Cinemorphosis

Category: technology

  • Fiona Hill and the Art of Clear Seeing

    Fiona Hill and the Art of Clear Seeing

    Fiona Hill stunned me on Andrew Sullivan’s Dishcast—not with theatrics or self-branding, but with something rarer: unvarnished intelligence. She spoke for more than an hour, weaving global politics, history, and sober analysis together without even a hint of schtick. No sales pitch. No influencer glow. Just clarity and competence. Listening to her felt like opening a window in a stale room. I’m now on track to read both of her books, if only to spend more time in the presence of a mind that refuses mediocrity.

    A few moments hit me squarely. She explained that she has never been drawn to social media, which she sees as a global time sink—an interactive void where people argue about nothing as if it were everything. Then she broadened the frame: we are living through a massive transition in politics, work, education, and culture, and we’d be naïve to pretend we understand it. She argued for humility—an acknowledgment that we can’t yet grasp the scale or direction of the upheaval we’re living through. We are, she suggested, walking into the unknown whether we like it or not.

    Sullivan agreed, calling this moment a “liminal” period in history. I hadn’t heard that word in years and had to remind myself that it means transitional—the uneasy space between what was and what will be. Hill embraced the term. She and Sullivan compared our moment to the Hundred Years’ War. No one living through the 14th century knew they were participants in a century-long conflict. They only knew that the ground was shifting.

    That’s where we are now. Nations wrestling for dominance, AI upending national security and labor markets, globalization rewiring identity and culture, political leaders who behave like pranksters with nuclear codes—this is our chaos. And like medieval villagers, we have no idea how long this period will last. Are these volatile leaders a temporary fever, or will they define an entire era? Are we living through a Hundred-Year Grifter Period? No one knows.

    Strangely, the conversation felt therapeutic. Hearing two sharp, grounded people speak honestly about uncertainty made me feel less panicked and less isolated. My anxiety and existential dread aren’t signs of unraveling—they’re signs of being alert during a liminal age that refuses easy explanations.

  • The Age of Kayfabe Outrage

    The Age of Kayfabe Outrage

    Writers like Robert Kaplan and Jaron Lanier have observed that society has traded analysis for outrage, swapping measured thought for emotional spectacle. I left Twitter—sorry, X—years ago to escape that hurricane of indignation, only to find the same moral theater thriving on Threads. Outrage, it turns out, is social media’s cash crop.

    This made me think of the Old and New Testaments, where prophets, Paul, and even Jesus in the temple showed no shortage of righteous fury. But their outrage was different—it was rooted in moral clarity and the courage to confront hypocrisy, not in the dopamine mechanics of public performance.

    Today’s outrage is a knockoff. It mimics the moral fire of the prophets but burns with cheaper fuel: vanity, self-branding, and the need to belong to a digital mob. It’s not the world of moral outrage we inhabit—it’s the world of fake outrage, a kind of performative fury that convinces even its actors of its authenticity. Like professional wrestlers in Vince McMahon’s ring, we’ve forgotten how to remove the mask.

    This is kayfabe morality: outrage as entertainment, conviction as cosplay. And unlike the prophetic anger of George Carlin or Isiah, which illuminated hypocrisy, ours merely monetizes it.

  • When Buying a New Computer Results in an Existential Crisis

    When Buying a New Computer Results in an Existential Crisis

    A computer is never just a computer. It’s a mirror of who you think you are — your ambitions, your identity, your delusions of purpose. If you fancy yourself a “power user” or “content creator,” you don’t want a flimsy piece of plastic gasping for air. You want a machine that hums with confidence — a gleaming altar to your productivity fantasies. You crave speed, efficiency, thermal dominance, at least 500 nits of blinding radiance, and a QHD or OLED screen that flatters your sense of destiny. The machine must look sleek and purposeful, the way a surgeon’s scalpel looks purposeful, even if it’s mostly used to slice digital cheesecake.

    That’s the mythology of computing. Now let’s talk about me. I’m 64, a man whose “power user” moments consist of reading an online article on one screen while taking notes on the other — a thrilling simulation of intellectual heroism. In these moments, I feel like an epidemiologist drafting a breakthrough paper on respiratory viruses, when in truth I’m analyzing a 900-word essay about AI in education or the psychological toll of protein shakes. I could do this work on a Chromebook, but that would insult my inner Corvette driver — the middle-aged man who insists on 400 horsepower for a trip to the grocery store, just to know it’s there.

