a stream

Yay holidays! Yay traditions! Yay America! Yay humans! We’re the best! We’re smarter than turkeys!

Standalone post link: Yay Thanksgiving!

I Made the World’s Blandest Facebook Profile, Just to See What Happens

by Kaitlyn Tiffany in The Atlantic

It seems like not many people are talking about this aspect of why Facebook is so horrible because it is also horrible in so many other ways. This is actually one of the main reasons I finally deleted my Facebook account, though.

I didn’t have a ton of “friends” (230ish, which I’m sure is below average for someone on Facebook for over a decade) and most of them didn’t share much that was real (or if they did, the algorithm didn’t see fit to share it with me), so my feed was filled with so much inanity and corporate stuff, and I still just scrolled through it compulsively, hoping something interesting would happen.

You can see this article had a different headline when I first encountered it in the Apple News app (another demonic time suck if you aren’t mindful and deliberate about finding quality content there - you have to dig to find things like articles from The Atlantic.)

After this I did find one more person talking about this, again via The Atlantic, but this time one of their new newsletter authors, Charlie Warzel in his Galaxy Brain:

What might the Facebook conversation look like if it more readily acknowledged Facebook for what it is: a vast algorithmic wasteland? Infinite channels, but nothing on.

Facebook’s Vast Wasteland

by Charlie Warzel

Standalone post link: Reading Link: Facebook Sent Me Down a Centrist Rabbit Hole

Writing the Great American Email

(Published this new ‘longer thing’ in the Features / Longer Things area of this website.)

Standalone post link: New Longer Thing: Writing the Great American Email

The last rays of the sun transfigured the water tower, the freeway overpasses, and the tops of the pins on the bowling alley sign, as I sat at my computer in an emptied office. I hadn’t noticed the sky darkening as I tapped away on my keyboard, compulsively shift-tabbing the cursor, re-reading, revising, substituting words, deleting phrases, and reorganizing paragraphs.

I still didn’t notice how late it was when my wife called me up wondering where I was and what I was doing, if I was okay. It was only as I dumbly attempted to explain to her why I was still at work that I recognized my folly. I was deep in creative flow, composing a short essay. I thought it was pretty good, and it was nearly complete.  It had some humor, it had a detailed history of past work on the subject, and it had what I think are some promising ideas for the topic moving forward. Sounds great, right? I haven’t yet disclosed a key detail, which is that it was about to be sent in reply to an email I received with a simple question asked in a single sentence.

My wife recommended I not hit send on that email just then, and I took her advice. It is still in my drafts. It was not all for naught, though. As I closed up the office and drove home from work, I was finally ably to put a name to a needed work productivity goal (and probably professional relationship goal, but I hate thinking about relationships) around what I think must be a rather unique personal challenge - I should not be writing The Great American Email.

Getting lost in composing detailed narratives and obsessively reworking sentences is within my full purview here in nowhereland, but it is usually not all that helpful or productive in an email at work. So, if I recognize that I am starting to write an extensive email, I need to take pause and figure out if it should actually be a phone call, an item for a meeting, a note that I don’t share with anyone yet, a sentence or two summary, or if it really needs to be anything at all. After all, I know people skip or delete my emails, sometimes maybe I can skip or delete things, too. 

I need to recognize that sometimes I just like reading myself writing - case in point, this very website, of which I may well be the only reader. Please don’t try to like, subscribe, or leave a comment, because none of those things are possible here. (Well, I guess “subscribe” is possible, if you are into that ancient protocol, RSS.)

TL;DR here’s that quality productivity self-help life hack you can share with all your business bros and professional contacts on LinkedIn - DON’T WRITE THE GREAT AMERICAN EMAIL.

(That is, unless your work is composing an email newsletter that you hope will get picked up by The Atlantic or make you a Substack millionaire – in that case you should definitely try to write the Great American Email. The school district doesn’t pay me for that sort of work, though.)

Standalone post link: Writing the Great American Email

Teen Librarians are not Pornographers and Other Things You Should Know About the People Who Have Dedicated Their Lives to Serving Youth in Your Community

by Karen Jensen of Teen Librian Toolbox

Loved this blog post that I happened upon today – being on School Library Journal’s network she’s kind of preaching to the choir, so I don’t know if this will convince or speak to anyone outside of libraries, but it’s honest and heartfelt and made me personally feel just a little bit better about my life.

