trained my tiktok algorithm to show videos that are so surreal you feel like you’re dreaming. here’s a thread of my favorites eggs?

shared the bad outer space news with tiktok

https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1388159373650837506

some of my favorite comments so far:

This is thread on the way the church has depicted the Easter story of Jesus’s resurrection over time.

It says a lot about the things we value. Early images of the resurrection story depict Jesus alone, rising from the grave. Later images show humanity rising with him.

I love this reflection of the church gaining more understanding over time. The resurrection story turns from a personal act into a communal one.

you realize how terrible these rating systems are when you’re on the receiving side of them

the algorithm ask users to rate things without reminding them that someone’s livelihood is often at stake

https://twitter.com/alexhern/status/1378419507174203397

a delivery person nervously ask for a five star review recently. he delivered tile to my house. why would you possibly rate that on a scale? further, why should he be subjected to maintaining some rating, and what happens when he falls below the threshold?

these systems are bad!

Reading ‘The Knowledge Illusion’, a book which tackles a fundamental paradox:

“The human mind is both genius and pathetic, brilliant and idiotic.” We think of the mind as a computer, but it’s nothing like one. Computers, focused on saving and loading information, are rigid. The human mind (which stores little) is flexible and focused on solving problems.

A better metaphor: The brain is a bee and society is a beehive.

I have a theory that games have been creatively stagnant as a medium for decades and that VR is going to be the thing that finally allows them to evolve. I’ve always loved games, but I rarely play them and even MORE rarely finish them. That’s because almost every game seems to devolve into a chore simulator, focused on providing ‘value’ to the player by creating tons of fetch-quests and grinds to take up their time.

That sucks!

Nobody cares about that thinkpiece you just wrote.

That's the premise of ‘Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit' by @SPressfield, a book that teaches you how to write things that people will actually read.

Here's a thread on some of my favorite concepts within the text

//thread// SO! Why aren't people reading what you write?

The reality is, no one wants to read ANYTHING.

Because of this, take lessons from those in advertising. People DEFINITELY don’t want to read ads, and yet sometimes they do. How come? Here’s how marketers get their words read…

I spent a lot of this past year reading, and now I want to share some of the best ideas I came across.

This is a thread on six of my favorite books I read in 2020 and why you should add them to your reading pile 🧵👇 HUMAN AS MEDIA by Andrey Miroshnichenko

This book (which I found through @david_perell) is incredible and I’m blown away that it’s so under-read! The main concept is that there have been four ‘evolutions’ that have helped distribute knowledge and create freedom of idea.

Let’s talk about Tribe by Sebastian Junger, one of my favorite books that gets to the heart of why community is a core part of what it means to be human. Thread! 🧵 Junger starts out by talking about his own experiences fumbling into adulthood. When you grow up in monotony, a desire for liminal experiences can be incredibly strong.

So we all saw the Robert Kardashian hologram, right? It’s the same tech that brought Tupac to Coachella! It’s so similar, in fact, that Kanye is now being SUED by the company who made it! That company, Holograms USA, is WILD. Thread! 🧵 Let’s start off by talking about the tech behind the hologram. It’s pretty simple! The technique (known as Pepper’s Ghost) works by projecting an image onto a transparent screen. If you walk too far to the left or right it stops working, but it’s convincing from the audience!

Does everyone know that Twitter is the world’s best search engine, way better than Google at giving you highly personalized results for whatever you’re looking for? This is a thread on how to use Twitter search to the fullest: First off, here’s why I use Twitter as a search engine: When you search on Google, you’re looking at the same results as everyone else. There’s two problems with this.

1) Finding ‘unique’ information is hard
2) You’re forced to assume that Google’s results are accurate

I want to tell you about The Four Agreements. This is a book I read when I was feeling particularly untethered, right after I lost my house to a massive wildfire. It taught me four simple ‘agreements’ that helped me overcome and rebuild.

Now it’s your turn to hear them. Before we can talk about those agreements we need to talk about rethinking the way you see the world.

You have to understand that ‘reality’ is just a dream.

Though this sounds surreal, it simply means this…

Currently watching a playthrough of ‘The Manhole’, the HyperCard game by Rand and Robyn Miller (of Myst fame!), and nothing could have prepared me for what this dragon sounds like. Realizing that @RoamResearch and HyperCard have a lot of overlap and this understanding is making my heart happy

https://twitter.com/conaw/status/1180997499760197632?s=21

https://t.co/boT0iHf7ro

I’ve been reading this book called ‘Human as Media’ (which I found through @david_perell) and WOW is this book slept on.

Seriously, an incredible read.

https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1242556782976745472

First chapter gets into the idea that human evolution can be seen through the lens of publishing advancements: from oral language to the printing press to the internet.

This evolution has worked on both an individual and communal level. We are becoming emancipated as thinkers.

This is a thread of artist’s desks covered with an insane amount of stuff. Starting it out with the desk of Steve Jobs because, I mean, naturally: I started collecting these this weekend after reading Oliver Sacks, which had a few photos of him at his desk. Just look at this! Is he just spending a morning reading sheet music? That rules.