groups, brands, money, covid, capitalism

something about small groups

been thinking about scenius. where's that happening? how can I get in? or maybe, have I already been in a couple? related: small groups. seems like not quite the same, but similar - maybe this is like the 12-person and 150-person Dunbar numbers. this is probably like dating; you can't make this happen, you can just create the opportunities. (anyway credit to Matt Webb for congealing most of these)

something about brands

all your favorite brands, from BSTOEM to ZGGCD (read with bypass paywalls if you like)

I'm continually fascinated with words meaning things. I mean, maybe, the creation of words to mean things. or even symbols to mean things. and even like, "let's trademark 1000 brands in case we accidentally get one of them to mean something." I guess it's overall kinda bad for a bunch of reasons, but given everything else out there it's hard to get upset about right now. meantime, it's kinda funny and intriguing.

a lot about money

money's fungible, right? that's almost the defining characteristic of it. every dollar is the same as every other dollar.

if you don't realize this, you get problems: you start spending more because you start making more, or you start keeping higher interest debt while paying off low interest debt, or whatever.

but if you do realize this too much, you get other problems. like, it's frustrating when I get a gift card, because like, why not just give me the money? at times I have sold a gift card online for like 70% of its value cash, just so I didn't have to think about it. that's a little pathological. like, sometimes "well I just lucked into 20 dollars, so now I don't have to worry about how I accidentally lost 20 dollars" is a nice smoothing function that helps you live a sane life.

I guess the smoothing function is the thing - you've got to know how much or little to worry about money, and I think sometimes I'm on the "worrying too much" side.

something about covid

covid is aerosols. I guess droplets is, like, water droplets, and aerosols is like someone smoking. "One just has to imagine that others they encounter are all smoking, and the goal is to breathe as little smoke as possible." ok, I'm getting a model of how this works, and this is consistent with that model. cool. it continues to be weird to see everyone develop risk models that are similar or at least compatible enough.

I agree with all this

how to destroy surveillance capitalism - at a "109 minute read", it's a short book. is this useful? is this a good overview guide I can point people to and say "this is why all the internet is bad"?