Friday, August 21, 2026

How to make friends and be an influencer


Can an app fix the "friendship recession"?
Lesley McClurg, Weekend Edition Saturday, NPR.org, Culture, July 25, 2026, 4-minute listen
How to make friends and be an influencer
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I have no idea why people follow me
Amidst what some researchers call a "friendship recession," apps and services have been proliferating to connect Americans. We hear from people who have already tried them or use them regularly to reflect on what about them has worked and hasn't.

TRANSCRIPT
HOST SCOTT SIMON: Many of the old places where friendships formed -- the office, houses of worship, maybe the VFW [Veterans of Foreign Wars, a.k.a. degenerate bars] -- may have become less central to people's lives.

Just react to things with opinions!
It's part of what's been called a friendship recession: Americans spending dramatically less time with friends than they did a decade ago. As Leslie McClurg of member station KQED FM [San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento] reports, a growing number of apps and services are trying to bring people back together.

BYLINE LESLIE MCCLURG: When Jen Hobbs moved to Oakland last summer, she assumed friends would come naturally at the coffee shop or after an exercise class, but six months in...

JEN HOBBS: And on New Year's, I was kind of reflecting on things, and I realized I still don't have any friends.

Talk about fitness on TikTok with a hot bod!
MCCLURG: She made it her resolution to fix that and downloaded every friendship app that she had seen advertised on Instagram. Some are simple, like "Bumble For Friends" (BFFBumble For Friends), which works much like the company's dating app.

But instead of swiping for lovers, you're swiping for pals. Others, like Timeleft [or Friend Cult], go further by matching users with like-minded strangers for a meal. [SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING]

UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR: In restaurants across the country [LAUGHTER] total strangers are gathering for conversation and community over shared meals. More
  • We’re not a social club, we’re a Friend Cult™ -- a weekly, Oakland-based gathering that makes it easier to see friends. No more text tag, no more calendar Tetris, no more doomscrolling. Just show up and hang out — like it used to be. See friends. Eat food. Feel better. Die happy.
Mr. Beast, what's an "influencer"?
Mr. Beast is the biggest influencer
An "influencer" has the ability to alter the attitudes, shopping behavior, or shopping decisions of others through knowledge, position, authority, or the because of an audience relationship.

This ability is either inherent to one's personality or is completely constructed by others for some benefit: social, personal, or economical [1].

The term "influencer" is used in media, business, religion, politics, and communication, referring to folks like social media influencers, podcasters, public speakers, religious influencers, writers, and newsletter writers who have dedicated followings [2, 3].

One writer defines influencers as those "who exercise influence over the organization and its potential customers" [4]. Another defines them as someone "who significantly shapes the customer's purchasing decision" [5]. According to another writer, influencers are "well-connected, create an impact, have active minds, and are trendsetters" [6].

What does every American want?
Just because someone has many followers does not necessarily mean that person has much influence over them [7, 8].

In contemporary usage, it means a social media influencer [9, 10, 11] or an online influencer [12, 13, 14] who builds a grassroots online presence through engaging content such as photos, videos, and updates.

This is done by using direct audience interaction to establish authenticity, expertise, and appeal by standing apart from traditional celebrities by growing a platform through social media rather than pre-existing fame [15, 16].

The modern term is commonly a paid role in which a business entity pays for social media influence-for-hire activity to promote products and services, known as influencer marketing [17].

As such, an influencer effectively acts as a modern salesperson or a marketer.  A 1% increase in spending on influencer marketing can lead to a 0.5% increase in audience engagement [18] for a company or corporation.

Types include fashion influencer, travel influencer, virtual influencer, content creators [19, 20, 21], and streamers [22, 23, 24]. More

How to Win Friends and Influence People
How to be an influencer? Keep talking until someone breaks your jaw like Jake? Read a book?
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This classic self-help book written by Dale Carnegie came out in 1936. Worldwide, over 30 million copies have been sold since, making it one of the best-selling books of all time [1, 2].

