PicoBlog

Almost exactly a year ago, Elon Musk walked into Twitter’s offices holding a white porcelain sink, his suspiciously puffy face wearing its characteristic spaniel-like, victorious grin.  Here was a man who had inadvertently Tweeted his way into being legally compelled to buy a social media website that he both adored and despised. Here was a billionaire who existed in a flop-sweat scented bubble of affirmation, who spent every day being reassured that he was one of the greatest minds of our generation, a modern lord capable of ushering humanity into space.

If you’ve watched professional wrestling for any length of time, a couple of things are very obvious. In that case, the sport is naturally homoerotic, what with scantily clad people, nearly always of the same gender, rolling around on the mat. But at the same the wrestling world, until very, very recently, has been very institutionally homophobic, and even worse, same-sex abuse scandals have been far from a rare occurrence in wrestling history.

I have been asked a lot recently about what I think of Peter Attia’s new NY Times bestselling book on longevity medicine, Outlive. So I decided to take a read to be able to answer this question, inform myself about what is in the popular press, and make a reasonable recommendation to read this book (or not). On a high level, I think this book is important conceptually and represents a profound shift in medicine that is much needed.

Occasionally, I let nostalgia carry me back to the video games I played as a kid. One of these is, of course, Pokemon. I have fond memories of my brother and I arguing over the best starter pokemon for our very first Game Boy game, Pokemon Emerald. Ultimately, he won the argument and we chose Torchic, which, in hindsight, was unambiguously the correct choice. Recently, I was playing a fan-made game inspired by Emerald, called Pokemon Reborn.

This collage from the Webtoon Hanlim Gym describes how the most overpowered character in the series has only two strengths: perception and adaptation. With a keen eye, he watches his opponent, avoids distraction, adapts to the changing conditions, and dictates time-space. He perceives and adapts. We can't tailor our decisions to the current situation unless we know what the current situation is. Much like in real life, if his opponents only think about what they want to do while he's looking at what they're doing, he has an overpowered advantage.

This is the introductory post of my Oversocialization Series, which will take place over the next 2-3 weeks. I plan a total of 6-8 posts. This post will be updated with links to all future posts at the end of this piece. Put simply, socialization is a process by which individuals become accustomed to, and internalize, the norms, values, and ideologies of the society they live in. Socialization is not an inherently evil process: we must all learn how to co-exist with others around us.

To those of us who moved to Austin in the ’80s and had to hear about how we missed all those amazing ’70s clubs, think of how much worse that would have been if we didn’t have our own AWHQ in Liberty Lunch. But this sacred venue also had a date with the ‘dozer, wiped away in 1999 to make room for Computer Sciences Corporation headquarters. The bare-boned venue’s demise was determined by two words: city owned.

If we reproduce the language found in sources created by early modern White men and women we risk inadvertently echoing the racist assumptions of those who created and perpetuated racial slavery while dehumanising the people who were enslaved. - Simon P. Newman, author of Freedom Seekers: Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London A follower recently pointed out that our Hard Histories website uses the term “owner” when referring to Johns Hopkins.

Dear Reader, I began Noted as a way to translate my academic work into essays a general audience could enjoy. For the past 10 months, I have been on a research-sabbatical. Originally, I planned on using this time to write another academic book. Instead, I fell in love with sharing notes with you. I’ve never had so many people read my writing, and I am t… ncG1vNJzZmiimaG5qq3NoZysq16owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpwvI6ipa2qn5nCpLXNoGSpq12Weq%2Bx1manmqGUYsC2rtKcqaKalac%3D