Social Media – Page 2 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Sunday Morning Reading

So what is this future we’re heading into anyway?

If you’re observing Memorial Day weekend in the U.S. I hope you have had a pleasant one. Even if the weather isn’t cooperating, seemingly echoing the threats of seeing that tradition, like so many others, diminished. We’re on the road again for a dear friend’s memorial service, but there’s still time for a little Sunday Morning Reading. Mostly tech related this week, some politics, and of course some cultural happenings. If you’re paying attention, it’s all intertwining. Listening to a lot of Bruce Springsteen. Enjoy.

Adding to what’s becoming a recurring theme in this column, Ian Dunt is looking for ways to get the most out of our digital lives while taking back a bit of control from the tech god wanna-be’s. Check out Taking Back Control of Our Digital Life.

Matthew Ingram wonders If AI Helps To Kill The Open Web What Will Replace It? Excellent piece and excellent topic, because like it or not, it’s the current and next movement we on the ground are going to have to contend with. Pay attention.

Neil Steinberg, one of my favorite of a dying breed of Chicago journalists, gives his take on the recent Chicago Sun-Times AI flap in The AI Genie Is Out of The Bottle, and the Granted Wish Often Brings Trouble.

Lucy Bannerman takes on the AI’s abuse of copyright and artists rights in Nick Clegg: Artists’ Demand Over Copyright Are Unworkable. They aren’t. Those demands just cost more than folks counting the beans want to pay.

Lynette Bye’s Misaligned AI Is No Longer Just Theory raises up that specter that haunts this entire episode of our life across all spectrums that seems easy to fall prey to or dismiss, depending on which side of the coin you’re on. Frankly, if you don’t think the future of this can be manipulated, you’re not paying attention.

Jason Snell’s take on the recent announcement that OpenAI has bought Jony Ive’s company to produce new hardware for AI I think is the correct one. Check out Sam and Jony and Skepticism.

Chloe Rabinowitz fills us in on the outgoing president of the Kennedy Center’s response to the bullshit coming out of the White House. in Deborah Rutter Releases Statement In Response to Trump Kennedy Center Allegations.

The real boss, Bruce Springsteen, continues to piss off the orange buffoon in the White House and I’m glad to see it. So is Eric Alterman in a guest essay in The New York Times proclaiming Bruce Springsteen Will Never Surrender to Donald Trump. We need more of this.

And to wrap up this week, here’s NatashaMH wondering Do We Really Need To Have This Discussion? No hints. No clues. Just good stuff for you to read.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Sunday Morning Reading

Paying attention for the next generation.

Good morning. Visiting the grandkids this weekend, so this will be a short stack of links to share. Fair warning ahead most are on the darker side of the ledger. The links. Not the grandchildren. They are the light. The grandchildren are why I pay attention.

First up is a piece on despair from Dean Pritchard titled Despair, What Is It Good For. He calls it a hopeless call to action. I’m not sure it’s hopeless at all. Just another step in finding what may or may not turn out to be answers. As long as we keep stepping.

NatashaMH says that social media addiction isn’t just about us, it’s about the people around us in Unread, Unavailable and Unbothered. I’ve never been one to buy into the social media addiction theory. It’s too damn easy to put down the damn phone. But I take her points because it’s too damn easy to keep hoping to find new ways to avoid despair.

Lauren Goode takes on Deepfakes, Scams, and the Age of Paranoia. Somebody needs to.

Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman say that Trump is betraying the voters who elected him in The White Rural Reckoning. They are correct. But we knew that would happen. Scum likes to remove itself from other scum once it’s done scumming around.

Joan Westenberg compares the comeuppance moment Apple is enduring to Martin Luther’s reformation moment in Apple’s Diet of Worms. Given the abundance of fanatics there’s more than a little truth here.

Playwright Sara Ruhl is one of my favorites. Charles McNulty takes a look at what she has to say in her new book In ‘Lessons From My Teachers,’ Playwright Sarah Ruhl Finds Wisdom In Art, Motherhood, Even Grief.

And as for weathering despair, check out Lost At Sea by Alec Frdyman. Excellent reading about a scary adventure.

And to close out this weekend I’ll leave you with this uncredited thought that pops up every now and then on social media.

And just remember who the tax breaks are targeted for.

Peace.

Sunday Morning Reading

Happy Mother’s Day reading.

Time for some Sunday Morning Reading on this Mother’s Day, with a short stack of culture, some tech, some politics, and the Ziegfeld Follies tossed in for good measure.

First up is a good long read from Spencer Kornhaber wondering if we’ve entered a cultural dark age. Provocative in parts, predictable in others, it’s worth your time for the journey it takes. Check out Is This The Worst-Ever Era of American Pop Culture?

