💌 Do you even leap?

It’s been a while since I wrote to you. Ahoy and, erm: merry solstice, happy calendar new year, happy lunar new year, happy feb 29th, etc. I was desperately trying to find an apppropriate pun for this museletter, given the auspicious date. So desperate, I turned to shoggoth to ask it if it knew of any puns.

Here are half a dozen “top-tier puns and witticisms to mark the occasion with humour” [shoggoth’s words, not mine]:

These are, frankly, beyond terrible. But not even in a “so bad it’s funny” kind of way. This is more like a not even wrong response, as in: not even funny.

Artificially emotional

For those of us paying attention, chatGPT—the main tool many of us use to access shoggoth—has experienced a noticeable degradation in quality. Just over a week ago there were reports of chatGPT “having a stroke,” “going insane,” “rambling,” and “losing it.” And around the same time, Gemini (formerly Bard, Google’s flagship AI product) presented blatantly inaccurate hallucinations, showcasing that AI is just as biased as the parameters it works within.

Will AI recover? Of course. The genie/djinn is out of the bottle now. And so we might get to enjoy the moderate apocalypses that ensue. Or the exacerbation of our metacrisis. Either way, it’ll be a fun and bizarre ride. I’ve given up shaking my staff like an old man seemingly ‘not with the times’ whilst proclaiming the ‘end times’. It’s no fun lingering in the metacrisis—far better to midwit it with the masses.

Besides: there are some fascinating overlaps between decentralised, censorship resistant, transparent, open-sourced protocols being worked on in the wondrous worlds of web3. These projects are, in my mind, an essential piece of the puzzle for ensuring that the technology of artificial intelligence does not completely centralise into Orwellian dystopias. Too much power in the hands of the few is not a good thing.

Dark Forest Adventure Quest

I’ve spent the last half-decade deep in the dark forest of web3—and soon I shall be prototyping a 5-week online cohort-based learning program to assist adventurous folk seeking to learn the ways of web3.

This course will cover wallet creation and safety, asymmetric cryptography, consensus mechanisms, smart contracts, decentralised autonomous organisations and governance, non-fungible tokens, zero-knowledge proofs, decentralised finance and physical infrastructure, regenerative finance, non-fungible tokens, decentralised social media, web1/web2/web3, generative art, subcultures, psyops and memes, but idk nfa dyor and more.

This is not a course on how to get rish.* It’s a course in which you will gain direct participatory knowledge of web3. You will experience, first hand, how revolutionary this is. This is one of the key areas where the future of leadership and coordination is happening; permissionlessly, right now.

* But I hope to impart to you enough street smarts to ensure you do not get rekt.

This remains one of the most important avenues of development in our noösphere—just as significant as the internet itself.

I want for you to experience for yourself the physiological quickening and ‘oh my!’ insight-cascades of realising the profundity of web3. And you can’t do that whilst on the sidelines, or punting within a centralised exchange.*

* That would be like learning about the internet via the newspaper. Oh, also: if you think crytpo is full of scams—you’re right, it is. As many emerging fields are. But also know: the biggest and most impactful scams have all been via centralised platforms and exchanges—not web3. Even during the crash of a few years back, protocols like AAVE worked just fine. And—beyond the layers of genuine repugnancy and grift—there are vistas of wholesomeness to be found.

I’ll share the curriculum in a future post. If you are interested in being part of the first cohort—please register your email over at drjasonfox.com/dark-forest-adventure-quest (I am doing a genuine sense-check here—maybe it’s just me who’s interested? 😅).

Leaping—not crawling

Now, where were we? Ah yes: leap year puns aren’t really a thing. But the concept of leaps reminded me of the ‘local maximum’ problem.

Imagine there’s an optimisation algorithm designed to find the highest point in an area. The algorithm works by crawling around a plain and scanning adjacent spaces. If all of the adjacent spaces are lower in height than where the algorithm is situated, the algorithm has found the highest point. Huzzah!

Except—if the algorithm ends up on a small mound instead of finding the highest mountain nearby, it will have only reached a local maximum instead of finding the the global maximum. This illustrates how algorithms might settle for a suboptimal solution that seems best within a limited perspective—rather than exploring further for the truly best solution.

I find it an apt metaphor for our times. Artificial intelligence might offer seemingly optimal answers—but if we rely on this alone, we will only be artificially intelligent. That might be enough, until it isn’t.

Now, as ever, is a time in which we must keep our wits about us. The deft acuity we ought cultivate behooves us to see around corners. Do not be caught flat-footed in these times of exponential change. Be nimble, curious and vital. Keep your wits about you—leap in and learn.*

* Singapore gets it.

There’s still hope dammit

Back on the 4th of October I wrote a post, wondering if we are beyond hope. And we’ve all seen what’s happened since then.*

* An ongoing state-sponsored genocide resulting in an obscene number of women, children, doctors, and journalists killed. Australians deciding to not recognise First Nation’s people in the consitituition (thanks to an effective fear and disinformation campaign). A US soldier literally immolating himself in protest to his country’s complicity in genocide—which mainstream media doesn’t report upon (or actively tries to smear). The proven efficacy of fear, disinformation and atrocity propaganda. That I still have progressive-except-for-palestine friends who are still ‘unsure’ as to whether 13,000+ children horribly killed—with many more dying from starvation right now—is a bad thing. “It’s so complicated,” they say. The fact that, in the past decade we have “successfully indoctrinated 2 billion people to take to the ballet boxes to vote for (extreme) right political movements to ultimately install a dictator/demagogue/autocrat controlled regime that vehemently denies the existence of climate change and global warming and vows to keep on excavating fossil fuels to grow the economy” (as Dutch speaker Bart Flos put it). The fact that most of us are so overworked and distracted we have neither the time nor wit to care. There’s more but... our context is grim.

