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great suggestion. I have this happen in my world a lot, most recently over doctors touting C19 misinformation. If their biggest fanbase is a conspiracy subreddit, move along lol.

This is a common chat in my household. We all want definitive answers, "the truth", and it's become way more of a burn due to the complexities and uncertainties of covid.

Something I learned in training as a scientist is the idea that we know nothing. Everything is a theory until proven (and even then anything can prove it wrong in a snap, just takes one conflicting study and it's out). There is no truth in science, just the currently accepted model, and holding conflicting ideas in your head like that is hard work (and also what makes humans amazing, that ability).

idk, this is great stuff what he's advocating here, yet it takes a lot of untraining to kill our "want the truth" mojo, but worth it.

IMHO, learn to sit with the unknowing, it pays off.

It’s a health issue, not a criminal issue

preach. and at the very least lets research it, the first hand reports alone give it cred to look into

Pretty interesting. Seems like a lot of the issue is not just LinkedIn itself, but the banal theater of pretending like we're adult business-people in an online forum. It's not just the model of LI, but the outcome of a pool of people marketing themselves and being gross car-salesmen cliches at it

Wish a space helped train/encourage people to BE HUMAN and to interact authentically and do work that matters, share without expecting back, and just nope on self-proclaimed influencers, as a whole.

I couldn't get over the math on this, maybe I did it wrong but that would average out to $200 a writer. Knowing some people make more, that means most people are making diddly squat, no?

But of course, interesting to see all the factors behind their particular algorithm. I subscribed for a while, but ended up burning time on articles "just because". There is no good space to chat about what you read, esp on feminist articles the comments are often a hot garbage troll fest. It's a read-only space to me.

equal parts heartbreaking & infuriating, sheesh

whoa, this would have been interesting had it passed

The intro photo to this piece is heavy. I'm taking in a lot of these "this is why we can't have nice things" pieces lately (esp from reading the book Caste).

Lots to consider, but I like the rallying cry in this opinion piece "as long as we're divided, we're conquered"

Amazing. Zero surprise, but still interesting. People act like Facebook is a public utility or something.

Reiterates the often ignored side of marketing that basically says "don't build your house on land you don't own".

many of its outlets specifically focused on Facebook distribution — “and now it’s gone.”

hey Aussies...try Readup lol.

This one really drew me in, but I also spend a lot of time thinking about the ethics of technology.

I have this weird tension over this topic. One half of me say hell yea, please rein in some of this madness before our tech overlords ruin everything...the other half is the more libertarian half that wants to preserve freedom & independence and who doesn't believe government could legislate or regulate themselves out of a wet paper bag.

Perhaps there are lessons from the biological sciences and their ethics model, but then again...also flawed.

I just want 1984 to remain fiction.

jeeeeez, our culture sure is efficient at messing people up. wow. sad, but fascinating look at the mental struggle of eating/body image disorders in cis males

Dig it! Love seeing other opinions around here

I think you're on to something for sure.

I don’t think “reading more articles in a better way” is a necessarily a goal that Readup’s target group consciously has

I don't find myself coming back to read better, I come back because it's a safe & sane place to discuss & be exposed to opinions outside my own. Empathy & sanity and our ability to cooperate at scale come from being exposed to, and taking time to consider, other opinions, worldviews & thoughts. The articles seed those conversations, but the community takes it further.

Like the latest post for Jeff Bezos' email at his retirement. Tons of different viewpoints, shared generously and with kindness. That's a win, and IMHO a direct panacea to the division we see elsewhere these days

Yikes, definitely an interesting read. I've been surface aware of the whole ordeal for some time. It's an interesting look at JK's online thrashing as she pushes up against not being everyone's darling goddess anymore.

Agree with Dellwood, the first half drags a bit if you know her history, but it's definitely thorough look at a talented, introverted woman thrust into the public eye and the downfall of balancing art, opinion, and an obvious addiction to Twitter attention.

My mom got me into Diet Coke in highschool, it's so toxic but I definitely had a moment with it. Reading this I could viscerally recall the taste and experience of drinking one. eek. SO wild.

gotta love AHP. I get so wigged out by the super-productivity focused game these days.

This sums up the tension perfectly:

This is the dystopian reality of productivity culture. Its mandate is never “You figured out how to do my tasks more efficiently, so you get to spend less time working.” It is always: “You figured out how to do your tasks more efficiency, so you must now do more tasks.”

fascinating. never even considered this.

Imagine discovering you have 300+ half siblings. My brain melts to even begin that thought experiment

many journalists appear to be addicted to twitter and hold the happenings on that platform as far more newsworthy than the rest of us "normies". Seems it's a risky thing for work at some outlets too.

But real talk, the journalist who didn't take a job because she didn't want an employer who didn't want her having opinions....can we recall when journalists were meant to be objective (or is that just me)? If you're going to be a public figure...it's part of the role, no? What am I missing?

I have a hard time reading this without a cringe. I'm too far gone down the anti-amazon path. Let's celebrate our climate pledge while encouraging people to ship items from all over the world one at a time & let counterfeits run rampant over your platform? Eesh. Amazon has definitely changed the world, I'm just not convinced it's been such a positive shift to our new cult of convenience.

Still, cynicism aside, it's remarkable what Bezos has achieved.

I dig this take, it looks at both the pros & cons (although admittedly it comes out pro given the boon to lifting millions of Americans out of poverty, I'm here for that)

I've always wondered what will happen when Readup gets HUGE in the moderation front. Will it matter, will the trash just sink to the bottom and not be seen? Since there's no inherent method to adding "virality" to the hot topics.