Kaitlyn Tiffany says We’re Back to the Actually Internet. It’s about fact checking, the need for fact checking, and actually about how fact checking doesn’t really matter.

We may have beat the term fascism to death long before the real beating actually begins, and it’s the Bible thumpers who seem far too eager for the end times with their wishes for some sort of Armageddon beat down. Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor take a look at The Rise of End Times Fascism.

The Apple enthusiast world is still going through some things and will continue to for the foreseeable future. Denny Henke at Beardy Guy Musings is chronicling his thoughts about his move away from using Apple products. His latest, Are Apple Enthusiasts Miserable? takes a look at some of the angst and tensions he sees.

Indie app Developer Thomas Ricourad, the developer of the app Ice Cubes for Mastodon, among other apps, is searching. He’s not alone. Check out Having A Clear Vision In A Blurred World.

Matthew Gurewitsch takes a quick look The Story of a Rose, an upcoming look at an almost forgotten era in A Ziegfeld Girl Recalls The Forgotten War.

Happy Mother’s Day to all.

(image from Aga Putra on Unsplash)

Carole Cadwalladr’s Final Column for The Observer

But she hasn’t stopped observing.

A couple of weeks ago I linked to Carol Cadwalladr’s recent return to the TED conference to deliver a speech entitled This Is What A Digital Coup Looks Like. It’s worth a watch if you care about such things. Heck, it should be required reading if you care at all about what’s happening in our digital and non-digital lives.

This post is linking to her farewell column in The Observer, the Sunday sister paper to The Guardian and The Guardian Weekly papers in Britain. Like all media outlets it’s been through some things in recent years. The Observer was purchased late in 2024 and like all such transactions that prompted staff layoffs and terminations, including Carole Cadwalladr and a number of her colleagues. You can read all about that on in her post Fuckty bye in How To Survive The Broligarchy. I suggest you do that as well as read her final Observer column It’s Not Too Late To Stop Trump and The Tech Broligarchy From Controlling Our Lives, But We Must Act Now.

I happen to believe she’s fighting the good fight. That last column provides some excellent behind the scenes during her preparation and anxiety leading up to that recent TED speech, as well as some reactions she received while at the conference, including an interchange between her and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, in addition to making the important case she continues to make.

She’s paying attention and raising alarm bells. We should too. She’s standing in the way. We should too.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

More than the bare minimum

It’s another Sunday. At a bare minimum it’s time for a little Sunday Morning Reading. There’s more politics than I’d like to shake any sticks at dominating my reading these days, so apologies if that turns you off. I just don’t think we can turn off or tune out to what’s happening. Like it or not (I don’t) we’re living through an epochal moment in world history demonstrating how little we regard human history. I emphasize “living through” because while we’re bearing witness, it is happening to us and whatever it evolves or devolves into will affect all who come after.

I happen to be one who believes that Trump is the ugly face of the chaos descending around us, propped up by bigger, deeper and darker forces using him as the fool too many fools easily fall for. Jonathan Mahler has an excellent piece that delves a bit into this called How The G.O.P. Fell In Love With Putin’s Russia. Excellent context that should not be ignored.

We’re living in a world daily facing formalist delusions. Benjamin Wittes uses the Abrego Garcia case as one example of that in The Situation: Formalist Delusions Confront Lawless Realities.

Speaking of formalist delusions, who knew some tech bros could declare you dead and wipe you off the books, or at least the books that matter when it comes to navigating life in today’s world. Hannah Natanson, Lisa Rein, and Meryl Kornfield take a look at how the Trump Administration Overrode Social Security Staff To List Immigrants As Dead.

Joan Westenberg calls us America, The Isolated. I can’t argue with her points. Though I will refer you back to Jonathan Mahler’s piece above for wider aperture. The deeper context is that the lens we’ve viewed the world, contained and restrained by borders, has never been the view for the forces now moving so rapidly.

In the growing category of erasing history, John Ismay takes a look at Who’s In and Who’s Out At The Naval Academy’s Library?

Mathew Ingram has penned two terrific posts that address what will certainly become a part of our digital lives as we move forward. Be Careful What You Post On Social Media. They Are Listening is the first post. He’s expanded that with Part 2 as the pace of social media monitoring is sure to be picking up.

Perhaps all of this feels too big or too overwhelming to contemplate in the helter-skelter of our daily lives. But it is beginning to have impacts, big and small. Take a look at Scott McNulty’s very funny run-in with a construction worker at his CVS. While CVS – Construction Versus Scott is about his adventures at his local pharmacy under renovation, there’s a comedy nugget in there that demonstrates how those paying attention are actually paying attention.

My initial reaction to any illness in our children is immediate quarantine and a call to the WHO (I deleted the CDC’s number from my address book because suddenly they just kept telling me to get more vitamin A).

