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I’m guilty of spending far too much of this week talking about the Beckhams. The fallout from eldest son Brooklyn’s excoriating social media attack on his parents delivers a new meme every hour. The family continues to post thinly veiled criticisms of each other on social media and we all dutifully follow along. Why do we find ourselves compelled towards other people’s drama in this way? I’ve had quite a busy week, I really shouldn’t have had time for it.
The Beckham story combines multiple phenomena that reveal a lot about our times – the use of social media to sell personal brands and conduct deep surveillance on other people’s lives, our obsession with following but also punishing nepo babies, our carelessness about how we treat each other online. This analysis has been a bit of a wake-up call.
My Beckham reading has been conducted almost exclusively on my laptop because I, like a lot of people, simply cannot stand to look at my phone at the moment. I agreed to update my operating system like a good Apple user and now have to navigate the visual incoherence of “Liquid Glass”, the new design style that makes your notifications blurry, your apps harder to find and the time impossible to read.
Laughably, Apple wanted Liquid Glass to bring “joy and delight to every user experience”. Instead it has brought rage and hostility. This design expert was shocked by the poor decisions that have been made in delivering the new look. He notes that Liquid Glass is indicative of the company’s failure to focus on its core ethos of brilliant design in the post-Steve Jobs era.
The second episode of our brand new Strange Health podcast reveals everything you ever wanted to know (and an awful lot you really didn’t want to know) about the various stones your body can produce. We’re talking gall, we’re talking kidney, we’re talking… tonsil. Why do hard growths appear and what can we do about them? Watch along here.
Also this week, Virginia Woolf’s “best essay” turns 100, Moore’s law reaches its limits and the “Homogenocene” delivers us curiously “samey” animals.
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