I've found even differing opinions are fun to tussle with on this platform, it's done with kindness, empathy & reason, like the good 'ole days of Highschool debate team...is that the nature of the "users" on the platform not being dirtbags (sorry Bill, i know u hate the "u" word) or is that directly influenced/created by the UX? TBD on that one.

I dig the shift here, and i agree its a scale thing. Will work beautifully the more you grow.

There's this mantra for effective marketing that basically goes: "Make something worth talking about".

A platform where you get $$ for writing on your OWN blog is definitely worth talking about. Let's go 2021, get it guys!

agh, really makes you think twice about almond milk. Also good in this vein is the book Beekeepers Lament. Interesting look at the diseases and troubles plaguing bees and beekeepers, with the added joy of following a plucky, iconoclast of a commercial beekeeper.

we're using electricity to solve design problems

In the tense days after the presidential election, a team of Facebook employees presented the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, with an alarming finding: Election-related misinformation was going viral on the site.

alarming? not the word I would have chosen. Expected is more like it.

Interesting look at the tremors within the FB org.

It's interesting to me how we keep framing these sort of problems as "technology problems"

If all this fervour seems extreme – Inbox Zero was just a set of technical instructions for handling email, after all – this was because email had become far more than a technical problem.

To me, these read as culture problems. And that's what makes them so sticky to fix. Can we just nuke hustle culture already?

Just finished AHP's "Can't Even" on how millenials became the burnout generation and this article is a great pairing with it. Lots to think about!

Interesting! I've never used substack as a writer but do subscribe to a handful, even a paid one or two.

I've always found the concept of paid newsletter seductive, and this is an interesting look at the growing pains we can expect from the platform as they grapple with the question...are they really a platform, or are they a media company?

and with that question...what does that mean for content rules etc etc. Fassssscinating, if you're into media trends at least

wonder if they've made more of this switch by now or if this was all PR. My grandfather used to take my sister & I to Perdue chicken houses near his farm to pick out chicks to pamper while we visited. Pretty sure they went straight back when we left...

This feels like a good outcome from pressure by big supplier for more ethics in how we raise meat. It's not exactly free range & biologically appropriate, but it sure is a step in the right direction.

uf. great read. best mental decision i made was nuking my personal instagram, no longer wanted to send selfies to strangers for social validation. what a world

endlessly fascinating. I've got Q fans popping up in my own world (as I'm sure many of us do) and dig how AHP explores in this interview where some of that may be coming from. Second maybe only to the "wellness, instagram Q" angle, this convo is a very compelling take.

For a white Evangelical, the idea of Black Lives Matter might make sense. But the need for collective shifts of power structures doesn’t make sense — at least in their world. Of course they would jump at something like QAnon, which, instead of suggesting that the “bad guy” is actually the system, suggests that the bad guy is an actual set of bad guys, individual and malevolent bad guys, doing specific actions that you can then oppose.

wow I'm late to the party, missed this! Quite the star-studded cast signing on. Now I need the goss on the controversy around it, someone please oblige me lol

This book is my newest obsession, and the review of it here is ok. I didn't know of Elif's work until I read 10 Minutes & 38 Seconds in This Strange World recently and WOW, she is an author worth reading. Both her fiction, and now this tiny little non-fiction gem.

whoa. i just talked to a buddy who had it race through her family too, lost her g-ma and another relative. wretched.

so stoked more and more people are talking about the attention economy and how the "free lunches" we get are messed up.

And honestly, if human behavior is any indication...most people hate ads and will pay to ditch them if they can afford it. We use ad blockers, subscribe to spotify instead of using the radio, get netflix or Tivo or whatever people use today.

Long term I'm curious to see if we ever transcend this arms race, or if we just keep it up into whatever future media forms develop.

hmm. This one hits

We are overdue for a real reckoning with what it means to be degraded by our own leadership

WOW. Ok this is fantastic.

It's not a funny article, but I found it pretty amusing. My best friend had a run-in with this exact phenomenon a few months back. She's a Zero Waste advocate and her insta community is big in the consciousness, design, and high vibes space. All of a sudden they were all going on about adrenochrome, pedophiles etc...

We were v confused. She started asking questions of one gal (and sending hilarious screenshots) and this EXACT thing happened:

"These videos rarely go into specifics; they tend to reference a documentary (that they’ll share with you over DM) or encourage the viewer to really prepare their self-care regimen before they go poking around into these dark truths and finally get “woke” in an entirely different sense."

Nailed the playbook. (and btw the video is mind-numbingly long and 10x worse than gaia tv for crazy making)

But really, this normalcy fetish is concerning. To be so obsessed with normalcy that you can believe some of this. Conspiracy thinking is fascinating, but the amount of it happening lately kind of ruins it for being an interesting cultural anecdote and just makes it feel dangerous to democracy. uf.

This is a delight

You can save a lot of money on conference tickets and business cards if you use a couple well-chosen essays as a way to get warm intros from friends-of-friends who you’d want to collaborate with.

I seem to be on a kick of mildly melancholy articles with a dash of hope that we can sort out climate change. This one got bundled with a 2nd one about a wild gardener and the combo works, although the first letter on caring for mother earth hit me right in the feels. That one earned the 10

This was FANTASTIC. I love this idea of the long now vs the short, and framing how we approach the decisions we make using that characterization.

If we want to contribute to some sort of tenable future, we have to reach a frame of mind where it comes to seem unacceptable - gauche, uncivilised - to act in disregard of our descendants.