Dale Carnegie had been conducting business courses in New York since 1912 [3]. In 1934, Leon Shimkin (Simon & Schuster) took one of Carnegie's 14-week courses on human relations and public speaking. He later persuaded Carnegie to let a stenographer take notes from the course to be revised for publication [3].

The initial 5,000 copies of the book sold exceptionally well, going through 17 editions in the first year [3]. In 1981, a revised edition containing updated language and anecdotes was released [4]. The revised edition reduced the number of sections from six to four, eliminating sections on effective business letters and improving marital satisfaction. In 2011, it was Number 19 on Time's List of the 100 Most Influential Nonfiction Books [5]. In 2022, a newly revised edition was published.

Author Dale Carnegie
I know what people want (Carnegie)
Before How to Win Friends and Influence People, the self-help genre had other successes. Authors like Orison Swett Marden and Samuel Smiles had sold well with their self-help titles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Dale Carnegie began his career teaching night classes at a NY YMCA, later expanding to YMCAs in Philadelphia and Baltimore [6]. He then taught independently at hotels in London, Paris, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, writing small booklets to go along with his courses [7].

When evolution gets us
After one of his 14-week courses, publisher Leon Shimkin of Simon & Schuster approached him [8]. Shimkin urged Carnegie to write a book, but he was not initially persuaded. Shimkin then hired a stenographer to type up one of Carnegie's long lectures and presented that transcript to Carnegie [9], who edited and revised it into its final form [10].

To market the book, Shimkin sent 500 copies to former graduates of the Dale Carnegie Course, with a note that pointed out the utility of the book for refreshing students with the advice they had learned [11]: 141.

Or just work out until you have a hot bod. See?
The 500 mailed copies brought orders for over 5,000 more copies, so Simon & Schuster had to quickly increase the original print order of 1,200 [11]: 142.  Shimkin also ran a full-page ad in the New York Times complete with quotes by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller on the importance of human relations [12].

Originally published in Nov. 1936, the book reached the New York Times best-seller list by the end of the year and stayed on it for the next two years [11]: 141.

Simon & Schuster continued to advertise the book, relying heavily on testimonials as well as the testable approach the book offered [12]. More

We invented Gods; Buddhism did not


(Serene Mind) The truth behind Buddhism | Why do [some] Buddhists not believe in God when many do, and others understand that it doesn't actually matter as far as one's own awakening, liberation, and freedom go.


Buddhism has a point: realization of the Truth
Buddhism is nontheistic (not agnostic, not confirmed atheistic) and don't believe in some supreme ultimate creator God but can and do if they want to.

Theism and atheism both have very goods point and some reality to them. Pantheism and polytheism are closer to the truth.

There are no monotheists just henotheists, but they don't know it or don't want to admit it because they're afraid to question their own religion's beliefs. Parents said, priests said, Bible interpreters (and mistranslators) said...so we just believe them.

The Buddha visits Sakka and Maha Brahma
Many, probably most, Buddhists do believe in all kinds of gods (devas) and Gods (brahmas) and even GOD (Brahman, the Monad, the ONE), as well as many kinds of unseen beings. But are any of these invisible entities an ultimate creator of souls, bodies, realities, controlling everything that happens? No way, even though Jehovah (Yahweh), the Demiurge (Yaldabaoth), Allah, Ahura Mazda, YHWH, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, and countless other "supreme beings" will say so or have priests say so for them.

There is Maha Brahma (the "Great Supremo") in Buddhism and the great Sakka (Indra), King of the Devas, and countless light beings (devas, lit. "shining ones") on many of the 31 Planes of Existence.

There is not just this world but worlds -- countless worlds -- to come in samsara. Rebirth is very real and has been since time immemorial but not often understood because most people are convinced it has to be some kind of "eternal soul" passing through all kinds of incarnations. It may seem that way, but ultimately it is not that way. Conventionally, yes. Many religions have good general descriptions even with culturally varying details.