    My setup hasn’t changed in seven years: an Acer Predator Triton 500 with an RTX 2080 (a $3,200 review model, not my dime), an Asus 4K monitor, and a mechanical keyboard that clicks like an old newsroom. The system runs flawlessly. Which is precisely the problem. Not needing a new computer makes me feel irrelevant — like a man whose life has plateaued. Buying one, however, rekindles the illusion that I’m still scaling great heights, performing tasks of vast cosmic significance rather than grading freshman essays about screen addiction.

    So yes, I’ll probably buy a Mac Mini M4 Pro with 48 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage. Overkill, absolutely. “Future-proofing”? A sales pitch for gullible tech romantics. But after seven years with the Acer, I’ll have earned my delusion. The real problem is not specs — it’s time. By the time I buy a new computer, I’ll be 66, retired, and sitting before a computer whose lifespan will exceed my own. That realization turns every new purchase into an existential audit.

    I used to buy things to feel powerful; now I buy them to feel temporary. A computer, a car, a box of razors — all built to outlive their owner. The marketing says upgrade your life; the subtext whispers your warranty expires first.

    Maybe that makes me a miserabilist — a man who can turn even consumer electronics into meditations on mortality. But at least I’ll have the fastest machine in the cemetery, writing The Memoirs of a Miserabilist in 4K clarity, with perfect thermal efficiency and 500 nits of existential dread.

  • Clean Teeth and the Lost Art of Touch

    Clean Teeth and the Lost Art of Touch

    Before my teeth cleaning this morning, I found myself venting to the office manager about the days when a cleaning was so gentle you could practically nap through it, instead of today’s ultrasonic assault that feels like you’re being interrogated by NASA hardware. My hygienist overheard me and promised to go old-school: mostly hand tools, reserving the high-frequency torture wand for the bottom front teeth, those stubborn little stalactites of tartar that laugh in the face of manual labor.

    The result was 38 minutes of blissful nostalgia—quiet, precise, almost tender. And while my mouth was being cleaned, my ears took a trip back to childhood. Through the thin partition I could hear my dentist chatting with a few middle-aged men as he worked on their crowns—no drill whine, just the low murmur of camaraderie. They talked about sports, camping trips, family vacations, and cars in the same unhurried rhythm I remembered from the 1960s barbershops of my youth.

    Back then, my father would get a hot towel and a straight-razor shave while I sat on the cracked vinyl chair, inhaling the comforting cocktail of menthol, talc, and motor oil drifting in from the mechanic’s next door. I’d chew my complimentary piece of Bazooka bubblegum and leaf through Mad Magazine while the barber’s razor sang against my father’s stubble. The air was thick with aftershave, laughter, and unspoken faith in the goodness of ordinary life.

    That’s what I felt again this morning—a fleeting return to a world where work was done by hand, talk was unhurried, and trust was the background hum. My teeth may be cleaner, but what really got polished was my nostalgia for human touch in an age of whirring machines.

  • Why Modern Dentistry Is More Barbaric Than Ever

    Why Modern Dentistry Is More Barbaric Than Ever

    Modern dentistry has gotten so bad that I’m already resentful about my 10 a.m. teeth cleaning, which is coming up in about three hours. By the time I get home from the dental clinic and swing a kettlebell, it’ll be past eleven, and I’ll be more drained from the dentist’s chair than from deadlifts. What used to be a minor inconvenience—like getting an oil change—has mutated into something I actively dread.

    About three years ago, I noticed the shift. My hygienists are top-notch: precise, cheerful, and merciless. They’ve traded their humble hand tools for futuristic contraptions that sound like dental drones and feel like punishment. Since COVID, the industry has embraced high-frequency ultrasonic and piezoelectric scalers that vibrate at tens of thousands of cycles per second—tiny jackhammers pulverizing tartar with surgical precision and medieval sadism. Add to that the air-polishing jets that blast your gums with baking soda dust, the industrial-strength suction roaring in your ear, and the chemical rinses that sting like mouthwash brewed in hell, and you’ve got yourself an ordeal.

    Once upon a time, a cleaning was almost meditative—forty minutes of harmless scraping and daydreaming under the warm hum of fluorescent lights. Now it’s an endurance sport in which I try to appear stoic, pretending the ultrasonic harpoon digging into my gumline is just “a mild tickle.” What was once a routine tune-up has become a high-tech excavation—cleaner, faster, and infinitely more barbaric.

