Throwbacks & Throughlines: May 2024
throwbacks & throughlines
Throwbacks & Throughlines is a new series in which I look back at previous SC Weekly posts (the Sunday Newsletter), cherry pick some highlights, consider what’s changed, and (circumstantially) add updated reflections.
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Already talk about “peak therapy” and the concept “Are we pathologizing everyday life?” A popular conversation had started surrounding the problematic use of “therapy speak” outside of counselor’s offices. It’s still a problem.
Simultaneously, much discussion about over-prescribing and treating symptoms with medications (especially in children) for situational dilemmas (not biological).
Around this time I became aware of the problematic narratives glorifying resilience and concepts of post-traumatic growth. The overall premise being something of a riff off the old adage that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Sadly, oftentimes, not so.
We were having more conversations about eco-anxiety.
I was going off about my hatred of gas- and noise-polluting leaf blowers. Something I had already ranted about previously. A warranted rant.
People were sleeping more and having less children.
Gen Z was already starting the backlash to Big Tech.
There were concerns about a brain drain due to U.S. immigration policies. Well… look at us now.
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‘About 1 in 4 US adults 50 and older who aren’t yet retired expect to never retire, AARP study finds’ (AP News)
A third of study respondents have concerns about “meeting basic living costs such as food and housing.”
“Medicare, the government-sponsored health insurance that covers 65 million older and disabled people, will be unable to pay full benefits for inpatient hospital visits and nursing home stays by 2031, the report forecast. And just two years later, Social Security will not have enough cash on hand to pay out full benefits to its 66 million retirees.”
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Home affordability is at its lowest since 1985. (WSJ)
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‘New cars will be required to have automatic emergency brakes by 2029.’ (Washington Post)
“The braking systems must be able to bring cars to a complete stop without crashing at speeds up to 62 mph, and to avoid hitting a pedestrian at up to 45 mph.”
This is interesting because we’ll see if it actually come to pass.
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Marijuana was supposed to be reclassed at the federal level from Schedule I to Schedule III.
Evidently, this was used as a strategic bargaining chip and so did not come to pass in 2024. It has resurfaced in 2026.
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The was expectation the U.S. could fall into stagflation.
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I recommended Michael Showalter’s film The Idea of You.
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Becky Tuch shared an amazing tribute to her father.
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I wrote:
“Apple basically suggested in an ad that the new iPad could replace all previous forms of art… and then had to apologize and walk it back.”
Oof.
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Will the real Emily Dickinson please stand up?
“Toward the end of her life, in 1884, she sent 86 letters to 34 recipients: the majority express thanks, others include a gift of flowers or food, and a handful convey condolences or congratulations.”
“[…] Dickinson was never isolated from the world, but rather sensitively engaged with local and national events.”
“Can we accept that being a loving friend was at least as important to her as her poetry?”
“Her reluctance to see visitors as she grew older—but not to bake them gingerbread or correspond with them—can be explained at least in part by the time she spent caring for ill family members or navigating her own poor health.”
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‘Gas stoves spread harmful pollution throughout your home.’ (WaPo)
I had already been freaked out by gas stoves for a long time… do not recommend.
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I wrote:
“Panera is [finally] getting rid of its dangerous Charged beverages… which were tragically death sentences for several individuals and caused harm to many.”
I personally had a terrible reaction to Panera’s charged lemonade and was hospitalized.
I couldn’t go into depth about this at the time as I was looking into pursuing legal action. Didn’t work out.
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I was reading some articles in The Free Press because I was confused about Bari Weiss’ ideology and did not yet understand that her “opinion” journalism also included making things up.
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We were choosing “the bear” over men.
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A trans person is killed Every. Single. Day. in the United States.
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‘New FBI Data Shows More Hate Crimes. These Groups Saw The Sharpest Rise.’ (The Marshall Project)
I took a deep dive on hate crime statistics.
I’m not really encouraging this. It didn’t feel super good for my mental health.
Here’s an important takeaway from many sources I’ve read since October 7 — What is bad for one minority group is bad for all minority groups.
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‘Civil War 2? Many Voters Think It’s Likely’ (Rasmussen Reports)
I don’t.
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“In worrying news for U-Haul, Americans are also making less plans to move than ever. Only 13% expect to move in the next year, and 25% think they’ll move in the next three years.” (The Daily Skimm)
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If you care what people wore to the Met Gala…
Shout-out to Kieran Culkin and Bad Bunny for the fun outfits.
I’m not gonna talk [specific] trash / throw shade (whatever the kids say now).
There are many terrible outfits. Mostly terrible outfits, in fact. That’s high fashion for you.
(Note: nothing has changed… except I will talk trash)
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Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna reveal bill to ‘cancel all medical debt’
Agreed. Let’s do it.
Undue Medical Debt (FKA. RIP Medical Debt) is/was a great idea. But it never should have been necessary.