These issues hit close to home but I’ve been avoiding social media and the news about them, which I think has been personally healthy but perhaps professionally a little irresponsible? There is always a fine line with news…

Standalone post link: Reading Link: Teen Librarians Are Not Pornographers

Photograph taken on June 13, 2009, somewhere off the South Fork Road in Provo Canyon.

I guess I’m going to at least occasionally continue with the totally random old photos. Probably should get a good series/source name for them.

Standalone post link: topographicbark

I wrote and had published on Granite Media a review of The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera. Might as well reshare it here for a record.

Full review text from https://www.granitemedia.org/2021/11/the-last-cuentista/ :

It’s literally the end of the world: a solar flare has knocked Haley’s Comet into a catastrophic collision course with Earth. But for almost-13-year-old Petra and her family there is an opportunity in the midst of this tragedy: they must leave their grandmother and their home in the New Mexico desert to secretly board an interstellar ship on a mission to colonize a new planet. Petra’s family is chosen as part of the mission because her parents are expert scientists with knowledge needed for exploring and terraforming the new planet. They will be put into stasis for the nearly 400 year space journey, and along the way Petra will receive a cognitive learning implant that will make her an expert in botany and geology when she arrives and is brought out of stasis. More than that, though, she also carries within her the Mexican folklore her grandmother shared with her, and the desire to be a storyteller, and preserve the stories of humanity. When she is brought out of stasis, not to her parents but to a future far different and more precarious than what was planned, her stories and Earth memories might be the only hope for saving what is left of humanity.

This book launches with a seemingly typical near-future sci-fi premise, but is unique as a middle-grade novel centering the story around a young person’s perspective. The author expertly interweaves Petra’s present predicament with flashbacks to her life on earth before the journey, as well as folklore and tales she learned from her Grandmother, which turn out to be absolutely prescient to her current situation light years from Earth. The book has positive echoes of middle-grade classics like The Giver and the Wrinkle in Time books, but with a contemporary flair, a fresh Mexican American perspective, and perhaps higher stakes for the characters. Beyond being a gripping science fiction adventure, it is filled with topics and situations for tween readers to discuss and think about, which would make it great for a book club or classroom study.

Reviewed by Joshua Whiting, Library Media Program, Granite Educational Technology Department Review shared in October 2021 Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5 stars) Interest Level: Grades 5 and Up

Author Website: dbhiguera.com

Title: The Last Cuentista Author: Donna Barba Higuera Publisher: Levine Querido Release Date: October 12, 2021 A review copy was not provided by the publisher.

Standalone post link: Book Review - The Last Cuentista

Yesterday morning I finished reading All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson. This morning I wrote six to seven pages of thoughts and notes about it, that I’m likely not safe to share anywhere right now, including here in unsyndicated nowhereland.

It’s a powerful book, though, if you’re willing to spend the time with it. And I’m afraid that fear of that power might be the true root and rot of the issue that seemingly requires me not to talk about it.

Standalone post link: Reading: All Boys Aren't Blue

I ended my cooking drought by making some potato-broccoli-cheese soup this afternoon, and now I’m ending my daily posting drought by sharing it here.

I’ve tried several different methods for this kind of soup and I finally have settled on this recipe as the best for what I want. I just add a bunch of broccoli and carrots to it, which is really the only change. And sometimes I mash one side of the pot with a potato masher. And I use more cheese than it says to.

I guess actually if I was in the recipe blogging scene those additions would constitute enough variations to write it up here as my own recipe. With pictures like this, I’m leaning hard into this being an anti-recipe blog, though. You’ll just have to trust me that it tastes good; my wife and daughter can vouch for that, too. Not my son, though; he ate oatmeal for dinner instead.

Standalone post link: potatobroccolicheesesoup

I filled up another ‘Field Notes’ notebook. I’m obsessed with these, and I already have too many, but I justify it because I do really like to write in them, I think I write more because of them. And now I even draw silly stuff in them sometimes. I’m sure I’ll use them all eventually.

Next up is this plain blue notebook, with turquoise and green ink pens. This is the first non-National Parks Series notebook I’ll be filling.

Standalone post link: Filling Up Space