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I’m having so many conversations lately about avoiding social media and eschewing the news in favour of ‘staying sane’. While retreating into our shells feels like an absolutely natural reaction to – gestures wildly – all this, it’s also exactly what the monsters in charge want us to do. How do we tread the line between engaged citizen and thoroughly defeated media spectator?
In her piece You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism, Janus Rose highlights how our social media platforms are designed to promote individualistic behaviours – like doomscrolling or hot takes – that masquerade as political engagement but achieve little.
Drawing on insights from Katherine Cross, Rose explains that with performative online activism “you are oxygenating the things these people are saying even as you purport to debunk them ... But perhaps the greatest of these sins is convincing ourselves that posting is a form of political activism, when it is at best a coping mechanism – an individualist solution to problems that can only be solved by collective action.”
The piece crystallises a fundamental problem with how social media shapes our relationship with information and activism: “For most people, social media gives you this sense that unless you care about everything, you care about nothing. You must try to swallow the world while it’s on fire ... Under this status quo, everything becomes a myopic contest of who can best exploit peoples’ anxieties to command their attention and energy. If we don’t learn how to extract ourselves from this loop, none of the information we gain will manifest as tangible action – and the people in charge prefer it that way.”
There’s a quieter path forward though, one that trades the dopamine hit of memes and quote tweets for something more substantial: “Trusted information networks have existed since long before the internet and mass media. These networks are in every town and city, and at their core are real relationships between neighbors – not their online, parasocial simulacra.”
We’re told these times are complex, that the issues require endless nuance and context. But perhaps the opposite is true. “The internet has conditioned us to constantly seek new information, as if becoming a sponge of bad news will eventually yield the final piece of a puzzle. But there is also such a thing as having enough information.”
The moral clarity of this moment is striking – we don’t need another outrage cycle to tell us what’s wrong. We have enough information. We know where we stand. The challenge now isn’t to understand more, but to act on what we already know, redirecting our energy from pointless online reaction to tangible local action. As I’ve said here before, we don’t need more clever dunks. We need more people showing up – in our communities, in our work, in the unglamorous spaces where real change takes root.
– Kai
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Apps & Sites
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A new iOS app by the Iconfactory folks: “Tapestry combines posts from your favorite social media services like Bluesky, Mastodon, Tumblr and others with RSS feeds, podcasts, YouTube channels and more. All of your content presented in chronological order, with no algorithm deciding what you should or shouldn’t see.” I like the sound of this. The lack of features for posting/engaging is actually a huge plus.
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A smart holiday planner that detects your location, combines your annual leave allowance with public holidays, and optimises leave requests to create the maximum number of extended breaks throughout the year. It prioritises filling shorter gaps first and counts any 3+ day break as a vacation period, including long weekends from public holidays.
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I featured Medito several years ago and since then the free-forever meditation app (iOS & Android) has come a long way. “No ads, no spam, no need to sign up or pay. The app includes courses to help you develop your practice, including a 30-day challenge. It also includes a sleep section with sounds, stories & meditations to help you drift off to a peaceful slumber. There are hundreds of sessions to choose from, including breathing exercises, walking meditations, mantra meditations and sessions to help you deal with stress, anxiety, pain and low-mood.” Created by the Medito Foundation.
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Resource planning for your fridge
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I love this mostly for the absolute geekery: Grocy goes beyond a simple pantry inventory tracker, it approaches domestic organisation with German precision – monitoring expiration dates and stock levels, while integrating recipe management and meal planning into a self-hosted software suite that brings enterprise-level resource planning to your home!
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Worthy Five: Zinzy Waleson Geene
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A social media account worth following:
Good God, Lemon, here is a permission slip to get off The Five Websites, make a personal site, add a guestbook, find friends on the IndieWeb, consider the Internet the world’s largest scavenger hunt, stop screaming at the news into your rage rectangle, tell me what you did over the weekend, and let me read it in my RSS feed.
A question worth asking:
“What’s a better question?” My partner, the best kind of power house, says it well: a boring conversation with someone doesn’t make the other person boring, it means you’re asking the wrong questions. Works great in life and at work.
A concept worth understanding:
‘You’re not all that, but you’re all that.’ I love to think that I’m both completely insignificant as well as the centre of my universe, and that the same goes for everyone else. It’s the humbling and empowering foundation of my spiritual practice.
A recipe worth trying:
I haven’t been the same since my partner introduced me to The Gefilteria Manifesto. Its recipe for challah is one I have used to prepare for many a shabbos in our home.
An activity worth doing:
Picking my favourite card from the Marina Abramović Method Cards: hold a mutual gaze. Sitting opposite another person for an hour and looking into their eyes, motionless, is something I don’t do often enough. Perhaps the same goes for you.
