Welcome to the second edition of Book, Album, Thought. I’ve got more pithy paragraphs to recommend things to you, friend!

Book: Careless People

I bought Sarah Wynn-William’s Careless People when I read that Facebook lawyers were trying to silence her from promoting it. That’s the Streisand Effect in action!

The memoir follows her time at Facebook from the optimistic early days, through the 2016 election and into our modern hellscape. She seems like a fly on the wall of the private jets where the executives of Facebook are cavorting around the globe, toppling democracies accidentally as they enrich themselves.

Zuck, Sandberg and others are dressed down to out-of-touch, imperfect, awkward, and cruel people. Careless People.

The memoir is imperfect too, with moments of SWW seeming to rationalize her role in all of this. I quite literally couldn’t put this book down. It’s validating, angering and dumbfounding. And it’s all true!

Album: Beta

Beta by Peter Cat Recording Company is a modern marvel. The album, as a whole, builds through moments of campfire sing song, Sinatraesque cooing, and bumping synth dance parties. It’s a genre mashup that they’ve perfected - combining jazz, dance, rock and bollywood into a unique modern sound.

The lyrics are honest and poetic. A perfect example is the 6 minute song People Never Change:

“People never change, but I will
'Cause I never give a fuck
That I’ll never be enough”
…
“I don't wanna be a crowd
I just wanna be a cloud”.

I never knew it, but I’ve always wanted to be a cloud too! Put some headphones on and spend an hour in the beautiful world only they could create.

Thought: We don’t need social media

If we could skip over the rise and fall of social media, what would our world of social connection look like today? We’ve landed in a place of hollow addiction after a decade of enshittification of the platforms that promised to connect us.

My proposal is simple: text your friends.

We don’t need VCs. We don’t need CEOs. We have the tools in front of us now.

We can bring back the tradition of writing “Happy Birthday” on your Facebook wall with an annual GCal reminder and a personalized text. We can reverse the alarming trends of social isolation with more memes in the group chat.

Seriously. Text me. I’ll text you back. We’re already friends.