Disclaimer One: I've lived in Japan for 14 years. So, even though I'm observing the whole thing online and from a distance, I'm not always totally up to date on some cultural trends in the West. Disclaimer Two: I am now 52 years old. So, even though I'm observing the whole thing online and from a distance, I'm not always totally up to date on some cultural trends in the West. Despite the two disclaimers above, however, I've noticed something happening (or rather, not happening) in the West that has concerned me. As the title suggests, it is a certain cultural stagnation. Let me explain. For most of the 20th century, cultural trends regularly changed and evolved to the point that you could instantly tell what decade they belonged to. This is especially visible in fashion, mainstream music, and cinema. Fashion is one of the most striking examples of this, probably because it is the most visual and widespread. Show someone an outfit from any time in the past 200 years, and they will more or less be able to tell you what decade it is from. Cinema is a relatively new technology, and it's easy to tell a movie's decade of origin based on technical and artistic factors. The same goes for music. Each decade since the end of World War II has had a unique "sound" that is immediately recognizable. While fashion, cinema, and music are the three domains where this concept is the easiest to perceive, they're definitely not the only ones. However, something happened at the turn of the century. Though each decade had its instantly recognizable fashion, cinema, music, and more for many years, that ended about 25 years ago. Compare a picture from 20 years ago with one from last year. You'll notice that people mostly look and dress the same way. They'll probably have similar haircuts, too. Can you instantly tell if a movie is 20 years old or was recently released, if you're not familiar with it? It's not impossible, but it's quite difficult. What is the main musical genre of the 2020s and what is its signature sound? How does it differ from that of the 2010s? And the 2000s? It's roughly the same for all three decades. Some sort of mix of hip-hop, R&B, and pop, I guess. Not a very memorable mix, though. Has a new genre of music even emerged in the 21st century? All of the genres we hear in mainstream music today were born in the 20th century. Compare that to the plethora of new genres that emerged between the early 1960s and late 1990s. Returning to the topic of movies, not only have they all looked and felt the same for the past couple of decades, but what are the big, culturally impactful movies of the past 20 years? The last one I can think of is _The Matrix_. Marvel movies and the superhero genre only have an impact because of their sheer number. Individually, they don't have much artistic or cultural value. A few years after seeing them, I have a harder and harder time telling them apart and remembering details from each one. Not only have there been no culturally impactful movies in the past 20 years, but worse, movies from the '80s, and to a lesser extent, the '90s, are still the predominant culturally important movies of the 21st century. Hollywood recognizes this and, instead of trying to create the next milestone movie, is mostly trying to profit from those old movies with various sequels and reboots, most of which are forgettable. I'm thinking of _Star Wars_ , _Alien_ , _Ghostbusters_ , and more. Interestingly, it seems that TV series have replaced movies in terms of creativity and cultural impact in the 21st century. However, this trend may be short-lived. Streaming platforms are replacing TV channels as the main producers of TV series, and, in many ways, they’re worse than movie studios. While they allow more creativity and originality, they cancel any show that isn't immediately profitable or too expensive to produce, even if it's successful. Consequently, new shows rarely have time to make an impact on culture. Not to mention, streaming and binge-watching mean whatever impact a show has will be limited in time. ### Why is that? Why is culture stagnant in the 21st century? Have people become less creative? Of course not. ### So why is it happening? It's only speculation on my part, but I'm afraid society as a whole has become less creative and less open to new cultural items. I think the geopolitical and economic upheavals of the 1990s were the indirect cause. Neo-liberalism took over the world’s economy and culture after the Cold War ended. The consequences are well known: out-of-control capitalism, globalization, and the displacement of most means of industrial production away from the locations of consumption. These changes greatly affected "mass produced" art, including music and movies. Already affected by technological changes, the music industry became focused on making money at the expense of everything else. Of course, making money has always been its main focus, but it used to do so by setting trends, signing and promoting new musicians who redefined music and culture. The Led Zeppelins, Queens, U2s, Princes, and Nirvanas of the 21st century exist, but they probably play in small venues or are solely online. You'll probably never hear of them. They'll never make it big. Fun fact: During my college years, my friends considered me the "music expert" of our group. How did that happen? It definitely