Things I Like
-
What solves all of these problems—the high return rates, the cost-prohibitive last-mile freight, the logistics nightmares, the buyer frustration, and the monumental volume of consumer waste it all sends to landfills—on some level? Stores. Going to a store.
We are go to the store people. I know, we're weird. But the utter waste of having something shipped to me when I could very likely get it at a store within a 20 minute drive stops me from the online ordering. And here's the thing, it's not that bad to go to a store and it gets one out of the house.
-
I had miscalculated the tools of adulthood when I was young, or I had miscalculated the kind of adult I would be. I had taken my cues from Edith Wharton novels and Merchant Ivory films. I had taken my cues from my best friend’s father.
I felt much of what Patchett says in this essay in my soul. For many years we hauled around things that we were given earlier in our lives or that we'd bought thinking it was a good idea at the time. During our last major move that changed and I realized when reading Patchett's words that it was then that I accepted the life I have (and quite like, thank you) and let go of the things that were my younger self's idea of what my life would be or were the ideas of other people.
-
The quantitative nature of Thoreau’s deconstruction of eudaimonia was radical, and deserves more attention. In our current moment, we should remember in particular the role of disruption in this intellectual journey. It’s hard to account for the cost of voluntary work if you’re tangled in a cultural context where everyone is getting and spending. Thoreau needed to retreat to a deliberate existence in which the voluntary was rendered obviously voluntarily—only then could he obtain the distance necessary to accurately account for these extra efforts. The Venetian blinds don’t truly feel optional until you’re living in a cabin that cost only twenty-eight dollars and twelve and a half cents.
A bit funny to link to an article about consumer culture and this one that is talking about realizing how much you really need to be happy and raises the question if working long hours to have a lot of stuff is necessary. I acknowledge the privilege that's implicit in asking the question, but as I've found when changing the focus of my own life, it can come across as exceptional to not have all the latest things and to pair down your life.
-
In other words, rather than helping us get our own selves out of the way so we can truly attend to others, these platforms encourage us to create thicker selves and to shore them up — defensively, competitively — against other selves we perceive as better off.
Nothing was very shocking in this article, but I found the philosophy underpinnings interesting while at the same time the entire thing made me a bit sad.
-
Not an article, but a link to a relatively short podcast series about wildfire in the west, created by Montana Public Radio and The University of Montana School of Business. I've been reading and listening to a lot of things about wildfire over the course of the past 11 months or so, mostly because a wildfire started just blocks from my house last September and took out 2500 structures in my area, so I've been trying to understand what it means for us and where we live. This podcast series is, by far, the best thing I've read or listened to on the subject. The host is empathetic, curious, and he talks to a wide range of people and takes on a lot of the complex issues surrounding the current situation. There are no easy answers, but I highly recommend giving this a listen if you want a better understanding of not only how we got here, but also how we can all live with fire going forward.
-
This is not a feature of a healthy society. Even before the pandemic pushed things to further extremes, the primacy of consumer identity made customer-service interactions particularly conflagratory. Being corrected by a salesperson, forgotten by a bartender, or brushed off by a flight attendant isn’t just an annoyance—for many people, it is an existential threat to their self-understanding.
I found the history in this article really interesting and also the way in which consuming has become so central to so many identities. I'm not sure it's the only reason people are awful these days, but it's probably part of it.
-
The United States government—whether controlled by Democrats, with their love of too-complicated-by-half, means-tested policy solutions; or Republicans, with their love of paperwork-as-punishment; or both, with their collective neglect of the implementation and maintenance of government programs—has not just given up on making benefits easy to understand and easy to receive. It has in many cases purposefully made the system difficult, shifting the burden of public administration onto individuals and discouraging millions of Americans from seeking aid. The government rations public services through perplexing, unfair bureaucratic friction. And when people do not get help designed for them, well, that is their own fault.
A must read on the problems with our programs and systems in this country, we punish those that need help, making it very difficult for them to get it. Other countries don't work this way. I often wonder how many people don't even realize that it doesn't have to be this way.
