Doof

Following up a recent post I love where I live. How it’s being destroyed, part 3: Drugs, here are a few more pictures and videos of addicts in my neighborhood. To clarify, I'm not going out of my way or looking for these images. As a New Yorker, I'm usually in a hurry. Most scenes like the ones below I pass by without taking pictures or videos. These images are about our culture, not the individuals in the images. If you use social media, fly, buy doof, or own shares in companies whose business models depend on addiction, THESE PICTURES ARE OF YOUR CREATION. I see little difference between these scenes and McDonald's or Instagram. Here's a video version of the couple: Here's a video…

Months ago, when I read Adam Alter's book and hosted him on the podcast, I learned that executives of social media companies often don't let their children use the services they work for. They know they design them to addict. I recently saw an old friend who works at Facebook. He has two kids. I asked him if he let them use Facebook. He said "no," with a look of: of course not, that would be bad for them. It's one thing to read and hear about it. It's another to experience it directly with a friend. Sometimes I can't believe people put social media apps on their phones. I mean, of course I know they do and I believe it. I'm the tiny minority.…

I knew the article would cover food and not distinguish doof from food from its title: "Why Are So Many Young Adults Getting Cancer? New Columbia research looks at ultra-processed foods, sedentary lifestyles, and other possible explanations." Sure enough, it didn't. Imagine people didn't distinguish heroin from poppy, if they thought shooting heroin was like eating a poppy-seed bagel. They'd miss that heroin affects the body and behavior a lot different than poppy seeds. In this post, I'll quote a few paragraphs, then translate them to distinguish doof from food. For context, here are the first two paragraphs, which don't mention food or doof: When Beatrice Dionigi was in medical school fifteen years ago, she was taught that colon cancer — long known as a…

I was learning about the economist Ronald Coase and a topic he focused on: transaction costs. A person in a video described how businesses and technology help lower transaction costs. The person used Amazon.com as an example, pointing out it takes less time to search the marketplace and buy what someone wants. My experience is different. When I look up what people buy most on Amazon.com, a lot of it is stuff that won't improve the life of the buyer before ending up in a landfill. In my conversation with Lorna Davis after she stopped shopping Amazon after taking my sustainability leadership workshop, she saved time and money. She didn't think she was wasting time or money. She probably thought she was saving them by…