wasn't from my family. Sometimes, it came from friends of friends who were experts in a very specific musical niche that they introduced to me. I would then introduce that niche to my other friends. Most of the time, though, I educated myself musically simply by listening to the radio and watching TV. I guess I was just good at separating the wheat from the chaff. Can you imagine developing a musical culture through TV and radio today? Me neither. You can on the internet, of course, but my point is that good, new, original, and creative music was easily accessible to anyone thanks to mainstream media. Not anymore. For at least 20 years, mainstream media has force-fed everyone the same ultra-formatted, auto-tuned, "fast-listening" music designed for easy consumption. This music leaves no cultural impact because it's not manufactured for that purpose. The same goes for cinema. Films are becoming increasingly expensive to produce, and mainstream studios are not interested in discovering the next Spielberg or Scorsese. They want movies that are predictable, easily consumed, and quickly profitable. I mean, Spielberg makes those kinds of movies. But I guess he has a vision and a mind of his own. Studios don't want that anymore. They want directors who are merely "manufacturers" of movies, not artists. To be clear: I'm not saying good music and movies don't exist anymore. I'm saying that mainstream music and movies aren't the places to find them. It's not even really about quality, which is a subjective thing to begin with. It's about uniqueness, originality, and, more importantly, making an impact on its time. I'm not sure if disco music or the many slasher movies of my youth were that good, but they are cultural markers of the '70s and '80s, respectively. Fashion is trickier to analyze, in no small part because I'm less proficient in the field. However, I buy clothes and like observing how people dress. So there's that. The evolution of trends in clothing has also been minimal. Each "new" style of the past 20 years is a revival of a style from the '80s or '90s. I also see the mark of neo-liberalism and unfettered capitalism in the advent of fast fashion. Paradoxically, mass production of cheap, low-quality, short-lasting clothes does not encourage creativity. Do the internet and the slow disappearance of mono-culture play a role in these phenomena? Probably. Very probably. However, despite devoting several paragraphs to them, I am less interested in the reasons for these cultural stagnations than in their possible consequences. ### So, what are these possible consequences? Honestly, I don't know. I can't see the future any better than you can. Fashion has always existed and always will, but it may go through some unpleasant phases in the future. Music will always exist, but what about mass-produced music? How sustainable is an industry that produces nothing but unoriginal, "safe" products? What impact does this have on the cultural knowledge of the population? The lack of artistic education is part of a larger problem affecting all education. I may talk about that another day. What about movies? Unlike music and fashion, you can't just make movies at home that have a chance of reaching a large audience. Sure, you can reach a large audience on the web. Tell me about the last movie you saw on YouTube or a similar platform that really impacted a generation. Honestly, I'm not optimistic about the future of cinema. Will it still exist in the 22nd century, even if Western civilization doesn't collapse? I doubt it. Yes, I used the "C word." Until now, I've only mentioned the possible impacts on the industries themselves. But what about the impact on civilization itself? What happens when a civilization no longer produces culturally significant art? In my opinion, nothing good. Even less so when you consider this cultural stagnation within the larger context of the major changes and struggles our civilizations are currently facing. In other words, I’m not saying that cultural stagnation is a factor contributing to a possible collapse of civilization. However, I am saying that cultural stagnation is a symptom of how sick our civilizations have become and a sign that the collapse has already started. But that's a topic for a future post. All in all, what do you think? Do you agree with me? Or do you think I’m totally out of touch with 21st-century Western culture? (See the two disclaimers at the beginning of the text.) Tell me. And if you like what you read: ## Sign up for Glitched Earth by David B. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

