Why is everyone talking about Bluesky right now?Published inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter4 min read2 hours ago-- Weekend plans? LMK in the responses. I am taking Slack off my phone.Issue #213: theres no such thing as a vaccine skeptic + how whimsy got expensiveA coworker told me their mom texted them on Tuesday to ask Whats Bluesky?? Thats how you know an app is breaking through.Its been Bluesky Week in my life (I also got a text from a not-super-online friend: Are you on Bluesky?). I finally gave in and created an account I have :: checks notes :: four followers. The vibe, as Ryan Broderick puts it in Garbage Day, is millennial roommate board game night: nostalgic yet slightly unhinged. Sam Biddle calls it LARPing using Twitter.Bluesky is now the #1 free app in the app store, ahead of ChatGPT and Threads. It surpassed 21 million users yesterday. Bluesky engineer Jaz built a live growth tracker. You can see clearly that it truly blew up over the last two weeks:Blueskys daily likers as of November 21The platform is still tiny, comparatively. Its 8% the size of Threads (275M monthly active users) and ~7% the size of X (300M monthly active users). But it has the most momentum, partially because its got cultural wind at its back. Its owned by a public benefit corporation, a for-profit entity whose ostensible goal is to make a positive impact on society (though theres no way to legally hold them to that). Its codebase is open source. It has 20 employees. Its mission? To drive open and decentralized public conversation, pretty much the polar opposite of what tech giants aimed to do in the 2010s.In 2024, were tired of watching tech execs grandstand and profit on attention and expression (see: Anil Dashs Dont call it a Substack). Its refreshing to be part of something that doesnt feel slickly designed to sell your time to the highest bidder.One more thing: Blueskys network is smaller than Threads, but it feels larger because, as Aaron Ross Powell explains, the app is less personalized by default. On Threads, you may never see whats trending globally because youre given a narrow algorithmic feed based on what it thinks you like. (I got assigned to a New York City feed somehow, so 80% of my recs are stuff about walkability and Jane Jacobs.) Bluesky, on the other hand, gives you a straight-up reverse-chron feed from people you follow, plus a global Discover page with viral hits. As a result, it feels more like one big party.Personally, I think Bluesky is fine for millennials who want to Marty McFly back to 2014. Its a good Twitter clone. But long-term, I wonder if the new Twitter is no Twitter at all? Maybe humanity is evolving past posting 280-to-300-character blurbs? Technology is so much better than it was in 2006. Maybe we dont need to talk in soundbites anymore? Harris Sockel Good quotesFrom an interview with a 57-year-old Mike Tyson that I surreptitiously linked in yesterdays newsletter: The most successful people have the biggest ego, but the lowest self-esteem.Marketing and branding consultant Michelle Wiles on how whimsy became expensive: Unlike stereotypical luxury stoic, serious, refined [todays most popular] brands put forth fun, personality, and a sense of surrealism that aligns to whats aspirational today. Time to purchase my $2,000 shearling hamster bag, I guess!People are throwing around the words vaccine skeptic so much we barely know what they mean. Isnt a skeptic from the Greek skepsis, to inquire someone who questions, who doesnt blindly accept overused language as fact? Albert Burneko in Defector: A person who merely refuses to learn what can be known is not a skeptic, but rather an ignoramus; a person who raises questions but does not seek their answers is not a skeptic, but a bullshitter.A writing tip?

The battle between Gen Z and Gen XPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min read8 hours ago-- Thursday! This week is whooshing by.Issue #212: lowercase diary entries, Angulars latest update, and the 4,000 weeks of your lifeIt was Netflixs first-ever livestreamed sports event: 27-year-old Jake Paul (masculinitys answer to the Kardashians?) v. 58-year-old Mike Tyson (once the youngest heavyweight champion in history). Actually, Paul is a pro boxing champ, too his record is 111. Tysons is 507.Netflix claims 108 million viewers tuned in. I didnt watch live, but I did watch the highlights. It looked like a draw to me? Definitely not a knockout, but Paul won.The fight itself wasnt eventful (both of them seemed tired), but the conversations around it were more interesting. Deadspin founder Will Leitch highlighted the hype-y moment at the beginning of every fight when the announcer bellows out the name of each contender, explaining why they should be feared or revered (think: introducing THE BONECRUSHERRR). His intro for Paul? In this attention economy, HE COMMANDS IT AND HE TURNS IT INTO CAPITAL!Wild. That sentence encapsulates what was at the heart of this fight, to me: a battle between Gen Z and Gen X. Two generations, two strategies. One demands respect through understated yet powerful actions. The other builds its reputation on image, influence, and visibility.One last note: Many of you couldnt watch at all, because Netflixs servers got overloaded during the stream. Moses Mwemezi Kemibaro, in Kenya, tried to watch on a few different internet service providers to no avail. Data scientist Risto Trajanov took us deep inside Netflixs tech stack to uncover what went wrong: the video couldnt be pre-cached, and Netflix wasnt prepared. Netflixs CTO apologized for the outage, but claimed the event was still a huge success. One man in Florida already sued the platform for interfering with his viewing pleasure.If you werent caught in buffering hell: What did you think? By 2030 will Netflix beat ESPN at its own game? Harris Sockel Two more things Im readingFeed Me, a newsletter by former Meta creative strategist Emily Sundberg, started as a venue for freaky little fictional horror stories like this one about a female founder who hides her employees in her basement. (I died at the baguette-shaped lamp.) Its now the fifth most popular paid newsletter on Substack in the business category. Sundbergs most popular story examines the dynamics of Substack itself, specifically how the platform spawns millions of lowercase diary entries that sound the same. (Semafor)Angular, the Google-built framework for creating digital interfaces used by everyone from Tesla to Microsoft to a humble blogging platform called Medium just released version 19. It includes new features to help your UI load more quickly, like incremental hydration (turning static HTML into a dynamic, interactive experience) and event replay enabled by default. (Angular Blog) Your daily dose of practical wisdomIf youre reading this at age 40, you have around 2,000 weeks left to live. Most lifetimes are ~80 years, or 4,000 weeks. Do something good with this one.

Deepening understanding about transmisogynyPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter4 min read9 hours ago-- Welcome back to the Medium NewsletterIssue #211: your thoughts on raw milk + how to persevereToday is Transgender Day of Remembrance, a time to mourn and pay tribute to those murdered for just living as who they are. 350 trans people have been murdered globally in 2024, 29 more than in 2023. Here are just a few of them.Often, their deaths go underreported and underinvestigated, and their murderers are unpunished. Most of them are Black and migrant trans women.On Medium, social psychologist Devon Price unpacks a study that tries to figure out why this is happening. Whats the root of this bigotry? NYU psychology professor Jaime Napier analyzed the results of a 23-country, 16,000-person survey. She found that people tend to be more vocally prejudiced against trans women than trans men.Why?Prejudice is layered. Author and trans activist Julia Serano coined the term transmisogyny in 2007 to name the intersection between transphobia and misogyny. Shes since written on Medium about how the term has been used in ways she didnt anticipate and why we need better, more specific language for how humans express gender and sexuality.But whats happening here, according to Napier, goes deeper than the fact that trans women are marginalized in two ways at once. Napier finds that people may be more biased against trans women than trans men because they view trans women as gay men, and most cultures punish men more aggressively than women for going against gender norms. Women are punished for transgressing, too, but in more insidious ways usually by people who doubt their sexuality or gender in the first place, think its a phase, or a cover.Thats why, Price writes, Napiers study is so important: Its a piece of carefully collected evidence that trans women and their allies can point to as proof that bias against trans femmes really is a societal problem, and it doesnt stop asking why?A few more survey results deepened and complicated my understanding like the fact that when controlling for anti-gay bias, highly religious people were actually less biased against trans folks than the non-religious were. You can read Prices full summary here. Harris SockelYour thoughts on raw milkOn Monday, we sent out a newsletter about raw milk. Many of you have vehement feelings on this topic! If you told us why you disagree with us (and cited your sources), thank you. We love smart disagreement. Here are a few of your responses:I just read the Medium Newsletter on raw milk. While I do not disagree with anything in it, I do feel it omitted a legitimate use case: cheese making. The commercial pasteurization processes diminish the quality of the curd to varying degrees. One may pasteurize their milk at home using a low-heat method that doesnt cause the same problems. It takes much longer, which is why its not done commercially.So, while having raw milk on the shelves in the health food section may not be a great idea, making it legal and marketing it as cheese milk 3.5% or something that isnt attractive to people who wouldnt know how to handle it is something that amateur cheese makers would appreciate. Trevor Fink, via email to tips@medium.comModern research, specifically the 2022 Frontiers in Microbiology study Screening and evaluation of lactic acid bacteria with probiotic potential from local Holstein raw milk (Zhang et al), shows that raw milks microbiological properties are far more complex than previously understood. The need to rely on older studies suggests either incomplete research on your part or a deliberate choice to ignore newer findings that might complicate your narrative. Either way, it undermines your credibility when discussing this topic. Andy AcelWhen I did my Masters, I focused on a specific infection from raw milk: brucellosis. Brucellosis is the most common zoonotic disease worldwide but few know about it because there is a long delay from exposure to symptoms.The case fatality rate from brucellosis is meager. 1 to 2%. The primary symptoms of brucellosis get dismissed as the flu recurring fever. Nanette Lai, MAAnd heres my favorite response (thank you Aardvark Infinity, whoever you are):A top highlight on Medium this weekI shall not quit something with great long-term potential just because I cant deal with the stress of the moment. Diana C.

Why a wildfire broke out in NYCPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min read8 hours ago-- Were back!Issue #210: wildfires in unlikely places, insights from an ER triage nurse, and your brain on iconsTwo weeks ago, a wildfire broke out in the unlikeliest of places: New York City.A 2-acre fire erupted in Prospect Park, close to the geographic center of Brooklyn and probably my favorite park on earth. For the first time in history, the FDNY launched a brush fire task force to put it out (its been snuffed now!), but it was only one of 271 brush fires across the city during the first two weeks of November. Meanwhile, there are at least 11 major wildfires burning up and down the East Coast right now, from Boston to Virginia.My coast is not usually on fire, and the causes (as I understand them) seem pretty straightforward: drought + heat = flames. It hasnt rained more than a half-inch in NYC since September 29, and its been hotter than usual for November. As of a few weeks ago, a majority of U.S. states (especially in the northeast and upper Midwest) hadnt seen any rain since September. Its almost like the atmosphere dumped all its moisture on us during Helene and Milton, and now its on PTO.Wherever there are (a) trees with dried-out leaves, and (b) a stray cigarette, there may be fire. On Medium, a New Jersey resident who lives close to the Jennings Creek Wildfire in Passaic County still raging, though 90% contained is thinking of moving, following in the footsteps of millions of indigenous people whove migrated to rainier climates over thousands of years. Historically, drought is a more powerful motivator to pack your things and go than flooding and researchers predict even more drought-induced migration this century.Related to that, I appreciated this map of climate risks by census region: It combines 184 datasets to show you the specific risks (flooding, drought, blackout, etc.) associated with each location. I found a spot outside Lincoln, Nebraska, that looks pretty safe see yall there? Harris Sockel 1 sentence, 1 storyTurns out hips dont lie started as something Shakira said in the studio when a song wasnt working if it were, her hips wouldve been moving. (Kim Witten, PhD)An ER triage nurse shares lesser-known symptoms that can predict serious conditions (never ignore flashing lights in your field of vision). (Andrea Romeo RN, BN)The Apple designer responsible for only requiring one icon size on iOS shares how your brain puts simple shapes together to visualize complex icons. (Edward Sanchez) Your daily dose of practical wisdomSometimes, being punctual can be impolite especially, as Matthew Clapham explains, in communities that view time as more of a communal resource than an individual one to be hoarded. If youre late because you were helping a neighbor out, thats better than being precisely on time.

