Things I Like
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And sometime around 2017, we will change again. The new year will bring a different kind of retreat. Rather than retreating into making or craft, we will retreat into smaller and more nuanced connections. Into quality over quantity. Into the single story over collections of stories. Into the subtle over the general. Into the singular datapoint over big data. Into attention over distraction.
Another piece of comfort and thought about the world in which news lives by someone working in that field at NPR.
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Moderation does not mean truth is always found equidistant between two extreme positions, nor does it mean that bold and at times even radical steps are not necessary to advance moral ends. Moderation takes into account what is needed at any given moment; it allows circumstances to determine action in the way that weather patterns dictate which route a ship will follow.
I long for the days when compromise was not a dirty word, when moderation was how we could move forward, when the other side was not evil or unpatriotic. I have no idea if, when, or how we'll get back to that, but I hope we can or I fear for our future in the US.
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To be a digital minimalist, in other words, means you accept the idea that new communication technologies have the potential to massively improve your life, but also recognize that realizing this potential is hard work.
I'm really enjoying Newport's blog, it's leading me to think about the way I spend my time and the things that I do. In addition, this post led me to the documentary, Minimalism, which is also quite interesting.
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So I find Scott Alexander’s thrive/survive model (aka the 'zombies vs post-scarcity utopia' model) of political behaviour more useful than a left/right distinction. The model looks like this: If you are (or anticipate) living in a world where zombies are after all of humanity, it fosters a ‘circle the wagon’ mentality: protect your own at all costs, don’t waste your resources on other people, support the military and stock up on guns, control reproduction (ie sexuality, particularly women’s) to ensure the survival of your tribe, create and enforce clear lines of command (hierarchies), etc. Alternatively, if you think that you live in a post-scarcity utopia, or that we someday will, you can prioritize things like helping other people, investing in art and science, taking care of the environment, and celebrating personal freedom.
If you aren't subscribed to Deb's email newsletter, you should be, it's always good. But this issue was particularly good in the wake of the US election.
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With this election, we’ve joined the rest of the world. Think of all the other nations that live under moronic, venal leadership. There are models for honorable political lives in those circumstances, but those models are quite different from our dominant notions of citizenship in which we follow politics as a spectator sport and occasionally vote. All over the world there are people in repressive settings who find ways to live as free human beings, act in solidarity with their neighbors, and fashion strategies to resist state power. We’re going to need to get good at practicing that kind of politics.
Interesting thoughts that provided me some sense of comfort and hope amidst the difficult news of most days.
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It’s the turn from fact that makes fascism possible. If they turn away from reasoning altogether, they can turn toward feeling like part of a body following a charismatic leader.
This was really fascinating. I've been reading a lot of history lately and it's been helping me get through what is an absolutely crazy feeling time. I take comfort in it somehow and I look to history for guidance.
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When you grow up in the middle, you see that life is more in the middle than it is on the sides. The majority of people are in the middle, the margin of victory is almost always in the middle, and very often the truth is there as well, waiting for us.
The American system of government is a system that encourages compromise and governing from the center because of the checks and balances that exist. This is also one reason that change happens slowly. But I agree with Noah, the middle is often where so many of us live and where so much truth can be found.
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And here we begin to see how the age of social media resembles the pre-literate, oral world. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and other platforms are fostering an emerging linguistic economy that places a high premium on ideas that are pithy, clear, memorable and repeatable (that is to say, viral). Complicated, nuanced thoughts that require context don’t play very well on most social platforms, but a resonant hashtag can have extraordinary influence. Evan Spiegel, the chief executive officer of Snap Inc., grasped the new oral dynamics of social media when he told the Wall Street Journal: 'People wonder why their daughter is taking 10,000 photos a day. What they don’t realize is that she isn’t preserving images. She’s talking.'
Fascinating idea, not sure I believe it or not, but maybe that's because reading and words are so important to me.
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Now is the time to resist the slightest extension in the boundaries of what is right and just. Now is the time to speak up and to wear as a badge of honor the opprobrium of bigots. Now is the time to confront the weak core at the heart of America’s addiction to optimism; it allows too little room for resilience, and too much for fragility. Hazy visions of “healing” and “not becoming the hate we hate” sound dangerously like appeasement. The responsibility to forge unity belongs not to the denigrated but to the denigrators. The premise for empathy has to be equal humanity; it is an injustice to demand that the maligned identify with those who question their humanity.
