OMM (On My Mind) – April 2024 – #3
~ a curated selection of discoveries ~
::: The Open :::
Dear Reader,
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Thank you for reading and for your time.
With Gratitude,
Mark
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::: Personal Notes :::
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Upcoming workshops I’m hosting.
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What are the Top 5 issues in the literary community?
Erika Dreifus was kind include to include this post in ‘Finds for Writers’
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::: Podcasts :::
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'Kids Are Not OK' Says Mental Health Expert (Fresh Air)
Highly recommend.
This is interesting in contrast to listening to [probably too much of] Jonathan Haidt’s opinions… to try to figure out his perspective/agenda/motivations.
In a way, the interview and research relates to material that Jonathan Haidt wades into…however, this is much more grounded and the actual materials that were found study and the person who wrote this is being much more considerate and even-handed (and, hopefully, is not providing skewed or partial research to support a prior hypothesis) stating that the issue with social media primarily affects those who already have diagnosed mental health issues. The study focuses on children though, I’d hazard, it carries to adult populations. If you use social media more than 6 to 8 hours you are likely to have increased problems, again, with the caveat that you already have a preexisting mental health disorder (or, perhaps, are predisposed to having anxiety or depression). The result of using more than 6-8 hours of social media a day—which is a TON … comparable to the concerning rates of (notably passive) television watching that created moral panic in the 90s—will heighten or make your anxiety and depression worse.
It's believed that approximately 9% of the youth population is in this group that is highly affected by social media (with negative consequences), likely to develop increased social difficulty, and this may be resulting in increased isolation.
Students are not returning to school at the same rate and are missing much more classes. They go on to discuss pandemic issues and school attending and how this has been not unlike the slow return to school post-9/11 for students who were directly affected. After 9/11 students were not coming back at the same rate if they lost a family member or primary caregiver and that it took about a year for that to stabilize. It was then pointed out that we lost over 1 million people in the pandemic, which means there are many more children who lost primary family members or caregivers.
An interesting discussion came up about the use of functional MRIs (FMRI) which allows for a sort of a blind study that can determine if children have autism or ADHD or both autism and ADHD.
70% of the kids in juvenile detention have dyslexia.
When you have dyslexia, apparently, learning how to read involves using both sides of your brain. Turns out, this is true as well when you’re learning a foreign language— but it's not supposed to be the case when you're learning what is theoretically your native tongue.
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::: Music :::
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The new Maggie Rogers album is out!
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The new Taylor Swift album is OTW!
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Songs are getting shorter. It’s believed this has to do with streaming.
Songs were, on average, 4-5 minutes for the last 50 years. In the past 5 years they’ve taken a dive towards 3 minutes.
(Sources: Billboard / Chartr)
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::: The Literary Community & Beyond :::
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‘There Are Too Many Books; Or, Publishing Shouldn’t Be All About Quantity’ (LitHub)
This article went viral.
Not surprising given the title and the fact that the article itself proclaims that it is a “hot take”.
But it’s not really a hot take… so much as it’s a subject most of us would rather not say out loud.
So, there’s some bravery involved in making this statement.
The piece is well-written and I agree with many of the takes.
The outshot is… underwhelming.
Is it possible I’m simply jealous I didn’t write this content myself? Sure.
This piece is about 750 words… so there’s much more to say about the AI threat to writers, corporate interests over concern for creatives, Big 5 presses being overwhelmed with material leaving accepted works unpublished, general lack of support for authors, potential correlation between streaming to the lowest common denominator and selling books to the lowest common denominator, the and progress for the sake of progress = capitalist run amok, and the list goes on.
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The State of Book Bans
It’s getting worse – notably, for public libraries.
47% of attempted bans target the LGBTQ+ community.
“The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries rose by 92%, versus 11% at schools.”
