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i was introduced to the slow food movement, the root of slow movement as a culture, and i'm already enamoured. it appeals to me to know when to slow down, breathe, and know where you are and what you're doing. not to bitch more about short-form stimulation, but—

slow food maintains itself as an antonym of fast food: eat local, made traditional. a bit too conservative for me mayhaps, but i appreciate the onus on quality, speaking out against the vast overproduction of food and subsequent waste. the fact that overpopulation isn't really an issue, but (malevolently?) inefficient distribution of food is always makes me sad. the juxtaposition of tonnes of food being thrown away with starvation isn't something that gels in my mind. what do we create all this for?

it is very tempting to say "as society is going the way of short-form, and fast, and easy, we will slowly go to the opposite side: longer videos, and slowing down", but will we? whenever i used to doomscroll, i found myself mentally wading through molasses for a few seconds after exiting, as if disoriented. that exhaustion is what made me stop, but that doesn't change the fact that the period of content consumption itself is "enjoyable", in the loosest sense of the word. it seems asymptotic, but it always has, hasn't it? recently, a model changed its own code during runtime to perform better. this isn't as skynet as it sounds, but simply, it's given a goal. if the goal is performance, the model will stop at nothing that does not penalise it to outperform itself iteratively. and for now: the goal is engagement. think out of the box!

i've attempted to engage with material that isn't designed to target short attention spans, and "nauseating editing styles" a la mr. beast, in a feel that i can only describe as toddler hopped up on sugar. kiarostami's taste of cherry (don't read the plot, i recommend going in blind) is an absolutely gorgeous movie, and made me extremely emotional, and i watched it almost in one straight session (this is Supposed to be normal, but i'm working on getting there). the slow movement page calls him an example of a slow cinema director, (characterised by minimalism, observational, and little-to-no narrative). and i think i'm interested. i will watch other kiarostami movies, maybe some more directors (everyone always calls Scorsese's movies slow). i watched buster's mal heart, as well, and i don't know if it qualifies as "slow" cinema but it was certainly different in a sense and i loved it (don't read the genre, just go for it).

there's too many components of this movement for me to list out, but read it? and breathe.