When are we, as a society, going to agree that healthcare (which includes mental healthcare) is a human right and not a privilege?
(Note: Hmm… how are doing? What direction did we choose?)
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‘R Derek Black - former KKK - shocks as they quietly come out as trans’ (Daily Mail)
This is quite a turnaround. Good for them.
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It’ll even survive TikTok being shut down. Trust me.
Gen Z are innovators. Ask a Gen Zer, “Do you know how to do this?”
If they don’t, they’ll say something like, “I’ll figure it out.”
They’ve pivoted just fine through each social media evolution as the medium dictates the messaging on the platforms.
The main concern for Gen Z involves their mental health.
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Boeing continues to have terrifying problems.
Look, if you can’t do the regular thing you can’t try the space version of the thing. New rules.
(Still true: new rule carries forth)
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“Two broods of periodical cicadas are emerging across the US. The event marks the first time in over 200 years these two broods—out of almost 3,400 known species—will appear simultaneously.” (ABC News)
Poet Nickole Brown wrote this beautiful Facebook post about cicadas:
“One silver-and-bronze cicada I’ve worn for years. Recently, I’ve added two more—one to mark a benign diagnosis after yet another cancer scare, another to mark coming through the painful end of my marriage. So, yes, cicadas: To me, they are totem of survival and resurrection—they persist, sometimes for as long as 17 years, in darkness, only to rise up singing. So let me tell you what I know: They do not sting. They do not spread disease. They do not bite. At this last stage of their long lives, they don’t even have mouths, so they cannot bite, cannot eat—not your flowers, not your vegetables, not your trees. And yes, they rise in prodigious numbers, but they are not locusts, not a plague. They are the very opposite of a plague: though smaller branches will be damaged when they lay their eggs, they do little harm; the soil will be aerated and fertilized. Also made happy are the many animals who feast on them, so killing cicadas with pesticides means you’re poisoning countless innocent others. And for mercy’s sake, don’t think their coming signals the end of the world. If anything, they are reminder of the *beginning* of the world—they were the butterflies of the Mesozoic, their song once heard by dinosaurs. For millions of years, they’ve emerged in 13- and 17-year cycles. Only recently have their clocks been scrambled by the climate crisis, so the grand emergence this spring means we’re still on a schedule that was set long before humans even existed. Celebrate the season of them arriving, once again, just on time. We’re not due to see an emergence like this for another 221 years, so imagine—if we do what we can for this good earth, in the year 2245, they might just come again. What I’m saying is don’t call them an infestation, an onslaught. Words matter. Call them a celebration, a jubilee, life’s own flash mob. Or use their collective noun: a superfluidity. How beautiful is that? A superfluidity of cicadas. What I’m saying is don’t be frightened or disgusted. Open your windows wide to a whirring call that, while otherworldly, is very much of our world. Open your heart to a calling that, while alien-sounding, comes from the place that was our home long before we called it home.”
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Straight out of a Black Mirror episode…
‘Robot dogs armed with AI-aimed rifles undergo US Marines Special Ops evaluation’ (Ars Technica)
Terrifying…
(Note: still terrifying)
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More on the importance of “Third Places” (aka. Third Spaces). In brief, places that are not your home or your workplace. We need these spaces. It’s good for our health. (Vox)
(Update: I need them even more now. We need them even more now.)
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A disturbing financial report.
There’s lots to unpack here.
“Concern over current events on financial wellbeing hits millennials the hardest, with concerns of the effects of global war and conflict topping the list (55% of millennials), followed by climate change (48% of millennials), and AI (44% of millennials).”
“Our findings indicate that Gen Z and millennials are nearly three times more likely to fear their financial situation could lead to experiencing homelessness as compared to Boomers and older respondents.”
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People in the U.S. want to know how to watch Eurovision
(Note: I want to know their reactions. Genuine opportunity for humorous reaction videos.)
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A look into the “crazies” who leave 1-star reviews. (Slate)
I encourage reading the article in full because… it’s well-written and oddly thoughtful.
“Dunking on one-star reviews also ignores their practical purpose as a last resort for people who feel they’ve been conned.”
“The one-star reviews I love, the ones that feel like actual literature, have little to do with commerce. In fact, they rarely seem like reviews. They’re part obscured confessional, part accidental poetry, containing writing that has been liberated from distractions like narrative, punctuation, and coherence. Like great fiction, they’re elusive and complicated. Unlike most of the internet, they’re remarkably human.”
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How Americans Feel About Federal Government Agencies (Visual Capitalist)
National Park Service for the win!
Disgraceful that the Department of Education has less cred than Homeland Security. Yeesh.
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‘Claude AI is here. Are we ready?’ (LitMagNews)
AI has been useful for freelance content writing jobs… in the six months of so before it replaced me. This was obviously going to happen. Basically, my job was to clean up the language and make it sound human. Secondarily, checking with reliable sources to confirm GPT wasn’t making things up.
