Escape the algorithm
action aging ai algorithm aliens Art awareness builder capitalism Chicago cities community dnd enshittification future games good tech governance happiness history humanity information Internet learning magic management media movie music organization parenting perspective physics privacy project reading reality Rome social social media technology travel ttrpg USA work
You are part of the universe.
You ask, “what am I?”
Better stated: A part of the universe asks, “what am I?”
Through its parts, the universe is capable of asking “what am I?”
The total of all these parts asking “what am I?” is the total awakened consciousness of the universe.
The universe is aware.
The dream of the democratisation of film-making is coming true. Now that it’s feasible for an individual artist to create an entire film on their own, it’s worth reflecting on what we have lost.
— Read on yakimenko.substack.com/p/on-the-decline-of-sumptuousness-in
Everyone would smell so good.
A manicured lawn and flowers would be indescribably beautiful.
A Patagonia jacket, rain shell and boots would give people superhuman powers.
People would be calm and orderly, more meditative. Much less alcohol.
A 50 year old would look indescribably young.
We are emergent phenomena — higher-level patterns and processes that arise from, but are not reducible in any simple way to, the lower-level physics and chemistry.
A human is:
• A far-from-equilibrium dissipative structure (physics)
• Built from self-replicating, metabolizing carbon chemistry in aqueous solution (chemistry)
• That has evolved nervous systems capable of generating subjective conscious experience, self-models, and complex behavior (psychology)
We are the universe temporarily organizing itself into a form that can ask “What are we?” — localized pockets of negentropy and information that have become self-aware through billions of years of chemical and biological evolution. We are both the product of blind physical laws and something that experiences those laws from the inside.
From Grok.
From fundamental physics, a human is a temporary, localized configuration of quantum fields (or particles and forces in the Standard Model plus gravity) that maintains a high degree of internal order against the universal tendency toward increasing entropy (the second law of thermodynamics).
From Grok.
Chemically, you are a vast, coordinated network of molecular machines running on carbon chemistry in water, powered by redox gradients, and capable of copying its own blueprint with high (but imperfect) fidelity.
From Grok.
“Golf feels maddeningly hard to learn because it’s a perfect storm of technical precision, unnatural movements, instant feedback on every mistake, and a brutal mental component—all in an unpredictable environment. Unlike sports where athleticism or hand-eye coordination can carry you early on, golf punishes small errors harshly and rewards patience and consistency over raw talent.” – Grok AI
Have you ever wanted to research something, so you bookmark a dozen articles, get distracted by everything on the internet, take notes, try to find the common links between the articles, get distracted again – and a project takes way longer than it should? A well-built prompt can fix that, save you time, and return you to the days when reading meant calm focus. The prompt below shows how to make reading calm again.
(more…)…my strong assumption is that most people who push or buy the idea that ‘AI is going to take all the jobs’ haven’t thought much about what ‘jobs’ are, in a fundamental sense.
— Read on endsdontjustifythemeans.com/p/why-ai-obviously-isnt-going-to-take
Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible aeon of the gods. (James Joyce)
— Read on www.secretorum.life/p/the-message-of-the-medium
The proper end of introspection is not being filled with facts about oneself. Your introspection is successful if it is finite, if it leads you towards direct contact with experience. Get out of the way of your becoming.
— Read on sashachapin.substack.com/p/should-you-be-in-charge-of-your-life
We tend to think of fermented foods as something humans invented and then chose to eat. But, increasingly, scientific evidence suggests the causality runs the other way. Fermented foods appear to have helped shape human biology itself, and our bodies may have been built, in part, to expect them….it raises an uncomfortable question about what happened when the Western food system, in the name of safety and efficiency, quietly removed these foods from our diets in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
— Read on www.asimov.press/p/culture-shift
As presented in the game, Reality is not fixed, but rather the product of consensus. What humanity collectively accepts as possible becomes so; what it rejects becomes difficult or even impossible to achieve. The titular mages are those rare individuals who have awakened to this truth and, through force of will, can impose their own understanding of Reality upon the world.
— Read on grognardia.blogspot.com/2026/04/retrospective-mage-ascension.html
The main difference in receiving openly is not that you will tangibly “have more”—it’s not about the gifts themselves, but about the feelings of worthiness, appreciation and gratitude they bring when you are open to them. Someone is trying to express love to you through a gift. Whether that gift is a compliment, experience, object, or anything else. By closing yourself off, you deny yourself of their love. You steal the moment of abundance from yourself. You also reduce their enjoyment.
— Read on read.isabelunraveled.com/p/why-is-asking-so-hard
Between roughly the Civil War and World War II, most American cities were at some point dominated by a boss and his machine. The term “boss” referred not only a powerful politician, but one who acquired, held and exercised power outside the channels dictated by law….
All this is well known. What is less well known is that the entire history of bossism is contained in three films: Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (the origin), Preston Sturges’ The Great McGinty (the peak), and John Ford’s The Last Hurrah (decline).
— Read on www.aaronrenn.com/p/the-three-ages-of-boss-rule
We moderns are not used to having to rebuild our world.
It is now the case that strong AI is here/coming, and we will have to rebuild our own world. Many of us are terrified at this prospect, others are just extremely pessimistic. It seems so impossible. How are all the new pieces supposed to fit together? Who amongst us can explain that process in a reassuring way?
Yet we have done it many times before.
— Read on marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/rebuilding-our-world-with-reference-to-strong-ai.html
Basement Whatever 