MDM Broadcast - 2018

In 2018, as the world spun under the spell of social media, I began posting updates to a broadcast channel on Telegram. I appreciated that Telegram was off the algorithmic-radar and it was well-designed, immediate, and just plain worked.

Recently, I decided to slowly back-fill some of those efforts here, while maintaining some of the design aesthetics of the original posts, as a way of keeping track, and date-stamping life itself.

But really, why all the explaining? - 20260131

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Welcome. My intent is to use this as a public scratchpad, much in the way the world uses the Zuckerverse. Just smaller, and quieter.

It's broadcast-only, because it's fun to use a chat tool to not chat. I don't expect you to stay, so feel free to pop-in and unsubscribe or mute notifications or do whatever you need to do.

A clean, well-lit, lightweight, ad-free space, sans algorithms -- just date-descending dailyness. (Or ascending, depending on yer scroll.) Thanks for stopping by.

ONWARD.

- MDM 20180307

10 yrs ago tonight, in Mississippi, rallying for Obama. Wonder where this kid is now.

Beginning to think the behavioral action (and thumb-digit exercise) people undergo while interacting with Instagram is analagous to late-night television cable channel-surfing, re-upped for our mobile-appified megalopolis: the unending pursuit of satisfaction by claiming dissatisfaction through channel switching or screen-scrolling.

There's always something incredible to see on the next channel, just keep scrolling deeper, oh look that's an amazing photo; no, wait, it's a great meme; huh, this news is four days old; oh! here's an ad for bras, is it an ad for bras? I don't need bras; just keep scrolling you'll find something that'll make all this worthwhile you know you will; oh here it is but don't stop can't linger, double-tap heart and scroll, double-tap ❤️ and scroll.

No dancing today.

I think I’d like to visit a hotel bar during a meteorologist convention, just to eavesdrop.

Is the reason Instagram still hasn’t implemented full text search (in their first 7 years) because they’re waiting for AI to be reliable enough to implement visual search instead?

Beautiful.

jim crow rd. in a viewmaster

What percentage of Weimaraner owners have never heard of William Wegman) or seen a picture of Fay and her pups? 10%? 20%?

So much quotability from Tristan Harris in his latest interview - this one with Nick Bilton. Ignore Bilton's questions and just listen to Harris roll.

"We've already created a runaway AI. The Facebook newsfeed is a runaway AI. Every minute you spend on it, it's generating more money off of you. It's extracting attention from you and making money, and then it's trying to figure out how it can hook you -- so it tries to enslave human beings -- it reinvests the money it makes into more prediction power to better predict what will hook all these human animals.

It shows better and better things to them, keeping them scrolling for longer and longer, so it makes even more money, so it can predict even more moves ahead on the chess board against the human beings it's facing, (to) better enslave them."

Merrill

Traffic from facebook bounces.

Never thought I'd see a golf-related meme that's about the history of photography. 2002 vs 2018.

In another life, I'd consider launching an experimental theater, in which every play was a production in which scripts were generated verbatim from court or gov't transcripts. Any kind of transcript, really. Kind of like Wilkins' excellent "Public Hearing", but all-the-time, live on stage.

Hadn't seen this HWT image before this morning.

Zoe Strauss, Chandelier in Trump Plaza Lobby, Columbia Pl Entrance_3990. Atlantic City, NJ. July 2015

That feeling when you stay up late to make a two-and-a-half-taps on-the-go-system for automagically downloading videos (from any platform/site) triggered by the iOS share sheet, such that each video is saved, sorted, and combined into a single video that's quietly placed in a folder hooked-up to a TV every evening at 7PM, so after you put the kids to bed, you can fire it up and stroll through the things you had no time to peruse during the day. What would Edward R. Murrow think?

Accosting Acosta

Very much appreciate the title of this short film.

John Barron phoned-in the threat.

When that posthumously-famous photographer took a picture in which her own shadow was purposefully superimposed over Beatty in a promo-poster

finally getting around to making my own tonic water - recipe uses this bark!!!

Feel lucky to have seen Arthur Jafa's "Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death" last week - currently at the High Museum. I haven't seen Infinity Mirrors, but I'd skip the lines and go straight to Jafa's piece. Always fascinates me how video art somehow manages to stay offline; I've looked for "Love is the Message..." at least a dozen times over the last year -- glad my hand was forced to see it in person. https://www.high.org/collections/love-is-the-message-the-message-is-death/