal histories, especially at a time when digital archives can be easily erased or removed without our knowledge or consent.
3) as an extension of the cyberdeck conversation, its been great seeing the girls adopt all tech to be more for the girlies. Usbs as hairclips, NFC chips in your nails. This gives me hope for a more version of cyberpunk that we always saw in the films. One dominated by women who are taking control of their tech use.
1. BOOKS
I raced to find myself a copy of East of Eden a couple weeks ago, because I realised that the show was coming out this autumn (Florence Pugh will feature). I have pretty much started it blind, not knowing what its about, except that Steinbeck wrote it. The book has been very enjoyable. He is able to write about the two important families in a way that balances morality with relatability. There is a dark thread that you just know is going to come out, and once it does, you will have already been so emotionally invested in the characters that it will probably destroy you. Anyways, Happy reading!
Drive your Plow the second time was great. I love a mystery thriller. She makes me think about our prejudices against outcasts, how we are easily able to cast them aside, their opinions and their perspectives on the world. But that often these are the perspectives that are the most valuable.
2. WATCH
I wish I had the stomach for it because it seems like the horror genre has been blessed with a plethora of films at the moment. But I am a big fat scaredy cat. Instead, I watched the first couple episodes of the RAFA documentary. Tennis has always been a sport that has escaped me, mostly because I didn’t grow up watching it, and then I never really fully understood the rules. But around me, I would always hear the important battle between Rafa and Federer. Full of respect. Historic. So, the documentary was a good way for me to finally understand at least part of this rivalry, and sport. Oh wow, it’s so emotional.
Also, on the recommendation of Jill (shoutout for you making me feel so welcome always in the Paris office), I tried to rewatch Under Paris. And failed spectacularly. Fun fact, though, is that while objectively horrible, the film has apparently received 64% on Rotten Tomatoes, with the critics consensus saying “Marrying environmental themes with bloody thrills, this Gallic entry into the shark attack canon ultimately lands on the right side of ridiculous fun.”
After reading Drive your Plow for the second time, I, of course had to watch Dua Lipa’s book club (Service95) interview with Olga. All I wonder is how does Dua Lipa have the time to do all of this? Her questions are so incredibly thoughtful and go to the depth not just of the content of the book, but how it relates to the author.
3. ARTICLES
If you let AI do your writing, I will kill you. Great lines in this one from: “The reason it’s so hard to get AI to stop hallucinating is that it’s permanently hallucinating. Its whole existence is one long lurid trip.” to “Human writers write because we’re sexual perverts, because we’re bitter and frustrated little gremlins, because we’re terrified of our own mortality, because we’re grasping and covetous but unfit for any other job, because it’s a form of revenge against the world. The AIs don’t have that. “
Yappism on how Astronomy has always been political, “it’s no coincidence that astrology keeps growing in popularity during times like the one we’re living in now: times where we witness and live through conflict, cruelty, and helplessness.” Following on from the astrology present in Drive your Plow, this is even more interesting. Should we not challenge the way we view astrology as something that is not as important?
please please read music fashion is a fashion accessory! Nick susi researches the history of how music hardware started out as merch, and now has become a taste signifier. I think interestingly he doesn’t talk about Nothing hardware, and Charli XCX’s recent collaboration with them, but nonetheless, its a very good deepdive about how frictionmaxxing is also affecting all our senses. “Now, in response to this information overload for our eyes, the relationship between our senses and media is shifting towards the ear.” It reminded me so much of this post on reddit, “Vinyl doesn’t sound different, but your brain treats it differently”.
a non-comprehensive list of sprinkling fairy dust all over ur life. “Try to fail at least five times a day and keep a tally of the times you biffed. I hate to report this, but it’s way harder to fail than you might realize.”
Alexi Gunner’s article on nightlife as cultural infrastructure, “Sociologist Mark Granovetter calls this the power of ‘weak ties’, arguing that our most valuable social connections are often not our closest mates and family, but rather the temporary friends we make in club queues, dancefloors and bathrooms, where spontaneous encounters between like-minded people lead to the exchange of ideas, numbers and, in Vegyn’s case, a USB.” Funnily, I am quite against the idea of weak ties, but am trying to be better at them.
When I am bored I think about danielle (𝓇𝒶𝓌 & 𝒻𝑒𝓇𝒶𝓁) and her post on shitposting (mischiefmaxxing) and how liberating it is to do that. I think I reference her shitposting on LinkedIn at least once a week. Anyways, here is an article about shitposting.
I have such a great time reading Patrick Kho. I aspire to be as good a cultural writer as he is. His recent post on China’s Zero Interest Policy is part memoir, part cultural analysis, part socio-economic analysis. It’s in my opinion a great way to read about the China’s specific policy and how it affects it’s population and neighboring countries. It makes me think so often of people writing about culture while observing vs participating and how the latter version will strengthen that analysis.
4. RANDOM
A beautiful poem, please (don’t) use AI.
Also an account on tiktok is called A world without…, where its content creates animation about a world without something. Like this one, a world without elbows.
Dark Forest Operating System or DFOS. The theory is a response to the walled garden of the internet, set up by and delineated by big tech. “Dark forests like newsletters and podcasts are growing areas of activity. As are other dark forests, like Slack channels, private Instagrams, invite-only message boards, text groups, Snapchat, WeChat, and on and on. This is where Facebook is pivoting with Groups (and trying to redefine what the word “privacy” means in the process).”
This has been a common practice, but more people have been talking about clip farming. Especially after Eliza McLamb’s piece, Fake Fans.
Did you know about rotoscoping? Now you do!
I started using the Corner app in Paris, and I absolutely love it.
The funniest video I have watched this month:
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