(Did you know? Friends of DD can respond to and engage with guest contributors like Zinzy Waleson Geene in one click.)
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Books & Accessories
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How a rock became a living planet
In Becoming Earth, acclaimed science writer Ferris Jabr tells the extraordinary story of how life and planet shaped each other over billions of years, transforming a barren rock into our living world. “It’s an exhilarating journey through the hidden workings of our planetary symphony – its players, its instruments, and the music of life that emerges – and an invitation to reexamine our place in it. How well we play our part will determine what kind of Earth our descendants inherit for millennia to come.”
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The surveillance trap we built ourselves
‘Security capitalism’ promises safety and convenience but traps us in systems of surveillance and control that diminish human agency and connection. Mark Maguire and Setha Low argue that escaping this requires collective reimagining of our future rather than individual opt-outs or technical fixes alone. “Security capitalism can be recognized by the marks it leaves on society, remaking public space in its own image – privatized, fortified, unequal, striated, and access-controlled.”
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Overheard on the Socials
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We live in a society that loves feel good stories about people coming together to help members of their community that are in need, but scoffs at the idea of building a system based on that very same concept.
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Food for Thought
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Janus Rose argues that social media activism and endless online discourse serve mainly as coping mechanisms that keep us trapped in cycles of outrage rather than enabling real change. The piece makes a case for redirecting our energy from digital reactions to local organising. “The marriage of big tech and Trumpworld should make clear that Silicon Valley and authoritarians share the same goal: to crush dissent by keeping their would-be opponents spinning on an endless hamster wheel of reactive anger. And just like in the classic 1983 thriller WarGames, the only winning move is not to play.”
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I really enjoyed this piece by Greta Rainbow who shares her experience of using a digital art project called Glance Back, which takes a daily photo of her through her webcam. The project highlights how we often lose awareness of ourselves and our surroundings while focused on screens. Through her photos, she reflects on the blurred line between work and life in the digital age. “A year ago, I installed the Chrome extension Glance Back, a net art piece coded by Maya Man. Three hundred–plus pictures of myself scrolling, and in most of them, I look awful. Really, so ugly. I know I look ugly because I have the attributes women are supposed to get rid of: under-eye bags, hooded eyelids, nasolabial folds, a furrowed brow, double chin, tangled hair, chapped lips. Only rarely am I smiling. This is what it physically looks like to interact digitally.”
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The cultural critic Susan Sontag warned in 1996 that seriousness was fading from society due to the dominance of consumerism and entertainment. Ted Gioia argues that she was right and that this lack of seriousness is evident in our obsession with fake identities and superficial online interactions. “In the final years of the twentieth century, computer technology had reached a level where massive levels of destruction could be shown on screen with an immediacy never before possible. Technology was setting the agenda for creativity. Everything else – script, directing, acting – was subservient to the computer-generated imagery.”
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Aesthetically Pleasing
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British photographer Judith McIntyre transforms Hong Kong’s street scenes into moody visual narratives, where every shadow tells a story.
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German artist Jowita’s paintings in oil, gouache and watercolour radiate a profound sense of calm and simplicity.
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London-based Another Department offers posters and garments screen-printed by hand with motivational messages and homages to movies and pop culture.
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Font of the week: Henmania features ingrown strokes form torqued, forward-leaning stencils and “speaks to an unrelenting beat, and in all-caps, screams, COCK-A-DOODLE-DOOO”.
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Notable Numbers
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Just one month after New York City introducing congestion pricing, 1 million fewer vehicles entered the congestion zone and overall afternoon peak travel times are up to 59% faster. Bus ridership is up 6% on weekdays and 21% on weekends, while subway ridership increased 7.3% on weekdays and 12% on weekends.
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Norway’s sovereign wealth fund recently posted a record-breaking annual profit of ~$222 billion, with the fund’s value topping $1.78 trillion – the equivalent of ~$319,900 for each Norwegian citizen.
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An 18-year-long study of 82,297 Scottish adults found that compared with sedentary commuting, commuting by bike was associated with lower all-cause mortality risk, lower risk of any hospitalisation, lower risk of cardiovascular disease, lower risk of cancer mortality and better mental health. This adds weight to other studies that found regular cycling cut the risk of death from any cause by 41%, and the incidence of cancer and heart disease by 45% and 46% respectively
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Classifieds
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How Did X Become Y is a weekly newsletter on topics ranging from how to steal an election to the market for ass insurance.
If you love type and typography, and want to hear about new fonts, foundries, type-related events and books, you might enjoy Elliot Jay Stocks’ newsletter, Typographic & Sporadic.
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The Week in a GIF
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Reply with your favourite GIF and it might get featured here in a future issue.
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