Things I Like
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This shift toward ever-larger trucks and SUVs has endangered everyone not inside of one, especially those unprotected by tons of metal. A recent study linked the growing popularity of SUVs in the United States to the surging number of pedestrian deaths, which reached a 40-year high in 2021. A particular problem is that the height of these vehicles expands their blind spots. In a segment this summer, a Washington, D.C., television news channel sat nine children in a line in front of an SUV; the driver could see none of them, because nothing within 16 feet of the front of the vehicle was visible to her.
I'll admit that I don't understand the obsession with large vehicles and as someone who walks a lot and who drives a smaller car, it's frightening how large many of these vehicles are. And now, as we go electric, we are just continuing that trend, even if it's unsafe for those not in the cars and means larger and heavier cars because of the batteries. This feels very typical of our country, that this is the way we'd go.
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...[W]e live in a world full of distractions but short on breaks. The time between activities is consumed by other activities—the scrolling, swiping, tapping of managing a never-ending stream of notifications, of things coming at us that need doing. All that stuff means moments of absolutely nothing—of a gap, of an interval, of a beautiful absence—are themselves absent, missing, abolished.
As I've put down my device more, started reading paper books more, and left what was left of the social media that I did consume, time feels different. And a lot of it is because it's slowing down in ways. I'm taking breaks, I'm not allowing everything that demands my attention to get it, and I'm actively seeking boredom.
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Some books should be savored — read slowly, meditated on, returned to — but if I’ve made it my goal to read X number of books or watch Z number of movies, then I won’t give such works the time they ask of me. I’ll rush through them so I can mark them off my list and move on to The Next Thing.
I'm with Jacobs here, I do keep track of my reading, but I've never had a goal. I also realize that there are way more books, podcasts, online articles, and content than I'll ever be able to consume. (I realized this in college with all the classics that were out there as new books keep getting published.) So instead of trying to consume as much as possible, I too have been in the mode of being thoughtful about what I consume and why. I've cut my feeds down (only people for the most part) and I've cut back on podcasts as well.
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My question about all this is: And then? You rush through the writing, the researching, the watching, the listening, you’re done with it, you get it behind you — and what is in front of you? Well, death, for one thing. For the main thing.
Prior to this post Jacobs posted several quotes of people using AI to write their articles or do their work and then he asks this and I think it's a wonderful question. Why are we racing through all the things? Why do we think that doing more is necessarily better or will lead to a better life? I've been slowing down, in many ways, over the last month and I gotta say, it's led to a lot more enjoyment of what I'm doing in any given moment.
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At the core of American housing policy is a secret hiding in plain sight: Homeownership works for some because it cannot work for all. If we want to make housing affordable for everyone, then it needs to be cheap and widely available. And if we want that housing to act as a wealth-building vehicle, home values have to increase significantly over time. How do we ensure that housing is both appreciating in value for homeowners but cheap enough for all would-be homeowners to buy in? We can’t.
Demsas is doing some of the best writing about the housing situation of anyone around. I came to the realization long ago that you can't house everyone and treat housing as a wealth generating asset, it will never work. On top of that, as Demsas mentions in a different section of the article, luck plays a huge role in whether you make money off of your house or not, so maybe, just maybe, it's time for real change in how we handle housing.
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For the first time, she experienced life in the city as a teenager without an iPhone. She borrowed novels from the library and read them alone in the park. She started admiring graffiti when she rode the subway, then fell in with some teens who taught her how to spray-paint in a freight train yard in Queens. And she began waking up without an alarm clock at 7 a.m., no longer falling asleep to the glow of her phone at midnight.
I love that kids are finding a different way, at least a small group of them, but I found it really odd how worried the parents were about this change. How in the world did previous generations survive and thrive when our parents couldn't track our every move?
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The wiggly line in the centre is the equatorial line, and the grey cloud represents the plane of the Milky Way. The Sun, Moon and planets also make an appearance - dating the sky depicted precisely to Friday, August 31 at 6 pm British Summer Time.
Filed under: really cool. Also I've put at least one of the smaller knitting projects in my queue.
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What’s surprised me most as Twitter has convulsed in recent weeks is how threadbare the social media cupboard really is. So many are open to trying something new, but as of yet, there’s nothing that feels all that new to try. Everything feels like a take on Twitter. It may be faster or slower, more decentralized or more moderated, but they’re all variations on the same theme: experiments in how to capture attention rather than deepen it, platforms built to encourage us to speak rather than to help us listen or think.
