reading, watching & listening to

Smaller, slower distribution could mean better content, better relationships, and better businesses — doubtless at smaller scales than what was hoped from BuzzFeed, Vice, etc., but then those didn’t work out. The benefits of cultivating and controlling your own distribution are mutual comprehension between a publication and its consumers; feelings of loyalty and trust; and perhaps an ability to survive in the long term, building a more durable institution.

This was illuminating. My notes:

Negative power is the way people have been control for most of human history.

Negative power means being controlled by prohibition or limitation, telling people you can’t do this or that. Today, people are controlled through positive power. Positive power tells you you can be whatever you want, you’re in charge, so you have no limitations. As long as you can put your head down, focus, grind, achieve your short term goals, set new ones and achieve those.

Authenticity is an ad campaign of neo-liberalism. It's a self absorbed nightmare. People now have to define themselves through themselves without any sort of help from the outside. Everyone is their own little personal project. Everything we learn is not just learning anymore. It's an investment in ourselves. Everything is about mentally optimizing yourself working, producing more efficiently with your mind.

what a performance

Incredible book for founders