Things I Like
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In times of social and political crisis, especially when new and often contradictory bulletins are arriving on our ICDs (Internet-Connected Devices) at a second-by-second rate, you and I need to step back. We need the relief. But at the same time, it is impossible, for me anyway, not to think about what’s happening. Just saying “I’m not going to read any more about this” is an inadequate response; it has a tendency to leave me fretful and at loose ends.
I appreciated Jacobs words this morning. I've been trying to be offline and not attempt to keep up with the firehose of information, but it's been hard lately as the place I grew up is brutalized. What he says rings true for me, I've been reading a lot of older works and history to try and make sense of what I'm feeling and thinking now.
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As I committed more time to this pursuit, I considered just listing my patterns on a couple of different platforms, but honestly, ownership of my content remained in my crosshairs.
Jen is selling her patterns! Also I love that she's doing so on her own site. If you're a knitter, get on it, they're wonderful and I've bought Vines on a Trellis to knit at some point this year.
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I think that’s what I like the most about this concept: YAMA recognizes that missing out is a fundamental part of the human condition. Rather than fighting this reality or trying to optimize around it, YAMA suggests simply accepting that we’re finite creatures in an infinite world.
I've pulled back from being online over the last month so I'm missing things all the time. I've also realized that people using more content to tempt me towards a paid subscription doesn't work as I already feel completely overwhelmed with content. It's made me feel calmer to not know, to let it go. This article was helpful as a way to think about content and what matters and that my feelings lately are normal.
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The tech industry wants you to believe the only path forward is more—more AI, more platforms, more subscriptions, more integration, more data sharing. But maybe the actual path is less. Smaller tools, more ownership, fewer intermediaries, more intention about what you let into your life.
This is one of the reasons why this site is so important to me along with RSS. The more I walk away from the tech world, the calmer I find I am. I've also found in the last year that I've been making some connections with new people through this site and following theirs and that's been really lovely.
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But filtering out unwanted noise is not being left behind. It is prioritizing attention on what matters. It’s protecting a level of focus that becomes rarer with each new notification and version update.
A bit of a theme here with some of the things I'm reading and thinking about in these links. I've not had issues shutting out notifications, ever, but I do think that when we set aside the things that distract us, whatever they may be, we start to get clarity and focus in new ways. These pocket size computers can be great, but they can also be awful.
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I don’t mean politics isn’t incredibly important; clearly, it’s often life-or-death. What I mean is that when you go to dinner at a friend’s house, or work on your novel, or help your elderly neighbor with the groceries, or saunter through the park, you’re not somehow participating in reality less than if your head were stuck in politics. Indeed, the opposite might be the case. Every time I glimpse again that politics is just one conceptual overlay, I’m plunged back into the larger reality that contains it. And I’m freer to engage in life, including political life, more effectively than before.
This entire newlsetter from Burkeman is quite good, but I especially liked his reframing of politics and the role it plays in our reality. I can get very caught up in the minutiae of the current political situation so starting about 2 weeks ago I stopped going to any news sites at all. I read one news magazine that comes out on Fridays and is a recap of the events of the previous week, it's free through the Libby app via my library. What I've realized is how much time and energy I put into things that made no difference in my day-to-day life and that I have no control over. Slowly but surely I'm getting better at putting up really helpful boundaries and this reframing was super timely for me.
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The premise at the heart of these conversations is that websites deserve and require a mass readership to be important or worthwhile. But what if they don’t?
This entire idea, that maybe we don't all need to be read by all the people is so good. I don't track anything about this site so I have absolutely no idea who reads it or even how many people do. It's freeing. I post and don't think much about it later unless someone contacts me about it.
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Perhaps the reason the idea of an “interesting” life feels like a cop-out – compared to, say, a wildly successful or influential or joyful one – is that it lacks any sense of domination or conquest. We want to feel as though we were handed the challenge of a human lifetime and that we nailed it, that we grappled with the problem and solved it. Whereas to follow the lead of interestingness is to accept that life isn’t a problem to be solved, but an experience to be had.
I really enjoyed Oliver Burkeman's latest on following what interests you. Doing so usually leads to good things, but those things may not be promotions, money, fame, or whatever particular thing you want to put at the end of this sentence. That being said, it leads to more satisfaction and I think it leads to more stimulation of the brain and excitement about what you're doing. I've been following what I find interesting more and more and it's leading me to all sorts of places I didn't expect to go.
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I can’t help having the compulsion, but I can redirect it. So instead of scrolling down the news websites, I read a few pages of a book, or exercise for a few minutes; I pick up the ukulele, or simply be, with permission to be bored.
I'm keenly interested to read the book mentioned in this piece and found the idea of never reading the news interesting as well. I've been curbing my time just idly scrolling the past two days and while I haven't suddenly gotten a ton more done, I have let my brain rest and allowed myself to be bored and sit in quiet more. We'll see where this leads me.
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This consistent misread is that no positive change is worth making unless you make it in a pristine, completely consistent, platonic final form. No. Not only is this characteristic of the main problem of progressivism today, this is also fundamentally untrue. No change is made in a vacuum, and no step forward in history comes perfectly. Believing it is true extricates you from your own responsibility and your own autonomy. It reduces your individual volition and humanity to a tool of large business. It is obedience in advance. It is an obscene mode of infantilism and not an honest position.
A good piece on how the choices we make do matter, they matter to us as individuals. I've been making a lot of small moves for years and I like feeling better about the way I'm spending money and the way I'm supporting (or not supporting) certain companies.
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They also tend to want to work from home, DoorGrubDash meals, order from Amazon, stream all the things, and basically do anything but actually support things they should walk to.
A new to me site and person that I've really been enjoying in my feed reader lately.
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As I’ve noted on several occasions, I’m thoroughly worn out by social networks and have been for many years now. I occasionally find myself keen to share something, and when I do, I almost immediately regret it, feeling that nobody saw it or cared; I tend to feel that I’m out on some weird limb, frustrating those who followed me for CSS workarounds twenty years ago. And so I retreat again.
I enjoyed this piece by Simon, how being quiet and doing work and not sharing is so valuable, but this particular passage about social media had me saying to myself, "it me."
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I’ve always felt that culture is made of the accumulation of small acts of gracious leadership: acknowledging moments of bravery during a retro, teasing out a reticent comment during a product review, and on and on. It can come from other places too, but it is most effective when it comes from the top.
I've seen so many complaints about iOS 26, some of them happening in this very house, with each update, I keep hoping the details will be cleaned up. We'll see what happens, but I'm not very hopeful.
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The less fortunate of the Instagram Mothers lost everything when their children sued. It began in France and spread from there. Mostly daughters and a few sons sued their mothers for mental health damage, the complications of a life lived online before one could consent to such a transgression of privacy.
Just read this one, I don't have anything else to say about it.
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It’s in feeling all the above that I’ve come more and more to believe that (trigger warning: lots of loaded words incoming): It’s impossible to be “authentic” (to maintain some kind of “core integrity”) or to access anything resembling “true creativity” when plugged into social media. Social media destroys whatever it is I feel out, alone, in the middle of a big walk, connecting with people, writing, looking closer and closer still at the world (not the train-wreck version of the world; the world as it is in front of my eyes which is often magnificent and beautiful, full of kindness and compassion).
Not all of us can take the types of walks Mod takes, but I do think that in the day-to-day there is a lot we can do to create space for thinking and creating. I do that by walking and running without headphones and it's me and my thoughts alone and I have no phone with me. This is a small way, in my daily life, that I leave things behind for a bit.