Klein makes some really great points throughout this piece and he quotes a piece by Robin Sloan that I've seen quoted a lot in recent weeks, but I think the above is what I've been thinking about the most. How do you have a way to listen, really listen? Is that possible online or is that easier when together with people in real life? I'm not sure another platform is what we need, but I definitely think reaching out and trying things that haven't been done before and looking to other models may be helpful in how we move forward.
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For ambition to be sustainable, it has to be personal and complex, not just about rising through the ranks. For every woman who is burned out after placing too much value on work as a key component of her identity, the task isn’t letting go of ambition altogether. It’s relocating those ambitions beyond the traditional markers of money, title, and professional recognition. Ambition does not have to be limited to a quest for power at the expense of yourself and others. It can also be a drive for a more just world, a healthier self, a stronger community. And it’s definitely achievable in soft pants.
I lost ambition to climb the ladder in my career quite early and recognized that it was OK for my job to be the thing that made it possible for me to be able to do the things I loved and kept me going. The hard part is dealing with both family and a culture that expects so much more and being OK with disappointing both.
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In this way, smartphones consume rest. I mean to defy the usual consumption metaphor—in which we (the users) consume whatever the device makes available. Instead, I think the devices (and their attendant systems and modes, the apps and news feeds and platforms and whatnot) consume us. We are consumed: our rest, our ease, our leisure, our breath—all are eaten up by the flickering and frittering and jittering of inconstant screens.
There's a lot in this piece Mandy wrote that I love and it was hard to pick a quote, but with all that's been going on lately, I think this is what I'm thinking about the most. How does being online and using all of the devices make us feel and what has it done to us? As I've stepped away from them more and more, I feel more like myself in many ways. I'm not sure if it's all about being online less and less, but I do think it's playing a significant role.
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Should life give me the opportunity to have another story, then I’m hoping for space and time to be able to explore and do the same kind of work I’m doing now but with more intention, more time for it to unfold, more thoughtfulness, more walks, more photography, more words.
Really interesting interview with a woman who I knew nothing about, but she's done amazing work. Hand sewing isn't currently my thing right now, but maybe in the future. I definitely want to read some of her books.
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As I’ve written before on this subject, people just aren’t meant to talk to one another this much. They shouldn’t have that much to say, they shouldn’t expect to receive such a large audience for that expression, and they shouldn’t suppose a right to comment or rejoinder for every thought or notion either. From being asked to review every product you buy to believing that every tweet or Instagram image warrants likes or comments or follows, social media produced a positively unhinged, sociopathic rendition of human sociality. That’s no surprise, I guess, given that the model was forged in the fires of Big Tech companies such as Facebook, where sociopathy is a design philosophy.
This short article sums up a lot of history about how we got where we are with social media, but it also does a great job of pointing out the inherit problems with it. We aren't meant to live life this way, it's not good for us, so maybe the beginning of the end of Twitter could point us to better ways instead of finding replacements.
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At this stage in my life, I simply do not have the time or energy to shake my little pan in a stream of information, trying to sift out the nuggets I want to engage with.
I'm with Rach Smith here and I'm not going to another social network now that the bird seems to be thrashing and possibly in the last throws of life. But I'm here, right on this site, and, for those so inclined, I'm really good at and like email, my contact form is always available to start a conversation.
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Many people don’t want to quit because they worry: without my Twitter account, who will listen to me? In what way will I matter to the world beyond my apartment, my office, my family? I believe these hesitations reveal something totally unrelated to Twitter, and if you find yourself fretting in this way, I will gently suggest that it’s worth questing a bit to discover what you’re really worried about.
Some interesting thoughts in this list.
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This is about more than naps. Thank you for saying that. I say it so much - it is about way more - it's a paradigm shift. It's mind-altering. It's culture-shifting. It's a full-on politics of refusal. We have been brainwashed by this system to believe these things about rest, about our bodies, about our worth - this violent culture that wants to see us working 24 hours a day, that doesn't view us as a human being, but instead views our divine bodies as a machine.
I want to read Hersey's book, but this is a great introduction to her thinking about rest as resistance and so much more. Our culture, and capitalism in particular, drive us to think that rest is bad. It's taken me years to move towards a place where I slow down regularly and I realize that it's a privilege that I can do that, but we all need it so much. In addition I really enjoyed the way Hersey talked about certain activities as being rest inducing, that you can be doing something that is restful for you even as you move. For me walking and knitting and yoga are these things.