Writings

Why in this modern world where we are the most “advanced” we’ve ever been, do we fail more than ever to trust that specialization and abstraction layer designed to make our lives easier? The answer can be found in so many tendrils of history, but I want to dissect it from an unexpected place: the vividly gruesome, unlikely, and confronting story of TWA Flight 800.

I used to think making change was the thing. I used to believe that changing the world, dominating it and reshaping it in my hands was the goal. Now, I not only see how naive that is, but how many terrible things have been done in the name of changing the world. How many civilizations, companies, people, and products have tried. And what they left in their wake.

Stopping someone from posting about their suicidal thoughts doesn’t make them go away. Hiding comments in a celebrity’s post about their body does not stop people from dissecting it in other platforms. But, content moderation also gives these platforms a chance to deploy their answer to a question everyone is asking. What is a content generation platform’s responsibility to the greater world it exists in?

I’m 23 and running out of time to learn how to ‘change the world’, and it feels as though at some point the hourglass will run out of sand and the beaches and land will go with it. The threats to our world loom larger every day, and my contribution remains small. I don’t give a shit that it’s hard for one person to have a big impact. I love this world, and I want to give it everything I have. I keep on coming up shorthanded.

Startups are complex. There is a fuck ton of money, pressure, and time spent together. Some people resonate cohesively, and others explode, and will take you out with them. You need to really know who you’re getting in the plane with — who you’re trusting your company with, and how they think about what you need to do to make this worth their while.

I fell in love, like anyone does. By seeing Vivienne Westwood earrings on the internet 2 years ago. My first thought was, “oh my god, these earrings look like tiny planets — they’re perfect for my completely space themed wardrobe." My second thought was, “Jesus fuck — these earrings are $300”.

Searches for people are about time and how to best manage it: it’s not only the search process itself, but the passing of information, onboarding people, admin of social media, and so on. It’s a job on top of a job managing an incredibly stressful situation. But, there’s unique pieces of this puzzle that have yet to be meaningfully solved.

I used to think that the pinnacle of my life was to do something with pain, and now I know the real answer is to accept it without letting it rule you. The goal is to not try to banish the pain from the room, but to give it a place. There is no running from pain, there is no endpoint to suffering. There is just finding a place to put it down.

Social media has been evolving into another form of weaponry for school shooters. Schools now simply shut down when an anonymous account posts vaguely threatening messages, or pre-existing shooters are turned into figureheads within online communities. For every large group of people that see the shooters as beyond human, there’s a small number of people who see themselves. In its wake, we now are catching up to guidelines about how to report in the media responsibility, and to not infame shooters into what they want. But, the process is slow and the hidden internet communities where people lurk are numerous. We have to confront the fact that the cycle of violence is enabled more easily with technology. But, the solution might not lie there.

I’m doing something harder than restarting a company: forcing myself to take a break. Dreaming up technical diagrams could happen in my sleep, because that’s not the hard part to me. The true hard shit is knowing I have this immense desire that’s been burning since I was 13, and not seceding to it.

“Every day, the inner sanctums of humanity become more and more barren. More cruel, visceral, laced with torment and pain. Humans are animals, and no greater than any other animal at that. Yet, we live, thrive, and have spread everywhere. You know what else has? Orcas.”