Let’s just admit it, social media is pretty dang cool. I’ve met some of my favorite people because of that little smart phone. Social media both provides a way to connect and a reason to create. It is both a network and a stage. It’s kinda silly to demonize social media. That’s like blaming a car for you driving too fast. We have laws limiting how fast you can drive, and yet we engineer some rockets on four wheels that can triple or quadruple the legal speed. Just because you can drive a car 200 mph doesn’t mean that you should drive that fast, at least not in most situations. It’s an illusion to even think that would be an option. You can’t go 200 mph in mid day traffic. In reality, the moments when it would be possible to push the performance of a high speed vehicle to its limits would be few and close to none. The same is true with social media. We don’t need to be on it all the time. The point is to learn how to use it effectively. That means learning how to respect certain limits. We live in a world where almost everyone can go from 0 to 100 real quick, online. If as many people had sportscars as have access to social media, the roads would be a daily blood bath. At the current moment, our technological power outmatches our experience and responsibility with the tech. Since we don’t want to regulate the Internet, we need to learn to govern our own behavior, to set limits for ourselves.  Read the rest at: https://jakejthomasphoto.com/2021/04/25/learning-to-drive-social-media/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jake-j-thomas/message

Dialogic

Learning to Drive Social Media

There’s nothing wrong with cannabis. It’s a beautiful plant with amazing flowers and effects. As with the pineapple, the pomegranate and the papaya, Cannabis is a naturally occurring living organism with many properties beneficial to health and wellness for humans and even for other animals. Sometimes people complain of feeling anxiety or sleepiness when they consume THC. This could be for a number of reasons. Different strains can have different effects, but also farmers are not equally good at growing weed. Cannabis is not like apples. It is a boutique crop, a difficult flower to grow well. The difference in the experience of consumption between top shelf flower and run of the mill boof is night and day and the pricing in dispensaries reflects this reality. The quality of the crop is what matters most about cannabis, and one way cannabis brands are marketing the quality of their flowers is through high THC numbers in their testing. While the cannabinoid percentages do matter, they are no clear indication of the quality of the flower or of your experience if you were to consume it. In order to really use cannabis effectively, you have to find a farm that grows flowers that you enjoy. It’s really that simple. You have to just experiment until you find the right farm and usually that will keep you connected to the best benefits that cannabis can offer. Besides the quality of the flowers, though, there is a big reason why people feel tired or anxious when they consume cannabis. This is because it is pointing out the problems they are not dealing with. When people get stoned, it often causes introspection and analysis over the problems, especially social situations, that are on your mind. It brings those things you are worrying about to the front of your attention. This is one of the reasons why stoners will win in the end. It causes self-reflection and that is the gateway to self-improvement and that is the gateway to being a better member of a community and that is the gateway to security and happiness. So yes, it is a gateway drug. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jake-j-thomas/message

Why the Future Belongs to Stoners part 1

This one is a written. Nothing off the dome. Just some good ol' reflections on robots and the state of tech. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jake-j-thomas/message

The Verge of Something Big

Quick rant about comedy and how jokes work according to Freud. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jake-j-thomas/message

How Comedy Works

A short rant on subcultures, how they get misrepresented and how that leads to fake culture. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jake-j-thomas/message

Why We Shouldn't Hate Hippies

The digital era has changed the way we consume art and literature. Podcasters and YouTubers are our major artists. With the amount of money entering into the digital world of art through NFTs, there is a new market with tons of implications for producers and consumer of art. While this is all interesting, I am convinced that making things is more fun than consuming them and better for us. For this reason, I see the digital age as a tremendous potential for new work to be made and for new generations of humans to enjoy art and literature although in new forms. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jake-j-thomas/message

Creators Create

A quick rant about difference, complexity and historical periods in art and literature. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jake-j-thomas/message

After Postmodern

Jake J. Thomas thinks out loud about the importance of honesty in communication when it comes to marketing and building culture at an organization. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jake-j-thomas/message

