Motivational Quote of the Week
“It all makes sense now. The world was created by a benevolent toad, hell bent on making us suffer as flies.” - Lord Hambersham, DDS
Cereal of the Week
The years 1998 - 2005 were a different time. The optimism of the 1990s held strong through 2000, but 2001 began a new era of international depression. The excuse for our government to create organizations to one day enable total control cast a shadow over an already cloudy day. But there were some bright spots that poked gingerly through the clouds, a cereal arose that would shape future spinoffs of many a cereal to come. It was a variation of Froot Loops that put it on par with one of its rivals great cereals. Marshmallow-blasted Froot Loops was born into existence by Kellogg’s at a time when we needed all the marshmallow and dyed multi-grain cereal. Calling it “froot” meant avoiding any association with actual fruit, adding marshmallows enabled it to finally compete with General Mills’ Lucky Charms.
In 1959 Froot Loops was actually Fruit Loops, but in 1963 someone at Kellogg’s decided that could be a dangerous way to represent something that is no more fruit than a Starburst. While Froot Loops with Marshmallows still exists, it is no longer Marshmallow-blasted Froot Loops. This represents the changing of time, from when things could be blasted with other things to create a new thing, to a time where things had to be gently added as to not ruffled the feathers of those who prefer not to imagine things getting blasted with things. The blasted nature of the 90s has surely fallen far behind us, as we move into an era of marshmallows of lesser tone.
News From Earth
Twitter is dead, long live Twitter. There seems to be a growing stream of articles pondering that very thought. Is Twitter dying? It’s hard to say, and there is no good answer. Its viability surely is. Elon Musk, the mad king, has made it clear he has no idea what he is doing. His narcissism is on full display, as he acts only to benefit himself. But this is not a business plan. Twitter is starting to fall apart as its maintenance teams were unceremoniously fired. It’s a mess. Many of us have stopped using the platform for all but DMs, mostly moving to Mastodon or frankly, just not using social media at all except to lurk. But lurking on Twitter no longer hits the same. It’s a depressing mess of negative news and right-wing rhetoric. It’s a cesspit of political face-whipping and individual sadness. The optimism is gone, and it has been for a while.
So what now? It’s ridiculous to presume that a social media network can’t evolve (Twitter changing from a place of whimsical optimism and communication to a place of back-breaking sorrow), and just as absurd to start engraving the headstone. While the infrastructure needs to be repaired and maintained, Twitter will likely live on. However, what demon it becomes is still up for debate. It’s strange, this thing we’ve spent the last 15 years of our lives using every single day, to connect with new friends and communities, spread awareness and armchair fight hopeless battles, is changing. It’s shutting out the OG emotional attachment to the platform, it’s allowing us to detox with ease due to it’s downward spiral of content themes and functionality. Twitter might not be dead, but it’s got sepsis and the wound stinks.
Sandwich of the Week
From the proprietary sandwich generation tool:
Hickory Chicken & Figue With Cranberries On Pane Di Altamura Bread.
Ephemeral Erosion
It’s hard to let go of something we are addicted to, hence the addiction. Whether it be alcohol, tobacco, gambling, or social media, leaving it behind is difficult. There is no argument there. Our mind toys with us, convincing us otherwise, craving that addiction. Grab that bottle, one last cigarette, money isn’t real, send that tweet. But we survived before it all, and we’ll survive after, if we allow ourselves the freedom to quit. Choice isn’t staying addicted, choice is moving on to something new and freeing ourselves from an outward source controlling our actions. Free will is not getting trapped by something we feel we cannot function without doing. Moving on is possible.
Our brains don’t make this easy. They work to rationalize, convince us that we need this thing. We need to endlessly scroll Instagram on the daily, we need to shit post on Twitter, we need to consume all the memes we can before our nightly restless sleep. These are lies our brain tells us because it too, is addicted. It’s on drugs, drugs that it produces itself, and it uses us to get them. Deriving our brain of dopamine (and whatever else is released during heightened states of addiction) won’t kill it, and it won’t kill us. We just have to fight through it. After a few weeks of not using Twitter, you’ll forget it’s there. After all these years, anyone you’ve met that is important to you is well, important to you and you have their email or phone number. We don’t have to die with it, we don’t have to let it tear us down. We can be human somewhere else. We can shit post on Linkedin.