The last redemption of geist.
Vol. 7, No. 1
Volume 6 kinda stunk. I apologize for that. I was tired coming out of Canada Reads, I decided mid-volume to port the site, I metablogged and said dull things for the sake of filling space, I got too enthusiastic about places like Bubbles, and didn’t do nearly enough mixtapes. Sure, the links are always nice and my pun game remained on fucking point, but everything else should be a little interesting or at least marginally amusing. Like every LLM keeps saying to me when I rage in all caps at their childlike stupidity: you deserve better.
Welcome to Pop Loser Volume 7: The Last Redemption of Geist. / ✌️
Confusions.
⚱️ You have to keep posting, even if you’re dead: ❝The numbers make sense when you look at them with the unblinking mechanical eye of the algorithm. The key to a sustained trend is a steady stream of new, participatory content. [Dolly] Parton has one last song in a time capsule to be opened in 2045, but unlike Michael Jackson, there’s no movie studio marketing to keep her in our feeds. So with each passing day she’s automatically ranked a little further down, granted a little less visibility online, because she isn’t uploading any grist for the mill.❞ / Gloria Steinem’s final essay. / 📺 After more than 60 years, Seven Up is about to conclude. / 👽 Silicon Valley’s science fiction problem: ❝Star Trek depicts a post-scarcity, post-capitalist society where money has been abolished and humanity works toward collective betterment. Gene Roddenberry’s Federation was built on principles of equality and exploration for the sake of knowledge, not profit or military dominance. Musk took the aesthetic – big spaceships, alien encounters, epic adventures – and left its political foundation. You don’t have to be a Trekkie to know that, in Star Trek, capitalism, nationalism and militarism have been left behind. Musk wants the Enterprise, but reimagined for the military-industrial complex.❞ / 💀 Meet history’s only known trebuchet casualty. / 🌲 Why do Chinese kids dig Walden? ❝If Thoreau were alive today, he might say that China has industrialized quiet desperation.❞
Extensions.
🗄️ Canada Modern, an archive of Canadian graphic design. / The Desktop Color Archive. / 🚬 Chinese Cigarette Museum. / 📷 25 photos that changed fashion. / Photos from the Rothschild Party. / Joel Sartore’s Photo Ark. / Emily Shur’s Polaroids of famous people. / 🤖 LinkedIn CringeBot 3000. / 📺 Emily Nussbaum still stans for Slings & Arrows. / ✈️ Tinfoil Pigeons. / 🍳 RecipeTables are all the rage. / 🚀 Galaxium, a 3D map of the universe. / ♟️ chess960v2. / 👾 A tool find/avoid softlocks in classic Sierra games. / PICO-8, a “console” for tiny games.
Explorations.
🍿 Romancing the Stone. Been a minute, but still great fun. / 📚 The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson. Yeah, yeah, shut up. / 📺 Deadloch (S2). Fucking kills me. / 📚 Kayfabe by Chris Koslowski.