OMM (On My Mind)
~ May 2023 #3 ~
::: The Open :::
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This is a double-issue. Readings, investigations, and deep dives from the past two weeks or so.
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::: The Arts & The Literary World:::
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A Guide to Major Book Awards (BookRiot)
It’s an honor just to be nominated, right?
Next question, do you have an Ivy League degree?
No? Well then, you’re going to have a tougher time receiving a major book award.
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The Oxford University Press has released the first 10 words of its forthcoming African American English dictionary, set to be published by March 2025 with a total of 1,000 definitions edited by Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.
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Controversy over artistic license.
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Did we already address the garlic in the room? Or, possibly… shallots!?
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ICYMI: Lucy Dacus is on GoodReads
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Speaking of Lucy… If I somehow failed to post this before… LitHub collected a selection of book recommendations that Lucy, Julien, & Phoebe (aka. boygenius) have name checked in interviews.
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David Simon on the writer’s strike. Simon is dead serious about his lack of affinity for AI chatbots.
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Posthumous Márquez novel to be published by Knopf.
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The artist sometimes known as Japanese Breakfast wrote a novel called Crying in H Mart (which I still want to read) and it is being turned into a film to be directed by Will Sharpe (who you may remember from White Lotus)
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Midtown Scholar (located in Harrisburg, PA) was named Publisher Weekly’s Bookstore of the Year!
I once said Midtown Scholar was better than The Strand (NYC). This may have sounded insane… that being said, here is move evidence that Midtown Scholar is a badass bookshop.
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Murder Is a Plot Point. Suicide Isn’t. (LitHub)
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A British Couple Actually Paid Nearly $250,000 to Remove a Banksy Mural From Their Building Due to the ‘Extremely Stressful’ Upkeep
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Sometimes read the book and don’t take shortcuts. (Seth Godin)
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In ‘Ocean Sentinels,’ Jason deCaires Taylor Installs Eight Hybrid Sculptures as Coral Guards
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::: Small Explorations & Deep Dives :::
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More evidence shows, “Social media fuels the youth mental health crisis” (Vox) …
Let’s be honest, social media fuels adult mental health issues dramatically as well.
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High schooler develops AI machine learning tool that helps gauge suicide risk using textual analysis.
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Chronic pain is complicated and science is trying to make progress.
My [very limited] understanding is that this constitutes early attempts to show objective, quantitative measurements of chronic pain.
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The oldest known animals might be … “comb jellies” …
“While they look superficially like jellyfish — they often have a bell-like shape, although with two lobes, unlike jellyfish, and usually tentacles — they are only distantly related. And while jellyfish squirt their way through the water, ctenophores propel themselves with eight rows of beating cilia arranged down their sides like combs. Along the California coast, a common ctenophore is the 1-inch-diameter sea gooseberry.” (Source)
Still, not impossible that “sponges” still rule the day.
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Science says… It’s best to sleep on your back.
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"Whatever the problem, be part of the solution. Don’t just sit around raising questions and pointing out obstacles."
- Tina Fey
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“New UN Report Says the World Can Cut 80% of Plastic Pollution by 2040”
I’ll believe it when I see it.
How about using bamboo?
This is on Major Corporations and is less about Personal Responsibility. Serious.
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Apparently we can live without more organs than we think? Ok, cool. Do we really have 70+ organs? Science says, yes.
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Someone bought a guitar smashed by Kurt Cobain for… too much $$$. Kurt would not approve.
Or, would laugh. Who knows.
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Want to get yourself motivated? Read this blog post by Seth Godin & watch Prince’s Purple Rain. It’ll all make sense.
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Some thoughts on the life and career of Martin Amis who died at 73.
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People pleasers are at high risk for burnout. No kidding.
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There are around 100,000 drug overdoses in the U.S. annually. (Vox)
This is everyone’s problem.
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Come on, who doesn’t love a great accent?
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Talk therapy is under the gun. The New York Times Magazine investigated who gets value from talk therapy forms such as modern classic CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and found that, well, it’s pretty mixed bag. This is unsurprising.
“Maybe we have reached the limit of what you can do by talking to somebody.”
