Emotional Ergonomics

After years of floundering, I think I'm finally getting it: You get energy by spending it. The fuel tank metaphor is completely misleading. The body supplies energy to meet demand. The tank *expands* if you use a lot of fuel. In other words, biology is fundamentally antifragile

We need ritual technology. Technology designed for ritual use.

Why? Most of the software we use daily is designed to engagement-max. Social media feeds, loot boxes, compulsion loops, gang gang yes yes yes ice cream so good. You’re caught in a feedback loop with the algorithm, and you are the squishiest part of that loop.

Ritual technology operates on... See more

The final edge we have over language models is that we can prove we're real humans by showing up IRL with our real human bodies. We can arrange to meet Twitter mutuals offline over coffee. We can organise meetups and events and conferences and unconferences and hangouts and pub nights.

In 

Markets for Lemons and the Great Logging Off, Lars Douce

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You see — if software is to have soul, it must feel more like the world around it. Which is the biggest clue of all that feeling is what’s missing from today’s software. Because the value of the tools, objects, and artworks that we as humans have surrounded ourselves with for thousands of years goes so far beyond their functionality. In many ways,

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Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has a beautiful explanation as to why Van Gogh’s masterpiece has resonated for over a century.

“You know what I like about The Starry Night?

It’s not what Van Gogh saw that night, it’s what he felt.

[The painting] is not a representation of reality and anything that deviates from is reality that has filtered through ... See more