The Dice — 045
When people wish me a Happy New Year my reply is a curt, “It better be.” Only three days in and it’s pretty obvious any happiness to be found in 2026 is going to come from personal relationships. We can’t rely on society-at-large or the government, and I’m sure as shit not going to seek any measure of happiness from corporations. I'm not into astrology, but from my perspective, if the planets are going to align it’s finding as many ways to de-algo this year as possible. Everything from platforms with “like” buttons to anything Google.
My mantra for this year is “move.” As in move physically and mentally—beyond ties to the past where there’s a more interesting and curious future ahead. I came across this quote from David Bowie that captures where my heart is right now (and hopefully my head will soon follow). “Always go a little further into the water than you feel you're capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don't feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you're just about in the right place to do something exciting.”
I believe I’m already there, but I’m still looking back at the shore when I need to turn around and head in a different direction.
Alright, let's roll.
As it turns out, we all have a bad attention deficit problem after thirty minutes of scrolling whatever on your phone.
“Remember that your attention is a scarce resource. A pioneering 2021 study found that just 30 minutes of phone scrolling tires us out psychologically, actually reducing our ability to exercise. One 2022 paper concluded that a half-hour of social-media use before training caused enough mental fatigue to affect the hand-eye coordination of elite volleyball players.”
This is just one of a few but important findings collected in the WSJ article, Your Key Survival Skill for 2026: Critical Ignoring.
Adding to this thread is this longer, required reading, The Art of (Attention) War. “We can only focus our attention on three to five meaningful chunks of information before our cognitive capacity overflows. Now, how does that compare to the number of tabs you have open right now? The number of TikToks you’ve scrolled today? The number of unread emails sitting in your inbox?”
Meanwhile, as Springfield level tire fire that is our world continues to add to our anxieties driving our perceived need to “learn more”, I have an app for that. Stop Doom Scrolling and Gain Perspective is a GPT I created that will help you analyze “major events by stripping away narratives, identifying real patterns, and giving clear, actionable guidance so people can make confident decisions without panic.”
Brian Kerr got rid of his LinkedIn “experience” (meaning all of his work history) and the site’s algorithm doesn’t know how to handle it.
“It started when I deleted my LinkedIn ‘Experience’. This small change confounded the algorithmic dragon crawling around beneath the thing. I stopped receiving the stream of touts and unsolicited messages that make this website go. The ads I was presented switched from reasonably targeted to bottom-of-the-barrel ad inventory absurdity, e.g., for the chamber of commerce for a tiny city two continents away; car-wash point-of-sale systems; onsite IT for distant regions. Merely removing this profile data confused the algorithm, and my experience was improved by its confusion.”
In his last post to LinkedIn ever, Brian goes on to tie his action to the words of Ralph Emerson, reminding us that meaningful work emerges from mess and accident, not from systems designed to calculate and control the outcomes. Retreat off the platforms isn’t the end of the world as we know it, but rather a reminder of the better one that awaits.
Brian and I were at this week’s School of the Possible’s weekly Campfire where he shared this with everyone. I get something meaningful every time I join the group on Friday morning. You should be there.
You may have seen reference to Instagram CEO’s end of year message on the increase of AI slop and declining trust users have for social platforms. As they should! Om Malik was quick to respond with an analysis that needs requires serious consideration.
“Instagram no longer believes it can beat AI by making more or better content. It wants to be the referee, to decide what is real and what is not, and to build systems that can do it at scale. Mosseri’s latest memo is about the next chapter in Instagram’s ever-changing story. The platform wants to control not only what you see but what counts as real. It wants creators, teens, advertisers, and regulators to tolerate that arrangement.”
Why so many people are still on that platform and others boggles my mind. And it’s not just Meta. This nonsense is coming for everything that relies on algorithms and scroll-sedated users to make money.
This is a sign of things to come.
The original, human-centered AI mandate survival guide
Creative Intelligence cuts through the hype and gives you practical frameworks for working with AI—not replacing yourself, but amplifying what you're already good at. No bullshit. No fear-mongering. Just clear thinking about what works, what doesn't, and how to stay valuable when machines do the boring parts.
Came across this uncheerful Reddit thread from Chris Glass’ always amazing site. It’s from a software engineer who just put in their two weeks notice working for a delivery app. They’re pissed off and exposing some pretty messed up practices.
“You guys always suspect the algorithms are rigged against you, but the reality is actually so much more depressing than the conspiracy theories. The thing that actually makes me sick—and the main reason I’m quitting—is the "Desperation Score." We have a hidden metric for drivers that tracks how desperate they are for cash based on their acceptance behavior.
If a driver usually logs on at 10 PM and accepts every garbage $3 order instantly without hesitation, the algo tags them as "High Desperation." Once they are tagged, the system then deliberately stops showing them high-paying orders. The logic is: "Why pay this guy $15 for a run when we know he’s desperate enough to do it for $6?" We save the good tips for the "casual" drivers to hook them in and gamify their experience, while the full-timers get grinded into dust.
Gee, without Meta’s trust monitors and authenticity cops who knows if this is true but it’s too damn evil not to believe. I think by the end of writing this issue, I toss my iPhone off a cliff.
A year after the historic Los Angeles fires, survivors share lessons from the burn zone is a somber look at the people who lost homes, neighbors, and their neighborhood. National Geographic sent a photographer Gideon Mendel to LA just weeks after the fires were put out. “He captured 129 portraits, meeting the displaced in the charred remains of their houses, businesses, and places of worship. Some gave him objects from the ruins, to be photographed in the studio.”
While the devastation is due to what we call a “wild fire” there is new evidence that these disasters were caused by prioritization problems and bureaucracy. “A State Parks ranger recently testified that she observed the ground still smoldering when she documented the Lachman Fire burn area on January 1. Hikers who visited the burn scar over the following days took photographs and video capturing smoke rising from the blackened hillside. On January 2, LAFD firefighters on the scene expressed concerns that the fire remained active. Nonetheless, the firefighters were ordered to leave the smoldering burn scar.”
So fucking stupid. How have we forgotten common sense? Anyway, good luck with the lawsuits California, you're going to need it.
CY_BORG is a “Nano-infested doomsday RPG about cybernetic misfits and punks raging against a relentless corporate hell.” In addition to a great setting, punks vs. corpations, the game’s art and design are incredible (see above). I don’t know if I’ll ever play but I bought a copy just to gawk at the pages.
And because I can't go a week without sharing a zine or two, go check out these visual delights: The War of the Worlds Did Not Take Place and TW3NTY2.
Published in Tacoma, Washington while listening to Reconstructed… For Your Listening Pleasure by The Art of Noise.
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