• Wednesday, 06/28/23 ** 12:01 Blown away by this piece from James Parker in the Atlantic. https://archive.ph/cHMzS. The writing feels alive. Sentences are short and brief but I can feel the people Parker reacts with through the page. I can feel his influences, some of them, though I haven't read enough; it's like gonzo journalism but more earnest, interacting with people not to make a point about yourself but to center them while living life. James is living life the way he wants to and documenting it. & the portraits are a wonderful touch - I can't wait to make a project like this. ** 12:05 Pick up substack. Is that how I improve writing? ** 12:09 Looking back at the writing of others, projects, long long lists of bullet points and works, I'm not sure I understand; why more and more and more? Why not better adn better and better? I want to improve on just a few things forever but do it everywhere. Maybe being prolific and restarting again and again is important for this. ** 15:05 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bvL2lZKgOA Everyone (I've seen in NY in the last few days) wants to be photographed. Is this good? It's definitely comfortable for photography - and NYC, as a cultural epicenter, deserves to be documented - but what about other cities? Other people? Hidden people? ** 21:04 Not sure how much is imagined or real - but walking around in Stockholm makes me feel more and more lonely. I don't have a friend to walk with and I don't speak Swedish. I don't understand the social signals of others and am outright ignored half the time I try to reach out to someone on the street, and the other half of the time I'm dismissed with a 'not interested' or a grunt, as if I'm a beggar or someone below them. I don't understand why.

I don't know what social signals to look for to know when to or how I can approach someone. In America, this is eye contact and a smile, a neutral motion forward, a gesture of the head towards you a bit, or a look from head to toe and back. I'm not sure how to get people to trust me or how to break through. Tourists talk to me for help but those conversations last minutes. This is rough.

First step has to be learning Swedish... ** 23:37 Mr. Beast aggressively user tests - runs anything he thinks might be not accessible by lots of people and gets lots of feedback. He's exploring new content creation territory - the world's general population - and it's fascinating! ** 23:54 Mr. Beast - nobody is ever going to do what I do better than me. He's spent his life making these videos and doing nothing but those videos, hiring the best people he can find to make these videos happen.

He's making long-form content into short-form content. The budget behind them is insane.

The medium is the message. Mr. Beast is making youtube videos to hold your attention spans for an optimal amount of time.

Short-form content - by definition - changes the game. You don't have to prod and hold attention. Now, mastering short-form content lets you master short-form content - that short-form content is everywhere. If you nail short-form, you can nail everything.