    It’s one of those perverse cases where technological progress has made the experience worse. Dentistry has gone digital, and comfort has gone extinct. Here’s hoping I can channel this resentment into a rage-fueled kettlebell session worthy of the gods of molar misery.

  • Brushing His Teeth in Purgatory

    Brushing His Teeth in Purgatory

    Yesterday, I ran into B—a colleague and friend of thirty years—in the faculty bathroom. He stood at the sink, looking tiny in an oversized blue oxford and baggy black pleated slacks, brushing his teeth with grim determination, the way a soldier might polish his boots before a hopeless battle. His reflection wore a bloodhound’s face: drooping eyes, sagging mouth, the look of someone who’d run out of surprises.

    We exchanged small talk about our students, about AI, about how much the classroom had changed. His voice was thin, almost apologetic.
    “They’ve checked out,” he said. “They use AI so much, they’ve just… checked out.”

    I tried to commiserate, mentioning how quickly the culture had shifted since the first wave of ChatGPT essays three years ago. But he didn’t answer. He rinsed, spat, and walked out without another word—already halfway gone.

    It isn’t just B. My younger colleagues say the same thing. Even my wife, who teaches writing in middle school, tells me her students have that same vacant look. Everyone seems ghosted by their own profession, still performing the motions of care while quietly surrendering.

    The image that won’t leave me is B—graying, stooped, and haloed in the pitiless glow of the faculty bathroom’s fluorescent lights—scrubbing his molars like an inmate serving life. He looked less like a man starting his day than one serving time in it, counting down to a retirement that recedes faster than his gumline.

  • The Laptop That Refuses to Die

    The Laptop That Refuses to Die

    I never imagined my $3,000 Acer gaming laptop—armed with an RTX 2080 and given to me as a review model back in 2019—would still be chugging along like a caffeinated mule nearly seven years later. It was supposed to be a flashy fling, not a long-term relationship. Yet here we are, the old beast still running my digital life as a home desktop replacement, while newer machines preen on YouTube reviews like showroom models whispering, “You deserve better.”

    Recently, I started the ritual again—tech research as performance art. I even discovered a comment I’d left a year ago under a Mac Mini review, declaring with absolute conviction that it would be my next computer. A year later, I’m still typing this on the Acer. Why? Because the damn thing refuses to die. Sure, I’m not exactly rendering Pixar films here; the most demanding task I throw at it is uploading Nikon footage. But still—seven years? That’s geriatric in tech years.

    Then came the unnerving thought: what if this laptop outlives my enthusiasm? What if it just… keeps working? The fantasy of upgrading evaporates under the weight of practicalities—transferring files, wrestling with two-step verification, updating passwords, the tedium of digital reincarnation. Let’s be honest: the desire for a “new system” might be less about performance and more about the dopamine of novelty.

    A darker impulse lurks beneath: part of me wants the Acer to fail, to give me permission to move on. But it won’t. It boots up every morning like a loyal mutt, eager to serve. And really—what are the odds that a new Mac Mini or Asus A18 Ryzen 7 would deliver another seven trouble-free years? Slim to none. So, I’m waiting. Not quite ready to buy, not quite ready to let go. Maybe the pursuit of new tech is its own kind of seduction—the chase more intoxicating than the catch.

  • I Am the Last Hands-Free Professor

    I Am the Last Hands-Free Professor

    The twins are home today—the high school’s closed for Veterans Day while my college closes for it tomorrow—so I left the house fifteen minutes early, a small luxury that spared me the traffic gauntlet. As I crossed campus, I spotted two young professors striding toward the Science Building. They could have been clones: mid-thirties, tall, lean, the same curated beard, and that monochrome uniform of urban intellect—black derby jackets, black jeans, black everything. It was as if an algorithm had dressed them.

    Each hand was occupied. Their left hands dangled a thermos and a lunch case like matching luggage; their right hands gripped identical strapped tech bags, no doubt cradling laptops and a faint sense of self-importance. Watching their synchronized march, I realized something about myself. After thirty-five years of teaching, I’ve never once looked professorial. My fatal flaw? Free hands. I move from car to office unburdened, thanks to my trusty backpack—functional, roomy, and entirely devoid of aesthetic ambition. It says less “professor” than “Wyoming park ranger with tenure.” But practicality has its own dignity.