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‘Celebrated poet, MacArthur genius – but Hanif Abdurraqib is just glad to have survived past 25’ (Guardian)
Extremely good piece. Hanif and I have a lot in common (I think) about the way we approach life and consider how to move through the world. I highly encourage reading the interview in full.
“There’s Always This Year is nominally about basketball. It’s about LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, and people who never catapulted to the stars, despite their promise. But it is also about surviving, and transformation, and the documentation of beauty. It is a love song to Columbus, Ohio, Abdurraqib’s home town – an ode to the virtues of staying in place, and a meditation on gravity, grief and loss.”
“The thing that excites me is affixing myself to these disciplines, even if they don’t have a reward. The reward is that I show up to something repetitively and that showing up is a reminder that I have endured, that I’ve survived enough to have the will and excitement to show up for something else. Sometimes that discipline is how I simply survive from sunrise to sunset.”
“What I’m always reaching for is: I want to know your interior world. I understand all of us, to some degree, perform different versions of ourselves for the many exterior worlds we inhabit.”
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‘15 Places That Publish Writing About Writing and Publishing’ (Authors Publish)
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‘80 Opportunities for Historically Underrepresented Authors in April 2024’ (Authors Publish)
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‘Yayoi Kusama Was the Top-Selling Contemporary Artist of 2023’ (Art News)
“Despite being 95 years old, Japanese trailblazer Yayoi Kusama remains one of the most influential female artists.”
“Younger artists were outstripped in sales by more established talents, as less than half of all works made by artists under 45 sold above their mid-estimate, compared to 65 percent the prior year.”
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5 Ways You Could Be Rejecting Yourself as a Writer (And How Not To)
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::: Health & Wellness :::
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‘Why are so many young people getting cancer?’ (VOX)
More terrifying information about why so many young people are getting cancer.
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::: Small Explorations & Deep Dives :::
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“The U.S. government will spend more this year paying the interest on its $35 trillion debt than on either national defense or Medicare, according to the Congressional Budget Office.” (Semafor)
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New idea for fundraising created, at least in part, by Seth Godin.
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Visualizing America’s Shortage of Affordable Homes
The reality of consideration for becoming a homeowner.
Or, put another way, the inability for the majority of Americans to imagine themselves as future homeowners.
Let’s imagine you’d also like to avoid an HOA.
Search your local area and see how many homes for sale you can find under $400,000. Note where they are located. Is this considered a relatively safe neighborhood? Are they single family homes? Almost definitely not. Are they twins? Probably not. Are they 3 bed, 1 bath Cape Cod-style homes? Maybe, but unlikely. Are they row homes or new construction in a development (that was very likely not built with weatherized materials for potential climate concerns (such as hurricanes, or higher category storms). In any case, it’s possible you’ll find a row home under 400K. It might need repairs for that price (depending on your region).
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The bees are back in town.
Due to human intervention (cultivating bee colonies), we’ve gone from the fears associated with colony collapse to having more bees than ever previously recorded.
(Source: The Washington Post)
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‘Chechnya bans techno as cultural crackdown intensifies’ (Semafor)
Direct quotes follow:
The Russian republic of Chechnya is banning songs that it deems to be either too fast or too slow, in an attempt to quash Western influences.
Minister of Culture Musa Dadayev said that “all musical, vocal and choreographic works should correspond to a tempo of 80 to 116 beats per minute,” in order to make music “conform to the Chechen mentality.”
“Borrowing musical culture from other peoples is inadmissible,” he said.
Examples of songs (NPR)
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An article on globes. I’m inclined to share as I remain rather happy with my investment in a decent quality globe.
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People in the U.S. are estimated to have spent approximately 1.6 billion dollars traveling to see the solar eclipse.
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Like “The Silent Generation”, I’m predicting a small group from Gen X will be moved into a new category. There’s something a little different about those born after ~1975 vs. those born in the late 60s or early 70s. I predict millennials may shift slightly higher (1981 is a little different from 1985-1989). I’ve long believed that micro-generations, gaps of 4-7 years, from ages entering high school to entering college, makes a notable difference. This is going to vary across class/race/gender.
