Canceled my New York Times subscription and resubscribed to The New Yorker. I found I didn’t really read the Times and I really missed spending an hour or so a day going through the meatier New Yorker articles. This one in particular convinced me to return.

Charlie Warzel in the New York Times:

In 2016, Mr. Caulfield met Mr. Wineburg, who suggested modeling the process after the way professional fact checkers assess information. Mr. Caulfield refined the practice into four simple principles:

1. Stop.
2. Investigate the source.
3. Find better coverage.
4. Trace claims, quotes and media to the original context.

Otherwise known as SIFT.

I had an argument/discussion with a really good friend yesterday about whether or not flu cases went down during the last year. I told her they went down because of our collective COVID precautions—wearing masks, social distancing, washing our hands—but she said it’s not true because they weren’t testing for influenza, so there’s no way of knowing for sure. She’s been against all the COVID precautions since the beginning, so I could understand where she was coming from. I still didn’t believe she was right, so I went online, found around ten sources for my claim that flu cases actually went down, and she said,

We don’t “believe” the same articles. We can both find ones that show what we agree with 🤣

I’m not sure if this SIFT method would’ve worked with her, but I find it useful for myself anyway. I also don’t know how to converse with my friends who don’t share the same definition of “truth” as me. Am I wrong? Is she wrong? Is there a balance? I have no idea.

But we’re still friends, and I’m fiercely loyal to my friends, even when we disagree.

Molly Wood in the latest episode of Make Me Smart with Kai and Molly:

Facebook is cigarettes… It’s Big Tobacco… They know its product causes harm and they keep minimizing the harm to keep selling product. #FacebookisCigarettes

Agree 100%. And over 2 billion people are addicted.

Craig Mod in his introduction to his new newsletter huh:

As I was conjuring up the shape of huh it struck me as slightly insane that more photographers don’t do this — mail out a single photo once a week. Ideally we’d subscribe to a cadre of our favorites. Maybe they’d all arrive on Wednesday and Wednesday would be this visual inbox party. No comments, no likes, no stream of other images to compete against, no Reels to be sucked into, no algorithmic curveballs. Just a few beautiful images, from the four or five photographers whose work we adore. Things to be enjoyed as units unto themselves in ways that are difficult to do in the din of social streams. And best of all — if we want to say something nice, we just have to hit reply. No public-space posturing.

Photography Wednesdays sounds amazing.

I stopped taking photos, especially macro photos, and that has made me sad. I asked a friend the other day where all the bugs have gone, and she said there are no bugs during winter. So I looked it up on the internet: Where do insects go during winter? Thought this was cool.

James Kochalka, via Austin Kleon:

It’s been my experience that if you’re a creative person, and you’re good at one thing, you’re probably good at another thing. If you’re good at drawing, you might be good at writing, too. If you’re good at writing, you might be good at playing music, too. If you’re good at playing music, you might be good at pottery. If you’re good at playing guitar, you might be a good dancer! In order to create, there’s some little thing you have to let happen inside yourself, of just letting yourself be free. If you can turn that little switch on inside yourself in one medium, you can probably do it in another medium.

I agree with this, but I want to add that it doesn’t just happen. You do have to work for it, but I firmly believe that if you’re not having fun during the journey, then you won’t enjoy the destination.

Anton Troianovski in the New York Times:

It was a siege. It was a mob. It was anarchy. Or, as the Italian newspaper La Stampa put it in its front-page headline Thursday, “Once upon a time, there was America.”

Only 13 more days.

Nate Chittenden, a farmer from Schodack Landing, N.Y., quoted by Andrew Jacobs in the New York Times:

“I’m in charge of this entire life from cradle to grave, and it’s important for me to know this animal went through its life without suffering,” he said, stroking the head of one especially insistent cow. “I’m a bad person if I let it suffer.”

In 2011, I chose to stop consuming dairy products after I determined, and later confirmed, I was lactose intolerant. In 2017, I decided to be vegan. I didn’t do it because I thought eating animals was “wrong.” I did it because I felt I was eating too much meat and not enough vegetables.

Over time, though, as this lifestyle sustained me and made me feel better than I ever have in my life, I underwent a sort of spiritual transformation. After a year without consuming any animal products, I realized how unnecessary animal suffering was to sustain a human life.

I’m glad farmers like Mr. Chittenden exist, and I’m grateful that farmers and scientists are trying to figure out how to farm animals ethically, but I’m done consuming animal products. I don’t need to eat them to be healthy, and I’m confident most people don’t, either.

Writing about social media and anxiety, Emma Warnock-Parkes suggests this tip to improve attention:

Play a music track and practise listening to one instrument at a time, switching between instruments every so often.

I do this and it helps to calm me down all the time.