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  1. @Jessica
    • Jessicascouted9 months ago

      Interesting. I suppose this is more evidence of the broader theme of what I know: I must be mindful of what I consume on the internet as my subconscious is taking in so much that shapes the way I behave, sometimes in ways I don't like.

    • Jessicascouted10 months ago
      The AtlanticFaith Hill4/27/237 min
      The Atlantic

      I sighed so loudly. I am one of the data points of a rise in fearful attachment.

      Also, this:

      Our culture puts a lot of value on trusting your gut, he told me, but that’s not always the right move if your intuition tells you that it’s a mistake to let people in.

    • Jessicascouted10 months ago
      internet princessrayne fisher-quann4/3/2315 min
      internet princess

      I love this piece so so so much.

      People, on the other hand, challenge us. They infuse our life with stakes. You can hurt a friend or partner or lose them forever if you refuse vulnerability or reject growth — the same cannot be said of a therapist, for instance, which makes them far safer companions. Therapy, while genuinely beneficial in many forms, has started to become homogenized in the personal-wellness zeitgeist as a kind of resume-builder for the self; a box to check off on the way towards becoming a hyper-functional young professional in life and love.

      These were sad and difficult times in which we all learned that it is often impossible for us as individuals to save someone we love from the sum of their suffering, especially so when you’re ignoring your own needs in the process. But to extrapolate that reality into the idea that we shouldn’t want to tend to our loved ones, to receive them as flawed and imperfect people and care for them anyway, is a grave miscorrection. We all exist to save each other. There is barely anything else worth living for.

    • Jessicaread11 months ago
      Vox4/11/2323 min
      Vox
    • Jessicascouted11 months ago
    • Jessicascouted11 months ago
      Alex Murrell32 min
      Alex Murrell

      An interesting analysis of how so much has become the "same" overtime. Plazas, suburbs, business parks... they all look the same to me no matter where I go. The section on the Instagram Face made me feel so sad. I've wanted to dye my hair certain colors or wished my face were a different shape, as if conforming to that popular look that's everywhere on IG would give me some [false] sense of belonging.

    • Jessicacommented1 year ago
      The AtlanticDaniel Herman12/9/2210 min
      The Atlantic

      Uhhh. Reading this felt very unsettling. Writing is an essential communication skill that transcends beyond just formal essays, cover letters, etc. Developing a personalized writing style is a key part of critical thinking. A part of me harbors this belief that the larger the population of individuals who write and are committed to processing thoughts through writing (or perhaps some form of creative expression), the more civil our discussions can be (not the endless abyss that the internet can sometimes feel like).

    • Jessicacommented1 year ago
      The American ScholarWilliam Deresiewicz3/1/1032 min
      The American Scholar

      Wow, this is great. I really appreciate the statement on friendship as a form of solitude. As someone who has always protected and cherished deep, intimate conversations and has had difficulty feeling authentic in group settings, I can say that the one-on-one forms of deep friendships and raw conversation are certainly seeds for learning how to think without all the extraneous noise confusing me about what I think vs. what the world thinks I should think.

    • Jessicacommented1 year ago
      LongreadsDevin Kelly7/22/2127 min
      Longreads

      Thoroughly enjoyed this piece. It made me think of how I still find social media a terrible influence (and certainly a tool for commodification of so much described here - friendship, community, simply being human).

      I think about the beauty of being dependent on another's whims so often these days. I think about missing the beauty that comes with such a long, extended moment.

      I worry friendship is the next territory of consumption and commodification, to the point where you can no longer simply wander with a friend, just to see what closeness might occur.

      Beautifully put. The experience of building closeness and unforgettable memories isn't often something that can be stated within a sentence or two (the author made the example of running across NY, questioning how important it is for him to say that he ran across the state versus soaking in something more ineffable, "the dailiness of our experience."

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
      The AtlanticAnne Applebaum11/15/2144 min
      The Atlantic

      Wow. Deeply informative piece.

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
      The Audacity.The Audacity.9/22/2122 min
      The Audacity.

      I didn’t know then that the walls of silence and shame were part of my inheritance.

      On a video chat shortly after these incidents, my dad warned me, “Be careful. You look Asian.” I scoffed. He said it like I had forgotten. As if I could ever forget.

      Moving and poignant writing. So much resonates…

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
      The AtlanticEmma Green9/20/2113 min
      The Atlantic

      Really enjoyed the ending of this interview.

      I’m wondering because being religious or not strikes me as a big part of how people experience hope. Some religious outlooks involve a notion of hope, or even of salvation, that comes from beyond just our life on Earth. And I think that creates a definitive divide in terms of how people view the future and how they experience moral demands on their lives.