Raw milk is about to have its culture war momentPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter2 min readJust now-- Happy Monday yall. Lets do this.Issue #209: Milktalk, the NYC marathon-as-party, a simple explanation of tariffs and becoming the boss of your phoneLets talk about raw milk.Long a trend among health influencers and tradwives who make claims about its nutritional value, raw milk is a staple topic of for you pages across all flavors of social media. With former presidential candidate/bear corpse dumper/raw milk booster Robert F. Kennedy Jr. poised to become head of the Health and Human Services Department, raw milk is about to have its culture war moment.The science on unpasteurized milk seems straightforward:Its risky. As the FDA says, consuming it in any form poses serious increased health risks from germs like Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, and Campylobacter. Drinking it can kill you.Its not healthier for you there arent more nutrients or probiotics, it doesnt cure lactose intolerance, its not better at preventing osteoporosis.In other words, the misleading benefits would never outweigh the immense risk that comes from drinking it.Whats the counter argument? In addition to the fundamentally wrong health claims above, theres an argument about taste (Ive tried raw milk; it tasted likemilk?), but also a generalized dislike of processed, industrialized food, which is a thread RFK Jr. is likely to pull on if hes confirmed (by no means a foregone conclusion). Theres also reason to question why we are drinking so much milk to begin with.One more thing: If youll recall, last spring there was a bird flu epidemic among dairy cattle in the U.S. You maybe havent heard much about it lately, but its still going on; there have been 136 new cases discovered in California in the last 30 days. The conversation in the spring was about milk safety, and ensuring that milk production was safely eliminating the virus. The process for that? Pasteurization. So add increased risk of bird flu to the list of reasons not to drink raw milk. 1 sentence, 1 storyYou run thousands of training miles to make it to the New York City Marathon just to see someone hold up a sign saying Welcome to the Bronx, now get the f*ck out but its all worth it. (Patricia Vicary, Runners Life)Were drawing lots of wrong conclusions from the election results; Democrats shouldnt over-correct and Republicans shouldnt be over-confident. (Matthew Dowd)A small business owner explains tariffs in simple terms: the prices of imported goods go up, and the increased cost is paid by the importer, and passed on to the consumer. (Sam W.) Your daily dose of practical wisdomYour phone is a tool, not a boss.

Work with people who respect you and who you respect. No exceptions.Published inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min read7 hours ago-- Take a bow. You made it.Issue #208: How Thriller was made and Always Be FinishingTheres a quote I think about a lot: How you do anything is how you do everything.Its one of those quotes that gets thrown around a lot. It makes a great title. Its an effective subject line. As far as I can tell, it was popularized by Martha Beck, who was raised in the LDS Church and left to pursue transcendental meditation (itself a practice of doing one thing well so it bleeds out into the rest of your life).I love this maxim because it encourages me to think small. Subtle details matter. How you approach a seemingly unimportant task says a lot about who you are.Thats why I loved Nora Germains list of 110 lessons from her career as a jazz violinist. Shes performed and recorded with artists like Sam Smith and Jon Batiste. She sees jazz as a metaphor for living, and if you listen closely, many of these are life lessons in disguise. A few of my favorites:Contribute, dont rely.Work with people who respect you and who you respect. No exceptions.If people express limitations, those belong to them not to you!You can always give yourself a chance. Book your own show. Give yourself the first solo. Harris SockelFrom the archive: All Thriller, No FillerQuincy Jones, the late Grammy-award-winning producer and jazz conductor who passed away just a few weeks ago, was many things. His daughter Rashida Jones remembers him as a culture shifter who was nocturnal his whole life. He kept jazz hours, waking up in the middle of the night to compose music with a notebook and pen.One of his masterworks is Thriller, the top-selling album of all time (even now, 42 years later). Indie musician Daniel McClelland explains that Thriller began with a pool of 700 possible songs. Together, Jones and Jackson eliminated 691 of them, distilling the project down to nine bangers including its pice de rsistance: Billie Jean. What separates the scrapped songs (you can listen to one in the post) from those that made the cut? A feeling of forward momentum the sense that a song is taking you somewhere you havent been before.Its also a lesson in quality control. The songs that were cut are decent! But theyre not as distinctive as those that were kept. Fifteen good-enough songs wouldve been worse than nine outstanding songs.Your daily dose of practical wisdomIf you want to write something a book, a post, an email aim for the ending. Finish it badly. Just find an ending, as author Sophie Lucido Johnson advises. Its shocking how scared we can be to say something is done.

The changing keys to the White HousePublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min read5 hours ago-- Welcome back to the Medium NewsletterIssue #207: the women who created werewolf stories and the four doors we use to determine right vs. wrongA big story last week was how historian Allan Lichtmans 13 keys to the White House a prediction model that has accurately called 90% of the past 40 years of presidential races failed. (He predicted Kamala Harris to be the winner.)Admittedly, these keys were new to me, so heres what I learned: Lichtmans whole deal is that there are 13 boolean statements (keys) that can predict whether an incumbent party will win or lose an election. I recommend reading through them all, but they include things like The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal, or The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. Because there are 13 of them, at least 7 need to be turned (or determined to be true) to accurately predict the election one way or another.So, what did Lichtman get wrong? I dont think I called any (keys) wrong, he told USA Today, before claiming the contest key was rendered problematic by what went on by the Democratic Party. Here is that key: No primary contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. He determined that statement to be true. Would you?Critics claim that the 13 keys are pretty subjective. Nate Silver, known for his own thorny political prediction history, even tweeted at Lichtman saying, At least 7 of the keys, maybe 8, clearly favor Trump. Sorry brother, but thats what the keys say. Unless youre admitting theyre totally arbitrary?On Medium, foreign policy expert Cam Silver, Ph.D. recently published an examination of an unturned key from the 1992 presidential race. Prior to George H.W. Bushs defeat, Lichtman neglected to turn the key that states: There is no sustained social unrest during the term. But Silver believes the variety of organized and potent demonstrations that ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) organized (which were also universally covered by mainstream media outlets) could certainly be categorized as significant enough:This wasnt fringe. ACT UP was a vocal and persistent part of the American political landscape, demanding accountability from those in power. By all standards of social movement theory, this kind of sustained, relentless protest more than qualifies as social unrest.Whats the future of Lichtmans keys? He elaborated in an interview this week that the unprecedented amount of disinformation that plagued this election season (and the rocket fuel of funding by the billionaire class that accelerated it) is making him consider a reevaluation of his model:The premise of the keys is that a rational and pragmatic electorate decides whether the White House party has governed well enough to get 4 more years. If the views of the White House parties are driven by those who are so rich that they have extraordinary influence beyond anyone else, then maybe the premise of the keys needs to be changed.1 sentence = 1 awesome story:The earliest stories about werewolves are thought to be written by women and date back to the 12th century. (Daley W.)As podcasts continue to dominate our modern media landscape (see below), one writer leaned in by turning her novel into one and describes her hunt for the right soundtrack to accompany it. (Hilde Festerling)Four doors shape our interpretation of right and wrong: ethics, morality, law, and religion. (Law and Ordnung)An eyebrow-raising graph:

It happened on Medium: October 2024 roundupMuch-highlighted insight, notable new publications, and evergreen listsPublished inThe Medium Blog4 min readJust now--Image: The Travelling Companions by Augustus Leopold Egg (from Birmingham Museums Trust)Ive been thinking a lot about just sitting with things. Not in an actual physical sense, but in the emotional / psychological / existential sense.Its really easy to want to flood your brain with more more more, as fast as possible. Over the last couple of months, Ive caught myself going back to the same bad social media habits I always regress into: only reading headlines on social media, barely skimming an article before deciding I get the full gist of it, replacing deep thinking with dopamine-saturated quick content.And look, sometimes we all need a lil bit of those empty brain calories. But then I come back to Medium and get lost in a lovingly-crafted deep dive that makes me sit in whatever emotion I am feeling that day and I walk away feeling better? I read a piece that makes me sit up, read closer, go deeper than I normally would with something I encounter on the internet, and I feel more grounded once I do.Last month, nearly our entire Medium team met in North Berwick, Scotland, for one of our twice-yearly in-person off-sites (we all typically work from home), and one thing that I most appreciated about that time was the ability to sit with colleagues and actually think about what we do every day, and what we want this magical place to be.Now, does this mean Ive completely cut myself off from my other platforms? No, of course not, we all contain multitudes. But am I more likely to turn to the voices on Medium to help me sit with difficult things or emotions? Youd better believe I am.And thats because of what all of you, fair readers and writers, bring to it every day.So lets check out what we all read and wrote in October, shall we? Amy Widdowson, VP Communications5 of Octobers most-read storiesHow Old Is Your Body? Stand On One Leg and Find Out by Yale associate professor of medicine F. Perry Wilson, MD MSCEUnderstanding LLMs from Scratch Using Middle School Math by Meta GenAI data director Rohit Patel in Towards Data ScienceA day at Secret Starbucks by Jill BennettMost commented-on and opened Medium Newsletter issuesLately Ive found that the Medium Newsletter + a strong cup of coffee = the best way to start a morning off right. When I checked in with our content lead Harris Sockel on what drove the most buzz this month, he pointed me to How to make your weekends feel twice as long, which caused me to take a long, hard look at how I spend my time from Friday-Sunday. Our most-opened newsletter in October was Pursuing your passion feels like cheating, which included the straight-to-the-heart line: So, what is happiness? Its not just passion. Its purpose. Something you love that people around you actually need.We love that yall keep reading these evergreen lists from Medium staffSelf-Improvement 101: Learn how to beat insomnia, cultivate emotional intelligence, create a realistic budget, and more.General Coding Knowledge by Medium backend engineer EduardoAnd the list I personally found most helpful as well, Living Well as a Neurodivergent Person by our director of content curation Terrie SchweitzerMost-highlighted passages in OctoberI shall not quit something with great long-term potential just because I cant deal with the stress of the moment. Diana C., Im Losing My Writing MojoAI wont take your job, a person using AI will; most likely you using AI will replace yourself not using it. Alberto Romero, in 30 Things Ive Learned About AIWhen you know you are taking the wrong train, make sure to get out at the next station because the longer you stay, the more expensive the return trip will be. Meena Rohith, Write Your First 100 Articles Then StopTheres the risk of true vulnerability: uncertainty. True vulnerability requires that you dont know. You dont know how your share will be received; you dont know how others will perceive you for sharing it; you dont know if theres a happy ending yet. Ally Sprague, Fake Vulnerability is Keeping You StuckTwo notable new publicationsHave a story youve written and you cant find a Medium publication to pitch to? Check out CarolFs Square Peg publication.Interested in evidence-based strategies for fostering curiosity? Check out STEM Parenting, edited by Silvia PM, PhDAnd finally, one story that made me grateful I keep an e-reader with me at all times5 Massive Books That Are Worth Your Time by Mark Manson. Look, between us friends, I must admit that Ive started Infinite Jest more than once but stopped because the book was too heavy to carry. Mark reminded me that, since I can fit an entire library in my purse, I no longer have an excuse anymore.

Why theres no such thing as an untranslatable wordPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter2 min read4 hours ago-- Were back with the Medium NewsletterIssue #206: befriending good communicators and a roadtrip through the 11 distinct subcultures that comprise the U.S.Untranslatable words are sort of a trope on the internet. Google that phrase and youll find a series of overlapping lists often written by English speakers. A classic: hygge, which one of my friends who used to live in Denmark tells me definitely does not mean cozy. (Its more nuanced than that, a combination of rusticity and simplicity.)At a certain point, these lists can feel like cultural fetishism to me, like theyre flattening all of Denmark into an appreciation for candles and chunky blankets.On Medium, linguist Tom Scullin believes nothing is truly untranslatable some concepts just take more syllables to express in one language than another. Tsondoku (), for example, is a Japanese word for something thats easy to communicate in English: buying books but not reading them (guilty). Saudade, which tops most lists of untranslatable words, is a Portuguese term at the intersection of longing and nostalgia. I think English speakers are fascinated by these words not because they feel foreign to us, but because they feel so familiar and because whenever you learn a new word for something abstract, it makes the abstract thing floating around your head more concrete.Plus: English contains just as many words that dont easily translate, too. I dont know what this says about the UK and America, but most of them have to do with social norms. Take awkward. It comes from a Norse word meaning turned the wrong way but has picked up all kinds of emotional and cultural valences over the last few decades, and it has no equivalent outside of English. The same is true of cringe and fair. Harris SockelWhat else were readingA progressives road trip through red states, featuring 11 distinct subcultures that comprise the U.S. (Cory Vinny)Joni Mitchell pairs well with a bowl of pho. (Ryley Graham)If you want to be a better communicator, befriend people who are good communicators. (Ava Huang, aka Bookbear Express)Your daily dose of practical wisdomTrue confidence = the courage to be disliked.

