As we continue down this path of escalating nihilistic meme violence, it can feel like the worst things have become viral. We are drowning in the memetic effluent of a capitalist media that profits by maximizing engagement. But I wonder if anyone remembers "Pay it Forward?"
A movie came out in 2000 about a kid who started a viral kindness campaign. The idea was that you do something nice for someone else with the expectation that they do the same in the future. I never really saw the movie, but I do remember the time. There were a few weeks, maybe a few months, where people started doing it. People would just be randomly nice, and everything actually just started feeling better.
Over time, the world caught up. Capitalism consumed the whole thing, and life went back to normal. 9/11 happened the next year, and the US started down the path of becoming the most twisted and evil version of itself. But there was a short time that doing nice stuff was a viral meme, a thing that people just started doing.
Gun violence doesn't have to be the only viral meme we have. We can make good things happen too.
No Sign of a Magnetar Remnant Following the Kilonova-Producing Long GRB 211211A $\sim 1.7~$Years Later
Genevieve Schroeder (Cornell), Ben Margalit, Brian D. Metzger, Wen-fai Fong, Benjamin P. Gompertz, Kate D. Alexander, Edo Berger, Tanmoy Laskar, Gavin P. Lamb, Andrew Levan, Charles D. Kilpatrick, Jillian C. Rastinejad
https://arxiv.org/a…
These days you can simulate anything you want
Driving a train or truck, flying a plane, surgeon, hotel assistant, motel operator, influencer, OF model, goat simulator, power wash simulator, football team manager, breakup simulator
When I was a kid, we barely had sim city, sim ant, flight stimulator, crazy taxi, and katamari
Now you can simulate being a tree or a rock, or a corporate slave tearing apart spaceships
Tyreek Hill accused of multiple instances of domestic violence in court filings by estranged wife
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/tyreek-
Opendoor names Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian as its CEO, following Carrie Wheeler's ouster, and taps co-founder Keith Rabois as chairman; OPEN jumps 35% after hours (Katherine Hamilton/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/business/c-suite/opend
love to see this, surprised it hadn't been on my radar.
Protesters Against AI Militarization Rally at Scale AI in San Francisco
https://www.kqed.org/news/12051183/protesters-against-ai-militarization-rally-at-sca…
Self-similar rupture of thin films of power-law fluid
Michael C Dallaston, Steven A Kedda, Scott W McCue
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.05383 https://arxiv.org…