      I think for me, being alive is a practice of faith. Getting up and doing my work for the day and seeking out work that needs doing—these are the most holy things that I experience. But it’s not framed as a religious undertaking in my head.

      Rebecca Solnit has a definition of hope as living in the unstuck place between optimism and pessimism where action is possible. Optimists think everything’s going to be fine, no matter what happens, and they excuse themselves from action. And pessimists think we’re fucked no matter what happens, and they excuse themselves from action. But hope lives in the unstuck middle place where agency is possible. I believe that what I do matters. So, by that definition, yes, I feel hopeful.

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
      The AtlanticGail Cornwall8/31/217 min
      The Atlantic

      A little bit of sadness filled me as I read this piece.

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
      Outside OnlineEric Arce8/16/2110 min
      Outside Online
    • Jessicascouted2 years ago

      Interesting read on the history of work in the US and some proposed ways of moving forward.

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
      bookbear expressAva8/26/215 min
      bookbear express

      The truth is, I keep coming to the same realization over and over these days: I’m the only person who’s going to help myself feel okay.

      Love this one from Ava

    • Jessicacommented2 years ago
      The AtlanticJennifer Senior8/9/2169 min
      The Atlantic

      I feel a need to re-read this piece to process the emotions that overtook me throughout each passage. The overwhelming grief and evolution of Bobby Sr., Helen, Jen, and Jeff took my entire being to so many places.

      There are people that need me. And that, in itself, is life. There are people I do not know yet that need me. That is life.

    • Jessicacommented2 years ago
      The AtlanticScott Barry Kaufman8/18/215 min
      The Atlantic

      Really enjoyed this article and all the links to what may be additional thought-provoking reads! I always appreciate a dose of Viktor Frankl.

      Part of being human is that we will forget our past suffering and start to take our current life for granted. But as Nelson notes, “The work is to remember more often than we forget.”

      🙏

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
      The Cleanest LineJeff McElroy7/19/216 min
      The Cleanest Line

      Such a lovely feel-good story.

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
      bookbear expressAva8/17/215 min
      bookbear express

      I am guilty of trying to find a reason for my feelings, trying to deconstruct it like I would with a math problem. It is absolutely draining yet a difficult train of thought to break.

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago

      So I think the reason that we seek distraction is that working on stuff that we care about is often scary. It brings us into contact with all the ways in which we’re limited—our talents might not be up to what we’re trying to do, and we can’t control how things will unfold.

      This is a refreshing perspective on fear. “Working on stuff we care about is often scary”—so much resonance in that phrase for me. A great short read.

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
      The New York Times CompanySarah A. Topol8/4/2171 min
      The New York Times Company

      "To me, defending Hong Kong's democracy is the same as defending my own democracy. I can't just stand by and watch everything happen."

      Nancy embodied so many of Taiwan's unique contradictions. Her grandmother identified as Japanese, her father identified as Chinese and Nancy identified as Taiwanese. Yet they all shared the same apartments and rights to a ballot box.

      Taiwan's democracy is still so young. Nancy's story stirred something within me... a mixture of grief and hope. An important read.

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
      Texas MonthlyMadeleine Aggeler6/2/2111 min
      Texas Monthly

      Love love love Yoga with Adriene and all that Adriene has given to the world with her gentleness. Benji is an absolutely precious down dog.

      Benji was born on November 5, 2014 (a Scorpio: intense, mysterious). His likes, according to Mishler: tennis balls; carrots; a bagel-shaped toy he was recently gifted; his dog friends Panda and Willa. Dislikes: fart noises, which he finds scary; plastic bags on the side of the road, which he also finds scary.

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago

      Fascinating look at the development of electric cars! Those first batteries sound cumbersome, and how frustrating it must be to just go a smidge further from your original starting point.

      Imagination is so powerful... I swear I could smell the horse manure in real-time, overtaking my nostrils.

      As I read about the internet of motion, my mind immediately strayed to data ownership and privacy; low and behold, the article ends discussing those concerns.

      Yet it should instead be seen as a cautionary tale in the other direction: that what looks like a quick fix today may well end up having far-reaching and unintended consequences tomorrow.

      No global problem ever has a quick fix, eh? Seems like we as a society don't ever quite learn that lesson.

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
      The AtlanticApoorva Tadepalli7/29/217 min
      The Atlantic

      “To move through a life without weapons,” she writes—weapons of any kind—is “to remain open to the world, and at its mercy.”

