Paola

At a certain point we’re gonna have to build up some machinery, inside our guts, to help us deal with this. Because the technology is just gonna get better and better and better and better. And it’s gonna get easier and easier and more and more convenient, and more and more pleasurable, to be alone with images on a screen, given to us by by people... See more

Yes, there were the (very good) “No Kings” rallies in June. And yes, groups such as Indivisible continue to organize conventional progressives. But for the most part, a miasma of passivity seems to have swept over the anti-Trump ranks. Institution after institution cuts deals with the Trump-administration extortion racket. In private, business... See more

Most commuters work in pairs—a co-pilot listens in on a dispatcher who provides the locations of ICE encounters and can run plates through a database of cars that federal agents have used in the past. Green Bean explained what happens when they identify an ICE vehicle. (Both ICE and Border Patrol are in Minneapolis, but everyone just calls them... See more

I feel simultaneously more invisible and more mysterious. Fewer people are watching. Fewer people can pin down exactly what I’m doing right now. Not posting has the air of reclaiming privacy.

You realize how much of your personality is reactive to a timeline instead of rooted in your own characters and story. Past a point, posting is more identity construction than expression.

I can’t help but notice though that after a successful stint at building things that do scale (or at least giving it a really good, long try), many people seem to gravitate towards building things that don’t scale.

I have a theory that chasing things that scale makes you need therapy, and the therapy is pursuing things that can’t scale.

And it is this disorienting synthesis which makes Cornwall's observations about the performative nature of contemporary American culture so powerful...