Two veterans, two perspectives on Veterans DayPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min read1 day ago-- Hello! Weve returned with the Medium NewsletterIssue #204: raking leaves and making things you actually love (even if no one else does)It makes cosmic sense for Veterans Day to fall one week after Election Day.* Not only do many of us get a three day weekend to recover, but: After voting on the principles that will define U.S. politics for four years, were honoring the people who fight for them.That sounds straightforward, but if youve ever met a veteran and listened to their stories, you know the truth: Not everyone fights (in the traditional sense) and the principles themselves are fuzzy.Benjamin Sledge was deployed to Afghanistan from 20032004 and to Iraq from 20062008. Hes part of the 1 in 10 U.S. army veterans to actually witness combat (most, like J.D. Vance or Tim Walz, work clerical jobs or train domestically). On Medium, Sledge describes being shelled and not knowing where its coming from; interviewing civilians to figure out who the enemy even is; getting bored as you drink your two rationed beers a day.Sledge has to get monthly ketamine infusions for chronic pain, and hes still in PT but the worst part of war isnt physical, he writes. Its not shame or PTSD, either. Instead, its moral injury the feeling of doing things that live in the gray area between right and wrong. We fear being viewed as monsters, he says, or lauded as heroes when we feel the things weve done were morally ambiguous or wrong.A story from Samantha Mazzotta showed me the other (more common) side of what its like to be a vet. Mazzotta was a military journalist, the same job JD Vance had. It involves running around the base with a notebook and camera covering trainings, ceremonies, and team-building events. Also, writing lots of press releases. Its essentially a free journalism school sponsored by the government. I can see how it led to Vances career as an author, speaker, and VP-elect. Mazzotta thinks its lowkey one of the best damn jobs in the military:I dont know a single person who served as a public affairs specialist who didnt love what they did. As a junior enlisted soldier, I had an almost unheard-of amount of freedom and discretion while out on assignments. While other soldiers languished behind a computer screen, I loaded film into a camera, grabbed a notebook, and went out to cover artillery training exercises Harris Sockel*This is totally coincidental. Veterans Day commemorates a pact that effectively ended World War I. And Election Day is on a Tuesday in November so farmers could spend a day (Monday) commuting to a remote polling location during an ideal time of year for them: the frenetic planting season (spring) and harvest (early fall) are over but winter hasnt yet made roads icy. Three stories, one sentence eachA computer science student predicts every election since 1916 in just 91 lines of C++ code (as a way to prove why we should all be more skeptical of election predictions). (Harys Dalvi)Leave the leaves where they are (on your lawn!) because raking deprives your precious grasses of natural fertilizers like phosphorus and potassium. (Olivia Louise Dobbs)Yes, making something that does numbers is nice, but it feels even better when you make something you actually love first. (Wen-Hsiu Wang)A good sentence I highlighted this weekLife wants to adapt and evolve, to make mistakes and be inconsistent. Anna Mercury, Institutions vs. Evolution

Dispatches from a post-election classroomPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min read5 hours ago-- HalloIssue #205: a letter from prison + an email from Taylor Swifts dadLest youve had enough post-election analysis, I just want to share a single story that felt new to me: Ian Williams Notes from a classroom. Williams is a graduate instructor at UNC Chapel Hill. Hes currently teaching a cultural studies class, the perfect crucible for a conversation about what happened last Tuesday.Most of his students voted for Harris. Two voted for Trump. Williams doesnt share much about the demographics of these students, but theyre undergrads. When asked who voted on the economy, almost all of them raised their hands. Policy researcher Brett Heinz agrees that this election was the inflation election. The price of eggs alone doubled in 2022. An MIT study earlier this year found that Bidens $1,400 stimulus checks were probably responsible, at least partially.But the most fascinating parts of Williams conversation with his students are cultural, not political (though the boundary between those two concepts is blurry). Nobody under ~30 trusts legacy media, but we knew that. More specifically, theyre suspicious of text but they love podcasts. Text seems overly edited and manipulated. Audio feels more authentic, more dynamic. Also: None of Williams students cared at all about Harris celebrity endorsements. One Harris voter said she knew that Swift and Beyonce werent for her, they were for Harris. The endorsements felt elitist and box-check-y. They were also just a little boring? Maybe the politics of celebrity are over, Williams writes. None of his students are impressed by big names anymore. What theyre drawn to most is honesty, passion, and perceived authenticity. Harris SockelWhat Im readingTaylor Lorenz on why theres no democratic equivalent to Rogan: The closest thing to a progressive Joe Rogan in mainstream liberal media is probably the podcast Pod Save America. But the podcasters on that show operate with a clear allegiance to the Democratic Party establishment. They dont speak to the youth or the disaffected masses who are fed up with the entire system. Who will be the next Chapo Trap House? (User Mag)Palantir, which builds AI tools for governments, has quickly grown into one of the top 10 most valuable AI companies by market cap. One writer who worked there before it IPO-d remembers a culture of highly dedicated weirdos who read books on theatrical improv to get good at their jobs. (Nabeel Qureshi)The quiet art of living well: pay attention to how your mind wanders. (Bill Wear)Taylor Swifts dads emails: I need to vent. Have actually entered this into Ripleys longest email contest. (Jane Song)A sentence I highlighted recentlyTrue intimacy, more than sex, is what youll miss Yes, I do miss sex, but in the grand scheme of things, what I really miss is intimacy. Damian Delune, The Top 15 Things Ive Learned After Three Years in Prison

The future of media is communityPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min read20 hours ago-- Welcome back to the Medium NewsletterIssue #202: climate denial as a coping mechanism, expanding accessibility in video games, and the history of bento boxesBy Carly Rose GillisYesterday, we highlighted a story about a potential reckoning in the media industry after an election cycle full of threats, misinformation, and dissatisfaction. Indeed, according to recent polling by Gallup, almost 70% of U.S. adults have either little trust in newspapers, TV, and radio, or none at all:What could be done to improve trust? Especially after yesterday, I feel like what were craving is less one-way broadcasting and more hard conversations. Damian Radcliffe, Chambers Professor in Journalism at the University of Oregon, explores this question in his new report, Advancing Community-Centered Journalism. (Hes publishing chapters from it on Medium.) Instead of the traditional top-down approach where power-holders (editors and advertisers) direct the conversation, he outlines specific ways news organizations can give more power to their readers to direct story selection and rebuild connection with their communities. A few ways:Literally asking. One example is from Seattle-based KUOW Public Radio, who used votes on social media to determine which stories to explore. The winning question led them to the bottom of Lake Washington and its findings went viral.Discovering the non-traditional sources where their communities get information and then collaborating.This may include physical and digital spaces (such as libraries and barbershops), as well as key influencers and community leaders.Serving important information in channels their communities actually use regularly. Newsrooms are adapting their messages into text messages or WhatsApp posts.The Solutions Journalism Network, which runs The Whole Story publication on Medium, is approaching trust from a different direction: promoting storytelling that goes beyond just reporting on problems, but includes whats being done to solve them. Why?We call solutions journalism hope with teeth. Research shows that when news reveals whats working (or promising), it elevates the tone of public discourse, making it less divisive and more constructive, allows communities to see better options, and builds agency and hope.What else were reading:Ironically, an increase in powerful hurricanes could strengthen some peoples skepticism of climate change, not weaken it. Terror management theory suggests climate denial is a coping mechanism one that only grows stronger when challenged. (The Conversation U.S.)One way video game developers can expand accessibility support: roadmapping sprints where they specifically focus on inclusive design. (Liana Ruppert)A real palate cleanser: The origin of the bento box goes back over two millennia; its first form is as the humble onigiri (aka those mouthwatering rice balls in Spirited Away). Recommendations for making your own bento box: specifically using Japanese rice and including the five fundamental colors of Japanese cuisine (red, yellow, green, white and black) in your meal. (Yuri Minamide) Your daily dose of practical wisdom about cookingHearings a sense you dont often associate with cooking, but to up your game in the kitchen, start using your ears, too.

One must imagine Sisyphus happyPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- The year is 85% over lets make this last 15% of 2024 count, shall we?Issue #203: Misery, prejudice, andfinding your joy!Im not going to pretend to know what this week was like for you. If youre in the U.S., emotions range from utter despair to satisfied jubilance; I can only imagine what it feels like to be following along from abroad, but humans tend to be, well, human, and our range is only so wide.Wherever you land on that spectrum whatever part of the world youre in, however you voted theres a part of you that will find something heartening in this essay from writer Jon Krakauer (adapted from his book Essays on Wilderness and Risk). It feels essential to the experience of being alive in this moment (or maybe any moment): Lately youve found yourself wondering if the end of civilization might be at hand, and you are not alone in your apprehension, Krakauer writes.We may be in (or entering) an especially difficult time, and Krakauers advice is to look to literature for guidance. If the going gets especially tough, he writes, you consult Albert Camus. Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus defines something useful about reframing your despair, finding a way to acknowledge it, take responsibility for it, and thereby get past it. In the end, Camus argues:Sisyphus determines that all is well, despite the ceaseless misery he must endure. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a mans heart, Camus observes. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Lightning round: Great, recent Medium stories in 2 sentences or lessFrom a professor of public policy, three things to be looking for in the Trump transition: what agreements will they sign, who will be leading the team, and which rules will they follow (or choose to ignore). (Heath Brown)Dealing with prejudice at work is one of the hardest challenges a leader can face; your best place to start is by creating space for the conversation, starting with talking about concrete examples. (Kim Scott)You probably wont agree with all of them (I didnt), but these 22 thoughts about what Trumps win means will make you think. And they end on a note I think we probably can all agree with: This election will impact some people more than others (both emotionally and practically), and well all be better off if we conduct ourselves with humility and give each other some grace. (Isaac Saul) in The Political Prism Todays top highlightIn a country as big and diverse as ours, we wont always see eye-to-eye on everything. But progress requires us to extend good faith and grace even to people with whom we deeply disagree. Thats how weve come this far, and its how well keep building a country that is more fair and more just, more equal and more free. Barack Obama, Our Statement on the 2024 Presidential Election Your daily dose of practical wisdom on finding joyWant more joy in your day? The advice from experts is simple: Think about the things that matter most to you and then do them more often.

A former member of the White House transition team on whats nextPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Hello, were tired but were backIssue #201: a media reckoning, a straw poll, and taking care of yourselfGood morning to everyone struggling to stay awake today (or just struggling, period).Before I share a few of the stories deepening my understanding at this moment, I just wanted to take a sec to appreciate how unique Pennsylvania is, as a state. I grew up there. My parents voted in Montgomery County, and I have friends in Berks and Bucks counties that reliably turn gray or very pale shades of red or blue on election night.One thing I can tell you about PA after having driven through it several times: Its big. And wildly diverse. (Also, gorgeous.) Philly feels like Brooklyn to me, but if you drive one hour to Bucks its Blair Witch vibes. Anyway: PA is the largest and most populous swing state, which makes it so important. Its the state that clinched Trumps win last night.Now that we know who the 47th President of the United States will be, I want to turn our attention to whats next: the transition.On Medium, Victor Garcia tells us what he witnessed when he served in the U.S. Digital Service at the White House as Trump first took office. After winning in 2016, Trump fired the head of his transition team and named Mike Pence its new leader. The Trump transition crew then reportedly ignored a pandemic playbook left by the Obama team and [tossed] binders of prepared materials into the trash. And, when Trump left office four years later, Garcia writes, I experienced firsthand the canceled meetings, withheld data, and systematic refusals that risked national security and public health.I reached out to Garcia and asked him about this next transition. Perhaps most importantly, he told me, its the unexpected crises that are most concerning. Any sudden event like a natural disaster, terrorist attack, or financial crisis would require an immediate and effective response from a new administration. Harris SockelWhat else were readingUseful tips for managers navigating a difficult day ahead, post-election, especially #4: Take care of yourselfAKA put your own oxygen mask on first, before you help others. (Ann Marie Lavigne)Sarah McBride became the first openly transgender member of Congress last night. A decade ago on Medium, she penned a personal tribute to her late husband, who passed away when McBride was 24 days after they were married. McBride shares several lessons from that experience, including: Life is too short for outdated dogmas to impede our own pursuit of happiness.After this bruising election cycle, a reckoning is coming for the media industry. Trump has promised severe consequences for the medias negative coverage, while Harris supporters, exhausted by hypocritical endorsement decisions and the decline of journalistic ethics in reporting, are funneling massive amounts of subscription dollars away from large liberal outlets, putting their future in serious jeopardy. (Jeremy Fassler)In the 1936 election, the Literary Digest a popular magazine at the time ran a straw poll. It was massive (targeting over 10 million people) but also wrongly predicted that Alfred Landon would win against Franklin D. Roosevelt. The resulting uproar sank the magazine, and provided an object lesson in a key part of understanding polling data: Non-response bias. (Sachin Date)Your daily dose of practical wisdom about equanimityAdvice from the stoics might come in handy today: After youve done what you can, accept the things you cant control.