Thank you, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, for your words. Thank you.
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‘The prescription that some offer, which is stop trade, reduce global integration, I don’t think is going to work,” he went on. “If that’s not going to work, then we’re going to have to redesign the social compact in some fairly fundamental ways over the next twenty years. And I know how to build a bridge to that new social compact. It begins with all the things we’ve talked about in the past—early-childhood education, continuous learning, job training, a basic social safety net, expanding the earned-income tax credit, investments in infrastructure—which, by definition, aren’t shipped overseas. All of those things accelerate growth, give you more of a runway. But at some point, when the problem is not just Uber but driverless Uber, when radiologists are losing their jobs to A.I., then we’re going to have to figure out how do we maintain a cohesive society and a cohesive democracy in which productivity and wealth generation are not automatically linked to how many hours you put in, where the links between production and distribution are broken, in some sense. Because I can sit in my office, do a bunch of stuff, send it out over the Internet, and suddenly I just made a couple of million bucks, and the person who’s looking after my kid while I’m doing that has no leverage to get paid more than ten bucks an hour.’
A lot of really interesting things in this interview with Obama. I'll miss his calm and eloquent way of talking about world affairs. But the insider look at the days leading up to and the days after the election were fascinating to me, both in how Obama talked about the odds and how he cared for his staff in the aftermath. I also think he is making a case for a basic income in this quote, but if our government isn't thinking this way, then I think many people may get left behind and the inequality gap will only widen.
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The truth is not meant to be hidden. It is not meant to be suppressed. It is not meant to be ignored. It is not meant to be disguised. It is not meant to be manipulated. It is not meant to be falsified. Otherwise, wrongdoing will persist.
I just watched Spotlight not that long ago, it's a really great movie, and Baron's role in the story is super intriguing as well. This short speech has a lot in it, and I hope that journalists heed his message. We desperately need people bringing the truth into the light in the days ahead.
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You don’t need another person telling you what to feel or not feel, what to do or not do in this eviscerating and potentially paralyzing moment. Everyone around me just wants to find the best way to help right now. Me too.
What I enjoyed most about this piece was the acknowledgement that we all aren't going to feel the same way and we aren't all going to react in the same way to what is happening in the US right now. And that's OK. I'm tired of being told how I should feel or what I should do.
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It sometimes seems to me that books are fighting — I don’t want to talk about other books, just my own. Sometimes I feel that my books have increased people’s understanding of how power works. I remember I spoke at Queens College, and a young man came up to me and said, “I really read The Power Broker, so I am in student government and I asked to be the chairman of the bylaws committee.” And I said, “Oh, he got it!”
I really need to read The Power Broker. This interview is great, well worth a few minutes of your time.
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Today, boredom is an option. To the extent that boredom is a lack of stimulation, we have cured it, and this isn’t necessarily a good thing. If you can endure boredom, you can devote yourself to deep and serious projects. If you can’t endure boredom, how do you write a book or enter into reflection?
Some interesting thoughts in here about how we distract ourselves and what this does to our ability to focus and think deeply. Much like the NY Times article about social media I linked to yesterday, I think there's a lot of merit in slowing down and tuning out.
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Perhaps more important, however, than my specific objections to the idea that social media is a harmless lift to your career, is my general unease with the mind-set this belief fosters. A dedication to cultivating your social media brand is a fundamentally passive approach to professional advancement. It diverts your time and attention away from producing work that matters and toward convincing the world that you matter. The latter activity is seductive, especially for many members of my generation who were raised on this message, but it can be disastrously counterproductive.
When I read this two things came to mind. The first was a quote I read about David Carr after he died, where he was interested in creating a reputation, not a brand. The second was that as I've pulled back from social media in the past few weeks some amazing things have happened: I'm writing a lot and some of it may makes its way onto this site, and I'm thinking more deeply and reading more. This is all coming from focused time and ignoring the hot takes of the moment. I'm grateful because with what's happening in the world right now, I need it more than ever. One other note: Cal Newport wrote more about how he defines social media on his own site as a follow up to this piece. And I'm with him, I love the internet, but I'm starting to hate several of the social media companies and how they view and define the internet.