So sacred texts and religious ideas can and sometimes are superior to answers science feeds us, as the Religion of the White Lab Coats claim to have irrefutable, testable, repeatable proof ("objective" unchanging evidence), mathematical formulas, cold logic, and views that later crumble. They always crumble. Science is incapable of coming to certainty about anything. There are no fixed conclusions. Everything needs more research and more scientists getting paid to work on things.

Science can't even agree on a definition of itself or its method. We are told to call it the "scientific method," but that changes and is applied differently everywhere, from lab to lab, university to university, city to city, state to state, country to country, and likely planet to planet.

Scientists, like religious priests in their flowing robes, tell us what is okay to believe, what we are given permission to believe without being laughed at -- no matter what is actually true or untrue.

We think "scientists" are unanimous. They are not! Not even within a single department of a single university. We think scientists hold to one worldview. They do not.

What's Zen Taoism got to do with anything?
In this country, most scientists are at least nominally "Christian" or members of some other Abrahamic faith. Why? If science were so sure about anything, at least it could be sure that creationists, intelligent design advocates, and fearmongers are out-and-out wrong.

But no, to play it safe, they align with one religion or another, almost always the one they were born into.

Way to go, science, what an inspiration and model for our reasoning and personal behavior.

We say, forget religion and science. But that can't easily be done, can it? So listen. Question. Think. Follow your heart and intuition and reason and the advice of noble friends and teachers. But to do this it is almost certainly going to mean we have to go check for ourselves what that advice is or has been in the past. We can't accept the words of well-meaning intermediaries, to say nothing of the ones who do not mean us well.

Accept what agrees with experience and understanding, like the Kalama Sutta suggests, but read it to the end. The Buddha does not stop at, "There is nothing to believe." He very much gives things that can be believed from our own personal experience and builds from there.

Unless we're enlightened, we ought never think we know for sure. After all, history shows, we humans are easily misled, too easily deceived, and sadly are also very much at risk of self-deception.

So purify the mind and heart, then systematically be mindful with it, then see for yourself if what the Buddha and the noble ones said was true isn't exactly as they said. That is our advice.

Because each person is responsible for one's own karma (deeds of thought, speech, and body that have the power to produce welcome and unwelcome results in the future), it is for each person to decide what to believe. Use it. Remain open. Truth is not arrived at by words but by practice and direct-seeing that produces insight.

Tibetan monks chant over troll bridge

(Mantraon) Superstitious Buddhist monks crossing a dangerous bridge: deep Tibetan chant of Om mani padme hum for calm and nervous system reset with help of internet slop

Trolls and a princess (John Bauer)
A bridge troll is a being in Nordic folklore, including Norse mythology. In Old Norse sources, beings described as "trolls" dwell in isolated areas of mountains, rocks, and caves, live together in small family units, and are rarely helpful to human beings.

In later Scandinavian folklore, trolls became beings in their own right, where they live far from human habitation, are not Christianized and brought to heel (like Zionist Hillary Clinton might like), and are considered dangerous to human beings.
  • TROLLS IN BUDDHISM: A kumbhāṇḍa (Sanskrit) or kumbhaṇḍa (Pāli) is one of a group of dwarfish, trollish, misshapen spirits among the lesser unseen being in Buddhist cosmology and mythology [1, 2]. Kumbhāṇḍa was a dialectal form for "gourd," and due to their large scrotums or stomachs, they got their name from the resemblance. But kumbhāṇḍa may also be interpreted as "pot-egg" since "pot" (kumbha like the world's largest festival, the Kumbha Mela, that pot or jar having spilled the the nectar of the gods, the amrita or ambrosia of immortality, on a few spots in India) and "egg" (aṇḍa). This was a common euphemism for "testicle," the kumbhāṇḍas were imagined as having testicles "as large as pots" [1]. The terms kumbhāṇḍa (dwarf or troll) and yakṣa (Sasquatch, female yakshi or Yeti, ogre) are sometimes used for the same creature. Yakṣa (Pali yakkha) in this case is the more general term, including a variety of lower woodland of for the most part unseen being. More
Male and female kumbhandas (trolls)
Depending on the source, their appearance varies greatly; trolls may be ugly and slow-witted or look and behave exactly like human beings, with no particularly grotesque characteristic about them.

