disassociated

Recent twenty-something finance graduate Annie (Natalia Dyer), who’s about to leave Philadelphia and move to Los Angeles for work, meets Tyler (Rachel Keller), and Danny (Danny Ramirez), who seem to be a couple, at a bar one evening.

But neither Tyler nor Danny seem sure they’re a thing, and their ambivalent feelings for Annie only muddy the waters further. Do they have designs on Annie. Or do they not?

No one seems to know. The only certainty being Annie, Tyler, and Danny enjoy slinking endlessly in and out of one bar after another, in the middle of the night.

Chestnut, trailer, the 2023 debut feature of Los Angeles based American filmmaker Jac Cron, struggles to figure out where it is going or what it’s trying to say. But maybe that’s the point, for is that not the plight of many a twenty-something?

The next time someone takes exception to your “bad language”, point them to this research:

Swearing may also be a sign of intelligence, is associated with less lying and deception at the individual level and higher integrity at the society level, and may be a sign of creativity. The offensiveness and the positive or negative consequences of swearing is highly dependent on the context.

I’m an introvert, but until I read Faith Hill’s 2022 article for The Atlantic, a few days ago, I’d never heard of ultra, or intense, introverts:

There’s already been some controversy in the psychological community about whether intense introversion should qualify as a disorder. The American Psychiatric Association has considered adding introversion to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Pathologizing introversion sounds absurd — until you start considering the extreme end of the spectrum.

It was Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist who identified the existence of introvert and extrovert personalities, who said there was no such thing as a pure introvert (or extrovert). Such a person, if there were one, according to Jung, would be in a lunatic asylum.

Adopting a nocturnal existence then to guarantee one’s solitude, seems like an extreme measure to me. But, introverts crave time alone, and becoming a creature of the night might be the only way some people can achieve this. But some of those described by Hill don’t seem like introverts per se, they appear to going all out to totally avoid contact with, well, everyone.

Introverts generally don’t want to completely avoid interactions with others, they instead seek to limit them. Anyone who keeps their phone permanently in do-not-disturb (DND) mode, knows what I mean. While I have set up overrides so certain people can always reach me, DND helps me manage my interactions with the outside world.

Plus, part of my work is writing, and the last thing a writer wants is their train of thought being broken by the ringing of a phone. But I don’t like the idea of introversion being considered a mental disorder. I think we need to ascertain that we’re dealing with bona fide introverts, rather than those who are seeking to completely cut themselves off from everyone else.

Tangentially related to yesterday’s post. This is something Jatan Mehta asked a few weeks ago. It’s an intriguing question. If social media platforms, Twitter/X, Instagram, etc, had remained as they started, maintaining chronological feeds, displaying content posted by accounts a member had chosen to follow in their feed, and keeping algorithms and political whims out of the mix, then no, maybe not.

As I wrote yesterday, I was there when (the original) Twitter landed. Quite a number of people who hitherto had been blogging, eventually went all in with the micro-blogging platform. It was just so much easier, plus no financial cost was involved. After a time, many of these people completely stopped posting content on their blogs, which all gradually disappeared as domain name registrations lapsed.

So it doesn’t entirely come down to come to the presence of social media, it comes down to what suits an individual. Maintaining a self-hosted website is more effort, but, to me, feels like second nature. Nevertheless, I still had a Twitter account, and even a Facebook page (it’s still there, somewhere), as having one for your brand was once a thing. However, I always regarded these social media presences as “out posts”.

They were extensions only of my online presence; not an integral part of it. Even back in 2008, there was the risk the service might shutdown abruptly, or the administrators might pull the plug on your account for whatever reason, without warning (or recourse). To some people, going “all in” on social media seemed foolhardy. Others were obviously prepared to take their chances, in exchange for the convenience the platforms offered.

But the social media platforms have changed a lot since 2008. All the more so in recent months. Being reliant on social media platforms has become a liability for some. Even the more “indie” platforms, such as Mastodon or Bluesky, are not, for various reasons, completely risk free either. The question then of starting a self-hosted blog, after being a lifelong social media user, now seems more a matter of necessity, rather than familiarity.

Kurzgesagt speculates on what extraterrestrial life might look like on planets elsewhere in the galaxy. But this may not be quite what we were expecting…

Keeping track of what’s happening (or being said) in the world, particularly the United States, in these past few weeks feels like an impossible task. Trying to make sense of it all is another matter entirely. But as Tyler Cowen, writing at Marginal Revolution, seems to suggest, it’s all part of a bigger scheme:

You will not win all of these cultural debates, but you will control the ideological agenda (I hesitate to call it an “intellectual” agenda, but it is). Your opponents will be dispirited and disorganized, and yes that does describe the Democrats today. Then just keep on going. In the long run, you may end up “owning” far more of the culture than you suspected was possible.