To close out this week, take a look at My Open Letter to Gen Z from NatashaMH. At “a bare minimum,” it’s worth a read to remind us that what we remember and hang on to from “back in the day” is now in a daily collision with what comes tomorrow. Easier to avoid the damage from those collisions perhaps if you acknowledge the maps are constantly changing.

Image from Mega Stolberg on Unsplash.

Carole Cadwalladr: This Is What A Digital Coup Looks Like

You need to watch and share this.

The subhead above says you need to watch this. I’m repeating that here. You do.

Carole Cadwalladr on stage for there 2025 TED Talk saying we are facing a digital coup.

Carole Cadwalladr tells it like she sees it. More importantly how many of us see it. But she is brave enough to speak it.

In her post announcing the release of this video of her TED Talk this year, she recounts how she knocked the Silicon Valley World off its axis with her 2019 TED Talk implicating Facebook, and Silicon Valley as a whole, for their role in Brexit. She’s back and talking about the ever increasing dangerous threats we’re facing today given how much we’ve already surrendered and those in control of our digital lives have capitulated to those in control of our politics. Or is it the other way around? As she puts it “a digital coup.”

Of course, I think she’s spot on.

I could go on and on, with words describing her thoughts, but your time would be better spent watching and listening.

You should also read her post, Speaking Truth To Tech Gods: I Return To TED.

A big hat tip to Ian Robinson for sharing these links on Mastodon.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Adolescence: A Review

A tough watch. A must see.

Adolescence. See it.

I’d like that to be all that I write about this sensational limited streaming series on Netflix, but there’s more I want to say.

You’ve probably heard of Adolescence. It’s become a well deserved hot topic of conversation because it’s an excellently done piece of storytelling that cuts through what seems like an impenetrable zeitgeist like a hot knife through melted butter. I’m glad to see that the hype tour surrounding its recent release ramp up after the series took off because something this good needs to be ballyhooed, bravoed, and brandished with flying banners.

For me, the bottom line, beyond just saying “see it” is that the producers and artists involved captured something we all know in our gut and make us face it. Captured it in a challenging way that they didn’t need to, but by accepting that challenge opened up those gut instincts with a rawness that touches nerves we may have all let somehow deaden. The painful intimacy of one family’s story opens up a chasm full of realizations that speak far beyond the specific issues so well portrayed.

In brief, a young boy is accused of stabbing a young girl and through the investigation we delve into a world of young boys and men influenced by Incel culture and bullying. A world not understood in this instance by the young boy’s family, or any one of the parents’ generation that we meet in the story. Watching the investigating detective’s son educate his father is a remarkable scene.

We follow the story through the boy’s arrest, booking and indictment, examination with a therapist, and the devastating conclusion as the family deals with the aftermath. Every moment is powerful. His arrest in the first episode is only the beginning of story that digs into every emotion there is when confronted with horrible moments that one would hope no family would ever have to endure. I can’t imagine any parent of young children, especially boys, watching this without wanting to take the doors off of their child’s bedroom doors and disconnect them from the Internet. It is tough to watch and it’s impossible to look away.

Toxic masculinity, patriarchy, bullying, isolation, fear, self-loathing, and the perils of social media become bigger monsters by the moment than any knife wielding attacker.

Director Philip Barantini, known for filming his stories in one take, uses that device to exquisite effect. He didn’t need to, but he and his team did and the payoff is exquisite. Each episode unfolds like a one-act play, filmed in one amazing traveling take. In later interviews it’s been revealed that they only did two full takes after a weekend’s rehearsal for each of the four episodes. The one take keeps you riveted as it ratchets up the tension, never letting you catch a visual breather from the story. How they filmed the second episode which takes place in and around a school is almost beyond imagining.

The cast is superb, especially 13-year old Owen Cooper as the young boy. In his acting debut he delivers a performance that is so outstanding that it takes your breath away. He’s not only a natural, his performance borders on the supernatural. Stephen Graham, who also co-authored the story with Jack Thorne, plays the boy’s father and strikes true in every millisecond he is on the screen. Well known for playing in-your-face tough guys, Graham’s journey through this story is like watching a rock face that has been the feature of a cliff, let go and crash into a million pieces. The rest of the cast is equally up to the task of matching these amazing performances.

The back story is that Graham, hearing about crimes featuring young boys stabbing young girls, felt that questions needed to be asked, the obvious one being “why is this happening?’ As is the case with all good drama and story telling Adolescence raises as many questions as it answers others. Certainly I imagine parents who see this, and they all should, will be asking the same questions the mother and father in the series do themselves.

