Satellite Haiku

Shawn remembers the early days of the web, and we talk about our first office jobs, majoring in the humanities, MiLo’s brush with Theranos, buying Elizabeth Holmes and Elon Musk, yoga retreats, World Cup visitors experiencing Americana, the White House as reality tv fodder, Trump as a tragic figure, the enduring power of the MAGA mob, the reflecting pool episode. Mentioned in this episode Our Cart...

We talk about doing voices to entertain our kids, Waldorf schooling and its prohibitions, audio book performances, art books, conceptual art, SpaceX and other IPOs, Elon’s race-baiting and other shenanigans, satellite launches, the World Cup, fans singing at sporting events, white American culture, sports as a melting pot, the Knicks game 4 comeback, Brazil’s humiliating 7-1 loss to Germany in 201...

We talk about the podcasting ad ecosystem, the “long tail”, Ani DiFranco, the economics of music streaming, news hygiene, Trump and the depths of dumb, vestiges of the Internet’s golden age, public healthcare vs private insurance. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit satellitehaiku.substack.com

We talk about Shawn’s patented microwave shortcut, first world problems™️, dumb uses of AI, the AI commencement speech “boo” trend, AI hallucinations, the AI “bubble” feeling (whether or not it’s actually a bubble), comparing this AI wave to the 2000 dotcom wave, the Trump firehose of s**t, finding solace and hope in things (Biosphere 2, radically zooming out, the overview effect, surrendering to...

We talk about Shawn’s tenacious cold, the hantavirus outbreak, pandemic insanity, MiLo’s paintings, his upcoming show, and Bob Ross. Then we talk about for an hour about our current state of religious (non)belief and how we got here. Mentioned in this episode Emmanuel Swedenborg, and especially his writings in Divine Love and Wisdom , Divine Providence , and Apocalypse Revealed . Rupert Sheldrake...

We talk about generalists vs specialists, the communications degree, film school then and now, the process vs the product (redux), Disney layoffs, creativity as a temperament, retirement, doomscrolling (hantavirus, ebola, SARS, COVID, and related conspiracy thinking), the Artemis mission (and flat-earthers), Q-Anon, wrong number spam, scamming the scammers, tolerating uncertainty, first world prob...

We talk about our podcast as a family artifact, home tech challenges, class reunions, digitizing MiLo’s old film projects, our celebrity doppelgängers, Charlize Theron, synchronicity, George Gurdjieff’s attention exercises, Lebron James and other athletic savants, the magical thinking of children, learning languages, John Vervaeke’s “four ways of knowing,” IQ and the definition of intelligence, As...

We talk about mountains, trains, snow, the Donner Party, medical “diseases of opulence,” 80s teen movies, categories of 80s parents, finding jobs during a downturn, AI and the future of jobs, the market for craftsmanship and artisanal goods, hipsters, the process and the product, the Luddites, local vs. global capitalism, AI writing, AI sycophancy, AI psychosis, AI artists, brain hemisphere differ...

MiLo shares an update on his grandbabies and uses that to riff on the constant versus the variant (nature versus nurture). We linger on parenthood for a bit, and then we talk about approaches to human learning, analogous approaches to training AI, Waldorf education, screen use and attention span, ADHD, the purpose of school and different college majors, STEM versus the humanities, the idea of the...

We talk about audiophiles, stereos of our youth, early portable music devices, white gentrification, artistic idiosyncrasies, writing, the pap smear test, videoconferencing apps, libertarians, Andreessen, Musk, Zuckerberg and the end of the Metaverse, the stupidity of supposedly smart people, the daily barrage of crime and scandal, fears about the midterms and 2028 elections. Mentioned in this epi...

We talk about the challenge of focusing on normal life, Trump’s fundamental laziness and capriciousness, art after tragedies like 9/11, the diminishing returns of escapism, dystopia-induced anxiety vs depression, eschatological beliefs, children as an investment with delayed returns, society vs selfishness, the hierarchy of self-identification, what capitalism can and can’t solve, America as non-d...

We talk about daylight savings, the war with Iran, ancient civilizations in North America, Lucy (aka “the missing link”), Charles Darwin’s bone collection, the brontosaurus, Amerigo Vespucci, John Hancock, chagas disease, science, freedom vs. security, Orwell, the S.A.V.E. Act, the Dunning-Kruger effect, the need for certainty and cognitive closure, James Talarico, consequentialism, secular morali...

