Things I Like
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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.
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Despite the awkward moments and missing out, this year has been the shove I needed to try new things. The best thing about the challenge is that I’ve been willing to say ‘yes’ more and that I’ve become more adventurous.Having the choice to spend, or not, is a privilege and I have become far more aware of why we buy. I have come to realise that consumerism keeps us chained to our desks, working to earn money to spend on stuff we think will make our lives better. And when the stuff doesn’t make us happy, we go back to work to earn more money to buy something else. The last 12 months have allowed me to step outside this cycle and I can honestly say I’m happier now. I’ve gained confidence and skills, done things I would never have done and met lovely people I wouldn’t have otherwise met.
I live what many may see as a frugal life. We keep a very close eye on our spending and it's for the very reason McGagh outlines. The more you spend, the more you need to work. And in the quest to spend less we've found out that being content with what you have and enjoying what is around you is truly wonderful, instead of always striving for more stuff that you often forget about in time.
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Which brings me to the saddest thing about these platforms: they are taking all of our input and time, and our thoughts, energy, and content, and using all of that for free to make money. Think about how many times you’ve tweeted. Or written or commented on a Facebook post. Or started a Medium draft. These are all our words, locked in proprietary platforms that controls not only how our message is displayed, but how we write it, and even more worrying, how we think about it.
So many good points in this piece. I will admit that I'm most saddened that so many are using tweetstorms or threads to share longer form thoughts. I find them jarring to read and while they contain good thoughts, they'd be so much better as a blog post. And, as the author states, I get why people do it, but these platforms aren't good for meaningful discourse anymore; maybe they never were.
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But let me make my own personal argument in defence of making art: I don’t even know who fashioned this particular phrase or idea, but there’s this idea that we do war so that our children will do commerce so that their children will be poets. Well, Adam, I’m not doing war, and I’m not gonna waste my life with commerce. Whether or not it’s financially viable for me, I want my goal of civilization to be as follows: to do the work, to pay attention to what’s beautiful, to encourage others in that form of attention as well. That’s where I want to be. And I will listen to Bismillah Khan and I will listen to Young Thug. Deferring one’s pleasure because of other peoples’ anxieties seems kind of weird to me.
I love Cole's writing and now can't wait to read the essays.
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This is not a lament. It is counsel. It is saying: We can awaken completely. The best sign of which will be how we treat every being who crosses our path. For real change is personal. The change within ourselves expressed in our willingness to hear, and have patience with, the “other.” Together we move forward. Anger, the pointing of fingers, the wishing that everyone had done exactly as you did, none of that will help relieve our pain. We are here now. In this scary, and to some quite new and never imagined place. What do we do with our fear?
Reading a lot of things to help me through these days and Walker is one I'll be coming back to, I'm sure.
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In the wake of recent events I’d encourage those of us who build hypertext to have discussions about how you measure success. Are all of your KPIs attention-based? Are you driving addiction? Are you comfortable with the repercussions?
So much good thinking is coming out right now about the way in which we use social media, our devices, and how we spend our time and what we give our attention. Dave's right on here and asking some very good questions about how, as creators of these things and web workers, we may want to think about.
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Evil settles into everyday life when people are unable or unwilling to recognize it. It makes its home among us when we are keen to minimize it or describe it as something else. This is not a process that began a week or month or year ago. It did not begin with drone assassinations, or with the war on Iraq. Evil has always been here. But now it has taken on a totalitarian tone.
Teju Cole <3 <3 <3 <3