# The Eclipse and the Reclamation of Looking at the Same Thing

Source: https://sceneswithsimon.com/p/the-eclipse-and-the-reclamation-of
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/The-Eclipse-and-the-Reclamation-of-Looking-at-the-Same-Thing?index=0x661bd52c03af0c4208ff7e4f5d719173242169b6c7d644931a6a6afabdb6fc84c5cfa650
Submitted by misha on 2024-04-14 UTC, 4 upvotes, 1 comment

## Summary

The writer argues that the April 8 total solar eclipse offered a brief, shared experience that people should try to repeat through local, offline life rather than relying on the sky. Describing watching it from DC, the writer says millions across populous parts of Northern America gathered outside, which felt like a reclaiming of shared reality from screens. The writer links this to a wish to reinvest in local culture, such as subsidising arts, sports and community groups, and to balance digital life with connection to place.

## Article

This week, a total solar eclipse charted its course across much of the populous parts of Northern America. Millions took time out of their day to get outside and look at the burning ball of fire that give us life.

City plazas were packed, neighbours gathered in parks and rooftops, and for a moment, a few hours of the afternoon on the 8th of April, millions shared the same reality. I was in DC and only experienced 90% of it. I didn’t experience the full frisson of a total eclipse, but I saw the news anchors getting teary and the emotional gravity of this moment.

A part of its appeal is the sincere awe of seeing a total eclipse, the cold wind breezing as the temperatures drop and darkness blanketing the Earth. Humanity is cosmically unbelievably lucky to have a moon fit so perfectly into the sun for a short period of the universe’s history.

If galactic tourism existed, millions of aliens would come here to see it in person. For now, it’s just us, in the vastness of the universe marvelling at this cosmic wonder.

But… There’s something else to it. It’s a brief and joyous reclamation of a shared reality and a shared humanity. From our hovels and our infinite worlds in our phones, we come up for air from a comatose information hibernation to witness the same thing. It’s something the world needs more of. But, it doesn’t mean that we need more cosmic wonder. We don’t have to always look up. We can also just look around us.

I don’t get out enough into my local community. I don’t join a run club, or a book club, or a local dance group. I should, but I don’t. That’s on me.

But, a part of me laments the faustian bargain of how we gained so much intimate and strong global connection to others, but at the same time lost a sense of touch grass locality. It’s led to increased polarisation, disconnectedness, and a sense of distrust while it also led to the rise of connection through niche communities formed online (like, going to a Super Smash Bros tournament).

I’m sure many feel the same, trying to in some way turn off the dopamine drip in their pockets and tune back into the world around us. A part of me also sometimes feels that it might be a stronger imperative that we better manage our relationship with our media and connectedness. There’s a larger theory here about how broader connectedness destroyed many localised status games and as a result has led to broad dissatisfaction and resentment (seen in the rise of reactionary, nationalist, and isolationist movements).

It’s why I sometimes feel that one of the best ways to invigorate a turn away from the depression and malaise in the developed, western world is to reinvest in local culture: subsidising all physical arts, culture, sports, entertainment. There’s a lot of goodwill that bubbles up from there.

A total solar eclipse doesn’t happen enough for us to rely on it as a tool for humanity to look up a bit more. That is in our own hands. Somewhere there is a good middle ground where we keep the goodness of digital life and also recover that which we lost in the process. Some of that can come from technology itself (like the touch grass 2016 summer of Pokemon Go), but other ways lean towards just opting back in.

Some trends that might pick up touch grass movements

Are there trends to see/watch if we are heading in this direction? How has your relationship changed with social media?

Not much to report this week otherwise. Coming off a high of finishing my 10 mile race in my goal time and just wrestling with my novel. Aiming to start watching the Fallout series. Looks great. 👀

Speaking of the web we inherited. If we’re going to ween ourselves off from dopamine socials, it’s nicer if it comes with a return to cozy and niche internet.

Mac Budkowski wrote a great article on the slow re-rise of the niche internet.

Happily, we saw the renaissance of the Niche Internet, with Reddit, Substack, Patreon, and many others helping niche creators and communities blossom. One big challenge is discoverability, which I believe can be solved via link aggregators, boutique search engines, and SaaS-driven social media. There are already some promising projects in these areas, and I think we are on the right track to reclaim the attention that was taken by Big Tech's algorithms.

It resonates with One Thing ‘s article on the Internet’s distribution problem.

On the internet where distribution was outsourced, there was no impetus to understand intention or context, only the incentive to misinterpret to your own ends. I guess that means I won’t tweet these newsletters anymore. But then, what was I really hoping for in doing that anyway? Better to just have them reach the people who want to read them via email, and grow slowly, convincing one reader at a time that this is a club they want to be in. Then they hit the subscribe button, and we try to keep them coming back.

It’s also personally why I opted to start this newsletter in Jan 2023. A way to create my own space independent of social media.

LLMs are leaving signatures behind. One such example is the ballooning of the word “delve” found in academic papers, suggesting that some parts of the paper was generated by AI. Now, I’m not here to argue about the use of the word “delve”. I use it.

It’s in my debut novel:

I was now living among them and I had to prove to myself what the limiter was. I delved deeper into it and found proof.

Might be more of a commonwealth thing?

Anyway, what’s more interesting to me is that there’s some common tropes it pulls out that’s related to contexts.

Asking it write romantic fiction, it would commonly try placing it in “Willow Creek”. Or a fantasy setting would take place in “Eldoria”.

I tested it in ChatGPT and the 2nd refresh, it gave me Eldoria as an option.

Romance fiction got Willow Creek on the first try. 😂

I think what’s interesting about this is wondering if LLMs can reveal the average of latent spaces that we can’t really see. Now, if you search Eldoria online, you find things online, but it could just have been from its roots as an LLM idea. One piece of evidence is that the searches for it was non-existent until recently.

Nothing in ngrams either.

If Eldoria wasn’t a thing and the LLM landed on this as an average of “fantasy”, why? It could literally be the average of all fantasy latent space, but it’s conjugation into a new word is interesting. It’s also not a word that I think the average person would’ve come up with? I wonder what else is there, conceptually, in trying to reveal latent space averages.

If you were a nerdy teenager around the turn of the century and could afford it, you’d have experienced the LAN Party. I have some serious good memories on it. Loved this article that is excerpted from a book about LAN Parties by Merritt K.

It’s just good nostalgia. :)

I definitely remember hours and hours of Counter Strike, Warcraft 3, and Unreal Tournament. Were you around in this era? What did you play?

This is an old deep house track that I recently discovered. Just a great, driving beat track with vocals sampled from Oumou Sangare.

Here’s the original from Oumou Sangare - Diaraby Nene.

Although I start this newsletter talking about finding more local experiences again, listening to Oumou Sangare and reading the comments makes me tune into an experience I would never have had otherwise.

For a moment I can connect with this person. We gain so much from the internet. We connect in ways no one in humanity could’ve done in the past. But, I think we have to figure out how to keep the goodness of it. In essence, both in touching grass and on the web, it’s finding humanity in it again.

That’s it for this week folks. When you see a sunset this week, remember that it’s quite likely that others are witnessing it too. Enjoy it!

Simon

## Comments

**0x6062...8055**: Loved this, I think that a great deal of our humanity is exploring a new frontier heading toward the "world within" and that technology has somehow accelerated the outward manifestation of some of the paradigm changes that we've encountered in this same venture (the inwards venture manifest outwards changes)

Then, we have an insight and realize that all we were looking for, all that we value cannot be obtained for our "individual" selves alone, and it's only then that we really start caring...