Things I Like
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The quote above comes from something she tweeted once that stuck with me: “for anyone trying to discern what to do w/ their life: PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU PAY ATTENTION TO. that’s pretty much all the info u need.”
Love this quote and it is very true. I don't track my days and time as some do, but I've shifted my attention a lot recently and it's been amazing.
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True diversity means true disagreement. Political correctness exists at public institutions, but it doesn’t dominate them. A friend of mine who went to Columbia and Yale now teaches at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York. “When you meet someone at Hunter,” she told me, “you can’t assume they see the world the same way you do.” That’s about as pithy an expression of the problem at selective private colleges as I can imagine. When you meet someone at Columbia or Yale or Scripps or Whitman or any of scores of other institutions, you absolutely can assume they see the world the same way you do. And anyone who threatens to disrupt that cozy situation must be disinvited, reeducated, or silenced. It’s no surprise that the large majority of high-profile PC absurdities take place at elite private schools like Emory or Oberlin or Northwestern.
It is somewhat ironic that I hesitated to post this link. But this link captured a lot of how I feel in some of the communities that I participate in. I didn't go to a small liberal arts college, but rather a huge university with a total of 50,000 students (graduate and undergraduate), but today as I age and I struggle to keep up with some of the fast paced changes in our culture, I often feel I can't express thoughts or work out how I feel in certain places. I censor myself and instead have a group of trusted and safe friends with whom I talk about these things. And in some ways that's probably the way it should be, but in other ways I am saddened that people can't work out their thoughts without being targeted in some way, that we can't be our true selves with most of the world.
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As political artefacts, standards embody certain ideologies. For the internet, it is an aspiration towards openness – open systems, open access, open source. In the US, this ideology has deep historical roots. Some ideas inherent in this openness can be traced from the civil liberties driving resistance towards England’s Stamp Act in the mid-18th century to 20th-century ideals of open societies as alternatives to fascist and communist regimes. The philosopher Langdon Winner argued in 1980 that artefacts have politics, beliefs and assumptions about the world and society that are embedded and written into their very fabric.
I really wanted to quote this whole thing, but you know, you should read it. It reflects on so many good things about how we make things and how we move forward and it reminded me of The Real World of Technology in all the best ways.
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Without homogeneity, there would be no variation. It is the mechanics of sameness in some areas of our life that allows us wild diversity in others.
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When the world is brash, fast, and stupid, we must seek out what is quiet, slow, and intelligent to brace ourselves against the world’s madness.
I'd never heard of the films that Chimero talks about here, but now I want to watch them. I also appreciate, more than I can say, how he points out how hard it is for our culture to slow down, to be patient, and to soak in things that may be hard or different or something we're not used to. I've been trying, especially in the last month, to do just that—focusing on one thing at a time and leaving behind the distractions. It's a change for me, not always easy, but it's been worth it for the calm it brings into my life.
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People stop taking values seriously when the public rewards (and consequences) don’t match up. We can say that our culture requires treating each other with respect, but all too often, the openly rude high performer is privately disciplined, but keeps getting more and better projects. It doesn’t matter if you docked his bonus or yelled at him in private. When your team sees unkind people get ahead, they understand that the real culture is not one of kindness.
I enjoyed this article and found it fascinating. I don't think too often about work culture, but this article hits the nail on the head about how culture actually works, not the way we want it to work. And it's given me a lot of food for thought about places I've worked and where I'm currently working. Hat tip to Rob for pointing me towards it.
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I think about the topic of busyness and how to slow down in a life a lot. Over the years I've essentially started habits that've helped me say no, make time for myself, and given myself time with no plans so that my mind can wonder. And when I come across some links that are helpful, I usually read through them. In Vox, a professor talks about how he's become less busy and it's through really small, simple things. And in HBR, there is a list of things that can be helpful to making small changes that can slowly work into larger changes. I especially liked the part about questioning your thoughts to do away with negative thinking, something I have a hard time with much of the time.