Truth in Marketing part 1

Anthony Arya. He's something else, man. This young artist is a purebred, an old soul, and a damn fine musician. It's rare to find the combination of talents that Arya has, and he is humble despite his gifts. Definitely one of the shining lights of contemporary music, in my opinion. Check him out on Spotify, HERE: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7d5MWIqKzhGiQDfBtQQsOf --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jake-j-thomas/message

Exciting Art Maker: Anthony Arya

Your favorite podcaster with a middle initial J. ruminates on what it will take to start the work of coming together in this country, in this hemisphere, in general. Why is love a practical approach to working with others? What does being positive do to people stuck in a difficult situation? Follow me on Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/jakejthomasphoto/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jake-j-thomas/message

Other Love

Art is supposed to be exciting.  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jake-j-thomas/message

Make Exciting Art

I'm back, baby. Welcome to my mind.  I'm here for you. Together we will make this great. Le't start the conversation.  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jake-j-thomas/message

The Continual Struggle to Be You

Coming back from a shoot, I reflect on the creative process and its importance during times of existential dread and uncertainty. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jake-j-thomas/message

Courage and Confidence During these Strange Times

Quick update on the status of the pod and some future designs. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jake-j-thomas/message

Scream Inside Your Heart

HELLO friends this is Jake J. Thomas bringing you another episode of the Dialogic podcast. I hope you all are well. I wanted to take some time today to discuss the important of creating content during this uncertain time. More than just the importance of creating content I want to think about the best kinds of content to create during this time. This is especially for anyone who has children, works with children and cares about children. One thing that I’ve noticed is that pressure tends to exacerbate whatever problems already exist. This situation is similar to a stress test that a financial institution would use. The stress is identifying where the weaknesses are. If a part of the system doesn’t seem adequate to withstand a moderate amount of stress it puts into question the viability of that part of the project. The failure to endure the stress opens up the space of removal. I think now is the time to double down on the kind of content I was already creating; content that is actively imagining sustainability. I don’t think that now is the right time to judge anything or to look for silver linings. I want to share my experience of concern for people’s health and for the economic consequences of what we are doing, and this heightened concern motivates me to work on inventing solutions to the bigger problems we face. We are identifying problems because of our inability to achieve certain goals. The symptom is dysfunction, the inability to reach a goal, which creates an emotional response. How do we respond to the feelings we have when our old ways of proceeding no longer work? Do we jump back into action? Do we find new ways to achieve our goals? This is certainly a very stressful test. One thing that has worked for me is to challenge myself. Giving myself some kind of tangible goal that I can use my will alone to achieve gives me a sense of control. I also have an intense energy inside of me because I am a passionate and caring person and if I don’t find a way to channel that energy then I have no way of controlling it. The best way I have found to focus that energy is through hiking long distances. If you are going to waste six hours looking at your phone, you could have spent six hours doing pushups, hiking, working on some physical fitness goal. Let’s not sell ourselves short. The feeling that I have if I spend six hours hiking is so vastly superior to the way I would feel if I sat around watching Netflix looking at Twitter that it is a no-brainer. The thing is, we have these programmed habits that have to do with economic schedules. We have monthly, quarterly and annual cycles that have deadlines that need to be met. We are drawing lines through the history of our times with the choices that we make, and sustainability is the most important thing to be thinking about and working on during this time and for the foreseeable future. While we are reimagining how the economy will function, we should also be preparing for other big concerns and that is what we should communicate in our work. I believe that art and marketing do and will merge at their highest level to work as a kind of attraction/ conversion cultural machine transforming people into agents to work on the task of imagining and sustainability and executing our plans sustainably. So many things are going to change and probably one of the first things we will want to do is to figure out what we can have in terms of values and principles that will not change when the circumstances change. Transparency in communication and accounting, nonviolent communication, whatever it is that we can agree on as a fundamental unchanging character of our community will help us to endure all of the pivots that we will have to make when our circumstances radically change. A principle-based set of ideas will give us some structure that will help to navigate the chaos. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jake-j-thomas/message

Creating Better Content

Conversations about photography, modeling and content creation in the digital age. Featuring Jake J. Thomas and Madison Marie.

hubhopper

Dialogic

hubhopper