    Until this morning, I’d never questioned my need to be unencumbered. Why not juggle a thermos, lunch case, and tech bag like everyone else? The answer reached back decades—to the zoo trips of childhood, when my mother insisted I bring a sweater “just in case.” I never needed it. I only needed freedom. That sweater haunted every outing, tied around my waist, falling in the dirt, collecting dust like a symbol of parental over-preparation. My whole day was spent managing it. Somewhere between those early years and now, the sweater evolved into the backpack—my lifelong protest against needless carrying.

    I could, I suppose, upgrade to a minimalist tech-sleek backpack that would make me blend in with the black-jacket brigade. But I won’t. I’ve made peace with my pack. It’s my declaration of independence—my refusal to let adulthood turn into perpetual sweater management.

  • Bad But Worth It? De-skilling in the Age of AI (college essay prompt)

    Bad But Worth It? De-skilling in the Age of AI (college essay prompt)

    AI is now deeply embedded in business, the arts, and education. We use it to write, edit, translate, summarize, and brainstorm. This raises a central question: when does AI meaningfully extend our abilities, and when does it quietly erode them?

    In “The Age of De-Skilling,” Kwame Anthony Appiah argues that not all de-skilling is equal. Some forms are corrosive and hollow us out; some are “bad but worth it” because the benefits outweigh the loss; some are so destructive that no benefit can redeem them. In that framework, AI becomes most interesting when we talk about strategic de-skilling: deliberately off-loading certain tasks to machines so we can focus on deeper, higher-level work.

    Write a 1,700-word argumentative essay in which you defend, refute, or complicate the claim that not all dependence on AI is harmful. Take a clear position on whether AI can function as a “bad but worth it” form of de-skilling that frees us for more meaningful thinking—or whether, in practice, it mostly dulls our edge and trains us into passivity.

    Your essay must:

    • Engage directly with Appiah’s concepts of corrosive vs. “bad but worth it” de-skilling.
    • Distinguish between lazy dependence on AI and deliberate collaboration with it.
    • Include a counterargument–rebuttal section that uses at least one example of what we might call Ozempification—people becoming less agents and more “users” of systems. You may draw this example from one or more of the following Black Mirror episodes: “Joan Is Awful,” “Nosedive,” or “Smithereens.”
    • Use at least three sources in MLA format, including Appiah and at least one Black Mirror episode.

    For your supporting paragraphs, you might consider:

    • Cognitive off-loading as optimization
    • Human–AI collaboration in creative or academic work
    • Ethical limits of automation
    • How AI is redefining what counts as “skill”

    Your goal is to show nuanced critical thinking about AI’s role in human skill development. Don’t just declare AI good or bad; use Appiah’s framework to examine when AI’s shortcuts lead to degradation—and when, if used wisely, they might lead to liberation.

    3 building-block paragraph assignments

    1. Concept Paragraph: Explaining Appiah’s De-Skilling Framework

    Assignment:
     Write one well-developed paragraph (8–10 sentences) in which you explain Kwame Anthony Appiah’s distinctions among corrosive de-skilling, “bad but worth it” de-skilling, and de-skilling that is so destructive no benefit can justify it.

    • Use at least one short, embedded quotation from Appiah.
    • Paraphrase his ideas in your own words and clarify the differences between the three categories.
    • End the paragraph by briefly suggesting how AI might fit into one of these categories (without fully arguing your position yet).

    Your goal is to show that you understand Appiah’s framework clearly enough to use it later as the backbone of an argument.

    2. Definition Paragraph: Lazy Dependence vs. Deliberate Collaboration

    Assignment:
     Write one paragraph in which you define and contrast lazy dependence on AI and deliberate collaboration with AI in your own words.

    • Begin with a clear topic sentence that sets up the contrast.
    • Give at least one concrete example of “lazy dependence” (for instance, using AI to dodge thinking, reading, or drafting altogether).
    • Give at least one concrete example of “deliberate collaboration” (for instance, using AI to brainstorm options, check clarity, or off-load repetitive tasks while you still make the key decisions).
    • End the paragraph with a sentence explaining which of these two modes you think is more common among students right now—and why.

    This paragraph will later function as a “conceptual lens” for your body paragraphs.

