onfocus

"Pinpoint the Tension: This is where we start finding those weird links. Look for the elements that don't fit together, that seem opposed. Find two contrasting elements and isolate them."

I enjoyed this description of a creative brainstorming technique that involves connecting previously unconnected dots.

"By late spring, well shortages and delayed recovery were being reported again, even though locals have water efficiency so ingrained in them that they easily meet 40% conservation mandates, he said."

Alarming story about how Mendocino, CA is faring in the California drought.

"They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was ‘just the flu’. But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back."

A doctor in Alabama talks about treating covid now that we have vaccines.

"The “both sides” model of journalism is being exploited by bad actors intent on spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories. “If the weight of the evidence allows you to make a judgment, but instead you go with ‘he said, she said,’ you're behaving recklessly even as you tell yourself you're doing the cautious thing,” as press critic Jay Rosen notes."

Hedging must feel like the safe path for journalists—especially since they wouldn't want to anger Big Dowsing. This is a good example of how baked-in both-sides thinking is. See also.

"But it’s interesting: the appeal of these checkpoint videos is precisely the fact that they are NOT designed. This subculture has repurposed a plot of unloved YouTube real estate and totally turned it around, charged it up with emotional energy, all without changing a single line of JavaScript or CSS. So, maybe the deep lesson of the checkpoint isn’t “make it like this!” but “don’t MAKE it at all”."

Great look at a type of comment that the systems aren’t designed for but people want to make.

"As bad as the winter surge was, Springfield’s health-care workers shared a common purpose of serving their community, Steve Edwards, the president and CEO of CoxHealth, told me. But now they’re “putting themselves in harm’s way for people who’ve chosen not to protect themselves,” he said."

Places with high vaccine hesitancy like Missouri are still struggling with covid.

"CARI, or Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute, is an online community dedicated to developing a visual lexicon of consumer ephemera from the 1970s until now."

What’s the German word for existential dread mixed with nostalgia? Asking for no reason.

"More than anything else, Tumblr in 2020 is a self-sustaining ecosystem. It’s a semi-sealed and increasingly fertile terrarium, a nigh-impossible perpetual-motion machine of a platform going productively psychotic in its isolation."

Nice look at the recent history and current state of Tumblr.

"The Republican operatives, who dismiss the expositions of critical race theorists and anti-racists in order to define critical race theory and anti-racism, and then attack those definitions, are effectively debating themselves. They have conjured an imagined monster to scare the American people and project themselves as the nation’s defenders from that fictional monster."

Ibram X. Kendi with the best definition of the CRT "debate" happening in the media.

"Walmart’s moral stand lasted three months. In January, the retail giant said it would suspend all donations to the 147 lawmakers who objected to the election results. But in April, the company gave $30,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, the party organization that supports House Republicans in elections. Two-thirds of those House members voted against certifying Biden’s win."

We can’t rely on corporations to provide a system of accountability. We can still make decisions about where to spend our money and attention though.

"Twitter is a parasite that burrows deep into your brain, training you to respond to the constant social feedback of likes and retweets. That takes only a week or two. Human psychology is pathetically simple to manipulate. Once you’re hooked, the parasite becomes your master, and it changes the way you think."

Sure Twitter took away their love of reading, but it gave them outrage and a sense of righteousness in return. Fair trade?

"Over 70% of the videos flagged by respondents came through YouTube's suggestion algorithm — an effect that's impossible to study because the algorithm is a closely-guarded secret at Google. That means YouTube users aren't primarily finding misinformation through search, but through YouTube feeding users those videos."

Hosting disinformation is bad enough, but actively recruiting people—at scale—is awful.