A few more notes on the episode of Binchtopia I highlighted earlier today about the shittification of the world as we know it (but not our lives, per se).

After listening, I finally ditched my Amazon account and, as it was put, be slightly more inconvenienced for the price of community and being less of a puppet in this system.

“The price of community is inconvenience. Everyone wants to live in a village, but no one wants to be a villager.”

Here are some other notes & quotes

“Our days are spent trying to get through tasks in order to get them out of the way, with the result that we live mentally in the future. The spirit of the times is one of joyless urgency. Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster. The day will never arrive when you have everything under control — when the flood of emails has been contained, when your to-do lists have stopped getting longer, when you’re meeting all obligations at work and in your home life, when no one’s angry at you for missing a deadline or dropping the ball. And when the fully optimized person you’ve become can turn at long last to the things life is really supposed to be about. Let’s start by admitting defeat. None of that is ever going to happen. But you know what? That’s excellent news. True life is the moment. Life is where you are living right now. There is no such thing other than the present moment.”

  • These hacks marketed as timesavers (AI, smart appliances, Amazon, big tech pitches, etc.) aren’t actually time savers
  • The problem with “smart” appliances: we don’t need them, they’re made to break, and they undercut the human way of interacting with our tools and our ability to fix them. It pushes us further away from simplicity — instead, it ends up complicating our lives with all these features, updates, changes, connectedisms
  • Everything is designed to be replaced with new technologies. There’s a larger socio-psychological piece here: the instinct to look for something new as the answer when something isn’t working
  • Vibe-based pricing — price doesn’t mean quality to us anymore
    • Made me think of the quality of my socks, and how I never know what I’m getting even from the same brand anymore
  • We’re bad at evaluating future values

“I’ve just offloaded the human experience — of thinking — to these landlords that I pay rent to.”

  • We’re addicted to the idea of saving time
  • The answer is simplicity and gratitude. Stay simple. Do things with all of you.