I’ve been reading and listening to Cal Newport for almost a decade now, and I’m a big fan of his work. His books, including Deep Work, Digital Minimalism and A World Without Email have been foundational in my thinking about how we use technology in our work and in our daily lives. He has a popular podcast as well, which I listen to regularly, much to my kids’ chagrin.
(I have no idea why they change the online title of this article to be worse… or at least more boring.)
It is quite a long essay, ironic, perhaps given that the thesis is that we’ve lost our ability to concentrate. It is well worth a read, because while he mostly focuses on education and the working world, there is a broader point about our society’s ability to focus and hold deep complex thoughts. Look no further than our current AI-Slop Social Media administration and I hope you begin to see the problem of placing people who are not deep-thinkers in charge of our government.
A diminished ability to use our brains also has concerning personal effects. Thinking is what lets us make sense of information in a complicated world. As president, Abraham Lincoln used to regularly retreat to his cottage, on the grounds of the Soldiers’ Home in the heights above Washington, to find the solitude needed to think intensively about the decisions facing him as commander in chief. A contemporaneous letter from a Treasury employee visiting Lincoln at the cottage during these years describes finding the president “reposed in a broad chair, one leg hanging over its arm. He seemed to be in deep thought.”
This was one of my favorite quotes from the article, mostly because the thought of how President Lincoln was sitting in this chair thinking makes me laugh.
I’m interested to know someone’s earnest argument against this article. I don’t believe that “It’s too hard” to make these changes is a valid argument. There’s a lot at stake. I’m interested in building a coalition here.
It was a beautiful day for a protest. We took public transit (the new B-Line BRT Bus) over to one of the rally points, and then marched from there to the capitol. It took over 45 minutes before we even started walking in earnest towards the capitol. When we arrived, the entire green space in front of the building was rapidly filling in, and by the time the speakers had started it was completely filled in. I greatly enjoyed reading all the clever (“For the Epsteinth Time…”), and not so clever signs that were brought to the rally.
I can’t find any estimates of the crowd size other than the organizers saying it was 200,000 people, and MPR having reported that at least 80,000 were expected. It was quite a bit larger than the previous rallies we had attended.
Being amongst 100,000 of your neighbors cheering and singing and chanting is exciting enough but the lineup of speakers and performers was extra special today, including some big names like Bruce Springsteen, Maggie Rogers, Joan Baez, Tom Morello, Bernie Sanders and Jane Fonda. I’m not sure I’ll ever see anything quite like it again.
There is a popular theory that for a mass resistance movement to affect the government it needs to mobilize 3.5% of the population. In the last presidential election in Minnesota there were about 3.2 million votes cast. If a conservative estimate of the crowd size today was 100,000 people, we’re getting pretty close to that 3.5% number.
3.5% of Minnesota’s 18+ population is 157,500. We’ve got a ways to go until the next election, but everyone needs to get out to vote!
when it was time to travel the 2 miles to the hospital for their baby’s induced delivery in late February, Schmitt pedaled Jones in a friend’s cargo e-bike. Jones said the ride was inspired by a St. Paul woman who, at two weeks past her due date, pedaled a bike to a hospital in 2018 and gave birth.
If a bill introduced in the Legislature passes this session, a small solar array would be a mere plug in away for Minnesotans.
The legislation would establish regulations for installation and operation of plug-in solar devices. Also known as balcony solar, homeowners or renters could place units outside near an outlet as a way to harness solar energy and cut down on surging electricity bills.
The idea is to “democratize” solar, making renewable energy more accessible, said Sen. Rob Kupec, DFL-Moorhead, the bill’s author in the Senate.
You should be reading Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American1 every day. Especially if you need help sorting through the daily onslaught of insanity from this administration.
Yesterday Julie K. Brown of The Epstein Files, whose work digging into the cover-up of the Epstein story for the Miami Herald has been instrumental in bringing the scandal to light, and her colleague Claire Healy reported that after sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his prison cell on August 10, 2019, a corrections officer called the FBI’s Threat Operations Center saying the officer “found it suspicious that an after-action team charged with investigation would be shredding huge amounts of paperwork” while FBI agents were in the building.
And
In a conversation with Anne McElvoy of Politico on Thursday, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres noted that attacks on civilian energy infrastructure are war crimes.
And
On Meet the Press today, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said: “We’re gonna give Iran $14 billion to fund this war with the United States? We’re gonna give Russia billions of dollars to fund their war with Ukraine? We’re literally putting money into the pockets of the very nations that we are fighting right now. We’ve never seen this level of incompetence in war-making in this country’s history.”
Many americans believe that vaccines are unsafe, but will jab themselves full of performance enhancers. They think seed oils cause chronic disease, but beef tallow is healthy. They’ll say you can’t trust federally insured banks, but you can trust the millionaires who want you to invest in their volatile vaporware crypto tokens. They think food additives are toxic but support an administration removing all restrictions on pumping pollutants into the air and water. They’ll insist that you can’t trust scientists, because they’re part of the conspiracy. The podcaster selling you his special creatine gummies, though? He seems trustworthy.
The sun started to set, and we still had 5 miles to go. A couple of us rallied ahead to the hut to start cooking dinner for the rest of the team. We finished Day 1 with headlamps, hungry, and wet with giant smiles. Our teamwork and positivity confirmed that I was on the trip of a lifetime with incredibly strong and resilient women. My cheeks hurt from smiling already.
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