camila domonoske

[keepthedelta]

possibly the best ever piece of american sports journalism

[inbabylontheywept]

It's weird. It's like, the less I use the internet, the less my tolerance for internet bullshit goes up, so when I do log on, I immediately want to start biting people. It kind of makes sense though, right? The internet is definitely one of those things where the more you use it, the more you want to use it, which gives it a pretty nice feedback loop for taking over your life. But once you start hitting the brakes, that same process goes backwards: The less you use it, the more you hate it when you do use it, which makes you avoid it more, and pretty soon the whole thing implodes into a shiny white-hot little doom orb. Sort of like the combined skeletons of the 5 billionares in that one submarine.

[inbabylontheywept]

This is also me prophesying the death of the internet in the 2030s. We're all already sick of this thing. We're just holding on for each other.

[camilashares]

my favorite econ paper I read last year identified social media platforms as “market traps.” They suck, but because everyone else uses them, you pay a price if you don’t, youre left out of things. The result is a platform whose active users *would prefer the platform didn’t exist.*

what this looks like in economically quantifiable terms is that you would have to pay college students to get them to give up TikTok individually, but THEY WILL PAY YOU if you could ban TikTok from their campus collectively: https://home.uchicago.edu/bursztyn/CollectiveTraps_Nov2024.pdf

which is to say we’re just holding on for each others

[myjetpack]

A recent cartoon for @newscientist

p.s. my new book of science cartoons, ‘Physics for Cats’ is out now. Links at www.tomgauld.com

[jkottke]

“The bird in Charlie’s Angels is, I believe, the wrongest bird in the history of cinema — and one of the weirdest and most inexplicable flubs in any movie I can remember. It is elaborately, even ornately wrong.” (I was slack-jawed by the end of this.)

[3eanuts]

June 20, 1957 — see The Complete Peanuts 1955-1958

[leebrontide]

An explainer for why I don't fuck with algorithmic social media

If you give a pigeon a little button to peck that releases pigeon food, it will push the button when it's hungry.

If you give a pigeon a button to peck that releases food every 5 pecks, it will peck it more often.

If you give a pigeon a button to peck that releases food at a randomly selected, always shifting number of pecks, the pigeon will peck that fucking button all day long.

Algorithm based social media is not set up to give you the best most fun stuff all the time, it is set up to give you a bunch of stress and nothingness with a randomized reward of something that actually makes you happy, because they want you pecking that button all damn day. It is a slot machine of content, meant to keep you putting in quarters made of your time and attention till you've nothing yet.

At least if I'm having a shit day on my own Tumblr feed it's because I've made a bad choice about who to follow and I can fix it.

[creature-wizard]

Anybody else remember that old Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic where this guy tries to genetically engineer the ultimate villain by combining the DNA of famous despots and dictators, and this frustrated scientist explains that villains arise naturally in countries with recent high inflation and a low gini coefficient?

[teachablr-moment]

I do! No idea how to find it though

[camilashares]

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - 2011-08-28

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - 2011-08-28

[camilashares]

I read a little piece the other day on life lessons on from hospice doctors- it was titled “lessons in living well, from the dying,” which was imho not quite on target because no one quoted in it was dying, but anyway; one of the pieces of advice for how to find joy in the ordinary was to stop thinking “I have to go to the grocery store” and instead think “I GET to go to the grocery store.”

and first of all, no advice finding everyday joy has ever surpassed Kurt Vonnegut’s: “When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud, ‘If this isn’t nice, what is?’ “ it doesn't expect that you love EVERY moment, but just that you notice the ones you DO.

but second of all, it would be beautiful to be perpetually able to appreciate how lucky we are to be able to run errands - but it seems a damned hard leap to go from obligation to gratitude all the time. it’s true! I’m lucky to be alive, to have eaten so there are dishes to clean, to own a bathroom that needs cleaning, etc etc. but if you’re not feeling it, it’s a tough thing to summon; trying to chirp “I *get* to do this!” to summon an enlightened attitude is likelier, for me, to make me feel guilty and annoyed that I’m not finding an appreciative spark. to leave me mired in self-hatred (I have so much, why aren’t I happy???) rather than walking in the sweet sunshine of genuine appreciation.

now, I think this might work for things people actually enjoy. (I do enjoy grocery shopping, as it happens.) but for things you straight up DON’T enjoy, I think there’s a much more attainable mental maneuver. instead of “I have to do the dishes” - well, you don’t HAVE to, actually. you could just not. but then … the dishes wouldn’t be done, and you wouldn’t have a clean kitchen at breakfast. or your partner would be frustrated that you didn’t do your fair share of chores, and you’d be making their life worse when you could easily make it better. or whatever the reason is why you’re going to do it!

you don’t HAVE to go to the store, but if you don’t, you won’t have food. so, in fact, you are CHOOSING to go to the store -- because you like the version of the world where you do better than the version of the world where you don’t.

dunno if it works for other people. but for me, once I recognize that what seems like an obligation is actually a choice - as it nearly always is - it’s way easier to slide into a better state of mind. to even, perhaps, find some gratitude.

[skluug]

I’m feeling very sleepy today. But you won’t hear the establishment talking about this

[camilashares]

started the new year by making some art. well, first I started the year with a massive hangover, but once I achieved Getting Up Off The Floor this was project number two.

i like that you can see my monstera in the reflection on the glass. sneaking one more in.

