Eric This is the season to read “The End of Summer,” a poem by Stanley Kunitz. I recommend Mark O’Connell’s book review at the New Yorker, “The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media”. A teaser: …the nexus of consumer technologies and submerged algorithms, which forms so large a part of contemporary reality, is deliberately engineered to get … Read more
Kelsey H. Spent some time reading a pretty lengthy NYT article on sustainable farming and possibly using the natural processes of carbon, compost, and farming to get carbon out of the air and into the ground. Sounds ridiculous, I know. But there’s so much good stuff in there — just when you think it might … Read more
Kelsey H. A really interesting lawsuit between an Oregon police officer and her department recently ended. The department asked the officer to effectively sign an NDA stating she “shall not publicly criticize or ridicule” the department, its policies or its members, or the city. If she didn’t sign, she was told, she would be fired. … Read more
Eric I spent last weekend in the remote mountain community of Stehekin where, in my reverie, I devoured Uplake, a new collection of short essays by local writer Ana Maria Spagna. The book is punctuated with brilliance, insight, and wonder. I most appreciated Spagna’s insistence on inhabiting the contradictions and tensions of her life and … Read more
Eric My friend Jan Hasselman, an attorney at Earth Justice and one of the most effective contributors to the Northwest’s Thin Green Line movement, has written an insightful account of how—and why—we fight fossil fuel projects at the local level in this political climate. Aven Lots of renewable energy news this week: Xcel Energy, Colorado’s … Read more
Eric New research findings say all the things we don’t want to believe. You’re uglier than you think: The evidence from psychological research suggests instead that we tend to think of our appearance in ways that are more flattering than are warranted… Most of us think that we are better than we actually are — not … Read more
Alyse Highlighting 5 Dutch cities, and numerous North American cities following their example, Melissa and Chris Bruntlett’s Building the Cycling City (coming out August 28) is an informative and enjoyable read that will inspire anyone interested in learning more about Dutch transportation planning and policies. What I found most compelling was how the stories in … Read more
Ed Personal branding or media property? That’s at the crux of a very interesting lawsuit filed in Virginia by the Roanoke Times against one of its former reporter over the rights to a Twitter account. Andy Bitter, who covered Virginia Tech football for the newspaper, left for a similar job at the Athletic, a startup … Read more
Eric “I Hate You Seattle: A Love Story,” by Tyrone Beason captured so well my own feelings about my city, as I suspect it does for many of us Gen Xers. Great piece of writing. In the face of mounting research-based evidence that Facebook is psychologically harmful to many users, the social media platform is … Read more
Kelsey Hamlin The Public Religion Research Institute found one-third (31 percent) of Americans feel diversity (or the fact that people of color are on pace to become the majority demographic) will have a negative impact. But journalist David Robert, who is quickly becoming a favorite of mine, started thinking: It occurred to me that white … Read more