Theres a lot more on your ballot than just the presidential electionPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min read11 hours ago-- Welcome to the 200th issue of the Medium Newsletter, which (and we definitely didnt plan this) coincides with U.S. Election Day. Some of the most-read issues so far? A philosopher on the meaning of LLMs, the underrated rewards of cold-calling, plus: Go small and go home. Thank you for reading!Issue #200: working the polls and phoning a friendBy Harris SockelYoure going to hear a lot about the presidential election today too much, probably so Im going to hook a left and recommend learning a little (just a little!) about everything else you might find on your ballot.Like my personal favorite ballot section: props (you know, propositions). Instead of voting for people, you can vote for an idea. One of the five props on my New York City ballot, just to give you a sense of how boring-yet-important these are, would ostensibly give the NY Department of Sanitation (heroes) more power to hold street vendors accountable for trash around their food trucks. If you dig a little deeper, though, turns out it may be a ploy to give the mayor more power over small business owners.Anyone can preview their ballot here. If you have a sec, Google each prop and read what yays and nays are saying. If you cant find much, thats a red flag! Maybe it was created by a small group of elected officials pushing an agenda.One more thing: In 24 states (not in mine), citizens can add their own props to the ballot. On Medium, intrepid LA citizen and organizer Michael Schneider describes how he did just that. It took three years! With the help of friends, neighbors, and professional signature-gatherers, he got the 61,000 signatures needed to propose (and pass) a new law leading to miles of safe bike and bus lanes across LA.Also today: Confessions of a Pennsylvania poll workerDid you know that in Pennsylvania, the poll worker handbook is 67 pages long? Or that each polling machine prints four tapes reporting all the votes, and a human poll worker needs to sign off on each tape? Those are a few of the intricacies Daniel McIntosh, PhD., reveals in his Medium story about what hell be doing today making sure every vote is accurately counted in Allegheny County, PA.There may be problems, but they arent at the polling places. The biggest obstacles to voting in Pennsylvania arent at the polling booth or the precinct level. People who come to our precinct looking for fraud (and each major party has people on hand to do just that) walk away bored. Your daily dose of practical wisdom: Phone a friendWhen life turns difficult be it election anxiety or an on-coming panic attack theres often nothing that can help faster than a simple phone call with someone you know.sunrise in nyc today, 6:30am

The 7 types of U.S. votersPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- T-1 day until whats shaping up to be one of the closest elections in U.S. historyIssue #199: a hike with George H.W. Bush + doing hard thingsBy Harris SockelIf all you do is read headlines today, you may end up believing two things: (a) America is divided, and (b) there are two types of voters: red and blue.Thats why this essay by Kathleen Murphy felt, to me, like coming up for air. Murphy cites a 2018 project by the nonprofit More In Common which identified seven finer-grained voter types. You can take a quiz to learn which one you are:Progressive Activists (8%): Government should make the world fairer.Traditional Liberals (11%): Government is about tolerance and compromise.Passive Liberals (15%): Eh, I believe in individual freedom but dont think the government does very much.Politically Disengaged (26%): Im just trying to get by. I dont care about all this.Moderates (15%): Activists are out of control. All I want is law, order, and peace.Traditional Conservatives (19%): The America I remember is slipping away.Devoted Conservatives (6%): Dont tread on me.The middle four groups (traditional and passive liberals, moderates, and the politically disengaged) represent two thirds of voters. Two-thirds! Surveyors discovered they believe in most of the same things: safeguards for reproductive rights, protections from discrimination based on identity, and more stringent gun background checks. They believe in compromise and are tired of hyper-partisanship.If thats you (which, statistically, it probably is), this week, try not to get caught up in the dominant story focused on extremes. Loud people and ideas will always win in a media environment that capitalizes on attention. The hidden truth is that, at least in a few fundamental ways, we tend to agree on more than we think.A pre-election palate cleanser: Hiking the sequoias with George H.W. BushWhen I received a phone invitation to hike with President Bush through the Giant Sequoias, writes Michael Hodgson, my initial reaction was, Right, who is this, really?Thirty-two years ago, Hodgson was one of six nature journalists invited to traipse with the president through the forest before he signed a proclamation ordering the preservation of Californias Giant Sequoia. Its the tallest tree in the world some can grow 279 feet tall, roughly half the height of Seattles Space Needle.Hodgsons favorite memory: Watching then-Secretary of State James Baker and his wife eagerly smelling the bark of a Jeffrey pine, seemingly the only members of the group fully aware of how special it was to walk through a silent forest surrounded by 3,000-year-old redwoods. Your daily dose of practical wisdomIts easier for a team to do a hard thing that really matters than to do an easy, incremental thing that doesnt matter much. Impact is motivating.

Apple doesnt innovate from scratchPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Four days! Stay informed but dont get sucked in.Issue #198: the French Bread Law, ancient lawn signs, and reigning in a free-ranging convoBy Harris SockelApple Intelligence dropped on Monday.*ICYMI, Apple Intelligence is marketing-speak for a handful of individual products. You can blurt out something impolite and Apple will recast your email in business-speak. You can create a little cartoon mini-me (a Genmoji of yourself). You can ask Siri how long it would take to drive to the moon, and she will understand that youre speaking hypothetically.Reviews are mixed. One blogger thinks its a lot of razzle dazzle (slick animations) disguising basic features like a Grammarly duplicate. A vlogger known as DailyTekk tested Apple Intelligence in beta and found it was helpful especially the ability to talk to Siri like its your friend, not your weird robot servant.In June, after Apple unveiled these features WWDC, Chris Messina inventor of the hashtag posted on Medium to contextualize them.Apple doesnt do a ton of ground-up innovation, he wrote. Instead, they identify technologies that havent yet achieved product-market fit and build compelling product experiences around them. They did this with digital music. Smartphones. Email, text messaging, and personal computing itself. Now, theyre tackling AI, building on ChatGPTs contextless text box on a blank page to help us begin to see what this new technology looks like when its part of a cohesive product.This is classic Apple. Take something that feels cold, futuristic, and isolating and make it feel warm and welcoming. Im reminded of this story by former Apple product designer Andrea Pacheco. She recalls how obsessed Apple has always been with building truly delightful product experiences, rather than shipping experimental MVPs. This moment sums it up well:Ill never forget this one time when I was at a meeting with a product team from Apple TV, and someone said that we could do a release on the web and mobile platform, but we didnt have the experience ready for TV. So the PM said if we cant launch the best experience across all our platforms now, were not launching it at all. If we need to wait another year to deliver the best experience for our customers, well wait.If youve tried Apple Intelligence, whats one specific use youve found for it? How has it helped you, or not?*Only if youre on an iPhone 15 or later! You have to download the latest iOS and then join the waitlist in Settings. Great, recent Medium stories in just 1 sentencePolitical lawn signs got their start in Ancient Rome when rich families would paint a candidates name on the houses walls to sway passing plebians. (Vishwas R. Gaitonde)France takes bread quite seriously, mandating by law that baguettes contain nothing but flour, salt, water, and leavening. (Eleanor Sigel)A proven way to curb your election anxiety: text a friend hey, Im feeling a little anxious about this (Catherine Sanderson, Author & Psychology Professor)Your daily dose of practical wisdomSimple problems + brilliant execution = success. (Many people get this turned around! They find a complex problem and execute in a mediocre way.)

The first witches were medieval healersPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Hello, yes, its Halloween. Im going as Paul Mescal holding the Sweetgreen bag.Issue #197: drinking the Kool-Aid and the paradox of controlBy Harris SockelQuick note: Because we love all these stories so much, everything linked below is a gift link. If youre not a Medium member, please enjoy! And if you want to support our mission, head here.As we mentioned on Monday, Halloween is a mlange of multiple holidays: (1) the ancient Celtic agricultural festival marking the beginning of winter, and (2) the eve (een) of All Hallows Day, a Christian holiday honoring the lives of saints.Most of the (very adorable) mayhem that may descend upon your block tonight has its roots in that 2,000-year-old Celtic festival. The Celts believed that, tonight, spirits rush back to Earth to welcome the darker half of the year. A costume is a shield from these demons. Or, as Rayne Fisher-Quann writes: i think halloween really is an extremely useful holiday for making the world your psychosexual stage and using overt artifice to disrupt the ever-present, everyday artifice that keeps you shrouded from yourself and others.Maybe thats your cue to really go for it this year? Engineer this giant DIY spiritwalker costume. Or go as a witch, the easiest costume of all time but not without reading Olivia Campbells excellent story about why the first witches were actually healers persecuted in medieval Europe for practicing medicine, a field dominated by men. Churches were opening universities, professionalizing medicine to be practiced by book-learned men, so they needed to wipe out the competition, Campbell writes.So, actually, if you go as a witch, thats a pretty revolutionary choice.If youd rather stay in, Summer Block, whos writing a book about Halloween, generously shares 23 pandemic-inspired ways to say hi to your local demon(s) from the comfort of home. Number 19 is an homage to witches, too I did not know until reading this that you can carve witch faces into dried apples as a family bonding activity (?).What else were readingThis Halloween coincides with Diwali, or Deepavali, the Hindu light festival. Its a very different holiday than Halloween, but the core idea of turning up with family and friends while the weather gets all depressing feels the same. Diwali marks the darkest day of the year, the New Moon in late October or early November, and poet Priyanka Sinha reveals its names origins: the row (avali) of clay lamps (deepa) to symbolize the victory of truth (light) over evil (darkness).Brie Wolfson, author of my all-time favorite blog post (fodder for a future newsletter), created a beautifully designed zine series on work culture. Its called The Kool-Aid Factory. I recommend starting with The Operating As One Issue. Its about getting a bunch of humans, each with their own motivations and histories, to work together toward a shared goal. One tip: Define exactly what you want your audience to feel, and note when they feel it. Pinpoint the moment when someone goes from oh, I kinda like this thing to I LOVE this thing, and rally around that as a team. Shopify defines it as a sellers first sale. Facebook once defined it as 7 friends in 10 days. At Medium, maybe its the first time 10 people applaud your story?Your daily dose of practical wisdomThe more you try to control something, the more it controls you.

A pre-election dispatch from an Atlanta barbershopPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Hello from me and my new favorite emoji, the finger heart (it means love, but cuter)Issue #196: six days until you know whatBy Harris SockelMan, what do you think of Kamala Harris? Luc Olinga asked his barber a few weeks ago.Olinga is a French-American investigative journalist born and raised in Cameroon. Hes in the midst of touring swing states across the U.S. to interview Black men about how theyre planning to vote, and hes sharing his observations on Medium. Early this year, he told me over email, I sensed that Black male voters, especially young Black men (I have a 19-year old son), were becoming more skeptical about supporting the Democratic party.A New York Times/Siena College poll earlier this month found that Trumps support was growing amongst Black and Hispanic voters. In response, Harris wrote an opportunity agenda for Black men a nine-page single-spaced document promising, basically, money (in the form of forgivable loans to entrepreneurs and aspiring homeowners).A few weeks ago, Barack Obama stopped at a Harris campaign office in Pittsburgh to speak bluntly with Black men about what he viewed as their lack of enthusiasm for Harris: Part of it makes me think you just arent feeling the idea of having a woman as president, he said.Olinga asked his barber: Did you see that clip? What did you think?His barber, Byron, replied: Man, why are you lecturing me? Stop, man When he was President, he didnt do much for us man, for Black people. You know what I mean.Byron went on: Man, we will look weak with her. Other countries will laugh at us, you know what I mean, he said.A moment of silence.He seemed to be struggling with his own prejudices and his stereotypes. Man, shes the lesser of two evils. Shes not going to take away rights and things that already exist, he told me. Trump wants to take away rights, man.Some may write this off as misogyny, but as Olinga argues in another story: I think it is simplistic to call [men who arent enthusiastic about Harris] misogynistic. Its our way to refuse to look beneath the surface [] These young men feel that their voice does not count. They want equality between men and women, but they feel that it is expressed today at the expense of men.Theres a lot more to explore on Olingas Medium profile. And Im curious: What is one thing youre thinking or feeling about this election that you havent seen reflected anywhere else (yet)? What are the deeper issues at play in this election that people seem hesitant to discuss?Your daily dose of practical wisdomTrust happens when youre willing to look bad, say something unpolished, or have a conversation you never wanted to have so you can get to the truth.