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You've probably heard of the Fermi Paradox. One day, while visiting the Los Alamos National Laboratory, physicist **Enrico Fermi** wondered aloud, > "Where is everybody?" And by "everybody," he meant **_aliens_**. From that informal question and the discussion that followed with his peers, others, including Carl Sagan and Michael H. Hart, developed a theory that now bears his name and is known worldwide as the "**Fermi Paradox**." Before we continue, note that, while they are our most prominent (almost) contemporaries to have theorized the problem, others before them, including Fontenelle in the 17th century, have asked the question in one form or another in their writings. So it's not a completely new matter. In short, the paradox states that given the number of stars in our galaxy (between 100 and 400 billion) and the likelihood that there are even more planets, the probability of extraterrestrial life existing has to be close to 100%. So why haven't we found anyone yet? Sure, our best telescopes can't see details on distant exoplanets, but why haven't we detected radio signals or similar communications? And why haven't they found us or contacted us? This is essentially the Fermi Paradox, for which many theories have been proposed to explain it. As a side note: about 6,000 exoplanets have been found in a bit more than 4,400 star systems as I’m typing these lines. We've found a few dozen candidates that could support life as we know it. However, remember that the actual number of such planets is likely in the billions, in our galaxy alone. Obviously, I'm not an expert, but I sometimes find many of the hypotheses about the Fermi Paradox to be overly "Earth-centric" and/or too inspired by science fiction. Don’t get me wrong; I love science fiction. However, I also think that, while it is important for helping us imagine possible human-centered futures, science fiction is not so different from fantasy when it comes to aliens and extraterrestrial life. For obvious reasons, science fiction authors lack the facts necessary to ground their imagination when dealing with aliens. For example, I’m thinking of hypotheses that state some advanced alien civilizations exist, know about us, and are observing us. However, they don't make contact because we’re not advanced enough (the Zoo hypothesis comes to mind). I mean... Why not? However, it sounds a bit too "StarTrekky" for me. Don't get me wrong; _Star Trek_ is great. However, it's not exactly realistic science fiction. There are also hypotheses that advanced civilizations hide because there is a violent and predatory civilization in our corner of the galaxy that colonizes, invades, and destroys every other civilization it finds (the Dark Forest hypothesis). Maybe. Why not? But I don't know. It sounds like something white humans would do. But if there were such a violent, expanding, and well-known civilization in this corner of the galaxy, wouldn't they have found and eaten us by now? There are dozens of other hypotheses, some more probable than others, but they are all based on unprovable assumptions as we just lack the necessary facts. One explanation of the Fermi Paradox that I find interesting is the Great Filter theory. It states that, at some point in a species' life, something will prevent it from achieving interstellar travel. This would explain why there are either no civilizations in the universe that can achieve interstellar travel or why they are very rare and unlikely to discover each other. The question, of course, is where in the course of life’s evolution is that filter located? (Assuming that life develops in similar ways throughout the universe.) The filter could occur as early as the evolution from unicellular to multicellular life forms. This evolution may be rare. In that case, we are the lucky ones for having passed the filter. However, we also could be the only ones who have passed it. It could also be that any civilization that becomes technologically advanced enough will eventually self-destruct before developing interstellar travel. And the current state of our world could prove this point and we may be about to reach that filter. There are other possible locations of the "great filter" throughout a species' lifetime, but these two are probably the main ones. I hope that one day—hopefully while I'm still alive and before our civilization collapses—we will develop telescopes powerful enough to observe life (or signs of life) on nearby planets. It would be great to find civilizations that are roughly as advanced as ours, but I'd also be happy to find something like their dinosaurs. Yes, there are many hypotheses, and one of them may be correct. However, I think there's an even simpler explanation that I rarely see mentioned directly when people talk about the Fermi Paradox. It's about **space** and **time**. Unless something like hyperspace exists, which is unlikely, interstellar travel deals with distances so vast that, even if it's technologically possible, it's logistically very difficult, if not impossible to achieve. Traveling to another planet in another stellar system would take decades at best, most likely much longer. Would it be possible to return home? What would be the point of expanding and colonizing nearby stellar systems if the planet of origin can't really communicate with its colonies and benefit from them? Would any civilization want to attempt such a trip in those circumstances? It's not impossible. After all, some past human civilizations have done seemingly crazy things, using an insane amount of resources for goals that seem pointless to outsiders (the most obvious example is probably the building of the pyramids; both in Egypt and in Mesoamerica). So, who knows what crazy, seemingly wasteful, and pointless endeavors an alien civilization could engage in? Of course, they don't have to send members of their species; they could send automated probes. After all, we've done so with the Voyager program, even though the two probes are not fully automated. And, we'll soon lose contact with them forever. Also, it is