Posts about text editors are what you'd expect on a personal blog, but they aren't what I'd like to write about. I've long admired the idea of Patrick Rhone's “What we believe in” posts on Minimal Mac, and such a thing is pretty appropriate to the new version of Best Endtimes Ever.
In 2007 when I first wrote on Best Endtimes Ever, the idea was to follow rapid change in the world along several themes. I started with these general and (relatively) long posts:
At this point I'm not sure where I was going with most of them except space – maybe it's too much science fiction, but if/how we're going to move out of the gravity well is still an interest. I guess “The neoteny pattern” is about structures of control that appear as infantilization, and not only a little about figuring that carp out personally.
The theme I would tease out of “Lies” is about media, and since 2007 the world (well, my world) has only gotten more mediated. Tons of startups want to be the internet middleman between you and the things you care about, to squeeze some ROI out of their seed capital. Indie games have apparently blown up, so there are more little systems and twee universes to spend your free time exploring than ever.
The invisible force behind that mediation is also behind the foodonautic theme I touched on too: the idea of junk is about as big as externality, in my mind, as a corrosive force. In the same way junk food replaces real food to the detriment of our diets, sensational junk news supplants informational real news; extremist junk politics crowds out constructive real politics; and, especially insidious for the introvert who grows dependent on it, easy light junk socialization replaces the deeper social roots the vagaries of real life pull against.
Weaving these themes of destructive force into a constructive optimistic world view is my “what we believe in,” so I hope to keep writing about these little things.