Longtermism, Austin, 2-hour movies, & creating luck

Notes on the things I've been into

Josh Spilker

Feb 14, 2023

Reading: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. It’s like the novel Kavalier and Klay by Michael Chabon plus the TV show Halt and Catch Fire. But this time in the realm of a video game studio.
The novel resonated with me because: 1) it’s about startups 2) it’s about the give-and-take between creative impulses & business 3) it’s about the friction with creative partnerships

TBH, I don’t read books with 25,000+ Amazon reviews, but this one meets the hype.
Reading: What We Owe The Future by Will MacAskill. MacAskill is a young philosopher, but is already well accomplished, and has tenure at Oxford (I think). He’s big into the effective altruism movement and the idea of “longtermism.” These are complicated topics, but effective altruism is about trying to use your money/resources to do the most good for right now.
Longtermism takes that a step further by asking, “where can you invest your resources to do the most good for the future?”
The above descriptions are very reductive, but you get the idea. If any of this sounds familiar, both of these came up in November when all the FTX-crypto-Sam-Bankman-Fried stuff was going on, because he was a big donor into these movements.
The takeaway for me is that the rate of change in our recent world is unprecedented. He makes a point about economies on average across history growing at 0 to 1% per year, and it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that anything beyond that was expected. But this pace of change will be impossible for our universe or minds to keep up.
Movies, why are they so long?
Josh Spilker 🏄‍♂️ @joshspilker
Movies should be 2 hours or less, hard stop
4:02 AM ∙ Feb 4, 2023
Watching: With that in mind, recent recommendations include Emily the Criminal on Netflix, the first 2 Bourne movies, The Menu (now on HBOMax), Mitchells vs The Machines (Netflix), and basically anything made before 2008.
What movies under 2 hours do you recommend?
Documentaries are reality TV now. The market for documentaries skyrocketed, especially in the wake of Tiger King, and the line between what’s approved by a source vs what’s actual journalism is very blurred. Harry and Megan, anyone?
The Astonishing Transformation of Austin, TX at The New Yorker.
“If you live long enough in a place, it becomes haunted by ghosts: memories of events and friends long gone still inhabit spaces that have been levelled and covered over by the unstoppable newness. It’s a form of double vision: you see things that are no longer there.”
More than 300 people arrive in Austin each day (and more than 200 leave) and now the city has changed into the 11th biggest in the United States. I haven’t been to Austin since the mid-00s, but I see ghosts everywhere in my own city, Nashville, which is undergoing a similar transition.
Listening: The Watch podcast interviews Chuck Klosterman. The Watch usually recaps TV shows, but this time they go in a slightly different direction with cultural critic Chuck Klosterman, most recently author of The Nineties. They discuss the point of dream sequences, and my favorite new genre, “Slow TV” like channels to watch trains go by.
Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey: There’s a legit Winnie Pooh horror/slasher movie???
Reading: Big Sur by Jack Kerouac. It’s been a long time since I read any Kerouac, and it doesn’t make sense to think of it as a traditional novel, instead it’s better if the words flow over you, picking up scraps of plot and meaning however they come to you. More like poetry in that way.
Can you create your own luck? Or increase your chance at least?