In Scandinavian folklore, trolls are sometimes associated with particular landmarks like bridges (sometimes said to have been formed by a troll having been exposed to sunlight).

Trolls are depicted in a variety of media in modern popular culture.

Etymology (word origin)
The Old Norse nouns troll and trǫll are variously defined as "fiend, demon, werewolf, jötunn," like the Middle High German troll, trolle, "fiend."

According to philologist Vladimir Orel, the word is likely borrowed from Old Norse, possibly developed from Proto-Germanic neuter noun *trullan, meaning "to tread, step on" [tromp, stomp, stamp]. The origin of the Proto-Germanic word is unknown [1]. Additionally, the Old Norse verb trylla means "to enchant..." More

Drugs, pranks, murder = bad (cartoons)

Summer ends: Just Like Heaven (8/22)


Stereotypical Southern California summer
When does summer really begin? It's not an astronomical question, as the people into genes insist gender is as easy to assign as reading x's and y's. It is easy if we make it that easy, but it is not so easy when we do not all agree to that as the objective measure.

What is "social summer"?

Mandatory: All Americans must visit a beach.
There's a kind of social summer, which runs between Memorial Day and Labor Day, just an approximation. The seasons do not always cooperate even in parts of the US where four distinct seasons make themselves obvious. There is "Indian summer," which is just a way of saying a long hot spell after official calendrical summer should have ended.

Another example of social summer is the one set by the local school district: When school ends, that's summer. Just ask Alice Cooper! When school begins again, that resumption is the end, even if the weather is still great and drives to the beach are worth the traffic.

"Summer" = School's out!

There did not used to be a "universal time" but rather many different times depending on the place. They were not simultaneous but more dependent on the sun circling (not revolving) overhead chased by the moon. Those were Tartarian (Tartary) times, and that's all been erased now. A universal measure imposes a definition that does not make sense for everybody on the ground.

Another social summer measure is determined by the concert calendar. The end comes to Pasadena, Los Angeles with the Just Like Heaven Festival this Saturday (Aug. 22, 2026).

New weekend, same party

(justlikeheavenfest.com)
New for 2026: Updated clubhouse amenities, enhanced VIP experiences, plus new shade sails, cooling misters, expanded shaded seating, and additional water refill stations throughout the festival grounds, giving concertgoers even more ways to stay cool and recharge between musical sets. For even more convenience, spend the day in VIP for a lot more money. Spend the day dancing in the expansive VIP viewing areas and lounging in shaded spaces between acts, all while enjoying exclusive food and drink options and air-conditioned restrooms. Buy Now Just Like Heaven | August 22, 2026


Will there be enough cops to stop trouble?
You will respect my authority...or else.
"Defund the police" was a deception to provoke public outrage. Congress funds new secret police forces and pays them much more now. If police officers want to scam the system, overseers look the other way. Let's make THE PURGE legal for a little while, and then we can use the predictable mayhem and disorder as a pretext to implement some Orwellian policies for "public safety" and a smiley face police state. 

I'm so ugly and sad...and pretty?


If I feel pretty, am I pretty? - To someone.
(pale blue wave) I stopped her in the park, and what she told me broke my heart. So I photographed her portrait.

If "ugly" is a feeling (an emotion), what is beauty?

Is self-confidence beautiful and self-doubt revolting?

Personality is incomprehensibly important so that even dwarves, Elephant Men, beasts, and hideous creatures are beautiful to some beauties out there.

