The Dice — 027

Look, nobody needs this much mayonnaise in their life. That photo—SFW by the way, Ethan—will haunt your dreams or be the very thing your soul has been searching for. Do you know what’s missing from that scene? The smell of fresh polyester from Sears, hairspray, and cigarette smoke. How we made it through the 1970s is beyond me. I’m ready for the short week with friends and family and I hope you’re able to do the same. The Dice will take a break for the upcoming holiday weekend and return on December 8th. Until then please enjoy your turkey responsibily with a tall glass of bourbon.

By now you should have read the news about China’s deep attack on U.S. telecommunications. Democratic chairman, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia was “stunned by the scope and depth of the breach, which was engineered over the past year by a group linked to Chinese intelligence that has been named Salt Typhoon” Apple’s Messages system appears to be unaffected but I’m not celebrating. Especially after reading the New Yorker’s piece on U.S. government-purchased spyware “which can hijack a phone to undetectably access its camera, microphone, and all of its data, including messages and photos.” And it’s not just one system or company but several.

Now is the perfect time for all of us to watch the new documentary, Surveilled.

Portland’s alt-weekly newspaper, Willamette Week, recently celebrated fifty years in publishing. To mark this achievement they published a list of people, places, and things that transformed the city. “You won’t find scandals and failures in the pages that follow, although WW broke many of those open. Instead, we looked for what's worth carrying with us into the next half-century. How creativity is fostered. How ideas flourish. How people—some of them extraordinary, some of them regular folks—can take charge of their destiny and work to make Portland and the world a better place.”

Earlier this month Magculture hosted a conference on independent publishing. The takeaways highlight the need for the alternative press. “If we’re going to go through a period in which some of our most fundamental values are challenged and renegotiated, I definitely want to have independent magazines contributing to the wider conversation. Whether they’re informing, protesting, entertaining, or just getting on with doing their own weird thing, I’m going to want independents for both instruction and distraction.”

I’m glad that I’m not the only one who is not a fan of the new Apple campaign for Apple Intelligence. Whereas we were once challenged to Think Different it would seem the company believes we shouldn’t have to think (or care about others) at all. “Is the message that Apple Intelligence is aimed at the perpetually lazy? Where’s the positive ad with a dyslexic child using Writing Tools to proofread a school essay or a businessperson using it to understand a complex report dumped on them minutes before a meeting?” The article is good, but the conversation taking place in the comments is worth scanning.

I’m a big fan of combining frameworks in pursuit of working smarter. This week I learned about Richard Feynman’s Twelve Problems method for discovering insights or connections. Digging a bit deeper I came across The Physicist and The Comedian. “Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize-winning physicist, is famous for always keeping 12 problems top of mind. Martin Short is famous for being an excellent comedian, but also for regularly evaluating his life based on 9 key categories. Combined, these two approaches make for an excellent framework for guiding your personal growth, knowledge curation, and discovery.” I think this might be a great way to finally put my Field Notes collection to use.

Speaking of…I also learned this week that Jim Coudal is writing on the Internet again.

Some of you no doubt have seen and heard SwearSky, the site that displays and plays profanity as it happens on Bluesky—it’s the Hampster Dance of today. For your amusement, there is also Bluesky Firehose (which reminds me of "The Internet, 2021” scene at the beginning of Johnny Mnemonic) and EmojiRain which displays emojis used on Bluesky in real-time.

I bet you haven’t seen Times New Dumbass, a free font based on Elon Musk’s stage performances. "Elon does this stupid "X" jump all the time. So we took one of those pictures and warped it into every letter of the alphabet.” 

This week I leave you with a thought on culture from artist Don Hertzfeldt. “When I was a teenager, I took the train to go to the record store to find rare stuff. Spotify is way more convenient, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to get out and to feel like you’re hunting, to feel like you’re living your life. I’m going to the movies, I’m going to this show. What streaming has done—it’s very convenient, but it’s taken the feeling of going hunting and turned it into we’re all just being fed. I feel like culture is when we’re all on the same page. For better or worse, when everyone’s watching the same thing, we all get something to talk about. That brings people together. Deep down, we want to be a Taylor Swift fan.”

When you’re ready to be absorbed into the Swiftie collective, Rolling Stone has ranked all 274 of her songs.

Published in Tacoma, Washington while trying to work around Manicotti, a sweet cat that would not take "no" for an answer.