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Good criticism:
“The author could also have talked more about how the amorality inherent in most of the natural world does not apply to humans. Similarly to other organisms, our evolutionary heritage makes us social, but whether that sociality is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is a moral, not a scientific, question. This distinction from the other cooperative processes that Silvertown outlines could have been explained better.” (Nature)
Yes, humans are social animals. Yes, humans are animals that are part of the ecosystem (albeit a reckless and destructive force). We’re not the only social creatures. Agreed, moral questions are difficult to quantify using the scientific method. This is more the realm of social/behavioral psychology or sociology or anthropology. “Soft” sciences.
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HUGE Climate Win
‘Swiss women win landmark climate case at Europe top human rights court’ (Reuters)
“The Swiss women, known as KlimaSeniorinnen and aged over 64, said their government's climate inaction put them at risk of dying during heatwaves. They argued their age and gender made them particularly vulnerable to such climate change impacts.”
“Europe's top human rights court ruled on Tuesday that the Swiss government had violated the human rights of its citizens by failing to do enough to combat climate change, in a decision that will set a precedent for future climate lawsuits.”
“The European Court of Human Rights's ruling, in favour of the more than 2,000 Swiss women who brought the case, is expected to resonate in court decisions across Europe and beyond, and to embolden more communities to bring climate cases against governments.”
"It is clear that future generations are likely to bear an increasingly severe burden of the consequences of present failures and omissions to combat climate change," O'Leary said.
“The verdict in the Swiss case, which cannot be appealed, will have international ripple effects, most directly by establishing a binding legal precedent for all 46 countries that are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights.”
"But the most important thing is that the Court has said in the Swiss women’s case that governments must cut their emissions more to protect human rights. So, their win is a win for us too and a win for everyone."
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An important history lesson about the 1864 Arizona law that is about to be enforced. A law written by William T. Howell, on his own, and quickly adopted by the other legislators of the time. Howell was paid the equivalent of what an everyday person made over the course of three years for creating the law of the land without input from others. “Judge Howell wrote the territory’s criminal code essentially single-handedly.” (Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson)
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‘As the Internet Gets Scarier, More Parents Keep Their Kids’ Photos Offline’
This is the title of a Washington Post article. Speaking from the soapbox position of a non-parent, posting kids pics online has always seemed a bit questionable. Consent is an issue that’s been coming up for years. And concerns about predators, of course. Now we have fears of deepfakes.
Basically, the internet has been getting creepier and creepier.
In 2004, I remember first getting on Facebook… and then leaving Facebook. I didn’t like it. Just like I didn’t like AIM (AOL instant messenger). I wanted my friends to keep sending me photos directly if they wanted me to see photos from their daily lives or adventures. This was pre-smartphone, btw. No one sent photos. No one wanted to email or text about their daily life anymore it seemed. It was much easier to tell everyone at once on Facebook. Well, we see how far we’ve come. Maybe it’s time to look back in the direction of 2004 for some ideas about how to handle the present.
Here's a “fun fact”. Mark Zuckerberg and I share the same birthday. He is exactly one year older than me.
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U.S.P.S. stamps are going up to 73 cents. Good. Save the postal service!
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Relatedly, Spotify is raising prices… and it should. Sometimes the solution is hard to see until it’s right in front of you. If streaming prices reached a certain level for premium subscriptions (without ads), then the music industry could recover to levels seen in the 1990s at the peak of CD sales. This might mean paying $40/month for Spotify but you should want this for the sake of musicians. The problem is that we want to make sure a fair percentage of that streaming money is going to the artists and not just the company’s overhead, CEO, and shareholders.