[camilashares]

my least favorite part of my job is the time i waste looking at stupid press releases using stupidly bad data and thinking "ugh, if that's true it would be noteworthy, but it's almost certainly not true" and then checking their sources and in fact, it's not true

what a great way to spend my finite time on earth

the sun is shining, the birds are singing, my children are running around outside growing up while i'm stuck inside staring at a screen scrolling through a very long document to discover you wildly mischaracterized the question in the survey you're citing and i don't know you but now I hate you

[camilashares]

started to type in an email

"I live in perpetual fear of being wrong about words like ''all,' 'first' and 'never,' so wanted to double-check on this 'all.' "

Got distracted midsentence so the email ended

"I live in perpetual fear Thanks!"

[camilashares]

Squash anxieties

I started a hugelkultur mound and planted zucchini on the sides and watermelon in the top, succession plantings, and nearly lost the first one entirely to deer, then a would-be fruit was never fertilized and withered, but now a picture perfect little zucchini is growing and every day I waffle over whether to pick it or let it grow more and I decided to pick it tomorrow for lunch and am already bracing myself to discover it nibbled by squirrels or something, and I spent a very hot afternoon scraping squash bug eggs off the bottom and I spotted but did not! Manage! To! Kill! An adult, and all I know about squash bugs is that they are the devil, so in conclusion I thiiiiink I am having fun gardening? Despite the fact that mostly I seem to be vibrating in terror over the fate of a single small squash?

[apoemaday]

A Contribution to Statistics

by Wislawa Szymborska

Out of a hundred people

those who always know better –fifty-two

doubting every step –nearly all the rest,

glad to lend a hand if it doesn’t take too long –as high as forty-nine,

always good because they can’t be otherwise –four, well maybe five,

able to admire without envy –eighteen,

suffering illusions induced by fleeting youth –sixty, give or take a few,

not to be taken lightly –forty and four,

living in constant fear of someone or something –seventy-seven,

capable of happiness –twenty-something tops,

harmless singly, savage in crowds –half at least,

cruel when forced by circumstances –better not to know even ballpark figures,

wise after the fact –just a couple more than wise before it,

taking only things from life –thirty (I wish I were wrong),

hunched in pain, no flashlight in the dark –eighty-three sooner or later,

righteous –thirty-five, which is a lot,

righteous and understanding –three,

worthy of compassion –ninety-nine,

mortal –a hundred out of a hundred.

[headspace-hotel]

today my wisdom is: the ecological crisis of our planet is not a thing that will Suddenly destroy us sometime in the next century—it has taken decades of continuous work for our biosphere to be preserved thus far, and it will take decades more of continuous work to continue preserving it.

The apocalypse is not a single event hovering in the future bearing down on us while we sit helplessly. We are at least 150 years into an ongoing "apocalypse."

Things will continue to steadily get worse without steady action, but "augh! it's already too late to stop climate change and mass extinctions!" is specifically the worst response

[headspace-hotel]

what I mean is, there is a persistent fallacy that the present situation of a thing is always worse than the past, even if there have been fluctuations in badness.

This is not true. There is a great wealth of specific cases where ecosystems/species/a specific anthropogenic impact on the environment is CURRENTLY, RIGHT NOW, better than it has been at any point in the past 100 years

[headspace-hotel]

I've been researching the history of conservation in the USA...and I think current doomers would benefit from knowing just how bad things got throughout the 20th century.

The eastern USA's natural environments were fucking razed. We went scorched earth on everything.

In the 1930's, DEER and WILD TURKEYS were almost eliminated from my state. Deer. Wild turkeys. Common animals that you can see all the time.

I've seen animals close to my home that a person in the 1970's would not have been able to see. I saw river otters and a bald eagle a couple months ago! Farmer family friend remembers when a bald eagle sighting here made the news. There is a thriving population of elk (16,000 animals) in the Appalachian Mountains, for the first time since before 1850!

We actively tried to exterminate so many species. Bison. Wolves. Mountain lions. The US GOVERNMENT PAID PEOPLE TO KILL CARNIVORES. They're still here. They're reclaiming their old territories. All is not lost

[bogleech]

There was a time most American cities almost never saw a blue sky. Brown and yellow smog was the norm and rivers were garbage sludge that are now teeming with fish. People don't know that government environmental regulation actually did succeed, that the EPA really worked as intended. Now it gets eroded because people think it isn't making a big difference, and they think that because they haven't seen what it's still holding back.

[residentscoundrel]

If you have environmental anxiety please read this!

[camilashares]

'Ah! you don't understand me; I have never met with any one who comprehends me': and they sigh and weep, write verses and walk alone ...

Emerson, making fun of “ardent young men and women,” a.k.a. dragging the emo kids of 1850

[nprbooks]

‘Pelicans In Iowa Thinking’: A New Critical Close Reading Of James Comey’s Tweets

Our brilliant former intern (and now news blogger & intrepid reporter) Camila Domonoske has a secret second life as a poetry expert, so naturally she decided to approach former FBI director James Comey’s recent tweets as a poetic Work:

The Work opens with a peaceful autumnal scene and two terse, declarative sentences:

“Beautiful fall day at West Point. Lone kayaker on the Hudson.”

The tweet establishes a pattern that will continue throughout the Work, of a specific location tied to every observation. In this case, as the first sentence notes, it’s a location inextricably tied with America’s history of war — but as the second sentence reminds us, on a body of water intimately tied to the ideal of the peaceful American pastoral.

Experience the Work here. (We’re SO proud, y’all. SO proud.)

– Petra