estimated that they will reach the stellar systems where they're heading — we know which ones — in about 40,000 years. Perhaps aliens are sending probes. Maybe. But we're not seeing any signs of them. It's true that we've been able to detect and recognize interstellar objects in our solar system for just a few years; and there must be many objects that we haven't detected. I don't want to veer too much in that direction, because I want to keep this post grounded, but could some UFOs be probes? Maybe. Then again, probably not. In any case, I think we can all agree that the vast distances and slow travel speeds would prevent civilizations from different stellar systems from visiting or even simply contacting each other. I think there's another hurdle that I rarely see mentioned, and it's not mentioned enough in my opinion. To me, the most obvious hurdle is **time** itself. What do I mean by that? Let's use our own planet as an example. Earth is about 4.55 billion years old. That's quite a long time, but some stellar systems and their planets are even older, Kepler-444 is estimated to be 11.2 billion years old. Recorded human history is only a few thousand years old. The oldest writing systems we know of, the Egyptian and Sumerian systems, are less than 5,000 years old. That's only 0.0001% of Earth's lifetime! So, even if many civilizations have developed interstellar travel, even if many extraterrestrial civilizations have actually visited Earth, there is a 99.9999% chance that they did so before humans were able to record it. And there is about a 99.993% chance that it happened before humans even existed. For me, the Fermi Paradox can be explained by an incompatibility in timelines, more so than by some far-fetched hypotheses or even the Great Filter hypothesis. Not only does a civilization needs to reach a level of technology that enables interstellar travel — and preferably, fast interstellar travel — but they also need to be lucky enough to arrive on our planet (or any other) at the exact moment life forms on that planet are also advanced enough to enable contact and communication. I doubt the dinosaurs or unicellular life forms were great conversationalists if Earth was visited during their time, which is much more likely than a visit in the last 5,000 years. In conclusion, it seems self-evident (that's not a very scientific approach, I know) that even if the chances of extraterrestrial life existing are close to 100% and the chances of intelligent, advanced extraterrestrial life existing are non-negligible, the chances of two of them meeting at the right place and time are probably close to zero. Perhaps the history of the universe is just a long series of missed encounters. What do you think?

Hello, everyone! As you may have guessed from the title, today I want to tell you about the days of the week. I'll talk about the days of the week in Japanese, French (and by extension other Romance languages), as well as a little bit in English. I noticed something pretty amazing a while ago. I’m sure many serious researchers have studied this topic very seriously, but I'm not one of them. I'll just share what I've noticed and a few explanations I know. First, let's review the names of the days if you don't speak Japanese or French. This applies to all Romance languages because it's really about Latin. However, since French is my native language, I’ll focus on it instead of constantly repeating, "as well as other Romance languages." In Japanese, each day of the week is composed of three kanji, or characters, but the last two are the same for every day, and they roughly mean "day of." For the sake of clarity and simplicity, I won't include them in the table below. In Japanese too, they're often omitted in timetables and similar documents. For example, Monday is 月曜日, so we'll only write: 月. Next to the kanji, you'll find the meaning in parentheses, though you may have already figured that out. If you’re familiar with Taoism, you’ll notice that the days from Tuesday to Saturday are associated with the five traditional elements: fire, water, wood, metal, and earth. You may be wondering why I'm suddenly alluding to Taoism when it didn't spread to Japan. Because it's an important part of Chinese philosophy, and China greatly influenced Japan about 1,300 years ago. This influence included introducing writing to Japan (kanji means "Chinese characters"), the days of the week, and many other things. However, since I’m more familiar with Japanese culture, I’ll focus on that to avoid saying anything silly. I could be wrong—I know almost nothing about Chinese languages—but I believe the days of the week we're talking about here aren't used in modern Chinese anymore. Okay, that’s nice, but what's my point? ## Sign up for Glitched Earth Sorry about that, but if you want to read the rest, you need to subscribe. It's free (unless you want to pay), but I'm doing this to minimize my content being crawled by AI bots and other plagiarists. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

