I saw a bumper sticker today that read: "Warning: You are being conditioned to believe that your freedom is selfish."

I'm sure it'll come as a total shock to you that this was stuck on the back window of a late-model, full-size SUV... /s

This rhetoric is what will drive the next election in Canada. The so-called freedom convoy schtick has saturated our political landscape.

Pockets of Western civilisation are waking up to responsibility. Other pockets are entrenching obliviousness and neglect.

Information doesn't matter if it's forgettable.

This is both a bold call to action, and a huge relief!

It would be quite remarkable if a religion's primary text was translated into English using exclusively male pronouns for its god and, over the course of 100s of years, the whole religion didn't turn out to at least subtly centre masculinity.

Finally had my first motorcycle ride of the season. I feel like I had all of the world's allergens blasted into my eyeballs with a firehose.

I love the experience of riding. But the itchy-watery eyes afterwards I could do without.

George Orwell's book 1984 was published in 1949. There are fewer years between 1949 and 1984 than 1984 and now.

The longer I live, the weirder time gets.

If you are trying to create a online communication plan with a group of people, and you start asking them for input on what platform to built it on, you will invariably get some people saying "Only XYZ platform!" and others saying "Anything, as long as it's not XYZ platform!"

Generally, I think it's better to just start, and invite people to join.

And use email as a backup.

All these contradictory pressures and tensions -- speed up! slow down! -- are being elevated by a myriad of nascent, entrepreneurial voices with unlimited access to the public square.

Simultaneously, our would-be bulwark institutions are complicit in escalating trauma. Indeed, they seem eager to invent new ways to crash their credibility, and trash their trustworthiness.

It all feeds and is fed by a trauma paradigm.

Healing is worth pondering.

It's worth imagining.

It's worth acting on.

Much of the current state of the world makes sense when we look at it through the lens of trauma.

We've all been traumatised -- chronically by the effects of (for example) climate change, and acutely by the effects of a pandemic.

People are flailing to make sense of a reality that keeps defying sense. It defies expectations. It defies normal.

Additionally, we're all feeling the need to be make up for lost time. We're afraid of missing out, of being left behind. And we're experiencing burnout.

Adobe ran itself into another iceberg this week over a rights management controversy.

Affinity is currently running a sale to attract new users. I've seen more interest in this design suite than ever before online. (Please don't screw this up, Canva!)

I made the switch to Affinity personally and professionally a few years ago because I strongly disagre with Adobe's business model.

Adobe is one of the companies making record profits *and* raising prices on their customers. And now this. Ugh.

We are each our own editors. Amidst the heightened noise and confusion projected at us constantly, we all need strategies to identify information as valuable and valueless.

If folks are interested in telling people information, but not interested in 1. making it relevant or 2. making it memorable, then their motives are selfish, and they can be freely disregarded.

If you're trying to teach someone something, and you are doing it for *their* good, it would be wise to prioritise these factors.

The aftertaste on a carrot cake and lemon meringue pie combination is...an experience.

A classified ad for a random art piece reads "If you are interesting, buy it."

I guess this is how I get to decide...

I just bought a new 64GB SD card for $5. And I just bought a handful of sandwich supplies at the grocery for $50.

We live in a weird time.

Whether it is tied to religion or not is an individual matter, but collectively the right is engaged in a culture war.

The right is reacting against a equitable, inclusive society -- indeed, they are calling that a far-left agenda. Notably, "far-left" in this context is a boogeyman-buzzword.

This should be consistently recognised: there is not a both sides to this -- it is one side trying exert dominance.

Both sides are scared, but only one side is actually scary.

#politics
#religion

I use the "big flip" to describe the way people's emotional momentum, or their internal drive to be right, is more important to their self-image than their human connection or credibility.

Whatever is used to reach them just becomes another "part of the problem," hence the flip.

A lot of people have been conditioned to believe that self-awareness is a weakness. They become caricatures of themselves, and end up supporting a bunch of things they don't actually value or even believe in.

"A snake, am I? Perhaps you'd like to see how snake-like I can be." -- I find myself thinking about this line from the Aladdin cartoon pretty often recently.

It is part of what I call the "big flip" -- the phenomenon where an accusation "permits" someone to be even more like the accusation than they were already.

A different kind of "big flip" is where Person A points out Person B's prejudice, and rather than Person B processing their prejudice, they simply expand it to include Person A, too.

Every day on the Internet:

Women: Here are some traits that make men dangerous. Here's why you should avoid them.

Men: How dare you?! I mean, I've made all those traits my whole identity -- are you saying that women should avoid me?!

I'm currently to a local band play live jazz, and some dude (I feel pretty safe making a gender guess here) just ripped by on an unnecessarily loud motorcycle -- the kind where they swap out mufflers for megaphones.

Everyone here laughed at him.

I would like him to know that -- we all think you're ridiculous! So, hey, if you know him, can you tell him for me?

Are you wired the way I am?

When I see marketing advice like "be bossy" (use more direct, immediate language instead of invitational language), it heightens my sensitivity to the demand pressure in all advertising, gives me to the tools to resist it.

Following marketing/advertising accounts on social media is a good way to gain insights into the subtle war for attention that is being waged against all of us.