So long
Thursday, November 7, 2024 • 1
Deactivated my Twitter account after fifteen years (sheesh).
Microposts
Finished reading: The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates 📚
Finished reading: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt 📚
Just talked myself into and out of $300 of yarn.
Currently reading: Abortion by Jessica Valenti 📚
Thursday, September 26, 2024 →
It’s the time of year when I can’t get around the nagging feeling that I need to buy yarn (I don’t need any more yarn).
Ephemera
Wednesday, September 25, 2024 • 1
Been playing with micro.blog for a bit now and very much recommend the experience. The interface is friendly and the team behind the app is ultra responsive. My fav features are Bookshelves - and the ability to push new posts to Bluesky and Mastodon. In other news, I got a new bike.
Wednesday, September 25, 2024 →
Finished reading (a couple of months ago): Holding It Together by Jessica Calarco 📚
Wednesday, September 25, 2024 →
Read this in one sitting, reminded of “The Fire Next Time” in both style and urgency. Finished reading: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates 📚
Finished reading: On Writing by Stephen King 📚
Thursday, September 19, 2024 →
“To create a novel or a painting, an artist makes choices that are fundamentally alien to artificial intelligence.”
🍳 Bean machine
Tuesday, September 3, 2024 • 1
It’s soup season - and I’m a newly-minted member of the bean club. This is more or less my favorite lentil soup recipe, except I deglaze the pot with a healthy dose of dry red wine before adding the lentils and stock, and I stew it with a big sachet of fresh thyme.
Finished reading: James by Percival Everett 📚
Currently reading: 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories by Lorrie Moore 📚
Watch House
Tuesday, July 2, 2024 • 1
Last week I joined an old friend on a road trip through Wisconsin. We saw a folk show, stayed at a vintage motel, and camped in the crook of Green Bay. In our early years, we were both shit-kicking dirtbags, rebels, people who thumbed our noses at convention and were told (and fully believed) we wouldn’t amount to much. Today, we’re regular middle-aged ladies secure in our work, home and ambition, figuring out what the rest of our lives will look like.
⚡ Acceleration
Tuesday, June 25, 2024 • 1
This has a bad headline, but the gist is that AI is already beginning to be used to power racketeering and ransom business models against vulnerable human enterprises. The net effect is a general erosion of the trustworthiness of written communication, especially online, as the same tools we use to perform our work and extend our social lives are increasingly used to scam us.
I read this again after a twenty year break. It holds up, but wowzers, my takeaways were different in 2024. Finished reading: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant 📚
“Again and again, I sought out high-challenge, high-stress jobs. I thrived when I felt bad.”
In relationship to collectors, purchases of physical media are on the rise, with vinyl outselling everything, and cassette tapes, CDs and DVDs making a comeback. I’m a longtime downloader and streamer, but have been buying vinyl lately myself. Indicative of lost trust in Big Tech?
61% of Americans are self-proclaimed collectors. 83% of collectors think their collection will be worth something someday. Young people identify as collectors more than ever, with Gen Z at 76% and millennials at 72%.
Starting to see some best practices emerging around AI capabilities in the higher ed space. Here’s a table of AI vs human capabilities in the Bloom’s hierarchy of cognitive tasks from Oregon State.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading so much, maybe it’s because I’m in a reflective stage of life, but I have the writing bug again. It’s been a long, long time since I felt the urge to write.
A clever look at feminist theory through celebrity case studies. My favorite chapters were on humor, leadership and nudity.
Finished reading: Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud by Anne Helen Petersen 📚
All the women I know are reading and gardening at a feral clip.
From the Garbage Day newsletter, my fav newsletter on internet trends and marketing, this blog post on looking for federated blog alternatives to Wordpress which links out to this handy dashboard measuring total users on federated platforms.
Why are divorce memoirs stuck in the 1960s? A fair question, I say. www.nytimes.com/2024/05/2…
The relevance of these authors, imo, is about women’s buying power in the ex-evangelical and ex-Mormon movement. But I think it’s pretty difficult to think publicly about ideas like liberation or, say, bodily autonomy when you aren’t regularly entertaining trans politics or questioning carceral politics.
My posts from micro.blog are pushing to Mastodon but not Bluesky. Why?
Two new media publishers are looking to build out their presence in the Fediverse: digiday.com/media/why…
I very much enjoyed this book. Despite the heavy subjects, ultimately culminating in a reflection on the ongoing conflict in Palestine that can’t be missed, it was a compelling read that I’ve returned to many times as a reference. The mirror as metaphor for the inexplicable stories in the news.
Finished reading: Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein 📚