iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 21/04/2025

The US is wallowing in a basic misunderstanding that defines its culture. That groups of people, of any size, think and feel and act. They don’t. It’s not even possible, how would it work? The US therefore sees every emergence of a hierarchy as authoritarianism.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 21/04/2025

Just as species don’t evolve and become extinct via their own agency, look again at the human world and re-imagine it as what it is. A world in which we have little to no real control, and where change and progress is mostly imposed via catastrophic external events. Humility.

Image from National Geographic of extnct animal skull.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

“Man is not only ruled by evil passions; but his rational capacity is severely limited as well. Without the warm cloak of custom, tradition, experience, history, religion, and social hierarchy—all of which radical man would rip off—man is shivering and naked.” Edmund Burke 1/6

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

That feeling of the world going absolutely batshit crazy is us reaching a specific tipping point. The tipping point where reality itself is defined by the fads and fashions of social life. Where what’s real becomes what trends. /1

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

The headline almost gets there. This is ‘Team Trump’. The entire Trump phenomenon is the substitution of public, civic life, with team sports on social media. The enshittification of an entire nation, in the precise @doctorow meaning of the term. /1 abc.net.au/news/2025-03-2…

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

Delicious own-goal by Clarkson here. People turned on Musk when he started to champion the views held by people like Jeremy, about the evils of government.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

The almost universal worshipping of small business reveals how far we’re infected by the terrible American disease of iconoclastic hatred of anything institutional. All sides of politics worship small business. It’s a terrible mistake. /1

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Henry VIII is a far better historical comparison for Trump than any fascist or Nazi. Far, far better.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

How we think, how we act, even how we feel, is overwhelmingly defined socially. By our membership of groups, in battle with other groups, for status. The Welcome Stranger nugget, as a beautiful example. The world’s largest ever alluvial gold nugget. Over 70kg of gold. /1

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

It’s feudalism, not fascism. My theme for several years now (just saying). It absolutely matters that we diagnose things correctly. These are fundamentally different things. Also this piece’s solutions to me are nonsense. /1 open.substack.com/pub/fosterth...

open.substack.com

Freedom isn't Feudal

I have noticed a particularly cheap dropline used by many in the collective Opposition: Calling Trump, Musk, and the MAGA movement “fascists”.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Mob rule doesn’t discriminate between just and unjust causes. The fact this behaviour is not universally condemned, but ordinary people actually applaud it, is a symptom of how far gone we now are. Let me say it again. Mob rule doesn’t pick and choose causes. /1

Photo of Tesla superchargers being burned.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

The entire dynamic of human life and history. Change comes only when the status quo is reduced to rubble.

Children sitting in front of it rubble, in World War 2. From: https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/people-politics/the-road-to-rebuilding-britain/

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Here’s that post-war rebuilding I talk about, when ‘the public’ became the central organising principle of societies. Rather than status. Nearly everywhere, except the US. 1/2

Graph plotting life expectancy at birth versus annual health expenditure per capita. Showing most nations having an enormous increase in life expectancy, without significant increase in cost. Except the US, which is going backwards across both dimensions.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

While simpletons use their Left/Right electoral goggles to understand what’s happening, Gil’s ‘Nerd Reich’ begins to implement exactly what they openly promised to do. And there’s even more to see here. /1 www.thenerdreich.com/the-network-...

thenerdreich.com

The Network State Coup is Happening Right Now

Elon Musk's attempt to destroy the United States government isn't random chaos. It's the methodical execution of the "network state" blueprint. Yet even as tech billionaires openly implement their we...

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

Copying each other is the most fundamental human act. We imitate because that gives us status, in a given group. It makes us recognisable, to the group. That in turn gives us an identity, we ‘belong’. Groups clash, their statuses collide. Imitative rivalry (Rene Girard). /1

Groups of people wearing puffy jackets in winter.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

I bought a Tesla this week. Lots of research went into the choice. The reaction from friends and colleagues was remarkable. Almost universal shock and horror, that I would do this. Which surprises me, because the reason they *wouldn’t* do it are things I criticise relentlessly, with them. /1

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

I use Will’s book often because he captures so much of the work on status, so beautifully. It’s rank or status that drives humans. Not power, not wealth. It’s how rich you are compared to *others*, or how powerful compared to others. Status, rank. Status = identity.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Human life is a battle for status. Status is also identity, without it, you’re nobody. We join groups (teams) to fight these battles, emulating high-status individuals. Team members imitate one another, ‘peer pressure’, to have membership of the group. /1

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

Populist landslides always lead to triumphalism. Because our entire understanding of politics is elections, we think these victories mean the complete opposite to what they actually mean. Broken societies have populist landslides. Winning those elections is a hospital pass. 1/4

Elon Musk giving what looks like a Nazi salute at the inauguration. Photo from ABC news.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

Trump feels like an apocalyptic disaster, or second coming, depending on who you are, because we attribute so much power to elections to transform reality. In reality they achieve almost nothing in the material reality sense. Which still determines eventual outcomes.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

The barons/nobles at the coronation of the King. Not an analogy. A pattern repeated throughout history, just called by different names. Note also the heavy representation of social media, from the King down. The greatest source of modern power.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

My constant theme. The illusion of democracy as a flattening of hierarchies occurred only after the cataclysmic disasters of the first half of the 20th century. The disasters flattened the hierarchies, it wasn’t democracy. Now the hierarchies are back. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01...

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

Humans don’t agree. On anything. They disagree until those disagreements destroy their societies. Then they agree, long enough to re-build. Only destruction brings agreement. Then the disagreement begins again.