Nature is the ultimate computational machinePublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter2 min readJust now-- Hello, its Tuesday! And, for the first time in weeks, it truly feels like fall here in NYC.Issue #195: the arrival fallacy + asking better questionsBy Harris SockelThe Nobel Prize in physics tends to go to astrophysicists or molecular physicists people who study very big things (space!) or very tiny things (electrons). A few weeks ago, though, it went to two scientists working on AI.A brief history of the Nobel Prize, because I was curious: It was established by Swedish chemist and businessman Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite. Sounds violent, but dynamite was far safer than most explosives in the late 19th century, and Nobel earned around 31 million Swedish kronor (~$200 million today) when people used his invention to build mines and railways across the U.S.With that fortune, Nobel established his prize a $1 million award to anyone whose work benefits humanity.As the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences explained in its winners announcement, AI researchers John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hintons neural networks mimic the way our brains create memories. Ever heard the phrase neurons that fire together wire together? Thats Hopfields network but on a computer, not in your head.Hopfield and Hintons work led to technologies like facial recognition, automated translation, and (of course) LLMs. On Medium, data scientist Tim Lou, PhD, explains why AI research falls under the umbrella of physics. Im a firm believer that nature is the ultimate computational machine, he writes, and if humanity were to ever develop true artificial intelligence, I have no doubt it must have a foundation based on our physical laws. Lightning round: Great, recent Medium stories in 2 sentences or lessDesign thinking (a methodology for understanding what your customers want, beginning with empathy) is a spiritual successor to the scientific method a way to solve any problem in the modern age. (Hal Wuertz)About to achieve a big personal dream say, publishing your novel, running a marathon, or taking a company public? Get ready for the arrival fallacy: that gnawing feeling of not-enough-ness when you achieve a long-held goal. (Maria Cassano)Hawaii has the dirtiest energy in the U.S. (who wouldve thought) because each island must produce its own power. The cleanest energy systems are large and interconnected, balancing multiple sources to conserve resources. (Matt Traverso)Your daily dose of practical wisdomOne of the secrets to being more likable: ask better questions.

Halloween is a weird blend of at least two old holidaysPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Welcome back to the Medium NewsletterIssue #194: parenting boys v. girls + auditing your boundariesBy Stephanie GeorgopulosEver find yourself frantically throwing together a last-minute Hawk Tuah costume for a last-minute Halloween party and wonder: Why?Allow me to share the 2000ish-year-old roots of this surprisingly complex holiday. Halloweens origin story begins with the Celtic celebration of Samhain (translation: summers end). Samhain was an agricultural festival that started at sundown on October 31 and ended at sunrise the next day. It marked the transition from harvest season to the dark half of the year, which was traditionally associated with death (today, we call it winter).The Celts believed that on this liminal night, the veil between worlds was at its thinnest a moment when the normal order of the universe is suspended, according to historian Nicholas Rogers. Now, what actually unfolded during Samhain is up for debate: As writer Nyx Shadowhawk points out on Medium, much of ancient Celtic history was recorded by medieval Christians. That means its very difficult to tell how many of the ideas associated with Samhain are authentically pre-Christian, and how many arose after Christianization.Theres no denying Halloweens ties to Christianity: It was established by the Pope to accompany All Saints Day, a holiday honoring saints and martyrs (Halloween is short for All Hallows Eve hallow being another word for saint). Originally celebrated in May, Pope Gregory III elected to move All Saints Day to November 1 in the mid-eighth century and Halloween moved along with it, forever linking it with the pagan celebration.The reasons for this move are contested but, either way, it served an important purpose: with Samhain and Halloween now sharing a date, descendents of the ancient Celts began practicing a combination of folk and religious traditions on and around October 31 and through this fusion, they managed to preserve pagan beliefs and rituals that may have otherwise been lost. It also resulted in something new: Whats [] likely, Shadowhawk writes, is that the superstition that the doors to the Otherworld are thrown open on Samhain got mixed in with the prayers for the dead on and around All Saints Day, becoming a single belief that the spirits of the dead return on that day.Catholicisms early influence on Halloween may come as a surprise to some, given the churchs position on the occult (spoiler: they dont like it). Certainly, the Pope didnt intend to popularize supernatural beliefs or their accompanying rituals. But ultimately, its the people practicing a tradition who determine whether it lives or dies not the church or any other authority.Suffice to say, the why behind Halloween is complicated but perhaps thats a good thing? After all, the end result is a modern holiday thats simultaneously secular, spiritual, and supernatural. In that way, Halloween continues to dissolve the boundaries of the ordinary world and what better way to celebrate the liminal?What else were readingWriter and mother Victoria Corindi challenges an old parenting adage: Are boys actually easier to raise than girls? Not quite: What looks like easier parenting for boys is often just a failure to address their needs in a meaningful way.Originally published in 2019, Jenny Harringtons Three Magical Phrases to Comfort a Dying Person is about finding the right words in the face of unimaginable loss. We all need to know how to sit and talk through a time for which there are no words. A time when not even an I love you will suffice. For Harrington, that time came when she learned her eight-year-old son would not recover from cancer that he was dying. What could she possibly say to bring him comfort? He was heading into the biggest and most unknown of all experiences, Harrington writes, He needed to hear he would not be alone.Your daily dose of practical wisdomThe boundaries that protected us in one season of our lives can limit, blind, or even damage us in another, so make a habit of reviewing yours.

The five stages of adult developmentPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Its us, back with the you guessed it Medium NewsletterIssue #193: the nebulous definition of community and simplicity vs. fancinessBy Harris SockelEvery month-ish, I find a story lying around in the Medium archive that (a) relatively few people have found, and (b) gives me words for something I felt but couldnt name.Enter: a three-part series by Natali Mallel (Morad) on the meaning of being an adult. Its based on the research of psychologist Robert Kegan at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who found that humans tend to progress through five stages of development:Stage 1: Impulsive mind (early childhood, few adults)Stage 2: Imperial mind (adolescence, 6% of adults)Stage 3: Socialized mind (58% of adults)Stage 4: Self-authoring mind (35% of adults)Stage 5: Self-transforming mind (1% of adults)Its common to imagine kids going through developmental phases (my friends with toddlers anxiously await the end of the terrible twos!) but less common to think of adults doing the same.Let me rephrase that. As adults, we often view life as a path in which we unlock new skills and opportunities, deepening our mastery along the way. Thats different from Kegans theory, in which how you see yourself radically changes as you grow.Stage 3 is your typical socialized adult who makes decisions based on whats conventionally appropriate. You identify with your role, relationships, and community. At Stage 4, you question conventions and your community. As you ascend toward Stage 5, you begin to accept (or even enjoy) the inherent blurriness of your identity and life itself. You can step outside of yourself and imagine all the paths you might take, all the people you might become. Realizations include:Nothing is black or white. (Im not smart. Im smart in some situations and stupid in others.)You can question both authority and yourself.You embrace paradox.When I first read about the self-transforming mind it felt scary to me. So malleable! So unstable! But Kegan thinks of it more as radical self-awareness.One practical tip to approach Stage Five-dom: If you feel conflicted about something (say, a career move), sit in a chair and set out chairs for all the different versions of you the fearful you, the angry you, the ambitious you. Sit in each chair and say what youre afraid, angry, or excited about. It seems silly but will help train your brain to do the same thing internally.One more story: on communityEvery startup is doing community in the Year of Our Lord 2024. Discord. Patreon. Substack. Even OpenAI is hiring a community team. The word community feels buzzword-y to me, but behind every buzzword is an important idea.Fabian Pfortmller, cofounder of the Together Institute, articulates this better than I can: Community has a definition problem. Its overused. Its vague. Even the dictionary definition is too diffuse, ranging from people who live in the same place to people who share common goals. Pfortmller proposes a new, simpler definition: Community = a group of people that care about each other and feel they belong together.When a brand or influencer tells you to join their community, theyre probably lying unless literally all their followers care about each other and feel like a cohesive unit.Your daily dose of practical wisdomFancy is easy. Simple is hard.

Unfriend your way to a better social media feedPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Welcome back to the Medium NewsletterIssue #192: pet death doulas + what your therapist really thinks about youBy Stephanie GeorgopulosI recently celebrated an accidental anniversary: Its been one year since I last posted on social media. Proud of me? (Dont be; I still lurk.) Not-posting wasnt a goal I set for myself, but it does reflect a personal accomplishment: This year I was too focused on how my life feels to think about how it looks.Still, Im not ready to retire my @s entirely. Theres no denying social media isnt what it used to be and no evidence that its going to improve anytime soon. Of course, those of us who soldier on despite this reality have our reasons but whether those reasons hurt or help us is worth unpacking.Digital hygiene requires mindfulness. Otherwise, its too easy to get sucked into an addictive cycle of doom-scrolling, hate-watching, self-loathing, and soapboxing. (Or, in my case, buying products I didnt know existed five minutes ago from companies that didnt exist five minutes ago. Instagram ads are no joke.)Approaching these platforms with intention might mean fine-tuning our feeds, going private, or limiting our scroll time but it can also mean questioning how and why we use them in the first place. During a recent attempt to make Facebook useable again, Medium writer Dan Foster found himself baffled by his bloated friends list: Why did I allow myself to accumulate so many hangers-on, half-friends, acquaintances, and lets be honest people I dont even know?There is no right or wrong answer to a question like this just an opportunity to understand what drives us to keep scrolling and posting. Questioning our motives gives us the insights we need to make conscious decisions about how and whether we exist online. For Foster who spent six hours removing 90% of his Facebook friends upsetting the status quo paid off:When you only have real friends on Facebook, it becomes a much richer and surprisingly more enjoyable online experience. Every post and status update is from or about someone you genuinely care about. The spam is gone. The random political rants are gone. The haters are gone. And when I post something, almost all of my friends respond.An enjoyable online experience? Now thats worth posting about.What else were readingMost people who work with animals do it because they love them. Euthanasia technicians are no different but helping animals transition has its costs: compassion fatigue, burn out, and stigma, to name a few. Pet death doula Ute Luppertz recently held a ceremony at her regional shelter for the techs and the animals theyve helped in Room Number Nine: [T]he room nobody speaks about at the animal shelter. The end of the road.Ever wonder what your therapist really thinks about you? Psychotherapist Gail Post, Ph.D. shares some of the unintended consequences of therapy notes going digital: Most clients want their therapist to like and respect them. It can feel devastating if your therapists terse writing style (common to most record-keeping) inadvertently suggests a lack of caring toward you as a person or if the notes dont reflect what you felt was relevant during a session. Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are still in their infancy, so Post advises asking your therapist how they use them, if at all. And if you really want to know what they think of you, she has a radical suggestion: Ask them.Your daily dose of practical wisdomLooking to declutter your space? The first question to tackle isnt how its why.

Pursuing your passion feels like cheatingPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Apple announced the first iPod 23 years ago today. Its the longest-lived Apple product to eventually be discontinued (in 2022).Issue #191: listening to the other side and doing just a few things wellBy Harris SockelThe phrase follow your passion gets thrown around so much its a joke. It sounds nice, but someone has to pay the bills and anything, if youre doing it for money, becomes work.Dan Pedersen asks a few questions that can help you land on a more useful definition of passion: What problems do you find easy to solve? In what way are you most creative?If youre doing something passion-y, it might feel like youre cheating because it feels easy or if not easy, at least interesting enough to keep doing even though its hard. In Harvard Business Review, Dan Cable calls this following your blisters. Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham calls it following your curiosity. Either way: What challenges do you keep returning to, what walls do you actually like banging your head against?Another lens on passion: the Japanese concept ikigai. Weve touched on this before, but its the idea that genuinely great work feels elusive because its the intersection of four things: what you love, what youre good at, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for. Passion is only the intersection of the first two (love + aptitude). Purpose, or ikigai, is all four.When you can find true purpose, youre not only happier. Youre also healthier. People with purpose in life sleep better and have more gray matter in their brains insula, lower levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines, and less of the stress hormone cortisol in their saliva, wrote science journalist Marta Zaraska on Medium a few years back.So, what is happiness? Its not just passion. Its purpose. Something you love that people around you actually need.From the ol archive: the other side is not dumbIn 2016, Sean Blanda struck a nerve by saying something very true that no one wants to hear (especially in an election year): Youre not right about everything, and the other side is not stupid. Just like you, theyve reached their conclusions based on a combination of intuition and analysis.Blandas essay has been read by 3.5 million people and it offers a few tips for listening to each other in a world thats only gotten more politically polarized over the last decade.One tip: The next time youre in a discussion with someone who disagrees with you, dont try to win. Instead, actively try to lose. Ask them to convince you and mean it. Listen. As any debate club veteran knows, if you cant make your opponents point for them, you dont truly grasp the issue.And if you ever get the urge to drop a link in the group chat, ask yourself Am I sharing this link because it contains info I havent considered before? Or am I just sharing it to remind my pals that Im not on the Other Side?Your daily dose of practical wisdomYoull be happier, saner, and better at your job if you do fewer things well. Do not say yes to every piece of work that comes your way. (It took me a decade to learn this, and Im still learning!)

