241–250 of 305 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have a suggestion for a "non-hypocritical" title for that article? Or are you saying NPR shouldn't be reporting on the cessation of one of the few pandemic response programs that help the average person?
That title’s editorialised. How about just ‘$600 Unemployment Benefit Scheme to End’?
Editorial would be adding ... "and that's a bad thing" or "and that's a good thing"
I deleted my Twitter a few months ago and my life is better for it. The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I’ve been reading a lot more long-form articles and books; I’ve finished reading three books in the last month or so. When my Twitter habit was strong I would often start a book and give up…
The problem I've been facing recently is that long form also turns out to be a waste of time after you go through the most informational/influential pieces. Lots of the articles thread the same water, dive into totally unnecessary details, or just tell a story that, while fascinating, does not really give you any important new information, or bury it in a few casual sentences, never elaborating on them. For books it…
Almost all books have relatively low information density. You can condense "How to Win Friends and Influence People" down to a page of chapter headings, for example, or a history book into a 2-3 page timeline. The point of all of the anecdotes and details isn't to convey more information, it's to force the reader to slow down to think about the topic and provide more memory hooks to help with recall later.
Whenever you read a book, if you think "that was obvious, I knew that already," observe if you are actually acting on that knowledge the way you want to. After reading the book, do you act on that knowledge you already knew more easily?
Even books that are outright bad can be useful if they force you to think more about a topic and re-evaluate your own opinions. For example, I try to read 1-2 general software books a year. Some of them are terrible, most of them tell me things I already learned, but the spaced repetition makes me re-evaluate my own recent choices to see if there are any areas where I have been getting lazy and cutting corners I shouldn't.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That title’s editorialised. How about just ‘$600 Unemployment Benefit Scheme to End’?
That's not editorial, that's analysis. Editorial would be adding ... "and that's a bad thing" or "and that's a good thing"
I mean it isn't literally a fact that it will definitely hit the economy, unless they've got a time machine, it's just their opinion. I'm sure it will prove to be a completely correct opinion! But it's still an editorial opinion. Sometimes you don't want any opinions, you just want the facts, thanks.
There are a lot of suggestions for "long form" and "books" here. Are none of you keeping up with this pandemic and what your country/state/city recommended behaviours, laws and bylaws are?
You can switch on the radio once a day for half an hour and get a full update while you make breakfast or something - doesn’t need any more than that really. And no chance of commenting!
If they said, "I dropped facebook/twitter and now get my news in short bursts from the radio"; I would have thought them wise.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chattel slavery adds certain people, namely those owned as slaves, to the "means of production" column. It's not incompatible in any way with capitalism.
It's literally incompatible with the standard definition of the word capitalism. The fact that slaves are not free means that exchanges couldn't possibly be voluntary.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is basically why I deleted my Facebook account, which was the one social network that I was really ever on. I was checking it non stop, but there wad never anything good. It was a huge time suck. I'd read news of how Facebook keeps people addicted or how they try out psychological experiments on its users which left me uneasy. Finally, when the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke and revealed that Facebook sells a…
> The biggest problem with deleting your account is that your contacts assume that you just deleted them and think that you're mad at them or something. It can have a real world impact. That's one reason I deleted my Facebook 5 years ago. I unfriended a casual acquaintance (who continually posted political rants), and they confronted me in person at a nightclub, demanding to know why. That just isn't healthy behaviou…
Facebook did not make our timelines toxic. Our 'friends' did.
I deleted my Twitter a few months ago and my life is better for it. The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I’ve been reading a lot more long-form articles and books; I’ve finished reading three books in the last month or so. When my Twitter habit was strong I would often start a book and give up…
I had a similar realization recently. When you truly think about it, the vast majority of news you read/hear isn't even remotely actionable information for the average person. At best, it'll be something interesting and feeds into our natural curiosity. Other than that, this idea that it's our responsibility as citizens to stay constantly informed on what's happening in the world is nonsense. Ask yourself, what was t…
The what in question would be the news item I had read. The meaningful action was the public protest I chose to join, or the campaign donations I decided to make, or the phone calls to my elected representatives. Elections aren't the only way citizens can (or should) interact with their government.
A few weeks ago I identified doomscrolling, particularly in bed, as a major source for my recent sleeping issues. As a result, I took a major step back from Twitter in general, and especially forced myself to stop reading Twitter in bed, or even in the late evenings. This produced an immediate improvement in both sleep quality and overall mood.
In my experience reading on the smartphone is an underrated cause of sleep issues. No matter what I read and no matter how dimmed and red my screen looks - it certainly helps - but it still impacts my sleep negatively. The desire to keep your mind busy even right before or actually while intending to fall asleep is also an indicator for other underlying issues. If I stop engaging in these distractions I get a chance…
Also, depending on the person, it heavily depends on what you are reading. With Twitter you are jumping from topic to topic. That's something completely different than reading a book.
I don't like the implication that mental health is just feeling good. Maybe if more people would read and understand the news, and feel bad about it , they'd be willing to do even trivial things like wear a mask. In my opinion, good mental health should be considered to be that your feelings align with reality. If reality sucks, it's not mentally unhealthy to feel bad about it. Feeling bad should spur making changes…
As a trans woman, I wish more people thought like you do. I see so many trans men or women that don't pass (as their gender identity) because parents or healthcare doctors kept them from transitioning; before puberty disfigured their body and prevented any chance of them passing as their gender identity. The foregoing situation happened more in the past. Especially depending on where they lived and how the healthcare…
Trans passing messageboards are absolutely brutal. Brutal honesty is necessary for some, for whom passing is a matter of physical safety. But for a lot more, it can amount to self-harming. Any deviation from sometimes pseudoscientific models of "man" and "woman" is seen as a tell, an imperfection. This is made worse by the fact that gender-affirming surgery is utterly unaffordable for most people, let alone most people struggling with dysphoria and depression.
In addition, passing politics by nature excludes many nonbinary people, for whom it is by definition impossible to pass. Not long after I came out I kept trying to find references for how to be myself. It shouldn't be that way.
Where might we be if trans bodies were seen as natural variation instead of deviance?