Image of men re-building cities after WW2. From: Algor Education.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

‘Free speech’ is a fiction perpetrated by media oligarchs. The Chinese block social media platforms not to censor speech, but to prevent oligarchs controlling their communities. Read what happens when that doesn’t happen. Social media is a hijacking of societies. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01...

abc.net.au

'Dangerous times ahead': Warnings of misinformation surge as Meta retreats

By scaling back its independent fact-checking, Meta has triggered alarm among civil society groups in Asia where misinformation's consequences have proven deadly.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

40 years ago McLuhan said the medium is the message. It’s not the content of media we should be focusing on. It’s the way the specific media shape our social relationships. Social media implements a worldview. Those who own it own our societies.

Our World in Data graph showing extremely rapid rise in social media use since the early 2000s.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

Social media is not just where people share information. It’s a replacement for society itself, and intended as such. What I call the ‘decoupling’ of societies from their foundations. Now, a literal de-coupling! This fascinating data will get a range of interpretations I’m sure. /1

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Reposted by Henry Madison

David Elfstrom 🍁 @davidelfstrom.bsky.social · 23/02/2024

To recap, for in-room air cleaners, HEPA *IS NOT NEEDED*. What matters is the combination of filtration, fit, and airflow, to maximize the Clean Air Delivery Rate for a target particle type and size, verified by an independent laboratory test to an industry standard. /7

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Reposted by Henry Madison

David Elfstrom 🍁 @davidelfstrom.bsky.social · 23/02/2024

The answer is, single-pass filtration efficiency DOESN'T MATTER except in specific cases like Powered Air Purifying Respirators (PAPR), clean rooms, operating theaters, or nuclear laboratory exhaust—HEPA's original purpose. /2

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

There’s nothing to balance. There has never been any such thing as free speech in the way the modern crusaders believe.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

Cory Doctorow. Any platform that doesn’t have almost zero switching costs for users will eventually be enshittified. My dilemma right now too, do I set up an entirely new network of contacts here, only to then maybe have to do that all over again down the track? doctorow.medium.com/https-plural...

doctorow.medium.com

Bluesky and enshittification

No one is the enshittifier of their own story.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

These are the tensions of all social media use. If you restrict it to specific interests, you get a wide proliferation of groups who have linkages with those topics. Healthy. But to turn social media into a sort of melting pot of all of society together, is when the shit starts. /1

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

The Magna Carta signing in 1215 was one of the foundations of democratic governance. It was the carving up of power between Kings and barons/nobles. It never was about ‘the people’. Today the exact same negotiation is happening between Trump and his billionaire barnacle group.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

“The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please. We ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risque congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints.” Edmund Burke, describing our modern world, centuries before it arrived.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

I don’t yet see a meaningful way BlueSky will pay for itself over the longer term. And this matters probably more than anything, because if it can’t, it can’t exist.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

I’m not sure resistance is choosing which social media platform will replace society.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

It was Deleuze I think who pointed out that the city/country divide was always a false one. That they’re the same entity.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

All societies are always organised around one thing. Status.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

The idiot paradox of our travel cultures is that most of the places we go to gawp at in wonder were created by people who just stayed home, for generations, making them the wonderful places that they are.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

Storr is absolutely right that all of society is status games. What I call team sports. There’s no escaping that, but there is shaping those sports so that they focus on more productive things. ‘Games of success’ include modern science and engineering. Still all status. 1/3

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

No amount of us all talking is a public. The public is a statistical calculation, a continuous assessment of collective need. It’s what bureaucrats do. There is no public without bureaucracy. The politics of our time despises ‘red tape’. It’s why there is no longer a public.

Picture of Donald Trump cutting red tape in front of a huge pile of paperwork. From NBC News.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

In feudal times a small number of families (the nobles or aristocracy) hoarded most of a society's wealth, in alliance with a King or Queen. 'The economy' is really a social deception to reinstate feudalism, history's default form. 1/2

Holdings of family wealth in the US, showing a dramatic increase since the 1990s. From the Congressional Budget Office.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Stop me when you figure out which country and government this is. 1) Government comes to power and within 3 years has built 3,500 km of high quality new roads. 2) Within that same 3 years, tens of billions spent on job creation schemes. /1

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

I'm sick of wearing a mask. But being sick of is much better than being sick with, something. I'd prefer politicians took a break from fellating lobbyists and went back to allowing a public health system to operate.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

One of the most important parts of status as the mechanism of all societies, is the scapegoating mechanism that Rene Girard talks about. The relentless battles for status - status games or team sports - lead to chaos. We’re seeing that right now. How do societies survive? /1

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

So many of those who stormed the Capitol were social media groups/teams. It was the essential infrastructure of the insurrection. We create tools, and then the tools create us. Most of what we take for 'society' right now is just teams on social media, arguing.

Donald Trump supporters storming the Capitol building. Image from Britannica.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

Another day in the algorithm we now call society. You’ll feel sadder and angrier at the end of the day than at the beginning, and that’s the algorithm doing its job.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

I’m already seeing the building passion and excitement for the upcoming Oz federal election. We don’t see that this is like the Super Bowl for the team sports of our entire lives. Every issue is a mini-election now, with battling teams looking to win status. 365 days a year. /1

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

I believe the origin of both monarchies and churches is societies attempting to stabilise status hierarchies. We don’t see this, looking back on them. But they were primarily about stopping the eternally violent battle for status.

Picture of Charlemagne being crowned by the Pope.

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

I look on every day as our most serious problems have nothing done about them. Activism won’t shift that. Somebody called me cynical for continually pointing this out. To me cynical is pretending all of these daily team sports solve anything. 1/3

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Henry Madison @ragesheen.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

"The lesson many will find impossible to accept is this: never believe groups who claim they just want ‘equality’ with rivals. No matter what they say, no matter what they believe, they don’t. They weave a marvellous dream of fairness for all, but the dream is a lie." Will Storr

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