today on https://patrickreads.org est. 2020 A collection of things I've been reading, and sometimes watching, around the web. Patrick Reads
The Feed is Fake

Absolute banger of a piece:

We’ve locked ourselves in the stupidest possible version of Plato’s cave, where what looks like the spontaneous consensus of the hive mind is often just shadows on the wall, put there by marketers, political operatives, foreign-influence campaigns, or anyone else with a few hundred bucks and something to sell.

My own usage of for-profit social media has plummeted in the recent years, in large part due to the gross feeling of always having my attention being sold. This article on clipping, which you may have heard about, really pin-points the source of this malaise. It's hard to see how much longer sites like YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook (Instagram, Threads, et al.) can remain viable in these kinds of network conditions – to say nothing of the effects this has on the global (but especially anglophone) world order.

If America's So Rich, How'd It Get So Sad?

A really great and in-depth look at the data around American happiness (or lack there-of) in the post-pandemic world – with a perhaps surprising extension to many anglophone nations.

The Vergecast: The beginning and end of the iPad

The Vergecast: The beginning and end of the iPad

I really appreciate the way Nilay has pulled apart the macro and micro concerns about the newest iPad commercial. This clip in particular:

In a month, Apple is going to announce AI features across its operating systems – huge sweeping AI features from the reports we've read. [...] They want to add generative AI capabilities to the products directly. And I think what they just learned is even a hint of breaking creative stuff is bad for them. [...] It's just an ad, it's a very expensive ad, but it's not born out of a love of those things because if you truly loved those things, you would not smash them. Maybe it's just a metaphor, maybe it's silly, maybe it's just a misfire. But a month from now they're gonna launch a bunch of AI features that are trained on a bunch of creative work and they're gonna have to answer a bunch of questions about whether or not they paid for that training data and whether artists are gonna compensated for it. And when you type into GarageBand "Make me a beat in the style of... whoever" – that person gets money. And like, are you ready for this? Because the reaction to this ad suggests that you are not.