So, yes, in certain areas, we are training our own replacements.
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I haven’t used AI for literary work.
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I have used AI for brainstorming.
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AI chatbots can be useful when you’re thinking and hit a wall. Instead of just talking to yourself—they (chatbots) can, potentially, help you expedite the process. After all, we’re human and we hit internal walls.
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The MFA MLM will take care of its own unraveling.
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Here’s food for thought.
Humans are imperfect.
Our brain is stuck in Plato’s cave. The brain is a perception machine working off data we already have. AI sounds similar but it’s not… it’s like Wikipedia on steroids. It’s a hive mind.
Only a larger AI (in terms of memory, processing power) will be able to outwit and train a more restricted AI system. Humans… don’t really work this way. We may get a bit Matrix-y if we let future Elon put a Neurolink-esque chip in our head. The terrible movie Limitless is an example of how bad we are at thinking about and predicting how this might go. Black Mirror reveals more wise humans have caught on a bit (see the episode ‘Joan is Awful’ … where we get to a point where no human can understand how the system we built works… but that’s fancy AGI (where AI starts training itself to be “beyond” us… I won’t say “better than us” because it’s something else).
What’s cool about humans (like other great apes) is that we are limited. My prediction is that we’re going to see a trend back towards “outsider” art as digital art and other forms become tired and, well, too perfect. Perfect is boring. Our imperfections are what make us interesting.
Here’s where we arrive at writing (and editing). If you want something super stylized… I guess AI is what you’re looking for. AI is like RH or Crate & Barrel or West Elm (pick your slick looking vibe). Humans are like a poorly staffed discount store. There’s random stuff all over the place and kind of a dump.
The Human Model is much more interesting for our imperfections. Literally, think about going to a nude drawing class. You arrive with a pad of paper and charcoal and try to sketch with your limited human abilities. Everyone does something different and, moreover, uniquely human. AI would crush us in this task but that’s not really the point. AI can “make this place beautiful”… but perfection is boring.
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‘Psychedelics could treat some of the worst chronic pain in the world’ (Vox)
This would be a MASSIVE medical feat.
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‘Vaccines have saved 150 million children over the last 50 years’ (Our World in Data)
Get those MMR and TDAP vaccines people. Please.
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Is it fake news? Take a breath and investigate.
‘The ‘Sift’ strategy: A four-step method for spotting misinformation’ (BBC)
Let’s look at more sources:
‘Evaluating Resources and Misinformation’
But where is the primary source?
Well, searches indicate Mike Caulfield developed The SIFT Method
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China + EV threat
“Because of their high quality and low cost (thanks to heavy government subsidies), Chinese EVs represent an existential threat to American automakers, industry journalists and execs have argued. The average cost of an EV in the US is $47,500, compared to $28,000 in China, according to Dunne Insights.”
“Inside EVs writer Kevin Williams went to the Beijing Auto Show last week and was floored by the vehicles he saw. His conclusion: “Western automakers are cooked.””
“Tesla CEO Elon Musk agrees. In January, he said Chinese EVs “will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world” if countries don’t slap tariffs on them.”
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Right after this, Biden did slap tariffs on China.
(Note: notice where we are now)
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On The Biden Campaign…
“His campaign appears all-too-focused on firming up his political base on the left with his new shift on Israel, a $7 trillion budget, massive tax increases, and failing to connect on the basic issues of inflation, immigration, and energy.” (New York Times)
(Note: déjà vu re. inflation / consumer expense concerns vs. foreign affairs)
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“As a whole, inflation and the economy were the most frequently prioritized issues, chosen by 73 percent and 70 percent of young voters, respectively.” (Vox)
“Health care was the only rival issue — cited frequently by Democrats, Black and white voters, women, and those making more than $75,000 a year — and chosen 71 percent of the time by all young voters as a top priority.”
“The issues we associate with young voters aren’t very salient.”
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Target is cutting back on selling Pride merch. They’ll have less in some stores and none in other stores and probably put a bit way in the back of a few stores.
Why? Because being cool with the queer community is hurting Target’s bottom line and shareholders come first.
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63% of Americans believe abortion should be legal. (Gallup)
(Note: Americans consistently uphold this position in spite of changes in leadership.)
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Serious AI Threats
This may bring large changes. Google is not just a search engine anymore… but sponsored ads makes them a lot of money.
“The latest integrations of AI into search engines and vice-versa moves the online ecosystem closer to a system where AI makes search engines obsolete. Google announced plans to effectively fuse search and AI, rolling out its AI-generated summaries, known as “AI Overviews,” will be available to everyone in the US this week. But creators and publishers are worried the changes will crater their web traffic, with traditional search links replaced by the summaries, The Washington Post reported. Research firm Gartner predicts search web traffic will fall 25 percent by 2026; a search consultant told the Post: “Some people are going to just get bludgeoned.”” (Semafor)
(Note: they were correct to be worried.)