Social media and micro-blogging platform Bluesky passed the thirty-million member mark last week. It must be an exciting time for the Bluesky founders and backers. Exciting also for members who had been looking for an alternative to the likes of Twitter/X. I say this as one of the earlier members of Twitter, which I originally signed up for in 2007 I think. At that point though, Twitter was one of a kind; it was the first of its kind. It would spawn numerous competitors, including Plurk, and Identi.ca, though few struggled to gain traction. By the end of 2009, after being online four years, with about twenty-six million members, Twitter was the place to be.

Up until that point, I’d met close to one-thousand people, many of whom knew of me through this website. But a lot were people who’d just stumbled upon my account, and wanted to connect. Here was a place that was one, big, on-going, conversation. Making Twitter friends was easy in those early days (I could say the same about blogging). Twitter seemed like a big old friendly village. But once sky-rocketing growth came — something founders and backers has been eagerly anticipating — things began to change. And that was good. For some. Good, for instance, for the Twitter gurus, those taking it upon themselves to educate the rest of us about the “correct way” to use Twitter.

And of course of influencers. I’m not exactly sure when either arrived en masse, but I’d say many had made their presence felt by 2010. I think that’s when I began to lose interest in the platform: it’d become too much noise, and not enough signal. Having said that, I kept my account going, ticking over, for another decade, then some. But Twitter was no longer that big old friendly village. And nor, of course, could it stay that way. The platform had to grow, and begin making a return for its backers. Some of the people I followed, and who followed me, became gurus and influencers. Some became both. But by then, I wasn’t really interested in them.

I’d been using Twitter for three or four years, I didn’t need someone lecturing me, especially someone who’d spent less time on the platform than I had. As for the influencers, little of what they said meant much to me. But as a platform, Twitter had matured. It was no longer the exciting, pioneering, experience it had once been. I might — if I were more of a social media power user — call Bluesky exciting, but I could never describe it as pioneering. Twitter, for better or worse, is/was the only micro-blogging slash social media platform to stake that claim. Everything else now, like it or lump it, is a case of been there, done that.

Twitter opened up the frontier, blazed the trail. Kind of like the Telegraph Road, no? Twitter built the cities and the roads between them. Bluesky, Mastodon, and whatever else, may be new, relatively new, but they are picking up were Twitter left off. Micro-blogging slash social media platforms are no longer the undiscovered country. I don’t mean to run down Bluesky in particular. Thirty-million members in two years is impressive. But I dare say there are a few gurus and influencers among that number. Maybe too many, all bringing with them more noise, and less signal. It’s enough to make me fear we’re seeing an early-stage re-run of late-stage Twitter.

I might be a member of Bluesky, and Mastodon, but late-stage Twitter is not something I want to see a repeat of. Give me, I say, a tried and true, though hardly new, personal website, any day.

American singer/song writer Chappell Roan, who topped the 2024 Triple J Hottest 100 just over a week ago, was named best new artist at the 2025 Grammys yesterday.

Roan used her acceptance to call on record companies to offer more support to emerging artists, in the form of improved healthcare and financial support, telling gathered industry executives: “we got you — but do you got us?”

Amanda Meade, writing for The Guardian:

People who get most of their news from commercial TV and radio are more likely to believe the conspiracy theory that climate change is a natural phenomenon rather than caused by humans, a new study has found.

The research conducted by Monash University, based in Melbourne, Australia, also found people who sourced news from commercial media outlets, generally scored lower on a measure of civic values, compared to those relying on non-commercial, and public, broadcasters. People with lower civic value scores tend to be more reluctant to take on views that clash with theirs.

And, if I’m understanding the study findings correctly, almost sixty-percent of Australians source news from social media platforms. With Facebook about to do away with fact-checkers, that’s going to be a lot of people with access to news that possibly has not been substantiated or verified.

The Teachers Lounge (AKA Das Lehrerzimmer), trailer, made in 2023, and directed by Ilker Çatak, is a cross between a (kind of) psychological thriller, and a (kind of) whodunit, set in a German elementary/primary school. I kid you not; the tension is palpable.

A person unknown has been stealing small quantities of money from bags and wallets left in the school’s staff room, and idealistic young teacher Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch), controversially attempts to uncover the identity of the thief.

Carla’s efforts to solve the mystery may be well intentioned, the presence of a would-be burglar in their midst both irritates and unsettles her colleagues, but you know what they say: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.