Modern heists, Wikipedia porn and bygone tickets

Plus: The philosophical problem with your podcast habit

Photo by insung yoon on Unsplash

I had to travel unexpectedly last week — due to continued misfortune, OF COURSE — so I’m sending an abridged, belated edition tonight, with the hopes that things will soon return to their uneventful norm.

While in transit, however, I found myself in a rare and deeply uncomfortable position that I thought I’d share! I forgot my headphones, and the in-flight movie options sucked, so I decided to (gulp) sit alone with my thoughts for a full 92 minutes.

Admittedly, I would’ve braved a bad movie if not for an interview I’d just read with the Irish psychologist Simon McCarthy-Jones. McCarthy-Jones argues that the modern compulsion to play podcasts (etc.) every moment of the day leaves little room for thought anymore.

As someone who soundtracks most menial tasks — is it dinner prep, really, if The Daily isn’t on? — I recognized both the syndrome McCarthy-Jones described … and my *perfectly* timed opportunity to engage in some healthy, headphone-less introspection.

In the old days—old days for us anyway—when you were doing the washing up or mowing the lawn, you’d have time to think. And these days, we increasingly seem to be accomplishing these tasks with headphones on, with YouTube and podcasts. So are these inputs helping us think? Or are we stopping ourselves thinking by importing other people’s thoughts, every hour of the day? 

… But did I think any profound, original thoughts in the sky between Buffalo and Atlanta? I did, I guess, think through the outline of this little introduction. I thought about a Platformer essay I shared last week, which theorized that the work of music critics had been usurped by algorithms. I also thought about this recent article on Spotify’s Daylists, which serve up thrice-daily curations of hyper-personalized songs.

It’s not only that we’re going through life listening — I thought — but we’re not even choosing the things we listen to. That does seem like a passive use of our one brief, precious life on earth (!).

Then I thought about Delta’s snack options. Then I thought about my growing to-do list. Then I thought about death (😬), because inevitably if you sit quietly and think about your thoughts … you do somehow end up in the darkest places!

“Are you okay?” That was Jason, interrupting. “It’s freaking me out that you’re just sitting there.”

I watched Chopped the entire flight back. Thoughtlessness was heaven.

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If you read anything else this weekend

“The Complicated Lives and Deaths of TikTok’s Illness Influencers,” by A.W. Ohlheiser for Vox. The phrase “marketable sick person” surely ranks among the grimmest I’ve read … but it’s pretty representative of this thoughtful, nuanced piece, which manages to both celebrate the good of illness influencing and call out the wider social problems that shape/necessitate it. Yes, it’s wonderful that people tell their own stories. Yes, we need new narratives around sickness and death. But holy shit, why does anyone have to shill on TikTok to afford medication?!

“The Great Freight-Train Heists of the 21st Century,” by Malia Wollan for The New York Times Magazine. We all love an old-school, long-form magazine caper, and this story delivers on that: You’ll meet grizzled engineers, undercover train cops, honest kleptomaniacs … the whole package. But Wollan also acts as tour guide through the fascinating and fast-expanding maze of online shopping infrastructure — which is (alarmingly, I would argue) eating up an ever larger-share of our train tracks, highways and neighborhoods.

“Inside an Election Denial Facebook Group on Primary Day,” by David Gilbert for Wired. There’s an ongoing debate among journalists and media scholars about how much mainstream outlets should cover conspiracists, accelerationists and other fringe actors. On one hand, the public might want to know what they’re doing; on the other, you’ve just done recruitment for them. This story straddles that line (… and maybe, sometimes, crosses it). But damn if it isn’t a perfect preview of the dynamics we should expect from this year’s presidential elections.

“Tickets Are For Remembering,” by Bailey Sincox for Public Books. Links does not often feature writing by “scholars of 16th- and 17th-century drama” … but such scholars also do not often pen long reflections on the rise of QR codes in theater! If you’ve been to a play (or concert or movie or airport) lately, then you know that no one uses paper tickets anymore. I’m not totally sure what is lost in that transition — and it honestly doesn’t seem like Sincox is, either — but it surely means something to move through life with fewer physical records.

“Wikimedia's Pornographers,” by Jason Koebler for 404 Media. “For almost as long as Wikimedia Commons has existed, dudes have used it to surrender their dicks to the public domain.” 10/10, no notes, very entertaining.

👉 ICYMI: The most-clicked link from last week’s newsletter was this essay on coming of age on the social web from Kyle Chayka in The New Yorker.

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Postscripts

There are NO postscripts this week on account of my unplanned travel (… and also possibly on account of my new unwillingness to squeeze AI-narrated articles into the crannies of my day). If you’d care to share a link in the comments, though, that would be great!

More next week — until then, warmest virtual regards.

— Caitlin