Why we all need a third placePublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Welcome back to the Medium NewsletterIssue #190: how metaphors influence our perceptions, and RSS-ing your news sourcesBy Carly Rose GillisAfter a few weeks of using Duolingo to learn Irish, my partner wanted to find a way to level up his skills. We looked at various tutors (expensive!) or classes (far away!), but in talking to some family friends about our search, one replied, Have you visited the group that meets at the local American Legion post?Those posts have always been a bit shrouded in mystery for me; if youre not familiar with them, they are U.S. military veteran community centers that provide space for mentorship, events, and social services. When we went, the atmosphere was bright and convivial. The teacher, Dith (Dave, in Irish, pronounced daw-hee), immediately beckoned us to sit and marched us through the irregular verbs and tenses they were already practicing. The fellow learners warmly welcomed us and encouraged us to stay for the Irish dancing class (!) that was to follow. The cost of this experience? Whatever we could spare to give in a tip jar.This is an example of a third place. First defined by U.S. sociologists Ramon Oldenburg and Dennis Brissett in 1982, these are spaces that host meaningful social interaction and personal development that are not work/school or home.Third places are spaces that anchor, writes Tia Merotto on Medium. They root us in our humanity and our identity in relation to others, reinforcing community through the respite and ease they offer.An important component of true third places is how they level the statuses of individuals within them they are not fueled by socioeconomic gatekeeping; people are free to come and go without obligation or financial burden.Unfortunately, because of that, they can be hard to sustain and are actively declining and at a time when we may need them most, as frightening loneliness statistics and economic downturns continue to plague our lived reality. Portuguese writer Araci Matos recently opined on this in a Medium story, Why We All Need a Third Place.The widespread adoption of remote work, exacerbated by the pandemic and initially seen as a marvel of not having to leave home, reveals itself as a poisoned gift. We are extremely lonely now, further intensified by a hidden factor that doesnt get much attention: the lack of public investment in third places.Third places need active support to survive. Next time you are interested in developing a skill or honing a hobby, consider finding an IRL community rather than just another fee-based service or app. (Quick tip: A great place to start is your local library.)One more story: about metaphorsI dont think I truly understood how ingrained metaphors are in the English language until I read this piece by linguist Sophie Frankpitt. The central question of her story is: Does this practice of heavily using metaphors in our communication influence how we experience the world, or is it the other way around? Take the example of how we describe arguments in terms of literal war or fighting: we fought our case or they were attacking us. Does this influence how we approach disagreements in our lives? Says Frankpitt: Theoretically speaking, if we conceptualize political issues as battles, perhaps were more likely to take polarized, antagonistic, uncompromising stances maybe even normalizing undertones of political violence.Your daily dose of practical wisdomTired of only seeing the most polarizing, emotional, trending news in your social feeds? Use an RSS reader to subscribe to the sources you trust and get your news in simple chronological order, just how nature intended.

Nearly 50% of us feel burnout; heres how to manage itPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Including today, there are only 11 Mondays left in 2024Issue #189: a quantum mechanics scientist largely forgotten by history, why few women get Nobel prizes, and making MVEs rather than MVPsBy Scott LambBurnout is a word with multiple identities. Since first appearing in the cultural lexicon in the 80s with Herbert Freudenbergers Burnout: The High Cost of High Achievement, its been a word we use casually to refer to stress and exhaustion related to work. But it has a clinical definition, too; the World Health Organizations International Classification of Diseases defines it as a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. Some research says 48% of workers globally experience burnout at some point in their careers.For people whove suffered the clinical version, recovery can be a long, fraught process. As Devon Price writes on Medium, some people never fully recover from an episode of clinical burnout. Looking at multiple studies, theres evidence that recovery can take years, and many never return to the same levels of energy and cognitive capacity they previously had. Its as if burnout sufferers have fallen off their previous life trajectory, and cannot ever climb fully back up, Price writes.Workplace burnout is especially challenging because even if youre noticing symptoms, its not always easy to just take time off. Some approaches for heading off burnout while still working are also just good advice for maintaining your health:Start with your body: As always, exercise, diet, and sleep play a huge role. Tend to those needs first.Restructure your work: Look for places where you can make accommodations with your schedule, tasks, or workloadGet away: Take a mental health day, some OOO time or consider taking a leave of absenceIf youre feeling burnt out, remember: Its not just a passing phase, and its not a sign of weakness. Burnout is a structural issue that demands a structural response. 3 great Medium stories in 2 sentences or lessYou probably dont know the name Max Born, but he played a central role in developing the theory of quantum mechanics alongside Werner Heisenberg; why his name has largely been forgotten by history (and wasnt part of Heisenbergs 1932 Nobel Prize) is one of the great untold stories of science, finally told by his great-grandson Pierz Newton-John on Medium.Related: Fewer than 7% of Nobel Prize winners are women, and that number is even lower in the sciences; the reasons boil down to forms of gender discrimination at every stage of a womans career.Want to launch something quickly and learn from it? Instead of thinking about the MVP (minimum viable product), focus on making an MVE minimum valuable experience.Your daily dose of practical wisdomLife is too big, and too short, to focus on everything. Instead, make your choice and zoom in on something.

If youre expecting not to like this email, you probably wontPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter2 min readJust now-- Welcome back to the Medium NewsletterIssue #188: hot sauce, getting older, and titrating your news intakeBy Harris SockelBe honest what did you expect when you opened this email?Information? Entertainment? Controversial opinions? Obvious ones? All of the above? None??Whatever your expectations, theyre shaping your experience of what youre reading right now. Our perceptions of reality are fragile things, Associate Professor of Medicine and Public Health F. Perry Wilson, MD MSCE writes. What you expect to think and feel not only shapes your perception, but it literally changes whats happening in your brain.Wilson cites a study of hot sauce. People volunteered to sit inside fMRI machines while being fed one of a few hot (or hot-ish) sauces through a tube. (I would never in my life volunteer for this, but good for them!)A warning flashed before each sauce: one jalapeo pepper for mild, two jalapeos for very hot. The most significant finding: People who already hated spicy food hated it more when they were warned about it first. If you think you wont like something, knowing its coming intensifies your dislike. And not just on a subjective level, but on a real neurological one.After seeing two jalapeos, the fMRI reveals that your spiciness neural pathways lightup theyre on a hair trigger to cause pain perception and when the spicy squirt comes, they fire. You feel the spice that much more intensely.I think there are all kinds of extensions of this idea: If you expect to hate a move, a job, an assignment, or a person you will. More! On the other hand, if you go into it with an open mind, or even a little distracted by something else, you might still dislike it but not as much. Lighting round: Great, recent Medium stories in 1 sentence or lessIf a project intimidates you, ask yourself this clarifying question: Why am I doing the thing Im about to do?Loneliness is simply the difference between your desired and perceived connections, the key word there being perceived.As you get older, you start to develop an intuitive understanding of what you want to say no to even if youre not sure what to say yes to.Your daily dose of practical wisdomYou probably dont need to spend more than an hour a day keeping up with the news.

An Asheville resident on life after HelenePublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter2 min readJust now-- Weve returned with the Medium NewsletterIssue #187: analyzing tech layoffs and observing without absorbingBy Harris SockelI awoke about 2 a.m. the night of the storm to the sound of small explosions in the street, writes Asheville resident Doug Brown in a story about life after Hurricane Helene. My room kept lighting up in odd colors. I looked out the window and saw sparks flying in all directions in iridescent blues and greens. It would have been beautiful if it were not terrifying.Almost 100 people are missing in North Carolina. Entire towns, like Marshall, were underwater. Brown and his neighbors still dont have running water, and when the water does come back theyll need to boil it. For now, theyre lining up with buckets every few days:I wash myself with a washcloth and splash rubbing alcohol in my armpits, and dream of the day when I can take a shower again. Asheville is kind of a hippie town, but as my friend Molly puts it, Were all hippies now.Browns story is more human than anything Ive read about this disaster so far. It makes me feel like Im there. Its also an inspiring tribute to humans ability to simply keep going when faced with ambiguity, change, and hardship. Our grief is real, Brown writes. But so is our strength.One more story: analyzing tech layoffsTechs been in the midst of a recession since the pandemic: According to layoffs.fyi, 470 tech companies laid off 141,000 employees in 2024. Those numbers are a bit better than what we saw in 2023 (264K layoffs total), so maybe were heading toward brighter days but its unclear.Analytics and experimentation director Bhavik Patel analyzed a dataset of 2,800 layoffs and tried to as objectively as possible figure out which roles have been impacted most. He found that product and design roles are more likely to be impacted than roles in engineering or data analytics:Your daily dose of practical wisdomObserve but dont absorb.

An Asheville resident on life after HelenePublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter2 min readJust now-- Weve returned with the Medium NewsletterIssue #187: analyzing tech layoffs and observing without absorbingBy Harris SockelI awoke about 2 a.m. the night of the storm to the sound of small explosions in the street, writes Asheville resident Doug Brown in a story about life after Hurricane Helene. My room kept lighting up in odd colors. I looked out the window and saw sparks flying in all directions in iridescent blues and greens. It would have been beautiful if it were not terrifying.Almost 100 people are missing in North Carolina. Entire towns, like Marshall, were underwater. Brown and his neighbors still dont have running water, and when the water does come back theyll need to boil it. For now, theyre lining up with buckets every few days:I wash myself with a washcloth and splash rubbing alcohol in my armpits, and dream of the day when I can take a shower again. Asheville is kind of a hippie town, but as my friend Molly puts it, Were all hippies now.Browns story is more human than anything Ive read about this disaster so far. It makes me feel like Im there. Its also an inspiring tribute to humans ability to simply keep going when faced with ambiguity, change, and hardship. Our grief is real, Brown writes. But so is our strength.One more story: analyzing tech layoffsTechs been in the midst of a recession since the pandemic: According to layoffs.fyi, 470 tech companies laid off 141,000 employees in 2024. Those numbers are a bit better than what we saw in 2023 (264K layoffs total), so maybe were heading toward brighter days but its unclear.Analytics and experimentation director Bhavik Patel analyzed a dataset of 2,800 layoffs and tried to as objectively as possible figure out which roles have been impacted most. He found that product and design roles are more likely to be impacted than roles in engineering or data analytics:Your daily dose of practical wisdomObserve but dont absorb.

Why this might be the immigration electionPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Weve got 20 days until the U.S. presidential electionIssue #186: untangling presidential immigration policy, and planning v. doingBy Harris SockelIf you live in the U.S., in just about three weeks youll know who your next president is. So much (too much?) has been said about this election. Its the vibes election. The dead heat election. The inflation election. And the immigration election.That last one feels important: Historically speaking, were living through an immigration wave approaching levels we havent seen since the 1890s.If youve been following the news and watching the debates (as I have), it can be hard to zero in on Trump and Harris specific policy differences on this issue. In the September debate, conversation between Trump and Harris on immigration devolved into an exchange of pre-planned zingers. I get why candidates do this! But it doesnt help clarify the issue.Isaac Saul of the Tangle politics newsletter which tries valiantly to be nonpartisan published a breakdown of Trump v. Harris illegal immigration policies on Medium last month. In some ways, their policies are similar: Both are pledging to make it harder to get into the U.S. But their tactics differ:Harris focuses on increasing border security and asylum restrictions for those illegally crossing the border.Trump vows to undertake the largest deportation plan in U.S. history and said hell invoke the Remain in Mexico policy, which requires asylum seekers (who may be fleeing actual danger) to wait in Mexico until their court date.Trump is right of center. Harris is center (though in the past shes been more center-left). Does that track with your understanding? Im genuinely curious what you think, because theres a lot of doublespeak out there.I think theres a deeper issue, too, around how we got here and why this is such a fraught issue in the U.S. For more on that, I recommend this essay by American Studies PhD Mark Tseng-Putterman. It was written during the Trump administration so its slightly outdated, but the history holds up. Tseng-Putterman traces 100 years of U.S. intervention in Central America, dating back to Theodore Roosevelts 1904 policy declaring America an international police power. He argues that the influx of immigrants were seeing now has its roots in U.S.-backed coups and unequal trade policies, writing: U.S. empire thrives on amnesia.That feels true to me. When it comes to immigration (and so many other issues), we tend to fixate on current problems without examining the web of decisions that caused them.Your daily dose of practical wisdomDont confuse planning with doing.

