James Gleick

"On the chat, reactions to the military strikes were emojis of a fist, an American flag, fire, praying hands, a flexed bicep, and 'Good Job Pete and your team!!,' 'Kudos to all…. Really great. God Bless,' and 'Great work and effects!'"

I mean, really. We're using American military might to kill, including civilians, and our most senior officials discuss it this way:
👊🇺🇸 🔥🙏💪🏻

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/march-24-2025?r=g7z5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

March 24, 2025

Today the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, dropped the story that senior members of the Trump administration planned the March 15 U.S.

Letters from an American
Mar 25, 2025 at 1:07pmWeb
Show threadAnna MiriamsdochterMar 25, 2025
@gleick that struck me too. It reads like the group chat of my rowing crew.
Show threadJames GleickMar 25, 2025
@venite I bet your rowing crew is far more sophisticated and thoughtful than these thugs.
Show threadAnna MiriamsdochterMar 25, 2025
@gleick also significantly less murderous, yes
Show threadferricoxideMar 25, 2025
@gleick

Death at the push of a button tends to reinforce the other dehumanizing aspects of warfare. They're not people at the ends of those weapons (either the ones delivering them or the ones being annihilated), they're just sprites.
Show threadRob KamMar 25, 2025
@gleick https://i.imgur.com/WASc0M9.jpeg
Show threadJaime RobertsonMar 25, 2025
@gleick I’m wondering who had the reporter in their contacts, and if it was really an accident to include them in the chat.
Show threadBeelbeebubMar 25, 2025
@gleick Honestly we are lucky it wasn't
🇺🇸🇺🇸🍆🍆🕌❤️
Show threadNashvilleGuyMar 25, 2025
@gleick Fits with Jill Filipovic's position that Trump world has a very adolescent view of masculinity https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/trump-masculinity/681828/
The Adolescent Style in American Politics

The version of manhood placed on display by Trump and his aides is the one imagined by teenage boys.

The Atlantic
Show threadmtc_ukMar 25, 2025
@gleick Well, emojis are a blight upon civilisation in the first place, but, yes, these people are all fuckwitted adolescents.
Show threadsomedudeMar 25, 2025
@gleick Well, they're human, aren't they?

Humans now think in emojis, and discuss things in emojis.

Emojis are used for giving feedback on the workplace, within relationships, when disaster strikes, when a loved one dies.

Did anyone think this was a thing reserved for college kids on ICQ or something?

Heck, with some part of your brain you think in emojis.

Not even the infinitely flexible ASCII emoticons, no: you yourself think in emojis.

It's been like this for at least 10 years.

Is it especially worrying if the top brass does it?
Show threadJames GleickMar 25, 2025
@somedude I think you need to get out more and meet some humans. Believe it or not, some of us still use words. There are so many of them!
Show threadsomedudeMar 25, 2025
@gleick Snarky. But you seem to be ignoring my main point, which is: generals, politicians, surgeons are human.

When you introduce a behaviour-changing digital product population-wide, such as the latest Android, the latest iPhone or release of Whatsapp, you're affecting the whole population, including generals, politicians, surgeons.

Your surgeon does think differently from the surgeon he or she trained under in the typewriter and pen era.

Your elected representative is fed memes and viral content by algorithms on a daily, nah, hourly basis.

Your judge's attention span is somewhat damaged by the constant stream of notifications on his Whatsapp group chats.

The United States Digital Service has been renamed after a meme, remember?
Show threadsomedudeMar 25, 2025
@gleick i.e. let me be even more clear: when the local school replaces the usual channels forms of interaction with Whatsapp group chats (n.b. an entirely proprietary and rather venomous system), when the local club stops having registration cards, replacing them with Telegram invites, when your lawyer defaults to Whatsapp, what do you expect the top brass will do?

What I'm trying to say is that this sort of promiscuity is nothing to be outraged about now.

I was outraged when my lawyer started sending me chat messages 10 years ago -- complete with his profile picture chugging from a beer case -- rather than the proper emails or phone calls; I was outraged when 5 years ago school was replaced with video calls (over proprietary systems like Zoom or Google Classroom).

I find no reason to be outraged now.

You're merely witnessing an up-to-date version of the famous XKCD from more than a decade ago: https://xkcd.com/743/
Infrastructures

xkcd
Show threadJames GleickMar 25, 2025
@somedude Honestly, I think this is a case study in Missing the Point. I'm not "outraged" about any of your examples, and they don't seem related to my posts about our senior government officials 1) violating the Espionage Act by sharing military secrets insecurely, 2) violating the Federal Records Act by privatizing and destroying official communications, 3) cheering and joking like schoolyard bullies about a deadly attack that killed civilians.
Show threadNicole ParsonsMar 25, 2025

@gleick

What's clear was the protection of Saudi oil refineries & oil shipping.

The fossil fuel industry funds wars.

Show threadDec [{()}]Mar 25, 2025
@Npars01 @gleick
And, somehow, all that is bailing out Europe.
Show threadJonathan TrottMar 25, 2025
@gleick @pluralistic my guess is one of the main reasons they don't want to use the existing secure in house methods is they don't have emoji support…