-
Remote work lays bare many brutal inefficiencies and problems that executives don’t want to deal with because they reflect poorly on leaders and those they’ve hired. Remote work empowers those who produce and disempowers those who have succeeded by being excellent diplomats and poor workers, along with those who have succeeded by always finding someone to blame for their failures. It removes the ability to seem productive (by sitting at your desk looking stressed or always being on the phone), and also, crucially, may reveal how many bosses and managers simply don’t contribute to the bottom line.
My experience with remote work is that it's so much easier to see who's productive and who's not. When you're judged based on the work and the work alone, not how well you can get along in an office, it also brings a new level of confidence for folks who may lack it and lays bear those we are all talk.
-
But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work.
This is an older post (based on the date in the url) but it's still quite relevant. And it brings up something I've been thinking about a lot with all the talk of shifting how people work post pandemic and so many people taking breaks and looking to change their work lives, but what happens if we all decide to make less so we can't spend as much and therefore we aren't helping to prop up this system? Personally, I'm spending a lot less, as I slow down for a bit, and I can't help but wonder how our system keeps going if a lot more people do that.
-
And that’s when I realized what those bastards in Silicon Valley had done to me. They’d wormed their way into my brain, found the thing that was more important to me than Twitter, and cut the connection.
This piece was so funny, but also so true. I loved how her sons reacted when she wanted back on and how they kept giving her things to read instead.
-
It is infuriating. It is also entirely understandable. Some days, as I am reading the news, I feel as if I am drowning. I think most of us do. At least online, we can use our voices and know they can be heard by someone.
Some really good thoughts about the online discourse, I'm still chewing over some of it. Over the course of the last six months I've been offline more than I have in years. I've been trying, not always successfully, to find more activities with people in my community. The difference to my mental health and my brain has been pretty amazing. The lack of constant online chatter means I can think, read deeply, and process what I do choose to take in on a daily basis.
-
Caffeine is not the sole cause of our sleep crisis; screens, alcohol (which is as hard on REM sleep as caffeine is on deep sleep), pharmaceuticals, work schedules, noise and light pollution, and anxiety can all play a role in undermining both the duration and quality of our sleep. But here’s what’s uniquely insidious about caffeine: the drug is not only a leading cause of our sleep deprivation; it is also the principal tool we rely on to remedy the problem. Most of the caffeine consumed today is being used to compensate for the lousy sleep that caffeine causes – which means that caffeine is helping to hide from our awareness the very problem that caffeine creates.
I enjoyed both the science about caffeine in this piece, but also the history. I didn't know about coffee houses in London at all, I may need to read more about it.
-
My Gram, whose mother made these clothes, recalls that her mother just delighted in designing, making, and even playing with the doll and her wardrobe. Apparently my great-grandmother didn’t have much opportunity to play as a child; her hands were necessary for farm work. I love that her sewing and knitting skills allowed her to rediscover her playful side as an adult. They are, after all, practical crafts, intended to clothe and keep us warm, but their fullest expression goes beyond that, entering the realm of art and creative play.
A lovely story and the photos of the clothes, wow! As I've been learning to sew I've started following more pattern makers and sewists and this post is beautiful.
-
Just as abstaining from flying for moral reasons won’t stop sea-level rise, one person canceling Prime won’t do much of anything to a multinational corporation’s bottom line. “It’s statistically insignificant to Amazon. They’ll never feel it,” Caine told me. But, he said, “the small businesses in your neighborhood will absolutely feel the addition of a new customer. Individual choices do make a big difference to them.”
I could've quoted several different things in this article, but this one is the one I came back to again and again. My local businesses notice that I'm there, I go out of my way to not buy things on Amazon and I haven't had prime for a long time. Free isn't free, someone is paying a price, and this article illustrates that very well.
-
But now, in my late middle age, the check mark serves a different purpose: It is the visible symbol of my realization that who I am is defined by what I do. I am a writer, so I write every day. Maybe you are a writer, too. Maybe you are not. The point still stands. The check mark is more important than whatever comes of the daily work whose completion you’re marking. The first represents actual living; the second, merely a life.
I really enjoyed this article and it's old school way of tracking work done.