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‘How to Survive and Thrive in the AI Apocalypse: Living in the ecosystem of the machine.’ (The Hedgehog Review)
“Is it, then, hopeless for us? Not if we too can learn new things and evolve in our thinking. Humans may be poor competitors both in the size of our knowledge base and in our processing power, but the holes and imperfections in AI can be exploited by even “dumber” and less powerful competitors.”
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1 in 5 Americans has maxed out their credit cards. (several sources)
(Note: Pretty sure this isn’t improving in 2026.)
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‘Copper can’t be mined fast enough to electrify the US’ (Science Daily)
Everyone needs to bring their pennies to the bank ASAP.
It only really matters if they were made before 1982 though…
As of 2024, U.S. pennies are 97.5% zinc & 2.5% copper. I guess that means they have a healthy immune system.
(Note: RIP penny… but you had it coming.)
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An Indiana judge determined tacos are “Mexican-style sandwiches”. (The Washington Post)
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‘Welcome to the Red-Hot Blue-Collar Job Boom’ (Business Insider)
(Note: Not exactly where we are now. No. We’ve been in a “no hire, no fire” stalemate, allegedly, for a while now.)
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‘Japanese scientist develops treatment that can help cats live up to 30 years’
Very exciting. Not seeing reputable sources talking about this yet so we may be a ways off from this becoming an actual reality.
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This was around the time MAHA got into raw milk.
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How many emails does the “average” person receive in a day? 121 (sources vary, but over 100)
An office worker tends to send about 40 emails per day.
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Claire Cottrill (Clairo) does a great track with Wallows that I like to joke is pretty much the same track she does with Phoenix—because Phoenix and Wallows have semi-interchangeable voices.
(Note: Old self speaks the truth.)
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‘The Fallacy of the Literary Citizen’
This essay by Alina Stefanescu, and published by ONLY POEMS, jumped out at me because I fairly often remark that I want to be a “good steward of the arts”. In my mind, I had somewhat aligned this concept with the idea of being a “good literary citizen”.
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“Challenge yourself to write 24 poems in 24 hours”
Wow, that’s a lot of poems...
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Eye Health
‘Rubbing Your Eyes Is Way More Harmful Than You Think’ (Inverse)
Rubbing your eyes is a little like “gently punching yourself in the face”
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According to the CDC, 1 in 9 children (in the U.S.) between the ages of 3 and 17 have been diagnosed with ADHD.
Previously, boys were more likely to receive the diagnosis, but the gap is closing.
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Can current AI technologies comprehend “theory of mind”?
Basically, the question is part of determining how quickly AI is learning how humans operate. Knowing “how we tick” is going to be both useful and worrisome. Worrisome, of course, when these technologies outpace us in a threatening number of ways.
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Slop.
‘Spam, junk … slop? The latest wave of AI behind the ‘zombie internet’
(Note: Oh boy! Remember why slop was new?)
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How the income gap of “what it means to be middle class” shifted from the early 2010s to 2020s.
(Note: it has continued to shift… even more dramatically. Now I regularly hear talk about the potential for a “permanent underclass”.)
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‘AI Safety Is Dead’ (Bloomberg, paywall)
I hope the record does not show that May 2024 was the end of this movement. That being said, The People were never going to be able to stop the billionaire tech bros from the “move fast and break things” approach if they were unwilling to stop themselves.
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The “dead internet theory” (which is news to me) … may be worse than previously thought (?)
(Note: it’s quite bad.)
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~ Prediction Markets ~
You can bet on anything these days (though you shouldn’t).
I wouldn’t bet on the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. I believe it’s unethical.
I’m sharing this as yet another metric for looking for considering likely outcomes. Looking grim at the moment.
Full disclosure: I DO NOT bet on anything on this platform and never intend to do so.
I’m sure there’s a way to bet on whether or not AI will destroy humanity. Lotta good that’ll do.
(Note: this went in the expected direction. Horrible. I later learned it takes society about 7 years to figure out how legalized gambling has had a severely negative impact. It’s been noted that we were right on schedule from the loosening of restrictions on sports betting to where we are in 2026.)
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I was too enthusiastic about Effective Altruism without greater awareness of counter arguments.
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According to the PEW Research Center, if given the opportunity, 49% of American registered voters say they would replace both Trump and Biden on the ballot.
(Note: Well… we replaced one candidate and unfortunately…)
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World fights back against bad tourists.
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Spike in interest in 2016 summer songs.
(Note: In 2026, I believe it’s 2008 that is a focus.)
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Grocery costs are at an all-time high
(Trend continued.)
Interesting as always. The cicada essay is fabulous.