I’m currently in France. I’ve been here for almost a week, and the heat wave has kept me inside my parents’ house for… about a week. Luckily, they installed air conditioning a while ago. I had grand plans to blog or journal about my trip to France this summer. However, it turns out that it’s pretty difficult to focus enough to write when you have two kids and their two grandparents around you all day long. (Proof: It took me almost a week to write these lines.) What about at night? At night, I’m still a bit jet-lagged and catching up on reading when not falling asleep. I meant to write about many of my observations and feelings about returning to France after some time away. I wrote something similar two years ago; just look through the archives of Liminal Web from March and April of 2023. I don’t know if I will this year, maybe once I’m back home in Japan. In the meantime, I thought I could post about a few things I did. As Tolkien and others have said, “ _There is no going back_.” The longer I live away from France, the more foreign the country becomes to me. I’ll try to write more about this, but the truth is that it’s not always black and white. On the one hand, French society in 2025 is quite foreign to me now. On the other hand, there are some timeless places, especially in the countryside. The countryside of pretty much any country is an interesting place. Some people may consider it too backwards, not worthy of interest, or too conservative, but the countryside is also where the true soul and identity of a country live. That’s why I’m annoyed by people who reduce countries to cities or, worse, to a country’s main city. When I’m back in France, I always find the country I know and grew up is in the countryside. That France is long gone in the cities. Not in the countryside. Also, when foreigners think about France, they often think about the delicious food and name some of the three-starred restaurants in Paris. Once again, this is a mistake. True French cuisine, arguably the best in the world, is not found in cities. It’s found locally and seasonally—and last time I checked, there aren’t many fields in cities. This long introduction brings me to today’s topic. ## Fruits and Vegetable in the French Southwest During one of our rare outings since my plane landed, we drove a dozen kilometers from my hometown to a farm whose owner is friends with my aunt. He has a very interesting “shop.” It’s only open three days a week for two hours each day. It’s located in an empty garage, and it contains some of the fruits and vegetables that the farmer grew that week. It’s located deep in the countryside and while it’s open to everyone, you can only find out about it through word of mouth. Yet, shortly before 5 p.m., when the shop opens, you’ll see cars arriving from all directions on the narrow country roads leading to the farm. This is what it looks like: My aunt didn’t want to be in the picture. Sorry, Auntie. Not only are you in the picture, but you’re also on the internet. (Don’t tell her.) It’s fresher and cheaper than at a farmers’ market. And it’s all seasonal. The key to delicious food anywhere in the world is simple: use unprocessed, local, seasonal ingredients. Those peaches and nectarines are to die for! That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more! (originally published in Liminal Web) ## Sign up for Glitched Earth DavidB's Memories from the 21st century Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

I’m currently in France. I’ve been here for almost a week, and the heat wave has kept me inside my parents’ house for… about a week. Luckily, they installed air conditioning a while ago. I had grand plans to blog or journal about my trip to France this summer. However, it turns out that it’s pretty difficult to focus enough to write when you have two kids and their two grandparents around you all day long. (Proof: It took me almost a week to write these lines.) What about at night? At night, I’m still a bit jet-lagged and catching up on reading when not falling asleep. I meant to write about many of my observations and feelings about returning to France after some time away. I wrote something similar two years ago; just look through the archives of Liminal Web from March and April of 2023. I don’t know if I will this year, maybe once I’m back home in Japan. In the meantime, I thought I could post about a few things I did. As Tolkien and others have said, “ _There is no going back_.” The longer I live away from France, the more foreign the country becomes to me. I’ll try to write more about this, but the truth is that it’s not always black and white. On the one hand, French society in 2025 is quite foreign to me now. On the other hand, there are some timeless places, especially in the countryside. The countryside of pretty much any country is an interesting place. Some people may consider it too backwards, not worthy of interest, or too conservative, but the countryside is also where the true soul and identity of a country live. That’s why I’m annoyed by people who reduce countries to cities or, worse, to a country’s main city. When I’m back in France, I always find the country I know and grew up is in the countryside. That France is long gone in the cities. Not in the countryside. Also, when foreigners think about France, they often think about the delicious food and name some of the three-starred restaurants in Paris. Once again, this is a mistake. True French cuisine, arguably the best in the world, is not found in cities. It’s found locally and seasonally—and last time I checked, there aren’t many fields in cities. This long introduction brings me to today’s topic. ## Fruits and Vegetable in