Facebook has been a bad product since the introduction of the News Feed, but the switching costs have always been high and it was optimized by some of the best engineers our universities could produce for stickiness. The dual onslaught of Groups, which incentivize low effort/high engagement content, and AI junk, which sometimes checks both of those boxes just right, makes it an even worse product.
It’s still sticky, because we’re all still here, but will that last? Will it last when most of the posts I see give me zero value? Will it last when groups, which are weighted so heavily in the feed, are cesspools of AI-generated nonsense? I hope not. I hope a product manager at Meta is losing sleep over this problem tonight.
This is happening to the whole Internet, though. AI slop is already filling up web pages and discussion forums. Reddit will succumb to it because upvotes are the metric. Comments sections were already astroturfed; now the astroturfers will just cut out the humans sitting in the phone farm. I just had a meeting today where one of the topics was using AI to generate blog posts. There’s no turning back from this garbage because the incentives to use it are so high, and the bill for that convenience won’t become due until the entire Internet is consumed by it.
I printed (and web published) a ‘zine because I believe print is going to make a comeback very soon. By its very nature, print defies the logic of machine generation. We need analog back. The digital ocean is polluted.
Blog
Quartier des Fantômes 1
It’s a zine about lots of stuff, including: art, architecture, poetry, photography, the South, Tallahassee, ghosts, and nature.
I made it.
I hope others will help me make the next one.
“Democracy”
Lately, every time someone writes about “democracy” in some piece of urgent online hand-wringing, I stop reading. It’s not because I disagree with their politics, necessarily, but because I can’t shake the uncanny feeling that the writer has stopped thinking.
“Democracy” is exactly what we are living with. Rule by populists and demagogues is one of its outcomes. What these people seem to want is something else, a Utopia of Rules, in which the adults swoop in to save us from our mistakes. It’s the world of Report Cards and Crossing Guards, where the rules and consequences are written on the board. That’s not the world we’re living in.
No Context Magazine No. 8
Computerized Capitalist Aesthetics, Optimism, Sex, and Anxiety in the November 1988 issue of PC Magazine. Giddy-up.
Economy
My new hobby is walking around the store and taking notes on all of the things I can make myself for a fraction of the cost. For example, I can spend $17 on a jar of Chili Crisp, or less than $5 (often far less) with ingredients I already have.
I know this isn’t anything new, but it’s new to me. Lately I’ve been making my own bread, dog treats, soda (because the SodaStream is amazing!), barbecue sauce, and other staples that would otherwise cost a lot of money or result in a lot of waste. Making as much as possible at home saves both money and waste, and. I try to cook every meal at home, and focus on buying ingredients, rather than products.
I’ve always been amazed by the people in cookbooks or on TV who can just stock a pantry and be ready to make just about anything at home. I’m learning how to do that now, and it feels good.
Coworkers
Some of them have it way too easy.
Cut-Up 04.08.2025: Architectural Digest
New Music and Cover Art, Too
Earlier this year I stopped by the SCAMS studio in Tallahassee to lay down a bass line on my friend Gamble Cosmos‘ new track, “Helene Serene.” It’s a great song, and I had a blast throwing down the bottom end.
Later, I was thrilled when Gamble asked me to contribute even more to the project by creating original cover art for the track’s release on Bandcamp as a “double A-side 7-inch” with another Gamble Cosmos single, “Kew Gardens Contigo.” We talked about some of his inspirations–hurricanes, ’90s shoegaze records, old 45s–and went over some of his other artwork for consistency’s sake, and then I was off to the drawing board.
I’m mostly satisfied with the results.
Here’s the record.
Steamboat Sublime
Edit: this poem was published at The Lake, a fine online journal of poetry and reviews. Please check it out there and read all of the other amazing work!
On General Pershing Street
the crows eat Lo Mein
from styrofoam cartons
while down at the museum
of the Second World War
the Ardennes Offensive
plays on a digital loop.
The projectors over there
decode streams of numbers,
signifying suffering
in the dark forest room where
the sound of Howitzers exploding
among the artificial trees
tends to bore the children
down from the Midwest.
Tonight the Carnival Liberty
will carry those children
down the Mississippi River
churning quietly by
flaming oil derricks and
ghostly lights in the delta.
Roll, Jordan, roll
the old folks used to sing
down on the German Coast
watching dark blades churn
the oilblack current.
Black oil, the wings on the
Pershing Crows.
Rust on the wind.
Collage: Rest and Collapse
A simple collage for today
C.B. Crenshaw 