Beauty is only skin deep. Deep inside the skin are very lovely things -- charm, comeliness, humor, riches! What is any one of us after other than being loved, feeling protected, comforted, understood, accommodated? Some even get off on loving others.

beauty, sadness, loneliness, photography, park, parable of touching a woman, dating, heartbreak, marriage, the four bases of popularity

Teachings of real Gnostic Jesus erased


(Hidden Wisdom) How to unite with GOD (Gnosticism's Monad) -- Gnostic Jesus Christ's most forbidden teachings erased, forbidden, destroyed by the official Church, replaced with Pauline (Saul of Tarsus) "Christian" doctrine most useful to the Roman Empire and Archons. The Aeon Goddess Sophia (Wisdom) sent Jesus in and with him a helper embodied in the person of Mary Magdalene (also explained in the Gnostic Gospel of Mary). Why does the modern Church have such a crucifixation?

The God of this world is a fraud

Who is the "Gnostic Jesus" rediscovered in Nag Hammadi library?

(The Gnostic Eye) The early Gnostic version of Jesus versus the "official" biblical version of Jesus today: The difference changes everything

Thursday, August 20, 2026

Ekaterina Sky: send stories, vote SXSW


“I think I should start making art again”
The intentions and prayers for the Earth were embedded here then covered with gold leaf.
Altadena Fire Mural Project, 2026, with golden prayers and us circled in red (Ekaterina Sky)
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Channeled inspiration for artful beauty
Six months after the Los Angeles fires, we built an art wall in Altadena. There were not many walls left to paint on, so we built one on the empty lot where the vegan cafe Oh Happy Days used to be.

Over four days the foothill neighborhood came and wrote their prayers and intentions to be sealed into the golden sphere at the center of the mural, some in English, some in Spanish, some in many other languages. One was a single name. One asked for the soil to become clean again. Then we sealed every one of those prayers under gold leaf.

A gold embedded Prayer for the Earth
They are still under there, and nobody can read them. On the final Sunday of our public art project, a woman came over to tell me about her friend: Her friend had lost her home in the Eaton Fire and had not smiled once in the six months since.

Her friend was at the wall right then, with a glistening brush in her hand. She was smiling. She had just said, “I think I should start making art again.” I did not go over to her. That moment was hers.

I thought, “She has every fact about what she lost. The facts do nothing for her. A wall, a brush, and her neighbors gave her somewhere to put it, and she picked the brush back up.” That is what I've been trying to say for 20 years! To put it plainly:

Data hands us the truth.
Beauty is what lets us carry it.

Knowing is not the hard part. Holding it is. Beauty is what makes the weight bearable enough to keep holding and acting on.


Vote for this talk at SXSW 2027
Save the forest, save the animals
I want to argue for that position in front of a room full of people who build things rather than a room of those who already agree with me. So I proposed a talk at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, next March (2027) I am calling, “Why Beauty Moves Us When Data Doesn’t.”

DESCRIPTION: Two decades of painting murals converges on one idea: Shared beauty can hold what words cannot yet reach, a shift that decides what people go on to protect.

After the 2025 Eaton Fire in Altadena, survivors gathered at a community mural to write their intentions and prayers into the paint. A woman who had not smiled since losing her home picked up a brush. This talk lays out the method behind the shift and how to build it into a strategy that moves people.

SESSION TAKEAWAYS:
  1. Art show LA Climate Week '26
    Why aesthetic experience shifts emotional orientation faster than data or logical arguments, and what that means for building a movement or campaign.
  2. A repeatable method for designing beauty and participation into engagement strategy, instead of attaching them as decoration afterward.
  3. Real, working examples, a reforestation partnership, a global soil movement, a wildfire recovery mural, proof the method produces outcomes. More
UN Climate Summit in Belém, Brazil
It is about how that Sunday afternoon of the art project actually worked. Read it HERE. It is accompanied on the page by a two-minute film of me speaking at the UN Climate Summit in Belém, Brazil.

Send me your stories!
REQUEST: If a moment like that has ever happened to you, I would love to hear it. I am collecting them to inspire others.


Warmly,


Ekaterina Sky, visual artist (ekaterina-sky.com)
Organizer, Life Force Art LLC