the French Southwest During one of our rare outings since my plane landed, we drove a dozen kilometers from my hometown to a farm whose owner is friends with my aunt. He has a very interesting “shop.” It’s only open three days a week for two hours each day. It’s located in an empty garage, and it contains some of the fruits and vegetables that the farmer grew that week. It’s located deep in the countryside and while it’s open to everyone, you can only find out about it through word of mouth. Yet, shortly before 5 p.m., when the shop opens, you’ll see cars arriving from all directions on the narrow country roads leading to the farm. This is what it looks like: My aunt didn’t want to be in the picture. Sorry, Auntie. Not only are you in the picture, but you’re also on the internet. (Don’t tell her.) It’s fresher and cheaper than at a farmers’ market. And it’s all seasonal. The key to delicious food anywhere in the world is simple: use unprocessed, local, seasonal ingredients. Those peaches and nectarines are to die for! That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more! (originally published in Liminal Web) ## Sign up for Glitched Earth DavidB's Memories from the 21st century Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

My biggest point of uncertainty about Ghost 6.0 was whether people were going to "get" the social web integration. The technology is wonderful, but complex. For many people, terms like ActivityPub, Fediverse, bridge, protocol, server, toot, boost, and Webfinger are alienating and confusing. They subtly imply that unless you understand what all these words mean, this might not be the place for you; in the same way crypto terms—blockchain, web3, wallet, keypair, nonce—are a wall of jargon that scream "you don't belong here" to normal people. The work of a product team, when working with new technology, is to abstract away as much of this complexity as possible, so that it feels friendly and approachable to new people. To send an email, you don't need to know what SMTP, IMAP, POP, DKIM, SPF, or DMARC are. To browse the web, there's no requirement to understand HTTP, DNS, servers, SSL, TTL, load balancing, or caches. The most significant impact these protocols have is perhaps that users never have to think about them. So while building the social web integration for Ghost, we weren't just reasoning about how to make it work and what it should do—we were thinking deeply about how to frame it. What words to use. What to compare it to. How to explain it. How to make it not need explaining at all. Will people "get it"? This question consumed more of my mental energy than anything else, right up until the moment we finally hit launch this past Monday. My personal nightmare would have been if the response to the launch was another chorus of "I don't understand what the point of this is"—"this is too complicated"—"what does [x] even mean?" I've seen it happen so many times before when people try to figure out this tech and how it relates to their lives. The graveyard of technically superior but user-hostile products is vast. But, I'm thrilled to see—at least so far—that hasn't been the case. To be sure, there are still points of functional confusion. Chief among them: Why doesn't post X from platform Y show up on platform Z right away? But for the most part, I've been really encouraged by how many people have just jumped right in and started using it, without getting stuck and needing more explanation. They're just... publishing. And connecting. And it's working. My strongest belief about the social web is that if we want it to succeed, we have to keep lowering the barrier to entry. We have to keep minimizing the need for arcane language. We have to keep solving the things that people expect to work, but don't, rather than endlessly explaining how the underlying technology works. We have to create more familiarity with concepts people already know. Let's not forget that email, as a technology, was based on the humble letter. To/from, subject, inbox, outbox—these were all words based on sending physical memos. The metaphor made the transition accessible. The interface and format of a new technology can often be the single biggest factor in determining its adoption. After all, for over a decade, we've had artificial intelligence capable of performing some pretty incredible tasks. The moment it really caught fire, though, was the moment it became a chatbox. Not when it got smarter. Not when it got more powerful. When it got simpler. I think we've taken a big step in the right direction with the social web in Ghost 6.0. And now we need to keep going.

<p>The fediverse aims for a truly decentralized, interoperable social web, yet the landscape is still fragmented. Bridgy Fed helps close those gaps by letting ActivityPub-enabled WordPress sites form real two-way connections with networks like Bluesky. With the ActivityPub plugin activated, you can link your blog to Bluesky in a few clicks. After that, posts, follows, likes, and replies flow natively between the two worlds.</p>

You may have heard of square (well, cubic) watermelons in Japan. Well, it's true, they exist. And they're actually from my adopted region. However, it's the first time I see one in the wild. (they're very expensive, and this one is not for sale but a prize for a raffle or something.

You People Disgust Me