Nature is a blindfolded gambler playing with a deck of shuffled genesPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min read4 hours ago-- There are 77 days remaining in 2024 (!)Issue #185: the Nobel Prize in chemistry, dealing with bad bosses, and living with envyBy Harris SockelSomething I love about Medium, and the internet generally: Youll always find a perspective that complicates what you thought you knew.Slvia PM, PhD a paleontologist and former professor runs a publication, Fossils et al, that does just that. It explodes common misconceptions about a topic Ive always been fascinated by: the origins of life on Earth.Take dinosaurs. I grew up with the most basic understanding of their tragic end (I vaguely remember watching an animated asteroid land on Earth and destroy them in a flash of light) but it turns out some survived! Specifically: birds. Sparrows, hawks, and even chickens are lil dinosaurs with wings. Theyve inherited air sacs in their bones, which originally evolved with dinos to help them store air outside of their rigid lungs.One species that truly did go extinct: the dodo bird. As one writer explains in a story about their demise: Nature is a blindfolded gambler playing with a deck of shuffled genes. Some species win, others lose and the dodos, it turns out, simply got too comfortable to stick around. Dodos evolved without fear on a serene island off the coast of Madagascar, and when Dutch settlers arrived, they couldnt hold their own. (Its more complicated than that, but thats the gist.) As a result, plants on that island also went extinct, because not enough animals could spread their seeds.The dodo is such a striking parable for life and work: If you live without fear or natural predators you may not live very long?One lesson of Fossils et al: Every tiny change triggers several others. The megalodon, a gnarly 82-foot shark, went extinct due to a confluence of subtle shifts in their environment, like changes in how the oceans flowed and the emergence of more efficient Great Whites. Nothing is stable, ever, and evolution is just natures way of saying, Well, that didnt go as per plan, but lets see what happens next! Lightning round: Great, recent Medium stories in 2 sentences or lessLast Wednesday, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Kevin Blake, PhDs thesis grandfather (the advisor to his advisor) for designing new proteins that may one day be used to create new drugs, vaccines, and tiny computers.High-school English teacher Michael L. Maceira remembers the worst boss he ever had (think: barking orders instead of saying hello) and realizes that bad bosses deserve pity, not hatred because theyre usually deeply unhappy.Heres an essay you dont come across every day: After a traumatic brain injury in 2019, Jessica Miniers brain did something really strange (but also kind of beautiful?). It sent her back to the best year of her life: 1991.Your daily dose of practical wisdomAsk yourself: Who has what I want? Then turn your envy into curiosity.

Every 40 days, a language diesPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Welcome back to the Medium NewsletterIssue #184: using your past to help your community, and replacing what ifs with even ifsBy Carly Rose GillisThere are at least 7,000 languages people use to communicate in the world, but its estimated that 50% of them will be extinct by 2100 due to migration, discrimination, and climate change.Another way of putting it: Every 40 days, a language dies.To visualize whats at stake, Morgan Wills of Kumu, a startup that specializes in data visualization tools, recently wrote on Medium about a map they made of endangered languages. When you visit it, hovering over each language reveals where theyre spoken and by how many people, and at the top you can select a few ways to filter it (but dont miss the filter settings on the right side to really dig in).Using a filter based on how many people are left who understand an endangered language.This is an example of work related to the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, which the United Nations designated as the span of time between 2022 and 2032. Beyond just an honorific awareness campaign, the U.N. is using it as an opportunity to spread really useful tools to Indigenous communities in need of language protection.Case in point: Digital Initiatives For Indigenous Languages, a whopping 193-page book chock full of resources for the holders of Indigenous languages and fascinating case studies for inspiration. For a bureaucratically produced document, its shockingly readable and full of fascinating stories such as how a crowdsourced comic book featuring a baby tamale helped promote the Nahuatl languages of Central and South America to a new generation (major Gudetama vibes, iykyk).A meta moment about language here: Language death is different than language change. Language change is natural, fluid, inclusive. The death of a language is often arrived at by means that are, as linguist Rebecca Ericson-Hua puts it, forcible, traumatic, and at the bare minimum unjust. Saving the languages of Indigenous people directly empowers communities razed by atrocities that had intent to exterminate them.As Wills says:language is so much more than just the words with which we communicate. The vocabulary, grammar, phrases, and modalities of a language create the lens through which we process the world. Its the backdrop to culture, the sounds and signs through which we experience tradition and share stories. Ultimately, language is identity.What else were readingMany folks want to help, volunteer, mentor but dont know what to give that would really be helpful to contribute. The answer lies in your most painful experiences, and how you overcame them.A common online retort to people who dont believe in climate science or vaccines is: Well, science doesnt care what you believe! But quantum theorist Chris Ferrie argues that science is tremendously belief driven most inventions and scientific truths begin with a daydream after all, and then often require something more than facts to be regarded as truth. An example from his story: I did not know that heliocentrism (Earth rotates around Sun) was met with derision by other scientists, not just religious leaders and what actually pushed its acceptance was how it aligned with the aesthetics of symmetry that were popular at the time (essentially: it was prettier to believe, so thats what really made it gain traction).Your daily dose of practical wisdomShake yourself out of a doom spiral by replacing What If questions with Even If statements. It helps you refocus on plausible solutions instead of terrifying hypotheticals.

Howdy, friends! Ive worked at Medium for over a year now, but Ive been on the platform since 2012 and Ive really loved watching what this company and community have become over that intervening decade plus.I enjoy Medium because I always feel good after I spend some time perusing my home feed. Weve heard from a few users that they enjoy Medium because it feels like its good for their brains or that they at least feel better after they spend time here. We love it, and gotta say that feedback like the below are the sorts of things that keeps all of us working happily away.We love to read it.In recent internal discussions, weve talked about how while the story is the core of our platform, the community is the connective tissue, which makes sense, considering the drive for an audience is what defines the difference between a blog post and a diary entry. And its true part of the joy of writing here is knowing that your work will be read by readers and community members outside of your existing network, and that readers are here to deepen their understanding of the world. And thats pretty cool, if you ask me!As Tony Stubblebine wrote a couple of months ago, we are trying to build a better internet, one digital brick at a time. And though its not always perfect, and theres an endless amount of work that still needs to be done, we come to our (entirely remote) work every morning hoping we can deepen understanding by building communities around our shared stories. Thats a lot to aspire to, but it sure makes the job fun.Now, lets take a look at what happened around the ol Medium ranch last month, shall we?- Amy Widdowson, VP of CommunicationsMedium by the numbers in September1.1 million drafts created80,600 stories published in publications212,355 user accounts suspended for violations of the Medium Rules, such as harassment, plagiarism, impersonation, phishing, and spamBTW, if you encounter accounts or content you feel violates our Rules, please report it the 3-dot menu on every page, or submit a request at help.medium.com Thank you for helping make Medium a better place!Selections from Septembers most highlighted passagesHell is something you carry around, not somewhere you go Praise Frank in his poem NdiyaPromise me crimson sunsetsand healing words of poetryand maybe this ugly world will seemserenely sacred and something closer to beautiful. Connie Song in Bruised PoetryCreativity is my addiction, bringing me back to what matters: remaining true to my inner voice. pockett dessert in Strange Addiction, Down On The Corner and Uncommon PlacesSubject that sparked the most responses to the Medium NewsletterArtificial intelligence, to absolutely no ones surprise. On September 13th, our VP of Content Scott Lamb asked a contentious question in the newsletter subject line Can AI make art? and yall had opinions on both sides. In reading and responding, content lead Harris Sockel told me that he was surprised by how divergent peoples views on this are: we got a few nos and some yesses, and some people saying its not the right question to ask, it depends on what you mean by art.New publications to follow on MediumLooking for some new pubs to maximize the value of your daily Medium home page reading binge? Check these out:Medium staff fav Joan Westenberg launched The Realist, a publication Cutting through the chaos to bring you sharp, no-bullshit thinking for a messy world.If youd like to get nerdy, check out Harlan Brotherss pub Science Spectrum and theyre taking submissions for writers!And executive coach Ally Sprague has started sharing her insights for tech leaders in her new publication Session Notes.Notable passages from Boosted stories last monthAt Medium, we rely on human curators and community editors to help us find and recommend the stories that make Medium worth paying for. When we find those stories, we give them a Boost to help recommend them to more readers. Here are some of my favorite passages from Septembers Boosted stories:The disparities in benefits between the virtual and real nature experiences raise a big question: why are wellness initiatives investing in these new tech tools rather than hands-on experiences that prioritize sensory immersion? Kelly Baldwin Heid in Why virtual reality nature cant provide the same wellness benefits as the real thingToday, though, I consider the habit-building lifestyle a nightmare. Its not exactly that habit-building has ruined my life, but it has done me more harm than good. Stephan Joppich in Goodbye, Atomic Habits.Design work is not done when the design is done. Thats because design is never truly done. Michal Malewicz in Ugly websites sell better.I scour the resumes for some kind of differentiator anything that sets them apart from their classmates in a meaningful way. Because of how similar internship candidates can appear, even small differentiators can have huge impacts. Jarom Hulet in Ive Hired 3 Cohorts of Data Science Interns Heres My Advice on Getting an Offer.How in awe all of us were to finally see the system of the asteroid Didymos (with the smaller Dimorphos orbiting around it) and its real shape This was the first hint of how unpredictable and uncertain the parameters related to these celestial bodies can be. Purdue College of Engineering in The worlds first successful deflection of an asteroid an inside view of recent findings and what lies ahead.Boosted stories by new writersHere are a few of our favorite Boosted stories written by writers brand-new to Medium.Why Being Ugly and Lonely Makes You Better at Software Engineering by Eric Ming, a tongue-in-cheek reflection on being a young developer.The Art of Tokenization: Breaking Down Text for AI by Murilo Gustineli, a senior AI software engineer at Intel, for Towards Data Science. This is an in-the-weeds look at whats running in the background of an LLM.Young Love by American humorist (and creative with whom I was obsessed as a young person watching SNL) Jack Handey for Slackjaw.And if you want to be super impressed by what the human body can endure, check out Mogollon Monster 100 by runner Travis Klein.

How to make your weekends feel twice as longPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter2 min read3 hours ago-- Its that day again, you know the one!Issue #183: creativity tips from Tony Soprano and what to do when you feel misunderstoodBy Harris SockelI thought Id take a hard left out of what weve covered in this newsletter lately WordPress drama, hurricanes, the worst Michelin-starred restaurant on Earth to plunder the archive and share some of the best stories about, just, how to do a weekend right.Because its that time again (weekend time) and, honestly, I never know how to make the best use of these precious 48 hours. Weekends are a relatively new invention, historically speaking. And they dont come with an instruction manual.Laura Vanderkam reminds us that, while a weekend can feel short, it contains roughly the same number of hours as your work week (37 waking hours between 5 p.m. Friday and 10 p.m. Sunday). But because theres less built-in accountability, we waste it. For years, she used a time-tracking device to monitor how she spent her weekends not to scare herself into productivity, but to become more aware. She calls it The Weekend Experiment That Will Change Your Life, and it did change hers. Seeing how she actually used those 48 hours led her to spend less time mindlessly checking email and more time reading, puzzling, and doing things worth remembering.Johanna Vann turned off email and Slack notifications on weekends (go ahead, just delete Slack from your phone every weekend, its fine!), and suddenly those two days felt twice as long. Nishith Goyal sees weekends as opportunities to build the life you want: theyre rough drafts for what you want your weeks to be, someday.Whats your perfect weekend?Were also reading: Creativity advice from The SopranosDont read this if youre planning on watching The Sopranos anytime soon, because spoilers abound, but: Sasha Zeiger explains how the Emmy award-winning shows final episode taught her how to take creative risks.Tony Soprano is a sympathetic character because hes cut his identity in half. Hes a mob boss, but also a regular guy. Hes evil, yet nice? His life is pragmatic but risky. Splitting yourself in two like that is a terrible way to live! Its also not the best mindset for getting work done, especially creative work. After the final episode, Zeigler had this realization:My best creations are expressions of pure subjectivity, authentic curiosity, and channeled vulnerability, which are inaccessible from a fragmented part of myself.One more piece of practical wisdom for your weekendWhen you feel misunderstood, its easy to want to push the other person to understand you. The better, yet counterintuitive approach? Attempt to understand them.

