✘ Read and listen
Rave wellbeing report; Mutual funds; Culture and media in Romania; AI-focused AEO taking over SEO; The age of the fractured soul
Hi, I’m working on a piece that I couldn’t finish before today. It’s about how we can recalibrate our thinking around digital systems and brings together topics from cybernetics to artistic practice. For this week, I hope you’ll enjoy the reading and the music I have for you.
Love, Maarten
LINKS
💃 Rave wellbeing report (Aoife McGuinness & Jessie Dymond)
“This report captures insights from Overflow’s Rave Wellbeing Month in January 2025—a snapshot of how people experience the rave, not just in motion, but in mind and body. What it gives. What it takes. What lingers.”
✘ Of course, dancing and the community vibes of the dancefloor at a rave are good for you! This report shows how this plays out and how to take advantage of the highs of the dancefloor, it’s necessary to allow the rest of your life to also support your wellbeing.
⚉ Mutual funds (Kei Kreutler)
“This structure improved a fundamental principal-agent problem in fund management. By eliminating the profit motive at the management company level, Vanguard aligned the interests of fund operators with fund investors. When combined with index investing, this created a powerful feedback loop: lower costs attracted more assets, which enabled even lower costs through economies of scale. The reduction in fund expenses that followed demonstrated how organizational structure could fundamentally change the economics of financial infrastructure.”
✘ Money makes things liquid. Understanding how and where certain methods of bringing money together come from helps us understand how we can apply it in the future. Kei uses an older tool of finance to discuss how we can pave a better path forward for mutual ownership in blockchain-based ecosytems.
🥊 Culture and Media amid Romania’s fight against the far-right (Bianca Bălănescu & Andrei Petre)
“Independent cultural organisations face threats from both the political establishment and the far right. Cultural funding has been steadily cut over the years, and now independent artists and institutions are scapegoated as representatives of “woke culture” seeking to poison traditional values.”
✘ The political lurch to the right we see across Europe and globally means that whoever ends up in charge is forced to deal with the rhetoric. I talk about the importance of metaphors a lot recently, and the political arena is no different. Culture and the creative industries more broadly need to help people deal with anxieties and push through positive modes of thinking.
🅰️ Is AI-focused AEO is the new SEO? (Juliet Bennett Rylah)
“But now, AI is changing the way people search for info online. For example, you’ve probably noticed that when you ask Google a question, you’ll get an AI overview powered by Gemini, Google’s LLM, at the top of your results.”
✘ It’s getting crucial to understand how it works to get found through chatbots and LLMs. Make sure you’re not just on socials, but that you have other presence online, too. A website needs to be up-to-date, for example. More importantly still, this isn’t keyword driven, LLMs provide full answers so your content should have this - preferably with references where needed.
⛓️💥 The age of the fractured soul (Joan Westenberg)
“Now the self is atomized and hyper-legible. It performs. It displays. But it rarely commits. Commitment is friction. Friction gets in the way of scale. So we optimize for aesthetics, for visibility, for engagement. And in doing so, we trade depth for reach.”
✘ We feel better when we commit. We feel better when we do deep work. We feel better when we make real connections with other people. We know this. Now, let’s act on this knowledge. Create routines and rituals that help achieve this. (and follow along Bas’ new newsletter Calm & Fluffy where he does a great job of helping set these routines and rituals).
MUSIC
Kieran Hebden and William Tyler - what a magical combination of craftsmanships. After a first collab a few years ago, the two are coming back with a full record this year. Their first single is a shining example of how their electronic/instrumental combo works so well. If I Had A Boat is a mesmerizing piece that combines fingerpicking guitar with layered electronics. Together they create a soundworld I want to fall into with my eyes closed.