On a larger scale, as we daily face an adult and supposedly mature world that seems stuck in adolescent, if not prepubescent misbehavior, celebrating toxic masculinity, bullying, and the perils of social media, this amazingly told story might at least give us a glimpse into how we looked away too often, when we knew we shouldn’t, ignoring so much at the cost of even more.

You can’t look away from this.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

We’re all circling. We’re not listening. We should be reading.

Everything changes. Everything remains the same. Damnit. With that said, here is this week’s Sunday Morning Reading with links to articles worth sharing and perhaps pondering over. There’s a bit of satire, a golden toilet heist, and the evolving nature of a piece from draft to final polish. And, yes, there is politics. Everything changes. Everything remains the same. Damnit.

Let’s kick off with Tina He and The Last Human Choice. That link is to the final version of the story. I also strongly encourage you to check out the draft version she shared here.

Alex Reisner takes on The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem. The technical scale may indeed boggle, the human greed behind it is a story told too often.

The Apple Intelligence/Siri sucks discussion continues and will certainly do so for quite awhile. Andrew Williams in Wired says To Truly Fix Siri, Apple May Have To Backtrack on One Key Thing–Privacy. I hate to say it, but I think he’s right and wish he weren’t.

Good satire can often be hard to distinguish from the real thing. Eli Grober walks that line well in Sergey Brin: We Need You Working 60 Hours A Week So We Can Replace You As Soon As Possible.

John Passantino takes a look at the unraveling of Threads in Hanging by a Thread.

Clearing the throat and clogging up the arteries with a bit of political writing here’s James Thorton Harris with Imagine Deportation: When Nixon Tried To Pull A Trump On John Lennon. Everything changes, everything remains the same. Damnit.

In the category of “be careful what you wish for,” Phoebe Petrovic in ProPublica gives us How A Push To Amend The Constitution Could Help Trump Expand Presidential Power. We’ve already let quite a few demons out of Pandora’s Box, I’m not so sure we want to crack it open any wider.

Speaking of demons, Elizabeth Lopatto tells us How Trump And Musk Built Their Own Reality. Excellent piece.

John Pavlovitz says we all make mistakes in America Chose The Monster.

Mark Jacob always has a great look at the media, especially in this moment, In this one he examines When The Media Take MAGA Liars At Their Word. I mentioned to Mark that what infuriates me is not just the media taking him at his word–ignorance and stupidity know no bounds–but that they know better and report it out as if they don’t.

And to flush away politics Clodagh Stenson, Jonathan Eden and William McLennan tell the tale of The Inside Story of Blenheim’s Gold Toilet Heist.

Bringing my words at the top full circle, NatashaMH once again delves deep into the personal past through a contemporary moment (her reaction to the streaming hit Adolescence) in A Requiem For My Dreams. I’ll close with a quote from her piece about the series that applies to everything, everywhere all at once:

People say the series is about a new world that’s happening. Fuck that, ignoramuses. It’s about a world that has always been out there behind closed doors when ears weren’t listening

(Image from Ashni on Unsplash)

Sunday Morning Reading

Time keeps on ticking and we need to keep on reading.

Losing an hour only to gain it back in a few months feels like a capricious two-step, forward and back, never gaining ground. Something we’re all experiencing at the moment and not just because of Daylight Saving Time, but on many levels. Time marches on regardless, even as it retreats for brief periods. Regardless of what time it is, here’s some Sunday Morning Reading to share.

To kick things off this week while you’re enjoying your coffee take a look at NatashaMH’s A Sip of Revolution.

Apple did the right thing. Eventually. Finally announcing that its Apple Intelligence features for a more personalized Siri will be delayed. John Gruber got the scoop handed to him from Apple. Ian Betteridge has some good thoughts on this as well in Hardware Dreams, AI Nightmares: Apple’s Crisis of Imagination.

While I’m on the tech beat, M.G. Siegler’s newsletter always offers good insight to ponder. A perfect example this week is It’s The End of the Web as We Know It (And I Feel Fine). I’m not so sure I do.

On the political beat, Jason Sattler, perhaps better known on social media as LOLGOP, tells us Why America Is On The Verge of Committing Atrocities Against Our Neighbors.

emptywheel spins out Attention Deficit And Defiance Division Of Labor: There’s Stuff Happening Where You’re Not Looking. It’s long and worth the time and reminds us that what we see and hear isn’t all that’s happening. Although at the moment, we’d like to see and hear more.

And if you’re like many wondering why some of these evil, decidedly American streaks of cruelty seem to resurface now and then, history is never kind and always a reminder. Take a look at Why This Puritan Sculpture May Revolutionize Your Thinking About The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Christopher Knight.

And to close out this week, here’s a look at how one of our real life Bond villains took over the James Bond franchise, in Benjamin Svetkey’s License To Shill: Inside Amazon’s 007 Takeover.

Image above by Jon Tyson