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Top 10 states with the highest minimum wages:
1. District of Columbia – $17.00
2. Washington – $16.28
3. California – $16.00
4. Connecticut – $15.69
5. New Jersey – $15.13
6. Maryland – $15.00
7. New York – $15.00
8. Massachusetts – $15.00
9. Colorado – $14.42
10. Arizona – $14.35
Hawaii is raising its minimum wage to $18 an hour by 2028.
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“The eclipse worked wonders for the chronically online: internet traffic was down more than 40% across states in the path of totality around the time that the moon blocked the sun.” (Chartr)
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The women’s NCAA basketball championship game had more viewers than the men’s for the first time in history.
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Wondering where your tax dollars go? Here’s a breakdown.
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“In this story, we'll follow hundreds of teenagers for the next 24 years, when they’ll be in their late-30s.”
“They're among the thousands of kids who are part of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. This means researchers have followed them since their teenage years to the present day – and beyond.”
Fascinating & terrifying.
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The EPA just required regulation to remove PFAs “forever chemicals” from the water supply within the next 5 years.
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AI Threat
‘Anthropic says its AI models are as persuasive as humans’ (Axios)
Elon has predicted “AI will outsmart the smartest human by the end of 2025.”
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An example of deceptive reporting…
‘Americans think they pay too much in taxes. Here's who pays the most and least to the IRS.’ (CBS News)
I should say, it’s the chart that is especially deceptive.
This is a bit of an IYKYK situation.
Charts are… often deceptive.
Top 50% of taxpayers? Earns more than $46,637
Top 25% of taxpayers? $94,440-169,799
Here is a bit of “living wage” data for a family of 4.
At the very bottom? $73,381 in Mississippi. Towards the top it’s over 100K.
But that’s not a “real living wage”.
Some estimates say it costs about $7,800-9,100 per month for a family of four to get by.
That is $93,600-$109,000.
Keep in mind, these estimates are for people who are just getting by month to month. They’re not taking lavish vacations.
Let’s go back to that Bottom 50% number— $46,637. This looks like one income though it could be two caregivers working part-time or underemployed or one person who is on Medicaid. I haven’t seen the full data set.
In any case, that’s roughly half of what it takes for a family of four to live in the United States. And, again, this is without accounting for the adjustment of “real living wages” and what it takes not only to survive but thrive in this wealthy nation.
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Access to natural spaces and tree coverage is often aligned with zip code destiny.
NatureQuant has developed a model to determine a “score” for the abundance of natural riches in your area. Input your address to find out your NatureScore.
There’s a write-up in The Washington Post that discusses this further. You’ll be unsurprised to learn that white wealthy highly educated areas have the highest scores.
“NatureScores can identify neighborhoods that need trees. Planting them is another matter.”
“Thirty years is a long time to wait, which is one of the reasons cash-strapped city governments often view tree planting as a frivolous expense compared to more pressing matters like crime and homelessness. “Trees are not a silver bullet. Trees are not going to solve poverty,” said Dan Lambe, the Arbor Day Foundation’s CEO.”
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‘15 Colorful Plants and Flowers That Resemble Animals’
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‘India Approves Massive $9 Bil. Rooftop Solar Plan with Panels for 10 Million Homes’ (Good News Network)
“The scheme, called PM-Surya Ghar, will provide free electricity to 10 million homes according to estimates, and the designing of a national portal—a sort of Healthcare.gov for solar panels—will streamline the process of installation and payment.”
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‘Guide dog nicknamed Dogfather retires after fathering over 300 puppies’
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::: Google Search Trends :::
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Humans continue to be obsessed with the eclipse.
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The People are concerned Dollar Tree is raising its prices. The name has lost all meaning.
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Searches about “lead poisoning” are at an all-time high.
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Popular searches in the past week: “how often does irs audit” and ”what triggers an irs audit”
& unsurprisingly “how to file a tax extension”
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People want to know how much $$$ they need to buy a house, live comfortably, & retire.
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::: News of the Weird :::
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Costco shoppers are in their “Gold Bug” era.
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Mattel is releasing Scrabble… easy mode?
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