Week 10-23 - Curiosities


This week on Hargie:

Week 10-23 - Photos

This week elsewhere:

  1. Premiumization & enshittification of all things. Spontaneity is dead? This whole piece reads like a fresh version of hell ("a boring blob on the horizon...an attention-deficit kingdom of perpetual experience and consumption"). Barf. What it boils down to is this: The capitalists are orchestrating surprise and delight. Teamlab exhibitions excel at this. And don't get me wrong, their "experiences" are monumentally cool. And also, monumentally annoying with steep prices, long queues and too many people. They have capitalized on surprise and delight to the max ("destination museum"). Capitalists want to surprise you, they want to delight you, they want you to feel good, snap the photo and share, and they want to take your cash. And then take the next persons cash, and the next, and the next. Here's an example from my experience...

    The instagram edition:
TeamLab exhibit in Tokyo, November 2018

The reality edition:

TeamLab exhibit in Tokyo, November 2018

There are two distinct emotions I get revisiting these photos... "that was neat" and "that was freaking annoying". The problem begins with "the freaking annoying" because that annoyance will be "minimized" by premiumization. I have to ruminate on this, there is more to say.

2. Musings on a slow life is a mind map of what a slow life is, and looks like (at least according to one person). How about we just celebrate what each of us can do, and cannot do in whatever time we have allotted? This seems like such a modern predicament. Can you imagine going back 500 years or so, and constructing a mind map musing on a slow life? The slow lifers seem as neurotic as the non-stoppers.

Ok that's enough kevetching for one post. Moving on...

3. I love a good disaster scenario, so this article positing 10 ways LA will survive environmental catastrophe is right up my alley. Bye bye cows and almond milk, hello pee-pee and wine. Your wine may pair well with your kelp steak.

4. A proposed design for a Danish church changes it's exterior lightning in response to available moonlight (this magazine is really good). I live in dark sky country, and can tell you, exterior lightning is mostly not necessary when the moon is greater than about a quarter. Besides,  it's good for the critters (the non-human ones).

5. Got Lactose? 6000 years ago, some peoples discovered a way to circumvent lactose intolerance to cheese.

Thanks for reading, before you go…

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Jamie Larson
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