Why this years hurricane season is worse than mostPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter2 min readJust now-- Welcome back to the Medium NewsletterIssue #182: figs, namedropping, and ASMRBy Harris SockelHurricane Milton made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane last night. Its the third-fastest intensifying Atlantic storm ever, and the first major hurricane to hit Tampa in over a century.If youre in Florida, I hope youre taking Xanadu Allens advice. She works at a police station on Anna Maria Island near Tampa Bay. As of yesterday, Allen was heading inland: I am relying on the way I frame my reality; I control what I can, accept what I cannot and decide which category everything in my life falls into.Milton joins Helene, Ernesto, and Beryl in an unusually active hurricane season. There arent more cyclones than usual, but those that form are intensifying more rapidly. Miltons wind speed more than doubled from 74mph (Category 1) to 180mph (Category 5) in less than a day earlier this week. One reason: warm water. A hotter ocean evaporates faster, and it can turbocharge a hurricane. Theres a marine heatwave happening right now ocean temps this spring were 4.5 standard deviations above the mean:What else were reading: figs, ASMR, and namedroppingEveryone needs to try fresh figs at least once, urges Evin Ibrahim, who lives in Iraq (home to a unique type of fig). Most are only ripe for a few weeks in summer and early fall, and they travel terribly, so if you can find them eat them!:: snaps fingers :: :: crinkles paper :: :: blows softly into the mic :: John Kruse MD, PhD explains the science behind ASMR (auto-sensory meridian response), a feeling of euphoria triggered by soft, crunchy sounds.Peoples brains light up when they hear their names. Designer Raquel Piqueras thinks you should do more namedropping at work its a subtle thing, but it brings people closer to you. Dont just say our team did X, say Breana, Greg, and I did X.Your daily dose of practical wisdomTry audio journaling at night, right before bed, to clear whatevers on your mind.

Four essential categories to use when planning your weekPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter2 min read1 day ago-- Happy Tuesday!Issue #180: a worrying stat about scientific papers, 28 foods you should be eating, and reducing your personal signal-to-noise ratioBy Scott LambTime management, like balancing your checking account and writing a good thank you note, is one of those central life skills that should, by all rights, be taught in schools alongside reading and math. Instead, were all left to experiment ourselves and learn from the experience of others.Last year, productivity coach Carl Pullein shared his weekly planning matrix, a simple way to think about what you need (and want!) to get accomplished each week, and which includes space for both work and life.To set it up, think through these four areas:Core work: The essentials you need to tackle each weekProjects: Key long-term projects that need progressPersonal: Personal priorities that need your attentionYour radar: Future tasks and ideas you need to keep an eye onThe trick is being very realistic with yourself about whats core work (your literal job) and what projects absolutely need your attention that week. Heres an example by Pullein himself:Finding a structure that allows you to reshape your week is work worth doing. The weekly matrix has been hugely helpful to me, but Im curious, whats worked for you?What else were readingA new study suggests that as many as one in seven scientific papers is fake.Blueberries, cherries, kimchi, and 25 other things nutritionists list as the best things to eat as part of your core diet.Good designers have a secret superpower: Creating alignment between teams at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels.Your daily dose of practical wisdomWant to be more effective? Make sure you have a theory behind everything youre trying to do, otherwise its just noise.

Like, literally, and the rise of filler wordsPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter2 min readJust now-- Hello again!Issue #181: how inspiration works, indigenous languages, and doing it rightBy Harris SockelI was watching a recording of myself in a Zoom meeting recently and realized I say like too much. Every remark I made was riddled with like, uh, or um. It was embarrassing, though the most embarrassing part is how unaware of it I usually am.Too much is totally subjective, but I think Ron Miller would agree. Hes a historian and educator who, in a recent Medium post, examined the rise of two of the most common (and most hated?) filler words: like and literally.Lets take like. Its a word meant to avoid precision. When you use like, youre intentionally distancing yourself from what youre saying. Its a device for, in Millers words, withholding commitment to a position or an idea.Enter: Literally. People love to hate on millennials who use literally in figurative contexts (no, youre not LITERALLY DYING even if youre laughing really hard). In fact, the word has been used figuratively since at least the 1700s: Charlotte Bront wrote about being literally suffocated by someones bad attitude. Still, its exploded in popularity over the last 20 years roughly coinciding with the rise of the internet.In a world where so much of what we create and react to exists in our minds and on screens, Miller argues, we want to hold on to some scrap of truth so we desperately insist that things or ideas are literally what they are and not political disinformation, digital manipulations or ephemeral products of social construction.Maybe these words arent popular just because they make getting through a conversation easier. Maybe theyre popular because they help us express aspects of being alive right now that are really hard to communicate in other ways: In so many aspects of life and work, its, like, sort of hard to tell whats literally real vs. not. Recent must-reads in 1 sentenceThe harder you work at something, the more inspired you become because your subconscious starts working on problems for you.You can replace Notion and most expensive apps with a combo of native apps like Reminders, Notes, and Numbers.TIL: 560 indigenous languages exist in Latin America.Your daily dose of practical wisdomFeeling awful about something doesnt mean youre doing it wrong.Deepen your understanding every day with the Medium Newsletter. Sign up here.Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly GillisQuestions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com Love this email? Read without limits or ads, fund great writers, and join a community that believes in human storytelling with Medium membership.

Three tips for your work week, and de-hyping AIPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Welcome back to the Medium NewsletterIssue #179: the top highlight on Medium last week + a clear-eyed perspective on AIBy Harris SockelHere are three pieces of wisdom to carry with you this week.One of the toughest skills for me (and many people!) is asking for help. Im great at gritting my teeth to finish something in isolation, but delegating is harder. If you, too, struggle with letting go, former engineering manager Vinita offers one piece of wisdom: Map the right problems to the right people. And make sure youre giving them something thats actually worth doing (not just something that seems like it should get done). A crucial mistake most managers make is delegating work that shouldnt be done at all.The term impostor syndrome was coined in 1978 by two self-doubting psychologists who named a feeling theyd had their entire lives. But its usually a sign youre doing something right. Youre shedding your skin and becoming someone new.Motivation is not the cause of an action; its the effect. If you want to feel motivated to do something, take one small step toward it.Were also reading: 30 observations about AIAccording to AI researcher Alberto Romero, the next wave of generative AI tools will obviate the human need to be the best at anything. The most defensible human activities of the future? Ones youll never possibly optimize. Sympathy. Humor. Imperfection. Writing surprising stuff instead of smart-sounding stuff.Recently, Romero published a list of 30 observations about the past, present, and future of AI. You may not agree with all of them, but theyll probably make you think. Heres one worth noting, true of AI and many things: Those who over-hype in the extreme and those who anti-hype in the extreme are often cut from the same cloth.Your responses: On building great teamsLast week, we published a newsletter about how monogamy is overrated (at work!) and why tech teams should operate more like film crews. Many of you disagreed (we love to see it). Heres one of our favorite responses, via Younghee Kwon:Movies are fundamentally different from software (and often hardware) products in the tech industry. While movies are produced once and can be enjoyed for years / decades without changes, software is continuously developed, maintained, and updated, making it more like a service rather than a static productWe also asked: Whats the best team youve ever been part of? Jeffrey Pillow replied:I was a senior marketing manager at a Fortune 500 company for years. Our community development team also reported directly to me. [] My team and I led a collaborative effort with Feeding America and Remote Area Medical (RAM) to provide take-home grocery boxes to everyone who attended a large medical clinic in Far Southwest Virginia one weekendThe appreciation and gratitude from medical clinic attendees was perhaps the most fulfilling moment of my work life.We came together with an idea. Met over a two month span. Transformed the idea into a reality. For me, thats how most projects should be.Lastly, in response to this story about how The New Yorker goes hard on edits, Jeffrey Anthony wrote:Ive found that editing is the difference between an okay article and a great one. Now, I spend as much time editing as I do researching & writing, sometimes even more. I can easily spend 68 hours editing a 3,500-word piece, often over two days. This allows some distance so when I return, Im seeing it with fresh eyes.Its similar to recording a song: you might spend 10 hours in the studio laying down a track and doing a rough mix, convinced youve recorded a hit. But its the next morning, when you sit down in front of those monitors and hit play again, where the distance produces the necessary space for honest reflection, and in a matter of seconds you know whether or not you have something. The top highlight on Medium last weekTrue vulnerability requires that you dont know. You dont know how your share will be received; you dont know how others will perceive you for sharing it; you dont know if theres a happy ending yet. Ally Sprague, Fake Vulnerability Is Keeping You Stuck, featured in issue #174.

Duolingos emotional blackmailPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Its Friday, at lastand welcome back to the Medium NewsletterIssue #178: turning your schedule upside-down and learning from solitudeBy Harris SockelHallo! Kaffe und milch, bitte. Danke!Thats one of the only things I can say in German. I started learning the basics a few weeks ago because I love the word verschlimmbesserung and thought exploring one of Englishs root languages would be fun. (Also, the animated characters are very cute. I like Lily, who has purple asymmetrical bangs and I bet knows a lot about the Berlin rave scene.) Duolingo starts you out by teaching you how to order things in a coffee shop, so here I am.Then I got busy and, as design expert Rosie Hoggmascall writes, the emotional blackmail startedI got the same messages, which seemed designed to make me feel personally responsible for this fake owls mental health. It was cute but a little scary?!It did not make me open the app again, but Im guessing these tactics work on other people! This all reminds me of another Medium story I read recently, by game designer Sam Liberty, on how Wordle draws in millions of daily players. It all boils down to core human drives:Wordle gives us a sense of daily accomplishment. So does Duolingo until you stop using it, at which point its messaging gets wild and unpredictable. Every product as big as Duolingo (7.4 million paid subscribers, ~$530 million annual revenue) taps into some combination of positive drives (ownership, accomplishment, empowerment, influence) and negative ones (scarcity, unpredictability).The next time you get a push notification from a service that wants a piece of your precious attention, try to figure out which core motivation its playing into. Are you being made to feel scared? Accomplished? Empowered? A combination of the above?Elsewhere on MediumThere are 31 days remaining until the U.S. presidential election. The number of truly undecided voters is tough to pin down, but by some estimates its as low as 3% and if youre one of them, youre probably fielding people from all sides trying to get you to change your mind. Essayist Alisa Wolf discusses the work of philosopher Eleanor Gordon Smith, whos written on Medium about how minds really change. People dont change when they feel attacked or abandoned but rather when they feel supported, loved, and accepted.Essayist Jacqueline Dooley explains how losing her daughter forced her to rethink her schedule. Grief had rewired my brain, she writes, peeling away the superficial crap, exposing my busy work for what it was meaningless. So many of us restrict our behavior based on what we think others will think about it, but in reality no one actually cares.Your daily dose of practical wisdomSolitude is a great teacher. Togetherness is a great healer.

Monogamy is overrated (at work)Published inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Weve returned with another Medium NewsletterIssue #177: letters to the editor and nothing is as urgent as you thinkBy Harris SockelJessica Zwaan, an HR expert on Medium, published a story this summer that got me thinking differently about the way I work. Its called What Tech failed to learn from Hollywood, and the thesis goes something like this: The best teams operate like film crews. They come together for a brief period of time to do something specific, and then disband.Hollywood doesnt marry its teams, Zwaan writes. They have beautiful, intense project-based affairs. No one is monogamous (work-wise).In tech and pretty much every other industry, work works differently. Teams endure for years, often past the point of being relevant. Inertia determines a lot of what we do. We build cozy, long-term relationships that can be super fulfilling, but sometimes unproductive.To get around this, Medium experimented with holacracy in its early days. The Greek word holon means whole, and a holacracy (as opposed to a democracy or an autocracy) is made up of autonomous units that operate both independently and in concert with each other.Its a freewheeling org structure thats sorrrrt of Hollywood-esque: When Medium tried it, there were no durable hierarchies or pyramid-shaped org charts. People came together to do specific things. Teams formed and dissolved like clouds. It was a little weird (no bosses, really! or titles!). We abandoned it because it was chaos, but the ideals and principles stuck around. They were so influential that theyre cited in an OReilly book about building great teams:1. Individuals can always instigate change.2. Authority is distributed, though not evenly or permanently.3. Ownership is accountability, not control.4. Good decision-making implies alignment, not consensus.I think those are good principles for working with people anywhere. And I like this quote, from our reflection on why we tried holacracy: Classic org charts are often linear and inflexible; in reality, people have the talent to play multiple roles in a company.Im curious: Have you ever been part of a team that felt unstoppable? A team that came together for a brief moment in time to do something great? What did that feel like, what motivated you, and what did you make?One more story: on editingBrand designer and professor David Langton published a letter to the editor in The New Yorker last year about Milton Glasers legendary INY logo. He was surprised by how detailed (and astute) the magazines edits were. Heres Langtons original letter with The New Yorkers first round of edits in red:The New Yorkers second round went even further (editing some of these edits!). Nothing starts out great, Langton reminds us, not even paragraph-long letters to the editor.Your daily dose of practical wisdomMaybe its not as urgent as you think, is something you should whisper to yourself at least once a day.