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What seems universally true is that we could all use a little song, a good poem, and a fine picture in our daily routine. (Speaking a few good words seems entirely optional.)
I really like the way Kleon digs into the origins of this list. But I agree with the list, taking time to appreciate is extremely important, not just trying to create.
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Even the most persuasive argument — that compulsory voting violates free speech ideals that include the right to silence — misunderstands how compulsory voting works. Voters are not compelled to support a candidate or even to cast a valid ballot. They are obliged to turn up.
This was really interesting to me and I had a hard time picking out the right quote, because I also find the argument about fringe parties not being able to get elected since swing voters, rather than turn out, are what matter. I found a lot of this compelling since our recent elections elected a president with small fraction of the population actually voting for him.
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The divisions are not just happening through commercialism though. School choice has led people to self-segregate from childhood on up. The structures of American work life mean that fewer people work alongside others from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Our contemporary culture of retail and service labor means that there’s a huge cultural gap between workers and customers with little opportunity to truly get to know one another. Even many religious institutions are increasingly fragmented such that people have fewer interactions across diverse lines. (Just think about how there are now “family services” and “traditional services” which age-segregate.) In so many parts of public, civic, and professional life, we are self-segregating and the opportunities for doing so are increasing every day.
This is an interesting read about how several institutions used to force more mixing of people from different backgrounds. The military is one such example, but college dorm life was something I wouldn't have thought about before reading this (even though it makes complete sense). I think about this a lot and about how to bring more influences (in real life as opposed to voices on social media) into my own life.
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A beautiful image and short post about a book that I now want to read as it sounds amazing.
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While healthy policy differences between the traditional right and the left will continue, they should not prevent Americans from uniting in the defense of democracy and our Constitution. There are deep differences and misunderstandings between both sides, each of which have somewhat different definitions for even words like liberty and equality. But on their most basic meaning, I believe there is broad consensus. We should celebrate this; it’s critical that we do.
Evan McMullin is extremely conservative and I think in a normal political year I wouldn't agree with him very much, but since the election, he's been a critical voice of the incoming administration. And I'm grateful he's still speaking up.
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Like the specialists at the Graham Center, the generalists at Jamaica Plain are incrementalists. They focus on the course of a person’s health over time—even through a life. All understanding is provisional and subject to continual adjustment. For Rose, taking the long view meant thinking not just about her patient’s bouts of facial swelling, or her headaches, or her depression, but about all of it—along with her living situation, her family history, her nutrition, her stress levels, and how they interrelated—and what that picture meant a doctor could do to improve her patient’s long-term health and well-being throughout her life.
This article describes what frustrates me so much about care in the US health care system. The person who should know me the best and be able to spend time to ensure my treatment is what I really need, is the one who is paid the least and expected to rush through their days. I went to the same clinic from the time I was born until I moved out of state at 32. The history and knowledge they had about my life and my health is something that can't be replicated easily, but it can make all the difference when a crisis or chronic illness strikes.
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As we move our code to CodePen, our writing to Medium, our photographs to Instagram we don’t just run the risk of losing that content and the associated metadata if those services vanish. We also lose our own place to experiment and add personality to that content, in the context of our own home on the web.
I'm so with Rachel on this, this space is my home, and I'm increasingly all in on it with syndication to other places. And it's why I care less about Twitter and other social media.
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So back to fundamentals. My first duties are to my family and close friends, to my communities of work and care, and to myself, though that last has taken me a very long time to understand. The panicky rhythm of Twitter is no longer compatible with those duties, so I’m off it. I was genuinely sad about its decline for a couple of years, but I don’t have any sadness to spare anymore.
One of the benefits of the decline of Twitter is that more people that I've followed on RSS for years are blogging again and also writing Tiny Letters. I'm excited as I like reading long form thoughts from great writers and I'm seeing more of it in my feed.