Page 5 of 6
media habits of the exhausted
I like thinking about media consumption habits. The often unconscious choices we make about what we allow space in our brain say a lot about what that brain looks like in that moment, and if you get good enough at noticing those patterns, they can be canaries in the coal mine for your mood. I track my reading habits pretty closely on Goodreads, so it’s easy for me to notice when I’m on a streak or going through a dry-spell. For example: when I’m anxious, I read detective stories where there is a logical reason for events and the bad guys get caught in the end. When I’m depressed, I stop reading new fiction because I don’t want to be potentially disappointed in a new world I’ve put emotional investment into. When I’m angry, I read non-fiction in the hopes that if I just understand our world a little better I can get a little better at helping solve its problems. And when I’m feeling optimistic, I buy new dead-tree books. I’m normally an e-book reader and I only get physical copies of books that resonate with me in some way, so if I’m buying a physical copy of a new book it’s because I feel like I have space in my life for the potential of something wonderful.
continue reading →books of 2016
I read 65 books in 2016. Some random numbers:
At least 1 female author: 54%
At least 1 PoC author: 18% (Yikes – I’ll have to do better about that)
Nonfiction: 29% (this is way higher than normal and I am v proud!)
Fantasy: 20%
Comic books: 14%
YA: 11%
Mystery: 11%
Sci-Fi: 8%
Literary: 8%
frequently asked questions about the election no one has actually asked me, yet
(This post first appeared on Medium.)
Is it okay to cry?
Yes.
Really? I’m not being too emotional?
No, really. Go ahead and cry. This is a fucked-up thing, and it would be weirder if you weren’t upset.
continue reading →be neville longbottom
Donald Trump is President-elect of the United States of America.
This was a shock, but it was also not a surprise. It is always a mistake to underestimate the depth of bigotry.
I have spent most of the day staring off into nothing. I have not gone more than half an hour without tearing up or outright crying. I am already sick and tired of reading postmortems but I cannot stop clicking them like a hamster on speed, looking for something that could have saved you, could have saved us. I am angry at everybody. I am angry at everything. I want to tear shit up and burn things down. I want to disappear.
continue reading →ashley madison: It’s not really about infidelity.
(This post was first published on Medium.com)
About a week ago, I posted the following tweet:
I have such complicated thoughts about the Ashley Madison hack, much of which comes down to “schadenfreude is ugly and unworthy of us”.
August 18, 2015 at 08:04PM (since deleted)
In the week since a lot of new information has come to light. There has been a second, larger dump with source code and the CEO’s email. We know about “family values” activist Josh Duggar’s account on the site (for which he seems to be more apologetic than, you know, molesting his sisters). We know about women and members of the LGBTQ population living in repressive regimes whose lives have been put at serious risk because of the leak. We know there are already mercenary “security experts” that are using the public’s fear to harvest email addresses for scams. We are starting to see real-world fall-out, including at least two possible suicides that have been linked to this.
In other words, things have gotten a lot more complicated.
This issue is about much more than infidelity. It’s about our vicious delight in negativity, the inevitable failure of computer security and computer literacy, the collateral damage of schadenfreude, the normalization of vigilante justice, and a collective desire for black-and-white judgments.
This is going to get long. Bear with me.
continue reading →