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
      The New YorkerAnn Patchett7/23/2133 min
      The New Yorker
    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
    • Jessicascouted2 years ago

      They are living women with interior lives so rich, we would weep if we knew them. Moreover, they are young women, still years away from the greatest adventures of their lives. If stepping away from the stage—and our ever-encroaching spotlight—is what they need to do to live another day, how can we possibly argue for anything else?

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
      ELLEMelissa Febos7/10/2110 min
      ELLE

      Beautiful.

      It had been a kind of safety, always knowing a little more than my partners about the limits of our love. Now that sounds lonely to me.

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
      The New York Times CompanyTiffany May7/23/215 min
      The New York Times Company

      “I understood from when I was young that sport is a luxury,” she said. “To be able to pursue your dream is a luxury. And therefore, if you can, then you must.”

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago

      Watching the Olympics from a screen at home helped me forget about the chaos in the world for a bit. Something I enjoy about the Olympics is learning more about the complexity of cultures and geographies. 1964 was a couple decades before I was born. Interesting to see the themes of rebirth and resilience, then and now.

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
      The AtlanticMarion Renault7/12/217 min
      The Atlantic

      Ultimately, even in the most clear-cut of cases, if a patient dies in the ambulance, an emergency medic may not learn the cause of death, or whether there was anything they could have done differently to change the outcome.

      What if a chef never tasted a final dish? What if a teacher wasn’t allowed to grade tests? Would a lawyer be okay with never hearing a verdict? “If you don’t know if you’re bettering patients,” Kaczmarek said, “how do you keep coming to work?”

      This is very saddening but also important to understand. It is somewhat bizarre to me that the Department of Transportation designated the EMS system. These roots must deeply contribute to how undervalued EMS work is in the healthcare industry.

    • Jessicacommented2 years ago

      “The urban impact of such an on-land solution is huge,” Coenen says. “Imagine seven-metre-high sea walls on the coastline. It’s like a reversed aquarium. The water’s outside, the people are inside. It’s a scary thought.”

      The image of a reversed aquarium is frightening. And I have to pinch myself and remember that this was actually a potential solution which was considered and cost-estimated.

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago
    • Jessicacommented2 years ago

      Reading this gave me the chills. I appreciate the author closing with something more uplifting about the kindness and respect for different cultures that transcend country borders… it does exist!

      Years after that, when I started working in journalism, I met some wonderful American men who came to Ukraine for the country, not for the women, and ended up finding true love. Unlike Tom, they fell in love with our nation first. They studied the culture, learned the language. I am rooting for men like my foreign friends, who see their Ukrainian spouses as partners worthy of their own careers and lives, not young sex dolls.

    • Jessicacommented2 years ago

      One day as I unsuccessfully tried to keep a production day “on schedule,” I finally realized that my best bet was simply to turn the cameras off and go see whether anyone needed help in the camp kitchen. Those hours of carrot-peeling and potato-chopping with the community helped me get into a much more fruitful rhythm of friendship-building and did more for “allyship” than any filmmaking skill I could have offered that day.

      Really love this snippet on how community and relationships are formed through the [small] choices we make in each moment, perhaps stepping outside of our usual habit or role.

      This article strongly reminds me of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. That book is a gem, and I think you would enjoy it if you resonate with this article.

    • Jessicascouted2 years ago

      My heart sinks. It’s been nearly six hours and she still hasn’t given up on her cub. I can just imagine how many times she darted back and forth on that road in attempts to wake it. It's extremely lucky that she wasn't hit as well. The calls to the cub continue, sounding more pained each time. I glance back finding myself hoping it would respond to her call too, but of course, nothing. Now here I am, standing between a grieving mother and her child. I feel like a monster.

      A painful story and it breaks my heart. National Parks have been flooded with visitors recently. I'm not sure if I will ever come to peace with the "humans versus the rest of nature" debacles... this is one of the things that keeps me awake at night.

    • Jessicacommented2 years ago
      The AtlanticArthur C. Brooks7/22/218 min
      The Atlantic

      I appreciated this article! Great advice here. There are so many reasons to prioritize our emotional health. Happiness and unhappiness are both contagious.

      In a 2019 study, researchers found that anger spreading around a workplace was correlated with more mistakes and accidents on the job.

    • Jessicacommented2 years ago
      The Daily BeastMatthew Lackner7/19/214 min
      The Daily Beast

      Fascinating! The first thing I thought of was the high cost, which the article touches on at the end. I also wonder what materials would be used to support the platform… those which could be environmentally friendly yet not easily degradable while submerged in water 100% of the time. Those two characteristics tend to clash.