We talk about MiLo’s new grandson, parenting, germaphobia, catastrophizing, panic attacks, our love language, learning the hard way, idiosyncrasies of houses, intuitive design and its opposite, the AI future as Terminator versus R2D2, the emerging techno-status gap, Luddites, AI use cases, Shawn’s journey down an Epstein Files rabbit hole, syndicates of capital, the Iran war, taxing the rich, and...

Shawn gets a little salty about Trump’s SOTU address (which he avoided), while MiLo compares Trump to Liberace. After indulging that digression for a bit, we talk about the closeted 1980s. We come back to the state of US politics, then we talk about cults, theocracy, the ability to recognize truth, tolerating uncertainty, the Tucson rodeo, deconstruction (from the church), embracing mystery, the G...

Happy birthday to MiLo! Shawn is recovering from a cold, so we talk about that and about losing your voice, then about (the royal formerly known as) Prince Andrew, political accountability (former President of S. Korea Yoon Suk Yeol, former Philippine President Duterte and his successor), whether the Epstein “dominoes” are really starting to fall, Anarcho-Capitalism, breakfast sandwiches, the “col...

MiLo (“Abu”) welcomes a new grandson, and we talk about pregnancy and birth. Then we talk about discrimination and personal blind spots, “cooperative interruption,” daydreaming, optimizing yourself to perform better, lifehacks, material wealth and happiness, striving versus self-acceptance, envy, commute time as a predictor of school success, the power of intention, classical yoga versus kashmir s...

We have thoughts about sleep. Then we talk about movies and entertainment—Quentin Tarantino’s films, Elmore Leonard adaptations, The Matrix, F1 (movie), Justin Timberlake, K-Pop Demon Hunters, the preteen years, Brian Eno’s definition of charisma, The Talking Heads, being different to be cool, Star Wars, Mon Rovîa, Mazes & Monsters (1982 Tom Hanks film), the Renaissance of female acting roles in t...

We talk about what’s happening in Minneapolis and debate whether the Trump administration is pursuing a strategy or just sort of chaotically pushing against civil norms and legal boundaries. Shawn sees a method in the madness and points to the existence of Project 2025 as evidence of coordination and a commitment to establish something durable. Milo plays devil’s advocate, dubious that this collec...

We talk about helping elderly parents with tech support, situations when AI unhelpfully offers help, the unnatural mix of high and low quality in AI output, machines vs the human experience of creating art, the engineer/STEM perspective on art and creativity, the real revenge of the nerds, dad jokes, living in the lie; living in the truth. Mentioned in this episode Ted Chiang: Why A.I. Isn’t Going...

We talk about works we created long ago, old tech, operant conditioning oneself, checklists, the memory palace, MiLo’s dad’s collections of stamps and old baseball cards, Warren Buffet’s stock market advice, the scammer mindset as a strange superpower, Elizabeth Holmes and Bernie Madoff, trying to learn options trading, trying to time the market, sneakerheads, Yeezeys, Minneapolis and its preceden...

We talk about being creatures of habit, aging parents, purpose and meaning in the context of work and AI, and what it feels like to live in this age of rapid and accelerating change. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit satellitehaiku.substack.com

We talk about family gatherings and family estrangement, the horseshoe effect in political ideology, the nazi problem on the right, incels, women in politics, misogyny, super-wealthy welfare queens, the rise of leftist economic populism, right-wing populism, wearing shoes in the house, Filipino family parties, gravy, family estrangement (redux), confirmation bias, scientific consensus as a heurist...

We talk about conflicting nutrition advice, confirmation bias, Jedi mind tricks as a parenting technique, our visceral aversion to blaming and shaming, consequentialism in parenting, older/younger sibling dynamics, being triggered by criticism and corrections, back seat driving, thinking out loud versus in your head, chemistry in relationships, psychopathology versus polygraph tests, the persisten...

We talk about creating, procrastinating, collaborating, seeing our own past work with fresh eyes, discipline and the lack thereof, arts & craft fairs, art criticism, having your beliefs challenged, alternative energy, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and leaving work unfinished because you are finished with it. Mentioned in this episode Don’t Look Up (2021 Netflix film) Landman (Paramount+ series)...

We talk about atmospheric rivers, The Doobie Brothers, suburban myths and life before the internet, Rush Limbaugh, the American Revolution, Simón Bolivar, the Haudenosaunee confederacy, the decline of language, and MiLo’s voiceover career that could have been. Mentioned in this episode L.A. Story (1991 film written by and starring Steve Martin) Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary The American Revolution (n...