    3. Counterargument Paragraph: Ozempification and Black Mirror

    Assignment:
     After watching one of the assigned Black Mirror episodes (“Joan Is Awful,” “Nosedive,” or “Smithereens”), write one counterargument paragraph that challenges the optimistic idea of “strategic de-skilling.”

    • Briefly describe a key moment or character from the episode that illustrates Ozempification—a person becoming more of a “user” of a system than an agent of their own life.
    • Explain how this example suggests that dependence on powerful systems (platforms, algorithms, or AI-like tools) can erode self-agency and critical thinking rather than free us.
    • End by posing a difficult question your eventual essay will need to answer—for example: If it’s so easy to slide from strategic use to dependence, can we really trust ourselves with AI?

    Later, you’ll rebut this paragraph in the full essay, but here your job is to make the counterargument as strong and persuasive as you can.

  • Why Willpower Can’t Save You from the Snack Aisle

    Why Willpower Can’t Save You from the Snack Aisle

    After hearing something thoughtful interviews with journalist Julia Belluz and scientist Kevin Hall about their new book Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us and KCRW food expert Evan Kleinman praise the book, I broke down and decided to see if the authors had any new insights into the exploration of what I call humans’ mismanagement of eating. The book begins on a promising note: The authors observe that in the animal kingdom, we are hard-wired with “food intelligence,” a natural-born instinct to regulate the quantity of what we eat and to target foods that our body craves for optimal nutrition. Our instinctive connection with food went haywire in the twentieth century: “Many of us started to eat too much, and the wrong things, even when we didn’t want to. Obesity rates began rising, first in rich, Western, industrialized countries such as the United States, then elsewhere.” Between 1980 and today, the obesity rate has doubled in several countries. Seventy percent of American adults and a third of U.S. children are classified as overweight or obese. Obesity-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes kills over half a million Americans a year. Obesity-related health costs are in the trillions.

    One of the major reasons for this breakdown in our instinctive hardwiring to naturally eat well is our disconnection from food: how it’s grown, produced, and cooked. We are now addicted to factory-produced fat, sugar, and salt. 

    Shaming and the gospel of self-discipline doesn’t help even though, as the authors point out, the wellness industry points an accusatory finger at our own moral shortcomings (lack of willpower, gluttony, and sloth) for our failures at weight management. The diet industries, the authors claim, are asking the wrong questions when they ask what is the best diet and how people can lose weight. For example, there are influencers who say low-carb is the best, but the authors show studies that contradict that claim. Low-carb diets are no better than low-fat ones in the long-term. The authors argue that championing the so-called ultimate diet is not the right question. Instead, the more helpful question is this: “Why do we eat what we eat?” Their obsession with answering this question is what propelled them to write the book. 

    The authors explain the problem of calories-in, calories-out as a surefire model for weight loss. The model is complicated and eventually sabotaged by the way the body reacts when we reduce calories. The metabolism slows down, we burn fewer calories doing the same exercise than we did initially, and our hunger signals rebel and scream “Eat more!” Contrary to the cheery claims of the wellness industry, eating less and exercising more usually fails within a year. 

    A more promising approach to weight management is avoiding ultra-processed foods. The more of these foods we eat, the less we are able to regulate our appetite, resulting in “a calorie glut” and weight-gain hell. But becoming food literature, replacing processed foods with whole foods, and learning to enjoy this exchange requires time and resources, which are lacking in many. Convenience and cost drive many Americans to processed food. Therefore, “the root causes” of obesity are structural. In the words of the authors: “It was never about us as individuals. Our food environment is wrecking us.” Our food environment is rewriting our brains to make us consume a calorie glut. Therefore, the food environment is making us overweight, sick, and unhappy. It is killing us. 

    Don’t consult Food Intelligence for the simple call to eat like your great-grandmother did. Even that sentiment is based on myth, the authors point out. Your great-grandmother may have spent endless hours in the kitchen exhausted while struggling “with hunger and nutrient shortfalls.” 

    One of the book’s objectives is to show how “old, unproven ideas and outdated policies continue to guide our current thinking and approaches to food.” They make it clear early on that they won’t be pushing this or that diet or even promoting “clean eating.”  If you’re looking for food puritanism, then look elsewhere. Kevin Hall admits to eating ultra-processed food and Julia Belluz admits to eating too much sugar. This book is not so much about rigid prescriptions as much as helping you change from a mindless eater to an intelligent one.