“The research seems very … baggy”
(NYT Mag, Paywall)
From a related article in the same issue (in which counselors talk about what they really want to say):
“To me, therapy is very much like dating, except, you know, obviously you don’t really want to date the person.”
Lotta frustration (and attempts at taking a deep breath to find balance) when encountering “the youth” using “Therapy Speak”… for example. “I’ve been gaslit by narcissists!”
(also behind a paywall, but search NYT Magazine for “What Your Therapist Doesn’t Tell You”
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An argument for keeping food around the house that you like to tell people you can’t keep around the house.
Frankly, this isn’t the most clear article I’ve read. The overall point, I believe, is that people would do better to allow themselves to eat what they really love (think: ice cream, Doritos, chocolate) in moderation because the alternative is that over-restriction results in lashing out (so to speak). The classic “everything in moderation including moderation” applies here. So, I guess, go eat whatever it is that you usually say if “wayyy too dangerous” because you’ll eat the whole box/bag… and simply try not to eat the whole box/bag.
Disclaimer: as noted in the article, if there are medical health reasons why you do not let yourself eat certain things then it’s a no brainer that this is not an excuse to go eat said things.
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When does a fetus have agency?
My answer: never before birth.
In this scenario…if it looks like a duck…it is not a duck…not yet at least.
Note the text below 13 weeks – “almost 3 inches long”
At 27 weeks, we’re still looking at a non-functional organism on the outside.
Around 37 weeks, the fetus may have some brain development. I would personally avoid suggesting that the fetus is thinking. Without context, the brain in a jar, never haven’t seen outside the womb, has nothing to think about. The brain may have some things to feel about. The mother was here first and has lived a life and has a whole lot more to both think and feel about.
Keep in mind that humans have the longest period of dependency and require the most time to become self-sufficient of all mammals. Various other primates, elephants, dolphins and whales, kangaroos and koalas, and birds of prey such as eagles, hawks, and owls, also have long periods where they cannot function on their own.
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NUKEMAP
Up there for most depressing “games”.
In this wildly exciting interactive “game”, you can “simulate the fallout from a nuclear explosion in your hometown”
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More evidence for the long-desired 4-day workweek:
“Three-quarters of U.S. workers said they would prefer working four 10-hour days instead of five eight-hour days in a Post-Ipsos poll.” (The Washington Post)
Rumor has it that we’ll probably have to wait 5-10 years to see any changes of this kind.
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According to Gallup findings, Americans now say that families need $85,000 to “get by” as opposed to $58,000 back in 2013.
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Shout-out to Lancaster County, PA!
Also, a reminder that not all farm animals need to survive on flat land.
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Top 25 Websites of 2023
You might not love AI but we can agree it’ll be nice to see GPT overtake porn.
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Abercrombie & Hollister still suck. “Changing consumer tastes, backlash against the company's elitist attitudes — the CEO once said the company was actively only targeting the “good-looking, cool kids” — as well as racial and religious discrimination lawsuits, have all hurt sales.”
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“New York is reportedly sinking under the 1.68 trillion pound weight of its skyscrapers.” (Chartr)
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In short, chronic stress/anxiety leads to IBD
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A retrospective of covid in early searches.
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YoY: More Americans are living alone. Presently around 27% of Americans. (Chartr)
People who live alone tend to pay more in taxes and, as has been highly reported, are susceptible to the epidemic of loneliness, isolation., and a myriad of other people mental health and physical health concerns.
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Apparently, the #3 and #4 tracks on albums tend to be the most popular. Go figure.
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Immigrants currently constitute around 18% of the American labor force. An all-time record.
Don’t go saying we do not need these workers. The chaos that would ensue boggles the mind.
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"I have an anxiety disorder, and I have OCD," Lembke told Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., in March 2022, during a roundtable hosted by the nonprofit Accountable Tech. "I was never warned that entering these online platforms would only amplify the things that I already struggle with."
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Mental Health
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Harris Poll - Most Reputable Corporations
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NASA research:
How Studying Hibernating Squirrels Could Help Future Space Exploration for Humans: A Surprising Connection
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This Micro-Thin “Smart Bandage” Monitors Wound Healing While Repairing Tissue
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Review of Animal Liberation Now
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