Full Width 
Shortcuts 
Sign Up 
Log In 
Articles 
Reading List More from Naz Hamid — Journal + Links
There is no such thing as a perfect place on the internet. But it’s possible to avoid the ones that aren’t even pretending to try to be better. The best time to leave Substack was a long time ago. The second best time is now. — Marisa Kabas Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
I went for a run. I’ve been running consistently for over a year and a half now. It’s a panacea for me. I run outside. I like to feel the cool wind on my skin, my pores open and sweating, the legs rhythmically turning over in pursuit of flow. In the beginning, I kept my head down, finding it difficult to smile or look at others. I usually like to connect to people somehow, to remind us of our humanity. Eventually, as the pace got me past the first mile, I started to look up and around. I saw and heard people. A laugh. A morning greeting between co-workers. A one-sided phone exchange. The juxtaposition of the feelings of my country divided and decided, against the backdrop of life as usual was jarring. I wanted to run down the feelings, in search of something: resolution, calm, peace, catharsis, or something else altogether to jettison the overwhelm. My body needs nurturing. It wants to build. It craves maintenance. If you have ever made anything then you know this truth: creation can take hours, months, years. And yet destruction can happen in an instant. Yet we still forge. We have to conceive, design, and construct to satisfy this innate desire. With matters of the physical, the mind, and the heart, upkeep is paramount. Without it, disrepair creeps up quickly. To achieve or progress further, requires even more effort. Sometimes that feels outsized in comparison to how easy it is to slip into decay. My feet took me to over 3 miles around a corner and a mild uphill. The legs started to give, and the crushing feeling in my chest forced me to a stop. I wasn’t having a heart attack. My ire had manifested itself physically, and halted me. I had to let it consume me briefly. I had to have a small breakdown. This was grief tied up in a turd of disappointment. My legs started to walk. Slowly at first, and as I crested the small incline, they got back to it. The feeling of disbelief is a privilege. I’m not surprised. Disappointed and angry, yes. But not surprised. I’ve experienced racism enough times in this country and gone through a lengthy process with immigration to know what this country truly is. Ironically, the racism I've experienced has occurred in cities. And despite being heightened to it when traveling through smaller parts of this country, I haven't knowingly experienced it. The racism is here, in our backyards. But this country is unlike any other. There are good people here, aiming to truly make the world a better place. It can be a place where you can make something out of nothing. That promise has been forgotten in favor of lifting the singular and not the plural. I’ve been able to make a good life for myself, and the many dependents I am responsible for, but that didn’t come easy. This life was hard-fought and hard-earned. I wanted it, and needed to make it happen. My family and loved ones rely on me, and I have a duty to care. My breath settled back in and the legs found their beat again and took me home. Five miles down. Five miles to keep the systems in check. Five miles to strengthen this body, sharpen this mind, and create momentum. As I walked through the door, I realized I found something I’ve had all along: resilience, and the ability to work hard. The work is never done. Let’s get to it. Read on nazhamid.com or Reply via email
If anything, as the well gets poisoned by their own outputs, large language models may well end up eating their own slop and getting their own version of mad cow disease. So this might be as good as they’re ever going to get. — Jeremy Keith I use AI. Not particularly for generative work but to work through code or even to find some semblance of an answer because the very same companies have made search unusable. My work also involves AI, and there's a longer post here about ways that AI might help, but the concerns are real, and I struggle with that balance. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
Stone Temple Pilots’ “Kitchenware & Candybars” comes on, and suddenly I'm 17 again, driving underneath the amber glow of late-night deserted streets in Kuala Lumpur. I can feel the sharp air conditioning in the car against my skin, keeping the tropical heat and humidity outside at bay, while the heady thoughts of my former teenage self wash over me. This isn’t singular to that song or memory. Music is so engrained in my being, noting the notable. A chord, drumbeat or lyric can transport me through my lifetime and to the person I once was. I then exist in this liminal state, suspended between now and then, today and yesterday. Read on nazhamid.com or Reply via email
Eva Decker is a designer engineer who likes playing piano and writing CSS. Currently living in NYC with Samwise. — Eva Decker Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
More in literature
Ridgeline subscribers — Hello! It’s me, Craig Mod. I’m doing an event with David Marx in Tokyo this Friday night (17th) at Tiger Mountain, a small, hip bookshop. The in-person tix are all sold out, but it will be livestreamed, and there are still tickets for that bit. It costs about seven bucks, and would make the small bookshop running it super happy to sell more tickets! (Although I realize the timezone difference is terrible for most readers …)
The golden window of tech may have expired. In 2010, I came across a video of Mick Jagger being interviewed (text version here). It was for a re-release of Exile on Main Street with 10 new tracks. During the interview he says this: But I have a take on that — people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn’t make any money out of records because record companies wouldn’t pay you! They didn’t pay anyone! Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone. So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25-year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn’t. In 2009, I had just started to recover or find my footing from the dot-com bust and the 2008 recession. I wondered about the tech industry’s longevity and resilience then, having experienced my first taste of startup life from 2000-2002. After which, I did my best to navigate what it meant to be a maker on the internet, before it figured out how to make money. I certainly didn’t make any for a number of years. What Jagger said has stuck with me ever since. I often come back to this when I think about any industry or vocation — how long do people really make money doing a thing? Tech feels that way now, again — that for a decade or more, coming out of 2008, people started to make money hand over fist, and tech was rosy, optimistic and all blue skies. We believed we could shape a utopian future, but eventually extracting value came calling, and has always been at the core of capitalism. And tech is a capitalist endeavor. Today, streaming has lobotomized all earnings for musical artists, which has led to heavy touring schedules and lucrative reunions capitalizing on fanbases that have only become even more endeared to the artists of their youth or formative years. Audiences are willing to dole out hundreds of dollars to see their favorite artists perform for hours in an arena or venue. We’re at an inflection point again, facing a different kind of existential threat. The younger generation will chalk this up to how tech is today, while those of us with decades in this industry and the long view of experience have either accepted it, made good money from it and retired, or are fighting the good fight. Is that period gone for tech too? And if so, what’s the equivalent of touring? → This looks better on the web → Reply via email Thanks for reading and using RSS!
it’s been going well for me.
Carl Elliott on the ethical implications of going beyond organ transplantation The post Dawn of the Brain-Dead appeared first on The American Scholar.