Yet still, I find myself cursed with a pervasive sense of hope. It’s so heavy, this hope, and it’s so often the source of despair. Yet still: I hope.

It’s kind of embarrassing, and I am not sure I actually believe in the hope. But it’s there. Of course, I’d love to be able to more readily summon the requisite sociopathy that allows one to be selective in what they care for, so as to make money whilst the world burns. (We are all obligate sociopaths, btw). But I often can’t, these days. Too much damn hope.

Recently I came across this old post from the philosopher-poet Bayo Akomolafe, written eight years ago. It rekindled something in me, which sparked a healthy shift in how I relate to hope. It may be apt for you, too.

Hope is the trickster

“Tricksters are stewards of queer hope,” Bayo writes. “coaxing us away from safe grounds to the monstrous ambiguities of being more fully present. The disturbing mist in the way. The comedic is not merely about laughter, it’s about accounting for the awkward. Acknowledging limitations.

Thwarting the tried and true. Perverting the obvious. So, when things start to get irresistibly funny; when what was once serious and absolutely certain becomes a caricature of itself; when what feels true is spoken from the mouths of jesters and ‘lies’ becloud the wisdom of the wise; when the sentences of the normal start to sound like gibberish; when the righteous spear tips of fundamentalism become the blood-stained claws of unbridled hate; when differences become weaponized territories; when nuance is sacrificed at the guillotine of political convenience; and, when ‘reason’ itself bends over backwards to touch his own private parts, look for cracks in the pillars. Look for the trickster: run to the safety of trouble. A happy chuckle precedes the lightening bolt that kindles the fire – for those whom the gods wish to kill, they first make mad – with ecstasy.”

Running to the safety of trouble

I’ve been away from it all for some time. My word for 2023 was “druid”. I didn’t share it with the world, as since launching The “Choose One Word” Ritual of Becoming I kind of cursed it for myself. But if I look back upon my chapters; the trickstery-ones have always been my most efficacious for me: rogue, king, prime, pirate, gentleman, jester, wizard, fool, bard, hermit, ???, ???, druid.

* It’s all good now; only it’s a more subtle and profound thing—with greater emphasis on the ritual of becoming; not the One Word beacon that is the distillation of much reflection, introspection and contemplation.

I have a genuine sense of my Word for the year ahead—but I’ll probably wait until April Fool’s Day to share it. My year of the druid certainly opened me to world pain and grief. It was a bit much. I feel a bit like Stańczyk (the Polish court jester) must of felt when he was the only person at a royal ball who was troubled by the news that the Muscovites had captured Smolensk. Except I’m not so much concerned for Smolensk as I am about life in the biosphere of this planet we share.

Suffice to say: it’s a clown world out there. (You can see in the background of this artwork—people are having a great time, all jolly, not a care at all about what’s happening, wot metacrisis?).

I recall this quote from Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art

“Most of the travelers, liars, thieves, and shameless personalities of the twentieth century are not tricksters at all, then. Their disruptions are not subtle enough, or pitched at a high enough level. Trickster isn’t a run-of-the-mill liar and thief. When he lies and steals, it isn’t so much to get away with something or get rich as to disturb the established categories of truth and property and, by so doing, open the road to possible new worlds.”

Time to be more subtle again, amidst the trouble once more.

New newsletter who dis?

I have updated the way my personal indie digital garden website works*—foxwizard.com has a new look and feel (with many kinks yet to iron out). I now have two newsletters. In theory, you are subscribed to both:

the museletter // intimate longform epistles, wherein I share what’s on my mind, along with glimmers worth attending to. It’s totally NSWF—as in, not safe for my own work. But it’s what you are reading right now and I appreciate you.

the spellbook // wit, wisdom and wiles to help you be a more effective imposter within the mythical ‘future of leadership’. This is what the museletter was meant to be, before I started relating to you as a friend rather than an “audience”. Now, the spellbook will be a chance to share shorter/spicier lessons and provocations.

The pages from my spellbook will cover the following domains: quest leadership, metamodern wizardry, bardic savvy, druidic sensibilities, and fox magic. Amongst other things.

* With immense gratitude to Professor Cathy Sarisky of Spectral Web Services. It is so good to have someone with coding savvy on your side. Immensely recommended.

drjasonfox.com will remain my corporate propaganda site, geared towards the speaking engagements that allow me to trojan-horse quest leadership sensibilities into Enterprise Land.

Newish podcast appearance

It’s here—my conversation on Humans of Purpose with the gracious and inimitable Mike Davis. We traverse humanity, the internet, quiet quitting, DAOs, video games and post-authenticity...and more! Have a listen.

Precious nostalgia

Our friend Jeff gave Kim his film camera for her to try and it’s been so fun. Holding a film camera and being aware of the preciousness of a roll of film, with its limited capacity, added a once-off-ness to each moment captured (ichi-go, ichi-e).

We had dinner with our friend Anna the other night, and the topic of preciousness came up. That quality of something being special, fragile, rare and sentimental, all at once. I wonder: when you hear the word preciousness—what comes to mind for you?

Thank you, as ever, for reading.